Dryden and the Critical Canons of the Eighteenth Cenfnry 13 



Man. To this transmogrification he succeeded in obtaining Alil- 

 ton's consent; but the production was nevet staged. In addition 

 tp all such rehabilitations he translated liberally from Latin, 

 Greek, Italian — and Chaucer. Nor was the case of Pope very 

 different. He inspires himself with Horace and Boileau. A good 

 deal of his best work is a pastiche of Latin satire. In the Essay 

 on Man he versifies ideas which were furnished him immediately 

 by Bolingbroke and whose significance he did not clearly under- 

 stand, while most of his pieces seem the result of successive 

 sketches — a various patchwork or mosaic which precludes the 

 notion of original projection. But why multiply examples? 

 When such are the leaders of an age, what can be expected of 

 their followers — of the Crown's and Ravenscroft's, the Gay's and 

 Prior's ?^ Let Addison answer for them all. 



"When I have iinished any of ni}' speculations, it is my method to con- 

 sider which of the ancient authors have touched upon the subject that I 

 treat of. By this means I meet with some celebrated thought upon it. or 

 some similitude for the illustration of my subject."' 



In short, the consciousness of the age was what we should now 

 call "literary." It was haunted by the memory of books, satu- 

 rated with reminiscences, distracted by the thought of tradition 

 and authority, of rules and models. And even in as far as it 

 succeeded in expressing its own temper, the terms in which it 

 did so were largely second-hand and foreign. 



Ill 



But in spite of these sources of weakness and the incidental 

 errors to which they gave rise, or rather on account of the spirit 

 which was liable to such weaknesses — the spirit of order, sobri- 

 ety, and clearness — it is to this movement that English is in- 

 debted for a genuine prose. Of these errors the general char- 

 acter is sufficiently obvious. In their respect for correctness and 



' For e.xamples of imitation on the part of the lesser spirits, see Beljame. 

 /e Public et les homines de lettres en Angleterre an XVII I<^ siecle. p. 5S ff. 

 "Addison. Spectator, no. 221. 



13 



