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surprised that men who have tasted of partial justice should ask for perfect justice; that he who has been robbed of coat and cloak will not be contented with the restitution of one of his garments. H: would be a very lazy blockhead if he were content; and I (who, though an inhabitant of the village, have preserved, thank God, some sense of justice) most earnestly counsel these half-fed claimants to persevere. in their just demands till they are admitted to a more complete shai of a dinner for which they pay as much as the others; and if they see a little attenuated lawyer squabbling at the head of their opponents, let them desire him to empty his pockets, and to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding which he has filched from the public feast, to carry home to his wife and children.

FRANCIS JEFFREY. 1773-1850. (Manual, p. 468.)
333. ENGLish Literature.

Our first literature consisted of saintly legends, and romances of chivalry, though Chaucer gave it a more national and populai character, by his original descriptions of external nature, and the familiarity and gayety of his social humor. In the time of Elizabeth, it received a copious infusion of classical images and ideas; but it was still intrinsically romantic-serious-and even somewhat lofty and enthusiastic. Authors were then so few in number, that they were looked upon with a sort of veneration, and considered as a kind of inspired persons; at least they were not yet so numerous as to be obliged to abuse each other, in order to obtain a share of distinction for themselves; · and they neither affected a tone of derision in their writings, nor wrote in fear of derision from others. They were filled with their subjeets, and dealt with them fearlessly in their own way; and the stamp of originality, force, and freedom, is consequently upon almost all their productions. In the reign of James I., our literature, with some few exceptions, touching rather the form than the substance of its merits, appears to us to have reached the greatest perfection to which it as yet attained; though it would probably have advanced still farther in the succeeding reign, had not the great national dissensions which then arose, turned the talent and energy of the people into other channels - first, to the assertion of their civil rights, and afterwards to the discussion of their religious interests. The graces of literature suffered of course in those fierce contentions; and a deeper shade of austerity was thrown upon the intellectual character of the nation. Her genius, however, though less captivating and adorned than in the happier days which preceded, was still active, fruitful, and commanding; and the period of the civil wars, besides the mighty minds that guided the public councils, and were absorbed in public cares, produced the giant powers of Taylor, and

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Hobbes, and Barrow

the muse of Milton -- the learning of Coke

and the ingenuity of Cowley.

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The Restoration introduced a French court- under circumstances more favorable for the effectual exercise of court influence than ever before existed in England; but this of itself would not have been sufficient to account for the sudden change in our literature which · ensued. It was seconded by causes of far more general operation. The l'estoration was undoubtedly a popular act; — and, indefensible as the conduct of the army and the civil leaders was on that occasion, there can be 1.0 question that the severities of Cromwell, and the extravagances of the sectaries, had made republican professions hateful, and religious ardor ridiculous, in the eyes of a great proportion of the people. All the eminent writers of the preceding period, however, had inclined to the party that was now overthrown; and their writings had not merely been accommodated to the character of the government under which they were produced, but were deeply imbued with its obnoxious principles, which were those of their respective authors. When the restraints of authority were taken off, therefore, and it became profitable, as well as popular, to discredit the fallen party, it was natural that the leading authors should affect a style of levity and derision, as most opposite to that of their opponents, and best calculated for the purposes they had in view. The nation, too, was now for the first time essentially divided in point of character and principle, and a much greater proportion were capable both of writing in support of their own notions, and of being influenced by what was written. Add to all this, that there were real and serious defects in the style and manner of the former generation; and that the grace, and brevity, and vivacity of that gayer manner which was now introduced from France, were not only good and captivating in themselves, but had then all the charms of novelty and of contrast; and it will not be difficult to understand how it came to supplant that which had been established of old in the country, and that so suddenly, that the same generation, among whom Milton had been formed to the severe sanctity of wisdom and the noble independence of genius, lavished its loudest applauses on the obscenity and servility of such writers as Rochester and Wycherly.

This change, however, like all sudden changes, was too fierce and violent to be long maintained at the same pitch; and when the wita and profligates of King Charles had sufficiently insulted the serious ness and virtue of their predecessors, there would probably have beer revulsion towards the accustomed taste of the nation, had not the party of the innovators been reënforced by champions of more tem perance and judgment. The result seemed at one time suspended or the will of Dryden—in whose individual person the genius of the English and of the French school of literature may be said to have maintained a protracted struggle. But the evil principle prevailed Carried by the original bent of his genius, and h's familiarity with

our older models, to the cultivation of our native style, to which he might have imparted more steadiness and correctness - for in force and in sweetness it was already matchless — he was unluckily seduced by the attractions of fashion, and the dazzling of the dear wit and gay rhetoric in which it delighted, to lend his powerful aid to the new corruptions and refinements; and in fact, to prostitute his great gifts to the purposes of party rage or licentious ribaldry.

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The sobriety of the succeeding reigns allayed this fever of profan ty; but nc genius arose sufficiently powerful to break the spell that et.ll withheld us from the use of our own peculiar gifts and faculties On the contrary, it was the unfortunate ambition of the next genera tion of authors, to improve and perfect the new style, rather than to return to the old one; and it cannot be denied that they did improve it. They corrected its gross indecency-increased its precision and correctness - made its pleasantry and sarcasm more polished and elegant- and spread through the whole of its irony, its narration, and its reflection, a tone of clear and condensed good sense, which recommended itself to all who had, and all who had not any relish for higher beauties.

