ry extensive, does not convince me that every member
of a London club is a Mephistopheles; but I will admit that a certain
excess of hard worldly wisdom may be generated in such resorts; and we
find many conspicuous traces of that tendency in the clubs of Queen
Anne's reign. Few of them have Addison's gentleness or his perception of
the finer side of human nature. It was by a rare combination of
qualities that he was enabled to write like an accomplished man of the
world, and yet to introduce the emotional element without any jarring
discord. The literary reformers of a later day denounce the men of this
period as 'artificial'! a phrase the antithesis of which is 'natural.'
Without asking at present what is meant by the implied distinction--an
inquiry which is beset by whole systems of equivocations--I may just
observe that in this generation the appeal to Nature was as common and
emphatic as in any later time. The leaders of thought believe in reason,
and reason sets forth the Religion of Nature and assumes that the Law of
Nature is the basis of political theory. The corresponding literary
theory is that Art must be subordinate to Nature. The critics' rules, as
Pope says in the poem which most fully expresses the general doctrine,

'Are Nature still, but Nature methodised;
Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained
By the same laws which first herself ordained.'

The Nature thus 'methodised' was the nature of the Wit himself; the set
of instincts and prejudices which to him seemed to be so normal that
they must be natural. Their standards of taste, if artificial to us,
were spontaneous, not fictitious; the Wits were not wearing a mask, but
were exhibiting their genuine selves with perfect simplicity. Now one
characteristic of the Wit is always a fear of ridicule. Above all things
he dreads making a fool of himself. The old lyric, for example, which
came so spontaneously to the Elizabethan poet or dramatist, and of which
echoes are still to be found in the Restoration, has decayed, or rather,
has been transformed. When you have written a genuine bit of
love-poetry, the last place, I take it, in which you think of seeking
the applause of a congenial audience, would be the smoking-room of your
club: but that is the nearest approach to the critical tribunal of Queen
Anne's day. It is necessary to smuggle in poetry and passion in
disguise, and conciliate possible laughter by stating plainly that you
anticip