Showing papers in "Eighteenth-Century Studies in 1978"

Theodicy at Midcentury: Young, Akenside, and Hume

Abstract: IT IS EMBLEMATIC of the difficulties in understanding mideighteenth-century English poetry and thought that two notable poetic theodicies should have appeared a scant decade after An Essay on Man, the one poem usually regarded by literary historians as a safe summation of period attitudes. Emblematic too, I believe, is the fact that these two "answers" to Pope in the 1740s, Young's Night Thoughts, the work of an Anglican divine in his sixties, and The Pleasures of Imagination, written by a suspiciously republican Deist in his early twenties, should at bottom have more in common with each other than either does with Pope's vindication of God's ways to man. The present essay is an attempt to make sense of these facts. Because putting the circumstances of the poems' construction in this light already involves several value judgments, I will begin by trying to justify reading Young's and Akenside's now faded poems as significant theodicies at all, before proceeding to examine their instructive similarities to each other and their shared differences from An Essay on Man. In the third and most speculative section of the discussion I will attempt to describe the difference between the poetic world of Pope and the blanker universe of Young and Akenside as analogous to the distance separating the philosophic procedures of Locke and Hume, whose central analytic work appeared first in 1739-40.

David Garrick and English Painting

Abstract: On ne compte pas moins de 176 portraits de D. G., acteur et auteur dramatique. Sa popularite et son impact sur le theâtre et les artistes du XVIII s.

Hume on Political Parties: The Case for Hume as a Whig

Abstract: FOR AT LEAST TWO CENTURIES, the one point of fundamental agreement among students of David Hume's political thought has been that his views may best be characterized as conservative. As one writer puts it, ". . . the age of Whig supremacy insisted that he was, at least, a Tory, and the appellation is still customarily used."' And so it is. Modern students are more careful than the eighteenthcentury critics, but the import of their message is much the same. Mossner, for example, while denying that Hume was a member of the Tory party, insists that the only acceptable application of his skepticism to political problems is conservative.2 Marjorie Grene goes further. She accepts the view that Hume's philosophy has conservative political implications, but also argues that his writings on history support the Stuart cause.3 Other commentators, such as Gladys Bryson, even reject Mossner and Grene's qualifications, which make Hume a moderate Tory, preferring to see him as admirer of absolute monarchy.4 The case, then, seems conclusive: the arguments are consistent, the evidence clear, and scholars agreed. Yet, in my view, a number of factors suggest that it is not really so compelling. To begin with, the agreement is not so complete as first appears. While Bryson sees Hume as an advocate of both the Stuart cause and of passive obedience, Grene agrees that he supports the

Bernard Mandeville and the Middlesex Grand Jury

Abstract: ONE OF THE MANY PUZZLES about Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees is why it had to wait until its third edition before attracting attention, and then immediately acquired notoriety. The initial version, his poem The Grumbling Hive, seems to have sunk without trace of criticism, favorable or hostile, when it appeared in 1705. The first expansion, in the form of the Fable, went through two editions in 1714, so presumably attracted readers, but again does not appear to have excited much comment. But in 1723 the third edition was presented by the Grand Jury of Middlesex, and subjected to a barrage of invective from pulpit and press, a chorus of complaint which accompanied its publishing history throughout the rest of the eighteenth century. What sparked off the controversy was the presentment of the Fable by the Grand Jury. If we could establish why the jurors were so incensed by the book as to recommend the prosecution of its publisher to the Court of King's Bench, we would be nearer to understanding why its third edition offended people, while earlier editions were not greeted with a similar reception. Mandeville himself was convinced that the Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, which he added to the Fable in 1723, provoked their wrath. As we shall see, he was partly right. But the actual presentment only alludes to his indictment of charity schools, and then links it to another attack made upon them by John Trenchard in the British Journal. It specifically criticizes the Fable because the Grand Jury held that it was designed "to run down Religion and Virtue as prejudicial to Society, and detrimental to the State; and to recommend Luxury, Avarice, Pride, and all kind of Vices, as being