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This is the praise of Queen Anne's wits and to this praise they are justly entitled. This was left for them to do, and they did it well. They were invited to it by the circumstances of their situation, and do not seem to have been possessed of any such bold or vigorous spirit, as either to neglect or to outgo the invitation. Coming into life immediately after the consummation of a bloodless revolution, effected much more by the cool sense than the angry passions of the nation, they seem to have felt that they were born in an age of reason, rather than of feeling or fancy; and that men's minds, though considerably divided and unsettled upon many points, were in a much better temper to relish judicious argument and cutting satire, than the glow of enthusiastic passion, or the richness of a luxuriant imagination. To those accordingly they made no pretensions; but, writing with infinite good sense, and great grace and vivacity, and, above all, writing for the first time in a tone that was peculiar to the upper ranks of society, and upon subjects that were almost exclusively interesting to them, they naturally figured, at least while the manner was new, as the most accomplished, fashionable, and perfect writers which the world had ever seen; and made the wild, luxuriant, and humble sweetness of our earlier authors appear rude and untutored in the comparison. Men grew ashamed of admiring, and afraid of iraitating, writers of so little skill and smartness; and the opinion became general, not only that their faults were intolerable, but that even the beauties were puerile and barbarous, and unworthy the serious regard of a polite and distinguishing age.

These, and similar considerations, will go far to account for the celebrity which those authors acquired in their day; but it is not quite so easy to explain how they should have so long retained their

ascer dant. One cause undoubtedly was, the real excellence of their productions, in the style which they had adopted. It was hopeless to think of surpassing them in that style; and, recommended as it was, by the felicity of their execution, it required some courage to depart from it, and to recur to another, which seemed to have been so lately abandoned for its sake. The age which succeeded, too, was not the age of courage or adventure. There never was, on the whole, quieter time than the reigns of the two first Georges, and the greater part of that which ensued. There were two little provinci d rebellions indeed, and a fair proportion of foreign war; but there was nothing to stir the minds of the people at large, to rouse their passions, or excite their imaginations- nothing like the agitations of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, or of the civil wars in the seventeenth. They went on, accordingly, minding their old business, and reading their old books, with great patience and stupidity. And certainly there never was so remarkable a dearth of original talentso long an interregnum of native genius - as during about sixty years in the middle of the last century. The dramatic art was dead fifty years before- and poetry seemed verging to a similar extinction. The few sparks that appeared, too, showed that the old fire was burni out, and that the altar must hereafter be heaped with fuel of another quality. Gray, with the talents rather of a critic than a poet-with learning, fastidiousness, and scrupulous delicacy of taste, instead of fire, tenderness, or invention — began and ended a small school, which we could scarcely have wished to become permanent, admirable in many respects as some of its productions are — being far too elaborate and artificial, either for grace or for fluency, and fitter to excite the admiration of scholars, than the delight of ordinary men. However, he had the merit of not being in any degree French, and of restoring to our poetry the dignity of seriousness, and the tone at least of force and energy. The Whartons, both as critics and as poets, were of considerable service in discrediting the high pretensions of the former race, and in bringing back to public notice the great stores and treasures of poetry which lay hid in the records of our older literature. Akenside attempted a sort of classical and philosophical rapture, which no elegance of language could easily have rendered popular, but which had merits of no vulgar order for those who could study it. Goldsmith wrote with perfect elegance and beauty, in a style of inell tenderness and elaborate simplicity. He had the harmony of Pore without his quaintness, and his selectness of diction without ais colo. ness and eternal vivacity. And, last of all, came Cowper, with a style of complete originality, — and, for the first time, made it apparent to readers of all descriptions, that Pope and Addison were no longer to be the models of English poetry.

In philosophy and prose writing in general the case was nearly parallel. The name of Hume is by far the most consider able which occurs in the period to which we have alluded. But, though hia

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thinking was English, his style is entirely Frer. ch; and being naturally of a cold fancy, there is nothing of that eloquence or richness about him which characterizes the writings of Taylor, and Hooker, and Bacon- and continues, with less weight of matter, to please in those of Cowley and Clarendon. Warburton had great powers; aud wrots with more force and freedom than the wits to whom he succeeded but his faculties were perverted by a paltry love of paradox, and rendered useless to mankind by an unlucky choice of subjects, and the rogance ard dogmatism of his temper. Adam Smith was nearly the first who made deeper reasonings and more exact knowledge popular among us; and Junius and Johnson the first who again familiarized us with more glowing and sonorous diction—and made us feel the tamen `ss and poorness of the serious style of Addison and Swift.

CHARLES LAMB. 1775-1834. (Manual, p. 470.)

334. From the "DISSERTATION Upon Roast PIG."

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather boiling (which take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hog., left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubbe, ly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age co, 1monly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, whin kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of the r poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and ne cuu'd easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labor of ar hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from? — not from the burnt cottage

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