Before the Empire of English: Literature, Provinciality, and Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century Britain

BEFORE THE EMPIRE OF ENGLISH

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BEFORE THE EMPIRE OF ENGLISH:LITERATURE, PROVINCIALITY,AND NATIONALISM IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN

Alok Yadav

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BEFORE THE EMPIRE OF ENGLISHCopyright © Alok Yadav, 2004.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in anymanner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of briefquotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First published 2004 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN™175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XSCompanies and representatives throughout the world

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the PalgraveMacmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdomand other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the EuropeanUnion and other countries.

ISBN 1–4039–6496–3 hardback

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataYadav, Alok

Before the empire of English : literature, provinciality, and nationalismin eighteenth-century Britain / Alok Yadav.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.ISBN 1–4039–6496–3 (alk. paper)1. English literature—18th century—History and criticism.

2. National characteristics, British, in literature. 3. Nationalism and literature—Great Britain—History—18th century. 4. Great Britain—Civilization—European influences. 5. Great Britain—Civilization—18th century. 6. English literature—European influences.7. Great Britain—Relations—Europe. 8. Europe—Relations—Great Britain. 9. Nationalism in literature. 10. Imperialism in literature.I. Title.

PR448.N38Y33 2004820.9'358'09033—dc22 2003067756

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

First edition: July 200410 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

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For Zofia

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments viii

Introduction (Dis)establishing the Empire of English 1

1. The Progress of English 21

2. The Republic of Letters 55

3. National Differences and National Autonomy 111

Notes 177

Index 215

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been a long time in the making and owes much to thesteady support of friends, family, and colleagues. I owe a lot to my

fellow graduate students at Cornell University and to the faculty there,especially Laura Brown and Satya Mohanty. That experience of criticalexchange and intellectual purposefulness has provided a crucial groundingever since, and not only for my work on this book. I’m grateful for thefinancial support provided by a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanitiesduring my time in graduate school, and had the good fortune to spend twoyears on a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute ofTechnology, where Kevin Gilmartin and Susan Ueki helped make theexperience both intellectually productive and personally memorable.At theUniversity of Chicago, I enjoyed the stimulation of the thinking andresearch going on around me, in the English department and with theCommittee on South Asian Studies. Lisa Freeman, Joshua Scodel, ElaineHadley, Laura Rigal, Loren Kruger, Chris Looby, Katie Trumpener, JimChandler, and J. Paul Hunter all helped to make my time in Chicago bothproductive and engaging. My latest debt, to my colleagues in the Englishdepartment at George Mason University, and my longest-standing one, tomy parents and siblings, are the most palpable. At George Mason, I owemost to Denise Albanese, Devon Hodges, Deborah Kaplan, and KristinSamuelian in sustaining this work and bringing it to completion, and wishto acknowledge also the University’s support in time off from teachingthrough a Mathy Fellowship and through junior faculty leave.To my sister,brother, and my parents—and to their patience—I owe much of my criticalbent. My final thanks, and what I am least able to express adequately,go to Zofia Burr, for her partnership through this work and her lovearound and beyond it, and to Leela, who little knows how much her littlemight is.

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INTRODUCTION

(DIS)ESTABLISHING THE EMPIRE OF ENGLISH

Is it possible to approach the history of English literature without takingfor granted its status as a great tradition? What issues and dynamics would

become evident if we recognized the claim to metropolitan cultural stand-ing as an ambition on the part of English-language writers throughout theearly modern period, rather than as an achieved fact? How would our per-spective on eighteenth-century English-language literary culture change ifwe took seriously Shaftesbury’s contention that the “British Muses” were“yet in their mere Infant-State”?1 J. P. Kenyon chastizes G. M.Trevelyan’svery popular English Social History (1942) for “its chauvinistic assumptionthat England had always been great,”2 and a similar though even moredeeply rooted assumption has formed the bedrock of most work on Englishliterature: namely, the assumption that it has formed a great traditionsince the days of Shakespeare. But if we are interested in gaining a trulypostimperial perspective on modern English-language literary culture, wewill need to rethink this tendency to begin with the metropolitan status ofEnglish-language literary culture as a given, and will need to analyzeinstead the process through which this status was achieved.

In contrast to modern assumptions, throughout the early modernperiod English-language writers evidence a self-conscious awareness thatthey are part of a traditionally marginal literary culture in the Europeanworld, far behind the Italians, the Spanish, and the French in internationalrecognition and renown.What I explore in this book are the nationalisticcultural negotiations prompted by this recognition on the part of English-language writers during the Restoration and eighteenth century. Mycontention is that a modified understanding of eighteenth-century English-language literary culture emerges if we take seriously the provincialanxieties that beset this culture—and, as a result, we gain a new perspectiveon the development of English into the global language and literary cul-ture that it now is, a perspective that allows us to see the real resonancesbetween the literary politics of cultural nationalist self-assertion in the early

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2 BEFORE THE EMPIRE OF ENGLISH

modern period and those of our own era, especially in the postcolonialworld.

By beginning with an exploration of the provincial anxieties of thisculture rather than with an assumption of its imperial centrality, this bookcarries out a twofold revisionist agenda: first, it challenges long-dominantaccounts of English-language literary culture that have discounted theimportance of nationalistic investments in the literary culture of the period.Such accounts have been modified by more recent attention to issues ofnationalism but the underlying literary historical framework constructedby these accounts remains largely intact. In my discussion of a range of top-ics (the republic of letters, the “progress of English” topos, the purchase ofnationalistic investments in “Augustan” literary criticism), I seek to rewritebasic features of this literary historical framework that have been largelyunaffected by the recent work on nationalism, but that carry importantconsequences for our evaluation of the dynamics of nationalism andprovinciality in English-language literary culture.

Second, this book also challenges some of the assumptions andapproaches adopted in recent scholarly attention to issues of nationalismand imperialism.This new scholarship has sometimes reinforced problematicassumptions about the metropolitan hegemony of English culture even asit has sought to subject older accounts to critical scrutiny. In particular, suchscholarship has tended to misconstrue imperial ambitions in eighteenth-century British literary culture as an assurance of metropolitan centrality,rather than recognizing these ambitions as marks of an effort to overcomeprovincial secondariness in the world of European culture.As a whole, thisbook seeks to provide a broad revision of our understanding of the interplayof culture, nationalism, provinciality, and empire in the eighteenth-centuryBritish context, and, in doing so, to offer ways to rethink the burden of theimperial past in the postcolonial present.

Reframing Early Modern British Cultural History

Let me illustrate some of the re-visioning enjoined in this book by com-menting briefly on the kind of difficulties that beset our understanding ofcultural nationalism during the eighteenth century, in particular withrespect to the issue of English insularity and xenophobia. In their impor-tant work on English and British nationalism, Gerald Newman and LindaColley have placed great stress on the anti-French, anti-Catholic, and xeno-phobic attitudes prevalent in English culture during the eighteenth cen-tury.3 In doing so, they reinforce a long-standing view, to be found, forexample, in Basil Williams’s remark that in the eighteenth century, “the


3INTRODUCTION

Englishman of every class is famous for his insular self-satisfaction and hiscontempt for the foreigner,” and echoed in Daniel Baugh’s reference to“the chauvinism and isolationism of the British populace.”4 There is, nodoubt, a good measure of truth in such observations shared by so many his-torians. But if they are taken as the whole story, they also obscure fromview the very real anxieties registered by Englishmen (and Britons moregenerally) during the eighteenth century on how they were perceived byoutsiders, especially by those at the established centers of European literaryculture. An exclusive emphasis on English xenophobia elides, in otherwords, the very real concern with provinciality in eighteenth-centuryEnglish-language culture. Not only had England only just emerged as acontender for great power status (around the turn of the eighteenth century,a status not consolidated until the Seven Years’ War), but its claims to beinga metropolitan literary culture were felt to be rather more precarious.Thechapters that follow provide evidence for this claim, and trace the conse-quences of and responses to this situation; for the moment, I want simplyto note how radically recognition of this anxiety about provinciality altersour sense of the dynamics of cultural nationalism in Britain during thisperiod. Something like the “colonial cringe” and the assertive defensivenessthat are familiar characteristics of “provincial” cultures within the laterBritish Empire are also evident features of “metropolitan” English-languageliterary culture during the eighteenth century.5

This uncertainty about being provincial underlies the raucous nationalisticboasting that historians and literary scholars have been more ready toidentify as a basic feature of the culture of the period. In eighteenth-century British writings, the figure of a bluff, manly, coarse John Bull mayindeed be contrasted with the foppish refinements of the French, themorose gravity of the Spanish, the corrupt and devious insinuations of theItalians, but John Bull is also a figure that condenses cultural anxieties,underwriting assertions of English superiority but also acknowledging acertain cultural lack, a deficit of urbanity. Dryden, for example, in hisEpilogue to Aureng-Zebe (1675), mocks what he perceives as the vulgar andchauvinistic English contempt for all things French, and in the process heattests to his own belief in the superiority of “French civility” over Englishbarbarism as he contemplates the likely reception of his play:

No song! no dance! no show! he [the author] fears you’ll say;You love all naked beauties but a play.He much mistakes your methods to delight,And like the French, abhors our target-fight;But those damned dogs can never be i’th’right.True English hate your Monsieur’s paltry arts,


For you are all silk weavers in your hearts.Bold Britons at a brave bear-garden frayAre roused, and clatt’ring sticks, cry,“Play, play, play!”Meantime, your filthy foreigner will stareAnd mutter to himself,“Ha! Gens barbare!”And gad, ’tis well he mutters—well for him;Our butchers else would tear him limb from limb.’Tis true, the time may come your sons may beInfected with this French civility,But this in after ages will be done;Our poet writes a hundred years too soon.6

Dryden rightly identifies the century following his own time as the periodin which the “barbaric” English will acquire “civility”: a hundred yearslater, by the 1770s, the British will come to embody (in their own eyes, andsometimes in the eyes of others as well) the epitome of cultured civility. Butin Dryden’s own time, and for decades to come, Britons often appearbrutish in the eyes of their own polite culture, to say nothing of how theyappear to foreigners. For example, nearly forty years after Dryden’s remarks,Jonathan Swift, in his Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining theEnglish Tongue (1712), writes,“I am afraid, My LORD, that with all the realgood Qualities of our Country, we are naturally not very Polite,” and heacknowledges that the British display “a tendency to lapse into the Barbar-ity of those Northern Nations from whom we are descended.” In his Essayon Criticism (1711), Pope refers to “Those half-learn’d Witlings, num’rous inour Isle, / As half-form’d Insects on the Banks of Nile,” and Thomas Tickell,in his poem On the Prospect of Peace (1712), imagines a future reformation ofthe British stage, as the country realizes the benefits of the arts of peace:“Inhappy chains our daring language bound, / Shall sport no more in arbitrarysound, / But buskin’d bards henceforth shall wisely rage, / And Grecianplains reform Britannia’s stage.” Even in 1740 Colley Cibber is complain-ing about the popular audiences at English theaters as “savages” in contrastto “the better-bred Audience, in Paris.”7 Regardless of whether the standardof metropolitan urbanity is located among the ancients or in modernFrance, English-language literary culture appears as a rude wilderness stillin need of proper cultivation. John Bull’s claim to cultured politeness wouldremain a vulnerable point through most of the eighteenth century, and thecomments of Dryden, Shaftesbury, Swift, Pope,Tickell, and Cibber suggestthe limitations of the view that English insularity and xenophobia servedto render the issue inconsequential.

By focusing exclusively on those contexts (within the British Isles andin the extra-European world) in which anglophone culture could viewitself as decidedly superior, recent scholars have mistakenly reinforced the

BEFORE THE EMPIRE OF ENGLISH4


impression that English-language culture was unproblematically positionedas a metropolitan culture in the early modern era. Such scholarship cer-tainly widens the perspective beyond the insular, anglocentric concerns oftraditional literary scholarship,8 but it does little to alter the complacentself-assessment that forms the basis of older scholarship. In this book, I seekto redress this problem by devoting significant attention to the Europeancontext alongside those of the British Isles and the wider imperial arena.This triple framework is essential for arriving at an adequate assessment ofthe situation of English-language literary culture in this period and forunderstanding its characteristic dynamics.

Provinciality and cultural belatedness are not terms that we generallyemphasize in analyzing the situation of English-language literary cultureduring the long eighteenth century, but they indicate something ofthe shift in perspective demanded by the analysis offered in this book.I trace, indeed, the process in which this provinciality and belatedness weretranscended by the close of the eighteenth century, but I try to show howwe misunderstand, or even miss altogether, the process of cultural transfor-mation if we read the endpoint back into the earlier phases of the process.

Before the Empire of English analyzes this transformation through a seriesof overlapping chapters, each of which focuses on one facet of the process.Chapter 1, “The Progress of English,” illustrates the provincial self-consciousness of English-language literary culture at the start of our periodby recovering and analyzing what I identify as a “progress of English”topos, prevalent in English poetry from the death of Cowley to the deathof Pope, and its concern with claiming cultivated status for the English-language literary tradition.The chapter then proceeds to examine the trans-formation of this topos in the period since the mid-eighteenth centurywhen it enters what I term a “triumphalist” phase, in which the toposemphasizes the global diffusion of the English tradition rather than itsincreasing refinement and emerging worthiness as in the earlier phase. In thefinal section, the chapter shows how directly the promotion of the English-language cultural sphere to metropolitan status came at the cost of demot-ing the other regional cultures of the British Isles to a merely provincialstatus—and how aware contemporaries were of this dynamic.

Chapter 2, “The Republic of Letters,” examines how the terrain ofliterary culture was predominantly conceptualized during the longeighteenth century and the relatively marginal place the English-languagetradition occupied on this terrain. I show the importance of a belletristicconcept of the republic of letters for English-language writers in this period,and how different this eighteenth-century concept was from the scholarly,erudite republic of letters of the seventeenth century (which has providedthe focus for most modern scholarship on the notion of the republic of

INTRODUCTION 5


letters). By emphasizing the transformation of the older, erudite republic ofletters (based on the idea of a universal Latin-based culture) into the newbelletristic republic of letters (based on the notion of cultural diversity) ofthe eighteenth century, I underline the neglected importance of issues oflanguage, nation, and provinciality to this “cosmopolitan” literary formationin the eighteenth century, and show how clearly English-language writersunderstood themselves to occupy a secondary place in the contemporaryworld of letters. Focusing on the situation of English-language writers,I offer a novel exploration of the republic of letters from a provincialvantage point rather than from that of the francophone center (as mostprevious scholarship has done). I show the inadequacy of an insularperspective on English-language literary culture in this period, as well asthe inadequacy of cosmopolitan and universalist idioms for getting atthe issues of national cultural diversity and marginality posed by theeighteenth-century concept of the republic of letters.

Chapter 3,“National Differences and National Autonomy,” reexaminesliterary critical discourses of the eighteenth century. In an extended exam-ination of both French and English “neoclassical” criticism, I show how sig-nally we have ignored the recognition of historical and cultural differencesin the discourse of neoclassical critics, mistakenly construing it instead as auniversalizing, ahistorical poetics. I focus attention on the idiom of the“laws” of poetry, showing how it functions to articulate a discourse ofnational cultural autonomy and how it underlines the anxious assertion ofcultural independence by English-language writers in the period. In thefinal section of this chapter, I go on to show how we have misunderstoodthe shifts in outlook that take place in later eighteenth-century Britishliterary culture as a result of our false understanding of the earlier period,and I propose an alternative narrative of changes in poetics across the eigh-teenth century to replace the “from classic to romantic” schema that hasserved, with various elaborations, as our basic account of eighteenth-century British literary history for several generations now.

Taken together, the chapters offer a new understanding of culturalnationalism within the context of the transformation of the status ofEnglish-language literary culture across the long eighteenth century. Thecritical approach adopted in this book shifts the focus away from an exclu-sive concern with nationalistic representations in literary texts to a focus onnationalistic investments in, and uses of, literary culture. My primary objectof analysis consists not of the ideologemes in a given literary work orauthorial oeuvre, but rather the situation of English-language literary cul-ture and the way this conditions the outlook of writers in the period.

At the same time,my analysis respects the specificity and relative autonomyof the literary terrain, and so does not subsume these literary developments



into an undifferentiated account of geopolitical and socioeconomicdevelopments, though, to be sure, it underlines the conditioning importanceof such developments. In proceeding in this manner, I take heed of someof Theodor Adorno’s remarks addressed to Walter Benjamin in 1938, inresponse to the latter’s work on Baudelaire.With a slightly perverse phras-ing, Adorno begins, “Let me express myself in as simple and Hegelian amanner as possible”:

Unless I am very much mistaken, your dialectic lacks one thing: mediation.Throughout your text there is a tendency to relate the pragmatic contents ofBaudelaire’s work directly to adjacent features in the social history of histime, preferably economic features. . . . I regard it as methodologicallyunfortunate to give conspicuous individual features from the realm of thesuperstructure a “materialistic” turn by relating them immediately andperhaps even casually to corresponding features of the infrastructure.Materialist determination of cultural traits is only possible if it is mediatedthrough the total social process.9

Adorno’s insistence that in the absence of a consideration of mediatingstructures and processes, Benjamin is reduced to an undue reliance on meremetonymy (linking together “adjacent features”), producing a rather“casual” and impressionistic kind of criticism, is an important stricture.Theexplanatory value of such “weak montage” (as Dominick LaCapra hasdescribed it, with reference to tendencies in New Historicist criticism) islimited, whatever its rhetorical appeal. In examining the intersections of lit-erature and nationalism, it remains necessary, as he insists, to identify medi-ate institutions and discourses (between the individual text/artifact and the“total social process,” however ill-defined and problematic each of theseterms might be) and to examine the constitutive antagonisms and conflictsthat structure these mediate terrains, if we hope to avoid sophisticated butarbitrary interpretations that fail to come to terms with the historical effi-cacy of discourses and representations.This book offers a literary historicalexamination of specific determinations structuring the terrain of English-language literary practice across the long eighteenth century: its centralfocus is on examining how, in relation to a problematic of language, nation,and provinciality, the literary terrain was perceived and structured during thelong eighteenth century, and the implications of this for our understandingof eighteenth-century English-language literary culture.

By no means do I imagine that this book resolves the importantquestions that it engages, but I do hope that it presents a new frameworkfor thinking about the interplay of language, nation, empire, and culture inthe shaping of our modern world by disrupting what I think are misap-prehensions regarding the character and consequences of nationalism in

INTRODUCTION 7


eighteenth-century British literary culture—beginning first of all and mostcentrally with the misapprehension that such issues only emerge as centralconcerns in the closing decades of the century.

Nationalism in British History:The Place of the Eighteenth Century

My emphasis on the pervasiveness of cultural nationalism throughouteighteenth-century British literary culture (especially during the so-calledAugustan period) challenges a weighty historiographic consensus (from thework of Isaiah Berlin to that of Eric Hobsbawm and Anthony Pagden) thatviews the era of Herder and Ossian as the era in which cultural nationalismbecomes an important phenomenon in European societies.10 But there isalso an older historiographic tradition that sees the Renaissance and Refor-mation as initiating and defining the epoch of European cultural nation-alisms.11 This latter perspective also finds expression in a range of recentwork on English nationalism in the Elizabethan period and the seventeenthcentury.12 Despite the internal divergence between these two historio-graphic traditions (the one associating nationalism with the Renaissanceand Reformation, the other with the French Revolution and romanticism),they both have the effect of marginalizing attention to the long eighteenthcentury as a locus for the development of modern nationalism.The sub-stance of this book offers a sustained rejoinder to the view that nationalismdoes not figure centrally in English literary culture until the later eighteenthcentury, but let me comment briefly on the view that the emergence andconsolidation of English nationalism should be located before the eighteenthcentury.

I make no attempt in this book to claim that the eighteenth centurywitnesses the “origins” of English cultural nationalism. Indeed, the tripleco-articulation and development of the Tudor state apparatus, the “empire”of England, and the Reformation politics of religion from the 1530s doseem to me to have an epochal significance in English history. But I doinsist on the difference between the eighteenth-century situation of Britishnationalism and the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century setting ofEnglish nationalism.

The differences between the earlier English Protestant nationalism andeighteenth-century British nationalism are most evident in the shift from areligious to an imperial grounding. Summarizing analyses of the earlier,religiously inflected variety of nationalism in Britain, Margot Finn writes:

For Sir Lewis Namier, religion “is a sixteenth-century word for nationalism,”and to Christopher Hill,“the patriotic aspects of the Reformation must have



struck contemporaries far more forcibly than any doctrinal change.” Earlynationalist typology indeed, as Conor Cruise O’Brien has recently argued,was “a Protestant property, and a constant theme of Protestant discourse.”13

In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, English Protestant reformand English nationalism are inextricably intertwined. But by the middle ofthe eighteenth century the structure of religious discourse had been sig-nificantly modified, and with it the matrix through which nationalist dis-course was articulated in the period.Thus, while England’s path of nationalgrandeur was earlier viewed in terms of religious destiny and duty, in theeighteenth century, this manifest destiny was increasingly linked to theimperial standing of British dominion and the imperial ambitions ofBritish culture.14 Gibbon comments that “we” may “compare the boats ofosier and hides that floated along our coasts [in the days of the nakedBriton] with the formidable navies which visit and command the remotestshores of the ocean,” and concludes: “Without indulging the fond preju-dices of patriotic vanity, we may assume a conspicuous place among theinhabitants of the earth.”15 Britain’s destiny is being read here directly interms of its imperial aggrandizement, and indeed imperial power andsociopolitical achievements increasingly serve as the foundational matrixfrom which nationalist discourses are articulated and interpreted.

This shift in English/British national discourses from a religious to animperial matrix is certainly evident by the time of Macaulay’s boast aboutthe British:

In the course of seven centuries [since the Norman Conquest] the wretchedand degraded race have become the greatest and most highly civilized peoplethat ever the world saw, have spread their dominion over every quarter of theglobe, have scattered the seeds of mighty empires and republics over vastcontinents . . . , have created a maritime power which would annihilate in aquarter of an hour the navies of Tyre, Athens, Carthage,Venice, and Genoatogether, have carried the science of healing, the means of locomotion andcorrespondence, every mechanical art, every manufacture, everything thatpromotes the convenience of life, to a perfection which our ancestors wouldhave thought magical, have produced a literature which may boast of worksnot inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; have discov-ered the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, havespeculated with exquisite subtilty on the operations of the human mind,have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the career ofpolitical improvement.16

Like Gibbon and other eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writers,Macaulay has not lost sight of the dramatic rise of the British nation from the

INTRODUCTION 9


condition of a “wretched and degraded race” (a race of naked savages, inGibbon’s discourse) to its recent emergence as a powerful and eminent polityon the global stage. And, unlike the religious mission of God’s Englishmen,this essentially eighteenth-century imperial accomplishment had a world-historical impact that makes it difficult even for contemporary historians togainsay, as is indicated by the parallel between Macaulay’s earlier-quotedcatalogue of British achievements and Linda Colley’s similar summary:

Britain’s “long” eighteenth century, which began with one aristocratic revo-lution in 1688 and ended with another in 1832, was a pageant of success.The nation’s art and architecture reached their elegant and original best. Itscapital became the center of print culture, finance, fashion, and commercialcreativity, the largest and most vibrant city in the Western world.The Britishconstitution became a topic for eulogy, as much by the unenlightened andilliterate at home as by the Enlightenment litterati abroad.The armed forces,fiscal system, and bureaucracy of the British state grew in efficiency andrange, bringing victory in all but one of a succession of major wars. Legit-imized by achievement and buttressed by massive economic and politicalpower, Britain’s landed elite kept at bay every domestic revolution except theindustrial one, which only enriched it more.The American Revolution, ofcourse, was not averted; but while this crisis embarrassed the British Empire,it did not destroy it. Even before 1776, the conquest of Canada had reducedthe thirteen colonies’ strategic significance, just as their profitability to themother country had been outstripped by its Indian possessions; their finalloss was made up, and more than made up, with relentless and almost con-temptuous speed. Between 1780 and 1820 some 150 million men andwomen in India,Africa, the West Indies, Java, and the China coast succumbedto British naval power and trading imperatives.

Thus did eighteenth-century Britain, at the command of greed ratherthan of heaven, succeed in ruling the waves and much of the world.17

As my discussion in subsequent chapters shows, Colley reads too much ofMacaulay’s confidence back into the less-than-certain process by whichBritain achieved its imperial dominance, and she uncritically repeats cul-tural self-valorizations authorized (like Macaulay’s) by a consciousness ofspeaking as a member of a “great,” or a “global,” power. We, like Macaulay,know how things turned out (and having seen the disappearance ofBritain’s imperial power, we know how things have turned out in a sensedifferent from Macaulay’s), but early eighteenth-century Britons living inthe shadow of Louis XIV’s France could have had no such assurance, evenas they did indeed develop an enthusiasm for imperial aggrandizement as aremedy for their perceived past lowliness.



Nor was such lack of national eminence a remote condition, confinedto the distant past.Through much of the eighteenth century, and even inits last quarter—despite Britain’s great success in the Seven Years’War—thecountry’s situation seemed precarious to many observers: the MP WilliamBurrell, in his speech of November 26, 1772 to the House of Commons,referring to the emerging crisis of the East India Company’s finances (notto mention the worsening relations with the mainland American colonies),declared: “Sir, let no gentlemen think this is a trivial question of ministryor opposition. No sir, it is [the] state of Empire; perhaps upon it dependswhether Great Britain shall be the first country in the world, or ruined orundone.”18 As Bruce Lenman notes, Britain did not “rule the waves” dur-ing this period in anything like the manner suggested by Colley’s summary:

Robert Clive had died in 1774, convinced that he lived in a disintegratingEmpire. There was much to be said for this opinion by 1783. . . . WithAmerica largely lost; British India wasted by war, famine, and corruption;Ireland restive; and the British West Indies in economic difficulties, it lookedin 1783 as if the British Empire faced an uncertain future.19

As Lenman suggests, the course of the War of American Independenceseemed to confirm the worst fears of contemporaries: in 1781 and 1782,Horace Walpole was writing that he was “mortified at the fall of England”:“we shall be reduced to a miserable little island. . . . I see little or noprospect of its ever being a great nation again”;20 likewise, in July 1782,LordShelburne declared to the House of Lords that “the Sun of England’s glorywas set for ever” and, around the same time, Lord George Germaine main-tained in the House of Commons that “from the instant when Americanindependence should be acknowledged the British Empire was ruined.”21

Contemporaries in Europe also shared this perception: “In early 1783the Emperor Joseph II concluded that England’s power and wealth were nomore, while his brother Leopold (then ruling as grand duke of Tuscany)frankly declared that Britain had been relegated to the second division ofEuropean states and now ranked alongside Denmark and Sweden,” andFrederick the Great commented on Britain’s “exhaustion and feebleness.”The importance of empire in sustaining any elevated sense of Britain’splace within the European concert of states was no less evident at home.George III himself conceded that defeat at the hands of the Americansmust “annihilate the rank in which this British empire stands among theEuropean states,”22 and Lord Sandwich lamented,“We shall never again fig-ure as a leading Power in Europe, but think ourselves happy if we can dragon for some years a contemptible existence as a commercial State.”23 Cas-tigating the decadence of city dwellers,William Cowper likewise concludes

INTRODUCTION 11


book 1 of The Task (1785) by remarking, “Folly such as your’s” has made“Our arch of empire, stedfast but for you, / A mutilated structure, soon tofall.”24 In all these comments, we see how crucial Britain’s recent imperialaggrandizement was to its transformation from “a miserable little island” to“a great nation”—and we discern eighteenth-century commentators’ anx-ious perception of Britain’s lowly position in the world of nations prior toits recent acquisition of greatness.

Even such precarious “greatness” was, however, a geopolitical not a cul-tural fact.And whatever the claims to recognition of British medicine, sci-ence, technology, philosophy, and “political improvements,” British literaryculture and the arts constituted relatively autonomous fields whose statuswas open to debate. Indeed, despite Colley’s “Whiggish” tone, significantlyabsent in her summary of eighteenth-century Britain’s “pageant of success”is any reference to its letters and literature—beyond London’s centrality forthe commercialization of print. Colley does claim that British art andarchitecture flourished during the long eighteenth century, but this state-ment ignores the fact that the British art world experienced a consciousinferiority to that of the Continent throughout this period.

One might contrast the assessment of eighteenth-century Britishculture and society offered by Macaulay and Colley with that offered by J. H. Plumb:

The first four Georges ruled for a little over one hundred years [1714–1830],yet they witnessed far profounder changes in economic, social, and culturallife than any previous monarchs. During these times England ceased to be asmall influential maritime state and became the leading empire of the world,responsible for the destinies of scores of millions of mankind. . . . The attitudeof inferiority of the eighteenth century was transformed into the complacentarrogance of the nineteenth. . . . The confidence to which such a sense ofsuperiority gave rise has led also to a distortion of the magnitude of Englishachievement in the Georgian age. It was formidable in technology, but in sci-ence and mathematics it could scarcely compare with European achievement,and in all the arts, save perhaps for the poetry of the romantic revival, it wasvery definitely inferior. Here and there—Gibbon and perhaps Hume—thereis a writer of European stature, but the general level of achievement in phi-losophy, history, and literature is mediocre. Painting and music tell the samestory.The decorative arts are equally jejune and provincial. . . . Rich enoughto afford to imitate the best, eighteenth-century England lacked the confi-dence to create its own standards of taste and culture. Behind the braggartattitude there was an inner uncertainty, a sense of being provincial whichever-growing prosperity could not disguise. In many ways England in theeighteenth century in its attitude to things European was similar to that ofRome in the first century to Greece or America in the late nineteenth toEurope—too conscious both of its own riches and its own rawness.25



Plumb astutely states the difficulty, for us who come in the wake ofBritain’s imperial epoch, of addressing the terrain of culture in Britishhistory: there are, as he suggests, multiple, and multiply resistant, layeringsof ideological “distortion” that have served to magnify and enforce theclaims of British culture for several centuries now. Since World War II—during the era of European decolonization and in the postcolonial period,that is—it has become more possible (as the first publication of Plumb’sremarks in 1956 evidences) to contest the inherited narratives in which thegreatness and beneficence of British culture (like that of European culturein general) have been and continue to be asserted.

This task of producing more adequate accounts of the characteristics ofBritish culture is further complicated with respect to the period from 1688to 1815 since this was a period during which the effective claims of Britishculture were radically revised (ambitiously embellished and elaborated) inthe course of Britain’s acquisition of imperial stature. In other words, thereis not only the legacy of subsequent (retrospective, revisionist) distortions todeal with, but the eighteenth century is itself a period of large-scale reeval-uation and conflict over the claims of British culture.The transformationof self-understandings and of institutional embodiments that this processinvolved does not take the form of a steady evolution—neither, as we haveseen, does the consolidation of Britain’s empire and national power in theperiod. Rather, throughout the eighteenth century similar cultural claimskeep being reasserted and renegotiated, though on diverse terrains and inchanging circumstances. As I argue throughout this book, eighteenth-century assessments of cultural standing constantly reference (rather thanreflect) the geopolitical standing of the society whose culture is in ques-tion. In the case of Britain, its geopolitical standing, while by no meanscompletely secure, was extraordinarily enhanced across the long eighteenthcentury, and this served as the major stimulus for radical reassessments of itscultural standing without in itself being able to produce simple confidenceabout the claims to cultural eminence.

Given the uncertainties of imperial competition, occasions of victorybecame national celebrations.And across the eighteenth century, the heroesof British patriotism are no longer the religious martyrs glorified by Foxe,but the military leaders who symbolized the redefinition of Britain’s placein the world: for example, the Duke of Marlborough, General Amherst,General Wolfe, Admiral Boscawen, Admiral Hawke, Lord Clive, AdmiralVernon, Warren Hastings, Lord Cornwallis,Viscount Lord Nelson. Opin-ions about the East India Company might be mixed, and official inquiriesmight express qualified disapproval in the late eighteenth century—as laterwith the Governor Eyre controversy (1865) or General Dyer and theJallianwala Bagh massacre (1919)—but popular sentiment is more

INTRODUCTION 13


accurately captured in the celebrity enjoyed by these figures, a celebrityechoed at a dinner party at Lady Mary Coke’s on May 25, 1773 attendedby Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Carter, and others including James Beattie, whorecorded: “Every body seems pleased, at Lord Clive’s having been sohonourably acquitted by the house of Commons yesterday.”26 Philip Ayreshas noted that British military heroes acquired agnomines in imitation oftheir Roman predecessors—“Wolfe of Quebec, Clive of India, Montgomeryof Alamein, Mountbatten of Burma are the English equivalents of ScipioAfricanus”27—and like their Roman models, these celebrated Britons wereessentially heroes of imperialist expansion. Eighteenth-century Britishnationalism, thus, develops most significantly through an imperial projectthat increasingly displaces a religious understanding of collective identityand manifest destiny.

A second defining feature of nationalism in eighteenth-century Britainis the powerful dynamic of incorporation and anglicization that governsthe relationship between England and the other regions of the British Isles.To be sure, this too is not a novel dynamic in the eighteenth century. Butin earlier periods the outcome or full significance of the cultural contesta-tion among the various regions of the British Isles remained uncertaindespite the evident predominance of England; in the eighteenth century,however, English hegemony is effectively consolidated and the outlines ofa long-term uprooting and provincialization of regional cultures on a largescale become visible. The modalities for the anglicization of Scotland,Wales, and Ireland—which eventually result in the present precarious posi-tion of Irish in Ireland, of Welsh in Wales, and of Gaelic in Scotland—become effective with the increasingly direct incorporation of regions intothe market economy, the increasingly decisive displacement of oral cultureby print culture, and the increasing formalization of schooling as an ele-ment of popular socialization.This is a process that reaches its high pointin the nineteenth century; in the eighteenth century itself, the moremanifest result is the relegation of regional cultures to a provincial and“archaic” status in contrast to the claim of urbane modernity and metro-politan standing for the English-language sphere.What is important to notefor our purposes is how the provincialization of other regional cultureswithin the British Isles works in tandem with the developing imperialextension of the English-language sphere to facilitate the new claim tometropolitan self-understanding on the part of English-language writers inthis period.

The specificity of nationalism in eighteenth-century Britain consists,then, not in its absolute novelty, but in its articulation with a nexus ofimperial and British Isles developments, which issued in a radical transitionfrom provincial to metropolitan self-conceptions in the cultural



realm—and this is what makes it so consequential an era for understandingthe place of English-language culture in the modern world.

Literature and Nationalism

Having sketched, however briefly, the context of eighteenth-centuryBritish nationalism, we need to situate the role of literature and literary cul-ture in this context. Putting the matter somewhat crudely, let me note thatthe forms of intercultural encounter, the scenes of cross-cultural “contact,”in the eighteenth century are structured through a dynamic of commercialand military conflict, and that such intercultural encounters becomeunavoidable given the expansionist impulses that constitute this dynamic:as Colley notes, “Between 1780 and 1820 . . . [much of ] India, Africa, theWest Indies, Java, and the China coast succumbed to British naval power andtrading imperatives.”Whether by willing participation, progressive encroach-ment, or direct confrontation, various regions of the world are conse-quently brought into an exchange with the metropolitan centers of thismilitary–commercial expansionism.

For there to be an exchange-relationship, however, that is not simplyone of domination or plunder, the metropolitan region must possess somecommodity that the other regions want, in the sense both of somethinglacking and something desired. Milton’s Satan asserts that he “who over-comes / By force, hath overcome but half his foe,”28 and contemporarieswere quite conscious that the exercise of hegemony required somethingmore than just preponderant force. In the earliest period of English colo-nial enterprise (reformed) Christianity functioned as the pearl of ines-timable value that could be used to justify any and all encroachments onthe lands and commodities of the New World natives, as is illustrated by thefollowing remarks of Sir George Peckham in his A True Report of the LateDiscoveries (1583):

the Savages shall hereby have just cause to blesse the houre when this enter-prize was undertaken. First and chiefly, in respect of the most happy andgladsome tidings of the most glorious Gospel of our Saviour Jesus Christ,whereby they may be brought from falsehood to trueth, from darknesse tolight. . . . And if in respect of all the commodities they can yeelde us (werethey many more) that they should but receive this onely benefit of Chris-tianity, they were more than fully recompenced. . . . we may say with S. Paul,If wee have sowen unto you heavenly things, doe you thinke it much thatwe should reape your carnall things?29

The crudity of this rationalization of plunder and dispossession is astonish-ing, but in light of the fact that the English (unlike the Spanish Franciscans

INTRODUCTION 15


and the French Jesuits) actually made very little effort to convert the nativesand spread the gospel of Christianity it soon became useless even forpurposes of self-delusion.Thus, Dryden, speaking as a Catholic dissident inThe Hind and the Panther (1687), critiques the subordination of religiousfaith to the demands of mercantile opportunism by the Dutch who, inorder to “run full sail to their Japponian Mart,”“Sell all of Christian to thevery name,”30 and, likewise, he laments of the English themselves:

Here let my sorrow give my satyr place,To raise new blushes on my British race;Our sayling ships like common shoars we use,And through our distant colonies diffuseThe draughts of Dungeons, and the stench of stews.Whom, when their home-bred honesty is lost,We disembogue on some far Indian coast:Theives, Pandars, Palliards, sins of ev’ry sort,Those are the manufactures we export;And these the Missionaires our zeal has made:For, with my countrey’s pardon be it said,Religion is the least of all our trade. (pt. 2, lines 556–67)

Given the thinness of a purely missionary pretext, a new “benefit” had tobe devised as the inexhaustible fund of legitimation for colonial and impe-rial expansion. In the eighteenth century, a new conception of “culture”—whether in the form of British political institutions, British scientificadvances, British religious enlightenment, or, increasingly, British politeculture and arts—comes to play a key role in this economy of exchange,functioning as the quality wanting in other regions, and serving to legiti-mate their incorporation, willing or unwilling, into the economy ofexchange. The “riches” of British culture become the inexhaustibleresource that fuels the expansion of the British structuring and regulatingof exchanges in the British Isles and more broadly around the globe.

Before such a circuit of exchange can be consolidated, however, anelaborate process of building up the claims of British culture, and, conversely,of asserting the deficiencies of other cultures, must occur—and this double-edged process, with regard to the literary terrain, is a chief focus of thisbook. As I have suggested, the successful assertion of the richness or wealthof British literary culture was not easy and, to the extent that it was real-ized, it was an eighteenth-century innovation. It depended on the “rise togreatness” of the British state but this assertion of cultural richness wasnever fully assured and remained open to challenge or disregard in a waynot equally true of Britain’s military and economic power. In the centurybefore the successes of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), the British had



repeatedly asserted their claim to cultural recognition but they had not yetconsolidated the assumption of cultural centrality that marks the modernhistory of the empire of English. Thus, for example, Thomas Sprat’sObservations on Mons. de Sorbiere’s Voyage into England (1665) seeks to turnthe Frenchman’s criticisms into testimonials of English virtue, but theargument remains on the defensive:

The Temper of the English is Free, Modest, Kind, hard to be provok’d. If theyare not so Talkative as others, yet they are more Careful of what they Speak.If they are thought by Some of their Neighbours to be a little defective inthe Gentleness and Pliableness of their Humour, yet that Want is abundantlysupplied by their firm and their masculine virtues: And perhaps the sameObservation may be found true in Men which is in Metals, and that theNoblest Substance are hardest to be polished.31

This emphasis on the “masculine virtues” of the English is reiterated bySprat in his 1667 History of the Royal Society, but again the defensive note isevident in his contrast between the achieved dissemination of “Neigh-bouring Languages” and the future possibilities of English:“As the FeminineArts of Pleasure, and Gallantry have spread some of our NeighbouringLanguages [e.g., French] to such a vast extent: so the English Tongue may alsoin time be more enlarg’d, by being the Instrument of conveying to theWorld, the Masculine Arts of Knowledge.”32 The recourse to a gendereddiscourse here, the attempt to shore up the “masculine” self-confidence ofEnglish culture, betrays an insecurity about the claims of English-languageculture that is only too palpable. Sprat is forced to project the “enlarg’d”standing of English into an indefinite future era when,“in time,” his hopes“may” be realized.

Due to both its novelty and its vulnerability, Britain’s claim to culturalleadership would remain a “sore spot” through much of the eighteenthcentury, in need of continual reassertion and buttressing—and for this veryreason, it would also remain a critical terrain for the articulation of Britain’simperial nationalism. In the early eighteenth century, Matthew Prior writesA Letter to Monsieur Boileau Despreaux; Occasion’d by the Victory at Blenheim,1704 (1704), the last in a series of poems he wrote responding to Boileauas panegyrist of Louis XIV. The occasion for this last poem marks anexplicit triumph for British arms, but regarding analogous claims for Britishliterary culture, the poet merely characterizes himself as one who will be:

Bless’d, if I may some younger Muse excite,Point out the Game, and animate the Flight.That from Marseilles to Calais France may know,As We have Conquerors We have Poets too,

INTRODUCTION 17


And either Laurel does in Britain grow.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

We can with universal Zeal Advance,To curb the faithless Arrogance of France.Nor ever shall Britannia’s Sons refuseTo answer to thy Master, or thy Muse.33

“Britannia’s Sons” may respond to both the arts and arms of France, butPrior leaves the triumphs of British poetry to the future achievements of“some younger Muse” who may be inspired by his evocation of Britishmilitary victories. Prior envisions the joint rise of British arts and arms, animportant topos in the imperial culture of the long eighteenth century, butall he can attest to is the present success of British arms. The culturallydefensive note we observed in Sprat’s response to Sorbière has not entirelydisappeared fifty years later—although one can see in Prior’s stance clearindications of a more assertive cultural self-conception emerging with thechanged geopolitical standing of Britain in the European (and extra-European) world over this same period. The importance of the culturalterrain as a site for national legitimation remains unchanged, however, fromSprat to Prior and beyond.

The acquisition of empire may not have depended on culture, but impe-rial stature could not be sanctioned—lacking both legitimacy and atriumph—without cultural preeminence. It is the argument of this bookthat efforts to construct such claims to cultural preeminence on behalf ofBritish literary culture were more doubtful and anxious across theeighteenth century than scholars have typically realized. And, indeed,“letters and literature” were, during the long eighteenth century, a crucialissue in making claims about cultural achievement—as Edward Wardimplies in his comment that Dryden is “The chiefest Glory of his NativeLand”; as John Dennis suggests in his account of the critical vocation (“Forwhat does the good critic design? He designs the advancement of a nobleart, and by it the interest and glory of his native country, which depend inno small measure upon the flourishing of the arts”); and as Samuel John-son restates in the preface to his Dictionary of the English Language (1755),“The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.”34 A writer in theQuarterly Review contends in 1809 that works of literature constitute “thoseefforts of genius which all civilized nations consider as their proudest boast,and their only permanent glory,” and Thomas Carlyle writes in his unfinishedhistory of German literature that literature “is not only the noblest achieve-ment of the nation, but also the most characteristic; the truest emblem ofthe national spirit and manner of existence.”35 The Encyclopaedia Britannicain the 1770s informs us that the advances of eighteenth-century British



inventors “diffuse a glory over this country unattainable by conquest ordomination,” and as late as 1842,Thomas Wyse (M.P. and Irish reformer)states in a speech, “Rich we may be, strong we may be; but without ourshare in the literary and artistic as well as scientific progress of the age, ourcivilization is incomplete.”36 The imperial and international context of cul-tural competition that underlies these remarks is, as this book shows,absolutely fundamental to the cultural dynamics of English-language liter-ary culture in the long eighteenth century. And attending to the vulnera-bility of British claims to literary eminence in the early modern periodallows us to see a historical space outside the modern global hegemony ofEnglish-language culture and to articulate a critical vision of its modernpretensions, creating a space for other histories than that of an ever-expanding empire of English ever since the Anglo-Saxon invasion ofBritain.

INTRODUCTION 19



CHAPTER 1

THE PROGRESS OF ENGLISH

One of my main contentions in this book is that issues of culturalprovinciality played a central role in eighteenth-century British liter-

ary culture.Writers of the period understood that literature was not just amatter of artistic achievement but of cultural power. Individual achieve-ments, in their view, took place within the space defined by the broaderquestion of the standing of the cultural tradition of which they were apart—and cultural prestige, they knew, was in turn linked to the geopolit-ical power of the polity whose culture was in question.These connectionshave been brought under renewed scrutiny through the lense of postcolo-nial cultural criticism, but they involve an old recognition of the interplayof cultural and geopolitical power in the shaping of cultural status.What isharder for us to recognize is that across the Restoration and the eighteenthcentury, English-language writers saw themselves as in need of establishingthe value of the cultural tradition in which they operated—certainlyfor the audience constituted by the wider world, but, consequently, to acertain extent for their own eyes as well.

In this chapter, I delineate the historic transformation in the status ofEnglish-language literary culture across the early modern period, by exca-vating beneath the acquired metropolitan standing of English-languageliterary culture layer by layer. I begin with the early nineteenth-centurymoment, by which time the English tradition had secured a metropolitanstatus, in order to show the significance accorded to such questions ofcultural standing in the literary culture of the period.Then I move back tothe crucial hundred years or so from the death of Cowley to the death ofPope during which English-language writers made a concerted effortof self-promotion, envisioning and asserting a metropolitan bearing fortheir cultural tradition. I identify and examine what I call the “progress ofEnglish” topos in the poetry of this period, a topos that is absolutely cen-tral to understanding the self-conception of English-language writers at thetime and that shows us how broad a swathe of the cultural dynamics of the

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period we miss when we fail to recognize the provincial anxieties that besetthe literary culture. I trace the development of this topos, and the shift itundergoes from the end of the eighteenth century and on through thenineteenth century and beyond with the changing status of the English-language literary tradition. Finally, I dig one layer deeper still, to examinebriefly the dynamic involved in the process through which the English lan-guage acquired its national status as a language of culture in contrast to theother regional vernaculars of the British Isles.The scope of the discussionin this chapter suggests some of the ways in which developments in eachof the three contexts I emphasize in this book—that of the British Isles, ofthe European world, and of the wider, extra-European terrain—bearon one another, producing a complex nexus of value and status throughwhich the standing of the English-language literary tradition is negotiatedand defined.

“Who is Bilderdijk?”: Major and Minor Languages

In order to make manifest the importance of issues of cultural provincial-ity in eighteenth-century British literary culture, let me begin slightly toone side, with an acknowledged instance of cultural marginality presentedby Southey in the early nineteenth century. Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831), an important Dutch poet, is an unfamiliar name for most anglo-phone readers in the present day, as he was in his own age. For his part,however, Bilderdijk served as a conduit of English-language literary cultureinto the Netherlands. He was a political exile in London from 1795 to1797, during which time “he gave lectures in French on the writing ofpoetry.”1 Subsequently, he translated some of the Ossianic poems as well asvarious of the works of Alexander Pope into Dutch; his wife, KatharinaWilhelmina Bilderdijk-Schweickhardt (1776–1830), likewise translatedSouthey’s Roderick. Southey came to know the Bilderdijks personally andwas a great admirer of Willem. Having revisited the couple in Leiden inJune 1826, Southey incorporated a tribute to Bilderdijk into his poetic“Epistle to Allan Cunningham” (1829) (I quote from the revised version ofthe poem published in 1838):

Would I could giveThe life and spirit of his vigrous Dutch,As his dear consort hath transfused my strainsInto her native speech; and made them knownOn Rhine and Yssel, and rich Amstel’s banks;And wheresoe’er the voice of Vondel stillIs heard.2

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23THE PROGRESS OF ENGLISH

There follows a compressed translation into “English rhyme” (line 155) ofpart of one of Bilderdijk’s poems (the use of rhyme sets this passage apartfrom the rest of Southey’s poem).This tribute to Bilderdijk leads to theselines:

“And who is Bilderdijk?” methinks thou sayest,A ready question; yet which, trust me,Allan,Would not be ask’d, had not the curse that cameFrom Babel, clipt the wings of Poetry.Napoleon ask’d him once with cold fix’d look,“Art thou then in the world of letters known?”“I have deserved to be,” the HollanderReplied, meeting that proud imperial lookWith calm and proper confidence. (lines 189–97)

Bilderdijk’s more or less anonymous, or even uncouth, status in English-speaking mouths leads Southey to invoke the curse of Babel, which hasdivided up “the world of letters” into mutually incomprehensiblecompartments.And yet, this fall into incomprehension is not uniform, nordoes it affect everyone alike: Bilderdijk and the Dutch know of importantEnglish-language writers, even if most English-speakers cannot beexpected to be similarly familiar with Dutch writers. This discrepancysuggests that the curse of Babel means not only that the world is dividedinto various distinct language-spheres, but also that it is divided into majorand minor languages. In some language spheres, because of their minorstatus, “the wings of Poetry” have been “clipt” more fully than in others,and this is particularly the case for Bilderdijk:

The language of a StateInferior in illustrious deeds to none,But circumscribed by narrow bounds, and nowSinking in irrecoverable decline,Hath pent within its sphere a name wherewithEurope should else have rung from side to side. (lines 220–25)

Bilderdijk’s anonymity stems, then, on Southey’s account, not from any lackof achievement, nor even from the mere fact that Europe is divided intonumerous language spheres, but from the more consequential fact that hewrites in a minor language.The Bilderdijks’s hometown of Leiden, with itsrenowned university, may have been a leading center of the Europeanworld of letters in the seventeenth century, but by the early nineteenth cen-tury, the literary and cultural scene of Leiden, like that of the Dutch worldmore generally, has been reduced to the status of a provincial enclave.3

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The significance of such cultural marginality is made clear by John Adams’sremarks of 1780:

The Dutch Language is understood by nobody but themselves: theConsequence of which has been, that this Nation is not known.With as pro-found Learning and Ingenuity, as any People in Europe possess, they havebeen over looked, because they were Situated among others more numerousand powerfull than they. I hope that Congress will profit by their Example,by doing . . . every Thing in their Power to make the Language they Speak[i.e., English] respectable, throughout the World.4

Adams is still concerned about the international status of English, but bythe time of Southey’s poem the English language, and with it Englishliterary culture, have consolidated their newfound importance on theinternational scene—although this fact is presented only implicitly inSouthey’s verses.

The contrast Southey does focus on (in lines 189–97) is that betweenthe Dutch poet Bilderdijk and the French military and political leaderNapoleon. The latter, with his “proud imperial look,” embodies theconsciousness of power, while the Dutch poet, with his “calm and properconfidence,” embodies the self-assured dignity and independence of theworld of letters. Overtly, the English-speaking world does not figure at allin this scene.The scene does not present us, however, with a simple oppo-sition between (military–political) power and a world of letters that standscompletely apart from such worldly entanglements, for embedded inBilderdijk’s response (“I have deserved to be” known in the literary world)is a consciousness of differentials of cultural power, a consciousness under-lined by Southey’s subsequent commentary in the poem about the “narrowbounds” of the Dutch language. Napoleon’s presumptuous manner withrespect to this Dutch poet, while clearly that of a world-historical figure, isalso that of a Frenchman (i.e., the manner of a representative of a metropol-itan tradition) when facing a representative of a nonmetropolitan tradition.In this regard, Southey himself speaks from a position closer to that ofNapoleon than to that of Bilderdijk.

Southey sets out to “do justice” to Bilderdijk in this poem, that is, he setsout to give him a name in the world of letters and cultural power.5 Southeycan imagine doing so because he writes in English, and English-languageliterary culture has acquired the status of a “great tradition” by his time.By translating the sentiments of Bilderdijk and Napoleon into his ownEnglish idiom, and staging their encounter in an English-language work,Southey, the Poet Laureate of Great Britain since 1813, hopes to effect arighting of the relatively neglected and marginal standing of Bilderdijk in


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the world of letters. By virtue of his own standing in a metropolitan tradition,Southey acquires the status of an arbiter in the world of letters and thecapacity to confer a kind of “honorary citizenship” on individuals whowould otherwise remain on the outskirts of the realm.The scene betweenBilderdijk and Napoleon that Southey stages in his “Epistle to AllanCunningham,” a scene in which Southey himself and the English-speakingworld seem at first glance to play a quite limited role, turns out to be onethat could only have been presented in a metropolitan tongue such asEnglish. The implied dynamic of translation and cultural centrality thatstructures this scene (construed as an occasion for rendering poetic justiceto Bilderdijk) makes it a privileged display for major languages, and under-lines the importance of issues of cultural power in the world of letters.6

The question that remains with us from Southey’s poem—after we haveanswered “who is Bilderdijk?”—is when and how did the English-languageliterary tradition acquire its metropolitan standing? A century before Southeystages Napoleon’s metropolitan condescension to Bilderdijk,Addison reportssimilar condescension (and contempt) directed at the English: the French,he complains in The Freeholder of April 2, 1716, treat the English “like aRace of Hottentots.”7 Despite our commonplace tendency to assume oth-erwise,“English literature” has not always been a great tradition in a majorlanguage throughout its modern history. In 1578, John Florio remarkedthat English is “a language that wyl do you good in England, but passeDouer, it is woorth nothing,”8 and, indeed, up through most of the seven-teenth century, English (no less than Dutch in the nineteenth century)might be described as “[t]he language of a State / Inferior in illustriousdeeds to none, / But circumscribed by narrow bounds.” Milton, in his Rea-son of Church Government (1642), had put the case emphatically in speakingof his country and his own ambition “to be an interpreter and relater of thebest and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this island inthe mother dialect”:

not caring to be once named abroad, though perhaps I could attain to that,but content with these British islands as my world; whose fortune hathhitherto been, that if the Athenians, as some say, made their small deeds greatand renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had hernoble achievements made small by the unskilful handling of monks andmechanics.9

By choosing to write in English (“the mother dialect”), Milton relegateshimself to the narrow confines of “these British islands.”And some twentyyears later, in the pamphlet The Case of Madam Mary Carleton, Lately Stiledthe German Princess,Truely Stated (1663), the English language is still referred

THE PROGRESS OF ENGLISH 25

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to as “the lockt repository of so many Excellencies”10—a phrasing in which“lockt” can only refer to the very limited dissemination of the Englishlanguage in Europe beyond the British Isles. In his 1674 “Preface toRapin,” Thomas Rymer, in the wake of the third Anglo-Dutch War(1672–74), celebrates the successes of English arms but acknowledges thelimited standing of the English language:

Wit and Valor have alwayes gone together, and Poetry been the companionof Camps.The Heroe and Poet were inspired with the same Enthusiasm, actedwith the same heat, and both were crown’d with the same laurel. Had ourTongue been as generally known, and those who felt our blows, understoodour Language; they would confess that our Poets had likewise done theirpart, and that our Pens had been as successful as our Swords.11

Just as Sprat and Prior envision some future moment in which the claims ofEnglish-language culture will be more widely recognized (especially by theFrench), while conceding that at present the culture lacks such recognition(see introduction), so, too, Rymer asserts the claims of “our Poets” againstthe Dutch, while conceding that “our Tongue” is not so “generally known”in fact. As these various remarks suggest, the acquisition of metropolitanstatus—both for the English language and for the literary tradition it carries—is a post-Restoration, and basically eighteenth-century, achievement.12

This belated rise to metropolitan standing becomes evident if we recol-lect that Voltaire’s Essay on the Epic Poetry of the European Nations (1728) andhis Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733) were among the earliest sig-nificant acknowledgments of English-language literary culture on theContinent.Writing to Horace Walpole on July 15, 1768,Voltaire remindshis correspondent of his role in introducing English literature to the Frenchpublic:“Je suis le premier qui ait fait connaître Shakespear aux Français. J’enai traduit des passages il y a quarante ans, ainsi que de Milton, de Waller,de Rochester, de Driden et de Pope. Je peux vous assurer qu’avant moipresque personne en France ne connaissait la poésie anglaise; à peine avait-on même entendu parler de Loke.”13 Indeed, ca. 1700, it would be hard toname even a few vernacular British literary figures whose writings were atall well known on the Continent.Writers like Thomas More,Francis Bacon,and Thomas Hobbes did indeed have a European reputation, but for theirLatin writings.14 Since very few people on the Continent were literate inEnglish, vernacular writings could only acquire a readership through transla-tions, and these were rare for “literary works” (in the modern sense) until thevogues for Addison’s periodical essays, Pope’s poetry, and Richardson’s nov-els, and the publication of French translations of English drama in the mid-eighteenth century. Shakespeare and Milton might have been familiar to


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some by reputation, but were scarcely known through their English writings.In her Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786), Hester Lynch Piozzi notes,“Shakespeare himself has, till lately, been worshipped only at home,” and itis indicative that when Pope Benedict XIV added Pamela to the IndexExpurgatorius, it was the French translation rather than the English origi-nal that was cited.15 Bernhard Fabian refers to the German “discovery” ofEnglish culture as a “terra incognita” in the early decades of the eighteenthcentury, and has noted the continuing reliance during this period on Latineditions of English works; other scholars have remarked on the practice inGermany, throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, of “translat-ing from French or Dutch versions of English works rather than from theoriginals.”16 Difficult as it may be for us to imagine, given the persistentcelebration since the eighteenth century of the unrivaled richness of theBritish literary tradition, English literature would not automatically havebeen considered one of the “great” traditions at the start of the eighteenthcentury and contemporary English-language writers were very aware ofthis fact.

For English speakers in the twenty-first century, it requires a strenuouseffort of the historical imagination to picture an early modern world inwhich the English-language literary and cultural sphere occupy only arelatively minor place, but without such an effort we will have a distortedpicture of the early modern world and will fail to notice the singularachievement and radical transformation embodied by the rise to metropolitanstanding of the English-language literary tradition across the long eighteenthcentury.

The Progress of English, First Phase: Refinement of the Tongue

In the Restoration and eighteenth century, English-language writersrepeatedly celebrate the recent achievement of a metropolitan culturalstanding that we tend to take for granted. By 1810, George Crabbe couldrefer to “the vast collection of English poetry,” while Trollope in 1857 refersto “the imperishable list of English poets,”17 and we, after the close of thetwentieth century, can speak of a literary tradition stretching for a millen-nium “from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf ” and beyond; but, English-languagewriters in the Restoration and early eighteenth century typically viewthemselves as the inheritors of a century or less of literary achievement(from Spenser’s or Shakespeare’s or, more typically, Denham and Waller’stime to their own). In that perspective, and by comparison with the oldervernacular traditions of continental Europe, the English-language literarytradition could look distinctly jejune. The recentness of the claim to


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metropolitan standing meant that English-language writers were highlyconscious of the issue of their place in the wider world of culture, and itled them to enshrine the culture heroes who had brought them to theirpresent glory.

The frontispiece to The Universal Visiter (1756) presents us with a typicalinstance of this kind of gesture: it consists of an engraving of the “TemplumApollinis Anglicani” (see figure 1.1).We see five busts on pedestals (Chaucer,Spenser, Shakespeare,Waller, and Dryden), behind which are shelves linedwith folio volumes, below, and with numerous smaller volumes, above.Theverses that the frontispiece carries appears as a caption of figure 1.1.

To CHAUCER! who the English Tongue design’d:To SPENSER! who improv’d it, and refin’d:—To Muse-fir’d SHAKESPEAR! who increas’d its Praise,Rich in bold Compounds, & strong-painted Phrase,To WALLER! Sweet’ner of its manly Sound:—To DRYDEN! who its full Perfection found.—

While these couplets invoke Chaucer and the other authors, the subjectthey celebrate is “the English Tongue”and its refinement to “full Perfection”—a progression that is presented as only being consummated in Dryden’s age.The verses and the image certainly celebrate the achievement of Englishauthors, but the substance of that achievement centers on their improving theEnglish language, and raising it to its present status in the world of letters.18

While the engraving depicts the English corner in the Temple of Apollo,it is clear that this is but one part of a larger structure.The Latin inscrip-tion naming the edifice reminds us that there is a classical portion to thisTemple, and presumably there are niches where the celebrated writers ofpostclassical Italy, France, and Spain are also housed.The Temple of Apollo,as it is pictured here, is a commodious structure. It is cosmopolitan in scope,but organized into distinct national literary traditions (much like theeighteenth-century republic of letters). Within this national space, theauthors are organized in a roughly chronological sequence, with divisionsamong the shelves that seem to indicate something like (very rough) histor-ical “periods” or “ages.” Thus, behind the five busts, we find the followingarrangement of large volumes:

Gower, Hubert | Sydney, Drayton, Fairfax, Surry, Beaumont | Johnson,Bathurst, Bacon, Fletcher, Ralegh | Milton, Butler, Wycherly, Congreve |Temple,Addison, Pope, Gay,Tillotson.

The numerous smaller volumes (without names on their spines) filling outthe rest of this alcove are presented as necessary, perhaps, to the achievement


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Figure 1.1

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of the major authors, but they remain individually anonymous and indistinct.The principles of order here involve the demarcation of three things: anational space, a chronological sequence, and a hierarchical divisionbetween major and minor authors (with five transcendent or hypercanon-ical figures singled out for special mention). Both poets and prose-writersare included, as are writers of both imaginative and historical or didacticgenres.There are, of course, peculiarities in this selection of representativefigures: in particular, the choice of Waller over Milton, among the busts, tes-tifies, in part, to the way in which Milton the republican remained a vexedfigure for the upholders of tradition long after the Restoration, but thischoice underlines also the emphasis in the frontispiece on refinement ofthe English language and English versification as the criterion for praise.Milton’s literary achievement may have been greater than Waller’s (and mayhave been recognized as such at the time this frontispiece was produced),but the sense that he had distorted the English idiom under the influenceof his Latinity, rather than contributed to its improvement, would tend toexclude him from the select few represented in busts.

Along with its exclusively male cast (which echoes the ostensiblymasculine virtues of the English tongue—its boldness, its strength, its fire,its manly sound), what is most striking about this representation of thenational tradition is its emphatically “English” inflection (in two senses):the neo-Latin strand of the English tradition has virtually disappeared, andlikewise the national space has been defined as “English” rather than“British” in scope. Indeed, in place of a multiple or multistranded tradition,we have here a single, linear tradition.Despite the commonplace perception,throughout the eighteenth century, of English as a hybrid or mixedlanguage, the literary tradition it carries is presented here in purified form:purged of any dynamic of interaction with other cultural traditions,whether near or far, it is presented as autonomous and self-contained—andonly as such is it placed in relation to other equally autonomous and self-contained national literary traditions in the Temple of Apollo.

The Universal Visiter frontispiece is only one example of a popular genre(generally of poems) tracing the emergent perfection of the English lan-guage and the achievements of English culture, a genre that dates back tothe Restoration and that flourished through the first half of the eighteenthcentury. For instance, when Dryden’s translation of Virgil was published in1697, Lady Mary Chudleigh wrote a poem “To Mr. Dryden, on his excel-lent Translation of Virgil,” which appeared in her Poems on Several Occasionsin 1703.19 In this poem, Chudleigh anticipates the Universal Visiter inpresenting Dryden as one who has brought the English language to its fullperfection, but she is more explicit about the former barbarism of thenative tongue. She traces the progress of English poetry from darkness


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(“Dark melancholy Night” [line 20]) to “the Triumphs of refulgent Day”(line 38): from Chaucer to Spenser to Waller to Milton and Cowley toDryden (as the culmination of the whole series). For Chudleigh,“our firstDawn of Light” (line 31) only begins with Waller (Chaucer’s is a “delusiveLight” [line 23] and Spenser gives us only “Lunar Beams” [line 25]), andeven with Milton and Cowley, “there [remain] some Footsteps of theNight” (line 35). Chudleigh, who lived from 1656 to 1710, thus writes ofthe refinement of the English tongue as a contemporary process. She praisesDryden particularly for cleansing “th’Augean Stable” of “Our Language,”for “all those Toils, whose kind Effects we share” (line 67):

Our Language like th’Augean Stable lay,Rude and uncleans’d, till thou by Glory mov’d,Th’Herculean Task didst undertake,And hast with Floods of Wit th’offensive Heaps remov’d. (lines 68–71)

She further praises Dryden for ridding the literary language of “That ancientRubbish of the Gothick Times, / When manly Sense was lost in triflingRhimes” (lines 72–73).20 Thus, on her account, Dryden is responsible forraising “our language” to a newfound “manly” dignity, after long ages whenit appeared besmeared with gothic barbarities. As with the Universal Visiter,Dryden’s major achievement is presented here as his contribution to thefashioning of the English language as an instrument and artifact of culture.

Similar essays in genealogical reconstruction and celebration might beexamined in Denham’s “On Mr. Abraham Cowley, his Death and Burialamongst the Ancient Poets” (1668), Oldham’s “Bion. A Pastoral, in Imita-tion of the Greek of Moschus, Bewailing the Death of the Earl ofRochester” (1684), Knightly Chetwood’s “To the Earl of Roscommon onhis Excellent Poem” and Dryden’s “To the Earl of Roscommon, on hisExcellent Essay on Translated Verse” (both 1684), Dryden’s “To my DearFriend Mr. Congreve” (1694),Addison’s “Account of the Greatest EnglishPoets” (1694), Samuel Cobb’s Poetae Britannici (1700), Samuel Wesley’s AnEpistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700), Jabez Hughes’s “Verses Occa-sion’d by Reading Mr. Dryden’s Fables” (wr. 1706; pub. 1720, 1737), ElijahFenton’s “An Epistle to Mr. Southerne” (1711), George Sewell’s “ToMr. Pope, on his Poems and Translations” (1720), Leonard Welsted’s “Epis-tle to the Duke of Chandos” (1720), John Dart’s Westminster Abbey, a Poem(1721), Judith Madan’s “The Progress of Poetry” (wr. ca. 1721; pub. 1731),William Mason’s “Musaeus, a Monody to the Memory of Mr. Pope”(1747), or Thomas Gray’s “The Progress of Poesy” (1754).21 From the deathof Cowley to the death of Pope, the progress of (English) poetry is animportant topos in the self-understanding of English-language literary


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culture: a writer in the Critical Review of January 1764 expresses this notionin these words: “[Chaucer] was (as a certain biographer terms him) themorning-star of this art; for as we descend to later times we can trace theprogress of English poetry from this great original to its full blaze andperfect consummation in Dryden and Pope.” Each of the poems I havementioned offers its own variation on the notion of literary genealogy, butthe topos I am concerned with is to be distinguished from the simplehomage paid to the talents and achievement of an individual writer,however great, in that it involves a reference beyond his or her particularaccomplishments to the consequences of this achievement for the literarylanguage and the literary tradition as a developing whole.22 The gesturedraws on the historical vision of the writers of Augustan Rome, who spokeof the gradual refinement and perfection of their own tongue, especially asit engrafted Greek literary culture onto its own rude stock. But in thehands of English authors, the topos is increasingly characterized by a reluc-tance to acknowledge any dependence on foreign cultures, and is used toassert instead a native (even a nativist) genealogy that supports or implies aclaim for autonomous and autotelic development.

This topos participates in the cultural work that R.F. Jones has examinedin his classic study of The Triumph of the English Language (1953). Jones discussesvarious efforts to enrich the English language in the early modern period, tomake it a fit linguistic instrument for culture, and the assertive proclamation,by the Restoration, of its adequacy for such tasks.What is most important formy argument here is Jones’s recognition that,“The refinement and adornmentof the mother tongue were themselves considered the goal of literature. Inother words, literature was considered instrumental to language, not languageto literature.”23 Early modern writers were concerned most directly withnegotiating and altering the reigning apparatus of languages within Britainand in the European world and its distribution of prestige,24 and only secon-darily thought of being praised for their individual achievement in thelanguage as something independent of the former task. It was only once theprestige and legitimacy of one’s tradition could be taken for granted that indi-vidual achievement became the essential criterion of evaluation. And suchconcern with the status of the English tradition continued for a hundred yearsafter Jones’s conclusion of his study with the Restoration.

