I A Brief History Of An English Literature An Augustan Age PDF Download

Excerpt from The Augustan Ages The disabilities of a short essay like this are confessed in its aim, which is to review more than one literature of Western Europe during a period that Opens in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The later limit varies in different cases. In France it is the death of Louis XIV.; in England the story goes fur ther With Pope and Swift, but is guided rather by schools and fashions than by strict chronology, Which may be misleading. As for some other countries, which fought the same battles as France and England, only many years in their wake, I have tried to pack, into what must be regarded as an appendix, the be ginnings of the great change, mental and formal, that overtook them also. This latter part has been pur posely written on a rather more compressed scale. It was impracticable to go too far into the eigh teenth century and it may be added, With no Wish to put off criticism, that the fitting of the countries, groups, and authors into this part of the series has been, as usual, carefully considered, and can be judged fairly when the companion volumes appear. The literature of prose and thought has preceded in each case, without any ambition to outline the course of pure philosophy. For in this period, while poetry declined, nothing less than criticism began to be organised, as well as prose in its newer cast. The history of style by itself would have no sense, without some remark on the shapes that the intellectual and rational movement took in letters. Les idees seules, says Bufi'on, forment le fond da style. France formed her prose soonest; her writing was on the whole more noble and influential than that of any other land at the time; and therefore France has been put first, although England did more for science, and perhaps ultimately more for thought. The two great countries fill three-quarters of this volume, and the sway of the French and English models upon other nations occupies much of the sequel. Hence it is hoped that, however the workmanship comes short, the general design may be right, and the emphasis. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.