The eighteenth century has gone down in memory as the Age of Enlightenment, an era of rapid intellectual development and rationalism, and more broadly, of "reasonableness" an interval of tranquillity after the fading of religious strife, and before the beginnings of the nationalistic and ideological struggles of modern times. England achieved stability after the turmoil of the seventeenth century, and by the later part of the century the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was a world power.
One might expect, then, that the eighteenth century would have been an age of brilliance, or at least of solid achievement, in British universities. However, the contrary seems to have been the case, as reflected in both contemporary accounts and in modern scholarship. At the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the eighteenth century was a Dark Age of relatively few students and little scholarship. In the words of Adam Smith, the pioneer economist, it was a time when Oxford professors made "scarcely even a pretence" of teaching (Smith, 1976, p. 284).
The condition of the University of Dublin, commonly referred to as Trinity College, Dublin, appears to have been somewhat better. Dean Swift, a graduate, wrote in a letter that
. . . there is an university in Ireland founded by Queen Elizabeth with a much greater discipline than either in Oxford or Cambridge (Maxwell, 1946, p. 113).
Certainly Trinity College's graduates in the eighteenth century were not without distinction, including, besides Swift, Bishop Berkeley, Congreve, Goldsmith, and Burke (Dowling, 1976, p. 163). But while more productive in this period, perhaps, than the "Oxbridge" universities, Trinity College itself produced little distinguished work. Between 1722 and 1753, not a single publication is recorded by any Fellow of Trinity College (McDowell and Webb, 1982, pp. 38-39).
Thus, it must be understood from the outset that a history of Bri...