After the death of James I. the course of literature breaks up into three stages, the first from 1625 to 1640, in which the survivals from the Elizabethan age slowly died away. The "metaphysical poets," Cowley, Wither, Herbert, Cra shaw, Habbington, and Quarles, and the cavalier poets, Suckling, Carew, Denham, all published poems before the close of this period, in which also Milton's early poems were composed, and the "Comus" and "Lycidas" published. The second stage (1640-1660) was given up almost wholly to controversial prose, the Puri tan revolution checking the production of pure literature. In this controversial prose Milton was easily chief. With the restoration a third stage was begun. Milton turned his new leisure to the com position of his great poems; the drama was revived, and Davenant and Dryden, with Otway, Southerne, Etherege, Wy cherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Far quhar in their first plays, and minor playwrights, are the most representative writers of the period. Butler established a genre in satire, and Marvel as a satir ist in some respects anticipated Swift; Roscommon, Rochester, and Dorset con tributed to the little poetry; while in prose we have Hobbes, Clarendon, Ful ler, Sir Thomas Browne, Walton, Cotton, Pepys, and Evelyn, John Bunyan, Locke, Sir William Temple, Owen Feltham, Sir Henry Wotton, James Harrington, and a crowd of theological writers, of whom the best known are Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter, Robert Barclay, William Penn, George Fox, Isaac Barrow, John Tillotson, Bishop Pearson, Sherlock, South, Sprat, Cudworth, and Burnet. Other features of the last part of the 17th century were the immense advance in physical science under Boyle, Isaac Newton, Harvey, and others, and the rise of the newspaper press.
Dryden's death in 1700 marks the commencement of the so-called Augus tan age in English literature. During it, nowever, no greater poet appeared than Pope (1688-1744). Against the formal limits of his conception of poetry signs of reaction were apparent in the verse of Thomson (1700-1748), Gray (1716-1771), Collins (1720-1759), Gold smith (1728-1774), and in the produc tions of Macpherson and Chatterton. The poets Prior (1664-1721), Gay (1688-1732), and Ambrose Phillips (1671-1749), inherited from the later 17th century, Gay being memorable in connection with English opera; and there were a large number of small but respectable poets - including Parnell, Shenstone, Blair, Akenside, Anstey, Beattie, and Allan Ramsay. It was in prose that the chief development of the 18th century was found. Defoe (1661 1731) and Swift (1667-1745) led the way in fiction and prose satire; Steele (1671-1729) and Addison (1672-1719), working on a suggestion of Defoe, estab lished the periodical essay; Richardson (1689-1761), Fielding (1707-1754), Smollett (1721-1771), and Sterne raised the novel to sudden perfection. Gold smith also falls into the fictional group as well as into those of the poets and the essayists. Johnson (1709-1784) exer cised during the latter part of his life the power of a literary dictator, with Boswell (1740-1795) as literary depend ent. The other chief prose writers were Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753), Ar buthnot (1675-1735), Shaftesbury (1671 1713), Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Burke, the historians David Hume (1711 1776), William Robertson (1721-1793), Edmund Gibbon (1737-1794); the poli tical writers Wilkes and Junius, the economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) ; the philosophical writers Humey Bentham (1749-1832), and Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), the scholars Bentley (1662-1742), Sir Wil liam Jones (1746-1794), and Richard Porson (1759-1808); the theologians At terbury, Butler (1692-1752), Warbur ton, and Paley, and some inferior play wrights, of whom Rowe, John Home, Colley Cibber, Colman the elder, Foote, and Sheridan were the most important.
With the French Revolution, or a few years earlier, the modern movement in literature began. The departure from
the old traditions, traceable in Gray and Collins, was more clearly exhibited in the last years of the century in Cowper (1731-1800) and Burns (1759-1796), and was developed and perfected in the hands of Blake (1757-1828), Bowles (1762-1850), and the "Lake poets" Wordsworth (1770-1850), Coleridge 11772-1834), and Southey (1774-1843); but there were at first many survivals from the poetic manner of the 17th cen tury, such as Erasmus Darwin (1731 1802), Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819), Ro bert Bloomfield (1766-1823), and Samuel Rogers (1763-1855). Among the earlier poets of the century, also, were George Crabbe (1754-1832), Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Hogg (1772-1835), Camp bell (1777-1844), James Montgomery, Mrs. Hemans Byran, Wailer Procter ("Barry Cornwall") Milman, L. E. Lan don, Joanna Baillie, Robert Montgomery. A more important group was that of Byron (1788-1824), Shelley (1792-1822), and Keats (1796-1821), with which may be associated the names of Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), Thomas Moore (1779 1852), and Landor (1775-1864). Among the earlier writers of fiction there were several women of note, such as Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849), and Jane Aus ten (1775-1817). The greatest name in fiction was unquestionably that of Scott. Other prose writers were Mackintosh, Malthus, Hallam, James Mill, Southey, Robert Hall, John Foster, Thomas Chal mers, Hannah More, Cobbett, William Hazlitt, Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Lord Brougham. In the literature after 1830 poetry included as its chief names Praed, Hood, Aytoun, Lord Houghton, Sidney Dobell, Alexander Smith, Philip James Bailey, William Allington, Eliza beth Barrett Browning, Coventry Pat more, Lord Lytton, ("Owen Meredith"), Arthur Hugh Clough, Edwin Arnold, Matthew Arnold, Dante G. Rossetti, William Morris, Lewis Morris, Swin burne, William Watson, Kipling, and last and greatest, Tennyson and Brown ing. A brilliant list of novelists for the same period includes Mar ryat, Lord Lytton, Ainsworth, Benja min Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield), Dickens, Thackeray, Charles and Henry Kingsley, Charlotte Bront, Lover, Lever, Wilkie Collins, George Macdonald, Charles Reade, George Eliot, Anthony and Augustus Trollope, William Black, Thomas Hardy, R. D. Blackmore, George Meredith, Conan Doyle, Hall Caine, Robert Louis Stevenson, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Craik (Miss Mulock), Mrs. Oli phant, Miss Yonge, Miss Thackeray, Mrs. Humphry Ward, J. M. Barrie, An thony Hope Hawkins, and others. To the historical and biographical list be long Alison, Macaulay, Buckle, Carlyle, Grote, Milman, Froude, Lecky, S. R. Gardiner, Kinglake, John Richard Green, E. A. Freeman, Charles Knight, Dean Stanley, David Masson, John Morley, Leslie Stephen, Justin McCarthy. Prom inent among the theological writers were Dr. Newman, Whately, Augustus and Julius Hare, Trench, Stanley, Maurice, Hamilton, Alford, F. W. Robertson, Stopford Brooke, Liddon, Isaac Taylor, Jowett, James Martineau, Tulloch, Henry Drummond, and Caird. In science and philosophy among the chief writers have been Whewell, Sir W. Hamilton, Mansel, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, Hugh Miller, Charles Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Max Muller, Herbert Spencer, T. H. Green, Sir William Thomson. Of the other prose writers of importance the chief are: De Quincey, Harriet Martineau, Sir Arthur Helps, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, W. E. Gladstone. A large number of writers of American and colonial birth were added to the native contributors to Eng lish literature in its widest sense. Among the English novelists whose work is notable in the twentieth century are Maurice Hewlett, John Galsworthy, Hugh Walpole, D. H. Lawrence, J. D. Beresford, Compton MacKenzie, Clemence Dane, W. B. Maxwell, Gilbert Carman, Stephen McKenna, and W. L. George.