The River and the Garden: Basic Spatial Models in Candide and La Nouvelle Heloise

Abstract: THE GARDEN REPRESENTS one of the oldest, most elementary, and at, the same time, most versatile spatial structures in art and literature. In its basic form it constitutes a closure containing a rationally controlled system surrounded by an often amorphous wilderness. Throughout history the garden and, by implication at least, the space surrounding it, have been invested with the most divergent significations. It appears as the locus of virtue, piety, harmony, lust, and gluttony, to mention but a few examples. It has served as a symbol of man's civilization and, in other cases, as an insular refuge for nature in a threatening ocean of civilization. But the closure of the garden is never complete. In order to relate the inside world to the world outside, in order to demonstrate the marked qualitative difference between garden and wilderness, man must be permitted or obliged to pass from one to the other. In fact, the possibility of passage is a necessary condition of the binary division of the world into order and disorder, harmony and chaos, the garden and the non-garden. Thus every garden has a gate.' And in most cases the function of the gate is narrowly restricted: it serves either as entrance or as exit. Indeed the function of the gate is of such importance that we may classify gardens according to whether their gates are entrances or exits. Thus the most widely treated garden model in Western culture, the garden of paradise.

Kant's Contact With British Empiricism

Abstract: NOT MANY HISTORIANS OF PHILOSOPHY these days devote their attention to James Beattie's Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770);' nor does it seem to deserve much attention. This work is chiefly notable in itself for the dogmatic enthusiasm with which it defended orthodox religion, for its outspoken contempt of philosophical insouciance, and for its lively misrepresentation of Berkeley and Hume. Beattie's own friends had misgivings, when the Essay first appeared, about its "violent and personal attack" on the socially gracious if notoriously skeptical Hume;2 but this attack, coupled with the work's intransigent Christianity, is what gave it its immediate fame. Unlike the major works of Berkeley and Hume, respectively The Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Beattie's Essay was translated into German (1772)3 in time to affect Kant. Although Kant had, of course, little or no English, as Arthur Lovejoy, Rene Wellek, and other scholars have pointed out,4 he

The Dangerous Age

Abstract: I ought now to think of concluding this Paper: But I know not how to give over. I am so much aware of the Inconstancy and Unsteddiness of the human Heart, the Frailty of the best Resolutions, and the most obstinate Virtue we can boast, the fatal Power of Temptation, the terrible Effects of bad Company, and the almost irresistible Force of Example, and withal, the Difficulty of attaining that high Pitch of Virtue necessary to qualify for the Enjoyment of the Christian Salvation, that I tremble to think what Trials you, or any Youth under my Care, may have to go through, and of the dreadful Hazard you run in passing through Life.'

The Ideology of Reynolds' Discourses on Art

Abstract: THIS ESSAY will deal with the ideological basis, both implied and explicit, of Reynolds' Discourses on Art.' What I shall do is provide a reading of the Discourses in the light of three different but related contexts. The first context, which has been mentioned before by other commentators but which has not been examined very thoroughly, refers to the strong similarities between, if not the direct influence-of, Burke's ideological assumptions in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, and some of Reynolds' central aesthetic presuppositions.2 The second context is Blake's annotations of Reynolds' Discourses in which Blake consistently attends to the ideological, as well as epistemological and aesthetic, implications of the Discourses. The third and final context which I shall apply to the Discourses is Reynolds' "Ironical Discourse"-the so-called sixteenth discourse-which was evidently written in response to, and in praise of, Burke's Reflections, and which makes explicit the implied ideology of Reynolds' Discourses. Of course, there are many sections of Reynolds' Discourses where one would be hard put to detect ideological implications, but if we take our cue from Reynolds' "Ironical Discourse," as well as Blake's

