28G 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



that it might acquire this the more surely, it com- 

 pelled poetry, as in France, to conform itself to the 

 law of prose likewise. The classic verse of French 

 poetry was the Alexandrine, a measure favorable 

 to the qualities of regularity, uniformity, preci- 

 sion, balance. Gradually a measure favorable to 

 those very same qualities — the ten-syllable coup- 

 let — established itself as the classic verse of 

 England, until in the eighteenth century it had 

 become the ruling form of our poetry. Poetry, 

 or rather the use of verse, entered in a remark- 

 able degree, during that century, into the whole 

 of the daily life of the civilized classes ; and the 

 poetry of the century was a perpetual school of 

 the qualities requisite for a good prose, the qual- 

 ities of regularity, uniformity, precision, bal- 

 ance. This may have been of no great service 

 to English poetry, although to say that it has 

 been of no service at all, to say that the eigh- 

 teenth century has in no respect changed the 

 conditions of English poetical style, or that it 

 has changed them for the worse, would be un- 

 true. But it was undeniably of signal service to 

 that which was the great want and work of the 

 hour, English prose. 



Do not let us, therefore, hastily despise John- 

 son and his century for their defective poetry 

 and criticism of poetry. True, Johnson is ca- 

 pable of saying, "Surely no man could have 

 fancied that he read 'Lycidas ' with pleasure had 

 he not known the author ! " True, he is capable 

 of maintaining that " the description of the tem- 

 ple in Congreve's 'Mourning Bride' was the 

 finest poetical passage he had ever read — he rec- 

 ollected none in Shakespeare equal to it." But 

 we are to conceive of Johnson and of his century 

 as having a special task committed to them, the 

 establishment of English prose ; and as capable 

 of being warped and narrowed in their judgments 

 of poetry by this exclusive task. Such is the 

 common course and law of progress ; one thing is 

 done at a time, and the other things are sacrificed 

 to it. We must be thankful for the thing done, if 

 it is valuable, and we must put up with the tem- 

 porary sacrifice of other things to this one. The 

 other things will have their turn sooner or later. 

 Above all, a nation with profound poetical in- 

 stincts, like the English nation, may be trusted 

 to work itself right again in poetry after periods 

 of mistaken poetical practice. Even in the midst 

 of an age of such practice, and with his style fre- 

 quently showing the bad influence of it, Gray was 

 saved, we may say, and remains a poet whose 

 work has high and pure worth, simply by know- 

 ing the Greeks thoroughly, more thoroughly than 



any English poet had known them since Milton. 

 Milton was a survivor from the great age of poe- 

 try; Dryden, Addison, Pope, and Swift, were 

 mighty workers for the age of prose. Gray, a 

 poet in the midst of the age of prose, a poet, 

 moreover, of by no means the highest force, and 

 of scanty productiveness, nevertheless claims a 

 place among the six chief personages of John- 

 son's lives, because it was impossible for an Eng- 

 lish poet, even in that age, who knew the great 

 Greek masters intimately, not to respond to their 

 good influence, and to be rescued from the false 

 poetical practice of his contemporaries. Of such 

 avail to a nation are deep poetical instincts even 

 in an age of prose. How much more may they 

 be trusted to assert themselves after the age of 

 prose has ended, and to remedy any poetical 

 mischief done by it! And meanwhile the work 

 of the hour, the necessary and appointed work, 

 has been done, and we have got our prose. 



Let us always bear in mind, therefore, that 

 the century so well represented by Dryden, Addi- 

 son, Pope, and Swift, and of which the literary 

 history is so powerfully written by Johnson in 

 his lives, is a century of prose — a century of 

 which the great work in literature was the for- 

 \ mation of English prose. Johnson was himself 

 a laborer in this great and needful work, and 

 was ruled by its influences. His blame of genu- 

 ine poets like Milton and Gray, his over-praise of 

 artificial poets like Pope, are to be taken as the 

 utterances of a man who worked for an age of 

 prose, who was ruled by its influences, and could 

 not but be ruled by them. Of poetry he speaks 

 as a man whose sense for that with which he is 

 dealing is in some degree imperfect. 



Yet even on poetry Johnson's utterances are 

 valuable, because they are the utterances of a 

 great and original man. That, indeed, he was ; 

 and to be conducted by such a man through an 

 important century cannot but do us good, even 

 though our guide may in some places be less com- 

 petent than in others. Johnson was the man of 

 an age of prose. Furthermore, he was a strong 

 force of conservation and concentration in an 

 epoch which by its natural tendencies seemed 

 moving toward expansion and freedom. But he 

 was a great man, and great men are always in- 

 structive. The more we study him, the higher 

 will be our esteem for the power of his mind, the 

 width of his interests, the largeness of his knowl- 

 edge, the freshness, fearlessness, and strength of 

 his judgments. The higher, too, will be our es- 

 teem for his character. His well-known lines on 

 Levett's death, beautiful and touching lines, are 



