SOURCE: Houghton, Walter E., Jr. “Problem and Method.” In The Formation of Thomas Fuller's ‘Holy and Profane States,’ pp. 3-16. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938.

In the following excerpt, Houghton discusses the critical reception of Fuller's writing from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century, maintaining that his work, particularly The Holy and Profane States, has been misunderstood by critics.

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Among English men of letters, Thomas Fuller has perhaps a unique distinction: no author so widely known seems to have received such meager and inadequate interpretation. By a curious irony, the failure of criticism may largely be traced to the main sources of his fame—to Coleridge and Lamb. It was they who rescued Fuller from the long neglect which had set in quickly with the Restoration, when his wit was found incompatible with neo-classical taste. But they did more than that: with infectious exaggeration of his worth, they...