English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century

The natural result, in fact, was the development of a new kind of literature, which was the most characteristic innovation of the period. The literary class of which I have hith...

It follows that neither in practice nor in speculative questions were the English thinkers of the time prescient of any coming revolution. They denounced abuses, but they had re...

When the critic began to perceive that many forms of art might be equally legitimate under different conditions, his first proceeding was to classify them in different schools....

Another literary movement is beginning which is to lead to the sense of this deficiency. The nobleman, growing rich and less absorbed in the political world, has time and leisur...

My Dear Herbert,--I had prepared these Lectures for delivery, when a serious breakdown of health made it utterly impossible for me to appear in person. The University was then g...

We have to ask how these conditions affect the literary position. One point is clear. The relation between the political and the literary class was at this time closer than it h...

Before considering the effect produced under the changed conditions, I must note briefly the intellectual position. The period was that of the culmination of the deist controver...

Crabbe meanwhile believed in Pope, and had a sturdy solid contempt for Methodism. Cowper's guide, Newton, would have passed with him for a nuisance and a fanatic. Crabbe is a th...

I am now to speak of the quarter of a century which succeeded the fall of Walpole, and includes two singularly contrasted periods. Walpole's fall meant the accession to power of...

One cause is obvious. The Wit utters the voice of the town. He agreed with the gentleman who preferred the smell of a flambeau in St. James Street to any abundance of violet and...

That was the correct profession of faith. Yet as a good many Wits found Greek an obstacle, a translation was needed. Chapman had become barbarous; Hobbes and Ogilvie were hopele...

Here, then, we have the general indication of the composition of the literary organ. It is made up of men of the world--'Wits' is their favourite self-designation, scholars and...

These symptoms indicate the tendencies of the rising class to which the author has mainly to address himself. It has ceased to be fully represented by the upper social stratum w...