rinciples. Yet
these were changes in tone and manner rather than in fundamental views.
The poets of the period were conservatives. They were shocked by the
radicalism of Mandeville, the Nietzsche of his day, who derided the
generally accepted moralities as shallow delusions, and who by means of a
clever fable supported a materialistic theory which implied that in the
struggle for existence nothing but egotism could succeed:

Fools only strive
To make a great and honest hive.

Obloquy buried him; he was a sensational exception to the rule. As a
body, the poets of his time retained the orthodox traditions concerning
God, Man, and Nature.

Their theology is evidenced by Addison, Watts, and Parnell. It is a
Christianity that has not ceased to be stern and majestic. In Addison's
_Divine Ode_, the planets of the firmament proclaim a Creator whose power
knows no bounds. In the hymns of Isaac Watts, God is as of old a jealous
God, obedience to whose eternal will may require the painful sacrifice
of temporal earthly affections, even the sacrifice of our love for our
fellow-creatures; a just God, who by the law of his own nature cannot
save unrepentant sin from eternal retribution; yet an adored God, whose
providence protects the faithful amid stormy vicissitudes,--

Under the shadow of whose throne
The saints have dwelt secure.

Spirits as gentle and kindly as Parnell insist that the only approach
to happiness lies through a religious discipline of the feelings, and
protest that death is not to be feared but welcomed--as the passage from
a troublous existence to everlasting peace. In most of the poetry of
the time, religion, if at all noticeable, is a mere undercurrent; but
whenever it rises to the surface, it reflects the ancient creed.

Traditional too is the general conception of human character. Man is
still thought of as a complex of lofty and mean qualities, widely
variable in their proportion yet in no instance quite dissevered. To
interpret--not God or Nature--but this self-contradictory being, in both
his higher and his lower manifestations and possibilities, remains the
chief vocation of the poets. They have not ceased the endeavor to lend
dignity to life by portraying its nobler features. Addison, in _The
Campaign_, glorifies the national hero whose brilliant victories thwarted
the great monarch of France on his seemingly invincible career toward
the hegemony of Europe, the warrior Marlborough, serene o