esenting what he took for the diabolic
agency. Burke represents above all things the political application of
the historical spirit of the period. His hatred for metaphysics, for
discussions of abstract rights instead of practical expediency; his
exaltation of 'prescription' and 'tradition'; his admiration for
Montesquieu and his abhorrence of Rousseau; his idolatry of the British
constitution, and in short his whole political doctrine from first to
last, implies the profound conviction of the truth of the principles
embodied in a thorough historical method. Nobody, I think, was ever more
consistent in his first principles, though his horror of the Revolution
no doubt led him so to exaggerate one side of his teaching that he was
led to denounce some of the consequences which naturally followed from
other aspects of his doctrine. The schism between the old and the new
Whigs was not to be foreseen during this period, nor the coming into the
foreground of the deeper problems involved.

I may now come to the purely literary movement. I have tried to show
that neither in philosophy, theology, nor political and social strata,
was there any belief in the necessity of radical changes, or prescience
of a coming alteration of the intellectual atmosphere. Speculation, like
politics, could advance quietly along the old paths without fearing that
they might lead to a precipice; and society, in spite of very vigorous
and active controversy upon the questions which decided it was in the
main self-satisfied, complacent, and comfortable. Adherence to the old
system is after all the general rule, and it is of the change not the
persistence that we require some account. At the beginning of our
period, Pope's authority was still generally admitted, although many
symptoms of discontent had appeared, and Warton was proposing to lower
him from the first to the second rank. The two most brilliant writers
who achieved fame in the early years of George III., Goldsmith and
Sterne, mark a characteristic moment in the literary development.
Goldsmith's poems the _Traveller_ (1765) and the _Deserted Village_
(1770), and the _Vicar of Wakefield_ (1766), are still on the old lines.
The poetry adopts Pope's versification, and implies the same ideal; the
desire for lucidity, sympathy, moderation, and the qualities which would
generally be connoted by classical. The substance, distinguished from
the style, shows the sympathy with sentimentalism of which Ro