The Third Earl of Shaftesbury: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory [2020 ed.] 9780367442705, 9781003020271, 9780367820121, 9781003011453

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: 18TH CENTURY LITERATURE

Volume 4

THE THIRD EARL OF SHAFTESBURY

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THE THIRD EARL OF SHAFTESBURY A Study in Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory

R. L. BRETT

I~~~o~:~!n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in 1951 by Hutchinson’s University Library This edition first published in 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1951 R. L. Brett All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

978-0-367-44270-5 978-1-00-302027-1 978-0-367-82012-1 978-1-00-301145-3

(Set) (Set) (ebk) (Volume 4) (hbk) (Volume 4) (ebk)

Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

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THE THIRD EARL OF SHAFTESBURY A STUDY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERARY THEORY

by R. L. BRETT Lecturer in English in the University of Bristol

HUTCHINSON'S UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Hutchinson House1 London, W.1 New York

Melbourne

Sydney

Cape Town

First Published · i951

PTinted in Great Britain by

William Brendon anil Son, Ltd. The Mayflower Press (late of Plymouth) at Bushey Mill Lans Watford, Herts.

To

My Father and Mother

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CONTENTS

Page Preface

Xl

Chapter I. The Cambridge Platonists

13

The Life and Writings of Shaftesbury

33

m.

Shaftesbury's Philosophy

59

IV.

The Ancients and Moderns

II.

v. The Creative Imagination

86 100

VI.

The Aesthetic Judgment

123

VII.

The Sublime

145 165

vm. The Doctrine of Ridicule IX.

The Influence of Shaftesbury's Thought

x. The Crisis of Reason

186 208

Appendix

224

Index

225

vii

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NOTE All references. to Shaftesbury's Characteri$tics are to the modern edition by J. M. Robertson, London, 1900. References to Shaftesbury's Second Characters or the Language of Forms are to the edition by B~njamin Ranq, Cambridge University Press-, 1914. References to Rand, when unaccompanied by a title, are to The Life, Unpublished Letters and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, edited by Benjamin Rand, Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd., London, 1900.

ix

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PREFACE

IN the essay which follows I have tried to do three things, though these are not entirely distinct from each other: to give an account of Shaftesbury's aesthetic and literary theory; to discuss the part he played in furnishing the minds of the Augustan writers with some of their guiding ideas; and to estimate the success of his attempt to keep alive a philosophy that he considered more sympathetic to the arts than the new philosophy of empiricism. The third Earl of Shaftesbury is generally known as the founder of the "moral sense" school of philosophy; a school which made an important contribution to ethics in the eighteenth century. Although in recent years there has been a steadily increasing recognition of his importance to· literature .and literary criticism, no full-length study has yet been devoted to this. Indeed, no extensive modem study of bis thought exists, apart from Fowler's Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, published in 1882. I am concerned primarily with those aspects of Shaftesbury's writings which merit the attention of the student of literature, but this concern has led me itJ. places to discuss questions of a philosophical importance. Though I apologize to those of my readers who happen to be philosophers for any philosophical ineptitude I may have shown, I hope I need not apologize to those whose interests are mainly literary; for an understanding of Shaftesbury's place in literature such philosophical excursions are necessary and he himself w