No More Learning

Joseph Wasse; Conyers Middleton; Jeremiah
Markland; John Taylor; Richard Dawes
329


## p. xiii (#19) ############################################

Contents
xiii
II. ANTIQUARIES
By H. G. ALDIS, M. A. , Peterhouse, Secretary of the
University Library
PAGE
Oxford and the Bodleian. Dagdale and Dodsworth. The Antiquities
of Warwickshire and Monasticon Anglicanum. Dugdale's Other
Labours. Anthony Wood and Athenae Oxonienses. Thomas
Hearne. John Tanner. John Aubrey. Local History and
Topography: Burton; Plot; Stukeley; Gordon. Chamberlayne's
Angliae Notitia and its Sequel. Gibson's Edition of Camden's
Britannia Ashmole and other County Antiquaries. Baker's
collections: his History of St John's College, Cambridge.
Writers on Monastic and Cathedral Antiquities. Old English
Studies: Sir Henry Spelman. Diplomatic: Thomas Madox.
Heraldry. Ames's Typographical Antiquities. The Cottonian
and the Harloian Libraries. Osborne and Oldys. Revival of the
Society of Antiquaries.
.
341
CHAPTER XIV
SCOTTISH POPULAR POETRY BEFORE BURNS
By T. F. HENDERSON
1
The long Blight on Scottish Secular Verse. Exceptional popularity of
Lyndsay. Survival of Songs in the Puritan Period. Peculiarity
of the relation between English and Scottish Song in the Seventeenth
Century. Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall
Songs. Original Scots Songs in The Tea-Table Miscellany:
Lady Grizel Baillie, Lady Wardlaw and William Hamilton of
Gilbertfield. Robert Sempill and The Life and Death of Habbie
Simson. Watson's Choice Collection. Allan Ramsay. His
earlier productions and The Gentle Shepherd. Difficulty of
estimating his Originality. His treatment of the Old Songs. The
Tea-Table Miscellany and The Evergreen. Alexander Pennecuick.
Robert Crawford. William Hamilton of Bangour. Sir John
Clerk and George Halkett. Alexander Ross. Alexander Geddes.
Dougal Graham. Mrs Cockburn. Jane and Sir Gilbert Elliot.
Anonymous Songs. Songs from David Herd's Manuscript and
other Collections. Jacobite Songs in Hogg's Jacobite Relics of
Scotland. Hogg's editorial methods. Literary value of the
Jacobite Songs. Robert Fergusson: his personality and poetio
qualities
359
1


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xiv
Contents
CHAPTER XV
EDUCATION
By J. W. ADAMSON, Fellow of King's College, London, and
Professor of Education in the University of London
PAGE
The Seventeenth Century Curriculum. Henry Wotton's Essay on the
Education of Children. Proposed supersession of Oxford and
Cambridge under the Commonwealth: Milton; Harrington;
Hobbes. Seth Ward's Vindiciae Academiarum. The Long
Parliament and Education. Projected Reforms of Schools.
Influence of John Amos Comenius. Hartlib, Petty and Dury.
Educational Projects after the Restoration: Cowley's Proposition.
The Ancients v. Moderns Controversy: Temple and Bentley.
Dissenting Academies : Secker's Experience. Courtly and Private
Education: Comments of Clarendon, Peacham, Francis Osborn
and others. Cavils of Swift and Defoe. Locke's Thoughts on
Education and Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Influence of the Essay on subsequent Educational Theory.
Education of Girls: Swift, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and
others. Elementary Education. Private Schools. Charity Schools:
Mandeville. The Public Schools : Eton and Westminster. Subjects
of Teaching. The Universities. Examinations at Cambridge.
The Oxford Tutorial System. _Foundation of the Royal Society.
Bentley's Range of Studies. Extension of University Learning.
New Chairs at Cambridge. Gibbon's Charges against the Oxford
System. Difficulties in the way of Reform
381
415
Bibliographies.
Table of Principal Dates
Index of Names
575
.
579
.


## p. xv (#21) ##############################################

THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY
OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
i
VOLUME IX. FROM STEELE AND ADDISON TO POPE AND SWIFT
Second Impression, 1919, Corrections and Additions
2
I
The errata mentioned in volumes of the History published later than the first
edition of this volume have been corrected in the present impression. In addition, some
misprints noticed later have been corrected, and a few alterations made. The more
important of these are as follows:
p. 78, 11. 17, 18 for Cytherea . . . 1723, read The St James's Journal of 15 December 1722,
p. 149, 11. 2-4 of footnote for Prior's. . . manuscripts. read J. Bancks, under the title
The History of His Own Time by Matthew Prior, and professing to be compiled from
the manuscripts of Adrian Drift, Prior's former secretary.
Addenda to the present (2nd) impression
The following should be added to the bibliographies :
pp. 415 ff. chapter 1. Defoe, The Newspaper and the Novel :
Behn, Mrs Aphra. See vol. VIII, chapter v and bibliography.
Haywood, Mrs Eliza (1693 ? -1756). Collected edn of novels, plays and poems. 4 vols.
1724.
Manley, Mrs Mary de la Rivière (1672 ? -1724). Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several
Persons of Quality, of both Sexes. From the New Atalantis. 2 vols. 1709.
pp. 434 ff. chapter 11. Steele and Addison:
Addison, Joseph, The Miscellaneous Works of. Ed. Guthkelch, A. C. Vols. I and 11. 1914.
Suddard, M. L'Humour d'Addison. Essais de littérature anglaise. Cambridge, 1915.
pp. 443 ff. chapter III. Pope :
Pope, Alexander (ed. ). Poems of Thomas Parnell. 1721.
Pope, Alexander (ed. ). Works of John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, etc. 1723.
pp. 452 ff. chapter iv. Jonathan Swift:
Suddard, Mary. Swift's Poetry. Essays in English Literature. Cambridge, 1912.
pp. 479 ff. chapter vi. Lesser Verse Writers :
Under Matthew Prior :
Aitken, G. A. Notes on the Bibliography of Matthew Prior. A paper read before the
Bibliographical Society, January 17, 1916. 1919.
Bickley, F. The Life of Matthew Prior. 1914.
Dennis, J. In Studies in English Literature. 1876.
Under David Mallet :
Ballads and Songs. Ed. Di lale, F. , with a memoir. 57.
Under Richard Savage (biography):
The Plain Dealer. Nos. 28 and 73. 1724.
Johnson, Samuel. Life of Savage. 1744.
pp. 488 ff. chapters vir and viii. Historical and Political Writers :
Under William Dampier :
Voyages. Ed. Masefield, J. 2 vols. 1906.
Thomas Pitt (1653-1726).
Dalton, Sir C. N. The Life of Thomas Pitt. Cambridge, 1915.
pp. 502 ff. chapter 21.
Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy :
Under George Berkeley :
Berkeley and Percival. The Correspondence between George Berkeley. . . and Sir John
Percival. . . . Ed. Rand, Benjamin. Cambridge, 1914.
Under Anthony Astley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury:
Second Characters or The Language of Forms. Ed. Rand, Benjamin. Cambridge,
1914.
pp. 542 ff. chapter xiv. Scottish Literature from 1603 to 1786 :
Under (1) General :
Millar, J. H. Scottish Prose of the 17th and 18th centuries. Glasgow, 1912.
Under D. Miscellaneous. I. (1603-1660):
James VI. Lusus Regius : being poems and other pieces by King James ye First. Ed.
Rait, R. S. 1901.
Under Scottish Popular Poetry. II. Critical and Historical Writings:
Ganttich Ta - Pantry
:
1912


