Foundation of Tithes Shaken; Forgery no Christianity; Sacred History, 2 vols., fol.; Autobiography, etc.

WILLIAM SEWEL, 1650-1726, a member of the Society of Friends, was born in Amsterdam. He was a weaver by trade, but employed his leisure hours in study and in writing. Besides an English and Dutch Dictionary, and some other works of that kind, he wrote A History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers. "Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recommend to you, above all church narratives, to read Sewel's History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract of the Journals of Fox and the primitive Friends. Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit."— Charles Lamb.

EDWARD BURROUGH, 1634-1668, a member of the Society of Friends, published several popular works in advocacy of his principles: Message to the Present Rulers of England; Wholesale Information to the King of England, etc.

THE eighteenth century opens with the reign of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart sovereigns, 1702-1714, followed by the reign of George I., the first of the Brunswick dynasty, 1714-1727.

The first third of the century is made illustrious by many great names in literature. For convenience of treatment, these are considered under four heads, or sections: 1. The Poets, beginning with Pope; 2. The Dramatists, beginning with Wycherley; 3. The Prose Writers, beginning with Addison; 4. Theological Writers, beginning with Butler.

I. THE POETS.

Pope.

Alexander Pope, 1688-1744, reigned supreme in the domain of letters during all the first part of the eighteenth century.

His poetry had not the naturalness and simplicity of Chaucer's, the universality of Shakespeare's, the majestic and solemn earnestness of Milton's, or even the freedom and breadth of Dryden's, nor did it so appeal to the consciousness of the national heart as that of the school which sprang up near the close of the century. It was to a certain degree artificial. Yet its art, it must be confessed, was consummate, and within the scope to which it was limited, it reached a perfection which has never been surpassed. It was pre-eminently the poetry of

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the wits. But it could not touch, it never touched, the national heart, like the poetry of Cowper or of Burns.

Career. Pope was born in London, but passed a large part of his life in retirement at Twickenham, so that he is often called the Bard of Twickenham. His talents evinced themselves very early in life, so that, to use his own words, he "lisped in numbers." His publications gained for him a handsome competence, and his house was a meeting-place for the leading literary men of the times: He had several quarrels with persons who had been intimate friends, such as Lady Montagu, and waged throughout life a sharp warfare against second and third rate authors.

In person, Pope was small and unpretending, very delicate in health, not remarkable for his conversational powers, but rather husbanding his resources for his books and letters. One of the few attractive traits in Pope's character was his devotion to his aged mother. He was by profession a Catholic. But his religion sat easily upon him, so that he has been set down by some as a secret Protestant, through Warburton's influence, and by others as a follower of Bolingbroke.

Works. - Pope's chief works, given in nearly the order of their composition, are: Pastorals, written by him at the age of sixteen; Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Messiah; Translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey (in which latter he was aided by Broome and Fenton); Essay on Man; and The Dunciad.

Correspondence. - Pope's Correspondence was published in part during his lifetime. It was alleged by Pope that the letters had been obtained by the publisher surreptitiously; but it has since been shown that there was a secret understanding between the two, Pope taking this way to screen himself from the imputation of vanity.

Change in the Estimate of Him. - There was a time when Pope's poetry was considered the model of thought and expression. Throughout the entire eighteenth century his lines were regarded by all except his personal enemies as stamped with profound genius. The modern school of criticism, however, has put a juster estimate upon Pope's merit. It has denied him any equality with the great poets, with Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, and scarcely even allowed him the first place among the second-rate poets.

Faults and Excellencies. - Pope's works are marred by conventionalism and would-be neatness. Rarely if ever does the poet rise to any flight of passion. His uniform use of the rhyming heroic couplet be

comes excessively monotonous; every couplet and line is so nicely turned and so carefully balanced, that the reader longs for an occasional irregularity. Pope is undoubtedly witty and sarcastic. The tendency to point and polish, which disqualified him for being a true epic poet, has made him the most successful epigrammatist in the language. No one has ever equalled him in the art of turning a couplet. The reader will search in vain in Pope for any of those broad strokes whereby a truly grand poet delineates a character or suggests a profound truth, any up-welling of emotion, any daring flight of imagination, any sweet play of humor. Still, Pope will remain what he has ever been, an elegant writer of English. His correctness in the structure of phrases and the choice of words, his avoidance of everything bizarre, render him a safe model of study for those whose style is still crude. Pope's verse can scarcely be a stimulant, but it may prove a wholesome corrective.