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, English-languagewriters continue to express doubts about the status and adequacy of thelanguage they work in. In 1650, Hobbes comments to Davenant regardingthe latter’s epic poem, Gondibert:

I never yet saw Poem that had so much shape of Art, health of Morality, andvigour and beauty of Expression as this of yours.And . . . I should say further


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that it would last as long as either the Aeneid or Iliad, but for one Disadvantage;and the Disadvantage is this: The languages of the Greeks and Romans, bytheir Colonies and Conquests, have put off flesh and blood, and are becomeimmutable, which none of the modern tongues are like to be.25

The “mutability”of English was an important concern of English-languagewriters during the hundred years after 1650: it prompted Swift’s proposalof 1712 for establishing an English academy (Swift comments to the Earlof Oxford, “It is Your Lordship’s Observation, that if it were not for theBible and Common Prayer Book in the vulgar Tongue, we should hardly beable to understand any Thing that was written among us an hundred Yearsago:Which is certainly true”; he laments that modern English writers “willbe read with Pleasure but a very few Years, and in an Age or two shall hardlybe understood without an interpreter”) and is still evident in Johnson’sproposals for a dictionary of the English language at mid-century and in hisremarks in 1765 on Chaucer and Shakespeare ( Johnson contrasts Englishwith “grammatical and settled languages” such as ancient Latin andGreek—as a result of which,“Homer has fewer passages unintelligible thanChaucer”—and laments that Shakespeare’s language has “become obso-lete” and “his sentiments obscure”).26 Edmund Waller’s “Of English Verse”provides perhaps the best-known instance of this concern:

But who can hope his lines should longLast in a daily changing tongue?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Poets that lasting marble seekMust carve in Latin or in Greek:We write in sand, our language growsAnd like the tide our work o’erflows.27

This poem satirizes hyperbolic claims to poetic immortality and measuresthe span of “all an English pen can hope” (line 26) in terms of the imper-manence of “fading beauty” and “present love” (lines 31–32). In contrast to“palace[s]” in Latin and Greek, English verse,Waller writes, is like a “flame”(i.e., desire) (line 12) that burns and is consumed all too quickly. Waller’ssense of the impermanence of English as a medium for poetic compositionis echoed in Sir William Temple’s “Essay upon the Ancient and ModernLearning” (1690):“If our Wit and Eloquence, our knowledge or Inventionswould deserve [to last longer than the works of the ancients have done],yet our Languages would not; there is no hope of their lasting long, nor ofany thing in them; they change every Hundred Years so as to be hardlyknown for the same. . . . so as they can no more last like the Ancients, thanexcellent Carvings in Wood like those in Marble or Brass.”28


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In the early eighteenth century, Pope too strikes the same note when hewrites in his Essay on Criticism (1711),“Our Sons their Fathers’ failing Lan-guage see, / And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be,” as does Addison in theSpectator of June 28, 1712:“if [Milton’s] Paradise Lost falls short of the Aeneidor Iliad . . . , it proceeds rather from the Fault of the Language in which itis written, than from any Defect of Genius in the Author. So Divine a Poemin English, is like a stately Palace built of Brick, where one may see Archi-tecture in as great a Perfection as in one of Marble, tho’ the Materials are ofa coarser Nature.”29 Addison is no longer apprehensive about the future via-bility of Milton’s English, but he still takes for granted the inferior “Nature”of English as compared to the classical languages.Thomas Tickell, even as heis celebrating the lasting fame of British military heroes in his poem On theProspect of Peace (1712), acknowledges a need to cast their praise in medalsrather than in the impermanent medium of the English language that poetslike himself rely upon: “faithful coins” will “teach the times to come,” hewrites,“O’er distant times such records shall prevail, / When English num-bers, antiquated, fail.”30Thomas Sheridan echoes this concern in 1756 whenhe pleads for greater public attention to English language use in British Edu-cation:“Suffer not our Shakespear, and our Milton, to become two or threecenturies hence what Chaucer is at present, the study only of a few poringantiquarians.”31 This concern about the limitations of English as a literarymedium provides the context for the progress of English topos that I havebeen discussing; it is this context, and its implications about the standing ofEnglish-language literary culture vis-à-vis other European traditions thatgives urgency to the topos.

A particularly interesting case to examine, in this regard, is the influentialtranslation-cum-adaptation of Boileau’s L’Art poétique (1674) undertakenby Sir William Soame, revised by John Dryden, and published anonymouslyin 1683 as The Art of Poetry (repr. 1708, 1710, 1712, 1715, 1717). Jacob Tonson states of this work:

This translation . . . was made in the year 1680 by Sir William Soame ofSuffolk, Baronet; who being very intimately acquainted with Mr. Dryden,desired his revisal of it. [Tonson] saw the manuscript lie in Mr. Dryden’s handsfor above six months, who made very considerable alterations in it, particularlythe beginning of the Fourth Canto; and it being his opinion that it would bebetter to apply the poem to English writers than to keep to the French names,as it was first translated, Sir William desired he would take the pains to makethat alteration; and accordingly that was entirely done by Mr. Dryden.32

It is precisely this substitution of English writers and English literaryhistory for the French writers and literary history in Boileau’s work thatinterests me here.


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The Soame–Dryden version makes English literary history observe thesame line of development as that adduced by Boileau for French literaryhistory, but despite this parallelism a certain distance between the twoworks becomes apparent. The crucial passage in this regard occurs incanto 1, and, despite its length, I quote it in full from the English version:

Our ancient verse, as homely as the times,Was rude, unmeasured, only tagged with rhymes:Number and cadence, that have since been shown,To those unpolished writers were unknown.Fairfax was he who in that darker ageBy his just rules restrained poetic rage;Spenser did next in pastorals excel,And taught the noble art of writing well,To stricter rules the stanza did restrain,And found for poetry a richer vein.Then Davenant came, who with a new-found artChanged all, spoiled all, and had his way apart;His haughty muse all others did despise,And thought in triumph to bear off the prize,Till the sharp-sighted critics of the timesIn their Mock-Gondibert exposed his rhymes,The laurels he pretended did refuse,And dashed the hopes of his aspiring muse.This headstrong writer, falling from on high,Made following authors take less liberty.Waller came last, but was the first whose artJust weight and measure did to verse impart,That of a well-placed word could teach the force,And showed for poetry a nobler course.His happy genius did our tongue refine,And easy words with pleasing numbers join;His verses to good method did apply,And changed harsh discord to soft harmony.All owned his laws, which, long approved and tried,To present authors now may be a guide. (lines 111–40)

We note here the familiar narrative of progress from the “rude,”“unpolished” writers of a “darker age,” through various intermediate steps,to the eventual emergence of a “happy genius”who “did our tongue refine.”This delineation of literary history, the shape and features of the develop-ment, are all traced from the pattern provided by the French work.Wherethe Soame–Dryden version speaks of Edward Fairfax (ca. 1575–1635),Edmund Spenser (1552/53–99), Sir William Davenant (1606–68),“following


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authors,” and Edmund Waller (1606–87), Boileau’s work refers to Françoisde Villon (1431–65?), Clément Marot (1496?–1544), Pierre de Ronsard(1524–85), Philippe Desportes (1546–1606), Jean Bertaut (1552–1611), andFrançois de Malherbe (1555–1628). Since Boileau’s work appeared in 1674and the Soame–Dryden version in 1683, the temporal vantage point fromwhich the two works reflect on their respective national literary histories isroughly contemporary, but one is immediately struck by the fact thatBoileau traces a development that begins a full century earlier, and,moreover, a development that has already reached its completion (withMalherbe) some fifty years before Boileau published his Art poétique.TheEnglish development, by contrast, begins roughly as the French one reachesits completion, and very quickly it moves onto figures who were person-ally known to Dryden’s generation. Indeed, Dryden collaborated withDavenant on a ballad opera version of The Tempest in 1667, and a substan-tial part of Waller’s oeuvre would not be published until after the appear-ance of the Soame–Dryden Art of Poetry ( Waller’s Divine Poems appearedin 1685 and The Second Part of Mr. Waller’s Poems was published posthu-mously in 1690). Thus, when we reach the conclusion of the passagequoted earlier (“All owned his laws, which, long approved and tried, / Topresent authors now may be a guide”), the relationship between Waller astime-tested model and “present authors” as his disciples has a very differentcomplexion than the corresponding French situation, since Waller was thenstill a living author. (Indeed, at the close of canto 4, the English work canwish that Waller would “his age renew, and offerings bring” in praise ofCharles II [line 197].)

The effort to adapt the French work to English circumstances thus pro-duces a noticeable strain in the argument of the poem, a strain that carriesthe mark of England’s belated arrival on the scene of culture in the Euro-pean world.The difference in poise between the two works here comes inpart from the fact that Boileau is speaking with greater historical distanceon the events he is describing, but it stems also from the different situationsof the two countries and cultures involved in this adaptation. This factorbecomes most evident in canto 2, where, in a discussion of the ode, Boileauand his adaptors write as follows:

Aux athlètes dans Pise elle [l’ode] ouvre la barrière,Chante un vainqueur poudreux au bout de la carrière,Mène Achille sanglant au bord du Simois,Ou fait fléchir l’Escaut sous le joug de Louis. (lines 61–64)

Of Pisa’s wrestlers [the ode] tells the sinewy force,And sings the dusty conqueror’s glorious course;To Simois’ streams does fierce Achilles bring,And makes the Ganges bow to Britain’s king. (lines 61–64)


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The wars of Louis XIV may well have led him to dominate the Escaut river(and to capture Mastricht, Dôle, Salins, and Besançon, as Boileau celebratesin canto 4), but how does one adapt that image to the situation of theBritish monarch? The Soame–Dryden version resorts to a bit of poeticlicense, and choosing a setting far enough away to preclude objection, con-structs a fantasy of “the Ganges bow[ing] to Britain’s king.”What is crucialhere is the way in which an ambition to parallel or exceed the Frenchmodel, catapults the English authors into a fantasy of imperial conquest.This fantasy, however, needs to be read by us not in light of future events(which eventually would transform it into a reality), but in light of its con-temporary circumstances.33 In that context, the projected conquest of theGanges is clearly a compensatory fantasy: something like it is demanded bythe literary context provided by Boileau’s model, and yet the Englishauthors can find nothing actual to fulfill the demand.34 Their predicament,though papered over in the text, nonetheless serves to undermine theauthority and ease with which the speaker of the poem can assume a met-ropolitan demeanor while reviewing the development of his literary tradi-tion. For decades to come, as we have observed, English-language authorswill continue to feel the need to rehearse the progress of English and tovindicate their claim to having arrived at a metropolitan standing in theworld of letters.

The Progress of English, Second Phase: Diffusion of the Tongue

The English language is travelling fast towards the fulfilment of its destiny.Through the influ-ence of the dreadful Republic [i.e., the United States] . . . and through the English colonies—African, Canadian, Indian, Australian—the English language (and, therefore, the Englishliterature) is running forward towards its ultimate mission of eating up, like Aaron’s rod, all otherlanguages.

—Thomas de Quincey,“William Wordsworth” (1839)

The uneasy attempt to combine a celebration of the refinement of theEnglish tongue with a celebration of expanding imperial power in thispoetic adaptation by Soame and Dryden points us toward an importantsupplement to or variation of the progress of English topos, a supplementthat comes to be articulated most fully from the mid-eighteenth century.The emphasis in the earlier discourse of the progress of English falls on theincreasing “refinement” and “perfection” of the English language as such: it


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is an idiom focused on the gradually refining intrinsic merits of theEnglish-language poetic tradition, what Johnson refers to as “the reputationof our tongue.”35 From the early eighteenth century through to our owntime a different kind of celebration of the English language and its literaturealso comes to be sounded—a celebration of its widespread geographicalscope, its emergence as a world language, in stark contrast to its earlierprovincial insularity.This is the era in which an imperial vision in Englishliterary culture comes to be articulated more fully with a general imperialself-understanding in the society as a whole. Where the earlier discoursecelebrated the emergence of English as the equal of other (older, better-established) metropolitan traditions in the European world through thepolished achievements of English-language poets, this newer discoursecelebrates the expanding geographical scope of the English-languagecultural sphere and its concomitant change in status and function as itbegins to acquire an imperial role and eventually a position of culturalhegemony on the global stage.36

This notion of the expanding scope of the English tongue emerges outof a comparison of the English with the achievements of other cultural tra-ditions ( just as an assertion of imperial grandeur for the state is asserted inthe Soame–Dryden Art of Poetry out of an implicit comparison with theFrance of Louis XIV).Thus, for example, Samuel Cobb in his revision ofPoetae Britannici (1700) as “Of Poetry” (1710) moves to conclude his poemby turning back to reflect on the volumes of the various English poets hehas been praising:

These gainful to the Stationer, shall standAt Paul’s or Cornhill, Fleetstreet or the Strand.Shall wander far and near, and cross the Seas,An Ornament to Foreign Libraries.Hail; Glorious Titles! who have been my Theme!O could I write so well as I esteem!From her low Nest my humble Soul shou’d riseAs a young Phoenix out of Ashes flies.Above what France or Italy can shew,The Celebrated Tasso, or Boileau.37

This sense that English poets will serve to ornament “Foreign Libraries,” thattheir fame shall not be confined to England or Britain but shall be spread“far and near,” reiterates a vision that had haunted English literary culturesince the Elizabethan age (as seen, e.g., in Samuel Daniel’s Musophilus), andis clearly based on an ambition to rival the extensive recognition of Latin orFrench or Italian in the world of European culture. Dryden had proclaimedthe extensiveness of English fame in his poem “To My Honoured Friend,


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Dr Charleton” (1663), though he was not referring specifically to literarywriters in his comment that, “Among th’Assertors of free Reason’s claim, /Th’ English are not the least in Worth, or Fame.”38 Instead, Dryden refers tolearned men like Francis Bacon, William Gilbert, Robert Boyle, WilliamHarvey, and Walter Charleton himself,“Whose Fame, not circumscrib’d withEnglish ground, / Flies like the nimble journeys of the Light” (lines 34–35).Whatever the merits of Dryden’s celebration of the fame of English “science,” English literary culture would remain in the shadows into theeighteenth century. In Cobb’s revised poem of 1710, the actual realization ofthe vision of English literary fame is cast into the future, as it will continueto be throughout the eighteenth century,while the recognition accorded theachievements of Italy, France, and Spain is already a well-established featureof the literary world. Similarly, when Leonard Welsted calls on the Duke ofChandos to “take the Muses to thy care,” he predicts as one happy conse-quence of such support an expansive future for the language:

If you vouchsafe to lend the timely aid,Nor Greece nor Rome shall Britain’s sons upbraid;The sunny climes, that boast a kindlier soil,With hills of wine enrich’d, and groves of oil,To us in Arts shall yield, to us in Song,And distant nations prize the British tongue.39

Neither poet is ready yet to claim that “the British tongue” has alreadycome to be prized by “distant nations” (in Europe and beyond), but oncesuch ambitions begin to switch into the present tense we have entered anew phase in the making of English as a metropolitan tradition.

This present-tense celebration of the expansive scope and recognitionof the English tongue (and of the literary tradition it carries) inaugurateswhat we might call the “triumphalist” phase of the “progress of English”topos and of the social history of the English language, but this does notreally arrive until well into the nineteenth century, though we see inklingsof it earlier. At first, there is a defensive cast to assertions of the wideningdomain of English. In its opening number, the Universal Visiter (1756), forexample, responds to the objection that “our tongue wants universality”:“But this objection,” the writer comments, “is vanishing daily; for I havebeen assured, by several ingenious foreigners, that in many places abroad,Italy in particular, it is become the fashion to study the English tongue.” Inremarks that clearly anticipate those just quoted, the London journal ThePresent State of the Republick of Letters reported in 1728 that it has learned“from undoubted hands” that “for the sake of reading our Authors, theEnglish language is now in greater request, and studied more than ever, inall foreign parts, where-ever learning flourishes, and particularly in Italy.”40


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A more positive sense of English-language literature’s new and increasinglyextensive dissemination is evident in the 1741 remark by Edward Cave,publisher of The Gentleman’s Magazine (est. 1731), that his periodical “isread as far as the English language extends, and . . . [is] reprinted from sev-eral presses in Great Britain, Ireland and the Plantations.”41 James Macpher-son, in the dedication of the 1765 edition of Fingal, states that “the Worksof Ossian . . . have been received with applause by men of taste through-out Europe,” and in the “Dissertation” prefixed to that edition argues that“the compositions of Ossian would have still remained in the obscurity ofa lost language” had they not been translated into English. “All the politenations of Europe,” he adds in the preface of 1773,“have transferred [thesepoems] into their respective languages.”42 By this point, then, English farfrom being a “lockt repository” has become, in the eyes of English-language authors, a key to the dissemination of a work throughoutEurope—although we should keep in mind that, in fact, Ossian circulatedthrough Europe primarily in French translations, rather than in English.Macpherson credits the English language with a cultural efficacy that reallybelongs even so late in the eighteenth century to the French, as we will seemore emphatically when discussing the republic of letters in chapter 2.Thesituation that obtained through most of the eighteenth century is wellcharacterized in Thomas Sheridan’s exhortation to the audience of his1759 lecture on the English language: “The Italians, the French, and theSpaniards, are far before you.Their languages and authors are well knownthrough Europe, whilst yours have got admission only into the closets of afew.You have but to rouze yourself from your lethargy, and to exert yournative vigour, soon to outstrip them all.”43 Sheridan may feel assured aboutthe eventual advance of the English language and its authors, but the pre-sent situation he confronts in 1759 is their laggard and relatively marginalplace in European culture. We have already repeatedly encountered thiskind of expectant, anticipatory, assertive investment in the idea of metro-politan standing for the English language and the literary tradition it car-ries, but we need to be careful not to mistake such gestures for actualevidence of metropolitan status. They exemplify, instead, anxieties aboutmetropolitan status even as they envision a future in which such anxietieshave been triumphantly canceled out.

The basis for such hopes regarding the future prospects of English-language literary culture was made explicit by various eighteenth-centurywriters. In rehearsing the history of “global” languages in a memorial to theU.S. Congress in September 1780, John Adams underlines the increasinggeopolitical importance of the Anglo-American world:

In the last Century, Latin was the universal Language of Europe. Correspon-dences among the learned, and indeed among Merchants and Men of


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Business and the Conversation of Strangers and Travellers, was generally carriedon in that dead Language. In the present Century, Latin has been generallylaid aside, and French has been substituted in its place; but has not yetbecome universally established, and according to present Appearances, it isnot probable that it will. English is destined to be in the next and succeed-ing Centuries, more generally the Language of the World, than Latin was inthe last, or French is in the present Age. The Reason of this is obvious,because the increasing Population in America, and their universal Connec-tion and Correspondence with all Nations will, aided by the Influence ofEngland in the World, . . . force their Language into general Use, in spightof all the Obstacles that may be thrown in their Way.44

Adams’s comment is still cast as a future expectation regarding “the nextand succeeding Centuries,” but now the expectation is not simply thatEnglish will be recognized in foreign lands as a major language, but that itwill be recognized as “the language of the world”—and this in a moreemphatic sense than any previous language in human history. Adams’sconcern is not simply with English achieving metropolitan standing (as oneamong several metropolitan traditions), but with its achieving hegemonicstanding as the leading metropolitan tradition on the world stage, as hereiterates in a letter to Edmund Jenings later in September 1780: “I haveundertaken to prophecy that English will be the most respectable Languagein the World, and the most universally read and Spoken in the nextCentury, if not before the Close of this.”45 Adams, we should note, is notsimply concerned with the empirical spread of English (which he, like DeQuincey, imagines as a violent process) but more particularly with the“respect” the language will gain through this dissemination.

Adams’s emphasis on the imperial destiny of English underlines thebasic theme of the expansive version of the “progress of English” topos:the connection between the diffusion of the language and its consequentcultural status.The spread of Latin under the Roman Empire stands as theexemplary case of linguistic diffusion for early modern writers, and theimperial (geopolitical) foundations of cultural power are part of the com-mon sense of the age. In 1767, Hume writes to Gibbon that French wouldsoon be eclipsed by English as the dominant language of European culture,and seeks to dissuade him from the intention of writing his proposedHistory of the Swiss Revolution in French:

I have perused [your manuscript] with great pleasure and satisfaction. I haveonly one objection, derived from the language in which it is written.Whydo you compose in French, and carry faggots into the wood, as Horace sayswith regard to the Romans who wrote in Greek? I grant that you have a likemotive to those Romans, and adopt a language much more generally dif-fused than your native tongue: but have you not remarked the fate of those


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two ancient languages in following ages? The Latin, though then less celebrated,and confined to more narrow limits, has in some measure outlived theGreek, and is now more generally understood by men of letters. Let theFrench, therefore, triumph in the present diffusion of their tongue. Our solidand increasing establishments in America, where we need less dread theinundation of Barbarians, promise a superior stability and duration to theEnglish language.46

Like Macaulay after him, Hume invokes the imperial dimension to likenthe status and fate of English to that of Latin. Cultural prestige, Humeimplies, rests not on cultural achievements alone (the main emphasis in theearlier version of the “progress of English” topos), but rather on achieve-ment mediated through the perspective of a nation’s position in the world-system. Despite his claims for English, Hume acknowledges the present“triumph” of French, which is so extensive that Gibbon’s history will be amere “faggot” amongst an extensive “wood.”This interweaving of domes-tic, European, and global considerations in Hume’s argument is typical ofthe emergent discourse about the status of English during an era of Britishimperial ambition. Gibbon himself, it is worth noting, expresses a rathersimilar sentiment in the concluding section of the third volume of The His-tory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, titled “General Observationson the Decline of the Empire in the West” and published in 1781, duringthe War of American Independence:“America now contains about six mil-lions of European blood and descent; and their numbers, at least in theNorth, are continually increasing. Whatever may be the changes of theirpolitical situation, they must preserve the manners of Europe; and we mayreflect with some pleasure, that the English language will probably be dif-fused over an immense and populous continent.” Samuel Taylor Coleridgeechoes Hume even more closely, in a notebook comment of 1808, whenhe writes that the works of Milton and Shakespeare are secured from suchcontingencies as destruction by accident, time, and war: “they and theircompeers, and the great, tho’ inferior, peerage of undying intellect, aresecured! secured even from a second irruption of Goths and Vandals . . . bythe vast empire of English language, laws, and religion founded in Americathro’ the overflow of the power and virtue of my country.”47

We catch a glimpse of the situation Gibbon, Hume, Adams, and othereighteenth-century writers were pointing toward in Francis Turner Pal-grave’s reference in 1861 to English as “the dominant language of theworld,” or again, and more interestingly, in James Weldon Johnson’s discus-sion in 1921 of the prospects for black poetry in the Americas: referring tothe different social conditions for blacks in Latin America and the UnitedStates, Johnson concludes, “So I think it probable that the first world-acknowledged Aframerican poet will come out of Latin America. Over


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against this probability, of course, is the great advantage possessed by thecolored poet in the United States of writing in the world-conqueringEnglish language.”48 We are a long way, by this point, from the sense ofEnglish as having only recently emerged from a rude and barbarous past.“The world-conquering English language” now can command “world-acknowledg[ment]” for its writers and literary culture with an assurancethat is, as Adams anticipates, perhaps unexampled in the history of theworld. As Sara Suleri notes, in our age English has become “history’slanguage.”49

I have called this expansive view of the spread of English the“triumphalist” version of the “progress of English” topos, and we cansee what is meant by such a label in various remarks about English sincethe nineteenth century. Edwin Guest, in his A History of English Rhythms(1838), strikes this note quite emphatically: the importance of cultivatingEnglish arises, he argues, from its position in the world at large, irrespectiveof its being “our living tongue.” English, he writes,

is rapidly becoming the great medium of civilization, the language of lawand literature of the Hindoo, of commerce of the African, of religion to thescattered islands of the Pacific.The range of its influence, even at the presentday, is greater than ever was that of the Greek, the Latin, or the Arabic; andthe circle widens yearly.Though it were not our living tongue, it would still,of all living languages, be the one most worthy of our study and ourcultivation, as bearing most directly on the happiness of mankind.50

The gesture of “objectivity” here is, no doubt, unconvincing, but the con-tinuing power of English in many countries throughout the postcolonialworld today—even where governments have been ideologically commit-ted to the replacement of English by a “national” language, as in Malaysia,India, and Nigeria—attests to the logic of the global situation invoked byGuest (as well as to various local complexities of linguistic pluralism inthese nations).The consequences of this (emergent or achieved) hegemonyof English—celebrated as a cultural triumph by the Anglo-American worldsince the eighteenth century—are spelled out no less bluntly by Rev. JamesGeorge in The Mission of Great Britain to the World, or Some of the Lessonswhich She is Now Teaching, published at Toronto in 1867 (the year of theCanadian Confederation):

other languages will remain, but will remain only as the obscure Patois of theworld, while English will become the grand medium for all the business ofgovernment, for commerce, for law, for science, for literature, for philosophy,and divinity.Thus it will really be a universal language for the great materialand spiritual interests of mankind.51


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Rev. George projects onto a global stage the very process of differentiationbetween a language of culture and mere “patois” that occurred within theBritish Isles hand in hand with the imperial elevation of English, a processI discuss in the next section. He envisions a situation in which English, farfrom being in need of cultural transactions with the ancient and modernlanguages of culture, becomes itself the metropolitan source and fount ofsuch cultural richness for various “provincial” cultures.

As these various remarks illustrate, the hegemony of English implies notsimply a “quantitative” domination of English over other languages in termsof language-use around the world; it also, and more importantly, implies a“qualitative” domination of English resulting in or reinforcing the impover-ishment of other languages, their provincialization, their reduction to thefunctional status of “kitchen languages” or “patois,” unusable for the greatmajority of the public-sphere activities of the modern world.This then isthe flip side of the triumph of English, the dark underbelly that has pro-voked (and continues to provoke) much resentment in many parts of theworld, even as it has been celebrated by English-language writers as a won-derful and intoxicating reversal of the historic provinciality of the tongue.

In the modern era, this triumphalist view of English has come to seemso natural that even in a “postcolonial” world it has become difficult to seeEnglish as anything other than inherently a world language, a languagepeculiarly able to incorporate and assimilate “loans” and appropriationsfrom the other languages of the world that it has come to dominate—a lan-guage that by virtue of this quality seems peculiarly adapted for globalexpansion. But the writers of the long eighteenth century saw the Englishlanguage instead as a newly fashioned artifact, newly perfected and gleam-ing with possibilities. For them, its major work was to purge itself of thedross of the past (a rude and provincial past), and in so doing make itself aninstrument for the elevation of the national literary and cultural traditionto a fit eminence.This transformation and elevation was one of the centralcultural facts of their age, but one that has been so taken for granted in theimperial aftermath of the English language that we have frequently failedeven to notice it, let alone take full measure of its significance.

Imperial English and Provincial Tongues

The Third World was not the only place where English tried to grow on the graveyard of otherpeople’s languages. Even in Britain I have heard similar complaints from regions whose originallanguages had been swallowed up by English or in regions where they are putting up a last ditchstruggle to prevent their languages from being killed and buried forever.

—Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1988)


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So far, I have been tracing the transformation of the status of the Englishlanguage and the English-language literary tradition in relation to the largerEuropean world of letters and in relation to the global stage. But side by sidewith these processes there was a related transformation of its status and func-tion within the British Isles that was equally important for the progress ofEnglish: across the early modern period, English went from being one ofseveral regional languages within the British Isles to being the national lan-guage, “the British tongue” as Welsted calls it, and as such distinguishablefrom various “provincial” languages still in use in the British Isles.This ele-vation of English above the other British regional vernaculars gave it a muchmore secure footing on which to claim the status of a language of culturethan did English’s standing vis-à-vis the recognized European languages ofculture, and this “national” elevation of English was one of the most palpa-ble and far-reaching domestic consequences of empire.Yet such multilingualcultural dynamics have regularly been neglected in the study of English lit-erature, almost as though the British Isles or the United States were mono-lingual terrains.While such erasure of “local” or “regional” cultural diversityclearly betrays an anglocentric bias, recovering this diversity is important notsimply as a remedy for anglocentrism, but also to enable us to see one of themodalities of anglocentrism. For linguistic and cultural anglocentrism in theearly modern period within the British Isles operated not simply—or evenprimarily—in the way implied by Ngugi in the epigraph to this section(“swallowing up” and destroying other languages), but rather through a pol-itics of cultural status, the object of which was not to anglicize other culturalspheres but to provincialize them—and, by the same token, to elevate Englishto a metropolitan status. Our discussion of the “triumphalist” expansion ofEnglish in the previous section can be only too easily misconstrued asimplying that cultural assimilation was the main vector of eighteenth-century cultural imperialism. But as I show in this section and in followingchapters, the negotiation of metropolitan and provincial standing within acontext of cultural diversity was as important a modality of imperial cultureas any project of hegemony and cultural assimilation.

In the eighteenth-century world of composite monarchies, recognition(rather than erasure) of linguistic and cultural diversity, precisely as“provincial” diversity, was central to the elevation of English as a“metropolitan” language. Modern English monolingual ideology construesEnglish as “the natural Mother Tongue” of Great Britain (in the words ofthe 1536 Act of Union of England and Wales),52 and conceives diversity oflanguage as a social and cultural “problem.” But such an outlook forgetsmore traditional conceptions of the British Isles as an inherently multilin-gual domain—generally construed as consisting of five regional languagesand cultures—and the anglocentric cultural politics that makes use of such


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diversity as a resource. Although the movement toward anglicization andenforced cultural homogeneity is inaugurated with the Henrician Refor-mation of 1534 and increasing Tudor assertion that cultural diversity is initself politically pernicious, linguistic diversity was still recognized in theeighteenth century as a characteristic of large states.This linguistic diversitytook two forms: one was the cultivation and use of prestige languages, theother was the presence of various “provincial” languages and cultures thathelped to set off the “metropolitan” or “national” language (and helped togive it the status of a prestige language, at least within the confines of thestate).The modern monolingual outlook, by disregarding the fact of locallinguistic diversity, also forgets important aspects of the struggle throughwhich English achieved prestige status, through which it secured elevationin the apparatus of languages that obtained in early modern Britain.

I discuss the place of English in the European republic of letters inchapter 2; here, I only want to note in summary fashion the relatively lowstatus of English vis-à-vis the prestige languages (both ancient and modern)and the increased pressure this put on advancing English by consolidatingits “metropolitan” status vis-à-vis the other regional languages of theBritish Isles. In 1690, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, John Lockelamented the degraded position of English relative to the learned lan-guages, and in the middle of the eighteenth century Thomas Sheridan stillthought it pertinent to reiterate the complaint by quoting him:

To mind what English his pupil speaks or writes, is below the dignity of onebred up amongst Greek and Latin, though he have but little of them him-self. These are the learned languages, fit only for learned men to meddlewith, and teach; English is the language of the illiterate and vulgar.53

In order to raise the status of English, to dissociate it from “the illiterate andvulgar” and associate it with culture and social prestige, there was a moreor less continuous effort in the early modern period to praise English at theexpense of the other provincial languages of the British Isles (Manx,Cornish,Welsh, Scots, Scots Gaelic, Norn, Irish).Thus, for instance, in 1681,an English satirist,“W. R.,” writes in his Wallography:

The Native Gibberish is usually prattled throughout the whole Taphydome,except in their Market Towns, whose Inhabitants being a little rais’d, and (asit were) pufft up into Bubbles, above the ordinary Scum, do begin to despiseit. . . . ’Tis usually cashier’d out of Gentlemen’s Houses. . . . the Lingua willbe English’d out of Wales.54

English is poised, as it were, between the European languages of culture (theprestige languages) and the provincial vernaculars (the patois): it approachesthe condition of the former by asserting its distance from the latter.


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The insistent subordination to English of other regional languages withinBritain found an important motive in this emulation of European languagesof culture. In the 1759 work cited previously, Sheridan declares, “HadDemosthenes written his orations in such a language as High Dutch, or Vir-gil his poems in such a one as Irish or Welsh, their names would not longhave outlived themselves” (27–28). Linking together Irish and Welsh withother “minor” languages like “High Dutch” (i.e., German) provides thegroundwork for a differential linking of English with “major”European lan-guages: the two moves are mutually reinforcing.What is at work in the den-igration of provincial languages is not simply a monolingually nationalisticeffort to anglicize these domains, but equally an effort to elevate English bysubordination of these cultural domains: the effort is not entirely to replaceWelsh or Gaelic or other regional tongues with English, but to construct themetropolitan stature of English by relegating these other languages and theircultural spheres to a merely provincial status. Satirists like “W. R.” may lookforward to the day when Welsh will have been “English’d out of Wales,” butfor the time being they are quite content to load the Welsh language withcontempt, to treat it as a “Native Gibberish”unfit for gentlemen, and despisedeven by those inhabitants who are “a little rais’d . . . above the Scum.”

This dynamic is perhaps most evident in the familiar case of Scotsspeech in the eighteenth century (which has, however, generally beeninterpreted solely in terms of a process of anglicization). Samuel Johnson isexplicit (and explicitly patronizing) about this intertwined process of angli-cization and provincialization in his account of his journey to the Hebridesin 1773:

The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to the English;their peculiarities wear fast away; their dialect is likely to become in half acentury provincial and rustick, even to themselves.The great, the learned, theambitious, and the vain, all cultivate the English phrase, and the Englishpronunciation, and in splendid companies Scotch is not much heard, exceptnow and then from an old lady.55

While Johnson speaks here of the “wearing away” of Scots peculiarities, heis not really contemplating the utter disappearance of the tongue; rather, ashe states, he envisions the language becoming “provincial and rustick” evenin the eyes of the Scots themselves and thus confined to the uses proper toa “kitchen language.” As is apparent in such comments, within a specificclass context, Scots increasingly acquired the status of a relic.Thus, althoughnineteenth-century writers like Galt, Scott, Hogg, and Mrs. Johnstone triedto reinstate Scots as a language fit for dignified literary uses, in social dis-course and in most writing it continued to carry a “clownish air,” as


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Matthew Bramble asserts in Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker (1771). SpokenScots has not so much disappeared as it has been decisively relegated to thestatus of a provincial dialect.

The complicated interplay of provincializing and anglicizing aims inJohnson’s outlook comes out even more clearly in his discussion of Irish. Ina letter of April 9,1757 to Charles O’Conor, Johnson urges the Catholic Irishantiquary and historian to continue the “account of Ireland” he had begunin his Dissertations on the Ancient History of Ireland (1753), commenting:

I have long wished that the Irish Literature were cultivated. . . .What rela-tion there is between the Welch, and Irish languages, or between the lan-guage of Ireland, and that of Biscay, deserves enquiry. Of these provincial, andunextended tongues, it seldom happens that more than one, are understoodby any one man; and therefore, it seldom happens that a fair comparison canbe made. I hope you will continue to cultivate this kind of learning, whichhas lain too long neglected, and which if it is suffered to remain in oblivionfor another century, may perhaps never be retrieved.56

In the preface to the revised edition of the Dissertations (1766), O’Conoracknowledges Johnson’s encouragement of his work:“Far from joining in thecurrent Prejudice against the present Subject, or oppressing the writer whoundertook it,with Censure . . . he approved of an Endeavor to revive . . . theantient Language and Literature of a Sister Isle.”57 O’Conor’s praise ofJohnson suggests how the latter was willing to endorse the “revival” of Irishfor scholarly purposes, how far he was from seeking the complete extinc-tion of the other languages of the British Isles, but also how completelyJohnson views them as “provincial, and unextended tongues.”

Johnson’s comments on Irish illustrate the limitations of an account ofeighteenth-century cultural politics simply in terms of anglicization, andthe need for us to recognize the importance of provincializing dynamics inthe cultural contestations of the period. In A Journey to the Western Islands ofScotland (1775), Johnson exemplifies the licensed ignorance of metropoli-tan cultural authority when he writes, “Of the Earse language, as I under-stand nothing, I cannot say more than I have been told. It is the rude speechof a barbarous people, who had few thoughts to express, and were content,as they conceived grossly, to be grossly understood” (116). Such complacentdismissal of cultures of which one “understand[s] nothing” illustrates thetypical outlook of metropolitan self-conceit when confronting a “provin-cial” culture, as we saw in Napoleon’s confrontation with Bilderdijk. Con-tempt for the other culture, not an imperative to assimilate it, is the keynoteof such an attitude (though, of course, such contempt may very often issuein proposals to replace the “rude speech of a barbarous people” with theinestimable gift of the English language).


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Actual large-scale cultural transformation of the regions of Britain was,in fact, an uneven, extended process, affecting some areas early and ratherfully (e.g., Cornwall) while in other areas significant changes across a broadrange of social levels only come to be registered in the eighteenth century(e.g., in the Scottish Lowlands), and in still other areas wholesale transfor-mations occur only in the nineteenth century (e.g., in Wales). But preced-ing and overlaid atop such sociocultural transformation was the constructionof an ideology of cultural stratification, cultural hierarchy.Thomas Watts, ina paper read to the Philological Society in 1850, echoes this sense of adetermining cultural hierarchy that underpins any more specific culturalevaluation: he suggests that after German, two Scandinavian languages,Russian, and Polish, “Hungarian makes the sixth language which, duringthe last century, has risen to the dignity of a language of books and litera-ture.” He proceeds to note that the last hundred years have been particu-larly rich in such transvaluations of cultural traditions—social and cultural“mobility,” in other words, do not apply solely to individuals and, even at alevel of greater generality, such transformation of status is characteristic ofthe modern period:

Within the century before it [i.e., 1650–1750] there was not one [language]that had changed its footing in this respect in a striking degree.There are stillin different corners of Europe a few languages which remain in the sameposition that they then occupied, or in very nearly the same; and of thesethere is a remarkable number in the British islands.The progress of each ofthese six languages has been greeted as a sign and harbinger of the progressof cultivation, but should we be prepared to hail with similar gratulation asimilar advance on the part of the Gaelic, the Irish, or the Welsh?58

This is a remarkably candid admission that what was involved in the deni-gration of Scots Gaelic, Irish, and Welsh cultural traditions as illiterate andmeager was no humanist valuation of letters and learning, but the assertionof a cultural hierarchy structured to reinforce English superiority. Thedesire was not to see the “advancement” (to use Bacon’s term) of theseother cultural traditions, but to see them subsumed under a structure ofEnglish cultural domination.Watts then proceeds to sketch out a history ofthe progress of English, concluding with a fantasy of English world-hegemony (a hegemony of the English-speaking peoples), and in doing sohe suggests how much the superior “dignity” of English (relative to thevarious “provincial” languages of the British Isles) derives from its imperialcachet:

Two centuries ago the proud position that [English] now occupies wasbeyond the reach of anticipation. We all smile at the well-known boast of


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Waller in his lines on the death of Cromwell, but it was the loftiest that atthe time the poet found it in his power to make:—

“Under the tropic is our language spoke,And part of Flanders hath received our yoke.”59

. . . A French jesuit Garnier, in 1678, laying down rules for the arrangementof a library, thought it superfluous to say anything of English books, because,as he observed, “libri Anglica scripti lingua vix mare transmittunt” [bookswritten in the English language are hardly ever sent across the sea]. . . . [But]the dominions of England now stretch from the Ganges to the Indus, [and]the whole space of India is dotted with the regimental libraries of itsEuropean conquerors. . . . What will be the state of Christendom at the timethat this vast preponderance of one language [i.e., English] will be broughtto bear on all its relations, —at the time when a leading nation in Europe[Britain] and a gigantic nation in America [the United States] make use ofthe same idiom, —when in Africa and Australasia the same language is in useby rising and influential communities, and the world is circled by the accentsof Shakespeare and Milton? (211–12)

Watts makes very clear that the glory of empire is an essential part of thecultural confidence that Britain has been able to consolidate since the eigh-teenth century: he is able to present Dryden’s fantasy of the Ganges bow-ing to Britain’s king as an imperial reality. Writing in the wake ofMacaulay’s notorious Minute on Indian Education (1835), with its claimthat “[w]hat the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More andAscham, our tongue is to the people of India,”60 Watts understands that thisaltered sociopolitical position has led to far-ranging readjustments in theglobal cultural–linguistic apparatus. Once again, the idea that metropolitanand provincial cultural statuses are directly dependent on geopoliticalpower is made manifest for us.

In a similar vein, John Hughes, a leading Welsh Wesleyan and a defenderof the virtues and rights of Welsh, nonetheless writes in 1822:“At the sametime, while we feel we are Welshmen, we forget not that we are membersof the British Empire at large; and we are sensible of the excellency of thelanguage, which is not only that of the British Isles, but promises to be thegrand medium of communication, both in the Western and Easternworld.”61 Hughes legitimates the status of English as the language of all theBritish Isles by invoking its imperial relations across the wider globe; heuses this imperial dimension to mitigate the subordination of the otherregional languages of Britain to English. That is, by virtue of being animperial language, English ceases to be a regional language like any otherin the British Isles. The invocation of imperial range becomes a crucialaspect of the reconstruction of Britain from a realm of numerous diversecultures into a tendentially homogeneous realm that properly is English,and in which various subaltern, regional cultures are tolerated. As a result


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of the shifting relations of the apparatus of languages within the BritishIsles, the “provinces” were increasingly transformed into “locked reposito-ries” of regional culture, while the English-language sphere became, bycontrast, a metropolitan domain of cultural production and dissemination.This change in status, as much as the various internal linguistic featurescommented on by traditional scholarship on the development of Englishliterary language, is what distinguishes Shakespeare’s English from that ofthe writers of the era of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century bardolatry.Waller’s boast that “Under the tropics is our language spoke” marks a sig-nificant turn from Milton’s patriotic acceptance of the limited sphere ofEnglish speech: it signifies the beginnings of a complete revolution in theself-conception of writers operating in the English-language culturalsphere.This revolution in self-conceptions produced an immense distancelikewise between the English-language sphere and all other cultural sphereswithin the British Isles.This, too, was a new fact or feature of the terrain ofculture in the British Isles, although we commonly tend to treat the result-ing situation as immemorial by conflating the simple historical predomi-nance of the English-language cultural sphere within the British Isles withits rather later assumption of metropolitan distinction within this context.

As a result of the new elevation of English, even if there was a Welsh lit-erary revival in the eighteenth century,Welsh was no longer a “literary” lan-guage; the metropolitan tradition of Welsh court poets was dead and in itsplace there arose a regional tradition, in conscious subordination to or at leastdistinction from the metropolitan English-language tradition.62 By that time,it had become increasingly difficult for writers in Welsh (or Scots or ScotsGaelic) to produce “literature”: by virtue of its medium, their writings wererelegated to the category of “dialect” or “folk” or “regional” literature.Thus,as Roland Mathias writes, discussion of Anglo-Welsh and Welsh poets

from the seventeenth century onwards, is vitally affected by the issue of con-fidence and a viable tradition. . . . [T]he tradition in which Anglo-Welshwriting began—with the Tudor glory, and behind it the line of Welsh princesgoing back to Brutus the Trojan, with the seniority of centuries that thatimplied [vis-à-vis the English]—had all but disintegrated. Progressively fromthe middle of the seventeenth century versifiers in English, themselves notmen of outstanding parts, were writing from a Wales that was unconfident,poor, provincial and second-rate: they partook of the enfeebled spirit, theservility of the times to which they belonged.The malaise affected the wholenation. . . .A sense of inferiority became deeply ingrained in the greatmajority of the Welsh-speaking population.63

Mathias’s comments here echo those of John Hughes in the earlynineteenth century. Discussing the difficult approach toward a linguistic


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“general standard” (i.e., uniformity) in early nineteenth-century Welsh,John Hughes writes: “In a national language the difficulty is less, but it isdifferent with respect to a people, whose language is not now used, nor inthe court, nor in the senate; and whatever it was at one time, is now nomore than a provincial tongue” (25–26).Welsh is not a “national” languagebecause it is not integrated with national political institutions; it is merely“provincial” because it has little in the way of diverse institutional or infra-structural consolidation. In contrast, English, “the general language of theEmpire,” is “the great vehicle of the national Literature, of Law, of theSenate, and the Court, as well as the first commercial transactions” (51).Given this structured hierarchy of linguistic domains and communicativepractices,Welsh culture—irrespective of individual achievements—will be,in Hughes’s phrase,“subordinate to” English-language culture (51).

If language-spheres like those of Welsh and Scots were relegated toprovincial status across the long eighteenth century, this happened evenmore emphatically to the smaller languages of the British Isles (Cornish,Manx, Shetland Norn and Channel Islands French). In 1785 there was an“ode” in the Universal Magazine by Peter Pindar ( John Wolcot) on, amongothers, Dolly Pentreath, (assumed to be) the last speaker of Cornish, whohad died in December 1777: the mock ode’s tone of metropolitan, sexist“wit” can be gauged from these lines:“Hail Mousehole! birth place of oldDoll Pentreath / The last who gabber’d Cornish . . .” A note in the col-lected volume from which I am quoting identifies Pentreath and recountsin mocking fashion, as a tale of romance, Daines Barrington’s “discovery”of “this wrinkled, yet delicious morceau”:

The honourable Antiquarian, Daines Barrington, Esq; journied, some yearssince from London to the Land’s-end, to converse with this wrinkled, yetdelicious morceau. He entered Mousehole in a kind of triumph, and peepinginto her hut, exclaimed, with all the fire of an enraptured Lover, in the lan-guage of the famous Greek Philosopher—“EUREKA!”The couple kissed—Doll soon after gabbled—Daines listened with admiration—committed herspeeches to paper, not venturing to trust his memory with so much treasure.The transaction was announced to the [Philological] Society—the Journals[e.g., Archaeologia] were enriched with their dialogues—the old Lady’s picturewas ordered to be taken by the most eminent Artist, and the honourableMember to be publicly thanked for the DISCOVERY!64

Much of the amusement here is supposed to reside in the ludicrousness ofcasting a grave antiquary and an antique woman in the role of romanticlovers. The text emphasizes the cultural poverty of the whole affair byunderlining words like “treasure” and “enriched,” and by deliberately invok-ing the aura of prestigious cultural spheres, whether French (“morceau”),


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Greek (“EUREKA”), or Roman (“He entered Mousehole in a kind oftriumph . . .”). The anecdote constructs value and indicates valorizationthrough metropolitan cultural practices, whether this be publication,having a portrait painted, or holding a public vote of thanks.The conven-tions of romance function as parody here particularly in association withthe larger intersection of prestigious versus provincial cultures; the poemand the note dramatize the evaluative judgments that structure the relationsof the cultural–linguistic apparatus.

The dialectical process that, across the eighteenth century, elevatesEnglish-language literary culture to metropolitan status, on par with otherprestige languages of the European world, also demotes other culturalspheres of the British Isles to provincial status. The existence of such adynamic suggests the importance of paying attention to regional culturaldiversity if we wish to understand the character and implications of nation-alism in English-language literary culture. The context of any culturalnationalism is multilingual and multicultural and it is in the structuring ofthis heterogeneous terrain that one finds the work of nationalism. Butequally importantly, as this chapter has shown, we cannot limit our atten-tion to the “domestic” British scene if we wish to understand the situationof English-language literary culture in this period.65The interplay of the cul-tural pressures and opportunities offered by the local British, the European,and the wider imperial contexts is crucial to any full account of the chang-ing self-understanding of English-language writers in our period. Themechanisms of cultural prestige and authority are to be found in the inter-pellation of a given “national” culture into a specific set of relations withinthe wider cultural–linguistic apparatus, and not in splendid isolation“within” the culture in question. Many of the central dynamics at work inthe literary culture are obscured if, in the manner of much literary schol-arship, we adopt an insular perspective on the London-focused literaryworld of eighteenth-century Britain or if we simply look for and examinenationalistic representations in literary texts. We need, instead or in addi-tion, to understand the situation of the literary culture and the culturaldynamics that govern the production and reception of work by English-language writers.This chapter has shown the importance of issues regard-ing the status of one’s own cultural tradition vis-à-vis other literarytraditions in the cultural politics of the early modern world; chapter 2examines the concept of the republic of letters in order to provide a morestructured account of the situation of the English-language literarytradition within the world of European culture, underlining how much wemiss about the real situation of English-language literary culture when wecredit writers like Addison and Pope with an unproblematic metropolitanurbanity.


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CHAPTER 2

THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS

The “republic of letters” represents one of the central ways of cognitivelymapping the terrain of European culture during the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries. If we want to understand the situation of English-language literary culture in the early modern period and how this situationimpinged on the self-understanding of English-language writers,we need toexamine this discursive institution. Unlike the progress of English topos, therepublic of letters has been the subject of extensive study. But most of thiswork assumes that the erudite, scholarly vision of the republic of letters thatwas dominant through the early seventeenth century is the essential anddefinitive expression of this concept.As a result, as I show in this chapter, wehave signally misconstrued or ignored the eighteenth-century vision of therepublic of letters. This vision was based, not on the ideal of an equal, uni-versal, learned, Latin-based culture, but rather on a belletristic conception ofheterogeneous national literary traditions interacting with one another andnegotiating issues of linguistic diversity and cultural marginality/centrality.This chapter brings this more modern version of the republic of letters intofocus and shows how it conditioned the self-understanding of English-language writers, posing for them issues of secondariness and cultural mar-ginality, and giving a nationalistic inflection to their conception of literarypractice.The neglect of this modern conception of the republic of letters hascontributed to the construction of an image of “Augustan” literary cultureas invested in a universalist poetics and a neoclassical orientation, an imagethat fails to register how fully the literary culture of the period engages witha problematic of cultural diversity and national status.

The phrase Respublica literaria itself,“unknown to Antiquity and the Mid-dle Ages,” has been traced back to the early fifteenth century (it occurs in aLatin letter of 1417 written by Francesco Barbaro to Poggio Bracciolini).Marc Fumaroli argues that it is an adaptation of “the much more ancientformula Respublica christiana”: “Respublica literaria stands out against thebackground of Respublica christiana, not in opposition to it but in imitation

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of it, so to speak, on a literary level. . . . It was not until the Republic ofLetters spread to northern Europe, encompassing Gallicans and Protestantsin the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and Masons in the eighteenth,that the original relationship of this literary aristocracy to the Romanchurch was dissipated, but without the disappearance of the idea of scholarsunited in a mystical body and working together toward a common goodwhose significance was universal.”1 Paul Dibon also argues for the depen-dence of the notion of the European republic of letters on an earlier notionof European Christian community: the republic of letters, he argues, testifiesto “la conviction, que nourrissait une élite, de l’unité intellectuelle et spir-ituelle de la civilisation occidentale.”2 The notion of the republic of letterswas popularized by publishers and scholars such as Aldo Manuzio andErasmus, but the notion did not acquire a wide currency until the seven-teenth century. During that century, the notion was naturalized in much ofEurope and was taken to refer primarily to “the learned world,” that is, tothe international world of savants and érudits, their learned correspondencesand personal networks (what the Germans refer to as a Gelehrtenrepublik).3

The phrase was not naturalized into English, according to the OxfordEnglish Dictionary, until the beginning of the eighteenth century, but bythen the notion had already begun to undergo a significant transformation.It no longer referred exclusively or even primarily to the world of scholarsand erudition, but to a larger world of polite letters, and came, increasingly,to work in tandem with a broad notion of “the public” (rather than anexclusive fellowship of scholars). Already by the mid-seventeenth century,Guez de Balzac speaks of the “République des belles lettres”; similarly,Sir Richard Blackmore in 1705 refers to the “Polite Republick” of the“Men of Letters.”4 The history of the phrase in English, thus, takes place inan era after the republic of letters, both as a concept and as a cultural for-mation, has already expanded beyond the library or study of the scholar toincorporate the whole imaginative realm of Parnassus. Disregarding thistransformation, modern writers often treat the “true” republic of letters,even in the eighteenth century, as the world of scholars and scholarship (theworld of erudition), and on occasion eighteenth-century writers also use thephrase in this narrower sense. But the phrase is hardly restricted to such usesin this period; instead, the “man of letters” (and, crucially, the woman of let-ters) join, and in good measure succeed, the “scholar” as the protagonists ofthe republic of letters in the eighteenth century.

My sense of a transformation, by the later seventeenth century, of theerudite commonwealth of learning into a polite republic of letters is close tothe view of Elizabeth Eisenstein, who notes that, as part of this shift, “thelanguage of the inhabitants of the literary Republic has shifted in the courseof the seventeenth century from Latin to French.”5 But she also emphasizes

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57THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS

the persistence of Latin-based erudition at the close of the seventeenthcentury, and thus suggests that for the last part of the seventeenth century“it may be desirable to distinguish between a learned cosmopolitan Latin-reading ‘Commonwealth of Learning’ and the more ‘worldly’ cosmopolitanFrench-reading ‘Republic of Letters’ ” (138, n. 289, emphasis added).Ratherthan speak of two distinct cultural formations—a “Commonwealth ofLearning” that is unchanged from the seventeenth century and a new“Republic of Letters”—that exist side by side, I think it preferable to con-ceive of this distinction as pertaining to an internal segmentation within theEuropean republic of letters and to emphasize the conceptual transforma-tion of the notion of the republic of letters as it shifts from a dominantlyerudite to a dominantly polite mode.The notion of a “Commonwealth ofLearning” can serve as a synonym for the erudite republic of letters, but thisversion of the republic of letters does not simply continue unchanged whilea second,“worldly” republic of letters arises alongside it; rather, the charac-ter of the republic of letters shifts from being marked by erudition to beingmarked by politeness, and a specifically erudite domain now figures as a par-ticular sector within the larger realm of the polite republic of letters—anderudition itself comes to be subjected to the demands of politeness, as wewill see in the discussion of Addison’s Dialogues Upon the Usefulness of AncientMedals, later.

Other students of the early modern republic of letters have described itschanging social basis (as it shifts from a network of educated male scholars,many of them ecclesiastics, to include both writers and readers, men as wellas women, and sites such as the salons, coffee houses, and reading societies);its increasing institutionalization (as it shifts from reliance on personal cor-respondences to consolidation through the media of academies, learnedsocieties, circulating libraries, periodicals, and book-reviews); and theincreasing importance of commercial logics in its operation as it becomesmore intimately intertwined with print capitalism (through the publishingand dissemination of books and journals for a wider readership). In thischapter, I take much of this sociological transformation of the character ofthe eighteenth-century republic of letters for granted, and focus on delin-eating the place of a problematic of language and nation, metropole andprovince, within this cultural formation. Against the tendency to construethe republic of letters as always implying a homogeneous cultural arena(as it did from the Renaissance into the seventeenth century)—with sharedvalues, a shared language, and commitment to the supposed intellectual andspiritual unity of occidental civilization—I argue that across the long eigh-teenth century the notion of a republic of polite letters consistently servesto focus attention on a multiplicity of languages and cultures in relation toone another. In the eighteenth century, the republic of letters serves, not as

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a trope of European unity and identity, but as a figure for the problem ofcultural difference and its negotiation, a negotiation that constantly high-lights issues of the relative standing of a given cultural tradition or milieuvis-à-vis other comparable traditions or milieus.The notion of the repub-lic of letters may imply a search for commonalities across constitutive het-erogeneities, but it does so in conscious recognition of the diversity ofcultural and social identities that structure interactions in a transnationalarena. Likewise, where many scholars treat the republic of letters as imply-ing the abstract equality of all its members, or a purposeful disregard ofinequalities of positioning within the realm, I argue that the concept servesprecisely to emphasize the consequentiality of issues of urbanity andprovinciality and the inequalities of sociocultural location that these termssuggest.And, finally, I show that attention to the notion of the republic ofletters alerts us to how the concept of the literary public sphere divergesfrom that of the political public sphere in this period—an issue neglectedby much work on cultural history inspired by Habermas’s account of the“bourgeois” or “civic” (bürgerliche) public sphere. My aim in this chapter isto show that across the Restoration and eighteenth century in Britain, thenational literary culture is consistently placed in the context of a wider,European literary field, and hence the inadequacy of purely national framesof reference in reading eighteenth-century British literature, a parochialtendency of much literary scholarship that inevitably elides the issues ofprovinciality posed by the wider context.

Visions of the Republic of Polite Letters

Despite the ease with which authors of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies invoke the republic of letters, the notion itself has always been hardto pin down. During its heyday, relatively few contemporaries felt obligedto elaborate on the notion at any length, a characteristic that attests to itsgeneral currency but that also makes it more difficult to reconstruct histor-ically. Being widely diffused in the culture, the notion also becomes at timessomewhat diffuse in articulation and meaning. Early modern English-language writers employ a variety of phrases more or less closely synony-mous with the “republic of letters,” beginning with such variations as the“Latine Republick,” the “Polite Republick,” or the “Republic of Parnassus,”and extending through such phrases as: “wit’s commonwealth” or the“muses’ commonwealth”; “learning’s commonwealth” or the “common-wealth of learning”; the “commonwealth of letters,” the “commonwealth ofliterature,” or the “literary commonwealth”; the “world of letters” or the“lettered world.”6 It is clear enough that the phrases the “commonwealth ofletters” or the “republic of letters” are translations of the notion of a respublica


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literaria, but it is not equally clear that eighteenth-century writers using thephrase the “world of letters” have this particular notion in mind. Our ten-dency, I think, is to interpret this latter phrase as invoking an undefined butgenerally fairly local literary scene (e.g., the London literary world) and, nodoubt, the phrase the “world of letters” is frequently used in such a sense.Nonetheless, it seems to me that the phrase often functions in the eigh-teenth century as a loose translation and adaptation of the respublica literaria,so that writers speak indifferently of the “republic,” the “commonwealth,” orthe “world” of letters. When Southey has Napoleon ask Bilderdijk, “Artthou then in the world of letters known?” he and his readers understand“the world of letters” to be a synonym for the transnational republic ofletters. In 1770, when Thomas Chatterton refers to Samuel Johnson as“Long in the literary world unknown,” the phrase “the literary world” mayseem quite distant from a notion of the republic of letters; yet, in 1800 whenSir Joseph Banks uses the same phrase in writing to a French colleague, thetranslators render it as “la République des lettres.”Elizabeth Hamilton, in Lettersof a Hindoo Rajah (1796), writes that “The thirst of conquest and the desireof gain,which first drew the attention of the most powerful and enlightenednations of Europe toward the fruitful regions of Hindoostan, have been themeans of opening sources of knowledge and information to the learned, andthe curious, and have added to the stock of the literary world,” a wordingin which “the . . . nations of Europe” and “the literary world” are equallyphrases of transnational scope.7

Over the course of this chapter, we shall encounter plenty of evidenceto support the view that the notion of a republic of letters had a generalcurrency in eighteenth-century English-language literary culture, but evenif we accept this claim, we still need to ask what contemporaries under-stood the republic of letters to mean.We cannot expect, of course, a singleor uniform answer to this question, but there are certain features that recurrepeatedly despite the other variations in different depictions of the repub-lic of letters, and it is through these common features that we can beginto understand what the notion of the republic of letters made available tothose involved with the realm of letters across the long eighteenth century.

While visiting Chatsworth in June 1750, David Garrick received a giftfrom William Cavendish, third Duke of Devonshire, and wrote to his closefriend, Somerset Draper, about it: “[The Duke] has given me, since I havebeen here, a Book I much wanted, it is called Melanges d’Histoire & deLitterature, in three volumes.”8 This work, written by Bonaventured’Argonne under the pseudonym of M. de Vigneul-Marville, was publishedoriginally in 1699 and republished at various points throughout the eigh-teenth century.Garrick’s interest in the work anticipates that of modern stu-dents of the republic of letters, as one of the passages in Vigneul-Marville’s

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collection of miscellaneous literary anecdotes and observations is an accountof the republic of letters:

La république des lettres est très-ancienne. . . . Jamais république n’a été niplus grande, ni plus peuplée, ni plus libre, ni plus glorieuse. Elle s’étend partoute la terre, & est composée de gens de toute nations, de toute condition,de tout âge, de tout sexe, les femmes non plus que les enfans n’en étant pasexclus: on y parle toute sorte de langues vivantes & mortes; les arts y sontjoints aux lettres, & les mécaniques y tiennent leur rang: mais la religion n’yest pas uniforme, & les moeurs, comme dans toutes les autres républiques, ysont mêlangées de bien & de mal; on y trouve de la piété & du libertinage.

La politique de cet état consiste plus en paroles, en maximes & réflexionsvagues, qu’en actions & en effets. Le peuple y tire toute sa force de l’éloquence &du raisonnement. Son trafic est tout spirituel, & ses richesses sont très-médiocres. On y tend à la gloire & à l’immortalité sur toutes choses. La pompedes habits n’y est pas grande, & l’on y fait peu de cas des gens qui ne travaillentque par avarice & pour avoir du pain.

Les sectes y sont en grand nombre, & il s’en forme tous les jours denouvelles.Tout l’état est divisé entre les philosophes, les médecins, les théolo-giens, les juriconsultes, les historiens, les mathématiciens, les orateurs, lesgrammairiens & les poëtes, qui ont chacun leurs loix particulières.

La justice y est administrée par les critiques souvent avec plus de sévéritéque de jugement. . . . La honte est le plus grand supplice des coupables, &perdre sa réputation en ce pays là, c’est y perdre la vie. Il y a pourtant deseffrontés & des chevaliers d’industrie, qui ne laissent pas d’y subsister auxdépens d’autrui; & des écornifleurs qui emportent les bons morceaux, &arrachent le pain de la main aux personnes de mérite.

Le public y distribue la gloire, mais souvent avec beaucoup d’aveuglement &trop de précipitation; ce qui cause de grandes plaintes, & excite de fâcheuxmurmures dans la république.9

Vigneul-Marville’s account of the republic of letters is clearly not an empir-ical report on this realm as a contemporary cultural formation; instead, itgives us a somewhat mixed description both of what this republic should beand what it fails to be.The division into sects, the blindness of the public inits judgments on writers and writings, the libertinism of some of the repub-lic’s members, the judgmental arrogance of critics—all of these are palpablefailings within the realm. According to Vigneul-Marville’s account, therepublic of letters is anything but a well-ordered realm, and it remains fullof complaints and angry murmurings.What he gives us is not, then, simplyan idealized portrait of the republic of letters.

Nonetheless, much of what he writes can only be understood as anexpression of the value-ideals of the republic of letters as a concept.This applies in particular to his sense of the universal scope of the republic


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of letters. In contrast to modern scholarship,Vigneul-Marville (like otherearly modern writers) characterizes the republic of letters as having subsistedsince antiquity. For him, the republic of letters is, as it were, a “natural”feature of literate civilization: it may be flourishing at the end of the seven-teenth century as never before, but it is not a novel departure in the historyof European culture. This universalization of the temporal scope of therepublic of letters is matched by Vigneul-Marville’s even more emphaticinsistence on its geographical, cultural, and social universality. By no meansis it restricted to the world of erudition (including as it does orators andpoets), nor, even, is it restricted to an adult male fraternity (including womenand children also); and, in line with the projects of Bacon, Leibniz, and theEncyclopédie, the republic of letters is here already seen to comprise a unionof lettered learning and mechanical arts (each in their proper place, to besure), and thus it extends to a wider social world than simply that of thearistocracy, the landed gentry, or the traditional professions.

As a positive concept, the republic of letters is clearly linked to an idealof universality—an ideal that finds partial fulfillment through various insti-tutional nodes.The Royal Society of London is one such node, as one cansee from the correspondence of its secretary, Henry Oldenburg. Oldenburgrepresents the Royal Society as seeking to help coordinate an internationalenterprise based on a shared commitment to “truth and human welfare”(see letter to Johannes Hevelius, February 18, 1662/63). But while theRoyal Society may be interested in joining forces with “men from all partsof the world who are famous for their learning,” the use of the masculinegender here is not incidental.10 The “world of learning” remains a cos-mopolitan but male preserve within the larger republic of polite letters asenvisaged by Vigneul-Marville. A closer approximation to the full ideal ofuniversality might be provided by the academy of the Arcadians at Rome.The Monthly Review (March 1758) describes the academy in these terms:

The academy of the Arcadians was erected towards the latter end of the lastcentury, at Rome, by those learned persons chiefly who were about QueenChristina of Sweden.This academy admits all sciences, all arts, all nations, allranks, and both sexes.The number of its members is not determined; theyare said to be at present upwards of two thousand.11

This academy, with its interest in “all sciences [and] all arts” and its opennessto persons of “all nations, all ranks, and both sexes,” embodies a miniatureversion of the republic of letters. Like Vigneul-Marville’s description, theseremarks about the academy of Arcadians suggest that the form of sociabilityconceptualized and valorized through the notion of the republic of letters is


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distinguished importantly from ordinary forms of social life in its ability toconstruct relations across differences of nationality, rank, and gender.

Despite the investment in reaching across (or “transcending”) these andother differences,Vigneul-Marville conceives of the republic of letters asanything but uniform or homogeneous. This republic includes membersfrom all nationalities, social ranks, ages, and genders—but not on the modelof a melting pot or through insistence on a common language and culture.Just as the different genres of writing (history, philosophy, etc.) each havetheir own province within the realm with their own laws, so, too, the realmis divisible into the various languages and nationalities that compose it.(Vigneul-Marville’s republic of letters, in this respect, bears comparisonwith the “Temple of Apollo” depicted in the frontispiece to the UniversalVisiter, with its separate niche for each national literary tradition, as dis-cussed in chapter 1.) The inhabitants of this republic of letters importantlyare groups of people with diverse social and cultural identities, rather thanabstract individuals divested of their social personalities. What remainsunclear in Vigneul-Marville’s account is how the intellectual commerceamong these diverse groups of people takes place and how they shapethemselves into a single, if indefinite,“public.”

The problem of communication entailed by the multiplicity of languageswithin the republic of letters is only rendered more intractable in light ofcomments Vigneul-Marville makes elsewhere in his miscellaneous literarycollection.“Chaque langue,”he writes,“a son génie, son caractere, ses usages,ses privileges, ses immunitez, & ses graces particulieres. Chacune demeure,pour ainsi dire, sur son quant-à-moi; & elles ne s’entrecommuniquent pointleurs singularitez.”12This insistence on the characteristic singularities of eachlanguage anticipates in many respects the outlook of a writer like Wilhelmvon Humboldt, although Humboldt places more emphasis on the differ-ences among language families (and hence on a typology of languages), thanon differences among languages in their singular uniqueness. Nonetheless, itis important for us to keep in mind that writers in the period we are con-cerned with were acutely aware of cultural and linguistic differences (evenif some of them also believed in the possibility of a rational and universalgrammar), and that their investment in a notion of the republic of letters wasneither built on a blindness to such differences, nor did it require that theydisregard them. In Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L’An Deux Mille Quatre CentQuarante (rev. ed., 1786), even the future is envisaged as marked by lin-guistic multiplicity and the diverse character or “genius” of each language.This diversity is made the basis for functional specialization, as Mercier’sspokesman from the year 2440 explains: “l’allemand est aujourd’hui lalangue des chymistes et naturalistes; l’anglois, la langue des poètes et des


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historiens; l’italien, la langue des opéras; l’espagnol, celle des hymes et desodes; le françois, la langue éternelle des romans, et celle de la politique.”13

The republic of letters, past, present, and future, is thus continually under-stood, across the long eighteenth century, to be a multilingual and culturallydifferentiated domain.

Vigneul-Marville’s account of the republic of letters certainly depicts itas an extensive, internally heterogeneous domain; it does not, however, offerus any hints on how to chart the center and the peripheries of this realm.To get a sense of this aspect of the republic of letters it is useful to turn toanother work popular in its own day, but which has been completely dis-regarded in most of the twentieth-century scholarship on this subject.I refer to Republica literaria by Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (1584–1648).Thiswork was originally published in Spain in 1655 and 1670, then reprintedin the Netherlands in 1677 and 1678 and from there translated into English(in 1705, 1727, and 1728), German (1748), Italian (1767), and French(1770), as well as being reprinted in Spanish across the eighteenth century(1730, 1735, 1788, and 1790).14 The work may originate in the early sev-enteenth century, but its period of greatest currency within Spain andthroughout Europe was in the eighteenth century: it may thus be taken asinfluential for and resonant with eighteenth-century conceptions of therepublic of letters. Saavedra’s work takes the form of a dream-vision, whichbegins with the following words:

I was running over in my Mind the prodigious Number, and continualIncrease of Books, thro’ the Liberty of the Press, and the Presumption ofWriters, who make a downright Trade of it; when, falling asleep, a Veil wasdrawn over those Images which my Thoughts, while awake, had beenemploy’d about; and I found myself in Sight of a City,whose Capitals of Silverand radiant, [sic] Gold dazzled me with their Lustre, and that carried theiraspiring Tops even above the Clouds. . . . [He chances upon “an elderly Man”whom he recognizes to be Marcus Varro “that universal Scholar.”] UponEnquiry what City that was, he . . . told me it was the Republick of Letters, andoffer’d his Company to conduct me to a Sight of what was most curioustherein; which I readily accepted, and placed myself under his Direction.15

Much like Dante’s Virgil in the Inferno and Purgatorio,Varro here serves as aguide and leads Saavedra through the city of “the Republick of Letters.”16

Although writing fifty years earlier, Saavedra, like Vigneul-Marville,presents the republic of letters as a realm containing a full range of writers,both scholarly and belletristic. But unlike Vigneul-Marville, he presents the republic as a “closed” realm: it is walled and surrounded by a moat


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(of ink), and in order to gain admittance, works sent from the rest of theworld must first pass through the hands of censors/critics who eitherapprove the work or condemn it to be used as waste paper (or to be burnt,in extreme cases). Rather than being spread across every region of theglobe, Saavedra’s republic of letters is, thus, a self-contained city that existsapart from the rest of the world. Nonetheless, he finds the whole worldwithin this single polis, in miniature as it were, as for instance when hecomes upon a street lined on both sides with “the most celebratedLibraries, both antient and modern.As that of Ptolomy Philadelphus, adornedwith 600000 Volumes; the Vatican; that of St. Ambrose at Milan of 40000Books; and several others” (73). He also finds any number of useless citi-zens within the realm, who contribute little to the advancement of the artsor sciences, but who have taken up the trade of writer in one fashion oranother.Thus despite the topographical differences in their descriptions ofthe republic of letters, Saavedra’s city is more like Vigneul-Marville’s realmof letters than one might expect.

