English literature the book is designed to acquaint students with the main outlines

Richardson was the first novelist of the period to make so detailed a study of feelings and states of mind. His epistolary novels “Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded “ and “Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady” had a lasting and deep influence upon

the history of European literature. These novels were very much admired in the 18thand 19thcenturies. These works are too long to be much read today, but their influence has been enormous.

Richardson’s books brought various important, arid in some ways, new elements to the novel. Each of his novels has a unified plot rather than disconnected episodes. The works established the theme of courtship leading to marriage as a basic plot of the novel.

All three novels by Samuel Richardson are written in the form of letters. The main direction of his novels was a detailed description of real people in common situations of domestic life. Particularly, Richardson’s novels treat a woman’s concern for security, marriage, and a social role. The novelty of form, by which he revealed his narrative through letters, came by accident, but, though never self-conscious in his art, he must have realized that this was his ideal method. For his strength lay in the knowledge of the human heart, in the delineation of the shades of sentiment, as they shift and change, and the cross-purposes which trouble the mind moved by emotion.

Influenced by the French writer Rousseau the sent imentalists thought that civilization was harmful to humanity. They believed that man should live close to nature and be free;from the corrupting influence of town life. For example, in Oliver Goldsmith’s novel “The Vicar of Wakefield” (1766) and Laurence Sterne’s (1713 - 1768) “Sentimental Journey” and in some other novels of the time, the corruption of town life is contrasted to the happy patriarchal life in the country. Oliver Goldsmith was also a poet. Most of his poems are devoted to the village life. (e.g. “The Deserted Village”). Samuel Johnson said of him in an epitaph, he attempted every type of literature and each type he attempted he adorned. His dramas and his novel have already been recorded, and his hack­ work history is best left without record. His essays, however, showed his individuality, and in “The Citizen of the World” (1762) he comments on life through the imaginary letters of a Chinese visitor. The other sentimentalist poets of the lfl,h century' were James Thomson and Thomas Gray. James Thomsen (1700—

1748), was too diffuse to be a great artist. His poem “The Seasons” (1726) is like a schoolboy’s essay padded into the requisite size. Yet for over a century he was one of the most widely-read poets in England. His sympathy with ordinary life, and for poverty, combined with his generous sentiment made him acceptable to many who could not tolerate the hard brill iance of A. Pope. Also his treatment of nature was original, even if ponderous, and it was a theme growing in popularity. Thomas Gray (1716-1771), the author of the “Elegy”, was among the most learned men in Europe in his day, yet his poems are a thin sheaf, a few odes and the “Elegy”. He brought into his poems new interests, but with the whole of the classical and medieval world within his grasp it is said that some melancholy or inertia held him from composition.