A HISTORY OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

by

HENRY A. BEERS

Author of _A Suburban Pastoral_, _The Ways of Vale_, etc. 

"Was unsterblich im Gesang soll leben Muss im Leben untergehen. " --Schiller

PREFACE

Historians of French and German literature are accustomed to set off aperiod, or a division of their subject, and entitle it "Romanticism" or"the Romantic School. " Writers of English literary history, whilerecognizing the importance of England's share in this great movement inEuropean letters, have not generally accorded it a place by itself in thearrangement of their subject-matter, but have treated it cursively, as atendency present in the work of individual authors; and have maintained asimple chronological division of eras into the "Georgian, ", the"Victorian, " etc. The reason of this is perhaps to be found in the factthat, although Romanticism began earlier in England than on the Continentand lent quite as much as it borrowed in the international exchange ofliterary commodities, the native movement was more gradual and scattered. It never reached so compact a shape, or came so definitely to a head, asin Germany or France. There never was precisely a "romantic school" oran all-pervading romantic fashion in England. 

There is, therefore, nothing in English corresponding to Heine'sfascinating sketch "Die Romantische Schule, " or to Théophile Gautier'salmost equally fascinating and far more sympathetic "Histoire duRomantisme. " If we can imagine a composite personality of Byron and DeQuincey, putting on record his half affectionate and half satiricalreminiscences of the contemporary literary movement, we might havesomething nearly equivalent. For Byron, like Heine, was a repentantromanticist, with "radical notions under his cap, " and a critical theoryat odds with his practice; while De Quincey was an early disciple ofWordsworth and Coleridge, --as Gautier was of Victor Hugo, --and at thesame time a clever and slightly mischievous sketcher of personal traits. 

The present volume consists, in substance, of a series of lectures givenin elective courses in Yale College. In revising it for publication Ihave striven to rid it of the air of the lecture room, but a fewrepetitions and didacticisms of manner may have inadvertently been leftin. Some of the methods and results of these studies have already beengiven to the public in "The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, "by my present associate and former scholar, Professor William LyonPhelps. Professor Phelps' little book (originally a doctorate thesis)follows, in the main, the selection and arrangement of topics in mylectures. _En revanche_ I have had the advantage of availing myself ofhis independent researches on points which I have touched but slightly;and particularly of his very full treatment of the Spenserian imitations. 

I had at first intended to entitle the book "Chapters toward a History ofEnglish Romanticism, etc. "; for, though fairly complete in treatment, itmakes no claim to being exhaustive. By no means every eighteenth-centurywriter whose work exhibits romantic motives is here passed in review. That very singular genius William Blake, _e. G. _, in whom the influence of"Ossian, " among other things, is so strongly apparent, I leave untouched;because his writings--partly by reason of their strange manner ofpublication--were without effect upon their generation and do not form alink in the chain of literary tendency. 

If this volume should be favorably received, I hope before very long topublish a companion study of English romanticism in the nineteenthcentury. 

 H. A. B. 

_October, 1898. _

CONTENTS

Chapter

 I. The Subject Defined

 II. The Augustans

 III. The Spenserians

 IV. The Landscape Poets

 V. The Miltonic Group

 VI. The School of Warton

 VII. The Gothic Revival

 VIII. Percy and the Ballads

 IX. Ossian

 X. Thomas Chatterton

 XI. The German Tributary

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM

CHAPTER I. 

The Subject Defined

To attempt at the outset a rigid definition of the word _romanticism_would be to anticipate the substance of this volume. To furnish ananswer to the question--What is, or was, romanticism? or, at least, Whatis, or was English romanticism?--is one of my main purposes herein, andthe reader will be invited to examine a good many literary documents, andto do a certain amount of thinking, before he can form for himself anyfull and clear notion of the thing. Even then he will hardly findhimself prepared to give a dictionary definition or romanticism. Thereare words which connote so much, which take up into themselves so much ofthe history of the human mind, that any compendious explanation of theirmeaning--any definition which is not, at the same time, a rather extendeddescription--must serve little other end than to supply a convenient markof identification. How can we define in a sentence words likerenaissance, philistine, sentimentalism, transcendental, Bohemia, pre-Raphaelite, impressionist, realistic? _Definitio est negatio_. Itmay be possible to hit upon a form of words which will mark romanticismoff from everything else--tell in a clause what it is _not_; but to add apositive content to the definition--to tell what romanticism _is_, willrequire a very different and more gradual process. [1]

Nevertheless a rough, working definition may be useful to start with. Romanticism, then, in the sense in which I shall commonly employ theword, means the reproduction in modern art or literature of the life andthought of the Middle Ages. Some other elements will have to be added tothis definition, and some modifications of it will suggest themselvesfrom time to time. It is provisional, tentative, classic, but will serveour turn till we are ready to substitute a better. It is the definitionwhich Heine gives in his brilliant little book on the Romantic School inGermany. [2] "All the poetry of the Middle Ages, " he adds, "has a certaindefinite character, through which it differs from the poetry of theGreeks and Romans. In reference to this difference, the former is calledRomantic, the latter Classic. These names, however, are misleading, andhave hitherto caused the most vexatious confusion. "[3]

Some of the sources of this confusion will be considered presently. Meanwhile the passage recalls the fact that _romantic_, when used as aterm in literary nomenclature, is not an independent, but a referentialword. It implies its opposite, the classic; and the ingenuity of criticshas been taxed to its uttermost to explain and develop the numerouspoints of contrast. To form a thorough conception of the romantic, therefore, we must also form some conception of the classic. Now thereis an obvious unlikeness between the thought and art of the nations ofpagan antiquity and the thought and art of the peoples of Christian, feudal Europe. Everyone will agree to call the Parthenon, the "Diana" ofthe Louvre, the "Oedipus" of Sophocles, the orations of Demosthenesclassical; and to call the cathedral of Chartres, the walls ofNuremberg--_die Perle des Mittelalters_--the "Legenda Aurea" of Jacobusde Voragine, the "Tristan und Isolde" of Gottfried of Strasburg, and theilluminations in a Catholic missal of the thirteenth century romantic. 

The same unlikeness is found between modern works conceived in thespirit, or executed in direct imitation, of ancient and medieval artrespectively. It is easy to decide that Flaxman's outline drawings inillustration of Homer are classic; that Alfieri's tragedies, Goethe's"Iphigenie auf Tauris" Landor's "Hellenics, " Gibson's statues, David'spaintings, and the church of the Madeleine in Paris are classical, atleast in intentions and in the models which they follow; while VictorHugo's "Notre Dame de Paris, " Scott's "Ivanhoe, " Fouqué's "DerZauberring, " and Rossetti's painting, "The Girlhood of Mary, " are no lesscertainly romantic in their inspiration. 

But critics have given a wider extension than this to the terms classicand romantic. They have discerned, or imagined, certain qualities, attitudes of mind, ways of thinking and feeling, traits of style whichdistinguish classic from romantic art; and they have applied the wordsaccordingly to work which is not necessarily either antique or medievalin subject. Thus it is assumed, for example, that the productions ofGreek and Roman genius were characterized by clearness, simplicity, restraint, unity of design, subordination of the part to the whole; andtherefore modern works which make this impression of noble plainness andseverity, of harmony in construction, economy of means and clear, definite outline, are often spoken of as classical, quite irrespective ofthe historical period which they have to do with. In this sense, it isusual to say that Wordsworth's "Michael" is classical, or that Goethe's"Hermann and Dorothea" is classical; though Wordsworth may be celebratingthe virtues of a Westmoreland shepherd, and Goethe telling the story oftwo rustic lovers on the German border at the time of the Napoleonic wars. 

On the other hand, it is asserted that the work of mediaeval poets andartists is marked by an excess of sentiment, by over-lavish decoration, astrong sense of color and a feeble sense of form, an attention to detail, at the cost of the main impression, and a consequent tendency to run intothe exaggerated, the fantastic, and the grotesque. It is not uncommon, therefore, to find poets like Byron and Shelly classified asromanticists, by virtue of their possession of these, or similar, characteristics, although no one could be more remote from medievalhabits of thought than the author of "Don Juan" or the author of "TheRevolt of Islam. "

But the extension of these opposing terms to the work of writers who haveso little in common with either the antique or the medieval asWordsworth, on the one hand, and Byron, on the other, does not stop here. It is one of the embarrassments of the literary historian that nearlyevery word which he uses has two meanings, a critical and a popularmeaning. In common speech, classic has come to signify almost anythingthat is good. If we look in our dictionaries we find it defined somewhatin this way: "Conforming to the best authority in literature and art;pure; chaste; refined; originally and chiefly used of the best Greek andRoman writers, but also applied to the best modern authors, or theirworks. " "Classic, _n. _ A work of acknowledged excellence and authority. "In this sense of the word, "Robinson Crusoe" is a classic; the "Pilgrim'sProgress" is a classic; every piece of literature which is customarilyrecommended as a safe pattern for young writers to form their style uponis a classic. [4]

Contrariwise the word _romantic_, as popularly employed, expresses ashade of disapprobation. The dictionaries make it a synonym for_sentimental, fanciful_, _wild_, _extravagant_, _chimerical_, all evidentderivatives from their more critical definition, "pertaining orappropriate to the style of the Christian and popular literature of theMiddle Ages, as opposed to the classical antique. " The etymology of_romance_ is familiar. The various dialects which sprang from thecorruption of the Latin were called by the common name of _romans_. Thename was then applied to any piece of literature composed in thisvernacular instead of in the ancient classical Latin. And as thefavorite kind of writing in Provençal, Old French, and Spanish was thetale of chivalrous adventure that was called _par excellence_, _a roman_, _romans_, or_ romance_. The adjective _romantic_ is much later, implying, as it does, a certain degree of critical attention to thespecies of fiction which it describes in order to a generalizing of itspeculiarities. It first came into general use in the latter half of theseventeenth century and the early years of the eighteenth; and naturally, was marked from birth with that shade of disapproval which has beennoticed in popular usage. 

The feature that struck the critics most in the romances of the MiddleAges, and in that very different variety of romance which was cultivatedduring the seventeenth century--the prolix, sentimental fictions of LaCalprenède, Scudéri, Gomberville, and D'Urfé--was the fantasticimprobability of their adventures. Hence the common acceptation of theword _romantic_ in such phrases as "a romantic notion, " "a romanticelopement, " "an act of romantic generosity. " The application of theadjective to scenery was somewhat later, [5] and the abstract_romanticism_ was, of course, very much later; as the literary movement, or the revolution in taste, which it entitles, was not enough developedto call for a name until the opening of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it was never so compact, conscious, and definite a movement in England asin Germany and France; and its baptism doubtless came from abroad, fromthe polemical literature which attended the career of the German_romanticismus _and the French _romantisme_. 

While accepting provisionally Heine's definition, it will be useful toexamine some of the wider meanings that have been attached to the words_classic_ and _romantic_, and some of the analyses that have beenattempted of the qualities that make one work of art classical andanother romantic. Walter Pater took them to indicate opposite tendenciesor elements which are present in varying proportions in all good art. Itis the essential function of classical art and literature, he thought, totake care of the qualities of measure, purity, temperance. "What isclassical comes to us out of the cool and quiet of other times, as ameasure of what a long experience has shown us will, at least, neverdisplease us. And in the classical literature of Greece and Rome, as inthe classics of the last century, the essentially classical element isthat quality of order in beauty which they possess, indeed, in apre-eminent degree. "[6] "The charm, then, of what is classical in art orliterature is that of the well-known tale, to which we can neverthelesslisten over and over again, because it is told so well. To the absolutebeauty of its form is added the accidental, tranquil charm offamiliarity. "

On the other hand, he defines the romantic characteristics in art asconsisting in "the addition of strangeness to beauty"--a definition whichrecalls Bacon's saying, "There is no excellent beauty that hath not somestrangeness in the proportion. " "The desire of beauty, " continues Pater, "being a fixed element in every artistic organization, it is the additionof curiosity to this desire of beauty that constitutes the romantictemper. " This critic, then, would not confine the terms _classic_ and_classicism_ to the literature of Greece and Rome and to modern worksconceived in the same spirit, although he acknowledges that there arecertain ages of the world in which the classical tradition predominates, _i. E. _, in which the respect for authority, the love of order anddecorum, the disposition to follow rules and models, the acceptance ofacademic and conventional standards overbalance the desire forstrangeness and novelty. Such epochs are, _e. G. _, the Augustan age ofRome, the _Siècle de Louis XIV_, in France, the times of Pope and Johnsonin England--indeed, the whole of the eighteenth century in all parts ofEurope. 

Neither would he limit the word _romantic_ to work conceived in thespirit of the Middle Ages. "The essential elements, " he says, "of theromantic spirit are curiosity and the love of beauty; and it is as theaccidental effect of these qualities only, that it seeks the Middle Ages;because in the overcharged atmosphere of the Middle Age there areunworked sources of romantic effect, of a strange beauty to be won bystrong imagination out of things unlikely or remote. " "The sense inwhich Scott is to be called a romantic writer is chiefly that, inopposition to the literary tradition of the last century, he lovedstrange adventure and sought it in the Middle Age. "

Here again the essayist is careful to explain that there are certainepochs which are predominately romantic. "Outbreaks of this spirit comenaturally with particular periods: times when . . . Men come to art andpoetry with a deep thirst for intellectual excitement, after a long_ennui_. " He instances, as periods naturally romantic, the time of theearly Provençal troubadour poetry: the years following the BourbonRestoration in France (say, 1815-30); and "the later Middle Age; so thatthe medieval poetry, centering in Dante, is often opposed to Greek orRoman poetry, as romantic to classical poetry. "

In Pater's use of the terms, then, classic and romantic do not describeparticular literature, or particular periods in literary history, so muchas certain counterbalancing qualities and tendencies which run throughthe literatures of all times and countries. There were romantic writingsamong the Greeks and Romans; there were classical writings in the MiddleAges; nay, there are classical and romantic traits in the same author. If there is any poet who may safely be described as a classic, it isSophocles; and yet Pater declares that the "Philoctetes" of Sophocles, ifissued to-day, would be called romantic. And he points out--what indeedhas been often pointed out--that the "Odyssey"[7] is more romantic thanthe "Iliad:" is, in fact, rather a romance than a hero-epic. Theadventures of the wandering Ulysses, the visit to the land of thelotus-eaters, the encounter with the Laestrygonians, the experiences inthe cave of Polyphemus, if allowance be made for the difference insentiments and manners, remind the reader constantly of the medieval_romans d'aventure_. Pater quotes De Stendhal's saying that all good artwas romantic in its day. "Romanticism, " says De Stendhal, "is the art ofpresenting to the nations the literary works which, in the actual stateof their habits and beliefs, are capable of giving them the greatestpossible pleasure: classicism, on the contrary, presents them with whatgave the greatest possible pleasure to their great grand-fathers"--adefinition which is epigrammatic, if not convincing. [8] De Stendhal(Henri Beyle) was a pioneer and a special pleader in the cause of Frenchromanticism, and, in his use of the terms, romanticism stands forprogress, liberty, originality, and the spirit of the future; classicism, for conservatism, authority, imitation, the spirit of the past. According to him, every good piece of romantic art is a classic in themaking. Decried by the classicists of to-day, for its failure to observetraditions, it will be used by the classicists of the future as a patternto which new artists must conform. 

It may be worth while to round out the conception of the term byconsidering a few other definitions of _romantic_ which have beenproposed. Dr. F. H. Hedge, in an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_[9]for March, 1886, inquired, "What do we mean by romantic?" Goethe, hesays, characterized the difference between classic and romantic "asequivalent to [that between] healthy and morbid. Schiller proposed'naïve and sentimental. '[10] The greater part [of the German critics]regarded it as identical with the difference between ancient and modern, which was partly true, but explained nothing. None of the definitionsgiven could be accepted as quite satisfactory. "[11]

Dr. Hedge himself finds the origin of romantic feeling in wonder and thesense of mystery. "The essence of romance, " he writes, "is mystery"; andhe enforces the point by noting the application of the word to scenery. "The woody dell, the leafy glen, the forest path which leads, one knowsnot whither, are romantic: the public highway is not. " "The windingsecret brook . . . Is romantic, as compared with the broad river. ""Moonlight is romantic, as contrasted with daylight. " Dr. Hedgeattributes this fondness for the mysterious to "the influence of theChristian religion, which deepened immensely the mystery of life, suggesting something beyond and behind the world of sense. "

This charm of wonder or mystery is perhaps only another name for that"strangeness added to beauty" which Pater takes to be the distinguishingfeature of romantic art. Later in the same article, Dr. Hedge assertsthat "the essence of romanticism is aspiration. " Much might be said indefense of this position. It has often been pointed out, _e. G. _, that aGothic cathedral expresses aspiration, and a Greek temple satisfiedcompleteness. Indeed if we agree that, in a general way, the classic isequivalent to the antique, and the romantic to the medieval, it will bestrange if we do not discover many differences between the two that canhardly be covered by any single phrase. Dr. Hedge himself enumeratesseveral qualities of romantic art which it would be difficult to bringunder his essential and defining category of wonder or aspiration. Thushe announces that "the peculiarity of the classic style is reserve, self-suppression of the writer"; while "the romantic is self-reflecting. ""Clear, unimpassioned, impartial presentation of the subject . . . Is theprominent feature of the classic style. The modern writer gives you notso much the things themselves as his impression of them. " Here then isthe familiar critical distinction between the objective and subjectivemethods--Schiller's _naiv and sentimentalisch_--applied as a criterion ofclassic and romantic style. This contrast the essayist develops at somelength, dwelling upon "the cold reserve and colorless simplicity of theclassic style, where the medium is lost in the object"; and "on the otherhand, the inwardness, the sentimental intensity, the subjective coloringof the romantic style. "

A further distinguishing mark of the romantic spirit, mentioned by Dr. Hedge in common with many other critics, is the indefiniteness orincompleteness of its creations. This is a consequence, of course, ofits sense of mystery and aspiration. Schopenbauer said that music wasthe characteristic modern art, because of its subjective, indefinitecharacter. Pursuing this line of thought, Dr. Hedge affirms that"romantic relates to classic somewhat as music relates to plasticart. . . It [music] presents no finished ideal, but suggests idealsbeyond the capacity of canvas or stone. Plastic art acts on theintellect, music on the feelings; the one affects us by what it presents, the other by what it suggests. This, it seems to me, is essentially thedifference between classic and romantic poetry"; and he names Homer andMilton as examples of the former, and Scott and Shelley of the latterschool. 

Here then we have a third criterion proposed for determining theessential _differentia_ of romantic art. First it was mystery, thenaspiration; now it is the appeal to the emotions by the method ofsuggestion. And yet there is, perhaps, no inconsistency on the critic'spart in this continual shifting of his ground. He is apparentlypresenting different facets of the same truth; he means one thing by thismystery, aspiration, indefiniteness, incompleteness, emotionsuggestiveness: that quality or effect which we all feel to be present inromantic and absent from classic work, but which we find it hard todescribe by any single term. It is open to any analyst of our criticalvocabulary to draw out the fullest meanings that he can, from such pairsof related words as classic and romantic, fancy and imagination, wit andhumor, reason and understanding, passion and sentiment. Let us, forinstance, develop briefly this proposition that the ideal of classic artis completeness[12] and the ideal of romantic art indefiniteness, orsuggestiveness. 

A. W. Schlegel[13] had already made use of two of the arts of design, toillustrate the distinction between classic and romantic, just as Dr. Hedge uses plastic art and music. I refer to Schlegel's famous sayingthat the genius of the antique drama was statuesque, and that of theromantic drama picturesque. A Greek temple, statue, or poem has noimperfection and offers no further promise, indicates nothing beyond whatit expresses. It fills the sense, it leaves nothing to the imagination. It stands correct, symmetric, sharp in outline, in the clear light ofday. There is nothing more to be done to it; there is no concealmentabout it. But in romantic art there is seldom this completeness. Theworkman lingers, he would fain add another touch, his ideal eludes him. Is a Gothic cathedral ever really finished? Is "Faust" finished? Is"Hamlet" explained? The modern spirit is mystical; its architecture, painting, poetry employ shadow to produce their highest effects: shadowand color rather than contour. On the Greek heroic stage there were afew figures, two or three at most, grouped like statuary and thrown outin bold relief at the apex of the scene: in Greek architecture a fewclean, simple lines: in Greek poetry clear conceptions easily expressiblein language and mostly describable in sensuous images. 

The modern theater is crowded with figures and colors, and the distancerecedes in the middle of the scene. This love of perspective is repeatedin cathedral aisles, [14] the love of color in cathedral windows, andobscurity hovers in the shadows of the vault. In our poetry, in ourreligion these twilight thoughts prevail. We seek no completeness here. What is beyond, what is inexpressible attracts us. Hence the greaterspirituality of romantic literature, its deeper emotion, its morepassionate tenderness. But hence likewise its sentimentality, itsmelancholy and, in particular, the morbid fascination which the thoughtof death has had for the Gothic mind. The classic nations concentratedtheir attention on life and light, and spent few thoughts upon darknessand the tomb. Death was to them neither sacred nor beautiful. Theirdecent rites of sepulture or cremation seem designed to hide itsdeformities rather than to prolong its reminders. The presence of thecorpse was pollution. No Greek could have conceived such a book as the"Hydriotaphia" or the "Anatomy of Melancholy. "

It is observable that Dr. Hedge is at one with Pater, in desiring somemore philosophical statement of the difference between classic andromantic than the common one which makes it simply the difference betweenthe antique and the medieval. He says: "It must not be supposed thatancient and classic, on one side, and modern and romantic, on the other, are inseparably one; so that nothing approaching to romantic shall befound in any Greek or Roman author, nor any classic page in theliterature of modern Europe. . . The literary line of demarcation is notidentical with the chronological one. " And just as Pater says that theOdyssey is more romantic than the Iliad, so Dr. Hedge says that "thestory of Cupid and Psyche, [15] in the 'Golden Ass' of Apuleius, is asmuch a romance as any composition of the seventeenth or eighteenthcentury. " Medievalism he regards as merely an accident of romance:Scott, as most romantic in his themes, but Byron, in his mood. 

So, too, Mr. Sidney Colvin[16] denies that "a predilection for classicsubjects . . . Can make a writer that which we understand by the wordclassical as distinguished from that which we understand by the wordromantic. The distinction lies deeper, and is a distinction much less ofsubject than of treatment. . . In classical writing every idea is calledup to the mind as nakedly as possible, and at the same time asdistinctly; it is exhibited in white light, and left to produce itseffect by its own unaided power. [17] In romantic writing, on the otherhand, all objects are exhibited, as it were, through a colored andiridescent atmosphere. Round about every central idea the romanticwriter summons up a cloud of accessory and subordinate ideas for the sakeof enhancing its effect, if at the risk of confusing its outlines. Thetemper, again, of the romantic writer is one of excitement, while thetemper of the classical writer is one of self-possession. . . On the onehand there is calm, on the other hand enthusiasm. The virtues of the onestyle are strength of grasp, with clearness and justice of presentment;the virtues of the other style are glow of the spirit, with magic andrichness of suggestion. " Mr. Colvin then goes on to enforce andillustrate this contrast between the "accurate and firm definition ofthings" in classical writers and the "thrilling vagueness anduncertainty, " the tremulous, coruscating, vibrating or colored light--the"halo"--with which the romantic writer invests his theme. "The romanticmanner, . . . With its thrilling uncertainties and its rich suggestions, may be more attractive than the classic manner, with its composed andmeasured preciseness of statement. . . But on the other hand theromantic manner lends itself, as the true classical does not, to inferiorwork. Second-rate conceptions excitedly and approximately put into wordsderive from it an illusive attraction which may make them for a time, andwith all but the coolest judges, pass as first-rate. Whereas about trueclassical writing there can be no illusion. It presents to usconceptions calmly realized in words that exactly define them, conceptions depending for their attraction, not on their halo, but onthemselves. "

As examples of these contrasting styles, Mr. Colvin puts side by sidepassages from "The Ancient Mariner" and Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale, "with passages, treating similar themes, from Landor's "Gebir" and"Imaginary Conversations. " The contrast might be even more clearlyestablished by a study of such a piece as Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn, "where the romantic form is applied to classical content; or by acomparison of Tennyson's "Ulysses" and "The Lotus Eaters, " in whichHomeric subjects are treated respectively in the classic and the romanticmanner. 

Alfred de Musset, himself in early life a prominent figure among theFrench romanticists, wrote some capital satire upon the baffling andcontradictory definitions of the word _romantisme_ that were current inthe third and fourth decades of this century. [18] Two worthy provincialswrite from the little town of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre to the editor of the"Revue des Deux Mondes, " appealing to him to tell them what romanticismmeans. For two years Dupuis and his friend Cotonet had supposed that theterm applied only to the theater, and signified the disregard of theunities. "Shakspere, for example makes people travel from Rome toLondon, and from Athens to Alexandria in a quarter of an hour. Hisheroes live ten or twenty years between two acts. His heroines, angelsof virtue during a whole scene, have only to pass into the _coulisses_, to reappear as wives, adulteresses, widows, and grandmothers. There, wesaid to ourselves, is the romantic. Contrariwise, Sophocles makesOedipus sit on a rock, even at the cost of great personal inconvenience, from the very beginning of his tragedy. All the characters come there tofind him, one after the other. Perhaps he stands up occasionally, thoughI doubt it; unless, it may be, out of respect for Theseus, who, duringthe entire play, obligingly walks on the high-way, coming in or going outcontinually. . . There, we said to ourselves, is the classic. "

But about 1828, continues the letter, "we learned that there wereromantic poetry and classical poetry, romantic novels and classicalnovels, romantic odes and classical odes; nay, a single line, my dearsir, a sole and solitary line of verse might be romantic or classic, according as the humor took it. When we received this intelligence, wecould not close our eyes all night. Two years of peaceful conviction hadvanished like a dream. All our ideas were turned topsy-turvy; for it therules of Aristotle were no longer the line of demarcation which separatedthe literary camps, where was one to find himself, and what was he todepend upon? How was one to know, in reading a book, which school itbelonged to? . . . Luckily in the same year there appeared a famouspreface, which we devoured straightway[19]. . . This said verydistinctly that romanticism was nothing else than the alliance of theplayful and the serious, of the grotesque and the terrible, of the jocoseand the horrible, or in other words, if you prefer, of comedy andtragedy. "

This definition the anxious inquirers accepted for the space of a year, until it was borne in upon them that Aristophanes--not to speak of otherancients--had mixed tragedy and comedy in his drama. Once again thefriends were plunged in darkness, and their perplexity was deepened whenthey were taking a walk one evening and overheard a remark made by theniece of the _sous-prefet_. This young lady had fallen in love withEnglish ways, as was--somewhat strangely--evidenced by her wearing agreen veil, orange-colored gloves, and silver-rimmed spectacles. As shepassed the promenaders, she turned to look at a water-mill near the ford, where there were bags of grain, geese, and an ox in harness, and sheexclaimed to her governess, "_Voilà un site romantique_. "

This mysterious sentence roused the flagging curiosity of MM. Dupuis andContonet, and they renewed their investigations. A passage in anewspaper led them to believe for a time that romanticism was theimitation of the Germans, with, perhaps, the addition of the English andSpanish. Then they were tempted to fancy that it might be merely amatter of literary form, possibly this _vers brisé_ (run-over lines, _enjambement_) that they are making so much noise about. "From 1830 to1831 we were persuaded that romanticism was the historic style (_genrehistorique_) or, if you please, this mania which has lately seized ourauthors for calling the characters of their novels and melodramasCharlemagne, Francis I. , or Henry IV. , instead of Amadis, Oronte, orsaint-Albin. . . From 1831 to the year following we thought it was the_genre intime, _ about which there was much talk. But with all the painsthat we took we never could discover what the _genre intime_ was. The'intimate' novels are just like the others. They are in two volumeoctavo, with a great deal of margin. . . They have yellow covers andthey cost fifteen francs. " From 1832 to 1833 they conjectured thatromanticism might be a system of philosophy and political economy. From1833 to 1834 they believed that it consisted in not shaving one's self, and in wearing a waistcoat with wide facings very much starched. 

