University of Virginia Library

The Foundation of "Philosophical Criticism": William Taylor's Initial Connection with the Monthly Review, 1792-93
by
DAVID CHANDLER

In his portrait of Francis Jeffrey in The Spirit of the Age (London, 1825), Hazlitt reviewed what seemed to him the principal advance in periodical criticism of the Romantic Period:

In respect of this criticism, "eminently characteristic of the Spirit of the Age" (and, one might add, prophetic of much subsequent critical endeavour), Hazlitt added a significant footnote:
Born in 1778, Hazlitt seems, understandably enough, to have misdated Taylor's connection with the Monthly Review (hereafter MR). As will be shown, Taylor had been a regular contributor as early as 1793; moreover there is no significant change in his critical method between then and 1799, when he stopped writing for the periodical for several years. It may, of course, have been around 1796 that Taylor's distinctive voice first began to be singled out from the MR's anonymous pages, despite the attempts of the editor, Ralph Griffiths, to prune Taylor's stylistic idiosyncrasies.[1] But what is important is that in Hazlitt's astute estimation Taylor had anticipated "the Spirit of the Age" nearly a decade before that "Spirit" became more broadly manifest in the Edinburgh Review (founded in 1802). It seems remarkable, given this, that no study of Taylor's criticism exists; the object of the present article is not to remedy the deficiency, but to trace the circumstances of Taylor's initial connection with the MR, of which only misleading accounts exist. This, it is hoped, will supply a sound bibliographical basis for subsequent work on Taylor as a critic.

A clear understanding of the circumstances of Taylor's connection with the MR depends to a certain extent on some knowledge of his background, so I give first a brief account of this. The early part of Taylor's life reveals a familiar conflict between parental ambition and personal inclination.[2] Born in Norwich in 1765, Taylor was the only child of a wealthy Norwich textile merchant with an extensive export business. He was brought up with a view to becoming useful in the business, from an early age being tutored in several European languages. The years 1774 to 1779 he spent at Mrs Barbauld's boarding school at Palgrave, Norfolk; he later described the prominent Unitarian Barbauld as "the Mother of his mind" (Robberds, I, 8). She was a major literary figure and there was a strong literary bias to the school's activities that gave Taylor a prolonged glimpse of his later métier.[3] Here, too, he made an important friend in the literary-minded Frank Sayers (1763-1817) (Taylor, I, x). Between 1779 and the end of 1782 Taylor was sent on two long continental tours with a view to his improvement in the relevant languages and to acquaint him with trade. The second tour included a year spent in the small German town of Detmold, where Taylor mastered German, probably the most important event of his intellectual life. Here he was befriended by Lorenz Benzler (1747-1827), a minor literary figure who encouraged Taylor's interest in German literature and introduced him to the work of major contemporary German writers. From 1783 Taylor ostensibly worked for his father but devoted much of his (seemingly extensive) leisure to literary pursuits (Taylor, I, xix). He became devoted to political reform and had an extremely tolerant view of religious differences: although continuing to worship as a Unitarian, he appears to have been essentially a Deist. He was in good company; as historians have noted, there was a liberal atmosphere in Norwich at this time, with Dissenters playing a prominent role in municipal affairs.[4] There was also a real interest in intellectual enquiry among the Norwich intelligentsia, many of whom regularly met at Taylor's family home, and against such a background Taylor, attracted to argument and new ideas, flourished.

Having come of age in 1786, Taylor began to take a more active role in city affairs. In 1788 he served on the committee of a Norwich organisation

devoted to the abolition of the Slave Trade (Norfolk Chronicle, 6 December 1788). The following year he was an active supporter of the campaign to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, and in 1790 he helped form the Norwich Revolution Society, subsequently conducting the Society's correspondence. Taylor's interest in literature continued; he had probably begun writing verse at Palgrave,[5] and by 1788 he was writing highly accomplished poetry.[6] Since 1783 he had translated extracts from German literature for Sayers' benefit (Taylor, I, xix); towards the end of the decade he embarked on an ambitious translation of Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris (Robberds, I, 112). In 1790 he made a second major translation, that of Lessing's Nathan der Weisse (preface to published edition, 1805). In the same year, having paid a devotee's visit to revolutionary France, he published a series of political letters in the Cambridge Chronicle over the signature "A Friend to Liberty".[7] The general tenor of these letters was opposition to the tyranny of systems; "[the] reasonable man", wrote Taylor, "is resolved to trust implicitly to no priest or party, but to the best of his abilities to search after the truth and act accordingly." This was obviously a sound basis for the "philosophical criticism" that he was to develop over the following decade.

