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What Was Neo-Classicism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

James William Johnson
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Extract

There seems to be no doubt about it: the century-old truisms about the literature variously called “Augustan” and “Neo-Classical” are in the process of dissolution. Premises induced by J. S. Mill and Matthew Arnold, explored by Oliver Elton, dogmatized by G. E. B. Saintsbury, and summarized by Leslie Stephen now appear inadequate to more recent scholars, whose research and rereading of Neo-Classical texts run counter to the general testimony as well as the specific judgments of their grandfathers. For the past few decades at least, published commentary has increasingly indicated the need to overhaul received ideas about those writers identified with the revival of classicism in England following the Restoration of Charles II and continuing throughout the eighteenth century.

The deficiencies in Victorian and Edwardian assumptions about Neo-Classicism revealed by latter-day findings are several, some of them due to false criteria of taste, morality, and literary excellence. But chiefly the research of the present age has disclosed a vast range of literature simply ignored — or, perhaps, suppressed — by earlier critics. Based as they were on a limited, prejudged selection of Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, the premises inherited from Victorian criticism have naturally failed to account for the discoveries of twentieth-century scholars.

The resulting disparity between limited assumptions and expanded information has called into question the very possibility of formulating any critical schema that accurately describes the characteristics of English literature between 1660 and 1800. The relativistic — not to say atomistic — inclinations of contemporary scholarship enforce the view that indeed no schema is possible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , November 1969 , pp. 49 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1969

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References

1. See Paulson, Ronald, “Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century,” Studies in English Literature, VII (1967), 531–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Cf. the background studies of Stuart politics by G. M. Trevelyan and George N. Clarke, and C. V. Wedgwood's examination of literature and politics under the Stuarts. See also the account of the Restoration in David Hume's History of England.

3. There are a number of good anthologies of Neo-Classical literary criticism, including those edited by G. W. Chapman, W. P. Ker, H. H. Adams and Baxter Hathaway, and J. E. Spingarn. It was hardly accidental that the rapid development of criticism as a literary form coincided with the rise of the Neo-Classical critique.

4. See Johnson, J. W., The Formation of English Neo-Classical Thought (Princeton, 1967), ch. iCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Boyle, Robert, A Discourse of Things above Reason. Inquiring Whether a Philosopher should admit there are any such (London, 1681)Google Scholar. B., R., Sir Isaac Newton's Account of the Æther (Dublin, 1745)Google Scholar; the following works by Sir Isaac Newton: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, ed. Hutchins, R. M. [Great Books of the Western World, XXXIV] (Chicago, 1952)Google Scholar; Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, ed. and tr. Hall, A. R. and Hall, Marie B. (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar; Pour Letters to Doctor Bentley. Containing Some Arguments in Proof of a Deity (London, 1756)Google Scholar; Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy, ed. Cohen, Bernard (Cambridge, 1958)Google Scholar. Bentley, Richard, The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism … in Eight Sermons (London, 1693)Google Scholar, and A Confutation of Atheism from the Structure and Origin of Humane Bodies (London, 1692)Google Scholar. Newton and Bentley specifically address themselves to Epicurus's deficiencies, Newton concentrating on those of hypothesis and Bentley on those of logic. See Newton, , Pour Letters, p. 25Google Scholar; Bentley, , The Folly of Atheism, Sermon I, pp. 7–8Google Scholar. Evelyn, in his long unpublished History of Religion, similarly attacked Epicurean thought, though he had earlier translated Epicurus's writings. See Evelyn, John, The History of Religion. A Rational Account of the True Religion (London, 1850), II, 174–78Google Scholar. Cf. the attitudes toward Epicurus espoused by John Dryden, Walter Charleton, the Earl of Clarendon, and Sir William Temple. Cf. Johnson, , English Neo-Classical Thought, pp. 82–85Google Scholar.

6. For a study of the metaphoric influence of Newton on eighteenth-century poetry, see Nicolson, Marjorie, Newton Demands the Muse (Princeton, 1946)Google Scholar.

