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

ENGLISH POET7Y IN THEEIGHTEENTH CLNT'URY. 31
to cultivate all the graces of style which are in keeping with
these qualities. The name that stands out conspicuous as the
leader in this movement is that of Dryden, and Pope only carried on in the eighteenth century what Dryden had begun
during the last decades of the seventeenth.
Dryden was forty-three years old when Milton died; yet in
thought and feeling there is a gap between these two poets as
of two centuries. The violent enthusiasms which had stirred
the souls of Milton and his compeers had all burnt themselves
out long before Dryden died. The enthusiasm of religion and
of republicanism, which during Milton's prime had animated a
large portion of the people, entirely disappeared with the Restoration. The stern heroism and self-sacrifice which these had
kindled gave place to an age of dissolute manners and reckless
self-indulgence, which are only too faithfully reflected in the literature of the time. The pendulum of human nature, which
had been strained too far towards severity, had gone full swing
in the opposite direction. It was a century and more before
England recovered that glow of religious zeal which had been
extinguished by the Restoration. By the beginning of the
eighteenth century and the reign of Queen Anne (A.D. I702 —
I714), the enthusiasm of patriotism and the enthusiasm of
liberty had gone the same way as the enthusiasm of religion.
These three enthusiasms all stood like extinct volcanoes, dreaded
no longer, but jeered at as puritanism and fanaticism.
In politics, the absolutism which had been triumphant during the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and which is reflected
in the works of Dryden, disappeared in I688, the year in which
Pope was born. That year fixed for the first time the system
of parliamentary government as we know it. The will of the
nation as expressed through Parliament became supreme. and
the kingly power as confined within the limitations which Par
liament imposed. The throne was now, according to the Whig
idea, founded not on divine right, but on a parliamentary title.
The right of the nation to depose a monarch who violated the
constitution was asserted. This, which is the essence of Whiggery, was the regime which began with Pope's birth and kept
growing in strength throughout his whole life, notwithstanding
the violent struggles of the Jacobites to upset it. But when