English Poetry in the Eighteenth Century [pp. 30-50]

ENGLISH POETRY IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY.
HERE is nothing which marks more decisively the worth
and vitality of English poetry than the way in which it
reflects the historic character of the age that produced it, and
answers to the risings and the fallings of the national spirit. It
could be shown, I believe, by one competent to the task that
each new phase of our poetry, from the time of Chaucer to our
own day, has been the outgrowth and the bloom of the spirit
that was working in the age in which it appeared. A history of
English poetry, written under this idea, would task severely any
writer's knowledge and grasp of thought; but if successfully
accomplished it would give fresh meaning to our poetry, and
throw back a new and original light on our national history.
For my present purpose, however, I shall be content if I can
only touch on a few of the historical conditions which went to
mould the poetry of the eighteenth century. When we speak
of this poetry there is one name that before all others comes to
mind-that of Pope. Yet it is not accurate to represent him
as the creator of what has been called somewhat strangely the
classical period of our literature. Rather he was the inheritor
and perfecter of it. He had received it as a bequest from the
preceding age, and only took up and perfected a style which
Dryden had originated. Why it has been called the classical
period has often been asked, and perhaps no better answer is
possible than that recently given, that after the Restoration
English writers began to perceive, as the classical writers of
Greece and Rome had done before them, that there was such a
thing as the art of writing, and to aim at expressing their meaning in the clearest, most concise, and most pointed manner, and
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