Prose-WriteRS-DE FOE, SWIFT, STEELE, AND ADDISON

POETS OF NATURE AND LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CEN-

TURY THOMSON, DYER, ALLAN RAMSAY, COWPER

(1700-1800)

CHAPTER XXII.

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458

POETS OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

(1800-1850)

...

CHAPTER XXIII.

476

SOME PROSE-WRITERS OF THE EARLIER YEARS OF THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY

508

INTRODUCTION.

THE Voices of our fathers gone before
Float back to us, who struggle in the rear ;
Subdued by distance ever more and more,

The purest notes are those that reach the ear.

We tread where Cadmon, far before us, trod, Where echoes are resounding yet his song : "It is most meet, that we should worship God, Our great Creator. In Him ye are strong:

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Through the great deep where stormy waters flow,
Your way is safe, whatever ills pursue;
Through the fierce furnace safe with Him you go,
As through the sunlight when it lifts the dew,

"If ye have faith. Have faith!" And are not these Whispers of Bede heard through our tread of feet?— "Lift me, and let me die upon my knees,

Where I prayed daily; so to die is sweet."

"When you have tried all treasures, Truth is best:" True Langland's music calls us from above:

"Whatever poison stabs, Love gives you rest

And health; the Triacle of Heaven is Love."

Voice after voice, the frailties of the flesh

Dust with the flesh, still blends its purer strain With our own speech, falls only to refresh,

Touches earth tenderly as summer rain,

Till earth, less hard about our stony way,
Smiles into life, loosens its iron grip,
And cumbered souls that languished in the clay

Shoot upward to find Heaven's companionship.

By him is Paradise Regained indeed

Who bears, with Christ, pain, famine, patient still :"Nor mind it, fed with better thoughts, that feed

Me hungering more to do my Father's will."

The voices of our fathers gone before

Stay here to help us with their music thus :-
What voice of ours, abiding evermore,

Shall help the dear ones who come after us?

God of our children, whom we yearn to teach,
The lips we kiss, O touch them from above;
Turn Thou their babblings into manly speech
As strong to move through innocence to love.

Our days are few, but yet a little more

Help us to leave our children, ere we die,
Of treasure added to the only store

That serves to build the home beyond the sky.

Teach, Father, God, our children how to pass
From earth to Heaven as from home to home,
The earth they leave reflecting as a glass

Its image of the Peace to which they come.

HENRY MORLEY.*

THIS Story of English Literature is the story of those "Prophets, sages, and worthies" of our nation, who, seeing more clearly than other men the truths of life and what God meant the world to be, have striven in various forms— in poems, stories, plays, essays, sermons, and lively jests—to set forth the true ideal. The work of each has been his own, shaped by his own individuality, tinged often by the circumstances of his own life, coloured still more by the spirit and fashion of the age in which he lived, but having running through it all the honest looking for what is right, and the endeavour to make others see it.

'Library of English Literature," vol. ii.