ABSTRACT

John Brown’s interest in patterns of social evolution preceded his interest in the arts. By 1763, the chorus of complaint at Homer’s defective moral vision had swelled, and like Thomas Warton and Richard Hurd, Brown turned to theory on social determinism to vindicate his noble primitives. Brown saw the art of primitive society as a union of song, dance and verse; the songs, generally introduced by cheiftains, had a strong legislative cast, and derived a special power for uniting and forming the character of society through this union of artistic forms. He explained in the Dissertation how political development eventually inhibited the social effectiveness of art by destroying the union of verse, dance and music, separating the functions of artist, priest and legislator. Thomas Sheridan’s new classical order was to be founded on the special prosodic capabilities of English, interlinked with a specially conducive political order.