IN LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 'N THE later eighteenth century, poetry tends to leave man and "the town." Nature not only becomes a background for human emotions, but is a theme for its own sake. Its grand and gloomy aspects fill Macpherson's Ossian; its moods of gayety or sadness are seen in Chatterton; its apparent sympathy with man's emotions is found in Burns. This later poetry of the century shows less of satire, more of lyric tenderness, than that of the first half; it takes increased interest in the sufferings of the masses, as is seen in Goldsmith, Gray, and Burns; real peasants begin to figure as its characters. On the whole, however, the poetical field yields but a scanty harvest. In prose fiction the century sees the real birth of the modern English novel in Richardson and Fielding; and also the appearance of the "Gothic" novel, a type of fiction with its scenes laid in medieval times, with an atmosphere of the supernatural, and often with a background of Gothic architecture, well illustrated by Walpole's Castle of Otranto and Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho. In expository prose, Johnson, Gibbon, and Burke show the development of the oratorical tendency perhaps to its climax. As a whole, the period is one of transition from the classic to the romantic manner, with now and then, as in Burns, some rumblings of the coming social revolution. WILLIAM COLLINS 1721-1759 Collins is often associated in criticism with his more famous contemporary, Thomas Gray, since the work of the two poets has many characteristics in common. He was the son of a wealthy tradesman and mayor of the town of Chichester, where he was born and died. After attending school at Winchester College he went to Oxford, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1743. For a while after this he lived in London a life of dissipation that undermined his health and led to the violent insanity in which he died. Collins's offering to poetry is small. His Persian Eclogues, 1742, his Odes, 1746, and his Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands, unfinished, and published long after his death, make up the list. The significance of the man lies in the difference between his work and that of any of his contemporaries; though in simplicity_and delicacy of imagination he most resembles Gray, and like him he forms a link between the poetry of his day and the poetry that was to come. Biography and criticism: Poems, with Memoir by William Moy Thomas, 1894; Poems, ed. W. C. Bronson, Boston, 1898; also Johnson, Hazlitt, Swinburne. Thomas Gray, scholar and antiquarian, shares with Burns preeminence among British poets of the eighteenth century. He was born in London. He was of delicate health, and, because of the irascible temper of his father, he was obliged to rely upon his mother's help in his education at Eton and at Cambridge. After a considerable tour upon the Continent as guest of his friend Horace Walpole, son of the prime minister, he returned to Cambridge and spent the remainder of his life as a private student in the libraries. Just before his death there, he was appointed professor of history. Gray's life of quiet, steady scholarship made him one of the most erudite men of his age. His intellectual curiosity seems to have been unbounded. Interest in natural scenery, antiquities, and botany led him on walking tours through England; linguistics and architecture, into scholarly research. Having exhausted the stores of classical literature, he turned to the Norse and Anglo-Saxon languages, and found in their records the inspiration of some of his most significant poetry, especially that which looked forward to the romantic age. Gray was a transition poet. His most popular poem, the "Elegy," years in the making and polishing, though romantic in temper and form, is classical in restraint and intellectuality. It lives by the universality of its theme, by the sympathy and humanity of its treatment, and by the delicacy of its art. The best recent editions: Gosse, 4 vols. 1884, and J. Bradshaw, Aldine edition, with Life, Notes, and Bibliography, 1891. Gray's letters, admirably edited by D. C. Tovey, 3 vols. 1900-12. Biography: Gosse (EML). Criticism: M. Arnold, Intro. to Gray's poems, Ward (EP), vol. III; Johnson; A. C. Benson, Liv. Age, 291:761-2, opposes Arnold's views; G. Bradford, "Bare Souls," Harp. 148:734-44, an interesting analysis; P. E. More, Nation, 96:592-5, speaks of the loneliness of Gray's life. ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 1 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 2 Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds; 3 Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower 4 Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 5 The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, |