At last they bethink themselves of a certain lawyer's clerk, who hadfirst imported these literary disputes into the village, in 1824. Tohim, they expose their difficulties and ask for an answer to thequestion, What is romanticism? After a long conversation, they receivethis final definition. "Romanticism, my dear sir! No, of a surety, itis neither the disregard of the unities, nor the alliance of the comicand tragic, nor anything in the world expressible by words. In vain yougrasp the butterfly's wing; the dust which gives it its color is leftupon your fingers. Romanticism is the star that weeps, it is the windthat wails, it is the night that shudders, the bird that flies and theflower that breathes perfume: it is the sudden gush, the ecstasy grownfaint, the cistern beneath the palms, rosy hope with her thousand loves, the angel and the pearl, the white robe of the willows. It is theinfinite and the starry, " etc. , etc. 

Then M. Ducoudray, a magistrate of the department, gives his theory ofromanticism, which he considers to be an effect of the religious andpolitical reaction under the restored Bourbon monarchy of Louis XVIII, and Charles X. "The mania for ballads, arriving from Germany, met thelegitimist poetry one fine day at Ladvocat's bookshop; and the two ofthem, pickax in hand, went at nightfall to a churchyard, to dig up theMiddle Ages. " The taste for medievalism, M. Ducoudray adds, has survivedthe revolution of 1830, and romanticism has even entered into the serviceof liberty and progress, where it is a manifest anachronism, "employingthe style of Ronsard to celebrate railroads, and imitating Dante when itchants the praises of Washington and Lafayette. " Dupuis was tempted toembrace M. Ducoudray's explanation, but Cotonet was not satisfied. Heshut himself in, for four months, at the end of which he announced hisdiscovery that the true and only difference between the classic and theromantic is that the latter uses a good many adjectives. He illustrateshis principle by giving passages from "Paul and Virginia" and the"Portuguese Letters, " written in the romantic style. 

Thus Musset pricks a critical bubble with the point of his satire; andyet the bubble declines to vanish. There must really be some moresubstantial difference than this between classic and romantic, for theterms persist and are found useful. It may be true that the romantictemper, being subjective and excited, tends to an excess in adjectives;the adjective being that part of speech which attributes qualities, andis therefore most freely used by emotional persons. Still it would bepossible to cut out all the adjectives, not strictly necessary, from oneof Tieck's _Märchen_ without in the slightest degree disturbing itsromantic character. 

It remains to add that romanticism is a word which faces in twodirections. It is now opposed to realism, as it was once opposed toclassicism. As, in one way, its freedom and lawlessness, its love ofnovelty, experiment, "strangeness added to beauty, " contrast with theclassical respect for rules, models, formulae, precedents, conventions;so, in another way, its discontent with things as they are, its idealism, aspiration, mysticism contrast with the realist's conscientious adherenceto fact. "Ivanhoe" is one kind of romance; "The Marble Faun" isanother. [20]

[1] Les définitions ne se posent pas _a priori_, si ce n'est peutêtre enmathématiques. En histoire, c'est de l'étude patiente de is la réalitéqu'elles se dégagent insensiblement. Si M. Deschanel ne nous a pas donnédu _romantisme_ la définition que nous réclamions tout à l'heure, c'est, à vrai dire, que son enseignement a pour objet de préparer cettedéfinition même. Nous la trouverons où elle doit être, à la fin du courset non pas à début. --_F. Brunetière: "Classiques et Romantiques, ÉtudesCritiques, " _Tome III, p. 296. 

[2] Was war aber dis romantische Schule in Deutschland? Sie war nichtsanders als die Wiedererweckung der Poesie des Mittelalters, wie sie sichin dessen Liedern, Bild- und Bauwerken, in Kunst und Leben, manifestierthatte. --_Die romanticsche Schule (Cotta edition)_, p. 158. 

[3] "The Romantic School" (Fleishman's translation), p. 13. 

[4] Un classique est tout artiste à l'ecole de qui nous pouvons nousmettre sans craindre que ses leçons on ses exemples nous fourvoient. Ouencore, c'est celui qui possède . . . Des qualités dont l'imitation, sielle ne peut pas faire de bien, ne peut pas non plus faire de mal. --_F. Brunetière, "Études Critiques, "_ Tome III, p. 300. 

[5] Mr. Perry thinks that one of the first instances of the use of theword _romantic _is by the diarist Evelyn in 1654: "There is also, on theside of this horrid alp, a very romantic seat. "--_English Literature inthe Eighteenth Century, by Thomas Sergeant Perry, _p. 148, _note_. 

[6] "Romanticism, " _Macmillan's Magazine_, Vol. XXXV. 

[7] The Odyssey has been explained throughout in an allegorical sense. The episode of Circe, at least, lends itself obviously to suchinterpretation. Circe's cup has become a metaphor for sensualintoxication, transforming men into beasts; Milton, in "Comus, " regardshimself as Homer's continuator, enforcing a lesson of temperance inPuritan times hardly more consciously than the old Ionian Greek in timeswhich have no other record than his poem. 

[8] "Racine et Shakespeare, Études en Romantisme" (1823), p. 32, ed. OfMichel Lévy Frères, 1954. Such would also seem to be the view maintainedby M. Émile Deschanel, whose book "Le Romantisme des Classiques" (Paris, 1883) is reviewed by M. Brunetière in an article already several timesquoted. "Tous les classiques, " according to M. Deschanel--at least, sosays his reviewer--"ont jadis commencé par être des romantiques. " Andagain: "Un _romantique_ seraut tout simplement un classique en route pourparvenir; et, réciproquement, un classique ne serait de plus qu'unromantique arrivé. "

[9] "Classic and Romantic, " Vol. LVII. 

[10] See Schiller's "Ueber naive and sentimentalische Dichtung. "

[11] Le mot de romantisme, après cinquante ans et plus de discussionspassionnées, ne laisse pas d'être encore aujourd'hui bien vague et bienflottant. --_Brunetière, ibid. _

[12] Ce qui constitue proprement un classique, c'est l'équilibre en lui detoutes les facultés qui concourent à la perfection de l'oeuvred'art. --_Brunetière, ibid. _

[13] "Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Litteratur. "

[14] Far to the west the long, long vale withdrawn, Where twilight loves to linger for a while. --_Beattie's "Minstrel. "_

[15] The modernness of this "latest born of the myths" resides partly inits spiritual, almost Christian conception of love, partly in itsallegorical theme, the soul's attainment of immortality through love. The Catholic idea of penance is suggested, too, in Psyche's "wanderinglabors long. " This apologue has been a favorite with platonizing poets, like Spenser and Milton. See "The Faïrie Queene, " book iii. Canto vi. Stanza 1. , and "Comus, " lines 1002-11

[16] "Selections from Walter Savage Landor, " Preface, p. Vii. 

[17] See also Walter Bagehot's essay on "Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art, ""Literary Studies, Works" (Hartford, 1889), Vol I. P. 200. 

[18] Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet (1836), "Oeuvres Complètes" (Charpentieredition, 1881), Tome IX. P. 194. 

[19] Preface to Victor Hugo's "Cromwell, " dated October, 1827. The playwas printed, but not acted, in 1828. 

[20] In modern times romanticism, typifying a permanent tendency of thehuman mind, has been placed in opposition to what is called realism. . . [But] there is, as it appears to us, but one fundamental note which allromanticism . . . Has in common, and that is a deep disgust with theworld as it is and a desire to depict in literature something that isclaimed to be nobler and better. --_Essays on German Literature, by H. H. Boyesen_, pp. 358 and 356. 

CHAPTER II. 

The Augustans

The Romantic Movement in England was a part of the general Europeanreaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century. This begansomewhat earlier in England than in Germany, and very much earlier thanin France, where literacy conservatism went strangely hand in hand withpolitical radicalism. In England the reaction was at first gradual, timid, and unconscious. It did not reach importance until the seventhdecade of the century, and culminated only in the early years of thenineteenth century. The medieval revival was only an incident--though aleading incident--of this movement; but it is the side of it with whichthe present work will mainly deal. Thus I shall have a great deal to sayabout Scott; very little about Byron, intensely romantic as he was inmany meanings of the word. This will not preclude me from glancingoccasionally at other elements besides medievalism which enter into theconcept of the term "romantic. "

Reverting then to our tentative definition--Heine's definition--ofromanticism, as the reproduction in modern art and literature of the lifeof the Middle Ages, it should be explained that the expression, "MiddleAges, " is to be taken here in a liberal sense. Contributions to romanticliterature such as Macpherson's "Ossian, " Collins' "Ode on theSuperstitions of the Scottish Highlands, " and Gray's translations formthe Welsh and the Norse, relate to periods which antedate that era ofChristian chivalry and feudalism, extending roughly from the eleventhcentury to the fifteenth, to which the term, "Middle Ages, " more strictlyapplies. The same thing is true of the ground-work, at least, of ancienthero-epics like "Beowulf" and the "Nibelungen Lied, " of the Icelandic"Sagas, " and of similar products of old heathen Europe which have comedown in the shape of mythologies, popular superstitions, usages, rites, songs, and traditions. These began to fall under the notice of scholarsabout the middle of the last century and made a deep impression uponcontemporary letters. 

Again, the influence of the Middle Age proper prolonged itself beyond theexact close of the medieval period, which it is customary to date fromthe fall of Constantinople in 1453. The great romantic poets of Italy, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, wrote in the full flush of the pagan revival andmade free use of the Greek and Roman mythologies and the fables of Homer, Vergil, and Ovid; and yet their work is hardly to be described asclassical. Nor is the work of their English disciples, Spenser andSidney; while the entire Spanish and English drama of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries (down to 1640, and with an occasional exception, like Ben Jonson) is romantic. Calderon is romantic; Shakspere andFletcher are romantic. If we agree to regard medieval literature, then, as comprising all the early literature of Europe which drew itsinspiration from other than Greek-Latin sources, we shall do no greatviolence to the usual critical employment of the word. I say _early_literature, in order to exclude such writings as are wholly modern, like"Robinson Crusoe, " or "Gulliver's Travels, " or Fielding's novels, whichare neither classic nor romantic, but are the original creation of ourown time. With works like these, though they are perhaps the mostcharacteristic output of the eighteenth century, our inquiries are notconcerned. 

It hardly needs to be said that the reproduction, or imitation, ofmediaeval life by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romanticists, contains a large admixture of modern thought and feeling. The brilliantpictures of feudal society in the romances of Scott and Fouqué give nofaithful image of that society, even when they are carefully correct inall ascertainable historical details. [1] They give rather the impressionleft upon an alien mind by the quaint, picturesque features of a way oflife which seemed neither quaint nor picturesque to the men who lived it, but only to the man who turns to it for relief form the prosaic, or atleast familiar, conditions of the modern world. The offspring of themodern imagination, acting upon medieval material, may be a perfectlylegitimate, though not an original, form of art. It may even have anovel charm of its own, unlike either parent, but like Euphorion, childof Faust by Helen of Troy, a blend of Hellas and the Middle Age. Scott'sverse tales are better poetry than the English metrical romances of thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Tennyson has given a more perfectshape to the Arthurian legends than Sir Thomas Malory, their compiler, orWalter Map and Chrestien de Troyes, their possible inventors. But, ofcourse, to study the Middle Ages, as it really was, one must go not toTennyson and Scott, but to the "Chanson de Roland, " and the "DivineComedy, " and the "Romaunt of the Rose, " and the chronicles ofVillehardouin, Joinville, and Froissart. 

And the farther such study is carried, the more evident it becomes that"mediaeval" and "romantic" are not synonymous. The Middle Ages was not, at all points, romantic: it is the modern romanticist who makes, orfinds, it so. He sees its strange, vivid peculiarities under the glamourof distance. Chaucer's temper, for instance, was by no means romantic. This "good sense" which Dryden mentions as his prominent trait; that "lowtone" which Lowell praises in him, and which keeps him close to thecommon ground of experience, pervade his greatest work, the "CanterburyTales, " with an insistent realism. It is true that Chaucer shared thebeliefs and influences of his time and was a follower of its literaryfashions. In his version of the "Romaunt of the Rose, " his imitations ofMachault, and his early work in general he used the mediaeval machineryof allegory and dreams. In "Troilus and Cresseide" and the tale of"Palamon and Arcite, " he carries romantic love and knightly honor to ahigher pitch than his model, Boccaccio. But the shrewdly practicalPandarus of the former poem--a character almost wholly of Chaucer'screation--is the very embodiment of the anti-romantic attitude, and aremarkable anticipation of Sancho Panza; while the "Rime of Sir Thopas"is a distinct burlesque of the fantastic chivalry romances. [2] Chaucer'spages are picturesque with tournament, hunting parties, baronial feasts, miracles of saints, feats of magic; but they are solid, as well, with theeveryday life of fourteenth-century England. They have the _naïveté_ andgarrulity which are marks of mediaeval work, but not the quaintness andgrotesquerie which are held to be marks of romantic work. Not archaicspeech, but a certain mental twist constitutes quaintness. Herbert andFuller are quaint; Blake is grotesque; Donne and Charles Lamb arewillfully quaint, subtle, and paradoxical. But Chaucer is alwaysstraight-grained, broad, and natural. 

Even Dante, the poet of the Catholic Middle Ages; Dante, the mystic, theidealist, with his intense spirituality and his passion for symbolism, has been sometimes called classic, by virtue of the powerful constructionof his great poem, and his scholastic rigidity of method. 

The relation between modern romanticizing literature and the realliterature of the Middle Ages, is something like that between theliterature of the renaissance and the ancient literatures of Greece andRome. But there is this difference, that, while the renaissance writersfell short of their pattern, the modern schools of romance have outgonetheir masters--not perhaps in the intellectual--but certainly in theartistic value of their product. Mediaeval literature, wonderful andstimulating as a whole and beautiful here and there in details ofexecution, affords few models of technical perfection. The civilizationwhich it reflected, though higher in its possibilities than the classiccivilization, had not yet arrived at an equal grade of development, wasinferior in intelligence and the natured results of long culture. Theepithets of Gothic ignorance, rudeness, and barbarism, which theeighteenth-century critics applied so freely to all the issue of theso-called dark ages, were not entirely without justification. Dante isalmost the only strictly mediaeval poet in whose work the form seemsadequate to the content; for Boccaccio and Petrarca stand already on thesill of the renaissance. 

In the arts of design the case was partly reversed. If the artists ofthe renaissance did not equal the Greeks in sculpture and architecture, they probably excelled them in painting. On the other hand, therestorers of Gothic have never quite learned the secret of the mediaevalbuilders. However, if the analogy is not pushed too far, the romanticrevival may be regarded as a faint counterpart, the fragments of ahalf-forgotten civilization were pieced together; Greek manuscriptssought out, cleaned, edited, and printed: statues, coins, vases dug upand ranged in museums: debris cleared away from temples, amphitheaters, basilicas; till gradually the complete image of the antique world grewforth in august beauty, kindling an excitement of mind to which there arefew parallels in history; so, in the eighteenth century, the despisedages of monkery, feudalism, and superstition began to reassert theirclaims upon the imagination. Ruined castles and abbeys, coats of mail, illuminated missals, manuscript romances, black-letter ballads, oldtapestries, and wood carvings acquired a new value. Antiquaries andvirtuosos first, and then poets and romancers, reconstructed in turn animage of medieval society. 

True, the later movement was much the weaker of the two. No such fissureyawned between modern times and the Middle Ages as had been openedbetween the ancient world and the Middle Ages by the ruin of the Romanstate and by the barbarian migrations. Nor had ten centuries of rubbishaccumulated over the remains of mediaeval culture. In 1700 the MiddleAges were not yet so very remote. The nations and languages of Europecontinued in nearly the same limits which had bounded them two centuriesbefore. The progress in the sciences and mechanic arts, the discoveryand colonizing of America, the invention of printing and gunpowder, andthe Protestant reformation had indeed drawn deep lines between modern andmediaeval life. Christianity, however, formed a connecting link, though, in Protestant countries, the continuity between the earlier and laterforms of the religion had been interrupted. One has but to compare thelist of the pilgrims whom Chaucer met at the Tabard, with the companythat Captain Sentry or Peregrine Pickle would be likely to encounter at asuburban inn, to see how the face of English society had changed between1400 and 1700. What has become of the knight, the prioress, the sumner, the monk, pardoner, squire, alchemist, friar; and where can they or theirequivalents be found in all England?

The limitations of my subject will oblige me to treat the Englishromantic movement as a chapter in literary history, even at the risk ofseeming to adopt a narrow method. Yet it would be unphilosophical toconsider it as a merely aesthetic affair, and to lose sight altogether ofits deeper springs in the religious and ethical currents of the time. For it was, in part, a return of warmth and color into English letters;and that was only a symptom of the return of warmth and color--that is, of emotion and imagination--into English life and thought: into theChurch, into politics, into philosophy. Romanticism, which sought toevoke from the past a beauty that it found wanting in the present, wasbut one phase of that revolt against the coldness and spiritual deadnessof the first half of the eighteenth century which had other sides in theidealism of Berkeley, in the Methodist and Evangelical revival led byWesley and Whitefield, and in the sentimentalism which manifested itselfin the writings of Richardson and Sterne. Corresponding to these on theContinent were German pietism, the transcendental philosophy of Kant andhis continuators, and the emotional excesses of works like Rousseau's"Nouvelle Héloise" and Goethe's "Sorrows of Werther. "

Romanticism was something more, then, than a new literary mode; a tastecultivated by dilettante virtuosos, like Horace Walpole, college recluseslike Gray, and antiquarian scholars like Joseph and Thomas Warton. Itwas the effort of the poetic imagination to create for itself a richerenvironment; but it was also, in its deeper significance, a reaching outof the human spirit after a more ideal type of religion and ethics thanit could find in the official churchmanship and the formal morality ofthe time. Mr. Leslie Stephen[3] points out the connection between thethree currents of tendency known as sentimentalism, romanticism, andnaturalism. He explains, to be sure, that the first Englishsentimentalists, such as Richardson and Sterne, were anything butromantic. "A more modern sentimentalist would probably express hisfeelings[4] by describing some past state of society. He would paintsome ideal society in mediaeval times and revive the holy monk and thehumble nun for our edification. " He attributes the subsequent interestin the Middle Ages to the progress made in historical inquiries duringthe last half of the eighteenth century, and to the consequent growth ofantiquarianism. "Men like Malone and Stevens were beginning thosepainful researches which have accumulated a whole literature upon thescanty records of our early dramatists. Gray, the most learned of poets, had vaguely designed a history of English poetry, and the design wasexecuted with great industry by Thomas Warton. His brother Josephventured to uphold the then paradoxical thesis that Spenser was as greata man as Pope. Everywhere a new interest was awakening in the minuterdetails of the past. " At first, Mr. Stephen says, the result of theseinquiries was "an unreasonable contempt for the past. The modernphilosopher, who could spin all knowledge out of his own brain; theskeptic, who had exploded the ancient dogma; or the free-thinker of anyshade, who rejoiced in the destruction of ecclesiastical tyranny, gloriedin his conscious superiority to his forefathers. Whatever was old wasabsurd; and Gothic--an epithet applied to all medieval art, philosophy, or social order--became a simple term of contempt. " But an antiquarianis naturally a conservative, and men soon began to love the times whosepeculiarities they were so diligently studying. Men of imaginative mindspromptly made the discovery that a new source of pleasure might bederived from these dry records. . . The 'return to nature' expresses asentiment which underlies . . . Both the sentimental and romanticmovements. . . To return to nature is, in one sense, to find a newexpression for emotions which have been repressed by existingconventions; or, in another, to return to some simpler social order whichhad not yet suffered from those conventions. The artificialityattributed to the eighteenth century seems to mean that men were contentto regulate their thoughts and lives by rules not traceable to firstprinciples, but dependent upon a set of special and exceptionalconditions. . . To get out of the ruts, or cast off the obsoleteshackles, two methods might be adopted. The intellectual horizon mightbe widened by including a greater number of ages and countries; or menmight try to fall back upon the thoughts and emotions common to allraces, and so cast off the superficial incrustation. The first method, that of the romanticists, aims at increasing our knowledge: the second, that of the naturalistic school, at basing our philosophy on deeperprinciples. [5]

The classic, or pseudo-classic, period of English literature lasted fromthe middle of the seventeenth till the end of the eighteenth century. Inasmuch as the romantic revival was a protest against this reigningmode, it becomes necessary to inquire a little more closely what we meanwhen we say that the time of Queen Anne and the first two Georges was ourAugustan or classical age. In what sense was it classical? And was itany more classical than the time of Milton, for example, or the time ofLandor? If the "Dunciad, " and the "Essay on Man, " are classical, what isKeats' "Hyperion"? And with what propriety can we bring under a commonrubric things so far asunder as Prior's "Carmen Seculare" and Tennyson's"Ulysses, " or as Gay's "Trivia" and Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon"?Evidently the Queen Anne writers took hold of the antique by a differentside from our nineteenth-century poets. Their classicism was of aspecial type. It was, as has been often pointed out, more Latin thanGreek, and more French than Latin. [6] It was, as has likewise been said, "a classicism in red heels and a periwig. " Victor Hugo speaks of "cettepoésie fardée, mouchetée, poudrée, du dix-huitième siècle, cettelitèrature à paniers, à pompons et à falbalas. "[7] The costumes ofWatteau contrast with the simple folds of Greek drapery very much as the"Rape of the Lock, " contrasts with the Iliad, or one of Pope's pastoralswith an idyl of Theocritus. The times were artificial in poetry as indress--

 "Tea-cup times of hood and hoop, And when the patch was worn. "

Gentlemen wore powdered wigs instead of their own hair, and the power andthe wig both got into their writing. _Perruque_ was the nickname appliedto the classicists by the French romanticists of Hugo's generation, whowore their hair long and flowing--_cheveaux mérovigiennes_--and affectedan _outré_ freedom in the cut and color of their clothes. Similarly theByronic collar became, all over Europe, the symbol of daring independencein matters of taste and opinion. Its careless roll, which left thethroat exposed, seemed to assist the liberty of nature against crampingconventions. 

The leading Queen Anne writers are so well known that a somewhat generaldescription of the literary situation in England at the time of Pope'sdeath (1744) will serve as an answer to the question, how was theeighteenth century classical. It was remarked by Thomas Warton[8] that, at the first revival of letters in the sixteenth century, our authorswere more struck by the marvelous fables and inventions of ancient poetsthan by the justness of their conceptions and the purity of their style. In other words, the men of the renaissance apprehended the ancientliterature as poets: the men of the _Éclaircissement_ apprehended them ascritics. In Elizabeth's day the new learning stimulated English geniusto creative activity. In royal progresses, court masques, Lord Mayors'shows, and public pageants of all kinds, mythology ran mad. "Everyprocession was a pantheon. " But the poets were not careful to keep thetwo worlds of pagan antiquity and mediaeval Christianity distinct. Theart of the renaissance was the flower of a double root, and the artistsused their complex stuff naïvely. The "Faërie Queene" is the typicalwork of the English renaissance; there hamadryads, satyrs, and river godsmingle unblushingly with knights, dragons, sorcerers, hermits, andpersonified vices and virtues. The "machinery" of Homer and Vergil--the"machinery" of the "Seven Champions of Christendom" and the "Roman de laRose"! This was not shocking to Spenser's contemporaries, but it seemedquite shocking to classical critics a century later. Even Milton, thegreatest scholar among English poets, but whose imagination was a strongagent, holding strange elements in solution, incurred their censure forbringing Saint Peter and the sea-nymphs into dangerous juxtaposition in"Lycidas. "

But by the middle of the seventeenth century the renaissance schools ofpoetry had become effete in all European countries. They had run intoextravagances of style, into a vicious manner known in Spain asGongorism, in Italy as Marinism, and in England best exhibited in theverse of Donne and Cowley and the rest of the group whom Dr. Johnsoncalled the metaphysical poets, and whose Gothicism of taste Addisonridiculed in his _Spectator_ papers on true and false wit. It was Francethat led the reform against this fashion. Malherbe and Boileau insistedupon the need of discarding tawdry ornaments of style and cultivatingsimplicity, clearness, propriety, decorum, moderation; above all, goodsense. The new Academy, founded to guard the purity of the Frenchlanguage, lent its weight to the precepts of the critics, who applied therules of Aristotle, as commented by Longinus and Horace, to modernconditions. The appearance of a number of admirable writers--Corneille, Molière, Racine, Bossuet, La Fontaine, La Bruyère--simultaneously withthis critical movement, gave an authority to the new French literaturewhich enabled it to impose its principles upon England and Germany forover a century. For the creative literature of France conformed itspractice, in the main, to the theory of French criticism; though not, inthe case of Regnier, without open defiance. This authority wasre-enforced by the political glories and social _éclat_ of the _siècle deLouis Quatorze_

It happened that at this time the Stuart court was in exile, and in thetrain of Henrietta Maria at Paris, or scattered elsewhere through France, were many royalist men of letters, Etherege, Waller, Cowley, and others, who brought back with them to England in 1660 an acquaintance with thisnew French literature and a belief in its aesthetic code. That Frenchinfluence would have spread into England without the aid of thesepolitical accidents is doubtless true, as it is also true that a reformof English versification and poetic style would have worked itself outupon native lines independent of foreign example, and even had there beenso such thing as French literature. Mr. Gosse has pointed out coupletsof Waller, written as early as 1623, which have the formal precision ofPope's; and the famous passage about the Thames in Denham's "Cooper'sHill" (1642) anticipates the best performance of Augustan verse:

 "O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full. "

However, as to the general fact of the powerful impact of French uponEnglish literary fashions, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, there can be no dispute. [9]

This change of style was symptomatic of a corresponding change in thenational temper. It was the mission of the eighteenth century to assertthe universality of law and, at the same time, the sufficiency of thereason to discover the laws, which govern in every province: a servicewhich we now, perhaps, undervalue in our impatience with the formalismwhich was its outward sign. Hence its dislike of irregularity in art andirrationality in religion. England, in particular, was tired ofunchartered freedom, of spiritual as well as of literary anarchy. Thereligious tension of the Commonwealth period had relaxed--men cannot bealways at the heroic pitch--and theological disputes had issued inindifference and a skepticism which took the form of deism, or "naturalreligion. " But the deists were felt to be a nuisance. They wereunsettling opinions and disturbing that decent conformity with generallyreceived beliefs which it is the part of a good citizen to maintain. Addison instructs his readers that, in the absence of certainty, it isthe part of a prudent man to choose the safe side and make friends withGod. The freethinking Chesterfield[10] tells his son that the professionof atheism is ill-bred. De Foe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Johnson allattack infidelity. "Conform! Conform!" said in effect the mostauthoritative writers of the century. "Be sensible: go to church: payyour rates: don't be a vulgar deist--a fellow like Toland who is poor andhas no social position. But, on the other hand, you need not be afanatic or superstitious, or an enthusiast. Above all, _pas de zèle!_"

"Theology, " says Leslie Stephen, "was, for the most part, almost asdeistical as the deists. A hatred for enthusiasm was as stronglyimpressed upon the whole character of contemporary thought as a hatred ofskepticism. . . A good common-sense religion should be taken for grantedand no questions asked. . . With Shakspere, or Sir Thomas Browne, orJeremy Taylor, or Milton, man is contemplated in his relations to theuniverse; he is in presence of eternity and infinity; life is a briefdrama; heaven and hell are behind the veil of phenomena; at every stepour friends vanish into the abyss of ever present mystery. To all suchthoughts the writers of the eighteenth century seemed to close their eyesas resolutely as possible. . . The absence of any deeper speculativeground makes the immediate practical questions of life all the moreinteresting. We know not what we are, nor whither we are going, norwhence we come; but we can, by the help of common sense, discover asufficient share of moral maxims for our guidance in life. . . Knowledgeof human nature, as it actually presented itself in the shifting scenebefore them, and a vivid appreciation of the importance of the moral law, are the staple of the best literature of the time. "[11]

The God of the deists was, in truth, hardly more impersonal than theabstraction worshiped by the orthodox--the "Great Being" of Addison'sessays, the "Great First Cause" of Pope's "Universal Prayer, " invokedindifferently as "Jehovah, Jove, or Lord. " Dryden and Pope wereprofessed Catholics, but there is nothing to distinguish their so-calledsacred poetry from that of their Protestant contemporaries. Contrast themere polemics of "The Hind and the Panther" with really Catholic poemslike Southwell's "Burning Babe" and Crashaw's "Flaming Heart, " or evenwith Newman's "Dream of Gerontius. " In his "Essay on Man, " Popeversified, without well understanding, the optimistic deism of Leibnitz, as expounded by Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke. The Anglican Church itselfwas in a strange condition, when Jonathan Swift, a dean and would-bebishop, came to its defense with his "Tale of a Tub" and his ironical"Argument against the Abolition of Christianity. " Among the Queen Annewits Addison was the man of most genuine religious feeling. He is alwaysreverent, and "the feeling infinite" stirs faintly in one or two of hishymns. But, in general, his religion is of the rationalizing type, areligion of common sense, a belief resting upon logical deductions, asystem of ethics in which the supernatural is reduced to the lowestterms, and from which the glooms and fervors of a deep spiritualexperience are almost entirely absent. This "parson in a tie-wig" isconstantly preaching against zeal, enthusiasm, superstition, mysticism, and recommending a moderate, cheerful, and reason religion. [12] It isinstructive to contrast his amused contempt for popular beliefs inghosts, witches, dreams, prognostications, and the like, with thereawakened interest in folk lore evidenced by such a book as Scott's"Demonology and Witchcraft. "

Queen Anne literature was classical, then, in its lack of those elementsof mystery and aspiration which we have found described as of the essenceof romanticism. It was emphatically a literature of this world. Itignored all vague emotion, the phenomena of subconsciousness, "theelectric chain wherewith we are darkly bound, " the shadow that roundsman's little life, and fixed its attention only upon what it couldthoroughly comprehend. [13] Thereby it escaped obscurity. The writingsof the Augustans in both verse and prose are distinguished by a perfectclearness, but it is a clearness without subtlety or depth. They nevertry to express a thought, or to utter a feeling, that is not easilyintelligible. The mysticism of Wordsworth, the incoherence of Shelley, the darkness of Browning--to take only modern instances--proceed, however, not from inferior art, but from the greater difficulty offinding expression for a very different order of ideas. 

