THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY
OF
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

Volume X: English
THE AGE OF JOHNSON


Edited by A. W. Ward & A. R. Waller
CONTENTS
    Prefatory Note
    Table of Principal Dates
  
Chapter I. Richardson
  By L. CAZAMIAN, Maître de Conférences at the Sorbonne, Paris
  1. Antecedents of the change introduced by Richardson into the history of the English Novel
  2. Richardson’s life before 1741
  3. Pamela: its qualities and extraordinary success
  4. Continuation, Stage adaptation and Parody; Fielding and Richardson
  5. Clarissa: its unique place among its author’s works; its Sentimentalism
  6. Sir Charles Grandison: its shortcomings and its psychological value
  7. Richardson’s later years and death
  8. Decline of his popularity; Limitations of his art
  9. His momentous influence upon English and European Literature
  10. His literary descendants
  11. His influence upon French Literature and national sentiment: Prévost, Voltaire, Diderot; Richardson and Rousseau
  12. His influence in Germany: Gellert, Wieland, Klopstock and Goethe; Dutch and Italian reproductions
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
II. Fielding and Smollett
  By HAROLD CHILD, sometime Scholar of Brasenose College, Oxford
  1. Fielding and Smollett compared
  2. Fielding’s descent and earlier life
  3. His first and subsequent Plays
  4. His Farces and cognate Dramatic Pieces
  5. His marriage
  6. Pasquin and The Historical Register; Journalistic work: The Champion
  7. Joseph Andrews and Pamela; The character of Parson Adams
  8. Fielding and Cervantes
  9. Miscellanies
  10. Jonathan Wild
  11. Political Journalism: The True Patriot and The Jacobite’s Journal
  12. Magisterial work and humane efforts
  13. Tom Jones
  14. The morality and the realism of the book: the author’s openness of soul
  15. Further pamphlets on social reform
  16. Amelia: its distinctive charm
  17. The Covent Garden Journal
  18. Fielding seriously ill
  19. His journey to Lisbon, and his posthumous account of it; His death
  20. Smollett’s parentage and early training as a surgeon; His arrival in London, with The Regicide in his pocket; His stay in the West Indies; Satirical and other verse
  21. Roderick Random and the Picaresque Novel
  22. Ferdinand Count Fathom
  23. The Critical Review; Historical and Miscellaneous work
  24. Sir Launcelot Greaves
  25. Travels through France and Italy
  26. Humphrey Clinker; Smollett’s last journey and death
  27. Final comparison between the literary achievements and influence of Fielding and Smollett
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
III. Sterne, and the Novel of His Times
  By C. E. VAUGHAN, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, Professor of English Literature in the University of Leeds
  1. New elements in the English Novel of the period from 1760 to 1780: Personality, Emotion and Sentiment
  2. Pre-eminence of Sterne
  3. His life
  4. Tristram Shandy and its success; Fiction as the vehicle of the Novelist’s idiosyncrasy
  5. Sterne as the Liberator of the Novel; His Humour the groundwork of his Characters
  6. Tristram Shandy and Don Quixote
  7. Sterne’s artificiality and pruriency
  8. Nature of his Sentimentalism
  9. Henry Mackenzie: The Man of Feeling; The Man of the World; Julia de Roubigné
  10. Henry Brooke: The Fool of Quality
  11. Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and Clara Reeve’s Old English Baron
  12. Fanny Burney as a Novelist: Evelina; Cecilia; Camilla; The Wanderer
  13. Spontaneity a leading characteristic of these Novels; Proof of this in the Diary of Mme. d’Arblay
  14. Her best qualities as surviving in her later stories
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
IV. The Drama and the Stage
  By GEORGE HENRY NETTLETON, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English in Yale University
  1. Significance of the term “The Eighteenth Century English Drama”; Queen Anne’s reign a period of transition in English Dramatic History; Cibber, Steele and Rowe
  2. Sentimental Comedy in England and on the Continent
  3. French Classical and Native influences upon English Eighteenth Century Drama
  4. New developments: Pantomime and Ballad Opera: John Rich
  5. The Beggar’s Opera
