ENGLISH LITERATURE 



2057 



ENGRAVING 



his own day was accounted better than that 

 of Shakespeare, but it was cold, formal and 

 artificial, entirely lacking in high poetic in- 

 spiration. That the Augustan Age, as the first 

 part of the century is called, was a brilliant 

 one may be seen from the names of its writ- 

 ers. During that period Swift produced his 

 Gulliver's Travels and his other matchless sat- 

 ires; Addison and Steele wrote their famous 

 Spectator papers; and Defoe won thousands of 

 readers with that earliest of novels, Robinson 

 Crusoe. The popular Spectator was a pio- 

 neer in a movement of great importance which 

 finally resulted in the modern newspaper, while 

 the mention of Robinson Crusoe indicates an- 

 other development that of the novel (which 

 see). 



An outstanding figure during the middle of 

 the century was Samuel Johnson, about whom 

 gathered a group of distinguished men Burke, 

 Goldsmith, Boswell and others who bowed to 

 his literary dictatorship. 



Side by side with the "classic" tendencies of 

 the authors mentioned above, there was grow- 

 ing up a new spirit of romanticism. Thomson, 

 Gray, Cowper, Blake, and, foremost of all, 

 Burns, revolted against the "common sense" 

 standards and demanded that imagination be 

 allowed its rightful place in poetry. A re- 

 newed appreciation of nature was evident, and 

 a far greater affection and sympathy for hu- 

 man beings. 



VIII. The Romantic Age (1800-1850). This 

 was a carrying out of the principles more or 

 less consciously formulated by these early 

 romanticists (see ROMANTICISM). Poetry rather 

 than prose was the dominant literary form, and 

 Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and 

 Keats reflected in their matchless verse the 

 demand of the age for freedom from affecta- 

 tion. Alike in that one particular, they dif- 

 fered widely in others, for romanticism allowed 

 the expression of individual genius, unbound 

 by general rules. Poets of lower rank, who 

 would have ornamented an age less splendid 

 in genius, were Scott, Moore and Southey, the 

 first-named being remembered rather for his 

 prose than for his verse, for Scott is the out- 

 standing prose writer of the age, and his nov- 

 els show the romantic spirit as clearly as does 

 his poetry. Lamb, De Quincey and Jane Aus- 

 ten are perhaps the only other writers of prose 

 whose works still find a wide audience. 



IX. The Victorian Age (1850-1900). Variety 

 seems at first sight to be the keynote of this 

 period, for almost every branch of literature 



is represented, and by works of high rank. The 

 progress of science, the inventions that came 

 with increasing frequency, the working out of 

 the doctrine of evolution, the social unrest, all 

 left their mark on the literature, and careful 

 study shows that this was all actuated by a 

 more or less definite moral purpose. The writ- 

 ers were the teachers of the people, not un- 

 pleasantly didactic, but speaking out with no 

 uncertain voice and teaching charity and the 

 brotherhood of man. The novels as well as 

 the poetry and the essays show clearly this 

 trait who can fail to find it in those of Dick- 

 ens, Thackeray or George Eliot? Primarily, 

 this was an age of prose, the three great writ- 

 ers just mentioned, with Macaulay, Arnold, 

 Carlyle and Ruskin, making up a group un- 

 matched in any other age. But poetry was not 

 neglected, and at least two of the Victorian 

 poets are entitled to first rank Tennyson and 

 Browning; while of the lesser poets, Rossetti, 

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Swinburne 

 produced work of which no age .need be 

 ashamed. All in all, it is probable that future 

 generations, looking back to the Victorian Age, 

 will call it one of the greatest in the history 

 of English literature. 



X. More Recent Literature. To give any gen- 

 eral characteristics of the literature of to-day is 

 difficult and unsafe only with perspective is 

 sound judgment possible. It is a period of 

 restless activity in every field, and poems, 

 dramas, plays, essays, history, criticism and 

 biography pour from the presses in a never- 

 ending stream. Of the prose writers, Kipling, 

 Hewlett, Bennett, Galsworthy, Barrie and 

 Shaw will perhaps best repay study, while 

 among the poets Yeats and Masefield have 

 attracted most favorable attention. 



The literature of England is not the only 

 literature written in the English language. 

 Across the sea there have grown two literatures 

 of goodly proportions, one in Canada and the 

 other in the United States. These are treated 

 under the titles AMERICAN LITERATURE and 

 CANADIAN LITERATURE. A.MCC. 



Consult Dawson's Makers of Modern English ; 

 Beers' From Chaucer to Tennyson; Mrs. Oli- 

 phant's Literary History of England in the 

 Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. 



ENGRAVING, the art of cutting characters, 

 figures or designs of any kind on a hard sur- 

 face. The earliest engraving was undoubtedly 

 done for ornamentation or decoration. The 

 rock carvings of primitive cliff-dwellers, the 

 inscriptions of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks 