## p. xvi (#22) #############################################



## p. xvii (#23) ############################################

ADDENDUM
VOL. VII
P. 412
Daniel, George, of Beswick (1616—57). Poems, from the original MSS. Ed. Grosart,
A. B. 4 vols. 1878.
Fisher, Payne (1616—93). Marston Moor, Eboracense carmen. 1650. [Payne Fisher
wrote much verse (chiefly Latin) in praise of Oliver Cromwell, after whose death
be epent several years in the Fleet, and wrote as a royalist. ]
CORRIGENDA
1
VOL. VIII
p. 6, footnote 2, line 2 from bottom, for Royal Exchange read New Exchange, Strand
p. 28, footnote 2 at end, read : to the researches, conducted independently in each
case, of W. J. Lawrence and Sir Ernest Clarke
p. 30, 1. 23 and elsewhere, for St Évremond read Saint-Évremond
p. 215. The verses, "Why dost thou shade thy lovely face,' here ascribed to
Rochester, are the work of Quarles, and were first published in his Emblems. They
have been printed in many editions of Rochester's poems, but whether they were
claimed by him in jest, or falsely attributed to him by his editors, we have no means
of knowing.
p. 370, 1. 21, for 1655 read 1665
p. 371, 1. 38. Read as follows in lieu of the next two sentences of the text :
English imitations also appeared ; Lord Broghill (Orrery)'s Parthenissa (first part) in
1654, with which, in spite of its handsome language, Dorothy Osborne was not
very much taken, and Sir George Mackenzie'ɛ Aretina of the Serious Romance in
1661. A complete edition of Parthenissa in three volumes was published in 1665 and
1667.
p. 376, l. 5, insert the before chevalier
p. 422, l. 15, Howard, James should be inserted before All Mistaken. (This and
the subsequent play were by him, not by Edward Howard. )
1. 2 from bottom, the entry Cibber should read:
Cibber, Theophilus. An Account of the Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and
Ireland, 5 vols. 1753.
p. 445, 1. 2 from bottom, for Grammont. Des read Grammont; des
p. 478, l1. 12, 13 from bottom, transfer entries Gray, G. J. and Elton, 0. to
heading Sir Isaac Newton
VOL. IX
p. 139, for Doctor's read Doctors'
p. 204, note, for second earl read third earl
p. 254, note, for Lord Walpole read Lord Holland
p. 276, 1. 15 and p. 499, 1. 40, for Gerard read Girard
1


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## p. 1 (#25) ###############################################

CHAPTER 1
I
DEFOE-THE NEWSPAPER AND THE NOVEL
DEFOE is known to our day chiefly as the author of Robinson
Crusoe, a pioneer novelist of adventure and low life. Students,
indeed, remember that he was also a prolific pamphleteer of unenvi-
able character and many vicissitudes. To his early biographers, he
was not merely a great novelist and journalist, but a martyr to liberal
principles and a man of exalted probity. His contemporaries, on the
contrary, inclined to regard him as an ignorant scribbler, a political
and social outcast, a journalist whose effrontery was equalled
I only by his astonishing energy. There is, probably, a measure of
truth in all these views; it is certainly true that the novelist we
remember was evolved out of the journalist we have forgotten.
When Defoe established his most important periodical, The
Review, in February 1704, the English newspaper, in a technical
sense, was not quite fifty years old. There had been weekly
Corantos
, or pamphlets of foreign news, from 1622 to 1641, and,
throughout the period of the civil war and the commonwealth,
there had been weekly 'newsbooks' designed to spread domestic
news, official or unofficial, parliamentary or royalist; but there
existed no real newspaper, no news periodical, not a pamphlet or
a newsletter, until the appearance of The Oxford Gazette in
November 1665'. The intrigues that led to the founding of this
paper, which soon became The London Gazette and, for many
years
, meagre and jejune though it was, possessed a monopoly of
the printed news, are of abundant interest, but have already been
noticed in this work? . It must suffice to say that such predecessors
in journalism as Defoe had before he was of an age to be influenced
by what he read were, in the main, purveyors of news through
pamphlets and written newsletters-interesting and able men,
many of them; generally staunch partisans ; sometimes, as in the
case of Marchamont Nedham, whom one regrets to encounter in
Milton's company, shameless turncoats. From their rather sorry
See Williams, J. B. , History of English Journalism, etc. p. 7.
* See ante, vol. vn, chap. xv, pp. 363—5.
1
!
E. L. IX.
CH. I.
1
8


