ve of learning and a belief in its power to transcend the old rules:
A thing well said will be wit in all languages; and though it may lose something in the translation, yet to him who reads it in the original, 'tis still the same; he has an idea of its excellency, though it cannot pass from his mind into any other expression or words than those in which he finds it (in Abrams 1843-1844).
The eighteenth century was called the age of prose, though prose from Bacon and others was strong in the previous century as well. Pope offered poetry of a classical, satiric sort, tightly controlled and directed at developing wit, while Samuel Johnson expressed his wit better in his prose than in his poetry. Since this was the age of prose, it is not surprising that the novel came into being in the eighteenth century and developed into a new art form by the end of that century and the beginning of the next. Scholarship was much prized in this age, and Samuel Johnson showed its import when he wrote his dictionary, much as James Boswell celebrated the scholar in the form of Johnson himself. The newspaper came into being through the writings of Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and Samuel Johnson. The rise of the newspaper also showed the growth in literacy during this century.
Restoration comedy was a particular theatrical form that made use of similar characters and plots for some forty years at its height. J.L. Styan notes this and then indicates that it is less important to wonder why plotting and characterization were so limited than to ask why the fact that they were so limited and so repeated was unimportant to their success:
The assumption is that the endless stories of seduction and cuckolding, and the repeated stereotypes of wit and coquette, fop and prude, country wife and country cousin, merely provided convenient pegs on which to hand the true elements of drama offered by Restoration comedy. And where might they be fou...