Harlem Gaspard De La Nuit

widely read title in the clandestine book trade. But his literary ideas also formed a bridge to the future. His writings on the theatre anticipated THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT 189 the principles and practice of Romantic drama, Mon Bonnet de nuit (1784) pointed poetry in the direction it would in fact take, and La Néologie (1801) was not merely a dictionary of coinages but a defence of the principle that language should not be constrained by taste but free to express the imagination and thought