Since Saavedra, in his dream, actually travels through this republic of let-ters and meets its inhabitants, his account allows us to examine the bordersof the republic and the exclusions and hierarchies it manifests more read-ily than Vigneul-Marville’s abstract account. Saavedra places “Men busiedin those Arts that are but the Habits of the Body; merely Handicraft, inwhich the Understanding bears little or no Part” in the “Suburbs” of thecity, within the city walls but separated by a river from those who belongmore properly to the republic of letters (8–9).After these merely “Mechan-ical Arts” and artists, he and his guide come upon the practitioners of“those Arts wherein the Understanding takes Place, and the Hands servebut as Instruments to it”—for example, architecture, painting, sculpture,tapestry-making, engraving (9). Finally, they come to the city gates proper,inside which reside the professors of the seven “Liberal Sciences,” the prac-titioners of which deal only with “Words and Quantities,” untouched bycrude matter (9, 26). As with Vigneul-Marville, Saavedra’s republic of let-ters comprehends both artificers and writers, although in this latter case thetripartite hierarchy of mechanical, fine, and liberal arts, like the central roleassigned to censors, emphasizes the selectivity rather than the breadth andinclusiveness of the republic of letters.

Nonetheless, the republic Saavedra encounters remains a peculiar mix-ture of indiscriminate inclusions and curious exclusions.The citizens of therepublic all must be thoroughly proficient in Latin, Saavedra finds, andwhen he inquires why this expenditure of time and energy is required,Varro explains:

as to the Sciences, it would be altogether improper to expose and make themcommon in the Mother-Tongue; besides, . . . it was necessary to preserve


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[the Latin tongue], not only upon account of the many learn’d Books writin it, but also that different Nations might enjoy the Benefit of one another’sStudies, and Improvements, they being made publick in one common andgeneral Language; which could not otherwise be brought about but by theendless Fatigue of Translations; which disfigure and greatly impair theStrength of their Originals. (61–62)

This understanding of the republic of letters as a Latin republic is sympto-matic of the relatively early date at which Saavedra’s work was composed,but the emphasis on Latinity is undermined by the very fact that his workis itself written in Spanish. Moreover, once we move through the republicwe come upon all sorts of writers for whom Latin is not the exclusive lan-guage of literary culture.Thus, for instance, Saavedra includes an extendedreview of the major Italian and Spanish poets (48–58); he also discusses thepresence of a variety of writers engaged in “Philosophical Enquiries”: Gym-nosophists, Druids, and “the Magi of Persia, the Chaldeans, the Turdetans ofSpain, the Indian Bracmans, the Rabbinists, Cabbalists, Sadducees, and others”(75–76)—the presence of all these figures suggests that his republic of let-ters, no less than that of Vigneul-Marville, is a multilingual and immemorialrealm, stretching across various historical cultures and regions of the globe(or at least epitomizing them within its own bounds). Saavedra is unusuallyinclusive in the attention he gives to occult traditions of alchemy, sorcery,and divination (beginning with “Hermes the Egyptian, Zoroaster and Budathe Chaldean [sic]” [95], and continuing with a variety of necromancers,pyromancers, hydromancers, aeromancers, sycomancers, geomancers, chiro-mancers, soothsayers, diviners, and oracles [95–98]). So, too, the republicturns out to be full of a variety of nameless writers in miscellaneous genres:thus, in addition to historians, philosophers, poets, grammarians, and critics,we find also physicians, opticians, astrologers, lawyers, miscellany-writers,and catalogue-writers (105–07). Despite the initial emphasis on theextremely selective process of admission to the city, then, the question wefind ourselves asking by this point is who isn’t included in this catch-allrepublic?

The most obvious exclusion in Saavedra’s vision of the republic of let-ters is that of women. For, despite the presence of a few “nymphs” here andthere, the only woman writer encountered during his tour is Sappho—andshe only serves as an occasion to expiate on the proper role of women.17

Saavedra finds the poet running from her father, and the old man complainsto him:

she minded nothing but to make Verses, without the least Thoughts of theBusiness and Concerns of the House, as to sew and spin; which, said he, arethe fittest and most becoming for a Woman: ’Tis not for them to study and


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fling away their Time upon Books, which distract their Thoughts, and are aptto make them vain of the little they know, to enter into Disputes, and to keepCompany with Men; to the no small Prejudice of their Characters, as itmakes them grow remiss and neglectful of the Reservedness and Decency oftheir Sex. (172–73)

Sappho’s father expresses here the censure of ill-repute that, unless carefullyguarded against, circled around female writers as public women throughoutthe period I am concerned with (from Aphra Behn to Mary Wollstonecraft)and that constantly evoked a discourse about “the fittest and most becom-ing”“Business and Concerns” of women.Whatever success and acceptancewomen writers may have won across the long eighteenth century (andthis was, in particular times and places, considerable), they never completelyescaped the murmurings of a sentiment that their “place” was reallyelsewhere.

This conjunction of an atopic or utopic discourse about the scope ofthe republic of letters with an insistently localizing discourse about theproper place of women produces one of the most characteristic and cen-tral tensions in the notion of the republic of letters as it was conceivedin the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Fifty years afterSaavedra, Vigneul-Marville may state categorically that women areincluded in the republic of letters, but his phrasing (suggesting that evenwomen and children are not excluded) indicates the dominant perceptionby which they were relegated to a second-class citizenship within therealm. In the 1740s, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu argues that women havea contribution to make to the republic of letters, but her argument remainsin a conditional or optative mood:

Si les Hommes vouloient seulment nous regarder comme un parti dans l’état(cas je me soumets a l’inferiorité quoyque je pû dire mille qui a écrit commevous sçavez, pour prouvez l’egalite des sexes) ils doivent tacher de mettre aprofit tous les Talents. Nôtre delicatesse ne nous permet pas de servir a laGuerre, mais cette mesme delicatesse nous fournit un grand loisir pourl’étude. Celles qui reüssiront pourront ajouter a la Republique des Lettres,et celles qui ne reussiront pas éviteront au moins l’oisiveté avec toute sasuitte.18

Similarly, Hume, in his 1742 “Of Essay-Writing,” recognizes the benefitsthat might be achieved from the full admission of women into the repub-lic of letters (indeed, from their becoming the “sovereigns” of this domain),but he also recognizes that most male savants (at least in Britain) will resistany such “Union . . . betwixt the learned and conversible Worlds.”19


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Speaking of “the Fair Sex, who are the Sovereigns of the Empire ofConversation” (535), Hume writes:

I approach them with Reverence; and were not my Countrymen, theLearned, a stubborn independent Race of Mortals, extremely jealous of theirLiberty, and unaccustom’d to Subjection, I shou’d resign into their fair Handsthe sovereign Authority over the Republic of Letters.As the Case stands, myCommission extends no farther, than to desire a League, offensive and defen-sive, against our common Enemies, against the Enemies of Reason andBeauty, People of dull Heads and cold Hearts. (535–36)

Hume acknowledges that in France “the Ladies are, in a Manner, theSovereigns of the learned World, as well as of the conversible” (536), but heunderlines the continuing division in Britain between the provinces ofmen and women (Reason and Beauty, the head and the heart). Hume’sendorsement of the existing division of social life (despite his “gallant”attempt to avoid giving offense to “the Fair Sex”) echoes the less compro-mising outlook of the third earl of Shaftesbury earlier in the century:“ForShaftesbury, politeness was very definitely the consequence of conversationamong learned gentlemen rather than between men and women. Indeed,Shaftesbury believed women’s company to be not only unnecessary butdetrimental to the process of male refinement, replacing masculine sensewith what he considered the ‘Gothic’ horrors of triviality and gallantry.”20

The opprobrium cast on women’s active participation in the republic ofletters underwrites the apologetic tone of Sarah Fielding’s preface to DavidSimple (1744), which is typical of much of women’s published writing dur-ing the early part of this period:“Perhaps the best Excuse that can be madefor a Woman’s venturing to write at all, is that which really produced thisBook; Distress in her Circumstances: which she could not so well removeby any other Means in her Power.”21

Robert Halsband states that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s writingcareer,“with its span over the mid-century, bridges the gap between, on theone side, women writers as tawdry Sapphos or stately ladies, and, on theother side, women writers as professional and respectable members ofthe republic of letters.”22 And it is true that a 1763 review of CatherineMacaulay’s History of England in the Monthly Review refers to “the greatnumber of the Fair Sex,who have figured in the republic of letters,” and thatHenry Mackenzie, in a letter of January 26, 1771 to his cousin ElizabethRose, remarks, “Your Sex is certainly very high in the Republic of Lettersat this very Aera. Mrs. McAulay in History, Mrs. Montague in Criticism,Mrs. [Frances] Brooke in Novel . . . are inferior to few.”23 By the time of


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Richard Samuel’s painting of 1779, The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain,which depicts the realm of arts and letters led by nine British women—Elizabeth Carter, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Anne Sheridan (néeLindley), Hannah More, Charlotte Lennox, Angelica Kaufmann, CatharineMacaulay, Elizabeth Montagu, and Elizabeth Griffith—we have certainlycome a long way from Saavedra’s republic with its all-male citizenry. ButSamuel’s painting still testifies to a desire to record for posterity the extra-ordinary constellation of nine such women in one country at one time,more than it illustrates the acknowledged and unremarkable presence ofwomen in the republic of letters, and the review of Macaulay in the Monthlyspends its energy arguing that “the soft and delicate texture of a femaleframe” makes it “dangerous for the fair” to undertake “severe study.” Theprecarious standing of women in the republic of letters is illustrated vividlyby the remarks of the Critical Review on Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of theRights of Woman (1792): “Women we have often placed near the throne ofliterature: if they seize it, forgetful of our fondness, we can hurl them fromit.”24 Saavedra’s exclusion of women from his vision of the republic of lettersis no longer the norm in eighteenth-century conceptions of this republic,but a continuing marginalization of women remained typical.

A second major exclusion is the virtual absence of the northernEuropean world from Saavedra’s republic of letters. He mentions druids, itis true, but Erasmus is the sole writer from northern Europe named in hiswork. Saavedra discusses, as we have seen, “ancients” from various parts ofEurasia, and among the “moderns” mentions writers of Italy, France, Spain,and Portugal. But he does not venture beyond these “southern” cultures,and it goes without saying, in light of the provinciality of English literaryculture prior to the eighteenth century, that he never has occasion to men-tion a British writer, let alone one whose works are written in the Englishlanguage.This feature of Saavedra’s work leads “J. E.,” the translator of thework into English in 1727, to modify Saavedra’s discussion of the epicpoets. Saavedra and his guide, we read, come upon:

a Hill with two towering Tops in Form of a Mitre, beset all over with Mirtlesand Laurels: And at the Bottom of it there flow’d a clear and pleasantStream. . . . Upon the Banks of this Silver Stream were seated at their EaseHomer, Virgil, Tasso, Camues [sic, for Camoens], and Milton, with LaurelCrowns upon their Heads, and sounding the Alarm to Heroick Poetry withSilver Trumpets. (99–100)

At this Parnassian moment in Saavedra’s journey through the republic ofletters, the English translator feels compelled to assert the claims of theEnglish-language literary tradition by inserting Milton into the list ofsupreme epic poets, each of whom represents a different literary tradition.


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The 1705 English translation of Saavedra’s work does not make such anaddition, so this represents a new departure; but as the sole reference to anEnglish writer in the whole work, the addition only serves to underline thegeneral absence of the English-language world from this vision of therepublic of letters. Since Saavedra’s republic of letters includes a host ofminor and disreputable writers, the exclusion of English-language writers isnot the result of a low opinion of their individual achievements; rather,Saavedra does not mention them (nor other writers from northern Europe)because in his eyes they do not belong to a “major” literary tradition, a lit-erary culture whose presence in the republic of letters could not go unmen-tioned. In this perspective, the ancient cultures of Egypt,Chaldea, Persia, andIndia still retain an eminence that northern European cultures have yet toacquire.

For “J. E.” in 1727 Saavedra’s complete neglect of the English-languageliterary tradition is insupportable, and he is forced to “update” the work.Nonetheless, if by the early eighteenth century the English-language tradi-tion figures in the republic of letters, it is not at all clear that it occupies any-thing other than a relatively marginal place—at least among the “literary”(in the modern sense) writers.As I noted in chapter 1,Voltaire could claimto be “discovering” literary England for the Continent as late as 1733, buteven within Britain itself, this sense of the relatively marginal place ofEnglish-language literary culture within the republic of letters is notuncharacteristic. Pope’s own dream-vision, The Temple of Fame (wr. 1711;pub. 1715), bears comparison with Saavedra’s work: Pope is even more sys-tematically inclusive than Saavedra in enumerating cultures from East andWest, North and South, depicted on the four faces of his temple structure,but while he includes figures from Egypt to Scythia, from China to Rome,the center of this temple is still dedicated to six ancient worthies from theMediterranean world (Homer,Virgil, Pindar, Horace,Aristotle, and Cicero).Inside the temple, Pope finds Fame beckoning her devotees:

And all the Nations, summon’d at the Call,From diff ’rent Quarters fill the crowded Hall:Of various Tongues the mingled Sounds were heard;In various Garbs promiscuous Throngs appeared;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Millions of suppliant Crowds the Shrine attend,And all Degrees before the Goddess bend;The Poor, the Rich, the Valiant, and the Sage,And boasting Youth, and Narrative old Age.25

This scene of almost babel-like confusion underlines the open-endedscope of the realm of fame; the goddess herself bears “A Thousand busy


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Tongues . . . / And Thousand open Eyes, and Thousand list’ning Ears”(lines 268–69)—and we need to imagine these thousand tongues speakingunnumbered different languages.Within such a vast and multiform scheme,in which antiquity claims a privileged position, the modern traditions ingeneral, and with them Pope’s own literary milieu, retain only a precariousposition, variously engraved and erased from the lower walls of the templeof fame (lines 31–44). Pope delivers a similar judgment in the Essay onCriticism (1711) on the place of modern traditions (and in particular theEnglish-language tradition) within the realm of fame:

No longer now that Golden Age appears,When Patriarch-Wits surviv’d a thousand Years;Now Length of Fame (our second Life) is lost,And bare Threescore is all ev’n That can boast:Our Sons their Fathers’ failing Language see,And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.26

Many of Pope’s contemporaries did not agree with him on this question ofthe lasting value of the English tongue (and Pope himself offers a different esti-mation at other moments), but what is important here is simply that there wasstill a debate going on in Britain over such issues, as discussed in chapter 1.A secure and permanent place in the international republic of letters was notsomething that English-language literary culture could take for granted: cer-tainly not in the eyes of foreign writers, as Thomas Sheridan notes as late as1762, when he laments that “the English are still classed by the people ofthose [southern European] countries, amongst the more rude and scarce civ-ilized nations of the North.They affix the term of barbarism to this country,in the same manner as the Greeks did to the rest of the world.”27 And, in con-sequence, as we have seen here and in previous chapters, an ambition to assertor prophecize Britain’s rightful place in this world of letters becomes animportant preoccupation of English-language writers in this period.

One final work that bears consideration here is Oliver Goldsmith’s AnEnquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759; 2d ed. 1774).This work received mixed reviews, being criticized as “consisting . . . oflittle else than the trite commonplace remarks and observations, that havebeen, for some years past, repeatedly echoed from Writer to Writer,throughout every country where Letters, or the Sciences, have been culti-vated.”28 But this triteness makes the work all the more valuable for presentpurposes, since it suggests the pervasive familiarity, throughout the repub-lic of letters, of the opinions expressed therein. Goldsmith, in unanimitywith the other writers we have considered, speaks of a “commonwealth ofliterature” in ancient times as well as modern (259–69), and under this head


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he considers equally the historian, the poet, the philosopher, and thecritic—although only the first two genuinely embody “polite learning”(the philosopher pursues “science” and critics are parasites who feed on theworks of others) (269). Goldsmith’s work confines itself to a review ofpolite learning in Europe, so it is not perplexed with the question of theborders of the republic of letters, but built into this very delimitation is anassumption that the center of this republic is to be found in Europe. Hisincidental remark that, “as in the land of Benin a man may pass for aprodigy of parts who can read, so in an age of barbarity a small degree ofexcellence ensures success” (274), exemplifies the tendency to exile into thewilderness of barbarity, outside the republic of letters, all cultures perceivedto be nonliterate, but even within Europe, Goldsmith relegates all thecountries beyond Italy, France, England, Germany, Holland, and, perhaps,Sweden, to the verge of barbarity.

Goldsmith, like Saavedra,Vigneul-Marville, and Pope, regards printingnot as the central institutional mechanism for the expansion and flourish-ing of the republic of letters, but as something that is at best inconsequen-tial and at worst positively detrimental to the republic of letters. Referringto the scholarly industry of the Middle Ages, Goldsmith observes:

the number of publications alone will never secure any age whatsoever fromoblivion. Nor can printing, contrary to what Mr. Baumelle has remarked,prevent literary decline for the future, since it only encreases the number ofbooks, without advancing their intrinsic merit. (272)

This view that it is the “intrinsic merit”of works, rather than any institutionalapparatus to support their production, dissemination, and reception thatsubtends the flourishing of the republic of letters is central to the self-understanding of this realm as a kind of meritocracy. Goldsmith adverts tothe plethora of literary journals published in France and England eachmonth, but he views them as a nuisance (“with which even idleness is cloyedat present” [259]), rather than as the support of the republic of letters (289).

What Goldsmith does see as necessary for the flourishing of letterswithin any particular region of the republic of letters is political freedom(understood in its liberal, rather than democratic, sense—i.e., as freedom tokeep and do with one’s property what one wishes, secure from govern-mental depredations, rather than any notion of political equality or ofhaving a voice in the governing of one’s own society).29 Arts and learning,he argues, “are the offspring of security, opulence, and ease” (261): theyrequire a “soil and climate” that provide “the necessaries of life” (263), theexistence of a state “of long continuance” to provide permanence, and ofa state that is “free” (262)—“for in a nation of slaves, as in the despotic


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governments of the east, to labour after fame is to be a candidate fordanger” (263).Thus, although Goldsmith champions in this work an out-look “beyond the bounds of national prejudice” in which people considerthemselves “citizens of the world” (291), he also acknowledges a close con-nection between writers and the state or polity they inhabit in their sharedcommitment to “national improvement” (333). For Goldsmith, there is amutual dependence between writer and society: the writer benefits froma free society, and the society benefits from the flourishing of its writers.

In this perspective, there is a link between civic patriotism and citizen-ship in the republic of letters: serving the polity and serving the world ofletters go hand in hand.This is a common enough view in the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century republic of letters, but one that has been down-played by scholars of this republic who concentrate on the French case,where (under conditions of political absolutism) it was more common forwriters to insist on the absolute autonomy of the republic of letters. In gen-eral, however, writers may insist on freedom from externally imposedvalues, but their own chosen values often include national loyalties.Thus,for instance, Hugo Grotius, whom Paul Dibon identifies as an archetypalcitizen of the republic of letters, believed that the writer’s role was to func-tion as a patriot and serve the cause of his polis and his religion.30 Simi-larly, Addison writes to Pope in 1713 regarding the latter’s work on theIliad: “I question not but your Translation will enrich our Tongue and doHonour to our Country,” thus asserting that literary achievements operatesimultaneously in the realm of letters and in the world of nations.31

Sir Joseph Banks, in a letter to Déodat de Dolomieu in 1801, imagines an evenmore intimate link between the lettered world and the world of politics:

We English, tho’ much attached to Science, have not, as your Chief Consuldid, sent learned men with our Army [i.e., as Napoléon did on his expedi-tion into Egypt]; our successes therefore, if Heaven should favour us withsuccess, will be productive of political advantages only, while Science,unthought of by Rulers, must look to France alone for having blendedLearning with her Arms and gathered knowledge beneficial to the wholerace of men with those Laurels which to our Commanders will be the fruit-less ornament of successful valour.32

This celebration of the “blending” of learning and arms stands in starkcontrast to the sentiment that the republic of letters was seen as standing alooffrom the state and its activities. Rather, as the examples I have quickly men-tioned suggest, the republic was not infrequently seen as distinctly benefitingfrom the power of the state and, in its own turn, contributing to the advance-ment and honor of the polity. Indeed, this sense of an alliance between therealm of letters and the civic polity (adumbrated in the topos of the joint rise


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of arts and arms) might even be taken as the dominant view at the time—rather than any proclivity to claim a posture of autonomy from the state andpolity, from which to conduct a critical review of their policies, values, prac-tices (as Habermas suggests in his notion of an early modern public sphere).This link between the realm of letters and the civic polity serves to exacer-bate issues of provincial and metropolitan status within the republic of letters,and suggests the extent to which writers in the period perceived a fairlydirect and pervasive connection between a society’s cultural power in therealm of letters and its geopolitical power in the world of nations.

For all the writers we have considered thus far, the republic of lettersstretches across generations and across cultures, with no easily definable outerboundaries, but for many of them the center of this republic is nonethelessreadily definable.Whether they locate this center in the world of classicalantiquity or within some identifiable location in the contemporary world,the notion of a governing center of value does not seem to be underminedor problematized by the unbounded extent of the republic of letters and itsmulticultural complexity.When writers discuss the republic of letters, theytend to do so from an assumed identification with this central position, andmodern scholars have followed their lead, but a question with more urgencyand ramifications for most cultures has to do with what it means to occupya provincial rather than a metropolitan location within the republic of let-ters. I have been suggesting that until the late seventeenth century, English-language literary culture had a marginal status within the European republicof letters: the cultural self-understanding that accompanied such a position-ing did not change overnight, even as the culture began to acquire a moremetropolitan positionality. Pope’s discourse, as discussed earlier, gives us aglimpse, perhaps, into the neglected question of what a provincial locationlooks like from the inside (the uncertainties it produces about the value ofone’s work), but in order to understand better what it means to be part ofthe republic of letters but not at its very center, we need to examine moreclosely the negotiation of provinciality in certain English-language worksfrom the era leading up to Pope.

The “Exorbitant” Address of English-Language Polite Literature

In his address “To the Reader” in Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), Sir ThomasBrowne states that, at first,“considering the common interest of Truth,” hehad “resolved to propose [the work] unto the Latine republike and equalljudges of Europe”:

but owing in the first place this service unto our Country, and therein espe-cially unto its ingenuous Gentry, we have declared our selfe in a language


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best conceived. Although I confesse, the quality of the Subject will some-times carry us into expressions beyond meere English apprehensions; andindeed, if elegancie still proceedeth, and English Pennes maintaine thatstream wee have of late observed to flow from many, wee shall within fewyeares bee faine to learne Latine to understand English, and a work willprove of equall facility in either. Nor have wee addressed our penne or stileunto the people, (whom Bookes doe not redresse, and are this way incapableof reduction) but unto the knowing and leading part of Learning.33

Browne, construing his work in Baconian fashion as a contribution to thegeneral “advancement of Learning” (4), at first understands his natural audi-ence to be the “equall judges of Europe.” This sense is reinforced by hisown subsequent reference to previous works on “vulgar errors” publishedin French, Italian, and Latin, thus evoking a European commonwealth oflearning to which he belongs.34 Browne’s reference to the “common inter-est of Truth” suggests, indeed, that the notional audience for his work is thelearned world at large (not just in Europe).

Nonetheless, he chooses to publish his work in English. Works in lan-guages such as French, Italian, and Latin may have been accessible to a broadcross-section of the learned community of seventeenth-century Europe, butBrowne cannot assume the same for a work written in English. He justifieshis decision to write in English by arguing that his “service” is owed “in thefirst place” to his own “Country.”35 At the same time, however, he acknowl-edges that the work will be beyond the capacity of “meere English appre-hensions” and thus will require some facility with Latin on the part of thereader. By this double gesture, Browne defines for himself a quite distinctaudience, consisting essentially of learned or semi-learned English readers,including both scholars and gentry.36 Already in Browne’s address to hisreaders we see indications of both a narrowing and a widening of audienceand address: instead of a European, Browne restricts himself, by writing inEnglish, to an English audience, but, by writing in English, instead of anaudience confined to scholars, Browne seeks to include also the “ingenuousGentry.”

The refashioning of audience and address suggested by Browne’sremarks points us in the direction of the long-term process of the vernac-ularization of European literary culture and the transformation of a cos-mopolitan commonwealth of learning into mutually independent nationalliterary public spheres. But these two strands (vernacularization and theconsolidation of discrete national literary spheres), while they are certainlyintertwined, are not synonymous with each other.There is an intermedi-ate phase, between the starting point and end point indicated here (andextending through the Restoration and eighteenth-century period in


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Britain), during which vernacular literary cultures operate in relation to awider European republic of letters, rather than in self-sufficient isolation asautonomous wholes in their own right. In the later nineteenth century, thestructure I am describing breaks down to a fair extent and the notion of arepublic of letters loses much of its resonance, but through the eighteenthcentury and even into the early part of the next century there is a com-bined and mutually implicated development of national and transnationalperspectives on literary culture.

Sir Thomas Browne evokes “the equall judges of Europe” even thoughhe chooses not to address them directly. He recognizes that they and he areparticipants in the same arena, the world of learning, and whether or nothe looks for their cooperation or their evaluation of his work, they are enti-tled to their opinions about it. Browne’s direct address to the English gen-try does not specifically exclude or delegitimate the opinions and views ofthe learned of Europe, unlike those of “the people, (whom Books doe notredresse, and [who] are this way incapable of reduction).” The illiteratevulgar may have opinions of their own, but these are irrelevant to the uni-verse of discourse in which Browne operates.The “judges of Europe,” bycontrast,may be placed on the sidelines, but they remain players in the sameuniverse of “elegancie” in which Browne performs.Browne’s address is thusboth exclusive and nonexclusive in intention: his direct address to theEnglish gentry and learned operates to the exclusion of the English com-mon people, but not to the exclusion of the learned of Europe. I dwell onthis structure of address because it prefigures a central mode of articulationin the eighteenth-century republic of letters, a mode that is not infrequentlypresent when authors have opted, like Browne, to produce a vernaculardiscourse.

I refer to the structure of address that I have just delineated as an “exor-bitant” address to one’s compatriots, to distinguish it from an “exclusive”address to them. The “exorbitancy” can take two distinct forms: withrespect to compatriot readers, it refers to the inadequacy of “meere Englishapprehensions” to take the measure of the discourse being offered to them;with respect to extraterritorial or extra-provincial readers, it refers to a(sometimes implicit) acknowledgment of their status as peers in the uni-verse of polite letters.Thus, even though an “exorbitant” address to one’scompatriots oftentimes looks superficially like an “exclusive” address tothem, the two modes of address need to be carefully distinguished.The dif-ference here (as we have seen with Browne and as I indicate later) can bediscerned in the rhetoric of a particular work, but its full resonancebecomes more apparent when placed in relation to the larger cultural con-text. Given the traditionally quite restricted geographic contours of theirtongue’s domain, English-language writers of polite literature during the


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Restoration and eighteenth century certainly understand their (direct)audience to consist of compatriots, but the echoes of their works areunderstood to extend into an “auditorium” that is also filled with the mur-murings caused by works of other (foreign) polite writers and their read-ers.This larger auditorium or arena is the eighteenth-century republic ofletters. It does not necessarily figure as the direct addressee or audience ofEnglish-language writers, but as a kind of virtual audience that becomesrelevant insofar as a given work is addressed to a “polite” audience.

That a supranational audience figures as a monitory presence for English-language writers of polite literature is rendered palpable by the insistencewith which English-language writers, even when seeking only to persuadetheir own compatriots of the merits of English literature, proceed by draw-ing comparisons with the achievements of other European (especiallyFrench) writers, and the sedulousness with which they retort to every Frenchcharacterization of English culture even while vociferously expressing disdainfor French viewpoints and opinions.37 Genuine disregard of extraterritorialopinion (whether due to insularity or contempt) might be compatible withretorts to assertions of French superiority by other English writers, but ithardly squares with a felt need to respond to every French writer’s commentabout English culture and society. In an essay of 1756,Adam Smith refers tothe English and the French as “those two great rivals in learning, trade, gov-ernment and war” and he characterizes the cultural aspect of this rivalry asexplicitly conducted in relation to the wider European “auditorium”:“tho’learning is cultivated in some degree in almost every part of Europe,” Smithwrites,“it is in France and England only that it is cultivated with such successor reputation as to excite the attention of foreign nations.” Smith’s commentclearly suggests that he takes as a primary criterion of “reputation in thelearned world” the question whether or not “the works of any particular manare inquired for out of his own country.”38 He assumes, in other words, thatwhat I am calling an “exorbitant” address, an address that reaches beyond anaudience of one’s compatriots is the implicit posture of all writers ofreputation.Adam Ferguson arguing in his Essay on the History of Civil Society(1767) that “the rivalship of nations” is fundamental for the formation ofpolitical society even makes such “emulation . . . excited from abroad” abasic plank of his social theory, claiming that:“Could we at once, in the caseof any nation, extinguish the emulation which is excited from abroad,we should probably break or weaken the bands of society at home, and closethe busiest scenes of national occupations and virtues.”39 Such competitive“emulation . . . excited from abroad” is quite a different thing from the insu-larity and xenophobia emphasized by modern scholars, though it no lessemphatically renders necessary an assertive English cultural nationalism in thequest to gain satisfactory recognition for the English-language literary spherewithin the multilingual and multinational republic of letters.40


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We need to keep in mind this larger context of cultural combativenessbetween the English and (especially) the French and the way in which itreinforces the sense that there is an “exorbitant” address in many Englishworks of the period, but for now I want to proceed with a more local andtextually particular examination, in order to flesh out my argument thatone can see the presence of the eighteenth-century republic of letters as a“virtual” audience in the texture of individual works. Addison’s Dialoguesupon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals (wr. 1702; pub. 1721), and the prefatorypoem written for it by Pope, can serve to illustrate my claim about the dis-tinction between an “exclusive” and an “exorbitant” address to a seeminglynational audience. By way of its discussion of ancient medals and classicalpoetry, Addison’s work constructs a kind of “parallel” or comparisonbetween ancient culture and that of modern England. In its engagementwith the ongoing dialogue between the ancients and the moderns, and inits translation of the Latin poetic tradition into a contemporary context, thework clearly belongs to the “neoclassical” phase of the long-term vernac-ularization of European cultures.Alexander Pope’s prefatory poem,“Versesoccasion’d by Mr.Addison’s Treatise on Medals,” highlights and focuses onthis exchange between the ancients and modern Britain.41 But side by sidewith this primary engagement in Addison’s text, emphasized by Pope,involving only contemporary English literary culture and the ancients,there is another orientation evident—an orientation toward theeighteenth-century European republic of letters that speaks through thisEnglish-language work, set in “a country village, that lies upon the Thames.”42

The tension, as well as the partial consonance, between Pope’s prefatorypoem and Addison’s dialogue allow us to gauge some of the differencesbetween a more or less “exclusive” and an “exorbitant” address to one’scompatriots in early eighteenth-century English-language literature.

Pope’s prefatory “Verses” survey the “ruins” and “wild waste” into whichthe ancient world has fallen; in an elegiac tone, he evokes “How Rome herown sad sepulchre appears” (337). The sense of futility suggested by thispicture of greatness fallen into decay is compounded by the activity of“the learn’d,” who engage in “fierce disputes” seeking to decipher a half-preserved name, “And give to Titus old Vespasian’s due” (337). Pope con-tinues his satire on numismatic learning by describing “pale antiquaries”consumed with “learned spleen” (337–38). At last, he comes to Addison,who, in contrast to the pedants, knows how to handle this kind of learningproperly:

Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine.Touch’d by thy hand, again Rome’s glories shine:Her gods, and godlike heroes rise to view,And all her faded garments bloom anew. (338)


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This revival and resurrection of ancient glories sets up Pope’s final turn: apoem that had started out like a warning about the vanity of human ambi-tions and the inevitable decay of earthly grandeur, closes by seeking toinstill in the author’s contemporaries and compatriots an ambition to excelthe achievements of the ancients:

Oh when shall Britain, conscious of her claim,Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame?In living medals see her wars enroll’d,And vanquish’d realms supply recording gold?Here, rising bold, the patriot’s honest face;There warriors frowning in historic brass.Then future ages with delight shall see,How Plato’s, Bacon’s, Newton’s looks agree:Or in fair series laurel’d bards be shown,A Virgil there, and here an Addison. (338)

Rome, far from being a warning, now functions as a model for Britain toemulate.43 In these lines, Pope constructs a strict parallel between classicalantiquity and modern Britain; he envisions Britain as the successor to“Greek and Roman fame.”As yet, this is once again a (futuristic) vision, asis the satisfying notion of “vanquish’d realms” supplying gold in tribute, sinceBritain seems strangely behindhand in asserting “her claim.” Nonetheless,that Britain already equals ancient Greece and Rome is asserted by Pope’sability to list off equivalents: Bacon and Newton for Plato,Addison for Virgil(and, in lines that follow those I have cited, James Craggs for Pollio, thepatron of Virgil). In philosophers, poets, and statesmen, modern Britain isalready the peer of the ancients, and Pope can draw a direct line betweenthe two societies without needing to invoke any intermediaries or foreigninterlocutors.The poem is addressed to Addison, but to him in his capacityas an exemplary Briton, thus allowing Pope to speak in a public rather thana private and personal voice. Addison’s “treatise on medals” provides forPope an “occasion” for national exhortation and for assertion of nationalself-regard. In introducing Addison’s work, Pope’s poem narrows our focusso that nothing else of the world remains beyond the borders of Britain andits dialogue with the ancients—except “vanquish’d realms,” nameless andunnumbered, that echo the “nations spoil’d” conquered by ancient Rome,and “future ages” for whom contemporary Britain will function as a kind ofglorious antiquity. This last named feature of the poem (“future ages”)potentially moves it beyond a purely “exclusive” address, hinting at a futuremultinational audience for Britain’s glories; nonetheless, Pope’s nationalisticpaean to the new Romans embodies a relatively “exclusive” address to his


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compatriots and ignores much in Addison’s text that is “exorbitant” in rela-tion to such an engagement.

Addison’s Dialogues seems to engage in the same kind of “neoclassical”cultural work as Pope’s poem, but it is repeatedly complicated by animplicit appeal to a virtual audience of European contemporaries.The dia-logues are conducted between three characters, Cynthio, Eugenius, andPhilander, the last of whom undertakes to elucidate for the others (and forAddison’s readers) the “usefulness of ancient medals.”The work has a semi-dramatic form, consisting, for the most part, of dialogue among the threecharacters. But each dialogue is framed at the start by an anonymous nar-rating voice that quickly and unobtrusively effaces itself, reemerging onlyat the end to close the dialogue. Despite this respect for the integrity of thedialogues, however, the narrator presents the dialogue form itself as a delib-erate literary device, remarking at the opening of the second dialogue that,“Some of the finest treatises of the most polite Latin and Greek writers arein dialogue, as many very valuable pieces of French, Italian, and English,appear in the same dress” (359). If one took one’s cue from Pope’s prefa-tory poem, it would have been sufficient to have mentioned the classicalmodels and the English precursors that Addison is following in this work;but in invoking the “polite” world of “fin[e]” and “valuable” literature,Addison feels compelled to indicate the presence also of parallel works inFrench and Italian, much as Thomas Browne invokes his French, Italian,and Latin predecessors. Indeed, he emphasizes at the start of the first dia-logue that his three characters, although retired “from the town [i.e., London]to a country village” for the summer,“were all three very well versed in thepoliter parts of learning, and had travelled into the most refined nations ofEurope” (339). Here again we see the curious linking together of referencesto the classical world and to the polite world of modern Europe, as thoughan Englishman could not stake a claim to familiarity with the formerexcept by way of a detour through the latter.44

As the dialogues proceed and Addison melds together his knowledge ofnumismatics and classical poetry, he refers occasionally by name to variousscholars and their studies (Guy Patin, Carlo Sigonio, Joseph Scaliger,AndréDacier, Jean-Foi Vaillant, and G. J.Vossius), thus evoking the European com-monwealth of scholarship on which he draws (and it is noteworthy thatno native British scholar is mentioned by Addison). Cynthio is always readyto mock the petty disputes and trivial learning of antiquarian scholars (asPope, too, in his prefatory poem, is willing to mock “pale antiquaries” inorder to praise Addison by contrast), but Philander offers a carefully mea-sured defense and justification of their minute scholarship. “[A] cabinet ofmedals is a body of history,” he argues:“It was a kind of printing, before theart was invented. It is by this means that Monsieur Vaillant has disembroiled


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a history that was lost to the world before his time, and out of a shortcollection of medals has given us a chronicle of the kings of Syria” (348).

This by no means allays Cynthio’s suspicions about the doubtful valueof such learning; a little later in the dialogue, Cynthio comments:

considering the subjects on which your chronologers are generallyemployed, I see but little use that rises from it. For example, what signifies itto the world whether such an elephant appeared in the amphitheatre in thesecond or the third year of Domitian? Or what am I the wiser for knowingthat Trajan was in the fifth year of his tribuneship when he entertained thepeople with such a horse-race or bull-baiting? Yet it is the fixing of thesegreat periods that gives a man the first rank in the republic of letters, and rec-ommends him to the world for a person of various reading and profounderudition. (349)

The “republic of letters” (a phrase Cynthio has already used in a similartone previously [347]) figures here as a world of false values, a world ofpedantry. Nonetheless, the whole movement of the dialogue is to reconcileCynthio (and Eugenio), as representative “men of wit” (447), to the viewthat the knowledge of ancient medals is indeed fruitful, that it does indeedcontribute to one’s appreciation of “the politer parts of learning” (339). Itis worth noting that even in dismissing the erudite “republic of letters,”Cynthio himself is speaking from the perspective of one “very well versed”in the world of polite letters, so that the tension embodied in his remarksis that between two conceptions of the republic of letters (erudite andpolite), rather than between an appreciation of the republic of letters and adismissal of it.The stance of Addison’s Dialogues, in other words, is scarcelythat of a parochial rejection of the wider world of the European republicof letters.

The effort of the dialogues as a whole is to reconcile the erudite and thepolite sectors of the republic of letters, but the dialogues can make this theiragenda only because there is already a perceived tension between these twodimensions of the republic of letters.45 Not only Cynthio, but the Dialoguesas a whole are at one remove from the seventeenth-century all-male worldof numismatic scholarship, as evoked in an engraving of ca.1691 by Antonyvan Zijlvelt that presents an imaginary group-portrait of the most cele-brated numismatists of the previous centuries.46 While van Zijlvelt’sengraving is rather formal and austere in manner,Addison (or his protago-nist, Philander) takes care to open his detailed examination of particularmedals by focusing on depictions of women, their features, their dress, theirornaments. Thus, Addison’s discourse, while still conducted within thebounds of male friendship, opens out by implication onto a world of


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heterosexual gallantry and social graces more generally.Addison’s Dialoguesmay well work to reconcile the older, inherited conception of the repub-lic of letters as a commonwealth of learning with the more modern con-ception of the republic as a cosmopolitan world of polite letters, but it doesso on the terms of the latter.The relative value of these two aspects of therepublic of letters, for Addison, is clearly evident in his justification ofnumismatic erudition on the basis of its serviceability for the elucidationof ancient poetry.47

This last point sounds a note familiar from Pope’s prefatory “Verses,” butwe can also see that, far from the two writers speaking in the same voice,there is a kind of dialogue and negotiation taking place between thediscourse of Pope and that of Addison. If, so far, I have emphasized the“exorbitancy” of Addison’s text, the extent to which it works with a hori-zon that, in its contemporary European orientation, exceeds that of Pope’sprefatory poem, it is important also to underline the extent of their con-vergence. Pope pictures a “fair series” of medals of “laurel’d bards” in whichthe ancient poets are paired with their modern British equals, and Addison’swork gives us very nearly the same construct but in the form of pairedquotations rather than paired medals. Addison’s work offers us more thantwo hundred and fifty illustrative quotations in Latin from the ancientpoets, and where these are of any length, he generally accompanies themwith an English verse translation (by himself or by other English poets).Thus,we get various pairings repeated over the course of the work:Drydenand Virgil, Creech and Horace, Rowe and Lucan, Addison and Seneca.Such parallels between English and Latin verse constitute the single largestelement of the Dialogues, in terms of space on the page, and in this respectPope’s prefatory “Verses” speak in the same accents as Addison’s own words.

Addison’s work seems to set up a kind of currency exchange for Latinverses, where they can be turned in, in order to be paid out an equivalentin English verse. But even as it performs this kind of conversion, where theLatins provide the “gold” with which to mint English medals and thusfigure as one of the “vanquish’d realms” evoked by Pope, Addison’s textrefuses to slip into a simply nationalistic address. For, if Pope’s poemcelebrates the British as the new Romans, Addison’s work contrasts thegrandeur of Roman self-conceptions with the pettiness of those of mod-ern England: the Romans were careful to preserve their fame for futureages, even those a thousand years hence:“But where statesmen are ruled bya spirit of faction and interest, they can have no passion for the glory oftheir country, nor any concern for the figure it will make among posterity.A man that talks of his nation’s honour a thousand years hence, is in verygreat danger of being laughed at” (439). Philander goes on, somewhat laterin the third dialogue, to comment on the “majesty and force,” the “brevity


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and comprehensiveness” of the inscriptions on the ancient Romanmedals compared to the “diffuseness” and “dulness” of modern inscriptions(444–45):“If you look into the ancient inscriptions, you see an air of sim-plicity in the words, but a great magnificence in the thought; on the con-trary, in your modern medals you have generally a trifling thought wraptup in the beginning or end of an heroic verse” (446).

Having pointed to the ridiculous misfit between the triviality of thethought and the grandeur of the verse in which it is clothed in modernmedals, and the inversion this represents of the Roman practice, Addisonmoves on to consider the effect of direct attempts to imitate the Romanstyle in modern medals—attempts that only betray the distance separatingRoman majesty from modern parody:

the Romans always appear in the proper dress of their country, insomuchthat you see the little variations of the mode in the drapery of the medal.Theywould have thought it ridiculous to have drawn an emperor of Rome in aGrecian cloak or a Phrygian mitre. On the contrary, our modern medals arefull of togas and tunics, trabeas, and paludamentums, with a multitude of the likeantiquated garments, that have not been in fashion these thousand years.Yousee very often a king of England or France dressed up like a Julius Caesar.One would think they had a mind to pass themselves upon posterity forRoman emperors. (448–49)

Thus, while Pope presents the British as the new Romans (if only theywere willing to assert themselves) upon whom “future ages” will look back“with delight,” Addison presents them as counterfeit Romans, as frauds inRoman attire thinking to dupe “posterity.” Both authors present theancient Romans as worthy models, but they have different conceptions ofwhether the modern English/British are ready to fill those shoes.48

Addison’s address remains, as I have been arguing,“exorbitant” to purelynationalistic cultural assumptions. Like Sir Thomas Browne’s, Addison’swork exceeds at various points “meere English apprehensions” and Addisonis careful to introduce early on in the dialogues the sentiment that his char-acters feel free “upon occasion to speak a Latin sentence without fearing theimputation of pedantry or ill-breeding” (340). Moreover, in place of Pope’sclimactic paean to contemporary Britain,Addison leaves a deliberate blank.Toward the close of the second dialogue, Philander reviews a series ofmedals in which we see “so many cities, nations, and provinces, that presentthemselves to you under the shape of women” (415). He discusses theconventional iconography associated with the figures of “Africa,” “Egypt,”“Mauritania,” “Spain,” “France,” and “Italy,” before moving on to discuss“Achaia.” Here, Cynthio interjects,“I was in hopes you would have shown


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us our own nation, when you were so near us as France” (424). Philander isforced to discuss “one of Augustus’s Britannias” and notes the flattering rep-resentation of the “military genius” of the British thereon, but he proceedsto acknowledge the general tenor of the ancient Roman view of Britain:

This [military genius] is, I think, the only commendable quality that the oldpoets have touched upon in the description of our country. I had once madea collection of all the passages in the Latin poets, that give any account of us,but I find them so very malicious, that it would look like a libel on thenation to repeat them to you.We seldom meet with our forefathers, but theyare coupled with some epithet or another to blacken them. Barbarous, cruel,and inhospitable, are the best terms they can afford us, which it would be akind of injustice to publish, since their posterity are become so polite, good-natured, and kind to strangers. (424–25)

Addison may claim that his contemporaries, the “posterity” of the ancientBritons, “are become . . . polite,” but he nonetheless feels insecure enoughabout this claim to feel it necessary to suppress the details of the ancientRoman depiction of the Britons as “barbarous, cruel, and inhospitable.”There,instead of a panegyric, we come upon “a libel on the nation.” Philander’s“collection” of passages from the Latin poets—a collection amassed out ofpatriotic investments, it seems clear—remains unpublished. Instead, he cites afew lines from the poets that underline Britain’s marginality vis-à-vis theRoman world, including Virgil’s famous line from the first eclogue:

Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.VIRG. Ecl. 1.

The rest among the Britons be confin’d;A race of men from all the world disjoin’d.

Mr. DRYDEN. (425)

Philander acknowledges also that in Roman representations the figure ofBritannia typically “confess[es] herself a conquered province”—althoughshe represents “a new world, separate from that which the Romans hadbefore conquered, by the interposition of the sea” (425).49

By Addison’s time, Britain has conquered her own “new world” acrossthe seas, and no longer figures as a conquered province. Modern scholarshave focused on this newfound geopolitical eminence, while ignoring theburden of Britain’s cultural past.What Addison’s Dialogues shows us is thatin many respects Britain still remains marginal to the European world ofculture and the republic of letters as it exists at the start of the eighteenthcentury. Some of the animus of Cynthio’s disdain for a certain aspect of therepublic of letters, while expressed as a disdain for pedantry, might be read


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nonetheless as a not uncharacteristic attitude of someone speaking from themargins of a cultural formation that they not only cannot entirely dismiss,but in which they wish to make a name for themselves.Addison’s Dialoguesstages for us quite explicitly some of the anxieties besetting a society seek-ing to assert its claims in the world of culture, while burdened with aninherited conception—however outdated or unfair to begin with—that itis a realm of barbarity and savage ferocity. Philander still finds it necessaryto live down the past. An indirect acknowledgment of the claims of thewider republic of letters—that is, an acknowledgment mediated through an“exorbitant” address to one’s compatriots—is one way of negotiating theconflicting pressures placed on a writer who belongs to a club in which heand his kind have traditionally been held in contempt.

Later in the eighteenth century, references to the republic of letters inthe writings of British authors are no longer so defensive; instead, theybegin to display an automatic, somewhat complacent, character, while stillunderlining the importance of a virtual European audience for English-language writers. In 1774, informing William Mason of the death of OliverGoldsmith, Horace Walpole writes: “The republic of Parnassus has lost amember; Dr Goldsmith is dead of a purple fever,” thus casually invokingthe Parnassian republic of letters as the context in which to consider sucha writer. Likewise, Frances Burney opens her preface to Evelina (1778) bystating that “In the republic of letters, there is no member of such inferiorrank, or who is so much disdained by his brethren of the quill, as the hum-ble Novelist,” and invokes the names of “Rousseau, Johnson, Marivaux,Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett” as some of her predecessors who havesaved this genre of writing from utter “contempt.”50 In this internationalrepublic of letters of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, English-language writers have a secure place and Burney feels no need to engagein an elaborate assessment of its characteristics and complications.

In his Essai sur l’étude de la littérature (1761), Edward Gibbon writes thatthere are two sorts of writers: the one is content with the praises of his con-temporaries (his compatriots), the other seeks the praises of the remotestposterity and takes pleasure in the thought that “mille ans après sa mort,l’Indien des bords du Gange, et le Laponois au milieu de ses glaces, lirontses ouvrages, et porteront envie au pays et au siècle qui l’ont vû naître.”Likewise, Swift writes to the Abbé des Fontaines (the French translator ofGulliver’s Travels) in July 1727 that,“l’auteur qui n’ecrit que pour une ville,une province, un Royaume, ou meme un siecle, merite si peu d’etre traduitqu’il ne merite pas d’etre lu.”51 Pope’s address to “Bards Triumphant” inAn Essay on Criticism (1711) evokes a similar horizon of extensive fame:

Hail Bards Triumphant! Born in happier Days;Immortal Heirs of Universal Praise!


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Whose Honours with Increase of Ages grow,As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!Nations unborn your mighty Names shall sound,And Worlds applaud that must not yet be found!Oh may some Spark of your Coelestial FireThe last, the meanest of your Sons inspire. (lines 189–96)

Pope’s sense that a poet’s stature is measured by the number of “Ages” and“Nations” that “sound” his name, by the extensiveness of his fame, is verymuch of a piece with Gibbon’s conception of true fame. No matter howhighly esteemed a writer is by any one nation or by any one age, if his orher reputation is confined to such parochial esteem it falls far short of the“Universal Praise” that serves as a standard for Pope and for polite lettersacross the long eighteenth century.

The prefatory material to Richardson’s Pamela (1740; 2d ed. 1741) like-wise underlines this orientation toward extensive fame. The letter to the“Editor” of Pamela by “J.B.D.F.” ( Jean Baptiste de Freval) concludes byaddressing the work itself:

Little Book, charming PAMELA! face the World, and never doubt of find-ing Friends and Admirers, not only in thine own Country, but far fromHome; where thou mayst give an Example of Purity to the Writers of aneighbouring Nation; which now shall have an Opportunity to receiveEnglish Bullion in Exchange for its own Dross, which has so long passedcurrent among us in Pieces abounding with all the Levities of its volatileInhabitants.52

The prospect of reversing the flow of literary works from France into Britainis thus envisioned as part of the effect of Pamela as it “face[s] the World”at large. Even more dramatically, Aaron Hill writes in his letter to the“Editor” of Pamela that the work “will live on, through Posterity, with suchunbounded Extent of Good Consequences, that Twenty Ages to come maybe the Better and Wiser, for its Influence”; it will influence “Millions ofMINDS” in the generations to come (11). Gibbon may imagine a writer’sinfluence extending a thousand years forward into the future, but Hill cred-its Richardson’s novel with an afterlife of at least two millennia.The para-meters of fame, thus, even for a “trifle” like Pamela are understood by itsaudience to extend “far from Home” and down “through Posterity.”Thisimage of Richardson’s extensive fame is picked up in Anna Williams’s“Verses addressed to Mr. Richardson, on his History of Sir CharlesGrandison”: she suggests that (British) posterity will continue to profit fromClarissa long after Fielding’s Tom Jones and Amelia Booth have fallen intoobscurity:“In distant times, when Jones and Booth are lost, / Britannia herClarissa’s name shall boast.” But Williams also underlines Richardson’s


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international stature:“Even now, not rocks or waves thy fame can bound, /The Rhine’s rude banks Clarissa’s worth resound; / And Tuscan bards hermournful tale relate, / In groves where Virgil sung of Dido’s fate.”53

The polite writers of the long eighteenth century all dream of this moreextensive kind of fame, a dream that is inseparable from a vision of Britishinfluence spread throughout the globe—a vision which, by the close of theeighteenth century, no longer seems visionary, and allows these writers tosee in the geographic scope of English letters, from the Ganges to theAtlantic colonies, a token of its claims on the furthest posterity.This con-ception of extensive fame provides the context and the complement tothe progress of English topos I discussed in chapter 1, and it underlines thechanging self-conception of English-language literary culture across thelong eighteenth century. Far from being content with a domestic reputa-tion, in smug disregard of foreign opinion, English-language writers ofpolite letters in the eighteenth century habitually conceive of the literaryterrain in terms of the republic of letters and are ambitious for an extensivefame that reaches beyond the confined circle of their own compatriots.

The late eighteenth-century situation of confident claims by Britishwriters to a significant place in the republic of letters is a long way fromthat of Addison’s time; early eighteenth-century Britain may have begun toassemble an empire of her own, but the contemporary European republicof letters was clearly structured predominantly as a French-languagesphere, and it is toward the Continent that we must turn to examine itmore fully, and to understand more clearly the differences between metro-politan and marginal cultural locations.

Peripheries and Centers in the Republic of Letters

In his “Essay on the Georgics,” forming part of the prefatory matter inDryden’s translation of Virgil (1697), Addison contrasts “the Address of aPoet” to “the simplicity of a Plow-Man,” a contrast by which English poets,like those of other nations, are honored above rustic simpletons.54 ButAddison also maintains, as we have seen, that Horace and Boileau, unlikeour English satirists, know “how to stab with address” (see n. 44): withinthe wider world of European letters, the English-language tradition was stillstigmatized as lacking polished “address” (in the sense of skill, dexterity, oradroitness). But in order to assess these issues of centrality and marginalitywithin the republic of letters more adequately, we need to turn from adiscussion of individual texts to examine more broadly the structure andcharacter of the European republic of letters. In doing so, we will see howcentral the issue of language was to the functioning of this realm from thelater seventeenth century onward and how clearly the francophone domain


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constituted the metropolitan domain within this realm, while the English-language sphere constituted one of several provincial borderlands.

In the seventeenth-century erudite republic of letters, Latin figured rel-atively simply as, so to speak, the official language; with the shift by the endof the century to a polite republic of letters, Latin was rendered not super-fluous, but increasingly marginal, and the problematic of language acquireda new significance. Marc Fumaroli states that, “The question of languagebecame immediately, and was to remain, one of the moving forces ofthe Republic of Letters, and in the eighteenth century, it was to lead to theconversion, itself controversial, to academic French as the ‘Latin of themoderns.’ ”55 This analogizing of French with Latin, though frequentlyadopted both by contemporaries and by modern scholars, obscures (as weshall see) the radical differences between the erudite and the polite versionsof the republic of letters: in the polite republic of letters the French lan-guage may have come to supply the place of Latin, but the substitutioncould never be complete nor wholly adequate due to this republic’s essentiallymulticultural and multilingual character.

Nonetheless, across the eighteenth century, French played an extra-provincial role on the Continent unlike that of any other European ver-nacular, and its sway extended into domains where Latin had only exerciseda limited role. Bruce, a “Gentleman of wit and sense” in Thomas Shadwell’sThe Virtuoso (1676), may speak contemptuously of French as “that mightyUniversal Language” (in contrast to Latin as a genuine universal language),but his comment nevertheless acknowledges the assumption by French ofa new social role in European culture.56 Similarly, in 1688 Aphra Behnwrites, rather grudgingly,“I confess the French Arms, Money and Intrigueshave made their Language very universal of late.”57 More predictably, theParisian Mercure galant emphasized in October 1694 that the effectivedomain of the French language and culture extended far beyond the bor-ders of the French kingdom:

L’étendue de la langue française passe les limites du Royaume. Elle ne seborne ni par les Pyrénées et les Alpes, ni par le fleuve du Rhin. On entendle français dans toute l’Europe. . . . [La langue française] est connue danstoutes les Cours: les princes et les Grands la parlent, les ambassadeursl’écrivent, et le beau monde en fait une mode.58

The culture of European elites—the courtly and the lettered—was largelyfrancophone and French oriented.The vast majority of the population ofeach country, which fell below the level of “les gens bien élevés,” remainedof course outside this cultural sphere. Nonetheless, within these limits andbecause of these limits, the emergence of a relatively coherent elite European


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culture was made possible, a culture under the hegemony, as Henry Fieldinghas one of his characters put it, of “all-conquering France.”59 It is only byconsidering French domination of the polite republic of letters that we canproperly understand the dynamics of centrality and provinciality in con-temporary European culture. It is in light of this structured cultural hierar-chy that the marginality of English-language literary culture at the start ofthe eighteenth century becomes fully apparent.

Perhaps the best indication of the extraterritorial importance of Frenchin the eighteenth-century cultural terrain is the plenitude of journals andnewspapers published in various parts of Europe in the French language.During the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, French-language periodicals were published in over two score European cities out-side France, including: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bonn, Breslau, Copenhagen,Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, The Hague, Hamburg, Köln, Leiden, Leipzig,London, Maestricht, Mannheim, Metz, Moscow, Prague, Rotterdam, St.Petersburg, Stockholm, Turin, Utrecht, Venice, Vienna, Warsaw, Zurich.60

The existence of French-language periodicals, for varying periods of time,in these and other cities attests to the emergence of French as indeed a“lingua franca” for the world of culture in much of eighteenth-centuryEurope. But it is worth noting that Italy and Spain, with their long-standingclaims to cultural leadership in Europe, were not so completely swept upin the trend toward French—nor was Britain. In a letter of August 1767,Voltaire writes: “notre langue se parle à Vienne, à Berlin, à Stokolm,à Copenhague, à Moscou. Elle est la langue de l’Europe”61—but the omis-sions in this charting of “Europe” are as important as the sites that arenamed. What one can say is that French was unique among the modernEuropean languages in the eighteenth-century world in having a substan-tial extra-provincial role beyond the borders of French political control.This was a relatively novel situation, having developed only since theseventeenth century, but it gave to French literary culture at the turn of thecentury a privileged position unparalleled by that of other modern Euro-pean literary traditions—certainly not by that of English-language litera-ture. As Elizabeth Eisenstein writes, “In no other eighteenth-centuryregion would the hope of obtaining an independent eminence and inter-national prestige be similarly encouraged by aid forthcoming from foreignworkshops”62—that is, from anything comparable to the extraterritorialFrench-language book-trade and publishing industry (and its readerships).

If the seventeenth century was still an age of Latin so far as the repub-lic of letters was concerned, the eighteenth century was the age of French.The Jesuits may have pursued their teaching in Latin, but their review jour-nal, the Mémoires de Trévoux (1701–67), was conducted in French; going onestep further, in the 1750s the Parisian Journal des Savants ceased to review


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works written in Latin. As Elizabeth L. Eisenstein notes, “the works ofsuch seventeenth-century Latin-writing savants as Pufendorf, Grotius, andLeibniz penetrated eighteenth-century Europe in French translations. Inthe 1630s Dutch publishers served cosmopolitan readers by publishingroughly 85 per cent of their output in Latin and only 10 to 15 per centin French; by the 1730s these proportions had been reversed.”63 Writing in1759, Goldsmith offers a similar assessment of the relationship betweenEnglish works of genius and French translations:“If we have produc’d rea-soners who have refin’d mankind, it is by means of French translations andabstracts that they are generally known in Europe.Their language has pre-vailed, and our philosophy.”64 And, as early as 1673, Bathsua Makin couldwrite, regarding the study of “Tongues” by Englishwomen,“Was all Learn-ing in English, as it is now in French, I think those dead Languages wouldbe of little use, only in reference to the Scriptures.”65 Thus, one can indeedspeak of a French-dominated republic of letters in eighteenth-centuryEurope, a realm in which all sorts of literary works circulated through themedium of the French language. The polite republic of letters may havebeen conceived of as a multilingual domain, but its francophone sectoroccupied a position of undoubted centrality—a fact that English-languagewriters understood as clearly as everyone else and that inevitably coloredtheir perception of their own linguistic medium and their ambitions for it.

Such a situation of widespread familiarity with French as a language ofculture in eighteenth-century Europe led very easily, as I have suggested,to exaggerated claims about the “universality” of the French language, andto claims about it as the linguistic basis for a homogeneous,“cosmopolitan”republic of letters during the period.The functional, and more so the nor-mative, role of the French language as the “universal” language of culturein eighteenth-century Europe was well recognized; it was maintained andpromoted by the practices of courts, academies, salons, periodicals, andindividual writers and readers inside and outside of France, who chose toproduce and consume works in French. Nonetheless, it is profoundly mis-leading to analogize French superiority in the eighteenth century with the“universality” of Latin in the seventeenth-century republic of letters. Doingso is only possible if we ignore the conceptual transformation involved inthe eighteenth-century view of the republic of letters as a multicultural andmultilingual domain.

Despite the generally celebratory account of French predominance inthe modern republic of letters offered by his compatriots, d’Alembert, inthe “Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia” (1751), articulates a muchmore mixed view of the outcome of the adoption of French in place ofLatin as the language of the Encyclopédie and of other scholarship more gen-erally. It is by following his lead that we can produce a more adequate


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account of the problematic of language in the eighteenth-century republicof letters:“Since our language,” d’Alembert writes,

was spread throughout all Europe, we decided that it was time to substituteit for Latin, which had been the language of our scholars since the renais-sance of letters. . . . However, an inconvenience that we certainly ought tohave forseen results from [this practice]. The scholars of other nations forwhom we have set the example have rightly thought that they would writestill better in their own language than in ours.Thus England has imitated us.Latin, which seemed to have taken refuge in Germany, is gradually losingground there. I have no doubt that Germany will soon be followed by theSwedes, the Danes, and the Russians.Thus, before the end of the eighteenthcentury, a philosopher who would like to educate himself thoroughly con-cerning the discoveries of his predecessors will be required to burden hismemory with seven or eight different languages. . . . The use of the Latinlanguage, which we have shown to be ridiculous in matters of taste, is of thegreatest service in works of philosophy . . . which urgently require a univer-sal and conventional language. It is therefore to be hoped that this usage willbe re-established, yet we have no grounds to hope for it.66

D’Alembert’s sense of the dilemma posed by the vernacularization of therepublic of letters—an issue broached by Saavedra and implicit in Vigneul-Marville’s description—is articulated temporally in relation to a recent pastwhen the French language “was spread throughout all Europe” and thuscould substitute for Latin, and a near future when the curse of Babel willbe revisited on scholarly Europe. His proposed solution is to reestablish theuse of Latin for scholarship, unlike others who were content to advocate areturn to the proximate past (or the still lingering present), in which Frenchcould claim a kind of (idealized) universality. D’Alembert’s prognosticationsabout the intensified fracturing of the republic of letters were not far fromthe mark, and they reiterate for us the importance of a problematic oflinguistic multiplicity in the French-dominated republic of letters of theeighteenth century.

Even the earlier period that d’Alembert views with a kind of nostalgicserenity as the age of the universality of French never, of course, existed assuch.The anonymous writer of “A Character of Saint-Evremond” prefixedto a translation of his Miscellaneous Essays published in 1692 puts the situa-tion very well, recognizing both the preeminence and the limits of Frenchin the republic of letters:

it is not with the Wits of our Times, how Eminent so ever, as with those wholived under Augustus when the Empire and Language were in some SenceUniversal; they properly wrote to the World: the Moderns, even the French


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Authors themselves, write at most but to a Province of the Roman Empire;and if they are known beyond their own Country, and become a CommonBenefit to Mankind, it is, in a great measure, owing to their Translators.67

The disappearance of the imperial “universality” of Latinity (which hadpreserved a kind of afterlife in the erudite republic of letters of the earlierseventeenth century) means that the problematic of language in the politerepublic of letters of the eighteenth century involves not the relatively sta-ble contrast between the language of learning and the vernaculars, but amore dynamic rivalry amongst various vernaculars for metropolitan status,a dynamic contest to determine status differentials between “major” and“minor” languages.The older concept of linguistic universality did not dis-appear overnight, of course: for example, Bayle writes in his Nouvelles de laRépublique des Lettres of November 1685 that “la Langue Françoise estdésormais le point de communication de tous les Peuples de l’Europe, &une Langue que l’on pourroit appeller transcendentelle,”68 suggesting that byvirtue of its “transcendental” universality and prevalence everywhere theFrench language has produced a kind of uniform playing field on which“all the peoples of Europe” can interact equally. But a closer examinationof this journal and its situation (which I undertake in this and the next sec-tion of this chapter) suggests a very different view of the structure andfunctioning of the European “republic of letters” in the late seventeenthand eighteenth centuries—and hence the need for modern scholars to rec-ognize the radical departure of the eighteenth-century republic of lettersfrom the earlier model of a homogeneous, universal, Latin-based culturaldomain.

The Nouvelles does foreground the supposed displacement of Latin byFrench in the republic of letters toward the close of the seventeenth cen-tury, but it allows us at the same time to witness the centrality not only ofissues of linguistic multiplicity but also of other issues of provinciality andcultural division within the modern republic of letters, especially as theseare overdetermined by the geopolitical realities of the European system ofstates. In the preface to the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, Baylebegins by referring to the prototype of such reviews:

On a trouvé si commode & si agréable le dessein de faire sçavoir au Public, parune espece de Journal, ce qui se passe de curieux dans la République desLettres, qu’aussi-tôt que M. Sallo, Conseiller au Parlement de Paris, eût faitparoître les premiers essais de ce Projet au commencement de l’année 1665,plusieurs Nations en temoignerent leur joye, soit en traduisant le Journal qu’ilfaisoit imprimer tous les huits jours, soit en publiant quelque chose de sem-blable. Cette émulation s’est augmentée de plus en plus depuis ce temps-là, desorte qu’elle s’est étenduë . . . d’une Nation à une autre. (1; original in italics)


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Denis de Sallo’s weekly Journal des Savants ran for only three months( January to March 1665), until it was suspended by order of the govern-ment under Colbert. It was then resumed in January 1666, under new edi-torship and transformed into an official organ, continuing in existence until1792 (indeed, after its revival in 1816, down to the present).69 Likewise,Bayle’s own journal was prohibited from sale in France from the start of1685, though he emphasizes in the preface that “Messieurs de l’EgliseRomaine” need not be alarmed by his journal, and indeed that it can helpthe censors to decide which books should be prohibited:

Nous agirons avec tant de circonspection, qu’apparement ces Nouvelles neseront pas défenduës, & nous esperons cela d’autant plus, qu’elles serviront àfaire connoître si un Livre doit être suspect. De sorte que Messieurs de laCongrégation de l’Indice, soit à Paris, soit ailleurs, n’auront pas besoin de lirebeaucoup pour connoître les Livres de contre-bande. (2; italics reversed)

Bayle’s ironic politesse here serves, perhaps, to taunt the censoring author-ities, but it also acknowledges the indulgence necessary for the circulationof such a work as his.That is, the phantasmatic republic of letters, existingonly as a shadow or a double of the states that made up the European sys-tem, was necessarily shaped by the institutional structures of these states.No matter how “circumspect” a publication might be—and Bayle went toconsiderable lengths in this work to couch his views in ironic or otherwiseevasive guise wherever they might seem to impinge on powerful institu-tions—it always ran the risk of being censored or prosecuted throughoutthe long eighteenth century in every European state, often more for theeducative impact of such a suppression on others than for any threat that thepublication in question itself embodied. I suggested earlier that eighteenth-century writers perceived a close connection between the realm of lettersand the world of nations, and the issue of regulatory control of the republicof letters is an important aspect of this connection.