  6. Mrs. Centlivre
  7. Young, Hughes and Thomson
  8. Lillo and Prose Domestic Tragedy: George Barnwell
  9. Lillo’s Morality
  10. Fatal Curiosity
  11. Other works by Lillo
  12. His influence upon French and German Dramatic Literature; Diderot and Lessing
  13. Edward Moore’s Gamester
  14. Voltaire and the English Drama
  15. English versions of his Plays; Voltaire and Shakespeare
  16. Fielding and Burlesque
  17. Stage Political Satire and the Licensing Act of 1737
  18. The Novel and the Theatre
  19. Garrick and Shakespeare
  20. Other Plays of the Garrick Era; Whitehead
  21. Home’s Douglas
  22. Foote’s Comic Mimicry; His Farces
  23. Murphy and Bickerstaff
  24. George Colman the Elder: The Jealous Wife and The Clandestine Marriage
  25. Kelly
  26. The Reaction against Sentimental Comedy
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
V. Thomson and Natural Description in Poetry
  By A. HAMILTON THOMPSON, M.A., F.S.A., St. John’s College
  1. Relations of Thomson’s Poetry to the tendencies of the age; His life and literary career
  2. The Seasons
  3. Influence of Milton
  4. Thomson’s interest in Nature
  5. Nature pictures in The Seasons, and the Human Element in these pictures
  6. Thomson’s objective attitude towards Nature
  7. His frequent vagueness of Description, and striking Incidental Digressions
  8. Patriotic Reflections: Britannia and Liberty
  9. The Castle of Indolence, its points of contact with Spenser, and the commonplace character of its Allegory
  10. Thomson’s Dramatic Work, from Sophonisba to Coriolanus
  11. Influence of Thomson on the younger generation of poets
  12. Somervile’s Chace and other Poems
  13. Jago’s Edge-Hill
  14. Lyttelton’s Dialogues of the Dead and other Writings
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
VI. Gray
  By the late Rev. DUNCAN C. TOVEY, M.A., Trinity College
  1. Gray’s family and life
  2. His friends at Eton and Cambridge; His vacations at Burnham
  3. His continental tour with Horace Walpole
  4. Their quarrel
  5. Gray’s return and Correspondence with West; The Agrippina Fragment
  6. Lyrics written at Stoke
  7. Gray again in residence at Peterhouse
  8. Reconciliation with Walpole
  9. An Elegy in a Country Churchyard
  10. Characteristics of the Elegy
  11. The Progress of Poesy; Vicissitude and The Bard
  12. Studies from the Norse
  13. Gray quits Peterhouse for Pembroke
  14. Researches in the British Museum and tour in Yorkshire and Derbyshire; Gray appointed Professor of Modern History
  15. The Installation Ode
  16. Visit to the Lake country
  17. Gray and Bonstetten
  18. Gray’s death
  19. His Letters, their value and their charm
  20. Friendship with Mason: projected joint History of English Poetry
  21. Concluding summary
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
VII. Young, Collins and Lesser Poets of the Age of Johnson
  By GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A., LL.D., D.Litt., F.B.A., Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh
  1. Reasons of the relative familiarity of readers with this group of English Verse-writers
  2. Young’s life and literary career
  3. Night Thoughts and its long-enduring popularity
  4. His other Writings: The Complaint
  5. Collins’s Odes and Eclogues
  6. Contrast between his individual inspiration and the influences of his age
  7. How Sleep the Brave and The Ode to Evening
  8. Dyer’s Grongar Hill
  9. Matthew Green
  10. Blair’s Grave
  11. Conscious or half-conscious Burlesque Verse; John Armstrong; His Art of Preserving Health
  12. Glover’s Ballad Admiral Hosier’s Ghost; Mannerisms in his Blank Verse
  13. Shenstone’s Poetical Works and their characteristics
  14. His Schoolmistress and Miscellaneous Poems
  15. Attractiveness and shortcomings of his Verse
  16. Akenside’s Pleasures of Imagination
  17. Smart’s A Song to David
  18. Beattie’s Minstrel
  19. His treatment of the Spenserian Stanza
  20. Falconer’s Shipwreck
  21. Concluding remarks
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
VIII. Johnson and Boswell
  By DAVID NICHOL SMITH, M.A., Goldsmiths’ Reader in English, University of Oxford
  1. Boswell’s Johnson the Johnson familiarly known to us; His personality and his Works
  2. Johnson’s early life: Lichfield, Oxford and Birmingham
