s, such as Richardson and Sterne, were anything but
romantic. "A more modern sentimentalist would probably express his
feelings[4] by describing some past state of society. He would paint
some ideal society in mediaeval times and revive the holy monk and the
humble nun for our edification." He attributes the subsequent interest
in the Middle Ages to the progress made in historical inquiries during
the last half of the eighteenth century, and to the consequent growth of
antiquarianism. "Men like Malone and Stevens were beginning those
painful researches which have accumulated a whole literature upon the
scanty records of our early dramatists. Gray, the most learned of poets,
had vaguely designed a history of English poetry, and the design was
executed with great industry by Thomas Warton. His brother Joseph
ventured to uphold the then paradoxical thesis that Spenser was as great
a man as Pope. Everywhere a new interest was awakening in the minuter
details of the past." At first, Mr. Stephen says, the result of these
inquiries was "an unreasonable contempt for the past. The modern
philosopher, who could spin all knowledge out of his own brain; the
skeptic, who had exploded the ancient dogma; or the free-thinker of any
shade, who rejoiced in the destruction of ecclesiastical tyranny, gloried
in his conscious superiority to his forefathers. Whatever was old was
absurd; and Gothic--an epithet applied to all medieval art, philosophy,
or social order--became a simple term of contempt." But an antiquarian
is naturally a conservative, and men soon began to love the times whose
peculiarities they were so diligently studying. Men of imaginative minds
promptly made the discovery that a new source of pleasure might be
derived from these dry records. . . The 'return to nature' expresses a
sentiment which underlies . . . both the sentimental and romantic
movements. . . To return to nature is, in one sense, to find a new
expression for emotions which have been repressed by existing
conventions; or, in another, to return to some simpler social order which
had not yet suffered from those conventions. The artificiality
attributed to the eighteenth century seems to mean that men were content
to regulate their thoughts and lives by rules not traceable to first
principles, but dependent upon a set of special and exceptional
conditions. . . To get out of the ruts, or cast off the obsolete
shackles, two methods might be adopted.