7. For a survey of Epicurean doctrines and traditions which facilitates a reconciliation of Epicureanism and Christianity, see DeWitt, Norman Wentworth, Epicurus and His Philosophy (Minneapolis, 1954)Google Scholar. Epicurus was not always so interpreted, especially in seventeenth-century France and England, where critics of the pagan came to stress the antithetical nature of his teachings and those of Jesus Christ and St. Paul. Even so, DeWitt's study helps to explain why pious Christians like Temple, Evelyn, Dryden, and Clarendon felt attracted to Epicureanism and assimilated some of its beliefs. DeWitt's bibliography is an evaluative recounting of earlier studies of Epicureanism.

8. The epithet is Swift's, but Plato was universally revered among the Neo-Classicists. See Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels, IV and elsewhereGoogle Scholar.

9. For a ready source book of eighteenth-century borrowings from Greco-Roman naturalists, see Goldsmith, Oliver, An History of the Earth and Animated Nature (London, 1774)Google Scholar. For similar borrowing from ancient medical texts, see Arbuthnot, John, An Essay Concerning the Nature of Ailments … According to the Different Constitutions of Human Bodies (London, 1731)Google Scholar, and An Essay Concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies (London, 1733)Google Scholar.

10. Much has been written about the Decay of Nature tradition and its effects. For probably the single most direct introit into scholarship on the subject, see Harris, Victor, All Coherence Gone (Chicago, 1949)Google Scholar, and its bibliography.

11. Diodorus Siculus, 1.6; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, V.77. See, too, Diodorus, X.10; Dionysius, VI.86; Pliny the Elder, Natural History, VII.xvi.73-76; Herodotus, , Histories, I.86, 207Google Scholar.

12. Pope, Alexander, An Essay on Man, III.17–20Google Scholar.

13. Johnson, Samuel, The Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 76Google Scholar.

14. Pope, , Essay on Man, I.251–56, 89-90Google Scholar. For similar visions of physical decay and chaos, see Pope, , The Dunciad, I.55–72Google Scholar, IV.627-56; Dryden, , “A Song for St. Cecilia's Day,” ll. 55–63Google Scholar; the Earl of Rochester, Upon Nothing, and After Death, Nothing Is; James Thomson, The Castle of Indolence, Canto II, LXXVII-LXXXI; Gray, Thomas, The Descent of Odin, ll. 87–94Google Scholar.

15. Temple, , A Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Umpire, Sweden, Denmark, et al. (1671)Google Scholar, and Of Popular Discontents; Swift, A Project for the Advancement of Religion; Pope, Windsor Forest; Joseph Addison, The Vision of Mirzah; Johnson, , Vanity of Human Wishes, ll. 125–28Google Scholar; Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LXXIGoogle Scholar.

16. Unsurprisingly, these images appear most often in Neo-Classical drama; e.g., Dryden's The Conquest of Granada and Aureng-Zebe, Rochester's Valentinian, Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved, Addison's Cato, Johnson's Irene. But they may also be found in satires, lyric poetry, and essays — even historiography. For a diverse sample of uses, see Swift's An Argument against Abolishing Christianity; Gray's Ode on the Spring; Temple's Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands; Clarendon's A History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars.

17. Cf. Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 60: “We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.” See also Pope, Moral Epistles, Epistle I, “To Cobham,” and Essay on Man, II.

18. Cf. Rochester, “A Satyr against Mankind”; Dryden, , Absalom and Acbitophel, II.1Google Scholar; Swift, “The Beasts' Confession”; John Gay, Fables; Bernard Mandeville, The Grumbling Hive; Samuel Johnson, The Idler, No. 22. Although other Neo-Classicists modified the view of mankind as bestial, most of them characteristically represented men's “lower” instincts in animalistic terms; for instance, Fielding showed his Jonathan Wilds and Parson Trullibers as wolves and swine. Hogarth's illustration of the characters in The Beggar's Opera as beasts of prey epitomizes the underlying Neo-Classical attitude.

