The Age of Pope or the age of Augustan

The Age of Pope, also known as the Augustan Age. This age spreads over the reign of few monarchs such as Queen Anne, George I of Hanover and George II of, again of the House of Hanover. The Augustan Age or the Age of Pope is also known by a different set of names such as

1.The Age of Neoclassicism
2.Age of Reason
3.Age of Exuberance
4.Age of Scandal and also an Age of Enlightenment.

After the period of Renaissance that the English people witnessed from the age of Elizabethan times onwards, with the onset of the reign of Queen Anne and in the post-restoration period it is predominated by an age of enlightenment. So we begin to note that whatever happens during these different periods in terms of literature, politics, culture, religion, other kinds of social changes and reforms, all of that is a product of this all-encompassing sweeping movement known as the enlightenment movement.

If we begin to take a look at the political happenings in England during this point of time, especially after the reign of Charles II, we notice that it was King James II who succeeded Charles II’s rule. However, he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution that happened in 1688. So King James II ruled from February 1685 only till 1688. James II was the second surviving son of Charles I and he was also the brother of Charles II. So after the death of Charles II who was heirless, we find James II assuming the throne. We also note that James II was the last Catholic monarch of England and he did not enjoy much popular support because he was trying to rule over a predominantly Protestant nation.

He was also suspected of being very pro-French since he was brought up in France and he had a lot of French influence in how he was going about his governance. He was also quite pro-Catholic and he also had begun to show the intentions of being an absolute monarch and this was something that the English people had begun to scorn with utmost hatred and we also know that it had even led to the beheading of previous monarchs. So James II in his attempts to restore Catholicism, he almost tried to bring in certain kind of religious liberty and harmony which was not taken very kindly by the English people.

However, the immediate trigger for sending out James II or immediate trigger in rising in rebel against James II was the birth of a son for him. Until then he only had two daughters who were being raised as Protestant. So that was not seen as much of a problem and also the birth of a son indicated that there is a legal male heir who also, there was a possibility of restoring Catholicism and also having another absolute monarch with catholic loyalty and catholic vent of might. So this was quite an unexpectable to the people and we almost find them conspiring to deposed James II. So then what happens is the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which is also known as the bloodless revolution of England because there was no war waged for it, there were no internal or external conflicts. It was a very strategic kind of planning that the parliament had undertaken. We find that this Glorious Revolution was led by none other than James II’s own son-in-law and also his nephew, the William of Orange. He was also the husband of one of his daughters Mary.

In 1688, we find a group of 7 Protestant nobles who were also part of the Parliament. They invite William of Orange to come to England with an army and take over the English crown. Soon after that since the monarch of England also ruled over Ireland and Scotland, we find them also complying to this new move and we find that by 11 April 1689 the Parliament of Scotland declares James II to have forfeited the throne because he had already fled England fearing this onslaught and attack from his son-in-law and nephew William of Orange. So by, we do find it by 1688 with throughout the very smooth kind of transition through a very bloodless kind of transition.

The Glorious Revolution happens and William of Orange and his wife Mary who is also the daughter of James II, they assume, jointly they assume the crown of England. And William the (sec), William also assumes the title of the King of England as William II. By 1701, we also find the parliament and the other leading rulers, they also taking enough precaution to prevent another catholic rule happening in England at a later point of time. So by 1701, we find this particular act of settlement being passed which also ruled that. No Roman Catholic was permitted to ascend the English throne, nor could any English monarch marry a Roman Catholic. So in that sense, James II, he was the last Catholic monarch who ruled over England. Around the same time, we continue to see the rise of political parties and primarily Whigs and Tories.

Whigs celebrated a sense of personal freedom, we also find that due to their strategic alliances with the wealthy nobles of the, of those times and also about due to their economic and commercial policies they used to gain in the long run. And Tories, they were more conventional and they continue to believe in the royal divine right. This particular period also witnessed the parliamentary union of England and Scotland. We do find that this had a lot of political implications even in the later points of time if you remember the Scottish Independence Referendum which happened in 2014. It is an indicator that there are a continuing relevance and the continuing problem, dissection of these political unions which took place as early as the 18th century.