The Stonesfield Pavement: Archeology in Augustan England

Abstract: THE HISTORY OF ARCHEOLOGY has hardly been attempted-its early years are especially obscure. That it began in the Italian Renaissance and developed thereafter to the enormously wider fields and more systematic techniques of modem scientific investigation is generally conceded. But what was it that happened during those long centuries of gestation after the first efforts of the Italians to recover the material evidence of ancient Rome but before the revelations of such familiar moderns as Schliemann, Layard, or Sir Arthur Evans? How did the search for antiquities turn into the science of archeology? To answer this we need to recover the intermediate period, not merely the climactic events like the discoveries of Pompeii or Herculaneum but the more deliberate and continuous efforts of scholars and antiquaries who were trying throughout those years to retrieve and classify all the nonliterary remains of Antiquity so that they might realize their ancient goal of comprehending the whole life of the past. To this the Augustans made their contribution, forging a crucial link in the chain that led to the modern science and I should like to illustrate something of this by following in detail one characteristic but utterly forgotten instance of antiquarian enterprise in eighteenth-century England. I do not suggest for a moment that the discovery of the Stonesfield pavement in 1712 can be compared to the unearthing of Pompeii or Herculaneum, nor even to those other contemporary neoclassical events, Addison's Cato, Bentley's Horace, or Pope's Homer, but it raised nearly as much clamor and it, too, left behind a legacy worth attending.'

Cornelius de Pauw and Exiled Jesuits: The Development of Nationalism in Spanish America

Abstract: THE NEW WORLD FIGURED OFTEN in many of the eighteenth century's most important debates. It was useful to bring America, and particularly the Indian, into discussions on the evils of despotism, the nobility of the savage, the perfectibility of man, the influence of climate, Nature's benevolence or malevolence, the underlying unity of the world's religions, and so on. Generally speaking, however, when philosoplhers touched on the New World in their discussions, they did so not so much from a desire to understand something of the reality of the American continent as from a desire to reinforce some general philosophical or scientific point, or to make some specific comment on European society or culture. In other words, America tended to be a convenient means to an intellectual end, and it might be presented to Europeans in a flattering or unflattering light, depending on the particular bias of the philosopher and the sources he chose to use. There were sources in abundance. The accounts of conquistadors, missionaries, scientists, and others during the preceding two hundred years constituted an extensive body of published material on the New World, and eighteenth-century writers could draw on a wealth of information-some of which might be inaccurate, some of which they might pluck out of context-to defend or attack many of the philosophical positions of the day. The eighteenth century's polemics involving the American continent have been exhaustively studied, and the arguments are rea-

Distance and Humor; The Art of Thomas Rowlandson

Abstract: 'WE KNOW COMPARATIVELY LITTLE about Thomas Rowlandson's life. Among surviving documents we have only a will, two letters, and some brief accounts by friends. What little we do know suggests a gregarious and generally likable man, but one possessed of a certain emotional economy in relations with others. We know, for instance, that though he had the reputation of being something of a sensualist, he remained unmarried and perhaps unattached.' A congenial friend and an enthusiastic carouser, he was also apparently unusually reserved about his past and personal life. Indeed when his obituary came to be written, there was strikingly little even in the way of hearsay information available.2 Two stories, in particular, come to mind as illustrations of Rowlandson's capacity for emotional detachment. Both are mentioned by Henry Angelo in his Memoirs, one of the few "sources" of information about the artist. The first tells of Rowlandson's reaction when, having been robbed and failing to identify his assailant among a group of suspects, he recognized one of them as a man wanted for another crime. "I have been the means of hanging one man," he is

Dryden's "Unideal Vacancy"

Abstract: This is enmphatically not the Dryden of twentieth-century criticism. If we are to understand the disparity, we need for a start to be clear what Johnson is thinking of. The earlier part of the Life has presented us with a long catalogue of misdeeds and the passage just quoted is followed by three further specimens by way of illustration, two from the plays and one from Annus Mirabilis. The first is a couplet from The Conquest of Granada which had already drawn thiC following comment from Settle: