Show r I t j i of i C e TilE ThE HERALDS I lorne orne Study Circle I t 1935 by Eaton 4 t Directed by Prof Seymour Eaton awn 4 4 0 fi 4 I GOLDEN AGES OF LITERATURE AE DISON AND THE AGE AG OF OP PROSE AND BASO BY JOSEPH RS DENEY DEm Y YA A AM iL 11 The age in which Joseph Joeeph n stands standa as the representative literary man lisa baa been coiled the Augustan AU age the classic C age the age of criticism 1 the age ase of prose and reason No one of these thene names is convincing without explanation though all of them point to the same general characteristics The last name carries with it the judg judgment ment of af the nineteenth century upon anon the writers of the eighteenth and is intended to be beth both a verdict and an acknowledgment nt of or services service but it ie WI iea isa a name which the die eighteenth century would not have appreciated The sug suggestion suggestion that Popes P pes metrical rne essays should ever come to be accounted valuable chiefly for Or their good influence ence upon the press style of succeeding generations would have been rejected morn acorn For it was especially e with poetry p in mind that eighteenth h century entIce critics applied to t Pope and Addison the high title Augustan It was belleT d 1 that these writers rs had brought Englin En literature to the highest degree of re refinement refinement They had bad done for English literature what the French had done dane for French literature a gen generation generation en earlier earner what Cicero cero Horace and Virgil had done for Roman Ute 3 ture lure under Augustus they had fouw it crude and primitive unformed w is wa isa a favorite adjective of the period and nd had left it J hed finished d regular and free from extravagance Pope and Addison were thenceforth tv t be the th by hr which w ich all ali writes write should be measured The present age aae dissents dl en s from this conclusIon not because it t 1 denies to the Augustans superiority m in literary h hover II over their predecessors or but because beca It refuses to determine superiority on O finish The I narrow a basis ba tB as literary present pre ent age perceives in Elizabethan poetry poe ry and drama qualities infinitely higher a spirit both deeper and freer I an interpretation of life that is stronger and truer than can be found fo nd in the poetry of the eighteenth century It also ateo linde a similar superiority in the spirit of the greatest poets of the pros pres present I ent eat century But it does oes not oot deny to Pope the honor of having shown to succeeding ages what literary work workmanship workmanship manship means It ascribes a to him wonderful skill in producing terse pre precise I Ielse else cite pointed and balanced verses And I it observes that the verses of Pope I have always Invited quotation that they have the proper aim of prose immediate intelligibility and lend i themselves them to the practical needs need of ordinary or minds Through universal a quotation Popes verses must mU Jt I Alexander Pope 1 have had an influence in com corn communicating to English prose something of their own clearness s and terseness To achieve correctness and elegance of expression ion to win perfection in InI style lyle were t tIe the ie principal aims aima of the I leading wr rs of the eighteenth cn con n nI I tur tury The ther hud bed found out that th thOse the thelis r rIe Ie is an art of that it matters how howa a thing is 18 said d Unregulated by It art lis poetry among the minor writers after Shakespeare Shak had become extravagant and fantastical The eighteenth cen eon century cenI tury studied to avoid these forms of I untruth In France a school of criticism criticism cism clam had appeared the influence o of I which was waa potent in compelling atten attention attention tion lion to polished forms of expression and thin French influence greatly re enforced though it did not create the Impulse Im to correctness and regularity of ot 0 f form amon among English writers At Atthe Atthe Atthe the beginning of the eighteenth ei cen con century century tury tory thin impulse had become dominant in English literature Readers were beginning nin to demand that such ideas as asI I were to be expressed ed though theY I might be commonplace and u ideas should Mould be set ret forth with neatness and symmetry Commonplace and un poetical ideas were not Dot to be rejected Sf if the style st le in which they appeared was clear and attractive Th The French in influence fluence e had shown itself most moat con eon conI conspicuously I in the English drama Vol Vet Voltaire Voltaire taire called Cato ato the first firt regular and reasonable play ever eer writ written written ten in England because beau it fulfilled the strict formal requirements of French criticism of or which the chief require requirement ment was the observance of at the uni unites tiles tes of time and place pla The poetry of ot the age was for the most part written I in line HEM of five iambic feet the two adjacent lines 3 rhyming and forming a 4 a each couplet usually making ete sense The labor Jabor and nd pains expended ded before Pope brought the rhymed couplet to perfection told Jd im immensely Imm m neelY In favor lavor of regularity con condensation I Icen cen point and balance in all allIea species Iea of writing It cramped and dwarfed poetic power but b t It gave to the prose sentence qualities which prose had bad hitherto The age was in the sense that its literary lawgivers demanded of Its it writers a close adherence to formal torm l yelps rules rut of writing It has also been called a Bc critical age in contrast co with the age I of Shakespeare and with the later per period perI I lad iod in which Byron and Wordsworth and nd Shelley are the leading lending figures tI res I periods made illustrious by works of 1 i the creative imagination As the rules I which it followed were deduced from a a study of the best bat works of the ancients it has bae also been called the classical age The study tudy of or models an ani the mi ImI Ion of ancient classics gave gu ve to writ ens era a common comman standard stand at of formal ex en excellence toward which to work Horace I wa was the tile model studied most closely His satires were ere imitated and his Ars ArsI I IP P became the literary code ode of I I I 1 5 I I L J 1 Jn ADDISON the age aile To the widespread interest in inthe Inthe Inthe the ica must b he be attributed the great gret gr success of translation tranE laUon of VI and Land Popes Pope translation