At the end of 1789 Taylor's friend Sayers decided to devote himself to literature, abandoning an abortive career in medicine (Taylor, I, xxxvii-xxxix). He immediately began writing a striking series of dramas in something like the style of Mason; the following year they were published by Joseph Johnson as Dramatic Sketches of the Ancient Northern Mythology. This volume established Sayers' reputation in both Britain and Germany and its relative success, according to Robberds, inspired Taylor to contemplate a literary career too (I, 81). Robberds explained that Taylor used the unrest caused by the French Revolution to lever his father out of trade:

This account is misleading, as will be shown. Robberds, unfortunately, only knew Taylor after the turn of the century; for the earlier part of the latter's life he relied heavily on the not very precise reminiscences of Taylor's cousin, Thomas Dyson (1769-1849) (Robberds, I, 2-3). The problem with the above chronology is that he leaves an awkard gap between 1791, when Taylor allegedly began his literary career, and the latter half of 1793 when he became a regular writer for the MR. Separate evidence allows us to place a translation of several of Wieland's Göttergespräche and a parody of Samuel Butler's Hudibras in this period, but collectively these show that Taylor wrote less in 1791-92 than in 1790, before his supposed adoption of a literary career.[8] Robberds certainly failed to appreciate the difficulty of a disengagement from a business as extensive as the Taylors', however. Furthermore, it seems certain that the elder Taylor needed to be convinced of the need for such a disengagement on the grounds of prudency, and these were unlikely to be evident as early as 1790. C. B. Jewson, the historian of Norwich in this period, states that it was not until early in 1791 that events on the continent provoked any commercial anxiety in Norwich (The Jacobin City [Glasgow, 1975], 25); fear of trade becoming actually "irksome and hazardous" would have been later, and J. K. Edwards, who has studied the Norwich trade at this period finds no evidence of "decline" "at least until 1792" ("The Decline of the Norwich Textiles Industry", Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research, 16 [1964], 31-41). This suggests that Robberds' dates should be moved forward at least a year, pointing to a more coherent chronology. There can be little doubt that from 1783, if not earlier, Taylor was more interested in literature than trade, but the latter allowed a prosperous style of living and ample leisure, while he must have realised the uncertainty attached to any attempt at a professional literary career.

In his study of the MR during this period, Benjamin Christie Nangle cites Robberds' account of Taylor's early involvement with the periodical without questioning its authority (The Monthly Review Second Series, 1790-1815

[Oxford, 1955], 66-67). According to Robberds the connection began when Taylor submitted, via William Enfield (1741-97; dean of Norwich literati and a regular contributor to the MR since 1774), an apparently unsolicited review of Sayers' second major work, Disquisitions Metaphysical and Literary:
Robberds published a letter from Griffiths to Taylor of 27 June 1793, "mark[ing] the commencement of this intercourse" (I, 122). The vexing aspect of Nangle's acceptance of this account is that he attributes three earlier reviews in the MR to Taylor, one as early as October 1790, the others of March 1792 and February 1793. Interestingly, the first two were again of works by Sayers, the first of Dramatic Sketches, the second of Poems (really a revised second edition of Dramatic Sketches with some shorter works added). As these attributions are taken from Griffiths' own, marked copy of the MR (now preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford), they merit serious attention, suggesting confusion in Robberds' account.

