by Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), for whom Christianity was a necessary curb to
human unreason. The realist Bernard de Mandeville (1670–1733) held that self-
interest leads to competition, not co-operation.Sense and Sensibility
Sense is a better watchword for the English 18th century than Reason. Sense
embraces practical reason, the ability to tell true from false, common sense (from
Lat.communis sententia, the common opinion). It was at first related rather than
opposed to Sensibility, a capacity for moral feeling. When Sensibility became more
aesthetic and sentimental, it came to be contrasted with sense, as in the title of Jane
Austen’s novel. Sense, finally, recalls Locke’s influential account of the mind, in
which reliable knowledge of the real comes from sense-impressions.Alexander Pope and 18th-century civilization
The days of Augustanism coincides with the day of Alexander Pope (1688–1744),
when Addison and Swift also flourished – as did the un-Augustan Defoe. The
Augustan temper did not thereafter rule the roost, but characterizes the most
accomplished work of the century:Gulliver’s Travels,Dunciad IV, Gray’s Elegy and
the judgements of Johnson. Joseph Addison was a poet and tragedian, but his legacy
is The Spectator, a daily paper which he edited and co-wrote with Sir Richard Steele,
in succession to Steele’s The Tatler(1709). Steele’s paper amused,The Spectator
educated entertainingly.Joseph Addison
After the exc esses of faction and enthusiasm, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Christopher
Wren and others had shown what human intelligence could do.Joseph Addison
(1672–1719) relayed these achievements to the new middle class in a prose which
Johnson thought ‘the model of the middle style’.The Spectator sold an unprece-
dented ten thousand copies of each issue; its wit was edifying, unlike that of the
Restoration; Addison’s essays were taken as a model for more than a century.
In issue No. 1 (Thursday, 1 March 1711), the Spectator introduces himself:
I find, that I ... was always a Favourite of my School-master, who used to say,that my
Parts were solid and would wear well. I had not been long at the University, before I
distinguished my self by a most profound Silence: For during the Space of eight Years,
except in the publick Exercises of the College, I scarce uttered the quantity of an
hundred words; and indeed do not remember that I ever spoke three Sentences together
in my whole Life. Whilst I was in this Learned Body I applied myself with so much
Diligence to my Studies, that there are very few celebrated Books, either in the Learned
or the Modern Tongues, which I am not acquainted with ....
This know-all then travels to Egypt to ‘take the Measure of a Pyramid; and as soon
as I had set myself right in that Particular, returned to my Native Country with great
Satisfaction’. He is also an observer of men:
I have passed my latter Years in this City, where I am frequently seen in most Publick
Places, tho’ there are not above half a dozen of my select Friends that know me; of
whom my next Papers shall give a more particular Account. There is no place of general
Resort, wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my184 6 · AUGUSTAN LITERATURE: TO 1790