The late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century ideal image of therepublic of letters sometimes depicts an autonomous or an elevated realmthat transcends the political terrain of Europe. For instance, in his preface tothe letters of Bayle (Amsterdam, 1729), Pierre Desmaizeaux writes that therepublic of letters is present as “un État répandu dans tous les États, uneRépublique où chaque membre, dans une parfaite indépendance, ne recon-noît d’autres loix que celles qu’il se prescrit à lui-même.”70 This rejection ofheteronomy, and anticipation of the Kantian notion that freedom (or inde-pendence) consists in obedience to the laws one gives oneself (rather thanin simple lawlessness or caprice), expresses a value-ideal but it hardly corre-sponds to any actually existing state of affairs. Bayle’s acknowledgment thatthe freedoms to be found in Holland, where he himself found refuge, were


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almost unique testifies to the prevailing conditions of regulation, surveil-lance, and prosecution under which the republic of letters operated in fact:

la République de Hollande. . . . [a] un avantage qui ne se trouve en aucunautre pais; c’est qu’on y accorde aux Imprimeurs une liberté d’une assezgrande étenduë, pour faire qu’on s’adresse à eux de tous les endroits del’Europe, quand on se voit rebuté par les difficultez d’obtenir un Privilege.Assurément si Milton eût vécu dans ces Provinces, il ne se fût pas avisé defaire un Livre de Typographia liberanda; car il n’eût point senti que les chosesy fussent dans la servitude à cet égard. . . . Cette honnête liberté de l’Im-primerie est sans doute un avantage très-favorable au dessein de faire unJournal des Sçavans . . . (1; italics reversed)

From this point of view, Holland is the capital of the republic of letters, andperhaps even its only real home, a land of “liberty” where others are realmsof “servitude.” At a minimum, one can say that the terrain of the republicof letters is very unevenly developed across Europe, with what Bayle calls“les pais d’Inquisition” representing the opposite extreme to Holland’s rel-ative tolerance (as least of works published in French or Latin rather thanDutch, and hence designed largely for an elite, transnational audience,rather than a local one).

The echo here of a religious division between Catholic and ProtestantEurope is made explicit by Bayle in his elaboration of these remarks:

Nos Presses [dans ces Provinces] sont le refuge des Catholiques aussi-bien quedes Réformez, & on craint si peu les Argumens de Messieurs de la Commu-nion de Rome, qu’on laisse vendre publiquement tous leurs Livres, bien loinde faire comme dans les pais d’Inquisition,où . . . on ne souffre pas même queles Controversistes Catholiques soient exposez en vente, tant on a peur desobjections qui paroissent dans leurs Ouvrages. (1; original in italics)

The free circulation of works of erudition and serious discussion thus ispresented by Bayle as preeminently a “Reformed” virtue, and he driveshome his critique of the “Messieurs de l’Eglise Romaine” by suggesting, asan explanation of their reluctance to see works circulate freely: “Il fautqu’ils ayent, ou moins de confiance dans les lumieres du Lecteur que nous,ou plus de défiance de leur cause, que nous la nôtre, ou enfin meilleureopinion de nos Livres, que nous n’en avons de leurs” (2; original in italics).This division of the republic of letters into “us” and “them” betrays a stateof affairs quite at variance with idealized assumptions about the norms andfunctioning of this realm, and suggests a sober recognition of the inextri-cable involvement of the realm of letters with the sociopolitical terrain andthe cultural divisions of the contemporary world.71


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But even if one ignores the irony of Bayle’s invocation of Denis de Salloas a precursor—and the issues of censorship and sectarian division thatrevolve around it (undermining any overidealization of the transcendentalindependence of the republic of letters)—his characterization of the repub-lic of letters in the passage that opens the preface still remains curiouslycomplicated.Thus, even the use of the French language as the medium ofthe journal serves to mark a boundary as much as it serves to facilitate com-munication: for most of the actual works reviewed in the journal are writ-ten not in French but in Latin.As Henri Basnage de Beauval writes in hisHistoire des Ouvrages des Savans for November 1687, the conflict betweenthe Ancients and the Moderns—embodied in the competing claims ofthe two languages, Latin and French—itself constitutes “une espèce deschisme” in the republic of letters.72 Sallo’s and Bayle’s promotion of eru-dite journals in the vernacular may have opened up the world of scholar-ship to a wider audience, but this larger audience was internally fracturedbetween those possessing different kinds of literacy (monolingual and mul-tilingual), those living in metropolitan locations and those residing in theprovinces, and those who could chart a free course through the republicand those for whom special accommodations had to be made if they wereto be admitted at all within its precincts. All of which served to reinforcethe function of the republic of letters as a hierarchical mapping of culturallocations in relation to each other, rather than as some sort of uniform,equal, homogeneous cultural space.

The signs of this internal sociolinguistic fracture are evident throughoutBayle’s Nouvelles even though Bayle himself presents Latin as being on its lastlegs as a language of scholarship, on the verge of being displaced by French.Bayle more than once calls attention to the discrepancy between the lan-guage of his journal and the language in which many of the works of eru-dition he reviews are written: in the issue of August 1685, discussing a Latindissertation on whether or not the Amazons existed, and in particular themotivations that induce men, in the present day, to insure that male andfemale children do not receive the same education, Bayle comments: “Jen’aurois pas tiré ces remarques de son Latin, si je n’avois considéré qu’il estimportant au beau sexe, qu’il sçache ce que l’on publie contre luy” (341).Women, in other words, remain only marginal members of the republic ofletters, for whom special accommodations need to be made, since theylacked, barring a few exceptions, any extended education in Latin.The sys-tem of culture might well have been shifting toward a vernacular-dominatedstructure, but much of the past—including such elusive realms as the“République des Amazones”—comprised an insulated “Latine republike”(as Sir Thomas Browne terms it), which remained accessible only to thosewho were fully franchised members of the republic of letters.73


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Similarly, in the issue of September 1685, at the end of an article on aTraité de l’Excellence du Mariage . . . Où l’on fait l’Apologie des femmes contre lescalomnies des hommes (Paris, 1685), Bayle inserts this notice for his readers:

Quelques personnes ayant fait connoître que ceux qui ne savent pas le Latin,sont fâchez de ne pas entendre le titre de tous les Livres dont nous parlons,parce que cela les engage souvent à passer plusieurs articles qu’ils liroientpeut-être, s’ils voyoient d’abord de quoi il s’agit, nous mettrons desormais àla fin des titres Latins, une explication qui les fera connoître suffisamment.(366; original in italics)

In saying this, Bayle was in fact adverting to a practice that he had followedgenerally, if not entirely regularly, from the start of the Nouvelles.Nonetheless,the remark alerts us to the radical division of his readership into twogroups—the “mere” French readers, on the one hand, and the lettered,bilingual or multilingual, readers on the other hand, a division that is crucialthroughout the eighteenth century inasmuch as it marks the boundaries ofa “national” reading-formation distinct from a properly European realm ofletters, and of a second-rank readership from that which has acquired full cit-izenship in any version of the realm of letters.Thus, while the vernaculariza-tion of the republic of letters marks a certain broadening of participation init, this does not take the form of an equable “democratization” of the realmbut the construction of a new hierarchy of differential literacies. Despite itsgeographical diffusion among European elites in the eighteenth century,French could never function as the “Latin of the moderns” because itremained inscribed within an apparatus of languages in which elite literacyrequired literacy in both French and Latin. Linguistic multiplicity and multi-lingual literacy (in the leading modern vernaculars and Latin, as well as inone’s own mother tongue) now became defining features of the domain ofliterature and learning, in contrast to an earlier (neo-Latin) era in which suchliterature and learning was ostensibly sustained in a single,“universal” tongue.

Language, education, religion, gender, censorship all serve to fracture thesupposed unity of the republic of letters, articulating it instead as a hierar-chical structure of cultural locations in which English-language writers,like their European peers, are embedded. The fact that English-languagewriters of polite letters take the republic of letters as their proper arena ofparticipation thus confronts them with multiple issues of centrality andmarginality within this realm, and this multiplicity only underlines theissues of provinciality posed by the manifest secondariness of their ownlinguistic sphere in this context.

Given the importance of issues of provinciality within the eighteenth-century republic of letters, it is important that we examine more closely its


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normative ideal of unboundedness and inclusivity, and ask ourselves whatthe significance of this ideal is: is it best understood as a mystificatory ide-alization? as a utopian critique of existing sociocultural formations andtheir erection of fixed boundaries? What kind of historical “reality” can oneascribe to value-ideals such as the one at issue? and what does it mean toconfront such an ideal with historical “realities” (such as the exclusions andmarginalizations I have been discussing in this section)? To attempt toanswer these questions fully would take us too far afield; I raise them hereonly to serve as a caution against assuming that we know all too well howto handle the question of “idealism” in the field of cultural history. In whatfollows, I narrow the issue of the boundaries of the republic of letters byposing it in relation to the question of its Europeanness, in order to bringout one final issue that has been implicit in much of the discussion in thischapter: the link between the eighteenth-century concepts of “the repub-lic of letters” and of “the public,” and the implications this raises (like the“exorbitant” address of English-language writers and the problematic ofprovinciality) for our tendency to think of early modern literary culture ininsularly national terms.

The Republic of Letters and (National) Public Spheres

In speaking of a “European” republic of letters I have been using the termdescriptively, but one might question what the status of this “European-ness” is in normative terms.This is an issue that presses in two directions:on the one hand, what is the status of a “European” republic of letters vis-à-vis distinct national arenas; on the other hand, what is its status vis-à-visan extra-European horizon? I argue that as a normative construct, theEnlightenment republic of letters is conceived of as necessarily transna-tional in form and singular in number, articulating a cosmopolitan univer-sality open to all peoples (men and women alike) within and beyondEurope.This republic of letters is, as we have seen, internally stratified interms of various kinds of provinciality and marginality; but what is essen-tial to the idea of the republic of letters is its multilingual, multiculturalextension, not any particular internal hierarchization. For Enlightenmentthinkers, whether Bayle at one end of the century or Kant at the other, theexercise of reason in public discourse and debate always takes as its norma-tive horizon a cosmopolitan realm of discussion and interchange, andindeed ideally a global or universal realm.

Already in 1690, in his essay “Of Heroic Virtue,” Sir William Temple wasdrawing attention to the narrow conception of human history and human-ity enforced by traditional learning, with its focus on the “four greatmonarchies” of the ancient world (Egypt, Greece, Persia, and Rome):“if we


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consider the map of the world, as it lies at present before us, since thediscoveries made by the navigations of these three last centuries, we shalleasily find what vast regions there are which have been left out of thatancient scene on all sides.”74 Temple complains that writers on politics andethics have deduced “the very common laws of nature and of nations”(322) from the evidence provided by these “four great empires” (316)—“Yet the stage of all these empires . . . is but a limited compass of earth, thatleaves out many vast regions of the world, the which, though accountedbarbarous, and little taken notice of in story [i.e., history], or by any cele-brated authors, yet have a right to come in for their voice, in agreeing uponthe laws of nature and nations (for aught I know) as well as the rest, thathave arrogated it wholly to themselves” (322).The concept of the “law ofnature and nations,” like that of the republic of letters, entails, as Templerecognizes, that all the peoples of the earth “have a right to come in fortheir voice,” however much the proponents of these concepts may havefailed to honor this demand.

Nor was Temple singular in his emphasis on a wider conception ofhumanity than one based narrowly on Europe or Christendom. In hisMélanges d’histoire et de littérature, as we have seen earlier in this chapter,Vigneul-Marville writes that the republic of letters “extends over the wholeworld and is composed of people of all nations, of all statuses, of all ages, andof each sex. . . . every sort of language, ancient and modern, is spokenthere.” In his Discourse on Method (1637; Latin translation 1644), Descartesbegins by asserting the equal rationality of all humans (“what is called Goodsense or Reason, is by nature equal in all men. . . . the diversity of our opin-ions does not proceed from some men being more rational than others, butsolely from the fact that our thoughts pass through diverse channels and thesame objects are not considered by all”) and goes on to assert that he feltobliged to make public his views on the principles of physics: “I believedthat I could not keep them concealed without greatly sinning against thelaw which obliges us to procure, as much as in us lies, the general good ofall mankind.”75 Leibniz, in his preface to the Novissima Sinica (1697), ignoresthe western hemisphere but nonetheless presents what is clearly meant to bean image of universal progress in enlightenment:

I consider it a singular plan of the fates that human cultivation and refine-ment should today be concentrated, as it were, in the two extremes of ourcontinent, in Europe and in Tschina (as they call it) [i.e., China], whichadorns the Orient as Europe does the opposite edge of the earth. PerhapsSupreme Providence has ordained such an arrangement, so that as the mostcultivated and distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other, those inbetween may gradually be brought to a better way of life.76


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The early Enlightenment, the era of the “crisis of European conscience”(as Paul Hazard has termed it), involved, then, a move beyond not onlynational, but also European, parochialism.This globalizing intellectual hori-zon is fundamental to the normative conception of the republic of lettersin the eighteenth century, however much authors may treat this formationhistorically and empirically as European in scope: when they reflect on theissue they are conscious, like Sir William Temple, of the gap between theuniversality demanded by the concept and the Eurocentrism evident inthe practice.

At the other end of the period we are concerned with we see a contin-uing emphasis on a transnational, and tendentially global, horizon. JamesBeattie, in his Elements of Moral Science (1790), underlines the reach acrossdifferent times and places made possible by the written (and printed) circu-lation that undergirds the republic of letters:“By means of writing, humanthoughts may be made more durable than any other work of man; may becirculated in all nations; and may be so corrected, compared, and com-pounded, as to exhibit . . . the accumulated wisdom of many ages.”77 JohnGilchrist emphasizes this global scope when he invokes “the republic ofletters at large” and “the literati of all countries” in The Oriental Linguist(1798).78 Kant’s explicit formulations of this cosmopolitan principle occurin several places: for instance, in his writings on education, in which he statesthat “children ought to be educated not for the present, but for a possiblyimproved condition of man in the future; that is, in a manner which isadapted to the idea of humanity and the whole destiny of man.This princi-ple is of great importance. . . . the basis of a scheme of education must becosmopolitan”;79 in his writings on politics, in which he argues that “Theproblem of establishing a perfect civil constitution is subordinate to theproblem of a law-governed external relationship with other states, and cannotbe solved unless the latter is also solved”;80 and in his writings on Enlight-enment, in which he argues that “a congregation, however large it is, is neverany more than a domestic gathering,” contrasting it with the situation of“a scholar addressing the real public (i.e. the world at large) through hiswritings.”81 In all these cases we are right, I think, to take the authors at theirword and to understand the republic of letters as normatively global in scope.It is intimately linked, in other words, with the notion of what SamuelJohnson calls, in 1750 in one of the Rambler essays, “the great republick ofhumanity,” what Mary Wollstonecraft refers to as “the common relationshipthat binds the whole family on earth together,” and what Thomas Jeffersonnames, in a letter of 1809, “a great fraternity spreading over the wholeearth.”82 And this conception of the global scope of the republic of lettersstands behind the language of William Wordsworth when he declares, in thepreface (1802) to the Lyrical Ballads, that, “In spite of difference of soil and


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climate, or language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of thingssilently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet bindstogether by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as itis spread over the whole earth, and over all time.”83

What is most important for our purposes is that the modern notion of“the public” develops in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in rela-tion to and under the shadow of this transnational notion of a republic ofletters. The two notions are not fully synonymous, of course, but neitherare they completely separable from each other.When Adam Smith, in hisessay of 1756, speaks of the “improvements and observations” which “theacademies in the different parts of Europe” have “communicated to thepublic,”84 it is clear that this “public” is transnational in scope. An indica-tion of the relationship between the notions of the “the public” and “therepublic of letters” is even more directly apparent in one of the notesto William Julius Mickle’s 1776 translation of Camoens’s The Lusiads, inwhich Mickle writes:

The writers who have treated of the mission of [St. Francis] Xavier, relate,that there is extant in India the writings of a Malabar poet, who wrote ninehundred epigrams, each consisting of eight verses, in ridicule of the worshipof the Brahmins, whom he treats with great asperity and contempt.Wouldany of our diligent enquirers after oriental learning favour the Public withan authentic account of the works of this poet of Malabar, he wouldundoubtedly confer a singular favour on the republic of letters.85

For Mickle,“the Public” and “the republic of letters” are clearly coordinatenotions, and if the republic of letters is a transnational formation so is thepublic. Similarly, when George Douglas titles a work in 1810, An appeal tothe republic of letters, in behalf of injured science, from the opinions and proceedingsof some modern authors of elements of geometry, he might equally haveaddressed it as “An appeal to the public . . .”: in this instance, the twonotions are not only coordinate, but almost synonymous.

A similar suggestion of synonymy is evident in various translations of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Paul Dibon notes that Descartes usesthe French term le public thirteen times in the Discours de la Méthode; to ren-der this term, the Latin translator generally uses the neuter noun publicum orthe adjective publicus, Dibon tells us, but he twice uses the phrase Respublicalitteraria and once the term respublica,86 indicating the way in which thenotions of “the public” and the “republic of letters” were mutually impli-cated.We can see the same process of mutual conceptual interference takingplace in the mid-eighteenth century. Edward Young’s Conjectures on OriginalComposition (1759) was translated by Pierre Le Tourneur in Oeuvres Diverses


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du Docteur Young (1770).87 Young’s English text uses the phrase “the republicof letters” only once (“Originals are, and ought to be, great favorites, for theyare great benefactors; they extend the republic of letters, and add a newprovince to its dominion” [45]), but employs as near synonyms the phrases“the learned world” (47),“the lettered world” (51, 54), and “the intellectualworld” (61); likewise,Young on occasion thinks of works as presented to “thepublic” (53, 72), but more generally he prefers to think of them as presentedto “the world” (which operates, in this context, sometimes as an abbreviatedform of “the learned world” or “the intellectual world” and sometimes sim-ply as a reference to the world at large) (63, 70). Le Tourneur sets up his ownrange of synonyms:he uses “la république des lettres” (240,242,248) to trans-late both “the republic of letters” and “the learned world,” as well as using“le monde littéraire” (265,279),“le monde lettré” (268), and “le monde intel-lectuel” (315) as near synonyms. He translates both “the public” and “theworld” as “le public” (275, 288, 290, 345, 356) tending to equate it, as doesYoung, with the supranational audience of the republic of letters.This impli-cation is clearest toward the end of the work where Young celebrates Addisonthe Christian (whose deathbed scene Young has just disclosed) as even moreglorious than Addison the man of letters.Young writes:

If powers were not wanting, a monument more durable than those of marbleshould proudly rise in this ambitious page, to the new and far nobler Addisonthan that which you and the public have so long and so much admired. Northis nation only; for it is Europe’s Addison, as well as ours; though Europeknows not half his title to her esteem; being as yet unconscious that the dyingAddison far outshines her Addison immortal. (72)

Le Tourneur translates this climactic passage as follows:

Ah! si mes forces ne m’avoient pas abandonné, j’éleverais ici un monumentplus durable que le marbre à ce nouvel Adisson bien plus grand, que l’Adissonqu’ont admiré jusqu’ici l’Angleterre & les Nations étrangéres [sic]; car Adis-son appartient autant à l’Europe qu’à sa Patrie. L’Europe chrétienne ne con-noissoit pas tous les droits qu’il avoit à son estime; elle ne savoit pas combienAdisson mourant, est supérieur à l’Adisson qu’elle a nommé l’immortel.(358–59)

Where Young speaks of the Addison that “you [i.e., Samuel Richardson, towhom the Conjectures are addressed] and the public” have admired, LeTourneur speaks of the “Adisson” who has been admired by “l’Angleterre &les Nations étrangéres,” thus underlining the extent to which in the era ofthe republic of letters, the “public” for literature is understood not exclu-sively in national terms but as a European ensemble.Young’s clarification


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that “the public” that has admired Addison consists not of “this nationonly” but rather constitutes a European public nicely exposes the distortionthat enters into our mapping of the literary sphere if we too readily assim-ilate “the (international) public” as it figures in relation to the realm of let-ters with “the (national) public” as it figures in relation to the domesticpolitical arena.

Yet, in contrast to the transnational or cosmopolitan concept of therepublic of letters, the notion of the “public sphere” as elaborated by JürgenHabermas (and as deployed by numerous other contemporary culturalcritics) is situated within the framework of a given “state and civil society”—by definition, an individual, particularized state-and-civil-society nexus,thus serving to “nationalize” the notion of a public sphere of letters.88

Habermas speaks of the “political public sphere” as emerging out of the“literary public sphere” as though these two formations operated with anessentially comparable notion of “the public,” whereas, as we have seen, thescope (and hence the character) of the public as understood in the realmof letters is quite different from the national public sphere in the realm ofpolitics. No doubt, the two notions of the public produce a kind of “inter-ference,” each for the other, and, over time, the political delimitation of thepublic may come to dominate any relatively autonomous literary determi-nation of a public, but this still involves a certain distortion of the notionof the public as it had been (and to some extent continued to be) conceivedin the literary culture of the period.The notion of the public sphere thatHabermas holds up as a kind of regulative ideal figures for Enlightenmentthinkers in general (not only for litterateurs) as the degeneration of a cos-mopolitan ideal into a series of very uneven and somewhat disjointednational developments across the face of Europe, frequently also deployedin antagonistic and competitive relations with each other. Having himselfabandoned the normative universality of the public sphere, Habermas canspeak of various kinds of public spheres and publics in relation to his four-fold sociological division of society into (i) the Intimsphäre of the family,(ii) the “private sphere” of civil society, (iii) the “public sphere” of commu-nicative rationality, and (iv) the “public sphere” of the state. This modelallows for a certain fluidity in its recognition of different kinds of “public-ness” (of the family sphere vis-à-vis the “novel privacy” of individuals; ofcivil society vis-à-vis the sphere of the family; of the “public sphere” vis-à-vis civil society; of the state vis-à-vis the “public sphere”), although it con-stantly risks (both in Habermas’s own discussion and in its reception byothers) being reduced to a binary distinction between a “public” and a “pri-vate” sphere, or at best a tripartite distinction between civil society, the“public sphere,” and the state. In any case, with regard to the early modernperiod, Habermas manages to speak descriptively of a liberal public sphere


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and a plebeian public sphere (xviii); a literary public sphere and a politicalpublic sphere (29); as well as a variety of “publics”—a reading public, atheater-going public, a concert-going public, a fine arts public (38–39), eachof these presumably being a particular public within a given society. But thishistorical-descriptive account sits oddly with Habermas’s simultaneousdesire to focus attention on the normative and conceptual implications ofthe notion of the public and the public sphere.

Habermas does, in fact, devote one chapter to “Kant’s elaboration of theprinciple of publicity” (102) and acknowledges Kant’s emphasis on a globalhorizon.Yet Habermas never directly addresses the dissonance between hisown elaboration of the regulative ideal associated with the public sphereand Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal. One might argue that Habermas is inter-ested ultimately in what he calls the “political public sphere,” as distin-guished from the “literary public sphere,” and that it is only the literaryformation that corresponds closely to Kant’s cosmopolitan emphasis. Butsuch an argument ignores the fact that a cosmopolitan horizon is crucialfor Kant precisely because he wishes to articulate a notion of “world citi-zenship” as a political category. For our purposes, what is most importantabout Habermas’s way of reframing the notion of the public is that it elim-inates, or at least obscures, the politics of language and the issues of provin-ciality that are central to the conception and the historical developmentof the European republic of letters. Thus, unlike many recent critics ofHabermas, my complaint is not that he overidealizes the civic publicsphere, but instead that he does not take the normative universality of thepublic seriously enough, and is content to inscribe it within the domesticboundaries of existing polities, thus radically simplifying the problematic ofcultural difference that the notion engages.

This feature of Habermas’s analysis has also been criticized recently byElizabeth L. Eisenstein: “Jürgen Habermas, who first drew attention to theemergence of a neutral space dedicated to rational criticism, seems to haveenvisaged the new arena as being contained within each separate dynasticstate. But the emergent public sphere also had extraterritorial aspects whichneed to be explored.”89The historical considerations that Eisenstein raises arecertainly important, but even more crucial, in my view, for Habermas’sargument, and any other constructed along similar lines, is the normativeconceptualization of the public sphere within a global horizon—a positedconceptual horizon that far exceeds, as we have seen in our discussion of theFrench-dominated republic of letters, the actual historical developmentof the “extraterritorial aspects” of the emergent public sphere. A global oruniversal horizon is designed to bring critical scrutiny to bear on the self-authorizing complacency of publics.The Enlightenment concept of the pub-lic sphere not only subjects the state to public scrutiny and accountability,


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but furthermore subjects this (national) public itself to scrutiny and critiquefrom the point of view of humanity at large. Habermas interprets the publicsphere as part of a liberal problematic focused on the relations between thestate and civil society; in my view, the Enlightenment ideal exceeds such adesignation, and contains resources for a critique of liberal publics as well asauthoritarian states.90 This normative investment of the notion of a realm ofletters in a global horizon makes unavoidable the problematic of linguisticmultiplicity and the partial imbrication of linguistic–cultural spheres: it makesunavoidable the issue of the relationships among the various language andcultural spheres and, consequently, it renders inescapable issues of relativestanding, of metropolitan and provincial status.

Eisenstein herself speaks of two distinct literary republics in the worldof eighteenth-century Europe: a continental francophone republic of let-ters and a transatlantic anglophone republic of letters. But this suggests toocategorical a demarcation. First, French-language journals circulated notonly on the continent but also made their way into the “New World”;91

moreover, in the eighteenth century, French-language journals also origi-nated and were being published in places like Boston, Cap-Français (Saint-Domingue), Guadeloupe, Montréal, New Orleans, Newport (RhodeIsland), Philadelphia, Québec, Saint-Pierre (Martinique), so that the fran-cophone republic of letters is not merely “European” as distinct from“transatlantic.” Second, in many respects Britain and her colonies (whichseem to comprise Eisenstein’s transatlantic republic) form what one mightcall an “imperial public sphere” rather than a cosmopolitan “republic of let-ters” (which necessarily constructs a form of “citizenship” quite distinctfrom, though not necessarily antagonistic to, the civic-patriotic citizenshipentailed by the system of states). If these regions form an anglophonerepublic of letters, it is a literary republic that bears a very different relationto existing political structures than does the francophone republic of let-ters. But, most importantly, there are normative reasons, as I have suggestedpreviously, why the republic of letters needs to be conceived of as singularin number (and universal in scope); a purely “descriptive” usage of the termto refer to a multiplicity of literary republics transforms the concept radi-cally and divests it of the critical normativity that it otherwise expresses andthat is its essential trait.

Instead of speaking of multiple republics of letters in the European(or Atlantic) world, I think it is more accurate to inscribe the problematicof language within the singular concept of the republic of letters, and toattend to the external boundaries and internal hierarchies of this republic.The European republic of letters undergoes a process of transformationacross the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not a process of multipli-cation. It remains singular in number, but it is no longer monolingual in


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form; rather, it is articulated through a multilingual apparatus of languages,an apparatus in which the French language occupies the dominant posi-tion. Using the idiom elaborated by Raymond Williams, one might speakof residual, dominant, and emergent dimensions of the republic of letters asa way of describing the interrelationships between Latin, French, andEnglish respectively in this apparatus of languages. What is essential toremember is (as we saw at the start of this chapter) that in the long eigh-teenth century the republic of letters is not conceived of as a domain witha single, common, homogeneous culture, but rather as a domain encom-passing multiple cultures, languages, peoples.What the notion of the repub-lic of letters proposes is not the simple victory of one standard of civility,but an ideal of intercommunication across cultural differences—an inter-communication that takes place in a world of constant (if generally slowand subtle) realignments of cultural centrality.

We can catch a glimpse of this flux in the status of cultural sphereswithin the republic of letters in the history of the Journal des savants (est.1665), a periodical conducted in French that begins to review English-language works from about 1702 and that ceases (as was previously noted)to review works written in Latin in the 1750s.Throughout the period weare concerned with, the European republic of letters remains dominantlyfrancophone, but there are constant adjustments of cultural positionalitytaking place through the internal articulation of its apparatus of languages,and through the reconfiguration of its constituencies.This means that thereis a complex politics of culture produced in and through the republic ofletters: not merely an “opposition” between the realm of letters and thestructure of European politics, but a cultural politics inextricable from thediscrepancies between the normative ideal of the cosmopolitan republicof letters and the fractured literary public spheres that delimit the terrain ofcultural production in eighteenth-century Europe. Issues of cultural powerstructure the realm of letters just as issues of geopolitical power structurethat of polities, as we saw in the discussion of Bilderdijk in chapter 1.

As an ideal, the republic of letters both acknowledges the existence of amultiplicity of languages and their attendant cultural spheres, and insists onthe inadequacy of any one of them as a self-sufficient whole. It forces uponus, in other words, a consciousness of the positionality of any one culturalsphere, its place and standing within a larger cultural ensemble. Such a con-sciousness, I have been arguing, is very marked in the eighteenth-centuryliterary world, and in the English-language sphere it entails a consciousnessof (and active desire to negate) cultural provinciality. On the one hand,there are clearly nodes of dissemination (such as Paris or the cities of theUnited Provinces) that extend their influence across national boundaries,and, on the other hand, locations (geographical and social) where it is


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incommodious for potential readers (e.g., women or “provincials”) to gainaccess to certain books, or more fundamentally, to the educational trainingand social standing that would allow them to be full participants in therepublic of letters.

One aspect of this discrepancy between a metropolitan and a provinciallocation and “identity” is discussed by Bayle in the Nouvelles for June 1685in a review of a volume on the “patavinitas” of Livy, that is, on the questionof provincialisms in the language of this writer who is a native not ofRome itself but of Patavium (Padua). Bayle rehearses the author’s discus-sion of various conjectures regarding “ce que c’étoit que cette Patavinité,qu’Asinius Pollio trouvoit dans l’Histoire de Tite-Live” (304), until hecomes to Rapin’s view that “Asinius Pollio ne blâmoit dans Tite-Live,qu’une mauvaise prononciation qui choquoit les Courtisans élevez à la délicatessede la Cour d’Auguste, & sentoit un peu la Province” (305).92 Bayle treats this asa perfectly commonplace attitude, with nothing particularly maliciousabout it, by reference to the contemporary attitudes of Parisians:

il est vrai qu’il se trouve des Parisiens fort habiles & fort équitables, qui trou-vent presque dans tous les Auteurs Provinciaux je ne sai quel tour de phrase, &comme une espece de goût de terroir qui ne les accommode pas. Ilsavouëront qu’à tout prendre ces Provinciaux écrivent bien, & plus éloquem-ment quelquefois que ceux qui ont été toûjours dans la Capitale; mais enfince je ne sai quoi qui est un reste de la Province revient toûjours. (305)93

This allusion to Parisian attitudes should remind us that while French mayhave been the language of culture through much of Europe in the eigh-teenth century,many regions of France itself continued to speak “des patois”and were not fully subordinated to the dialect of the capital until well afterthe era of the program to impose Parisian French on all the regions of thecountry undertaken in the wake of the French Revolution. Bayle, himself aprovincial from the south of France and now an exile whose own writingin French is, apparently, sometimes marked by “gasconnismes,”94 remarkstoward the end of this review on the role of provincial authors in the refine-ment of languages:

l’Auteur remarque fort judicieusement, que les Romains étoient coupablesd’une espece d’ingratitude lors qu’ils parloient des Provinciaux avec mépris,car de tant d’habiles Ecrivains qui nous restent, & qui ont tant contribué àperfectionner la Langue Latine, à peine s’en trouve-t-il trois qui soient nez àRome; Lucrece,Varron, & Cesar.Tous les autres sont venus ou d’Espagne, oude quelque Province d’Italie, & il est certain que plusieurs d’entr’eux ont lestile incomparablement plus beau que Varron & que Lucrece. Un AuteurFrançois avoit déja fait cette remarque l’an 1678. & y avoit ajoûté qu’à cet


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égard Paris est bien plus heureux, & bien plus glorieux que Rome. Celan’empêche point que Malherbe & M. de Balzac, deux Provinciaux, ne soientceux qui ont heureusement commencé à bien polir la Langue Françoise.M. de Vaugelas autre Provincial y a eu sa bonne part. (306)

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the role of provincial authors in thecorruption or refinement of a given language, it is clear that a distinctionbetween “ce qu’on appelloit urbanité dans le langage” and “le stile étranger &Provincial” (306) was a major part of early modern perceptions of theliterary field (and of language-use more generally), and that the “mépris”of the metropolitan speech-community for provincialisms was a significantaspect of the hierarchical structuring of the republic of letters.95

We catch a further glimpse of how the notion of “provinciality” con-denses social and linguistic–cultural hierarchies, bringing the republic ofletters into a kind of alignment with the sociopolitical world, in DavidGarrick’s response to Henry Jones (1721–70), the Irish bricklayer and poetpatronized by Lord Chesterfield. Writing in 1755 to the Marquis ofHartington, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Garrick comments:“Mr Jonesye Famous Irish Bricklayer & Poet sent me an Ode from Dublin to presentto yr Excellency. there was such an Irishism in the proposal, that I havedesir’d to be Excus’d, & I don’t doubt but by this Time You have seen &felt the Trowel & Mortar.”96 In the late sixteenth and early seventeenthcenturies, Ben Jonson may have been able to live down his own humblebeginnings as a bricklayer and soldier, but by the mid-eighteenth centurythe category of “uneducated poet” was well established, and compoundedby Jones’s Irishness, there was no escaping his provinciality in the eyes ofsomeone like Garrick, firmly ensconced in the London literary world andthe larger republic of letters.

Far from being a relatively uniform and “open” field of participation forall, then, the republic of letters was informed by a set of value-normsand institutions that established a structured hierarchy of “metropoles” and“peripheries,” not to mention the vast wild and barbaric tracts that laybeyond the borders of this republic. Earlier in this chapter, we saw that therepublic of letters is in fact marked by a hierarchical ordering of centers andperipheries; here, we can say further that by virtue of its investment in avalue-ideal of “urbanity” the republic of letters is also in idea invested ina cultural hierarchy of metropolitan and provincial standing. The issue ofprovinciality acquires an undeniable importance in the workings of therepublic of letters precisely because of the republic’s unbounded scope. Bycontrast, in more parochially defined cultural spaces, it is possible to imag-ine (at least) a kind of abstract equality. Thus, for instance, followingHabermas, Terry Eagleton has argued that the literary public sphere


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established an ideal sociality, one in which the hierarchical distinctions ofthe actual society were temporarily “suspended”:

The sphere of cultural discourse and the realm of social power are closelyrelated but not homologous: the former cuts across the latter and suspendsthe distinctions of the latter, deconstructing and reconstituting it in a newform, temporarily transposing its “vertical” gradations onto a “horizontal”plane.97

Eagleton’s sense that the distinctions that serve to produce the hierarchicalstructure of the social order are not immediately operative in “the sphere ofcultural discourse” is unobjectionable; however, the realm of letters oper-ates with its own structured hierarchy of value and recognition, and withits own barriers to full accessibility for various social groups. As such, therealm of letters does not “deconstruct” or “suspend” the hierarchical dis-tinctions of the social world; rather, it complicates them.98 This allows for theemergence of novel solidarities, novel groupings (based, e.g., on affinities oftaste, connoisseurship, learning) that do not entirely reproduce the order-ing of groups in the social hierarchy, but that nonetheless are not entirelyindependent of features of the social identities and the social world of thepersons concerned. For example, when Bayle died in 1706, his will oughtto have been invalid in France since he was a Huguenot emigrant, but theFrench authorities, by decree of the parliament of Toulouse, chose to honorit nonetheless on the basis of his standing in the republic of letters:

Le parlement de Toulouse lui a fait un honneur unique, en déclarant valideson testament, qui, suivant la rigueur de la loi, devait être annulé, comme faitpar un réfugié. Les héritiers ab intestat réclamaient en leur faveur les éditscontre les réformés; mais la grande chambre crut devoir céder à l’avis deSenaux, l’un des juges, qui représenta “que les savans étaient de tous les pays;qu’il ne fallait pas regarder comme fugitif celui que l’amour des lettres avaitappelé en d’autres contrées; qu’il était indigne de traiter d’étranger celui quela France se glorifiat d’avoir produit.”99

Following this same logic and citing this precedent,Voltaire, in his Siècle deLouis XIV, includes Bayle, although a refugee in Holland, amongst thewriters who bring honor to the age of Louis le Grand.We see here that therepublic of letters generates its own hierarchy of value, but it is very clearlya hierarchy, and it is effective in the system of states only because it is notentirely divorced from the social realities of that system. If, to take anotherinstance, a division between the leisured and the laboring classes is funda-mental to the terrain of early modern social life, there is a reinscription (andpartial transformation) of this division in the distinction between mental


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and physical labor—a distinction embodied in the status of literary work(which Isaac D’Israeli refers to as “the labor absqae labore, ‘the labour devoidof labour,’ ” quoting “the inscription on the library of Florence . . .describ[ing] the researches of literature”),100 and in the distinctionDr. Johnson invokes in his characterization of his native town of Lichfieldas “a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobiesof Birmingham work for us with their hands.”101

There are, then, two kinds of value-norms associated with the eighteenth-century republic of letters: one is a norm of universality, the other a normof “urbanity” (non-provinciality).The first norm,by invoking an ideal audi-ence that always exceeds any given audience, contests the nationalist andmajoritarian complacencies of actual, historical publics.The second normreinflects, and in some respects exacerbates, social divisions by “refracting”them on the cultural terrain. Neither norm can be simply equated with theactual historical-empirical operation of the eighteenth-century republic ofletters, but by the same token they both need to be recognized as part of thehistorical reality of that cultural formation (i.e., the normative force of therepublic of letters is as much a part of its historical reality as are its moreexclusively empirical features).

With regard to the eighteenth-century republic of letters, I have empha-sized a number of themes that have not received the attention they deserve:the centrality of a problematic of language and nation in this cultural for-mation emerging from its conceptualization as a domain encompassingmultiple languages and cultures; the fundamentally secondary place of theEnglish-language literary world in this republic of letters across the longeighteenth century and the negotiation of this fact in the works of English-language writers; the centrality of issues of provinciality in the ordering ofthe realm of letters; and the critical leverage of the concept of the republicof letters (implying as it does an unbounded and normatively global sphereof cultural interchange) vis-à-vis the parochialisms and complacencies ofindividual cultures and societies. In all these respects, the notion of therepublic of letters does not stand opposed to the notion of distinctivenational or regional cultures, nor does it simply require the abandonmentof a commitment to one’s local culture.The notion of the republic of let-ters implies a kind of multicultural awareness, but not a cosmopolitanism(if one understands this to mean an outlook that transcends national divi-sions and specificities). Indeed, “nationality” is a third value-norm operat-ing in the field of culture in the long eighteenth century, a norm that isespecially marked in the English-language literary sphere. Thus, althoughstudents of the republic of letters—like critics of Habermas—have focusedalmost exclusively on the conflict between the “ideal” and the “reality” ofthe republic of letters, there seem to me to be a plurality of value-norms


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operating in the field of culture in the eighteenth century, a plurality thatcreates its own complications and tensions that have not been adequatelyexplored.When an author expresses a special obligation to his or her owncompatriots, for instance, it is not simply a case of failure to live up to acosmopolitan ideal; rather, it is evidence of a competing ideal of literature(s)and taste(s) as national in form. Such national inflections are not seen onlyor even primarily as deformations of the cultural terrain but as positive val-ues in their own right, as I show in chapter 3. Even within the conceptu-ality of the republic of letters and “neoclassical” poetics, as we shall see, therecognition of national cultural differences and the assertion of nationalidentity function as positive values in English-language literary cultureacross the long eighteenth century.

While the notion of the republic of letters hardly cancels out nationallyspecific and nationalistic literary investments, it does contextualize eachnational literary culture in a wider transnational field that is structured interms of a hierarchy of metropolitan urbanity versus provincial rusticity.Eighteenth-century English-language writers are everywhere conscious ofsuch a hierarchy, as much prior scholarship on “polite,”“refined,”“enlight-ened,” “neoclassical” British culture has shown. But because such scholar-ship has tended to localize the distinctions at issue here within the domesticcontext of Britain, as played out in such works as Pope’s Dunciad, it hasfailed to appreciate the pressure this cultural hierarchy exerted on the self-understanding of all English-language writers as products of a culturalsphere traditionally perceived as marginal, provincial, even barbaric. Theintensity with which “polite” writers assert their cultural distinction fromGrubstreet hacks within the domestic arena has much to do with the inse-curities of their ambition to claim metropolitan status within the widerrepublic of letters. English-language writers of the long eighteenth centuryunderstood their inherited status as a minor tradition, but in response tothis situation they articulate an assertively nationalistic literary ethos andlatched onto the possibility of metropolitan cultural aggrandizementopened up by the rising geopolitical standing of the British polity. Thedesire for cultural distinction—the forceful effort to overcome the margin-ality of the past—fed both a nativist (insularly nationalist) and an imperial-ist current in eighteenth-century English-language literary culture. Thecomplex intersections that result from these two outlooks provide thematrix within which the notion of an English-language literary traditionacquires its modern shape, and help explain why this tradition, whilenational in form, remains crucially invested in its extraterritorial and impe-rial dimensions since these are the tokens by which it lays claim to anon-provincial standing within the republic of letters.


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CHAPTER 3

NATIONAL DIFFERENCES AND

NATIONAL AUTONOMY

In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbondistinguishes between the structure of the Roman Empire—forming

“one great nation, united by language, manners, and civil institutions”—and the structure of the modern “republic” of Europe, as he styles it, whichemerged from the European Christendom of the Middle Ages.1 Thestrength of this modern European formation was based, in Gibbon’s view,not on unity and homogeneity of “language, manners, and . . . institutions,”but on national diversity and competition: he comments that, “On therevival of letters, . . . national emulation, a new religion, new languages,and a new world, called forth the genius of Europe” (1:84). Gibbon’sunderstanding of the modern European republic of states, and the republicof letters that forms its cultural double, is consonant with the views of otherwriters discussed in chapter 2.As we saw in that chapter, the notion of therepublic of letters, as part of its transnational orientation, constantly callsattention to the diversity of multiple national literary traditions and to therelated dynamic of “national emulation.” For Gibbon, “the genius ofEurope” emerges out of the competition of nations, religions, languages;and, likewise, the eighteenth-century republic of letters gains its coherencenot from a shared culture but from a dynamic of national competition.

As Gibbon’s comments suggest, notions of national cultural particularityare not only embedded in the broad concept of the republic of letters, butare also far more pervasive in eighteenth-century European culture and areseen to apply to many particular fields of cultural practice. In his fragmen-tary “Relation de l’état présent de la République des Lettres” (1675?),Leibniz writes, “Ie remarqve qve chaqve pais a une certaine maniered’erudition qvi ne sera pas estimée autre part,”2 thus suggesting thatcultural particularities and national differences apply in the ostensibly“objective” field of erudition and scholarship, and lead to diverse criteria of

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value in each country. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenthcenturies, moreover, national differences and national investments fissureeven the terrain of modern science, that most “universalist” of cognitiveparadigms, especially in the debate between French (Cartesian) and English(Newtonian) science. In his Letters concerning the English Nation (1733),Voltaire writes:

A Frenchman, who arrives in London, will find philosophy like every thingelse very much changed there. He had left the world a plenum, and he nowfinds it a vacuum.At Paris the universe is seen composed of vortices of subtilematter; but nothing like it is seen in London. . . . The very essence of thingsis totally changed.You neither are agreed upon the definition of the soul, noron that of matter. . . . How furiously contradictory are these opinions!

Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites.Virg. Eclog. 3.

’Tis not for us to end such great disputes.3

Later, in this same chapter of the Letters concerning the English Nation,Voltairenotes the outrage caused in England by Fontenelle’s Eulogy of Newton:“M. de Fontenelle presides as judge over philosophers; and the Englishexpected his decision, as a solemn declaration of the superiority of theEnglish philosophy over that of the French. But when it was found that thisgentleman had compared Des Cartes to Sir Isaac, the whole Royal societyin London rose up in arms” (85), and likewise,Voltaire’s own championingof Newton’s science would raise heated opposition in France.This conflictbetween “English natural science” and its “French” competitor recalls, insome respects, the politicized conflict in the 1930s between “Soviet” and“Western” science, and the parallel should alert us to how extensive andintense the field of cultural contestation was in the eighteenth century.

An echo of a similar debate between partisans of Newton and Leibnizcan be heard as late as 1774: as Lorraine Daston notes, Klopstock, in Diedeutsche Gelehrtenrepublik (1774), suggests that a monument to Leibnizshould adorn “the entrance to his imagined society of German scholars,”with an inscription reading:

Stand silent, Researcher, be you German or Briton. Leibniz plowed the fur-row and sowed the seeds, just as Newton did. But he alone built upon thatfurrow and seed, beyond Newton.You hesitate in vain, Briton, to concedehim to be the better man. For all Europe names him so.4

Here the issue is not so much a contest between two distinct systems ofphysics (as it was in the conflict between Cartesian and Newtonian


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physics); rather, it is a conflict between competing claims to nationaleminence within a unified scientific paradigm. Likewise, in his PreliminaryDiscourse (1751) to the Encyclopédie, d’Alembert may have praisedMaupertuis (“the first among us who dared declare himself openlyNewtonian”) for evidencing that one could be a “good citizen withoutblindly adopting the physics of his country,” but d’Alembert’s own Prelim-inary Discourse is full of anxiety about French indebtedness to the English(Bacon and Chambers) regarding the encyclopedic venture, an indebted-ness he is careful to argue away.5 D’Alembert’s anxiety may not lead toblind adherence to a peculiarly national system of science, but it is hard toread his Discourse without discerning a strong element of nationalpartisanship, of national jockeying for a position of leadership in the inter-national advancement of learning. Much the same set of concerns aboutnational priority and eminence has beset the evaluation of the relativecontributions of the Physiocrats and of Adam Smith to the development ofmodern political economy since the initial publication of the Wealth ofNations in 1776.6 Pascal’s well-known comment that “what is truth on oneside of the Pyrenees is error on the other” underscores this nationallyinflected diversity of cultural assumptions in religion, the arts and sciences,and manners and mores.7

With respect to literary culture, the competition among the variousnational literary traditions structured through the eighteenth-centuryrepublic of letters involves not only rival claims to eminence in belles let-tres, but extends indeed to the acknowledgment of a diversity of nationallyinflected poetics. Cultural competition is supplemented and deepened by anemphasis on cultural difference.Throughout the long eighteenth century theemulation of rival national literary traditions is conceived of in terms thatresemble more the conflict between Cartesian and Newtonian physics,than the competition for preeminence between Newton and Leibniz.8Thisis true not only in the later eighteenth century and the romantic period,but already, as I show in this chapter, in the late seventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries.

The frequency and wide distribution of nationally inflected debates inthe late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—occupying such ter-rains as those of politics, scholarship, science, belles lettres, music, painting,and landscape gardening—should lead us to examine more closely thecharacter and meaning of national differences in relation to the anglophoneliterary culture of the long eighteenth century. My own discussion, inchapter 2, of the universal normativity built into the notion of the repub-lic of letters was designed to suggest that a certain universalism remained apowerful force throughout the long eighteenth century (from Bayle to Kantand beyond), but that this universalism did not extinguish or preclude

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attention to national differences. But how exactly “national differences”were interpreted in relation to literary culture remains to be worked out.In this chapter, I discuss two neglected facets of the significance of nationalcultural differences in the long eighteenth century, before considering inthe final section the implications of this issue for our understanding ofliterary historical developments across the eighteenth century. I argue, first,that not only were national cultural differences recognized in some broadsense, they also entered directly into the reflections on literature, into thepoetics and literary criticism of the period. Second, not only were nationalcultural differences widely acknowledged in this period, but the particular-ities of “one’s own” culture were readily valorized as a kind of culturalindividuality from the earliest part of this period even during the period of“neoclassical” cultural dominance—well before the age of Ossian andHerder from the 1760s, or the “Patriot” poets of the 1730s and 1740s.9

These features of the literary culture have largely been neglected in stud-ies of the poetics and criticism of the period, at least with respect to theRestoration and early eighteenth century. Instead, a model of “neoclassi-cism” has been constructed with reference to such categories as Nature,Reason, and Universality, leaving little scope for acknowledgment of—letalone engagement with—national cultural particularity.Thus, P.W. K. Stone,for example, argues that the “recognition of a uniformity of taste” is a funda-mental feature of “eighteenth-century aesthetics”; he illustrates the ten-dency of this “ ‘uniformitarian’ doctrine” in Hugh Blair’s comment that,“His Taste must be esteemed just and true, which coincides with the gen-eral sentiments of men.”10 Hand in hand with this interpretation of thepoetics of the earlier part of our period, the dominant tendency in literaryhistorical scholarship has been to divide the literary developments of thelong eighteenth century into a tripartite pattern consisting of neoclassicism,the age of sensibility, and full-blown romanticism (adhering, respectively, toa mimetic and rationalist poetics; a discourse of taste and sympathy; and anexpressivist and subjectivist poetics of imaginative power). While thisscheme does get at genuine shifts in the dominant idioms for discussing andtheorizing aesthetic issues, it also leads us to neglect certain continuities ofconcern across the long eighteenth century, and chief among these is theconcern with nationally inflected cultural differences and specificities.Once we acknowledge such continuities, however, we need to rethink ourreceived models of literary historical development across the long eighteenthcentury. In the final section of this chapter, I suggest that the traditional tri-partite literary historical scheme leads us to misunderstand the character ofthe “shifts” in literary culture across this period, and I propose a differentway of understanding both the genuine shifts and the real continuities inthe literary culture of the period.


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In this chapter I focus, then, on the place of issues of national particularityin the era of “neoclassical” poetics, taking this to be a crucial step for recon-ceptualizing the place and significance of nationalism in the anglophoneliterary culture of the long eighteenth century as a whole. In the first twosections of this chapter, discussing influential French writers (such asBoileau, Baillet, Le Bossu, Bouhours, and Saint-Evremond) and English-language authors from John Dryden to Henry Fielding, I show how suchissues were perceived and evaluated by writers of the late seventeenth andearly eighteenth centuries. In particular, I underline how widespread therecognition of issues of national cultural difference was among “neoclassi-cal” authors (intertwined as it was with notions of climatological andethnic difference)—in contrast to many of our common perceptions about“neoclassical” literary outlooks.And I show how one of the central idiomsof the criticism of this period—the notion of the “rules” or “laws” ofpoetry—has been flattened by twentieth-century scholars into a monolog-ical idiom of universality, when it was actually used in quite a different fash-ion by many English-language writers of the period, used in fact tounderwrite a notion of national cultural difference. In the third section ofthis chapter I show more particularly how motives of cultural nationalismfunction as an embedded, and acknowledged, part of the poetics of theperiod by examining closely two critical texts by Dryden and Addison. Myaim in these sections is to overhaul our conception of the “neoclassical” eraof English literary history: instead of focusing on the interplay betweenancients and moderns (whether through translation, imitation, or parody),I focus on the issues of national specificity and nationalistic investment inone’s own literary culture, giving rise to both a “nativist” and a “patriotic”emphasis in the literary culture of the period. I show that there is a wide-spread concern in Britain in this era for giving an authentically nationalinflection to literary discourses and that this concern to assert the nationalculture betrays much the same concern with cultural imposition fromabroad as that found in many postcolonial societies. By recognizing the roleof nationalist outlooks in “neoclassical” English-language literary culture,we appreciate more fully the provincial anxieties that beset this culture.

In the concluding section of this chapter, I glance briefly at the moretraditionally acknowledged development of cultural nationalism in the eraof the Wartons, Percy, Macpherson, Hurd, and others (continuing upthrough the romantic period), and the “shift” in literary attitudes that thisdevelopment is supposed to signal. Having shown how much of this criti-cal idiom has already been anticipated in the earlier periods, I argue thatrevising our inherited understanding of the development and significanceof literary–cultural nationalism in the early eighteenth century leads us torevise more generally our understanding of the character and manner of


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the transformation of literary culture across the long eighteenth century.Reexamining the problematic of national cultural difference in earlyeighteenth-century poetics not only revises our understanding of thatparticular period; it also pushes us to try to reconceptualize how change inthe literary system took place over the longer term.

French Critics and National Traits

The French literary critics of the seventeenth century who were most influ-ential in Britain have generally been identified with the codification of aneoclassical aesthetic and an insistence on the universal validity of “the rules”of poetry as formalized by Aristotle and Horace.They might, perhaps withmore justice, be identified as the fashioners of a perspective on and engage-ment with literary history as a process of cultural development and transfor-mation. Earl Miner has written that “it is to Dryden that England owes itsvery concept of a literary period and of literary succession,”11 but Drydenand the other English-language writers and critics of his era drew theirconceptions and much of their knowledge of literary history from Frenchwriters. Indeed, John Oldmixon in his Essay on Criticism (1728) insinuatesthat the influence of French critics exists even—or especially—where theyremain unmentioned by classicizing English authors:

The French Academy set an Example to other learned and ingenious Men, tomake themselves Masters of their own Language, and the Encouragementthey met with from Lewis XIV produced an Age of Poets, Orators, and Cri-ticks.The latter have done more towards explaining the Classicks than hadbeen done before from the Augustan Age to their own.They threw Pedantryand Jargon out of their Writings, and render’d them as polite as judicious.Such are the Criticisms of Rapin, Bossu, Segrais, Boileau, Bouhours, and Dacier,who are all read with like Profit and Pleasure; and this is the Reason of thefrequent Use of them, and not an Affectation of foreign Phrases, and techni-cal Cant, as is insinuated by such as never read, or never understood them,and by such too as have not only both read and understood them, but havelearnt of them all the Reading they have, and yet make use of no otherNames than Quintillian, Longinus, Donatus, Eustathius, and the Ancients.12

These French critics, and their peers, also elaborated an understanding ofthe national particularity of cultural traditions that was picked up andamplified by English-language writers.The particular aesthetic identified as“neoclassical” might have waned in popularity after the first four decadesof the eighteenth century, but the focus on historical and national differ-ences articulated by these earlier writers established a problematic that hasnot been entirely superseded even now.


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In order to get a proper perspective on English aesthetic assumptionsduring the neoclassical period (and indeed our own understandings ofcultural and historical difference), it is useful to begin by examining afreshsome of the influential French critical writers of the late seventeenthcentury. I discuss these French authors not as “foreign” writers in relation tothe British context, but as authors whose works circulated widely in and fig-ured significantly in the English-language literary discussions of the period.In examining these writers, we see just how pervasive a concern with thetopics of national traits and national tastes was in this period, how insistentlythe poetics of the neoclassical period involved a comparative cultural poet-ics, and how far the literary criticism of the period operated in consciousawareness of the multinational horizon of the republic of letters. Such con-cerns provide the framework within which the cultural nationalism andprovincial anxieties of eighteenth-century English-language literary culturetook shape.

Adrien Baillet’s Jugemens des savans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs(9 vols., 1685–86; repr. 7 vols., 1722) is a massive compilation of the criticalestimates offered through the centuries on the writings of authors famous in“the republic of letters.”13 In his first volume, Baillet devotes three hundredpages to discussing the qualities of a good critic, focusing especially on thevarious “prejudices” that influence and sometimes distort critical evaluationof literary works. These prejudices are of various types: for example, thosebased on characteristics of the author (his social rank, educational qualifica-tions, religious affiliation, antiquity/modernity, etc.) and those based on char-acteristics of the book itself (its title-page, its anonymity [or lack thereof ], itsrarity, its popularity, etc.). Among other prejudices, Baillet discusses—andargues against—that based on the nationality of the author. But, as we shallsee, his critique of this prejudice is qualified in various ways, beginning withhis acknowledgment that the prejudice obtains almost universally through-out the republic of letters. Despite his own qualified dissent, then, Baillet’sdiscussion provides striking testimony to the pervasiveness of a consciousnessof literary nationality during this period: as he suggests, nearly all of his con-temporaries understood the nationality of the author of a given work to bean informative fact about the likely character of the work in question.

Baillet himself allows that “Les siécles differens ont leur génie & leurgoût particuliers” (15), but he is more skeptical of alleged national charac-teristics and differences. He quotes from Boileau’s Art poétique, but disagreeswith the sentiment expressed there:

Souvent sans y penser un Ecrivain qui s’aimeForme tous ces Heros semblables à soi-mêmeTout a l’humeur Gascone en un Auteur Gascon. (119;quoting chant 3, lines 127–29)


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Baillet, himself a provincial from Picardy, comments:“on voit des humeursGascones & des caractéres de rhodomonts dans des Auteurs de toutes sortesde pays, de toutes sortes d’états & de conditions” (119). He grants that dif-ferent societies have each their own corporate characters, but insists thatone can push such distinctions too far, and that individual (personal) dif-ferences and traits are more consequential than those derived from corpo-rate identity. He argues,“qu’il y ait une espéce d’injustice à rejetter sur unclimat, sur un territoire, ou sur une Province les vices & les vertus qu’onremarque dans les Auteurs” (122). Like Bayle in his comments on thealleged “patavinity” of Livy, Baillet is aware that the discourse of culturaldifference is frequently deployed by metropolitan cultures to castigate orstigmatize provincial cultures, to characterize them as marked by variousforms of cultural deficiency or inferiority—and as such, he disputes, itseems, the validity of the whole notion of national traits.

Despite his own stance, however, he is forced to acknowledge thatalmost all critics, from the days of antiquity to the present, have ascribedsome significance to differences of nationality and climate, and he is willingto allow, with Boileau, that “Les climats font souvent les diverses humeurs” (ArtPoëtique, canto 3, line 114).As Baillet continues his discussion, the distanceseparating him from the prevailing attitudes toward the question of nationaldifferences becomes less and less significant. As we shall see, two pointsemerge with clarity: first, that his objection to the traditional typology ofnational differences derives from his sense that it praises Greeks and Asiansat the expense of “Europeans” (i.e., inhabitants of the occidental andseptentrional nations). In combating this prejudice, he in fact comes closeto simply reversing the evaluation and accepting the validity of the notionof national differences so long as it serves to enforce the cultural superior-ity of (Western) Europe over its rivals. Second, it becomes clear that Bailletobjects not so much to the notion of national differences per se, as to theirdeduction from climatological rather than sociocultural factors. Thisrevision of the theory of national differences renders it capable of enforcingjudgments in favor of (western and northern) Europe, and thus salvages itfrom the critique that Baillet had seemed prepared to launch.

As Baillet’s criticisms suggest, the climatological account of nationaldifferences, prevalent in Europe since the days of Graeco-Roman antiquity,and notably revived since the Renaissance, was entering a period of revisionand challenge with the continued shift to the west and the north of the cen-ter of gravity of the European world.The theory of climates, dividing theworld into three climactic zones—the frigid, the torrid, and between thesetwo extremes, the temperate—and associating with each a characteristicbodily, political, and cultural “constitution” or “complexion,” was used toargue for and explain the preeminence of the peoples of the temperate zone


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over all others (which meant, for the ancient Greeks, their preeminence overthe rest of the world).Already in the sixteenth century, Jean Bodin had rein-terpreted the scope of the privileged “temperate” zone to include northernFrance as well as the Mediterranean world of Greece and Rome, and towardthe end of the seventeenth century Sir John Chardin completes this appro-priation of the climatological theory to serve the interests of the “septentri-onal” nations. In his Voyages en Perse (first part published London, 1670;complete work published in 3 vols., Amsterdam, 1711), Chardin offers thisassessment of the cultural effects of excessive heat:

la température des climats chauds énerve l’esprit comme le corps, dissipe cefeu d’imagination nécessaire pour l’invention ou pour la perfection dans lesarts. On n’est pas capables, en ces climats-là de longues veilles, et de cetteforte application qui enfante les beaux ouvrages des arts libéraux et des artsmécaniques; de là vient aussi que les connoissances des peuples de l’Asie sontsi limitées, et qu’elles ne consistent guère qu’à retenir et qu’à répéter ce quise trouve dans les livres des anciens, et que leur industrie est brute et maldéfrichée, pour ainsi dire; c’est seulement dans le septentrion qu’il fautchercher les sciences et les métiers dans la plus haute perfection.14

English writers, adjusting the climatological discourse in a similar fashion totheir own advantage, would define southern England as occupying a tem-perate zone quite different from the barren northern climates of Lapland,Scandinavia, and Scotland, on the one hand, and from the torrid zone tothe south, on the other hand.

This climatological theory of national difference, variously adapted fromits classical European and Arabic sources, would retain its adherents in thelong eighteenth century (as is evident, e.g., in the writings of Milton,Sir William Temple, Sir Richard Blackmore, Joseph Addison,Abbé Du Bos,Montesquieu,Vico, James Thomson, Oliver Goldsmith,William Robertson,Thomas Hutchinson,William Falconer, and Kant), but it would also be sup-plemented by newer accounts of national difference.15 Baillet’s emphasis onsociocultural, rather than climatological, factors as the basis of national dif-ferences was one such supplementary emphasis; in the later eighteenth cen-tury, a racial-ethnic typology of national differences also becomesincreasingly important as a supplement to the climatological typology.Thesociological and racial-ethnic models accepted, for the most part, quite tra-ditional characterizations of national differences, but simply sought toaccount for them on a new basis. They served, thus, as “modernizations”of the theory of national differences rather than as radical challenges tothe worldview supported by the theory of climates.To a large extent, thenewer explanatory models would merely elaborate and rework strandsalready present in the theory as it had been developed by classical and early


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modern writers, linking these with the idioms of racial difference codified byEnlightenment ethnological writings, and with the sociocultural style of expla-nation privileged by Baillet and elaborated by the writers of the ScottishEnlightenment, among others.Racial-ethnic thinking thus draws on sourceswith deep roots in Western culture and is hardly a modern development ofthe age of Enlightenment as it has sometimes been represented.

To return to Baillet, however, let me cite his rejection of the inheritedtypology of national–climatological differences:

Aristote estimoit que les Peuples qui naissent dans les Pays froids & générale-ment dans toute l’Europe sont naturellement courageux & robustes, maisqu’ils ne sont point propres aux exercices de l’esprit, qu’ils ne sont point capa-bles de méditation, & qu’ils n’ont point d’industrie pour les Arts. Il jugeoit aucontraire que les Peuples de l’Asie ont beaucoup de talent pour les exercicesde l’esprit, qu’ils sont ingénieux, spirituels, propres à la méditation &au raisonnement, & adroits à trouver & à perfectionner les Arts.

Mais si l’on vouloit se départir du respect dû à l’antiquité & au méritede ce Philosophe, on pouroit demander à ses Sectateurs où est la solidité decette pensée. Car sans entrer en discussion de ce qu’il dit des Asiatiques, quine sait que Regiomontanus ou Muler de Konisberg, que Copernic, queTyco-Brahé, que Kepler & plusieurs autres Mathématiciens, Astronomes &Philosophes sont sortis des Pays les plus froids? Et qui sont les Asiatiques pluscapables de méditation & de contemplation que ces Septentrionaux? Où a-t-on trouvé les Arts de l’Imprimerie & de l’Artillerie si ce n’est dans lesPays froids, & où a-t-on perfectionné les autres Arts les plus beaux & les plusutiles à la vie si ce n’est en Europe? Et qui est-ce qui voudroit souteniraujourd’hui que les Européens ne sont point propres aux exercices de l’esprit, eux qui sans contredit ont passé généralement tous les Peuples desautres parties du monde en ce point. (122–23)

One can see here how Baillet engages in a version of the Quarrel of theAncients and the Moderns, and it is clear that one way of understanding thisquarrel is as a competition between the claims of modern Europe and thoseof the ancient cultures of the East. Most commentators on the Battle of theBooks have tended to ignore this aspect of the debate, seeing it instead as a“domestic” European debate pitting a European past against a Europeanpresent (a debate in which temporal, not geographical, location is the cen-tral line of division).This is an issue I cannot pursue here, but in fact thedebate regularly extends beyond the respective claims of different historicalepochs and calls for a recentering of the republic of letters on western andnorthern Europe and away from the cultures of the south and east.

For Baillet, the modern cultural achievements of Europe undermine theancient national discriminations and prejudices advanced by Aristotle.Baillet accepts (in agreement with Hippocrates, Plato,Aristotle, Seneca, and


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“les autres”) that “la temperature de l’air & la bonté du climat contribuëquelque chose à la disposition naturelle des esprits” (187); but he insists that“nous ne pouvons consentir à ce que quelques-uns d’entre eux ont avancéque les Peuples de l’Occident & du Septentrion n’ont ni génie ni dispositionpour les Arts & les Sciences” (187). Baillet’s objections are easy enough for usto accept, but he immediately qualifies their force by allowing that “lePréjugé que l’on a de cer[t]ains pays, n’est pas toujours faux”—although, heinsists, the validity of these prejudices is due not to climatological factors butto the shared customs and mutual interaction of persons belonging to thesame community (188). With this admission, Baillet limits himself to cri-tiquing the traditional (negative) characterizations of western and northernEuropean cultures, while accepting the general viability of national charac-terizations. Baillet no longer insists that qualities (whether negative or posi-tive) apply only to individuals, and thus are personal, not corporate, incharacter;16 he simply argues that such corporate characteristics are the resultof sociocultural rather than climatological factors.

We see how little difference this reinterpretation of the theory ofnational characteristics can make when Baillet himself comes to survey thenational characteristics of the writings of various peoples. In this survey, herepeats the familiar stereotypes about grave Spaniards, heavy Germans, vainItalians, industrious Dutchmen, solid and philosophic Englishmen, andspirited (or in some people’s eyes, frivolous) Frenchmen. As we mightexpect, his acceptance of cultural stereotypes is most evident in his discus-sion of “des Orientaux” (Egyptians, Jews, Syrians, Arabs, Persians, andIndians). These peoples are addicted to fables and allegories; they have apropensity for feigning and lying agreeably that is evident in their earliestextant writings and that is still with them (125–28).Where Europe is theland of science (knowledge), the Orient is the land of romance and fable:

Ainsi nous ne pouvons presque conclure autre chose en faveur des NationsOrientales, que de dire que comme leurs Ecrivains n’ont point travaillé pournotre usage, ils ne sont bons & utiles la plupart que pour leur Pays; que legoût des Occidentaux est un peu different du leur; que le génie des uns estpeut-être plus éloigné de celui des autres, que n’est la distance des lieux quiles sépare. Et rien n’empêche que nous ne prenions toutes leurs fictions, leursallégories, & leurs autres maniéres d’écrire que nous avons remarquées pourdes puérilités, des bassesses, des badineries, & des fadaises; comme il leur estpermis de faire passer chés eux le sérieux, la gravité, la sincérité, & la solid-ité des Ecrivains d’Occident pour des grossiéretés, des simplicités, & tout cequ’il leur plaira. (128)

In other words, East is East and West is West, and the two can share nothingbut mutual contempt and incomprehension. The vehemence of Baillet’s


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dismissal of the literary culture of the East is clearly a response to theprovocation occasioned by so many dismissive remarks about the culturalcapacities of the peoples of western and northern Europe.17 Yet it is clearthat in the end, Baillet does not so much seek to deconstruct the (Graeco-Roman) discursive structure that authorizes such dismissive remarks as toappropriate and redirect that discourse against the cultures of the East.

Baillet’s discussion of national prejudices is important not only as amongthe most extensive treatments of the subject in the early modern period,but also as characteristic of the qualified manner in which such prejudiceswere opposed throughout the long eighteenth century. Like Baillet, SamuelJohnson and David Hume might oppose the climatological theory ofnational differences, but they too supported a “modernized” (sociocultural,and in Hume’s case, racial) theory of national characteristics that was readilydeployed in the service of dominant cultural stereotypes.18 Moreover,Baillet’sdiscussion suggests not only the familiar typology of national charactersprevalent throughout the European world in the early modern period, butalso focuses our attention on how national prejudices enter into the recep-tion and evaluation of literary works. In dismissing the literary culture of theEast, Baillet acknowledges the diversity of national cultural modes andengagements: their literature has nothing to say to “us” because the literary“taste” and “genius” of Oriental and Occidental peoples are so far apart.

Through Baillet’s discussion, we have seen in passing that Boileauaccepts and adapts Horace’s notion of the differences of climes and humorsamong the different countries of the world. A more extended elaborationof this outlook is found in Dominique Bouhours’s very popular Entretiensd’Ariste et d’Eugène (1671), a work from which Baillet quotes in his discus-sion of the national character of Germans and other northern peoples.Bouhours (1628–1702) was a Jesuit man of letters and the author of sev-eral works of criticism that had a significant impact in England. His Manièrede bien penser dans les ouvrages d’esprit (1687) was translated into English in1705, and more freely adapted by John Oldmixon in 1728, having alreadyserved as the inspiration for George Granville, Lord Lansdowne’s Essay uponUnnatural Flights in Poetry (1701). Addison summarized the main thrust ofthis work of Bouhours in the Spectator, no. 62 (May 11, 1711):

Bouhours, whom I look upon to be the most penetrating of all the FrenchCriticks, has taken Pains to shew,That it is impossible for any Thought to bebeautiful which is not just, and has not its Foundation in the Nature ofthings:That the Basis of all Wit is Truth; and that no Thought can be valu-able, of which good Sense is not the Ground-work.19

Bouhours’s insistence on the superiority of poetic delights founded ontruth and good sense, over those that are mere creatures of fancy, is certainly


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an important aspect of his critical legacy (and one that resonates withEurope’s sense of its difference from “Oriental” literary culture). But forpresent purposes, more important is his articulation of a language-centeredcultural nationalism.

