The commencement of the last century brings us to a group of authors of very different character. The influence of French literature began to be felt, and the characteristics of the English writers of this period are elegance and grace. This is properly the age of English prose, which was enriched, successively, by Ad dison, lloraee Walpole, Swift, Sterne. Richardson, Smollett, Fielding, Hume, Gibbon, Chesterfield, and Robertson. The first poet who rose to eminence in the last century, was Pope, who was born in 1688, and published Isis Essay on Criticism in 1711. His most celebrated poetical works are the Rape of the Lock, the Essay on Man, and The Dunciad. Thomson, au thor of The Seasons and the Castle of Indolence, lived and flied in the first half of the century. Gay, a contemporary poet, is distinguished for his Fables. Gray ranks as one of the finest lyric po ets of England. The few odes he has left, and his L'legy itao Country Churchyard, belong to the classics of the language. Goldsmith was born in 1723, and died in 1779. llis poems of The Traveller, and The Deserted Village, and his romance of the Vicar of Wakefield, will live as long as his native tongue. Cowper closes the list of the poets of the last century. llo died in 1800, after a life darkened by religious melancholy. llis Task, Table talk, and ballad (ff./Ohm. Gilpin, are his best poetical works. Returning to the prose writers, Addison is first in point of time, having been born in 1672. His best works are his essays, contributed to The Spectator, which he established in 1711, in conjunction with his friend Steele. His English has rarely been excelled for purity and elegance. Chesterfield, Lady Montague, and Horace Walpole, are dis tinguished as epistolary writers. Dean Swift, born in 1667, was it politician and satirist, but is now best known by his Tule of a Tub, published in 1704. and Gulliier's Travels, in 1726. t'.terne, iii his Tristram Shandy and The Senti mental displayed a droll min gling of wit and pathos, in a style exceed ingly lively and flexible. Richardson, one of the first English romance-writers, was burn in 1689. His principal novels, which are of immense length, are Pa 7nrice, Clarissa Hartaire, and Sir Charles Grandison. Smollett, his successor, pub lished his Roderick Random, in 17-18, and Humphrey Clinker, his last work, in 1771. Hume, in addition to political and philfemphieal works, iv rate the History of England, from t he invasion of Ciesar to the rebellion of 1688, which was pub ! lished in 1673-4. Smollett wrote tour volumes in continuation of the history. Gibbon, born in 1737, completed, after twenty years' labor, his History of the Decline and Fall of the R. -tan Empire, which appeared from 1782 to 1788. Rob ertson, the contemporary of Gibbon, pub lished his History of Scotland in 1759, and his History of the Reign of Charles F. in 1769. Dr. Johnson, whose liasselas, Lives of the I'oets, and contributions to The Rambler, exercised such a salutary iutluenee on the popular taste of his time, died in 1784. His Dictiohary of the English Language, NV :Is first published in 1733. Edmund Burke, one of the most finished and powerful of English orators, published, in 1756, his Essay on the Sub lime and fleautifui, which is a model of philosophical writing. lle died in 1797.
With the present century commenced a new era in English literature. The reign of the drama mid the epic were over ; the reign of romance, in both prose and poetry, and the expression of a high er and more subtle range of imagination, now commenced. The language lost something, perhaps, of its classic polish and massive strength, but beeatne more free and flowing, more varied in style, and richer in epithet. The authors in whims this change is first apparent, are Coleridge and Wordsworth, in poetry, and Scott in prose. Nearly coeval with the two former, but different in charac ter, were Byron and Moore ; the latter are the poets of passion, the former of imagination. Scott, in Inc Waverley nov
els, first developed the neglected Wealth of English romance. Burns, although his best songs are in the Scottish dialect, stands at the head of all English song writers. Campbell, in the true lyric in spiration of his poems, is classed with Gray. Rogers and Southey can scarcely be ranked among those poets who assisted in developing the later English litera ture. The former imitates the old mod els; the latter, more Luring in hit forms of verse, and more splendid in his imagi nation, has never been able to touch the popular heart. Coleridge's prose works contain probably the most important contributions to English philosophical literature, since the time of Bacon. The department of history has been amply filled by Scott, Alison, author of a His tory of Europe, Billies and Grote, cele brated for their Histories of Greece, Na pier, in his History of the Peninsular War, Hallam, in his History of the Mid dle Ages, and Macaulay in his History of England. Most of these writers are now (1351) living. Those who hare died since the beginning of the century, are Keats, in 1320; Shelley, in 1822 ; Byron, in 1824: Scott, in 1932; Coleridge, in 1934 ; Southey, in 1843 ; Campbell, in 1844 ; Thomas IIood. in 1848 ; and Wordsworth, in 1850. Rogers and Moore are still living, at an advanced age ; Leigh hunt, the author of The Rimini, survives his friends, Shelley and Keats. The field of historical romance, opened by Sir Walter Scott, has been success fully followed by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and G. P.R. James. As novelists of English life and society, under all its aspects, Dickens and Thackeray—and of late years, Miss Drente, author of Shir ley and Jane Eyre—stand preminent. As essayists and critics, the names of Lords Jeffrey and Brougham, Sidney Smith, Macaulay, Professor Wilson, De Quincey, Carlyle and Stevens, surpass even the group who produced The Taller and the Spectator. Carlyle, in his Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and heroes and Hero-Worship, has made are of an idiom of his own—a broken, involved, Bermanesque diction, which resembles that of no other English author. The most prominent living English poets, are Thomas Moore, Leigh Hunt, Rogers, Alfred Tennyson, the present poet-lau reate, Milnes, Barry Cornwall, Robert Browning. a lyric and dramatic poet, his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, prob ably the most impassioned and imagina tive of English female authors, Walter Savage Landor, Mary Howitt, R. II. Horne, author of Orion, Croly, Philip James Bailey, author of Festus, and T. N. Talfourd, author of the tragedy of Jon. As prose writers, there still remain Hallam, Macaulay, Brute, Profe•ssor Wil son, Brougham, Bulwer, Dickens, Thaek eray, Miss Bronte, Miss Martineau, James, Howitt, Stevens, and a number of others. All English works of any merit are now immediately reprinted in this country, and the English literature of the present century is as familiar to most Americans as their own.
American. Literature.—The literature of the United States belongs almost ex clusively to the present century. The language being that of England, and all the treasures of English literature the common inheritance of our countrymen, whatever American authors produce is necessarily measured by the English standard, The language comes to us finished and matured, while the means of intellectual cultivation—until a com paratively recent period—have been limited, and our abundant stores of le gend and history are still too fresh to be made available for the purposes of poetry and fiction. The present generation, however, has witnessed the growth of a national literature, if not peculiarly American in language, at least in style and the materials it has chosen. Our most eminent poets and prose writers are still living, and almost every year adds to the list of younger authors, and to the regard in which American literature is held abroad.