and pause. Newton was
dead, and had left no successor; Locke was dead, and had left no
successor. The wits of Queen Anne's reign, Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot,
Steele, and Addison, were dropping off one by one, and for a season none
arose adequate to supply their place. It had altogether become an age of
mediocrity; neither an age of stern conflict, like that of the Puritans,
nor even a fiercely lawless and riotous age, like that of Charles the
Second, nor a transition age, like that of the Revolution, but an age of
a negative and slumbrous character; its only positive qualities were a
generally diffused laxity of principle and corruption of practice; but
its vices, as well as its virtues, were small; it had not virtue to be
greatly good, nor daring to be greatly wicked.

All this told on its poetry; and our wonder, we repeat, is, that it did
not tell more. That it did not, was probably owing to the continued
prevalence of the power of classical literature. That, increased by the
influence of the universities and the great schools, and by the
translations made of its masterpieces by Dryden and Pope, contributed to
produce and maintain purity of taste, in the midst of general
depravation of manners, and to touch many opening minds with the chaste
and manly inspiration of a long past age. Hence the poetry of the first
half of the eighteenth century, while inferior in force and richness to
that of the end of the seventeenth, is superior in good taste, and is
much freer from impurities. To this the imitation of French models, too,
contributed. Still we see the traces of the period very distinctly
marked in its works of art and in its poetry. The paintings of Hogarth,
next to the infinite richness of the painter's invention, and the
accuracy of his observation and touch, testify to the corruption of
these times. They are everlasting libels--as true, however, as they are
libellous--on the age of the first two Georges; and we are astonished
how such an age produced such a genius, as well as grieved to see how
such a genius had no better materials to work on than were furnished by
such an age. It is much the same with the novels of Smollett and
Fielding, and with parts of the poetry of Churchill, Lloyd, and others.
The formal wars of that day, too, were certain to produce formal poetry,
and Blenheim was fitly celebrated in Addison's "Campaign." The sceptical
philosophy then prevalent was faithfully mirrored in Pope's "Essay on
Man,"