pleasant Essays brings us in style and tone nearer to the great class of essayists of whom Addison was chief.

Lady Rachel Russell's Letters begin the letter-writing literature of England, in which Gray and Cowper, Byron and Beckford have done the best work.

Pepys, in 1660-69, and Evelyn, whose Diary grows full after 1640, begin that class of gossiping memoirs which have been of so much use in giving color to history. History itself at this time is little better than memoirs, and such a name may be fairly given to CLARENDON's History of the Civil Wars, begun in 1641, and to BISHOP BURNET'S History of his own Time, and to his History of the Reformation, begun in 1679, completed in 1715. Finally, classical criticism, in the discussion on the genuineness of the Letters of Phalaris, was created by Richard Bentley in 1697-99.

THE LITERATURE OF QUEEN ANNE AND THE FIRST GEORGES. -With the closing years of William III. and the accession of Queen Anne, 1702, a literature arose which was partly new and partly a continuation of that of the Restoration. The conflict between those who took the oath to the new dynasty and the Nonjurors who refused, the hot blood that it produced, the war between Dissent and Church and between the two parties which now took the names of Whig and Tory produced a mass of political pamphlets, of which Daniel Defoe's and Swift's were the best; of songs and ballads, like Lillibullero, which were sung in every street; of squibs, reviews, and satirical poems and letters. Every one joined in it, and it rose into importance in the work of the greater men who mingled more literary studies with their political excitement. In politics all the abstract discussions we have mentioned ceased to be abstract and became personal and practical, and the spirit of inquiry applied itself more closely to the questions of every-day life. The whole of this stirring literary life was concentrated in London, where the agitation of soci

ety was hottest; and it is round this vivid city life that the literature of Queen Anne and the two following reigns is best grouped.

It was with a few exceptions a Party Literature. The Whig and Tory leaders enlisted on their sides the best poets and prose writers, who fiercely satirized and unduly praised them under names thinly disguised. Personalities were sent to and fro like shots in battle. Those who could do this work well were well rewarded, but the rank and file of writers were left to starve. Literature was thus honored not for itself, but for the sake of party. The result was that the abler men lowered it by making it a political tool, and the smaller men, the fry of Grub Street, degraded it by using it in the same way, only in a baser manner. Their flattery was as abject as their abuse was shameless, and both were stupid. They received and deserved the merciless lashing which Pope was soon to give them in the Dunciad.

Being a party literature, it naturally came to study and to look sharply into human character and into human life as seen in the great city. It discussed all the varieties of social life, and painted town society more vividly than was done before or has been since; and it was so wholly taken up with this that country life and its interests, except in the writings of Addison, were scarcely touched by it at all. The society of the day was one in which all subjects of intellectual and scientific inquiry were eagerly debated, and the wit of this society was stimulated by its party spirit. Its literature reflected this intellectual excitement, and at no time in our history was literary work so vigorous and masculine on the various problems of thought and knowledge. Criticism being so active, the form in which thought was expressed was now especially dwelt on, and the result was, that the style of English prose became for the first time absolutely simple and clear, and English verse reached a neatness of expression and a closeness of thought

as exquisite as it was artificial. At the same time, and for the same reasons, Nature, Passion, and Imagination decayed in poetry."

BIBLIOGRAPHY. HOBBES.-I. Disraeli's Quarrels of Authors; Grote's Minor Works; Hazlitt's Literary Remains; Tulloch Rat. Theology in Eng.; Contem. Rev., v. 7, 1868; West. Rev., v. 87, 1867.

LOCKE.-T. Forster's Original Letters of with Sketch of Writings and Opinions; King's Life of; Sir J. Mackintosh's Miscel. Works; R. Vaughn's Essays; Eng. Men of Let. Series; Lewes' Hist. of Philosophy; Ed. Rev., v. 99,.

From Locke's Conduct of the Understanding.

Those who have read of everything are thought to understand everything too, but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge, it is thinking [which] makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. There are indeed in some writers visible instances of deep thoughts, close and acute reasoning, and ideas well pursued. The light these would give would be of great use, if their readers would observe and imitate them; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be turned into knowledge; but that can be done only by our own meditation, and examining the reach, force, and coherence of what is said; and then, as far as we apprehend and see the connection of ideas, so far it is ours; without that it is but so much loose matter floating in our brain. The memory may be stored, but the judgment is little better, and the stock of knowledge not increased, by being able to repeat what others have said or produce the arguments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by hearsay, and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very often upon weak and wrong principles.

