In the 18th century, an emotional sensitiveness found an expression in literature and gradually merged into the larger and deeper imaginative life of the Romantic Revival.
It was Mathew Arnold who summed up the 18th century in English Literature as 'the age of prose and reason, our excellent and indispensable 18th century. The 18th century literature was the product of reason and intelligence playing upon the surface of life. It was commonly critical didactic and satirical. It produced poetry of argument and criticism of politics and personalities, and was couched in the heroic couplet which in the long run was bound to grow monotonous. As for the general social tone of the age "manners were coarse, politics scandalously corrupt, and the general tone of society brutal." But we must not think that the 18th century was without excellence and values of its own. In the words of W.J. Long, "The literature of the reign of Queen Anne was the better mind of England when it had recognized itself through good sense and moderation of temper from the Puritan excess and from wings to soar; but it was something to have attained to a sober way of regarding human life and to the provisional resting place of a philosophical and theological compromise."
The general temper of the age may be summed up in a phrase. "The Age of Reason." It was, in reality, an age opposed to individual initiative in the arts, science and social progress. It was a new frivolous age for all well-to-do, but it was a correct and moral frivolity. It was a period of false appearances, of assured self interest, and of established rules and regulations for custom and form. In this age much importance was attached to reason in modes of thinking and expressing-reason may be interpreted as good sense, rationalism, intellect, wit or just dry logic-ism, but it was definitely opposed to excessive emotionalism, sentimentalism extravagance, eccentricity and even imagination.
It was Mathew Arnold who summed up the 18th century in English Literature as 'the age of prose and reason, our excellent and indispensable 18th century. The 18th century literature was the product of reason and intelligence playing upon the surface of life. It was commonly critical didactic and satirical. It produced poetry of argument and criticism of politics and personalities, and was couched in the heroic couplet which in the long run was bound to grow monotonous. As for the general social tone of the age "manners were coarse, politics scandalously corrupt, and the general tone of society brutal." But we must not think that the 18th century was without excellence and values of its own. In the words of W.J. Long, "The literature of the reign of Queen Anne was the better mind of England when it had recognized itself through good sense and moderation of temper from the Puritan excess and from wings to soar; but it was something to have attained to a sober way of regarding human life and to the provisional resting place of a philosophical and theological compromise."
The general temper of the age may be summed up in a phrase. "The Age of Reason." It was, in reality, an age opposed to individual initiative in the arts, science and social progress. It was a new frivolous age for all well-to-do, but it was a correct and moral frivolity. It was a period of false appearances, of assured self interest, and of established rules and regulations for custom and form. In this age much importance was attached to reason in modes of thinking and expressing-reason may be interpreted as good sense, rationalism, intellect, wit or just dry logic-ism, but it was definitely opposed to excessive emotionalism, sentimentalism extravagance, eccentricity and even imagination.
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