ten thousand readers. Yet the story had power, and the central figure of Clarissa was impressive in its pathos and tragedy. The novel would still be readable if it were stripped of the stilted conversations and sentimental gush in which Richardson delighted; but that would leave precious little of the story.

Fielding. In vigorous contrast with the prim and priggish Richardson is Henry Fielding (1707–1754), a big, jovial, reckless man, full of animal spirits, who was ready to mitigate any man's troubles or forget his own by means of a punch bowl or a venison potpie. He was noble born, but seems to have been thrown on the world to shift for himself. After an excellent education he studied law, and was for some years a police magistrate, in which position he increased his large knowledge of the seamy side of life. He had a pen for vigorous writing, and after squandering two modest fortunes (his own and his wife's) he proceeded to earn his living by writing buffooneries for the stage. Then appeared Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, and in ridiculing its sentimental heroine Fielding found his vocation as a novelist.

He began Joseph Andrews (1742) as a joke, by taking for his hero an alleged brother of Pamela, who was also virtuous Burlesque of but whose reward was to be kicked out of doors. Richardson Then the story took to the open road, among the inns and highways of an age when traveling in rural England was almost as adventurous as campaigning in Flanders. In the joy of his story Fielding soon forgot his burlesque of Richardson, and attempted what he called a realistic novel; that is, a story of real life. The morality and decorum which Richardson exalted appeared to Fielding as hypocrisy; so he devoted himself to a portrayal of men and manners as he found them.

Undoubtedly there were plenty of good men and manners at that time, but Fielding had a vagabond taste that delighted in rough scenes, and of these also eighteenth-century England could furnish an abundance. Hence his Joseph Andrews is a picture not of English society, as is often alleged, but only of

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the least significant part of society. The same is true of Tom Jones (1749), which is the author's most vigorous work, and of Amelia (1751), in which, though he portrays one good woman, he repeats many of the questionable incidents of his earlier

works.

There is power in all these novels, the power of keen observation, of rough humor, of downright sincerity; but unhappily the power often runs to waste in long speeches to the reader, in descriptions of brutal or degrading scenes, and in a wholly unnecessary coarseness of expression.

Influence of the Early Novels. The idea of the modern novel seems to have been developed by several English authors, each of whom, like pioneers in a new country, left his stamp on subsequent works in the same field. Richardson's governing motive may be summed up in the word "sensibility," which means "delicacy of feeling," and which was a fashion, almost a fetish, in eighteenth-century society. Because it was deemed essential to display proper or decorous feeling on all occasions, Richardson's heroines were always analyzing their emotions; they talked like a book of etiquette; they indulged in tears, fainting, transports of joy, paroxysms of grief, apparently striving to make themselves as unlike a real woman as possible. It is astonishing how far and wide this fad of sensibility spread through the literary world, and how many gushing heroines of English and American fiction during the next seventy-five years were modeled on Pamela or Clarissa.

In view of this artificial fashion, the influence of Fielding was like the rush of crisp air into a hot house. His aim was realistic, that is, to portray real people in their accustomed ways. Unfortunately his aim was spoiled by the idea that to be realistic one must go to the gutter for material. And then appeared Goldsmith, too much influenced by the fad of sensi bility, but aiming to depict human life as governed by high ideals, and helping to cleanse the English novel from brutality and indecency.

Influence

There were other early novelists, a host of them, but in Richardson, Fielding and Goldsmith we have enough. RichardThreefold son emphasized the analysis of human feeling or motive, and that of itself was excellent; but his exaggerated sentimentality set a bad fashion which our novelists were almost a century in overcoming. Fielding laid stress on realism, and that his influence was effective is shown in the work of his disciple Thackeray, who could be realistic without being coarse. And Goldsmith made all subsequent novelists his debtors by exalting that purity of domestic life to which every home worthy of the name forever strives or aspires.

If it be asked, What novels of the early type ought one to read? the answer is simple. Unless you want to curdle your blood by a tale of mystery and horror (in which case Mrs. Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho will serve the purpose) there are only two that young readers will find satisfactory: the realistic Robinson Crusoe by Defoe, and the romantic Vicar of Wakefield by Goldsmith.

Summary. What we call eighteenth-century literature appeared between two great political upheavals, the English Revolution of 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789. Some of the chief characteristics of that literature such as the emphasis on form, the union of poetry with politics, the prevalence of satire, the interest in historical subjects—have been accounted for, in part at least, in our summary of the history of the period.

The writings of the century are here arranged in three main divisions: the reign of formalism (miscalled classicism), the revival of romantic poetry, and the development of the modern novel. Our study of the so-called classic period includes: (1) The meaning of classicism in literature. (2) The life and works of Pope, the leading poet of the age; of Swift, a master of satire; of Addison and Steele, the graceful essayists who originated the modern literary magazine. (3) The work of Dr. Johnson and his school; in which we have included, for convenience, Edmund Burke, most eloquent of English orators, and Gibbon the historian, famous for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Our review of the romantic writers of the age covers: (1) The work of Collins and Gray, whose imaginative poems are in refreshing contrast to the formalism of Pope and his school. (2) The life and works of Goldsmith, poet, playwright, novelist; and of. Burns, the greatest of Scottish song

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writers. (3) A glance at other poets, such as Cowper and Blake, who aided in the romantic revival. (4) The renewed interest in ballads and legends, which showed itself in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, and in two famous forgeries, the Ossian poems of Macpherson and The Rowley Papers of the boy Chatterton.

