ge he, Fic alee acpi 
_steam-engine brought 
_ rather than nature; 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
MANCHESTER, MASS., SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1908. 
ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
BY D. F. LAMSON. 
[It is proposed under this general title 
to present a series of articles on the prin- 
cipal writers of the period, beginning 
with Dryden and ending with Cowper. | 
The 18th century was an age of in- 
vention and material advancement. In 
1762, the Bridgewater canal, the first 
link in inland waterways, was opened; 
in 1763, the famous Wedgwood potteries 
went into operation; in 1767, the 
spinning-jenny was introduced, and the 
into shape by 
Watt; the power loom came into use in 
1784; meanwhile great improvements 
were being made in agriculture and the 
breeding of stock. But the century was 
not one of material activity. merely; its 
outward enterprise had its counterpart in 
the world of letters. 
In a rationalistic age, like the 18th cen- 
tury, men trouble themselves little about 
new ideas, but reason and debate upon 
ideas already possessed. The principal 
literary achievement of the time was 
naturally in prose, the medium best fitted 
for ratiocination and argument. Its chief 
prose writers are Swift, Steele, Addison, 
Locke, Defoe, Sterne, Johnson, Gib- 
bon, and Adam Smith, the author of the 
“Wealth of Nations’ and the founder 
of the science of Political Economy. Its 
‘great poets, not to speak of lesser lights, 
were Dryden, Pope, Gray and Gold- 
smith. Some of these, notably Dryden 
and Goldsmith, also excelled in prose. 
These names represent, as will be seen 
at a glance, a wide variety of taste, cul- 
ture and literary power. 
_ The century may be characterized as 
in general an age of coarse utilitarianism, 
of religious indifference and of political 
corruption; it was the age of rationalism 
and deism, an age of the religion of na- 
ture, a system too vague and colorless to 
have any vitality; it was, however, the 
age that gave birth to the masterly ‘‘ An- 
alogy’’ of Butler, the mysticism of 
William Low, and the evangelical and 
evangelistic fervor of Wesleyanism. In 
literature it is noted for no stars of the 
first magnitude; it was an age of the 
commonplace; it was to the spacious 
times of the great Elizabeth an age of 
penny-a-liners and poetasters. 
The spirit of the age was one of art 
it was marked by 
finish rather than originality; robustness 
of Bacon and Milton, and the out-door 
freshness of Shakespeare, had given 
place to the drawing-room manners of 
an Addison and a Pope. ‘The sturdy 
virility of the Ecclesiastical Polity had de- 
generated into the prim elegance of the 
Spectator and the Essay on Man. The 
luxuriance of nature disappeared under 
the pruning shears of art. Genius was 
measured by the foot-rule; thoughts 
were marshalled by a drill-sergeant, 
emotion was repressed, comedy and 
tragedy reduced to mere stage-acting, 
and life became a puppet show with Be- 
linda for its heroine and a lock of hair 
for its reward of valor. ‘This is not say- 
ing, of course, that the times of Queen 
Ann and the Georges could not boast of 
famous writers. It is only saying that the 
standard of greatness had changed; style 
had come to be the main thing; the at- 
tention of those who held the ear of the 
public was given less to what they had 
to say, and more to how they said it; 
writers employed their time in laborious- 
ly polishing a period or pointing an epi- 
gram or balancing a sentence, until Ene- 
lish literature well nigh lost its freedom 
and force. Letters were cultivated with 
great assiduity, and poetry became a fine 
art. Sermons, histories, essays were fin- 
ished to a faultless degree of nicety, but 
they lacked color and life. There was 
a studied conformity to classic ideals, 
but there was no great passion, no Ham- 
let, or Samson Agonistes, or Great- 
Heart; women who were unmoved by 
Desdemona’s tragic fate could weep over 
Clarissa Harlowe through six prosy 
tomes. “There was literary workman- 
ship, sometimes of a high order; but it 
was without inspiration or spontaneity. 
‘The best writers were not creators, they 
were mere artists.” 
It is true, however, and this must be 
said, after all criticisms are made, these 
men were in many instances artists of 
consummate taste and skill; if they 
wanted intensity and breadth, they were 
masters of detail; they wrought the lan- 
guage to a high degree of literary per- 
fection; they were without rivals in ver- 
bal criticism, and were adepts in syntax 
and prosody. Men like Addison, Swift 
and Johnson in prose, and Dryden, Pope 
and Goldsmith in poetry, were poten- 
tates who ruled the world of letters with 
a regal hand, and their deftness in shap- 
ing language to thought has hardly been 
surpassed from their day to this. One 
is unapproached as a master of satire, 
another was a prince of critics, a third 
still overawes us with his ponderous 
dicta, and a fourth touched nothing he 
did not adorn. Lacking as the 18th cen- 
tury was in imagination and invention, it 
excelled in the art of expression, It was 
the Silver Age of English ‘literature an4 
taste; an age in which writers studied not 
vnly men but manners, and in which 
the literary world was the vogue. It was 
essentially (1) an age of light literature, 
as became a polite society; (2) an age 
of satirical literature, as became a society 
which lived upon discussion of fashions 
and follies; and (3) an age of artificial 
literature, as reflecting a time in which 
conviction had given place to sentiment 
and thought to words and phrases. In 
short, despite the robust influence of 
Reynolds and Johnson, it was an age of 
dilettanteism in literature and art. 
[The next paper will be upon John 
Dryden, critic, prose writer and_ poet. | 
In Yachting Circles. 
The Manchester Yacht club opened 
for the season on May 20, and is in 
charge of Charlie Olsen of Cambridge, 
brother of Severance Olsen, who was in 
charge the twoyears previous. The latter 
returned to his home in Sweden last win- 
ter and has not yet returned. 
The regetta committee is arranging 
the season’s schedule and it will pro- 
bably be announced next week. The 
tender class races will be held as_ usual 
beginning next week or the week after. 
MANCHESTER 
‘The bathing season at Singing Beach 
seems to be fully under. way. During 
the month of May 48 bathers were re- 
corded as using the public bathhouse. 
‘This is an increase of 46 over last year, 
when but two were listed for the month. 
The season really began on May 11, but 
the first bather entered the water, April 
27. Last week, A. U. McCormick, 
the caretaker, reported 58 using the pub- 
lic bathhouse. “The warm weather of 
Sunday drove large numbers to the beach, 
many of whom enjoyed the privileges of 
the bathhouse. The pier, at Masconomo 
park is very popular amongst the boys, 
where they dive off from the float into 
the water. “Che water this season shows 
a decided rise in temperature over that of 
last, for this time of year. The lowest 
temperature recorded during May was 
50 degrees, while the highest reached the 
60 mark. ‘The minimum for June is 
54 degrees, and the maximum 62 de-. 
grees, thus far. At Masconomo. park 
the water is usually from 2to 4 degrees 
warmer than outsids. All owners of 
bathhouses wishing to let them should 
notify Mr. McCormack, who has many 
inquiries of that nature, 
