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Literature and Religion in Eighteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

A. R. Humphreys
Affiliation:
Professor of English, The University College of Leicester

Extract

For several decades the reputation of eighteenth-century religion has been rising. Where the Victorians saw on the whole only apathy and even cynicism, their successors have found that the sober goodwill, rising at times to a luminous devotion, which characterises much Hanoverian worship still makes its appeal. Yet our conversion is not (and never can be) complete, and it is still widely felt that the Victorian indictment was right, viz. that the people had forsaken the fountain of living waters.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1952

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