AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE by William Henry Hudson

Author:William Henry Hudson
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Published: 2015-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

17

The Age of Johnson:

Verse

79. General Characteristics. Broadly viewed, the history of our later eighteenth century poetry is, as we have said, the history of a struggle between old and new, and of the gradual triumph of the new. On the one hand, there were writers who followed the general practice of the school of Pope, and aimed to produce the kind of verse which Pope had brought to perfection and made popular. In the works of these men, therefore, we recognise the continuance of what we may here call the Augustan tradition. On the other hand, there was a marked tendency among writers of the rising generation to abandon the practice of the school of Pope, respond to a different range of influences, and seek fresh subjects, fresh forms, and fresh modes of feeling and expression. In the works of these men, therefore, we may recognize the breaking up of the Augustan tradition. When in his Essay on Pope (1756) Joseph Warton took the ground that Pope was a great ‘wit’, but not a great poet, since his work lacked those imaginative and emotional qualities which are essential to true poetry; when in his Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), addressed to Richardson, Young maintained that poets should leave off imitating classic models and depend upon nature and the promptings of individual genius, it is evident that the change of taste is beginning to express itself in open protest against the principles of the reigning fashion.

Thus the Age of Johnson, in respect of its poetry, is obviously an age of transition, innovation, and varied experiment. It must, however, be borne in mind that the great general movement from old to new was the result of many forces and resolves itself under analysis into a number of different movements following many lines. At this juncture the reader should return to the epitome of the chief characteristics of the classical school of poetry already given (§59). As was there shown, classical poetry (1) was mainly the product of the intelligence, and was strikingly deficient in emotion and imagination; (2) it was almost exclusively a ‘town’ poetry; (3) it was conspicuously wanting in romantic spirit; (4) it was extremely formal and artificial in style; and (5) it adhered rigorously to the closed couplet. At all these points reaction set in. (1) Emotion, passion, and imagination invaded poetry to the destruction of its dry intellectuality, and the old narrow didactic principles were discarded. (2) Poetry ceased to concern itself exclusively with the ‘town’, and began to deal with nature and rustic life. A most important feature in it is the growth of the sense of the picturesque. (3) The romantic spirit revived, and this revival brought with it great changes in the themes and temper of verse. (4) Efforts were now made to break away from the stereotyped conventions of ‘poetic diction’, and to substitute for these simplicity of phrase and the language of nature. (5) The supremacy of the closed couplet was attacked, and other forms of verse used in its place.

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