It was a period when numerous and
distinctive forms appeared; when genius began to segregate into schools
and divisions; when the progress of letters and the demands of popular
curiosity gave rise to works which would have been impossible, because
uncalled for, in any former period. English enterprise was extending
commerce and scattering useful arts in all quarters of the globe, and thus
giving new and rich materials to English letters. Clive was making himself
a lord in India; Braddock was losing his army and his life in America.
This spirit of English enterprise in foreign lands was evoking literary
activity at home: there was no exploit of English valor, no extension of
English dominion and influence, which did not find its literary
reproduction. Thus, while it was an age of historical research, it was
also that of actual delineations of curious novelties at home and abroad.
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.
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