conception of the ideal lyric in dealing with so anti-lyrical an age would be to exclude all but some half-dozen poems from our province. For this reason we shall depart from strictly logical and ideal standards with no other apologia than the excellent one of practical expediency, and adapt our conception of lyric to meet that of Landor when he spoke of "all that portion of our metre which, wanting a definite term, is ranged under the capitulary of lyric." 1

Indeed we may not unreasonably be said to extend this definition in some ways, for we shall include within our survey the shorter, slighter verse of the age, excluding neither such forms as elegiac verse nor epigram; but our conception of lyric will not be entirely Landor's, for ever within our minds will linger, a shadow of a shade, that ideal test and standard, to restrain us from too far a deviation from the straight and narrow lyric road.

1 Works, 8 vols, London, 1876, Vol. IV, p. 56.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LYRIC IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry,
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move!

The sound is forc'd, the notes are few.

WM. BLAKE: To the Muses.

H

CHAPTER I

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

'J'avoue, d'ailleurs, qu'en vous retraçant l'évolution de la poésie lyrique, je me suis efforcé de lier à ce mouvement même le mouvement aussi des principales idées du siècle."-F. BRUNETIÈRE, L'Évolution de la Poésie Lyrique en France au Dix

neuvième Siècle.

Then tell me, is your soul entire ?
Does Wisdom calmly hold her throne?
Then can you question each desire,
Bid this remain, and that begone:
No tear half-starting from your eye;
No kindling blush, you know not why;
No stealing sigh, nor stifled groan.

AKENSIDE: Odes, Bk. I, 3.

WHEN we remember that the eighteenth century gave us in the person of "John Bull a symbol of what we are pleased to regard as our national character, and also in Dr. Johnson a supreme representative, not only of that character but also of the age, we shall scarcely be surprised to find that high and sustained lyric utterance is by no means a salient feature of the period. We shall not expect the poets of such an age to be men of whom we can say:

And in his gusts of song he brings

Wild odours shaken from strange wings,
And unfamiliar whisperings

From far lips blown,

While all the rapturous heart of things

Throbs through his own.1

For although our literature can show lyrics com

1 Poems of Wm. Watson.

(Shelley's Centenary, p. 56.)

London and New York, 1905. 2 vols.

parable both in number and quality with those of any other nation, we rightly refuse to regard the minds of our lyric poets as at all representative of the national psychology; and although John Bull, as known to the eighteenth century, is by no means representative of present-day England, any modern symbol of national character would appear as incongruous a lyrist as would John Bull himself apostrophising the skylark as he paced his native fields.

From the opening of the century indeed, until well within sight of the close, influences adverse to lyric had full and visible sway. It was an age of reason, of common sense, of prose. Philosophy, science, and even religion worked hand in hand to establish the supremacy of reason in every department of thought and emotion. Man was to be ruled entirely by his mind; in literature, if not in life, the heart, the passions, were forgotten, or remembered only to be suppressed; and although Pope's motto, "Follow Nature," was continually upon the lips of the writers of the time, they systematically retained the low imaginative and emotional level of art bequeathed to them by the age of Dryden. By

Nature" was meant something very different from the "Nature" of the romantics who followed them. To the eighteenth century "Nature" meant many things, but above all it meant the following of reason; a narrow, myopic, purblind reason which would only recognise what was under its nose, and refused to see all aspects of life that could not be stated with the clearness and lucidity of a Euclidean problem. This mental attitude to life was the result of the speculation of Hobbes in the preceding century. Whatever its value in the realm of philosophy, such a position was fatal to the production of elevated and passionate lyric, and amongst the anti-lyrical influences of the age the continuation of this sceptical philosophy by Locke and Hume was not the least important. Its influence was speedily manifested in contemporary poetry. Before the close of the seventeenth