This time also witnessed the succession of the Hanoverian Kings. At least for the next four monarchs, we find the Hanoverian, the House of Hanover dominating the English royalty for some time from now. If we begin to look at the political background of the Augustan period, we find that the inaugural moment of the Augustan period also coincides with the reign of Queen Anne. Queen Anne’s reign lasted from 1702 till 1714. She succeeded to the throne after the death of her sister Mary II and her husband William III. And we notice that she was also the daughter of James II. She was raised as a Protestant on the instruction of Charles II who was her uncle, her father’s brother. Since she grew up with a lot of fervour towards the Protestant faith, she also showed a lot of devotion to the Anglican Church. So she was quite popular among the English people during that time.

She got married to Prince George of Denmark and she was considered entirely English in all her traits and all her belief systems and the ways of her life. So she was quite popular during her times and we do not find her getting into a lot of political entanglements during her period. But however, she was also the last Stuart monarch and we notice that she did not have any legal heir. And it was quite a tragic kind of personal life that she had led. She had about 17 pregnancies but there was also a series of miscarriages, stillbirths and early deaths of her offsprings. And one of her surviving children, male prince, he lived only till about 11 years of old. So all of these had led to a lot of despair and a lot of melancholy in the royal family then. Queen Anne is also said to have had a lot of intellectual limitations. She was not considered as quite smart unlike many other kings and queens of England. She also had suffered from chronic ill health, she (suffer) she said to have suffered from the continuous attack of gout which was quite painful to her. And even it said that the anecdote says that even on the day of her succession, on the day of her coronation, she had to be carried in a chair to the ceremony because she had a very painful gout attack then.

At a later point, Macaulay, one of the greatest prose writers of the period, he spoke about Queen Anne in such a way that he mentions, “when in good humour she was meekly stupid and when in bad humour she was sulkily stupid.” So she is not said to have had much of intellectual compatibility. If we look at the Age of Pope or the Augustan Age and the chief features which characterized it, we notice that London continues to remain as the centre of 18th-century literature. From the Medieval times onwards London was a centre of all kinds of major activities which were happening in England. And in this time particularly from the Augustan period onwards, the major audience of all kinds of literary and non-literary activities, it becomes the polite society which is centred in London.

We also notice that the writers of this period, they begin to write for a very civilized urban group whose education they could almost take for granted. In that sense the audience was very limited and also the subject matter also was tailored in such a way to cater to only to this particular kind of educated, elite and urban audience. So we find literature taking a very urban kind of shift from this point in time and also aristocracy begins to be replaced with notions of gentility and wealth. And we also notice that the motivating power in society is focused on how gentle one is, that also, that is something which was not entirely based on birth but also based on the other kinds of traits that one acquired along the lines as well the education, the other kinds of various things that fashion their personality so on and so forth. And we also find that this, from this period onwards the people begin to move away from the old idealisms and the merchants and tradesmen who were until that point of time, who were only seen as a factor in sense of contributing to the commercial aspects of English life, we find them playing an active role in the literary and cultural fashionings of the, of England.

Glorious Revolution also had played a significant role in shaping Augustan Age or the Age of Pope in the way it has been shaped because it marked the victory of the town over the court and there was also a celebration of the triumph of the Parliament. And we do not find at any later point of time the parliament being completely taken away by the monarch or anyone else, any other royals or the nobles. We find the parliament continue to play a very significant role in the shaping of politics and also indirectly in the shaping of the literature and the other cultural forms that were to come out from the island of Britain.

Education also began to signify more important things such as civilization, it was also based on a kind of calculation towards a better career. It also made people more complacent, more rational and more respectable. So education began to play a whole, an entirely different role in the shaping of the nation’s future itself. Around this time there is a separation of economics and ethics which happened and we do not find them getting interconnected with each other. And this was also perhaps quite necessary to take forward the various policies of colonization and also the newer emergent economic trends which were getting shaped and fashioned. Coffee houses also replaced the court as the meeting place of men of culture and learning and this also made this meeting plays more kind of a place because the court was the place which many could not access. In that sense, the coffee house provided more egalitarian space and also a more affordable and accessible place for everyone. This period also marks the arrival of the journalist. We also find matter such as Gossip making its way into the print.

As a result of all of these changes which were happening in the background, there is an increased emphasis on aspects of civilization and refinement which were also the hallmarks of a well-bred person. And poetry from this point in time, it is no longer for the common man, it becomes a civilized activity. It also becomes more socially acceptable than in the preceding ages. But however, the narrow limits imposed on the audience and also on matters of composition, it also led to a lot of narrowness in terms of its audience, in terms of its reach and also in terms of the range which it could achieve. So compared to the earlier periods, though there were a lot of positive things happening, there was also a way in which art and literature were getting limited and getting narrowed down to particular forms and particular audiences and particular kinds of articulations. And this period most significantly it witnessed a moral, tendency towards a moral regeneration.

