A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)Saintsbury, George
History
A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)
Saintsbury, George
English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
The prominence of the French Revolution, which has already appeared more
than once in the above account of late eighteenth century poetry, is
still more strongly reflected in the prose writing of the period.
Indeed, many of its principal writers devoted their chief attention
either to describing, to attacking, or to defending the events and
principles of this portentous phenomenon. The chief of them were John
Moore, Arthur Young, Helen Maria Williams, Thomas Paine, William Godwin,
Richard Price, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Holcroft. Of these Price,
a veteran who had nearly reached his sixtieth year when our period
commences, chiefly belongs to literature as an antagonist of Burke, as
does Priestley, whose writing was very extensive, but who was as much
more a "natural philosopher" than a man of letters as Price was much
less a man of letters than a moralist and a statistician. Both,
moreover, have been mentioned in the preceding volume, and it is not
necessary to say much about them, or about John Horne Tooke (1736-1812),
philologist and firebrand.
Of the others something may, and in some cases not a little must,
appear. Dr. John Moore, sometimes called "Zeluco" Moore (from his most
popular book), and father of the general who fell at Corunna, was born
at Stirling in the winter of 1729-30. Studying medicine at Glasgow, he
was apprenticed (as Smollett had been earlier) to Dr. John Gordon, and
entered the army as surgeon's mate for the Laufeldt campaign. He then
lived two years in Paris, perfecting himself in medicine, after which he
established himself in Glasgow. After many years' practice there, he
accompanied the young Duke of Hamilton on various travels through
Europe, and in 1778 settled in London. This was his headquarters for the
rest of his life, till his death at Richmond on 21st January 1803. The
chief interruption to his residence there was his memorable journey with
Lord Lauderdale to Paris in the latter half of 1792, which resulted in
one of the most vivid and trustworthy accounts by an eyewitness of the
opening scenes of the Terror. This _Journal during a Residence in
France_ was published during the next two years. But Moore had earlier
than this, though not very early in his own life, become an author. His
_View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany_, the
result of his journeyings with the Duke, appeared in 1779, with a
continuation relating to Italy two years later; and in 1786 he published
his one famous novel _Zeluco_. After the _Journal_ he returned to novel
writing in _Edward_ (1796) and _Mordaunt_ (1800)--books by no means
contemptible, but suffering from the want of a central interest and of a
more universal grasp of character and manners. He contributed a Life of
Smollett and an Essay on Romance to an edition of his friend's works in
1797. One or two medical books also stand to his credit, while he had
rather unadvisedly added to his admirable _Journal_ a _View of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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