The Augustan “Mobility”

, I THE AUGUSTAN "MOBILITY" w. L MAcDoNALD T he first Objects that lay within our Observation were the Qualjty ... Strutting round their Balconies in their Tinsey Robes and Golden Leather Buskins l ooking with great ,Contempt upon the admiring Mobility, gazing in the Dirt at our OstentaJious H uon (Ned Ward) . T HE vagueness in the use of the term "Augustan Age" makes some sort of demarcation necessary at the outset. Taking into account one historian of English literature and another, "Augustan" has been made to include Spenser and Blake, who are separated by two full centuries. Frequently the t,erm is made vaguely synonymous with the "Classical Age", the "Age of Reason", and applied to the whole "eighteenth" century from ·Dryden to Cowper. Since the word ine'vitably implies associations with, the Augustan Age aT Roman literature, the question arises, what period of the eighteenth cen tury corresponds most nearly wi th the age of Virgil and Horace? Various considerations, too numerous to mention here, make it apparent that the age of Pope is richer in parallels than any other; and the period from 1700 to 1744, or roughly, the first four decades of the century, the term of Pope's literary activity, which corresponds almost exactly in extent with the reign of Augustus, is here understood to be the era of the English Augustans. ' To set down categorically the characteristics of any age is, in Stevenson's phrase, to court disaster, and yet to distinguish leading qualities is a necessary proceeding in order to secure something like a defini tion or to 200 THE AUGUSTAN" MOBILlTY" announce a point of view. Provided, then, one keeps in mind the fact that every significant member of any age or any school is an individual with his own tempel'ament and idiosyncrasies, and that among Augustan writers there is perhaps as wide a range of personalities as there is among the Romantics, one may be permitted to make a few generalisations as to the qualities which Augustans possess in common. For the purpose of the present discussion only two features need be emphasised. The vogue of satire notwithstanding, Augustan literature is suffused with a rosy optimism, an insistent smugness, which is perhaps unparalleled in any other age of English letters. Furthermore; the most gifted of the Augustan wri ters, those who practically monopolised the Iiterary stage, Pope, Steele, Addison, Gay, Arbuthnot (the coffeehouse "wits"), regarded themselves as the ' elect of the nation, and greeted with a supercilious stare intruders into'the charmed circle. In this coterie Swift occupies an anomalous position which it is impossible here to define. A necessary corrollary of this intellectual exclusiveness and an almost imperative condition of the invincible complacency of the age was a contemptuous indifference of the i/ite to the conditions of the masses and a resolute disregard of their sufferings. In general literature the attitude of the Augustans towards the "vulgar" is pretty clearly that of indifference and disdain. They are a part of the human species and thus come j ust within the horizon of the elect. The doctrine of universal benevolence. that supreme quality of the virtuous man, is the note upon which the Essay on Man concludes. This is all very well for men of Pope's class, whose circumstances in life guaranteed a'n easy competence, and who could therefore view with philosophical detachment the condition of the poor. With 201 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY obstinate complacency Pope, the high priest of A~gustan­ ism, observes in the Essay that all classes are satisfied with their lot; that none would change places with his neighbor, that even "the poor contents him with the c·are of heaven". Addison congratulates the indigent on disadvantages which find compensation in a more abundant share of H eaven's solici tude. God, says Addison platitudinously, provides for their happin~ss in the next world; and he . ends his message of comfort with a nicely balanced and antithetical sentence: "Thus do they become exalted in goodness, by being depressed in fortune, and their poverty is, in reality, their preferment."> Charity, the giving of such superfluities as the "fair sex" will not miss or...