The Cause.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The middle of the eighteenth century is marked as a period in which, while
other forms of literature flourished, there arose a taste for historic
research. Not content with the _actual_ in poetry and essay and pamphlet,
there was a looking back to gather up a record of what England had done
and had been in the past, and to connect, in logical relation, her former
with her latter glory. It was, as we have seen, the era of her great
historians, Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson, who, upon the chronicles, and the
abundant but scattered material, endeavored to construct philosophic
history; it was the day of her greatest moralists, Adam Smith, Tucker, and
Paley, and of research in metaphysics and political economy. In this
period Bishop Percy collected the ancient English ballads, and also
historic poems from the Chinese and the Runic; in it Warton wrote his
history of poetry. Dr. Johnson, self-reliant and laborious, was producing
his dictionary, and giving limits and coherence to the language.
Pages:
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554