/lit/ - Literature

Writers like Dryden and Pope were well aware of the new barbarian reading class and tried their best to allow them to catch up to those who were afforded a sophisticated education of the classics and literary judgement. They wrote translations in order to bridge the two together, to allow the monolingual middle class to obtain some sense of Mt. Parnassus.
Matthew Arnold was apt in calling the next generation of 18th ce English literature as the "age of prose." Up until the 1740s, verse set the standard for what was Literature. Since the rising middle class had neither the knowledge nor the care for the intricacies of meter or erudite craftsmanship, novels rose to the top of the booksellers' list and dethroned Apollo and Athena.
Writers like Johnson tried their best to educate the masses by writing essays on literary criticism to show them how to exercise judgement, to separate the wheat from the chaff, but, alas, neque mittatis margaritas vestras ante porcos.