  3. His first writings and his Translation of A Voyage to Abyssinia
  4. Foreshadowings of Johnson’s style
  5. His school at Edial and migration to London
  6. Irene and its subsequent production on the Stage
  7. His work on The Gentleman’s Magazine his real start as a man of letters
  8. Reports of Debates in Parliament
  9. Other Contributions to the Magazine
  10. The Life of Savage
  11. Greater Schemes
  12. Johnson’s Earlier Verse
  13. London and The Vanity of Human Wishes
  14. The Rambler and the Revival of the Periodical Essay
  15. Openly didactic purpose of The Rambler; success of the Collected Edition
  16. A Dictionary of the English Language; new features of its design; distinctive merits of the work: the Definitions
  17. Lesser work
  18. Dedications
  19. Journalistic projects and labours
  20. The Idler
  21. Rasselas and its lesson
  22. Johnson’s Edition of Shakespeare: value of its Text and Notes
  23. Political Pamphlets
  24. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
  25. The Lives of the Poets: their original plan and distinctive features
  26. Equipoise of biography and criticism
  27. Influence of personal feeling
  28. Johnson’s last years and death
  29. His literary growth, and advance in ease of style
  30. The weight of his words carried by the strength of his thought
  31. Ill success of his Parodists
  32. Effect of Johnson’s death; Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes and Sir John Hawkins’s Life
  33. Boswell’s earlier experiences and Writings
  34. An Account of Corsica; His later life and labours; His death, and his posthumously published Letters
  35. His Life of Johnson, with the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, his enduring title to fame
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
IX. Oliver Goldsmith
  By HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON, LL.D.
  1. Goldsmith’s early life and the uncertainties surrounding it
  2. Childhood at Lissoy and schooldays at Elphin
  3. The Old House, a New Inn
  4. College life at Trinity, Dublin
  5. Goldsmith, B.A
  6. Wanderings at home and abroad
  7. Sojourn at Leyden
  8. Medical and literary efforts in London: the parting of the ways
  9. Contributions to The Monthly Review
  10. Translation of Marteilhe’s Memoirs
  11. An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe and its Reception
  12. The Bee, and its Verse and Prose
  13. Contributions to The British Magazine and The Public Ledger, the Chinese Letters (reprinted as The Citizen of the World)
  14. Goldsmith in Wine Office Court; his friendship with Johnson
  15. The History of England in Letters
  16. The Traveller and its success
  17. The Vicar of Wakefield: the History of the Book
  18. More Compilation
  19. The Good-Natur’d Man
  20. The Temple and Islington
  21. The Deserted Village
  22. The Haunch of Venison
  23. She Stoops to Conquer
  24. Closing years and death
  25. Goldsmith’s personality and literary genius
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
X. The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
MACPHERSON’S OSSIAN.  CHATTERTON.  PERCY AND THE WARTONS.
  By W. P. KER, M.A., F.B.A., Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Professor of English Literature, University College, London
  1. Limited Influence of the Middle Ages upon Modern Literature
  2. Influence of Architecture
  3. The Literary Gothic Terror or Wonder
  4. Dryden’s, Pope’s and Addison’s estimates of Medieval Poetic masterpieces
  5. Temple and The Death-Song of Ragnar
  6. Northern Studies: Hickes’s Thesaurus
  7. Percy’s Five Runic Pieces
  8. Translations from the Icelandic: Gray
  9. The Movement in favour of Ballads and Border Songs
  10. Ossian and Macpherson
  11. Literary career of Macpherson
  12. Gaelic Elements in Fingal and Temora
  13. Macpherson’s Literary Talent
  14. Percy’s Reliques
  15. Their direct influence upon Modern Poetry
  16. Chatterton and his indebtedness to Spenser
  17. The Rowley Imposture
  18. The Wartons
  19. Thomas Warton the Younger and his Poems
  20. His History of English Poetry
  21. Hurd
  22. Tyrwhitt, the Restorer of Chaucer
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
XI. Letter-Writers
  
By HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A.
