NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
MANCHESTER, MASS., FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1908. 
] 
ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
BY D. F. LAMSON. 
Dryden, Swift and Pope form a great 
literary triumvirate who were much alike 
in their critical sagacity. ‘They were 
not men to be loved. ‘They contributed 
to the intellectual renown of their age, 
but they can hardly be said to have ele- 
vated the moral standard. Of the three, 
no doubt, the first place should be given 
to Alexander Pope, as critic, moralist 
and poet. 
Pope was born in a literary atmos- 
phere, in the times of Walton, Walker, 
Tillotson, Parnell, Prior, Gay, Johnson, 
Gray and Goldsmith. He could remem- 
ber being carried when a child to see 
Dryden at Will’s coffee-house, as the 
Nestor of the wits of his day sat in his 
arm-chair by the fire; and he may be 
said to have inherited in asense Dryden’s 
genius and place in’ English _ letters. 
The period of his life (1688—1744) 
was that which gave intellectual form 
and color to the age. 
Pope and Dryden have often been 
compared, but a comparison between the 
two is difficult if not impossible. Pope 
has more nicety of phrase than Dryden; 
he is more finished and elegant; he 
labors more to bring every line and word 
to the scverest test of perfection; but he 
has often less vigor and fire, he lacks the 
*““long resounding march and energy 
divine.’ The question which is the 
greater poet is still a moot one, and de- 
pends less upon canons of literary excel- 
lence than upon individual judgment and 
taste. 
It must be said that Pope was not a 
poet of the first order; but both as critic 
and poet he holds a high rank in English 
letters. After Dryden, he was an ac- 
knowledged master and dictator. “The 
age of Queen Anne was one of literary 
art rather than originality or genius, and 
among the artists Pope was almost with- 
out arival. He was not of the genus 
of poets that are born and not made, 
though from childhood he showed a 
talent for verse; he ‘‘lisped in numbers, 
and the numbers came.’’ His_ pro- 
ductions are the result of painstaking 
labor and careful elaboration; he ex- 
celled in the perfection of style and 
polish. As Lowell says, ‘‘ measured by 
any high standard of imagination, he 
will be found wanting; tried by any test 
of wit, he is unrivalled.’” He embodied 
the gay, artificial life of the age, the wit 
and satire of polite society, the common- 
sense, the hatred of sentiment and 
emotion, the refusal to go below the sur- 
Nature. 
Nature’s fixed law is like the rail-road train 
By which you may be carried or be slain, 
Nor will regard our comfort or our pain. 
Get on it and your journey will be rushed, 
Get in its way aside you will be brushed, 
Get under and you surely will be crushed. 
Nature, impartial, has no least respect 
For men or motives, ignorance or neglect— 
A blessing or a ban as you elect. 
Nature will not vicariously atone; 
Grace or forgiveness are to her unknown— 
Will punish for your sins, your own, your own. 
Back we may reason from effect to cause. 
Nature rewards obedience to her laws, 
Carries our message or our burden draws, 
Provided always we will go her way, 
But will not swerve an inch nor make delay 
However earnestly we plead or pray. 
A faithful servant she, or cruel master, 
Speeds o’er the wiry track than lightning faster; 
She gives a helping hand or wreaks disaster. 
Give her a proper steed on which to ride, 
Remove all obstacle that would collide, 
Direction also for her course provide, 
She’ll run your errands, here, there, anywhere, 
By day or night, through earth or sea or air. 
Rut have a care, good people, have a care; 
‘To tamper or to trifle do not dare! 
Nov. 1908. 
JosepH A. Torrey. 
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face of things, which were characteristic 
of the times. “The age was one favor- 
able to verse-making, but not to poetry. 
Accordingly, we find that Pope’s writ- 
ings are cold and faultless in expression, 
with a glitter that is more of the iceberg 
than of the sunbeam. ‘They are ad- 
mirable in taste, but deficient in feeling. 
Among the great poets who preceded 
him, Chaucer represented actual life, 
Spenser imaginative life, 
Shakespeare > 
ideal life, Milton the interior life; Pope 
as distinctly represented social and ex- 
terior, or artificial, life. But while Pope 
was the greatest, he was also the last, of 
the artificial school; already, in his day, 
people had begun to find something out- 
side of Cheapside, and country and town 
were coming to more familiar terms; 
and in the next generation in Shenstone 
and Gray and Goldsmith and Cowper, 
the natural spirit began to assert - itself. 
