There was an analogous compromise in the sphere of Taste and Criticism. It was the aim of Addison to strike a mean between the principles of Charles II.'s Court and the ecclesiastical tyranny of the Puritans; to form a standard of social conversation which should be gay without being irreligious, and witty without being indecent. Under these conditions the spirit of the Classical Renaissance gradually asserted its superiority in English poetry over the Feudal and Ecclesiastical traditions which had struggled so hard for victory through the greater part of the seventeenth century. The Renaissance conquered in England, not by the adoption of formal rules of imitation, but by allying itself with dominant tendencies in the national life, and by developing an instrument of metrical expression which had been naturalised in the language since the time of Chaucer. Compromises have no finality. The Revolution settlement served as a modus vivendi, but it did not satisfy all the needs of the imagination. Walpole's régime gave the country the breathing-space it required to establish the new order. As Young said of it : When I survey the blessings of our isle, Her public wounds bound up, her credit high, Who, fond of bloodshed, draw the murdering sword, Nevertheless the predominance of the moneyed classes, on whose support Walpole mainly relied, led to materialistic principles of public policy, and to the vast increase of Parliamentary corruption. In Church and State the suppression of Roman Catholics, Nonjurors, and Dissenters, thrust out of the sphere of social action many spiritual aspirations which were forced to find an outlet 1 Love of Fame: Satire vii. 21-28. VOL. V T through irregular channels. And, in the same way, the reaction in poetry against all forms of medievalism confined the imagination too strictly within ethical and satirical limits, to the exclusion of those lyrical impulses which had once found natural and simple modes of expression. The time has now come for tracing the gradual uprising of these suppressed forces against the dominant Compromise. Through the reigns of George II. and George III., three distinct imaginative movements may be observed to agitate the surface of the prevailing Whiggism; and at the same time the poets who are affected by them are seen to be seeking, as their vehicles of expression, blank verse or other kinds of English metre, in preference to the heroic couplet, which has hitherto maintained an undisputed supremacy. The tendencies in question are the Deistical Movement, the Methodist Movement, and the Antiquarian and Esthetic Movement, in which the Romantic Revolution of the last part of the century had its first beginnings. As all of these in various ways affected profoundly the course of English poetry, I shall consider them here in the order I have named. The Deists are first spoken of as a distinct body of religious thinkers about the middle of the sixteenth century. Professing to believe in a personal God, they excluded from their worship the person of Christ, and while insisting on the obligations of Natural Religion, rejected the authority of Revelation. Their doctrines were the intelligible (though not logical) sequel of the Reforming movement in religion. As the Church of Geneva had shaken off the traditions of Rome, as the Anabaptists had freed themselves from the restraints imposed by Calvin, so the Deists imagined themselves to have advanced a further step along the path of liberty by repudiating the authority of Scripture. They themselves were divided from each other by shades and sections of belief. The earliest of English Deists, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, a man evidently of a sincerely pious temper, reduced universal religion to five articles of belief: (1) That there is one supreme God; (2) That He is chiefly to be worshipped; (3) That piety and virtue is A cistic tands pro.. Cherbeing to I of ingle oke the principal part of His worship; (4) That we must repent of our sins, and, if we do so, God will pardon them; (5) That there are rewards for good men, and punishments for bad men in a future state. There was nothing in these articles directly opposed to Christian tenets, nor did Lord Herbert show any antagonism to Christianity, except in considering it a "particular," as contrasted with the "universal" religion. But those who followed him showed themselves less anxious to propagate the religion. of Nature than to subvert the authority of Revelation. They were by no means agreed in accepting Lord Herbert's fifth article; on the other hand, they were united in a common attempt to undermine on different sides the supernatural foundations of the Christian Faith. Some of them, like Shaftesbury, adopting one of the first principles of Hobbes, insisted that established religion was only to be accepted as the work of the Civil Power. Some, sheltering themselves under the name, while seeking to abolish the thing, tried to prove either, with Collins, that the foundations of Christianity were solely allegorical; with Toland, that "Christianity is not mysterious"; or, with Tindal, that "Christianity is as old as Creation." Others, particularly Morgan and Chubb, spoke highly of the moral doctrines of Christianity, but sought to show, in company with Woolston, a scandalous buffoon, that the miracles, which were supposed to attest the divine origin of the Christian Revelation, were unworthy of credit. The most virulently aggressive of all the Deists in his attacks on Christianity was Lord Bolingbroke, whose main position has been justly summed up in the following proposition, "That from the clearness and sufficiency of the law of nature, it may be concluded that God hath made no other revelation of His will to mankind; and that there is no need for any extraordinary supernatural revelation." 