English Literature · Chapter 26Eighteenth-Century Literature (1700-1800) (7)
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The fourth fact to remember is that Defoe knew prison life; and thereby hangs a tale. In 1702 Defoe published a remarkable pamphlet called "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," supporting the claims of the free churches against the "High Fliers," i.e. Tories and Anglicans. In a vein of grim humor which recalls Swift's "Modest Proposal," Defoe advocated hanging all dissenting ministers, and sending all members of the free churches into exile; and so ferociously realistic was the satire that both Dissenters and Tories took the author literally. Defoe was tried, found guilty of seditious libel, and sentenced to be fined, to stand three days in the pillory, and to be imprisoned. Hardly had the sentence been pronounced when Defoe wrote his "Hymn to the Pillory,"--
Hail hieroglyphic state machine, Contrived to punish fancy in,--
a set of doggerel verses ridiculing his prosecutors, which Defoe, with a keen eye for advertising, scattered all over London. Crowds flocked to cheer him in the pillory; and seeing that Defoe was making popularity out of persecution, his enemies bundled him off to Newgate prison. He turned this experience also to account by publishing a popular newspaper, and by getting acquainted with rogues, pirates, smugglers, and miscellaneous outcasts, each one with a "good story" to be used later. After his release from prison, in 1704, he turned his knowledge of criminals to further account, and entered the government employ as a kind of spy or secret-service agent. His prison experience, and the further knowledge of criminals gained in over twenty years as a spy, accounts for his numerous stories of thieves and pirates, Jonathan Wild and Captain Avery, and also for his later novels, which deal almost exclusively with villains and outcasts.
When Defoe was nearly sixty years of age he turned to fiction and wrote the great work by which he is remembered. Robinson Crusoe was an instant success, and the author became famous all over Europe. Other stories followed rapidly, and Defoe earned money enough to retire to Newington and live in comfort; but not idly, for his activity in producing fiction is rivaled only by that of Walter Scott. Thus, in 1720 appeared Captain Singleton, Duncan Campbell, and Memoirs of a Cavalier; in 1722, Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, and the amazingly realistic Journal of the Plague Year. So the list grows with astonishing rapidity, ending with the History of the Devil in 1726.
In the latter year Defoe's secret connection with the government became known, and a great howl of indignation rose against him in the public print, destroying in an hour the popularity which he had gained by a lifetime of intrigue and labor. He fled from his home to London, where he died obscurely, in 1731, while hiding from real or imaginary enemies.
Works of Defoe. At the head of the list stands Robinson Crusoe (1719-1720), one of the few books in any literature which has held its popularity undiminished for nearly two centuries. The story is based upon the experiences of Alexander Selkirk, or Selcraig, who had been marooned in the island of Juan Fernandez, off the coast of Chile, and who had lived there in solitude for five years. On his return to England in 1709, Selkirk's experiences became known, and Steele published an account of them in The Englishman, without, however, attracting any wide attention. That Defoe used Selkirk's story is practically certain; but with his usual duplicity he claimed to have written Crusoe in 1708, a year before Selkirk's return. However that may be, the story itself is real enough to have come straight from a sailor's logbook. Defoe, as shown in his Journal of the Plague Year and his Memoirs of a Cavalier, had the art of describing things he had never seen with the accuracy of an eyewitness.
Robinson CrusoeThe charm of the story is its intense reality, in the succession of thoughts, feelings, incidents, which every reader recognizes to be absolutely true to life. At first glance it would seem that one man on a desert island could not possibly furnish the material for a long story; but as we read we realize with amazement that every slightest thought and action--the saving of the cargo of the shipwrecked vessel, the preparation for defense against imaginary foes, the intense agitation over the discovery of a footprint in the sand--is a record of what the reader himself would do and feel if he were alone in such a place. Defoe's long and varied experience now stood him in good stead; in fact, he "was the only man of letters in his time who might have been thrown on a desert island without finding himself at a loss what to do;"[215] and he puts himself so perfectly in his hero's place that he repeats his blunders as well as his triumphs. Thus, what reader ever followed Defoe's hero through weary, feverish months of building a huge boat, which was too big to be launched by one man, without recalling some boy who spent many stormy days in shed or cellar building a boat or dog house, and who, when the thing was painted and finished, found it a foot wider than the door, and had to knock it to pieces? This absolute naturalness characterizes the whole story. It is a study of the human will also,--of patience, fortitude, and the indomitable Saxon spirit overcoming all obstacles; and it was this element which made Rousseau recommend Robinson Crusoe as a better treatise on education than anything which Aristotle or the moderns had ever written. And this suggests the most significant thing about Defoe's masterpiece, namely, that the hero represents the whole of human society, doing with his own hands all the things which, by the division of labor and the demands of modern civilization, are now done by many different workers. He is therefore the type of the whole civilized race of men.
