It is one of the venerable commonplaces of criticism that ‘manners,’ as distinct from romance and the idealistic interpretation of life, make the bulk of eighteenth century literature. Comment has often begun and more often ended with this platitude. But that large body of work vaguely termed ‘literature of manners’ can no more be dismissed with a truism than can the life that it depicts, but demands a critical method as varied as the matter which is treated. In so far as this prevailing interest of the century manifested itself in _belles lettres_, in novel, drama, satire, and descriptive verse, it offers no unusual problem to the literary historian; but side by side with such types we have…
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