Just like in the Restoration period, there was a revolt against the dominant forms of puritanism and also kind of tendency to move against the stifling aspects of puritanism. In the Augustan Age, we find them, we find the English people mostly moving towards a moral regeneration. And there is also a revolt being shown against the restoration of profligacy. People were getting quite fed up of the kind of indecent literature which was getting promoted, the kind of moral degeneration which was happening, the celebration of anarchy. 

All of these was getting a little too much for the English public and we find them craving for some kind of normalcy court and the court to be restored in the London circles and especially in the forms of art and literature which was getting produced during that time. So this tendency proved quite fruitful in the way in which literature was about to emerge in the 18th century. So we look at the literary features of the age. As you noted before it was primarily a literature of intelligence. Influence of the Classical Age was very notable. Latin was again revived and we do find a lot of translations also finding its way into the London circles during this time. And but nevertheless, the flip side was that people as well as the writer, they remained quite indifferent to the beauties of nature during this time.

We find them focusing more on descriptive and meditative kind of poetry rather than the kind of poetry which the Elizabethans loved or the kind of poetry which was about to follow later in the romantic age. This period though it is celebrated as the Augustan period and almost like a golden period in terms of classicism and rebirth of classicism, from the present critical point of view it is not considered as a great age.

However, the term is continuing to be used for the convenience of classification because many of the later historians believe that this form cannot be compared with the early Augustan period that flourished in history. During this time also we find the men of letters continuing to be under the patronage of powerful patrons. Only that this patronage shifted from the space of the court to the other kinds of spaces so that anyone who had a lot of wealth could afford to be patrons of art and literature. We also find a critical spirit dominating during this time which also perhaps led to a kind of artificial society which was quite polished at the surface and continued to remain a little rotten at the core.

This was an opinion at least some of the historians had of this age at a later point of time that information as well as in spirit everything was seen more sophisticated only at the surface level. So because of this, perhaps art was also more self-conscious, it was seen as a deliberate kind of activity rather than a natural kind of activity like it was during the Elizabethan times. The middle class also emerged as an important force to reckon with. We find that the objective of literature also narrows down to the entertainment and education of this predominant middle class which was emerging in London then. If we talk about the poetry of the Age of Pope, we notice that it was mostly satire that dominated kind of writing. So the satire was mainly directed against the public and literary figures of those times. It included a lot of criticism and even caustic mockery but also we find that there were a few who did not want to hurt the sentiments of people a lot. So we also find a play of gentle irony in some of the works. There was a particular kind of poets who dominated the poetics in London during this time.

They were together collectively known as the Graveyard school of poets. They spoke increasingly about death and decay. We shall be taking a look at them shortly. And most of the poets of this period, they were very self-conscious about the kind of poetry that they were producing. So the subject matter was also tailor-made in such a way that it also reflected the kind of image that they wanted to portray of themselves in the society then. We find some of them being influenced by a deep spirit of humanism. For instance, we find it in the works of Goldsmith, Gray and even and Pope. And many of the writings if you survey them at a later point of time, it seems as if they have already accepted the premise of enlightenment. We find it gets reflected in the treatment, in the choice of subject matter et cetera. The pastoral influence of the earlier times also continued to dominate. And more than everything we do find that there is a predominance of classical learning and classical authors during this time. This now leads us to take a look at what exactly constituted the classical school of poetry. The historian Hudson talk about, talks about five different characteristics that would define the classical school of poetry.

First of all, it was a product of intelligence and it was a poetry of argument, of criticism, of politics and personality. It had a lot of topical relevance in that sense. And it was off, the flip side was that it was deficient on the side of emotion and imagination.

Secondly, it was mostly town poetry for various political and social reasons. And the flip side again was that it neglected the humbler aspects of life. The flip side was that it neglected the humbler aspects of life. There was no one writing much about nature, about the landscape, about country things or not even about common people. This poetry was found to be wanting quite severely in romantic elements. Romantic here is used to talk about all kinds of things which perhaps characterize the finer aspects of life. And in that sense the critics of this time, they were unsympathetic even towards the earlier stalwarts such as Chaucer, Spenser and even towards Shakespeare’s poetry.