In the remaining works of Defoe, more than two hundred in number, there is an astonishing variety; but all are marked by the same simple, narrative style, and the same intense realism. The best known of these are the Journal of the Plague Year, in which the horrors of a frightful plague are minutely recorded; the Memoirs of a Cavalier, so realistic that Chatham quoted it as history in Parliament; and several picaresque novels, like Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, and Roxana. The last work is by some critics given a very high place in realistic fiction, but like the other three, and like Defoe's minor narratives of Jack Sheppard and Cartouche, it is a disagreeable study of vice, ending with a forced and unnatural repentance.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761)
To Richardson belongs the credit of writing the first modern novel. He was the son of a London joiner, who, for economy's sake, resided in some unknown town in Derbyshire, where Samuel was born in 1689. The boy received very little education, but he had a natural talent for writing letters, and even as a boy we find him frequently employed by working girls to write their love letters for them. This early experience, together with his fondness for the society of "his dearest ladies" rather than of men, gave him that intimate knowledge of the hearts of sentimental and uneducated women which is manifest in all his work. Moreover, he was a keen observer of manners, and his surprisingly accurate descriptions often compel us to listen, even when he is most tedious. At seventeen years of age he went to London and learned the printer's trade, which he followed to the end of his life. When fifty years of age he had a small reputation as a writer of elegant epistles, and this reputation led certain publishers to approach him with a proposal that he write a series of Familiar Letters, which could be used as models by people unused to writing. Richardson gladly accepted the proposal, and had the happy inspiration to make these letters tell the connected story of a girl's life. Defoe had told an adventure story of human life on a desert island, but Richardson would tell the story of a girl's inner life in the midst of English neighbors. That sounds simple enough now, but it marked an epoch in the history of literature. Like every other great and simple discovery, it makes us wonder why some one had not thought of it before.
Richardson's Novels. The result of Richardson's inspiration was Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, an endless series of letters[216] telling of the trials, tribulations, and the final happy marriage of a too sweet young maiden, published in four volumes extending over the years 1740 and 1741. Its chief fame lies in the fact that it is our first novel in the modern sense. Aside from this important fact, and viewed solely as a novel, it is sentimental, grandiloquent, and wearisome. Its success at the time was enormous, and Richardson began another series of letters (he could tell a story in no other way) which occupied his leisure hours for the next six years. The result was Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady, published in eight volumes in 1747-1748. This was another, and somewhat better, sentimental novel; and it was received with immense enthusiasm. Of all Richardson's heroines Clarissa is the most human. In her doubts and scruples of conscience, and especially in her bitter grief and humiliation, she is a real woman, in marked contrast with the mechanical hero, Lovelace, who simply illustrates the author's inability to portray a man's character. The dramatic element in this novel is strong, and is increased by means of the letters, which enable the reader to keep close to the characters of the story and to see life from their different view points. Macaulay, who was deeply impressed by Clarissa, is said to have made the remark that, were the novel lost, he could restore almost the whole of it from memory.
Richardson now turned from his middle-class heroines, and in five or six years completed another series of letters, in which he attempted to tell the story of a man and an aristocrat. The result was Sir Charles Grandison (1754), a novel in seven volumes, whose hero was intended to be a model of aristocratic manners and virtues for the middle-class people, who largely constituted the novelist's readers. For Richardson, who began in Pamela with the purpose of teaching his hearers how to write, ended with the deliberate purpose of teaching them how to live; and in most of his work his chief object was, in his own words, to inculcate virtue and good deportment. His novels, therefore, suffer as much from his purpose as from his own limitations. Notwithstanding his tedious moralizing and his other defects, Richardson in these three books gave something entirely new to the literary world, and the world appreciated the gift. This was the story of human life, told from within, and depending for its interest not on incident or adventure, but on its truth to human nature. Reading his work is, on the whole, like examining the antiquated model of a stern-wheel steamer; it is interesting for its undeveloped possibilities rather than for its achievement.
HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754)
Life. Judged by his ability alone, Fielding was the greatest of this new group of novel writers, and one of the most artistic that our literature has produced. He was born in East Stour, Dorsetshire, in 1707. In contrast with Richardson, he was well educated, having spent several years at the famous Eton school, and taken a degree in letters at the University of Leyden in 1728. Moreover, he had a deeper knowledge of life, gained from his own varied and sometimes riotous experience. For several years after returning from Leyden he gained a precarious living by writing plays, farces, and buffoneries for the stage. In 1735 he married an admirable woman, of whom we have glimpses in two of his characters, Amelia, and Sophia Western, and lived extravagantly on her little fortune at East Stour. Having used up all his money, he returned to London and studied law, gaining his living by occasional plays and by newspaper work. For ten years, or more, little is definitely known of him, save that he published his first novel, Joseph Andrews, in 1742, and that he was made justice of the peace for Westminster in 1748. The remaining years of his life, in which his best novels were written, were not given to literature, but rather to his duties as magistrate, and especially to breaking up the gangs of thieves and cutthroats which infested the streets of London after nightfall. He died in Lisbon, whither he had gone for his health, in 1754, and lies buried there in the English cemetery. The pathetic account of this last journey, together with an inkling of the generosity and kind-heartedness of the man, notwithstanding the scandals and irregularities of his life, are found in his last work, the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.
Fielding's Work. Fielding's first novel, Joseph Andrews (1742), was inspired by the success of Pamela, and began as a burlesque of the false sentimentality and the conventional virtues of Richardson's heroine. He took for his hero the alleged brother of Pamela, who was exposed to the same kind of temptations, but who, instead of being rewarded for his virtue, was unceremoniously turned out of doors by his mistress. There the burlesque ends; the hero takes to the open road, and Fielding forgets all about Pamela in telling the adventures of Joseph and his companion, Parson Adams. Unlike Richardson, who has no humor, who minces words, and moralizes, and dotes on the sentimental woes of his heroines, Fielding is direct, vigorous, hilarious, and coarse to the point of vulgarity. He is full of animal spirits, and he tells the story of a vagabond life, not for the sake of moralizing, like Richardson, or for emphasizing a forced repentance, like Defoe, but simply because it interests him, and his only concern is "to laugh men out of their follies." So his story, though it abounds in unpleasant incidents, generally leaves the reader with the strong impression of reality.
Fielding's later novels are Jonathan Wild, the story of a rogue, which suggests Defoe's narrative; The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), his best work; and Amelia (1751), the story of a good wife in contrast with an unworthy husband. His strength in all these works is in the vigorous but coarse figures, like those of Jan Steen's pictures, which fill most of his pages; his weakness is in lack of taste, and in barrenness of imagination or invention, which leads him to repeat his plots and incidents with slight variations. In all his work sincerity is perhaps the most marked characteristic. Fielding likes virile men, just as they are, good and bad, but detests shams of every sort. His satire has none of Swift's bitterness, but is subtle as that of Chaucer, and good-natured as that of Steele. He never moralizes, though some of his powerfully drawn scenes suggest a deeper moral lesson than anything in Defoe or Richardson; and he never judges even the worst of his characters without remembering his own frailty and tempering justice with mercy. On the whole, though much of his work is perhaps in bad taste and is too coarse for pleasant or profitable reading, Fielding must be regarded as an artist, a very great artist, in realistic fiction; and the advanced student who reads him will probably concur in the judgment of a modern critic that, by giving us genuine pictures of men and women of his own age, without moralizing over their vices and virtues, he became the real founder of the modern novel.