Character of Particular Works.- Pope's Translation of Homer is accurate enough; and yet it is not Homer, for the simple reason that Homer is the naive poet par excellence and Pope is the perfect type of the conventional poet. There is not the slightest touch of sympathy between them. The Essay on Man contains an immense number of excellent precepts couched in excellent couplets, any one of which by itself would be perfect, but which taken together form a sermon rather than a poem. The Rape of the Lock displays more fancy and conceit than imagination. Abelard and Eloise find the fire of their passion dampened materially by the Popean measure. The Dunciad is probably Pope's best work. In it he had the opportunity of exhibiting to the full his peculiar powers of satire, and the success of his poison-tipped, winged couplets may be estimated by the commotion and wrath which they aroused. His Correspondence is interesting, but the reader's enjoyment is spoiled by the ever recurring impression that the letters are not real letters - the hearty expression of individual feeling but compositions studied with the public in view.

"In the interval between the end of Milton and the beginning of Pope the art of song had suffered one of its many metamorphoses. It had changed from an inspired message into an elaborate chime of words. Milton, grand, harmonious, and musical as is his utterance at all times, was a man overflowing with high thought and lofty meaning; with so much to say to his generation that the mode of saying it might almost have been expected to become indifferent to him. It never did so, because of the inborn music of the man, that wonderful sense of melody in which he has never been surpassed, if, indeed, ever equalled, in the English tongue. But notwithstanding this great natural gift, his subject was the thing pre-eminent with him; and as his subject was of the highest importance and solemnity, so his verse rose into organ-floods of severest sweetness. Dryden, who succeeded him, did not possess a similar inspiration. He had no message to the world to speak of, and yet he had a great deal to say. Accordingly with him the subject began to lower and the verse to increase in importance. In Pope this phase of poetry attained its highest development. With him everything gave way to beauty of expression. No prophetic burden was his to deliver. The music of the spheres had never caught his ear. Verse was the trade in which he was skilled, not the mere mode of utterance by which a mind overflowing with thoughts of heaven or earth communicated these thoughts to its fellows. He was an admirable performer upon an instrument the most delicate and finest-toned which humanity possessed. His power on it was such that the most trivial motif, the most mean topic, became, in his hands, an occasion of harmony. We confess without hesitation that the music of Pope's verse does not enchant and enthral our particular ear,

but it did that of his own generation. It belonged, as does so much of the poetry of France, to an age more marked by culture than by nature; building upon certain doctrines and tenets of literary belief; trusting in style as in a confession of faith, and establishing as strict a severance between the orthodox and heterodox in literature, as ever a community of ecclesiastics has done in a religious creed. Perhaps that was the only period of English literature in which an Academy would have been possible. Pope made himself the poetic standard of the age. His contemporaries were measured by it as by a rule; and no one came up to the height of the great master. He gave to his generation a stream of melodious words such as might have made the whole country sweet, but which, unfortunately, being often employed to set forth nauseous or trifling subjects, gave no nobility to the mind of his period, but only a mathematical music-something which touched the ear rather than the heart. But in Pope his school came to a close. It was impossible to do anything finer, more subtle or more perfect in the art of combining words. If there had been given to him a message to deliver, probably he would not have reached to such perfection in the mode of delivering it; but as it was, he brought to its highest fulfilment and completion the poetical style of which he was capable."- Blackwood.

Matthew Prior, 1664-1721, was a poet of considerable celebrity in the reign of Queen Anne.

Career.-Prior was adopted by his uncle, a tavern-keeper of London. In this position he attracted the attention of the guests by his familiarity with Horace, and gained the patronage of the Earl of Dorset, who sent him to Cambridge. Here he graduated, was introduced into public life, and rose rapidly to distinction. He went over to the Tory party in 1701 or 1702, and subsequently became Ambassador at Paris. When the Whigs regained power, Prior was thrown into prison on the charge of treason, but was released, after two years, without a trial.

Works. Prior's writings are not numerous. The Country Mouse and the City Mouse, written by Prior and Montagu together, The best known longer works are: being a Satire upon Dryden's Hind and Panther; his Carmen Seculare, a panegyric on William III.; Solomon, and Alma, written in prison. His short, fugitive pieces, however, are generally considered preferable.

Character of his Works. — The more elaborate poems are heavy, and spoiled by the conceits of the age. But the tales and apologues are light, graceful, sparkling, and in the tone of good society. His Alma was generally supposed to be an imi

tation of Hudibras.

"Johnson speaks slightingly of his lyrics; but, with due deference to the great Samuel, Prior's seem to me among the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems. Horace is always in his mind, and his song and his philosophy, his good sense, his happy, easy turns and melody, his loves and his epicureanism, bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master."- - Thackeray.

John Gay, 1688-1732, was one of several poets whose