be at all disconcerted by any company, and he, therefore, resolutely set himself to behave quite as an easy man of the world, who could adapt himself at once to the disposition and manners of those whom he might chance to meet.

The cheering sound of 'Dinner is upon the table' dissolved his reverie, and we all sat down without any

symptom of ill-humour. There were present-beside

Mr Wilkes and Mr Arthur Lee, who was an old companion of mine when he studied physic at EdinburghMr (now Sir John) Miller, Dr Lettsom, and Mr Slater the druggist. Mr Wilkes placed himself next to Dr Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and politeness that he gained upon him insensibly. No man eat [ate] more heartily than Johnson, or loved better what was nice and delicate. Mr Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to some fine veal. 'Pray give me leave, Sir ;-It is better here-A little of the brown -Some fat, Sir-A little of the stuffing-Some gravyLet me have the pleasure of giving you some butterAllow me to recommend a squeeze of this orange; or the lemon, perhaps, may have more zest.'-'Sir, Sir, I am obliged to you, Sir,' cried Johnson, bowing, and turning his head to him with a look for some time of 'surly virtue,' but, in a short while, of complacency. [15th May 1776.]

Our conversation turned upon living in the country, which Johnson, whose melancholy mind required the dissipation of quick successive variety, had habituated himself to consider as a kind of mental imprisonment. 'Yet, Sir,' said I, 'there are many people who are content to live in the country.' Johnson. Sir, it is in the intellectual world as in the physical world: we are told by natural philosophers that a body is at rest in the place that is fit for it; they who are content to live in the country, are fit for the country.'

Talking of various enjoyments, I argued that a refinement of taste was a disadvantage, as they who have attained to it must be seldomer pleased than those who have no nice discrimination, and are therefore satisfied with everything that comes in their way. Johnson. 'Nay, Sir: that is a paltry notion. Endeavour to be as perfect as you can in every respect.'

I accompanied him, in Sir Joshua Reynolds's coach, to the entry of Bolt-court. He asked me whether I would not go with him to his house; I declined it, from an apprehension that my spirits would sink. We bade adieu to each other affectionately in the carriage. When he had got down upon the foot-pavement, he called out, 'Fare you well;' and without looking back, sprung away with a kind of pathetic briskness, if I may use that expression, which seemed to indicate a struggle to conceal uneasiness, and impressed me with a foreboding of our long, long separation. [1784.]

Standard editions of Boswell's great work are those by Napier (4 vols. 1884; two supplementary volumes contain Boswell's Journal

of a Tour to the Hebrides and 'Johnsoniana ') and by Dr Birkbeck Hill (6 vols. 1887). Invaluable for the light thrown on Boswell's inner character are his Letters to Temple (1856), whose acquaintance he had made while yet a student at Edinburgh University, and Boswelliana (1874) by Charles Rogers. Of the famous essays by Macaulay and Carlyle, which contradict rather than correct each other, the latter has much more truth in it than the former. is a Life of Boswell by Percy Fitzgerald (2 vols. 1891). THOMAS DAVIDSON.

There

Mrs Piozzi (1741-1821) was as yet MRS THRALE when she became a particular star in Dr Johnson's firmament. Born at Bodvel in Carnarvonshire, Hester Lynch Salusbury in 1763 married Henry Thrale, a prosperous Southwark brewer; in 1765 Johnson conceived an extraordinary affection for her, was domesticated in her house at Streatham Place for over sixteen years, and for her sake learned to soften many of his eccentricities. Thrale, who made Johnson one of his four executors, died in 1781, after his wife had borne him twelve children; and in 1784 the brewery-the potentiality of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice,' as Johnson said- was sold for £135,000. Johnson felt himself slighted when the widow became attached to the Italian musician Piozzi. The marriage took place in July 1784; the pair travelled through France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium, returning to England in 1787. In 1795 Mrs Piozzi built Brynhella on the Clwyd, and there Piozzi died in 1809. When past seventy the irrepressible old lady formed a sentimental attachment for the actor W. A. Conway; she was eighty when she died from the consequences of a broken leg. Vivacious, frank, and witty, she was charming and pretty, if hardly beautiful. Only two of her works can be said to live, and that solely through their subject-Anecdotes of Dr Johnson (1786; reprinted in Mrs Napier's Johnsoniana, 1884) and Letters to and from Dr Johnson (1788). She was an acute observer, and her reminiscences are often interesting, though she was by no means painfully accurate. Observations and Reflections on her Continental experiences are forgotten, as are a book on British Synonymy (1794) and her Retrospection over the events of eighteen hundred years! (1801). Of her poems, the best-known, The Three Warnings, was her first, and was so much above the level of her other verse that it was believed to have been at least amended by Johnson; it appeared in a volume of Miscellanies issued in 1766 by Mrs. Williams, the blind inmate of Johnson's house. Mrs Piozzi's contributions to The Florence Miscellany in 1785 afforded a subject for Gifford's satire, his Baviad having been written expressly to ridicule the Della Cruscan mutual admiration society, of which Mrs Piozzi was arch-priestess.

