A Brief History of the English Language and Literature Part 26

WILLIAM COWPER. +1731-1800+. Commissioner in Bankruptcy; Clerk of the Journals of the House of Lords; poet.

+Table Talk+ (1782); +John Gilpin+ (1785); +A Translation of Homer+ (1791); and many other _Poems_. His Letters, like Gray's, are among the best in the language.

+1740+

EDWARD GIBBON. +1737-1794+. Historian; M.P.

+Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire+ (1776-87). "Heavily laden style and monotonous balance of every sentence."

Rebellion in Scotland, 1745, commonly called "The 'Forty-five."

+1750+

ROBERT BURNS. +1759-1796+. Farm-labourer; ploughman; farmer; excise-officer; lyrical poet.

_Poems and Songs_ (1786-96). His prose consists chiefly of Letters.

"His pictures of social life, of quaint humour, come up to nature; and they cannot go beyond it."

Clive in India, 1750-60.

Earthquake at Lisbon, 1755.

Black Hole of Calcutta, 1756.

+1760+

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. +1770-1850+. Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland; poet; poet-laureate.

+Lyrical Ballads+ (with Coleridge, 1798); +The Excursion+ (1814); +Yarrow Revisited+ (1835), and many poems. +The Prelude+ was published after his death. His prose, which is very good, consists chiefly of Prefaces and Introductions.

George III. ascends the throne in 1760.

Napoleon and Wellington born, 1769.

+1770+

SIR WALTER SCOTT. +1771-1832+. Clerk to the Court of Session in Edinburgh; Scottish barrister; poet; novelist.

+Lay of the Last Minstrel+ (1805); +Marmion+ (1808); +Lady of the Lake+ (1810); +Waverley+-- the first of the "Waverley Novels"-- was published in 1814. The "Homer of Scotland." His prose is bright and fluent, but very inaccurate.

Warren Hastings in India, 1772-85.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. +1772-1834+. Private soldier; journalist; literary man; philosopher; poet.

+The Ancient Mariner+ (1798); +Christabel+ (1816); +The Friend+-- a Collection of Essays (1812); +Aids to Reflection+ (1825). His prose is very full both of thought and emotion.

ROBERT SOUTHEY. +1774-1843+. Literary man; Quarterly Reviewer; historian; poet-laureate.

+Joan of Arc+ (1796); +Thalaba the Destroyer+ (1801); +The Curse of Kehama+ (1810); +A History of Brazil+; +The Doctor+-- a Collection of Essays; +Life of Nelson+. He wrote more than a hundred volumes.

He was "the most ambitious and and most voluminous author of his age."

American Declaration of Independence, 1776.

CHARLES LAMB. +1775-1834+. Clerk in the East India House; poet; prose-writer.

_Poems_ (1797); +Tales from Shakespeare+ (1806); +The Essays of Elia+ (1823-1833). One of the finest writers of writers of prose in the English language.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. +1775-1864+. Poet; prose-writer.

+Gebir+ (1798); +Count Julian+ (1812); +Imaginary Conversations+ (1824-1846); +Dry Sticks f.a.ggoted+ (1858). He wrote books for more than sixty years. His style is full of vigour and sustained eloquence.

Alliance of France and America, 1778.

THOMAS CAMPBELL. +1777-1844+. Poet; literary man; editor.

+The Pleasures of Hope+ (1799); +Poems+ (1803); +Gertrude of Wyoming+, +Battle of the Baltic+, +Hohenlinden+, etc. (1809). He also wrote some _Historical Works_.

Encyclopaedia Britannica founded in 1778.

HENRY HALLAM. +1778-1859+. Historian.

+View of Europe during the Middle Ages+ (1818); +Const.i.tutional History of England+ (1827); +Introduction to the Literature of Europe+ (1839).

THOMAS MOORE. +1779-1852+. Poet; prose-writer.

+Odes and Epistles+ (1806); +Lalla Rookh+ (1817); +History of Ireland+ (1827); +Life of Byron+ (1830); +Irish Melodies+ (1834); and many prose works.

+1780+

THOMAS DE QUINCEY. +1785-1859+. Essayist.

+Confessions of an English Opium-Eater+ (1821). He wrote also on many subjects-- philosophy, poetry, cla.s.sics, history, politics. His writings fill twenty volumes. He was one of the finest prose-writers of this century.

French Revolution begun in 1789.

LORD BYRON (George Gordon). +1788-1824+. Peer; poet; volunteer to Greece.

+Hours of Idleness+ (1807); +English Bards and Scotch Reviewers+ (1809); +Childe Harold's Pilgrimage+ (1812-1818); +Hebrew Melodies+ (1815); and many _Plays_. His prose, which is full of vigour and animal spirits, is to be found chiefly in his Letters.

Bastille overthrown, 1789.

+1790+

PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY. +1792-1822+. Poet.

+Queen Mab+ (1810); +Prometheus Unbound+--a Tragedy (1819); +Ode to the Skylark+, +The Cloud+ (1820); +Adonas+ (1821), and many other poems; and several prose works.

Cape of Good Hope Hope taken, 1795.

Bonaparte in Italy, 1796.

Battle of the Nile, 1798.

+1800+

JOHN KEATS. +1795-1821+. Poet.

+Poems+ (1817); +Endymion+ (1818); +Hyperion+ (1820). "Had Keats lived to the ordinary age of man, he would have been one of the greatest of all poets."

Union of Great Britain and Ireland, 1801.

Trafalgar and Nelson, 1805.

+1810+

Peninsular War, 1808-14.

Napoleon's Invasion of Russia; Moscow burnt, 1812.

+1820+

THOMAS CARLYLE. +1795-1881+. Literary man; poet; translator; essayist; reviewer; political writer; historian.