SOURCE: Wellek, René. “English Criticism.” In A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, Volume 3: The Age of Transition, pp. 86-92. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965.

In the following excerpt, Wellek describes the 1830s and 1840s as transitional decades between earlier Romantic theories and those of the Victorian age.

Introductory

In England the thirties and forties of the 19th century can be described as an age of transition. This, it has been objected, is true of any period; but these two decades fit particularly well John Stuart Mill's description in his Spirit of the Age (1831): “Men have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones.” There was an anarchy of opinions and an aversion to system and theory. “He is a theorist: and the word which expresses the highest and noblest effort of human intelligence is turned into a bye-word (sic) of derision.”¹ Mill...