tran lation of ot Homer as well weD as his Imitations ona of or Horace Though untrue to the manner and spirit of the original Popes trans translations lations fulfilled mens ideal of classical dignity It was easy eSt to appreciate a literature which set forth the rules by which it to be judged in the thet t of or maxims which all could under understand understand stand The keenest interest was wae ex u excited eked cited in subjects of literary inquiry Men became concerned about questions que of correct t taste Ancient were we reappraised r contemporaries held beld one another to standards that all accepted as 6 true A knowledge of af the accepted accented rules rulee of pC literary construction was be believed to be more important than In Inspiration or genius No style could be considered good which did not obey these rules Such a spirit could not Ct holp being unfavorable to the tile production tint tion tl of any but the most artificial it was most favorable to the development of an orderly definite prose prone Matthew Arnold has said eald The glory glor of English literature Is In poetry p and in n poetry the strength of the eighteenth century does not lie Nevertheless tie the eighteenth century accomplished for us as an immense liter literary literary literary ary progress and ls Ps 1 5 very shortcomings in poetry were an instrument to that d td It ii The pra a our ou POp people Ie could not but resistibly to tb production of a re rose rose style sty because b uee for the f modern life me the old Eng English ugh lish prose prove the t e prose of Milton and Taylor is cumbersome A style of regularity uni uniformity uniformity nd precision balance balanco was wae wanted These are the qualities of ot a serviceable prose style Our literature required d a prose i con oon conformed conformed formed to the true law of pros prom p and that it might acquire this the more nore surely sur ly It compelled poetry po try as in France to conform itself to the law of Gf prose likewise The classic verse f C fFrench fFrench French Frerich poetry was WM the Alexandrine A i in measure ure favorable to the qualities of regularity uniformity precision hal bal balance ance Gradually a measure massure m re favorable to those very same qualities the ten syllable couplet established itself as the clastic dc verse of England until in inthe Inthe the Ute eighteenth century it had become lecome the runny ruling form farm of our poetry Poetry or oi rather th the use u df dr diverse verse entered in a remarkable r degree during that cen con century centUry tury into the whole hoJe or of the he dally deIly life Ufe of the civilized classes and the poetry of the century was a perpetual school I of the qualities qUI requisite for a good prose prOM the qualities of regularity uni sal uniformity precision balance This may have been or of no great service to Eng Bug poetry although to say that it Has hea M been bosh of no service at all ail to say that the eighteenth century has bas in no C respect changed tIle the conditions condition for English poetical style or that it has bas changed them theta for tot the worse would be untrue But it was wail undeniably of signal service to that which was wu the great want and work of the hour prose What made a good working prose pr in indispensable indispensable dispensable to the eighteenth century was as the tile fact tact that modern life Ufe had come comein comen in n all of H lie practical and intel intellectual interests Scientific investigation had ad received a great impulse from tile the founding of the Royal society in 1662 Inventors and anti d tCO co li J in science followed one another rapidly It was the time of Sir Isaac Isae Newton Boyle and Halley Hailey Philosophy like science waited Awaited the gift of popular statement that it might enter the th lives Uve of the theDaH masse DaH The revolution of 1188 bad had maid made public opinion important and party J tY leaders sought the services of lit lU literary literary men who aho could create e it Satire in la prose or verse was the e favorite in instrument ta strument of writers who would bring about political changes or advance moral ral reformat Nothing bears stronger testimony oy to the tile practical characteristics tie tics of the age e than the prevalence of ofU satire aLIre U In the writings of or Dryden Addi Add Addison son eon n II Swift and Pope If It satire adopts the garb of poetry remus it Is te only that it may increase e its sharpness its Ito level Jevel levelis is the prose leveL The age was unit unimaginative it lacked enthusiasm moral earnestness and lofty lotty faith but its leaders were to make it an anage anage age of reason and time time came when it prided Itself upon its philosophy and common sense Of or this age of prose and reason reaSon cov coy the first half baH of the tho th eighteenth century Addison Is 19 the best representative He la is chosen rather rath r than Swift or ot Popo Pope because his work exhibits the thee literary tendency of or the period in sober anti amI moderate aspect Addison is never extreme His satire for instance is without Popes sting stingIng lag Ing and without Swifts rols mis Moreover his personality as seen in his hIg works and life is admirable admirable admirable able above Popes and Swifts He Is chosen rather than Dryden though Dryden is a very ery important name e in inthe inthe Inthe the history of prose I 1 position is In that of a pioneer of ot the period under understudy understudy understudy study In the Essay say of Dramatic Poesy and the prefaces to his plays plaS and poems Dryden used a shorter charter sen sea sentence sentence tence than his hie predecessors had used and showed that he knew how to rid English prose pr e of Intricacy and obscurity obscurity ity fame fanie however rests mainly not on lila his prose p e but on his verse while rests mainly upon his work as a 11 prose e e Dr Johnsons famous appreciation of at Whoever wished to attain an English style familiar but not nt coarse find And but bat not DOt ostentatious must give his hia n days and nights to the volumes of ol has been repeated with ith without without out dissent ent by many critics of the e nine nineteenth nineteenth nineteenth century It is almost exclusively in his character as prose essayist that th t Addison is attractive to modern read readers ers erg His HILt life save sav only the period of o his work as essayist ayt es t may Easy therefore be passed over with VOt brief notice Note study will be concluded tomorrow |