At one point in La manière de bien penser, which is presented in the formof four dialogues between Eudoxe (the author’s surrogate) and Philanthe,Bouhours might seem to insist on the universality of his criteria of truthand good sense, articulating a critical outlook that leaves little scope for thedistorting effects of translation, let alone for more fundamental national dif-ferences of taste and literary valuation. Thus, in the following exchange,concerning some verses by Achillini on St. Francis Xavier, we are told byEudoxus that good sense is the same in all languages and in all countries.Philanthus begins the exchange by defending Achillini (I quote from theanonymous English translation of 1705):

The Thought perhaps is not so good in French, replies Philanthus; but saywhat you will, it is excellent in Italian. Every Nation has its own peculiarrelish in Wit, as well as in Beauty, in Clothes, and in every thing else. As ifjustness of Sence [sic] were not the same in all Languages, replies Eudoxus: andthat what is bad in it self ought to pass for good in any Country with Menof Sense.20

“Men of Sense,” it would seem, will be like-minded whichever countryand culture they happen to inhabit.The literary criteria of good sense, rea-son, and truth, Bouhours’s touchstones, hardly seem to allow for culturalparticularities and national differences, just as our inherited conceptions of“neoclassicism” maintain. But later in this their first dialogue Philanthuscomments, without dissent from Eudoxus, that “what pleases one Man ofgood Sence [sic], does not infallibly please another” (36). Bouhours’s touch-stones for critical evaluation do not, then, fully homogenize the heteroge-neous terrain of literary tastes. Indeed, Eudoxus himself, in the thirddialogue, comments regarding an Italian poet’s praise of Louis XIV:

I am pleas’d to find Foreign Wits, when our Monarch is the Subject[,] speakof him a little upon the Excess, it is a Proof of that noble Idea which theyhave of him. . . . I say these Thoughts are pardonable in a Man, on t’otherside the Mountains; but I don’t know, if they would be excusable in a French-man, for our Wit is of another mixture than the Italian, and we Relish now,nothing but a just Grandeur. (24–25; the pagination begins anew with thethird dialogue)

Eudoxe’s statement here is scarcely distinguishable from that of Philanthein the first dialogue, cited earlier. By this point, it becomes clear that the


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requirement of “justness,” far from being a universal aspect of good poetry,is a characteristic mark of modern French taste. Other rules apply to“Foreign Wits,” and the two discussants will go on to describe the charac-teristic excesses of Spanish and Italian poets, in contrast to the just meanobserved by the French. Bouhours clearly has no doubt that modernFrench taste is superior to that of all other cultural communities, but hedoes seem to accept that national literatures have (and will continue tohave) distinctive characteristics.

If we are still at some remove here from a cultural relativist outlookregarding cultural tastes, it is not for lack of recognizing national differencesin literary taste. Similarly, Bouhours may not espouse an outlook of histori-cal relativism, but he does recognize something of the historical embed-dedness of literary works. Discussing, in the fourth dialogue, the issue ofobscurity, Eudoxus, despite his penchant for the ancients, dispenses with thenotion of a “timeless” classic:

The Antients whom you esteem so much, said Philanthus, are often Obscureenough, and few understand them without the help of Interpreters[.] [I]f theObscurity proceeds from the Thought itself, answered Eudoxus, I condemnthe Antient as well as the Moderns; but if it relates to certain HistoricalCircumstances, we have nothing to reproach them with, they writ for theAge they lived in, not ours.They allude to things of which we have lost theMemory, and they are unknown; which is not their faults, if we don’t under-stand them.The Commentators guess sometimes the matter, but commonlythey oblige an Author to say what they please, and they put him to theTorture like a Criminal, to make him speak against his Will. I doubt whetherthe comparison be altogether just: but I know part of what we write now,will meet with the same fate, as the works of Antiquity. (80)

This acknowledgment that all works, modern as well as ancient, willrequire commentary for their elucidation with the passage of time indicatesthat Bouhours recognizes that audiences (as well as works) are historicallyspecific, inhabiting particular cultural worlds with their unspoken assump-tions and interwoven strands of common knowledges and practices.21 Sim-ilarly, Bouhours allows his spokesman to assert that the ancients wrote fortheir own time, not ours (much as Baillet says of Oriental writers that theywrite for their culture not ours): he is very far from a sense that “classic”authors wrote for posterity, for all time, rather than for their own time andplace.Thus, while Bouhours’s stance in La manière de bien penser may wellbe characterized as espousing a “universalist” poetic, we need to be carefulto understand the extent to which it is explicitly compatible with anacknowledgment of national and historical cultural particularities.

In his Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène, Bouhours goes beyond a recognitionof cultural particularities to a more emphatic valorization of some of the


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national specificities of French literary culture. Indeed, some of his remarksin this work are characterized by a vulgar cultural chauvinism, arguing(through Ariste) that, “de toutes les prononciations la nôtre est la plusnaturelle et la plus unie” and (through Eugène) that,“la langue française estpeut-être la seule qui suive exactement l’ordre naturel, et qui exprime lespensées en la manière qu’elles naissent dans l’esprit.”22 Despite the limita-tions of this cultural outlook, it is worth noticing that Bouhours is wellaware of the diversity of languages.

In his view, there is in fact an intimate connection between the partic-ular “genius” of a language and the specific “character” of a nation. Eugèneremarks that the French language is particularly apt for combining brevitywith clarity, and adds:“Il n’y a peut-être rien qui soit moins à son goût quele style asiatique. . . . Et cela est fondé en quelque façon sur notre humeur:car le langage suit d’ordinaire la disposition des esprits; et chaque nation atoujours parlé selon son génie” (59–60). Each language, for Bouhours, is areflection of a national culture, and a single terminology of “humor,”“dis-position,” “genius,” and “temperament” can be used to discuss either lin-guistic or national–cultural specificities.Thus, for instance, Eugène arguesthat, “Les Allemands ont une langue rude et grossière; les Italiens en ontune molle et efféminée, selon le tempérament et les moeurs de leur pays”(60); and likewise that,“[la langue française] tient de notre humeur francheet sincère, qui ne peut souffrir la fausseté et le mensonge” (49).

The national characterizations with which Bouhours operates are allrather stereotyped, except of course for the relatively extended and lauda-tory characterization of the French. It is clear that for him all modern lan-guages other than French are essentially defective.“Comme les talents despeintres sont divers,” Eugène remarks,“les génies des langues les sont aussi”:

il y en a quelques-unes qui ne sont pas heureuses à peindre les pensées aunaturel. Telle est entre autres la langue espagnole. . . . elle aime passionné-ment l’hyperbole et la porte jusqu’à l’excès. . . . La langue italienne. . . .songe plus à faire de belles peintures que de bons portraits; et, pourvu queses tableaux plaisent, elle ne se soucie pas trop qu’ils ressemblent. . . . Il y ad’autres langues qui représentent naivement tout ce qui se passe dans l’esprit;et entre celles qui ont ce talent, il me semble que la langue française tientle premier rang, sans en excepter la grecque et la latine. Il n’y a qu’elle, àmon gré, qui sache bien peindre d’après nature et qui exprime les chosesprécisément comme elles sont. (46–48)

The kind of privilege that the Judaeo-Christian tradition ascribed toHebrew as the “original” language, Bouhours appropriates, in a modern-ized and secularized form, for French. He remarks that “les génies [divers]des langues” are much like the diverse talents of individual painters. Butwhile this initial analogy might seem to point toward a cultural relativist


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conclusion, Bouhours moves instead toward a hierarchical ordering of theepistemological adequacy of different languages. Every language mightfunction as “la langue naturelle” for its native speakers, but French has aunique capacity to represent things as they really are,“au naturel.”

Bouhours has much more to say about the particular character of theFrench language and its historical development (“Les langues,” he argues,“ont leur naissance, leur progrès, leur perfection et même leur décadence,comme les empires” [104]), but what we have considered is enough toshow how central the notion of national characteristics was to his concep-tion of language and literary culture. Bouhours may have retained his senseof the privileged position of French, but he would have agreed with therecognition of diversity, and to some extent even with the culturalrelativism, of Richard Simon’s remarks in his Histoire critique du Vieux Testa-ment (1678). Simon, “one of the founders of modern biblical criticism,”“discarded the hypothesis of the divine origin of Hebrew. . . . Language, hewrote, was a human invention; since human reason differs in differentpeoples, so languages must differ as well. God willed that different peoplesspeak different languages in order that ‘each might explain themselves intheir own way.’ ”23 Bouhours and Simon clearly inhabit the same culturalclimate, one in which a notion of national cultures and their great diver-sity is the starting point for reflection.This recognition of cultural diversity,at least as much as any reference to universal principles of art, constitutesthe foundation for the elaboration of poetics and literary criticism in the“neoclassical” period.

The reception of Bouhours’s work in Britain also reinforces the perti-nence of this outlook, and indeed of Adrien Baillet’s emphasis on nationalprejudices in the evaluation of an author’s work. John Oldmixon translatedand adapted Bouhours’s La manière de bien penser in 1728 as The Arts of Log-ick and Rhetorick, and the work is one long object lesson in the diverse, evenopposed, national commitments of English and French writers during thisera of Anglo-French military conflict—though what is worth remarkingfrom our perspective is the extent to which these writers, English andFrench alike, hold comparably nationalistic cultural investments. Oldmixondiagnoses an inherent national bias in Bouhours’s work, commenting:“Thelearned Jesuit cannot give an Example or two out of the antient or modernAuthors, which are not French; but we must have many out of the Writingsof his Countrymen, and always to the Credit of his Country, or the Kingof it.”24 But Oldmixon is also capable of recognizing a tendency to scornFrench self-descriptions on the part of English readers due to their ownnational prejudices. Citing phrases from French panegyrics, he offers thiscommentary:“If Frenchmen were capable of Fear, behave your selves like French,and such like Phrases are ridiculous to us Englishmen; in which perhaps we


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are a little too national, and nothing but the Vanity of our Neighbours, andtheir Overvaluing themselves, should hinder us from allowing them to bea brave and gallant People” (174). For Oldmixon, who is himself nothingif not a nationalistic Englishman, Bouhours’s work is full of national chau-vinisms, and the English response to it and other French works is likewisemarked by national prejudices.

From our review of Bouhours’s own works and of Oldmixon’s adapta-tion of one of them, it is clear that the European republic of letters acrossthis period was structured as a great hall of mirrors in which nationalinvestments and prejudices about one’s own culture and that of other peo-ples were continually being reflected and multiplied in such a fashion thatit would be impossible to arrive at a vantage point on a given literary workthat was not already in some fashion framed by the need to consider itsnational particularity.The fact of national partisanship in literary discussionsand in broader cultural discussions is casually accepted by the London Jour-nal in a May 1732 review of Voltaire’s Histoire de Charles XII, when it states:“It is no wonder that a Frenchman should be partial in his Characters of theEnglish Nation . . .,” and by Horace Walpole, who explains why he declinedto argue with Voltaire over Shakespeare, by stating (ca. 1768): “all Francewould be on his side, and all England on mine,” treating as a foregoneconclusion how the lines of combat will be drawn.25 This situation ofnational competition and partisanship hardly seems surprising, given theconception of the republic of letters elaborated in chapter 2; what issurprising is the extent to which this engagement with national particularityin the literary criticism of the period has been ignored or minimized inmany twentieth-century studies.

Saint-Evremond (1614–1703) is another French critic who repeatedlythematized the issue of national cultural differences, and he was, in addition,the French critic most directly involved in the development of English-language literary culture in the period, having lived as a political exile inLondon for a period of almost forty years, from 1661 until his death in1703, except for a period from 1665 to 1670 when he was in Holland.Bouhours praises Saint-Evremond in his La manière de bien penser as a finewriter and critic and the false attribution of works to Saint-Evremond, notunlike similar attributions to the Earl of Rochester, testifies to the reputa-tion of Saint-Evremond: indeed, over seventy editions of Saint-Evremond’sworks appeared between 1650 and 1753, including a dozen in English from1672 to 1728.The continuing eminence of Saint-Evremond in the anglo-phone world during the eighteenth century is also attested to by the citationof his name on various title-pages, in a clear bid to enhance the sale of theseworks.Thus, for instance,Charles Gildon’s Life of Mr.Thomas Betterton, the lateEminent Tragedian (London, 1710), is described as containing “The Judgment


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of the late Ingenious Monsieur de St. Evremond, upon the Italian and FrenchMusic and Opera’s.”26 Similarly, a translation of Petronius’s Satyricon pub-lished in 1736 advertises on its title-page that it contains “a Character of hisWritings by Monsieur St. Evremont.”27 Even as late as 1769, a collectionof Letters Supposed to have passed between M. De St. Evremond and Mr.Waller.Now first Collected and Published (actually authored by John Langhorne) waspublished.28 Despite the twentieth-century neglect of Saint-Evremond’sinfluence on anglophone culture during the late seventeenth and early eigh-teenth centuries, then, there is every reason to believe that his writings werewell known, widely circulated, and influential.

Saint-Evremond’s “Discourse upon the Grand Alexander” (1665)—which Dryden praises as “an admirable piece of Criticism”29—is an importantessay for our purposes. In this essay, Saint-Evremond commends Racine ingeneral, but complains about his depiction of Alexander the Great and theIndian king Porus in his play Alexandre le Grand (1665), arguing that ratherthan observing the distinctive genius of each of these characters (belong-ing to a very different age and nation), Racine has made them into con-temporary Frenchmen. This fault is most egregious in the depiction ofPorus:“I imagined to find in Porus,” Saint-Evremond writes:

a Greatness of Soul, which wou’d be somewhat more surprising to us; anIndian Heroe should have a different Character from one of ours. AnotherHeaven, if I may so speak, another Sun, and another Climate, produce otherAnimals, and other Fruits: The Men seem to be of another make, by thedifference of their Faces, and still more, if I durst say so, by a distinction ofReason: Both their Morals, and a Wisdom peculiar to their Religion, seemthere to guide another sort of Men, in another World. Porus however . . . ishere purely French. Instead of transporting us to the Indies, he [Racine]carries him into France, where he is so well acquainted with our Humour,that he seems to have been born, or at least to have passed the greatest partof his Life among us.30

Anticipating Baillet and Bouhours, Saint-Evremond expresses here hissense that there is an unbridgeable cultural dichotomy between East andWest, that a culture vastly different from our own will exhibit strikinglydifferent characters, different morals, even a different rationality—in effect,it will constitue “another sort of Men.”This is about as extreme a statementof cultural particularity and cultural difference as one can imagine. ForSaint-Evremond, it is not merely the manners and customs of peoples thatdiffer (while their fundamental “human nature” remains essentially thesame in all ages and cultures); his demand is not for “local coloring” but foran understanding of the fundamental differences that characterize andparticularize each age and nation, distinguishing them from all others.


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Although Saint-Evremond thus advocates a strongly relativist position,arguing that “alien” characters should appear strange and somewhat incom-prehensible to “us” when we encounter them in literary works, henonetheless remains trapped within the stereotypes of cultural differenceprevalent in his age—a failing that besets us at the start of the twenty-firstcentury no less than it did the writers of the early modern period. For him,Roman liberty and Roman tyranny alike differ from Oriental despotism:

They that undertake to represent some Heroe of ancient Times, shouldexamine the Genius of the Nation to which he belonged, [of ] the Time inwhich he lived, and particularly his own.A Writer ought to describe a Kingof Asia otherwise than a Roman Consul; one should speak like an absoluteMonarch, who disposes of his Subjects as his Slaves; the other, like a Magis-trate who only puts the Laws in execution, and makes their Authorityrespected by a free People.An old Roman should be described furious for thePublick Good, and moved by a wild Notion of Liberty, different from theFlatterer of Tiberius’s time, who knew nothing but Interest, and abandonedhimself to the Slavery of the Age. (1:191–92)

Saint-Evremond insists on “the Genius of the Nation,” but this notion isclearly overdetermined by a more general conception of the dichotomybetween Europe and Asia. Louis XIV as an European monarch, howeverabsolute, is categorically different from a lawless Asian despot.

Despite his emphasis on the characteristic quality of “the Genius of theNation,” it is clear that Saint-Evremond also recognizes that this national“Genius” is historically malleable.The “old Romans” are nothing like those“of Tiberius’s time.” The historical malleability—and hence the historicalconstructedness—of a nation’s “genius” is most evident in Saint-Evremond’s long essay, “Reflections upon the Different Genius of theRoman People, At different Times of the Republick” (wr. 1663–64).31

Here, Saint-Evremond argues that, initially,“[t]he Genius of this People wasas rustical as it was wild” (1:11); “afterwards this Humour turned intoAusterity, and became a rigid Vertue, far remote from Politeness or Agree-ableness, and hating the very least appearance of Corruption” (1:24–25);still later, coming into contact with the wealth and luxuries of other cul-tures, the Romans lusted after them and secured them through conquest:“An Universal Curiosity was now excited in the Citizens, even their Heartsbegan to feel with emotion, what their Eyes had begun to see withpleasure. . . . They began to have a Curiosity for Shews, and an Affectionfor Pleasures” (1:34, 36). An ambition for glory succeeded briefly, beforegiving way to an age in which “every one basely pursued his own privateInterest”: “the Genius of Interest, which succeeded to that of Honour,acted differently amongst the Romans, according to the diversity of


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Tempers.Those that possessed a true Greatness of Mind, strove to acquirePower; inferiour Souls contented themselves by heaping up Riches allmanner of ways” (1:67–68). By the time of Augustus, the Romans had lostall their former “greatness or force of Soul,” all their former “Vertue” andlove of liberty; they were now amenable to “a gentle and agreeableGovernment” (1:90). From this, it was a quick slide to complete abjection:“the Romans more disposed to serve, than Tiberius to command, gave them-selves up to Slavery, when he hardly durst hope for their Subjection.Thiswas the Genius of the Roman People at that time” (1:91). In response to thetyrannical rulers they now suffered under, the Romans themselves becamenothing better than a furious mob, and an involved history of “Massacres,and Civil Wars” and political confusion followed (1:100).

In this rapid survey of the changing character of the Roman peopleacross the ages, it is clear that for Saint-Evremond, the notion of “nationalcharacter” or the “genius” of a people is a historical notion, subject to alter-ation, and indeed virtually complete transformation, across time. However,for Saint-Evremond, historical investigation does not undermine or decon-struct the notion of national character by showing its changeability, its dif-ference from itself; rather, history itself becomes nothing other than anarrative of the successive transformations of national characteristics. Saint-Evremond comes to different conclusions about the validity and usefulnessof the notion of “national character” as a result of his historical investiga-tions than we might, but this difference in conclusions should not lead usto assume that he is blind to the notion of historical development andtransformation.

Saint-Evremond’s discussion of the changing “genius” of the Romans isnot specifically concerned with the intersection of literature and nationalcharacter (unlike his remarks on Racine’s play). He returns to a moredirectly literary discussion of national character in a series of essays on thedrama. Here, through a number of cross-cultural comparative discussions,Saint-Evremond considers various issues regarding tragedies and comedies,ancient and modern, in France, Italy, Spain, and England. Saint-Evremond’sdiscussion in these essays is full of references to national characteristics andtheir literary implications. He repeats, for instance, the common Frenchcriticism of English tragedies as bloody, cruel, and shapeless:

There are four or five EnglishTragedies, which in Truth ought to have severalthings retrench’d in them, and with that Reformation might be madeadmirable Plays. In all the rest you see nothing but a shapeless and indigestedMass, a Crowd of confused Adventures, without Consideration of time andplace, and without any regard to Decency, where Eyes that delight in cruelSights, may be fed with Murders, and Bodies weltering in Blood. Should the


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Poets palliate the Horrour of them by Relations, as it is the Custom inFrance, they wou’d deprive the Spectators of that Sight which pleases themmost. The Men of better Breeding among them condemn this Custom,through a sense of Humanity perhaps; but an ancient Habit, or the Humourof the Nation in general, prevails over the Delicacy of a few Persons.32

For Saint-Evremond,“ancient Habit” and “the Humour of the Nation” arealmost synonymous terms, since (as we have seen) he considers the“humour” or “genius” of a nation to be nothing other than the historicallyformed product of its habits, customs, and way of life. The impact ofnational characteristics on comedy is even greater than on tragedies, sincecomedy “ought to be the Representation of the Actions of common life.”Saint-Evremond complains, however, of French comedy: “we have inImitation of the Spaniards, made it run altogether upon Gallantry, not con-sidering . . . that the Spaniards following their own genius have onely paintedout the Manners of Madrid in their Intrigues and Adventures” (1:505). Saint-Evremond continues: “It is no wonder that Regularity and Probability areless to be found among the Spaniards than the French; for since all theGallantry of the Spaniards is derived from the Moors, it retains still a certainTincture of Afric, that is uncouth to other Nations, and too extraordinary tobe accommodated to the Exactness of Rules” (1:507). In the wake of theReconquest of the Iberian peninsula in the fifteenth century, the Spaniardsmay have made a fetish of “purity of blood,” Saint-Evremond seems toimply, but their culture nevertheless remains hybridized and will not beable to get rid of “a certain Tincture of Afric” without a radical transfor-mation of its modes and manners. In criticizing an episode in La Calprenède’s romance of Cleopatra, Saint-Evremond invokes a climatologicalconception of national character:“Calprenede, though a Frenchman, ought tohave remembered that Lovers born in a hotter Climate than that of France,need but few words on such occasions” (i.e., when once a lover and hismistress find themselves together) (1:506–07).

We see that Saint-Evremond’s views on national character, like those ofother commentators, become more sophisticated and flexible the nearer hedraws to home, and more reductive and stereotyped the further away helooks. Nonetheless, national particularity always remains a major consider-ation for him: indeed, he articulates an “Augustan” notion of nationallyspecific aesthetics, rather than some universal norm. Comparing Frenchand English comedies, Saint-Evremond emphasizes that where Englishaudiences and writers prize “Variety” in their comedies, the French value“Regularity.”33 Following him, Dryden similarly states that the Englishvalue “Energy” above all else, while the French value “Correctness,” andColley Cibber adds his opinion that, “to’ I allow them [the French] many


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other Beauties, of which we are too negligent; yet our Variety of Humourhas Excellencies that all their valuable Observance of Rules have never yetattain’d to.”34 Saint-Evremond (and Dryden and Cibber) thus recognizethat there will be nationally specific aesthetic criteria used to evaluateliterary works; that works from diverse cultures cannot be evaluated by asingle standard of aesthetic achievement. In the early eighteenth century,Voltaire reemphasizes this point when he states that the popularity ofParadise Lost among the English proves that there is such a thing as nation-ally specific literary tastes. He comments that,“If the Difference of Geniusbetween Nation and Nation, ever appear’d in its full Light, ’tis in Milton’sParadise lost,”35 a comment that is usefully glossed by his earlier contentionthat, “It is as easy to distinguish a Spanish, an Italian, or an English Author,by their Stile, as to know by their Gait, their Speech, and their Features, inwhat Country they were born. . . . From their different Characters flowsthat dislike which every Nation shows for the Taste of its Neighbours”(40–42). Saint-Evremond’s conception of nationally specific aestheticcriteria was, in fact, a commonplace of the “Augustan” period, despite itsneglect by modern scholars.

In his comments on the diversity of French and English dramatic tastes,Saint-Evremond touches on an issue that was also raised by Bouhours inhis discussion of “good sense” in La manière de bien penser (see earlier). Saint-Evremond’s handling of this issue is, as we shall see in the next section ofthis chapter, much more resonant for the approach adopted by British writ-ers when they come to handle this issue. In his essay “Upon Comedies,”Saint-Evremond writes:

I confess that good Judgment, which ought to be of all Countries of theWorld, has established some Rules, which are nowhere to be dispensed with,but it is hard not to make some Allowances to custom, since Aristotle himselfin his Art of Poetry, places sometimes Perfection in that which was best likedat Athens, and not in that which is really most perfect.

Comedy cannot pretend to greater Privileges than the Laws, whichthough they ought to be founded on Justice, are nevertheless different,according to the different Genius of the People who make them.36

The rules of poetry, says Saint-Evremond, are like the laws of nations: theyall ought to be founded on reason ( judgment, justice), which is “of allCountries of the World,” but they will nonetheless differ “according to thedifferent Genius of the People who make them.”Aristotle’s own poetics, afterall, reflect not some universal standard, but what “was best liked at Athens.”

The issue of the “universality” of Aristotle’s rules for poetry is alsoaddressed by René Le Bossu in his Traité du poëme épique (1675), a French


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critical work that helped define the very meaning of neoclassicism in bothFrance and England. Le Bossu confronts the issue directly right at the startof his work, in a passage that is important enough for us to quote at length:

Aristotle and Horace left behind them such Rules, as make them by all Menof Learning, to be look’d upon as perfect Masters of the Art of Poetry: Andthe Poems of Homer and Virgil are, by the Grant of all Ages, the most perfectModels of this way of Writing, the World ever saw. So that if ever a Just andSupreme Authority had the Power to prescribe Laws and Rules to any Art,one cannot question but these four Persons had all Authority on their side,with respect to the Epick Poem.And this is the only kind we shall treat of atpresent.

’Tis true, the Men of our Times may have as much Spirit as the Ancientshad; and in those things which depend upon Choice and Invention, they maylikewise have as just and as lucky Fancies: But then it would be a Piece ofInjustice to pretend that our new Rules destroy those of our first Masters;and that they must needs condemn all their Works, who could not forsee ourHumours, nor adapt themselves to the Genius of such Persons as were to beborn in after-Ages, under different Governments, and under a different Reli-gion from theirs; and with Manners, Customs, and Languages, that have nokind of relation to them.

Having no Design then by this Treatise to make Poets after the Model ofour Age (with which I am not sufficiently acquainted) but only to furnish myself with some sort of Foundation in the Design I have of explaining theAeneid of Virgil; I need not concern my self with every new Invention of theselast Times. I am not of Opinion, that what our late Authors think is universalReason, and such a common Notion as Nature must needs have put into theHead of Virgil. But leaving Posterity to determine whether these Novelties bewell or ill devis’d, I shall only acquiesce in what I think may be prov’d fromHomer,Aristotle, and Horace. I will interpret the one by the Other, and Virgil byall Three, as having the same Genius and Idea of the Epick Poesie.37

Le Bossu is often treated as a prime example of the pedantic critic whocannot see beyond the authority of Aristotle to the actual practice of poets,ancient and especially modern. But as this passage makes clear, Le Bossu’sopening gesture is to draw a distinction between the “Laws and Rules”authorized by Aristotle, Horace, Homer, and Virgil, and the “new Rules”established by the innovations of the moderns. For Le Bossu, “the Modelof our Age” for epic poetry will naturally differ from that of the ancients,even if the Greeks and the Romans shared “the same Genius and Idea” ofepic poetry. This difference between ancients and moderns need not betotal, and some aspects of what Aristotle and Horace had to say may stillapply in the modern world. But modern writers, “born in after-Ages,under different Governments, and under a different Religion . . . and with


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Manners, Customs, and Languages, that have no kind of relation” to thoseof the ancients, will naturally need to find ways of writing that are com-pelling and relevant to their own age.As a result, Le Bossu makes clear thathis treatise is intended as an aid to the reading and appreciation of Virgil,an aid that is necessary precisely because “universal Reason” and “Nature”do not guarantee that modern readers will share the cultural assumptionsof Homer and Virgil,Aristotle and Horace.

Le Bossu’s work, then, far from prescribing a timeless and universal setof rules for all poets, sets itself the task of recovering the culturally specific“Idea” of epic poetry held by the ancients. One may argue that he fails atthis task, but this is a different kind of failure than that with which Le Bossuand his confreres are usually saddled. Le Bossu shares with Saint-Evremond,Bouhours, Boileau, and Baillet a sense of the differing “genius” of diverseages and nations. He, like the others, understands the notion of culturaldiversity in terms of a hierarchical schema, but he also recognizes that it iseasy to misjudge the achievements of foreign cultures. He notes, forinstance, that:

The Relish which all Antiquity, both Sacred and Profane, Greek and Barbarian,had for Fables, Parables, and Allegories (which are one and the same in thisplace) gave the Ancient Poets a great deal more Liberty than the Modernshave; and make things in Homer pass for Beauties, which would look but illin a Piece of Modern Poetry.This likewise exposes our Ancient Poet to suchCensures, as bewray our Ignorance oftner than his faults. (50)

Cultural differences lead to misunderstandings and a failure to appreciatethe aesthetic achievements of alien cultures, even of the “alien cultures” ofone’s own past. Le Bossu’s point here, in defense of Homer, remains a basicproposition in historicist and cultural relativist arguments about specificworks and about cultural traditions more generally. A version of the argu-ment is used by Francis Douce in 1807 (in his Illustrations of Shakespeare) todefend Shakespeare against the strictures of Charlotte Lennox: regardingImogen in Cymbeline, Douce writes:

She [Lennox] degrades our heroine into a mere kitchen wench, and advertsto what she calls her oeconomical education. Now what is this but to expose herown ignorance of ancient manners? If she had missed the advantage of qual-ifying herself as a commentator on Shakespeare’s plots by a perusal of our oldromances, she ought at least to have remembered, what every well informedwoman of the present age is acquainted with, the education of the princessesin Homer’s Odyssey. It is idle to attempt to judge of ancient simplicity by amere knowledge of modern manners; and such fastidious critics had betterclose the book of Shakespeare for ever.38


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We might be tempted to classify Douce, with his nationalistic defense of“the book of Shakespeare,” as a very different kind of critic from Le Bossu,but continuities such as the one I have just pointed out indicate the needfor a more flexible conception of critical schools, eras, and modes.

Le Bossu insists that Homer was “oblig’d to accommodate himself to theManners, Customs, and Genius of the Greeks his Auditors” (19), and thisprinciple allows him both to acknowledge and to resist what he takes to bethe ideological thrust of ancient Greek literature: “The Grecians . . . wereextremely pleas’d to see the Crimes and Misfortunes of Kings: And the Moralinstruction, that was most in Vogue at that time, was such a one as did begetin Men an Aversion to Monarchy, and a love to Democracy, which they call’dliberty” (60). Le Bossu repeats this point (“in the Popular States of Greece,where Monarchy was Odious, nothing was heard with greater pleasure andArdency than the Misfortunes of Kings” [105]), but his notion of culturalspecificity and the relativity of values allows him,as a subject of the Sun King,to undermine any exemplary status such attitudes might hold for the present.

Here, as throughout our discussion in this section, we see how centralnotions of cultural diversity and relativism are to the outlook of Frenchseventeenth-century critics and their epigones—who show themselves tobe more the descendants of the Montaigne who wrote that “it is the ruleof rules, and the universal law of laws, that each man should observe thoseof the place he is in” than one might have thought.39 This elaboration of aspace for negotiating national cultural specificity and national cultural self-assertion in the writings of “neoclassical” critics has been strangelyneglected in modern scholarship and has underwritten a distorted per-spective on the literary culture of the early modern period.As we will seein the next section, English critics took this recognition of national speci-ficity and gave it an emphatically “nationalist,” even “nativist,” inflection asthey sought to assert the cultural autonomy of English literature.

The Laws of Good Writing

[M]y Purpose . . . is not to give Laws to others; but to shew by what Laws I govern myself.

—Colley Cibber

Italy, in the age of queen Elizabeth, gave laws to our island in all matters of taste, as France hasdone ever since.

—Thomas Warton.

In France, sir! what’s France to me? I’m an Englishman, sir, and know no right the fools ofFrance have to be my examples.

—Robert Dodsley40


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Both Saint-Evremond and Le Bossu suggest that the laws of poetryenunciated by Aristotle apply to the ancient Greeks but not necessarily tothe practice of other ages and nations.This notion of the nationally specificspirit of the laws proved to be especially resonant for English writers,perhaps not surprisingly, given the extreme self-consciousness about thedistinctive body of national laws in England (the common law tradition).41

We find English-language writers repeatedly interpreting the “laws” ofpoetry—what John Dennis calls “Poetical Statute[s]”42—in analogy withthe “laws” of the land—that is, as confined to a particular place and time,rather than universal in their force.The laws of the land might be “provin-cial” in scope, but by the same token they are autonomous and indepen-dent of all “foreign” laws, as Sir William Blackstone declares in hisCommentaries on the Laws of England: “the civil and canon laws, consideredwith respect to any intrinsic obligation, have no force or authority in thiskingdom; they are no more binding in England than our laws are bindingat Rome.”43 This trope of cultural autonomy is crucial to the English-language discourse of poetics from 1650 to 1750, but has been neglectedby modern scholars, who have wrongly assumed that when the laws orrules of poetry are invoked in this period, a timeless and universal set ofrules is invariably implied.

Occasionally, it is true, a writer will analogize the laws of poetry withthe (universal) laws of nature, rather than with civic laws (different in eachstate). For instance, Charles Gildon, in his Complete Art of Poetry (1718),comments on the rules of art:

never any Laws had such Force and Authority. Humane Laws expire, orchange very often after the Death of those, who enacted them, becauseCircumstances change, and the Interests of whom they are made to serve aredifferent; but these still gain new Vigour, because they are the Laws ofNature, which always acts with Uniformity, renews them incessantly, andgives them a perpetuate Existence.44

Although a vocabulary of “the law of nature” was elaborated in the traditionsof natural law theory and rationalist philosophy in relation to the moraluniverse (as, e.g., in the claim that innate ideas enable us to “spell out theLaw of Nature”),45 it would seem that Gildon here invokes “the lawsof Nature” in relation to the physical universe, that is, in relation to aNewtonian conception of the laws of nature.The older vocabulary of nat-ural law is still very much alive in the period we are dealing with, but it iscoming to be eclipsed in general usage by the newer scientific idiom (withits pluralized notion of the laws of nature).The spread of these notions oflaw(s) inherent in the very nature of reality, the very order of things, sharp-ened the contrast between such natural laws and the man-made laws used


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to order societies. In the passage just quoted, Gildon draws this contrastbetween “laws of Nature” and “human laws” rather pointedly, in order toalign the rules of art with the former class of laws. But other writers,emphasizing the man-made quality of works of literature, view the rules ofart as human conceptions, just like other human laws: even Johnson com-ments in the Rambler that,“The accidental prescriptions of authority, whentime has procured them veneration, are often confounded with the laws ofnature.”46

Gildon’s universalizing position has generally been seen as typical of thatof French critics, but as we have seen in our discussion of Baillet, Boileau,Bouhours, Saint-Evremond, and Le Bossu, the idiom emphasizing judg-ment, sense, and reason as the basis of the critical evaluation of literaryworks hardly necessitated an insistence on a single, uniform literary stan-dard for all the world. Gildon’s insistence on “uniformity” in the quotedpassage is an extreme position for an English writer, but it would be anequally extreme position for a French writer.47

John Dennis anticipates Gildon when he writes in 1701: “But, as bothNature and Reason . . . owe their Greatness, their Beauty, their Majesty, totheir perpetual Order. . . . so Poetry which is an Imitation of nature mustdo the same Thing. It can neither have Greatness or Real Beauty, if itswerves from the Laws which Reason severely prescribes it.”48 The “Laws”prescribed by Reason are explicitly analogized here to the “perpetualOrder” of nature itself, and Dennis likewise comments in 1696 that “theRules of Aristotle . . . are but Directions for the Observation of Nature, asthe best of the written Laws, are but the pure Dictates of Reason and Rep-etitions of the Laws of Nature.”49 But Dennis had earlier critiqued ThomasRymer’s strictures on English drama, arguing that they would lead to theruin rather than the reformation of the English stage:

For to set up the Grecian Method amongst us with success, it is absolutelynecessary to restore not only their Religion and their Polity, but to transportus to the same Climate in which Sophocles and Euripides writ; or else by rea-son of those different Circumstances, several things which were graceful anddecent with them, must seem ridiculous and absurd to us, as several thingswhich would have appear’d highly extravagant to them, must look properand becoming with us.50

Again, once we probe a little deeper we become aware that Nature mayprescribe a “perpetual Order,” but Nature itself is not conceived as uniformacross diverse ages and nations. For Dennis, the constitution (physicaland political), the manners and mores, the “Climate and Customs” (1:12)of the Greeks and the English are sufficiently different for their aesthetic


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sensibilities to be significantly incompatible. Likewise, in his Remarkson . . . Prince Arthur (1696), Dennis questions “whether some Episodes,which do not in the least offend against Probability or Reason in Virgil,may not be reasonably suppos’d to be highly improbable, when they arecopied in a modern Poem, by a Poet of our Age, by reason of the vastly dif-ferent Circumstances of Times, Places, Persons, Customs, Religions, andcommon received Opinions” (1:60). Thus, for Dennis, “Probability andReason” might be necessary criteria in evaluating a given literary work, butthey are clearly not sufficient: one must also take into account the specific“Circumstances of Times, Places, Persons, Customs, Religions, andcommon received Opinions.” Each culture consequently, it is clear, mustpursue its own proper dramatic mode.

Twentieth-century scholars, it seems to me, have accepted too much atface value the polemical discourse of English writers of the late seventeenthand early eighteenth centuries, who constantly differentiate themselvesfrom French critics by foisting onto the latter a blindness to national dif-ferences. I think it more accurate to say that while most French writers ofour period took for granted the fact of national particularities and differ-ences of taste, English writers presented themselves as champions of (English)national distinctiveness, national particularity. In doing so, they werecertainly responding to an imperialistic impulse in the French literaryculture of the period, but such imperialism glorified the spread of Frenchculture across Europe; it did not assume that all literary cultures were essen-tially homogeneous and reducible to a single standard (prior to their assim-ilation into the French cultural sphere). There is, thus, not so much adifference between the theoretical stance of French and English critics, asthere is a fundamental opposition between two distinct projects of culturaldomination or self-assertion.

In any case, the analogy between the laws of the land and the laws ofgood writing is worth attending to more particularly, since it is fundamen-tal to the literary conceptions of the period. Sir William Davenant, in thepreface to Gondibert, An Heroick Poem (1650), defends himself by arguing:“If I be accus’d of Innovation, or to have transgressed against the methodof the Ancients, I shall think my self secure in beleeving [sic] that a Poet,who hath wrought with his own instruments at a new design, is no moreanswerable for disobedience to Predecessors, then Law-makers are liable tothose old Laws which themselves have repealed.”51 The poet who under-takes a poem on a new design is like a giver of laws, by whose actions theold laws are abrogated, at least within his domain. Davenant uses the anal-ogy with the laws of a polity in order to assert the independence of him-self as a modern against the example of the ancients, but his usage is notheavily overdetermined by nationalistic assumptions.


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Such assumptions come to the fore, however, in other uses of this anal-ogy between the laws of poetry and the laws of the polity.Thus, Dryden,in his preface to All for Love (1678), writes: “I should not have troubledmyself thus far with French poets, but that I find our Chedreux criticswholly form their judgments by them. But for my part, I desire to be triedby the laws of my own country; for it seems unjust to me that the Frenchshould prescribe here till they have conquered.”52 Samuel Butler, similarly,objects to the application of classical rules, “As if the Antique Laws ofTragedy / Did with our own Municipall agree”53 And Elkanah Settle, inhis A Farther Defence of Dramatic Poetry (1698), complains that, “theseCorneillean Rules, are as Dissonant to the English Constitution of the Stage,as the French Slavery to our English liberty.”54 Autonomy, independence,and self-determination in the political and cultural spheres are seen by eachof these critics as mutually implicated. Their implicit assertion is that theliterary value or achievement of English drama can only be rightly assessedafter the assertion of cultural autonomy and self-determination; withoutthis cultural independence, literary evaluation will be a mere charade.Thisassertion of the priority of cultural recognition over aesthetic evaluationmakes the position of these English writers very similar to that of anti-imperialist cultural critics of the twentieth century,55—and alerts us, onceagain, to the provincial standing of English-language literary culture in theEuropean republic of letters.

The emphasis on cultural self-respect and impatience with imposedevaluations comes out very strongly in George Farquhar’s “A Discourseupon Comedy, in Reference to the English Stage” (1702). Farquharexpresses his basic position sarcastically in the following passage:

by what authority should Aristotle’s rules of poetry stand so fixed andimmutable? Why, by the authority of two thousand years’ standing, becausethrough this long revolution of time the world has still continued the same;by the authority of their being received at Athens, a city the very same withLondon in every particular: their habits the same, their humors alike, theirpublic transactions and private societies à la mode France; in short, so verymuch the same in every circumstance that Aristotle’s criticisms may giverules to Drury Lane, the Areopagus give judgment upon a case in the King’sBench, and old Solon shall give laws to the House of Commons.56

For Farquhar, the “fact” of cultural difference between modern Englandand ancient Greece is so very evident that the application of Aristotle’s rulesto the English drama is in itself a kind of reductio ad absurdum. Nationaldifferences, Farquhar argues, necessitate diversity of poetic means: “theforms of eloquence are divers, and ought to be suited to the differenthumor and capacities of an audience; . . . the fiery choleric humor of one


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nation must be entertained and moved by other means than the heavyphlegmatic complexion of another” (87). Farquhar’s statement here is moreemphatic and categorical than some we have met with, but in substance itdoes not differ from the views expressed by the French critics discussed inthe previous section. Indeed, Farquhar seems to paraphrase here a remarkSaint-Evremond makes in a 1676 letter to the duchess of Mazarin:

A vast number of Rules, made three thousand years ago, are set up to bethe Standard of what’s writing now adays; without considering that neitherthe Subjects to be treated, nor the Genius to be regulated are the same. If weshould make Love like Anacreon and Sappho, nothing would be more ridicu-lous; if like Terence, nothing more Plebeian, or Citizen-like; and if like Lucian,nothing more gross and lewd. All ages have a peculiar character proper tothemselves: they have their Politicks, their Interests, their Affairs; and, in somemeasure, their Morals, having their particular Virtues and Vices. I own ‘tis allHumanity still: but Nature is various in men; and Art, which is nothing butan imitation of Nature, ought to vary as she does. Our impertinences are notthe same which Horace ridicul’d; nor are our vices the same which Juvenalrebuk’d: we must therefore make use of other raillery and reproofs.57

The congruence of English and French criticism in the late seventeenthand early eighteenth centuries, and their common insistence on nationalparticularity in aesthetics, could hardly be more clearly exemplified.

“The rules of English comedy,” Farquhar continues, “do not lie in thecompass of Aristotle or his followers, but in the pit, box, and galleries”(93–94). The authority of the audience could scarcely be ignored by aworking playwright, even if he were (like Dryden in his prologues and epi-logues) contemptuous of its judgments. Farquhar displays none of Dryden’sself-division on this score, and simply insists:

We must consider then, in the first place, that our business lies not with aFrench or a Spanish audience, that our design is not to hold forth to ancientGreece, nor to moralize upon the vices and defaults of the Roman commonwealth—no, no! An English play is intended for the use and instruction ofan English audience, a people not only separated from the rest of the worldby situation, but different also from other nations as well in the complexionand temperament of the natural body as in the constitution of our bodypolitic. As we are a mixture of many nations, so we have the most unac-countable medley of humors among us of any people upon earth; thesehumors produce variety of follies, some of them unknown to former ages;these new distempers must have new remedies, which are nothing but newcounsels and instructions. (92–93)

Farquhar protests that the English, insulated from “the rest of the world,”also have a nature different from that of other peoples: their humor,


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complexion, and temperament are uniquely their own. He qualifies thisassertion of incommensurability between the English and the rest of theworld when he argues that “some” of their follies were “unknown to for-mer ages,” implying that they share the rest of their follies with other agesand nations. And by the end of his “Discourse,” Farquhar has articulated aposition that, in principle, differs little from that of any of the critics hemight be presumed to be chastising (such as Thomas Rymer):“let our oldEnglish authors alone,” Farquhar complains:

If they have left vice unpunished, virtue unrewarded, folly unexposed, orprudence unsuccessful, the contrary of which is the utile of comedy, let thembe lashed to some purpose; if any part of their plots have been independentof the rest, or any of their characters forced or unnatural, which destroys thedulce of plays, let them be hissed off the stage. But if by a true decorum inthese material points they have writ successfully and answered the end ofdramatic poetry in every respect, let them rest in peace. (99)

Farquhar’s defense of “our old English authors” is articulated here in thevery language of the “neoclassical” criticism of the period: he emphaticallyascribes a moral purpose to comedy (which Dryden, on occasion, was will-ing to waive); he focuses attention on coherence of plot and naturalness ofcharacter, rather than on any more secondary qualities of a drama; he speaksin the idiom of “decorum,” of utile et dulce, of the “end” or design of a givenbranch of poetry. Farquhar may disagree with Rymer in his substantivejudgment of Shakespeare’s plays, but much of his “Discourse” is very muchof a piece with that of the so-called neoclassical critics. But what concernsus most in this context is his use of the notion that the laws of good writ-ing for English authors are based on local (i.e., national) precedents and noton Homer,Aristotle, and the classics:“To determine a suit at law,” he writes,

we do not look into the archives of Greece or Rome, but inspect the reportsof our own lawyers and the acts and statutes of our Parliaments; and by thesame rule we have nothing to do with the models of Menander or Plautus,but must consult Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, and others, who by methodsmuch different from the ancients have supported the English stage and madethemselves famous to posterity. (94)

Just as the acts and writs of Parliament are good throughout the polity, sothe “models” of “Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, and others” serve as sover-eign precedents for English letters: they serve to establish the “empire” ofEnglish literature in the same sense in which the late Tudors asserted the“empire”of England.Reprinted at least seven times with his Works by 1775,Farquhar’s “Discourse” provides one of the most emphatic declarations of


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literary autonomy of any piece of criticism from the eighteenth century,though he leaves room for others to develop more fully an account of whatthe substantive content of this literature should be.

One of the many echoes of Farquhar’s outlook occurs in the epilogueto Colley Cibber’s The Careless Husband (1704). The epilogue celebratesMarlborough’s victory at Blenheim over the French and their Bavarianallies, but the speaker also laments that the English stage still remains sub-ject to “fears of slavery” and to “paying tribute to a foreign throne.”58

Referring to the popularity of French performers, Cibber complains that“song and dance” have usurped the place of drama, “And English actors[are] slaves to swell the Frenchman’s gains” (lines 8, 11). Cibber makes anationalistic appeal to his audience of English men and women:“Oh, thatyour judgment, as your courage has / Your fame extended, would assert ourcause, / That nothing English might submit to foreign laws” (lines 16–18).The English may have defeated the French on the battlefield (at least tem-porarily), but in the cultural sphere French domination remains unchal-lenged and Cibber urges his audience to champion the (neglected) culturalindependence and self-regard of the English stage by invoking the analogybetween “foreign laws” in politics and in art.

The connection between the laws of good writing and those of thenation returns to view, albeit somewhat obliquely, in Addison’s discussionof the ballad of Chevy Chase in Spectator no. 70 (May 21, 1711). Addisonbegins his consideration of this poem, which concerns “the mutual Feudswhich reigned in the Families of an English and Scotch Nobleman” (299),by outlining two critical “rules”:

The greatest modern Criticks have laid it down as a Rule,That an heroickPoem should be founded upon some important Precept of Morality, adaptedto the Constitution of the Country in which the Poet writes. . . . The nextPoint observed by the greatest Heroic Poets, hath been to celebrate Personsand Actions which do Honour to their Country. . . .

The Poet before us, has not only found out an Hero in his own Country[i.e., England], but raises the Reputation of it by several beautiful Incidents. . . .At the same Time that our Poet shews a laudable Partiality to his Country-men, he represents the Scots after a Manner not unbecoming so bold andbrave a People. (298–301)

That heroic poetry should instruct as well as delight (it “should be foundedupon some important Precept of Morality”) is, of course, a familiar maxim,but what makes Addison’s remark interesting for us is his specification thatthis moral precept should be “adapted to the Constitution of the Countryin which the Poet writes.” Addison is here following Le Bossu’s Traité du


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poëme épique: Le Bossu distinguishes between the abstract moralizing ofphilosophers and divines, and the nationally specific precepts of the poet:“The School-men treat of Vertues and Vices in general.The Instructions theygive are proper for all sorts of People, and for all Ages. But the Poet has anearer Regard to his own Country, and the Necessities he sees his ownNation lie under.”59 The laws of good writing thus prescribe a focus on the“Constitution” of one’s own country, so that the epic poet, like the legis-lator, must suit his dictates to the peculiar circumstances and temperamentof his nation. And in producing art, the poet should display “a laudablePartiality to his Country-men,” for heroic poetry is meant to support thenational “Honour”; it is meant to enhance the nation’s glory. Patriotism, ornational “Partiality,” is thus part of the poet’s duty and doctrine—a duty (aswe shall see later in this chapter) already acknowledged by Dryden,similarly drawing on Le Bossu, in his discussion of Virgil in 1697.

The emphasis here on the specificity of address of heroic poetry (andpresumably of other poetry as well) tends to undermine Aristotle’s argu-ment that poetry is more “philosophical” than history in the truths itteaches: here, poetry has come to be linked decisively with the historical,sociopolitical, and cultural development of the society from which itemerges.The nationalistic emphasis here (in Le Bossu and in Addison) is ofa piece with the analogy between the laws of the land and the laws of goodwriting that we have been considering, and underlines a crucial differencebetween what is termed “neoclassical” poetics and the poetics of Aristotle.In keeping with its orientation toward a multicultural republic of letters,there is a comparative—a cross-cultural and historical—dimension toneoclassical poetics that is absent in Aristotle.

Addison had previously articulated his sense of the importance ofnational cultural differences in Spectator no. 29 (April 3, 1711), in his dis-cussion of the influence of Italian opera in England. In this paper Addisontakes up the issue of the nationally specific address of a work of art not interms of the moral it inculcates, but more directly in terms of its aestheticqualities. He objects to the “use of Italian Recitativo with English Words” byunderlining issues of cultural difference in language and music:

the Tone, or (as the French call it) the Accent of every Nation in theirordinary Speech is altogether different from that of every other People, as wemay see even in the Welsh and Scotch, who border so near upon us. By theTone or Accent, I do not mean the Pronunciation of each particular Word,but the Sound of the whole Sentence. . . . For this Reason, the RecitativeMusick in every Language should be as different as the Tone or Accent ofeach Language, for otherwise what may properly express a Passion in oneLanguage, will not do it in anther. . . . I am therefore humbly of Opinion,that an English Composer should not follow the Italian Recitative too


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servilely, but make use of many gentle Deviations from it, in Compliancewith his own Native Language. . . . he ought to accommodate himself to anEnglish Audience, and by humouring the Tone of our Voices in ordinaryConversation, have the same Regard to the Accent of his own Language, asthose Persons had to theirs whom he professes to imitate. (120–21)

Addison argues that the “music” of each language (and hence the musicthat should accompany the words of that language) has an individualcharacter.As a result, each nation will have its own operatic style unsuitedto the ears of foreigners.Addison goes on to extend his remarks on nationallyspecific tastes to music as such, even outside of an operatic context:

A Composer should fit his Musick to the Genius of the People, and considerthat the Delicacy of Hearing, and Taste of Harmony, has been formed uponthose Sounds which every Country abounds with: In short, that Musick isof a Relative Nature, and what is Harmony to one Ear, may be Dissonanceto another. (120–22)

Having underlined the necessary uniqueness of the “Taste of Harmony” ineach country, the diversity of the “Ear” on a national basis, Addisonconcludes his discussion by generalizing his argument about the nationaldiversity of tastes:

I shall add no more to what I have here offer’d than that Musick,Architectureand Painting, as well as Poetry and Oratory, are to deduce their Laws andRules from the general Sense and Taste of Mankind, and not from thePrinciples of those Arts themselves; or in other Words, the Taste is not toconform to the Art, but the Art to the Taste. (123)

Far from supposing that some intrinsic “Principles” of each art will dictatethe universal “Laws and Rules” appropriate to their conduct, Addisonargues that the “Laws and Rules” of each art must derive from the nation-ally differentiated “Sense and Taste of Mankind.” By linking the “Laws andRules” of art with the national “Taste” and “Genius of the People,” Addi-son implicitly analogizes these aesthetic “Laws” with the civil laws peculiarto each polity. In asserting that “the Taste is not to conform to the Art, butthe Art to the Taste,” he comes close to arguing that there should be anationally specific “Art” peculiar to each country.

In his Essay on Criticism (1711), Pope gently mocks the nationalisticanalogy between civic laws and the laws of poetry when he writes aboutthe spread of “Arts o’er all the Northern World”:

But Critic Learning flourish’d most in France.The Rules, a Nation born to serve, obeys,And Boileau still in Right of Horace sways.


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But we, brave Britons, Foreign Laws despis’d,And kept unconquer’d, and unciviliz’d,Fierce for the Liberties of Wit, and bold,We still defy’d the Romans, as of old.Yet some there were, among the sounder FewOf those who less presum’d, and better knew,Who durst assert the juster Ancient Cause,And here restor’d Wit’s Fundamental Laws.60 (712–22)

Pope’s chief strategy in these lines is to counterpose allegedly “ForeignLaws” to lawless “Liberties”—in contrast to the procedure of the championsof native liberty, who identify this liberty not with lawlessness, but with therule of indigenous laws rather than foreign ones. Through this shift inrhetoric, Pope is able to redescribe the ancient laws as “Fundamental” oruniversal (rather than “foreign”), and to paint opposition to them as “unciv-iliz’d.” He comments earlier on Aristotle’s civilizing mission:

Poets, a Race long unconfin’d and free,Still fond and proud of Savage Liberty,Receiv’d his Laws, and stood convinc’d ‘twas fitWho conquer’d Nature, shou’d preside o’er Wit. (649–52)

“Savage Liberty,” on Pope’s view, is the only alternative to the “Laws” ofAristotle. But Pope’s own acknowledgment that issues of national (cultural)freedom and subjection are implicit in this debate echoes the terms of thediscussion that we have been tracing, and it is far from clear that his rhetor-ical slight-of-hand is fully persuasive.

Indeed, Pope’s own position in this poem is more ambivalent and com-promised than many accounts would suggest.The lines I have quoted evokea Tacitean image of rude,Germanic freedom only to subvert it with a cleverturn immediately afterward. But many of Pope’s readers would have foundthe British identification with that image of freedom more powerful andcompelling than anything Pope is able to offer in its place.And not only inthis passage, but throughout the poem, Pope’s idiom carries within it anecho of a more nationally assertive cultural stance. He may deny theoppression of “Foreign Laws” in poetry, but he himself decries the “Licenceof a Foreign Reign” (544) under William of Orange. He may have written:

Those RULES of old discover’d, not devis’d,Are Nature still, but Nature Methodiz’d;Nature, like Liberty, is but restrain’dBy the same Laws which first herself ordain’d.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


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When first young Maro in his boundless MindA Work t’outlast Immortal Rome design’d,Perhaps he seem’d above the Critick’s Law,And but from Nature’s Fountains scorn’d to draw:But when t’examine ev’ry Part he came,Nature and Homer were, he found, the same:Convinc’d, amaz’d, he checks the bold Design,And Rules as strict his labour’d Work confine,As if the Stagyrite o’erlook’d each Line.Learn hence for Ancient Rules a just Esteem;To copy Nature is to copy Them. (88–91, 130–40)

But in doing so he invokes the self-ordained laws so dear to the nationalisticcritics (“Nature, like Liberty, is but restrain’d / By the same Laws which firstherself ordain’d”). He also includes an injunction, paraphrasing Horace, thatcuts against this seeming universalization of the “Nature” found in Homer:

You then whose Judgment the right Course wou’d steer,Know well each ANCIENT’s proper Character,His Fable, Subject, Scope in ev’ry Page,Religion, Country, Genius of his Age:Without all these at once before your Eyes,Cavil you may, but never Criticize. (118–23)

If we combine these two statements of Pope’s we come out with a con-clusion not unlike Saint-Evremond’s: the rules of poetry are founded on“Nature,” but the specificity of a given poet’s religion, country, and thegenius of his age will modify the import and application of these rules.

This need to reinflect “the Critick’s Law” in accordance with culturaldiversities is even more evident if we recall the lines by Dryden that seemto stand behind Pope’s assertion that “Nature and Homer were . . . the same”:in the prologue to The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island (pub. 1670), Drydenwrites:

Shakespear, who (taught by none) did first impartTo Fletcher Wit, to labouring Johnson Art.He Monarch-like gave those his subjects law,And is that Nature which they paint and draw.61

According to Dryden, Fletcher and Jonson found that “Nature” andShakespeare were the same. And even Pope, when he discusses the power of“Great Wits” to “snatch a Grace beyond the Reach of Art” (155), allows that “theAncients thus their Rules invade, / (As Kings dispense with Laws Themselves


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have made)” (161–62), thus echoing once again the nationalistic invocationof laws we ourselves have made.

Dryden, for his part, recognizes the authority of each “founder” of a dis-tinct kind of writing: in the preface to Albion and Albanius (1685), he putsforward “this fundamental proposition”:

That the first Inventors of any Art or Science, provided they have brought itto perfection, are, in reason, to give Laws to it; and according to their Modellall after Undertakers are to build.Thus in Epique Poetry, no Man ought todispute the Authority of Homer, who gave the first being to that Masterpieceof Art, and endued it with that form of Perfection in all its Parts, that nothingwas wanting to its excellency. Virgil therefore, and those very few who havesucceeded him, endeavour’d not to introduce or innovate any thing in aDesign already perfected, but imitated the plan of the Inventor: and are onlyso far true Heroique Poets, as they have built on the Foundations of Homer.Thus Pindar, the Author of those Odes, (which are so admirably restor’d byMr. Cowley in our Language,) ought for ever to be the Standard of them; andwe are bound according to the practice of Horace and Mr. Cowley, to Copyhim. Now, to apply this Axiom, to our present purpose, whosoever under-takes the writing of an Opera, (which is a modern Invention, though builtindeed, on the foundations of Ethnique Worship,) is oblig’d to imitate theDesign of the Italians, who have not only invented, but brought to perfection,this sort of Dramatique Musical Entertainment.62

Dryden’s position here certainly seems to undermine any claims to nationalspecificity in the practice of writing in these genres, but the structure of hisargument makes it very easy for someone else to assert that English epic orlyric or opera or drama is an independent “Invention” and thus need notconform to the ancient standard—as indeed Blackmore and Farquhar dosoon after.63 In any case, Dryden’s argument evidently undermines anyappeal to “nature” (e.g., in a critique of operas as “unnatural”), and it showshow the idiom of “laws” can come to be absorbed almost entirely withinthe folds of cultural history and culturally specific precedents, rather thanreflecting a conception of nature, uniform and unchanging across diversenations and ages as most modern commentators have assumed.

Dryden’s notion of founding lawgivers is given a more liberal turn inAdvertisements from Parnassus (1704) by “N. N. Esquire,” a free adaptation ofBoccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnasso (1612) that substitutes English figures forthe Italian of the original. In advertisement 28 there is a critique of theAristotelian critics in the form of a story about Otway. His plays have beendebarred from the honor of being deposited in the Delphic Library inParnassus, we are told, because the critics appointed to consider the casedecided he had violated the rules of Aristotle.Otway appeals to Apollo who


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summons Aristotle to explain himself. Aristotle pleads that his rules havebeen misinterpreted by the critics: he had merely pointed out the methodsthat “the most accurate Writers before his time had follow’d; and withalconfessed that he believed ‘twas possible a Poet, might at this Day, write soexcellent a Poem, without following his Rules, as might serve to give Lawsto future Ages.”64 Here, Aristotle himself is made to endorse the limitedjurisdiction of his poetic rules, and to allow that a poet like Otway canestablish a new precedent that will “serve to give Laws to future Ages.”

Fielding will similarly reinvoke this prerogative as the founder of a newprovince of writing in Tom Jones (1749), carrying it forward with a comicelaborateness. He cautions the reader not to be surprised “if my Historysometimes seems to stand still, and sometimes to fly” (77):

For all which I shall not look on myself as accountable to any Court ofCritical Jurisdiction whatever: For as I am, in reality, the Founder of a newProvince of Writing, so I am at liberty to make what Laws I please therein.And these Laws, my Readers, whom I consider as my Subjects, are bound tobelieve in and to obey; with which that they may readily and chearfullycomply, I do hereby assure them that I shall principally regard their Ease andAdvantage in all such Institutions: For I do not, like a jure divino Tyrant,imagine that they are my Slaves or my Commodity. I am, indeed, set overthem for their own Good only, and was created for their Use, and not theyfor mine. Nor do I doubt, while I make their Interest the great Rule of myWritings, they will unanimously concur in supporting my Dignity, and inrendering me all the Honour I shall deserve or desire.65

Fielding’s declaration of independence here echoes Davenant’s in his pref-ace to Gondibert, and like Davenant’s, Fielding’s self-assertion does not carryany specifically national implication. He does not divide the “Jurisdiction”of various critical statutes and courts into nationally delimited spheres, butasserts rather the autonomy of the one work he is presently placing beforethe reader.

It is a short step from Fielding’s position here to our modern tendencyto conceive of each literary work (or at least each “great” work) as suigeneris, requiring us to comprehend the unique laws of its constitution.Yetthe legislative authority that Fielding assumes for himself necessarily bearsan analogy with the legislative sovereignty of states, polities, nations, so thatFielding’s individualism ultimately is not entirely separable from the assertionof the independence of national cultures. Horace Walpole, in his preface tothe second edition (1765) of The Castle of Otranto, would seem to haveFielding’s example in mind when he claims that,“I might have pleaded, thathaving created a new species of romance, I was at liberty to lay down whatrules I thought fit for the conduct of it.”66 But instead, he reverts to an


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older formulation, echoing Dryden, when he argues that “My rule wasnature” and more particularly that,“That great master of nature, Shakespeare,was the model I copied” (8).Walpole, finding that Nature and Shakespearewere one, desists from any claim of originality and instead is content “toshelter my own daring under the cannon of the brightest genius thiscountry, at least, has produced” (12), thus reverting to the emphaticallynationalistic idiom bound up with the discourse of literary precedent andthe laws of good writing.

The connection between national cultural independence and the tropeof legislative independence is reasserted also and more elaborately byOliver Goldsmith in his Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning inEurope (1759). Goldsmith, indeed, gives this connection the same kind ofemphasis as Farquhar half a century earlier. He argues that there is “a par-ticular standard of taste in every country” and on this basis reasons that:

the critics of one country, will not be proper guides to the writers ofanother; Grecian or Roman rules will not be generally binding in France orEngland; but the laws designed to improve our taste, by this reasoning, mustbe adapted to the genius of every people, as much as those enacted topromote morality.67

Goldsmith constructs an analogy between the civic laws of a polity and the“laws designed to improve our taste,” and he argues emphatically that“English taste, like English liberty, should be restrained only by laws of itsown promoting” (295). “In fact, nothing can be more absurd,” he argues,“than rules to direct the taste of one country drawn from the manners ofanother” (296). Arguing that “criticism must understand the nature of theclimate and country, &c. before it gives rules to direct Taste,” Goldsmithcontinues forward to the logical conclusion:“In other words, every countryshould have a national system of criticism” (296).

Goldsmith’s language here clearly gains some resonance from its affinitieswith Montesquieu’s discussion in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) of the diversespirit,mores, and manners of nations, and the need to observe such differencesin legislating for any nation. Just as Montesquieu argues that mores andmanners are “institutions of the nation in general,”68 rather than somethingimposed by a legislator, Goldsmith posits national tastes as similarly deter-mined by the nation at large and beyond the control of official decrees.When Montesquieu undertakes to describe the national character ofEngland, or rather of a hypothetical nation just like England, he says that,“The character of the nation would appear above all in the works of themind” (332), before proceeding to discuss their satirical writings, historians,and poets (333). Montesquieu is best known, perhaps, for his discussion of


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the effects of climate and terrain on the genius of a nation (a topic dis-cussed throughout Part III of The Spirit of the Laws and exemplified in hiswell-known comment that, “The empire of climate is the first of allempires” [316]), and for his emphatic dichotomization of Europe and Asiaon the basis of what he sees as the political, civil, and domestic liberty ofthe one and servitude of the other (he says of Asia, “in all the histories ofthis country it is not possible to find a single trait marking a free soul; onewill never see there anything but the heroism of servitude” [284]).Theseideas (the climatological theory; the dichotomy between East and West) are,as we have noted, important aspects of the conception of national traits andnational tastes across the long eighteenth century. But the governing thesisof Montesquieu’s book—that the laws of each nation must be adapted toits national spirit—is even more germane to the particular idiom we havebeen examining in this section of the chapter. Montesquieu writes,“If it istrue that the character [caractère] of the spirit and the passions of the heartare extremely different in the various climates, laws should be relative to thedifferences in these passions and to the differences in these characters”(231); and someone like Goldsmith merely elaborates the point with regardto the terrain of literature and literary criticism.

Drawing on a trope and an argument that had been persistently reiter-ated by English-language writers through the previous one hundred years,Goldsmith thus makes emphatically clear how the idiom of rules and lawsof good writing was used to insist on national–cultural differences andoften to assert a nationalistic cultural stance. The insistence with whichEnglish-language writers in this period argue for their rightful culturalautonomy, the vehemence with which they decry submission to theaesthetic dictates of foreign cultures is a product of their perceived subor-dination to French and classical culture, French and classical cultural values.No less than writers in contemporary postcolonial societies, British writersfrom Dryden to Goldsmith are not simply expressing an insular, chauvin-istic sentiment but are seeking to articulate and assert a right to nationalcultural self-determination.These British writers are engaged in a culturalpolitics of provincial self-assertion, but this whole dimension of theirsituation has been elided by modern scholars who equate the “neoclassi-cal” period with a metropolitan bearing and thus turn a blind eye to thecultural dynamics I have been delineating in this section.

This insistence on local, indigenous laws in the English-language criticaltradition persisted throughout the eighteenth century, though it latterly lostsome of its initial clarity of purpose.Thomas Warton, in his Observations onthe Fairy Queen of Spenser (1756; rev. ed. 1762), writes that, “it is absurd tothink of judging either Ariosto or Spenser by precepts which they did notattend to.We who live in the days of writing by rule, are apt to try every


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composition by those laws which we have been taught to think the solecriterion of excellence.”69

Warton supposes that the “laws”by which we judge “every composition”constitute a single code of criticism, even as he argues that writers of thepast did not “attend to” such rules. He is apt to assume that such olderwriters wrote by no rules at all, because they did not adhere to “our” rules(Spenser’s poetry, he writes, is not written according to a plan, but is “thecareless exuberance of a warm imagination and a strong sensibility” [15]).Thus, though Warton retains the rejection of alien laws that characterizesthe critical gesture we have been tracing, he does not envision thepossibility of other codes of law that are indigenous to these older writers.

A critic like the Rev. Henry Boyd, who published a translation ofDante’s Divina Commedia in 1802, redeploys the theme in his prefatorydiscussion of the claims of Dante’s nonclassical “epic.” Boyd suggests that“the old imperial code of criticism”—based on the edicts of Aristotle—isnow just beginning to lose some of its authority, though Boyd’s languageechoes what other writers had been asserting forcefully for over a century.“It is now grown familiar,” he writes,

to appeal to the sentiments of nature from the dictates of ARISTOTLE, andPoets who were ignorant of his rules, or did not chuse to plan their worksaccording to them, may at last expect a fair hearing; after having been longdeemed criminals in the eyes of a law to which they were not amenable. . . .The venerable old Bard who is the subject of the present enquiry has beenlong neglected; perhaps for that reason, because the merit of his Poem couldnot be tried by the reigning laws of which the author was ignorant, or whichhe did not chuse to observe.70

Dante’s independence of laws whose jurisdiction did not reach him is of apiece with the cultural autonomy asserted by Restoration and eighteenth-century English writers for themselves, but Boyd’s argument has strikingaffinities with that of Warton. Boyd’s formulation does not emphasize thatDante worked with other laws than those of Aristotle, and thus his formu-lation tends toward the romantic proclivity to oppose law to (antinomian)freedom, to understand freedom as necessarily lawless (as Pope anticipated).But the eighteenth-century critical tradition is closer to the Kantianperspective that defines freedom as obedience to laws that one has givenoneself, a perspective that emphasizes autonomy (as against heteronomy),rather than lawlessness and lack of restrictions, as the basis of liberty. Boyd’sperspective, like Warton’s and like Pope’s parody, gives us a “negative” imageof freedom as absence of constraint, but the critical idiom it draws onarticulates a richer notion of positive freedom based on a self-definedcultural charter.