Again the literature of the Restoration and Queen Anne periods--which maybe regarded as one, for present purposes--was classical, or at leastunromantic, in its self-restraint, its objectivity, and its lack ofcuriosity; or, as a hostile criticism would put it, in its coldness offeeling, the tameness of its imagination, and its narrow and imperfectsense of beauty. It was a literature not simply of this world, but of_the_ world, of the _beau monde_, high life, fashion, society, the courtand the town, the salons, clubs, coffee-houses, assemblies, ombre-parties. It was social, urban, gregarious, intensely though notbroadly human. It cared little for the country or outward nature, andnothing for the life of remote times and places. Its interest wascentered upon civilization and upon that peculiarly artificial type ofcivilization which it found prevailing. It was as indifferent to Venice, Switzerland, the Alhambra, the Nile, the American forests, and theislands of the South Sea as it was to the Middle Ages and the manners ofScotch Highlanders. The sensitiveness to the picturesque, the liking forlocal color and for whatever is striking, characteristic, and peculiarlynational in foreign ways is a romantic note. The eighteenth centurydisliked "strangeness added to beauty"; it disapproved of anythingoriginal, exotic, tropical, bizarre for the same reason that itdisapproved of mountains and Gothic architecture. 

Professor Gates says that the work of English literature during the firstquarter of the present century was "the rediscovery and vindication ofthe concrete. The special task of the eighteenth century had been toorder, and to systematize, and to name; its favorite methods had beenanalysis and generalization. It asked for no new experience. . . Theabstract, the typical, the general--these were everywhere exalted at theexpense of the image, the specific experience, the vital fact. "[14]Classical tragedy, _e. G. _, undertook to present only the universal, abstract, permanent truths of human character and passion. [15] Theimpression of the mysterious East upon modern travelers and poets likeByron, Southey, De Quincey, Moore, Hugo, [16] Ruckert, and Gérard deNerval, has no counterpart in the eighteenth century. The Orientalallegory or moral apologue, as practiced by Addison in such papers as"The Vision of Mirza, " and by Johnson in "Rasselas, " is rather faintlycolored and gets what color it has from the Old Testament. It issignificant that the romantic Collins endeavored to give a novel turn tothe decayed pastoral by writing a number of "Oriental Eclogues, " in whichdervishes and camel-drivers took the place of shepherds, but theexperiment was not a lucky one. Milton had more of the East in hisimagination than any of his successors. His "vulture on Imaus bred, whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds"; his "plain of Sericana whereChinese drive their cany wagons light"; his "utmost Indian isleTaprobane, " are touches of the picturesque which anticipate a more modernmood than Addison's. 

"The difference, " says Matthew Arnold, "between genuine poetry and thepoetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school is briefly this: theirpoetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry isconceived and composed in the soul. " The representative minds of theeighteenth century were such as Voltaire, the master of persiflage, destroying superstition with his _souriere hideux_; Gibbon, "the lord ofirony, " "sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer"; and Hume, with histhorough-going philosophic skepticism, his dry Toryism, and cool contemptfor "zeal" of any kind. The characteristic products of the era weresatire, burlesque, and travesty: "Hudibras, " "Absalom and Achitophel, ""The Way of the World, " "Gulliver's Travels" and "The Rape of the Lock. "There is a whole literature of mockery: parodies like Prior's "Ballad onthe Taking of Namur" and "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse";Buckingham's "Rehearsal" and Swift's "Meditation on a Broomstick";mock-heroics, like the "Dunciad" and "MacFlecknoe" and Garth's"Dispensary, " and John Phillips' "Splendid Shilling" and Addison's"Machinae Gesticulantes"; Prior's "Alma, " a burlesque of philosophy;Gay's "Trivia" and "The Shepherd's Week, " and "The Beggars' Opera"-a"Newgate pastoral"; "Town Eclogues" by Swift and Lady Montague andothers. Literature was a polished mirror in which the gay world saw itsown grinning face. It threw back a most brilliant picture of the surfaceof society, showed manners but not the elementary passions of humannature. As a whole, it leaves an impression of hardness, shallowness, and levity. The polite cynicism of Congreve, the ferocious cynicism ofSwift, the malice of Pope, the pleasantry of Addison, the earlyworldliness of Prior and Gay are seldom relieved by any touch of theideal. The prose of the time was excellent, but the poetry was merelyrhymed prose. The recent Queen Anne revival in architecture, dress, andbric-a-brac, the recrudescence of society verse in Dobson and others, isperhaps symptomatic of the fact that the present generation has enteredupon a prosaic reaction against romantic excesses and we are finding ourpicturesque in that era of artifice which seemed so picturesque to ourforerunners. The sedan chair, the blue china, the fan, farthingale, andpowdered head dress have now got the "rime of age" and are seen infascinating perspective, even as the mailed courser, the buff jerkin, thecowl, and the cloth-yard shaft were seen by the men of Scott's generation. 

Once more, the eighteenth century was classical in its respect forauthority. It desired to put itself under discipline, to follow therules, to discover a formula of correctness in all the arts, to set up atribunal of taste and establish canons of composition, to maintainstandards, copy models and patterns, comply with conventions, andchastise lawlessness. In a word, its spirit was academic. Horace wasits favorite master--not Horace of the Odes, but Horace of the Satiresand Epistles, and especially Horace as interpreted by Boileau. [17] The"Ars Poetica" had been englished by the Earl of Roscommon, and imitatedby Boileau in his "L'Art Poetique, " which became the parent of a numerousprogeny in England; among others as "Essay on Satire" and an "Essay onPoetry, " by the Earl of Mulgrave;[18] an "Essay on Translated Verse" bythe Earl of Roscommon, who, says Addison, "makes even rules a noblepoetry";[19] and Pope's well-known "Essay on Criticism. "

The doctrine of Pope's essay is, in brief, follow Nature, and in orderthat you may follow nature, observe the rules, which are only "Naturemethodized, " and also imitate the ancients. 

 "Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; To copy nature is to copy them. "

Thus Vergil when he started to compose the Aeneid may have seemed abovethe critic's law, but when he came to study Homer, he found that Natureand Homer were the same. Accordingly, "he checks the bold design, And rules as strict his labor'd work confine. "

Not to stimulate, but to check, to confine, to regulate, is the unfailingprecept of this whole critical school. Literature, in the state in whichthey found it, appeared to them to need the curb more than the spur. 

Addison's scholarship was almost exclusively Latin, though it wasVergilian rather than Horatian. Macaulay[20] says of Addison's "Remarkson Italy"; "To the best of our remembrance, Addison does not mentionDante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bolardo, Berni, Lorenzo de' Medici, orMachiavelli. He coldly tells us that at Ferrara he saw the tomb ofAriosto, and that at Venice he heard the gondoliers sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far less than for Valerius Flaccus andSidonius Apollinaris. The gentle flow of the Ticino brings a line ofSilius to his mind. The sulphurous stream of Albula suggests to himseveral passages of Martial. But he has not a word to say of theillustrious dead of Santa Croce; he crosses the wood of Ravenna[21]without recollecting the specter huntsman, and wanders up and down Riminiwithout one thought of Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly sought anintroduction to Boileau; but he seems not to have been at all aware thatat Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau could notsustain a comparison: of the greatest lyric poet of modern times [!]Vincenzio Filicaja. . . The truth is that Addison knew little and caredless about the literature of modern Italy. His favorite models wereLatin. His favorite critics were French. Half the Tuscan poetry that hehad read seemed to him monstrous and the other half tawdry. "[22]

There was no academy in England, but there was a critical tradition thatwas almost as influential. French critical gave the law: Boileau, Dacier, LeBossu, Rapin, Bouhours; English critics promulgated it: Dennis, Langbaine, Rymer, Gildon, and others now little read. Three writers ofhigh authority in three successive generations--Dryden, Addison, andJohnson--consolidated a body of literary opinion which may be described, in the main, as classical, and as consenting, though with minorvariations. Thus it was agreed on all hands that it was a writer's dutyto be "correct. " It was well indeed to be "bold, " but bold withdiscretion. Dryden thought Shakspere a great poet than Jonson, but aninferior artist. He was to be admired, but not approved. Homer, again, it was generally conceded, was not so correct as Vergil, though he hadmore "fire. " Chesterfield preferred Vergil to Homer, and both of them toTasso. But of all epics the one he read with most pleasure was the"Henriade. " As for "Paradise Lost, " he could not read it through. William Walsh, "the muses' judge and friend, " advised the youthful Popethat "there was one way still left open for him, by which he might excelany of his predecessors, which was by correctness; that though indeed wehad several great poets, we as yet could boast of none that wereperfectly correct; and that therefore he advised him to make this qualityhis particular study. " "The best of the moderns in all language, " hewrote to Pope, "are those that have the nearest copied the ancients. "Pope was thankful for the counsel and mentions its giver in the "Essay onCriticism" as one who had

 "taught his muse to sing, Prescribed her heights and pruned her tender wing. "

But what was correct? In the drama, _e. G. _, the observance of theunities was almost universally recommended, but by no means universallypracticed. Johnson, himself a sturdy disciple of Dryden and Pope, exposed the fallacy of that stage illusion, on the supposed necessity ofwhich the unities of time and place were defended. Yet Johnson, in hisown tragedy "Irene, " conformed to the rules of Aristotle. He pronounced"Cato" "unquestionably the noblest production of Addison's genius, " butacknowledge that its success had "introduced, or confirmed among us, theuse of dialogue too declamatory, of unaffecting elegance and chillphilosophy. " On the other hand Addison had small regard for poeticjustice, which Johnson thought ought to be observed. Addison praised oldEnglish ballads, which Johnson thought mean and foolish; and he guardedlycommends[23] "the fairy way of writing, " a romantic foppery that Johnsondespised. [24]

Critical opinion was pronounced in favor of separating tragedy andcomedy, and Addison wrote one sentence which condemns half the plays ofShakspere and Fletcher: "The tragi-comedy, which is the product of theEnglish theater, is one the most monstrous inventions that ever enteredinto a poet's thought. "[25] Dryden made some experiments intragi-comedy, but, in general, classical comedy was pure comedy--theprose comedy of manners--and classical tragedy admitted no comicintermixture. Whether tragedy should be in rhyme, after the Frenchmanner, or in blank verse, after the precedent of the old English stage, was a moot point. Dryden at first argued for rhyme and used it in his"heroic plays"; and it is significant that he defended its use on theground that it would act as a check upon the poet's fancy. But afterwardhe grew "weary of his much-loved mistress, rhyme, " and went back to blankverse in his later plays. 

As to poetry other than dramatic, the Restoration critics were at one injudging blank verse too "low" for a poem of heroic dimensions; and thoughAddison gave it the preference in epic poetry, Johnson was its persistentfoe, and regarded it as little short of immoral. But for that matter, Gray could endure no blank verse outside of Milton. This is curious, that rhyme, a mediaeval invention, should have been associated in thelast century with the classical school of poetry; while blank verse, thenearest English equivalent of the language of Attic tragedy, was ashibboleth of romanticizing poets, like Thomson and Akenside. The reasonwas twofold: rhyme came stamped with the authority of the French tragicalexandrine; and, secondly, it meant constraint where blank verse meantfreedom, "ancient liberty, recovered to heroic poem from the troublesomeand modern bondage of rhyming. "[26] Pope, among his many thousand rhymedcouplets, has left no blank verse except the few lines contributed toThomson's "Seasons. " Even the heroic couplet as written by earlier poetswas felt to have been too loose in structure. "The excellence anddignity of it, " says Dryden, "were never fully known till Mr. Wallertaught it; he first made writing easily an art; first showed us how toconclude the sense most commonly in distichs, which, in the verse ofthose before him, runs on for so many lines together, that the reader isout of breath to overtake it. "[27] All through the classical period thetradition is constant that Waller was the first modern English poet, thefirst correct versifier. Pope is praised by Johnson because he employedbut sparingly the triplets and alexandrines by which Dryden sought tovary the monotony of the couplet; and he is censured by Cowper because, by force of his example, he "made poetry a mere mechanic art. "Henceforth the distich was treated as a unit: the first line was balancedagainst the second, and frequently the first half of the line against thesecond half. 

 "To err is human, to forgive divine. " "And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged. " "Charms strike the eye, but merit wins the soul, " etc. , etc. 

This type of verse, which Pope brought to perfection, and to which hegave all the energy and variety of which it was capable, so prevailed inour poetry for a century or more that one almost loses sight of the factthat any other form was employed. The sonnet, for instance, disappearedentirely, until revived by Gray, Stillingfleet, Edwards, and ThomasWarton, about the middle of the eighteenth century. [28] When the poetswished to be daring and irregular, they were apt to give vent in thatspecies of pseudo-Pindaric ode which Cowley had introduced--a literarydisease which, Dr. Johnson complained, infected the British muse with thenotion that "he who could do nothing else could write like Pindar. "

Sir Charles Eastlake in his "History of the Gothic Revival" testifies tothis formal spirit from the point of view of another art than literature. "The age in which Batty Langley lived was an age in which it wascustomary to refer all matters of taste to rule and method. There wasone standard of excellence in poetry--a standard that had its origin inthe smooth distichs of heroic verse which Pope was the first to perfect, and which hundreds of later rhymers who lacked his nobler powers soonlearned to imitate. In pictorial art, it was the grand school whichexercised despotic sway over the efforts of genius and limited thepainter's inventions to the field of Pagan mythology. In architecture, Vitruvius was the great authority. The graceful majesty of theParthenon--the noble proportions of the temple of Theseus--the chasteenrichment which adorns the Choragic monument of Lysicrates, wereascribed less to the fertile imagination and refined perceptions of theancient Greek, than to the dry and formal precepts which were inventedcenturies after their erection. Little was said of the magnificentsculpture which filled the metopes of the temple of the Minerva; but theexact height and breadth of the triglyphs between them were considered ofthe greatest importance. The exquisite drapery of caryatids andcanephorae, no English artist, a hundred years ago, thought fit toimitate; but the cornices which they supposed were measured inch by inchwith the utmost nicety. Ingenious devices were invented for enabling theartificer to reproduce, by a series of complicated curves, the profile ofa Doric capital, which probably owed its form to the steady hand anduncontrolled taste of the designer. To put faith in many of the theoriespropounded by architectural authorities in the last century, would be tobelieve that some of the grandest monuments which the world has ever seenraised, owe their chief beauty to an accurate knowledge of arithmetic. The diameter of the column was divided into modules: the modules weredivided into minutes; the minutes into fractions of themselves. Acertain height was allotted to the shaft, another to the entablature. . . Sometimes the learned discussed how far apart the columns of a porticomight be. "[29]

This kind of mensuration reminds one of the disputes between Frenchcritics as to whether the unity of time meant thirty hours, ortwenty-four, or twelve, or the actual time that it took to act the play;or of the geometric method of the "Saturday papers" in the _Spectator_. Addison tries "Paradise Lost" by Aristotle's rules for the composition ofan epic. Is it the narrative of a single great action? Does it begin_in medias res_, as is proper, or _ab ovo Ledae_, as Horace has said thatan epic ought not? Does it bring in the introductory matter by way ofepisode, after the approved recipe of Homer and Vergil? Has itallegorical characters, contrary to the practice of the ancients? Doesthe poet intrude personally into his poem, thus mixing the lyric and epicstyles? etc. Not a word as to Milton's puritanism, or his_Weltanschauung_, or the relation of his work to its environment. Nothing of that historical and sympathetic method--that endeavor to putthe reader at the poet's point of view--by which modern critics, fromLessing to Sainte-Beuve, have revolutionized their art. Addison looks at"Paradise Lost" as something quite distinct from Milton: as amanufactured article to be tested by comparing it with standard fabricsby recognized makers, like the authors of the Iliad and Aeneid. 

When the Queen Anne poetry took a serious turn, the generalizing spiritof the age led it almost always into the paths of ethical and didacticverse. "It stooped to truth and moralized its song, " finding itsfavorite occupation in the sententious expression of platitudes--theepigram in satire, the maxim in serious work. It became a poetry ofaphorisms, instruction us with Pope that

 "Virtue alone is happiness below;"

or, with Young, that

 "Procrastination is the thief of time;"

or, with Johnson, that

 "Slow rises worth by poverty depressed. "

When it attempted to deal concretely with the passions, it found itselfimpotent. Pope's "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard" rings hollow: it isrhetoric, not poetry. The closing lines of "The Dunciad"--so strangelyoverpraised by Thackeray--with their metallic clank and grandioseverbiage, are not truly imaginative. The poet is simply working himselfup to a climax of the false sublime, as an orator deliberately attaches asounding peroration to his speech. Pope is always "heard, " never"overheard. "

The poverty of the classical period in lyrical verse is particularlysignificant, because the song is the most primitive and spontaneous kindof poetry, and the most direct utterance of personal feeling. Whateverelse the poets of Pope's time could do, they could not sing. They arethe despair of the anthologists. [30] Here and there among the brilliantreasoners, _raconteurs_, and satirists in verse, occurs a cleverepigrammatist like Prior, or a ballad writer like Henry Carey, whose"Sally in Our Alley" shows the singing, and not talking, voice, buthardly the lyric cry. Gay's "Blackeyed Susan" has genuine quality, though its _rococo_ graces are more than half artificial. Sweet Williamis very much such an opera sailor-man as Bumkinet or Grubbinol is ashepherd, and his wooing is beribboned with conceits like these:

 "If to fair India's coast we sail, Thy eyes are seen in diamonds bright, Thy breath is Afric's spicy gale, Thy skin is ivory so white. Thus every beauteous prospect that I view, Wakes in my soul some charm of lovely Sue. "

It was the same with the poetry of outward nature as with the poetry ofhuman passion. [31] In Addison's "Letter from Italy, " in Pope's"Pastorals, " and "Windsor Forest, " the imagery, when not actually false, is vague and conventional, and the language abounds in classicalinsipidities, epithets that describe nothing, and generalities at secondhand from older poets, who may once, perhaps, have written with their"eyes upon the object. " Blushing Flora paints the enameled ground;cheerful murmurs fluctuate on the gale; Eridanus through flowery meadowsstrays; gay gilded[32] scenes and shining prospects rise; whileeverywhere are balmy zephyrs, sylvan shades, winding vales, vocal shores, silver floods, crystal springs, feathered quires, and Phoebus andPhilomel and Ceres' gifts assist the purple year. It was after thisfashion that Pope rendered the famous moonlight passage in histranslation of the Iliad:

 "Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies, " etc. 

"Strange to think of an enthusiast, " says Wordsworth, "reciting theseverses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having his raptures inthe least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity. " The poeticdiction against which Wordsworth protested was an outward sign of theclassical preference for the general over the concrete. The vocabularywas Latinized because, in English, the _mot propre_ is commonly a Saxonword, while its Latin synonym has a convenient indefiniteness that keepsthe subject at arm's length. Of a similar tendency was the favoriterhetorical figure of personification, which gave a false air of life toabstractions by the easy process of spelling them with a capital letter. Thus:

 "From bard to bard the frigid caution crept, Till Declamation roared whilst Passion slept; Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread, Philosophy remained though Nature fled, . . . Exulting Folly hailed the joyful day, And Pantomime and Song confirmed her sway. "[33]

Everything was personified; Britannia, Justice, Liberty, Science, Melancholy, Night. Even vaccination for the smallpox was invoked as agoddess, "Inoculation, heavenly maid, descend!"[34]

But circumstances or periphrasis was the capital means by which theAugustan poet avoided precision and attained nobility of style. Itenabled him to speak of a woman as a "nymph, " or a "fair"; of sheep as"the fleecy care"; of fishes as "the scaly tribe"; and of a picket fenceas a "spiculated paling. " Lowell says of Pope's followers: "As themaster had made it an axiom to avoid what was mean or low, so thedisciples endeavored to escape from what was common. This they contrivedby the ready expedient of the periphrasis. They called everythingsomething else. A boot with them was

 "'The shining leather that encased the limb. '

"Coffee became

 "'The fragrant juice of Mocha's berry brown. '"[35]

"For the direct appeal to Nature, and the naming of specific objects, "says Mr. Gosse, [36] "they substituted generalities and second-handallusions. They no longer mentioned the gillyflower and the daffodil, but permitted themselves a general reference to Flora's vernal wreath. It was vulgar to say that the moon was rising; the gentlemanly expressionwas, 'Cynthia is lifting her silver horn!' Women became nymphs in thisnew phraseology, fruits became 'the treasures of Pomona, ' a horse became'the impatient courser. ' The result of coining these conventionalcounters for groups of ideas was that the personal, the exact, was lostin literature. Apples were the treasures of Pomona, but so werecherries, too, and if one wished to allude to peaches, they also were thetreasures of Pomona. This decline from particular to general languagewas regarded as a great gain in elegance. It was supposed that to useone of these genteel counters, which passed for coin of poetic language, brought the speaker closer to the grace of Latinity. It was thought thatthe old direct manner of speaking was crude and futile; that a romanticpoet who wished to allude to caterpillars could do so without anyexercise of his ingenuity by simply introducing the word 'caterpillars, 'whereas the classical poet had to prove that he was a scholar and agentleman by inventing some circumlocution, such as 'the crawling scourgethat smites the leafy plain. '. . . In the generation that succeeded Popereally clever writers spoke of a 'gelid cistern, ' when they meant a coldbath, and 'the loud hunter-crew' when they meant a pack of foxhounds. "

It would be a mistake to suppose that the men of Pope's generation, including Pope himself, were altogether wanting in romantic feeling. There is a marked romantic accent in the Countess of Winchelsea's ode "Tothe Nightingale"; in her "Nocturnal Reverie"; in Parnell's "Night Pieceon Death, " and in the work of several Scotch poets, like Allan Ramsay andHamilton of Bangour, whose ballad, "The Braces of Yarrow, " is certainly astrange poem to come out of the heart of the eighteenth century. Butthese are eddies and back currents in the stream of literary tendency. We are always in danger of forgetting that the literature of an age doesnot express its entire, but only its prevailing, spirit. There iscommonly a latent, silent body of thought and feeling underneath whichremains inarticulate, or nearly so. It is this prevailing spirit andfashion which I have endeavored to describe in the present chapter. Ifthe picture seems to lack relief, or to be in any way exaggerated, thereader should consult the chapters on "Classicism" and "ThePseudo-Classicists" in M. Pellisier's "Literary Movement in France, "already several times referred to. They describe a literary situationwhich had a very exact counterpart in England. 

[1] As another notable weakness of the age is its habit of looking, to thepast ages--not understanding them all the while . . . So Scott gives upnearly the half of his intellectual power to a fond yet purposelessdreaming over the past; and spends half his literary labors in endeavorsto revive it, not in reality, but on the stage of fiction: endeavorswhich were the best of the kind that modernism made, but still successfulonly so far as Scott put under the old armor the everlasting human naturewhich he knew; and totally unsuccessful so far as concerned the paintingof the armor itself, which he knew _not_. . . His romance andantiquarianism, his knighthood and monkery, are all false, and he knowsthem to be false. --_Ruskin, "Modern Painters, "_ Vol. III. P. 279 (FirstAmerican Edition, 1860). 

[2] See also the sly hit at popular fiction in the _Nonnë Prestës Tale_:

 "This story is also trewe, I undertake, As is the book of Launcelot de Lake, That women hold in ful gret reverence. "

[3] "History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, " Vol. II. Chapxii, section vii. 

[4] Sentimentalism approaches its subject through the feelings;romanticism through the imagination. 

[5] Ruskin, too indicates the common element in romanticism andnaturalism--a desire to escape from the Augustan formalism. I condensethe passage slightly: "To powder the hair, to patch the cheek, to hoopthe body, to buckle the foot, were all part and parcel of the same systemwhich reduced streets to brick walls and pictures to brown stains. Reaction from this state was inevitable, and accordingly men steal out tothe fields and mountains; and, finding among these color and liberty andvariety and power, rejoice in all the wildest shattering of the mountainside, as an opposition to Gower Street. It is not, however, only toexisting inanimate nature that our want of beauty in person and dress hasdriven us. The imagination of it, as it was seen in our ancestors, haunts us continually. We look fondly back to the manners of the agesought in the centuries which we profess to have surpassed ineverything. . . This romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in historyand in external nature the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinarylife. "--_Modern Painters_, Vol. III. P. 260. 

[6] Although devout in their admiration for antiquity, the writers of theseventeenth century have by no means always clearly grasped the object oftheir cult. Though they may understand Latin tradition, they havecertainly never entered into the freer, more original spirit of Greekart. They have but an incomplete, superficial conception ofHellenism. . . Boileau celebrates but does not understand Pindar. . . The seventeenth century comprehended Homer no better than Pindar. Whatwe miss in them is exactly what we like best in his epopee--the vastliving picture of semi-barbarous civilization. . . No society could beless fitted than that of the seventeenth century to feel and understandthe spirit of primitive antiquity. In order to appreciate Homer, it wasthought necessary to civilize the barbarian, make him a scrupulouswriter, and convince him that the word "ass" is a "very noble" expressionin Greek--_Pellisier: "The Literary Movement in France" (Brinton'stranslation, _1897), pp. 8-10. So Addison apologizes for Homer's failureto observe those qualities of nicety, correctness, and what the Frenchcall _bienséance_ (decorum, ) the necessity of which had only been foundout in later times. See _The Spectator_, No. 160. 

[7] Preface to "Cromwell. "

[8] "History of English Poetry, " section lxi. Vol III. P. 398 (edition of1840). 

[9] See, for a fuller discussion of this subject, "From Shakspere to Pope:An Inquiry into the Causes and Phenomena of the Rise of Classical Poetryin England, " by Edmund Gosse, 1885. 

[10] The cold-hearted, polished Chesterfield is a very representativefigure. Johnson, who was really devout, angrily affirmed that hiscelebrated letters taught: "the morality of a whore with the manners of adancing-master. "

[11] "History of English Thought in the Eighteen Century, " Vol. II. Chap. Xii. Section iv. See also "Selections from Newman, " by Lewis E. Gates, Introduction, pp. Xlvii-xlviii. (1895). 

[12] See especially _Spectator_, Nos. 185, 186, 201, 381, and 494. 

[13] The classical Landor's impatience of mysticism explains his dislikeof Plato, the mystic among Greeks. Diogenes says to Plato: "I meddle notat present with infinity or eternity: when I can comprehend them, I willtalk about them, " "Imaginary Conversations, " 2d series, Conversation XV. Landor's contempt for German literature is significant. 

[14] "Selections from Newman, " Introduction, pp. Xlvii-xlviii. 