19. Obviously many Neo-Classicists absorbed the psychological theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume while rejecting other of their tenets. To a considerable extent Hobbes and Locke were merely giving voice to widely held assumptions about the nature of man.

20. Cf. Pope, Moral Epistles, Epistle I:

Our depths who fathoms, or our shallows finds,

Quick whirls, or shifting eddies, of our minds ?

On human actions reason tho' you can,

It may be Reason, but it is not Man.

21. Freud acknowledged his indebtedness to writers of fictive literature for his insights, and various modern writers have testified to the psychological astuteness of Swift, Pope, et al. Since Neo-Classical writing is permeated with psychological insights, it is superfluous to cite examples, though it ought to be noted that most of the earthier products of the Neo-Classicists' study of mankind — Sodom, The Empress of Morocco, Swift's bawdry, Pope's obscene parodies, John Cleland's Fanny Hill, and so on — were suppressed by the proper Victorians. As a consequence, Neo-Classicism was reduced to the “proper” and “decorous” by such commentators as Leslie Stephen; and much of its vitality and complexity, as well as humor, has been ignored. To speak of Neo-Classicism without including its fleshier elements is like equating classicism with the orations of Cicero while disowning Catullus, Martial, and Petronius Arbiter. It should be further noted that much of the medical and quasi-medical literature of the Neo-Classical period — e.g., Arbuthnot's Essays, Cheyne's, GeorgeThe English Malady (London, 1733)Google Scholar — were psychological studies of hypochondria, melancholy, etc.; and the compositions that parodied them — Swift's Digression on Madness, Pope's Cave of Spleen section in The Rape of the hock, Matthew Green's The Spleen, James Boswell's The Hypochondriack — incorporate many of the basic psychological axioms of Neo-Classical thought. Sir Samuel Garth's Dispensary uniquely combines the classical, satiric, medical, and psychological.

22. See Johnson, English Neo-Classical Thought, ch. iv.

23. See SirChurchill, Winston, The Age of Revolution (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; SirNamier, Lewis, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; Plumb, J. H., England in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1955)Google Scholar, and The First Four Georges (London, 1956)Google Scholar; Walcott, Robert Jr., English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; as well as the studies of Trevelyan, Clarke, and Wedgwood.

24. Even a rapid survey of the political theories of Locke, Bolingbroke, Junius, and Burke reveals the basis for many of the specific political opinions expressed in the columns of The Guardian, The Examiner, The Englishman, The Craftsman, The World, The North Briton, The Bee, and other periodicals of the times written by Steele, Swift, Bolingbroke, Addison, Defoe, Fielding, Johnson, Chesterfield, Goldsmith, and others.

25. Pope, , Essay on Man, III.147–318Google Scholar; Swift, An Essay on Modern Education, The Public Spirit of the Whigs, Advice to the October Club, and elsewhere; James Thomson, Liberty; William Cowper, Charity; Johnson, The Rambler, Nos. 20, 68, 89, 99, 135 et seq.; Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

26. Cf. Johnson, English Neo-Classical Thought, ch. ii.

27. Lovejoy, A. O., Essays in the History of Ideas (New York, 1960), pp. 78–98Google Scholar. This classic study, “The Parallel of Deism and Classicism,” originally appeared in Modern Philology, XXIX (1932), 281–99Google Scholar.

28. Notably Bolingbroke, Gibbon, and Horace Walpole, not to mention the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Pope, and others who were part-time Deists or part-time classicists.

29. Evelyn, John, History of Religion, and A Devotionarie Book (London, 1936)Google Scholar; Steele, Richard, The Christian Hero (London, 1701)Google Scholar; Jonathan Swift, The Sentiments of a Church of England Man; Addison, Joseph, Of the Christian Religion, in Miscellaneous Works (London, 1914), II, 407–45Google Scholar; Mandeville, Bernard, Free Thoughts on Religion (London, 1720)Google Scholar, and The Divine Instinct, Recom-mended to Men (Oxford, 1751)Google Scholar; Samuel Johnson, A Review of a Free Inquiry into the Origin and Nature of Evil.