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The whole complex idiom of the laws or rules of poetry has been thefocus of most commentary on the “neoclassical” critical idiom, and yet wecan see that there are aspects of it that have been seriously occluded and asa result the general tenor of this idiom has been regularly misinterpreted ina one-sided fashion. By the end of the nineteenth century the misconstrualof this eighteenth-century idiom had reached its typical modern form,which has persisted since then. Thus, for instance, Leslie Stephen, in his1903 Ford Lectures on English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century(1904), comments that:

Critics in an earlier day conceived their function to be judicial.They wereadministering a fixed code of laws applicable in all times and places.The truecanons for dramatic or epic poetry, they held, had been laid down once forall by Aristotle or his commentators; and the duty of the critic was toconsider whether the author had infringed or conformed to the establishedrules, and to pass sentence accordingly.71

The “modern critic,” by contrast, understands the claims of historicalrelativism, and recognizes that “The great empire of literature . . . has manyprovinces” (3): “There is a ‘law of nature’ deducible from universal princi-ples of reason which is applicable throughout, and enforces what may becalled the cardinal virtues common to all forms of human expression. Butsubordinate to this, there is also a municipal law, varying in each provinceand determining the particular systems which are applicable to the differ-ent state of things existing in each region” (3–4). Despite Stephen’s senseof innovation and modernity, his discourse here simply resurrects theeighteenth-century emphasis on “municipal law,” which is different in each“province” of the “great empire of literature.” Moreover, he is still willingto subordinate it to an overarching “law of nature” in a manner that ismuch less assertive of cultural autonomy and national independence thanthat of many a critic of the long eighteenth century.The modern failure todecipher this eighteenth-century idiom could hardly be better illustrated.

All of this is to suggest that the inherited charts we use to navigate ourway through the critical idioms of the long eighteenth century are in needof substantial revision, beginning with an admission that the continent of“neoclassicism” remains in certain respects a kind of terra incognita.What hasbeen taken to be a universalist critical idiom emphasizing nature and rea-son as transcultural and transhistorical standards turns out to be, in thehands of English-language writers, a historically and culturally differentiat-ing discourse of national–cultural autonomy and self-assertion. Such a seri-ous misrecognition of the “Augustan” literary terrain constitutes a crucialaspect of our modern blindness to the provincial anxieties of early modern


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English-language literary culture, especially its obsessive concern to assertits own national cultural autonomy against “foreign” cultural standardsimposed from abroad.

Literary Nationalism in the Augustan Age

What I have been tracing in the previous sections of this chapter is not thedevelopment of some “preromantic” currents in the late seventeenth andearly eighteenth centuries, but rather outlooks and investments that arecentral to the criticism of what we have been taught to name the “neo-classical” age of English literature. My aim has been to make clear howunder-read and misunderstood aspects of the criticism of this era remain,despite the large volume of study devoted to this material by several gen-erations of scholars. Once we attend to the nationalistic cultural politics ofthis body of literary criticism, however, we soon find cultural nationalismto be a more prominent and intrinsic ingredient than we might have beenled to expect—and not only in the writings of a Farquhar, but also in thoseof such central figures of “neoclassical” criticism as Dryden and Addison,as I demonstrate further in this section. The early nineteenth-centurynational tale may have sought to show, as Katie Trumpener argues, how “anational art must be understood on its own terms, not forced into a prioraesthetic mold it can never fit,”72 but such an emphasis, far from embody-ing a “new” literary nationalism (as Trumpener argues) merely extends tothe British peripheries the ideology of national cultural autonomy that hadbeen dominant in England since the seventeenth century (or indeed sincethe Elizabethan period).

Dryden’s “Dedication of the Aeneis” to the Earl of Mulgrave (1697) canserve as an exemplary instance of the complications of the late seventeenth-century literary scene.73 Throughout this dedication, Dryden is deferentialtoward various French critics and poets who have preceded him (Le Bossu,Corneille, Dacier, Ruaeus [Charles de La Rue], Malherbe, Le Clerc, andespecially Segrais, his predecessor as translator and critic of Virgil’s Aeneid ).Indeed, Dryden pays much more attention to French and Italian translatorsof the Aeneid who have preceded him than he does to his English prede-cessors, whom he clearly does not think worthy of much discussion.Likewise, Dryden employs in the dedication a language of literary achieve-ment that employs the idiom of “Parnassus” (273, 327), which might seemto suggest a single standard of literary excellence, and no less than Mulgravein his Essay on Poetry, Dryden employs the seemingly universal terms ofclassical poetics: exemplified, for instance, in his comment evokingthe opening of Horace’s Ars poetica that “Nothing but Nature can give asincere pleasure; where that is not imitated, ’tis Grotesque Painting, the fine


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Woman ends in a Fishes Tail” (272–73).This hardly appears to be a milieuin which one would find a clear acknowledgment of national particulari-ties of taste and aesthetic value, and yet such it is. Parnassus, as we saw inchapter 2, has many different (national) colonies on its slopes, and “Nature”itself, as we have seen in this chapter, can serve to valorize national culturaldifferences.

One might approach this less acknowledged aspect of Dryden’s criticalidiom through his use of the language of “patriots” and patriotism (279),and his assertion that while a Frenchman like Montaigne may well havewished to have been born in Venice, he himself is “better pleas’d to havebeen born an English Man” (281). Dryden goes on to assert: “I shall . . .speak my Thoughts like a free-born Subject as I am; though such things,perhaps, as no Dutch Commentator cou’d, and I am sure no French-mandurst” (283). But since this might seem to change the question by shifting itto the political terrain or to that of “national characters” ( bold Englishmen,dull Dutchmen, servile Frenchmen), and away from that of poetics per se,I will pause here only to underline the fact that the notion of identifiablehumors and national characters is, as I have noted previously, omnipresentthroughout the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so that there isnothing more stereotyped in the period than the notion of national partic-ularities.Turning, then, to Dryden’s comments more specifically addressedto the task and achievement of the poet, what do we find?

“To love our Native Country, and to study its Benefit and its Glory, tobe interested in its Concerns, is Natural to all Men, and is indeed our com-mon Duty.A Poet makes a farther step; for endeavouring to do honour toit, ‘tis allowable in him even to be partial in its Cause” (298). So proclaimsDryden, and he adds:“sure a Poet is as much privileg’d to lye, as an Ambas-sador, for the Honour and Interest of his Country” (299). Poets, on this con-ception, are ambassadors of their “Native Countr[ies]” and champions of anational cause. Homer,Virgil, and Tasso (the three greatest epic poets, onDryden’s account) “are manifestly partial to their Heroes, in favour of theirCountry” (298). Poetic license acquires in this context a specifically nation-alistic coloring, and the task of the poet is inseparable from furthering theglory of his “Country.” (Twenty years later, one might note, Matthew Priorin his preface to Solomon on the Vanity of the World [1718] reiterates thissentiment when he writes,“I need make no Apology for the short Digres-sive Panegyric upon GREAT BRITAIN, in the First Book: I am glad to haveit observed, that there appears throughout all my Verses a Zeal for the Honorof my Country: and I had rather be thought a good English-man, than thebest Poet, or greatest Scholar that ever wrote.”74 Dryden construes nationalpartiality as an intrinsic part of being a good poet; Prior goes one stepfurther, and suggests that even if his national partiality detracts from his poetic


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merits, he had rather be a good patriot (in verse) than a good maker ofverses. Similarly, in his essay “On Lyric Poetry” [1728], Edward Youngexcuses the faults of his poem and expresses the hope that the poem “willmeet indulgence for the sake of the design,which is the glory of my countryand my king”75—that is, he hopes his patriotic intentions will compensatefor any defects in poetic performance. In 1729, Bernard Mandeville com-ments, “There are some things, in which it is the Interest of Society thatMen should be biass’d; and I don’t think it amiss, that Men should beinclined to love their own Language, from the same Principle, that they lovetheir Country.The French call us Barbarous, and we say, they are Fawning: Iwon’t believe the first, let them believe what they please.”76 For Mandeville,not just writers, but all citizens should be “biass’d” in favor of the culture oftheir own nation, biased, in particular, in favor of their own national lan-guage. Similarly, George Lyttelton, in his Epistle to Mr. Pope [1730], has theshade of Virgil admonish Pope about the poet’s “task,” which is, above all,“to raise / A lasting column to thy Country’s praise”; by fulfilling this task,the poem concludes,“Approving Time shall consecrate thy lays, / And jointhe Patriot’s to the Poet’s praise.”77 James Thomson adopts this recommen-dation when he states his desire, in The Seasons [1730], to “mix the Patriot’swith the Poet’s Flame.”78 For all these writers, patriotic loyalty is a chiefresponsibility of the poet, and it is generally understood to harmonize withor reinforce his literary accomplishments as well.)

Having made national partiality into not only a fact of nature, but alsoa moral duty, Dryden proceeds to distinguish between the differing aes-thetic orientations and values of different literary traditions. “The French,”he argues,“have set up Purity for the Standard of their Language [and com-positions in it],” while “a Masculine Vigour” is the proclaimed standard ofEnglish (322). “Purity” and “Vigour” are clearly two distinct aestheticcriteria or “characters”; they underwrite not only differences betweenthe two languages (“Their Language is not strung with Sinews like ourEnglish. It has the nimbleness of a Greyhound, but not the bulk and bodyof a Mastiff ” [322]), but also between the “Genius” of their respectivepoets: “Like their Tongue is the Genius of their Poets, light and trifling incomparison of the English;more proper for Sonnets, Madrigals, and Elegies,than Heroick Poetry. The turn on Thoughts and Words is their chief Talent. . . . But Heroick Poetry is not of the growth of France, as it mightbe of England, if it were Cultivated” (323). Later in the dedication, Drydenreturns to this distinction between French (and Italian) poetry and Englishpoetry, and makes clear that these traditions not only valorize differentkinds of poetic achievement, but that for Dryden the English outlook ismore compelling: “Let the French and Italians value themselves on theirRegularity: Strength and Elevation are our Standard. . . . the affected


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purity of the French, has unsinew’d their Heroick Verse. . . . they are sofearful of a Metaphor, that no Example of Virgil can encourage them to bebold with safety” (331).

By this point, Dryden’s idiom is difficult to distinguish from that of theliterary patriot or cultural nationalist. He believes that a distinctive(national) “genius” is attributable to the English-language literary tradition,and he believes that the virtues of this national genius are to be prizedequally with, if not above, those of other national literary traditions. More-over, he believes that the distinctive character of each national tradition isrooted in the particularities of the language in which it is composed, andthat these linguistic particularities are reflective of the larger ethos of thesociety and its heritage.

The French, as the dominant metropolitan literary tradition of theperiod, may identify their literary precepts with “classical” and “universal”aesthetic values (yet even this, we have seen, is not really the case), butEnglish writers clearly label that outlook as a peculiarly French aestheticof purity. From the perspective of English-language literary culture, a per-spective constantly challenging its own stigmatization as provincial, thereare various national aesthetics and any claim to universal validity is likely tobe seen as a disguised attempt at cultural hegemony. The resonancebetween this perspective and that of many postcolonial literary cultures intheir critique of Eurocentric aesthetics is not accidental, since both areresponses (albeit from significantly different positions) to ascriptions of cul-tural barbarity, provinciality, underdevelopment. In English-language liter-ary culture during this period there is a constant tension between emphasison a norm of cultural pluralism and national diversity, on the one hand, anda desire to reposition their own cultural tradition as the standard and arbiterof all others, on the other hand.We catch a glimpse of this latter tendencyin Dryden’s remark that,“What I have said, though it has the face of arro-gance, yet is intended for the honour of my Country; and therefore I willboldly own, that this EnglishTranslation has more of Virgil’s Spirit in it, thaneither the French, or the Italian” (325).Through this claim of a preeminentcorrespondence between the spirit of Virgil’s epic and that of Dryden’stranslation, Dryden repositions the national traits of English poetry as notjust different from those of French and Italian poetry, nor simply preferredby himself, but as implicitly supported by the testimony of the classicaltradition itself.

Addison’s A Discourse on Ancient and Modern Learning (published posthu-mously in 1739) also articulates the cultural nationalism that inheres in somuch criticism of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.Wehave already noted something of Addison’s emphasis on cultural national-ism in his Dialogues Upon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals (in chapter 2), in


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his discussion of the ballad of Chevy Chase in Spectator no. 70, and hisemphasis on nationally distinct cultural tastes in his discussion of nationalmusical and operatic styles in Spectator no. 29. This last issue is taken upagain in the Discourse on Ancient and Modern Learning,79 as are some of theissues raised in his discussion of Milton’s Paradise Lost in the Spectator (seenos. 273 and 285).The Discourse thus reprises and underlines themes centralto Addison’s critical outlook.As with Dryden’s “Dedication of the Aeneis,”given the topic or occasion of Addison’s Discourse, here if anywhere wemight expect to see the supposedly “universalist” poetics of “neoclassicism”articulated and defended. It turns out, however, that, far from proclaimingthe timeless power of the classics and the need for modern writers toimitate them, Addison’s Discourse underlines instead the historicity of allwritings, the effects (both damaging and enhancing) of temporal and cul-tural distance on our appreciation of ancient writings, and the issues ofrhetorical effectiveness specific to the situation of writers vis-à-vis theircontemporary and connational audiences.

The import of Addison’s discussion in the Discourse is to recommendsomething like a nationalist poetics. Because Homer and Virgil constructedtheir poetical geographies out of their own countries, their readers (“if weconsider ’em as the Poet’s Countrymen”) “liv’d as it were upon the Spot,and within the Verge of the Poem; their Habitations lay among the Scenesof the Aeneid; they cou’d find out their own Country in Homer” (455). Forsuch readers, their familiarity with the settings and contexts of the poemsmade the poems themselves more readily intelligible and “gave ’em a greaterRelish than we can have at present of several Parts” (455–56). But perhapsmore importantly, such familiarity also gave these readers a different sense oftheir own lives and worlds, once they found them storied in the works oftheir poets: these readers “liv’d as it were on Fairy Ground, and convers’d inan enchanted Region, where every Thing they look’d upon appear’dRomantic, and gave a thousand pleasing Hints to their Imaginations” (455).

Addison posits here a reciprocal relation between the national “content”(in terms of setting) of a given literature and the self-recognition of itsconnational readers.He had already touched on this theme in his Letter fromItaly (1703)—where he celebrates the “Classic ground” of Italy (line 11)and rather hollowly asserts the exaltation of the Boyne from “a poor inglo-rious stream / That in Hibernian vales obscurely stray’d” to its newfoundfame in the “immortal verse” of Charles Montagu, first Earl of Halifax, suchthat now “Its rising billows through the world resound” ( lines 44–50)80—but in the Discourse, he elaborates the importance of nationally recogniz-able setting and content more explicitly. He argues, accordingly, that “itwou’d have pleas’d an Englishman, to have seen in [Blackmore’s] PrinceArthur any of the old Traditions of Guy [of Warwick] varied and beautified


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in an Episode, had the Chronology suffered the Author to have led hisHero into Warwickshire” (456).

In this respect,Addison’s position is not unlike that of later writers whosimilarly champion the virtue of national setting and content. Thus, forinstance, Joseph Warton, in his discussion of Pope’s Pastorals in his Essay onthe Genius and Writings of Pope, vol. 1 (1756), comments:

A Mixture of British and Grecian ideas may justly be deemed a blemish inthe PASTORALS of Pope: and propriety is certainly violated, when hecouples Pactolus with Thames, and Windsor with Hybla. Complaints ofimmoderate heat, and wishes to be conveyed to cooling caverns,when utteredby the inhabitants of Greece, have a decorum and consistency, which theytotally lose in the character of a British shepherd. . . . We can never com-pletely relish, or adequately understand, any author, especially any Ancient,except we constantly keep in our eye his climate, his country, and his age.81

Warton goes on to comment that Pope himself “was sensible of the impor-tance of adapting images to the scene of action” (1:6), instancing hisreplacement of “laurels” in his Mediterranean originals with “willows” inhis English pastorals. Warton goes on to express his desire for native subject-matter:“I cannot forbear wishing, that our writers would more fre-quently search for subjects in the annals of England. . . . We have been toolong attached to Grecian and Roman stories” (1:272). Similarly, RoyallTyler in his prologue to The Contrast (1790) underlines for his Americanaudience the patriotic setting of his play:

Exult, each patriot heart!—this night is shewnA piece, which we may fairly call our own;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Our Author pictures not from foreign climesThe fashions, or the follies of the times;But has confin’d the subject of his workTo the gay scenes—the circles of New-York.On native themes his Muse displays her pow’rs82

Tyler’s prologue translates Addison’s observation on the advantages ofnational content for a work’s connational readers into a doctrine of liter-ary nationalism with respect to the setting and content of a work. Thecomments of Warton and Tyler define a position that is virtually identicalto that of Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, and Ihechukwu Madubuike inToward the Decolonisation of African Literature (1980), who argue (for instance)that,“We have nothing against foreign imagery (‘seasons of an alien land’)


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as such. All we are saying is that when the context and setting is Africanand tropical, it is asinine to drag in spring, snow and other arctic parapher-nalia.”83 We may seem to have traveled a long way from Addison to the“nativist” cultural nationalism of these postcolonial African critics—asindeed we have—but it is important to recognize the partial comparabilityof Addison’s cultural situation and that of postcolonial critics. In his Letterfrom Italy,Addison grants that he hails from a land that is relatively harsh inclimate and uncelebrated in verse (or at least in verse that is known andacknowledged in other countries), but he has recourse to political “Lib-erty” as the saving grace and ultimate ground for British self-esteem. Post-colonial critics, writing in the aftermath of modern-day imperialism andunder the continuing hegemony of a neocolonial world order, cannotmake a similar move (“it is morning yet on creation day”) and remaincommitted to arguing the need for cultural autonomy and self-direction asan essential part of the continuing struggle for cultural “decolonization.”

The resonances of Addison’s critical posture become clearer still if werecollect his argument that one “Circumstance that made Virgil and Homermore particularly charming to their own Country-men, than they can pos-sibly appear to any of the Moderns” is the fact that they chose “theirHeroes out of their own Nation” (456–57). For the connational reader ofthese poets,

the whole Poem comes more home, and touches him more nearly than itwould have done, had the Scene lain in another Country, and a Foreignerbeen the Subject of it. . . . I believe therefore, no Englishman reads Homer,or Virgil, with such an inward Triumph of Thought, and such a Passion ofGlory, as those who saw in them the Exploits of their own Country-men orAncestors. (457)

For Addison, reading national literature (especially epic literature) involves“an inward Triumph of Thought” and raises “a Passion of Glory.” Thisnational link between readers and their reading produces a kind of pleasurethat increases the power of the work in question, and that makes a conna-tional audience in some sense the “natural” audience for works in heroic—and perhaps in other—genres.Addison recognizes an intimate link not onlybetween literature and nationalism in general, but between certain kinds ofliterature and the imperialist passions of “Triumph” and “Glory” morespecifically. He recognizes, in other words, the role of literature in support-ing and furthering the ethos of imperialist nationalism.

This emphasis on heroic nationalism is echoed by many subsequentEnglish critics. For example, Joseph Warton, in An Essay on the Genius and


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Writings of Pope (1756), recommends (as we have seen) that dramatistsabandon the legends of the Greeks and Romans and take up insteadEnglish historical subjects:

We have been too long attached to Grecian and Roman stories. In truth, theDOMESTICA FACTA are more interesting, as well as more useful: moreinteresting, because we all think ourselves concerned in the actions and fatesof our countrymen; more useful, because the characters and manners bid thefairest to be true and natural, when they are drawn from models with whichwe are exactly acquainted. . . . The historical plays of Shakespeare are alwaysparticularly grateful to the spectator, who loves to see and hear our ownHarrys and Edwards, better than all the Achilleses or Caesars, that everexisted. (1:272–73)

Similarly, one mid-eighteenth-century reader in a nine-page letter for Gray(transmitted through Mason) writes that he prefers The Bard to The Progressof Poesy because of its national pertinence: “Can we in truth be equallyinterested, for the fabulous exploded Gods of other nations . . . as by thestory of our own Edwards and Henrys.”84 Oliver Goldsmith likewise pre-ferred The Bard to The Progress of Poesy, and he takes the nativist principleeven further when he adds with regard to the former of these poems (in an unsigned review in The Monthly Review [September 1757]) that,“anEnglish poet,—one whom the Muse has mark’d for her own,—could pro-duce a more luxuriant bloom of flowers by cultivating such as are nativesof the soil.”85 Elizabeth Montagu makes much the same point in her Essayon the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare (1769). Commenting on Shake-speare’s history plays as a new species of drama, she writes:“The commoninterests of humanity make us attentive to every story that has an air of real-ity, but we are more affected if we know it to be true; and the interest is stillheightened if we have any relation to the persons concerned. Our noblecountryman, Percy, engages us much more than Achilles, or any Grecianhero.”86 For each of these readers and writers, Addison’s “inward Triumphof Thought” is an essential part of the experience of reading nationalliterature.

Addison’s recognition of the importance of national subject-matter isimportant also for the way in which it can modify our perspective on lit-erary works that might otherwise fail to register as nationalist to us, sincewe are so used to British literature centered on British subject-matter. Butwhen, for instance, Nicholas Rowe introduces The Tragedy of Jane Shore(1714) by stating that tonight, “We’ll treat you with a downright Englishfeast,” he means by this statement two things. First, that like Shakespeare(his professed model in this play “Written in Imitation of Shakespear’s


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Style”), he has “made it more his care / To rouse the passions than to charmthe ear”:

immortal Shakespeare wrote,By no quaint rules nor hampering critics taught;With rough, majestic force he moved the heart,And strength and nature made amends for art.87

Here, Rowe identifies Shakespeare with a national English aesthetic of“rough, majestic force” in preference to the “rules” and “art” of otherliterary cultures. But, in addition to this invocation of the national aestheticgoverning his play, Rowe, by offering “a downright English feast,” alsomeans to indicate that his play will deal with a story out of national history,in the manner made famous by Shakespeare’s history plays. Johnson, likemany others, felt that Rowe’s play displayed little of the “rough, majesticforce” of Shakespeare’s work, and remarked with some asperity:

In what he [Rowe] thought himself an imitator of Shakespeare it is not easyto conceive.The numbers, the diction, the sentiments, and the conduct, everything in which imitation can consist, are remote in the utmost degreefrom the manner of Shakespeare; whose dramas it resembles only as it is anEnglish story, and as some of the persons have their names in history.88

Johnson may not have thought much of this fact here, but the choice of“an English story,” the use of national subject-matter, is an important ges-ture in Rowe’s play, and clearly modeled on Shakespeare’s own practice inhis history plays. It is this choice that aligns the playwright with his char-acter, Lord Hastings, and with the latter’s declaration of his patriotic faith:

. . . my soul’s darling passion stands confessed.Beyond or love’s or friendship’s sacred band,Beyond myself I prize my native land.On this foundation would I build my fame,And emulate the Greek and Roman name;Think England’s peace bought cheaply with my blood,And die with pleasure for my country’s good. (3.1.241–47)

Outside of this episode in which the specter of civil war raises for Hastingsan image of his “groaning country” bleeding “at every vein,” Rowe’s “she-tragedy” does not focus on the theme of patriotism and self-sacrificing lovefor one’s “native land.” For the most part, it speaks instead in a more gen-eralized idiom of virtue and tyranny, lawless passion and lawless power.Nonetheless, the initial invocation of Shakespeare’s example and the choice


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of English history as subject-matter establishes the fact that the generalizedidiom of virtue rests on native ground.

The underlying importance of national subject-matter in the criticalthought of the early eighteenth century is brought out most emphaticallyperhaps in the widespread criticisms leveled at the popularity of Italianopera.To be sure, much of the criticism of this fashionable entertainmenttook the form of an Enlightenment advocacy of “rational entertainment”(e.g., serious plays in the English language) as preferable to the merelysensuous pleasures of Italian opera (for an English-speaking audience).Thus, for example, Swift comments in a letter of March 8, 1709 that “TheTown is run mad after a new Opera [i.e., Pyrrhus and Demetrius]. Poetry andgood Sense are dwindling like Eccho into Repetition and Voice”; the Tatler,referring to the same opera, comments that it is a “shallow Satisfaction ofthe Eyes and Ears only” and shows “the Degeneracy of our Understand-ing”; and Addison writes in the Spectator a couple of years later that the“only Design” of operas is “to gratify the Senses, and keep up an indolentAttention in the Audience”89: their attractions are scenic, musical, gestural,and theatrical—but not rational, since they make no appeal throughlanguage to the understanding of the English audience. At times this kindof “rationalistic” criticism of operas seems to be focused on the inherentabsurdities of the form, irrespective of the language barrier that limits theiraddress to an English audience (see, e.g., Spectator nos. 13 and 14 [March 15–16, 1711])—and hence quite removed from any issues of cultural national-ism.And indeed much of the scholarly discussion of the English critique ofItalian opera has focused on the general aesthetic principles at issue in thedebate.

But the underlying nationalist logic of the stance of critique of Italianoperas comes out plainly in Addison’s discussion in Spectator no.18 (March 21,1711).“It is my Design in this Paper,” he states,

to deliver down to Posterity a faithful Account of the Italian Opera, and ofthe gradual Progress which it has made upon the English Stage: For there isno Question but our great Grand-children will be very curious to know theReason why their Forefathers used to sit together like an Audience of For-eigners in their own Country, and to hear whole Plays acted before them ina Tongue which they did not understand. (1:78–79)

Addison underlines what he takes to be a pusillanimous willingness on thepart of the English gentry “to sit together like . . . Foreigners in their ownCountry,” attending “Plays acted before them in a Tongue which they didnot understand.”Addison’s remarks emphasize not only the absurdity of thesituation, but the disloyalty of the English audience in thus preferringItalian operas to English plays. He insists that,“If the Italians have a Genius


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for Musick above the English, the English have a Genius for other Perfor-mances of a much higher Nature, and capable of giving the Mind a muchnobler Entertainment” (81).And the note of reproach for cultural disloyaltycomes out clearly in his closing remarks that:

At present, our Notions of Musick are so very uncertain, that we do notknow what it is we like; only, in general, we are transported with any thingthat is not English: So it be of a foreign Growth, let it be Italian, French, orHigh-Dutch, it is the same thing. In short, our English Musick is quite rootedout, and nothing yet planted in its stead. (82)

By this point in the discussion, Addison is no longer concerned with themerits or demerits of Italian opera in itself; rather, he is primarily con-cerned with the contest between “foreign” and native English arts.

Addison’s remarks on Italian opera in the Spectator are of a piece withmuch of the voluminous criticism of opera published in the early eighteenthcentury.90 A particularly telling instance of this nationalistic critique of“foreign wit” is found in the epilogue to Richard Steele’s popular play, TheTender Husband (1705; 2d ed. 1711; 3d ed. 1717; 4th ed. 1723; 5th ed. 1731).Steele’s epilogue, in fact, is an important enough document of earlyeighteenth-century “English”cultural nationalism for us to quote it at length:

Britons, who constant war with factious rage,For liberty against each other wage,From foreign insult save this English stage.No more th’Italian squalling tribe admit,In tongues unknown; ’tis Popery in wit.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .But is it not a serious ill to seeEurope’s great arbiters so mean can be:Passive with an affected joy to sit,Suspend their native taste of manly wit,Neglect their comic humor, tragic rage,For known defects of nature and of age?Arise for shame, ye conquering Britons, rise;Such unadorned effeminacy despise;Admire (if you will dote on foreign wit)Not what Italians sing but Romans writ.So shall less works, such as tonight’s slight play,At your command with justice die away;Till then forgive your writers, that can’t bearYou should such very tramontanes appear,The nations which contemn you, to revere.


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Let Anna’s soil be known for all its charms,As famed for lib’ral sciences as arms;Let those derision meet who would advanceManners or speech from Italy or France;Let them learn you who would your favor find,And English be the language of mankind.91

Steele chastises the taste for Italian opera (and for French manners andmodes) as “effeminacy,”92 as shameful submission to “foreign insult”:“Thenations which contemn you, [you] revere.” He calls on the “Britons’ ” toadmire manliness and conquering power—appealing to them to spurn themodern French and Italians, and to imitate instead the ancient Romans,who imposed their language and culture (Steele implies) on their con-quered provinces instead of tamely allowing others to serve as culturalmodels for them. (The standing of Greek culture in ancient Rome is, ofcourse, elided by Steele.) It is not for the “conquering Britons” to curryfavor with the Italians and the French; rather, “Let them learn you whowould your favor find, / And English be the language of mankind.” Steele’scultural nationalism is not simply defensive (seeking to preserve the Englishstage against the encroachments of “foreign wit”); rather, emboldened by therecent military successes of “Britain,” he envisions the growing prestige of“British” arts as well as “British” arms (“Let Anna’s soil be . . . / As famed forlib’ral sciences as arms”).This explicit linking of geopolitical power with cul-tural recognition and authority, evoked by the ancient topos of the joint riseof arts and arms, is a theme we have encountered before, and one that recursthroughout the century. We might note that Steele’s appeal is not to the“English” but to “Britons”—this, despite the fact that the Anglo-Scottishunion has not yet taken place. Steele’s nationalism is careful to evoke not sim-ply the polity of England but “Anna’s soil,” that is, all the kingdoms and terri-tories subject to her sovereignty. His nationalism, in other words, is cast inrelation to an imperial monarchy and, by virtue of its focus on the geolinguis-tic politics of the English language, it positions Anna’s subjects as the English-speaking peoples.“Britons,” for Steele, is not so much a political term, as it is aterm evoking a cultural community, and serving to articulate a specifically cul-tural nationalism that finds its chief goal and emblem in the envisioned globalspread of the English language (and the literary culture that it carries).

Steele’s stance in this epilogue weaves together many strands germane tothe argument of this book. I have already noted the importance of theintersection of geopolitical and cultural power at various points; the evoca-tion of a “British” and an imperial dimension for English-language cultureis part of the transnational horizon of early modern literary culture that Ihave been emphasizing; and the theme of the global spread of the English


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language was elaborated in chapter 1. For present purposes, what is impor-tant is the testimony Steele’s epilogue provides regarding the emphaticsense of cultural secondariness and “foreign insult” that underpins theEnglish / British investment in cultural nationalism in the early eighteenthcentury. Recent scholarship has been ready to recognize the imperialisticambition in such cultural discourses, but it has tended to ignore the senseof neglect of the native culture that gives urgency to this ambition as a rem-edy for the present situation. As a result, modern writers often invert theeighteenth-century situation and interpret patriotic appeals to assert aneglected national culture as evidence of metropolitan self-assurance andcomplacency.What strikes Steele, by contrast, and raises his ire is the asym-metry of a situation in which Britons admire French and Italian arts whilethe cultivated classes of these countries only hold British arts in contempt.

From Classic to Romantic?

In this final section, I want to suggest that recognizing the important place ofcultural nationalism in the literary criticism of this period forces us to recon-sider the narratives of development from classicism to romanticism, from(cosmopolitan) Enlightenment to (romantic) nationalism, that have domi-nated literary historiographic scholarship on the long eighteenth century. Inplace of such ( linear) narratives of development, I propose a more dialecticalaccount of how literary outlooks are transformed between the early and lateparts of the long eighteenth century.This transformation involves the disso-lution of what I call a posture of “critical pluralism” into a variety of com-peting “critical fundamentalisms” (of which “neoclassicism” and“romanticism” are two instances). Thus rather than witnessing a shift fromneoclassicism to romanticism, the long eighteenth century witnesses insteada more complex transition from which both neoclassicism and romanticismresult as consolidated, mutually incompatible, and coeval critical outlooks.

The criticism of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuriestypically works with pairs of qualities that are not incompatible, but whichproduce a certain tension in relation to each other (e.g., imagination/judgment; genius/reason).These paired qualities are approached via a logicof the mean as a way of negotiating the relations between them, so thatwhile a common failing of a writer is to be deficient in one quality oranother, an equally common failing consists in the excess of an otherwisedesirable quality.93 In the mid- and later-eighteenth century, by contrast,the tendency is increasingly to enumerate single, positive qualities and toevaluate a writer in terms of the simple absence or presence (in varyingdegrees) of these qualities. Such a perspective retains the idea that a writermight be deficient in a given quality, but it eliminates the whole notion of


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excess and with it the idea of “balance” that is so central to the earlier crit-icism. Likewise, by thinking of qualities of writers and their works as sim-ple positivities, rather than as in tension with some paired quality, the latercriticism tends to replace the nuanced evaluations of the earlier criticism(e.g., “Homer has more fire, but Virgil more judgment”) with categoricalderogation or approval of writers / works according to their affiliation orlack thereof with qualities esteemed by the critic (e.g., such and such is [oris not] genuine poetry; so and so is [or is not] a real poet).

This transformation of the critical idiom across the long eighteenth cen-tury certainly means that issues of cultural difference and cultural nation-alism come to be expressed with a different inflection in the later part ofthe period. But the fact of this transformation, and more importantly theway it has been construed in literary historical scholarship, have also tendedto obscure the very real continuities in the engagement with such issuesthroughout the long eighteenth century, early and late. Recognizing theimportance of cultural nationalism in the criticism of the early part of thisperiod forces us to reconceptualize the changes in literary criticism acrossthe long eighteenth century; and, at the same time, in order to be fullyeffective, local analyses of individual texts and passages of eighteenth-century critical discourse, such as we have pursued so far in this chapter,need to be supplemented by a macrohistorical account of change in criti-cal idioms across the long eighteenth century. This is what I attempt tosketch out in this final section of the chapter.94

Having exemplified the nationalistic investments of the critical outlook ofthe early part of the long eighteenth century by way of Dryden’s “Dedica-tion of the Aeneis,” Addison’s Discourse on Ancient and Modern Learning, andSteele’s epilogue to The Tender Husband, we can ask how things have changedby the mid- and later-eighteenth century. Douglas Lane Patey speaks of a“mid-century nationalist movement of revisionist literary history,”95 but asfar as poetics is concerned, we might ask in what sense have critical assump-tions and outlooks been transformed across the century? I have suggestedthat the transformation that does take place has been misconstrued as a sim-ple shift from universalist neoclassicism to nationalistic romanticism.WilliamCollins is sometimes taken as a representative transitional figure in this shift,but so far as critical outlooks are concerned it is not hard to see the inade-quacy of such claims. In the preface to his Persian Eclogues of 1742 (rev. 1757as Oriental Eclogues),Collins champions the notion of nationally particular lit-erary tastes, but there is little “new” in his discourse as a review of the mate-rial in this chapter makes abundantly clear. Collins writes:

It is with the Writings of Mankind, in some Measure, as with theirComplexions or their Dress, each Nation hath a Peculiarity in all these, to


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distinguish it from the rest of the World.The Gravity of the Spaniard, and theLevity of the Frenchman, are as evident in all their Productions as in their Per-sons themselves; and the Stile of my Countrymen is as naturally Strong andNervous, as that of an Arabian or Persian is rich and figurative. There is anElegancy and Wildness of Thought which recommends all their Composi-tions; and our Genius’s are as much too cold for the Entertainment of suchSentiments, as our Climate is for their Fruits and Spices. If any of theseBeauties are to be found in the following Eclogues, I hope my Reader willconsider them as an Argument of their being Original. . . . WhateverDefects, as, I doubt not, there will be many, fall under the Reader’sObservation, I hope his Candour will incline him to make the followingReflection:That the Works of Orientals contain many Peculiarities, and thatthro’ Defect of Language few European Translators can do them Justice.96

Collins may be somewhat playful here in his assertion of the unbridgeablecultural differences between East and West, since he only pretends that hehas translated genuine “Oriental” works into English. Nonetheless, his laterdismissal of this early work on the grounds that it does not in fact captureanything of the manner of the eastern nations and might as well have beentitled “Irish Eclogues,” only serves to confirm the sentiment of culturaldifference expressed in his original preface.And the idiom of that discourse(the effect of climate; the notion of national characters; the culturaldichotomy between east and west) is, as we have seen, the common cur-rency of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.97 Seen in thisperspective, Collins’s preface hardly suggests a shift is taking place in criti-cal idioms around mid-century; rather, it tends to support the view thatcritical idioms inherited from the earlier part of our period continued withunabated force through mid-century.

I have already suggested that the transformation of critical idioms acrossthe long eighteenth century did not take the form of a process of “evolu-tion” or “development” from classicism to romanticism. Rather, the trans-formation might be better envisioned as the unraveling of a large fabric ofloosely woven strands, and their regrouping into a number of distinct andtightly woven patches.The resulting transformation involves a fundamen-tal shift from a posture of critical pluralism to one of a variety of (compet-ing) critical fundamentalisms. Let me illustrate the kind of transformationI am referring to by considering two contrasting critical idioms of the1760s, exemplified by Hugh Blair and Richard Hurd, in which we can seethis transformation in process as it were.

James Macpherson’s Ossianic works certainly figure as an importantmilestone in the history of European romanticism: initially published from1760 to 1765 and republished throughout the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries, they achieved a pan-European popularity second in


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their own time only to the cult of Shakespeare. From 1763, they were typi-cally accompanied by Hugh Blair’s Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian(rev. 1765), which thus became one of the most important critical docu-ments of the entire romantic period, either in its own voice or adapted, asit was, for instance, by Herder in his 1773 essay “Uber Ossian und dieLieder alter Völker.”Though Blair’s standing as an influential cultural figure(through his teaching, and especially through his Lectures on Rhetoric andBelles Lettres of 1783, which became a standard textbook for much of thenext hundred years in Britain and the United States) has been frequentlynoted, his essay on the poems of Ossian has not received a great deal ofattention; when we examine it, we are not surprised to find it valorizing apoetry of sublimity and pathos founded on imagination and the passions.98

Blair likewise valorizes the “force” and “energy” of a vigorous and primi-tive poetic idiom and poetic sensibility that have not been “emasculated”by overrefinement (381–82). He champions the “rude,” “wild,” and “pas-sionate” eloquence of Ossian, a poet of “original genius” (378) as againstthe “modern poets” with their trivial banterings:

His poetry, more perhaps than that of any other writer, deserves to be stiled,The Poetry of the Heart. It is a heart penetrated with noble sentiments,and with sublime and tender passions; a heart that glows, and kindles thefancy; a heart that is full, and pours itself forth. Ossian did not write, likemodern poets, to please readers and critics. He sung from the love of poetryand song. (356)

Ossian’s poetry, that is to say, is the expression of his humanity, not thecalculated product of a literary career, seeking either the reward of fame ormonetary gain or both. Blair refers to him as a “true Poet” (378), influencedby “true poetic inspiration” (356),“who wrote from the immediate impulseof poetical enthusiasm, and without much preparation of study or labour”(384). Ossian’s forte, we are told, is “the true poetical sublime” (394):

Accuracy and correctness; artfully connected narration; exact method andproportion of parts, we may look for in polished times. . . . But amidst therude scenes of nature, amidst rocks and torrents and whirlwinds and battles,dwells the sublime. It is the thunder and the lightning of genius. It is theoffspring of nature, not of art. (394–95)

This seems like a dismissal of the small arts of “polished times” in favor ofnature and the Sturm und Drang, the storm and stress or “the thunder andlightning” of genius. Given all this, it is easy to see why both Macpherson’swork and, implicitly, Blair’s critical remarks have frequently been construedas heralds of the romantic movement.


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But this would be a very partial reading of Blair’s critical remarks. Forside by side with the kind of remarks that I have just cited, we find anotherset of concerns in Blair’s Dissertation. This other aspect of Blair’s workemerges in his evaluation of the Ossianic Fingal and Temora as epic poems.The whole concern to legitimate the title of these poems to the honorificlabel of “heroic poem” or “epic” already attests to an investment in a notionof generic hierarchy that carries over from the “neoclassical” period. He alsoinvokes the “rules” and remarks of Longinus, Horace, Quintilian, and LordKames regarding good writing, and more especially those of Aristotle con-cerning the qualities of an epic in particular. He may reject the claims ofLe Bossu regarding the proper composition of an epic (“Never did amore frigid, pedantic notion, enter into the mind of a critic” [359]), but henonetheless addresses Le Bossu’s requirement that an epic poem “illustratesome moral truth” (359). Moreover, his dismissal of Le Bossu only serves toallow him to embrace Aristotle’s requirements more fully, namely,“That theaction which is the ground work of the poem, should be one, compleat, andgreat; that it should be feigned, not merely historical; that it should beenlivened with characters and manners; and heightened by the marvellous”(358–59). Blair’s validation of the Aristotelian requirements deserves quota-tion, even though it constitutes a somewhat lengthy passage:

Examined even according to Aristotle’s rules, it [Fingal ] will be found to haveall the essential requisites of a true and regular epic; and to have several ofthem in so high a degree, as at first view to raise our astonishment on findingOssian’s composition so agreeable to rules of which he was entirely ignorant.But our astonishment will cease, when we consider from what source Aristotledrew those rules. Homer knew no more of the laws of criticism than Ossian.But guided by nature, he composed in verse a regular story, founded on heroic actions, which all posterity admired.Aristotle, with great sagacity andpenetration, traced the causes of this general admiration. He observed what itwas in Homer’s composition, and in the conduct of his story, which gave itsuch power to please; from this observation he deduced the rules which poetsought to follow, who would write and please like Homer; and to a composi-tion formed according to such rules, he gave the name of an epic poem.Hence his whole system arose.Aristotle studied nature in Homer. Homer andOssian both wrote from nature. No wonder that among all the three, thereshould be such agreement and conformity. (358)

Here we see the same reconciliation of “Nature” and “Homer” (andAristotle) as that effected by Pope in the Essay on Criticism. Indeed, in itselaborate discussion of the fables, the composition, the description,imagery, and sentiments of the Ossianic poems (treating in turn the severalfigures of simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, apostrophe), Blair’s


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Critical Dissertation can look like a very complete piece of “neoclassical”critical evaluation. He is pleased to find very little “border[ing] on an Italianconceit” in these poems (381), and says that some of their similes “woulddo honour to any of the most celebrated classics” (390), thus continuing tohold the classics as a kind of universal standard for judging poetic achieve-ment and claiming the title of “classic” for Ossian. (Note also Blair’s com-ment that,“In one remarkable passage, Ossian describes himself as living ina sort of classical age” [352].)

Blair thus praises Ossian both for his “enthusiastick warmth” (390),which sometimes carries him “beyond the cautious strain of modernpoetry” (392), and for his “judgment and art” in the composition of hisworks (374), the “correct[ness]” and “propriety of sentiment and behaviour”in his characterizations (394). His criteria of evaluation reiterate thecoupled demands for fancy and judgment, poetic fire and refined discernmentthat characterize “neoclassical” criticism from Hobbes forward.99

Blair’s presentation of Ossian as “a sort of classic” thus differs essentiallyfrom Richard Hurd’s strategy in his Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762),where Hurd seeks to rehabilitate “Gothic” art by distinguishing it as its ownautonomous aesthetic paradigm, one that cannot be evaluated by the termsof “Grecian rules”:

When an architect examines a Gothic structure by Grecian rules, he findsnothing but deformity. But the Gothic architecture has it’s [sic] own rules, bywhich when it comes to be examined, it is seen to have it’s [sic] merit, as wellas the Grecian. The question is not, which of the two is conducted in thesimplest or truest taste: but, whether there be not sense and design in both,when scrutinized by the laws on which each is projected.100

Hurd’s dichotomization of “Grecian” and “Gothic” rules of art may seemlike a more radical defense of nonclassical art than Blair’s, but it is worthnoting that ultimately he ends up valorizing “sense and design” as theproper criteria of judgment. He insists, indeed, that the application of thesecriteria must take into account the different “projects” undertaken by thetwo kinds of art, but he universalizes “sense and design” as the definingcharacteristics of all art. Other critics who adopt this dichotomizing orpolarizing strategy, such as Joseph Warton or Henry Headley, will championfancy and the imagination above all else, but like Hurd they too reduce thecriteria of evaluation to a single quality that they identify with the“essence” of poetry.

Blair’s argument recognizes, instead, a multiplicity of criteria in terms ofwhich art can be evaluated. Sense and design, correctness and accuracy,strictness of connection and propriety of diction and sentiment are all valid


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criteria—but so too are forcefulness, energy, and vigor; the ability to movethe passions and stir the imagination; directness and simplicity. Blair’sdiscourse recognizes that literary art is a multifaceted practice that canappeal to its audiences in a variety of ways. His aesthetic outlook ischaracterized by what I call “critical pluralism”: an outlook that canoperate in both a flexible and an intransigent manner, since it allows for anopen and responsive relation to diverse cultural artifacts, but equally itmakes possible an opportunistic and constantly shifting resistance toanything the critic chooses to oppose. In any case, this outlook remainsquite distinct from the “critical fundamentalism” of Hurd—an outlook thattends to perceive systematic and mutually incompatible aesthetic stancesbetween which the observer must choose, cleaving to one and rejecting theother as wholly alien. Thus, in discussing Spenser’s Faerie Queene Hurdmaintains that the work has a genuine Gothic unity of design and overlaidatop it a specious attempt at classical unity of design, which “the violenceof classic prejudices forced the poet to affect . . . tho’ in contradiction to hisgothic system” (70). The expedients to which Spenser resorted in thisattempt were “injudicious,” in Hurd’s view:“Their purpose was to ally twothings, in nature incompatible, the Gothic, and the classic unity” (71). Eventhough Hurd has been at pains in the earlier portion of his Letters onChivalry and Romance to demonstrate the compatibility of classical heroicand Gothic manners, accounting thus “for the constant mixture, which themodern critic esteems so monstrous, of pagan fable with the fairy tales ofRomance” (39), he himself now adopts the idiom of “the modern critic”who insists on the systematic incompatibility of classical and Gothicnotions of unity. Whatever the shifts in Hurd’s own outlook over the courseof this work, it is indeed a mark of the “modern” critic (i.e., of the criticalfundamentalism that began to dominate literary discussion by the late eight-eenth century) to insist on the essential uniqueness and incompatibility ofthe classical world, the Biblical world, the medieval European world, theworld of the Renaissance, and that of modern Europe, and of the literaryart produced in each of these “worlds.”

The history of literary criticism and practice across the long eighteenthcentury has generally been written from the point of view of some such“critical fundamentalism.”That is, whether a given scholar felt most affinityfor “neoclassical” or for “romantic” aesthetics, the shared assumption wasthat the history of the period could be narrated in terms of a shift from onesystematic poetics to another (the two being mutually incompatible), a shiftfrom a given aesthetic outlook to a “new” (perhaps even revolutionary) aes-thetic outlook: a “transition from ‘Augustan to Romantic,’ from ‘reason’ to‘imagination,’ from ‘order and decorum’ to the ‘wilderness of sensations.’ ”101

The problem with this construction of cultural history is that once scholars


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start to investigate the genealogy of the new romantic aesthetics, they findthemselves tracing these genealogical strands back through the whole of theeighteenth century. Thus, whether the focus is on an affective aesthetics(rather than a mimetic one), on an aesthetics of the sublime (rather than anaesthetics of the beautiful), on an aesthetics of originality (rather than one ofimitation), or on an aesthetics of cultural particularity (rather than an uni-versalist aesthetics), each and every one of these emphases can be found as astrand in the aesthetic outlook of the earlier part of this period.The newnessof the “new” aesthetic outlook thus dissolves into a long string of precursorsand anticipations.102

Most of these genealogical investigations of critical idioms were carriedout by scholars deeply sympathetic to a romantic aesthetics. But scholarswho claimed that such teleological investigations distorted and deprecatedthe literary practice of the earlier part of this period have offered their ownversion of the same shift from a neoclassical to a romantic aesthetic.Theyhave sought to understand and often to champion a neoclassical aesthetic“in its own terms,” but they too have assumed that it has a systematicincompatibility with romantic aesthetics and that the early and late por-tions of the eighteenth century are marked by distinctive aesthetic out-looks, operating with quite distinct sets of assumptions.103 The literaryhistory of the eighteenth century remains the story of a linear shift fromone set of literary assumptions to another, though the outcome of this shiftis perhaps seen, from this perspective, as a fall into romantic mystificationsrather than the emergence of a new and vital recognition of the truth ofthe imagination.

Neither of these accounts, however, is well equipped to address theapparent coexistence of what are constructed as two mutually incompatiblesets of aesthetic assumptions and allegiances in a work such as Blair’s Criti-cal Dissertation—or, for that matter, in the critical writings of most any othereighteenth-century literary figure.There is, no doubt, a marked change inthe outlooks of anglophone literary culture across the eighteenth century,but my own sense is that this history is misunderstood if it is seen primar-ily as a simple transition from one aesthetic system to another. Such a view,in its strictest formulations, leads to the implication that certain kinds ofaesthetic perceptions and critical problems could not be enunciated in theone era or the other, that certain thoughts only became thinkable within thenew paradigm—an implication that is difficult to square with the longhistory of “anticipations” of supposedly novel romantic perceptions.

I want to argue for a different understanding of the literary history of theeighteenth century.The transformation that does take place over this periodcan be better understood as a shift from what I have called “critical plural-ism” to “critical fundamentalism.”On this account, it is not so much that new


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aesthetic assumptions, criteria, or concepts are introduced at some point duringthe course of the century. Rather, there is a kind of progressive distillation ofthe diverse coexisting and variously interacting strands in the aesthetic out-look of the early part of the century into what come to be seen as distinctand mutually incompatible aesthetic postures, to which we generally give thelabels “neoclassical” and “romantic.” Thus, it is not so much that new,unprecedented assumptions and criteria are introduced (hence the futility ofattempts to trace the origin and development of these “new” aestheticassumptions); rather, already existing assumptions and criteria are reorganizedso as to form newly consolidated aesthetic “stances” that now come to bedefined in terms of (and through) polemical oppositions.The late eighteenth-century tendency to pose fancy and judgment as incompatible qualities ofthe poetic temperament—so that a given poet belongs either to the schoolof fancy or the school of judgment—dismantles what had previously beenconstrued as the twin and intertwined gifts of all great poets.

On this account, then, both “neoclassicism” and “romanticism” areproducts of the later part of the eighteenth century: they are the coexistingproducts of a shift to a “fundamentalist” aesthetic outlook on the part ofmost participants in the literary field, whichever literary “school” they mayfeel themselves allied with.104 The retrospective construction of neoclassi-cism is evident in “Sleep and Poetry,” in which Keats posits neoclassicismas “a schism” in English poetry.105 But in doing so, Keats transforms into aradical departure what the Augustans viewed as a continuous refining ofthe single tradition of English poetry. In his book on Elizabethan Poetry inthe Eighteenth Century (1941), Earl Wasserman long ago sought to clarify thecontinuity of the English poetic tradition, as well as the process by which“Elizabethan” and “Augustan” English poetry came to be seen as polaropposites, embodying mutually exclusive poetics. Wasserman shows that“a rather large body of Renaissance literature was very much alive in theeighteenth century, and the Augustans not only read and, after their ownfashion, appreciated it, but often found in it the substance for their own lit-erary productions”;106 he repeatedly emphasizes that the Augustans did notreject earlier English poetry, in order to construct a “new” kind of poetry(as Keats implies), but rather sought to blend Elizabethan poetic “fire,”“strength,” or “spirit” with their own greater “correctness” and refinementsin versification (48–49).“[T]he division of poets into the school of Spenserand the school of Pope,”Wasserman writes, “is a dichotomy that was notoften perceived before Hurd and the Wartons” (93). Nonetheless, it is clearthat Wasserman thinks that the Augustans failed to perceive the incompati-bility between their own poetics and the poetry of the Elizabethan age, sothat his critical outlook is fundamentally the same as that of Hurd, theWartons, and Keats in this regard.


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This sense of a “dichotomy” between different kinds of poetry is a cul-tural construction of the later eighteenth century, and it underlines the factthat a real transformation of critical assumptions and outlooks does takeplace over the eighteenth century. But this transformation occurs througha much more dialectical process than a simple transition from one aestheticsystem to another: it involves, rather, the emergence of a fundamentallynew way of conceptualizing both the nature of poetic schools or modesand the relationship between different poetic eras.As a result, there is botha greater measure of continuity and a more radical disjuncture than hasgenerally been recognized between the critical outlooks of the early andlate portions of the long eighteenth century: virtually every strand inthe outlooks of the later period is to be found earlier in the century, butthe underlying paradigm has been transformed from critical pluralism tocritical fundamentalism.

By the end of the eighteenth century, there was a tendency to defineany given literary milieu in terms of the distinctive aesthetic assumptionsand tenets in terms of which it was said to operate.This systematization anddifferentiation of distinct aesthetic “worlds”—not in terms of mere stylistictrends, but in terms of fundamental aesthetic outlooks—gives to the periodsince the late eighteenth century a cast very different from that whichprevailed in earlier eras. For while critical differences have always beenapparent, these had tended to be seen as differences of emphasis—to someextent chosen and wilful differences (or, by contrast, inescapable differ-ences, of temperament, character, education), to some extent differences ofemphasis adapted to different occasions, circumstances, purposes, andaudiences. Despite such differences, however, all writers were seen to beoperating on the same terrain, in the same aesthetic “universe” as it were.107

The result was not so much “ahistoricism” as eclecticism and often a kindof superficiality of argument since critical differences were rarely seen toinvolve fundamental assumptions and values. By the end of the century, thissituation had been replaced by one that emphasized the mutual incompat-ibility of distinct sets of critical assumptions and values, and that gave acertain polemical clarity and consequentiality to critical argument sincethis was now seen to involve rival aesthetic worldviews as it were. (Ofcourse, the more limited kinds of critical differences were also much inevidence, but these were now seen as relatively trivial disagreements, meredifferences of emphasis within a given critical posture.)

Seeing the literary history of the eighteenth century in terms of thecrystallization of critical positions (rather than the emergence of novel crit-ical outlooks) allows us to understand better why the literary terrain looksso different, so novel by the end of the century without our being ableclearly and effectively to identify the deployment of categorically new


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assumptions, criteria, values on this terrain. This perspective helps us tounderstand better both what changes and what doesn’t change across theeighteenth century, or better, it helps us understand how change in literaryoutlooks takes place over this period. It allows us to see that the simple lin-ear narratives that have governed our conceptualization of eighteenth-century literary history (and of literary history more generally) need to bereinflected to allow for more complex logics of development and displace-ment. And this change in perspective allows us to see, finally, that culturalnationalist engagements are both much more central and much morecontinuous throughout the literary culture of the long eighteenth centuryin Britain than has otherwise been evident. The effort to redeem theneglected and lowly status of the national culture provides in fact one ofthe main engagements of the literary culture of the period, one thatenergizes the expansive visions and hopes for the metropolitan standing ofEnglish-language literary culture in the near future.

My argument about the need to revise our inherited narratives of literarydevelopment across the long eighteenth century issues from the other fun-damental revisionings of the English-language literary culture of this periodenjoined in this book, by way of its efforts to underline the traditionallymarginal status of English-language literary culture in the European world;to isolate the progress of English topos and its development from theseventeenth through the nineteenth centuries; to assert the importance ofthe republic of letters as a fundamental mode of conceptualizing the liter-ary terrain and the way this concept foregrounded issues of provinciality,cultural difference, and national cultural status for eighteenth-century read-ers and writers; and to show how fundamentally “neoclassical” English crit-ics were concerned with a nationalistic assertion of cultural autonomy andthe redemption of their native culture from the dominating impact of moreinfluential European cultures. However adequate my own narrative of adialectical shift from critical pluralist outlooks to various kinds of criticalfundamentalism may be in helping us to understand the character of thechanges and continuities in the critical discourses of the period, this bookhas sought to demonstrate the need for us to discard our inherited precon-ceptions about the status, character, and engagements of English-languageliterary culture in the long eighteenth century by bringing into the fore-ground the interplay of imperial ambitions, provincial anxieties, and nationalself-assertion that structures this field of cultural production in this era.


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NOTES

Short titles have been used for some internet sources cited in the notes, as follows:LION Literature Online. ProQuest Information and Learning Company,1996–2003.Version 96.1 (December 1996) to version 03.4 (May 2003).

Introduction (Dis)establishing the Empire of English

1. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury,“Soliloquy: or Advice to anAuthor” (1710), in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions,Times, ed. PhilipAyres, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 1:115.

2. John Kenyon, The History Men: The Historical Profession in England since theRenaissance (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), 234.

3. See Gerald Newman, “Anti-French Propaganda and Liberal Nationalism inthe Early Nineteenth Century: Suggestions Toward a General Interpreta-tion,” Victorian Studies 18 (1975): 385–418; Newman, The Rise of EnglishNationalism: A Cultural History 1740–1830 (New York: St. Martin’s Press,1987); Linda Colley,“The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and theBritish Nation 1760–1820,” Past and Present 102 (1984): 94–129; Colley,“Whose Nation? Class and National Consciousness in Britain 1750–1830,”Past and Present 113 (1986): 97–117;Colley,“Radical Patriotism in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Patriotism:The Making and Unmaking of British NationalIdentity, ed. Raphael Samuel, 3 vols. (London: Routledge, 1989), 1:169–87;Colley,“Britishness and Otherness:An Argument,” Journal of British Studies 31(1992): 309–29; Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven,CT:Yale University Press, 1992). See also Walter R. Johnson, “A Historio-graphical Sketch of English Nationalism 1789–1837,” Canadian Review ofStudies in Nationalism 19 (1992): 1–8.

4. Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy 1714–1760 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1939), 1; Daniel A. Baugh, “Great Britain’s Blue Water Policy, 1689–1815,”International History Review 10 (1988): 47.

5. In his recent book, Dipesh Chakrabarty suggests that “the region of theworld we call ‘Europe’. . . . has already been provincialized by history itself.. . . [T]he so-called ‘European age’ in modern history began to yield place toother regional and global configurations toward the middle of the twentiethcentury,” and turns his attention instead to interrogating the intellectualinescapability of Eurocentric conceptions of modernity throughout the

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contemporary world (Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought andHistorical Difference [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000], 3).Chakrabarty’s notion of “provincializing” Europe’s cultural centrality is animportant inspiration for my own examination of the emergence of metro-politan status for the English-language cultural sphere within the Europeanworld and, by extension, of the anglophone cultural sphere within thewider world. As Chakrabarty argues, “provincializing Europe is not a pro-ject of rejecting or discarding European thought,” but of reconceptualizingit from a postcolonial perspective (16–17).

6. John Dryden, Aureng-Zebe, ed. Frederick M. Link (Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1971), 119–20.

7. Jonathan Swift, A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the EnglishLanguage (1712; repr., Menston, England: Scolar Press, 1969), 25–26;Alexander Pope, “Essay on Criticism,” in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed.John Butt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), lines 40–41;Thomas Tickell, On the Prospect of Peace (1712), lines 464–67, in LION;Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, ed. B. R. S. Fone(1968; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000), 129, 138, 174.

8. There is now an important body of such work that has expanded our senseof the engagements of eighteenth-century British literature and culture.Much of this work is devoted to particular authors or works, but for someof the more wide-ranging work, see, e.g.: Srinivas Aravamudan, Tropicopoli-tans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688–1804 (Durham, NC: Duke UniversityPress, 1999); Laura Brown, Ends of Empire:Women and Ideology in Early Eigh-teenth-Century English Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1993); Mita Choudhury, Interculturalism and Resistance in the London Theater,1660–1800: Identity, Performance, Empire (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell Univer-sity Press, 2000); Moira Ferguson, Subject to Others: British Women Writers andColonial Slavery, 1670–1834 (New York: Routledge, 1992); Suvir Kaul,Poems of Nation,Anthems of Empire: English Verse of the Long Eighteenth Cen-tury (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000); Felicity Nussbaum,Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century Narratives(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Janet Sorensen,The Grammar of Empire in Eighteenth-Century British Writing (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000); Rajani Sudan, Fair Exotics: XenophobicSubjects in English Literature 1720–1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Charlotte Sussman, Consuming Anxieties: ConsumerProtest, Gender, and British Slavery, 1713–1833 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).

9. Theodor Adorno et al., Aesthetics and Politics, ed. Ronald Taylor (London:Verso, 1980), 128–29.

10. See, e.g., Isaiah Berlin,“The Bent Twig:On the Rise of Nationalism,” in TheCrooked Timber of Humanity:Chapters in the History of Human Ideas, ed.HenryHardy (London: John Murray, 1990); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nation-alism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press,1990);Anthony Pagden,“The Effacement of Difference:Colonialism

NOTES FOR P P . 4–8178


and the Origins of Nationalism in Diderot and Herder,” in After Colonial-ism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Developments, ed. Gyan Prakash(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

11. See, regarding the case of England, E. C.W. Stratford, The History of EnglishPatriotism, 2 vols. (London: John Lane, 1913); Hans Kohn,“The Genesis andCharacter of English Nationalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940):69–94; Richard Foster Jones, The Triumph of the English Language: A Surveyof Opinions Concerning the Vernacular from the Introduction of Printing to theRestoration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1953); and ChristopherHill, “The Norman Yoke,” in Puritanism and Revolution (1958; repr.,Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1968), 58–125.

12. See, e.g., Liah Greenfeld,“Science and National Greatness in Seventeenth-Century England,” Minerva 25 (1987): 107–22, and the same author’sNationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1992); David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protes-tant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley and Los Angeles:University of California Press, 1989); Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nation-hood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1992);Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Politics, and National Identity: Refor-mation to Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); andEdwin Jones, The English Nation:The Great Myth (Phoenix Mill, England:Sutton, 1998).

13. Margot Finn,“An Elect Nation? Nation, State and Class in Modern BritishHistory,” Journal of British Studies 28 (1989): 184.

14. In viewing nationalism in terms of investments in national greatness(“national grandeur”) rather than simply in national identity, I depart fromColley’s and Newman’s emphasis on religious dimensions of eighteenth-century cultural nationalism in Britain.

15. The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, ed. Lord Sheffield, 5 vols.(London: John Murray, 1814), 3:560.

16. Thomas B. Macaulay,“Sir James Mackintosh” (1835), in Critical and Histor-ical Essays, 6 vols. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 3:308.

17. Linda Colley,“The Politics of Eighteenth-Century British History,” Journalof British Studies 25 (1986): 359.

18. British Library, Egerton MSS 242, p. 22, quoted in H.V. Bowen, Revenue andReform: The Indian Problem in British Politics 1757–1773 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1991), 132.

19. Bruce P. Lenman, “Colonial Wars and Imperial Instability, 1688–1793,” inThe Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2, The Eighteenth Century, ed. P. J.Marshall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 165–67. C. A. Baylyoffers a similar assessment of the situation of imperial Britain in the 1780s:“the 1770s and 1780s were a British recessional.The American empire waslost; the infant empire in Asia racked by warfare and mismanagement[including the defeat of the British in western India by the Marathas in1779 and in Madras by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore in 1780]. Inthe eastern Mediterranean, French trade greatly outstripped English trade

NOTES FOR P P . 8–11 179


which had been dominant at the end of the previous century. . . . Theprofitability of the lucrative Caribbean islands was declining relative to theFrench West Indies. . . . Even the dependence of Ireland, the oldest colony,was in doubt.Whatever the underlying strength of the commercial econ-omy, many Britons felt that their great days were over” (Imperial Meridian:The British Empire and the World 1780–1830 [London: Longman, 1989], 2).

20. Horace Walpole, The Yale Edition of the Correspondence of Horace Walpole, ed.W. S. Lewis, 48 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1937–83),35:310.

21. Quoted in Gerald S. Graham, British Policy and Canada 1774–1791:A Studyin Eighteenth-Century Trade Policy (1930; repr., Westport, CT: GreenwoodPress, 1974), 52.

22. H. M. Scott,“Britain as a European Great Power in the Age of the AmericanRevolution,” in Britain and the American Revolution, ed. H. T. Dickinson(London: Longman, 1998), 180; John Cannon, “The Loss of America,” inibid., 235 (Frederick the Great), 234 (George III).

23. John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, The Private Papers of John, Earl ofSandwich, vol. 4, 1781–1782, ed. G. R. Barnes and J. H. Owen. Publicationsof the Navy Records Society 78 (London, 1938), 26.

24. William Cowper,“The Task,” in The Task and Selected Other Poems, ed. JamesSambrook (London: Longman, 1994), lines 770, 773–74.

25. J. H. Plumb, The First Four Georges (1956; repr., Glasgow: William CollinsSons & Co., 1966), 34–36.

26. Ralph S.Walker, ed., James Beattie’s London Diary 1773 (Aberdeen:AberdeenUniversity Press, 1946), 39.

27. Philip Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-CenturyEngland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 15.

28. John Milton,“Paradise Lost,” in Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. MerrittY. Hughes (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), book 1, lines 648–49.

29. Sir George Peckham, A True Report of the Late Discoveries (London, 1583),quoted in Klaus E. Knorr, British Colonial Theories 1570–1850 (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1944), 30.The notion is repeated in the VirginiaCompany’s True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia (1610),which states that we “doe buy of them [the natives] the pearles of the earth,and sell to them the pearls of heaven” (quoted in Paul Stevens,“Paradise Lostand the Colonial Imperative,” Milton Studies 34 [1996]: 8).

30. John Dryden, “The Hind and the Panther,” part 2, lines 572, 574, in ThePoems of John Dryden, ed. James Kinsley, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1958), vol. 2. Subsequent references to this work will be given in the text.

31. Thomas Sprat, Observations on Mons. De Sorbiere’s Voyage into England (London,1665), quoted in Greenfeld, Nationalism, 84 (see n. 12).

32. Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society of London (London, 1667), 129,quoted in Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Originsof Modern Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 138.

33. Matthew Prior, The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, ed. H. Bunker Wrightand Monroe K. Spears, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971),1:226.



34. Edward Ward, “To the Pious Memory of the Most Sublime and Accurate Mr. John Dryden,” in The London-Spy (1703), 422; John Dennis, The CriticalWorks of John Dennis, ed. Edward Hooker, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1939), 2:213; Samuel Johnson,“Preface to the Dictionary,”in Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Frank Brady and W. K.Wimsatt (Berkeley andLos Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), 296.

35. [Robert Southey?], Quarterly Review (1809), repr. in Richard Ruland, ed.,The Native Muse:Theories of American Literature, vol. 1 (New York: Dutton,1976), 71; Carlyle’s Unfinished History of German Literature, ed. Hill Shine(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1951), 6.

36. Encyclopedia Britannica quoted in Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory:A CriticalIntroduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 37;Thomas Wysequoted in Carol Duncan, “Putting the ‘Nation’ in London’s NationalGallery,” in The Formation of National Collections of Art and Archaeology, ed.Gwendolyn Wright (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1996), 107.

Chapter 1 The Progress of English

1. Cornelius W. Schoneveld, “Bilderdijk between Pope and Byron:The Para-doxes of His Translation of An Essay on Man into Dutch,” in CentennialHauntings: Pope, Byron and Eliot in the Year 88, ed. C. C. Barfoot and TheoD’Haen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), 219.

2. Robert Southey, “Epistle to Allan Cunningham,” in The Poetical Works ofRobert Southey, Collected by Himself, 10 vols. (London: Longman et al., 1838),3:305–18, lines 141–47. Line numbers for subsequent references to thispoem are supplied in the text.

3. See Paul Dibon, “L’Université de Leyde et la République des Lettres auXVIIe siècle,” Quaerendo 5 (1975): 4–38; Mordecai Feingold, “Reversal ofFortunes:The Displacement of Cultural Hegemony from the Netherlandsto England in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” in TheWorld of William and Mary: Anglo-Dutch Perspectives on the Revolution of1688–89, ed. Dale Hoak and Mordecai Feingold (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1996), 234–61, 316–22 (notes); E. H. Kossmann, “TheDutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Dutch Republic in theEighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment and Revolution, ed. Margaret C.Jacob and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1992), 19–31;Wijnand W. Mijnhardt,“The Dutch Enlightenment: Human-ism, Nationalism, and Decline,” in ibid., 197–223; Mijnhardt, “Dutch Cul-ture in the Age of William and Mary: Cosmopolitan or Provincial?” in TheWorld of William and Mary, ed. Hoak and Feingold, 219–33, 311–16 (notes).

4. John Adams,Papers of John Adams, vol. 10, June 1780–December 1780, ed.GreggL. Lint et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 174.

