Michael Ferber

“The deference to the forms and ‘rules’ of Greek and Latin authors, especially Latin, with their clarity, focus, and decorum; the assumption that literature, and all the arts, should be an ideal imitation of life, or ‘Nature methodiz’d’ (in Alexander Pope’s phrase), and that their purpose is to improve our morals by purging tragic passions or ridiculing comic vices, including religious ‘enthusiasm’; the acceptance of human limitations and the necessity of order in both the arts and society, though often tempered with a modest hope that civility and reasonableness may enlarge their domain – these norms were widespread in the 17th and early 18th centuries among the literate elite of Europe.”
― Michael Ferber, Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction