phesied the fall of the Bastille and denounced luxury,
was to some extent an unconscious ally of Rousseau, though he regarded
the religious aspects of Rousseau's doctrine as shallow and
unsatisfactory. Crabbe shows the attitude of which Johnson is the most
characteristic example. Johnson was thoroughly content with the old
school in so far as it meant that poetry must be thoroughly rational and
sensible. His hatred of cant and foppery was so far congenial to the
tradition; but it implied a difference. To him Pope's metaphysical
system was mere foppery, and the denunciation of luxury mere cant. He
felt mere contempt for Goldsmith's flirtation with that vein of
sentiment. His dogged conservatism prevented him from recognising the
strength of the philosophical movements which were beginning to clothe
themselves in Rousseauism. Burke, if he condemned the revolutionary
doctrine as wicked, saw distinctly how potent a lesson it was becoming.
Johnson, showing the true British indifference, could treat the movement
with contempt--Hume's scepticism was a mere 'milking the bull'--a love
of paradox for its own sake--and Wilkes and the Whigs, though wicked in
intention, were simple and superficial dealers in big words. In the
literary application the same sturdy common sense was opposed to the
Pope tradition so far as that tradition opposed common sense.
Conventional diction, pastorals, and twaddle about Nature belonged to
the nonsensical side. He entirely sympathised with Crabbe's substitution
of the real living brutish clown for the unreal swain of Arcadia; that
is, for developing poetry by making it thoroughly realistic even at the
cost of being prosaic.

So far the tendency to realism was thoroughly congenial to the
matter-of-fact utilitarian spirit of the time, and was in some sense in
harmony with a 'return to Nature.' But it was unconsciously becoming
divorced from some of the great movements of thought, of which it failed
to perceive the significance. A new inspiration was showing itself, to
which critics have done at least ample justice. The growth of history
had led to renewed interest in much that had been despised as mere
curiosities or ridiculed as implying the barbarism of our ancestors. I
have already noticed the dilettantism of the previous generation, and
the interest of Gray and Collins and Warton and Walpole in antiquarian
researches. Gothic had ceased to be a simple term of reproach. The old
English literature is