CHAPTER 8. THE LANGUAGE.

Transition. The 17th century was the period of transition from Early Modern or Tudor English to Modern English proper. Ranging from Ben Jonson and the Metaphysical poets to Dryden and Defoe, the period falls naturally into two sharply contrasted parts, the division between the two being marked by the Restoration of 1660, by which date the final break with the older literary traditions was complete. By 1660 also the Early Modern changes in pronunciation were generally adopted, and definite progress had been made in the standardizing of the spelling.

Literary Usage. The literature of the first half of the 17th century still reflects the classical learning of the humanists and the pedantry of the later schoolmen. The dramas of Jonson, the conceits of the Metaphysical school, and the Latinized prose of Burton and Browne bear witness to the learned and often pedantic spirit of the day. Latin was still freely used for learned and scientific works, many scholars sharing Bacon's fear that "these modern languages will... play the bankrupts with books"; while English prose was garnished with Latin figures and quotations, and affected the weighty Latin sentences and elevated style used by Hooker at the end of the 16th century, or the learned wit of the time of James I. In the second half of the century a noteworthy change in literary style and diction occurred. The works of Cowley (as a prose-writer), Waller, Dryden, and their contemporaries are characterized by a new manner of writing in which the language of the scholar is replaced by the everyday language of society and the town. The new "polite" manner was in part indebted to French influence for its greater lucidity, and its more simple and logical syntax, but the great changes in style and diction were due to the fact that the literature of the late 17th century was a social literature in close connection with everyday life, and that the life which it reflected was not that of the courtier, the scholar, or the rustic, according to the old Elizabethan distinctions, nor the national life as a whole as with Shakespeare, but the life of the middle classes and the town, ranging from the refined and elegant tone of fashion used by the genteel Temple and by Congreve, or the vigorous colloquial style of Dryden and the fashionable slang of L'Estrange, to the racy and realistic manner of the man in the street in Defoe. The new literary usage was thus a class usage, and was in close connection with the everyday speech of London, and the Restoration literature of the uncourtly court of Charles II. differed little from the rest in tone. A more homely and general usage survived in the pulpit, and is represented in the Pilgrim's Progress

The Spoken Usage. The more progressive tendencies of 16th-century pronunciation were established for the standard language by 1660. The conservative Dr. Gill complained in 1621 both of these vulgarisms and of the mincing and affected

pronunciation used in his day by the "Mopsæ quæ omnia attenuant" saying "meedz, plee" for "maidz, plai," and "bitsherz miit" when they should say "butsherz meet."'' This refined pronunciation of meat as mit became vulgar in the later 17th century, and was not accepted as standard until well on in the 18th. In the 17th century the pronunciations of u as in but and a as in hat became general, also the special developments of vowels before r (as in care, bear, hear, before, bar, for, bird, cur). Changes in vowel quantity also took place, as in breath, bread, etc.. where the vowel has been shortened, or path, father, hard, etc., where it has been lengthened. These may be due to the influence of class or dialect; cf. the modern pronunciations of path with a and ă. Evidence as to a fashionable affectation at the end of the century is given by Vanbrugh's Relapse (1697), where Lord Fop uses packet, stap, crawn, pawnd for pocket, stop, crown, pound, etc.

Spelling. The modern distinction between the old open and close e (ea and ee, ie respectively) and the use of oa for open o became fixed in the course of the century, and the use of capitals for nouns was given up shortly after the beginning of the 18th.

Syntax and Vocabulary. The great changes in style and syntax which took place in the 17th century may be gathered from Dryden's criticism of Ben Jonson in his Defence of the Epilogue of the "Conquest of Granada." Dryden discusses the refinement which the English of his day has undergone "either in rejecting such old words, or phrases, which are ill-sounding, or improper; or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding and more significant." The 17th century witnessed the first "English Dictionarie," published by Cockeram in 1623, which contains a number of inkhorn terms, and adds a second part in which the cultivator of a learned style may find the learned equivalents of ordinary words. The use of inkhornisms was superseded in the latter part of the century by the polite use of French terms, countenanced by Dryden as making "the language... more courtly and our thoughts. . . better drest," provided the use were not an exaggerated one, a turning English into French, rather than a refining of English by French."'*

SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST

GILL, A.: Logonomia Anglica (1619).-JONSON, BEN: The English Grammar (1640).—Cooper, C. Grammatica Lingua Anglicano (1685), ed. J. D. Jones (Halle, 1912).-DIerberger, J.: Drydens Reime (Freiburg, 1895).-HORN, W.: Historische neuenglische Grammatik (1908).—MAYHEW and SKEAT: Glossary of Tudor and Stuart Words (Clarendon Press, 1913).—WYLD, H. C. K.: History of Modern Colloquial English (Fisher Unwin, 1920).-ZACHRISSEN: Pronunciation of English Vowels.

1 A similar reference to contemporary affectation occurs in the Writing Scholar's Companion (1695): "at London, where to avoid a broad clownish speaking, we are too apt to run into the contrary Extream of an affected way of speaking perhaps too fine."

Essays, ed. W. P. Ker, p. 162.