The first of these earlier reviews (N.S. 3, 140-147) proves on closer inspection, however, not to be Taylor's. In the Bodleian copy it can be seen that Griffiths had originally marked it "Anon." (147); another hand has subsequently added "Taylor 1st Art." Although the review is both long and, in many respects, approving, there is a coolness of tone that Taylor certainly would not have applied to his closest friend's first published work (a comparison with his later reviews of Sayers' works is revealing in this respect). He would not have stated "There are, in all these plays, many imperfect lines, and some other symptoms of hasty composition" (146), neither would he have pointed out errors in Sayers' notes on Scandinavian mythology when he could--if he had such information--have so easily set Sayers right prior to the latter's publication. Moreover the mistake is readily explicable. The 1792 review (N.S. 7, 331-332), marked by Griffiths "Anon:--Dr. E's friend" (332), almost certainly is Taylor's work (as Nangle assumed), and thence, by extension, almost certainly his first published review. Griffiths clearly understood that it had come via Enfield, and other manuscript evidence, to be considered shortly, points to Taylor as the writer. The review contains just the sort of energetic praise we would expect --"they [Sayers dramas] abound with efforts of the lyric kind, which, in our language, have seldom been excelled" (331)--moreover it contains recondite information, not in the text, that only an acquaintance of the author is likely to have known; for example (commenting on Sayers' "Pandora"): "The story of Pandora had already been given, as a monodrama, by the inferior hand of Count Pepoli." Stylistically, too, the review

seems to be Taylor's. It seems probable, then, that the 1790 review was mistakenly marked as Taylor's "1st Art." by someone who had heard (correctly) that Taylor's reviewing career began with a review of Sayers' Dramatic Sketches.

Fortunately, Enfield's extant correspondence with Griffiths, preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. Add. C.89, ff.53-100v), allows the circumstances developing from the 1792 review to be filled in with reasonable detail. Enfield's covering letter for the review is not preserved, but it is clear that Griffiths was impressed by the unsolicited contribution, and that he enquired of Enfield regarding Taylor's availability for other reviewing work. All this is implied in the postscript of a letter of Enfield to Griffiths dated 21 February 1792:

This must refer to someone who Enfield knew in Norwich, and Enfield's subsequent letters to Griffiths make it all but certain that "the reviewer" was Taylor. This, then, effectively confirms Taylor's authorship of the 1792 review and again suggests that it was his first. Interesting here is the reference to Taylor's being "too busy" for regular employment, as within eighteen months or so he had indeed become a reviewer ex officio". This must allude to his mercantile activities. Whether the business was still functioning normally, or whether it was in the process of being wound up (as seems possible), it was clearly allowing Taylor limited leisure.

Griffiths seems to have instructed Enfield to keep Taylor interested, for in a fragment of a letter dated April 1792 Enfield reported: "I have prevailed upon my friend Mr W. Taylor junr. occasionally to undertake an article for the R." He then enlarged on Taylor's suitability:

Despite the promising tone of this, neither Griffiths or Taylor seems to have made any immediate move to consolidate the latter's connection with the MR. Thus on 11 July we find Enfield returning Griffiths some "foreign books" that he felt unable to review and repeating his recommendation of Taylor:
Again, however, there was no movement on either side, and on 6 December Enfield reminded Griffiths: "You have not yet sent any foreign article for Mr. Taylor" (f.66).

The impression one gets from this correspondence is that Taylor was still very much involved in business in 1792, and far from committed to a literary career. Had he been so, one imagines he would have made a determined effort to consolidate the favourable impression his review of Sayers' Poems had made on Griffiths. Griffiths, on the other hand, was apparently reluctant to accept Taylor as a merely dilettante contributor. Certainly it appears that he felt there was no immediate vacancy for a reviewer of German material (see below). Enfield seems during the latter half of 1792 to have been more eager to establish the connection than either of the main parties concerned. We can pause here to consider his motives.

Enfield had been a friend of Griffiths for many years, and the two men seem to have had the highest respect and affection for each other. Enfield, indeed, towards the end of his life, was able to compare the friendship to a marriage: "I consider ourselves as bound to one another, like man and wife" (f.100). Enfield's devotion to the success of the MR is thus not surprising, but his political radicalism meant that he was prepared to tolerate no compromise in the periodical's traditional liberal ideology. Among several similar passages in his correspondence with Griffiths, the following, included in a letter of 5 August 1791, admirably demonstrates Enfield's belief that the MR could, and should, play a valuable part in the liberal crusade:

Though Enfield must have realised that not all his fellow contributors conceived of the radical potential of the review in the way he did (see below), Taylor, not only with impeccable radical credentials, but superbly well read and a personal friend, must have appealed as perfectly fitted to battle against "bigotry" and "dishonesty" in the MR, just as he had done previously in the Cambridge Chronicle. Enfield's persistence in calling Griffiths' attention to Taylor is thus explicable as a combination of personal, literary, and political factors.

