ted from the general body of the nation, it is,
I think, impossible to understand clearly the transformation of the
drama. It illustrates the necessity of accounting for the literary
movement, not only by intellectual and general causes, but by noting how
special social developments radically alter the relation of any
particular literary genus to the general national movement. I shall soon
have to refer to the case again.

I have now only to say briefly what I propose to attempt in these
lectures. The literary history, as I conceive it, is an account of one
strand, so to speak, in a very complex tissue: it is connected with the
intellectual and social development; it represents movements of thought
which may sometimes check and be sometimes propitious to the existing
forms of art; it is the utterance of a class which may represent, or
fail to represent, the main national movement; it is affected more or
less directly by all manner of religious, political, social, and
economical changes; and it is dependent upon the occurrence of
individual genius for which we cannot even profess to account. I propose
to take the history of English literature in the eighteenth century. I
do not aim at originality: I take for granted the ordinary critical
judgments upon the great writers of whom so much has been said by judges
certainly more competent than myself, and shall recall the same facts
both of ordinary history and of the history of thought. What I hope is,
that by bringing familiar facts together I may be able to bring out the
nature of the connection between them; and, little as I can say that
will be at all new, to illustrate one point of view, which, as I
believe, it is desirable that literary histories should take into
account more distinctly than they have generally done.

II

The first period of which I am to speak represents to the political
historian the Avatar of Whiggism. The glorious revolution has decided
the long struggle of the previous century; the main outlines of the
British Constitution are irrevocably determined; the political system is
in harmony with the great political forces, and the nation has settled,
as Carlyle is fond of saying, with the centre of gravity lowest, and
therefore in a position of stable equilibrium. For another century no
organic change was attempted or desired. Parliament has become
definitely the great driving-wheel of the political machinery; not, as a
century before, an int