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Poets' Corner
Number Twenty Two : 20th June 2014
Thomas Gray and The Eighteenth Century
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In the history books of our school days , the Eighteenth Century was depicted as a time of dynamic innovation in English science and technology , of expanding trade networks , agricultural
improvements and rapid economic development in general. We didn't hear much about the catastrophic effects of that development on the country's lower orders. The Enclosures of formerly
common land by landowners seeking to expand their acreage led to more efficient farming techniques but higher rents for those who lived on the land. The surveyor with his theodolite and
chain was as ominous a figure for rustic English folk as the redcoat with his musket was for the original inhabitants of newly-colonial lands.The English countryside became full of casual
labourers who were totally dependent on being hired to obtain daily wages that would keep them and their families out of the workhouse. “The lower class must be kept poor or they will never
be industrious ” was the received opinion of the day for those higher up the social ladder. Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard remarks on the ‘chill penury’ and ‘destiny obscure’ of the great bulk of the population :
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil ,
Their homely joys , and destiny obscure ;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.
“It is allowed that employments of least dignity are of the most apparent use ; that the meanest artisan contributes more to the accommodation of life than the profound scholar or argumentative
theorist and that the public would suffer less present inconvenience from the banishment of philosophers than from the extinction of any common trade ,” observed Dr. Johnson in one of his Ramblers.
Like earthworms in the soil , the anonymous poor laboured to provide all the nutrients and conditions for growth that fuelled the superstructures of wealth and culture harvested by the merchants ,
landowners , artists and politicians who provide the cast for the century's history books. Nor do we neglect to consider the trade in slaves. By the 1760s there were over 40,000 Africans per annum
being shipped to the Caribbean sugar colonies alone. The profits so gained built many a rural mansion and helped to start an Industrial Revolution back in England that was destined to make wage-slaves
out of its native poor. Lancashire and Yorkshire textiles were used as barter by the slave-traders , along with fire arms from Birmingham’s gun industry. The owners of the ships that sailed out of
Liverpool and Bristol amassed fortunes on which they retired to estates as country gentlemen. When the government shelled out billions of pounds “to free slaves” after the 1833 Abolition Act , they
were in fact compensating the many who owned slaves for their “loss of property”.
Older art historians thought Gainsborough's Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were a charming couple in a cultivated landscape but
for Marxist critics they became the haughty exponents of an oppressive landowning society who assumed their wealth was just part of the natural order of things. The picaresque novels of Smollett , Sterne and Fielding are full of the sort of boisterous adventures that you expect in Carry On films , with casual seductions and villainy as commonplace as political corruption. Satires were
a popular form in the eighteenth century , their best-known example being Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Here was a man who jeered at the very concept of human progress. Why is it that we don’t mind being called Yahoos , although we’re fairly sure we
are not Yahoos ? Do we feel that Swift’s pessimistic world-view (humanity is weak and ridiculous , their “happiness” a mirage) is not altogether false ? Intermittently most people have felt
uncomfortable at the pain of existence but Swift seems to remain permanently in a depressed mood , as if someone suffering from toothache should have the energy and inclination to write a book about it.
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Archive
Poets' Corner #1 – Poetic Pessimism, 13th September 2012
Poets' Corner #2 – The Workman's Friend, 10th October 2012
Poets' Corner #3 – On The Trail of Two Dylans, 12th November 2012
Poets' Corner #4 – Omar Khayyam, 14th December 2012
Poets' Corner #5 – William Blake, 25th January 2013
Poets' Corner #6 – A Minor Poet, 19th February 2013
Poets' Corner #7 – Thomas Hardy, 20th March 2013
Poets' Corner #8 – Shakespeare's Sonnets, 21st April 2013
Poets' Corner #9 – Edward Thomas, 20th May 2013
Poets' Corner #10 – Harry Smith's Anthology, 19th June 2013
Poets' Corner #11 – William Plomer, 21st July 2013
Poets' Corner #12 – Ghosts , 20th August 2013
Poets' Corner #13 – William Dunbar, 20th September 2013
Poets' Corner #14 – Bathtub Thoughts, 20th October 2013
Poets' Corner #15 – Bagpipe Music, 20th November 2013
Poets' Corner #16 – Sylvia & Emily, 20th December 2013
Poets' Corner #17 – The Fall Of Icarus, 16th January 2014
Poets' Corner #18 – Those Gone Before, 20th February 2014
Poets' Corner #19 – Rudyard Kipling, 20th March 2014
Poets' Corner #20 – Martin Bell, 20th April 2014
Poets' Corner #21 – Another Modest Proposal, 20th May 2014
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