\n| <\/p>\n Characteristics of Augustan Poetry <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Relation of Gray to the poetry of his times<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The poetry of Gray marks
\nthe transition from the eighteenth century or Augustan style of poetry to the nineteenth-century
\nstyle; i.e. to say almost all the tendencies of poetry between the
\ndeath of Pope and the production of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798are to be found in Gray’s writings. Of the other poets of the
\ntime, Johnson & Goldsmith mark the last development of the Augustan style, while Collins, Blake, Cowper, Burns, Chatterton each embody in their poetry the beginnings of one or
\nmore tendencies which afterwards found their full expression in the
\nnineteenth century. Gray alone seems to include in himself along with many characteristics of the conservative school of Johnson & Goldsmith all the revolutionary tendencies, not one or
\nmany but all, of the later poets. His earliest poem, the Ode on Spring, has many of the characteristics of Pope and Dryden; one of
\nhis latest, the Ode on Vicissitude, has many of the characteristics of
\nWordsworth. He is therefore the typical poet of his age, which, as regards poetry, was an age of transition.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What is meant by the Augustan or eighteenth-century style? In<\/i>
\nwhat sense is it less poetical than the poetry of Wordsworth &<\/i>
\nShelley?<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The poetry of the eighteenth century differs entirely from that of another period in English literature. It differs alike in subject-matter, in spirit and in form. Many modern critics have denied
\nthe name of poetry to it altogether. Matthew Arnold calls Pope and Dryden classics not of poetry, but of prose, he says that they
\nare great in the regions of half poetry; other critics while hesitating to go so far, say in substance much the same thing; Gosse, for instance, calls their poetry the poetry of English
\nrhetoric, which exactly amounts to Matthew Arnold’s description of it as
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 125<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nhalf poetry. Its own admirers give it the name of classic poetry,
\nthat is to say a poetry in which imagination and feeling are subordinated to correctness and elegance.
\n<\/span><\/p>\nPoetry as generally understood, the poetry of Shakespeare and Wordsworth, may be
\ndefined as a deeper and more imaginative perception of life and nature expressed in the language
\nand rhythm of restrained emotion. In other words its subject-matter is an interpretation of life and nature which goes deeper into
\nthe truth of things than ordinary men can do, what has been called a
\npoetic criticism of life; its spirit is one of imagination and feeling, it is not intellectual but imaginative, not rational but emotional;
\nand its form is a language impassioned and imaginative but restrained by a desire for perfect beauty of expression; and a
\nrhythm generally taking the form of metre, which naturally suits the expression of deep feeling. It differs from rhetoric in this that
\nrhetoric expresses feeling which is not deep & not quite sincere, and tries to strike and influence the reader instead of being satisfied with expressing itself and for that purpose relies
\nmainly on tricks of language such as antithesis, epigram etc. Rhetoric
\ntries to excite admiration and appeals to the intellect; poetry is content with adequate self-expression and appeals to the heart.
\n<\/span><\/p>\nEighteenth-century poetry differs from ordinary poetry, in subject-matter, in spirit and in form. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Spirit<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The spirit of ordinary poetry is one of imagination and
\nfeeling, that is to say imaginative and emotional; that of eighteenth-century
\npoetry is one of commonsense and reason, that is to say intellectual and
\nrational. Pope and Johnson are the two chief critics of the school. Pope
\nexpressly lays it down in his Essay on Criticism that sense and wit are the
\nbases of all true poetry and Johnson is continually appealing to them as
\ncriterions, especially in his life of Gray, where he objects to what he
\nconsiders the excess of imagery, the incredibility of his subjects, the use of
\nimaginative mythological language and the occasional absence of a didactic
\npurpose. In their opinion nothing should<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 126<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nbe admitted in poetry which is not consistent with sense & wit,
\nthat is to say which is not intellectual and rational. Accordingly we find no striking imagery & no passion in eighteenth-century
\npoetry; the poets as a rule avoid subjects in which emotion is required and when they do try to deal with the passions and
\nfeelings, they fail, their expression of these is rhetorical and not poetic. This is the reason why the drama in the eighteenth
\ncentury is such an utter failure.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Subject-matter<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The difference in subject-matter is manifold. In the first
\nplace, instead of dealing with the whole of life and nature, they limit
\nthemselves to a very narrow part of it. This limitation is partly due to the restriction of poetry to sense and wit and partly to
\nthe nature of the audience the poets addressed. It was a period in which literature depended mainly on the patronage of the
\naristocracy, and it was therefore for the English aristocracy of the time that the poets wrote. They were therefore bound to limit
\nthemselves to such subject-matter as might suit the tastes of their patrons. These two considerations led to three very important
\nlimitations of subject-matter.<\/span><\/p>\n1st<\/sup> The exclusion of the supernatural from poetry. The ..temper of the times was rationalistic and sceptical and to the
\ncultured aristocracy of the times Shakespeare’s ghosts and fairies and Milton’s gods and angels would have seemed absurdities; it
\nresulted also from the idea of commonsense as the cardinal rule of poetry, that nothing incredible should be admitted unless it was treated humorously, like the sylphs and gnomes in
\nPope’s Rape of the Lock or the beasts in the fables of Gay & Swift.
