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. The intellectual horizon might
be widened by including a greater number of ages and countries; or men
might try to fall back upon the thoughts and emotions common to all
races, and so cast off the superficial incrustation. The first method,
that of the romanticists, aims at increasing our knowledge: the second,
that of the naturalistic school, at basing our philosophy on deeper
principles.[5]