None of them, except William Wilson, has an ethical aim, but they all have an intellectual, utilitarian purport, in giving us profound knowledge of man's hidden emotions.
"The Literature of Ecstasy"
Albert Mordell
Under the first Georges we are in the very heart of the eighteenth century; the century, as its enemies used to say, of coarse utilitarian aims, of religious indifference and political corruption; or, as I prefer to say, the century of sound common sense and growing toleration, and of steady social and industrial development.
"English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century"
Leslie Stephen
So far the tendency to realism was thoroughly congenial to the matter-of-fact utilitarian spirit of the time, and was in some sense in harmony with a 'return to Nature.
"English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century"
Leslie Stephen