\nPoetry however seems naturally to demand the element of the supernatural & the only way to admit the supernatural without
\noffending against reason was by Personification. We therefore find a tendency to create
\na sort of makeshift mythology by personifying the qualities of the mind. Otherwise the
\nsupernatural practically disappears from English poetry for a whole century. <\/span><\/p>\n2d<\/sup> The exclusion of rural life and restriction to
\nthe life of the<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 127<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n town and of good society. The aristocracy of the time took no
\ninterest in anything but the pleasures, occupations and mental pursuits of the town and it is accordingly only with this part of life that eighteenth-century poetry deals. The country is
\nonly treated as a subject of ridicule as in Gay’s Shepherd’s Week or of purely conventional description as in Pope’s Pastorals
\nand Windsor Forest.<\/span><\/span>1<\/span><\/sup>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n3d<\/sup> As a natural result of this, the exclusion of external
\nNature. The sense of natural beauty is quite absent from eighteenth-century poetry and we do not have even so much as the sense of
\nthe picturesque except in subjects such as landscape gardening where art could modify nature. Whenever the poets try to write of natural scenery or natural objects, they fail; their
\ndescriptions are either conventional and do not recall the object at all or only
\ndescribe it in a surface manner recalling just so much as maybe perceived by a casual glance. Of sympathy with Nature or
\nclose observation of it, there is hardly a single instance in English poetry between Dryden and Thomson. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n4th<\/sup>
\nThe exclusion of human emotion, i.e. to say poetry was.. not only limited to the workings of the human mind and
\nhuman nature but to cultured society and to the town, & not only to this but to the intellect and weaknesses of men purely;
\nthe deeper feelings of the heart are not touched or only touched in an
\ninadequate manner; and it is a characteristic fact that the passion of love which is the most common subject of English poetry, is
\ngenerally left alone by these poets or if handled, handled in a most unreal and rhetorical manner. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nIt followed from the exclusion of so much subject-matter
\nthat the forms of poetry which demanded this subject-matter
\nalmost disappeared. Lyrical poetry & the drama, both of which demand passion, feeling and fancy, epic poetry, which requires a grasp of entire human and external nature, a wide view of<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n1 The poets of the time have a tendency to the false or conventional pastoral; i.e. to
\nsay a mechanical imitation of Latin & Greek rural poetry, & especially when they
\ntry to write love poetry, they use Latin & Greek pastoral names; but these pastorals have
\nnothing to do with any real country life past or present, nor do they describe any
\nrural surroundings and scenery that ever existed, but are mere literary exercises. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 128<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
\nlife and some element of
\nthe supernature, and serious narrative poetry are very little represented in the age of Pope
\nand then only by second-rate productions. The poetry of the age is mainly didactic, i.e. its subjects are literary criticism,
\nethics, science or theology or
\nhumorous, i.e. consists of satire, mock epic, humorous narrative and light society verse. All these
\nare subjects which are really outside the scope of poetry strictly so
\ncalled, as they give no room for imagination and emotion, the cardinal elements of poetry. The subjects and the way they are
\ntreated, making allowance for the difference involved by the use of metre & especially the heroic metre which necessitates a very
\ncondensed expression of thought, is not very different from that of the prose periodicals of the time. The poetry of the age taken in the mass gives one the impression of a great social journal inverse, somewhat more brilliant and varied than the Tatler and
\nSpectator but identical in spirit.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nForm<\/i> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nLastly the poetry of the eighteenth century differs widely inform, i.e. in
