What you will have noticed here, as I trust elsewhere, is the close connection between the literary tenets of the time and the general condition of thought. To be sure, these do not always precisely coincide. We find the regular drama existing throughout the French Revolution, only giving way later before the attacks of the Romanticists, yet, in general, the widespread views of a period affect immediately the literary methods; in this case, too, the first leisure was devoted to making the drama over again. The task of our ancestors was establishing civilization and driving out barbarism, and what seemed to them one of their first duties was expelling barbarism from literature. What they thought barbarous, the Gothic architecture, mountains, and certain forms of poetry, we have learned to enjoy. If we bear these things in mind, and watch the growth of modern feelings during the last century, we shall get to understand the present better. There is, too, an advantage in studying a period of unbrilliant performance, that it gives an opportunity to see how opinions grow.

As to the play itself, and the excitement it produced, it was enormously admired. The political condition only added to the excitement; party feeling ran high, and, as Macaulay said, it was hoped that "the public would discover some analogy between the followers of Cæsar and the Tories, between Sempronius and the apostate Whigs, and between Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties of Rome, and the band of patriots who still stood firm round Halifax and Wharton." The Tories, however, were not to be outdone; each side determined to find nothing but compliments for itself in the political setting. Pope wrote that the applause "of the Whig party, on the one side, was echoed back by the Tories on the other, and after all the applauses of the opposite faction, Lord Boling

broke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into his box, and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgment (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator."

Bishop Berkeley was at the performance with Addison, "and two or three more friends in a side-box, where we had a table and two or three flasks of Burgundy and champagne, with which the author (who is a very sober man) thought it necessary to support his spirits. . . . Some parts of the prologue, written by Mr. Pope, a Tory, and even a Papist, were hissed, being thought to savour of Whigism, but the clap got much the better of the hiss (Academy, Sept. 6, 1879).

Even in Dr. Johnson's time, the "Cato" had come to be regarded as "rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural affections, or of any probable or possible in human life." And Dr. Johnson said: "About things on which the public thinks long, it commonly attains to think right;" and now, having thought longer, the public has attained to think that it will not read "Cato," and I need dwell on it no longer.

Its effect was to lend the authority of Addison's name to this formal way of writing plays. In Germany, Gottsched wrote "Der Sterbende Cato" (written 1731, pub

*

*Gottsched was by no means satisfied with Addison's work; vide Riccoboni, "Account of Theatres" (Engl. transl.), 226 et seq.: "I was at first advised literally to translate Addison's 'Cato,' but as I was resolved to stick to the rules of the drama, I found he fell far short in regularity to the French tragedy. The English are indeed great masters both of thought and expression; they know wonderfully well how to sustain a character, and enter surprisingly into the heart of man; but as to the conduct of the Fable they are very careless, as appears from all their dramatic compositions," etc.; and "the scenes are very ill-connected together; the actors go and come without any apparent reason; sometimes the stage is quite

lished 1732), in imitation of this and a French play by Deschamps (1715), and in England the tradition of the Elizabethan drama was rendered fainter than ever. If we are inclined to condemn Addison, we must remember that what he was really endeavoring to supersede was the exaggerations of Dryden, Lee, and their contemporaries of the post-Restoration stage. In the place of rant he put a sort of decorous eloquence. The play reads not so much like the work of a poet as like that of an intelligent and able man, who has deliberately made up his mind to write a tragedy, and who has put a number of dignified thoughts into the most elegant language he could find. Addison's intelligence was sufficient to save him from gross faults, but not enough to inspire him to write a real tragedy.

empty," etc.

Hence he combined the English and the French models, and wrote his own 66 Cato."

Gottsched's play went through ten editions by 1757 (Koberstein, v. 286, note 10). Freiherr von Bielefeld said: "Es sei eine Tragödie, die in allen Sprachen der Welt schön sein würde" (Koberstein, loc. cit.).

success.

CHAPTER VI.

I. THE never-ending question suggests itself here, What is real poetry? We cannot help wondering how it is that such frigid propriety as fills the "Cato" should have given full satisfaction to our grandfathers and grandmothers. And while we may be willing to acknowledge that the "Cato was admired quite as much because Addison wrote it as for anything else, this does not explain its long The question, too, comes up again with regard to Pope, who was the head of the poetical school of his time. Nowadays the reading world may be said to be divided into classes, one of which avers that Pope was a great poet, while the other wonders how it is possible to call him a poet at all. It may well be that these contending foes will very nearly agree concerning what they find in Pope; what divides them is the proper definition of poetry. It would be a difficult matter to furnish this. Various attempts have been made to do it, but I know none that satisfies every one, and there would seem to be this objection to all definitions: that they must be made by judging past methods of writing poetry, and next year there may be found a new way which will not accord with the rule. Moreover, they will be made to suit but a single period. In fact, however, this discussion would not only take us into a very confused region, but it would be wanton straying from the work we have now before us,

which is looking at what was liked in the last century, and trying to find its relation to what went before and what has followed it.*

In general, we are inclined to make such a definition of poetry as shall include the work of the poets we like and exclude most of the rest. Those who demand that poetry shall be compact of imagination, that it shall arouse or charm the emotions, rather than give a cooler intellectual delight, may give Pope all the credit his admirers claim for his intelligence—to state it broadly— without consenting to place him among the singers who delight us in a very different way. As contrasted with these singers, as we may call them, among whom any one may place his favorite-say Keats, Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, or Mrs. Browning-Pope may be called a talker, or rather a converser. He is the best of convers

ers, and there is a great deal implied in that title: wit, tact, knowledge of men and the world, wisdom, a clever tongue-and all of these things Pope had. In short, he is the flower of the period which we are studying; not necessarily the greatest man, for Dryden leaves upon the reader an impression of magnitude, of being greater than what he accomplished, which we do not feel about Pope, who was perfectly successful in putting what was best of himself into literature, and into classical literature. The aim of the period in which he lived was to let reasonableness, common-sense, have full sway, and nowhere did it find fuller expression in English literature than in Pope.

The period was an interesting one in respect to the man of letters, whose position, however, was not secure, although the Spectator had created a large reading public. It may

* In the Contemporary Review for December, 1881, and January, 1882, are two interesting articles by Mr. Alfred Austin, discussing Mr. Matthew Arnold's definition of poetry as a criticism of life.