lines the poetical pioneers, the political and other satirists,
the revolutionary propagandists, and the novelists of terror, are the
four classes of writers that distinguish the period 1780 to 1800; and
perhaps they distinguish it sufficiently, at least for those with whom
historical genesis and connection atone to some extent for want of the
first order of intrinsic interest. In less characteristic classes and in
isolated literary personalities the time was not extremely rich, though
it was not quite barren. We can here only notice cursorily the
theological controversialists who, like Paley, Horsley, and Watson,
waged war against the fresh outburst of aggressive Deism coinciding with
the French Revolution: the scholars, such as, in their different ways,
Dr. Parr, the Whig "moon" of Dr. Johnson; Porson, the famous Cambridge
Grecian, drinker, and democrat; Taylor the Platonist, a strange person
who translated most of the works of Plato and was said to have carried
his discipleship to the extent of a positive Paganism; Gilbert
Wakefield, a miscellaneous writer who wrote rapidly and with little
judgment, but with some scholarship and even some touches of genius, on
a great variety of subjects; Jacob Bryant, mythologist, theologian, and
historical critic, a man of vast learning but rather weak critical
power; and many others. Of some of these we may indeed have more to say
later, as also of the much-abused Malthus, whose famous book, in part
one of the consequences of Godwin, appeared in 1798; while as for drama,
we shall return to that too. Sheridan survived through the whole of the
time and a good deal beyond it; but his best work was done, and the
chief dramatists of the actual day were Colman, Holcroft, Cumberland,
and the farce-writer O'Keefe, a man of humour and a lively fancy.

One, however, of these minor writers has too much of what has been
called "the interest of origins" not to have a paragraph to himself.
William Gilpin, who prided himself on his connection with Bernard
Gilpin, the so-called "Apostle of the North" in the sixteenth century,
was born at Carlisle. But he is best known in connection with the New
Forest, where, after taking his degree at Oxford, receiving orders, and
keeping a school for some time, he was appointed to the living of
Boldre. This he held till his death in 1814. Gilpin was not a
secularly-minded parson by any means; but his literary fame is derived
from the series of Picturesque Tours