Poetry was in a transition state; it was taking its leave of the unhealthy satire and the technical wit of Queen Anne’s reign, and attempting, on the one hand, the impostures of Macpherson and Chatterton,—­to which we shall hereafter refer,—­and, on the other, the restoration of the pastoral from the theatrical to the real, in Thomson’s song of the Rolling Year, and Cowper’s pleasant Task, so full of life and nature.  Swallow-like, English poetry had hung about the eaves or skimmed the surface of town and court; but now, like the lark, it soared into freer air—­

    Coetusque vulgares et udam
    Spernit humum fugiente penna.

In short, it was a day of general awakening.  The intestine troubles excited by the Jacobites were brought to an end by the disaster of Culloden, in 1745.  The German campaigns culminating at Minden, in 1759, opened a door to the study of German literature, and of the Teutonic dialects as elements of the English language.

It is, therefore, not astonishing that in this period Literature should begin to arrange itself into its present great divisions.  As in an earlier age the drama had been born to cater to a popular taste, so in this, to satisfy the public demand, arose English prose fiction in its peculiar and enduring form.  There had been grand and desultory works preceding this, such as Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and Swift’s inimitable story of Gulliver; but the modern novel, unlike these, owes its origin to a general desire for delineations of private life and manners.  “Show us ourselves!” was the cry.

A novel may be defined as a fictitious story of modern life describing the management and mastery of the human passions, and especially the universal passion of love.  Its power consists in the creation of ideal characters, which leave a real impress upon the reader’s mind; it must be a prose epic in that there is always a hero, or, at least, a heroine, generally both, and a drama in its presentation of scenes and supplementary personages.  Thackeray calls his Vanity Fair a novel without a hero:  it is impossible to conceive a novel without a heroine.  There must also be a denouement, or consummation; in short, it must have, in the words of Aristotle, a beginning, middle, and ending, in logical connection and consecutive interest.

DANIEL DEFOE.—­Before, however, proceeding to consider the modern novel, we must make mention of one author, distinctly of his own age as a political pamphleteer, but who, in his chief and inimitable work, stands alone, without antecedent or consequent. Robinson Crusoe has had a host of imitators, but no rival.

Daniel Foe, or, as he afterwards called himself, De Foe, was born in London, in the year 1661.  He was the son of a butcher, but such was his early aptitude, for learning, that he was educated to become a dissenting minister.  His own views, however, were different:  he became instead a political author, and wrote with great force against the government of James II. and the Established Church, and in favor of the dissenters.  When the Duke of Monmouth landed to make his fatal campaign, Defoe joined his standard; but does not seem to have suffered with the greater number of the duke’s adherents.