ABSTRACT
Students of the period will benefit greatly from Irene Simon’s Neo-Classical Criticism, 1660–1800. She has succeeded in presenting in a particularly lucid and attractive way, all the salient points of the doctrine underlying the said consensus of critical opinion. The neo-classical attitude to genius seems a little confused. Some, like Hobbes, seem to denigrate inspiration, others cannot help feeling that invention, imagination, gift, talent, genius and so on, are ‘absolutely necessary’ but they all agree on the need for observation, knowledge, apprenticeship, imitation of the best. Typical of the underlying common sense of the age is Joseph Addison’s balanced opinion on the free genius of a Homer or a Shakespeare and the controlled genius of a Virgil or a Milton. The Augustan poetic world-picture is fairly consistent; it derives its strength from the equation of reason, nature and conscience.
