villain, an impudent fellow, only for differing from him
in a point merely speculative, is, in my humble opinion, a very
improper style for a person of his education." Swift wrote verses as
well as prose, but their motive was the reverse of poetical. His gross
and cynical humor vulgarized whatever it touched. He leaves us no
illusions, {192} and not only strips his subject, but flays it and
shows the raw muscles beneath the skin. He delighted to dwell upon the
lowest bodily functions of human nature. "He saw bloodshot," said
Thackeray.

1. Macaulay's Essay, The Comic Dramatists of the Restoration.

2. The Poetical Works of John Dryden. Globe Edition. Macmillan & Co.

3. Thackeray's English Humorists of the Last Century.

4. Sir Roger de Coverley. New York: Harper, 1878.

5. Swift's Tale of a Tub, Gulliver's Travels, Directions to Servants,
Polite Conversation, The Great Question Debated, Verses on the Death of
Dean Swift.

6. The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. Globe Edition. Macmillan &
Co.

{193}

CHAPTER VI.

FROM THE DEATH OF POPE TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

1744-1789.

Pope's example continued potent for fifty years after his death.
Especially was this so in satiric and didactic poetry. Not only Dr.
Johnson's adaptations from _Juvenal_, London, 1738, and the _Vanity of
Human Wishes_, 1749, but Gifford's _Baviad_, 1791, and _Maeviad_, 1795,
and Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, 1809, were in the
verse and manner of Pope. In Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_, 1781,
Dryden and Pope are treated as the two greatest English poets. But
long before this a revolution in literary taste had begun, a movement
which is variously described as The Return to Nature, or The Rise of
the New Romantic School.

For nearly a hundred years poetry had dealt with manners and the life
of towns, the gay, prosaic life of Congreve or of Pope. The sole
concession to the life of nature was the old pastoral, which, in the
hands of cockneys, like Pope and Ambrose Philips, who merely repeated
stock descriptions at second or third hand, became even more artificial
than a _Beggar's Opera_ or a _Rape of the {194} Lock_. These, at
least, were true to their environment, and were natural, just _because_
they were artificial. But the _Seasons_ of James Thomson, published in
installments from 1726-30, had opened a new field. Their theme was the
English landscape, as varied by the changes of the year, and