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comedy was an unprincipled nllain, to whom seduction and adultery, extravagance and ingra- titude, and an uttei contempt for every thing sacred and serious, are apportioned by the poet as the roost splendid ornaments he can bestow upon him, and for the adroit employment of which he is gratified by success, aud rewarded by beauty.
The model was but too faithfully copied in real life. He who aspired to reputation in the circles of gallantry assumed that laxity of morals and looseness of manners which he had so fre- quently contemplated and admired upon the stage ; whilst to be known to have devoted any leisure to the duties of devotion, to the study of the classics, or the acquisition of science, would have mined him for ever in the estimation of the fashionable world. Nor after all these sacrifices at the shrine of dissipation and vice, were the accomplishments and address of these gentle- men entitled to the praise of either refinement or grace. On the contrary, their manners were coarse, their conversation obscene, and their amusements frequently so gross, that bull-bait- ing, bear-baiting, and prize-fighting, were con- sidered as appropriate recreations for the highest ranlcs ; " they were not only attended," remarks an annotator upon the Tailer, " by butchers, drovers, and great crowds of all sorts of mob, but likewise by dukes, lords, knights, squires, &c. There were seats particularly set apart for the quality, omamentea with old tapestrv hang- ings, into which none were admitted under half a crown at least. The neighbourhood of these amusements was famous for sheltering thieves, pickpockets, and infamous women ; and for breeding bull-dogs."
11 such were the general manners of men, who esteemed themselves exclusively entitled to the appellations of fashionable and well bred, it might naturally be supposed, that the fair sex were not more seriously disposed, or more solidly accomplished. In the dramatic writings of the day, for the most part a just picture of the times, they are by no means favourably drawn; levity, immodesty, and infidelity, together with an intemperate love of frivolous pursuits, are their usual characteristics. It is to the honour of the sex, however, that we can with truth call these draughts highly overcharged, and in a great measure the caricatures of a licentious and debauched imagination. At a period, iitdeed, when literature was so little dilTused, and when to read with fluency, and spell with correctness were, among the ladies, deemed rare and im- portant acquisitions, much information or ac- quired knowledge in the female worid could not be expected, and one of the best educated ladies of her day, of the first taste and understanding, is represented by Addison as exclaiming, "You men are writers, and can represent us women as unbecoming as you please in your works, while we are unable to return the injury ;" an acqui- escence in, and confession of, inability, to which the accomplished women of the present day are no longer under the necessity of submitting.
After this brief sketch of the national manners, and of the low state of literature among the people at large, during the chief part o? the reign of Anne, should we pause to consider what were really the merits of those who professed the acquirements of study, the authors of the same period we shall find, notwithstanding the examples of the preceding century, of a Barrow, a Dryaen , a Milt4>n, a Temple, and a Tillotson, that their language was, in general, unharmonious, and inaccurate, clogged with barbarisms, provincial vulgarisms, and cant phraseology; and that, with the exception of Swift, whose composition was for that age comparatively pure and correct, we
?>os8e8sed scarcely a specimen of good style, rom the death of Tillotson, in 1694, to the ap- pearance of the Tatlers. One great cause of this defalcation, as has been hinted before, is to be attributed to the warmth of political contest, which at that time universally agitating and heating the minds of men, withdrew their atten- tion from every pleasing topic, and from all con- sideration as to beauty of thought or felicity of expression, planting in their place the bitter fruits of rancour, envy, and contention. Hence arose that rough, strong, but slovenly diction, which pervaded almost every political pamphlet, and was at length employed on subjects demand- ing a very different style ; nor was a perfect specimen given of what highly polished compo- sition could effect on topics connected with government, until the admirable Freeholder was presented to the world, whose simple elegance and humour, adorning the most thorny paths of party dispute, contributed more than weight of argfument to its ultimate popularitv and success. Another cause equally powerful in retanling the acquisition of a graceful and perspicuous style, was the little attention which, previous to the tasteful models of Addison, was paid to criti- cism, and to the grammatical and analogical construction of language. Dryden, it is true,, had written his prefaces in a rich and varied, though not a very correct, manner; but they were too desultonr and contradictory to afford many just rules for the attainment of an accu- rate style, and were, indeed, chiefly employed in delivering precepts for epic, dramatic, and satiric compositions. Euglisn poetry had been enriched by the most splendid monuments of genius, by the dramas of Shakspeare and the epopeia of Milton ; but English prose had yet much to acquire from the labours of the critic, the grammarian, and the lexicographer.
1714. The Rudimentt of the Latin Tongue ; being an easy Introduction to Latin Grammar. By Thomas Ruddiman. Printed at Edinburgh by Robert Freebaim, and entered at stationers' hall, London, for Andrew Bell,* March36, 1716.
- Mr. Andrew Bell it one who manages the common
borineu of life with very good success. He had the good fortune to strDce In with my proposal of the MtAentan OraeU, and I am heartily glad he has found so much life in the ashes of Old Athenae. So br as I have had any con- cern with liim, I have fonnd him not only Just, bnt grate- ful.— Dinif en.
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