ABSTRACT
To define precisely the change that came over the second half of the eighteenth century is difficult.1 It is not quite enough to say that the Age of Reason gave way to an Age of Sentiment. Undoubtedly there was an access of sentimentality after the vogues of Richardson and Rousseau were established; but sentiment had existed before their day, and the phrase “Age of Reason” was used by Tom Paine to describe the period of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, one chief mark of the change was not merely an increase in sentimentality but also a modification of attitude towards sentiment. While Richard Steele in his Christian Hero-and other authors of his day as well-had perceived rather the utility of sentiment, authors later in the century indulged in the delicate enjoyment of their own emotional thrills. Where Addison and others had praised the rationality of simplicity, Burns will display the picturesqueness of the
The Vogue of Sentiment
quality. The ablest men of the second half of the century still were proponents of reason and common sense; but they were also (Dr. Johnson or Burke, for example) likely to be men of strong emotional natures. It is significant that Hume’s philosophical writing was practically done by 1750; thereafter he was to be the historian and essayist. Hume’s highly logical thinking, one may say, served but to subvert the classical integrity of man’s reason, and throughout the century there had been a strong anti-rational prejudice against “mere” logic. The change is at once felt if we place the leading poets of the Queen Anne group-Pope and Swift-in comparison with fin de siècle poets such as Cowper and Burns. It is a change obviously that does not imply an access of intellectual power but does imply increased delight in subjective emotional states. The later century tends to glorify the individual’s sensations whether merely thrilling or (as they seemed at times) revelatory of new, vague truths.