[15] Racine observes that good sense and reason are the same in all ages. What is the result of this generalization? Heroes can be transportedfrom epoch to epoch, from country to country, without causing surprise. Their Achilles is no more a Greek than is Porus an Indian; Andromachefeels and talks like a seventeenth-century princess: Phaedra experiencesthe remorse of a Christian. --_Pellissier, "Literary Movement in France, "_p. 18. 

In substituting men of concrete, individual lives for the ideal figuresof tragic art, romanticism was forced to determine their physiognomy by ahost of local, casual details. In the name of universal truth theclassicists rejected the coloring of time and place; and this isprecisely what the romanticists seek under the name of particularreality. --_Ibid. _ p. 220. Similarly Montezuma's Mexicans in Dryden's"Indian Emperor" have no more national individuality than the SpanishMoors in his "Conquest of Granada. " The only attempt at local color in"Aurungzebe"--an heroic play founded on the history of a contemporaryEast Indian potentate who died seven years after the author--is theintroduction of the _suttee_, and one or two mentions of elephants. 

[16] See "Les Orientales" (Hugo) and Nerval's "Les Nuits de Rhamadan" and"La Légende du Calife Hakem. "

[17] The rules a nation, born to serve, obeys; And Boileau still in right of Horace sways. --_Pope, "Essay on Criticism, "_

[18] These critical verse essays seem to have been particularly affectedby this order of the peerage; for, somewhat later, we have one, "OnUnnatural Flights in Poetry, " by the Earl of Lansdowne--"Granville thepolite. "

[19] "Epistle to Sacheverel. "

[20] "Essay on Addison. "

[21] Sweet hour of twilight!--in the solitude Of the pine forest, and the silent shore Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood, Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er, To where the last Caesarian fortress stood, Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me, How have I loved the twilight hour and thee! --_Don Juan_

[22] I must entirely agree with Monsieur Boileau, that one verse of Vergilis worth all the _clinquant _or tinsel of Tasso. --_Spectator_, No. 5. 

[23] _Spectator_, No. 419. 

[24] See his "Life of Collins. "

[25] _Spectator_, No. 40. 

[26] "The Verse": Preface to "Paradise Lost. "

[27] Dedicatory epistle to "The Rival Ladies. "

[28] Mr. Gosse says that a sonnet by Pope's friend Walsh is the only one"written in English between Milton's in 1658, and Warton's about 1750, "Ward's "English Poets, " Vol. III, p. 7. The statement would have beenmore precise if he had said published instead of _written_. 

[29] "History of the Gothic Revival, " pp. 49-50 (edition of 1872). 

[30] Palgrave says that the poetry of passion was deformed, after 1660, by"levity and an artificial time"; and that it lay "almost dormant for thehundred years between the days of Wither and Suckling and the days ofBurns and Cowper, " "Golden Treasury" (Sever and Francis edition, 1866). Pp. 379-80. 

[31] Excepting the "Nocturnal Reverie" of Lady Winchelsea, and a passageor two in the "Windsor Forest" of Pope, the poetry of the periodintervening between the publication of the "Paradise Lost" and the"Seasons" [1667-1726] does not contain a single new image of externalnature. --_Wordsworth. Appendix to Lyrical Ballads_, (1815). 

[32] _Gild_ is a perfect earmark of eighteenth-century descriptive verse:the shore is gilded and so are groves, clouds, etc. Contentment gildsthe scene, and the stars gild the gloomy night (Parnell) or the glowingpole (Pope). 

[33] Johnson, "Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane, " 1747. 

[34] See Coleridge, "Biographia Literaria, " chap. Xviii

[35] Essay on Pope, in "My Study Windows. "

[36] "From Shakespere to Pope, " pp. 9-11. 

CHAPTER III. 

The Spenserians

Dissatisfaction with a prevalent mood or fashion in literature is apt toexpress itself either in a fresh and independent criticism of life, or ina reversion to older types. But, as original creative genius is notalways forthcoming, a literary revolution commonly begins with imitation. It seeks inspiration in the past, and substitutes a new set of models asdifferent as possible from those which it finds currently followed. Inevery country of Europe the classical tradition had hidden whatever wasmost national, most individual, in its earlier culture, under a smooth, uniform veneer. To break away from modern convention, England andGermany, and afterward France, went back to ancient springs of nationallife; not always, at first, wisely, but in obedience to a true instinct. 

How far did any knowledge or love of the old romantic literature ofEngland survive among the contemporaries of Dryden and Pope? It is nothard to furnish an answer to this question. The prefaces of Dryden, thecritical treatises of Dennis, Winstanley, Oldmixon, Rymer, Langbaine, Gildon, Shaftesbury, and many others, together with hundreds of passagesin prologues and epilogues to plays; in periodical essays like the_Tatler_ and _Spectator_; in verse essays like Roscommon's, Mulgrave'sand Pope's; in prefaces to various editions of Shakspere and Spenser; inletters, memoirs, etc. , supply a mass of testimony to the fact thatneglect and contempt had, with a few exceptions, overtaken all Englishwriters who wrote before the middle of the seventeenth century. Theexceptions, of course, were those supreme masters whose genius prevailedagainst every change of taste: Shakspere and Milton, and, in a lessdegree, Chaucer and Spenser. Of authors strictly mediaeval, Chaucerstill had readers, and there were reprints of his works in 1687, 1721, and 1737, [1] although no critical edition appeared until Tyrwhitt's in1775-78. It is probable, however, that the general reader, if he readChaucer at all, read him in such modernized versions as Dryden's "Fables"and Pope's "January and May. " Dryden's preface has some admirablecriticism of Chaucer, although it is evident, from what he says about theold poet's versification, that the secret of Middle English scansion andpronunciation had already been lost. Prior and Pope, who seem to havebeen attracted chiefly to the looser among the "Canterbury Tales, " madeeach a not very successful experiment at burlesque imitation ofChaucerian language. 

Outside of Chaucer, and except among antiquarians and professionalscholars, there was no remembrance of the whole _corpus poetarum_ of theEnglish Middle Age: none of the metrical romances, rhymed chronicles, saints' legends, miracle plays, minstrel ballads, verse homilies, manualsof devotion, animal fables, courtly or popular allegories and love songsof the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Nor was thereany knowledge or care about the masterpieces of medieval literature inother languages than English; about such representative works as the"Nibelungenlied, " the "Chanson de Roland, " the "Roman de la Rose, " the"Parzival" of Wolfram von Eschenbach, the "Tristan" of Gottfried ofStrasburg, the "Arme Heinrich" of Harmann von Aue, the chronicles ofVillehardouin, Joinville, and Froissart, the "Morte Artus, " the "DiesIrae, " the lyrics of the troubadour Bernart de Ventadour, and of theminnesinger Walter von der Vogelweide, the Spanish Romancero, the poemsof the Elder Edda, the romances of "Amis et Amile" and "Aucassin etNicolete, " the writings of Villon, the "De Imitatione Christi" ascribedto Thomas à Kempis. Dante was a great name and fame, but he was virtuallyunread. 

There is nothing strange about this; many of these things were still inmanuscript and in unknown tongues, Old Norse, Old French, Middle HighGerman, Middle English, Mediaeval Latin. It would be hazardous to assertthat the general reader, or even the educated reader, of to-day has muchmore acquaintance with them at first hand than his ancestor of theeighteenth century; or much more acquaintance than he has withAeschuylus, Thucydides, and Lucretius, at first hand. But it may beconfidently asserted that he knows much more _about_ them; that he thinksthem worth knowing about; and that through modern, popular versions ofthem--through poems, historical romances, literary histories, essays andwhat not--he has in his mind's eye a picture of the Middle Age, perhapsas definite and fascinating as the picture of classical antiquity. Thathe has so is owing to the romantic movement. For the significantcircumstance about the attitude of the last century toward the wholemedieval period was, not its ignorance, but its incuriosity. It did notwant to hear anything about it. [2] Now and then, hints Pope, anantiquarian pedant, a university don, might affect an admiration for someobsolete author:

 "Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learned by rote, And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote: One likes no language but the 'Faery Queen'; A Scot will fight for 'Christ's Kirk o' the Green. '"[3]

But, furthermore, the great body of Elizabethan and Stuart literature wasalready obsolescent. Dramatists of the rank of Marlowe and Webster, poets like George Herbert and Robert Herrick--favorites with our owngeneration--prose authors like Sir Thomas Browne--from whom Coleridge andEmerson drew inspiration--had fallen into "the portion of weeds andoutworn faces. " Even writers of such recent, almost contemporary, reputeas Donne, whom Carew had styled

 "--a king who ruled, as he thought fit, The universal monarch of wit":

Or as Cowley, whom Dryden called the darling of his youth, and who wasesteemed in his own lifetime a better poet than Milton; even Donne andCowley had no longer a following. Pope "versified" some of Donne'srugged satires, and Johnson quoted passages from him as examples of thebad taste of the metaphysical poets. This in the "Life of Cowley, " withwhich Johnson began his "Lives of the Poets, " as though Cowley was thefirst of the moderns. But, "Who now reads Cowley?"

asks Pope in 1737. [4] The year of the Restoration (1660) draws a sharpline of demarcation between the old and the new. In 1675, the year afterMilton's death, his nephew, Edward Philips, published "TheatrumPoetarum, " a sort of biographical dictionary of ancient and modernauthors. In the preface, he says: "As for the antiquated and fallen intoobscurity from their former credit and reputation, they are, for the mostpart, those that have written beyond the verge of the present age; forlet us look back as far as about thirty or forty years, and we shall finda profound silence of the poets beyond that time, except of some fewdramatics. "

This testimony is the more convincing, since Philips was something of a_laudator temporis acti_. He praises several old English poets andsneers at several new ones, such as Cleaveland and Davenant, who werehigh in favor with the royal party. He complains that nothing now"relishes so well as what is written in the smooth style of our presentlanguage, taken to be of late so much refined"; that "we should be socompliant with the French custom, as to follow set fashions"; that theimitation of Corneille has corrupted the English state; and that Dryden, "complying with the modified and gallantish humour of the time, " has, inhis heroic plays, "indulged a little too much to the French way ofcontinual rime. " One passage, at least, in Philips' preface has beenthought to be an echo of Milton's own judgment on the pretensions of thenew school of poetry. "Wit, ingenuity, and learning in verse; evenelegancy itself, though that comes nearest, are one thing. True nativepoetry is another; in which there is a certain air and spirit whichperhaps the most learned and judicious in other arts do not perfectlyapprehend, much less is it attainable by any study or industry. Nay, though all the laws of heroic poem, all the laws of tragedy were exactlyobserved, yet still this _tour entrejeant_--this poetic energy, if I mayso call it, would be required to give life to all the rest; which shinesthrough the roughest, most unpolished, and antiquated language, and mayhaply be wanting in the most polite and reformed. Let us observeSpenser, with all his rusty, obsolete words, with all his rough-hewnclouterly verses; yet take him throughout, and we shall find in him agraceful and poetic majesty. In like manner, Shakspere in spite of allhis unfiled expressions, his rambling and indigested fancies--thelaughter of the critical--yet must be confessed a poet above many that gobeyond him to literature[5] some degrees. "

The laughter of the critical! Let us pause upon the phrase, for it is akey to the whole attitude of the Augustan mind toward "our old tragickpoet. " Shakspere was already a national possession. Indeed it is onlyafter the Restoration that we find any clear recognition of him, as oneof the greatest--as perhaps himself the very greatest--of the dramatistsof all time. For it is only after the Restoration that criticism begins. "Dryden, " says Dr. Johnson, "may be properly considered as the father ofEnglish criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine, uponprinciples, the merit of composition. . . Dryden's 'Essay of DramaticPoesy' [1667] was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art ofwriting. "[6] The old theater was dead and Shakspere now emerged fromamid its ruins, as the one unquestioned legacy of the Elizabethan age tothe world's literature. He was not only the favorite of the people, butin a critical time, and a time whole canons of dramatic art were opposedto his practice, he united the suffrages of all the authoritative leaderof literacy opinion. Pope's lines are conclusive as to the veneration inwhich Shakspere's memory was held a century after his death. 

 "On Avon's banks, where flowers eternal blow, If I but ask, if any weed can grow; One tragic sentence if I dare deride Which Betterton's grave action dignified . . . How will our fathers rise up in a rage, And swear, all shame is lost in George's age. "[7]

The Shaksperian tradition is unbroken in the history of Englishliterature and of the English theater. His plays, in one form oranother, have always kept the stage even in the most degenerate conditionof public taste. [8] Few handsomer tributes have been paid to Shakspere'sgenius than were paid in prose and verse, by the critics of our classicalage, from Dryden to Johnson. "To begin then with Shakspere, " says theformer, in his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy, " "he was the man who, of allmodern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensivesoul. " And, in the prologue to his adaptation of "The Tempest, " heacknowledges that

 "Shakspere's magic could not copied be: Within that circle none durst walk but he. "

"The poet of whose works I have undertaken the revision, " writes Dr. Johnson, "may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claimthe privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration. "[9]

 "Each change of many-colored life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new. "[10]

Yet Dryden made many petulant, and Johnson many fatuous mistakes aboutShakspere; while such minor criticasters as Thomas Rymer[11] and Mrs. Charlotte Lenox[12] uttered inanities of blasphemy about the finesttouches in "Macbeth" and "Othello. " For if we look closer, we noticethat everyone who bore witness to Shakspere's greatness qualified hispraise by an emphatic disapproval of his methods. He was a prodigiousgenius, but a most defective artist. He was the supremest of dramaticpoets, but he did not know his business. It did not apparently occur toanyone--except, in some degree, to Johnson--that there was an absurdityin this contradiction; and that the real fault was not in Shakspere, butin the standards by which he was tried. Here are the tests whichtechnical criticism has always been seeking to impose, and they are notconfined to the classical period only. They are used by Sidney, who tookthe measure of the English buskin before Shakspere had begun to write; byJonson, who measured socks with him in his own day; by Matthew Arnold, who wanted an English Academy, but in whom the academic vaccine, after solong a transmission, worked but mildly. Shakspere violated the unities;his plays were neither right comedies nor right tragedies; he had smallLatin and less Greek; he wanted art and sometimes sense, committinganachronisms and Bohemian shipwrecks; wrote hastily, did not blot enough, and failed of the grand style. He was "untaught, unpractised in abarbarous age"; a wild, irregular child of nature, ignorant of the rules, unacquainted with ancient models, succeeding--when he did succeed--byhappy accident and the sheer force of genius; his plays were"roughdrawn, " his plots lame, his speeches bombastic; he was guilty onevery page of "some solecism or some notorious flaw in sense. "[13]

Langbaine, to be sure, defends him against Dryden's censure. But Dennisregrets his ignorance of poetic art and the disadvantages under which helay from not being conversant with the ancients. If he had known hisSallust, he would have drawn a juster picture of Caesar; and if he hadread Horace "Ad Pisones, " he would have made a better Achilles. Hecomplains that he makes the good and the bad perish promiscuously; andthat in "Coriolanus"--a play which Dennis "improved" for the newstage--he represents Menenius as a buffoon and introduces the rabble in amost undignified fashion. [14] Gildon, again, says that Shakspere musthave read Sidney's "Defence of Posey" and therefore, ought to have knownthe rules and that his neglect of them was owing to laziness. "Moneyseems to have been his aim more than reputation, and therefore he wasalways in a hurry . . . And he thought it time thrown away, to studyregularity and order, when any confused stuff that came into his headwould do his business and fill his house. "[15]

It would be easy, but it would be tedious, to multiply proofs of thispatronizing attitude toward Shakspere. Perhaps Pope voices the generalsentiment of his school, as fairly as anyone, in the last words of hispreface. [16] "I will conclude by saying of Shakspere that, with all hisfaults and with all the irregularity of his _drama_, one may look uponhis works, in comparison of those that are more finished and regular, asupon an ancient, majestic piece of Gothic architecture compared with aneat, modern building. The latter is more elegant and glaring, but theformer is more strong and solemn. . . It has much the greater variety, and much the nobler apartments, though we are often conducted to them bydark, odd and uncouth passages. Nor does the whole fail to strike uswith greater reverence, though many of the parts are childish, ill-placedand unequal to its grandeur. " This view of Shakspere continued to be therule until Coleridge and Schlegel taught the new century that this childof fancy was, in reality, a profound and subtle artist, but that theprinciples of his art--as is always the case with creative genius workingfreely and instinctively--were learned by practice, in the concrete, instead of being consciously thrown out by the workman himself into anabstract _theoria_; so that they have to be discovered by a reverentstudy of his work and lie deeper than the rules of French criticism. Schlegel, whose lectures on dramatic art were translated into English in1815, speaks with indignation of the current English misunderstanding ofShakspere. "That foreigners, and Frenchmen in particular, who frequentlyspeak in the strangest language about antiquity and the Middle Age, as ifcannibalism had been first put an end in Europe by Louis XIV. , shouldentertain this opinion of Shakspere might be pardonable. But thatEnglishmen should adopt such a calumniation . . . Is to meincomprehensible. "[17]

The beginnings of the romantic movement in England were uncertain. Therewas a vague dissent from current literary estimates, a vague discontentwith reigning literary modes, especially with the merely intellectualpoetry then in vogue, which did not feed the soul. But there was, atfirst, no conscious, concerted effort toward something of creativeactivity. The new group of poets, partly contemporaries of Pope, partlysuccessors to him--Thomson, Shenstone, Dyer, Akenside, Gray, Collins, andthe Warton brothers--found their point of departure in the loving studyand revival of old authors. From what has been said of the survival ofShakspere's influence it might be expected that his would have been thename paramount among the pioneers of English romanticism. There areseveral reasons why this was not the case. 

In the first place, the genius of the new poets was lyrical ordescriptive, rather than dramatic. The divorce between literature andthe stage had not yet, indeed, become total; and, in obedience to theexpectation that every man of letters should try his hand atplay-writing, Thomson, at least, as well as his friend and discipleMallet, composed a number of dramas. But these were little better thanfailures even at the time; and while "The Seasons" has outlived allchanges of taste, and "The Castle of Indolence" has never wantedadmirers, tragedies like "Agamemnon" and "Sophonisba" have been longforgotten. An imitation of Shakspere to any effective purpose mustobviously have take the shape of a play; and neither Gray nor Collins norAkenside, nor any of the group, was capable of a play. Inspiration of akind, these early romanticists did draw from Shakspere. Verbalreminiscences of him abound in Gray. Collins was a diligent student ofhis works. His "Dirge in Cymbeline" is an exquisite variation on aShaksperian theme. In the delirium of his last sickness, he told Wartonthat he had found in an Italian novel the long-sought original of theplot of "The Tempest. " It is noteworthy, by the way, that theromanticists were attracted to the poetic, as distinguished from thedramatic, aspect of Shakspere's genius; to those of his plays in whichfairy lore and supernatural machinery occur, such as "The Tempest" and "AMidsummer Night's Dream. "

Again, the stage has a history of its own, and, in so far as it was nowmaking progress of any kind, it was not in the direction of a more poeticor romantic drama, but rather toward prose tragedy and the sentimentalcomedy of domestic life, what the French call _la tragédie bourgeoise_and _la comédie larmoyante_. In truth the theater was now dying; andthough, in the comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan, it sent up one bright, expiring gleam, the really dramatic talent of the century had alreadysought other channels in the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. 

After all, a good enough reason why the romantic movement did not beginwith imitation of Shakspere is the fact that Shakspere is inimitable. Hehas no one manner that can be caught, but a hundred manners; is not thepoet of romance, but of humanity; nor medieval, but perpetually modernand contemporaneous in his universality. The very familiarity of hisplays, and their continuous performance, although in mangled forms, was areason why they could take little part in a literary revival; for whathas never been forgotten cannot be revived. To Germany and France, at alater date, Shakspere came with the shock of a discovery and begotSchiller and Victor Hugo. In the England of the eighteenth century hebegot only Ireland's forgeries. 

The name inscribed in large letters on the standard of the new school wasnot Shakspere but Spenser. If there is any poet who is _par excellence_the poet of romance, whose art is the antithesis of Pope's, it is thepoet of the "Faërie Queene. " To ears that had heard from childhood thetinkle of the couplet, with its monotonously recurring rhyme, itsinevitable caesura, its narrow imprisonment of the sense, it must havebeen a relief to turn to the amplitude of Spencer's stanza, "the fullstrong sail of his great verse. " To a generation surfeited with Pope'srhetorical devices--antithesis, climax, anticlimax--and fatigued with theunrelaxing brilliancy and compression of his language; the escape fromepigrams and point (snap after snap, like a pack of fire-crackers), froma style which has made his every other line a proverb or currentquotation--the escape from all this into Spenser's serene, leisurelymanner, copious Homeric similes, and lingering detail must have seemedmost restful. To go from Pope to Spenser was to exchange platitudes, packed away with great verbal cunning in neat formulas readily portableby the memory, for a wealth of concrete images: to exchange saws like, "A little learning is a dangerous thing, "

for a succession of richly colored pictures by the greatest painter amongEnglish poets. It was to exchange the most prosaic of our poets--a poetabout whom question has arisen whether he is a poet at all--for the mostpurely poetic of our poets, "the poet's poet. " And finally, it was toexchange the world of everyday manners and artificial society for animaginary kingdom of enchantment, "out of space, out of time. "

English poetry has oscillated between the poles of Spenser and Pope. Thepoets who have been accepted by the race as most truly national, poetslike Shakspere, Milton, and Byron, have stood midway. Neither Spensernor Pope satisfies long. We weary, in time, of the absence of passionand intensity in Spenser, his lack of dramatic power, the want ofactuality in his picture of life, the want of brief energy and nerve inhis style; just as we weary of Pope's inadequate sense of beauty. But ata time when English poetry had abandoned its true function--therefreshment and elevation of the soul through the imagination--Spenser'spoetry, the poetry of ideal beauty, formed the most natural corrective. Whatever its deficiencies, it was not, at any rate, "conceived andcomposed in his wits. "

Spenser had not fared so well as Shakspere under the change which cameover public taste after the Restoration. The age of Elizabeth had noliterary reviews or book notices, and its critical remains are of thescantiest. But the complimentary verses by many hands published with the"Faërie Queene" and the numerous references to Spenser in the wholepoetic literature of the time, leave no doubt as to the fact that hiscontemporaries accorded him the foremost place among English poets. Thetradition of his supremacy lasted certainly to the middle of theseventeenth century, if not beyond. His influence is visible not only inthe work of professed disciples like Giles and Phineas Fletcher, thepastoral poet William Browne, and Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, but in the verse of Jonson, Fletcher, Milton, and many others. Miltonconfessed to Dryden that Spenser was his "poetical father. " Drydenhimself and Cowley, whose practice is so remote from Spenser's, acknowledged their debt to him. The passage from Cowley's essay "OnMyself" is familiar: "I remember when I began to read, and to take somepleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know notby what accident, for she herself never read any book but ofdevotion--but there was wont to lie) Spenser's works. This I happened tofall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knightsand giants and monsters and brave houses which I found everywhere there(thought my understanding had little to do with all this), and, bydegrees, with the tinkling of the rime and dance of the numbers; so thatI think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and wasthus made a poet as irremediably as a child is made an eunuch. " It is acommonplace that Spenser has made more poets than any other one writer. Even Pope, whose empire he came back from Fairyland to overthrow, assuredSpence that he had read the "Faërie Queene" with delight when he was aboy, and re-read it with equal pleasure in his last years. Indeed, it istoo readily assumed that writers are insensible to the beauties of anopposite school. Pope was quite incapable of appreciating it. He took agreat liking to Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd"; he admired "TheSeasons, " and did Thomson the honor to insert a few lines of his own in"Summer. " Among his youthful parodies of old English poets is one pieceentitled "The Alley, " a not over clever burlesque of the famousdescription of the Bower of Bliss. [18]

As for Dryden, his reverence for Spenser is qualified by the same sort ofcritical disapprobation which we noticed in his eulogies of Shakspere. He says that the "Faërie Queene" has no uniformity: the language is notso obsolete as is commonly supposed, and is intelligible after somepractice; but the choice of stanza is unfortunate, though in spite of it, Spenser's verse is more melodious than any other English poet's exceptMr. Waller's. [19] Ambrose Philips--Namby Pamby Philips--whom Thackeraycalls "a dreary idyllic cockney, " appealed to "The Shepherd's Calendar"as his model, in the introduction to his insipid "Pastorals, " 1709. Steele, in No. 540 of the _Spectator_ (November 19, 1712), printed somemildly commendatory remarks about Spenser. Altogether it is clear thatSpenser's greatness was accepted, rather upon trust, throughout theclassical period, but that this belief was coupled with a generalindifference to his writings. Addison's lines in his "Epistle toSacheverel; an Account of the Greatest English Poets, " 1694, probablyrepresent accurately enough the opinion of the majority of readers:

 "Old Spenser next, warmed with poetic rage, In ancient tales amused a barbarous age; An age that, yet uncultivated and rude, Wher'er the poet's fancy led, pursued, Through pathless fields and unfrequented floods, To dens of dragons and enchanted woods. But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore, Can charm an understanding age no more. The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, While the dull moral lies too plain below, We view well pleased at distance all the sights Of arms and palfreys, battles, fields and fights, And damsels in distress and courteous knights, But when we look too near, the shades decay And all the pleasing landscape fades away. "

Addison acknowledged to Spence that, when he wrote this passage, he hadnever read Spenser! As late as 1754 Thomas Warton speaks of him as "thisadmired but neglected poet, "[20] and Mr. Kitchin asserts that "between1650 and 1750 there are but few notices of him, and a very few editionsof his works. "[21] There was a reprint of Spenser's works--being thethird folio of the "Faërie Queene"--in 1679, but no critical edition till1715. Meanwhile the title of a book issued in 1687 shows that Spenserdid not escape that process of "improvement" which we have seen appliedto Shakspere: "Spenser Redivivus; containing the First Book of the 'FaëryQueene. ' His Essential Design Preserved, but his Obsolete Language andManner of Verse totally laid aside. Delivered in Heroic Numbers by aPerson of Quality. " The preface praises Spenser, but declares that "hisstyle seems no less unintelligible at this day than the obsoletest of ourEnglish or Saxon dialect. " One instance of this deliverance into heroicnumbers must suffice:

 "By this the northern wagoner had set His sevenfold team behind the steadfast star That was in ocean waves yet never wet, But firm is fixed, and sendeth light from far To all that in the wide deep wandering are. " --_Spenser_. [22]

In 1715 John Hughes published his edition of Spenser's works in sixvolumes. This was the first attempt at a critical text of the poet, andwas accompanied with a biography, a glossary, an essay on allegoricalpoetry, and some remarks on the "Faërie Queene. " It is curious to findin the engravings, from designs by Du Guernier, which illustrate Hughes'volumes, that Spenser's knights wore the helmets and body armor of theRoman legionaries, over which is occasionally thrown something that looksvery much like a toga. The lists in which they run a tilt have thefaçade of a Greek temple for a background. The house of Busyrane isLouis Quatorze architecture, and Amoret is chained to a renaissancecolumn with Corinthian capital and classical draperies. Hughes' glossaryof obsolete terms includes words which are in daily use by modernwriters: aghast, baleful, behest, bootless, carol, craven, dreary, forlorn, foray, guerdon, plight, welkin, yore. If words like these, andlike many which Warton annotates in his "Observations, " really neededexplanation, it is a striking proof, not only of the degree in which ourolder poets had been forgotten, but also of the poverty to which thevocabulary of English poetry had been reduced by 1700. 

In his prefatory remarks to the "Faërie Queene, " the editor expresses thecustomary regrets that the poet should have chosen so defective a stanza, "so romantick a story, " and a model, or framework for the whole, whichappears so monstrous when "examined by the rules of epick poetry"; makesthe hackneyed comparison between Spenser's work and Gothic architecture, and apologizes for his author, on the ground that, at the time when hewrote, "the remains of the old Gothick chivalry were not quiteabolished. " "He did not much revive the curiosity of the public, " saysJohnson, in his life of Hughes; "for near thirty years elapsed before hisedition was reprinted. " Editions of the "Faërie Queene" came thick andfast about the middle of the century. One (by Birch) was issued in 1751, and three in 1758; including the important edition by Upton, who, of allSpenser's commentators, has entered most elaborately into theinterpretation of the allegory. 

