Men And Manners of the Eighteenth Century

difficulty through a chaos of treasons and cabals. But to the men who lived in it the age was Changes of the far more than this. To them the Revolution was more than a merely political revolution: it was the recognition. not only of a change in the relations of the natinq t;o ifs rulers, but of changes almost as grpat in F.ng-lish society and in English ''ntfl1ip'f"7tr Tf it was the age of the Bill of Rights, it was the age also of the Spectator. If Marl- borough and Somers had their share in shaping the new England that came of 1688, so also had Addison and Steele. And to the bulk of people it may be doubted whether the change that passed over literature was not more startling and more interesting than the change that passed over politics. Few changes, indeed, have ever been so radical and complete. Literature suddenly doffed its stately garb of folio or octavo, and stepped abroad in the light and easy dress of pamphlet and essay. We hear sometimes that the last century is "repulsive"; but what is it that repels us in it? Is it the age itself, or the picture of itself which the age so fearlessly presents? There is no historic ground for thinking the eighteenth century a coarser or a more brutal age than the centuries that had gone before; rather there is ground for thinking it a less coarse and a less brutal age. The features which repel us in it are no features of its own production. What makes the improvement Georgian age seem repulsive is simply that it is...