sketched; but no mention has been made of the great men who made England famous by their writings and scientific discoveries. For it was during this time that Robertson wrote his histories of Scotland, Spain, and America, that Gibbon composed his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and that Adam Smith gave to the world his Wealth of Nations. Samuel Johnson wrote essays, criticisms, and poems, but he is best remembered by his Dictionary, published in the reign of George II. Goldsmith, who talked like “Poor Poll,” wrote charming tales and essays. His name will never be forgotten while the Vicar of Wakefield retains its well deserved popularity. But the most remarkable feature of all this literary activity is the long list of great poets who lived and wrote during the latter half of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. For this lterary outburst we must give some credit to the hopes and fears aroused by the great upheaval in the social and political life of France. Cowper, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Campbell, Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, and Scott, are names of poets second only to those of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. But Scott (Sir Walter) ranks higher as a novelist than as a poet, and the author of the Waverley Novels, still holds the first place among the novelists of all climes and ages.
Towards the close of the reign, in 1807, two Americans, Fulton and Livingston, moved a vessel up the Hudson River by steam, and a little later, in 1813, steam-navigation was tried on a small scale on the Clyde. Scientific discoveries were made by such men as Herschel, Davey, and Priestly, while Josiah Wedgewood taught the people of Staffordshire the art of making beautiful and graceful pottery.
CHAPTER XXV.
A PERIOD OF REFORM.
1. George IV.—The last of the four Georges had been the acting king for ten years before his father’s death, and the nation knew him too well to expect much in the way of good from his hands. His admirers called him “The First Gentleman in Europe,” by which