5. In a letter of December 6, 1828, to William Wordsworth, Southey writesthat he has been preparing various essays for the periodicals: “—these andan ‘Epistle to Allan Cunningham’ for his Anniversary, describing some of myportraits, make the main part of what I have done since my return fromLondon. The plan of thus exhibiting myself is borrowed from a poem of



Bilderdijk’s, part of which I have translated and introduced, and taken thatopportunity of doing what justice I can to one of the most admirable menin all respects whom it has been my good fortune to know” (New Letters ofRobert Southey, ed. Kenneth Curry, 2 vols. [New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1965], 2:329). In 1830, Southey had successfully recommended thatBilderdijk be elected an honorary member of the Royal Society ofLiterature (Cornelius De Deugd, “Friendship and Romanticism: RobertSouthey and Willem Bilderdijk,” in Europa Provincia Mundi: Essays inComparative Literature and European Studies Offered to Hugo Dyserinck on theOccasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Joep Leerssen and Karl UlrichSyndram [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992], 379).

6. Cf. the comments of Gunnar Brandell (“Weltliteratur and Literary Nation-alism,” in Problems of International Literary Understanding: Proceedings of theSixth Nobel Symposium Stockholm, September 1967, ed. Karl Ragnar Gierow[Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1968], 109–15) regarding the positionof Kierkegaard (Denmark), Ibsen (Norway), and Strindberg (Sweden) in thewider world of European literature: “The fame of all three of them spreadthrough Germany, where the language barrier was easy to overcome, andwhere reigned at that moment, around 1900, a particular receptiveness forimpulses from the North. It is an open question if any of them had held theposition they do to-day without the German assistance.And I should thinkthis is not unique: by being important in France or Britain a writerbecomes almost automatically part of the international literary scene,whereas a writer from a small country, if he is lucky, may be adopted in oneof the great countries and afterwards, with this backing, eventually acceptedby others” (113). Brandell also comments, “From around 1500 our worldliterature is heavily biased in favour of the politically dominating Europeanpowers. . . . The idea of an exchange between different literatures is, as acorollary, from now on undefinable without thinking in terms of big andsmall nations” (113).

7. Joseph Addison, The Freeholder, ed. James Leheny (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1979), 162.

8. John Florio, His Firste Fruites (1578; repr., New York: Da Capo, 1969), 50.9. Milton, Complete Poetry and Major Prose, 668 (see intro., n. 28).

10. “The Case of Mary Carleton,” in Counterfeit Ladies:The Life and Death ofMal Cutpurse and The Case of Mary Carleton, ed. Janet Todd and ElizabethSpearing (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 87.

11. Thomas Rymer, The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, ed. Curt Zimansky (New Haven,CT:Yale University Press, 1956; repr.,Westport,CT:GreenwoodPress, 1971), 9–10.

12. Much the same is true of England’s geopolitical standing in the Europeanworld. Under Charles I, J. R. Jones writes,“Powerlessness, combined with abusy diplomacy and grandiose pretensions, made England contemptible” inthe eyes of Continental powers; a similar situation arises in the reign ofCharles II. “English historians have described with some satisfaction thespeed with which Charles detached himself from the French alliance and



the Third Dutch War in 1674, and the way in which the French ambassadorwas taken by surprise: in reality the lack of French reaction, the absence ofa determined attempt to preserve the English alliance, was a true but unflat-tering estimate of how much it was worth. In terms of French diplomaticactivity and expenditure, England mattered far less than Brandenburg orSweden, and when Louis did later respond to Charles’s appeals for moneythe amounts which were paid put him on the same level as a minor Frenchpensioner like the Elector of Trier. In 1688 Louis, by his decision to pro-ceed with his aggression in the Rhineland, judged England to be lessimportant than Cologne or the Palatinate” (“English Attitudes to Europe inthe Seventeenth Century,” Britain and the Netherlands 3 [1968], 39).

13. The Yale Edition of the Correspondence of Horace Walpole, 41:152 (see intro., n. 20).14. John Hale comments: “It was Latin that enabled the English, through the

writings of such men as Bacon, Camden, the anatomist William Harvey andthe physician—and metaphysician—Robert Fludd, to re-enter as intellec-tuals a continent which had rejected them—with the loss of Calais in1558—as a political power” (The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance[New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994], 152).

15. Hester Lynch Piozzi, Ancedotes of Samuel Johnson, ed. S. C. Roberts (1925;repr., New York: Books for Libraries, 1980), 180; Bernard Kreissman,Pamela-Shamela:A Study of the Criticisms, Burlesques, Parodies, and Adaptations ofRichardson’s “Pamela” (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960), 83, n. 8.

16. Bernhard Fabian, “English Books and their Eighteenth-Century GermanReaders,” in The Widening Circle: Essays on the Circulation of Literature inEighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Paul J. Korshin (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1976), 172;William Jervis Jones, “ ‘Spuma Linguarum’:On the Status of English in German-Speaking Countries before 1700,” inImages of Language: German Attitudes to European Languages from 1500 to 1800(Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1999), 171.

17. George Crabbe, Selected Poems, ed. Gavin Edwards (London: PenguinBooks, 1991), 463; Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers, ed. Robin Gilmour(London: Penguin Books, 1987), 168.

18. Brief discussions of the frontispiece to The Universal Visiter are found in TrevorRoss, The Making of the English Literary Canon: From the Middle Ages to the LateEighteenth Century (Montreal and Kingston:McGill-Queen’s University Press,1998), 3–4, and in Richard Terry, Poetry and the Making of the English LiteraryPast 1660–1781 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 58–59.

19. Lady Mary Chudleigh, “To Mr. Dryden, on his Excellent Translation ofVirgil,” in Poems on Several Occasions.Together with the Song of the Three Chil-dren Paraphras’d (London: Bernard Lintot, 1703), 25–28. References to thispoem will be given by line number in the body of the text.

20. Ironically, though, Chudleigh’s own poem, like many such critiques ofrhymed verse, is itself written in rhyme. For a broad survey of the debateover rhyme in English poetry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,see Arthur Melville Clark, “Milton and the Renaissance Revolt againstRhyme,” in Studies in Literary Modes (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1946),



105–41; and Morris Freedman, “Milton and Dryden on Rhyme,”Huntington Library Quarterly 24 (1960–61): 337–44.The debate is of interesthere because it is construed by its participants as an issue not simply of lit-erary style or aesthetics, but of English cultural independence and culturalidentity—much like the debate over the popularity of Italian opera inBritain, which I discuss in chapter 3.

21. Sir John Denham,“On Mr.Abraham Cowley, his Death and Burial amongstthe Ancient Poets,” in Poems and Translations (London: H. Herringman,1668), 89–94; John Oldham,“Bion.A Pastoral, in Imitation of the Greek ofMoschus, Bewailing the Death of the Earl of Rochester,” in The Works ofMr. John Oldham (London: Jo.Hindmarsh, 1684), 73–87;Knightly Chetwood,“To the Earl of Roscommon on his Excellent Poem,” and John Dryden,“To the Earl of Roscommon, on his Excellent Essay on Translated Verse,”both prefixed to An Essay on Translated Verse. By the Earl of Roscommon(London: Jacob Tonson, 1684), unpaginated; John Dryden, “To My DearFriend, Mr. Congreve” (1694), in The Works of John Dryden, vol. 4, Poems1693–1696, ed.A. B. Chambers and William Frost (Berkeley and Los Angeles:University of California Press, 1974), 432–34; Joseph Addison, “AnAccount of the Greatest English Poets,” The Works of the Right HonourableJoseph Addison, Esq., 4 vols. (London: Jacob Tonson, 1721), 1:36–41;“SamuelCobb, Poetae Britannici (London: A. Roper and R. Basset, 1700); SamuelWesley, An Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (London: Charles Harper,1700); Jabez Hughes,“Verses Occasion’d by Reading Mr. Dryden’s Fables,”in Dryden:The Critical Heritage, ed. James Kinsley and Helen Kinsley (NewYork: Barnes and Noble, 1971), 248–53; Elijah Fenton,“An Epistle to Mr.Southerne,” in Poems on Several Occasions (London: Bernard Lintot, 1717),67–83; George Sewell, “To Mr. Pope, on his Poems and Translations,” in ANew Collection of Original Poems, Never Printed in any Miscellany (London: J.Pemberton and J. Peele, 1720), 58–62; Leonard Welsted, “Epistle to HisGrace the Duke of Chandos,” in The Works, In Verse and Prose, of Leonard Welsted (London: Printed for the Editor, 1787), 73–75; John Dart, Westminster-Abbey. A Poem (London: J. Batley, 1721); Judith Cowper Madan, “TheProgress of Poesy,” in The Poetical Calendar, ed. Francis Fawkes and WilliamWoty,12 vols. (London: J.Coote,1763–64),3:17–28;William Mason,“Musaeus,a Monody to the Memory of Mr. Pope,” in The Works of William Mason, 4vols. (London:T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1811), 1:1–15;Thomas Gray, “TheProgress of Poesy” (1757), in Thomas Gray and William Collins, PoeticalWorks, ed. Roger Lonsdale (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 46–51.

22. Cf. the chapter on “the progress-of-poesy poem” in Terry, Poetry and theMaking of the English Literary Past 1660–1781, 35–62, esp. 49–57 (see n. 18).

23. Jones, The Triumph of the English Language, 183 (see intro., n. 11).24. I draw the concept of the “apparatus of languages” from the work of Renée

Balibar: see her L’Institution du français: essai sur le colinguisme des Carolingiensà la République (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985).

25. Thomas Hobbes,“Answer to Davenant,” in Critical Essays of the SeventeenthCentury, ed. Joel E. Spingarn, 3 vols. (1908–09; repr., Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1957), 2:65.



26. Swift, A Proposal for Correcting . . . the English Language, 32 (see intro., n. 7);Johnson, Selected Poetry and Prose, 334, 336 (see intro., n. 34).

27. Edmund Waller,“Of English Verse,” in Silver Poets of the Seventeenth Century,ed. G. A. E. Parfitt (London: Dent, 1974), lines 5–6, 13–16. Subsequentreferences to this poem are given by line number in the text.

28. Sir William Temple,“An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning,” inCritical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Spingarn, 3:63 (see n. 25).

29. Pope, “Essay on Criticism,” lines 482–83 (see intro., n. 7); Joseph Addisonand Richard Steele, The Spectator, ed. Donald Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1965), 3:566.

30. Tickell, On the Prospect of Peace, lines 249, 251, 265–66 (see intro., n. 7).31. Thomas Sheridan, British Education: or, The Source of the Disorders of Great

Britain (1756; repr., Menston, England: Scolar Press, 1971), xvii.32. I cite Boileau’s original (“L’Art poétique”) and the Soame–Dryden transla-

tion (“The Art of Poetry”) from the parallel printing of the English andFrench works in The Continental Model: Selected French Critical Essays of theSeventeenth Century, in English Translation, ed. Scott Elledge and DonaldSchier, rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970). References tothese works will be given by line number in the body of the text. (Thequotation from Jacob Tonson is from The Continental Model, 386.)

33. A few years later, in 1686, the East India Company, under Sir Josiah Child,did send troops to India and declared war on the Mughal Empire. Despitemilitary and naval support from James II, they were driven out of Surat,imperiled in Bombay, and defeated in Bengal. In September 1687, theCompany was able to sue for peace, by agreeing to pay “a large sum in repa-rations.” Only in 1690 was the Company allowed back into Bengal,“after agrovelling apology from it as well as a fine of 150,000 rupees (about£15,000 sterling)” (Bruce P. Lenman, England’s Colonial Wars 1550–1688[London: Longman, 2001], 209–11).

34. It is noteworthy that the American colonies do not seem appropriate to theseauthors to invoke at this juncture. The imperial fantasies of British literaryculture were oriented toward the Old World of the East, even though the so-called first British Empire was constructed in the “New World” of theWest,with the gap between these two orders creating a space of imperial antic-ipation and design that accompanies and shapes British expansion in the East.

35. Samuel Johnson, The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language (London:J. and P. Knapton et al., 1747), 10.

36. Richard Bailey has gathered much material that bears on this topic in thechapter on “World English,” in his Images of English:A Cultural History of theLanguage (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 93–121.

37. Samuel Cobb,“Of Poetry,” in Poems on Several Occasions . . . To which is Pre-fix’d A Discourse on Criticism and the Liberty of Writing, 3d ed. (London: JamesWoodward, 1710), lines 672–81.

38. John Dryden, “To My Honor’d Friend, Dr. Charleton,” lines 21–22, inThe Works of John Dryden, vol. 1, Poems 1649–1680, ed. E. N. Hooker and H. T. Swedenberg, Jr. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 1956). Subsequent references to this poem will be supplied in the text.



39. Welsted,“Epistle to . . . Chandos,” lines 11, 17–22 (see n. 21).40. “Some Thoughts on the English Language,” The Universal Visiter ( January

1756): 6 (the author of this essay was probably Christopher Smart); ThePresent State of the Republick of Letters (November 1728): 399.

41. C. Lennart Carlson, The First Magazine: A History of the Gentleman’sMagazine (Providence, RI: Brown University, 1938), 81.

42. James Macpherson, The Poems of Ossian and Related Works, ed. HowardGaskill (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 41, 51, 409.Macpherson’s comment about the “metropolitan” function of the Englishlanguage as a medium for international cultural exchange reiterates a claimmade some years earlier, in 1756, by the Society in Scotland for the Prop-agation of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK), which sought “to introduceamong the Highlanders a knowledge of the English language, to fit themfor understanding and being understood by the rest of the world” (PresentState of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge [Edinburgh,1756?], 40, quoted in Sorensen, The Grammar of Empire in Eighteenth-CenturyBritish Writing, 40 [see intro., n. 8]).We see in these remarks the interdepen-dence between claims about English’s international standing and claimsabout its metropolitan function within the British Isles.

43. Thomas Sheridan, A Discourse. Being Introductory to His Course of Lectures onElocution and the English Language (1759; repr., Augustan Reprint Society,no. 136, Los Angeles:William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1969), 12.

44. Adams, Papers of John Adams, 10:128.45. Ibid., 170.46. David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, 2 vols. (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1932), 2:170–71.47. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed.

David Womersley, 3 vols. (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1994),2:514, n. 8; Samuel T. Coleridge, Coleridge’s Shakespearean Criticism, ed.Thomas M. Raysor, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1930), 1:254–55.

48. Francis Turner Palgrave, The Golden Treasury, ed. Christopher Ricks(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1991), 8; James Weldon Johnson,The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922; repr., New York: Harcourt BraceJovanovich, 1983), 40.

49. Sara Suleri, Meatless Days (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989),112.

50. Edwin Guest, A History of English Rhythms, ed.W.W. Skeat (1838; London:George Bell and Sons, 1882), 703, quoted in Alastair Pennycook, The CulturalPolitics of English as an International Language (London: Longman, 1994), 99.

51. Rev. James George, The Mission of Great Britain to the World, or Some of theLessons Which She Is Now Teaching (Toronto: Dudley and Burns, 1867), 6,quoted in ibid.

52. United Kingdom, Committee on the Legal Status of the Welsh Language,Report, 1965, 9.



53. Sheridan, A Discourse, 39–40 (see n. 43).54. “W. R.,” Wallography (1681), quoted in Prys Morgan, The Eighteenth-Century

Renaissance (Llandybie,Wales: Christopher Davies, 1981), 20. See also, in thiscontext,Thomas Rymer’s comment in 1692 on Taliessin and Merlin as earlyWelsh poets: “had they not written in Welch, [they] might yet deserve anesteem among us” (quoted in Terry, Poetry and the Making of the EnglishLiterary Past 1660–1781, 134 [see n. 18]).

55. Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, ed. Peter Levi(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1984), 151. Subsequent referencesto this work are given in the text.

56. Samuel Johnson, The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. Bruce Redford, 5 vols.(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992–94), 1:151–52. Johnson isevidently asking for a continuation of the kind of work begun in EdwardLhuyd’s Archaeologia Britannica (Oxford, 1707), in which Lhuyd investigatedthe affinities of Welsh with other Celtic languages, such as Breton.

57. Charles O’Conor, Dissertations on the Ancient History of Ireland, rev. ed.(London, 1766), iv, quoted in ibid., 1:151, n. 4.

58. Thomas Watts,“On the Probable Future Position of the English Language,”Proceedings of the Philological Society 4 (1850): 209. Subsequent references aregiven in the text.

59. Pope, one might note, cited these two lines in Peri Bathos (1728) to illustratethe bathetic effect produced by anticlimax: the first line of the couplet, withits imperial conceit, raises expectations that are disappointed by the paltrysuccess commemorated in the second line (Poetry and Prose of AlexanderPope, ed.Aubrey Williams [Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1969], 416).

60. Thomas B. Macaulay,“Minute on Indian Education,” in Selected Writings, ed.John Clive and Thomas Pinney (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1972), 243.

61. John Hughes, An Essay on the Ancient and Present State of the Welsh Language(London: Privately printed, 1822), 52. Subsequent references are given inthe text.

62. For a discussion of this “renaissance,” see Saunders Lewis, A School of WelshAugustans: Being a Study in English Influences on Welsh Literature during Part ofthe Eighteenth Century (Wrexham, UK: Hughes and Son, 1924) and Morgan,The Eighteenth-Century Renaissance (see n. 54).

63. Roland Mathias, Anglo-Welsh Literature.An Illustrated History (Bridgend, UK:Poetry Wales Press, 1987), 53–54.

64. [ John Wolcot], The Poetical Works of Peter Pindar, Esq.A Distant Relation to thePoet of Thebes (Dublin:A. Colles et al., 1791), 96 and unnumbered note.

65. This seems to me to mark the major limitation of the otherwise compellingrecent scholarly work by Robert Crawford, Leith Davis, Janet Sorensen, andothers on Anglo-Scottish literary and cultural relations since the Union of1707. By focusing its attention on domestic “British” contexts, such workfails to assess the intersections of domestic hegemony, European rivalry, andoverseas imperialism in the construction of the empire of English.



Chapter 2 The Republic of Letters

1. Marc Fumaroli,“The Republic of Letters,” Diogenes 143 (1988), 136–39. Forthe fullest account of the early history of the phrase, see Françoise Waquet,“Qu’est-ce que la République des Lettres? Essai de sémantique historique,”Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 147 (1989): 473–502. See also ElizabethEisenstein, “The Republic of Letters and the Printed Book-Trade,” ThePrinting Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transforma-tions in Early-Modern Europe, 2 vols. in 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1980), 136–59, esp. 137, n. 287 where she notes the use of thephrase in 1417.

2. Dibon, “L’Université de Leyde et la République des Lettres,” 26–27 (see chap. 1, n. 3). The (religious) notion of “Christendom,” however, wasbecoming outmoded by the early eighteenth century, if not already by themid-seventeenth century, its place being taken by the newer (cultural orcivilizational) notion of “Europe,” and it is this latter concept that providesthe contextual frame for the eighteenth-century republic of letters. On theshift from “Christendom” to “Europe,” see Franklin Le Van Baumer, “TheConception of Christendom in Renaissance Europe,” Journal of the Historyof Ideas 6 (1945): 131–56; Denys Hay,“ ‘Europe’ and ‘Christendom’:A Prob-lem in Renaissance Terminology and Historical Semantics,” Diogenes 17(1957): 45–55; Hay, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea, rev. ed. (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press, 1968); and Hale, The Civilization of Europe inthe Renaissance, 3–15 (see chap. 1, n. 14).

3. For general studies of the érudit republic of letters of the seventeenth cen-tury, see (in addition to the works cited previously): Hans Bots,“L’Esprit dela République des Lettres et la tolérance dans les trois premier périodiqueshollandais,” XVIIe Siècle 116 (1977): 43–57; Hans Bots and FrançoiseWaquet, eds., Commercium Litterarium: Forms of Communication in the Republicof Letters 1600–1750 (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press, 1994);Lorraine Daston,“The Ideal and Reality of the Republic of Letters in theEnlightenment,” Science in Context 4 (1991): 367–86; Paul Dibon, “Com-munication in the Respublica literaria of the 17th Century,” Respublica Litter-aria: Studies in the Classical Tradition 1 (1978): 43–55;Anne Goldgar, ImpoliteLearning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters 1680–1750 (NewHaven, CT:Yale University Press, 1995); Maarten Ultee,“The Place of theDutch Republic in the Republic of Letters of the Late Seventeenth Cen-tury,” Dutch Crossing 31 (1987): 54–78; Maarten Ultee, “The Republic ofLetters: Learned Correspondence, 1680–1720,” The Seventeenth Century 2(1987): 96–112; Maarten Ultee, “Res publica litteraria and War,1680–1715,” in Res Publica Literaria: Die Institutionen der Gelehrsamkeit in derfrühen Neuzeit, ed. Sebastian Neumeister and Conrad Wiedeman, 2 vols.(Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1987), 2:535–46; Françoise Waquet,“De lalettre érudite au périodique savant: les faux semblants d’une mutation intel-lectuelle,” XVIIe Siècle 140 (1983): 347–59; Françoise Waquet,“Les Éditionsde correspondances savantes et les idéaux de la République des Lettres,”

NOTES FOR P . 56188


XVIIe Siècle 178 (1993): 99–118.These scholars stress the foundation of theearly republic of letters on personal (rather than institutional) relations andpractices (Goldgar); the small size of the active community of the republicof letters—not more than 1,200 persons in any given year (according toUltee, “The Republic of Letters,” 100); and the central importance oflearned correspondences as the chief modality through which the republicof letters was sustained.

4. Guez de Balzac quoted in Waquet, “Qu’est-ce que la République deslettres?” 501, n. 125 (see n. 1); Sir Richard Blackmore, Eliza:An Epick Poem.In Ten Books (London:Awnsham and John Churchill, 1705), 89.

5. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 138 (see n. 1).Subsequent references to this work are given in the text.

6. Variations on the notion of the republic of letters recur in the writings ofscores of English-language authors from George Wither in the mid-seventeenth century to Hazlitt and Southey in the early nineteenthcentury—including, Sir Thomas Browne; Sir Richard Blackmore;ThomasRymer; John Dennis; John Dryden; Sir William Temple; John Locke; JosephAddison; Samuel Cobb; Jonathan Swift; Charles Gildon; John Oldmixon;John Gay; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl ofShaftesbury;Thomas Tickell; Jonathan Richardson; Henry Fielding; EdwardYoung; Samuel Derrick; John Langhorne; Charles Churchill;William JuliusMickle; Frances Burney; David Hume; Samuel Johnson; Laurence Sterne;George Huddesford;Thomas Jefferson; Joel Barlow; Lemuel Hopkins; JamesBoswell; Oliver Goldsmith; Christopher Anstey; William Hayley; HenryJames Pye; Bishop Richard Hurd; and Samuel Ireland. I discuss a few ofthese examples more directly in the course of this chapter.

7. Thomas Chatterton. “The Whore of Babylon,” line 359, and “KewGardens,” line 859, both in vol. 1 of The Complete Works of Thomas Chatter-ton, ed. Donald S.Taylor, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971); Sir JosephBanks’s letter and its translation by the French Ministry of Marine andColonies quoted in G. R. de Beer,“The Relations between Fellows of theRoyal Society and French Men of Science when France and Britain wereat War,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 9 (1951–52): 271,272; and Elizabeth Hamilton, Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, ed.Pamela Perkins and Shannon Russell (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press,1999), 55.

8. David Garrick, The Letters of David Garrick, ed. David M. Little and GeorgeM. Kahrl, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 1:143.

9. [N. Bonaventure d’Argonne],“Vigneul-Marvilliana,” in Ana, ou Collection debons mots, contes, pensées détachées, traits d’histoire et anecdotes des hommes célèbres,depuis la renaissance des lettres jusqu’à nos jours; suivis d’un choix de proposjoyeux, mots plaisans, réparties fines et contes a rire.Tirés de différens recueils [comp.Charles Georges Thomas Garnier], 10 vols. (Amsterdam: et se trouve, àParis, Chez Visse, 1789), 5:414–17.

10. Henry Oldenburg, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. A. RupertHall and Marie Boas Hall, 9 vols. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,



1966), 2:27–28. It is perhaps worth remarking that, while “49 per cent ofthe Fellows of the Royal Society were foreigners” in 1740 ( J. S. Bromley,“Britain and Europe in the Eighteenth Century,” History 66 [1981]: 394),“no woman was elected to full membership in the Royal Society until1945” (Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? 26 [see intro., n. 32]).

11. Monthly Review 18 (March 1758): 249-50.12. [N. Bonaventure d’Argonne], Mélanges d’Histoire et de Litterature, 3 vols.

(Rotterdam: Chez Elie Yvans, 1700–02), 1:262.13. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, L’An Deux Mille Quatre Cent Quarante (rev. ed.,

1786), chap. 47, quoted in Edward D. Seeber, “Ideal Languages in theFrench and English Imaginary Voyage,” PMLA 60 (1945): 596.

14. For a full discussion of the complex publishing history of this work, seeJohn Dowling, Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (Boston, MA:Twayne, 1977).

15. Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, Respublica Literaria: or, The Republick of Letters;being a Vision, trans. “J. E.” (London: S. Austen, 1727), 1–3. (Subsequentreferences to this work are given in the text.)

16. It is perhaps worth noting that Dante’s palace of Limbo in canto 4 of theInferno has often been construed as a palace of Fame, with its seven wallsrepresenting the seven liberal arts, and that its inhabitants—the poets,philosophers, and “great souled” men and women of Greece, Rome, theIslamic world, and Italy—form a kind of proto-republic of letters. Dante(d.1321) precedes the first recorded use of the phrase respublica literaria by ahundred years but his example suggests that the concept antedates the term—and his inclusion of figures like Avicenna,Averroes, and Saladin shows us thatequating the idea of the republic of letters with the respublica Christiana, evenin its early days, leads us to ignore the cultural work it is used to effect.

17. Likewise, one might note, the only woman, ancient or modern, mentionedin Swift’s Battle of the Books (pub. 1704) is “Afra the Amazon” (i.e., AphraBehn), though the forces of the moderns are numbered at “fifty thousand”(“A Full and True Account of the Battel Fought last Friday between theAntient and the Modern Books in St. James’s Library,” in The Oxford Authors:Jonathan Swift, ed. Angus Ross and David Woolley [Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1984], 16, 6).

18. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu [Letter to Anna Maria van Schurman](ca.1742–46), in Essays and Poems and “Simplicity, a Comedy,” ed. RobertHalsband and Isobel Grundy (1977; repr. with new preface, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1993), 166. Lady Mary, one recalls, reflected on the stigmaattached to women’s participation in the republic of letters when sheadvised that a woman should “conceal whatever Learning she attains, withas much solicitude as she would hide crookedness or lameness” (quoted inRobert Halsband, “Ladies of Letters in the Eighteenth Century,” in TheLady of Letters in the Eighteenth Century. Papers Read at a Clark Library Semi-nar January 18, 1969 by Irvin Ehrenpreis and Robert Halsband [Los Angeles:William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1969], 35).

19. David Hume,“Of Essay-Writing,” in Essays, Moral Political and Literary, ed.Eugene F. Miller, rev. ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1987), 537.(Subsequent citations are given in the text.)



20. Philip Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society, Britain 1660–1800(London: Longman, 2001), 66.

21. Sarah Fielding, The Adventures of David Simple, ed. Peter Sabor (Lexington:University Press of Kentucky, 1998), [3] (original in italics).

22. Halsband,“Ladies of Letters in the Eighteenth Century,” 50–51 (see n. 18).23. [William Rose], Review of History of England, by Catherine Macaulay,

Monthly Review 29 (1763): 372–82; Henry Mackenzie, Letters to ElizabethRose of Kilravock, ed. Horst W. Drescher (Münster:Verlag Aschendorff, 1967),70. The Restoration and eighteenth-century period witnessed, of course,the emergence of a number of important groupings of literary women fromthe circle around Katharine Philips, to the “female senate” around Swift, to thefemale coterie around Richardson, and the Bluestocking circles of the latereighteenth century.

24. Critical Review, 2d ser., 5 (1792): 132, quoted in Laura L. Runge,“GenderedStrategies in the Criticism of Early Fiction,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 28(1995): 375.

25. Pope, “The Temple of Fame,” in Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. Butt, lines278–81, 288–91 (see intro., n. 7). Subsequent references to this poem areprovided in the text.

26. Pope,“Essay on Criticism,” in Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. Butt, lines 478–83(see intro., n. 7).

27. Thomas Sheridan, A Dissertation on the Causes of the Difficulties Which Occur,In Learning the English Tongue, quoted in Adam Beach, “The Creation of aClassical Language in the Eighteenth Century,” Texas Studies in Literature andLanguage 43 (2001): 125.

28. William Kenrick in the Monthly Review 21 (November 1759): 381, quoted inThe Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed.Arthur Friedman, 5 vols. (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1966), 1:247. Subsequent references to Goldsmith’s Enquiryinto the Present State of Polite Learning are also from this edition and are providedin the text.

29. On the importance of this theme in eighteenth-century English literaryculture, see Michael Meehan,Liberty and Poetics in Eighteenth-Century England(London: Croom Helm, 1986).

30. Dibon writes regarding Grotius:“Pour lui, l’activité intellectuelle est essen-tiellement ordonnée à la praxis, au service de la cité” (“L’Université deLeyde et la République des Lettres,” 32) (see chap. 1, n. 3).

31. Joseph Addison, Letters of Joseph Addison, ed. Walter Graham (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1941), 281.

32. Sir Joseph Banks, letter to Déodat de Dolomieu, 1801, quoted in de Beer,“The Relations between Fellows of the Royal Society and French Men ofScience,” 275 (see n. 7).

33. Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, ed. Robin Robbins, 2 vols.(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 1:2–3. Subsequent citations of this work,all from volume one, will be incorporated into the text.

34. On Browne’s relation to the concept of the republic of letters, see R. J. Schoeck,“Sir Thomas Browne and the Republic of Letters: Introduc-tion,” English Language Notes 19 (1982): 299–312 and Jean-Jacques



Denonain, “Thomas Browne and the ‘Respublica Litteraria,’ ” EnglishLanguage Notes 19 (1982): 370–81.

35. Cf. other seventeenth-century comments that emphasize the culturalnationalist import of writing in English: e.g., Sir Edward Coke explains whyhe wrote the first part of his Institutes (Coke on Littleton, 1628) in English:“This part we have . . . published in English, for that they are an introduc-tion to the knowledge of the national law of the realm. . . . We have left ourauthor to speak his own language, and have translated him into English, tothe end that any of the nobility or gentry of this realm, or of any other estateor profession whatsoever, that will be pleased to read him and these Insti-tutes, may understand the language wherein they are written” (quoted inJohn W. Cairns, “Blackstone, an English Institutist,” Oxford Journal of LegalStudies 4 [1984], 330). Similarly, Milton comments, in the Doctrine and Disci-pline of Divorce (1643), that his work “might perhaps more fitly have beenwritten in another tongue [i.e., Latin]: and I had done so, but that the esteemI have of my country’s judgment, and the love I bear to my native languageto serve it first with what I endeavor, made me speak it thus, ere I assay theverdict of outlandish readers” (Complete Poems and Major Prose, 702 [seeintro., n. 28]). One notes that in the postcolonial world, too, the choice oflanguage in which to write is bound up with issues of cultural nationalism.

36. Pseudodoxia Epidemica did, of course, go on to acquire a wider Europeanaudience: it was translated into Dutch (in 1668), into German (in 1680),into French (in 1733), and from the French into Italian (in 1737). SeeGeoffrey Keynes, A Bibliography of Sir Thomas Browne, 2d ed. (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1968).

37. Likewise, the tendency to take note of French recognition of English liter-ary achievements betrays a similar, though more direct, concern withextraterritorial opinion. Even so nationalistic a critic as John Dennis—whoinsists (as we will see in chapter 3) on the national distinctiveness of eachculture on the basis of its “Religion, Climate, and Customs” (12) and whoasserts, “I love my Country very well, and therefore should be ravished tosee that we out did the French in Arts, at the same time that we contend forEmpire with them” (10)—evidences this kind of deference to foreign opin-ions. In The Impartial Critick (1693), he writes of Edmund Waller:“We all ofus have reason to Honour the Man, who has been an Honour to England:And it is with an inexpressible pleasure, that I find his Death lamented bytwo great French Wits, viz. La Fontaine, and Monsieur St. Euremont” (13). LaFontaine and Saint-Evremond thus function to ratify English self-regard.(All citations are from The Critical Works of John Dennis, vol. 1 [see intro, n.34].) The character of English responses to French comments, whether pos-itive or negative, about English culture bears a striking analogy, indeed, toScottish and Irish responses to English comments on their cultural tradi-tions and achievements.

38. Adam Smith,“Letter to the Edinburgh Review,” in Essays on Philosophical Sub-jects, ed.W. P. D.Wightman and J. C. Bryce (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund,1982), 243.



39. Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 28, 29.

40. The centrality of the notion of “emulation” to eighteenth-century Britishliterary culture is highlighted by Howard Weinbrot in Britannia’s Issue:TheRise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1993), but he sees the concept as contributing to a benign cos-mopolitanism, whereas I see it as feeding a competitive cultural nationalism.

41. Addison, writing before the Union of Scotland and England in 1707, workswith an “English” framework, but Pope’s prefatory poem, originally pub-lished in Pope’s Works of 1720 and reprinted in Tickell’s edition of Addison’sWorks in 1721, speaks in a “British” idiom.The poem was further revised in1726, and published in the 1735 edition of Pope’s Works.

42. Joseph Addison,Dialogues upon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals.Especially in Rela-tion to the Latin and Greek Poets (wr. 1702; pub. 1721), in The Works of the RightHonourable Joseph Addison, ed. Richard Hurd, 6 vols. (London: T. Cadell andW.Davies, 1811), 1:339. (Pope’s prefatory “Verses” are found on pages 337–38.The text here prints the 1721 version of the poem, without the six lines [lines5–10] that Pope added in 1726, and includes three substantive variants fromthe final version of the poem.) Subsequent references to these works will beprovided in the body of the text.

43. The contrast between the opening section of the poem and its close is evenmore noticeable when one considers the six lines not included in thisreprinting of the poem. In those lines, Pope describes critically some of the“wonders” of ancient Rome that have fallen into ruins or have disappearedaltogether:

Imperial wonders rais’d on Nations spoil’d,Where mix’d with Slaves the groaning Martyr toil’d;Huge Theatres, that now unpeopled Woods,Now drain’d a distant country of her Floods;Fanes, which admiring Gods with pride survey,Statues of Men, scarce less alive than they. (lines 5–10)(see “To Mr Addison, Occasioned by his Dialogues on Medals,” in ThePoems of Alexander Pope, 215 [see intro., n. 7])

The message is clear that not only is it vain to imagine that such “wonders”will survive, but also that they are dubious achievements in the first place,being dependent on “slaves” and “martyr[s]” and on “nations” that have beendespoiled. Given this emphasis, it is even more striking that by the end of thepoem Pope should entreat his compatriots to emulate and succeed Rome.

Howard Erskine-Hill offers a rich reading of Pope’s poem (“The MedalAgainst Time: Pope’s Epistle to Mr. Addison,” in The Augustan Idea in English Literature [London: Edwin Arnold, 1983], 267–90), but one which,to my mind, too easily resolves the tension in the poem between its open-ing suspicion of Roman acts of glory and its concluding endorsement ofBritish emulation of the ancient Romans. Pope’s poem may offer ways of



revivifying the decayed monumentality of Augustan Rome (by translatingit into the career of modern Britain), but it never offers any adequateanswer to the moral dubiousness of Roman grandeur.

44. A particularly telling instance of this inability to view the ancients exceptby way of the polite world of continental Europe occurs in Cynthio’s praiseof Horace’s satiric finesse, in contrast to the crude management of “ourEnglish satirists” (369): “Horace knew how to stab with address,” Cynthiodeclares, “and to give a thrust where he was least expected. Boileau hasnicely imitated him in this, as well as his other beauties. But our Englishlibellers are for hewing a man downright, and for letting him see at a dis-tance that he is to look for no mercy.”“I own to you,” Eugenius responds,“I have often admired this piece of art in the two satirists you mention . . .”(370). Here, the “beauties” of Horace become indistinguishable from thebeauties of Boileau, and it is almost as if Cynthio and Eugenius have learnedto see in Horace what they have been trained to notice by Boileau.

Addison’s remarks here echo Dryden’s comments in his “Discourse con-cerning the Original and Progress of Satire” (1692): Dryden remarks on the“fineness of raillery” in artful satire that serves to distinguish “the slovenlyButchering of a Man,” from “the fineness of a stroak that separates the Headfrom the Body, and leaves it standing in its place,” before going on toinstance his portrait of Zimri in Absalom and Achitophel as something he isproud of in this regard (The Works of John Dryden, vol. 4, 71 [see chap. 1, n.21]). It is especially telling that while Addison seems to have Dryden’s lan-guage in the back of his mind here, he evokes it only to criticize “our Eng-lish satirists”—presumably, including Dryden himself. (Dryden’s owncomment has been related, through Thomas Rymer’s 1674 translation, toRené Rapin’s Reflexions sur l’Aristote: see P. J. Smallwood,“A Dryden Allusionto Rymer’s Rapin,” Notes and Queries 23 [1976]: 554.)

45. For one account of the demise of the republic of letters in the nineteenthcentury, precisely as the result of the increasingly irreconcilable divorcebetween scholarship and belles lettres over the course of the eighteenthcentury, see Joseph Levine, “Strife in the Republic of Letters,” in Commer-cium Litterarium, ed. Bots and Waquet, 310–19 (see n. 3).

46. Antony van Zijlvelt’s engraving is preserved in the Academisch HistorischMuseum, Leiden; a reproduction is available in Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleerand G.H.M.Posthumus Meyjes, eds.,Leiden University in the Seventeenth Cen-tury:An Exchange of Learning (Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden / E. J. Brill,1975), 460.

47. In a letter to George Stepney, written from Vienna in November 1702,while he was at work on the Dialogues upon Medals,Addison writes:“I haveendeavour’d to treat my subject, that is in itself very bare of ornaments, asdivertingly as I could. I have propos’d to my self such a way of Instructingas in Dialogues on the Plurality of Worlds [by Fontenelle, 1686].This veryowning of designe will I believe look like a piece of Vanity . . .” (Letters ofJoseph Addison, 35–36 [see n. 31]). This comment suggests the distancebetween Addison’s polite discourse and the erudite discourse of the



numismatists, and it indicates the exemplary status of French works both inleading this shift toward a broader readership and as models for emulation.

48. One discerns behind Addison’s critical comments here a submerged aware-ness of Tacitus’s discussion of cultural imperialism and the Roman arts ofrule. Commenting on Agricola’s Romanization of the Britons, Tacitus(Agricola, 21) writes: “Roman dress, too, became popular and the toga wasfrequently seen. Little by little there was a slide towards the allurements ofdegeneracy. . . . In their inexperience the Britons called it civilization whenit was really all part of their servitude” (quoted in Peter Salway, RomanBritain [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984], 142).Aping Roman attireis shameful, Addison knows, not only because it is unmerited and parodic,but also because it is a mark or a residue of colonization and subjection.

49. For a useful discussion of representations of Britain in Roman literature, seeKatharine Allen,“Britain in Roman Literature,” University of Wisconsin Stud-ies in Language and Literature 3 (1919): 133–48.

50. Walpole, The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, 28:144 (seeintro., n. 20); Frances Burney, Evelina, or The History of a Young Lady’s Entranceinto the World, ed. Margaret Doody (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994),7 (original in italics).

51. Edward Gibbon, “Essai sur l’étude de la littérature,” in The MiscellaneousWorks of Edward Gibbon, 4:27–28 (see intro., n. 15); Jonathan Swift, The Cor-respondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams, 5 vols. (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1963–65), 3:217.

52. Samuel Richardson, Pamela or,Virtue Rewarded, ed.T.C.Duncan Eaves and BenD.Kimpel (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 5. Subsequent referencesto this work are provided in the text.

53. Anna Williams, “Verses Addressed to Mr. Richardson, on his History ofSir Charles Grandison,” Miscellanies (London:T. Davies et al., 1766), 32.

54. Joseph Addison,“An Essay on the Georgics,” in The California Edition of theWorks of John Dryden, vol. 5, The Works of Virgil in English, 1697, ed.WilliamFrost and Vinton A. Dearing (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia Press, 1987), 145.

55. Fumaroli,“The Republic of Letters,” 145 (see n. 1).56. Thomas Shadwell, The Virtuoso: A Comedy (London: Henry Herringman,

1676), 2.57. Aphra Behn,“The Translator’s Preface,” to her translation of Fontenelle’s A

Discovery of New Worlds (1688), in The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Janet Todd(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993), 4:75.

58. Mercure galant (October 1694), quoted from Louis Réau, L’Europe françaiseau siècle des Lumières (Paris: Albin Michel, 1971), 23, with modificationsbased on Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à nosjours (Paris:A. Colin, 1967), 5:137.

59. Henry Fielding, The Grub-Street Opera, ed. Edgar V. Roberts (Lincoln: Uni-versity of Nebraska Press, 1968), 54.

60. See Jean Sgard, ed., Dictionnaire des Journaux, 1600–1789, 2 vols. (Oxford:Voltaire Foundation, 1991).



61. Voltaire, letter to Pierre Guyot, August 7, 1767, in The Complete Works ofVoltaire, ed. Theodore Besterman, vol. 116 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation,1974), D14340.

62. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 147 (see n. 1).63. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, Grub Street Abroad: Aspects of the French Cosmopolitan

Press from the Age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1992), 38–39.Within France itself, through the mid-sixteenth century,more books were published in Latin than in French, but by the mid-seventeenth century, the Latin proportion had declined to about 20% of thetotal number of titles published. By 1700, the Latin proportion was approxi-mately 10% of the total and “by 1764 publications in ancient and foreign lan-guages only accounted for 4.5 per cent of printed output in the kingdom”(Françoise Waquet, Latin or the Empire of a Sign [London:Verso, 2001], 81).Waquet also notes that “about 20 per cent” of the learned periodicals pub-lished in Europe between 1665 and 1747 were in Latin (84) and that 31%of the texts reviewed in the Bibliothèque raisonnée des ouvrages des savants del’Europe between 1728 and 1740 were written in Latin (83–84).

64. Goldsmith, Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning, 292 (see n. 28).65. Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen

(1673), ed. Paula L. Barbour (Los Angeles:William Andrews Clark Memo-rial Library, 1980), 34.

66. Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot,trans. Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1995), 92–93.

67. “A Character of Saint-Evremond,” in The California Edition of the Works ofJohn Dryden, vol. 20, Prose 1691–1698, ed. A. E.Wallace Maurer (Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of California Press,1989), 7. (The second halfof this “Character” is written by John Dryden.)

68. Pierre Bayle, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres [1684–87], repr. as vol. 1of his Oeuvres Diverses, 4 vols. (Amsterdam, 1727; repr. Hildesheim: Olms,1964–68). My citations of the Nouvelles are from the Olms photographicreprint of the Oeuvres Diverses, vol. 1, here, 416. Subsequent references tothis work will be given by page number in the body of the text.

69. For a useful brief history of the periodical, see Raymond Birn,“Le Journaldes Savants sous l’Ancien Régime,” Journal des Savants (1965): 15–35.

70. Pierre Desmaizeaux, Lettres de M. Bayle, publiées sur les originaux, avec desremarques (Amsterdam, 1729), quoted in Waquet, “Qu’est-ce que laRépublique des Lettres?” 485 (see n. 1).

71. With regard to religious schisms in the republic of letters, see Rosalie Colie,who describes Bayle as one of “a host of men . . . who took advantage ofincreasing literacy to mobilize international Protestantism into a republic ofletters” (“John Locke in the Republic of Letters,” Britain and the Netherlands,vol. 1, ed. J. S. Bromley and E. H. Kossmann [London: Chatto and Windus,1960], 118) and Mario Rosa, who speaks of an ecclesiastic or monasticrepublic of letters established by the Maurists (“Un ‘méditateur’ dans la



République des Lettres: le bibliothécaire,” in Commercium Litterarium, ed.Bots and Waquet, 87 and 96) (see n. 3). However, I see these Protestant andCatholic formations as sectoral divisions within the European republic ofletters rather than as autonomous formations in their own right. See alsoPeter van Rooden, “Sects, Heterodoxies, and the Diffusion of Knowledgein the Republic of Letters,” in Commericum Litterarium, ed. Bots and Waquet,51–64 (see n. 3): Rooden argues that the Jewish intellectual world, whileequally international in character, remained separate and apart from theEuropean republic of letters, which never quite lost its roots in the notionof the common corps of Christendom.

72. Henri Basnage de Beauval, Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans (November1687), quoted in Bots, “L’Esprit de la République des Lettres,” 49 (see n. 3).

73. Descartes had already declared, in his “The Search After Truth by the Light ofNature,” that “it is no more the duty of an ordinary well-disposed manto know Greek and Latin than it is to know the languages of Switzerland orBrittany” and this work of his is designed to show, that “an unlettered man” isfully capable of philosophical inquiry even without school learning: nonethe-less, this work was itself first published in 1701 in Latin (though it had beencomposed in French) (see The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans.Elizabeth S.Haldane and G. R.T. Ross, 2 vols. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1931], 1:309, 304). In England, as William Sacksteder argues, the lifetime ofThomas Hobbes (1588–1679) serves to mark the shift away from Latin:Hobbes is “at the watershed between scholarly employment of Latin and cre-ative philosophy in English. Previous British thinkers had written only popu-lar works in the vernacular, and his successors wrote all major works therein”(33); still, Hobbes’s own practice of composing his major works in both Eng-lish and Latin, and his constant utilization of the different conceptual resourcesand implications of Greek, Latin, and English terms suggest the limits of thevernacularization that has taken place by the Restoration period. (See WilliamSacksteder, “Hobbes: Teaching Philosophy to Speak English,” Journal of theHistory of Philosophy 16 [1978]: 33–45.) Similarly, Locke may have composed(and published) his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in English,but whenhe prepared a Latin edition of the work, he undertook to revise it and wroteto his friend William Molyneux to request assistance in “paring off some of thesuperfluous repetitions . . . left in for the sake of illiterate men and the softersex, not used to abstract notions and reasonings” (Locke to Molyneux, April26, 1695, in John Locke, Selected Correspondence, ed. Mark Goldie [Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2002], 209).The late seventeenth-century shift in thelanguage of composition noticed by Sacksteder is important, but the differen-tiation of Latin and English readerships continued to be significant throughoutthe eighteenth century for philosophical and other “serious” literature.

74. Sir William Temple, “Of Heroic Virtue,” in The Works of Sir William Temple,4 vols. (London: S. Hamilton, 1814; repr. New York: Greenwood Press,1968), 3:323. (Subsequent references to this work are provided in the text.)



75. Descartes, “Discourse on Method,” in The Philosophical Works of Descartes,trans. Haldane and Ross, 1:81, 119 (see n. 73).

76. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “Preface to the Novissima Sinica,” in Writingson China, ed. and trans. Daniel J. Cook and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (Chicago:Open Court, 1994), 45.

77. James Beattie, Elements of Moral Science, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. Cadell andWilliam Creech, 1790), 1:31.

78. [ John Gilchrist], The Oriental Linguist,An Easy and Familiar Introduction to thePopular Language of Hindoostan (Calcutta: printed by Ferris and Greenway,1798), dedication (original in italics).

79. Immanuel Kant, Education, trans. Annette Churton (Ann Arbor: Universityof Michigan Press, 1960), 14–15.

80. Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a CosmopolitanPurpose,” in Kant’s Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 47 (original in italics).

81. Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’ ”in Kant’s Political Writings, ed. Reiss, 57.

82. See Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, no. 77 (December 11, 1750), in TheYale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 4, The Rambler, ed.W. J. Bate and Albrecht B. Strauss (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press,1969), 41. For Wollstonecraft, see A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,ed. Miriam Brody (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 271. For Thomas Jefferson, see his letter to John Hollins, February 19, 1809, in which heexplains “the nature of the correspondence which is carried on betweensocieties instituted for the benevolent purpose of communicating to allparts of the world whatever useful is discovered in any one of them”:“These societies are always in peace, however their nations may be atwar. Like the republic of letters, they form a great fraternity spreadingover the whole earth, and their correspondence is never interrupted byany civilized nation” (Thomas Jefferson: Writings [New York: Library ofAmerica, 1984], 1201).

83. William Wordsworth,“Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1802),” in The OxfordAuthors: William Wordsworth, ed. Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1984), 606.

84. Smith,“Letter to the Edinburgh Review,” 249 (see n. 38).85. William Julius Mickle, The Lusiad; or, the discovery of India. An Epic Poem.

Translated from the Original Portuguese of Luis de Camoëns (London: Cadellet al., 1776), 291, in LION (note to book 6, line 351).

86. Dibon, “Communication in the Respublica Literaria of the 17th Century,”54, n. 12 (see n. 3).

87. Edward Young, “Conjectures on Original Composition in a Letter to theAuthor of Sir Charles Grandison,” in Edward Young’s “Conjectures on OriginalComposition” in England and Germany:A Study in Literary Relations by Mar-tin William Steinke (New York: Stechert, 1917), 41–73. French translationby Pierre Le Tourneur as “Conjectures sur la composition originale, Epitreadressée à l’Auteur de Charles Grandison,” in Oeuvres Diverses du Docteur



Young,Traduites de l’Anglois, 4 vols. (Paris: Le Jay, 1770), 3:227–360. (Referencesto both works will be given by page number in the text.)

88. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: AnInquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans.Thomas Burger and Freder-ick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). Subsequent references tothis work will be incorporated into the body of the text.

89. Eisenstein, Grub Street Abroad, 5 (see n. 63).90. The Enlightenment concept of the public thus already anticipates (unlike

Habermas’s formulation) the problem of minorities in majoritarian democra-cies, an issue developed in the nineteenth century by J. S. Mill, and one thathas acquired a renewed importance in twentieth-century Western thinkingabout multicultural societies. The issue has also figured importantly in theAfrican–American tradition and in the constitutional thought of independentIndia and post-apartheid South Africa, to cite a few significant instances.

91. See, e.g., the documentation and discussion in Paul Merrill Spurlin, TheFrench Enlightenment in America: Essays on the Times of the Founding Fathers(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984).

92. Bayle is reviewing Daniel Georg Morhof ’s, De Patavinitate Liviana Liber(1685), and refers here to Rapin’s Comparison of Thucydides and Livy, anEnglish translation of which was subsequently published at Oxford in 1694.

93. Cf., e.g., a remark by La Rochefoucauld in his Réflexions ou sentences etmaximes morales (1665), which Aphra Behn translates as follows:“The accentof the Country where we are born lives in our hearts, and minds, as well ason our tongues and in our Language” (Reflections on Morality or SenecaUnmasqued [1685], in The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Janet Todd, vol. 4[Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993], 50).

94. See Ruth Whelan, “République des Lettres et littérature: le jeune Bayleépistolier,” XVIIe Siècle 178 (1993): 72, n. 6. Elisabeth Labrousse writes ofBayle’s childhood in Le Carla at the foot of the Pyrenees:“The language hecould hear all around him was Occitan, and though French was spoken inthe household of his father, pastor Jean Bayle, it was with a thick southernaccent which Pierre himself never lost” (Bayle [Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1983], 12–13).

95. This aspect of the hierarchical ordering of the cultural realm is, of course,no less relevant today than it was in the early modern period. Jacques Der-rida, e.g., reflecting on his “French Algerian” origins, writes, “One enteredFrench literature only by losing one’s accent” (45)—which means, of course,by acquiring the right accent. Derrida continues,

I retain, no doubt, a sort of acquired reflex from the necessity of thisvigilant transformation. I am not proud of it, I make no doctrine ofit, but so it is: an accent—any French accent, but above all a strongsouthern accent—seems incompatible to me with the intellectualdignity of public speech. (Inadmissible, isn’t it? Well, I admit it.)Incompatible, a fortiori, with the vocation of poetic speech: forexample, when I heard René Char read his sententious aphorisms

NOTES FOR P P . 101–106 199


with an accent that struck me as at once comical and obscene, as thebetrayal of a truth, it ruined, in no small measure, an admiration ofmy youth. (Monolinguism of the Other; or the Prosthesis of Origin, trans.Patrick Mensah [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998], 46)

Derrida’s remarks, in their bluntness, help us to reflect on how the issue of“Scotticisms” and a “Scotch” accent figured in the anglophone literaryculture of the eighteenth century, and on how the accents of Third WorldEnglishes resonate in the context of the modern internationalization ofthe language.

96. Garrick, Letters of David Garrick, ed. Kahrl and Little, 1:221 (see n. 8).97. Terry Eagleton, The Function of Criticism: From “The Spectator” to Post-

Structuralism (London:Verso, 1984), 13.98. Cf. Pierre Bourdieu’s argument regarding the relative autonomy of the lit-

erary field and the consequences he draws thereby: “External determi-nants . . . , which the Marxists used to invoke, cannot exert themselvesexcept through the intermediary of transformations in the structure of thefield which results from them.The field exerts an effect of refraction . . . andit is only on the condition of knowing the laws specific to its function (its‘coefficient of refraction,’ that is, its ‘degree of autonomy’) that one canunderstand what it is that occurs”(“Principles of a Sociology of CulturalWorks,” in Explanation and Value in the Arts, ed. Salim Kemal and IvanGaskell [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], 179).

99. Louis M. Chaudon, Dictionnaire, Historique, Critique et Bibliographique,30 vols. (Paris: Ménard and Desenne, 1821), s.v.“Bayle, Pierre,” 3:214.

100. Isaac D’Israeli, Curiosities of Literature. Second Series (New York: WilliamPearson, 1835), 400. D’Israeli is presumably referring to the LaurentianLibrary in Florence, founded in 1444 and opened to the public in 1571.

101. James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, intro. Pat Rogers(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 708.

Chapter 3 National Differences and National Autonomy

1. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1:62 (seechap. 1, n. 47). Subsequent references to this work will be given in the text.

2. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “Relation de l’état présent de la Républiquedes Lettres,” in Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, herausgegaben PreussischenAkademie der Wissenschaften, vierte Reihe,Politische Schriften, erster Band,1667–1676 (Darmstadt: Otto Reichl Verlag, 1931), 568.

3. Voltaire, Letters concerning the English Nation,“A New Edition” [trans. JohnLockman] (London: J. and R.Tonson, 1767), 83–84 (letter 14). Subsequentreferences to this work will be given in the text.

4. Friedrich Klopstock, Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik (1774), quoted inDaston, “The Ideal and Reality of the Republic of Letters,” 373 (see chap. 2, n. 3).

NOTES FOR P P . 106–112200


5. D’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia, 88–89 (see chap. 2,n. 66). While acknowledging the use the Encyclopedists have made ofEphraim Chambers’s Cyclopedia or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences(1728), d’Alembert describes Chambers’s compilation as simply a“translation” of various French writings, and positions the project hehimself is engaged in as not so much itself a translation of Chambers as atranscendence of his work (109–11). Similarly, in his discussion of the rela-tionship between Bacon’s division of the various branches of the arts andsciences of memory, reason, and imagination, and the classificatory schemeadopted for the Encyclopédie, d’Alembert again walks a fine line betweenacknowledging derivation from and asserting superiority to the prior work(49–50, 76–77, 159–64). More generally, after a discussion of the achieve-ments of Bacon, Descartes, Newton, and Locke, d’Alembert writes: “Wemay conclude from all this history that England is indebted to us for theorigins of that philosophy which we have since received back from her”(85)—as though the question of national indebtedness were precisely whatwas at stake in his historical retrospective.

6. Edwin Cannan, commenting on this issue, remarks of the Wealth of Nations:“Its composition was spread over at least the twenty-seven years from 1749to 1776.During that period economic ideas crossed and recrossed the Chan-nel many times, and it is as useless as it is invidious to dispute about therelative shares of Great Britain and France in the progress effected” (Wealthof Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan [New York: Random House, 1937], lv).

7. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann cite this remark by Pascal and suggestthat it may be said to contain “in nuce” the fundamental problem confrontedby the sociology of knowledge, the problem of the “amazing variety offorms of thought” in historically and culturally distinct societies (The SocialConstruction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge [Garden City,NY: Doubleday, 1966], 5).

8. Cf. Howard Weinbrot,“Enlightenment Canon Wars:Anglo-French Views ofLiterary Greatness,” ELH 60 (1993): 79–100.

9. Christine Gerrard, in her important study The Patriot Opposition to Walpole:Politics, Poetry, and National Myth, 1725–1742 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1994), explores the ways in which “the Patriot poets of the 1730s and early1740s engaged in a process of recovering British cultural as well as consti-tutional roots,” thus contributing to “current critical debates about the ori-gins of literary nationalism” (121). As I show in this chapter, and moregenerally in this book as a whole, nationalism in English-language literaryculture goes back well before the 1730s.

10. P.W. K. Stone, The Art of Poetry 1750–1820:Theories of Poetic Composition andStyle in the Late Neo-Classic and Early Romantic Periods (New York: Barnesand Noble, 1967), 24–25.

11. Earl Miner,“Introduction: Borrowed Plumage,Varied Umbrage,” in LiteraryTransmission and Authority: Dryden and Other Writers, ed. Earl Miner andJennifer Brady (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3.

NOTES FOR P P . 113–116 201


12. John Oldmixon, Essay on Criticism (1728), ed. R. J. Madden (Los Angeles:William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1964), 46.There is some discus-sion of this phenomenon in relation to Dryden in John Sherwood’s “Drydenand the Rules:The Preface to Troilus and Cressida” (Comparative Literature 2[1950]: 73–83). Sherwood argues: “One should not be misled by Dryden’sstatement that ‘Aristotle with his interpreters, and Horace, and Longinus’ arethe authors to whom he owes his ‘lights.’ These authors were evidentlyconsulted and may be found quoted in the Preface; but Aristotle is almostinvariably seen through the eyes of the French ‘interpreters’ [especially Rapinand Le Bossu], and Longinus was evidently known to Dryden chiefly throughthe translation of Boileau” (75).

13. Adrien Baillet, Jugemens des savans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs. ParAdrien Baillet. [1685]. Revûs, corrigés, & augmentés par M. De la Monnoye de l’Académie Françoise, 7 vols. (Paris: Charles Moette et al., 1722). References tothis work, all taken from the first volume unless otherwise specified, will begiven in the text.

14. Sir John Chardin, Voyages en Perse (1670, 1711), quoted. in Warren E. Gates,“The Spread of Ibn Khaldun’s Ideas on Climate and Culture,” Journal of theHistory of Ideas 28 (1967): 418. Ibn Khaldun had adapted the climatologicaltheory in the fourteenth century to valorize his own society, accepting thetraditional argument that a temperate climate produced superior civiliza-tion, and merely adding that the Arabian climate was a temperate one(Charles Konigsberg, “Climate and Society: A Review of the Literature,”Journal of Conflict Resolution 4 [1960]: 69). Ibn Khaldun’s work was pickedup and absorbed by Chardin, who, in turn, was the acknowledged sourcefor Du Bos and an important influence both directly and through Du Boson Montesquieu’s climatological theory. Thus, “a theory of climate whichhad reached a dead end in Europe was suddenly revitalized by a contribu-tion from the East, giving a new impetus to western social philosophy”(Gates,“The Spread of Ibn Khaldun’s Ideas,” 422).

15. There is an extensive bibliography of scholarship on this subject. For anintroduction to it, see James William Johnson, “Of Differing Ages andClimes,” Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960): 465–80; Pat Rogers,“Northand South,” Eighteenth-Century Life 12.2 (1988): 101–11; Nussbaum, TorridZones (see intro., n. 8); and Roxann Wheeler, “The Empire of Climate,” inThe Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century BritishCulture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 1–48 (esp.21–28). For the extension of the theory of climate into the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries, see Mark Harrison,“ ‘The Tender Frame of Man’: Dis-ease, Climate, and Racial Difference in India and the West Indies,1760–1860,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 70 (1996): 68–93; David N.Livingstone, “The Moral Discourse of Climate: Historical Considerationson Race, Place, and Virtue,” Journal of Historical Geography 17 (1991):413–34; and Konigsberg (n. 14).

16. Baillet had argued, previously, that “Il y a de l’injustice à donner à touteune Nation les vices & les défauts que l’on aura remarqués dans quelques

NOTES FOR P P . 116–121202


particuliers, comme à render de bonnes qualités universelles lorsqu’elles nesont que personelles” (187).This objection against false or premature gen-eralization should apply equally whether the generalizations are based onclimatological or sociocultural hypotheses. It turns out, however, that Bail-let objects more to negative characterizations of Europeans than to themaking of stereotyping generalizations as such.

17. See, e.g., the discussion in chapter 2 of Saavedra Fajardo’s Republic of Letters,a work that ignores the cultures of northern Europe as insignificant to theworld of letters. Swift’s image of “Gothic swarms” coming forth from“Ignorance’s universal north” (in his “Ode to the Athenian Society,” in TheComplete Poems, ed. Pat Rogers [London: Penguin, 1983], lines 298–99) cap-tures the traditional prejudice against the northern countries/climates,which equates them with ignorance and barbarity.

18. For Johnson’s critique of the climatological theory, see Idler no. 11 ( June 24,1758) and his “Life of Milton.” Like his contemporaries, Johnson frequentlyspeaks of particular national characteristics, but that he views such charac-teristics in a sociocultural light, rather than as fixed, innate characteristics, isevident from his remark that “there is no permanent national character; itvaries according to circumstances.Alexander the Great swept India; now theTurks sweep Greece” (Boswell, Life of Johnson, 494 [see chap. 2, n. 101]). ForHume’s views, see his essays “Of National Characters” (1748) and “OfCommerce” (1752) in Essays, Moral Political and Literary (see chap. 2, n. 19).

19. Addison and Steele, The Spectator, 1:268 (see chap. 1, n. 29). Subsequentreferences to this work will be given in the text.

20. Dominique Bouhours, The Art of Criticism (1705), intro. Philip Smallwood(Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1981), 29. Subsequentreferences to this work will be provided in the text.

21. Cf. the comments of Matthew Prior in his commonplace book, ca.1720–21:“I believe no Man now alive is so absolutely Master of the Greekor Latin tongue as to be able to read one Sentence without stopping a lit-tle to consider the Grammatical construction of it: add to this that the Cus-toms of these Nations, their Cloathing, their Utensils, their Houses,husbandry, Encampments, their laws, the manner of their pleadings, and theplacing their words, their proverbs in common discourse are so differentfrom Ours, that whole Volumes of Critics & Commentators must not onlybe read but remembered before a Man is master of One oration of Demos-thenes or Cicero or One Comedy of Aristophanes or a Satyr of Horace orJuvenal” (The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, 1:1005–06 [see intro., n. 33]).

22. Dominique Bouhours, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène, ed. RenéRadouant (Paris: Editions Bossard, 1920), 57, 55. Subsequent references tothis work will be provided in the text.

23. Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, trans. James Fentress(Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 86.

24. John Oldmixon, The Arts of Logick and Rhetorick (1728) (Hildesheim: GeorgOlms Verlag, 1976), 173. Subsequent references to this work will be pro-vided in the text.

NOTES FOR P P . 122–126 203


25. London Journal (May 1732), quoted in Roger B. Oake, “Political Elementsin Criticism of Voltaire in England 1732–47,” Modern Language Notes 57(1942), 350; Walpole, Yale Edition of the Correspondence of Horace Walpole,41:148, n. 1 (see intro., n. 20).

26. Charles Gildon, The Life of Mr.Thomas Betterton, the late Eminent Tragedian(1710; repr. New York:Augustus M. Kelley, 1970).

27. Petronius, The Works of Petronius Arbiter, in Prose and Verse (1736; repr.NewYork:AMS Press, 1975).

28. [John Langhorne], Letters Supposed to have passed between Mr. de St. Evremondand Mr.Waller. Now first Collected and Published (London, 1770).

29. Dryden,“A Character of Saint-Evremond,” 11 (see chap. 2, n. 67).30. Saint-Evremond, “A Discourse upon the Grand Alexander,” in Works of

Mr. de St. Evremont, 2 vols. (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1700),1:191. Subsequent references to this work will be provided in the text.

31. Saint-Evremond, “Reflections upon the Different Genius of the RomanPeople, at different Times of the Republick,” in Works of Mr. de St. Evremont,1:1–100. Subsequent references to this work will be provided in the text.

32. Saint-Evremond, “Upon Tragedies,” in Works of Mr. de St. Evremont,1:503–04. Subsequent references to this work will be provided in the text.

33. Saint-Evremond, “Of the English Comedy,” Works of Mr. de St. Evremont,1:518–20.

34. Cibber, Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, 169–70 (see intro., n. 7).35. Voltaire, An Essay upon the Civil Wars of France extracted from curious manu-

scripts.And also upon the Epick Poetry of the European Nations, from Homer downto Milton (1728), 104, repr. in Le Bossu and Voltaire on the Epic, ed. StuartCurran (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1970).

36. Saint-Evremond, “Upon Comedies,” in Works of Mr. de St. Evremont,1:509–10 (see n. 30).

37. Le Bossu, Monseiur Bossu’s Treatise of the Epick Poem (London, 1695), 2, repr.in Le Bossu and Voltaire on the Epic (see n. 35). Subsequent references to thiswork will be provided in the text.

38. Francis Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare and of Ancient Manners, 2 vols.(London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807), 2:104–05.

39. Michel de Montaigne, “Of Custom,” in The Complete Works of Montaigne:Essays,Travel Journal, Letters, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1957), 86.

40. Cibber, Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, 19–20 (see intro., n. 7);ThomasWarton, Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser, rev. ed., 2 vols. (1762; repr.New York: Haskell House, 1969), 1:4; Robert Dodsley,“Sir John Cockle atCourt,” in Miscellanies by the late R. Dodsley, Vol. 1, 2nd ed. (London: J.Dodsley, 1777), 83.

41. The notion of national specificity and autonomous self-sufficiency thatadheres to the common law tradition is nicely evoked by Sir John Daviesin his Irish Reports (1612), where he writes that English customary law is “soframed and fitted to the nature and disposition of this people, as we mayproperly say it is connatural to the Nation, so as it cannot possibly be ruled

NOTES FOR P P . 127–136204


by any other Law.This Law therefore doth demonstrate the strength of witand reason and self-sufficiency which hath been always in the People of thisLand, which have made their own Laws out of their wisedome and expe-rience, (like a silk-worm that formeth all her web out of her self only) notbegging or borrowing a form of a Commonweal, either from Rome or fromGreece, as all other Nations of Europe have done” (quoted in J. G.A. Pocock,The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: English Historical Thought in theSeventeenth Century [1957; repr. New York:W.W. Norton, 1967], 33–34).

42. John Dennis,“Remarks on . . . Prince Arthur,” in The Critical Works of JohnDennis, 1:91 (see intro., n. 34).

43. Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book the First(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765), 14.

44. Charles Gildon, The Complete Art of Poetry, 2 vols. (London: CharlesRivington, 1718), 1:135.

45. Nathanael Culverwel, in An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light ofNature (1652), refers to innate ideas as the “first and Alphabetical notions”that enable us to “spell out the Laws of Nature”: “There are stampt andprinted upon the being of man, some cleare and undelible Principles; somefirst and Alphabetical notions; by putting together of which it can spell outthe Law of Nature” (Nathaniel Culverwell, An Elegant and Learned Discourseof the Light of Nature, ed. Robert A. Greene and Hugh MacCallum [Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1971], 54).

46. Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, no. 156 (September 14, 1751), in The Yale Edi-tion of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 5, The Rambler, ed. W. J. Bate andAlbrecht B. Strauss (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1969), 66.

47. It is worth remarking, perhaps, that Gildon himself writes elsewhere,“as inPhysic, so in Poetry, there must be a regard had to the Clime, Nature, andCustoms of the People, for the Habits of the Mind as well as those of theBody, are influenced by them” (“An Essay at a Vindication of the Love-Verses of Cowley and Waller” [1694], in Critical Essays of the Eighteenth Cen-tury 1700–1725, ed. Willard Durham [1915; repr. New York: Russell andRussell, 1961], 4). Here, the diversity of cultures (of literatures) is in factproduced, in part, by the diversities of nature, including those of climate. So,even for Gildon, the notion of “uniformity” across ages and nations is anextreme position.

48. John Dennis, “The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry,” inThe Critical Works of John Dennis, 1:202 (see intro., n. 34).

49. John Dennis,“Remarks on . . . Prince Arthur,” 1:96. Subsequent referencesto this work are provided in the text.

50. John Dennis, “The Impartial Critick,” in The Critical Works of John Dennis,1:11. Subsequent references to this work are provided in the text.