Books and reading are looked upon to be the great helps of the understanding and instruments of knowledge, as it must be allowed that they are; and yet I beg leave to question whether these do not prove a hindrance to many, and keep several bookish men from attaining to solid and true knowledge. This I think I may be permitted to say, that there is no part wherein the understanding needs a more careful and wary conduct than in the use of books; without which they will prove rather innocent amusements than profitable employments of our time, and bring but small additions to our knowledge.

There is not seldom to be found even amongst those who aim at knowledge [those] who with an unwearied industry employ their whole

time in books, who scarce allow themselves time to eat or sleep, but read and read and read on, but yet make no great advances in real knowledge, though there be no defect in their intellectual faculties to which their little progress can be imputed. The mistake here is, that it is usually supposed that, by reading, the author's knowledge is transfused into the reader's understanding; and so it is, but not by bare reading, but by reading and understanding what he writ. Whereby I mean not barely comprehending what is affirmed or denied in each proposition, though that great readers do not always think themselves concerned precisely to do, but to see and follow the train of his reasonings, observe the strength and clearness of their connection, and examine upon what they bottom. Without this a man may read the discourses of a very rational author, writ in a language and in propositions that he very well understands, and yet acquire not one jot of his knowledge; which consisting only in the perceived, certain, or probable connection of the ideas made use of in his reasonings, the reader's knowledge is no farther increased than he perceives that so much as he sees of this connection so much he knows of the truth or probability of that author's opinions.

All that he relies on without this perception he takes upon trust, upon the author's credit, without any knowledge of it at all. This makes me not at all wonder to see some men so abound in citations, and build so much upon authorities, it being the sole foundation on which they bottom most of their own tenets; so that in effect they have but a secondhand or implicit knowledge, i.e., are in the right if such an one from whom they borrowed it were in the right in that opinion which they took from him, which indeed is no knowledge at all. Writers of this or former ages may be good witnesses of matters of fact which they deliver, which we may do well to take upon their authority; but their credit can go no farther than this, it cannot at all affect the truth and falsehood of opinions, which have no other sort of trial but reason and proof, which they themselves make use of to make themselves knowing, and so must others too that will partake in their knowledge.

Indeed, it is an advantage that they have been at the pains to find out the proofs, and lay them in that order that may show the truth or probability of their conclusions: and for this we owe them great acknowledgments for saving us the pains in searching out those proofs which they have collected for us, and which possibly, after all our pains, we might not have found, nor been able to have set them in so good a light as that which they left them us in. Upon this account we are mightily beholding to judicious writers of all ages for those discoveries and dis

courses they have left behind them for our instruction, if we know how to make a right use of them; which is not to run them over in a hasty perusal, and perhaps lodge their opinions or some remarkable passages in our memories, but to enter into their reasonings, examine their proofs, and then judge of the truth or falsehood, probability or improbability of what they advance, not by any opinion we have entertained of the author, but by the evidence he produces, and the conviction he affords us, drawn from things themselves. Knowing is seeing, and, if it be so, it is madness to persuade ourselves that we do so by another man's eyes, let him use ever so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very visible. Till we ourselves see it with our own eyes, and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much in the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe any learned author as much as we will.

Euclid and Archimedes are allowed to be knowing, and to have demonstrated what they say; and yet, whoever shall read over their writings without perceiving the connection of their proofs, and seeing what they show, though he may understand all their words, yet he is not the more knowing: he may believe indeed, but does not know what they say, and so is not advanced one jot in mathematical knowledge by all the reading of those approved mathematicians.

LESSON 38.

ALEXANDER POPE.- 66 Pope absorbed and reflected all the elements spoken of under party literature. Born in 1688, he wrote excellent verse at twelve years of age; the Pastorals appeared in 1709, and two years afterwards he took full rank as critical poet in the Essay on Criticism, 1711. The next year saw the first cast of his Rape of the Lock, the 'epos of society under Queen Anne,' and the most brilliant play of wit in English. This closed what we may call his first period.

He now became known to Swift and to Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, a statesman who was also a writer. With these and with Gay, Parnell, Prior, and Arbuthnot, Pope formed the Scriblerus Club, and soon rose into great fame by his Translation of the Iliad and Odyssey under George I., 1715-1725, for which he received 7,000 pounds.