SMOLLETT AND STERNE
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) apparently tried to carry on Fielding's work; but he lacked Fielding's genius, as well as his humor and inherent kindness, and so crowded his pages with the horrors and brutalities which are sometimes mistaken for realism. Smollett was a physician, of eccentric manners and ferocious instincts, who developed his unnatural peculiarities by going as a surgeon on a battleship, where he seems to have picked up all the evils of the navy and of the medical profession to use later in his novels.
Smollett's NovelsHis three best known works are Roderick Random (1748), a series of adventures related by the hero; Peregrine Pickle (1751) in which he reflects with brutal directness the worst of his experiences at sea; and Humphrey Clinker (1771), his last work, recounting the mild adventures of a Welsh family in a journey through England and Scotland. This last alone can be generally read without arousing the readers profound disgust. Without any particular ability, he models his novels on Don Quixote, and the result is simply a series of coarse adventures which are characteristic of the picaresque novel of his age. Were it not for the fact that he unconsciously imitates Jonson's Every Man in His Humour, he would hardly be named among our writers of fiction; but in seizing upon some grotesque habit or peculiarity and making a character out of it--such as Commodore Trunnion in Peregrine Pickle, Matthew Bramble in Humphrey Clinker, and Bowling in Roderick Random--he laid the foundation for that exaggeration in portraying human eccentricities which finds a climax in Dickens's caricatures.
Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768) has been compared to a "little bronze satyr of antiquity in whose hollow body exquisite odors were stored." That is true, so far as the satyr is concerned; for a more weazened, unlovely personality would be hard to find. The only question in the comparison is in regard to the character of the odors, and that is a matter of taste. In his work he is the reverse of Smollett, the latter being given over to coarse vulgarities, which are often mistaken for realism; the former to whims and vagaries and sentimental tears, which frequently only disguise a sneer at human grief and pity.
Sterne's WorkThe two books by which Sterne is remembered are Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. These are termed novels for the simple reason that we know not what else to call them. The former was begun, in his own words, "with no real idea of how it was to turn out"; its nine volumes, published at intervals from 1760 to 1767, proceeded in the most aimless way, recording the experiences of the eccentric Shandy family; and the book was never finished. Its strength lies chiefly in its brilliant style, the most remarkable of the age, and in its odd characters, like Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, which, with all their eccentricities, are so humanized by the author's genius that they belong among the great "creations" of our literature. The Sentimental Journey is a curious combination of fiction, sketches of travel, miscellaneous essays on odd subjects,--all marked by the same brilliancy of style, and all stamped with Sterne's false attitude towards everything in life. Many of its best passages were either adapted or taken bodily from Burton, Rabelais, and a score of other writers; so that, in reading Sterne, one is never quite sure how much is his own work, though the mark of his grotesque genius is on every page.
The First Novelists and their Work. With the publication of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield in 1766 the first series of English novels came to a suitable close. Of this work, with its abundance of homely sentiment clustering about the family life as the most sacred of Anglo-Saxon institutions, we have already spoken[217] If we except Robinson Crusoe, as an adventure story, the Vicar of Wakefield is the only novel of the period which can be freely recommended to all readers, as giving an excellent idea of the new literary type, which was perhaps more remarkable for its promise than for its achievement. In the short space of twenty-five years there suddenly appeared and flourished a new form of literature, which influenced all Europe for nearly a century, and which still furnishes the largest part of our literary enjoyment. Each successive novelist brought some new element to the work, as when Fielding supplied animal vigor and humor to Richardson's analysis of a human heart, and Sterne added brilliancy, and Goldsmith emphasized purity and the honest domestic sentiments which are still the greatest ruling force among men. So these early workers were like men engaged in carving a perfect cameo from the reverse side. One works the profile, another the eyes, a third the mouth and the fine lines of character; and not till the work is finished, and the cameo turned, do we see the complete human face and read its meaning. Such, in a parable, is the story of the English novel.