In the interval had appeared, in gradually increasing numbers, thatseries of Spenserian imitations which forms an interesting department ofeighteenth-century verse. The series was begun by a most unlikelyperson, Matthew Prior, whose "Ode to the Queen, " 1706, was in a ten-linedmodification of Spenser's stanza and employed a few archaisms like _weet_and _ween_, but was very unspenserian in manner. As early as the seconddecade of the century, the horns of Elfland may be heard faintly blowingin the poems of the Rev. Samuel Croxall, the translator of Aesop's"Fables. " Mr. Gosse[23] quotes Croxall's own description of his poetry, as designed "to set off the dry and insipid stuff" of the age with "awhole piece of rich and glowing scarlet. " His two pieces "The Vision, "1715, and "The Fair Circassian, " 1720, though written in the couplet, exhibit a rosiness of color and a luxuriance of imagery manifestlylearned from Spenser. In 1713 he had published under the pseudonym ofNestor Ironside, "An Original Canto of Spenser, " and in 1714 "AnotherOriginal Canto, " both, of course, in the stanza of the "Faërie Queene. "The example thus set was followed before the end of the century by scoresof poets, including many well-known names, like Akenside, Thomson, Shenstone, and Thomas Warton, as well as many second-rate and third-rateversifiers. [24]

It is noteworthy that many, if not most, of the imitations were at firstundertaken in a spirit of burlesque; as is plain not only from the poemsthemselves, but from the correspondence of Shenstone and others. [25] Theantiquated speech of an old author is in itself a challenge to theparodist: _teste_ our modern ballad imitations. There is somethingludicrous about the very look of antique spelling, and in the sound ofwords like _eftsoones_ and _perdy_; while the sign _Ye Olde Booke Store_, in Old English text over a bookseller's door, strikes the publicinvariably as a most merry conceited jest; especially if the first letterbe pronounced as a _y_, instead of, what it really is, a mereabbreviation of _th_. But in order that this may be so, the languagetravestied should not be too old. There would be nothing amusing, forexample, in a burlesque imitation of Beowulf, because the Anglo-Saxon ofthe original is utterly strange to the modern reader. It is conceivablethat quick-witted Athenians of the time of Aristophanes might findsomething quaint in Homer's Ionic dialect, akin to that quaintness whichwe find in Chaucer; but a Grecian of to-day would need to be very Atticindeed, to detect any provocation to mirth in the use of the genitivein-oio, in place of the genitive in-ou. Again, as one becomes familiarwith an old author, he ceases to be conscious of his archaism: the final_e_ in Chaucer no longer strikes him as funny, nor even the circumstancethat he speaks of little birds as _smalë fowlës_. And so it happened, that poets in the eighteenth century who began with burlesque imitationof the "Faërie Queen" soon fell in love with its serious beauties. 

The only poems in this series that have gained permanent footing in theliterature are Shenstone's "Schoolmistress" and Thomson's "Cast ofIndolence. " But a brief review of several other members of the groupwill be advisable. Two of them were written at Oxford in honor of themarriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1736: one by Richard OwenCambridge;[26] the other by William Thompson, then bachelor of arts andafterward fellow of Queen's College. Prince Fred, it will be remembered, was a somewhat flamboyant figure in the literary and personal gossip ofhis day. He quarreled with his father, George II, who "hated boetry andbainting, " and who was ironically fed with soft dedication by Pope in his"Epistle to Augustus"; also with his father's prime minister, Sir RobertWalpole, "Bob, the poet's foe. " He left the court in dudgeon and set upan opposition court of his own where he rallied about him men of letters, who had fallen into a neglect that contrasted strangely with their formerimportance in the reign of Queen Anne. Frederick's chief ally in thispolicy was his secretary, George Lord Lyttelton, the elegant if somewhatamateurish author of "Dialogues of the Dead" and other works; the friendof Fielding, the neighbor of Shenstone at Hagley, and the patron ofThomson, for whom he obtained the sinecure post of Surveyor of theLeeward Islands. 

Cambridge's spousal verses were in a ten-lined stanza. His "Archimage, "written in the strict Spenserian stanza, illustrates the frequentemployment of this form in occasional pieces of a humorous intention. Itdescribes a domestic boating party on the Thames, one of the oarsmenbeing a family servant and barber-surgeon, who used to dress thechaplain's hair:

 "Als would the blood of ancient beadsman spill, Whose hairy scalps he hanged in a row Around his cave, sad sight to Christian eyes, I trow. "

Thompson's experiments, on the contrary, were quite serious. He hadgenuine poetic feeling, but little talent. In trying to reproduceSpenser's richness of imagery and the soft modulation of his verse, hesucceeds only in becoming tediously ornate. His stanzas are nerveless, though not unmusical. His college exercise, "The Nativity, " 1736, is aChristmas vision which comes to the shepherd boy Thomalin, as he ispiping on the banks of Isis. It employs the pastoral machinery, includesa masque of virtues, --Faith, Hope, Mercy, etc. , --and closes with acompliment to Pope's "Messiah. " The preface to his "Hymn to May, " hassome bearing upon our inquiries: "As Spenser is the most descriptive andflorid of all our English writers, I attempted to imitate his manner inthe following vernal poem. I have been very sparing of the antiquatedwords which are too frequent in most of the imitations of thisauthor. . . His lines are most musically sweet, and his descriptionsmost delicately abundant, even to a wantonness of painting, but still itis the music and painting of nature. We find no ambitious ornaments orepigrammatical turns in his writings, but a beautiful simplicity whichpleases far above the glitter of pointed wit. " The "Hymn to May" is inthe seven-lined stanza of Phineas Fletcher's "Purple Island"; a poem, says Thompson, "scarce heard of in this age, yet the best in theallegorical way (next to 'The Fairy Queen') in the English language. "

William Wilkie, a Scotch minister and professor, of eccentric habits anduntidy appearance, published, in 1759, "A Dream: in the Manner ofSpenser, " which may be mentioned here not for its own sake, but for theevidence that it affords of a growing impatience of classical restraints. The piece was a pendant to Wilkie's epic, the "Epigoniad. " Walking bythe Tweed, the poet falls asleep and has a vision of Homer, whoreproaches him with the bareness of style in his "Epigoniad. " Thedreamer puts the blame upon the critics, "Who tie the muses to such rigid laws That all their songs are frivolous and poor. "

Shakspere, indeed, "Broke all the cobweb limits fixed by fools";

but the only reward of his boldness

 "Is that our dull, degenerate age of lead Says that he wrote by chance, and that he scare could read. "

One of the earlier Spenserians was Gilbert West, the translator ofPindar, who published, in 1739, "On the Abuse of Travelling: A Canto inImitation of Spenser. "[27] Another imitation, "Education, " appeared in1751. West was a very tame poet, and the only quality of Spenser's whichhe succeeded in catching was his prolixity. He used the allegoricalmachinery of the "Faërie Queene" for moral and mildly satirical ends. Thus, in "The Abuse of Traveling, " the Red Cross Knight is induced byArchimago to embark in a painted boat steered by Curiosity, which waftshim over to a foreign shore where he is entertained by a bevy of lightdamsels whose leader "hight Politessa, " and whose blandishments theknight resists. Thence he is conducted to a stately castle (the court ofLouis XV. Whose minister--perhaps Cardinal Fleury?--is "an old andrankled mage"); and finally to Rome, where a lady yclept Vertù holdscourt in the ruins of the Colosseum, among mimes, fiddlers, pipers, eunuchs, painters, and _ciceroni_. 

Similarly the canto on "Education" narrates how a fairy knight, whileconducting his young son to the house of Paidia, encounters the giantCustom and worsts him in single combat. There is some humor in thedescription of the stream of science into which the crowd of infantlearners are unwillingly plunged, and upon whose margin stands

 "A _birchen_ grove that, waving from the shore, Aye cast upon the tide its falling bud And with its bitter juice empoisoned all the flood. "

The piece is a tedious arraignment of the pedantic methods of instructionin English schools and colleges. A passage satirizing the artificialstyle of gardening will be cited later. West had a country-house atWickham, in Kent, where, says Johnson, [28] "he was very often visited byLyttelton and Pitt; who, when they were weary of faction and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent table and literaryconversation. There is at Wickham, a walk made by Pitt. " Like manycontemporary poets, West interested himself in landscape gardening, andsome of his shorter pieces belong to that literature of inscriptions towhich Lyttelton, Akenside, Shenstone, Mason, and others contributed soprofusely. It may be said for his Spenserian imitations that theirarchaisms are unusually correct[29]--if that be any praise--a featurewhich perhaps recommended them to Gray, whose scholarship in this, as inall points, was nicely accurate. The obligation to be properly"obsolete" in vocabulary was one that rested heavily on the consciencesof most of these Spenserian imitators. "The Squire of Dames, " forinstance, by the wealthy Jew, Moses Mendez, fairly bristles withseld-seen costly words, like _benty_, _frannion_, etc. , which it wouldhave puzzled Spenser himself to explain. 

One of the pleasantest outcomes of this literary fashion was WilliamShenstone's "Schoolmistress, " published in an unfinished shape in 1737and, as finally completed, in 1742. This is an affectionatehalf-humorous description of the little dame-school of Shenstone's--andof everybody's--native village, and has the true idyllic touch. Goldsmith evidently had it in memory when he drew the picture of theschool in his "Deserted Village. "[30] The application to so humble atheme of Spenser's stately verse and grave, ancient words gives a veryquaint effect. The humor of "The Schoolmistress" is genuine, notdependent on the more burlesque, as in Pope's and Cambridge'sexperiments; and it is warmed with a certain tenderness, as in theincident of the hen with her brood of chickens, entering the open door ofthe schoolhouse in search of crumbs, and of the grief of the littlesister who witnesses her brother's flogging, and of the tremors of theurchins who have been playing in the dame's absence:

 "Forewarned, if little bird their pranks behold, 'Twill whisper in her ear and all the scene unfold. "

But the only one among the professed scholars of Spenser who caught theglow and splendor of the master was James Thomson. It is the privilegeof genius to be original even in its imitations. Thomson took shape andhue from Spenser, but added something of his own, and the result has avalue quite independent of its success as a reproduction. "The Castle ofIndolence, " 1748, [31] is a fine poem; at least the first part of it is, for the second book is tiresomely allegorical, and somewhat involved inplot. There is a magic art in the description of the "land ofdrowsy-head, " with its "listless climate" always "atween June andMay, "[32] its "stockdove's plaint amid the forest deep, " its hillsidewoods of solemn pines, its gay castles in the summer clouds, and itsmurmur of the distance main. The nucleus of Thomson's conception is tobe found in Spenser's House of Morpheus ("Faërie Queene, " book i. Cantoi. 41), and his Country of Idlesse is itself an anticipation ofTennyson's Lotus Land, but verse like this was something new in thepoetry of the eighteenth century:

 "Was nought around but images of rest: Sleep-soothing groves and quiet lawns between; And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest, From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green, Where never yet was creeping creatures seen. 

 "Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played And hurlëd everywhere their waters sheen; That, as they bickered through the sunny glade, Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made. "

"The Castle of Indolence" had the romantic iridescence, the "atmosphere"which is lacking to the sharp contours of Augustan verse. That is tosay, it produces an effect which cannot be wholly accounted for by whatthe poet says; an effect which is wrought by subtle sensations awakenedby the sound and indefinite associations evoked by the words. The secretof this art the poet himself cannot communicate. But poetry of this kindcannot be translated into prose--as Pope's can--any more than music canbe translated into speech, without losing its essential character. LikeSpenser, Thomson was an exquisite colorist and his art was largelypictorial. But he has touches of an imagination which is rarer, if nothigher in kind, than anything in Spenser. The fairyland of Spenser is anunreal, but hardly an unearthly region. He seldom startles by glimpsesbehind the curtain which hangs between nature and the supernatural, as inMilton's

 "Airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. "

There is something of this power in one stanza, at least, of "The Castleof Indolence:"

 "As when a shepherd of the Hebrid Isles, Placed far amid the melancholy main (Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles, Or that aerial beings sometimes deign To stand embodied to our sense plain), The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain, A vast assembly moving to and fro, Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show. "

It may be guessed that Johnson and Boswell, in their tour to the Hebridesor Western Islands, saw nothing of the "spectral puppet play" hinted atin this passage--the most imaginative in any of Spenser's school till weget to Keats'

 "Magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn. "

William Julius Mickle, the translator of the "Lusiad, " was a moreconsiderable poet than any of the Spenserian imitators thus far reviewed, with the exception of Thomson and the possible exception of Shenstone. He wrote at least two poems that are likely to be remembered. One ofthese was the ballad of "Cumnor Hall" which suggested Scott's"Kenilworth, " and came near giving its name to the novel. The other wasthe dialect song of "The Mariner's Wife, " which Burns admired so greatly:

 "Sae true his heart, sae smooth his speech, His breath like caller air, His very foot has music in't, As he comes up the stair, For there's nae luck about the house, There is nae luck at a', There's little pleasure in the house When our gudeman's awa', "[33]

Mickle, like Thomson, was a Scotchman who came to London to push hisliterary fortunes. He received some encouragement from Lyttelton, butwas disappointed in his hopes of any substantial aid from the BritishMaecenas. His biographer informs us that "about his thirteenth year, onSpenser's 'Faërie Queene' falling accidentally in his way, he wasimmediately struck with the picturesque descriptions of that much admiredancient bard and powerfully incited to imitate his style and manner. "[34]In 1767 Mickle published "The Concubine, " a Spenserian poem in twocantos. In the preface to his second edition, 1778, in which the titlewas changed to "Syr Martyn, " he said that: "The fullness and wantonnessof description, the quaint simplicity, and, above all, the ludicrous, ofwhich the antique phraseology and manner of Spenser are so happily andpeculiarly susceptible, inclined him to esteem it not solely as the best, but the only mode of composition adapted to his subject. "

"Syr Martyn" is a narrative poem not devoid of animation, especiallywhere the author forgets his Spenser. But in the second canto he feelscompelled to introduce an absurd allegory, in which the nymph Dissipationand her henchman Self-Imposition conduct the hero to the cave ofDiscontent. This is how Mickle writes when he is thinking of the "FaërieQueene":

 "Eke should he, freed from fous enchanter's spell, Escape his false Duessa's magic charms, And folly quaid, yclept an hydra fell Receive a beauteous lady to his arms; While bards and minstrels chaunt the soft alarms Of gentle love, unlike his former thrall: Eke should I sing, in courtly cunning terms, The gallant feast, served up by seneschal, To knights and ladies gent in painted bower or hall. "

And this is how he writes when he drops his pattern:

 "Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale, And, Fancy, to thy faerie bower betake! Even now, with balmy freshness, breathes the gale, Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake; Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake, And evening comes with locks bedropt with dew; On Desmond's moldering turrets slowly shake The trembling rye-grass and the harebell blue, And ever and anon fair Mulla's plaints renew. "

A reader would be guilty of no very bad guess who should assign thisstanza--which Scott greatly admired--to one of he Spenserian passagesthat prelude the "Lady of the Lake. "

But it is needless to extend this catalogue any farther. By the middleof the century Spenserian had become so much the fashion as to provoke arebuke from Dr. Johnson, who prowled up and down before the temple of theBritish Muses like a sort of classical watch-dog. "The imitation ofSpenser, " said the _Rambler_ of May 14, 1751, "by the influence of somemen of learning and genius, seems likely to gain upon the age. . . Toimitate the fictions and sentiments of Spenser can incur no reproach, forallegory is perhaps one of the most pleasing vehicles of instruction. But I am very far from extending the same respect to his diction or hisstanza. His style was, in his own words and peculiarities of phrase, andso remote from common use that Jonson boldly pronounces him _to havewritten no language_. His stanza is at once difficult and unpleasing:tiresome to the ear by its uniformity, and to the attention by itslength. . . Life is surely given us for other purposes than to gatherwhat our ancestors have wisely thrown away and to learn what is of novalue but because it has been forgotten. "[35] In his "Life of West, "Johnson says of West's imitations of Spenser, "Such compositions are notto be reckoned among the great achievements of intellect, because theireffect is local and temporary: they appeal not to reason or passion, butto memory, and presuppose an accidental or artificial state of mind. Animitation of Spenser is nothing to a reader, however acute, by whomSpenser has never been perused. "

The critic is partly right. The nice points of a parody are lost upon areader unacquainted with the thing parodied. And as for seriousimitations, the more cleverly a copyist follows his copy, the less valuehis work will have. The eighteenth-century Spenserians, like West, Cambridge, and Lloyd, who stuck most closely to their pattern, oblivionhas covered. Their real service was done in reviving a taste for abetter kind of poetry than the kind in vogue, and particularly inrestoring to English verse a stanza form, which became so noble aninstrument in the hands of later poets, who used it with as much freedomand vigor as if they had never seen the "Faërie Queene. " One is seldomreminded of Spenser while reading "Childe Harold"[36] or "Adonais" or"The Eve of Saint Agnes"; but in reading West or Cambridge, or even inreading Shenstone and Thomson, one is reminded of him at every turn. Yetif it was necessary to imitate anyone, it might be answered to Dr. Johnson that it was better to imitate Spenser than Pope. In theimitation of Spenser lay, at least, a future, a development; while theimitation of Pope was conducting steadily toward Darwin's "BotanicGarden. "

It remains to notice one more document in the history of this Spenserianrevival, Thomas Warton's "Observations on the Faërie Queen, " 1754. Warton wrote with a genuine delight in his subject. His tastes werefrankly romantic. But the apologetic air which antiquarian scholarsassumed, when venturing to recommend their favorite studies to theattention of a classically minded public, is not absent from Warton'scommentary. He writes as if he felt the pressure of an unsympatheticatmosphere all about him. "We who live in the days of writing by ruleare apt to try every composition by those laws which we have been taughtto think the sole criterion of excellence. Critical taste is universallydiffused, and we require the same order and design which every modernperformance is expected to have, in poems where they never were regardedor intended. . . If there be any poem whose graces please because theyare situated beyond the reach of art[37] . . . It is this. In readingSpenser, if the critic is not satisfied, yet the reader is transported. ""In analyzing the plan and conduct of this poem, I have so far tried itby epic rules, as to demonstrate the inconveniences and incongruitieswhich the poet might have avoided, had he been more studious of designand uniformity. It is true that his romantic materials claim greatliberties; but no materials exclude order and perspicacity. " Wartonassures the reader that Spenser's language is not "so difficult andobsolete as it is generally supposed to be;" and defends him againstHume's censure, [38] that "Homer copied true natural manners . . . But thepencil of the English poet was employed in drawing the affectations andconceits and fopperies of chivalry. "

Yet he began his commentary with the stock denunciations of "Gothicignorance and barbarity. " "At the renaissance it might have beenexpected that, instead of the romantic manner of poeticalcomposition . . . A new and more legitimate taste of writing would havesucceeded. . . But it was a long time before such a change was effected. We find Ariosto, many years after the revival of letters, rejecting truthfor magic, and preferring the ridiculous and incoherent excursions ofBoiardo to the propriety and uniformity of the Grecian and Roman models. Nor did the restoration of ancient learning produce any effectual orimmediate improvement in the state of criticism. Beni, one of the mostcelebrated critics of the sixteenth century, was still so infatuated witha fondness for the old Provençal vein, that he ventured to write aregular dissertation, in which he compares Ariosto with Homer. " Wartonsays again, of Ariosto and the Italian renaissance poets whom Spenserfollowed, "I have found no fault in general with their use of magicalmachinery; notwithstanding I have so far conformed to the reigning maximsof modern criticism as to recommend classical propriety. "Notwithstanding this prudent determination to conform, the author takesheart in his second volume to speak out as follows about thepseudo-classic poetry of his own age: "A poetry succeeded in whichimagination gave way to correctness, sublimity of description to delicacyof sentiment, and majestic imagery to conceit and epigram. Poets begannow to be more attentive to words than to things and objects. The nicerbeauties of happy expression were preferred to the daring strokes ofgreat conception. Satire, that bane of the sublime, was imported fromFrance. The muses were debauched at court; and polite life and familiarmanners became their only themes. "

By the time these words were written Spenser had done his work. Color, music, fragrance were stealing back again into English song, and"golden-tongued romance with serene lute" stood at the door of the newage, waiting for it to open. 

[1] A small portion of "The Canterbury Tales. " Edited by Morell. 

[2] The sixteenth [_sic. Quaere_, seventeenth?] century had an instinctiverepugnance for the crude literature of the Middle Ages, the product of sostrange and incoherent a civilization. Here classicism finds nothing butgrossness and barbarism, never suspecting that it might contain germs, which, with time and genius, might develop into a poetical growth, doubtless less pure, but certainly more complex in its harmonies, and ofa more expressive form of beauty. The history of our ancient poetry, traced in a few lines by Boileau, clearly shows to what degree he eitherignored or misrepresented it. The singular, confused architecture ofGothic cathedrals gave those who saw beauty in symmetry of line andpurity of form but further evidence of the clumsiness and perverted tasteof our ancestors. All remembrances of the great poetic works of theMiddle Ages is completely effaced. No one supposes in those barbaroustimes the existence of ages classical also in their way; no one imagineseither their heroic songs or romances of adventure, either the richbounty of lyrical styles or the naïve, touching crudity of the Christiandrama. The seventeenth century turned disdainfully away from themonuments of national genius discovered by it; finding them sometimesshocking in their rudeness, sometimes puerile in their refinements. These unfortunate exhumations, indeed, only serve to strengthen its cultfor a simple, correct beauty, the models of which are found in Greece andRome. Why dream of penetrating the darkness of our origin? Contemporarysociety is far too self-satisfied to seek distraction in the study of apast which it does not comprehend. The subjects and heroes of domestichistory are also prohibited. Corneille is Latin, Racine is Greek; thevery name of Childebrande suffices to cover an epopee withridicule. --_Pellissier_, pp. 7-8. 

[3] "Epistle to Augustus. "

[4] "Epistle of Augustus. "

[5] _I. E. _, learning. 

[6] "Life of Dryden. "

[7] "Epistle to Augustus. "

[8] The tradition as to Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton is almost equallycontinuous. A course of what Lowell calls "penitential reading, " inRestoration criticism, will convince anyone that these four names alreadystood out distinctly, as those of the four greatest English poets. Seeespecially Winstanley, "Lives of the English Poets, " 1687; Langbaine, "AnAccount of the English Dramatic Poets, " 1691; Dennis, "Essay on theGenius and Writings of Shakspere, " 1712; Gildon, "The Complete Art ofPoetry, " 1718. The fact mentioned by Macaulay, that Sir Wm. Temple's"Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning" names none of the four, is withoutimportance. Temple refers by name to only three English "wits, " Sidney, Bacon, and Selden. This very superficial performance of Temple's was acontribution to the futile controversy over the relative merits of theancients and moderns, which is now only of interest as having givenoccasion to Bentley to display his great scholarship in his "Dissertationon the Epistles of Phalaris, " (1698), and to Swift to show his powers ofirony in "The Battle of the Books" (1704). 

[9] Preface to the "Plays of Shakspere, " 1765. 

[10] Prologue, spoken by Garrick at the opening of Drury Lane Theater, 1747. 

[11] "The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered and Examined, " 1678. 

[12] "Shakspere Illustrated, " 1753. 

[13] See Dryden's "Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy" and "Defence of theEpilogue to the Conquest of Granada. "

[14] "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakspere, " 1712. 

[15] "The Art of Poetry, " pp. 63 and 99. _Cf_. Pope, "Epistle toAugustus":

 "Shakspere (whom you and every play-house bill Style the divine, the matchless, what you will) For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight, And grew immortal in his own despite. "

[16] Pope's "Shakspere, " 1725. 

[17] For a fuller discussion of this subject, consult "A History ofOpinion on the Writings of Shakspere, " in the supplemental volume ofKnight's Pictorial Edition. Editions of Shakspere issued within acentury following the Restoration were the third Folio, 1664; the fourthFolio, 1685; Rowe's (the first critical edition, with a Life, etc. ) 1709(second edition, 1714); Pope's, 1725 (second edition, 1728); Theobald's, 1733; Hanmer's 1744; Warburton-Pope's, 1747; and Johnson's 1765. Meanwhile, though Shakspere's plays continued to be acted, it was mostlyin doctored versions. Tate changed "Lear" to a comedy. Davenant andDryden made over "The Tempest" into "The Enchanted Island, " turning blankverse into rhyme and introducing new characters, while Shadwell alteredit into an opera. Dryden rewrote "Troilus and Cressida"; Davenant, "Macbeth. " Davenant patched together a thing which he called "The Lawagainst Lovers, " from "Measure for Measure" and "Much Ado about Nothing. "Dennis remodeled the "Merry Wives of Windsor" as "The Comical Gallant";Tate, "Richard II. " as "The Sicilian Usurper"; and Otway, "Romeo andJuliet, " as "Caius Marius. " Lord Lansdowne converted "The Merchant ofVenice" into "The Jew of Venice, " wherein Shylock was played as a comiccharacter down to the time of Macklin and Kean. Durfey tinkered"Cymbeline. " Cibber metamorphosed "King John" into "Papal Tyranny, " andhis version was acted till Macready's time. Cibber's stage version of"Richard III. " is played still. Cumberland "engrafted" new features upon"Timon of Athens" for Garrick's theater, about 1775. In his life of Mrs. Siddons, Campbell says that "Coriolanus" "was never acted genuinely fromthe year 1660 till the year 1820" (Phillimore's "Life of Lyttelton, " Vol. I. P. 315). He mentions a revision by Tate, another by Dennis ("TheInvader of his Country"), and a third brought out by the elder Sheridanin 1764, at Covent Garden, and put together from Shakspere's tragedy andan independent play of the same name by Thomson. "Then in 1789 came theKemble edition in which . . . Much of Thomson's absurdity is stillpreserved. "

[18] "Faërie Queene, " II. Xii. 71

[19] "Essay on Satire. " Philips says a good word for the Spenserianstanza: "How much more stately and majestic in epic poems, especially ofheroic argument, Spenser's stanza . . . Is above the way either ofcouplet or alternation of four verses only, I am persuaded, were itrevived, would soon be acknowledged. "--_Theatrum Poetatarum_, Preface, pp. 3-4. 

[20] "Observations on the Faëry Queene, " Vol. II. P. 317. 

[21] "The Faëry Queene, " Book I. , Oxford, 1869. Introduction, p. Xx. 

[22] "Canto" ii. Stanza i. 

 "Now had Bootes' team far passed behind The northern star, when hours of night declined. " --_Person of Quality_

[23] "Eighteenth Century Literature, " p. 139. 

[24] For a full discussion of this subject the reader should consultPhelps' "Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, " chap. Iv. , "TheSpenserian Revival. " A partial list of Spenserian imitations is given inTodd's edition of Spenser, Vol. I. But the list in Prof. Phelps'Appendix, if not exhaustive, is certainly the most complete yet publishedand may be here reproduced. 1706: Prior: "Ode to the Queen. " 1713-21:Prior(?): "Colin's Mistakes. " 1713 Croxall: "An Original Canto ofSpenser. " 1714: Croxall: "Another Original Canto. " 1730 (_circa_):Whitehead: "Vision of Solomon, " "Ode to the Honorable Charles Townsend, ""Ode to the Same. " 1736: Thompson: "Epithalamium. " 1736: Cambridge:"Marriage of Frederick. " 1736-37: Boyse: "The Olive, " "Psalm XLII. "1737: Akenside: "The Virtuoso. " 1739: West: "Abuse of Traveling. " 1739:Anon. : "A New Canto of Spenser's Fairy Queen. " 1740: Boyse: "Ode to theMarquis of Tavistock. " 1741 (_circa_): Boyse: "Vision of Patience. "1742: Shenstone: "The Schoolmistress. " 1742-50: Cambridge: "Archimage. "1742: Dodsley: "Pain and Patience. " 1743: Anon. : "Albion's Triumph. "1744 (_circa_): Dodsley: "Death of Mr. Pope. " 1744: Akenside: "Ode toCurio. " 1746: Blacklock: "Hymn to Divine Love, " "Philantheus. " 1747:Mason: Stanzas in "Musaeus. " 1747: Ridley: "Psyche. " 1747: Lowth:"Choice of Hercules. " 1747: Upton: "A New Canto of Spenser's FairyQueen. " 1747: Bedingfield: "Education of Achilles. " 1747: Pitt: "TheJordan. " 1748: T. Warton, Sr. : "Philander. " 1748: Thomson: "The Castleof Indolence. " 1749: Potter: "A Farewell Hymn to the Country. " 1750: T. Warton: "Morning. " 1751: West: "Education. " 1751: T. Warton: "Elegy onthe Death of Prince Frederick. " 1751: Mendes: "The Seasons, " 1751:Lloyd: "Progress of Envy. " 1751: Akenside: "Ode. " 1751: Smith:"Thales. " 1753: T. Warton: "A Pastoral in the Manner of Spenser. " 1754:Denton: "Immortality. " 1755: Arnold: "The Mirror. " 1748-58: Mendez:"Squire of Dames. " 1756: Smart: "Hymn to the Supreme Being. " 1757:Thompson: "The Nativity, " "Hymn to May. " 1758: Akenside: "To CountryGentlemen of England. " 1759: Wilkie: "A Dream" 1759: Poem in "Ralph'sMiscellany. " 1762: Denton: "House of Superstition. " 1767: Mickle: "TheConcubine. " 1768: Downman: "Land of the Muses. " 1771-74: Beattie: "TheMinistrel. " 1775: Anon. : "Land of Liberty. " 1775: Mickle: Stanzas from"Introduction to the Lusiad. "

[25] See Phelps, pp. 66-68. 

