himself into harmony with the Universe, and this best of all possible worlds will then bring about his happiness. Shaftesbury's belief in a beneficent God, the religion of nature, the natural goodness of man, and the inevitable tendency of things toward altruism typifies the century's revolt against the egoism of Hobbes and Hume's skepticism. It also paved the way for the whole literature of sensibility; the sentiment of Richardson, the drama and fiction of tears, the "graveyard" school of poetry, Ossian, and the horrors and thrills of the Gothic novel. Indeed, as the Puritan sternness relaxed under the sunshine of this complacent optimism, the latter half of the century was fairly well saturated with tears. Even Pope, and in some respects Fielding, yielded to the ever-widening flood of sentiment, only Johnson and Burke among the principal literary figures of the time remaining staunch in opposition to what they believed was destroying the sole discipline able to control the heart of man. Rousseau's influence as it spread across the Channel combined with this widening stream of Shaftesbury to form the revolutionary and romantic movements that were coming at the end of the century. BERNARD MANDEVILLE (1670-1733) To Shaftesbury's somewhat genteel optimism may be opposed Mandeville's sour pessimism. The Grumbling Hive, 1705, was later enlarged and republished in 1714 as The Fable of the Bees. This skit, part verse and part prose, proves how vice makes bees happy and virtue makes them miserable. The author debases everything pure and noble to show human nature in its naked wickedness. Thus every part was full of vice, Luxury Employ'd a million of the poor, Were ministers of industry. Fools only strive To make a great and honest hive. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE It must not be inferred from the foregoing discussions of this period that the student may look with contempt upon its spirit and accomplishment or ignore the really great contribution it made to human culture. Its literary creed doubtless was narrow and its production superficial; its popular philosophy was pleasantly optimistic and its practical life largely selfish and materialistic. But just as grave criticism may be made of many another epoch which seems to stand higher in our estimation, and much more may be said of this self-styled Augustan Age of English history and letters. First of all, even though Dryden did not find English poetry brick and Pope did not leave it marble, these men and their contemporaries cleared away many fantastic conceits and established a clearer and firmer medium for poetical practice. Dryden, Pope, and Prior are really the initiators of clearness in verse as in prose. Moreover, a recognized grammatical usage was established, a great boon to modern English speech. It is in the formation of a definite, clear, flexible prose that the period deserves our greatest thanks. Dryden, Addison, Berkeley, Swift, and Chesterfield are a group of writers it would be difficult to match in another age. Add to these Johnson, Goldsmith, Fielding, Gibbon, and Burke, and the eighteenth century stands preeminently as the age of great prose masters. The forms of literature include the essay, the novel, the familiar letter, and history as it is now written. But in another way the eighteenth century deserves our respect. There is upon the whole, and underneath the surface glitter, a certain intellectual integrity at its very base. As knowledge of human nature was essential to a practical use of its literary creed, so in the development of the critical intellect, the use of reason was necessary to a careful, conservative approach to any question. Fundamental in any classical theory is a search for the general principles of human conduct and the acceptance of convention as a necessary means for the attainment of any rational end. That this reliance upon convention becomes conventionality, is but the inevitable turn of the wheel of progress. After such an epoch must come revolution of some sort, which in turn hardens into opposite fixed forms and must be freed perhaps by a return to earlier but actually no more conventional forms. TH CHAPTER VI OLD AND NEW IN CONFLICT 1745-1798 THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE HE death of Pope in 1744 and that of Swift in 1745 mark the end of the old régime. With them and their generation passed the old static, passive ideal of perfection represented by the Established Church, by the crystallizing of social customs and political institutions during the long period of peace and internal growth, while England was being governed by Sir Robert Walpole and his ministers. It had been marked by carelessness, frivolity, and indifference in high life, and by a gradual growth to self-consciousness on the part of the middle classes. Literature had been aristocratic and thinking superficial and complacent. Below the surface the new revolutionary forces were beginning to stir. Thenceforth letters express a restlessness and a discontent with established ideas corresponding to revolution in political life, and preparing the ground for the coming romantic movement. Among the first of these was the religious awakening under John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield. Methodism, attracting to itself miner and industrial laborer, was the instrument which revived the spiritual life of the country after the long period that had yielded to the domination of rationalism. For the critical temper was substituted religious enthusiasm, and the latent energies of the people found an outlet in this rather than in political revolution, as happened across the Channel. The same age witnessed the beginning of humanitarian sympathy, directed by John Howard toward prison reform and by Clarkson and Wilberforce toward the abolition of slavery in the Colonies, though the emancipation of the slaves was finally consummated only in 1833. Revolution stalked through the world, profoundly modifying the whole range of men's ideas. The American War of Independence, during the years 1775-1783, harks back for its basic ideas to the French philosophical writings in the middle years of the century. The French Revolution, commencing in 1789 and passing through the terrible Reign of Terror before it reached its consummation in the Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, made a profound impression upon English thought. By it the principle of equality, or the Rights of Man, was set free in the world. Political revolution kept pace with and coalesced with another revolution quite as far-reaching in its consequences, what has been termed the Industrial Revolution. This transformation of the industry of the world was inaugurated by the perfection of the steam engine by James Watt and the invention of the spinning jenny and the power loom by means of which the manufacture of cloth might be greatly increased. Upon the ruins of the ancient feudal system of apprenticeship rose the new Factory System and the consequent distinction between capital and labor. This is the profoundest economic change in history, and from it date the social and political problems of the modern world. On the breaking up of the Manorial System in the |