Philips is a master of all the arts by which Virgil and the best didactic poets elevate their subject above its ordinary level; in the judicious selection of what is picturesque in his rustic theme; in the contrasts of his arrangements; in the skilful juncture of his paragraphs; in his transitions from the technical to the imaginative and pathetic; he accomplishes the same feat as Denham in Cooper's Hill. How humorous, and yet how dignified in its humour, is this picture of rustic merriment in winter! When the aged year

Inclines, and Boreas' spirit blusters frore,

Beware the inclement heavens; nor let thy hearth
Crackle with juiceless boughs; thy lingering blood
Now instigate with th' apples' powerful streams.
Perpetual showers and stormy gusts confine
The willing ploughman, and December wanes
To annual jollities; now sportive youth
Carol incondite rhymes, with suiting notes
And quaver unharmonious; sturdy swains,
In clean array, for rustic dance prepare,
Mixt with the buxom damsels; hand in hand
They frisk and bound, and various mazes weave,
Shaking their brawny limbs with uncouth mien,
Transported; and sometimes an oblique leer
Dart on their loves; sometimes a hasty kiss
Steal from unwary lasses; they, with scorn,
And neck reclined, resent the ravished bliss.

He has all the local patriotism of Browne of Tavistock':

Hail Herefordian plant, that dost disdain

All other fields ! Heaven's sweetest blessing, hail!

Be thou the copious matter of my song,

And thy choice nectar, on which always waits
Laughter, and sport, and care-beguiling wit,
And friendship, sweet delight of human life.
What should we wish for more? or why in quest
Of foreign vintage, insincere and mixt,
Traverse the extremest world? why tempt the rage
Of the rough Ocean? when our native glebe
Imparts from bounteous womb annual recruits
Of wine delectable, that far surmounts
Gallic or Latin grapes, or those that see
The setting sun near Calpe's towering height.

1 Vol. iii. p. 49.

As Garth fills The Dispensary with Whig sentiments and compliments, Philips is equally emphatic in his praises of the Tories and his reflections on the Roundheads :

Can we forget how the mad headstrong rout
Defied their prince to arms, nor made account
Of faith or duty or allegiance sworn?
Apostate atheist rebels! bent to ill,

With seeming sanctity and covered fraud,
Instilled by him who first presumed to oppose
Omnipotence; alike their crime; the event
Was not alike: these triumphed, and in height
Of barbarous malice and insulting pride,
Abstained not from imperial blood. O fact
Unparalleled! O Charles! O best of Kings!

What stars their black disastrous influence shed
On thy nativity, that thou shouldst fall
Thus by inglorious hands, in this thy fealm,
Supreme and innocent, adjudged to death

By those thy mercy only would have saved!

Philips is not to be held altogether responsible for the failure of Blenheim, of which Johnson says:

He imitates Milton's numbers indeed, but imitates them very injudiciously. Deformity is easily copied; and whatever there is in Milton which the reader wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar, or licentious, is accumulated with great care by Philips. Milton's verse was harmonious, in proportion to the general state of our metre in Milton's age; and if he had written after the improvements made by Dryden, it is reasonable to believe that he would have admitted a more pleasing modulation of numbers into his work; but Philips sits down with a resolution to make no more music than he found-to want all that his master wanted, though he is very far from having what his master had. Those asperities therefore that are venerable in the Paradise Lost are contemptible in the Blenheim.1

Making allowance for the complete deafness of Johnson to the music of Paradise Lost, there is substantial truth in this criticism. Philips' genius was for mock-heroic; but in Blenheim he seeks to imitate Milton's heroic style seriously, and the style is not suited to the subject. For panegyric the neatness and epigrammatic

1 Lives of the Poets: John Philips.

point of the couplet was far better adapted than was the more subtle and varied harmony of blank verse; besides which the inevitable appearance of parody leaves in the mind an impression of the ludicrous. We have only to compare the elegance, dignity, and occasional loftiness of The Campaign with the inflated diction of Blenheim to recognise the superior judgment shown by Addison. Forced to give an air of greatness to objects not yet seen in right perspective, Philips, in order to avoid the charge brought against Dryden of having used technical terms in his Annus Mirabilis, sought, like Lucan, to translate each phrase of ordinary use into some form of poetical diction. The result was lines like the following in a description of the Battle of Blenheim :

Now from each

The brazen instruments of death discharge
Horrific flames, and turbid streaming clouds
Of smoke sulphureous; intermixt with these
Large globous irons fly, of dreadful hiss,
Singeing the air, and from long distance bring
Surprising slaughter; on each side they fly
By chains connext, and with destructive sweep
Behead whole troops at once; the hairy scalps
Are whirled aloof, while numerous trunks bestrew
The ensanguined field: with latent mischief stored
Showers of granadoes rain, by sudden burst
Disploding numerous bowels, fragments of steel,
And stones, and glass, and nitrous grain adust.
A thousand ways at once the shivered orbs
Fly diverse, working torment and foul rout,
With deadly bruise and gashes furrowed deep.
Of pain impatient the high-prancing steeds
Disdain the curb, and flinging to and fro
Spurn their dismounted riders; they expire
Indignant, by unhostile wounds destroyed.

In judging such lines it seems not unfair to invert the criticism of Johnson, and to say that Miltonic blank verse may be used, in a mock-heroic vein, "to recommend to our attention the act of engrafting, and decide the merit of the red-streak and the pear-main"; but that it only serves to degrade what is really heroic in the shock of con

tending armies, which are not angelic.1 On the other hand, it is to be remembered on behalf of Philips that the poem was written to order, and that he was selected to execute the task because his employers, with great want of discrimination, thought that his grandiose style was capable of elevating any subject. If he had attempted to write in a manner better suited to his theme, he would not have done what was expected of him. He ought to be judged in his own department, and in that his is the merit of having first shown the capacities of blank verse for didactic poetry, and having been the pioneer of the style afterwards developed by Thomson and Cowper.

1 "Contending angels may shake the regions of heaven in blank-verse; but the flow of equal measures, and the embellishment of rhyme must recommend to our attention the art of engrafting, and decide the merit of the redstreak and the pear-main.”—Johnson, Life of Philips.

F

VOL. V

CHAPTER IV

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SOCIAL STANDARD OF TASTE

THE TATLER AND THE SPECTATOR

HOWEVER marked were the indications of new thoughts and feelings in the public mind, reflected as they were in poems like The Dispensary, Cider, and Creation, they could never have produced of themselves a national order of art and literature. By the flight of James II. English society was left without the guidance it had hitherto received in matters of taste. The ancient system of semi-Gothic imagination that had formed itself round the Court was, by the Revolution, thrown into ruins, and the violent and extravagant traditions, fostered by the Royalist Reaction, were the only artistic models that enjoyed any prestige with the people. If a sound Public Opinion in morals and manners was to be built up, it could only be under the conscious guidance of sagacious minds giving a fresh development to the established institutions of the country. Fortunately the men available for the task were equal to its accomplishment.

One of the circumstances most favourable to the formation of Public Opinion was the rapid growth of the London Coffee-houses. Coffee, introduced into England under the Commonwealth, was at first regarded as a mere medicine, but, from its stimulating qualities, soon became popular as a drink, and (it may be presumed), from its non-intoxicating character, was found to promote at once society and discussion. It was in a Coffee-house that the Rota Club met for their philosophical debates before