From The Three Warnings.' When sports went round, and all were gay, On neighbour Dobson's wedding-day, Death called aside the jocund groom With him into another room,

Her

And looking grave-You must,' says he, 'Quit your sweet bride, and come with me.' 'With you! and quit my Susan's side? With you!' the hapless husband cried ;

Young as I am, 'tis monstrous hard!
Besides, in truth, I'm not prepared :
My thoughts on other matters go;
This is my wedding-day, you know.'

What more he urged I have not heard,
His reasons could not well be stronger;
So Death the poor delinquent spared,
And left to live a little longer.
Yet calling up a serious look,

His hour-glass trembled while he spoke-
'Neighbour,' he said, 'farewell! no more
Shall Death disturb your mirthful hour:
And further, to avoid all blame
Of cruelty upon my name,
To give you time for preparation,
And fit you for your future station,
Three several warnings you shall have,
Before you're summoned to the grave;
Willing for once I'll quit my prey,

And grant a kind reprieve;

In hopes you'll have no more to say;
But, when I call again this way,

Well pleased the world will leave.'
To these conditions both consented,
And parted perfectly contented.

What next the hero of our tale befell,
How long he lived, how wise, how well,
How roundly he pursued his course,

And smoked his pipe, and stroked his horse,
The willing muse shall tell :

He chaffered then, he bought and sold,
Nor once perceived his growing old,

Nor thought of Death as near:

His friends not false, his wife no shrew,
Many his gains, his children few,

He passed his hours in peace.
But while he viewed his wealth increase,
While thus along life's dusty road,
The beaten track content he trod.
Old Time, whose haste no mortal spares,
Uncalled, unheeded, unawares,

Brought on his eightieth year.
And now, one night, in musing mood,
As all alone he sate,
The unwelcome messenger of Fate
Once more before him stood.

Half-stilled with anger and surprise, 'So soon returned!' old Dobson cries.

Nay, then,' the spectre stern rejoined,

'These are unjustifiable yearnings:

If you are lame, and deaf, and blind,

You've had your Three sufficient Warnings;

So come along; no more we'll part,'
He said, and touched him with his dart.
And now old Dobson, turning pale,
Yields to his fate--so ends my tale.

The 'secretary's warrant' refers to the famous illegal warrant used against Wilkes (see below at page 516). In 1861 Abraham Hayward edited Mrs Piozzi's Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains (2 vols. 1861); see also Mangin's Piozziana (1833) and L. B. Seely's Mrs Thrale (1891).

T was part of the spirit of the nineteenth century to look down on the eighteenth and all its works, and greatly to overestimate the deeper, higher, holier temper of the new epoch. Coleridge's discovery, by German help, of the contrast between understanding and reason, led him to an unphilosophical disdain of all that had been accomplished in the century into which he was born; Carlyle denounced 'a sceptical century and godless,' ' opulent in accumulated falsities as never century was.' It became customary to agree that those three unhappy generations of men were dead to faith, to historical insight, to poetical feeling, to love of nature, to apprehension or real admiration of the sublime, the beautiful, the tender, the true. And it was assumed that the English literature of the period, mysteriously differing from that of all other periods, consistently and comprehensively reveals and displays these lamentable defects in intellectual and spiritual life.

Geological development did not proceed by universal cataclysms; in literary history, though there are changes of humour, of taste, and of fashion-violent as well as gradual, profound as well as superficial-the revolutions recorded are rarely or never so absolute as nineteenthcentury writers unhistorically declared; and the transition from the eighteenth-century way of looking at things or of putting things was not one of them. The men of the eighteenth century bled when they were pricked, laughed if they were tickled, died when they were poisoned; they loved, they hated, they rejoiced and hoped and feared; the roots of poetry were still deep-planted in their life, even though the life had for the time gone out of

their poetry.

In truth, the literature of that time was a somewhat peculiarly self-consistent outcome of the characteristic English temperament. literary mood has changed, but in our ordinary rule of life the principles of the eighteenth century are still dominant. The Englishman

does not wear his heart on his sleeve, still less the Scotsman-it is weak and worthy only of a foreigner to be demonstrative. He does not propose to take the public to his heart, or let them feel the very pulse of the machine. In religion he will not grovel in abject selfnegation, nor does he desire or aim at ecstatic bliss. Englishmen do not (except in poetry) shout for intensity of joy or scream with laughter-nor do they weep or whine if they can possibly help it; they are reticent in the sphere of the domestic affections, and are very slow to unbosom themselves about any other. We are not enthusiastic; we regard the intense with suspicious dislike. We do not adore; we do not gush; we will not allow ourselves to seem surprised or delighted; we are extremely reserved-good form so prescribes it. However much we may actually feel, this is still the law of the island-born, save only in art and poetry. Yet contrariwise, in literature and art, but there only, we now set the highest value on that which is the most complete self-revelation of the artist, illustrating even the fainter nuances of his varying moods, his hopes, his fears, his doubts, struggles, distresses, despondencies, despairs. In poetry we say we love intensity and unreserve.

