NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
o AWEEKLY JOURNAL DEVOTED-TO-THE: BEST: INTERESTS-OFTHENORTHSHORE 
Vol. Il. No. 30 
AN AGE OF LITERARY ART. 
| 1688—1 703. | 
By D. F. Lamson. 
In English literature, the 18th 
century, which may be said to in- 
clude practically the period from 
the Revolution of 1688 to the 
French Revolution and Reign of 
Terror, is noted for no lights of the 
first magnitude. As for the lesser 
lights, their name is Legion; it was 
an age of the commonplace and the 
mock heroic, an age of imitators 
and actors, an age of scribblers. 
Grub street penny-a-liners and poet- 
asters. Its chief luminaries were 
Dryden, Addison, Prior, Pope, 
Swift, Gray, Johnson and_ Gold- 
smith. It was an age prolific in 
prose and verse, and witnessed the 
influence of the Deistic and Metho- 
dist movements and the rise of the 
Romantic school of poetry. It was 
a cold, superficial, skeptical age. 
Churchmen danced attendance 
upon the great; bishops preached 
from Cicero and Seneca, rather than 
Paul; Lord Chesterfield gave laws 
to society; Beau Nash was the idol 
of fashion; Mr. Civility and Mr. 
Worldly Wiseman were the accept- 
ed types of morality and piety; 
Hogarth held up the mirror to the 
follies and vices of English life. In 
comparison with the 16th and 17th 
centuries, it was a time of dullness 
and decadence. It was to the time 
of Elizabeth “as moonlight unto 
sunlight, and as water unto wine.” 
The achievements in the world of 
arms and of statesmanship which 
have made illustrious the names of 
Marlborough and Chatham were 
matched by no great achievements 
in the world of letters. 
The spirit of the age was one of 
art rather than nature. As the cen- 
tury drew near its close, a reaction 
from the artificial style that had 
been in vogue was led by Cowper 
and Wordsworth, followed in the 
opening of the 19th century by 
Campbell and Scott, which  re- 
3) 
MANCHESTER, MASS., SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1905 
deemed poetry from its rigidity and 
stiffness, and imparted to it a grace 
of naturalness and a glow of human 
iniperest., & But. the, middie ‘ofethe 
century was marked by its finish 
rather than its originality; the ro- 
bustness of Bacon and Milton and 
the out-door freshness of Shakes- 
peare had given place to the draw- 
ing-room manners of an Addison 
and a Pope. The sturdy virility of 
the Ecclesiastical Polity had degen- 
erated unto the prim elegance of 
the Spectator and the smug philos- 
ophy of the Essay on Man. The 
luxuriance of nature disappeared 
under the pruning shears of art. 
Genius wsa measured by a foot- 
rule, thoughts were marshalled by 
a drill-sergeant, emotion was re- 
pressed, comedy and tragedy  re- 
duced to stage-acting, nature was 
clipped and trimmed like a Dutch 
garden with its formal parterres 
and rectangular beds, 
“All ranked in order and disposed with 
grace.’’ 
The attention of writers was given 
less to what they had to say, and 
more to how they said it. 
The age has been called, though 
not with much reason, the “Augus- 
tan age of English literature.” It 
had no Virgil, and Pope was scarce- 
ly another Homer, though his trans- 
lation of the Iliad is not without its 
merits. The time was one of mo- 
notonous respectability in the lit- 
erary world. One feels in travers- 
ing it as in faring over the English 
moors or our western prairies; here 
and there are moderate undulations, 
but the sky-line is broken by no 
majestic heights. ; 
This is not saying, of course, that 
the times of Queen Anne and the 
Georges could not boast of great 
writers. It is only saying that the 
standard of greatness had changed; 
style had come to be the main 
thing; writers employed their time 
in laboriously polishing a period or 
pointing an epigram or balancing a 
(Continued on Page 5, 1st column) 
Three Cents 
SUCCESSFUL FAIR 
Manchester Town Hall Crowded Wednesday 
and Thursday Evenings, When Fair Under 
Auspices of Congregational Societies Was 
Held — Pleasing Entertainments 
The fair in the Manchester Town 
hall Wednesday and Thursday even- 
ings under the auspices of the auxil- 
lary societies of the Congregational 
church was one of the most success- 
ful events of the kind ever held in 
town, both as regards the financial 
success of the venture and the social 
end as well. 
Prettily decorated for the occasion 
with colored papers and_ vari-colored 
electric lights hangings about the 
booths, the hall made a beautiful set- 
ting for the crowds that thronged the 
room to overflowing each night. 
Booths that were filled with pretty 
articles at the opening were com- 
pletely relieved of their burdens long 
before the closing hour, and in some 
cases before the first night of the fair 
had closed. 
Of a very interesting nature, in- 
deed, were the programs presented. 
‘““An old fashioned garden” was the 
feature on Wednesday evening. This 
was announced as “spectacular and 
catchy,” and its merits proved it. 
As the curtain was raised a “ gar- 
den”’ filled with charming flowers of 
the most beautiful hue, was before 
the eyes of the spectators. With 
heads nodding with the breezes they 
sang sweet songs, stopping occasion- 
ally far the pansy and rose, or the 
poppy and the daisy to exchange 
greetings. Their conversation was 
very interesting. .The “ stalks” of 
the flowers were all of the same hue 
but the “ blossoms” were of different 
colors and shapes. Here they are: 
Morning glory — Miss Susan Allen 
and Mrs. F. C. Rand. 
Pansies — Misses Eva Allen, Marion 
Scott and Marion Allen. 
Poppies — Misses Ruth Blaisdell 
and Bessie Allen. 
Daisies — Misses Grace Prest and 
Jennie Hannable. 
(Continued on page 14, 1st column] 
