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VIII.

JOHNSONIAN AGE.

A.D. 1745-1784.

CULMINATION OF CLASSICAL PROSE. DR. SAMUEL JOHN.

SON.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL. - RICHARDSON, FIELDING, SMOLLETT, ETC.

REMARKABLE OUTBURST OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE.

HUME, ROBERTSON, GIBBON.

PRONOUNCED SCEPTICISM IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL WRIT

INGS OF DAVID HUME.

CREATION OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY BY ADAM SMITH.

RISE OF ORATORICAL ELOQUENCE.-EDMUND BURKE.

CLOSE OF THE ENGLISH STAGE DRAMA WITH RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

GROWTH OF ROMANTIC POETRY. - COLLINS, GRAY, AND OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JOHNSONIAN AGE,

WITH HISTORICAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND ART NOTES.

A.D. 1745-1784.

Dr. Samuel Johnson not only represented the literature of the forty years succeeding the death of Pope, but also ruled over it as king. Of his death, in 1784, Craik says, "It was not only the end of a reign, but the end of kingship altogether in our literary system. For King Samuel has had no successor; nobody since his day, and that of his contemporary Voltaire, has sat on a throne of Literature, either in England or in France." These years, known in literature as the Johnsonian Age, are the transition between those widely different epochs-the placid, unruffled, Classical Age and the tumultuous Age of Revolution. It was essentially an Age of Prose.

English Sovereigns. ( GEORGE II., -1760. [House of Brunswick.] ( GEORGE III., 1760

CULMINATION OF CLASSICAL PROSE. - DR. SAMUEL

JOHNSON.

War of the Encyclopædists in

France. Affiliof that sceptical Hume, Gibbon, and Walpole.

As classical poetry attained its highest development under Pope, so did classical prose under Dr. Johnson. "His phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously, accompanied by its epithet; grand, pompous words peal like an organ; every proposition is set forth, balanced by a proposition of equal length; thought is developed with the compassed regularity and official splendor of a procession. Art cannot be more finished, or nature more forced." This elaborate Latinic diction-distinguished by the del, 1759

ated members

company were

Bolingbroke,

Death of Han

Formation of Johnson Club,

the celebrated

1764. [See Dr. JohnsonFriends.]

name of Johnsonese-forms a contrast with the light, graceful, conversational style of Addison in the preceding age, both of which were influential elements in English literature. Dr. Johnson's labors embraced nearly every department of literature: he developed Biography, continued the periodical Essay begun by Addison and Steele, compiled the first valuable Dictionary of the English Language, dignified Literary Criticism, composed the first Didactic tale in the language, wrote a Book of Travel-to the Heb

Visit of Mozart rides-contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine

to England with his parents, 1764. The most difficult compositions of Bach and Handel were

played at sight by the musical prodigy of eight years.

and other periodicals, indulged in Meditations and Sermons, produced a Classic tragedy, dabbled in poetry, and, above all, addressed to Lord Chesterfield a frank and candid Letter which struck a death-blow to literary patronage and elevated Literature into a paying as well as an honorable profession.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL. - RICHARDSON,

FIELDING, SMOLLETT, ETC.

Occasional noteworthy specimens of prose fiction had been produced in England as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sir

Appearance of Thomas More's "Utopia" and Lord Bacon's "Atlantis" were excellent philosophical tales, and Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" was a popular chivalric romance in its day; while to the preceding age belonged Swift's fictional narrative of "Gulliver's Travels" and Defoe's admirable stories. But the first English novel possessing all the requisites of such a composition as the delineation of social life, real characters, probabilities and possibilities, and as the working out of a regularly constructed plot, was Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" (1740), which became the favorite book of fashionable

the famous paper, North Briton, edited by John Wilkes, 1762.

Invention of the spinningjenny by Hargreaves, 1767.

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