VI SUMMARY OUR glance at the literary history of America during the seventeenth century has revealed these facts: in 1630, when Boston was founded, the mature inhabitants of America, like their brethren in England, were native Elizabethans; in 1700 this race had long been in its grave. In densely populated England, meanwhile, historical pressure-social, political, and economic alike-had wrought such changes in the national character as are marked by the contrast between the figures of Elizabeth and of King William III. National experience had altered the dominant type of native Englishmen. In America the absence of any such external pressure had preserved to an incalculable degree the spontaneous, enthusiastic, versatile character of the original immigrants. In literature, seventeenth-century England had expressed itself in at least three great and distinct moods, of which the dominant figures were Shakspere, Milton, and Dryden. Though America had meanwhile produced hardly any pure letters, it had continued, long after Elizabethan temper had faded from the native literature of England, to keep alive with little alteration those minor phases of Elizabethan thought and feeling which had expressed the temper of the ancestral Puritans. In history and in literature alike, the story of seventeenth-century America is a story of unique national inexperience. BOOK II THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY I ENGLISH HISTORY FROM 1700 TO 1800 REFERENCES Gardiner, Chapters xliv-lii. WHEN the eighteenth century began, the reign of Will- The Sov. iam III was about as near its close as that of Elizabeth ereigns. was a hundred years before. In 1702 William was succeeded by Queen Anne. In 1714 George I followed her, founding the dynasty which still holds the throne. George II succeeded him in 1727; and in 1760 came George III, whose reign extended till 1820. The names of these sovereigns instantly suggest certain familiar facts, of which the chief is that during the first half of the century the succession remained somewhat in doubt. It was only in 1745, when the reign of George II was more than half finished, that the last fighting with Stuart pretenders occurred on British soil. Though on British soil, however, this contest was not on English: there has been no actual warfare in England since 1685, when the battle of Sedgmoor suppressed the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion against James II. These obvious facts indicate historical circumstances which have had profound effect on English character. eenth Cen During the past two centuries the commercial prosperity of England has exceeded that of most other countries. An imperative condition of such prosperity is peace and domestic order. Good business demands a state of life which permits people to devote themselves to their own affairs, trusting politics to those whose office it is to govThe Eight- ern. Under such circumstances eighteenth-century Englishmen had small delight in civil wars and disputed England a successions. Accordingly they displayed increasing confidence in parliamentary government, which could give England what divine right could no longer give it,-prosperous public order. In the course of the eighteenth century, there steadily grew a body of public opinion, at last overwhelming, which tended to the maintenance of established institutions. tury in Period of Stability. England and France. So this eighteenth century brought to England far less radical changes than those which marked the preceding. Though the interval between the deaths of George III and William of Orange is far longer than that between William's and Queen Elizabeth's, we can feel between the Prince of Orange and his native English successor no such contrast as we felt between William and the last Tudor queen. For all that, the century was not stagnant; and perhaps our simplest way of estimating its progress is by four well-remembered English battles. In 1704 was fought the battle of Blenheim; in 1745, that of Fontenoy; in 1759 Wolfe fell victorious at Quebec; and in 1798 Nelson won the first of his great naval victories—the battle of the Nile. Whatever else these battles have in common, all four were fought against the French, the one continental power whose coast is in sight of England. Throughout |