The Cambridge History Of English Literature Vol 14 Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from The Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. 10: The Age of Johnson After a protracted period of tentative effort, the English novel in the eighteenth century sprang into complete being from a soil not upturned by any violent social upheaval, but in which a deep movement of vitality had been secretly at work. The moral revolution sometimes called the renascence of sentiment cannot be said to have preceded the birth of Richardson's masterpieces; but their success, to some extent, was favoured by it, while they contributed to give it weight. The literary growth into which the sap that had permeated the Elizabethan drama was again to flow could thus be sustained by a radical energy equal in depth, if not in breadth, to that by means of which Shakespeare's plays had flourished. From the age of Milton to that of Wesley, puritanism, to all appearance, had been struck out of art, as it had out of the brilliant, superficial life of the world. Yet, Bunyan had dreamt his dream, and visualised for ever his imaginings; Addison had reconciled literature with the earnest purposes of human life; Defoe had grasped the concrete substance of things and breathed truth into fiction. From the beginning of the Georgian era, the rise of the trading class had been slowly infusing into public opinion a new spirit of probity and fervour. About 1740, the methodist movement was in full activity, and the sentimental reaction was gathering an impetus destined to contribute to no less a result than the romantic revival. A contemporary as he was of Wesley and of Young, Richardson signalises the advent of a momentous change, the full extent of which was never to become perceptible to himself. 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.