garding melancholy as a disease, or at least as an abnormal state, curable in its early stages partly by medicine, partly by intelligent self-treatment, but after a time probably incurable and likely to result in madness and death, very probably by suicide. Towards the end of the century there is some tendency to reserve "melancholy" for use in the more general sense of " sadness," and to employ the word "spleen" as a technical term for the physical disease and for the mental state which we now call melancholia, though the words were still used interchangeably. Spleen" is not defined in Blount's dictionary in 1670, but by 1730 it is so much the fashionable ailment of the moment that Bailey's dictionary not only gives definitions of the noun, and of the adjective "spleenful," but also of seven derivatives. In the eighteenth century, as dictionary definitions show, medical theory as to the cause and cure of the disease was changing, and, as we shall see later, the melancholy mood was affirmed to be within the individual's own control. Controversy arose, based on opposed ethical and social theories, between those who condemned and those who approved indulgence in melancholy and its frank, personal expression in literature - between the followers of Pope and Johnson, and the followers of Milton, Thomson, and Gray.

In an effort to bring my subject within the limits of industry, I have excluded from the following pages any consideration of love-melancholy as such, and of elegiac poetry as such, remembering that Burton himself considers the death of friends among the merely adventitious causes of melancholy. Each of these subjects would require a book in itself. My purpose is rather to describe the growth to perfect expression of that mood of sorrow which is apparently without adequate specific cause in the poet's own experience. I have excluded satiric poetry also, although

much of seventeenth and eighteenth century satire may well be regarded as the poetry of despair. Nevertheless, since a sense of superiority is an essential element in the satiric spirit, the satirist never feels himself actually engulfed by the weltering waters of melancholy. He may be a castaway, but he is still riding the waves on the plank of intellect. Nor does he give direct expression to his feeling of depression, but conceals it by an attack on the folly or wickedness of other men, or of the world in general. Satiric poetry is therefore in a class by itself. But I have not found it possible to discuss the melancholy poetry of the eighteenth century without reference to that religious melancholy which Burton claims to have been the first to treat fully, for the literary taste of the early eighteenth century was very largely determined by the religious struggles of the seventeenth.

Because of these exclusions, the succeeding chapters do not furnish anything like a complete analysis of melancholy literature even in the chosen period, but only a chronological study of the various "melancholy" elements which successively emerged into popular favor and which in 1751 were combined by the artistry of Gray into an enduring lyric whole.

31 Tucker, Verse Satire in England, p. 8.

CHAPTER II

THE TASTE FOR MELANCHOLY IN 1700

To determine just what the people of England were reading in a given year is a task which, if not wholly impossible, would at least require the combined effort of a goodly number of students working in several fields. Nevertheless, some sense of the widespread fondness for melancholy subjects in literature about the year 1700 may be gathered from an examination of the titles of books published and reprinted during, let us say, the ten years just before that date. At the same time we must bear in mind that attention given wholly to a single phase of literature necessarily exaggerates its importance, and we must do what we can to correct our impressions by reference to general studies of the literature of the period.

Such studies, we notice, invariably emphasize the prosaic character of the literary output and especially the dearth of true lyric poetry at the end of the seventeenth century. This temporary disappearance of the genre which had been one of the great glories of the Elizabethan age was a not unnatural consequence of the immense social changes of the seventeenth century. It seems to have been due to the exhaustion of certain springs of feeling which usually underlie and give rise to lyric expression. Political, religious, and social dissension had deprived poets of one powerful source of inspiration, the sense of national unity. The disillusion and cynicism which inevitably follow wars were unfavorable to the expresson of joyous or ideal moods, while they encouraged the production of

satire. Taste for the classics, fostered by the imitation of French models, happened to direct attention rather to epic and dramatic forms of poetry than to lyric.1 In the lyric genre itself, the interest in Cowley and his example fostered the grandiose Pindaric rather than the simpler lyric forms. Generally speaking, in the literary effort of the time, real enthusiasm was for science, philosophy, and history, rather than for poetry.

However, there was no counting on any homogeneous feeling in this reading public, or any specially developed literary taste. Nor did the lack of unity in readers imply a tolerance or liberality of spirit such as might have encouraged a widely varied literature and authors of marked individuality. The effect of warring tastes was merely destructive. The cleavage between Protestant and Catholic, churchman and non-conformist, Whig and Tory, middle class and noble, town and country, was relatively more disastrous for literature than such differences are today, simply because the actual number of educated readers was so much smaller. At the same time, the reaction against Restoration excesses was making for a narrow didacticism in almost all writing.

It had been true, even of the Age of Restoration, that the largest number of readers were serious-minded, books of religion constituting the largest class in the publishers' lists, with books of science next, and history third. The output of plays, which usually looms so large in the mind of the student of Restoration literature, was not two per cent of the total English books of the time (1660-1688)

1 In the types of literature translated from the Greek in the last half of the seventeenth century, Philosophy, Fable, Epic, and History were far more numerous than the translations of lyric poetry. See Dr. F. M. K. Foster's English Translations from the Greek.

2 Beljame, Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre, pp. 143, 206-7, 338.

either in printed bulk or in price. At the end of the century this seriousness seems to have been on the increase, for in the year 1700 books of "Divinity" formed fifty per cent of all the books listed in the Term Catalogues, (not counting reprints) as compared with thirty-four per cent in 1690, and forty-four per cent in 1696. Of reprinted books in any given term between 1690 and 1700, they constituted from ten to twenty-five per cent. The class, "Divinity," included, of course, technical discussions of theological or ecclesiastical questions, and it must be remembered that all such matters in the seventeenth century had chiefly a political bearing. But setting aside all works of interest only to religious or political partisans, there still remain a large number which were hortatory or devotional, or which, though partly controversial, nevertheless appealed to thoughtful readers of any faith.

Thus the truly popular authors between 1690 and 1700, to judge from the frequency with which they were reprinted, were Jeremy Collier, Bishop Taylor, Archbishop Tillotson, John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, and George Herbert. The favorite subjects were "the four last things," i.e., death, judgment, heaven, and hell— life in this world, if it was treated at all, being regarded chiefly as a preparation for death. We find Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying in its fifteenth edition in 1690, and its eighteenth in 1700; Sherlock's Practical Discourse Concerning Death,

3 Arber, Term Catalogues, vol. 1, pp. XV-XVI; vol. III, p. VII. These publishers' lists, though not complete, may fairly be taken as representative.

4 Just as books of the class, Sociology, have today. Of English book production in the year 1921, Fiction, the largest class, forms about 17%, Sociology, the next in size, nearly 7%, Religion, third, 7+%, Poetry and Drama 51⁄2+%. In American book production, Fiction makes about 111%, Science, 8%, Sociology 7%, and Poetry and Drama 6%. (Percentages calculated from figures in the Publishers' Weekly.)