We have a similar illustration of the same thing in Mr. Gosse’s account of Shaftesbury. We are told that he “was perhaps the greatest literary force between Dryden and Swift”; that “he deserves remembrance as the first who really broke down the barrier which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilization of literary Europe”; that “he set an example for the kind of prose which was to mark the central years of the century”; that “his style glitters and rings, and ... yet so curious that one marvels that it should have fallen completely into neglect”; that “he was the first Englishman who developed theories of formal virtue, who attempted to harmonize the beautiful with the true and the good”; that the modern attitude of mind seems to meet us first in the graceful cosmopolitan writings of Shaftesbury; that “without a Shaftesbury there would hardly have been a Ruskin or a Pater.” Such amazing nonsense almost confounds refutation by its sheer absurdity. With regard to the first statement, it may be sufficient to say that between the period of Dryden’s literary activity and the publication of Swift’s _Battle of the Books_ and _Tale of a Tub_ were flourishing Hobbes, Izaak Walton, Bunyan, Temple, and Locke; that between the publication of the _Tale of a Tub_ and of Shaftesbury’s collected writings were flourishing Addison, Steele, De Foe, Arbuthnot, Berkeley. With regard to the second statement, it would be interesting to know how a writer who had been preceded by Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, could be described as a writer who had been the first “to break down the barrier which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilization of literary Europe.” The truth is, that Shaftesbury exercised no influence at all on Continental Literature until long after our Literature had generally become influential in France. Equally absurd and baseless is the remark that he “set an example of the kind of prose that was to mark the central years of the century.” Whose prose was affected by him? Bolingbroke’s? or Fielding’s? or Richardson’s? or Middleton’s? or Johnson’s? or Goldsmith’s? or Hume’s? or Hawkesworth’s? or Sterne’s? or Smollett’s? or Chesterfield’s? that of the writers in the _Monthly Review_? or in the _Adventurer_? or in the _World_? or in the _Connoisseur_? To say of Shaftesbury’s style that “it glitters and rings,” is to say what betrays utter ignorance of its characteristics. As a rule, it is diffuse, involved, and cumbrous, affected, but with an affectation which sedulously aims at the very opposite effects of “glittering and ringing.” When he is eloquent, as in the _Moralists_, he imitates the style of Plato; his vice is florid verbosity; it may be doubted whether a single sentence could be found to which Mr. Gosse’s description would be applicable. If, it may be added, his style had “fallen completely into neglect,” it is somewhat surprising that “he should set an example for the kind of prose which was to mark the