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What Was Neo-Classicism?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2014
Extract
There seems to be no doubt about it: the century-old truisms about the literature variously called “Augustan” and “Neo-Classical” are in the process of dissolution. Premises induced by J. S. Mill and Matthew Arnold, explored by Oliver Elton, dogmatized by G. E. B. Saintsbury, and summarized by Leslie Stephen now appear inadequate to more recent scholars, whose research and rereading of Neo-Classical texts run counter to the general testimony as well as the specific judgments of their grandfathers. For the past few decades at least, published commentary has increasingly indicated the need to overhaul received ideas about those writers identified with the revival of classicism in England following the Restoration of Charles II and continuing throughout the eighteenth century.
The deficiencies in Victorian and Edwardian assumptions about Neo-Classicism revealed by latter-day findings are several, some of them due to false criteria of taste, morality, and literary excellence. But chiefly the research of the present age has disclosed a vast range of literature simply ignored — or, perhaps, suppressed — by earlier critics. Based as they were on a limited, prejudged selection of Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, the premises inherited from Victorian criticism have naturally failed to account for the discoveries of twentieth-century scholars.
The resulting disparity between limited assumptions and expanded information has called into question the very possibility of formulating any critical schema that accurately describes the characteristics of English literature between 1660 and 1800. The relativistic — not to say atomistic — inclinations of contemporary scholarship enforce the view that indeed no schema is possible.
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References
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16. Unsurprisingly, these images appear most often in Neo-Classical drama; e.g., Dryden's The Conquest of Granada and Aureng-Zebe, Rochester's Valentinian, Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved, Addison's Cato, Johnson's Irene. But they may also be found in satires, lyric poetry, and essays — even historiography. For a diverse sample of uses, see Swift's An Argument against Abolishing Christianity; Gray's Ode on the Spring; Temple's Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands; Clarendon's A History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars.
17. Cf. Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 60: “We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.” See also Pope, Moral Epistles, Epistle I, “To Cobham,” and Essay on Man, II.
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19. Obviously many Neo-Classicists absorbed the psychological theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume while rejecting other of their tenets. To a considerable extent Hobbes and Locke were merely giving voice to widely held assumptions about the nature of man.
20. Cf. Pope, Moral Epistles, Epistle I:
Our depths who fathoms, or our shallows finds,
Quick whirls, or shifting eddies, of our minds ?
On human actions reason tho' you can,
It may be Reason, but it is not Man.
21. Freud acknowledged his indebtedness to writers of fictive literature for his insights, and various modern writers have testified to the psychological astuteness of Swift, Pope, et al. Since Neo-Classical writing is permeated with psychological insights, it is superfluous to cite examples, though it ought to be noted that most of the earthier products of the Neo-Classicists' study of mankind — Sodom, The Empress of Morocco, Swift's bawdry, Pope's obscene parodies, John Cleland's Fanny Hill, and so on — were suppressed by the proper Victorians. As a consequence, Neo-Classicism was reduced to the “proper” and “decorous” by such commentators as Leslie Stephen; and much of its vitality and complexity, as well as humor, has been ignored. To speak of Neo-Classicism without including its fleshier elements is like equating classicism with the orations of Cicero while disowning Catullus, Martial, and Petronius Arbiter. It should be further noted that much of the medical and quasi-medical literature of the Neo-Classical period — e.g., Arbuthnot's Essays, Cheyne's, GeorgeThe English Malady (London, 1733)Google Scholar — were psychological studies of hypochondria, melancholy, etc.; and the compositions that parodied them — Swift's Digression on Madness, Pope's Cave of Spleen section in The Rape of the hock, Matthew Green's The Spleen, James Boswell's The Hypochondriack — incorporate many of the basic psychological axioms of Neo-Classical thought. Sir Samuel Garth's Dispensary uniquely combines the classical, satiric, medical, and psychological.
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24. Even a rapid survey of the political theories of Locke, Bolingbroke, Junius, and Burke reveals the basis for many of the specific political opinions expressed in the columns of The Guardian, The Examiner, The Englishman, The Craftsman, The World, The North Briton, The Bee, and other periodicals of the times written by Steele, Swift, Bolingbroke, Addison, Defoe, Fielding, Johnson, Chesterfield, Goldsmith, and others.
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30. The writings of four clergymen closely associated with Neo-Classicists and the Neo-Classical tradition provide a compendium of these beliefs. See the sermons of Gilbert Burnet, Francis Atterbury, Joseph Trapp, and William Warburton. Cf. Mossner, Ernest C., Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason (New York, 1936)Google Scholar.
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32. See George Villiers, The Rehearsal; Dryden, MacFlecknoe; Pope, The Dunciad; Henry Fielding, The Tragedy of Tragedies.
33. Johnson, English Neo-Classical Thought, ch. iv. Compare the use of David as a symbol with that of Augustus and Cato and, later, the Antonines as political preservers in Neo-Classical writing. Even the fictional heroes — the Allworthys, the Heartfrees, the Brambles, the Shandys — are knowingly opposed to such manipulators and destroyers as Blifil, Jonathan Wild, Peachem, and their ilk. For the writer as hero, see The Rambler, No. 21. Cf. the treatment of Dr. Johnson as a literary hero in Thomas Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship.
34. See the journals and diaries of Pepys, Swift, Johnson, and Boswell, for instance. Compare these private expressions with the public, poetic versions of Edward Young's Night Thoughts and Gray's elegies and “Sonnet on the Death of Mr. West.” The similarity is striking.
35. See the correspondence of Swift, Pope, Gray, Walpole, et al. Dr. Johnson said, “In a man's letters … his soul lies naked.”
36. Johnson, English Neo-Classical Thought, chs. ii, ix.
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