Summary of the Eighteenth Century. The period we are studying is included between the English Revolution of 1688 and the beginning of the French Revolution of 1789. Historically, the period begins in a remarkable way by the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1689. This famous bill was the third and final step in the establishment of constitutional government, the first step being the Great Charter (1215), and the second the Petition of Right (1628). The modern form of cabinet government was established in the reign of George I (1714-1727). The foreign prestige of England was strengthened by the victories of Marlborough on the Continent, in the War of the Spanish Succession; and the bounds of empire were enormously increased by Clive in India, by Cook in Australia and the islands of the Pacific, and by English victories over the French in Canada and the Mississippi Valley, during the Seven Years', or French and Indian, Wars. Politically, the country was divided into Whigs and Tories: the former seeking greater liberty for the people; the latter upholding the king against popular government. The continued strife between these two political parties had a direct (and generally a harmful) influence on literature, as many of the great writers were used by the Whig or Tory party to advance its own interests and to satirize its enemies. Notwithstanding this perpetual strife of parties, the age is remarkable for the rapid social development, which soon expressed itself in literature. Clubs and coffeehouses multiplied, and the social life of these clubs resulted in better manners, in a general feeling of toleration, and especially in a kind of superficial elegance which shows itself in most of the prose and poetry of the period. On the other hand, the moral standard of the nation was very low; bands of rowdies infested the city streets after nightfall; bribery and corruption were the rule in politics; and drunkenness was frightfully prevalent among all classes. Swift's degraded race of Yahoos is a reflection of the degradation to be seen in multitudes of London saloons. This low standard of morals emphasizes the importance of the great Methodist revival under Whitefield and Wesley, which began in the second quarter of the eighteenth century.
The literature of the century is remarkably complex, but we may classify it all under three general heads,--the Reign of so-called Classicism, the Revival of Romantic Poetry, and the Beginning of the Modern Novel. The first half of the century, especially, is an age of prose, owing largely to the fact that the practical and social interests of the age demanded expression. Modern newspapers, like the Chronicle, Post, and Times, and literary magazines, like the Tatler and Spectator, which began in this age, greatly influenced the development of a serviceable prose style. The poetry of the first half of the century, as typified in Pope, was polished, unimaginative, formal; and the closed couplet was in general use, supplanting all other forms of verse. Both prose and poetry were too frequently satiric, and satire does not tend to produce a high type of literature. These tendencies in poetry were modified, in the latter part of the century, by the revival of romantic poetry.
In our study we have noted: (1) the Augustan or Classic Age; the meaning of Classicism; the life and work of Alexander Pope, the greatest poet of the age; of Jonathan Swift, the satirist; of Joseph Addison, the essayist; of Richard Steele, who was the original genius of the Tatler and the Spectator; of Samuel Johnson, who for nearly half a century was the dictator of English letters; of James Boswell, who gave us the immortal Life of Johnson; of Edmund Burke, the greatest of English orators; and of Edward Gibbon, the historian, famous for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
(2) The Revival of Romantic Poetry; the meaning of Romanticism; the life and work of Thomas Gray; of Oliver Goldsmith, famous as poet, dramatist, and novelist; of William Cowper; of Robert Burns, the greatest of Scottish poets; of William Blake, the mystic; and the minor poets of the early romantic movement,--James Thomson, William Collins, George Crabbe, James Macpherson, author of the Ossian poems, Thomas Chatterton, the boy who originated the Rowley Papers, and Thomas Percy, whose work for literature was to collect the old ballads, which he called the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, and to translate the stories of Norse mythology in his Northern Antiquities.
(3) The First English Novelists; the meaning and history of the modern novel; the life and work of Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, who is hardly to be called a novelist, but whom we placed among the pioneers; and the novels of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith.
Selections for Reading. Manly's English Poetry and Manly's English Prose (Ginn and Company) are two excellent volumes containing selections from all authors studied. Ward's English Poets (4 vols.), Craik's English Prose Selections (5 vols.), and Garnett's English Prose from Elizabeth to Victoria are useful for supplementary reading. All important works should be read entire, in one of the following inexpensive editions, published for school use. (For titles and publishers, see General Bibliography at end of this book.)
Pope. Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, edited by Parrott, in Standard English Classics. Various other school editions of the Essay on Man, and Rape of the Lock, in Riverside Literature Series, Pocket Classics, etc.; Pope's Iliad, I, VI, XXII, XXIV, in Standard English Classics, etc. Selections from Pope, edited by Reed, in Holt's English Readings.
