England and the English in the Eighteenth Century (Volume 2); Chapters in the Social History of the Times (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: "3 CHAPTER XIV. THE LITERARY WORLD. The Augustan era of English literature?Its rise and wane?Evil consequences of Government patronage of authors?Miseries of literary life in London under the first Georges?Samuel Boyse?Dancing attendance upon the great?Private patronage?Publishing by subscription ?Fulsome dedications?Laureate odes?Magazines and reviews? Circulating libraries and reading societies?Goldsmith's castigation of Chinese tales and English tours?Eighteenth-century novels- Pamphlets?The Fourth Estate -Sketch of its history?Dr. Johnson as a reporter?Advertisements?The provincial press?Anonymity and noms-de-guem. It was long customary to style the first quarter of the age under review the Augustan era of English literature, by reason of a resemblance in point of intellectual activity which was supposed to exist between it and the lettered ease of society in the capital of the Roman empire under the beneficent sway of the Emperor Augustus. Modern critics, however, have been unable to endorse this verdict in its entirety, for the simple reason that it expresses only a general truth. If the term Augustan must be held to imply that those who devoted themselves to the literary profession in England during the twelve years which comprise the reign of Queen Anne constantly received signal marks of the royal favour and protection, that the civil power stooped to flatter that order of men by their familiarity and by a system of rewards, that they were in a position to command the universal admiration and respect of their fellow-men, and that both they and their works engrossed a far greater amount of public attention than had hitherto been similarly bestowed upon them, then assuredly the epithet Augustan loses none of its force. But if, on the other hand, it is sought to ...