[26] See the sumptuous edition of Cambridge's "Works, " issued by his sonin 1803. 

[27] "Mr. Walpole and I have frequently wondered you should never mentiona certain imitation of Spenser, published last year by a namesake ofyours, with which we are all enraptured and enmarvelled. "--_Letter formGray to Richard West_, Florence, July 16, 1740. There was norelationship between Gilbert West and Gray's Eton friend, though it seemsthat the former was also an Etonian, and was afterwards at Oxford, "whence he was seduced to a more airy mode of life, " says Dr. Johnson, "by a commission in a troop of horse, procured him by his uncle. "Cambridge, however, was an acquaintance of Gray, Walpole, and RichardWest, at Eton. Gray's solitary sonnet was composed upon the death ofRichard West in 1742; and it is worth noting that the introduction toCambridge's works are a number of sonnets by his friend Thomas Edwards, himself a Spenser lover, whose "sugared sonnets among his privatefriends" begin about 1750 and reach the number of fifty. 

[28] "Life of West. "

[29] Lloyd, in "The Progress of Envy, " defines _wimpled_ as "hung down";and Akenside, in "The Virtuoso, " employs the ending _en_ for the singularverb!

[30] Cf. "And as they looked, they found their horror grew. " --Shenstone. 

 "And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew. " --Goldsmith. 

 "The noises intermixed, which thence resound, Do learning's little tenement betray. " --Shenstone. 

 "There in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule. " etc. --Goldsmith. 

[31] The poem was projected, and perhaps partly written, fourteen orfifteen years earlier. 

[32] _Cf_. Tennyson's "land in which it seemed always afternoon. "--_TheLotus Eaters_. 

[33] Mickle's authorship of this song has been disputed in favor of oneJean Adams, a poor Scotch school-mistress, whose poems were printed atGlasgow in 1734. 

[34] Rev. John Sim's "Life of Mickle" in "Mickle's Poetical Works, " 1806, p. Xi. 

[35] _Cf. _ Joseph Warton's "Essay on Pope, " Vol. II. P. 35. "It has beenfashionable of late to imitate Spenser; but the likeness of most of thesecopies hath consisted rather in using a few of his ancient expressionsthan in catching his real manner. Some, however, have been executed withhappiness, and with attention to that simplicity, that tenderness ofsentiment and those little touches of nature that constitute Spenser'scharacter. I have a peculiar pleasure in mentioning two of them, 'TheSchoolmistress' by Mr. Shenstone, and 'The Education of Achilles' by Mr. Bedingfield. And also, Dr. Beattie's charming 'Minstrel. ' To these mustbe added that exquisite piece of wild and romantic imagery, Thomson's'Castle of Indolence. '"

[36] Byron, to be sure, began his first canto with conscious Spenserian. He called his poem a "romaunt, " and his valet, poor Fletcher, a "stanchyeomán, " and peppered his stanzas thinly with _sooths_ and _wights_ and_whiloms_, but he gave over this affectation in the later cantos and madeno further excursions into the Middle Ages. 

[37] Pope's, "Snatch a grace beyond the reach of art. " --_Essay on Criticism_. 

[38] "History of England, " Vol. II. P. 739. 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Landscape Poets

There is nothing necessarily romantic in literature that concerns itselfwith rural life or natural scenery. Yet we may accept, with somequalification, the truth of Professor McClintock's statement, that the"beginning and presence of a creative, romantic movement is almost alwaysshown by the love, study, and interpretation of physical nature. "[1] Whythis should be true, at all events of the romantic movement that began inthe eighteenth century, is obvious enough. Ruskin and Leslie Stephenhave already been quoted, as witnesses to the fact that naturalism andromanticism had a common root: the desire, namely, to escape into thefresh air and into freer conditions, from a literature which dealt, in astrictly regulated way, with the indoor life of a highly artificialsociety. The pastoral had ceased to furnish any relief. Professing tochant the praises of innocence and simplicity, it had become itselfutterly unreal and conventional, in the hands of cockneys like Philipsand Pope. When the romantic spirit took possession of the poetry ofnature, it manifested itself in a passion for wildness, grandeur, solitude. Of this there was as yet comparatively little even in theverse of Thomson, Shenstone, Akenside, and Dyer. 

Still the work of these pioneers in the "return to nature" represents thetransition, and must be taken into account in any complete history of theromantic movement. The first two, as we have seen, were among theearliest Spenserians: Dyer was a landscape painter, as well as a poet;and Shenstone was one of the best of landscape gardeners. But it is thebeginnings that are important. It will be needless to pursue the historyof nature poetry into its later developments; needless to review thewritings of Cowper and Crabbe, for example, --neither of whom was romanticin any sense, --or even of Wordsworth, the spirit of whose art, as awhole, was far from romantic. 

Before taking up the writers above named, one by one, it will be well tonotice the general change in the forms of verse, which was an outwardsign of the revolution in poetic feeling. The imitation of Spenser wasonly one instance of a readiness to lay aside the heroic couplet in favorof other kinds which it had displaced, and in the interests of greatervariety. "During the twenty-five years, " says Mr. Goss, "from thepublication of Thomson's 'Spring' ['Winter'] in 1726, to that of Gray's'Elegy' in 1751, the nine or ten leading poems or collections of versewhich appeared were all of a new type; somber, as a rule, certainlystately, romantic in tone to the extreme, prepared to return, ignorantlyindeed, but with respect, to what was 'Gothic' in manners, architecture, and language; all showing a more or less vague aspiration towards thenature, and not one composed in the heroic couplet hitherto so vigorouslyimposed on serious verse. 'The Seasons, ' 'Night Thoughts' and 'TheGrave' are written in blank verse: 'The Castle of Indolence' and 'TheSchoolmistress' in Spenserian stanza; 'The Spleen' and 'Grongar Hill' inoctosyllabics, while the early odes of Gray and those of Collins arecomposed in a great variety of simple but novel lyric measures. "[2]

The only important writer who had employed blank verse in undramaticpoetry between the publication of "Paradise Regained" in 1672, andThomson's "Winter" in 1726, was John Philips. In the brief prefatorynote to "Paradise Lost, " the poet of "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso, "forgetting or disdaining the graces of his youthful muse, had spoken ofrhyme as "the invention of a barbarous age, " as "a thing trivial and ofno true musical delight. " Milton's example, of course, could not fail togive dignity and authority to the majestic rhythm that he had used; andPhilips' mock-heroic "The Splendid Shilling" (1701), his occasionalpiece, "Blenheim" (1705), and his Georgic "Cyder" (1706), were all avowedimitation of Milton. But the well-nigh solitary character of Philips'experiments was recognized by Thomson, in his allusion to the last-namedpoem:

 "Philips, Pomona's bard, the second thou Who nobly durst, in rime-unfettered verse, With British freedom sing the British song. "[3]

In speaking of Philips' imitations of Milton, Johnson said that if thelatter "had written after the improvements made by Dryden, it isreasonable to believe he would have admitted a more pleasing modulationof numbers into his work. "[4] Johnson hated Adam Smith, but when Boswellmentioned that Smith, in his rhetorical lectures at Glasgow University, had given the preference to rhyme over blank verse, the doctor exclaimed, "Sir, I was once in company with Smith and we did not take to each other;but had I known that he loved rhyme as much as you tell me he does, Ishould have hugged him. "

In 1725 James Thomson, a young Scotchman, came to London to push hisliterary fortunes. His countryman, David Malloch, --or Mallet, as hecalled himself in England, --at that time private tutor in the family ofthe Duke of Montrose, procured Thomson introductions into titled society, and helped him to bring out "Winter, " the first installment of "TheSeasons, " which was published in 1726. Thomson's friend and biographer(1762) the Rev. Patrick Murdoch, says that the poem was "no sooner readthan universally admired; those only excepted who had not been used tofeel, or to look for anything in poetry beyond a _point_ of satirical orepigrammatic wit, a smart antithesis richly trimmed with rhyme. " This isa palpable hit at the stronger contrast than between Thomson and Pope, not alone in subject and feeling, but in diction and verse. Thomson'sstyle is florid and luxuriant, his numbers flowing and diffuse, whilePope had wonted the English ear to the extreme of compression in bothlanguage and meter. Pope is among the most quotable of poets, whileThomson's long poem, in spite of its enduring popularity, has contributedbut a single phrase to the stock of current quotation:

 "To teach the young idea how to shoot. "

"Winter" was followed by "Summer" in 1727, "Spring" in 1728, and thecompleted "Seasons" in 1730. Thomson made many changes and additions insubsequent editions. The original "Seasons" contained only 3902 lines(exclusive of the "Hymn"), while the author's final revision of 1746 gave5413. One proof that "The Seasons" was the work of a fresh andindependent genius is afforded by the many imitations to which it soongave birth. In Germany, a passage from Brockes' translation (1745) wasset to music by Haydn. J. P. Uz (1742) and Wieland each produced a"Frühling, " in Thomson's manner; but the most distinguished of his Germandisciples was Ewald Christian von Kleist, whose "Fruhling" (1749) was adescription of a country walk in spring, in 460 hexameter lines, accompanied, as in Thomson's "Hymn, " with a kind of "Gloria in excelsis, "to the creator of nature. "The Seasons" was translated into French byMadame Bontemps in 1759, and called forth, among other imitations, "LesSaisons" of Saint Lambert, 1769 (revised and extended in 1771. ) InEngland, Thomson's influence naturally manifested itself less in directimitations of the scheme of his poem than in the contagion of his manner, which pervades the work of many succeeding poets, such as Akenside, Armstrong, Dyer, Somerville and Mallet. "There was hardly one versewriter of any eminence, " says Gosse, [5] "from 1725-50, who was not insome manner guided or biased by Thomson, whose genius is to this dayfertile in English literature. "

We have grown so accustomed to a more intimate treatment and a morespiritual interpretation of nature, that we are perhaps too apt toundervalue Thomson's simple descriptive or pictorial method. Comparedwith Wordsworth's mysticism, with Shelley's passionate pantheism, withByron's romantic gloom in presence of the mountains and the sea, withKeats' joyous re-creation of mythology, with Thoreau's Indian-likeapproach to the innermost arcana--with a dozen other moods familiar tothe modern mind--it seems to us unimaginative. Thomson has been likened, as a colorist, to Rubens; and possibly the glow, the breadth, and thevital energy of his best passages, as of Rubens' great canvases, leaveour finer perceptions untouched, and we ask for something more esoteric, more intense. Still there are permanent and solid qualities in Thomson'slandscape art, which can give delight even now to an unspoiled taste. Toa reader of his own generation, "The Seasons" must have come as therevelation of a fresh world of beauty. Such passages as those whichdescribe the first spring showers, the thunderstorm in summer, thetrout-fishing, the sheep-washing, and the terrors of the winter night, were not only strange to the public of that day, but were new in Englishpoetry. 

That the poet was something of a naturalist, who wrote lovingly and withhis "eye upon the object, " is evident from a hundred touches, like"auriculas with shining meal";

 "The yellow wall-flower stained with iron brown;"

or, "The bittern knows his time, with bill engulfed, To shake the sounding marsh. "[6]

Thomson's scenery was genuine. His images of external nature are neverfalse and seldom vague, like Pope's. In a letter to Lyttelton, [7] hespeaks of "the Muses of the great simple country, not the littlefine-lady Muses of Richmond Hill. " His delineations, if less sharp andfinished in detail than Cowper's, have greater breadth. Coleridge'scomparison of the two poets is well known: "The love of nature seems tohave led Thomson to a cheerful religion, and a gloomy religion to haveled Cowper to a love of nature. . . In chastity of diction and theharmony of blank verse, Cowper leaves Thomson immeasurably below him; yetI still feel the latter to have been the born poet. "

The geologist Hugh Miller, who visited Lyttelton's country seat at Hagleyin 1845, describes the famous landscape which Thomson had painted in"Spring":

 "Meantime you gain the height from whose fair brow The bursting prospect spreads immense around, And, snatched o'er hill and dale and wood and lawn, And verdant field and darkening heath between, And villages embosomed soft in trees, And spiry town, by surging columns marked Of household smoke, your eye extensive roams. . . To where the broken landscape, by degrees Ascending, roughens into rigid hills, O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds, That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise. "

"That entire prospect, " says Miller, [8]--"one of the finest in England, and eminently characteristic of what is best in English scenery--enabledme to understand what I had used to deem a peculiarity--in some measure adefect--in the landscapes of the poet Thomson. It must have often struckthe Scotch reader that, in dealing with very extended prospects, herather enumerates than describes. His pictures are often merecatalogues, in which single words stand for classes of objects, and inwhich the entire poetry seems to consist in an overmastering sense ofvast extent, occupied by amazing multiplicity. . . Now the prospect fromthe hill at Hagley furnished me with the true explanation of thisenumerative style. Measured along the horizon, it must, on the lowestestimate, be at least fifty miles in longitudinal extent; measuredlaterally, from the spectator forwards, at least twenty. . . The realarea must rather exceed than fall short of a thousand square miles: thefields into which it is laid out are small, scarcely averaging a squarefurlong in superficies. . . With these there are commixed innumerablecottages, manor-houses, villages, towns. Here the surface is dimpled byunreckoned hollows; there fretted by uncounted mounds; all is amazing, overpowering multiplicity--a multiplicity which neither the pen nor thepencil can adequately express; and so description, in even the hands of amaster, sinks into mere enumeration. The picture becomes a catalogue. "

Wordsworth[9] pronounced "The Seasons" "a work of inspiration, " and saidthat much of it was "written from himself, and nobly from himself, " butcomplained that the style was vicious. Thomson's diction is, in truth, not always worthy of his poetic feeling and panoramic power overlandscape. It is academic and often tumid and wordy, abounding inLatinisms like _effusive_, _precipitant_, _irriguous_, _horrific_, _turgent_, _amusive_. The lover who hides by the stream where hismistress is bathing--that celebrated "serio-comic bathing"--is describedas "the latent Damon"; and when the poet advises against the use of wormsfor trout bait, he puts it thus:

 "But let not on your hook the tortured worm Convulsive writhe in agonizing folds, " etc. 

The poets had now begun to withdraw from town and go out into thecountry, but in their retirement to the sylvan shades they wereaccompanied sometimes, indeed, by Milton's "mountain nymph, sweetLiberty, " but quite as frequently by Shenstone's nymph, "coy Elegance, "who kept reminding them of Vergil. 

Thomson's blank verse, although, as Coleridge says, inferior to Cowper's, is often richly musical and with an energy unborrowed of Milton--asCowper's is too apt to be, at least in his translation of Homer. [10] Mr. Saintsbury[11] detects a mannerism in the verse of "The Seasons, " whichhe illustrates by citing three lines with which the poet "caps the climaxof three several descriptive passages, all within the compass of half adozen pages, " viz. :

 "And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave. " "And Mecca saddens at the long delay. " "And Thule bellows through her utmost isles. "

It would be easy to add many other instances of this type of climactericline, _e. G. _("Summer, " 859), "And Ocean trembles for his green domain. "

For the blank verse of "The Seasons" is a blank verse which has beenpassed through the strainer of the heroic couplet. Though Thomson, inthe flow and continuity of his measure, offers, as has been said, thegreatest contrast to Pope's system of versification; yet wherever heseeks to be nervous, his modulation reminds one more of Pope'santithetical trick than of Shakspere's or Milton's freer structure. Forinstance ("Spring, " 1015):

 "Fills every sense and pants in every vein. "

or (_Ibid. _ 1104):

 "Flames through the nerves and boils along the veins. "

To relieve the monotony of a descriptive poem, the author introducedmoralizing digressions: advice to the husbandman and the shepherd afterthe manner of the "Georgics"; compliments to his patrons, like Lyttelton, Bubb Dodington, and the Countess of Hertford; and sentimental narrativeepisodes, such as the stories of Damon and Musidora, [12] and Celadon andAmelia in "Summer, " and of Lavinia and Palemon[13] in "Autumn"; whileever and anon his eye extensive roamed over the phenomena of nature inforeign climes, the arctic night, the tropic summer, etc. Wordsworthasserts that these sentimental passages "are the parts of the work whichwere probably most efficient in first recommending the author to generalnotice. "[14] They strike us now as insipid enough. But many comingattitudes cast their shadows before across the page of "The Seasons. "Thomson's denunciation of the slave trade, and of cruelty to animals, especially the caging of birds and the coursing of hares; his preferenceof country to town; his rhapsodies on domestic love and the innocence ofthe Golden Age; his contrast between the misery of the poor and theheartless luxury of the rich; all these features of the poem foretokenthe sentimentalism of Sterne and Goldsmith, and the humanitarianism ofCowper and Burns. They anticipate, in particular, that half affecteditch of simplicity which titillated the sensibilities of a corrupt andartificial society in the writings of Rousseau and the idyllic picturesof Bernardin de St. Pierre's "Paul and Virginia. " Thomson went so far inthis vein as to decry the use of animal food in a passage which recallsGoldsmith's stanza:[15]

 "No flocks that range the valley free To slaughter I condemn: Taught by the power that pities me, I learn to pity them. "

This sort of thing was in the air. Pope was not a sentimental person, yet even Pope had written

 "The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food. And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. "[16]

It does not appear that Thomson was personally averse to a leg of mutton. His denunciations of luxury, and his praise of early rising[17] and coldbathing[18] sound rather hollow from the lips of a bard--"more fat thanbard beseems"-who used to lie abed till noon, and who, as Savage toldJohnson, "was perhaps never in cold water in his life. " Johnson reports, not without some spice of malice, that the Countess of Hertford, "whosepractice it was to invite every summer some poet into the country, tohear her verses and assist her studies, " extended this courtesy toThomson, "who took more delight in carousing with Lord Hertford and hisfriends than assisting her ladyship's poetical operations, and thereforenever received another summons. "[19]

The romantic note is not absent from "The Seasons, " but it is notprominent. Thomson's theme was the changes of the year as they affectthe English landscape, a soft, cultivated landscape of lawns, gardens, fields, orchards, sheep-walks, and forest preserves. Only now and thenthat attraction toward the savage, the awful, the mysterious, theprimitive, which marks the romantic mood in naturalistic poetry, showsitself in touches like these. 

 "High from the summit of a craggy cliff, Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frowns On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race Reigns the setting sun to Indian worlds. "[20]

 "Or where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked, melancholy isles Of farthest Thule, and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides. "[21]

Compare also the description of the thunderstorm in the mountains("Summer, " 1156-68), closing with the lines:

 "Far seen the heights of heathy Cheviot blaze, And Thule bellows through her utmost isles. "

The Western Islands appear to have had a peculiar fascination forThomson. The passages above quoted, and the stanza from "The Castle ofIndolence, " cited on page 94, gave Collins the clew for his "Ode on theSuperstitions of the Scottish Highlands, " which contained, says Lowell, the whole romantic school in the germ. Thomason had perhaps found theembryon atom in Milton's "stormy Hebrides, " in "Lycidas, " whose echo isprolonged in Wordsworth's "Solitary Reaper"--

 "Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. "

Even Pope--he had a soul--was not unsensitive to this, as witness his

 "Loud as the wolves, on Orcas' stormy steep, Howl to the roarings of the Northern deep. "[22]

The melancholy which Victor Hugo pronounces a distinguishing badge ofromantic art, and which we shall see gaining more and more upon Englishpoetry as the century advanced, is also discernible in "The Seasons" in apassage like the following:

 "O bear me then to vast embowering shades, To twilight groves and visionary vales, To weeping grottos and prophetic glooms; Where angel-forms athwart the solemn dusk Tremendous sweep, or seem to sweep along; And voices more than human, through the void, Deep-sounding, seize the enthusiastic ear;"[23]

or this, which recalls "Il Penseroso":

 "Now all amid the rigors of the year, In the wild depth of winter, while without The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat Between the groaning forest and the shore, Beat by the boundless multitude of waves, A rural, sheltered, solitary scene; Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit And hold high converse with the mighty dead. "[24]

The revival again, of the preternatural and of popular superstitions asliterary material, after a rationalizing and skeptical age, is signalizedby such a passage as this:

 "Onward they pass, o'er many a panting height, And valley sunk and unfrequented, where At fall of eve the fairy people throng, In various game and revelry to pass The summer night, as village stories tell. But far around they wander from the grave Of him whom his ungentle fortune urged Against his own sad breast to life the hand Of impious violence. The lonely tower Is also shunned, whose mournful chambers hold, So night-struck fancy dreams, the yelling ghost. "

It may not be uninstructive to note the occurrence of the word _romantic_at several points in the poem:

 "glimmering shades and sympathetic glooms, Where the dim umbrage o'er the falling stream Romantic hangs. "[25]

This is from a passage in which romantic love once more comes back intopoetry, after its long eclipse; and in which the lover is depicted aswandering abroad at "pensive dusk, " or by moonlight, through groves andalong brooksides. [26] The word is applied likewise to clouds, "rolledinto romantic shapes, the dream of waking fancy"; and to the scenery ofScotland--"Caledonia in romantic view. " In a subtler way, the feeling ofsuch lines as these is romantic:

 "Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart, As home he goes beneath the joyous moon;"

or these, of the comparative lightness of the summer night:

 "A faint, erroneous ray, Glanced from the imperfect surfaces of things, Flings half an image on the straining eye. "

In a letter to Stonehewer (June 29, 1760), Gray comments thus upon apassage from Ossian:

 "'Ghosts ride on the tempest to-night: Sweet is their voice between the gusts of wind: _Their songs are of other worlds. _'

"Did you never observe (_while rocking winds are piping loud_) that pause, as the gust is re-collecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a shrilland plaintive note, like the soul of an Aeolian harp? I do assure you, there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit. Thomson hadan ear sometimes; he was not deaf to this, and has described itgloriously, but given it another, different turn, and of more horror. Icannot repeat the lines: it is in his 'Winter. '" The lines that Gray hadin mind were probably these (191-94):

 "Then, too, they say, through all the burdened air, Long groans are heard, shrill sounds and distant sighs That, uttered by the demon of the night, Warn the devoted wretch of woe and death. "

Thomson appears to have been a sweet-tempered, indolent man, constant infriendship and much loved by his friends. He had a little house andgrounds in Kew Lane where he used to compose poetry on autumn nights andloved to listen to the nightingales in Richmond Garden; and where, sangCollins, in his ode on the poet's death (1748), "Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore, When Thames in summer wreaths is drest, And oft suspend the dashing oar To bid his gentle spirit rest. "

Collins had been attracted to Richmond by Thomson's residence there, andforsook the neighborhood after his friend's death. 

Joseph Warton, in his "Essay on Pope" (1756), testified that "TheSeasons" had been "very instrumental in diffusing a taste for thebeauties of nature and landscape. " One evidence of this diffused tastewas the rise of the new or natural school of landscape gardening. Thiswas a purely English art, and Gray, writing in 1763, [27] says "It is notforty years since the art was born among us; and it is sure that therewas nothing in Europe like it": he adds that "our skill in gardening andlaying out grounds" is "the only taste we can call our own, the onlyproof of our original talent in matter of pleasure. " "Neither Italy norFrance have ever had the least notion of it, nor yet do at all comprehendit, when they see it. "[28] Gray's "not forty years" carries us back withsufficient precision to the date of "The Seasons" (1726-30), and it isnot perhaps giving undue credit to Thomson, to acknowledge him as, in agreat measure, the father of the national school of landscape gardening. That this has always been recognized upon the Continent as an art ofEnglish invention, is evidenced by the names _Englische Garten_, _jardinAnglais_, still given in Germany and France to pleasure grounds laid outin the natural taste. [29] Schopenhauer gives the philosophy of theopposing styles as follows: "The great distinction between the Englishand the old French garden rests, in the last analysis, upon this, viz. , that the former are laid out in the objective, the latter in thesubjective sense, that is to say, in the former the will of Nature, as itmanifests (_objektivirt_) itself in tree, mountain, and water, is broughtto the purest possible expression of its ideas, _i. E. _, of its own being. In the French gardens, on the other hand, there is reflected only thewill of the owner who has subdued Nature, so that, instead of her ownideas, she wears as tokens of her slavery, the forms which he has forcedupon her-clipped hedges, trees cut into all manner of shapes, straightalleys, arched walks, etc. "

It would be unfair to hold the false taste of Pope's generationresponsible for that formal style of gardening which prevailed when "TheSeasons" was written. The old-fashioned Italian or French or Dutchgarden--as it was variously called--antedated the Augustan era, whichsimply inherited it from the seventeenth century. In Bacon's essay ongardens, as well as in the essays on the same subject by Cowley and SirWilliam Temple, the ideal pleasure ground is very much like that which LeNotre realized so brilliantly at Versailles. [30] Addison, in fact, inthe _Spectator_ (No. 414) and Pope himself in the _Guardian_ (No. 173)ridiculed the excesses of the reigning mode, and Pope attacked them againin his description of Timon's Villa in the "Epistle to the Earl ofBurlington" (1731), which was thought to be meant for Canons, the seat ofthe Duke of Chandos. 

 "His gardens next your admiration call, On every side you look, behold the wall! No pleasing intricacies intervene, No artful wildness to perplex the scene; Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other. The suffering eye inverted nature sees, Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees; With here a fountain, never to be played; And there a summer house, that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers; There gladiators fight, or die in flowers; Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn, And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn. "

Still the criticism is not merely fanciful which discovers an analogybetween the French garden, with its trim regularity and artificialsmoothness, and the couplets which Pope wrote: just such an analogy asexists between the whole classical school of poetry and the Italianarchitecture copied from Palladio and introduced in England by InigoJones and Christopher Wren. Grounds were laid out in rectangular plots, bordered by straight alleys, sometimes paved with vari-colored sand, andedged with formal hedges of box and holly. The turf was inlaid withparterres cut in geometric shapes and set, at even distances, with yewtrees clipped into cubes, cones, pyramids, spheres, sometimes intofigures of giants, birds, animals, and ships--called "topiary work"(_opus topiarium_). Terraces, fountains, bowling-greens (Fr. _boulingrin_) statues, arcades, quincunxes, espallers, and artificialmazes or labyrinths loaded the scene. The whole was inclosed by a wall, which shut the garden off from the surrounding country. 

"When a Frenchman reads of the Garden of Eden, " says Horace Walpole, inhis essay "On Modern Gardening" (written in 1770, published in 1785), "Ido not doubt but he concludes it was something approaching to that ofVersailles, with clipped hedges, _berceaux_ and trellis work. . . Themeasured walk, the quincunx and the _étoile_ imposed their unsatisfyingsameness on every royal and noble garden. . . Many French groves seemgreen chests set upon poles. . . In the garden of Marshal de Biron atParis, consisting of fourteen acres, every walk is buttoned on each sideby lines of flower-pots, which succeed in their seasons. When I saw it, there were nine thousand pots of asters, or _la reine Marguerite_. . . At Lady Orford's, at Piddletown, in Dorsetshire, there was, when mybrother married, a double enclosure of thirteen gardens, each I supposenot much above a hundred yards square, with an enfilade of correspondentgates; and before you arrived at these, you passed a narrow gut betweentwo stone terraces that rose above your head, and which were crowned by aline of pyradmidal yews. A bowling green was all the lawn admitted inthose times: a circular lake the extent of magnificence. "[31]

Walpole names Theobalds and Nonsuch as famous examples of the old formalstyle of garden; Stourhead, Hagley, and Stowe--the country seat ofLyttelton's brother-in-law, Lord Cobham--of the new. He says thatmottoes and coats of arms were sometimes cut in yew, box, and holly. Herefers with respect to a recent work by the Rev. Thomas Whately, orWheatley, "Observations on Modern Gardening, " 1770; and to a poem, thenand still in manuscript, but passages of which are given by Amherst, [32]entitled "The Rise and Progress of the Present Taste in Planting Parks, Pleasure Grounds, Gardens, etc. In a poetic epistle to Lord ViscountIrwin, " 1767. 

