So is he, I think, likewise in the extension of literary criticism by including in it investigations into psychology, not merely individual but national, into manners, religion, and what not. This extension, continued by the Germans of the later eighteenth century and immensely popularised and developed during the nineteenth, of course now seems to some the orthodox and only legitimate process of the kind. To me, as my readers by this time must be well aware, it does not seem so. I therefore deplore the exercise of Vico’s genius in this direction, and I do not purpose to admit its results into these pages more than I can help. But once more I recognise his greatness, if in some respects as that of a great heresiarch. And it would be really “unphilosophical” to leave him without pointing out, what has not, so far as I know, been pointed out before, how noteworthy he is as exemplifying the corruption of a thing accompanying quite early stages of its growth. We have throughout maintained that the Historical method is the salvation of Criticism, and in this very period we are witnessing its late application to that purpose. Vico is the very apostle, nay, more, the prophet, of the Historical method itself. Yet here, as elsewhere, the postern to Hell is hard by the gateway of the Celestial City. [Sidenote: _England._] We may give a somewhat full account of some English writers whose criticism trembles on the verge of æsthetic or oversteps it, partly on the general principles announced in the preface to the last volume, partly because some of them at least do touch actual criticism rather more nearly than, say, Baumgarten and Vico; but also because, in the great _prepollence_ of English literature during the eighteenth century, some of them likewise—notably Shaftesbury and Burke—exercised a very considerable influence upon foreign countries. As for Hume, he is a particularly interesting example of a man pushing freedom of thought to the utmost limit in certain directions, but apparently content to dwell in the most hide-bound orthodoxy of his time as to others.[284] [Sidenote: _Shaftesbury._]