One of the notable changes in English literature during the eighteenth century is a growth in altruism. It is a change which involves not only a breaking down of the old aristocratic indifference to the lower classes of society during the Restoration, but the establishment of a new ethical theory; literature displayed a broader human interest and assigned a new reason for its sympathy. It is usually assumed that the difference is due principally to the influx of French philosophy. This assumption at least minimizes the importance of a development which had taken place in the literature of England itself before the general interest in Rousseau. (The change, especially in poetry, is to be traced largely, I think, to the Characteristics (1711) of Lord Shaftesbury, whose importance as a literary influence in England has never been duly recognized. It has long since been established that his system of philosophy constitutes a turning-point in the history of pure speculation, especially in ethics; it has more recently been shown also that he is responsible for many of the moral ideas which inform the popular literature of Germany from Haller to Herder. But his influence upon the popular writers of his own country has received scant notice.
Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700-1760