Gray's friend and editor, the Rev. William Mason, in his poem "TheEnglish Garden, " 1757, speaks of the French garden as already a thing ofthe past. 

 "O how unlike the scene my fancy forms, Did Folly, heretofore, with Wealth conspire To plant that formal, dull disjointed scene Which once was called a garden! Britain still Bears on her breast full many a hideous wound Given by the cruel pair, when, borrowing aid From geometric skill, they vainly strove By line, by plummet and unfeeling shears To form with verdure what the builder formed With stone. . . Hence the sidelong walls Of shaven yew; the holly's prickly arms Trimmed into high arcades; the tonsile box, Wove in mosaic mode of many a curl Around the figured carpet of the lawn. . . The terrace mound uplifted; the long line Deep delved of flat canal. "[33]

But now, continues the poet, Taste "exalts her voice" and

 "At the awful sound The terrace sinks spontaneous; on the green, Broidered with crispëd knots, the tonsile yews Wither and fall; the fountain dares no more To fling its wasted crystal through the sky, But pours salubrious o'er the parchëd lawn. "

The new school had the intolerance of reformers. The ruthless CapabilityBrown and his myrmidons laid waste many a prim but lovely old garden, with its avenues, terraces, and sun dials, the loss of which is deeplydeplored, now that the Queen Anne revival has taught us to relish the_rococo_ beauties which Brown's imitation landscapes displaced. 

We may pause for a little upon this "English Garden" of Mason's, as anexample of that brood of didactic blank-poems, begotten of Phillips'"Cyder" and Thomson's "Seasons, " which includes Mallet's "Excursion"(1728), Somerville's "Chase" (1734), Akenside's "Pleasures ofImagination" (1742-44), Armstrong's "Art of Preserving Health" (1744), Dyer's "Fleece" (1757) and Grainger's "Sugar Cane" (1764). Mason's blankverse, like Mallet's, is closely imitative of Thomson's and the influenceof Thomson's inflated diction is here seen at its worst. The whole poemis an object lesson on the absurdity of didactic poetry. Especiallyharrowing are the author's struggles to be poetic while describing thevarious kinds of fences designed to keep sheep out of his inclosures. 

 "Ingrateful sure, When such the theme, becomes the poet's task: Yet must he try by modulation meet Of varied cadence and selected phrase Exact yet free, without inflation bold, To dignify that theme. "

Accordingly he dignified his theme by speaking of a net as the"sportsman's hempen toils, " and of a gun as the

 "--fell tube Whose iron entrails hide the sulphurous blast Satanic engine!"

When he names an ice-house, it is under a form of conundrum:

 "--the structure rude where Winter pounds, In conic pit his congelations hoar, That Summer may his tepid beverage cool With the chill luxury. "

This species of verbiage is the earmark of all eighteenth-century poetryand poets; not only of those who used the classic couplet, but equally ofthe romanticizing group who adopted blank verse. The best of them arenot free from it, not even Gray, not even Collins; and it pervadesWordsworth's earliest verses, his "Descriptive Sketches" and "EveningWalk" published in 1793. But perhaps the very worst instance of it is inDr. Armstrong's "Economy of Love, " where the ludicrous contrast betweenthe impropriety of the subject and the solemn pomp of the diction amountsalmost to _bouffe_. 

In emulation of "The Seasons" Mason introduced a sentimental lovestory--Alcander and Nerina--into his third book. He informs his readers(book II. 34-78) that, in the reaction against straight alleys, manygardeners had gone to an extreme in the use of zigzag meanders; and herecommends them to follow the natural curves of the footpaths which themilkmaid wears across the pastures "from stile to stile, " or which

 --"the scudding hare Draws to her dew-sprent seat o'er thymy heaths. "

The prose commentary on Mason's poem, by W. Burgh, [34] asserts that theformal style of garden had begun to give way about the commencement ofthe eighteenth century, though the new fashion had but very latelyattained to its perfection. Mason mentions Pope as a champion of thetrue taste, [35] but the descriptions of his famous villa at Twickenham, with its grotto, thickets, and artificial mounds, hardly suggest to themodern reader a very successful attempt to reproduce nature. To be sure, Pope had only five acres to experiment with, and that parklike scenerywhich distinguishes the English landscape garden requires a good deal ofroom. The art is the natural growth of a country where primogeniture haskept large estates in the hands of the nobility and landed gentry, and inwhich a passion for sport has kept the nobility and gentry in the countrya great share of the year. Even Shenstone--whose place is commended byMason--Shenstone at the Leasowes, with his three hundred acres, felt hislittle pleasance rather awkwardly dwarfed by the neighborhood ofLyttelton's big park at Hagley. 

The general principle of the new or English school was to imitate nature;to let trees keep their own shapes, to substitute winding walks forstraight alleys, and natural waterfalls or rapids for _jets d'eau_ inmarble basins. The plan upon which Shenstone worked is explained in his"Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening"[36] (1764), a few sentences fromwhich will indicate the direction of the reform: "Landscape shouldcontain variety enough to form a picture upon canvas; and this is no badtest, as I think the landscape painter is the gardener's best designer. The eye requires a sort of balance here; but not so as to encroach uponprobable nature. A wood or hill may balance a house or obelisk; forexactness would be displeasing. . . It is not easy to account for thefondness of former times for straight-lined avenues to their houses;straight-lined walks through their woods; and, in short, every kind ofstraight line, where the foot has to travel over what the eye has donebefore. . . To stand still and survey such avenues may afford someslender satisfaction, through the change derived from perspective; but tomove on continually and find no change of scene in the least attendant onour change of place, must give actual pain to a person of taste. . . Iconceived some idea of the sensation he must feel from walking but a fewminutes, immured between Lord D----'s high shorn yew hedges, which runexactly parallel at the distance of about ten feet, and are contrivedperfectly to exclude all kind of objects whatsoever. . . The side treesin vistas should be so circumstanced as to afford a probability that theygrew by nature. . . The shape of ground, the disposition of trees andthe figure of water must be sacred to nature; and no forms must beallowed that make a discovery of art. . . The taste of the citizen andof the mere peasant are in all respects the same: the former gilds hisballs, paints his stonework and statues white, plants his trees in linesor circles, cuts his yew-trees, four-square or conic, or gives them whathe can of the resemblance of birds or bears or men; squirts up hisrivulets in _jets d'eau_; in short, admires no part of nature but herductility; exhibits everything that is glaring, that implies expense, orthat effects a surprise because it is unnatural. The peasant is hisadmirer. . . Water should ever appear as an irregular lake or windingstream. . . Hedges, appearing as such, are universally bad. Theydiscover art in nature's province. "

There is surely a correspondence between this new taste for picturesquegardening which preferred freedom, variety, irregularity, and naturalnessto rule, monotony, uniformity, and artifice, and that new taste inliterature which discarded the couplet for blank verse, or for variousstanza forms, which left the world of society for the solitudes ofnature, and ultimately went, in search of fresh stimulus, to the remainsof the Gothic ages and the rude fragments of Norse and Celtic antiquity. 

Both Walpole and Mason speak of William Kent, the architect and landscapepainter, as influential in introducing a purer taste in the gardener'sart. Kent was a friend of Pope and a _protégé_ of Lord Burlington towhom Pope inscribed his "Epistle on the Use of Riches, " already quoted(see _ante_ p. 121), and who gave Kent a home at his country house. Kentis said to have acknowledged that he caught his taste in gardening fromthe descriptive passages in Spenser, whose poems he illustrated. Walpoleand Mason also unite in contrasting with the artificial gardening ofMilton's time the picture of Eden in "Paradise Lost:"

 "--where not nice art in curious knots, But nature boon poured forth on hill and dale Flowers worthy of Paradise; while all around Umbrageous grots, and caves of cool recess, And murmuring waters, down the slope dispersed, Or held by fringëd banks in crystal lakes. Compose a rural seat of various hue. "

But it is worth noting that in "L'Allegro" "retired leisure, " takes hispleasure in "_trim_ gardens, " while in Collins, "Ease and health retire To breezy lawn or forest deep. "

Walpole says that Kent's "ruling principle was that nature abhors astraight line. " Kent "leaped the fence and saw that all nature was agarden. He felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley, changingimperceptibly into each other. . . And remarked how loose groves crownedan easy eminence with happy ornament. . . The great principles on whichhe worked were perspective and light and shade. . . But of all thebeauties he added to the face of this beautiful country, none surpassedhis management of water. Adieu to canals, circular basins, and cascadestumbling down marble steps. . . The gentle stream was taught toserpentine seemingly at its pleasure. "[37] The treatment of the gardenas a part of the landscape in general was commonly accomplished by theremoval of walls, hedges, and other inclosures, and the substitution ofthe ha-ha or sunken fence. It is odd that Walpole, though he speaks ofCapability Brown, makes no mention of the Leasowes, whose proprietor, William Shenstone, the author of "The School-mistress, " is one of themost interesting of amateur gardeners. "England, " says Hugh Miller, "hasproduced many greater poets than Shenstone, but she never produced agreater landscape gardener. "

At Oxford, Shenstone had signalized his natural tastes by wearing his ownhair instead of the wig then (1732) universally the fashion. [38] Oncoming of age, he inherited a Shropshire farm, called the Leasowes, inthe parish of Hales Owen and an annuity of some three hundred pounds. Hewas of an indolent, retiring, and somewhat melancholy temperament; and, instead of pursuing a professional career, he settled down upon hisproperty and, about the year 1745, began to turn it into a _fermé ornée_. There he wooed the rustic muse in elegy, ode, and pastoral ballad, sounding upon the vocal reed the beauties of simplicity and the vanity ofambition, and mingling with these strains complaints of Delia's crueltyand of the shortness of his own purse, which hampered him seriously inhis gardening designs. Mr. Saintsbury has described Shenstone as amaster of "the artificial-natural style of poetry. "[39] His pastoralinsipidities about pipes and crooks and kids, Damon and Delia, Strephonand Chloe, excited the scorn of Dr. Johnson, who was also at no pains toconceal his contempt for the poet's horticultural pursuits. "Whether toplant a walk in undulating curves and to place a bench at every turnwhere there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where itwill be seen; to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and tothicken the plantation where there is something to be hidden, demands anygreat powers of mind, I will not enquire. " The doctor reports thatLyttelton was jealous of the fame which the Leasowes soon acquired, andthat when visitors to Hagley asked to see Shenstone's place, their hostwould adroitly conduct them to inconvenient points of view--introducingthem, _e. G. _, at the wrong end of a walk, so as to detect a deception inperspective, "injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain. "[40]Graves, however, denies that any rivalry was in question between thegreat domain of Hagley and the poet's little estate. "The truth of thecase, " he writes, "was that the Lyttelton family went so frequently withtheir company to the Leasowes, that they were unwilling to break in uponMr. Shenstone's retirement on every occasion, and therefore often went tothe principal points of view, without waiting for anyone to conduct themregularly through the whole walks. Of this Mr. Shenstone would sometimespeevishly complain. "

Shenstone describes in his "Thoughts on Gardening, " several artificesthat he put in practice for increasing the apparent distance of objects, or for lengthening the perspective of an avenue by widening it in theforeground and planting it there with dark-foliaged trees, like yews andfirs, "then with trees more and more fady, till they end in thealmond-willow or silver osier. " To have Lord Lyttelton bring in a partyat the small, or willow end of such a walk, and thereby spoil the wholetrick, must indeed have been provoking. Johnson asserts that Shenstone'shouse was ruinous and that "nothing raised his indignation more than toask if there were any fishes in his water. " "In time, " continues thedoctor, "his expenses brought clamors about him that overpowered thelamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and his groves were haunted by beingsvery different from fawns and fairies;" to wit, bailiffs; but Gravesdenies this. 

The fame of the Leasowes attracted visitors from all parts of thecountry--literary men like Spence, Home, and Dodsley; picturesquetourists, who came out of curiosity; and titled persons, who came, orsent their gardeners, to obtain hints for laying out their grounds. Lyttelton brought William Pitt, who was so much interested that heoffered to contribute two hundred pounds toward improvements, an offerthat Shenstone, however, declined. Pitt had himself some skill inlandscape gardening, which he exercised at Enfield Chase and afterward atHayes. [41] Thomson, who was Lyttelton's guest at Hagley every summerduring the last three or four years of his life, was naturally familiarwith the Leasowes. There are many references to the "sweet descriptivebard, " in Shenstone's poems[42] and a seat was inscribed to his memory ina part of the grounds known as Vergil's Grove. "This seat, " saysDodsley, "is placed upon a steep bank on the edge of the valley, fromwhich the eye is here drawn down into the flat below by the light thatglimmers in front and by the sound of various cascades, by which thewinding stream is agreeably broken. Opposite to this seat the groundrises again in an easy concave to a kind of dripping fountain, where asmall rill trickles down a rude niche of rock work through fern, liverwort, and aquatic weeds. . . The whole scene is opaque andgloomy. "[43]

English landscape gardening is a noble art. Its principles are sound andof perpetual application. Yet we have advanced so much farther in thepassion for nature than the men of Shenstone's day that we are apt to beimpatient of the degree of artifice present in even the most skillfulcounterfeit of the natural landscape. The poet no longer writes odes on"Rural Elegance, " nor sings

 "The transport, most allied to song, In some fair valley's peaceful bound To catch soft hints from Nature's tongue, And bid Arcadia bloom around; Whether we fringe the sloping hill, Or smooth below the verdant mead; Or in the horrid brambles' room Bid careless groups of roses bloom; Or let some sheltered lake serene Reflect flowers, woods and spires, and brighten all the scene. "

If we cannot have the mountains, the primeval forest, or the shore of thewild sea, we can at least have Thomson's "great simple country, " subduedto man's use but not to his pleasure. The modern mood prefers a lane toa winding avenue, and an old orchard or stony pasture to a lawn decoratedwith coppices. "I do confess, " says Howitt, "that in the 'Leasowes' Ihave always found so much ado about nothing; such a parade of miniaturecascades, lakes, streams conveyed hither and thither; surprises in thedisposition of woods and the turn of walks. . . That I have heartilywished myself out upon a good rough heath. "

For the "artificial-natural" was a trait of Shenstone's gardening no lessthan of his poetry. He closed every vista and emphasized every openingin his shrubberies and every spot that commanded a prospect with comeobject which was as an exclamation point on the beauty of the scene: arustic bench, a root-house, a Gothic alcove, a grotto, a hermitage, amemorial urn or obelisk dedicated to Lyttelton, Thomson, Somerville, [44]Dodsley, or some other friend. He supplied these with inscriptionsexpressive of the sentiments appropriate to the spot, passages fromVergil, or English or Latin verses of his own composition. Walpole saysthat Kent went so far in his imitation of natural scenery as to plant_dead_ trees in Kensington Garden. Walpole himself seems to approve ofsuch devices as artificial ruins, "a feigned steeple of a distant churchor an unreal bridge to disguise the termination of water. " Shenstone wasnot above these little effects: he constructed a "ruinated priory" and atemple of Pan out of rough, unhewn stone; he put up a statue of a pipingfaun, and another of the Venus dei Medici beside a vase of gold fishes. 

Some of Shenstone's inscriptions have escaped the tooth of time. Themotto, for instance, cut upon the urn consecrated to the memory of hiscousin, Miss Dolman, was prefixed by Byron to his "Elegy upon Thyrza":"Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!" Thehabit of inscription prevailed down to the time of Wordsworth, whocomposed a number for the grounds of Sir George Beaumont at Coleorton. One of Akenside's best pieces is his "Inscription for a Grotto, " which isnot unworthy of Landor. Matthew Green, the author of "The Spleen, " wrotea poem of some 250 lines upon Queen Caroline's celebrated grotto inRichmond Garden. "A grotto, " says Johnson, apropos of that still morecelebrated one at Pope's Twickenham villa, "is not often the wish orpleasure of an Englishman, who has more frequent need to solicit thanexclude the sun"; but the increasing prominence of the mossy cave andhermit's cell, both in descriptive verse and in gardening, wassymptomatic. It was a note of the coming romanticism, and of thatpensive, elegiac strain which we shall encounter in the work of Gray, Collins, and the Wartons. It marked the withdrawal of the muse from theworld's high places into the cool sequestered vale of life. All throughthe literature of the mid-century, the high-strung ear may catch thedrip-drip of spring water down the rocky walls of the grot. 

At Hagley, halfway up the hillside, Miller saw a semi-octagonal templededicated to the genius of Thomson. It stood in a grassy hollow whichcommanded a vast, open prospect and was a favorite resting place of thepoet of "The Seasons. " In a shady, secluded ravine he found a whitepedestal, topped by an urn which Lyttelton had inscribed to the memory ofShenstone. This contrast of situation seemed to the tourist emblematic. Shenstone, he says, was an egotist, and his recess, true to hischaracter, excludes the distant landscape. Gray, who pronounced "TheSchoolmistress" a masterpiece in its kind, made a rather slightingmention of its author. [45] "I have read an 8vo volume of Shenstone'sletters; poor man! He was always wishing for money, for fame and otherdistinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living, against hiswill, in retirement and in a place which his taste had adorned, but whichhe only enjoyed when people of note came to see and commend it. " Grayunquestionably profited by a reading of Shenstone's "Elegies, " whichantedate his own "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751). Headopted Shenstone's stanza, which Shenstone had borrowed from the loveelegies of a now forgotten poet, James Hammond, equerry to PrinceFrederick and a friend of Cobham, Lyttelton, and Chesterfield. "WhyHammond or other writers, " says Johnson, "have thought the quatrain often syllables elegiac, it is difficult to tell. The character of theelegy is gentleness and tenuity, but this stanza has been pronounced byDryden. . . To be the most magnificent of all the measures which ourlanguage affords. "[46]

Next after "The Schoolmistress, " the most engaging of Shenstone's poemsis his "Pastoral Ballad, " written in 1743 in four parts and in a trippinganapestic measure. Familiar to most readers is the stanza beginning:

 "I have found out a gift for my fair, I have found where the wood-pigeons breed. "

Dr. Johnson acknowledged the prettiness of the conceit:

 "So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return;"

and he used to quote and commend the well-known lines "Written at an Innat Henley:

 "Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn. "

As to Shenstone's blank verse--of which there is not much--the doctorsays: "His blank verses, those that can read them may probably find to belike the blank verses of his neighbors. " Shenstone encouraged Percy topublish his "Reliques. " The plans for the grounds at Abbotsford weresomewhat influenced by Didsley's description of the Leasowes, which Scottstudied with great interest. 

In 1744 Mark Akenside, a north country man and educated partly inScotland, published his "Pleasures of Imagination, " afterwards rewrittenas "The Pleasures of the Imagination" and spoiled in the process. Thetitle and something of the course of thought in the poem were taken fromAddison's series of papers on the subject (_Spectator_, Nos. 411-421). Akenside was a man of learning and a physician of distinction. His poem, printed when he was only twenty-three, enjoyed a popularity now ratherhard to account for. Gray complained of its obscurity and said it wasissued nine years too early, but admitted that now and then it rose "evento the best, particularly in description. " Akenside was harsh, formal, and dogmatic, as a man. Smollett caricatured him in "Peregrine Pickle. "Johnson hated his Whig principles and represents him, when settled atNorthampton, as "having deafened the place with clamors for liberty. "[47]He furthermore disliked the class of poetry to which Akenside's workbelonged, and he told Boswell that he couldn't read it. Still he speaksof him with a certain cautious respect, which seems rather a concessionto contemporary opinion than an appreciation of the critic's own. Heeven acknowledges that Akenside has "few artifices of disgust than mostof his brethren of the blank song. " Lowell says that the very title ofAkenside's poem pointed "away from the level highway of commonplace tomountain paths and less dogmatic prospects. The poem was stiff andunwilling, but in its loins lay the seed of nobler births. Without it, the 'Lines Written at Tintern Abbey' might never have been. "

One cannot read "The Pleasures of Imagination" without becoming sensiblethat the writer was possessed of poetic feeling, and feeling of a kindthat we generally agree to call romantic. His doctrine at least, if nothis practice, was in harmony with the fresh impulse which was coming intoEnglish poetry. Thus he celebrates heaven-born genius and theinspiration of nature, and decries "the critic-verse" and the effort toscale Parnassus "by dull obedience. " He invokes the peculiar muse of thenew school:

 "Indulgent _Fancy_, from the fruitful banks Of Avon, whence thy rosy fingers cull Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf Where Shakspere lies. "

But Akenside is too abstract. In place of images, he presents the readerwith dissertations. A poem which takes imagination as its subject ratherthan its method will inevitably remain, not poetry but a lecture onpoetry--a theory of beauty, not an example of it. Akenside might havechosen for his motto Milton's lines:

 "How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbëd, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute. "

Yet he might have remembered, too, what Milton said about the duty ofpoetry to be simple, sensuous, and passionate. Akenside's is nothing ofthese; it is, on the contrary obscure, metaphysical, and, as aconsequence, frigid. Following Addison, he names greatness and novelty, _i. E. _, the sublime and the wonderful, as, equally with beauty, the chiefsources of imaginative pleasure, and the whole poem is a plea for what weare now accustomed to call the ideal. In the first book there is apassage which is fine in spirit and--though in a less degree--inexpression:

 "Who that from Alpine heights his laboring eye Shoots round the wide horizon, to survey Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave Through mountains, plains, through empires black with shade. And continents of sand, will turn his gaze To mark the windings of a scanty rill That murmurs at his feet? The high-born soul Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm; Rides on the vollied lightning through the heavens; Or, yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast, Sweeps the long trace of day. "

The hint for this passage was furnished by a paragraph in Addison'ssecond paper (_Spectator_, 412) and the emotion is the same to whichGoethe gives utterance in the well-known lines of "Faust";

 "Doch jedem ist es eingeboren Dass sein Gefühl hinauf und vorwärts dringt, " etc. 

But how greatly superior in sharpness of detail, richness of invention, energy of movement is the German to the English poet!

Akenside ranks among the earlier Spenserians by virtue of his "Virtuoso"(1737) and of several odes composed in a ten-lined variation on Spenser'sstanza. A collection of his "Odes" appeared in 1745--the year beforeCollins' and Joseph Warton's-and a second in 1760. They are of littlevalue, but show here and there traces of Milton's minor poetry and thatelegiac sentiment, common to the lyrical verse of the time, noticeableparticularly in a passage on the nightingale in Ode XV, book i;, "To theEvening Star. " "The Pleasures of Imagination" was the parent of anumerous offspring of similarly entitled pieces, among which are JosephWarton's "Pleasures of Melancholy, " Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope, " andRogers' "Pleasures of Memory. "

In the same year with Thomson's "Winter" (1726) there were published intwo poetical miscellanies a pair of little descriptive pieces, "GrongarHill" and "The Country Walk, " written by John Dyer, a young Welshman, inthe octosyllabic couplet of Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Pensoroso. "("Grongar Hill, " as first printed was a sort of irregular ode withalternate rhyming; but it was much improvised in later editions, andrewritten throughout in couplets. )

Dyer was a landscape painter who had been educated at Westminster school, studied under Richardson at London, and spent some time wandering aboutthe mountains of Wales in the practice of his art. "Grongar Hill" is, infact, a pictorial poem, a sketch of the landscape seen from the top ofhis favorite summit in South Wales. It is a slight piece of work, careless and even slovenly in execution, but with an ease and lightnessof touch that contrast pleasantly with Thomson's and Akenside'sponderosity. When Dyer wrote blank verse he slipped into the Thomsoniandiction, "cumbent sheep" and "purple groves pomaceous. " But in "GrongarHill"--although he does call the sun Phoebus--the shorter measure seemsto bring shorter words, and he has lines of Wordsworthian simplicity--

 "The woody valleys warm and low, The windy summit, wild and high. "

or the closing passage, which Wordsworth alludes to in his sonnet onDyer--"Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill":

 "Grass and flowers Quiet treads On the meads and mountain heads. . . And often, by the murmuring rill, Hears the thrush while all is still, Within the groves of Grongar Hill. "

Wordsworth was attracted by Dyer's love of "mountain turf" and "spaciousairy downs" and "naked Snowdon's wide, aerial waste. " The "power ofhills" was on him. Like Wordsworth, too, he moralized his song. In"Grongar Hill, " the ruined tower suggests the transience of human life:the rivers running down to the sea are likened to man's career from birthto death; and Campbell's couplet, "'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view And robes the mountain in its azure hue, "[48]

is thought to owe something to Dyer's

 "As yon summits soft and fair, Clad in colors of the air Which to those who journey near Barren, brown and rough appear, Still we tread the same coarse way, The present's still a cloudy day. "

Dyer went to Rome to pursue his art studies and, on his return in 1740, published his "Ruins of Rome" in blank verse. He was not very successfulas a painter, and finally took orders, married, and settled down as acountry parson. In 1757 he published his most ambitious work, "TheFleece, " a poem in blank verse and in four books, descriptive of Englishwool-growing. "The subject of 'The Fleece, ' sir, " pronounced Johnson, "cannot be made poetical. How can a man write poetically of serges anddruggets?" Didactic poetry, in truth, leads too often to ludicrousdescents. Such precepts as "beware the rot, " "enclose, enclose, yeswains, " and

 "-the utility of salt Teach thy slow swains";

with prescriptions for the scab, and advice as to divers kinds of woolcombs, are fatal. A poem of this class has to be _made_ poetical, bydragging in episodes and digressions which do not inhere in the subjectitself but are artificially associated with it. Of such a nature is theloving mention--quoted in Wordsworth's sonnet--of the poet's nativeCarmarthenshire

 "-that soft tract Of Cambria, deep embayed, Dimetian land, By green hills fenced, by Ocean's murmur lulled. "

Lowell admired the line about the Siberian exiles, met

 "On the dark level of adversity. "

Miltonic reminiscences are frequent in Dyer. Sabrina is borrowed from"Comus"; "bosky bourn" and "soothest shepherd" from the same; "the lightfantastic toe" from "L'Allegro"; "level brine" and "nor taint-worm shallinfect the yearning herds, " from "Lycidas"; "audience pure be thydelight, though few, " from "Paradise Lost. "

"Mr. Dyer, " wrote Gray to Horace Walpole in 1751, "has more of poetry inhis imagination than almost any of our number; but rough andinjudicious. " Akenside, who helped Dyer polish the manuscript of "TheFleece, " said that "he would regulate his opinion of the reigning tasteby the fate of Dyer's 'Fleece'; for if that were ill received, he shouldnot think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence. " Theromantic element in Dyer's imagination appears principally in his love ofthe mountains and of ancient ruins. Johnson cites with approval asentence in "The Ruins of Rome":

 "At dead of night, The hermit oft, midst his orisons, hears Aghast the voice of Time disparting towers. "[49]

These were classic ruins. Perhaps the doctor's sympathy would not havebeen so quickly extended to the picture of the moldering Gothic tower in"Grongar Hill, " or of "solitary Stonehenge gray with moss, " in "TheFleece. "

[1] W. D. McClintock, "The Romantic and Classical in English Literature, "_Chautauquan_, Vol. XIV, p. 187. 

[2] "Eighteenth Century Literature, " p. 207. 

[3] "Autumn, " lines 645-47. 

[4] "Life of Philips. "

[5] "Eighteenth Century Literature, " p. 221

[6] _Cf_. Chaucer: "And as a bitoure bumbleth in the mire. " --_Wyf of Bathes Tale_. 

[7] Phillimore's "Life of Lyttelton, " Vol. I, p. 286. 

[8] "First Impression of England, " p. 135. 

