eighteenthcentury

eightetheenth century viewed as a whole has a distinctive character. It was very definitely the age of understanding, the age of enlightenment, when a literature which had become clear and pellucid began to diffuse knowledge among a growing public. The supremacy of reason was scarcely challenged; there reigned a gerneral belief in the advancement of the human mind.. No doubt there was an evolution within the limits of the century, and none would mantain that it was the same at its close as at its beginning.
Nevertheless, throughout all changes and innovations, its literature kept a sort of general unity, so much so that, even if it be convenient to make divisions in a period so vast and prolific, it would be mistaken to regard them as anything but boundary lines serving to mark off successive generations between which there are not abrupt breaks.

"sensibility", which bulked larger as the century advanced, was present in germ during its earliest years.
Steele had more than one of the traits shown later in an accentuated form by Rousseau in france and by sterne and Mackenzie in great britain. Addison, goldsmith, and jane austen are borne upon the same stream of humor.
crabbe would have been able to agree with pope on almost all points of poetic technique and practice.
Farquhar and sheridan would have understood one to another immediatly, and exchanged quips and jokes. The proportions of the ingredients vary, no doubt, in this different writers, but they are the same ingredients. the writers are all in communion. if they could have conversed together, they would have disagreed on many questions, but all would have understood the discussion.
The same atmosphere envelops the whole century.