e other artistic
apprehension of the world. The movement was not indeed wholly dependent
upon a reaction, but in its development it corresponds with the reaction
against the continuance of a great tradition which had become merely a
convention, when it had lost its vitality and sincerity. The best
examples of this may perhaps be found in Dryden's attempt to carry on
the heroic tradition in English tragedy, and in Voltaire's strenuous and
meritorious efforts to continue the work of Racine and Corneille. They
meant well, and their tragic dramas are not without merit, but it is
clear enough that they could not bend the bow of Ulysses. They were
great artists, as we can see clearly enough in _Absalom and Ahitophel_,
or in _Candide_, but their genius lay in other directions. 'Il faut
cultiver notre jardin' is a great judgement of life, one very wholesome
and necessary for all time, but it was not the mood of Othello or of
Hamlet.

European art had to come down from the empyrean, and though the descent
was great, yet it gained new life by once again touching mother earth.

No doubt, however, the harsh reality of Hogarth and Defoe was not the
whole of life, and, by a strange transition, before the middle of the
eighteenth century we find the novelists and, though they are less
important, the dramatists, turning from the faithful and minute study of
the outward appearance and form of things to the study of sensibility
and emotion, and the world, which had seemed so hard and unmoved, was
dissolved in tears.

We find this a strange and even a ridiculous spectacle, the men who had
prided themselves on their common sense and reasonableness, whose
literature had sparkled with wit and epigram, blubbering and crying like
great children; but whatever we think of it, that is what happened. The
first artist of the new type was a Frenchman, Marivaux, and his _Vie de
Marianne_ is a study of a young woman who is the embodiment of
sensibility and self-consciousness, an amiable and virtuous girl, who is
hardly able to enjoy the good that life brings her, for fear lest she
should miss the opportunity of renunciation. The first great novel of
sentiment is also French, the Abbe Prevost's _Manon Lescaut_, and here
indeed we are in the deep waters of affliction; there are but few
moments between the beginning and the end of his sad story when the hero
is not in tears. And yet it is a great novel, for there are few studies
of human nature, as ab