CHAPTER XXVI.

GEORGE III.-SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND THE FINE ARTS.

Causes of the Vicissitudes of Genius. — Retrospection; England behind, but improves on her Models. — Intellectual Characteristics of the Georgian Age. - Revival and Exhaustion of Ethical Essays, Magazines, and Reviews. — Abandoned Departments of Science; Metaphysics of Reid and Dugald Stewart.-The Modern Novel.Services rendered to Literature and Society by the Standard Histories of Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson. — Adam Smith on Political Economy, and Sir William Blackstone on Law and Jurisprudence. -Dr. Paley, Godwin, and Rousseau. Poetical Transition from Goldsmith, Cowper, and Darwin to Scott, Moore, Burns, and Byron.-Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. The English School of Reynolds. —Banks, Nollekins, and Flaxman. — Music and the Italian Opera.

THE mental and artistical progress of a people opens many and interesting fields of inquiry. Not the least curious is the generation of intellect. Is the genius that signalises an age usually a single or double star; or does it appear in constellations of one central and surpassing light, whose vivifying force quickens into existence inferior luminaries of less overpowering radiance? This is one branch of the subject on which an ingenious thesis with pertinent examples might be readily put forth, rich, poor, or intermediate. Another is the nature of the soil in which the mind does most fructify and delight to dwell, whether in peace or war, amidst the din of arms, or in the hot ferment of religious or political strife. Or is it independent of all or any of these, and a free gift by Nature of a favourite child, which, at uncertain times and places, she vouchsafes to gladden, enlighten, and lead

onward the human family? And then as a sequel to such investigations is the inverse problem,- Why is the blessing withdrawn? Why should a nation once vigorous, fertile, and varied in mind, that has put forth all the flowers and fruit of genius,-why should its glories become dim, degenerate, and extinct? Does the failure of perpetuity arise from want of culture or encouragement, or is it only in obedience to the general law of life, death, and resurrection which governs universal creation?

All these inquiries or heads of chapters must be passed over. England, as I have more than once remarked, has been fertile in illustrations, and Science, Literature, and the Arts form no exception in her career of manifestations. Sometimes we have shone with a borrowed lustre. Italy in the seventeenth century was our example and precursor in philosophy, poetry, and the arts; and France at a later period was before us, if not in sterling qualities, in the courtly polish, gaiety, and enjoyments of social intercourse. But if we borrowed, we repaid with high interest mightily and rapidly improved upon our models, besides exulting in native originals, whose honoured fronts may proudly peer in any court, palace, or urbane precinct. Aided by the primitive fathers of our intellectual renown, we speedily rose in foreign estimation; from followers became leaders in knowledge, and offered such examples for guidance as the world did not disdain to accept and honour. The great Lord Bacon was doubtless in the van of the movement; he pointed the way to victory; but a greater than Bacon in grandeur of discovery was the immortal Sir Isaac Newton; and next to him, inferior in splendour, but perhaps more useful in research, was John Locke, who set himself down cautiously to observe and digest from Hobbes and his own individuality the phenomena of mental operations, and

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inculcate the true principles of religious toleration and political government.

The celebrity of these illustrious triumvirs elevated England into the foremost place in the great domains of morals, natural philosophy, and metaphysics. But other fields were to be won. Man has a sympathising soul, as well as reasoning mind, and cannot live by bread alone. Singly the intellect is light, without heat, warms not, centres in self, and if unallied, as nature intended, with the heart, the fancy and imagination is dull, inert, and joyless. In such isolation the touch of Prospero's wand is needed, and England had it in her noble cluster of national dramatists-Shakspeare, Jonson, Marlow, and Massinger-who gilded with etherial brightness, and cheered with social glee, the triumphant reign of Queen Elizabeth. In this sunburst of genius the nation had few exotic partakers: unlike the philosophers, our early poets were native and to the manner born, and only imperfectly admitted in spirit and form of transfusion among neighbouring states.

The bright summer of Elizabeth was fated to be sadly overcast. Literature itself indeed is a dramatic presentment, and the scene is perpetually changing. Generally, however, some ascendant spirit or principal figure engrosses the chief interest of the performance. It is poetry at one time, science and philosophy at another, and next perhaps theology. The last has been the stock piece from the earliest period in national representation, and was sturdily maintained by the successor of the maiden queen. It was a transition, but not an intellectual advance. The people had their glorious dramatists; but with the first Stuart came a dense cloud of pedantry, which the light shed by Bacon could only partially penetrate, and which enveloped the royal court in "verbal

criticism and solemn quibble." Controversy became rife, and continued hot and furious into the next reign, finally exploding in the great civil conflict of the seventeenth century. The tracts issued during these religious fermentations were collected by a bookseller (Tomlinson) to the amount of 30,000; this enormous lot of 2000 volumes was bargained for by Charles II., but not bought; eventually it was bought by George III., and presented to the British Museum. Pending the strife of the lay and ecclesiastical powers, no opening was left for science or belles lettres. The limited demand for any publication unconnected with the dominant agitation may be learnt from the little popularity enjoyed by Milton's metrical productions, and the fact mentioned by Dr. Johnson, that from 1623 to 1664 the nation was satisfied with two editions of Shakspeare, which together probably did not amount to 1000 copies.* Wholesome literature did not benefit by the Restoration; it was a transition from one extreme to another-from a conclave to Paphos-and it became only the toy of a libertine king, his courtesans and gallants, who sought to divert their weariness with wits and savans, as monarchs were wont to do with their jesters. Charles II. and his followers brought hither the spirit of the literary favourites of Louis XIV., with whom the great was everything, and the people nothing save a slumbering volcano. Under this kind of favour, letters, with a few grand exceptions, put on the lowest garb in which they can be arrayed-flaunted in meretricious finery-to pander to the swell-mob of St. James's, or the

* Our great national poet fared better than our great natural philosopher. Twenty-seven years elapsed between the publication of the first and second edition of the "Principia" of Newton, which comprised his wonderful exposition of the solar system.

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hardly more degraded assemblage congregated nightly at the Globe and Blackfriars theatres.

These revolting aspects in mental development may not have been all loss. If they offered no examples to follow, there may have been some to shun. The ingredients themselves may not have been wholly poisonous, but only too exclusively predominant, and the amalgam which next issued may be accepted as the fixed result of the austerities of the Puritans and the license of the Cavaliers. The Augustan age of Queen Anne had, in addition to an instructive experience of the danger of extremes, another advantage which seems almost inseparable from success in any public pursuit. What I mean is the emancipation of letters from partial interests. Literature, to be enduring and generally useful, must be based, as previously remarked, on the popular demand; and this was created under Anne by the essayists. These pioneered the way for a higher class of periodical miscellany in the Magazine, as a more permanent repository for their fugitive half-sheets, and the choicer articles of the newspapers. The first of these was the "Gentleman's Magazine," the only survivor of its generation, and was started by Cave in 1731. Other magazines followed: one of them, the "Magazine of Magazines," attempted, by giving the pith of its monthly contemporaries, to do the same by them as the "Gentleman's" had done by the newspapers and the essayists. With the magazines originated a new class of writers, known as the Critics*, who at first only gave monthly lists of new publications, but extended their vocation to abstracts, and then to notices of their merits or deficiencies. The "Monthly Review," begun in 1749, was the first of this class of periodicals, and

* England under the House of Hanover, by Thomas Wright, M. A., vol. i. p. 304.

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