The positive temper, the attitude of realism, is everywhere in the ascendant.

The sixteenth century made voyages of discovery; the seventeenth sat down to take stock of the riches it had gathered.

For the first time in English literature writing becomes a vehicle for storing and conveying facts.
It would be easy to give instances: one must suffice here.

Biography, which is one of the most characteristic kinds of English writing, was unknown to the moderns as late as the sixteenth century.

Partly the awakened interest in the careers of the ancient statesmen and soldiers which the study of Plutarch had excited, and partly the general interest in, and craving for, facts set men writing down the lives of their fellows.