Book excerpt: This volume presents an array of studies on many aspects of the eighteenth century: on the novel, history, the history of ideas, drama, poetry and sentimentality. The essays are as diverse as ‘Pope’s Essays on Man and the French Enlightenment’ and ‘Of Silk-worms and Farthingales and the Will of God.’ One group is concerned with the works and ideas of Bayle, Alexander Gerard, Diderot, Fuseli, Hawkesworth and Swift among others. The essays are the work of leading scholars for many disciplines and were presented at the Second David Nichol Smith Seminar; together they reflect some of the liveliest and most up-to-date trends in the present reexamination of the period. The book will be invaluable to all students of the literature, thought, and civilisation of the eighteenth century.