2 The first didactic poem in English which immediately derives its inspiration from the Deistic movement is Pope's 1 Leland's View of the Deistical Writers that have appeared in England in the Last and Present Century (Fourth Edition, 1764), p. 4. 2 Ibid. p. 383. Essay on Man. This was begun some time in 1731, and the first Epistle was published in February 1733 without the author's name, the poet being very doubtful what kind of reception his work would meet with, and being obviously afraid of attacks by the "Gentlemen of the Dunciad." When he found that the Essay was favourably received and its orthodoxy unquestioned, he took courage, and, after the second and third Epistles had appeared still anonymously, owned the fourth, which was published in January 1734. 2 Warburton pretended that Bolingbroke's philosophy -which did not appear in a published form till after his death was derived from the Essay on Man. The reverse is the case. Pope himself told Spence "how much, or rather how wholly, he was obliged to Lord Bolingbroke for the thoughts and reasonings in his moral work; and once in particular said that, beside their frequent talking over that subject together, he had received, I think, seven or eight sheets from Lord Bolingbroke in relation to it (as I apprehended by way of letters), both to direct the plan in general, and to supply the matter for the particular epistles." This account is confirmed by Lord Bathurst.3 Bolingbroke, while an exile in France, had occupied his enforced leisure with the study of ancient and modern philosophy, and had formed from it a system of reasoning which he fondly imagined to be original. On his return to England in 1724, he was in the habit of discoursing on natural religion to a limited circle of acquaintances, including Pope, Lyttelton, the two Richardsons, and a few others, who used to meet for discussion at the house of Mallet.1 He himself had imbibed an intense hatred of the Christian religion, and though he professed to be mainly arguing on behalf of Deism as against Atheism, he was obviously mainly concerned to overthrow the reasoning of the Anglican Clergy. He accordingly exerted all his powers to prove the futility, or at the least the superfluity, 1 Cited in Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vol. ii. p. 276. 2 Spence, Anecdotes, p. 108. 4 Ibid. p. 275. of Lord Herbert's fifth fundamental article of Deism, viz. "That there are rewards for good men, and punishments for bad men in a future state." Pope was still professedly a Roman Catholic. From his early boyhood he had interested himself in the controversy between the Churches, with the result, as he himself told Spence, that his mind was early left in a state of uncertainty. Many of his Anglican friends endeavoured to bring him over to their communion, and, in view of the Latitudinarian principles then widely prevailing in the Church of England, it might be thought that there would have been few difficulties in his way. But several motives, the strongest of which was regard for the feelings of his parents, prevented him from making any public renunciation of the faith in which he had been educated. He remained a nominal member of the Roman Catholic Church, and, when dying, conformed to all its rites and regulations. Much independent evidence, however, shows that his most intimate opinions were of the Deistic order, and the whole tone and tenour of the Essay on Man testifies to the enthusiasm with which he opened a mind vacant of positive beliefs to the philosophic dogmatism of Bolingbroke. Nevertheless, from the Deism of Bolingbroke he differed` in one or two essential particulars. On the one hand, he had no quarrel with the Anglican divines; on the other, he had a firm persuasion of the immortality of the soul. Hence his theological position resembled that of Lord Herbert, and contrary to Bolingbroke's intention, the argument in the Essay on Man was aimed much more directly at the position of the Atheists than at the champions of revealed religion. With such a confusion of motives, it was almost inevitable that the Essay should encounter the censure of Christian critics on the ground of heterodoxy. At first, indeed, it seems to have been regarded as innocent and even satisfactory; but in 1737 the tendency of Bolingbroke's reasoning, which Pope had embraced without understanding it, was exposed by Crousaz, a Swiss professor, in his Examen de l'Essai de Mr. Pope, and Pope saw with |