It seems to have been late in 1792, or early the following year, that Taylor supplied a second "occasional article", this time a review, perhaps surprisingly, of Joseph Ritson's edition of Ancient Songs, from the time of King

Henry the Third to the Revolution (1792). There is no record of the review being sent, but it was published in the February MR (N.S. 10, 178-182), is marked "T--y----r*" in the Bodleian copy, with "*of Norwich" added below, and in a letter to Griffiths of 13 March 1793 Enfield stated "Mr. Taylor is very happy in your approbation of his article of Ritson" (f.71v). Griffiths' "approbation" is hardly surprising as the review is a performance of easy competence and obvious learning. It would be interesting to know more than we do of the relations between Griffiths and Taylor at this juncture, and thus whether Griffiths had solicited the review. Prima facie it does not appear to have been the sort of work that Enfield was encouraging Griffiths to supply Taylor with, but his extant correpondence with Griffiths is by no means complete, and the review itself demonstrates how capable Taylor was of handling such material. It is worth noting that Enfield had clearly been varying his suggestions, proposing first a "literary or philosophical work", later a work of "science, or taste", and given that no German work was forthcoming, he may have pointed out Taylor's competence in other areas. Interestingly, Taylor shortly afterwards reviewed an earlier work of Ritson's, Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry (1791). The considerable delay in the appearance of a review of this work may suggest that Griffiths had previously been unable to find a reviewer with the requisite specialist knowledge.[10] If he now discovered that Taylor had such knowledge, he may have offered him the later work as a means of ascertaining his competence; at this stage there seems to have been no question of Taylor being paid. A case may be made either way, but from this time it is certain that Griffiths approached Taylor with material of this type. Enfield's letter of 13 March continued:
What Griffiths' "schemes" were can only be speculated, but the suggestion is that they related to Taylor's regular employment as a reviewer. At this date a sort of half-way stage seems to have been reached, Enfield continuing to act as intermediary. Taylor must have accepted both John Pinkerton's Scotish [sic] Poems (1792) and Ritson's Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry at this juncture. These were the same sort of work as the Ancient Songs and this may well imply, as suggested above, that Griffiths was looking for a specialist in this area.

At the beginning of March, meanwhile, Taylor submitted a review that was certainly not solicited. On 1 March Enfield wrote to Griffiths: "I send you a volunteer article of Mr Taylor on his friend Dr Sayers' Essays [Disquisitions Metaphysical and Literary]. It is a tribute of friendship, but I think a very fair one" (f.70) (this was the review that Robberds considered to be Taylor's first). This was Taylor's second "tribute of friendship", and Griffiths was normally opposed to such potentially partisan reviewing; perhaps

that explains why Taylor, although once again strongly approving, did attempt a more impartial tone. Perhaps, too, he was now thinking of a serious commitment to the MR and wanted further to consolidate his reputation with Griffiths. As Robberds notes, the review was published in the April MR (N.S. 10, 373-377). Along with the review Enfield sent Griffiths a copy of the Disquisitions and suggested that Sayers, too, might "become a valuable addition to your corps". Sayers' review of Joseph Priestley's Letters to the Philosophers and Politicians of France on the subject of Religion subsequently appeared in the MR for June 1793 (N.S. 11, 229-230), but by 5 May Enfield had decided that Sayers was probably "too indolent to be a very regular reviewer" (f.73v). (Sayers, indeed, seems only to have undertaken one subsequent review for Griffiths.)

On 5 May it was Enfield's turn to supply a "tribute of friendship". He wrote to Griffiths:

Taylor's translation of Iphigenie auf Tauris had been completed in 1790; his choosing finally to publish it in Spring 1793 must reflect his increasingly serious literary ambitions. The publication may also have been a politic move aimed at Griffiths, who had not yet allowed Taylor to demonstrate his prime strength in the field of German literature. In the event the publication probably had the additional significance, by its almost complete commercial failure, of proving to Taylor the necessity of a regular connection with a periodical if he were to pursue a living with his pen.[11] In this regard it is noteworthy that Taylor did not bother publishing his other major translation of 1790, that of Lessing's Nathan der Weise, until 1805.