Not so was it with us under good Queen Anne and the Georges. Then the Englishman carried into his literature what was and is still the rule of his daily life-moderation, commonsense, correctness, abhorrence of 'enthusiasm ' in word as in deed, self-complacent appreciation of the high degree of civilisation he had now happily attained, and a corresponding disregard of what he thought 'Gothic,' barbarous, and uncultured. Dignified reserve was the keynote of literature; the lyric cry,' whether of joy or grief, was repressed on principle; mystery and marvel were ratiocinatively explained away; nature was admired on philosophical grounds; 'propriety' was the fetich of the period; decorum, elegance, point, and good taste took aristocratic precedence of uncouth originality, humour, and power. The originality, the humour, and the power had not ceased to

exist, but it was not the fashion to welcome them save under restraint.

Yet even in the early part of the century, as we have seen, the classicism adapted to French modes, the Popian formalism specially characteristic of the whole period, was early disturbed by the emergence here and there of a vein of idealism, sentimentalism, realism, and nature-worship, and of a simplicity sometimes not a little affected. Wesley and Whitefield had wakened the dogmatic and anti-dogmatic slumber of indifference with powerful effect before the middle of the century. Berkeley's idealism had sufficiently little in common with the age of deism and of common-sense. Thomson was but one of the poets of nature seen in a new light. Spenser, after long oblivion, was tasted again, and after a fashion imitated. There is a romantic note in the Countess of Winchilsea's Reverie, in Parnell's Night-Piece, in Hamilton of Bangour's Braes of Yarrow. Long before Macpherson, before even Jerome Stone of Dunkeld, such a minor poet as Aaron Hill sang after Gaelic models— once, at least-of Scuir Uaran in the wilds of Ross-shire, of heather, pines, and highland lochs, and in vision described Skye as a 'fair isle' nearly fifty years before it was discovered by Dr Johnson; and sought and found new poetic materials in semi-barbarous Russia. Gothic' ceased to be a synonym for the uncouth, the contemptible, the worthless. Gray was strongly attracted by things Celtic, Norse, weird, glamorous; Collins's ode on The Superstitions of the Highlands, written in 1749, contained, according to Lowell, the germ of the whole romantic movement; and the father of the Wartons wrote 'Runic' odes. Vernacular writing became popular; Allan Ramsay by his Evergreen revived interest in the poetic past of his country; pseudo-antique ballads were largely manufactured in the north, as also songs lacking neither in directness, simplicity, tenderness, nor pathos.

In the latter half of the century the spirit of innovation shows itself more constantly, more irrepressibly, and in more various shapes. Interest in the romantic past, curiosity about the unfamiliar ways and regions of the remote East, willingness to be surprised and attracted by novelties, a craving for change, accompany the 'return to nature.' Life is more varied; there is a warmer throb in literature. Scottish national feeling assumed new shapes; the Welsh national awakening, intellectual

and spiritual, became pronounced; the Irish National party found leaders in Flood and Grattan. Significantly enough Adam Smith founded a new social polity in the very year that the American Revolution made a break in history; and this and much else in thought and in speech, and even in song, prepared the way for projecting a tabula rasa, for the vision of all things become new, to be realised not in the kingdom of God but in the Republic of the Être Suprême. Shakespearean criticism, begun in Queen Anne's time, had become really important with Johnson, Steevens, and Malone. Though Gibbon still called German a barbarous idiom, a new desire to know about things German showed that the existence of a great Teutonic literature had begun to be realised; 'Sturm und Drang' and Werterism were more readily assimilated in England than Klopstock and Gessner. Young's Night Thoughts and Blair's Grave illustrate the widespread elegiac mood, the determination to snatch a fearful joy from the poetic aspects of the melancholy, and were wholly independent of Werter. But Werter and Götz von Berlichingen told both directly and indirectly on English literature, as did the melodramas of other German authors.

