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who seek to please chiefly by an exhibition of Nature in her simplest and most familiar views. From these he selects his objects with equal taste and discretion, and in no instance does he ever represent what would excite disgust or cause pain. In the poetry of Goldsmith there is nothing that strikes us as merely ideal. Everything is clear, distinct, and palpable. His very imagery is tangible. He draws it from objects that act at once upon the senses, and the reader is never for a moment at a loss to discover its application. It is this that makes Goldsmith so easily understood and so generally admired. His poetical landscapes and portraits are so many transcripts from living nature, while every image, every thought, and every sentiment connected with them have a corresponding expression of unaffected truth and simplicity.... The characteristics of Goldsmith's poetry are ease, softness, and beauty. He can be commended for the elegance of his imagery, the depth of his pathos, and the flow of his numbers. He is uniformly tender and impressive, but rarely sublime.

BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

Washington Irving's "Life of Gold- | De Quincey's Works: "Essays on the smith."

William Black's "Oliver Goldsmith,"
edited by Morley, in the "English |
Men of Letters" series, 1879.
Forster's "Life and Adventures of
Oliver Goldsmith."

Walter Scott's "Life of Goldsmith."
North American Review, xlv., p. 91.

Poets," vol. ix. Macaulay's "Essays," vol. vi. Thackeray's "Humorists of the Eighteenth Century." "The Cumberland Memoirs."

Taine's "History of English Literature."

IX.

AGE OF REVOLUTION.

A.D. 1784-1837.

GREAT REVOLUTION IN POETRY.-COWPER, BURNS, WORDSWORTH, SCOTT, BYRON.

GROWTH OF THE NOVEL. - MARIA EDGEWORTH, SCOTT, BULWER-LYTTON.

PROGRESS IN THE SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND PO LITICAL HISTORY.-HENRY HALLAM.

ESTABLISHMENT OF CELEBRATED BRITISH JOURNALSREVIEWS: EDINBURGH, QUARTERLY, WESTMINSTER. MAGAZINES: BLACKWOOD'S, LONDON, FRASER'S.

FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM BY S. T. COLERIDGE.

SCHOOL OF SCOTCH PHILOSOPHERS -T. REID, DUGALD STEWART, DR. T. BROWN, SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.

RISE OF THE ART SCHOOL IN POETRY.-JOHN KEATS, WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AGE OF REVO

LUTION,

WITH HISTORICAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND ART NOTES.

A.D. 1784-1837.

That same spirit of revolution which, on the eve of the nineteenth century, manifested itself on the Continent of Europe by convulsions and agitations in Politics and Philosophy, produced in Great Britain-saved from all excesses by political and religious liberty-a great transformation in Literature. "It was not social ideas, as in France, that were transformed, nor philosophical ideas, as in Germany, but literary ideas. The great rising tide of the modern mind, which elsewhere overturned the whole edifice of human conditions and speculations, succeeded here only at first in changing style and taste." English passion and imagination, which had been dormant for over a century, were revived, classical conventionality was thrown aside, and there followed a magnificent outburst in literature only paralleled by that of the Elizabethan Age.

English Sovereigns. [House of Brunswick.]

GEORGE III., -1820.
GEORGE IV., 1820-1830.
WILLIAM IV., 1830-1837.

GREAT REVOLUTION IN POETRY. - Cowper, BURNS, WORDSWORTH, SCOTT, BYRON.

By the poetic revolution is meant that change in the tone and character of English poetry as manifested in a comparison of the works of Pope and his school with the works of the nineteenth-century poets. This change may be defined as the abandonment of poetry which struggled after the so-called classical correctness by

Political reign of the great statesman, William Pitt, son of the cele

brated Lord
(1783-1801).

Chatham
His parliamen-

tary career be-
He was made

gan in 1781.

Chancellor of the Exchequer

in 1782, and the

following year was placed by George III. at the head of his cabinet. In 1784 Gibbon wrote from Lausanne, "A youth of fiveand-twenty, who raises himself to the government of an empire by the

power of genius and the reputation of virtue is

not less glorious to the country than to

conforming to arbitrary rules of art, ignored external nature, despised all men but the rich and learned, was devoid of imagination and passion, and dabbled only with an intellectual theology; for a poetry which substitutes romantic for classical sentiment and subject, exalts Nature into a living being, endowing her with life and soul, embraces humanity, irrespective of class, race, or time, swells and contracts with emotion and feeling, and deals with a personal theology of the heart. The chief causes which led to this transformation are to be found in the (1) relig

himself." Pitt ious agitations under John Wesley; (2) study

was a peaceminister, a financier, and a promoter of English industry. His patriotism was intense, but he was free from English prejudice and passion. On the king's refusal to sanction the

bill of Catholic

emancipation

he resigned his

office 1801. The French victory at Austerlitz is said to have caused his death in 1806. His last words were a fitting conclusion to so patriotic a life, "My country! How I leave my country!"

Invention of

of the natural poetry of Chaucer and the Elizabethan writers, and of Bishop Percy's collection of the old English and Scotch ballads; (3) French Revolution; (4) introduction of transcendentalism from Germany by Coleridge. Democratic and philosophical ideas swept from the Continent into Great Britain, and uniting with native religious and romantic ideas, took possession of the poets' minds; whence issued a natural poetry of theology, passion, Nature, and universal

man.

The movement began distinctly with the publication of Cowper's "Task" (1784), but had existed in an undefined and vague manner in the poetry of Thomson, Gray, Collins, and Goldsmith; while it culminated under Wordsworth, and may be said to have ended with Shelley. There were few poets of the age who did not come under its influence. Thomas Campbell's first poem, "The Pleasures of Hope" (1799), was artificial in its sentiment, and contained occasional bombast and strained metaphors; but his later lyrics were natural expressions of high emotion, and were scattered with fine flashes of

the Hydraulic imagination. George Crabbe's excellent descriptions of rural life in "The Village" (1783), "The

Press by
Bramah, 1786.

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