In the letter of 5 May Enfield noted that he was enclosing "Mr. T's articles". This must refer to the review of Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry which, like Enfield's review of Iphigenia in Tauris, was fitted into the May issue of the MR (N.S. 11, 72-77 and 51-59 respectively), and that of Scotish Poems which appeared in the June issue (N.S. 11, 172-176). Intriguingly it may also refer to a review of a rather different kind of work: William Belsham's Remarks on the Nature and Necessity of Parliamentary Reform (1793). A review of this pamphlet, marked "Tay----r of Nor----h" in the Bodleian copy, appeared in the Appendix to Volume 10 (January-April 1793), apparently published at the same time as the May issue (N.S. 10, 577-580).[12] There is, unfortunately, no mention of this review in the extant Enfield correspondence. As Enfield would have known, Taylor was extremely interested

in parliamentary reform--in the review he refers to it as "the most interesting of subjects"--and well qualified to tackle such works along lines that Enfield would approve.[13] As this was the first of Taylor's many reviews of political works it would be particularly interesting to know whether it was solicited or unsolicited, but no certain evidence points either way. On balance, however, it seems unlikely that Taylor, who in this case can have had no privileged early access to the book, would have risked encroaching on a regular reviewer's territory. Two years later, when Taylor sent him an unsolicited review, Griffiths was forced to refuse it because the work had already been given to somebody else; on that occasion he warned: "My reviewing friends always run a great hazard of losing their labour, when they voluntarily, and without previously acquainting the conducter, undertake an unconsigned article" (Robberds, I, 134). The Belsham piece certainly proved Taylor's value as a political reviewer. Of his three reviews in the July MR, two are of political works, the anonymous Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Failures and Thomas Paine's Prospects on the War and Paper Currency (N.S. 11, 334-335 and 335-337 respectively), while in the August issue he was allowed considerably more space to review Robert Hall's Apology for the Freedom of the Press and for General Liberty (N.S. 11, 380-384). None of these are mentioned in the Enfield correspondence, but it is inconceivable that Griffiths was not soliciting them. A possible explanation of why such works were now offered to Taylor can be found in the subsequent letter from Griffiths of 27 June; Griffiths stated that he was no longer sending political works to Arthur Murphy, because of the latter's "violent attachment to aristocracy" (Robberds, I, 123). At a time of acute political tension the liberal Griffiths, with the support of Enfield, could only preserve a uniformity of sentiment in the MR--something he cherished--by winnowing out the more conservative voices. Along with the increase in politically orientated publications, this would have created space for a new, politically "safe" reviewing voice like Taylor's.

The third of the July reviews, that of the anonymous Stone Henge: A Poem (1792), clearly identified as Taylor's in the Bodleian copy, is a different case (N.S. 11, 344-345). There seems no good reason for Griffiths' sending Taylor this obscure and second-rate work, apparently published as early as May 1792. Clearly there had been some new initiative to get the work reviewed, for the Critical Review for July, and the British Critic for August 1793, both carried very brief notices. Taylor's longer notice can perhaps be explained by the fact that the poem was by John Wagstaffe (1726?-1808), a minor Norwich poet patronised by Edward Jerningham; quite possibly Taylor took the initiative in endeavouring to attract notice to a work that had previously received little or none.[14]

As Robberds recorded, Enfield was absent from Norwich for a considerable part of the Summer of 1793. On 6 June he wrote to Griffiths that he was going on a tour of the Lakes: "We set out on Midsummers day, & shall be absent six weeks" (f.76). But Robberds seems to have been mistaken in supposing that there was any significant transference of books. In the letter quoted, Enfield expressly stated his determination to complete all his outstanding work for the MR before he left, and there is no obvious increase in Taylor's contributions in the following months. Robberds' sole evidence was probably the letter he prints from Griffiths to Taylor of 27 June, where it is mentioned that Enfield had "turned over" to Taylor "one or two . . . pamphlets" (I, 123); his misrepresentation of this can probably be accounted for by his clear ignorance of the extent to which Taylor had already become an independent contributor. Before he left, Enfield dispatched a parcel to Griffiths that, along with his own reviews, contained "articles concerning Hall, Paine, Owen and Barry" by Taylor (Robberds, I, 124). As noted already, only the Paine review found its way into the July MR; the Hall review appeared in August, "Owen and Barry" in September. Presumably the reviews of Thoughts on . . . the Present Failures and Stone Henge had already been dispatched. Of the other works, William Owen's translation of The Heroic Elegies and other Pieces of Llywarc Hen (1792) (N.S. 12, 18-22), which again seems to have appeared belatedly, was an obvious title for the reviewer of Ritson and Pinkerton, while James Barry's Letter to . . . the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (N.S. 12, 23-28) had a pronounced political aspect.

