This fourth volume covers the period from Dryden to Johnson. It begins with a survey of the social context of English Literature during this period, followed by a survey of the literature itself, much of it of a series of essays dealing with detail with Dryden, Swift, Pope; the Essayists, the novelists Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne; Goldsmith, Johnson, etc. There are also essays on Hogarth, and eighteenth-century architecture and planning. Finally the volume contains an appendix of biographies and bibliographies.