Thirdly there was an extreme sense of devotion to form. This was mostly superficial and at the surface level. We also find this leading to a lot of artificial and conventional style of articulation. For example, even simple statements were converted into, elaborated ornamented style of, rendition, for example, the statement such as God rest his soul, in the Augustan time, it was converted into eternal blessings on his shade attend. So this was considered as more polished and more sophisticated in the Augustan times, especially many of the poets thought that this also rendered a certain classical touch to otherwise the pedestrian form of expression. It was to this form of ornamentation and this sort of extravagant articulation that Wordsworth was to register his emphatic protest at a later point of time.

Fifthly and finally this sort of poetry, it adhered to the closed couplet as the only possible form for serious work in verse. This grew monotonous in the long run and it also because, primarily because closed couplet was too narrow and inflexible. In that sense, we also find them not getting a permanent place in poetry, especially in terms of the literary in critical qualities. Moving on let us take a look at the major writers of this period. Particularly in this lecture, we shall be taking a look at the major poets which dominated the Augustan Age in England during that time. Alexander Pope was born in 1688. This year is very significant in the history of English history and literature.

This was the year of Glorious Revolution and also the year of Bunyan’s death. Pope was born into a Roman Catholic family and he also had received only a very haphazard form of formal education. So in that sense, he was never considered as an accurate scholar. He did manage to teach himself quite a lot of things but that was not quite scholarly and never up to the mark compared to many of the other university-educated writers. And since his upbringing was mostly Catholic, he also suffered a lot on account of that. During that time, the Catholics were looked down upon and they were also treated with a lot of suspicions. They could not sit in the parliament, they were not allowed to hold any kind of offices.

We also note that the Act of Settlement also ensure that no Catholic monarch was ever to, come to power in England. So this was kind of attitude that Protestant England had towards the Catholics then. So because of that pope could not fair very well among his circles. He was constantly criticized and attacked in the media on account of this belief that he held. And because of this and also because of the chronic ill health that he suffered throughout, he had a very bad relation, relations with his contemporaries. He never liked anyone, any of them and we also find the others making a lot of caustic remarks about pope himself. At the latter point, it is mentioned about the pope’s relations with his contemporaries that it was a tangled record of miserable jealousies and quarrels. In his poetry also, we find this getting reflected. He was quite supreme in the art of making caustic attacks and caustic remarks at his rivals. For instance, he was acquainted for a while with Wycherley who was one of the restoration writers. But however, the pope fell out to him at later point of time. He even declared his verse to be worthless and we do not find them coming together again for any kind of literary purpose. Pope’s work could be classified into three different periods, an early period and late period of original work and in between a short period of translation.

The early period of the pope's writings was before 1715. It was mostly a collection of miscellaneous poems without sticking to any particular kind of a subject matter of form. We find them writing four pastorals during this time dedicated to four seasons: to spring, summer, autumn and winter. And this poetry was also fashioned on Virgil and we do find a kind of artificial manner creeping into this. If you remember the influence of classicism was quite great on pope's poetry. Another important work of this early period was The Messiah which was a poetic rendering of the Messianic passages in the Book of Isaiah of the Bible. 

This work was also considered hugely popular and interesting during that time. With Windsor Forest, another form of his we find him getting into a newer kind of writing known as topographical poetry. And this is a kind of poetry which described a landscape from a vantage point of time. He was one of the pioneers in this kind of writing in England. And the other significant work was The Essay on Criticism. This was written at a very young age of 21. It was a popular interpretation of the literary creed of the age, how it was criticized for not, for being not very original. Pope was inspired heavily by the classic writers and we do find many of the tenets making into his own writing. So some of them which pope himself thought was very original were not actually that original.

He was most inspired by Horace’s Ars Poetica and Boileau’s L’Art Poetique. So we find a lot of not just inspiration, even kind of blind copying from the earlier masters finding its way into pope’s writing as well. Poems was a set of two narrative poems put together. The other important works of this early period, they are Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Eloisa to Abelard and a tragic love story which was cast in Ovid’s style. Perhaps the most important work and that was the satire of this early period, was The Rape of the Lock. And this poem was fashioned in the form of a mock-heroic epic. This is also considered as the pope's masterpiece. This work initially appeared in 1712 in Lintot’s Miscellanies.