SECTION V

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I. GENERAL VIEW

POLITICALLY, the age, with despotism evicted, was content to accept a Whig oligarchy in which factions contended for place. Walpole maintained peace and material prosperity till he fell before a flame of war fanned by his opponents. Chatham was victorious over France and Spain, and the attempt of George III. to restore personal rule was foiled through the ruin of his American policy. Political principle was resuscitated by Chatham, Burke, and Rockingham, and upheld by the younger Pitt, a disciple of Adam Smith. Government by party began to supplant faction, and the reform of Parliament was balked only by the reaction due to the French Revolution, when Pitt was dragged into war against "a propagandist religion in arms."

Intellectually, the rationalism rising naturally from the principles of Locke found early expression in the writings of Collins, Tindal, and others, and was associated with Toryism by Bolingbroke and later by Hume. Locke's own doctrine, accepting Christianity, was maintained by the Whig divines. Against both schools stood the High Churchmen, many of them Jacobites, and all upholding the authority of the clergy. In all these schools logical and historical argument was usually of more account than spiritual life. Among exceptional men were, on the one hand, the Arian Clarke, and on the other the nonjuror Law, author of the Serious Call. No school appealed to the general religious feeling, and the ground lay open for the enthusiasm of Wesley, which became a lasting power owing to its deep sense of religion.

In science the genius of Newton had opened the road to new discoveries in mathematics and astronomy, and Henry Cavendish led the way in chemistry and physics. In classical science Bentley showed himself the greatest of scholars, but after his death the universities sank into intellectual torpor. In economics the greatest event was the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, a book of incomparable effect. In applied science the latter half of the century saw the invention of the spinning-jenny and the mule, while the restoration of the roads and the making of canals led to the development of collieries, potteries, and weaving.

Authorship was still no path to wealth. All parties united to buy Pope's Homer, and all his works had a market, but few writers made a living. The age of patronage was ending, and the reading public was as yet small. A few country towns,

such as Norwich and Lichfield, had literary circles. Some country gentlemen, like Browne Willis, bought books, but the Squire Hardcastles had few and the Squire Westerns none. Some clergymen collected apologetic divinity. A few histories, like Robertson's, sold well, and Burke's later works like wildfire. Goldsmith got £40 for The Traveller, and £60 for The Vicar of Wakefield; Johnson £400 in all for the Lives of the Poets, though the publishers, if asked, would have given more. The publishers of Robertson's History of Scotland made £6,000. Few playwrights earned much, but Gay had £700 for The Beggar's Opera, and Goldsmith some £500 by each of his comedies. Good painters did well, and music had a vogue.

Large fortunes were rare. Ancestral Jamaica plantations and a long minority started the younger Beckford with £150,000 a year, while of the old nobility the Duke of Bedford came first with an income of £30,000. Shelburne said that any one could have all he wanted on an income of £5,000. Many estates were impoverished by gambling, some constitutions by the bottle.

For travelling none but the main roads were easy, at least in winter. The family coach was giving way to the post-chaise or, for such impatient travellers as Chatham, the whisky or gig. For cheaper wayfaring there was the stage-coach, becoming speedier, and the wagon, which took goods as well as humble passengers, and was slow.

In theory education changed little in this period, though in practice Oxford and Cambridge improved towards its end. The training was based on Latin, Greek, and -though not everywhere-mathematics. Westminster and Eton were the fashionable schools. At one or the other were all the Prime Ministers, except four who were bred at home, and almost all the secretaries of state. In the towns the small grammar schools not only taught many sons of the clergy, lesser gentry, and larger tradesmen, but also gave poor boys a chance of learning and advancement-witness Johnson and divers bishops. In the rural districts the classes below the gentry had little education. The peasantry were often not far removed from serfdom, and mostly restricted to the parish of their birth.

The policing of the country was bad, highway and other robberies were common. The criminal law was cruel; the death penalty very frequent, and often enforced for petty offences. The prisons and the madhouses were places of horror, but towards the end of the century Howard's exertions prepared the way for reform.

The Man.-Born in London, the son of a Roman Catholic merchant of gentle blood, Pope was small of stature and slightly deformed. Except in his earliest years he never enjoyed health, a fact which explains some of his moral faults. Among these malice and mendacity are conspicuous.

Into some errors he was led by a vanity stimulated by his early and lasting success. Again, he did not know how to stand alone, and in turn Swift, Bolingbroke, and Warburton had over him a command which was not always for his good.

At the age of eleven he went with his father to live at Binfield in Windsor Forest, and the boyhood years spent there have left traces in his earlier works. He was largely self-taught, steeping himself especially in English and Latin poetry. Like Ovid he "lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers

." He was encouraged by Sir William Trumbull, a neighbour and a retired secretary of state, and a translation of Statius, made when he was about fourteen, was followed two or three years later by the Pastorals, not published until 1709. The pastoral form, as used by Virgil and Milton, might still be a young poet's legitimate medium for expressing his emotions and his thoughts on life. Pope at seventeen was too young to make an effective use of this vehicle; the verses are imitative, but here and there have real feeling, and a melody which falls short only of the great masters of the shepherds' verse. Their promise, however, was unfulfilled-the spirit of the age and intercourse with critics and men of letters led their author along other lines.

66

Alexander Pope.

(From a picture by William Hoare.)

Pope's Correctness" and Classicism. Two small poets and critics of the previous generation, whose acquaintance Pope made about this time, and of whom he wrote some thirty years later,

Granville the polite

And knowing Walsh would tell me I could write,

did something to turn the bent of his mind. Walsh, in particular, advised him to