Our study of the novel includes: (1) The meaning of the modern novel, as distinct from the ancient romance. (2) A study of Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, who was a forerunner of the modern realistic novelist. (3) The works of Richardson and of Fielding, contrasting types of eighteenthcentury story-tellers. (4) The influence of Richardson's sentimentality, of Fielding's realism, and of Goldsmith's moral purity on subsequent English fiction.

Selections for Reading. Typical selections are given in Manly, English Poetry and English Prose, Century Readings, and other miscellaneous collections. Important works of major writers are published in inexpensive editions for school use, a few of which are named below.

Pope's poems, selected, in Standard English Classics, Pocket Classics, Riverside Literature, and other series. (See Texts, in General Bibliography.) Selections from Swift's works, in Athenæum Press, Holt's English Readings, Clarendon Press. Gulliver's Travels, in Standard English Classics, in Ginn and Company's Classics for Children, in Carisbrooke Library, in Temple Classics.

Selections from Addison and Steele, in Athenæum Press, Golden Treasury, Maynard's English Classics. Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, in Standard English Classics, Riverside Literature, Academy Classics.

Chesterfield's Letters to his son, selected, in Ginn and Company's Classics for Children, and in Maynard's English Classics.

Boswell's Life of Johnson, in Clarendon Press, Temple Classics, Everyman's Library.

Burke's Speeches, selected, in Standard English Classics, Pocket Classics, English Readings.

Selections from Gray, in Athenæum Press, Canterbury Poets, Riverside Literature.

Goldsmith's Deserted Village and Vicar of Wakefield, in Standard English Classics, King's Classics; She Stoops to Conquer, in Pocket Classics, Belles Lettres Series, Cassell's National Library.

Sheridan's The Rivals, in Athenæum Press, Camelot Series, Riverside Literature, Everyman's Library.

Poems of Burns, selected, in Standard English Classics, Riverside Literature, Silver Classics.

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, school edition by Ginn and Company; the same in Everyman's Library, Pocket Classics.

Bibliography. For extensive manuals and texts see the General Bibliography. The following works deal chiefly with the eighteenth century.

History. Morris, Age of Queen Anne and the Early Hanoverians (Epochs of Modern History Series); Sydney, England and the English in the Eighteenth Century; Susan Hale, Men and Manners in the Eighteenth Century; Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne; Thackeray, The Four Georges.

Literature. L. Stephen, English Literature in the Eighteenth Century; Perry, English Literature in the Eighteenth Century; Seccombe, The Age of Johnson; Dennis, The Age of Pope; Gosse, History of English Literature in the Eighteenth Century; Whitwell, Some Eighteenth-Century Men of Letters; Phelps, Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement; Beers, English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century; Thackeray, English Humorists.

Pope. Life, by Courthope; by L. Stephen (English Men of Letters Series). Essays, by Thackeray, in English Humorists; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Lowell, in My Study Windows.

Swift. Life, by Forster; by L. Stephen (E. M. of L.). Essays, by Thackeray, in English Humorists; by Dobson, in Eighteenth Century Vignettes.

Addison and Steele. Life of Addison, by Courthope (E. M. of L.). Life of Steele, by Dobson. Essays by Macaulay, by Thackeray, by Dobson. Johnson. Life, by Boswell (for personal details); by L. Stephen (E. M. of L.). Hill, Dr. Johnson: his Friends and his Critics. Essays by Macaulay, by Thackeray, by L. Stephen.

Burke. Life, by Morley (E. M. of L.), by Prior. Macknight, Life and Times of Burke.

Gibbon. Life, by Morrison (E. M. of L.). Essays, by Birrell, in Collected Essays; by L. Stephen, in Studies of a Biographer; by Harrison, in Ruskin and Other Literary Estimates; by Sainte-Beuve, in English Portraits.

Gray. Life, by Gosse. Essays by Lowell, M. Arnold, L. Stephen, Dobson.

Goldsmith. Life, by Washington Irving, by Dobson (Great Writers Series), by Black (E. M. of L.), by Forster. Essays, by Macaulay; by Thackeray, in English Humorists; by Dobson, in Miscellanies.

Burns. Life, by Shairp (E. M. of L.), by Blackie (Great Writers). Carlyle's Essay on Burns, in Standard English Classics and other school editions. Essays, by Stevenson, in Familiar Studies of Men and Books; by Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English Poets; by Henley, in Introduction to the Cambridge Edition of Burns.

The Novel. Raleigh, The English Novel; Cross, Development of the English Novel; Perry, A Study of Prose Fiction; Symonds, Introduction to the Study of English Fiction; Dawson, Makers of English Fiction.