30. The writings of four clergymen closely associated with Neo-Classicists and the Neo-Classical tradition provide a compendium of these beliefs. See the sermons of Gilbert Burnet, Francis Atterbury, Joseph Trapp, and William Warburton. Cf. Mossner, Ernest C., Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason (New York, 1936)Google Scholar.

31. Cf. esp. Atterbury, Francis, Sermons and Discourses on Several Subjects and Occasions (London, 1723)Google Scholar; Atterbury, Francis, “On Anxiety” and “The Wretchedness of a Wavering Mind,” in The English Preacher (London, 1773–1774), VIIGoogle Scholar, and “On the Terrors of Conscience,” in ibid., VIII; Joseph Trapp, The Nature and Influence of the Fear of God. A Sermon (London, 1713), and The Nature, Usefulness, and Regulation of Religious Zeal (London, 1739)Google Scholar. These sermons are particularly significant in revealing the fusion of Christian pessimism with ethical tenets. Atterbury was a self-professed lover of the Greek and Latin classics, who aided Charles Boyle in the Phalaris controversy, taking Temple's side against Bentley. A long-time friend of Swift's, he was eventually exiled but only after Pope testified on his behalf. Trapp was the chaplain of Bolingbroke and the preserver of the heroic dramas of Roger Boyle, the First Earl of Orrery, if not the writer of The Tragedy of King Saul himself. Orrery was the elder brother of Robert Boyle and the father of Charles Boyle.

32. See George Villiers, The Rehearsal; Dryden, MacFlecknoe; Pope, The Dunciad; Henry Fielding, The Tragedy of Tragedies.

33. Johnson, English Neo-Classical Thought, ch. iv. Compare the use of David as a symbol with that of Augustus and Cato and, later, the Antonines as political preservers in Neo-Classical writing. Even the fictional heroes — the Allworthys, the Heartfrees, the Brambles, the Shandys — are knowingly opposed to such manipulators and destroyers as Blifil, Jonathan Wild, Peachem, and their ilk. For the writer as hero, see The Rambler, No. 21. Cf. the treatment of Dr. Johnson as a literary hero in Thomas Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship.

34. See the journals and diaries of Pepys, Swift, Johnson, and Boswell, for instance. Compare these private expressions with the public, poetic versions of Edward Young's Night Thoughts and Gray's elegies and “Sonnet on the Death of Mr. West.” The similarity is striking.

35. See the correspondence of Swift, Pope, Gray, Walpole, et al. Dr. Johnson said, “In a man's letters … his soul lies naked.”

36. Johnson, English Neo-Classical Thought, chs. ii, ix.

37. Bronson, Bertrand, Johnson Agonistes (Cambridge, 1946)Google Scholar; Watkins, W. B. C., Perilous Balance (Princeton, 1939)Google Scholar; LordCecil, David, The Stricken Deer (London, 1929)Google Scholar. These and other studies of Rochester, Swift, Gray, Johnson, Boswell, and other Neo-Classicists represent in tragic terms their agonized lives. Cf. the similar writings of the period 1660-1800: Burnet, Gilbert, Some Passages in the Life and Death of John Earl of Rochester (London, 1682)Google Scholar; Cibber, Theophilus, “Swift” and “Rochester,” in The Lives of the Poets of Great-Britain and Ireland (London, 1753), V, 73-100, and II, 269–300Google Scholar; Samuel Johnson, “Savage” and “Otway,” in lives of the Poets; SirHawkins, John, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (London, 1787)Google Scholar; plus a spate of didactic pamphlets that depicted Rochester, Swift, Johnson, and others in moralistic terms mingling Christian and tragic premises. Cf. Mudford, William, A Critical Enquiry into the Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson. In which it is shown that the Pictures of Life contained in the Rambler, and other publications of That Celebrated Writer, have a Dangerous Tendency (2nd ed.; London, 1803)Google Scholar.