51. Sir William Davenant,“Preface to Gondibert,” in Critical Essays of the Seven-teenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn, 3 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1957), 2:20.

52. John Dryden, All for Love, ed. David M. Vieth (Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1972), 17.

NOTES FOR P P . 136–139 205


53. Samuel Butler,“Upon Critics Who Judge of Modern Plays Precisely by theRules of the Antients,” in Satires and Miscellaneous Poetry and Prose, ed. RenéLamar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), 61.

54. [Elkanah Settle], A Farther Defence of Dramatick Poetry (London: Eliz.Whitlock, 1698), 28.

55. When Saul Bellow asserts,“Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust ofthe Papuans? I’d be glad to read them” (quoted in Lawrence Levine,Highbrow/ Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988], 256), he suggests a con-ditional claim along these lines: show me the African Tolstoy, then I will rec-ognize the claims of African literature. Across the long eighteenth century,English-language writers understand that a similar demand directed by theFrench at English drama can only be satisfied if the claims of English liter-ature are first accorded a measure of respect; otherwise, the demand willalways only turn up a series of barbarian failures, including most of all thatof Shakespeare. If Bellow understood better the historical dynamics throughwhich European cultures achieved recognition, especially the English-language tradition in which he writes, he might be less inclined to pose asa kind of grand inquisitor of the claims of non-European cultures.

56. George Farquhar,“A Discourse upon Comedy, in Reference to the EnglishStage. In a Letter to a Friend,” in Eighteenth-Century Critical Essays, ed. ScottElledge, 2 vols. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1961), 1:85. Subse-quent references to this work will be given in the text.

57. John Hayward, ed., The Letters of Saint Evremond (London: Routledge,1930), 163–64.

58. Colley Cibber, The Careless Husband, ed. William W. Appleton (Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1966), epilogue, lines 2–3. Subsequent refer-ences to this work will be provided in the text.

59. Monsieur Bossu’s Treatise of the Epick Poem, 18 (see n. 37).60. Pope,“Essay on Criticism,” in Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. Butt, lines 711–22

(see intro., n. 7). Subsequent references to this work will be provided in thetext.

61. John Dryden, Prologue to The Tempest, Or The Enchanted Island, in The Worksof John Dryden, vol. 10, Plays:The Tempest,Tyrranick Love, An Evening’s Love,ed. Maximillian E. Novak (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia Press, 1970), lines 5–8 (italics reversed).

62. John Dryden, Preface to Albion and Albanius, in The Works of John Dryden,vol. 15, Plays:Albion and Albanius, Don Sebastian,Amphitryon, ed. Earl Miner(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 4–5.

63. I have discussed Farquhar earlier; Sir Richard Blackmore, in the preface tohis Paraphrase on the Book of Job (1700), disputes in very similar terms theauthority granted to Homer and Virgil as models of what epic poetry mustbe: “But upon what Authority is this imposed on the World? What Com-mission had these two Poets to settle the limits and extent of Epick Poetry, orwho can prove they ever intended to do so? . . . ’Tis therefore to be wish’d

NOTES FOR P P . 139–147206


that some good Genius, qualify’d for such an Undertaking, would break the Ice,assert the Liberty of Poetry, and set up for an Original in Writing in a wayaccommodated to the Religion, Manners, and other Circumstances we are nowunder” (quoted in David Womersley, ed., Augustan Critical Writing [London:Penguin, 1997], xxii–xxiii).

64. Advertisements from Parnassus (1704), quoted in Paul Spencer Wood, “TheOpposition to Neo-Classicism in England between 1660 and 1700,” PMLA43 (1928): 193. Otway assumes the place occupied by Tasso in the originalversion of this story.

65. Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones A Foundling, intro. Martin C. Bat-testin, ed. Fredson Bowers, 2 vols. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UniversityPress, 1975), 1:77–78 (bk. 2, chap. 1).

66. Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, A Gothic Story, ed. W. S. Lewis(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 12. Subsequent references to thiswork will be given in the text.

67. Goldsmith, Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, 294 (seechap. 2, n. 28). Subsequent references to this work will be provided in thetext.

68. Montesqieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans.Anne M. Cohler et al. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1989), 315. Subsequent references to this workwill be provided in the text.

69. Warton, Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser, 1:15 (see n. 40). Subse-quent references to this work will be provided in the text.

70. Henry Boyd, trans., The Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, 3 vols. (London:T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), 1:1–2. One might compare the open-ing part of Boyd’s statement quoted in the text with the assertion of one ofJohn Dennis’s characters in The Impartial Critick (1693): “the Authority ofAristotle avails little with me, against irrefutable Experience” (The CriticalWorks of John Dennis, 1:21 [see intro., n. 34]). After more than a century ofreiteration, the appeal from Aristotle to “Nature” or to actual literary“Experience” might indeed be said to have “grown familiar.”

71. Leslie Stephen, English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century (1904;repr. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1962), 2. Subsequent references to thiswork will be given in the text.

72. Katie Trumpener, Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the BritishEmpire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 142.

73. John Dryden,“Dedication of the Aeneis,” in The Works of John Dryden, vol.5, Poems:The Works of Virgil in English 1697, ed.William Frost and Vinton A.Dearing (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987),267–341. References to this work will be provided in the text.

74. Prior, Preface to Solomon on the Vanity of the World, in Literary Works ofMatthew Prior, 1:309 (see intro., n. 33).

75. Edward Young, “A Discourse on Lyric Poetry” (1728), in The CompleteWorks, Poetry and Prose, of the Rev. Edward Young, 2 vols. (London: WilliamTegg and Co., 1854), 1:419.

NOTES FOR P P . 148–155 207


76. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols. (1924; repr.Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1988), 2:297.

77. [George Lyttelton],“An Epistle to Mr. Pope. From Rome, 1730,” in A Col-lection of Poems in Six Volumes. By several Hands (London: J. Dodsley, 1775),2:37–38.

78. James Thomson, The Seasons, ed. James Sambrook (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1981),“Autumn,” line 22.

79. Joseph Addison, “A Discourse of Ancient and Modern Learning,” in TheMiscellaneous Works of Joseph Addison, ed. A. C. Guthkelch (London: G. Belland Sons, 1914), 458–59. Subsequent references to this work will be givenin the text.

80. Joseph Addison, “Letter from Italy,” in The Miscellaneous Works of JosephAddison (see previous note).

81. Joseph Warton, An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, 5th ed., 2 vols.(London:W. J. and J. Richardson et al., 1806), 1:4–5. Subsequent referencesto this work will be provided in the text.

82. Royall Tyler, Prologue to The Contrast: A Comedy, intro.Thomas J. McKee (New York: Burt Franklin, 1970), xxxviii (original in italics).

83. Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, and Ihechukwu Madubuike, Toward theDecolonization of African Literature: African Fiction and Poetry and Their Critics(1980; repr. London: KPI Limited, 1985), 172.

84. William Mason, ed., The Poems of Gray,To which are prefixed Memoirs of hisLife and Writings (York: Printed by A.Ward, 1775), 90–91.

85. Goldsmith, The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 1:113 (see chap. 2, n. 28).86. Elizabeth Montagu, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare, com-

pared with the Greek and French Dramatic Poets.With Some Remarks upon theMisrepresentations of Mons. de Voltaire (1769; repr. New York:Augustus M. Kelley,1970), 57.

87. Nicholas Rowe, The Tragedy of Jane Shore, ed. Harry William Pedicord(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), 9 (prologue). Subsequentreferences to this work will be provided in the text.

88. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vols.(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), 2:69.

89. Jonathan Swift, Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D., vol. 1, Letters1690–1714, ed. David Woolley (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999), 239; JosephAddison and Richard Steele, The Tatler, ed. Donald F. Bond, 3 vols. (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1987), no. 4 (April 19, 1709);Addison and Steele,The Spec-tator, no. 5 (March 6, 1711) (see chap. 1, n. 29).

90. See Mita Choudhury,“The Italian Incursions and ‘English’ Opera,” in Inter-culturalism and Resistance in the London Theater, 1660–1800, 35–60 (see intro.,n. 8). William Hogarth’s very popular print “The Bad Taste of the Town”(also referred to as “Masquerades and Operas”) (February 1723/24) is anotable example of this contemporary critique of the taste for Italianoperas. Ronald Paulson offers an extended reading of this work in his studyof Hogarth (Hogarth, vol. 1, The “Modern Moral Subject” 1697–1732 [NewBrunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991], 74–90), interpreting it in

NOTES FOR P P . 155–163208


terms of Addison’s privileging of an aesthetics of “common sense” in theSpectator and in terms of Hogarth’s own aesthetic preference for “nature” or“life” over “the opera’s rendition of form” (76).The nationalistic emphasisof Hogarth’s engraving is noted by Paulson but is more pungently expressedin Nikolaus Pevsner’s summary comment that in this work Hogarth “casti-gate[s] Raphael and Michelangelo together with Italian opera for theneglect of home-made English art, represented by the works ofShakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, Congreve, and Otway carted away on awheelbarrow as waste-paper” (The Englishness of English Art [1956; repr.Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1964], 26).

Addison’s influence on Hogarth is clear enough, but one might also pointto a more proximate antecedent in Leonard Welsted’s “A Prologue occa-sioned by the Revival of a Play of Shakespeare” (1721), which specificallyevokes a scene of Shakespeare (and English drama more generally) beingousted from public favor by “alien toys,” such as French tumblers and Italianopera singers:

To low provincial Drolls, in crowds, you run,By foreign modes and foreign nonsense won;To see French Tumblers three long hours you sit,And Criticks judge of capers in the Pit.

What art shall teach us to refine your joys,And wean your sickly taste from alien toys?For this we toil, and in our cause engageTh’immortal Writers of an earlier age:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Fond labour! antient sense must quit the field,And Shakespear to the soft Bercelli yield:Whence is this change in nature! one would swearThat Eunuchs were not form’d to lead the Fair. (lines 39–52)

Welsted’s equation of foreign arts with castrated masculinity (“Things thatare not Men” [line 56]), in contrast to traditional English “True Masculin-ity” (line 54), strikes a characteristic note of this discourse of culturalnationalism.

91. Richard Steele, The Tender Husband, ed. Calhoun Winton (Lincoln: Universityof Nebraska Press, 1967), 78.

92. Cf. Steele’s comment in a letter of October 7, 1708 to J. Keally:“The tastefor Plays is expired. We are all Operas, performed by eunuchs every wayimpotent to please” (Correspondence of Richard Steele, ed. Rae Blanchard[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941], 25).This was a particularly com-mon element in the critique of foreign arts (as inimical to English mascu-line virility), as we have already seen with Welsted’s “Prologue” of 1721. So,too, the author of To the H—nble Sir J——B—— (1734), referring to “FrenchDancers and Harlequins, . . . Effeminate Eunuchs, and Sod[omitica]l Ital-ians,” exclaims that English is “so debauch’d with Effeminacy and Italian

NOTES FOR P . 164 209


airs . . . [that] we daily see our Male Children . . . dwindle almost intoWomen” (quoted in Kathleen Wilson,“The Good, the Bad, and the Impo-tent: Imperialism and the Politics of Identity in Georgian England,” in TheConsumption of Culture, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer [London:Routledge, 1995], 243). Similarly, the author of Satan’s Harvest Home (1749)associates the Italian opera’s “Corruption of the English stage” with other “cor-ruptions” of aristocratic manners, such as the “Contagion” of men kissingeach other and their degeneration into “enervated effeminate Animal[s]”given to “unnatural Vices” (quoted in Michael McKeon, “HistoricizingPatriarchy:The Emergence of Gender Difference in England, 1660–1760,”Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 [1995]: 321, n. 68, 311).

93. On the logic of the mean in “neoclassical” literary culture see EdwardPechter, Dryden’s Classical Theory of Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1975) and Joshua Scodel, Excess and the Mean in Early ModernEnglish Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

94. The editors of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 4, The Eigh-teenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), H. B. Nisbetand Claude Rawson, acknowledge the inadequacy of the traditional “classicto romantic” narrative but their response is to eschew categorizing labelsaltogether rather than to offer a counter-narrative (“The present volume hasin general sought to avoid categorisations, whether of the traditional or revi-sionist varieties” [xv]—the reference being to Northrop Frye’s replacementof “preromanticism” with the notion of an “age of sensibility”). But as Iargued at the start of this chapter, such attempts to bury well-established nar-ratives under a mound of silence are bound to fail. If one wants to preventthe constant return of the dead, one needs to drive a stake through its heartby offering an account that could take its place as an explanatory narrativeof literary historical change across the period in question.

95. Douglas Lane Patey, “The Institution of Criticism in the Eighteenth Cen-tury,” in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 4, The EighteenthCentury, 22 (see previous note). In another essay in this volume, Patey doesacknowledge that French “cultural nationalism” had already reached a kindof climax in the 1670s and 1680s (“Ancients and Moderns,” 36).

96. William Collins, “Oriental Eclogues,” in The Works of William Collins, ed.Richard Wendorf and Charles Ryskamp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979),2–3 (italics reversed).

97. One might compare Collins’s remarks with Aphra Behn’s comment in her“epistle dedicatory” to Oronooko (1688): “If there be any thing that seemsRomantick, I beseech your Lordship to consider, these Countries do, in allthings, so far differ from ours, that they produce unconceivable Wonders; atleast, they appear so to us, because New and Strange” (The Works of AphraBehn, vol. 3, The Fair Jilt and Other Short Stories, ed. Janet Todd [Columbus:Ohio State University Press, 1995], 56 [original in italics]).

98. Hugh Blair, “Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian,” in The Poemsof Ossian and Related Works, ed. Howard Gaskill (Edinburgh: Edinburgh

NOTES FOR P P . 165–168210


University Press, 1988), 345. Subsequent references to this work will beprovided in the text.

99. In his History of English Poetry (1781),Thomas Warton is able to quote withapproval Hobbes’s dictum that,“In a good poem both judgment and fancyare required; but the fancy must be more eminent, because they please forthe EXTRAVAGANCY, but ought not to displease by INDISCRE-TION” (quoted in Earl Wasserman, Elizabethan Poetry in the EighteenthCentury [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1947], 231).

100. Richard Hurd, Letters on Chivalry and Romance, intro. Hoyt Trowbridge(Los Angeles:William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1963), 63. Subse-quent references to this work will be provided in the text.

101. Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole, 121 (see n. 9). See, e.g., suchimportant works as Walter Jackson Bate’s From Classic to Romantic: Premisesof Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1946), Norman Maclean’s “From Action to Image:Theories of theLyric in the Eighteenth Century,” in Critics and Criticism:Ancient and Mod-ern, ed. R. S. Crane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), M. H.Abrams’s The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), and René Wellek’s A History ofModern Criticism 1750–1950, vol. 1, The Later Eighteenth Century (NewHaven, CT:Yale University Press, 1955). But the narrative logic I am dis-cussing is so pervasive as to be found almost anywhere.

102. Thus, e.g., regarding Henry Mackenzie’s description of Robert Burns as a“Heaven-taught ploughman” in his famous review of the latter’s poems in1786, Robert Crawford notes:“his discussion of natural literary genius is ofa piece with the view of genius put forward by [Hugh] Blair and othereighteenth-century teachers of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, and dates backat least to the seventeenth-century Réflexions sur la Poétique d’Aristote (1674)by René Rapin, who writes of a poet’s ‘elevation of Soul that depends noton Art or Study, and which is purely a Gift of Heaven, and must be sus-tain’d by a lively Sence and Vivacity’ ” (“Robert Fergusson’s Robert Burns,”in Robert Burns and Cultural Authority, ed. Robert Crawford [1996; repr.Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997], 2). (One might, indeed, tracethis view back to Bede’s description of Caedmon.) Likewise, regarding thetwin principles of “historical” criticism—that in interpreting a work wemust place it within the cultural context of its own age, and that in evalu-ating it we must attend to the literary conventions and expectations thatprevailed when it was written—Hoyt Trowbridge remarks that neither ofthese ideas “was at all novel” in the hands of the Wartons and others in thelate eighteenth century:“Wellek,Wasserman, and Wimsatt and Brooks [haveshown] that similar statements were made by sixteenth-century Italiandefenders of Ariosto, by Chapelain and Dryden in the seventeenth century,and by Hughes, Upton, and other commentators on Shakespeare, Spenser,and Ben Jonson in the eighteenth century.The same slogans were appliedto Hebrew poetry by Lowth, to Homer by Blackwell and Wood, and to the

NOTES FOR P P . 170–172 211


Greeks and Romans generally by Gibbon, but the finest statement of theseideas, as well as their most impressive exemplification in practice, was prob-ably the preface and notes of Dr. Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare (1765)”(Hurd, Letters on Chivalry and Romance, intro.Trowbridge, iv–v [see n. 100]).

103. See, e.g., the important work of Edward Pechter on Dryden’s criticism(n. 93), and Emerson R. Marks’s studies of neoclassical criticism, Relativistand Absolutist:The Early Neoclassical Debate in England (New Brunswick, NJ:Rutgers University Press, 1955) and The Poetics of Reason: English Neoclas-sical Criticism (New York: Random House, 1968).

104. With regard to this point, and the more general issue at stake in thissection of the chapter, see Ralph Cohen, “Some Thoughts on the Prob-lems of Literary Change 1750–1800,” Dispositio 4 (1979): 145–62; A. D.Harvey, “Neo-classicism and Romanticism in Historical Context,” in hisLiterature into History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 125–70; CliffordSiskin, The Historicity of Romantic Discourse (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1988); Robert J. Griffin,“The Eighteenth-Century Construction ofRomanticism:Thomas Warton and the Pleasures of Melancholy,” ELH 59(1992): 799–815; Griffin, Wordsworth’s Pope:A Study of Literary Historiogra-phy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); David Fairer, “His-torical Criticism and the English Canon: A Spenserian Dispute of the1750s,” Eighteenth-Century Life 24 (2000): 43–64; and Terry,“Classicists andGothicists:The Division of the Estate,” in Poetry and the Making of the Eng-lish Literary Past 1660–1781, 286–323 (see chap. 1, n. 18).As Griffin statesin his 1992 essay, what we need to understand is “not how mirror becamelamp, but how this particular episode of literary history came to beconstructed in that way” (802).

105. John Keats, “Sleep and Poetry,” in The Oxford Authors: John Keats, ed.Eleanor Cook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), line 181.

106. Wasserman, Elizabethan Poetry in the Eighteenth Century, 35 (see n. 99). Sub-sequent references to this work will be provided in the text. (Morerecently, Margaret Anne Doody’s The Daring Muse:Augustan Poetry Recon-sidered [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985] implicitly developscertain continuities between Elizabethan and Augustan poetry by reexam-ining the characteristics of the latter poetic mode.)

107. R. S. Crane has sought to preserve some of this sense of things in his essayson the history of criticism in the eighteenth century. He refers to “a moreor less common framework of characteristic fundamental terms and dis-tinctions which critics throughout the period, for all their disagreementson points of doctrine or appreciation, found it natural to utilize in thestatement of their questions and the justification of their answers” (“OnWriting the History of Criticism in England 1650–1800,” in The Idea ofthe Humanities and Other Essays, 2 vols. [Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1967], 2:167). Crane’s account of “neoclassical” criticism is animportant contribution to my own understanding of “critical pluralism,”but his larger narrative of a shift from this “neoclassical” criticism to

NOTES FOR P P . 172–174212


“romantic” aesthetics reinstalls the traditional narrative of a linear shiftfrom one set of critical concerns to another new one.We are left with thefamiliar narrative of a movement from classic to romantic, even thoughCrane has usefully reinterpreted what the basic characteristics of this“classic” critical mode were.

NOTES 213



INDEX

Abrams, M. H., 211 n. 101Achillini, Claudio, 123Adams, John

Papers of John Adams, 24, 40–1, 42,43, 181 n. 4

Addison, Josephcultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 115, 119,142–4, 153, 156–60, 162–3,166, 208–9 n. 90

fame of, 26, 28, 77–8, 100–1republic of letters and, 57, 77,

79–84, 122, 142–3, 189 n. 6status of English culture and, 31, 34,

53, 72, 79, 81–4, 86, 194 n. 44,195 n. 48

works:“Account of the GreatestEnglish Poets,” 31, 184 n. 21;Dialogues Upon the Usefulness ofAncient Medals, 57, 77, 79–84,156, 193 nn. 41, 42, 194 n. 44,194–5 n. 47, 195 n. 48; ADiscourse on Ancient and ModernLearning, 156–60, 166, 208 n.79;“Essay on the Georgics,”86, 195 n. 54; The Freeholder,25, 182 n. 7; Letter from Italy,157, 159, 208 n. 80; letters, 72,191 n. 31, 194–5 n. 47;Spectator, 34, 122, 142–3,143–4, 157, 162–3, 185 n. 29

Adorno,Theodor, 7, 178 n. 9Advertisements from Parnassus, 147–8,

207 n. 64Allen, Katharine, 195 n. 49Amherst, Gen. Jeffrey, 13Anacreon, 140anglocentrism, 5, 45Anstey, Christopher, 189 n. 6Aravamudan, Srinivas, 178 n. 8Arcadians, academy of, 61–2Ariosto, Ludovico, 150, 211 n. 102Aristophanes, 203 n. 21Aristotle

cultural authority of: asserted, 69,116, 137, 145, 146, 169, 202 n.12; challenged orcircumscribed, 120–1, 132–4,136, 139–41, 143, 147–8, 151,152, 207 n. 70

arts and arms topos, see English literaryculture

Ascham, Roger, 50Augustan criticism, see neoclassical

criticismAyres, Philip, 14, 180 n. 27

Bacon, Francisfame of, 26, 28, 39, 78, 183 n. 14influence on Encyclopédie, 113,

201 n. 5republic of letters and, 61, 74

This index covers the main text and the notes. For references to primary works inthe notes, only the first citation of the work (which includes full bibliographicinformation) is indexed. Primary works are listed as subentries under their author’sname; they appear after all other subentries for the author. Secondary works areindexed by author only, without a subentry for the title of the work.

Yadav-index.qxd 4/15/04 4:51 PM Page 215

Bailey, Richard, 185 n. 36Baillet,Adrien

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 115, 117–18,119, 120–2, 124, 126, 128, 134,137

works: Jugemens des savans sur lesprincipaux ouvrages des auteurs,117–18, 120–2, 202 n. 13,202–3 n. 16

Balibar, Renée, 184 n. 24Banks, Joseph

republic of letters and, 59, 72, 189 n.7, 191 n. 32

Barbauld,Anna Laetitia, 68Barlow, Joel, 189 n. 6Barrington, Daines, 52–3Bate,Walter Jackson, 211 n. 101Bathurst, Ralph, 28Baugh, Daniel, 3, 177 n. 4Baumer, Franklin Le Van, 188 n. 2Bayle, Pierre

French language in republic ofletters and, 91, 94–5

provincialisms and, 105, 118, 199 nn.92, 94

republic of letters and, 92–4, 96,107, 113, 196 n. 71

works: Nouvelles de la République desLettres, 91–5, 105–6, 196 n. 68

Bayly, C.A., 179–80 n. 19Beach,Adam, 191 n. 27Beattie, James

works: Elements of Moral Science, 98,198 n. 77; London Diary 1773,14, 180 n. 26

Beaumont, Francis, 28Bede the Venerable, 211 n. 102Behn,Aphra, 66, 190 n. 17

works: Oronooko, 210 n. 97;Reflections on Morality or SenecaUnmasqued, 199 n. 93;“TheTranslator’s Preface” (toFontenelle), 87, 195 n. 57

Bellow, Saul, 206 n. 55Benjamin,Walter, 7

Berger, Peter, 201 n. 7Berlin, Isaiah, 8, 178 n. 10Bertaut, Jean, 36Bibliothèque raisonnée des ouvrages des

savants de l’Europe, 196 n. 63Bilderdijk,Willem, 59

status of Dutch culture and, 22–5,48, 104, 181–2 n. 5

Birn, Raymond, 196 n. 69Blackmore, Sir Richard

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 119, 147,157–8, 206–7 n. 63

republic of letters and, 56, 189 n. 6works: Eliza:An Epick Poem, 56, 189

n. 4; Paraphrase on the Book ofJob, 206–7 n. 63

Blackstone, Sir WilliamCommentaries on the Laws of England,

136, 205 n. 43Blackwell,Thomas, 211 n. 102Blair, Hugh

neoclassical and romantic poeticsand, 114, 167, 168–71, 172, 211n. 102

works: Critical Dissertation on thePoems of Ossian, 168–71, 172,210–11 n. 98; Lectures onRhetoric and Belles Lettres, 168

Boccalini,TraianoRagguagli di Parnasso, 147

Bodin, Jean, 119Boileau-Despréaux, Nicholas

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 115, 117–18,122, 134, 137

English emulation and competitionwith, 17–18, 34–7, 38, 86, 116,144–5, 194 n. 44, 202 n. 12

works: Art poétique, 34–7, 117–18,122, 185 n. 32

Boscawen,Adm. Edward, 13Boswell, James, 189 n. 6

Life of Johnson, 200 n. 101,203 n. 18

Bots, Hans, 188 n. 3, 197 n. 72

INDEX216


Bouhours, Dominique, 127cultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 115, 122–7,128, 132, 134, 137

fame of, 116, 122works: Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène,

122, 124–6, 203 n. 22; Lamanière de bien penser, 122,123–4, 126–7, 132, 203 n. 20

Bourdieu, Pierre, 200 n. 98Bowen, H.V., 179 n. 18Boyd, Rev. Henry

(Trans. ) Divina Commedia of DanteAlighieri, 151, 207 n. 70

Boyle, Robert, 39Brandell, Gunnar, 182 n. 6Bromley, J. S., 190 n. 10Brooke, Frances, 67Brooks, Cleanth, 211 n. 102Brown, Laura, 178 n. 8Browne,Thomas

republic of letters and, 73–5, 79, 82,94, 189 n. 6, 191–2 n. 34

works: Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 73–5,191 n. 33, 192 n. 36

Brunot, Ferdinand, 195 n. 58Burney, Frances

republic of letters and, 84, 189 n. 6works: Evelina, 84, 195 n. 50

Burns, Robert, 211 n. 102Burrell,William, 11, 179 n. 18Butler, Samuel, 28

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 139

works:“Upon Critics Who Judge ofModern Plays … by the Rulesof the Antients,” 139, 206 n. 53

Caedmon, 211 n. 102Caesar, Julius, 82, 105Cairns, John W., 192 n. 35Camden,William, 183 n. 14Camoëns, Luis Vaz de, 68, 99Cannan, Edwin, 201 n. 6Cannon, John, 180 nn. 22, 23Carlson, C. Lennart, 186 n. 41

Carlyle,Thomas, 18, 181 n. 35Carter, Elizabeth, 14, 68Carter, Philip, 191 n. 20Case of Madam Mary Carleton,The,

25–6, 182 n. 10Cave, Edward, 40Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 177–8 n. 5Chambers, Ephraim

Cyclopedia or an Universal Dictionary ofArts and Sciences, 113, 201 n. 5

Chapelain, Jean, 211 n. 102“A Character of Saint-Evremond,” see

DrydenChardin, John

Voyages en Perse, 119, 202 n. 14Charleton,Walter, 39Chatterton,Thomas

works:“Kew Gardens,” 59, 189 n. 7;“The Whore of Babylon,” 59,189 n. 7

Chaucer, Geoffreymutability of English and, 33, 34, 70progress of English topos and, 28,

31, 32Chetwood, Knightly

“To the Earl of Roscommon on hisExcellent Poem,” 31, 184 n. 21

Chinweizu, 158, 208 n. 83Choudhury, Mita, 178 n. 8, 208 n. 90Chudleigh, Mary, Lady

progress of English topos and, 30–1works:“To Mr. Dryden, on his

excellent Translation of Virgil,”30–1, 183 nn. 19, 20

Churchill, Charles, 189 n. 6Cibber, Colley

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 131–2, 135,142

status of English culture and, 4works: An Apology for the Life of

Colley Cibber, 4, 131–2, 135,178 n. 7; The Careless Husband,142, 206 n. 58

Cicero, 69, 203 n. 21Clark,Arthur Melville, 183–4 n. 20

INDEX 217


classic and romantic, see English literaryculture

Clive, Robert, 11, 13–14Cobb, Samuel

progress of English topos and, 31,38–9

republic of letters and, 189 n. 6works:“Of Poetry,” 38, 39, 185 n.

37; Poetae Britannici, 31, 38,184 n. 21

Cohen, Ralph, 212 n. 104Coke, Sir Edward

Institutes, 192 n. 35Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 42, 186 n. 47Colie, Rosalie, 196 n. 71Colley, Linda, 2, 10, 11, 12, 15, 177 n.

3, 179 nn. 14, 17Collins,William

cultural differences and, 166–7,210 n. 97

works: Persian Eclogues, 166–7,210 nn. 96, 97

Committee on the Legal Status of theWelsh Language, 186 n. 52

Congreve,William, 28, 209 n. 90Corneille, Pierre, 139, 153Cornwallis, Charles Cornwallis, Earl

of, 13Cowley,Abraham, 147

progress of English topos and, 5,21, 31

Cowper,WilliamThe Task, 11–12, 180 n. 24

Crabbe, George, 27, 183 n. 17Craggs, James, 78Crane, R. S., 212–13 n. 107Crawford, Robert, 187 n. 65,

211 n. 102Creech,Thomas, 81Cressy, David, 179 n. 12Critical Review, 32, 68, 191 n. 24cultural nationalism, see English literary

cultureCulverwel, Nathanael

An Elegant and Learned Discourse ofthe Light of Nature, 205 n. 45

Dacier,André, 79, 116, 153D’Alembert, Jean Le Rond

cultural nationalism and, 113,201 n. 5

French language in republic ofletters and, 89–90

works:“Preliminary Discourse tothe Encyclopedia,” 89–90, 113,196 n. 66, 201 n. 5

Daniel, Samuel, 38Dante Alighieri, 63, 151, 190 n. 16D’Argonne, Bonaventure, see

Vigneul-MarvilleDart, John

Westminster Abbey, a Poem, 31,184 n. 21

Daston, Lorraine, 112, 188 n. 3,200 n. 4

Davenant,Williamlaws of poetry and, 138, 148mutability of English and, 32–3progress of English topos and, 35, 36works: Gondibert,An Heroick Poem,

138, 148, 205 n. 51Davies, Sir John

Irish Reports, 204–5 n. 41Davis, Leith, 187 n. 65De Beer, G. R., 189 n. 7, 191 n. 32De Deugd, Cornelius, 182 n. 5Demosthenes, 47, 203 n. 21Denham, John

progress of English topos and, 27, 31works:“On Abraham Cowley, his

Death and Burial amongst theAncient Poets,” 31, 184 n. 21

Dennis, Johncultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 18, 136,137–8, 192 n. 37

laws of poetry and, 137, 207 n. 70republic of letters and, 189 n. 6, 192

n. 37works: The Advancement and

Reformation of Modern Poetry,137, 205 n. 48; Critical Works,18, 181 n. 34; Impartial Critick,

INDEX218


137, 192 n. 37, 205 n. 50, 207n. 70; Remarks on … PrinceArthur, 136, 137, 138, 205 n. 42

Denonain, Jean-Jacques, 191–2 n. 34De Quincey,Thomas

“William Wordsworth,” 37, 41Derrick, Samuel, 189 n. 6Derrida, Jacques, 199–200 n. 95Descartes, René

cultural nationalism and, 112–13,201 n. 5

republic of letters and, 97, 99,197 n. 73

works: Discourse on Method, 97, 99,198 n. 75;“The Search AfterTruth by the Light of Nature,”197 n. 73

Desmaizeaux, PierreLettres de M. Bayle, 92, 196 n. 70

Desportes, Philippe, 36Dibon, Paul, 56, 72, 99, 181 n. 3, 188

nn. 2, 3, 191 n. 30, 198 n. 86Dictionnaire, Historique, Critique et

Bibliographique, 200 n. 99D’Israeli, Isaac

Curiosities of Literature, 108, 200 n. 100Dodsley, Robert

“Sir John Cockle at Court,” 135,204 n. 40

Donatus, 116Doody, Margaret Anne, 212 n. 106Douce, Francis

Illustrations of Shakespeare, 134–5, 204n. 38

Douglas, George, 99Dowling, John, 190 n. 14Drayton, Michael, 28Dryden, John, 81, 83, 128, 140, 141

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 115, 116,131–2, 139, 143, 150, 153–6,157, 166, 183–4 n. 20,211 n. 102

imperialism and, 16, 36–7, 38, 50laws of poetry and, 146, 147, 149mutability of English and, 34, 70

progress of English topos and, 28,30–1, 32, 34–7

republic of letters and, 26, 189 n. 6,202 n. 12

status of English culture and, 3–4,18, 38–9, 153, 194 n. 44,209 n. 90

works: Albion and Albanius, 147, 206n. 62; All for Love, 139, 205 n.52; The Art of Poetry, 34–7, 38,50, 185 n. 32; Aureng-Zebe, 3–4,178 n. 6;“A Character ofSaint-Evremond,” 90–1, 128,196 n. 67;“Dedication of theAeneis,” 153–6, 157, 166, 207n. 73;“Discourse concerningthe Original and Progress ofSatire,” 194 n. 44; The Hind andthe Panther, 16, 180 n. 30; TheTempest, 146, 149, 206 n. 61;“To my Dear Friend Mr.Congreve,” 31, 184 n. 21;“To My Honoured Friend,Dr Charleton,” 38–9,185 n. 38;“To the Earl ofRoscommon on his ExcellentEssay on Translated Verse,” 31,184 n. 21

Du Bos, Jean Baptiste, 119, 202 n. 14Duncan, Carol, 181 n. 36Dutch literary culture, 23–4, 25

republic of letters and, 89, 92–3status of English culture and, 26, 27,

154, 192 n. 36Dyer, Gen. Reginald E. H., 13

Eagleton,Terry, 106–7, 200 n. 97East India Company, 11, 13–14,

185 n. 33East Indies, 10, 11, 15, 37, 50, 65, 69,

99, 121, 128, 179 n. 19, 185 nn.33, 34, 203 n. 18

Eco, Umberto, 203 n. 23Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 56–7, 88, 89,

102–3, 188 n. 1, 189 n. 5,196 n. 62, 63, 199 n. 89

INDEX 219


Encyclopaedia Britannica, 18–19,181 n. 36

Encyclopédie, 61, 89, 201 n. 5English literary culture

arts and arms topos and, 18, 26,72–3, 164

barbarism of, 3–4, 70, 83–4, 86, 109,155, 156, 203 n. 17, 206 n. 55

classic and romantic in, 6, 114,165–75, 210 n. 94

cultural nationalism and, 1–3, 6, 7–8,8–10, 111–14, 117, 135, 138,139–42, 149, 150, 153–65, 166,175, 183–4 n. 20, 192 n. 35,193 n. 40, 201 n. 9, 208–9 n.90, 209–10 n. 92, 210 n. 95

French translations of, 27, 40, 89,99–100

geopolitical standing and, 6–7,10–13, 16, 18, 21, 40–2, 50,109, 164, 178 n. 8

imperial ambitions of, 2, 13–14,15–16, 18–19, 36–7, 109, 156,159, 163–4, 175, 185 n. 34,193–4 n. 43

metropolitan or provincial status of:in the European context, 1–2,5, 12–13, 16–18, 21–2, 24–8,58, 68–70, 83–4, 85–6, 95,108–9, 139, 150, 165, 175, 192n. 37, 195 n. 48; in the BritishIsles context, 5, 14, 22, 44–53,106, 187 n. 65, 192 n. 37; inthe global context, 37–44

mutability of English language and,32–4

postcolonial perspective on, 1–2,115, 139, 150, 156, 158–9,177–8 n. 5

progress of English topos and, 5,21–2, 27–32, 35, 37–44,45, 175

provincial anxieties of, 1–3, 22, 115,117, 165, 175

xenophobia and, 2–3, 75–6Erasmus, Desiderius, 56, 68

Erskine-Hill, Howard, 193–4 n. 43Euripides, 137Eustathius, 116Eyre, Gov. Sir John, 13

Fabian, Bernhard, 27, 183 n. 16Fairer, David, 212 n. 104Fairfax, Edward, 28, 35Falconer,William, 119Farquhar, George

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 139–42, 147,149, 153

works:“A Discourse uponComedy,” 139–42, 206 n. 56

Feingold, Mordecai, 181 n. 3Fenton, Elijah

“An Epistle to Mr. Southerne,” 31,184 n. 21

Ferguson,AdamEssay on the History of Civil Society,

76, 193 n. 39Ferguson, Moira, 178 n. 8Fielding, Henry, 84, 115, 189 n. 6

works: Amelia, 85; The Grub-StreetOpera, 88, 195 n. 59; Tom Jones,85, 148, 207 n. 65

Fielding, SarahDavid Simple, 67, 191 n. 21

Finn, Margot, 8–9, 179 n. 13Fletcher, John, 28, 141, 146Florio, John

His Firste Fruites, 25, 182 n. 8Fludd, Roger, 183 n. 14Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier, sieur

de, 112, 194–5 n. 47Frederick the Great, 11Freedman, Morris, 184 n. 20French language, see republic of lettersFrench literary culture

critical discourse of, 115, 116–35,137, 138, 140, 210 n. 95

metropolitan urbanity of, 3–4, 52,79, 86, 105

republic of letters and, 41–2, 56–7,72, 74, 86–91, 102, 103, 104

INDEX220


status of English culture and, 1, 2, 3,17, 25, 26–7, 35–7, 38, 40, 50,76–7, 89, 139, 142, 150, 153,154, 155, 156, 163, 164–5, 192n. 37, 194–5 n. 47, 201 n. 5,202 n. 12, 206 n. 55

Freval, Jean Baptiste de, 85Frye, Northrop, 210 n. 94Fumaroli, Marc, 55–6, 87, 188 n. 1,

195 n. 55

Galt, John, 47Gandhi, Leela, 181 n. 36Garnier, Jean, 50Garrick, David, 59, 106, 189 n. 8Gates,Warren E., 202 n. 14Gay, John, 28, 189 n. 6George III, 11George, Rev. James

The Mission of Great Britain to theWorld, 43–4, 186 n. 50

Germaine, Lord George, 11Gerrard, Christine, 201 n. 9, 211 n. 101Gibbon, Edward

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 111, 211–12 n. 102

French language in the republic ofletters and, 41–2

republic of letters and, 12, 84, 85,111

status of English culture and, 9–10,41–2

works: Essai sur l’étude de la littérature,84, 85, 195 n. 51; The History ofthe Decline and Fall of the RomanEmpire, 42, 111, 186 n. 47;Miscellaneous Works, 9, 179 n. 15

Gilbert,William, 39Gilchrist, John

The Oriental Linguist, 98, 198 n. 78Gildon, Charles

laws of poetry and, 136–7, 205 n. 47republic of letters and, 189 n. 6works: Complete Art of Poetry, 136–7,

205 n. 44;“Essay at a

Vindication of the Love-Versesof Cowley and Waller,” 205 n.47; Life of Mr.Thomas Betterton,127–8, 204 n. 26

Goldgar,Anne, 188–9 n. 3Goldsmith, Oliver

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 119, 149–50,160

republic of letters and, 70–2, 84, 89,189 n. 6

works: An Enquiry into the PresentState of Polite Learning inEurope, 70–2, 89, 149, 191 n. 28

Gower, John, 28Graham, Gerald S., 180 n. 21Gray,Thomas

works: The Bard, 160;“The Progressof Poesy,” 31, 160, 184 n. 21

Greenfeld, Liah, 179 n. 12, 180 n. 31Griffin, Robert J., 212 n. 104Griffith, Elizabeth, 68Grotius, Hugo, 72, 89, 191 n. 30Guest, Edwin

A History of English Rhythms, 43,186 n. 50

Guez de Balzac, Jean-Louis, 56, 106,189 n. 4

Habermas, Jürgen, 58, 73, 101–3, 106,108, 199 nn. 88, 90

Hadfield,Andrew, 179 n. 12Hale, John, 183 n. 14, 188 n. 2Halifax, Charles Montagu, Earl of, 157Halsband, Robert, 67, 190 n. 18, 191

n. 22Hamilton, Elizabeth

Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, 59, 189 n. 7Harrison, Mark, 202 n. 15Harvey,A. D., 212 n. 104Harvey,William, 39, 183 n. 14Hastings,Warren, 13Hawke,Adm. Edward, 13Hay, Denys, 188 n. 2Hayley,William, 189 n. 6Hazlitt,William, 189 n. 6

INDEX 221


Headley, Henry, 170Helgerson, Richard, 179 n. 12Herder, Johann Gottfried, 8, 114

“Uber Ossian und die Lieder alterVölker,” 168

Hill,Aaron, 85Hill, Christopher, 8–9, 179 n. 11Hippocrates, 120–1Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans, 94,

197 n. 72Hobbes,Thomas

neoclassical criticism and, 170,211 n. 99

status of English culture and, 26,32–3, 197 n. 73

works:“Answer to Davenant,” 32–3,184 n. 25

Hobsbawm, Eric, 8, 178 n. 10Hogarth,William

“The Bad Taste of the Town,” 208–9n. 90

Hogg, James, 47Homer, 166

cultural authority of, 33, 68, 69, 146,147, 169

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 133–5, 141,154, 157, 159, 206–7 n. 63,211 n. 102

Hopkins, Lemuel, 189 n. 6Horace, 81

cultural authority of, 69, 86, 116,144, 147, 153–4, 169, 194 n.44, 202 n. 12

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 41, 122,133–4, 140, 146, 203 n. 21

works: Ars poetica, 153–4Hubert, Sir Francis, 28Huddesford, George, 189 n. 6Hughes, Jabez

“Verses Occasion’d by ReadingMr. Dryden’s Fables,” 31,184 n. 21

Hughes, John (1677–1720), 211 n. 102

Hughes, John (1776–1843)Essay on the Ancient and Present State

of the Welsh Language, 50–2,187 n. 61

Humboldt,Wilhelm von, 62Hume, David

cultural differences and, 122,203 n. 18

republic of letters and, 12, 66–7,189 n. 6

status of English culture and, 41–2works: letters, 41–2, 186 n. 46;“Of

Commerce,” 203 n. 18;“OfEssay-Writing,” 66–7, 190 n.19;“Of National Characters,”203 n. 18

Hurd, Richardcultural differences and, 115neoclassical and romantic criticism

and, 167, 170–1, 173republic of letters and, 189 n. 6works: Letters on Chivalry and

Romance, 170–1, 211 n. 100Hutchinson,Thomas, 119

Ibn Khaldun, 202 n. 14India, see East Indies; see also “Oriental”

culturesIreland, 11, 14, 40, 48, 106, 180 n. 19,

192 n. 37Ireland, Samuel, 189 n. 6Irish language, 46, 47, 48, 49Italian literary culture, 1, 28, 39, 40, 65,

68, 71, 74, 79, 88, 124, 130, 145,147, 155, 156

Italian opera, 143–4, 147, 162–4, 184n. 20, 208–9 n. 90, 209–10 n. 92

Jefferson,Thomas, 98, 189 n. 6, 198 n. 82Jemie, Onwuchekwa, 158, 208 n. 83John Bull, 3, 4Johnson, James Weldon

The Book of American Negro Poetry,42–3, 186 n. 48

Johnson, James William, 202 n. 15

INDEX222


Johnson, Samuelcultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 47–8, 122,161, 203 n. 18, 212 n. 102

laws of poetry and, 137mutability of English and, 33republic of letters and, 59, 84, 98,

108, 189 n. 6status of English culture and, 18, 38,

47–8works: Idler, 203 n. 18; Journey to the

Western Islands of Scotland, 47,48, 187 n. 55; letters, 48, 187 n.56; Lives of the English Poets,161, 203 n. 18, 208 n. 88; Planof a Dictionary of the EnglishLanguage, 38, 185 n. 35;“Preface to the Dictionary,” 18,181 n. 34;“Preface toShakespeare,” 33, 185 n. 26,212 n. 102; Rambler, 98, 137,198 n. 82, 205 n. 46

Johnson,Walter R., 177 n. 3Johnstone, Mrs. Christian Isobel, 47Jones, Edwin, 179 n. 12Jones, Henry, 106Jones, J. R., 182–3 n. 12Jones, Richard F., 32, 179 n. 11,

184 n. 23Jones,William Jervis, 183 n. 16Jonson, Ben, 28, 106

cultural authority of, 141, 146,209 n. 90

cultural differences and, 141,211 n. 102

Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, 11Journal des Savants, 88–9, 91–2, 104Juvenal, 140, 203 n. 21

Kames, Henry Home, Lord, 169Kant, Immanuel

autonomy and self-imposed lawsand, 92, 151

cultural differences and, 119republic of letters and, 96, 98, 102, 113

works:“An Answer to the Question:‘What Is Enlightenment?’ ”, 98,198 n. 81; Education, 98, 198 n.79;“Idea for a UniversalHistory,” 98, 198 n. 80

Kaufmann,Angelica, 68Kaul, Suvir, 178 n. 8Keats, John

“Sleep and Poetry,” 173, 212 n. 105Kenrick,William, 191 n. 28Kenyon, J. P., 1, 177 n. 2Keynes, Geoffrey, 192 n. 36Klopstock, Friedrich

Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik,112–13, 200 n. 4

Knorr, Klaus E., 180 n. 29Kohn, Hans, 179 n. 11Konigsberg, Charles, 202 nn. 14, 15Kossman, E. H., 181 n. 3Kreissman, Bernard, 183 n. 15

La Beaumelle, Laurent Angliviel de, 71Labrousse, Elisabeth, 199 n. 94La Calprenède, Gauthier de Costes,

sieur de, 131La Fontaine, Jean de, 192 n. 37Langhorne, John, 189 n. 6

Letters Supposed to have passed betweenM. De St. Evremond and Mr.Waller, 128, 204 n. 28

Lansdowne, George Granville, LordEssay upon Unnatural Flights in

Poetry, 122La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de

Réflexions ou sentences et maximesmorales, 199 n. 93

La Rue, Charles de, 153Latin language, see republic of letterslaws of poetry, see neoclassical criticismLe Bossu, René

cultural authority of, 116, 142–3,153, 169, 202 n. 12

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 115, 132–6,137, 142–3

INDEX 223


Le Bossu, René—continuedworks: Traité du poëme épique, 132–4,

142–3, 204 n. 37Le Clerc, Jean, 153Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm

republic of letters and, 61, 89, 97,111–13

works: Novissima Sinica, 97, 198 n.76;“Relation de l’état présentde la République des Lettres,”111–12, 200 n. 2

Lenman, Bruce, 11, 179 n. 19, 185 n. 33Lennox, Charlotte, 68, 134Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 11Le Tourneur, Pierre

(Trans.) “Conjectures sur lacomposition originale,”99–101, 198 n. 87

Levine, Joseph, 194 n. 45Levine, Lawrence, 206 n. 55Lewis, Saunders, 187 n. 62Lhuyd, Edward

Archaeologia Britannica, 187 n. 56Livingstone, David N., 202 n. 15Livy, 105, 118Locke, John, 189 n. 6, 201 n. 5

works: letters, 197 n. 73; SomeThoughts Concerning Education, 46

London Journal, 127, 204 n. 25Longinus, 116, 169, 202 n. 12Louis XIV, 17, 36–7, 116, 123, 129,

135, 183 n. 12Lowth, Robert, 211 n. 102Lucan, 81Lucian, 140Luckmann,Thomas, 201 n. 7Lucretius, 105Lyttelton, George

Epistle to Mr. Pope, 155, 208 n. 77

Macaulay, Catherine, 67, 68, 191 n. 23Macaulay,Thomas Babington

status of English culture and, 9–10,12, 42, 50

works:“Minute on IndianEducation,” 42, 50, 187 n. 60;

“Sir James Mackintosh,” 9–10,179 n. 16

Mackenzie, Henry, 211 n. 102letters, 67, 191 n. 23

Maclean, Norman, 211 n. 101Macpherson, James, 40, 115, 186 n. 42;

see also OssianMadan, Judith Cowper

“The Progress of Poesy,” 31,184 n. 21

Madubuike, Ihechukwu, 158,208 n. 83

Makin, BathsuaAn Essay to Revive the Antient

Education of Gentlewomen, 89,196 n. 65

Malherbe, François de, 36, 106, 153Mandeville, Bernard

The Fable of the Bees, 155, 208 n. 76Marivaux, Pierre, 84Marks, Emerson R., 212 n. 103Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of,

13, 142Marot, Clément, 36Mason,William, 84

works:“Musaeus, a Monody on theDeath of Mr. Pope,” 31, 184 n.21; (Ed.) Poems of Gray,To whichare prefixed Memoirs of his Life,160, 208 n. 84

Mathias, Roland, 51, 187 n. 63Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau de,

113McKeon, Michael, 210 n. 92Meehan, Michael, 191 n. 29Mémoires de Trévoux, 88Menander, 141Mercier, Louis-Sébastien

L’An Deux Mille Quatre CentQuarante, 62–3, 190 n. 13

Mercure galant, 87, 195 n. 58metropolitan status, see English literary

cultureMickle,William Julius, 189 n. 6

The Lusiad … Translated from theOriginal Portuguese, 99, 198 n. 85

INDEX224


Mijnhardt,Wijnand W., 181 n. 3Mill, John Stuart, 199 n. 90Milton, John

cultural differences and, 119, 132,183–4 n. 20

mutability of English and, 34progress of English topos and, 28,

30, 31republic of letters and, 93status of English culture and, 25,

26–7, 34, 42, 50, 51, 68,192 n. 35

works: Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce, 192 n. 35; Paradise Lost,15, 157, 180 n. 28; Reason ofChurch Government, 25, 182 n. 9

Miner, Earl, 116, 201 n. 11Montagu, Elizabeth, 14

cultural nationalism and, 160republic of letters and, 67, 68works: Essay on the Genius and

Writings of Shakespeare, 160,208 n. 86

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortleyrepublic of letters and, 66, 67,

189 n. 6, 190 n. 18Montaigne, Michel de, 154

“Of Custom,” 135, 204 n. 39Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat,

baron de, 119, 202 n. 14The Spirit of the Laws, 149–50,

207 n. 68Monthly Review, 61–2, 67, 68, 190 n.

11, 191 nn. 23, 28More, Hannah, 68More,Thomas, 26, 50Morgan, Prys, 187 nn. 54, 62Morhof, Daniel Georg, 199 n. 92Mulgrave, John Sheffield, Earl

of, 153

Namier, Sir Lewis, 8Napoléon Bonaparte, 23, 24, 25, 48,

59, 72national characters, 3, 62–3, 117–22,

125, 132, 154, 167

nationalism, cultural, see Englishliterary culture

Nelson, Horatio Nelson,Viscount, 13neoclassical criticism

climatological theories and, 115,118–22, 128, 131, 137, 150,167, 202 n. 14

cultural difference and, 6, 109,113–15, 116, 117–18, 124–6,128–32, 133–5, 137–8, 139–40,142–3, 205 n. 47, 206–7 n. 63

cultural nationalism and, 109,111–15, 125–7, 143, 152

historical specificity and, 116, 124,129–30, 134–5, 157,211–12 n. 102

laws or rules of poetry and, 6, 115,132, 133, 135–53

uniformity and, 114, 123, 132–3,136–7, 147, 152, 153, 157

Newman, Gerald, 2, 177 n. 3,179 n. 14

Newton, Isaac, 78, 112–13, 136, 201 n. 5Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 44, 45Nisbet, H. B., 210 n. 94Nussbaum, Felicity, 178 n. 8, 202 n. 15

Oake, Roger B., 204 n. 25O’Brien, Conor Cruise, 9O’Conor, Charles

Dissertations on the Ancient History ofIreland, 48, 187 n. 57

Oldenburg, Henryletters, 61, 189–90 n. 10

Oldham, John“Bion.A Pastoral … Bewailing the

Death of the Earl ofRochester,” 31, 184 n. 21

Oldmixon, Johncultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 126–7republic of letters and, 116, 122,

189 n. 6works: The Arts of Logick and Rhetorick,

126–7, 203 n. 24; Essay onCriticism, 116, 202 n. 12

INDEX 225


“Oriental” culturesclimatological theory and, 118–20,

150, 202 n. 14cultural difference and, 121–2, 123,

124, 128, 129, 150, 166–7cultural status of, 68–9, 118

Ossiancultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 8, 114neoclassical and romantic criticism

and, 167–70republic of letters and, 22, 40status of English culture and, 40, 186

n. 42see also Macpherson, James

Otway,Thomascultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 147–8, 207 n.64, 209 n. 90

Pagden,Anthony, 8, 178–9 n. 10Palgrave, Francis Turner

The Golden Treasury, 42, 186 n. 48Pascal, Blaise, 113, 201 n. 7Patey, Douglas Lane, 166, 210 n. 95Patin, Guy, 79Paulson, Ronald, 208–9 n. 90Pechter, Edward, 210 n. 93, 212 n. 103Peckham, Sir George

A True Report of the Late Discoveries,15, 180 n. 29

Pennycook,Alastair, 186 nn. 50, 51Percy,Thomas, 115Petronius, 128, 204 n. 27Philips, Katharine, 191 n. 23Pindar, 69, 147Pindar, Peter, see Wolcot, JohnPiozzi, Hester Lynch

Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, 27,183 n. 15

Plato, 78, 120–1Plautus, 141Plumb, J. H., 12–13, 180 n. 25Pocock, J. G.A., 205 n. 41Pollio (Gaius Asinius Pollio), 78, 105

Pope,Alexandercultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 77–9, 81, 82,144–6, 155, 158

imperialism and, 77–9, 187 n. 59,193–4 n. 43

laws of poetry and, 144–6, 151, 169mutability of English and, 34, 70neoclassical and romantic criticism

and, 173progress of English topos and, 5, 21,

28, 31–2republic of letters and, 22, 26,

69–70, 71, 84–5status of English culture and, 4, 26,

53, 69–70, 72, 73, 109,187 n. 59

works: Dunciad, 109; Essay onCriticism, 4, 34, 70, 84–5,144–7, 169, 178 n. 7; Pastorals,158; Peri Bathos, 187 n. 59; TheTemple of Fame, 69–70, 191 n.25;“Verses occasion’d by Mr.Addison’s Treatise on Medals,”77–9, 81, 193 nn. 41, 42,193–4 n. 43

The Present State of the Republick ofLetters, 39, 186 n. 40

Prior, Matthewcultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 17–18, 154–5,203 n. 21

status of English culture and,17–18, 26

works: Commonplace Book, 203 n.21; A Letter to Monsieur BoileauDespreaux, 17–18, 180 n. 33;Solomon on the Vanity of theWorld, 154–5, 207 n. 74

provincial anxieties, see English literaryculture

provincialisms, 47–8, 105–6, 117–18,199 nn. 93, 94, 199–200 n. 95

provincial status, see English literaryculture

INDEX226


Pufendorf, Samuel, 89Pye, Henry James, 189 n. 6Pyrrhus and Demetrius, 162

Quarterly Review, 18, 181 n. 35Quintilian, 116, 169

Racine, JeanAlexandre le Grand, 128

Ralegh, Sir Walter, 28Rapin, René

cultural authority of, 105, 116, 194n. 44, 202 n. 12

works: La comparaison de Thucydide etde Tite Live, 199 n. 92;Reflexions sur l’Aristote, 194 n.44, 211 n. 102

Rawson, Claude, 210 n. 94Réau, Louis, 195 n. 58republic of letters

belletristic versus erudite, 5–6, 55–8,80–1, 194 n. 45

censorship and, 92–4center and peripheries of, 6, 55, 58,

63, 73, 86–96, 104, 106–9, 175cultural diversity and, 6, 28, 55,

57–8, 62–3, 65, 90, 96–8,103–4, 108, 111–12,143, 175

English-language writers and, 58–9,68–70, 73–86, 95, 104, 108

French language in, 56–7, 87–91,94–5, 103–4

Latin language in, 64–5, 73–4, 82,87, 88–91, 94–5, 104, 196 n.63, 197 n. 73, 203 n. 21

mechanical arts and, 61, 64, 107–8public sphere and, 58, 99–104, 199

n. 90religion and, 55–6, 60, 65, 93–4, 97,

188 n. 2, 190 n. 16, 196–7 n. 71states or polities and, 71–3,

91–2, 103universality and, 60–1, 95–8, 101–3,

108, 113–14, 198 n. 82

women in, 56, 57, 60, 61, 65–8,94–5, 96, 105, 190 nn. 10, 17,18, 191 n. 23

Richardson, Jonathan, 189 n. 6Richardson, Samuel

republic of letters and, 26, 27, 84,85–6, 100, 191 n. 23

works: Clarissa, 85–6; Pamela, 27,85–6, 195 n. 52

Robertson,William, 119Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of,

26, 127Rogers, Pat, 202 n. 15Ronsard, Pierre de, 36Rosa, Maria, 196–7 n. 71Ross,Trevor, 183 n. 18Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 84Rowe, Nicholas, 81

The Tragedy of Jane Shore, 160–2, 208n. 87

rules of poetry, see neoclassicalcriticism, laws of poetry

Runge, Laura L., 191 n. 24Rymer,Thomas

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 26, 137, 141

provinciality and, 187 n. 54republic of letters and, 189 n. 6,

194 n. 44works:“Preface to Rapin,” 26,

182 n. 11

Saavedra Fajardo, Diego decultural differences and, 64–5, 69, 90republic of letters and, 63–6,

68–9, 71status of English culture and, 68–9,

203 n. 17works: Republica literaria, 63–6, 68–9,

90, 190 nn. 14, 15, 203 n. 17Sacksteder,William, 197 n. 73Saint-Evremond, Charles

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 115, 127–32,134, 137, 140, 146

INDEX 227


Saint-Evremond, Charles—continuedlaws of poetry and, 132, 136,

140, 146status of English culture and,

192 n. 37works:“Discourse upon the Grand

Alexander,” 128–9, 204 n. 30;letters, 140, 206 n. 57;“Of theEnglish Comedy,” 131, 204 n.33;“Reflections uponthe … Genius of the RomanPeople,” 129–30, 204 n. 31;“Upon Comedies,” 132,204 n. 36;“Upon Tragedies,”130–1, 204 n. 32

Sallo, Denis de, 91–2, 94Salway, Peter, 195 n. 48Samuel, Richard

The Nine Living Muses of GreatBritain, 68

Sandwich, John Montagu, Earl of, 11,180 n. 23

Sappho, 65–6, 140Satan’s Harvest Home, 210 n. 92Scaliger, Joseph, 79Schiebinger, Londa, 180 n. 32,

190 n. 10Schoeck, R. J., 191 n. 34Schoneveld, Cornelius W., 181 n. 1Scodel, Joshua, 210 n. 93Scott, H. M., 180 n. 22Scott, Sir Walter, 47Seeber, Edward D., 190 n. 13Segrais, J. R. de, 116, 153Seneca, 81, 120–1Settle, Elkanah

A Farther Defence of Dramatick Poetry,139, 206 n. 54

Seven Years’War, 3, 11, 16Sewell, George

“To Mr. Pope, on his Poems andTranslations,” 31, 184 n. 21

Sgard, Jean, 195 n. 60Shadwell,Thomas

The Virtuoso, 87, 195 n. 56

Shaftesbury,Anthony Ashley Cooper,Earl of

republic of letters and, 67, 189 n. 6status of English culture and, 1, 4works: Characteristicks of Men,

Manners, Opinions,Times, 1,177 n. 1

Shakespeare,Williamcultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 127, 134–5,141, 160–2, 209 n. 90, 211–12n. 102

laws of poetry and, 146mutability of English and, 33progress of English topos and, 28republic of letters and, 26–7, 168status of English culture and, 26–7,

42, 50, 51, 206 n. 55Shelburne, Lord, 11Sheridan, Elizabeth Anne, 68Sheridan,Thomas

mutability of English and, 34provinciality and, 47status of English culture and, 40,

46, 70works: British Education, 34, 185 n.

31; A Discourse. BeingIntroductory to His Course ofLectures on Elocution, 40, 46, 47,186 n. 43; A Dissertationon … Learning the EnglishTongue, 70, 191 n. 27

Sherwood, John, 202 n. 12Sidney, Philip, 28Sigonio, Carlo, 79Simon, Richard

Histoire critique du Vieux Testament,126

Siskin, Clifford, 212 n. 104Smallwood, P. J., 194 n. 44Smart, Christopher, 186 n. 40Smith,Adam

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 76, 113

republic of letters and, 76, 99

INDEX228


works:“Letter to the EdinburghReview,” 76, 99, 192 n. 38;Wealth of Nations, 113

Smollett,Tobiasprovinciality and, 47–8republic of letters and, 84works: Humphrey Clinker, 47–8

Soame, Sir William, 34; see also Dryden,The Art of Poetry

Sophocles, 137Sorensen, Janet, 178 n. 8, 186 n. 42,

187 n. 65Southey, Robert

republic of letters and, 22–5, 59,181–2 n. 5, 189 n. 6

status of English culture and, 18,24–5, 181 n. 35

works:“Epistle to AllanCunningham,” 22–5, 59,181 n. 2; letters, 181–2 n. 5

Spanish literary culture, 1, 28, 39, 40,65, 68, 88, 124, 130, 131

Spenser, Edmundcultural differences and, 150–1, 171,

173, 211 n. 102laws of poetry and, 150–1, 171progress of English topos and, 27,

28, 31, 35Sprat,Thomas

status of English culture and, 17,18, 26

works: History of the Royal Society,17, 180 n. 32; Observations onMons. de Sorbiere’s Voyage intoEngland, 17, 180 n. 31

Spurlin, Paul Merrill, 199 n. 91Steele, Sir Richard

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 163–5, 166,209 n. 92

works: letters, 209 n. 92; TheTender Husband, 163–5, 166,209 n. 91

Stephen, Leslie, 152, 207 n. 71Sterne, Laurence, 189 n. 6

Stevens, Paul, 180 n. 29Stone, P.W. K., 114, 201 n. 10Stratford, E. C.W., 179 n. 11Sudan, Rajani, 178 n. 8Suleri, Sara, 43, 186 n. 49Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, 28Sussman, Charlotte, 178 n. 8Swift, Jonathan


mutability of English and, 33republic of letters and, 84, 189 n. 6,

190 n. 17, 191 n. 23status of English culture and, 4,

203 n. 17works: Battle of the Books, 190 n. 17;

letters, 84, 162, 195 n. 51, 208n. 89;“Ode to the AthenianSociety,” 203 n. 17; Proposal forCorrecting … the English Tongue,4, 33, 178 n. 7

TacitusAgricola, 195 n. 48

Tasso,Torquato, 38, 68, 154,207 n. 64

Tatler, 162, 208 n. 89Temple, Sir William

cultural differences and, 119mutability of English and, 33progress of English topos and, 28republic of letters and, 96–7, 98,

189 n. 6works:“Essay upon the Ancient and

Modern Learning,” 33, 185 n.28;“Of Heroic Virtue,” 96–7,98, 197 n. 74

Terence, 140Terry, Richard, 183 n. 18, 184 n. 22,

187 n. 54, 212 n. 104Thomson, James, 119

The Seasons, 155, 208 n. 78Tickell,Thomas

mutability of English and, 34republic of letters and, 189 n. 6

INDEX 229


Tickell,Thomas—continuedstatus of English culture and, 4works: On the Prospect of Peace, 4, 34,

178 n. 7Tillotson, John, 28To the H___nble Sir J___ B____,

209–10 n. 92Tonson, Jacob, 34Trevelyan, G. M., 1Trollope,Anthony

Barchester Towers, 27, 183 n. 17Trowbridge, Hoyt, 211–12 n. 102True Declaration of the Estate of the

Colonie in Virginia, 180 n. 29Trumpener, Katie, 153, 207 n. 72Tyler, Royall

The Contrast, 158, 208 n. 82

Ultee, Maarten, 188–9 n. 3Universal Visiter, 28–30, 39, 62, 186 n. 40Upton, John, 211 n. 102

Vaillant, Jean-Foi, 79–80Van Rooden, Peter, 197 n. 71Van Zijlvelt,Antony, 80, 194 n. 46Varro, 63, 105Vaugelas, Claude Favre, seigneur de,

106Vernon,Adm. Edward, 13Vico, Giambattista, 119Vigneul-Marville, M. de (pseud. of

Bonaventure d’Argonne)republic of letters and, 59–63, 64,

65, 66, 71, 90, 97, 189 n. 9,190 n. 12

Villon, François de, 36Virgil

cultural authority of, 32–3, 34, 47,63, 68, 69, 133, 146, 147, 156

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 133–4, 138,154, 155, 157, 159, 206–7 n. 63

status of English culture and, 78, 81,83, 86, 155, 156

works: Aeneid, 32–3, 34, 133, 153,157; Eclogues, 83, 112

Voltairecultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 112, 127, 132,208 n. 86

republic of letters and, 88, 107status of English culture and, 26, 69works: Essay on the Epic Poetry of the

European Nations, 26, 132, 204n. 35; Histoire de Charles XII,127; letters, 26, 88, 196 n. 61;Letters Concerning the EnglishNation, 26, 112, 200 n. 3; Sièclede Louis XIV, 107

Vossius, Gerardus Johannes (GerhardJohann Voss), 79

Waller, Edmundmutability of English and, 33progress of English topos and, 27,

28, 30, 31, 35–6, 51status of English culture and, 26,

49–50, 51, 192 n. 37works:“Of English Verse,” 33,

185 n. 27Wallography, 46–7, 187 n. 54Walpole, Horace


laws of poetry and, 148–9republic of letters and, 84status of English culture and,

11, 26works: letters, 11, 84, 180 n. 20;

Castle of Otranto, 148–9,207 n. 66

Waquet, Françoise, 188 n. 1, 188–9 n. 3,189 n. 4, 196 nn. 63, 70

Ward, Edward“To the Pious Memory of …

Mr. John Dryden,” 18, 181 n 34War of American Independence, 10,

11–12, 179 n. 19Warton, Joseph

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 115, 158,159–60

INDEX230


neoclassical and romantic criticismand, 170, 173, 211 n. 102

works: Essay on the Genius andWritings of Pope, 158, 159–60,208 n. 81

Warton,Thomascultural differences and cultural

nationalism and, 115laws of poetry and, 150–1neoclassical and romantic criticism

and, 173, 211 nn. 99, 102status of English culture and, 135works: History of English Poetry, 211

n. 99; Observations on the FairyQueen of Spenser, 135, 150–1,204 n. 40

Wasserman, Earl, 173, 211 nn. 99, 102,212 n. 106

Watts,Thomasstatus of English culture and,

49–50works:“On the Probable Future

Position of the EnglishLanguage,” 49–50, 187 n. 58

Weinbrot, Howard, 193 n. 40,201 n. 8

Wellek, René, 211 nn. 101, 102Welsted, Leonard

cultural differences and culturalnationalism and, 209 nn. 90, 92

progress of English topos and,31, 39

status of English culture and, 45works:“Epistle to the Duke of

Chandos,” 31, 39, 45, 184 n. 21;“A Prologue occasioned by theRevival of a Play ofShakespeare,” 209 n. 90

Wesley, SamuelAn Epistle to a Friend Concerning

Poetry, 31, 184 n. 21West Indies, 10, 11, 15, 180 n. 19Wheeler, Roxann, 202 n. 15Whelan, Ruth, 199 n. 94Williams,Anna

“Verses addressed to Mr.Richardson,” 85–6, 195 n. 53

Williams, Basil, 2–3, 177 n. 4Williams, Raymond, 104Wilson, Kathleen, 209–10 n. 92Wimsatt,W. K., 211 n. 102Wither, George, 189 n. 6Wolcot, John (pseud.“Peter Pindar”),

52–3, 187 n. 64Wolfe, Gen. James, 13, 14Wollstonecraft, Mary

republic of letters and, 66, 68, 98works: A Vindication of the Rights of

Woman, 98, 198 n. 82Womersley, David, 207 n. 63Wood, Paul Spencer, 207 n. 64Wood, Robert, 211 n. 102Wordsworth,William

“Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,”98–9, 198 n. 83

Wycherley,William, 28Wyse,Thomas, 19, 181 n. 36

Young, Edwardcultural nationalism and, 155republic of letters and, 99–101,

189 n. 6works: Conjectures on Original

Composition, 99–101,198 n. 87;“On Lyric Poetry,”155, 207 n. 75

INDEX 231


Documents

Before the Empire of English: Literature, Provinciality, and Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century Britain