By common consent two publications are accepted as specially showing that 'going in the tops of the trees' that heralded the spirit of the new century, Macpherson's Ossian (1760-63) and Percy's Reliques. Even by those who most abhorred it, as by Wordsworth, it was admitted that the 'impudent Highlander's' phantom offspring was greeted with acclamation in the south, and 'the thin consistence took its course through Europe upon the breath of popular applause.' And Percy, who had begun his literary life-work by translating (from the Portuguese) a Chinese novel and (from Du Mallet) Eddaic poetry, issued in 1765 those Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, to which German literature was profoundly indebted, and by which, as Wordsworth said, English poetry has been absolutely redeemed. I do not think there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligation to the Reliques: I know it is so with my friends.' According to Wordsworth, Percy only wanted resolution to follow his genius into the regions of true simplicity and genuine pathos, as evinced by his exquisite ballad of Sir Cauline and by many other pieces;' but unhappily fell back in his Hermit of Warkworth to 'the

vague, glossy, and unfeeling language of his day.' Since the prophet of the New Spirit made this memorable profession and confession, the significance of the Reliques for England and the world has only become more manifest. The Wartons had a large share in the new propaganda, not merely by direct polemic against Pope and by their rehabilitation of the ancient writers, but by their sympathy for things Celtic, Gothic,' and mediæval. The Rowley Poms showed the immediate effect of the novel affection for a mediævalism often wholly misconceived, melodramatic, and false to history; too defective in their antiquarianism to deceive any but the unwary or uninstructed, they are yet, as the work of a true and original poet, much more genuinely romantic than the tame verse of the Wartons.

6

Hidden grots, mossy cells, Druids and bards, monks and hermits, knights and minstrels, came to their own; the love for the wild in scenery, eccentric in Gray and Walpole, became normal, until 'Picturesque Tours' and the aestheticism of Gilpin and Uvedale Price became matter of mirth and parody. The Castle of Otranto, Scott said, had been justly considered the original and model of a peculiar species of composition,' and it prepared the way for the Old English Baron, for The Mysteries of Udolpho, with its odd blend of romanticism and sentimentalism, and for Lewis's Monk. Six several English translations of Bürger's Lenore appeared between 1796 and 1800. Beattie's Minstrel, full of the love of solitary communion with nature and frank joy in her beauty, in so far anticipates Wordsworth; Thomas Warton, in thought and feeling, in word and rhythm, often anticipates Scott. The Traveller and Deserted Village show didacticism on a new plane; Goldsmith's keen sense of the social evils of his time was strongly marked, and his simple English, though his sentences were often built on the Johnsonian model, was a sharp contrast to Johnson's Latinised ponderousness. Goldsmith as playwright broke with old conventions, to the dismay of conservatives, as Garrick on the stage had brought about a swift advance from formalism to naturalness; Sheridan went even further in emancipating comedy from the stilted style. Gibbon, in noble succession to Hume and Robertson, at least marks the historical trend of men's minds. Burke, by his attitude to the Americans in their struggle, showed that if he became pronouncedly hostile

to the French Revolution, it was the fault as well as the misfortune of the friends of liberty. Bentham was engaged in his lifelong polemic against established legal and political grievances; Godwin's Political Justice contained well-nigh as powerful revolutionary elements. as Paine's works. The caustic caricatures and pungent parodies of the Anti-Jacobin, of Gifford and Peter Pindar,' served not merely as a reductio ad absurdum of what was novel, fantastic, extravagant, but cherished a subversive spirit that acted in quite other ways than was intended satire proved again 'the bane of the sublime' as then understood. It made for ever impossible that tendency to run riot in personification and apostrophe, of which Erasmus Darwin is the most unlucky exponent

-a tendency which, ever since Thomson's ornate and artificial diction had been commended by admirable poetry, had run parallel with the tendency seen in Goldsmith and Cowper to simpler utterance. Cowper and Burns are the notable poets of the last decades of the century. Burns showed in full measure the enthusiasm of humanity; Cowper summed up all the tender humanities and sweet domesticities in verse which even Wordsworth accounted chaste in diction.' Campbell's Pleasures of Hope is the last of the category of which Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination was the most notable early example, romantic only in name, doubly didactic in substance. Crabbe is still a didactic, though his peculiar gravitation to humble life and depressing issues points away from the temper of his predecessors. William Lisle Bowles distinctly marks the transition period; Blake, a prophet and more than a prophet, though in the eighteenth century is hardly of it. Rogers's Pleasures of Memory belongs to the same group as the earlier Pleasures of the Imagination and the later Pleasures of Hope; and Campbell's patriotic songs only continue a series of which Thomson's Rule Britannia' and Garrick's Heart of Oak' were early examples. Jane Austen lives and moves in the eighteenth century. Samuel Rogers, a senior contemporary of Scott and Byron, who lived to be a patriarch of letters for years after the first edition of this work was issued, into the generation to which Lord Macaulay and Carlyle and Thackeray belonged, yet learned at school to love those who were to be his masters and models throughout life, while Gray and Goldsmith and Johnson were yet alive.

D. P.