Presidential Address

P re sid e n tia l A d d r e s s L e ste r G . C ro c k e rrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA DOME TIME AGO, several of my colleagues informed me that it was my duty to make a presidential address, without which no banquet is complete. I think that you would have preferred cham­ pagne, with which to toast the launching of what promises to be a fortunate venture. Without the champagne you should not expect of me the m o tu s a n im i c o n tin u u s in which, according to Cicero, true eloquence resides. A later writer, known to some of you, said, "Brevity is the soul of wit.” If I cannot be witty, I can be fairly brief. Despite the profusion of scholarly societies, I believe in the valid­ ity of this one. The need for cross-communication and for synthesis is unmistakable. As Dean May has said, we need a counterweight with which to balance escalating specialization. Our different sub­ jects and geographical areas will complement and illuminate each other. Literary scholars, in particular, increasingly feel the need for what may be a more coherent and meaningful forum than the one provided by MLA. We have gathered here because we have common commitments. We believe that the things we like to talk about are of interest to all of us, and that the problems which concern each of us, different though they may be, have wider openings and dimensions. If they do, it is so because they were once alive within a single segment of our history, and were conditioned by each other and by the matrix of that cultural moment. But the basis of our commitment is the attractive force which the eighteenth century exerts upon us, a force which is decidedly not in inverse relation to the square of the time that separates us from that period. The attractiveness of the century depends on two rather obvious factors, distinct yet conjoined. The first is intrinsic: the interest, significance, and peculiar character of that age and of what was xv Th e Mo d e r n it y o f t h e Eig h t e e n t h Ce n t u r y done and thought during it. The second is extrinsic: its vitality and importance for our own time. At the risk of inciting the ire of my historian friends, I should call the purely intrinsic attractiveness antiquarian history (but without any pejorative connotation, for I certainly favor and enjoy study of the past for its inherent interest). The second is history with added meaning: that part of the past which matters to any present. I know that we should not be here if we did not have a strong conviction that the past is relevant to the present, and that in the continuum of evolving cultural config­ urations the eighteenth century has bequeathed to us a heritage which it would be folly to ignore and which we delight to contem- * Our belief in a deep and multidimensional relevance, one that is abiding and not ephemeral, led us to propose, as the principal theme of this conference "The Modernity of the Eighteenth Cen­ tury." When I wrote these lines, I had no notion of what was to be said at the symposium by the distinguished scholars who took part in it. Without attempting to plumb the depths or span the vastness of a subject so debatable and diverse, I shall indulge in a few limited remarks, taking the risk that I may contradict, or even worse repeat, what was said earlier in the day. There is much in the eighteenth century that is YXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGF n o t modern. Since scientific theory and knowledge, according to that age’s own law of progress, are never stationary, its ideas were often inaccurate, or even to a later age quaint and absurd. But they were necessary developments. Rather more foreign to us are the credulity, and the indulgence in fantasy and ungoverned speculation, so often en­ countered in the writings of the naturalists. History itself was not written as it would be...