ABSTRACT
The unpeaceful nature of the early eighteenth century can be seen nowhere more clearly than in literary criticism. Much of this sort of writing was not of permanent eminence, but it does illuminate both the mood and the intellectual quality of the period.1 The critical function and temperament were freely disparaged on a variety of grounds. One of these was the quarrel over the relative merits of ancient and modern writers-a quarrel long current in both France and England. In the preface to his edition of Sir Charles Sedley’s Miscellaneous Works (1702) Captain William Ayloffe bursts out:
Politics also muddied the springs of criticism. In 1705 Ned Ward in his Hudibras Redivivus, No. 1, gave writers advice from the gutter:
The Disrepute of Criticism
As for the manners and morals of criticism-on that subject Jonathan Swift was superlatively opprobrious. In his Battle of the Books he describes Criticism as
In his “Digression concerning Criticks” in A Tale of a Tub Swift is equally caustic, and more personal:
Abuse of the critical function was often blamed on antiquarian specialization such as that of Bentley, Rymer, Tom Hearne, and Lewis Theobald. Verbal criticism, as textual emendation was called, was abused as pedantry. Even before Swift wrote, Dennis, for example, had a reputation as an ill-natured critic. He at one extreme was frequently castigated for subservience to rules, and at the other extreme blows fell upon sprightly authors who defended irregularities by remarking pertly, “Shakespear writ without rules.”
