believed in the universal authority of Reason, and in its ability to understand and
explain, as in Pope’s line: ‘God said,Let Newton be, and all was light.’ It favoured
toleration and moderation in religion, and was hopeful about the rational
perfectibility of man. Among English writers, scepticism rarely reached to the Deism
of anticlericals such as the Frenchman Voltaire and the virtual atheism of the Scot
David Hume: ‘Enlightenment’ is a term which fits France and Scotland better than
England. Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) is one of the few English writers who are
wholly of the Enlightenment, though by the time of the French Revolution (1789)
the term fits political thinkers such as William Godwin and Tom Paine, and writers
such as Maria Edgeworth. When Horace Walpole, himself indifferent to religion,
went to France in 1765, he disliked the rational godlessness of the salons. Early in the
century, the third Earl of Shaftesbury advocated enlightened self-interest, holding
that multiple self-interest would work together to the good – a benign view scorned
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 183Literature at the time of Pope
1704 Isaac Newton, Optics
1705 (The playwright Sir John Vanburgh designs Blenheim Palace for the Duke of Marlborough)
1706 George Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer
1707 Farquhar, The Beaux’ Stratagem; Isaac Watts, Hymns
1708 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Letter concerning Enthusiasm
1709 Sir Richard Steele, The Tatler; Bishop Berkeley, A New Theory of Vision; Prior,Poems;
Nicholas Rowe (ed.), The Works of Mr William Shakespeare(6 volumes to 1710)
1710 Berkeley, Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge;
Shaftesbury, Advice to an Author
1711 Joseph Addison, The Spectator; Shaftesbury, Characteristics
1713 Addison, Cato
1714 John Gay, The Shepherd’s Week; Bernard de Mandeville, Fable of the Bees
1715 (Handel, Water Music)
1716 Gay, Trivia andThree Hours after Marriage(Hawksmoor designs St Mary Woolnoth,
London)
1719 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
1722 Thomas Parnell (d.1718), Poems; Defoe, Moll Flanders
1726 James Thomson, Winter; Gay, Fables
1728 William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life; Gay, The Beggar’s Opera;
Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia
1729 Thomson, Britannia
1730 Thomson, The Seasons; Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb
1731 The Gentleman’s Magazine(to 1922)
1732 The London Magazine
1735 Samuel Johnson, A Voyage to Abyssinia(Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress)
1736 Bishop Butler, The Analogy of Religion
1737 William Shenstone, Poems; John Wesley, Poems and Hymns;
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Nonsense of Common-Sense
1738 Johnson, London
1739 John and Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems;
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
1740 Samuel Richardson, Pamela
1742 (Handel, Messiah; Hogarth, Marriage à la Mode)