The Age of Virtue: British Culture from the Restoration to Romanticism PDF
Preview The Age of Virtue: British Culture from the Restoration to Romanticism
THE AGE OF VIRTUE Also by David Morse AMERICAN ROMANTICISM (2 volumes) ENGLAND'S TIME OF CRISIS: From Shakespeare to Milton HIGH VICTORIAN CULTURE PERSPECTIVES ON ROMANTICISM ROMANTICISM: A Structural Analysis The Age of Virtue British Culture from the Restoration to Romanticism David Morse Lecturer in English and American Studies University of Sussex ffi First published in Great Britain 2000 by & MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-333-76031-X First published in the United States of America 2000 by « ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 0-312-22353-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morse, David. The age of virtue : British culture from the Restoration to Romanticism / David Morse. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-312-22353-^6 1. English literature— 18th century—History and criticism. 2. Virtue in literature. 3. English literature—Early modern, 1500-1700—History and criticism. 4. Didactic literature, English- -History and criticism. 5. Great Britain—Civilization— 18th century. 6. Ethics, Modern—18th century. 7. Romanticism—Great Britain. I. Title. PR448.V57M67 1999 820.9'353-dc21 99-18157 CIP © David Morse 2000 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fulyl managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire For Annabelle This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Virtue's Vicissitudes 26 3 Virtue Excluded 47 4 Virtue from Below 110 5 Provincial Virtue 176 6 The Romantics and Virtue 236 Notes 312 Select Bibliography 321 Index 327 vn Acknowledgements I would like to thank my Sussex colleagues Vincent Quinn, An gus Ross and Norman Vance for reading and commenting on sections of the manuscripts. I owe a particular debt to Siobhan Kilfeather for putting me in touch with some Irish materials di rectly relevant to the topic. vm 1 Introduction This is a study of eighteenth-century culture and of the role that the idea of virtue played within it, but it is by no means my intention to suggest that the age itself was particularly virtuous; rather, as is so often the case, the invocation of virtue tended to be associated with the concern that it was more likely to be absent than present. In one of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories, 'The Three Tools of Death' the worthy priest throws out the enigmatic suggestion that it is because the murder weapon is so large that it has not been noticed. The earth was the 'weapon' - since the body had been thrown out of a window. Similarly in the reign of Anne and three subsequent Georges the allusions to virtue are so thickly strewn that they are likely to go both unnoticed and undeciphered. It is as if, in the vicinity of a country house, you take it for granted that there are gravel-walks and would think it distinctly odd if there were not; whereas in another con text gravel-walks would stick out like a sore thumb, indeed might even lead one to rub one's eyes in astonishment. Equally, this very familiarity may lead us to believe that all talk of virtue is bound to consist of sanctimonious platitudes - especially since we are rarely prone to speak of virtue ourselves - whereas these were in fact questions which were taken intensely seriously. So the intention of this book likewise is to take virtue seriously; to chart like the sightings of a great whale both its longtime promi nence and subsequent disappearance, to try to grasp it in all its diverse manifestations. Not only is virtue's most congenial habitat the eighteenth century, it is also plausible to suggest that it flourishes most abundantly between 1700 and 1800. In the morally relaxed and generally cynical atmosphere of Charles ITs court virtue was scarcely a word to galvanise men into activity. Its special prov ince was the grandiose world of the heroic play; where royal heroes were as magnificently noble and virtuous as they were 1 D. Morse, The Age of Virtue © David Morse 2000
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