\nlanguage & metre, from that of preceding & subsequent poetry. This difference
\nproceeds from a revolt against the poetical language of the seventeenth century,
\njust as the language of Wordsworth & Keats is a revolt against that of the
\neighteenth. The Elizabethan poets aimed at a poetry which should be romantic,
\nsensuous and imaginative; romantic, that is to say, full of the strange and
\nwonderful, sensuous, that is to say, expressing the perceptions of the senses &
\nespecially the sense of the beautiful in vivid and glowing colours, and
\nimaginative in the sense of being full of splendid and original imagery,
\n&especially of striking phrases & vivid metaphors. In the later Elizabethans &
\neven many of the earlier all this was carried to great excess; the love of the
\nstrange and wonderful was carried into unnaturalness and distortion,
\nsensuousness became lost in exaggeration and poetry became a sort of hunt for
\nmetaphors, metaphors used not as aids to the imagination, but for their own
\nsake, and the more absurd and violent, the better. Waller &<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 129<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
\nDryden first and Pope to a much greater extent revolted against
\nthis style of forced ingenuity and proclaimed a new kind of poetry. They gave to Elizabethan language the name of false wit
\nand Pope announced the objects of the new school in an often quoted couplet
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nTrue wit is nature to advantage dressed <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nWhat oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nThis couplet gives the three main principles of eighteenth-century style out of which all its distinctive characteristics rise.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n(1) The poets were to write only of what oft was thought; they were to avoid the
\nElizabethan romantic tendency to search after the strange & wonderful. But these
\npoets went much farther. Not only all that was peculiar or eccentric but all that was original, individual or unusual was avoided as offensive
\nto reason & commonsense. There are no ideas in Augustan poetry
\nwhich are not perfectly obvious and common, nothing which might not occur to an average educated man. This was fatal to poetry which to be poetry at all must be unusual;
\nunusually lofty, unusually beautiful or unusually impassioned, & which
\ndries up in an atmosphere of commonsense and commonplace. Augustan poetry has neither feeling for greatness nor for beauty
\nnor for passion and it is therefore not without justice that it is described as at best a half poetry or a poetry of rhetoric.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nBut the obvious & commonplace will not be read, unless it is made to look new &
\ninteresting by brilliant language. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n(2) The second principle is that while the
\nobvious & commonplace should be the staple of poetry, it should be expressed in new and brilliant language, and this should be done by
\nmeans of true wit. That is to say, while false ingenuity should be
\navoided, true ingenuity should be the rule of poetry. Accordingly we find that striking poetical expressions are singularly absent,
\nthe imagery is cold, obvious & conventional & their place is taken by brilliant cleverness and rhetoric. In order to conceal
\nthe barrenness of subject-matter every line is made an antithesis, an epigram or some other
\nrhetorical turn of language. The Augustan poets did not realise that wit, whether false or true, has<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\nPage \u2013 130<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n
\nnothing to do with poetry & so they fell from one extreme to
\nthe other; poetry with them became even more an exercise for mere ingenuity than with the Elizabethans, in a way less open to ridicule but more barren & prosaic.<\/span><\/span>2<\/span><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n(3) The eighteenth century was not contented with nature, it wanted nature to be dressed & dressed to advantage. Eliza-be
\nthan poetry had been even at its best either rude & unpolished or extravagant & lawless. It broke through all the ordinary
\nrules which restrain poetry; in
\ntheir recoil from this tendency the Augustans determined to restrict themselves by the greatest
\nnumber of rules possible, not only those rules which are universal and for all time but many which were artificial & unsuitable.
