ABSTRACT
In the early eighteenth century, the definitions of 'criticism' included interpretation and evaluation. The 'process' of criticism, in so far as it is available to modern critics, exists in the form of revisions and in examples which friends and critics suggest as revisions—those taken and agreed with or those rejected by the poet as inconsistent with his 'turn' of genius or the needs of the poem. The criticism developed, for the poet, by a knowledge of other literary works, by a knowledge of explanatory criticism, by response to and assistance from his friends, acting as critics. The eighteenth-century views shared an acceptance of criticism as a comparative procedure in the creation or interpretation of a poem, as a shared effort between the poet and critic involving judgement and imagination, as a procedure which was conscious and which demonstrated respect for the poem by making it conform to what was considered the proper type of communication.