The twelve reviews detailed so far seem to have comprised the extent of Taylor's gratuitous reviewing for the MR. They can be classified into three types: the unsolicited notices of Sayers and the probably volunteered one of Wagstaffe; the reviews of works under the rubric "old British poetry"; the reviews of works concerned with the contemporary political scene. It may seem odd, after Enfield's recommendations, that there is no "foreign article" in this list, but Griffiths was almost certainly wary of offending regular members of his "corps" who normally handled this area. Taylor's first review of a German publication appeared in the Appendix to Volume 11 (May-August 1793) and detailed an obviously peripheral work, Johann Hinrich Röding's Allgemeines Wörterbuch der Marine (1793), Taylor, however, demonstrated a surprising knowledge of its rather specialised subject matter (N.S. 11, 563-565). Possibly this was unsolicited. It was not until September 1794 that Taylor's second review of a German work (a translation of Herrmann von Unna) appeared, but thereafter he regularly handled German material.

The principal effect of Enfield's absence was to force Griffiths into direct communication with Taylor for the first time. This began with his letter of 27 June, already quoted from. The letter concluded:

Taylor replied on 12 July:

This is a revealing letter, demonstrating yet again that Robberds vastly oversimplified Taylor's transition from merchant to professional man of letters. By this time Taylor must have realised that there was very little money to be made from translations like Iphigenia in Tauris, and his somewhat cavalier attitude towards "remuneration" from Griffiths suggests no desire for a professional dependence on his writing. The reference to work in "the counting-house" contradicts Robberds' supposition that the Taylors quickly withdrew from all their business interests, and that the younger Taylor made an immediate transition to literature. Later in the decade Taylor certainly did take a pride in being able to live off his earnings as a writer (with the supplement, it must be added, of an income from some earlier investments).[15] On 1 November he wrote to Robert Southey:

But in Summer 1793 Taylor clearly lacked any notion of his writing supplying a sufficient recompense to allow him an adequate independent income. It was perhaps the fact that Griffiths accepted the terms set out in his letter of 12 July, and that from then on he was paid, that alerted Taylor to the possibility. It was probably in August 1794 that Taylor petitioned, apparently quite angrily, for higher payment, and from then on Griffiths agreed to pay him three guineas a sheet.[16] Taylor's demanding more money contrasts greatly with his position in July 1793, implying, I would suggest, that, pace Robberds, it was not until 1794 that his circumstances allowed Taylor to "devote himself . . . exclusively to literature." This is supported by the fact that the Norwich papers for 18 July 1795 carried a "NOTICE to the DEBTORS and CREDITORS Of WILLIAM TAYLOR, of the city of Norwich, Shawl-Manufacturer", a notice that clearly represents a final stage in the Taylors' withdrawal from trade, thus suggesting that their regular income from their business would have ceased several months earlier. When he stopped writing for the MR in 1799 Taylor recorded that he had made upwards of £50 a year from Griffiths (Robberds, I, 306). From early 1796 he was a regular contributor to the Monthly Magazine as well, thus considerably augmenting his literary earnings. Given that he continued to live with his parents, never married, and travelled infrequently, this income probably went a long way. The average Norwich weaver earned around £15 a year at this period.[17]

It is unfortunate that no more letters between Griffiths and Taylor have been preserved from 1793 after the initial exchange. But when Enfield returned to Norwich sometime in August he must have been delighted to discover that his efforts over the previous eighteen months had not been in vain, and that Griffiths and Taylor had now formed a regular connection. Writing to Griffiths on 3 September, he stated:

Enfield's prediction was admirably borne out over the following six years, as Taylor gave expression for the first time to that new "style of philosophical criticism" that Hazlitt would later praise as "characteristic of the Spirit of the Age".