\nThey made the language & metre of their poetry not only smooth &
\nelegant, but formal and monotonous; the tendency was, as has been often said, to cut out poetry according to a uniform &
\nmechanical pattern. Cowper said that Pope
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nMade poetry a mere mechanic art;
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAnd every warbler has his tune by heart
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nand Taine has expanded the charge in his History of English
\nLiterature, II p. 194, “One would say that the verse had been fabricated by a machine, so uniform is the make.” The charge
\nthough exaggerated is well founded; there is a tendency to a uniform construction & turn of sentence and the unchanging
\nrepetition of 3 or 4 rhetorical artifices. It is the language of a school rather than of individual genius.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWhen we examine the metre, we find it treated in the same way. Poetical harmony depends upon two things, the choice of the metre and the combination of all the various
\ncadences possible within the limits of the metre chosen. The poet chooses
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n2
\nThe following passage was written on a separate page of the manuscript. Its place of<\/i>
\ninsertion was not marked<\/i>:
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nBesides this in order to dignify the obviousness of their ideas & sentiments, a
\nsort of conventional poetic language was adopted, wherever wit and epigram could not be
\nemployed; ordinary words were avoided as ignoble and literary words often with
\nan artificial meaning were employed, or else a sounding paraphrase was employed or a
\npretentious turn of language. The universal rule was that an idea should not be
\nstated simply, but either cleverly or as it was called nobly.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\nPage \u2013 131<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n
\na particular stanza or a couplet form or blank verse just as he
\nthinks most suitable to his subject; but the pauses and accents in the lines of the stanza or successive verses may be arranged
\nmany different ways, the disposition of long and short syllables and the combination of assonances and alliterations are almost
\ninfinite in their variety & great poets always vary one line from another so that not only the language but the sound of the verse, or as it is technically called the movement may suggest the
\nexact emotion intended. This variation of cadences is a matter not for
\nrules, but for individual genius to work out. But the Augustan poets in their passion for regularity determined to subject even
\nthis to rules. They chose as their favourite & almost only form of verse, the couplet and
\nespecially the heroic couplet. All ambitious poetical work of Pope’s school is in the heroic couplet;
\nonly in light verse do they try any other. The part of their poetry in
\nlyrical metres or in stanzas is insignificant in quantity and almost worthless in quality. Having confined themselves to the heroic
\ncouplet, they tried to make even this as formal and monotonous as possible; they put a pause regularly at the end of the first line
\nand a full stop or colon at the end of the second; they place the accent almost invariably on every second syllable; they employ
\nassonance without the slightest subtlety and, though without some skill in the disposition of long & short syllables good metre
\nitself is impossible, yet they only use it in the most elementary manner. The only variety then possible was a very minute and
\nalmost imperceptible one which gave great scope for ingenuity but little for real poetic power.<\/span><\/span>3<\/span><\/sup>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nOne more characteristic of the school must be noticed, i.e. the narrowness of its culture. In the eighteenth century it was the
\ntendency to consider all the age between the third and sixteenth centuries as barbarous and best forgotten; even the sixteenth
\nand early seventeenth were regarded as half barbarous times; and the only things besides contemporary science, philosophy
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n3
\nThe following sentence was written on a separate page. Its place of insertion was not<\/i>
\nmarked<\/i>:
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThese restrictions forced the writers to be extremely condensed & ingenious and
\nas has been said reduced every couplet to the point of an epigram.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\nPage \u2013 132<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n
\nand literature which were regarded with interest were ancient
\nclassical literature and French civilisation. Even of the classics, little was known of Greek literature though it was held in formal
\nhonour; French & Latin and Latin rather of the second best than the best writers were the only foreign influences that affected
\nAugustan literature to any appreciable extent.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe main characteristics of eighteenth-century poetry may
\ntherefore be summed up as follows; -a rational & intellectual rather than imaginative & emotional spirit; a restriction to town
\nsociety and town life, and inability to deal with rural life, with Nature, with passion or with the supernatural; a tendency to
\nreplace the supernatural by personification; an almost exclusive preference for didactic, satirical and humorous poetry; a dislike of originality and prevalence of merely obvious ideas and
\nsentiments; an excess of rhetorical artifice in style; a monotonous,
\nrhetorical and conventional style; a restricted and cut-and-dried metre and an exclusion of
\nall poetic influences & interests except the Latin writers & contemporary and French thought &literature. Its merits were smoothness, regularity & correctness;
\ngreat cleverness and brilliance of wit; great eloquence; and the attainment of perfection within its own limits & according to
\nits own ideals.<\/span><\/span>4<\/span><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n
\n4 The following sentence was written on a separate page. Its place of insertion was not<\/i>
\nmarked<\/i>: <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nThe history of our period is partly that of a breaking away from formality in language and metre & a revival of lyric poetry, but still more of a struggle to widen the range
\nof poetry by bringing all nature and all human activity both past & present into its scope, to increase interests and subject-matter as well as to inspire new life and sincerity
\ninto its style. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 133<\/p>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Characteristics of Augustan Poetry Relation of Gray to the poetry of his times The poetry of Gray marks the transition…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-early-cultural-writings","wpcat-49-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11853,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions\/11853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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