Author: Edmund Gosse

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-10-22

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780266583561

Excerpt from English Literature, Vol. 3 of 4: An Illustrated Record; From Milton to Johnson; Part II While, therefore, we cannot claim for the Opening years of the centurv the production of any masterpieces, and while its appearance, from an intellectual point of view, is to us quiescent, yet without doubt the seeds of genius were swelling in the darkness. In all departments of thought and art, Englishmen were throwing off the last rags of the worn-out garments of the Renaissance, and were accustoming themselves to wear with comfort their new suit of classical formulas. In poetry, philosophy, history, religion, the age was learning the great lesson that the imagination was no longer to be a law unto itself, but was to follow closely a code dictated by reason and the tradition of the ancients. Enthusiasm was condemned as an irregularity, the daring use of imagery as an error against manners. The divines were careful to restrain their raptures, and to talk and write like lawyers. Philosophical writers gladly modelled themselves on Hobbes and Locke, the nakedness of whose unenthusiastic style was eminently sympathetic to them, although thev conceived a greater elegance of delivery necessary. Their speculations be came mainly ethical, and the elements of mystery and romance almost entirely died out. Neither the pursuit of pleasure nor the assuaging of conscience, no active force of any kind, became supreme with the larger class of readers; but the new bourgeois rank Of educated persons, which the age of Queen Anne created, occupied itself in a passive analysis of human nature. It loved to sit still and watch the world go by; an appetite for realistic description, bounded by a decent code, and slipping neither up into enthusiasm nor down into scepticism, became the ruling passion of the age. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries common-sense had been by no means characteristic of the English race, which had struggled, Haunted, or aspired. It now went back to something like its earlier serenity, and in an age of comparatively feeble emotion and slight intensity took things as they were. In Shaftesbury, a writer of provisional but extraordinary influence, we see this common-sense taking the form of a mild and exuberant optimism; and perhaps what makes the dark figure of Swift stand out SO vividly against the rose-grey background of the age is the incongruity of his violence and misanthropy in a world so easy-going. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.