"To err is human, to forgive divine."

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man."

"Honor and shame from no condition rise:

Act well your part; there all the honor lies.”

Only Shakespeare, of English poets, is more quotable or more often quoted, than Pope. This is not originality, but it is the next best thing this ability to clarify and adorn the ideas of more original minds and so make them common property. And this was Pope's special gift, so perfect in its kind that he may well contest with his friend and mentor, the far more original Swift, the position of leading spirit of the age.

Now with the work of these men before us, especially the prose of Addison and the poetry of Pope, we are in a position to understand what is meant by the "Classicism" of the age. It does not mean that there was genuine enthusiasm for classical scholarship; that belonged rather to the age of the Renaissance. But there was great admiration for the particular ideals of Roman literature in the time of Augustus-for rhetorical polish and refinement. The Epistles and Satires of Horace were especially regarded as models. French influence also was strong, for men like La Fontaine, Boileau, and the dramatists, had already fixed a similar character upon French literature. The pleasure which was taken in making prose correct and orderly was extended to poetry, and every species of lawlessness was decried. Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton had all to be remodelled to suit the changed taste. In short, artificiality, in literature as in social life, was the keynote. There was much talk of nature. "True wit is nature to advantage dress'd" was one of Pope's maxims. But in the first place, this "nature" meant specifically the manners of life as they were found; and then the dressing to advantage left little even in those that could be called natural. Imagination was dead, and a nimble fancy,

a sharpened logic, and a cunning art, took its place. The depths of human emotion were left unsounded, the glories and mysteries of outdoor nature unexplored. Poets were content to find their themes in the trivial concerns of a frivolous society or the commonplaces of a self-satisfied philosophy. In the Rape of the Lock, for instance, cards are called, and—

"Behold, four Kings in majesty revered,

With hoary whiskers and a forky beard."

Coffee is served, and

"From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoking tide."

The lock is cut from the fair one's head, and—

"What Time would spare, from steel receives its date,
And monuments, like men, submit to fate!

Steel could the labor of the gods destroy,

And strike to dust th' imperial towers of Troy;

Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,

And hew triumphal arches to the ground.

What wonder, then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel
The conquering force of unresisted steel?"

To such uses had the heroics of Chaucer and Marlowe come. The gulf that separates not only these verses from the lightest of Shakespeare's or Milton's, but equally the highest reaches of their author from the sublime imaginings of the men who had gone before, cannot be measured. Yet we may spare ridicule; indeed ridicule for the matter no sooner threatens to rise than admiration for the unsurpassed art of the manner thrusts it back. Pity, moreover, were out of place. Each age has its work to perform; and, thanks to Swift, Addison, Pope, and their fellows the Classical Age of English literature need yield to no other in the effectiveness with which it performed its special task.

CHAPTER XIV

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY-RISE OF THE NOVEL

1720-1770

DEFOE RICHARDSON FIELDING SMOLLETT STERNE

To the eighteenth century belongs the development of a virtually new species of literature which has since grown to be one of the strongest competitors of poetry and the drama. It is what we know to-day as the Novel, employing a term which did not come into very general English use until some time after the thing itself.* It is to be carefully distinguished from the older Romance. The latter term was long applied to any narrative of adventure or love, usually in verse, and commonly a translation from one of the Romance languages; and the element of adventure remains to this day one of the conspicuous features of the prose romance. "The Novel," wrote Clara Reeve in her Progress of Romance (1785), "is a picture of real life and manners, and of the time in which it is written. The Romance, in lofty and elevated language, describes what never happened nor is likely to happen." Of course the kinds are bound to overlap, and a sort of cross between the two may be seen in the Spanish picaresque or rogue stories, which are frequently full of wild adventures against a background of the sheerest realism. But something more is required of the novel. The picaresque tale itself lacks the very essential elements of plot, and of character as revealed in and developed by plot. It

*In Elizabethan times the word was applied to short realistic tales, commonly translated from the Italian (Italian, novella). The eighteenth century novelists, Richardson, Fielding, etc., preferred to call their novels "Histories."