## p. 2 (#26) ###############################################

2
Defoe—the Newspaper and the Novel
ranks, two figures of special importance stand out: Henry Muddiman,
the best news disseminator of his day, who has been mentioned
previously), and Roger L'Estrange, who was worsted by Muddiman
as an editor of newsbooks, but in whom, as political journalist,
indefatigable pamphleteer and competent man of letters, we
discover Defoe's most significant prototype.
L'Estrange was born, of good Norfolk stock, on 17 December
1616. He received an education befitting his station and, on
reaching his majority, became a zealous supporter of the king.
Betrayed in a plot for the recapture of Lynn, he was seized,
unfairly condemned to death, reprieved, left languishing for a few
years in Newgate and, finally, suffered to escape. During his
imprisonment, he made a small beginning as a pamphleteer, and
it is to the exasperating treatment accorded him that we may
partly attribute the dogmatic partisanship which is the most
striking characteristic of his political and ecclesiastical writings.
His adventures on the continent and his experiences in England
from his return in 1653 to the death of Cromwell may be passed
over. Late in 1659, he came forward as a writer of pamphlets and
broadsides designed to promote the restoration of Charles II.
Many of them may be read in the tract entitled L'Estrange his
Apology, but his only production of the period that possesses
any general interest is his scurrilous attack on Milton bearing
the inhuman title No Blinde Guides. After the restoration,
L'Estrange felt that his services were not duly recognised; but he
did not, on that account, neglect his assumed duties as castigator
of all persons whom he deemed factious—particularly presbyterians.
His tracts of this period often contain important information about
their author and throw light on the times; but, save for occasional
passages of quaint homeliness, they make dismal reading.
In the summer of 1663, he published his stringent Considera-
tions and Proposals in order to the Regulation of the Press, and
he soon had his reward in his appointment as one of the licensers,
and as surveyor of printing presses. He was also granted a
monopoly of the news; but his two weekly newsbooks caused dis-
satisfaction, and The Gazette finally drove him from the field. He
was more successful as a suppressor of seditious publications,
witness the notorious case of John Twyn—but such sinister success
as he had has cast upon his name, whether fully merited or not,
a reproach from which it will never be freed. For about fifteen
years, his official duties seem to have checked his fluent pen; but,
1 See ante, vol. VII, pp. 349, 362 ff.


