Mr. Burton (1577-1650) was an English vicar and a college librarian, and his thinking was informed by both religious orthodoxy and the more secular canon of classicalliterature.
Gregory Nagy, a professor of classical Greek literature at Harvard, is a gentle academic of the sort who, asked about the future, will begin speaking of Homer and the battles of the distant past.
This includes not only classical and traditional literature, but also public data and official information produced and voluntarily made available by governments or international organizations.
They were synonymous with a progressive theory of composition that replaced classical forms with organic structure, harmonic freedom and subjects derived from literature.