The basic plot for this poem, it was based on a real-life incident which was a practical joke played by a certain Lord Petre who had cut a lock of hair from the head of a young woman named Arabella Fermor. So this joke, in fact, led to a feud between two prominent families and it had even cost a lot of amusement and a lot of interest to the contemporary people then. Pope to make fun of the entire incident and also to show how the sort of a trivial incident had the power to even invoke hostilities between two prominent families, he decided to compose this mock-heroic epic. It was celebrated as a heroic comical kind of work of that time. And we find it, we find pope engaging with trivial occurrences of those times, especially part, especially as part of this particular incident. We find them handling these trivial occurrences with a lot of dignity and seriousness that belonged to an epic. So in that sense, the treatment was considered very perfect and he is also considered as perhaps the most important writer of work of this kind of. Matthew Arnold at later point of time, he even acknowledged and celebrated this poem as the criticism of life. So this work was quite, it was quite popular during that time and it also had inspired many others to try mock-heroic kind of epics to effectively articulate their satirical writings.

The second period in the pope's writing career was a period of translation which lasted from 1715 till 1725. During this period he attempted true major translations of Iliad and Odyssey. However, this work was not considered very, considered as a faithful translation either because it was mostly like a version of the Pope's own Homer. There was more of the pope in his translation than of Homer because due to their various limitations that he had and due to the limitations of the age itself, it said that neither pope nor his age could understand or enter into the spirit of Homer or the Homeric world.

However, he is credited to have produced a version translation of Homer which the public really accepted because it was more readable than the complex kind of rendition which had, which was part of Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. And it generally said of this particular work by this particular translation by the pope that it had every merit except fidelity to the original.

The third period was dominated by a lot of satiric and didactic writings and he imitated, even for his satirical writings he imitated the masters of the old classical period. And we find him imitating Horace in most of these works which were produced at a later point of time. And The Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot and this work was hugely popular during that time because he had satirized Joseph Addison, a prominent prose writer of the period. In this work we also find him mocking and attacking a lot of communists having high and lofty aspirations in terms of art. The important and the most popular work of this period was perhaps The Dunciad series. Dunces, in fact, refer to bad poets of those times. It was also modelled on Macflecknoe, the product of an earlier age written by Dryden. This his work, The Dunciad series, it had come out in three, at three different points of time.

There were three different sets which were produced at different points of time in 1728, in 1729, in 1742 and in 1743. All of these, this series, in fact, it attacked the bad poets of those times. And since the characters remained obscure and they were not known to the reader of a later time, it also destroyed much of its relevance and much of its humour because the modern reader is reading about someone who is not at all popular, someone who is not recorded in history other than these poetic references by the pope. But apart from that, we do find that the pope had tried a lot through his satires to expose the society’s vices and also its ignorant tendencies despite the high lofty artistic aspirations it had. So we also find him critiquing class, critiquing a lot of vices and a lot of follies which were part of the Augustan world of England during that point of time.

The important work which also showed the pope's interest in philosophy was that of Essay on Man. Though the work was titled an essay, it was actually a poem in 4 epistles. So we find him writing this in defence of the moral government of the universe. And he also, he goes on to ask a lot of philosophical questions in this work. But however, the limitation was that the pope was not a philosopher at all and he did not have any kind of natural leanings towards the learning of philosophy or to the articulation of philosophy. And he did not, he had not received any kind of formal training in philosophy. So his work was mostly through the influence of others and through the kind of readings that he had acquired. We find that in these philosophical renditions he was hopelessly confused and he also self-contradicts a lot. And however, is celebrated for the rhetorical beauty and power it had. So we find that apart from a couple of poetical renditions by the pope, we do not find him being rated as one of the great masters in English literature.

Nevertheless, the age gets known by his name as the Age of Pope due to the prolific kind of work that he produced and also due to the great influence that he had in terms of the new classical influences. Some of the oft-quoted lines in the English language it has come from many of the pope's writings. For example, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light, the proper study of mankind is a man, to err is human to forgive is divine, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. These are some of the common sayings which have become part of the English language and many of us even use this without knowing that it all originated in the poetry and the epistles of Alexander Pope.

So this was a major contributed, contribution that the pope gave not just to English literature but also to the evolution of the English language. Now let us take a look at another major influence which was collectively known as Graveyard School of Poetry. They were mostly obsessed with the spirit of melancholy and despair and this was even seen as an English malady during those times. Elegy was the commonest form of expression of the Graveyard School of Poets and they were also concerned with aspects of human mortality, decay, ageing, death et cetera. It said that in terms of form and in terms of treatment and subject matter, they also anticipated the Gothic novel.