Swift. Gulliver's Travels, school edition by Ginn and Company; also in Temple Classics, etc. Selections from Swift, edited by Winchester, in Athenaeum Press (announced); the same, edited by Craik, in Clarendon Press; the same, edited by Prescott, in Holt's English Readings. Battle of the Books, in King's Classics, Bohn's Library, etc.
Addison and Steele. Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, in Standard English Classics, Riverside Literature, etc.; Selections from Addison, edited by Wendell and Greenough, and Selections from Steele, edited by Carpenter, both in Athenaeum Press; various other selections, in Golden Treasury Series, Camelot Series, Holt's English Readings, etc.
Johnson. Lives of the Poets, in Cassell's National Library; Selected Essays, edited by G.B. Hill (Dent); Selections, in Little Masterpieces Series; Rasselas, in Holt's English Readings, and in Morley's Universal Library.
Boswell. Life of Johnson (2 vols.), in Everyman's Library; the same (3 vols.), in Library of English Classics; also in Temple Classics, and Bohn's Library.
Burke. American Taxation, Conciliation with America, Letter to a Noble Lord, in Standard English Classics; various speeches, in Pocket Classics, Riverside Literature Series, etc.; Selections, edited by B. Perry (Holt); Speeches on America (Heath, etc.).
Gibbon. The Student's Gibbon, abridged (Murray); Memoirs, edited by Emerson, in Athenaeum Press.
Gray. Selections, edited by W.L. Phelps, in Athenaeum Press; Selections from Gray and Cowper, in Canterbury Poets, Riverside Literature, etc.; Gray's Elegy, in Selections from Five English Poets (Ginn and Company).
Goldsmith. Deserted Village, in Standard English Classics, etc.; Vicar of Wakefield, in Standard English Classics, Everyman's Library, King's Classics, etc.; She Stoops to Conquer, in Pocket Classics, Belles Lettres Series, etc.
Cowper. Selections, edited by Murray, in Athenaeum Press; Selections, in Cassell's National Library, Canterbury Poets, etc.; The Task, in Temple Classics.
Burns. Representative Poems, with Carlyle's Essay on Burns, edited by C.L. Hanson, in Standard English Classics; Selections, in Pocket Classics, Riverside Literature, etc.
Blake. Poems, edited by W.B. Yeats, in Muses' Library; Selections, in Canterbury Poets, etc.
Minor Poets. Thomson, Collins, Crabbe, etc. Selections, in Manly's English Poetry. Thomson's The Seasons, and Castle of Indolence, in Modern Classics; the same poems in Clarendon Press, and in Temple Classics; Selections from Thomson, in Cassell's National Library. Chatterton's poems, in Canterbury Poets. Macpherson's Ossian, in Canterbury Poets. Percy's Reliques, in Everyman's Library, Chandos Classics, Bohn's Library, etc. More recent and reliable collections of popular ballads, for school use, are Gummere's Old English Ballads, in Athenaeum Press; The Ballad Book, edited by Allingham, in Goldern Treasury Series; Gayley and Flaherty's Poetry of the People (Ginn and Company), etc. See Bibliography on p. 64.
Defoe. Robinson Crusoe, school edition, by Ginn and Company; the same in Pocket Classics, etc.; Journal of the Plague Year, edited by Hurlbut (Ginn and Company); the same, in Everyman's Library, etc.; Essay on Projects, in Cassell's National Library.
The Novelists. Manly's English Prose; Craik's English Prose Selections, vol. 4; Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (see above); Selected Essays of Fielding, edited by Gerould, in Athenæum Press.
Bibliography.[218]
History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 280-322; Cheyney, pp. 516-574. General Works, Greene, ch. 9, sec. 7, to ch. 10, sec. 4; Traill, Gardiner, Macaulay, etc. Special Works, Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vols. 1-3; Morris's The Age of Queen Anne and the Early Hanoverians (Epochs of Modern History); Seeley's The Expansion of England; Macaulay's Clive, and Chatham; Thackeray's The Four Georges, and the English Humorists; Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne; Susan Hale's Men and Manners of the Eighteenth Century; Sydney's England and the English in the Eighteenth Century.