  1. Horace Walpole as “the Prince of Letter-Writers”; His personal character vindicated
  2. His earlier life
  3. Strawberry Hill
  4. His Letters and their qualities
  5. Mann and other Correspondents
  6. Walpole as a Critic
  7. His Anecdotes of Painting in England, Castle of Otranto and Historic Doubts on Richard III
  8. Chesterfield: His personality and public services; His wit
  9. His genius for friendship
  10. His Letters to his Son and to his Godson; Their actual nature
  11. Fanny Burney (Mme. d’ Arblay): her Early Diary, and her Diary and Letters
  12. Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu as a literary hostess
  13. Garrick and his Correspondents
  14. Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses
  15. Hannah More as a Letter-Writer in youth and middle age
  16. Gilbert White’s Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne

THE WARWICKSHIRE COTERIE
By the Ven. W. H. HUTTON, B.D., Archdeacon of Northampton, Canon of Peterborough and Fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford
  1. The Warwickshire Circle and its connecting Links
  2. Somerville
  3. Lady Luxborough and the Literary Society at Barrels: Shenstone
  4. The Correspondence between the Countesses of Hertford and Pomfret
  5. Jago
  6. Richard Graves and his literary work
  7. The Spiritual Quixote and Columella
  8. Literature at Bath
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
XII. Historians, I
HUME AND MODERN HISTORIANS
  By the Rev. WILLIAM HUNT, D.Litt., Trinity College, Oxford
  1. Cause of late development of good Historical Writing; Rymer’s Foedera
  2. Ockley’s History of the Saracens
  3. The Scottish School, influences on its character
  4. David Hume: Influences on his Historical work
  5. Hume’s History of England: its character and literary style; its Toryism
  6. William Robertson and his Histories; their value
  7. His literary style
  8. Robert Henry’s History of England
  9. Historical works of Sir David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes)
  10. Sir John Dalrymple’s Memoirs of Great Britain, etc
  11. Watson’s Philip II
  12. Horace Walpole’s Historic Doubts; William Guthrie
  13. Lord Lyttelton’s Henry II; Archibald Bower’s History of the Popes
  14. Smollett’s Compleat History and Continuation; Oliver Goldsmith’s History of England
  15. Leland’s History of Ireland; Orme’s Military Transactions in Indostan; William Russell’s Modern Europe
  16. Adam Ferguson’s History of Civil Society; Delolme’s Constitution of England
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
XIII. Historians, II
GIBBON
  By Sir A. W. WARD, Litt.D., F.B.A., Master of Peterhouse
  1. Gibbon’s mind a type of the Literary mind; Completeness of his Historical achievement
  2. Lord Sheffield’s Memoirs
  3. Gibbon’s earlier life
  4. His residence at Lausanne
  5. Essai sur l’Étude de la Littérature
  6. Militia experience
  7. Choice of a Theme
  8. The original conception of The Decline and Fall
  9. Gibbon establishes himself in London and enters Parliament
  10. Publication of Vol. 1 of The Decline and Fall
  11. Attacks and Criticisms
  12. Gibbon’s return to Lausanne; Publication of the concluding Volumes; Other Historical Writings; Gibbon’s death
  13. Estimate of The Decline and Fall: greatness of the Theme and adequacy of the treatment
  14. Substantial accuracy
  15. Lucidity of style
  16. Faults and shortcomings of the work
  17. Middleton’s Life of Cicero
  18. Adam Ferguson’s Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic
  19. Mitford’s History of Greece
  20. Whitaker’s History of Manchester
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
XIV. Philosophers
  By W. R. SORLEY, Litt. D., F.B.A., Fellow of King’s College, Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy DAVID HUME
  1. Hume’s literary ambition
  2. His life and literary career
  3. His posthumous Autobiography
  4. His disclaimer of his earliest and greatest work, A Treatise of Human Nature
  5. Hume’s “New Medium
  6. His analysis of “Philosophical Relations
  7. The Problem of Causation
  8. Hume’s Theory of Belief
  9. His sceptical solution
  10. His Theological Writings: “Of Miracles”; Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
  11. Political and Economical Essays

ADAM SMITH
  1. Life and Writings
  2. The Theory of Moral Sentiments
  3. The Wealth of Nations; Its relation to Sir James Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy
  4. Adam Smith’s Scientific Treatment of Economic Facts
  5. The System of Natural Liberty: Free Trade

OTHER PHILOSOPHICAL WRITERS
  1. David Hartley
  2. Abraham Tucker
  3. Richard Price and Joseph Priestley
  4. Paley and his Theological Utilitarianism
  5. Reid, Campbell and Beattie
  6. The Principles of “Common Sense
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
XV. Divines
  By the Ven. Archdeacon W. H. HUTTON, B.D.