## p. 3 (#27) ###############################################

L’Estrange and Popish Plot. The Observator 3
during this period, he began, probably with his version of the
Visions of Quevedo, in 1667, the long series of his translations,
and he published, in 1674, a sensible Discourse of the Fishery,
thus anticipating Defoe in the character of promoter.
In 1679, he assailed Shaftesbury and the exclusionists in
pamphlets which won him the royal regard. During the next
year, he was in the thick of the controversy about the popish plot,
labouring to allay the popular fury against Roman Catholics. His
denunciations of Oates and other informers led to machinations
against himself. He was falsely accused of endeavouring by bribery
to secure the defamation of Oates, and he was charged with being
a papist. He was acquitted by the council; but public opinion
ran so high against him that he fled, for a short time, to Holland.
To employ a phrase in the title of one of his tracts, “a whole Litter
of Libellers' assailed him at this season; but 'the Dog Towzer'
was not to be thus daunted. He returned in February 1681, and
kept the press busy, not only with apologetic pamphlets, but with
bitter assaults upon the dissenters and with one of the most
important of his works, his political newspaper The Observator:
In Question and Answer.
This journal, of two double-columned folio pages, began its
career on 13 April 1681 and ran to 9 March 1686/7. After no. 5,
readers could not be sure how many issues they would receive
a week; but, as a rule, the tireless editor supplied them with three
or four numbers devoted to abuse of dissenters, whigs, trimmers
and Titus Oates. Throughout, he employed a device, which he had
not originated, but which his example made popular for a genera-
tion—the trick of casting each number in the form of a dialogue.
It is needless to attempt to chronicle the changes in the form of title
and in the persons of his interlocutors, since, in order to avoid
the mistakes already made by bibliographers, one would need to
examine every page of the periodical-an appalling task. It is
enough to say that L'Estrange had a large share in the final
discrediting of Oates; that, until it suited the king's purpose to
issue the declaration of indulgence, clerical and royal favour
crowned his ecclesiastical and political zeal; and that his many
critics had abundant excuse for the diatribes they continued to
issue against him. Defoe, who was probably in London during
the larger part of The Observator's life, may thus early have
determined that, if ever he should edit a paper of his own, he
would avoid the awkward dialogue form and an extravagance
that defeated its own ends.
1-2


## p. 4 (#28) ###############################################

4 Defoe—the Newspaper and the Novel
The date of his knighting by James II, April 1685, may be held
to mark the zenith of L'Estrange's career. In 1686, he was sent
on a mission to Scotland; in 1687, in his answer to Halifax's
famous Letter to a Dissenter, he supported the king's claim to the
dispensing power; in 1688, he received from James a reward in
money that may have made him feel less keenly the suppression of
The Observator. At the revolution, he was dismissed from his post
of licenser and imprisoned. For several years after his release, he
led a troubled life. He was more than once rearrested; his health
declined ; his wife died ruined by gambling; he was disappointed in
his children; and, long before his death, on 11 December 1704, he
had lost all his influence and become a bookseller's hack. Yet it is
to this period that we owe his most important literary work, The
Fables of Æsop and other Eminent Mythologists : with Moral
Reflections, which appeared as a folio in 1692, and was followed, in
1699, by a second part, Fables and Storyes Moralized. His long
series of translations, many of them from the French and the
Spanish”, is noted elsewhere. Defoe did not follow far in his
steps as a translator; but it is not improbable that, when, in his old
age, he found himself cut off from journalism, he remembered the
example set him by L'Estrange and displayed an even more remark-
able general literary fecundity. It is almost needless to add that,
whether as journalist, pamphleteer, or miscellaneous writer, Defoe, in
comparison with his predecessor, profited from the general advance
made by the late seventeenth century toward a less cumbrous prose.
There was another journalist contemporary with L'Estrange to
whom Defoe was indebted. This was Henry Care, whose opposition
to the church party made him a special object of The Observator's
vituperations. He edited, in 1678—9, a quarto Pacquet of Advice
from Rome, which soon added to its title the word Weekly and
continued its existence, through five volumes, to 13 July 1683.
Later, he supported James and the Roman Catholics. If we may
trust Defoe, there is no doubt that Care's early death was brought
on by bad habits. He is chiefly important to us because it was from
him that Defoe borrowed the general idea of the department in
The Review known as the proceedings of the Scandalous Club. '
Space is wanting for a full discussion of the evolution of
journalism between the fall of The Observator and the founding
of The Review. A few meagre newspapers sprang up to rival The
Gazette so soon as James had fled the kingdom, and, between 1690
and 1696, John Dunton, the eccentric bookseller, later famous for
1 Cf. as to these, post, chap. x.