Some of the important writers of this period included Robert Burton and his work, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, this is perhaps the most important work of the Graveyard School of Poets. Thomas Parnell’s Night-Piece on death, Edward Young’s Night Thoughts which was written in the form of an epic, Robert Blair’s The Grave. We do find that even in the title, there is a kind of melancholy and there is a kind of gloominess built into it. The other important verse writers of this period included John Gay. His Trivia, it was the travesty of The Beggar’s Opera which was very prominent and very famous French work. And this work is also said to have taken the town by storm. William Somerville’s work, The Chase; Sir Samuel Garth’s The Dispensary, James Thomson’s The Seasons, these were all prominent works of those times by certain noteworthy writers.

John Dyer’s Grongar Hill was not hugely popular then but later it said that Wordsworth had greatly admired this work. And Mark Akenside’s The Pleasures of the Imagination, it was work which was didactic in nature. It also had aspects of aesthetic theory and discussion about aesthetics built into it. Robert Dodsley was also another significant writer of those times. Christopher Smart, his cling to fame was not just through his writings but he is said to have displayed a lot of religious mania. He was also put into an asylum at a later point of time towards the end of his life. William Collins and Joseph Warton continued to write during this time. And though their works were not hugely popular, it is worthy to mention these names to show the kind of literary output that the Age of Pope or the Augustan Age had.

Thomas Percy was one writer who also showed a lot of interest in antiquarianism. And his work, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, it was a collection of ballads which was published in 1765. Even at a later point of time, we find this work exerting a lot of influence in the Age of Romanticism as well. Thomas Chatterton was a very interesting figure of these times. He claimed to have discovered a particular medieval 15th-century poet named Thomas Rowley. And he claimed that this poet, this poem, he claimed that this poet and his works were forgotten and he claimed to have honoured them from obscurity and from the past. But however the other major historians such as Horace Walpole, they condemned these claims as forgeries as well. And we do find that Thomas Chatterton, he meets a very tragic that he commits suicide at the age of 18. There was no major kind of works that he produced apart from this yet unfounded kind of claim about the discovery of this poet, Thomas Rowley. But however, his death and his life and his tragic death are said to have inspired a lot of romantic poets at a later point of time. Coleridge for instance, he wrote this particular poem, Monody on the death of Chatterton as a tribute to this very young promising person who also met with the tragic end.

And Wordsworth in fact, he even created a particular myth around this boy-genius, that is how he had described, that is how Wordsworth had described Chatterton. He is also said to have painted these two lines in his memory: the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul, that perished in his pride. So we find that these lot of different kinds of tendencies and a lot of different kinds of influences had shaped not just the literature of the period but also the spirit, the general thinking. Through this, we find that lot of literary and non-literary tendencies were also getting shaped by the major influences of enlightenment, the spirit of discovery and also the spirit of going back to the past and bringing a lot of mythical characters and a lot of characters in the past alive.

Let us wind you this lecture by drawing our attention to two major poets of this time who also said to have signalled or marked the transition towards the Romantic Age dominated by Wordsworth and others. William Cowper had published a set of his works under the title Poems. And some of his major works included On the Loss of the Royal George, John Gilpin’s Ride which was also humorous. The Task which was written in blank verse, unlike most of the poems of those times, it was also written in the style of reportage. In this work, The Task, we also find him talking about a lot of events from all around the world including India. I can remember this was also the age which saw the heightened influence of colonization. We find many poets getting into question, a lot of things which were happening in the world which was outside England and London. So we also find interesting in this poem, Task, a lot of references to Brahminical rites which were happening in India that point in time.

The other important poet who is said to have signalled a (trans) transition towards the romantic ages, Robert Burns, his work concerned with humanity, the countryside and nature, quite in contrast with the dominant form of writing in the Augustan Age which was classical and hence removed from all these finer kinds of notions. He also spoke a lot about the labourer’s lot which was hardly discussed because the poetry of the neoclassical age, the poetry of the Augustan Age was predominantly town-centric. He was also the critic of class inequality which made him quite enduring to the romantics at later point of time. He composed satires and love songs. It included The Holy Fair, The Cotter’s Saturday Night, Mary Morison and Duncan Gray.