ABSTRACT
In criticism the English have always been more or less derivative and parasitic. For the best part of a century they took their theories of art ready-made from the Continent; and then with the Restoration the French influence, or rather another form of the French influence, supervenes. English criticism is largely a history of foreign influences. In this field the English have been constant borrowers, and only occasional lenders. Certain English critical works, notably Addison's papers on Milton and Burke's Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, acted on Germany in the eighteenth century — works that, though marking the maximum of English critical influence abroad, are in themselves somewhat second-rate performances, even judged by the standard of the best English criticism. The opposition between English genius and foreign rules is also felt during the later period of French influence. English literature, has possessed in a preeminent degree imaginative fervor, geniality, and humor.
