00074--Describe general characteristics of the literary criticism of 18th century.

            Crticism in the early 18^th century does not differ substantially from Restoration criticism, except that Neo-classicism grows more severe and stringent, and there is an expansion and diffusion of the critical temper.  It accepts and consolidates the revolution that Dryden made, and advances it cautiously on many fronts.  It makes ample use of the critical tradition that it has inherited from Dryden.

1.      18^th century has inherited the 'cultural nationalism' of Dryden, i.e., a love of English literature and criticism and a contempt for French literary theories and criticism.  In this connection, George Matson says that the Augustan contempt for French neo-classical authority is much like Dryden's even in its ambiguities.  The attitude of the nineteen year old Pope when he wrote the Essay on Criticism might be Dryden's "cultural nationalism" put into verse.  In so far as the rules are French, Pope argues, they are bad; in so far as they are ancient, and judiciously interpreted by Englishmen, they are good.

2.      Criticism in the 18^th century has also inherited from Dryden; his historicism or historical sense.  No Augustan critic can match Dryden in the fitness of his historical sense; but as a result of his work there is widespread awareness in the early 18^th century that the sense of the history is a useful and necessary part of the equipment of a critic. 

It has acquired a tradition of descriptive criticism - as a result of Dryden's work, the Augustans are able to practise descriptive criticism more casually and naturally than any Restoration critic.  The olden legislative criticism, or the older method of judging a work on the basis of the genre to which it belonged, was pushed out, and descriptive and analytic criticism hence forth reigned supreme.  Analysis became a fashionable activity, and critics no longer hid their analysis of literary master pieces in some other form.  Descriptive criticism could now throw off its mask, and appear in its true colours.  A revolution of a far-reaching significance was thus brought about by Dryden.