  1. General character of the English Theological Literature of the Period; Its abhorrence of Enthusiasm; Earlier Writers distinguished by power or outspokenness: Samuel Johnson
  2. Atterbury and his career
  3. Smalridge
  4. The Convocation Controversy: Wake
  5. Hoadly and the Bangorian Controversy
  6. The later Nonjurors: the Wagstaffes; Deacon; Henry Dodwell; Bonwicke
  7. Robert Forbes; Bingham
  8. Thomas Sherlock
  9. Butler, Wilson and Waterland: A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist
  10. Butler’s Analogy
  11. Herring and Secker
  12. The Methodist Movement: Whitefield
  13. James Hervey
  14. Fletcher of Madeley
  15. John and Charles Wesley
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
XVI. The Literature of Dissent, 1660–1760
  By W. A. SHAW, Litt.D. Vict., Public Record Office
  1. The Historical Evolution of Dissent reflected in its Literature
  2. The principle of Liberty of Conscience and the struggle for Toleration
  3. The Literature of Dissent from Defoe to Watts
  4. Michaijah Towgood
  5. Controversial Literature on Church Polity and Dogma
  6. The “Happy Union,” and the Disruption between Independents and Presbyterians
  7. The spread of Arianism and the First Socinian Controversy
  8. The Arian Controversy proper: Peirce and Hallett
  9. The Salters’ Hall Synod and the question of Subscription: John Taylor and Samuel Bourn
  10. The Free Thought effect of the Unitarian Movement; Conservative contributions by Dissenters to the Deistic Controversy
  11. The Nonconformist Academy System
  12. Hymns and Devotional Literature
BIBLIOGRAPHY
  
XVII. Political Literature, 1755–75
  By C. W. PREVITÉ-ORTON, M.A., Fellow of St. John’s College
  1. Revival of Controversy after the death of Henry Pelham
  2. The Monitor; John Shebbeare and Arthur Murphy
  3. Accession of George III; Loyal Tory Pamphleteers
  4. Smollett and The Briton
  5. Wilkes and The North Briton
  6. Wilkes’s literary triumph
  7. Antipathy to the Scots
  8. Churchill: his earlier life
  9. His beginnings as a Satirist; The Rosciad
  10. Night
  11. The Prophecy of Famine
  12. The Epistle to William Hogarth; The Duellist
  13. Gotham; The Conference and its personal confession
  14. Churchill’s Later Satires
  15. Force of his invective
  16. Political Pamphlets in Prose
  17. Candor in The Public Advertiser
  18. Woodfall’s editorship of the Advertiser
  19. The Letter-Writers
  20. Junius: His literary personality and antecedents
  21. The Letters of Junius proper
  22. Their substance and characteristics
  23. Their supremacy in slanderous polemic
  24. The Mystery of Junius
  25. The Franciscan claim
  26. Junius the culmination of a notable series of Political Writings
BIBLIOGRAPHY