## p. 5 (#29) ###############################################

Rival Newspapers. The Review 5
his Life and Errors and for his absurd political pamphlets,
published his Athenian Gazette, afterwards The Athenian Mercury,
as an organ for those curious in philosophical and recondite
matters. From Dunton, Defoe borrowed some of the topics dis-
cussed in the miscellaneous portion of his paper. In 1695, the
Licensing Act, which had for some years been administered with
moderation, was allowed to lapse, and several new journals were at
once begun, some of which were destined to have important careers.
Chief among these were The Flying Post, a triweekly whig organ,
edited by the Scot George Ridpath, for many years a bitter
opponent of Defoe, and the tory Post Boy, which was published
by Abel Roper, a special object of whig detestation, and, for some
time, edited by Abel Boyer, who, later, changed his politics. These
and The Post Man, as well as the printed newsletter of Ichabod
Dawks and the written newsletter of John Dyer, notorious for his
partisan mendacity, were primarily disseminators of news. They
were supplemented, in March 1702, by the first of the dailies, The
Daily Courant, which, like the weekly Corantos of eighty years
before, consisted of translations from foreign papers. It soon fell
into the hands of Samuel Buckley, a versatile man with whom Defoe
was often at odds. On 1 April 1702, the most important strictly
political organ of the whigs was begun by John Tutchin, a small
poet and pamphleteer, who had suffered under Jeffreys and was
still to endure persecution for his advanced liberal opinions. He
took L'Estrange's old title, The Observator, and continued the
dialogue form. Two years later, Tutchin's form and his extreme
partisanship were imitated by the famous non-juror and opponent
of the deists, Charles Leslie, whose short-lived Rehearsal became
the chief organ of the high churchmen. Meanwhile, a few months
before Leslie's paper appeared, Defoe, not without Harley's
,
connivance, had begun his Review as an organ of moderation,
ecclesiastical and political, and of broad commercial interests.
Although his satirical discussions of current topics may have given
useful hints to Steele and Addison, it seems clear that Defoe's
chief contribution to journalism at this period is to be found in
his abandonment of the dialogue form and of the partisan tone of
his predecessors and immediate contemporaries. He adopted a
straightforward style, cultivated moderation and aimed at accuracy,
because, more completely than any other contemporary journalist,
be made it his purpose to secure acquiescence rather than to
strengthen prejudice. But, in what follows, we must confine
ourselves to his own varied career.


## p. 6 (#30) ###############################################

6 Defoe—the Newspaper and the Novel
Defoe is usually said to have been born in London in 1661, the
date being derived from a reference to his age made in the preface
to one of his tracts. That this is an error seems clear from his
marriage licence allegation. He must have been born in London,
the son of James Foe, a butcher of the parish of St Giles, Cripple-
gate, at the end of 1659 or early in 1660. His father came of
Northamptonshire stock; but the name of his mother's family has
not been ascertained. Beyond the fact that his parents were
presbyterians, who early set him apart for the ministry, we know
little concerning his childhood. When he was about fourteen, he
entered a dissenters’ school kept at Stoke Newington by Charles
Morton, a somewhat distinguished scholar and minister, and
he probably remained there three or four years, by which
time he had given up the idea of becoming a preacher. He has
left some account of his education, which appears to have been
practical and well adapted to the needs of his journalistic career,
since emphasis was laid on history, geography and politics, the
modern languages and proficiency in the vernacular.
Scarcely anything is known of his life between 1677 or 1678,
when he may be presumed to have left school, and January 1683/4,
the date of his marriage, when he was a merchant in Cornhill,
probably a wholesale dealer in hosiery. There is evidence from
his writings that, at one time, he held some commercial position in
Spain, and it is clear that his biographers have not collected all
the passages that tend to show his acquaintance with Italy,
southern Germany and France. As it is difficult to place any long
continued absence from England after his marriage, it seems
plausible to hold that he may have been sent to Spain as an
apprentice in the commission business and have taken the oppor-
tunity, when returning, to see more of Europe. His 'wander-years,'
if he had them, must be placed between 1678, the year of the
popish plot and the murder of Godfrey, and 1683, the year of the
repulse of the Turks from Vienna, since it is practically certain
that he was in London at each of these periods.