[9] Appendix to Preface to the Second Edition of "Lyrical Ballads, "

[10] There are, of course, Miltonic reminiscences in "The Seasons. " Themoon's "spotted disk" ("Autumn, " 1091) is Milton's "spotty globe. " Theapostrophe to light ("Spring" 90-96) borrows its "efflux divine" fromMilton's "bright effluence of bright essence increate" ("Paradise Lost, "III. 1-12) And _cf. _ "Autumn, " 783-84:

 "--from Imaus stretcht Athwart the roving Tartar's sullen bounds, "

with P. L. , III, 431-32; and "Winter, " 1005-08. 

 "--moors Beneath the shelter of an icy isle, While night o'erwhelms the sea. "

with P. L. , I. 207-208. 

[11] "Ward's English Poets, " Vol. III. P. 171. 

[12] There were originally _three_ damsels in the bathing scene!

[13] It was to this episode that Pope supplied the lines (207-14)

"Thoughtless of beauty, she was beauty's self, " etc. , which form his solitary essay in blank verse. Thomson told Collins thathe took the first hint of "The Seasons" from the names of thedivisions--Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter--in Pope's "Pastorals. "

[14] Appendix to Preface to Second Edition of "Lyrical Ballads. "

[15] "The Hermit. "

[16] "Essay on Man, " Epistle I. 

[17] "Falsely luxurious, will not man awake?" etc. --_Summer_, 67. 

[18] "Nor, when cold winter keens the brightening flood, Would I, weak shivering, linger on the brink. " --_Ibid. _ 1259-60. 

[19] "Life of Thomson. "

[20] "Spring, " 755-58. 

[21] "Autumn, " 862-65. 

[22] "Epistle of Augustus. "

[23] "Autumn, " 1030-37. _Cf. _ Cowper's

 "O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade!"

[24] "Winter, " 424-32. 

[25] "Spring, " 1026-28. 

[26] Shakspere's "broom groves whose shade the dismist bachelor loves;"

Fletcher's

 "Fountain heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves, "

and his

 "Moonlight walks when all the fowls Are safely housed, save bats and owls. "

[27] Letter to Howe, September 10. 

[28] Letter to Howe, November, 1763. 

[29] Alicia Amherst ("History of Gardening in England, " 1896, p. 283)mentions a French and an Italian work, entitled respectively "Plan deJardins dans le gout Anglais, " Copenhagen, 1798; and "Del Arte deiGiardini Inglesi, " Milan, 1801. "This passion for the imitation ofnature, " says the same authority, "was part of the general reaction whichwas taking place, not only in gardening but in the world of literatureand of fashion. The extremely artificial French taste had long taken thelead in civilized Europe, and now there was an attempt to shake off theshackles of its exaggerated formalism. The poets of the age were alsopioneers of this school of nature. Dyer, in his poem of 'Grongar Hill, 'and Thomson, in his 'Seasons, ' called up pictures which the gardeners andarchitects of the day strove to imitate. " See in this work, for goodexamples of the formal garden, the plan of Belton House, Lincoln, p. 245;of Brome Hall, Suffolk; of the orangery and canal at Euston, p. 201; andthe scroll work patterns of turf and parterres on pp. 217-18. 

[30] In Temple's gardens at Moor Park, Hertfordshire, _e. G. _, there wereterraces covered with lead. Charles II. Imported some of Le Notre'spupils and assistants, who laid out the grounds at Hampton Court in theFrench taste. The maze at Hampton Court still existed in Walpole's time(1770). 

[31] It is worth noticing that Batty Langley, the abortive restorer ofGothic, also recommended the natural style of landscape gardening asearly as 1728 in his "New Principles of Gardening. "

[32] "History of Gardening in England. "

[33] I. 384-404. 

[34] "The Works of William Mason, " in 4 vols. , London, 1811. 

[35] See Pope's paper in the _Guardian_ (173) for some rather elaboratefoolery about topiary work. "All art, " he maintains, "consists in theimitation and study of nature. " "We seem to make it our study to recedefrom nature, not only in the various tonsure of greens into the mostregular and formal shapes, but, " etc. , etc. Addison, too, _Spectator_414, June 25, 1712, upholds "the rough, careless strokes of nature"against "the nice touches and embellishments of art, " and complains that"our British gardeners, instead of humoring nature, love to deviate fromit as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes, and pyramids. We see the marks of the scissors upon every plant and bush. I do notknow whether I am singular in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughsand branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematicalfigure. " See also _Spectator_, 477, for a pretty scheme of a garden laidout with "the beautiful wildness of nature. " Gilbert West's Spenserianpoem "Education, " 1751 (see _ante_, p. 90) contains an attack, in sixstanzas, upon the geometric garden, from which I give a single stanza. 

 "Alse other wonders of the sportive shears, Fair nature mis-adorning, there were found: Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers, With sprouting urns and budding statues crowned; And horizontal dials on the ground, In living box by cunning artists traced; And gallies trim, on no long voyage bound But by their roots there ever anchored fast, All were their bellying sails out-spread to every blast. "

[36] "Essays on Men and Manners, " Shenstone's Works, Vol. II. Dodsley'sedition. 

[37] "On Modern Gardening, " Works of the Earl of Orford, London, 1798, Vol. II. 

[38] Graves, "Recollections of Shenstone, " 1788. 

[39] "Ward's English Poets, " Vol. III. 271. 

[40] "Life of Shenstone. "

[41] See _ante_, p. 90, for his visits to Gilbert West at Wickham. 

[42] See especially "A Pastoral Ode, " and "Verses Written toward the Closeof the Year 1748. "

[43] "A Description of the Leasowes by R. Dodsley, " Shenstone's Works, Vol. II, pp. 287-320 (3d ed. ) This description is accompanied with amap. For other descriptions consult Graves' "Recollections, " HughMiller's "First Impressions of England, " and Wm. Howitt's "Homes of thePoets" (1846), Vol. I. Pp. 258-63. The last gives an engraving of thehouse and grounds. Miller, who was at Hagley--"The British Tempe"-andthe Leasowes just a century after Shenstone began to embellish hispaternal acres, says that the Leasowes was the poet's most elaboratepoem, "the singularly ingenious composition, inscribed on an Englishhillside, which employed for twenty long years the taste and genius ofShenstone. "

[44] See "Lady Luxborough's Letters to Shenstone, " 1775, for a longcorrespondence about an urn which _she_ was erecting to Somerville'smemory. She was a sister of Bolingbroke, had a seat at Barrels, andexchanged visits with Shenstone. 

[45] "Letter to Nichols, " June 24, 1769. 

[46] Dryden's "Annus Mirabilis, " Davenant's "Gondibert, " and Sir JohnDavies' "Nosce Teipsum" were written in this stanza, but the universalcurrency of Gray's poem associated it for many years almost exclusivelywith elegiac poetry. Shenstone's collected poems were not published till1764, though some of them had been printed in Dodsley's "Miscellanies. "Only a few of his elegies are dated in the collected editions (ElegyVIII, 1745; XIX, 1743; XXI, 1746), but Graves says that they were allwritten before Gray's. The following lines will recall to every readercorresponding passages in Gray's "Churchyard":

 "O foolish muses, that with zeal aspire To deck the cold insensate shrine with bays!

 "When the free spirit quits her humble frame To tread the skies, with radiant garlands crowned;

 "Say, will she hear the distant voice of Fame, Or hearing, fancy sweetness in the sound?" --_Elegy II_. 

 "I saw his bier ignobly cross the plain. " --_Elegy III_. 

 "No wild ambition fired their spotless breast. " --_Elegy XV_. 

 "Through the dim veil of evening's dusky shade Near some lone fane or yew's funereal green, " etc. --_Elegy IV_. 

 "The glimmering twilight and the doubtful dawn Shall see your step to these sad scenes return, Constant as crystal dews impearl the lawn, " etc. --_Ibid_. 

[47] "Life of Akenside. "

[48] "Pleasures of Hope. "

[49] _cf. _ Wordsworth's

 "Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or the unimaginable touch of time. " --_Mutability: Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, XXXIV. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Miltonic Group

That the influence of Milton, in the romantic revival of the eighteenthcentury, should have been hardly second in importance to Spenser's is aconfirmation of our remark that Augustan literature was "classical" in away of its own. It is another example of that curiously topsy-turvycondition of things in which rhyme was a mark of the classic, and blankverse of the romantic. For Milton is the most truly classical of Englishpoets; and yet, from the angle of observation at which the eighteenthcentury viewed him, he appeared a romantic. It was upon his romanticside, at all events, that the new school of poets apprehended andappropriated him. 

This side was present in Milton in a fuller measure than his completedworks would show. It is well known that he, at one time, had projectedan Arthuriad, a design which, if carried out, might have anticipatedTennyson and so deprived us of "The Idyls of the King. " "I betook me, "he writes, "among those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemncantos the deeds of knighthood. "[1] And in the "Epitaphium Damonis" hethus apprised the reader of his purpose:

 "Ipse ego Dardanais Rutupina per aequora puppes, Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogeniae, Brennumque Arviragunque duces, priscumque Belinum, Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos; Tum gravidam Arturo fatali fraude Iörgernen; Mendaces vultus, assumptaque Gorlöis arma, Merlini dolus. "[2]

The "matter of Britain" never quite lost the fascination which it hadexercised over his youthful imagination, as appears from passages in"Paradise Lost"[3] and even in "Paradise Regained. "[4] But with hisincreasing austerity, both religious and literary, Milton gravitatedfinally to Hebraic themes and Hellenic art forms. He wrote Homeric epicsand Aeschylean tragedies, instead of masques and sonnets, of rhymedpieces on the Italian model, like "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso, " and ofstanzaic poems, like the "Nativity Ode, " touched with Elizabethanconceits. He relied more and more upon sheer construction and weight ofthought and less upon decorative richness of detail. His diction becamenaked and severe, and he employed rhyme but sparingly, even in the choralparts of "Samson Agonistes. " In short, like Goethe, he grew classical ashe grew old. It has been mentioned that "Paradise Lost" did much to keepalive the tradition of English blank verse through a period remarkablefor its bigoted devotion to rhyme, and especially to the heroic couplet. Yet it was, after all, Milton's early poetry, in which rhyme isused--though used so differently from the way in which Pope used it--thatcounted for most in the history of the romantic movement. ProfessorMasson contradicts the common assertion, that "Paradise Lost" was firstwritten into popularity by Addison's Saturday papers. While that serieswas running, Tonson brought out (1711-13) an ediction of Milton'spoetical works which was "the ninth of 'Paradise Lost, ' the eight of'Paradise Regained, ' the seventh of 'Samson Agonistes' and the sixth ofthe minor poems. " The previous issues of the minor poems had been in1645, 1673, 1695, 1705, and 1707. Six editions in sixty-eight years iscertainly no very great showing. After 1713 editions of Miltonmultiplied rapidly; by 1763 "Paradise Lost" was in its forty-sixth, andthe minor poems in their thirtieth. [5]

Addison selected an occasional passage from Milton's juvenile poems, inthe _Spectator_; but from all obtainable evidence, it seems not doubtfulthat they had been comparatively neglected, and that, although reissuedfrom time to time in complete editions of Milton's poetry, they wereregarded merely as pendents to "Paradise Lost" and floated by itsreputation. "Whatever causes, " says Dryden, "Milton alleges for theabolishing of rime . . . His own particular reason is plainly this, thatrime was not his talent: he had neither the ease of doing it, nor thegraces of it: which is manifest in his 'Juvenilia' or verses written inhis youth; where his rime is always constrained and forced and comeshardly from him. "

Joseph Warton, writing in 1756, [6] after quoting copiously from the"Nativity Ode, " which, he says, is "not sufficiently read nor admired, "continues as follows: "I have dwelt chiefly on this ode as much lesscelebrated than 'L'Allegro' and "Il Penseroso, "[7] which are nowuniversally known, ; but which, by a strange fatality, lay in a sort ofobscurity, the private enjoyment of a few curious readers, till they wereset to admirable music by Mr. Handel. And indeed this volume of Milton'smiscellaneous poems has not till very lately met with suitable regard. Shall I offend any rational admirer of Pope, by remarking that thesejuvenile descriptive poems of Milton, as well as his Latin elegies, areof a strain far more exalted than any the former author can boast?"

The first critical edition of the minor poems was published in 1785, byThomas Warton, whose annotations have been of great service to all latereditors. As late as 1779, Dr. Johnson spoke of these same poems with anabsence of appreciation that now seems utterly astounding. "Those whoadmire the beauties of this great poem sometimes force their own judgmentinto false admiration of his little pieces, and prevail upon themselvesto think that admirable which is only singular. " Of Lycidas he says: "Inthis poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, forthere is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, andtherefore disgusting. . . Surely no man could have fancied that he read'Lycidas' with pleasure, had he not known its author. " He acknowledgesthat "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" are "noble efforts of imagination";and that, "as a series of lines, " "Comus" "may be considered as worthy ofall the admiration with which the votaries have received it. " But hemakes peevish objections to its dramatic probability, finds its dialoguesand soliloquies tedious, and unmindful of the fate of Midas, solemnlypronounces the songs--"Sweet Echo" and "Sabrina fair"--"harsh in theirdiction and not very musical in their numbers"! Of the sonnets he says:"They deserve not any particular criticism; for of the best it can onlybe said that they are not bad. "[8] Boswell reports that, Hannah Morehaving expressed her "wonder that the poet who had written 'ParadiseLost' should write such poor sonnets, " Johnson replied: "Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carveheads upon cherry stones. "

The influence of Milton's minor poetry first becomes noticeable in thefifth decade of the century, and in the work of a new group of lyricalpoets: Collins, Gray, Mason, and the brothers Joseph and Thomas Warton. To all of these Milton was master. But just as Thomson and Shenstone gotoriginal effects from Spenser's stanza, while West and Cambridge andLloyd were nothing but echoes; so Collins and Gray--immortal names--drewfresh music from Milton's organ pipes, while for the others he set thetune. The Wartons, indeed, though imitative always in their verse, havean independent and not inconsiderable position in criticism and literaryscholarship, and I shall return to them later in that connection. Mason, whose "English Garden" has been reviewed in chapter iv, was a small poetand a somewhat absurd person. He aped, first Milton and afterward Gray, so closely that his work often seems like parody. In general theMiltonic revival made itself manifest in a more dispersed and indirectfashion than the Spenserian; but there was no lack of formal imitations, also, and it will be advisable to notice a few of these here in the orderof their dates. 

In 1740 Joseph Warton, then an Oxford undergraduate, wrote hisblank-verse poem "The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature. " The work of aboy of eighteen, it had that instinct of the future, of the set of theliterary current, not uncommon in youthful artists, of which Chatterton'sprecocious verses are a remarkable instance. Composed only ten yearslater than the completed "Seasons, " and five years before Shenstone beganto lay out his miniature wilderness at the Leasowes, it is moredistinctly modern and romantic in its preference of wild nature tocultivated landscape, and of the literature of fancy to the literature ofreasons. 

 "What are the lays of artful Addison, Coldly correct, to Shakspere's warblings wild?"

asks the young enthusiast, in Milton's own phrase. And again

 "Can Kent design like Nature?. . . Though he, by rules unfettered, boldly scorns Formality and method, round and square Disdaining, plans irregularly great?. . . 

 "Versailles May boast a thousand fountains that can cast The tortured waters to the distant heavens; Yet let me choose some pine-topped precipice Abrupt and shaggy, whence a foamy stream, Like Anio, tumbling roars; or some black heath Where straggling stands the mournful juniper, Or yew tree scathed. "

The enthusiast haunts "dark forests" and loves to listen to "hollow windsand ever-beating waves" and "sea-mew's clang. " Milton appears at everyturn, not only in single epithets like "Lydian airs, " "the level brine, ""low-thoughted cares, " "the light fantastic dance, " but in the entirespirit, imagery, and diction of the poem. A few lines illustrate thisbetter than any description. 

 "Ye green-robed Dryads, oft at dusky eve By wondering shepherds seen; to forest brown, To unfrequented meads and pathless wilds Lead me from gardens decked with art's vain pomp. . . But let me never fall in cloudless night, When silent Cynthia in her silver car Through the blue concave slides, . . . To seek some level mead, and there invoke Old midnight's sister, contemplation sage (Queen of the rugged brow and stern-fixed eye), To lift my soul above this little earth, This folly-fettered world: to purge my ears, That I may hear the rolling planet's song And tuneful turning spheres. "

Mason's Miltonic imitations, "Musaeus, " "Il Bellicoso" and "Il Pacifico"were written in 1744--according to the statement of their author, whosestatements, however, are not always to be relied upon. The first waspublished in 1747; the second "surreptitiously printed in a magazine andafterward inserted in Pearch's miscellany, " finally revised and publishedby the author in 1797; the third first printed in 1748 in the Cambridgeverses on the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. These pieces follow copy inevery particular. "Il Bellicoso, " _e. G. _, opens with the invocation. 

 "Hence, dull lethargic Peace, Born in some hoary beadsman's cell obscure!"

The genealogies of Peace and War are recited, and contrasted pictures ofpeaceful and warlike pleasures presented in an order which corresponds asprecisely as possible to Milton's in "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso. "

 "Then, to unbend my mind, I'll roam Amid the cloister's silent gloom; Or, where ranged oaks their shades diffuse, Hold dalliance with my darling Muse, Recalling oft some heaven-born strain That warbled in Augustan reign; Or turn, well pleased, the Grecian page, If sweet Theocritus engage, Or blithe Anacreon, mirthful wight, Carol his easy love-lay light. . . And joys like these, if Peace inspire Peace, with thee I string the lyre. "[9]

"Musaeus" was a monody on the death of Pope, employing the pastoralmachinery and the varied irregular measure of "Lycidas. " Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, under the names of Tityrus, Colin Clout, andThyrsis, are introduced as mourners, like Camus and St. Peter in theoriginal. Tityrus is made to lament the dead shepherd in very incorrectMiddle English. Colin Clout speaks two stanzas of the form used in thefirst eclogue of "The Shepherd's Calendar, " and three stanzas of the formused in "The Faërie Queene. " Thyrsis speaks in blank verse and isanswered by the shade of Musaeus (Pope) in heroic couplets. Verbaltravesties of "Lycidas" abound--"laureate hearse, " "forego each vainexcuse, " "without the loan of some poetic woe, " etc. ; and the closingpassage is reworded thus:

 "Thus the fond swain his Doric oat essayed, Manhood's prime honors rising on his cheek: Trembling he strove to court the tuneful Maid, With stripling arts and dalliance all too weak, Unseen, unheard beneath an hawthorn shade. But now dun clouds the welkin 'gan to streak; And now down dropt the larks and ceased their strain: They ceased, and with them ceased the shepherd swain. "

In 1746 appeared a small volume of odes, fourteen in number, by JosephWarton, and another by William Collins. [10] The event is thus noticed byGray in a letter to Thomas Wharton: "Have you seen the works of two youngauthors, a Mr. Warton and a Mr. Collins, both writers of odes? It is oddenough, but each is the half of a considerable man, and one thecounterpart of the other. The first has but little invention, verypoetical choice of expression and a good ear. The second, a fine fancy, modeled upon the antique, a bad ear, a great variety of words and imageswith no choice at all. They both deserve to last some years, but willnot. " Gray's critical acuteness is not altogether at fault in thisjudgment, but half of his prophecy has failed, and his mention of Collinsis singularly inappreciative. The names of Collins and Gray are nowclosely associated in literary history, but in life the two men were inno way connected. Collins and the Wartons, on the other hand, werepersonal friends. Joseph Warton and Collins had been schoolfellows atWinchester, and it was at first intended that their odes, which wereissued in the same month (December), should be published in a volumetogether. Warton's collection was immediately successful; but Collins'was a failure, and the author, in his disappointment, burned the unsoldcopies. 

The odes of Warton which most nearly resemble Milton are "To Fancy, " "ToSolitude, " and "To the Nightingale, " all in the eight-syllabled couplet. A single passage will serve as a specimen of their quality:

 "Me, Goddess, by the right hand lead Sometimes through the yellow mead, Where Joy and white-robed Peace resort And Venus keeps her festive court: Where Mirth and Youth each evening meet, And lightly trip with nimble feet, Nodding their lily-crowned heads; Where Laughter rose-lip'd Hebe leads, " etc. [11]

Collins' "Ode to Simplicity" is in the stanza of the "Nativity Ode, " andhis beautiful "Ode to Evening, " in the unrhymed Sapphics which Milton hademployed in his translation of Horace's "Ode to Pyrrha. " There areMiltonic reminiscences like "folding-star, " "religious gleams, " "playwith the tangles of her hair, " and in the closing couplet of the "Ode toFear, "

 "His cypress wreath my meed decree, And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee. "

But, in general, Collins is much less slavish than Warton in hisimitation. 

Joseph Warton's younger brother, Thomas, wrote in 1745, and published in1747, "The Pleasures of Melancholy, " a blank-verse poem of three hundredand fifteen lines, made up, in nearly equal parts, of Milton andAkenside, with frequent touches of Thomson, Spenser, and Pope's "Epistleof Eloisa to Abelard. " Warton was a lad of seventeen when his poem waswritten: it was published anonymously and was by some attributed toAkenside, whose "Pleasures of Imagination" (1744) had, of course, suggested the title. A single extract will suffice to show how well theyoung poet knew his Milton:

 "O lead me, queen sublime, to solemn glooms Congenial with my soul; to cheerless shades, To ruined seats, to twilight cells and bowers, Where thoughtful Melancholy loves to muse, Her favorite midnight haunts. . . Beneath yon ruined abbey's moss-grown piles Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve, When through some western window the pale moon _Pours her long-levelled rule streaming light:_ While sullen sacred silence reigns around, Save the lone screech-owl's note, who build his bower Amid the moldering caverns dark and damp;[12] Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green Invests some wasted tower. . . Then when the sullen shades of evening close Where _through the room_ a blindly-glimmering gloom The _dying embers_ scatter, far remote From Mirth's mad shouts, that through the illumined roof Resound with festive echo, let me sit Blessed with the lowly cricket's drowsy dirge. . . This sober hour of silence will unmask False Folly's smile, that like the dazzling spells Of wily Comus cheat the unweeting eye With _blear illusion, _ and persuade to drink That charmëd cup which _Reason's mintage fair__ Unmoulds_, and stamps the monster on the man. "

I italicize the most direct borrowings, but both the Wartons had sosaturated themselves with Milton's language, verse, and imagery that theyooze out of them at every pore. Thomas Warton's poems, issued separatelyfrom time to time, were first published collectively in 1777. They areall imitative, and most of them imitative of Milton. His two best odes, "On the First of April" and "On the Approach of Summer, " are in thefamiliar octosyllabics. 

 "Haste thee, Nymph! and hand in hand, With thee lead a buxom band; Bring fantastic-footed joy, With Sport, that yellow-tressëd boy, " etc. [13]

In Gray and Collins, though one can hardly read a page without beingreminded of Milton, it is commonly in subtler ways than this. Gray, forexample, has been careful to point out in his notes his verbalobligations to Milton, as well as to Shakspere, Cowley, Dryden, Pindar, Vergil, Dante, and others; but what he could not well point out, becauseit was probably unconscious, was the impulse which Milton frequently gaveto the whole exercise of his imagination. It is not often that Graytreads so closely in Milton's footsteps as he does in the latest of hispoems, the ode written for music, and performed at Cambridge in 1769 onthe installation of the Duke of Grafton as Chancellor; in which Milton ismade to sing a stanza in the meter of the "Nativity Ode";

 "Ye brown o'er-arching groves That Contemplation loves, Where willowy Camus lingers with delight; Oft at the blush of dawn I trod your level lawn, Oft wooed the gleam of Cynthia, silver bright, In cloisters dim, far from the haunts of Folly, With Freedom by my side, and soft-eyed Melancholy. "

Not only the poets who have been named, but many obscure versifiers arewitnesses to this Miltonic revival. It is usually, indeed, the minorpoetry of an age which keeps most distinctly the "cicatrice and capableimpressure" of a passing literary fashion. If we look through Dodsley'scollection, [14] we find a _mélange_ of satires in the manner of Pope, humorous fables in the manner of Prior, didactic blank-verse pieces afterthe fashion of Thomson and Akenside, elegiac quatrains on the model ofShenstone and Gray, Pindaric odes _ad nauseam_, with imitations ofSpenser and Milton. [15]

To the increasing popularity of Milton's minor poetry is due the revivalof the sonnet. Gray's solitary sonnet, on the death of his friendRichard West, was composed in 1742 but not printed till 1775, after theauthor's death. This was the sonnet selected by Wordsworth, toillustrate his strictures on the spurious poetic diction of theeighteenth century, in the appendix to the preface to the second editionof "Lyrical Ballads. " The style is noble, though somewhat artificial:the order of the rhymes conforms neither to the Shaksperian nor theMiltonic model. Mason wrote fourteen sonnets at various times between1748 and 1797; the earlier date is attached, in his collected works, to"Sonnet I. Sent to a Young Lady with Dodsley's Miscellanies. " They areof the strict Italian or Miltonic form, and abound in Miltonic allusionsand wordings. All but four of Thomas Edwards' fifty sonnets, 1750-65, are on Milton's model. Thirteen of them were printed in Dodsley's secondvolume. They have little value, nor have those of BenjaminStillingfleet, some of which appear to have been written before 1750. Ofmuch greater interest are the sonnets of Thomas Warton, nine in numberand all Miltonic in form. Warton's collected poems were not publishedtill 1777, and his sonnets are undated, but some of them seem to havebeen written as early as 1750. They are graceful in expression andreflect their author's antiquarian tastes. They were praised by Hazlitt, Coleridge, and Lamb; and one of them, "To the River Lodon, " has beenthought to have suggested Coleridge's "To the River Otter--"

 "Dear native stream, wild streamlet of the west--"

as well, perhaps, more remotely Wordsworth's series, "On the RiverDuddon. "

The poem of Milton which made the deepest impression upon the new schoolof poets was "Il Penseroso. " This little masterpiece, which sums up inimagery of "Attic choice" the pleasures that Burton and Fletcher and manyothers had found in the indulgence of the atrabilious humor, fell in witha current of tendency. Pope had died in 1744, Swift in 1745, the lastimportant survivors of the Queen Anne wits; and already the reactionagainst gayety had set in, in the deliberate and exaggerated solemnitywhich took possession of all departments of verse, and even invaded thetheater; where Melpomene gradually crowded Thalia off the boards, untilsentimental comedy--_la comedie larmoyante_--was in turn expelled by theridicule of Garrick, Goldsmith, and Sheridan. That elegiac mood, thatlove of retirement and seclusion, which have been remarked in Shenstone, became now the dominant note in English poetry. The imaginativeliterature of the years 1740-60 was largely the literature of lowspirits. The generation was persuaded, with Fletcher, that

 "Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy. "

But the muse of their inspiration was not the tragic Titaness of Dürer'spainting:

 "The Melencolia that transcends all wit. "[16]

rather the "mild Miltonic maid, " Pensive Meditation. 

There were various shades of somberness, from the delicate gray of theWartons to the funereal sable to Young's "Night Thoughts" (1742-44) andBlair's "Grave" (1743). Goss speaks of Young as a "connecting linkbetween this group of poets and their predecessors of the Augustan age. "His poem does, indeed, exhibit much of the wit, rhetorical glitter, andstraining after point familiar in Queen Anne verse, in strangecombination with a "rich note of romantic despair. "[17] Mr. Perry, too, describes Young's language as "adorned with much of the crude ore ofromanticism. . . At this period the properties of the poet were but few:the tomb, an occasional raven or screech-owl, and the pale moon, withskeletons and grinning ghosts. . . One thing that the poets were nevertired of, was the tomb. . . It was the dramatic--can one say themelodramatic?--view of the grave, as an inspirer of pleasing gloom, thatwas preparing readers for the romantic outbreak. "[18]

It was, of course, in Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"(1751), that this elegiac feeling found its most perfect expression. Collins, too has "more hearse-like airs than carols, " and two of his mostheartfelt lyrics are the "Dirge in Cymbeline" and the "Ode on the Deathof Mr. Thomson. " And the Wartons were perpetually recommending suchthemes, both by precept and example. [19] Blair and Young, however, arescarcely to be reckoned among the romanticists. They were heavydidactic-moral poets, for the most part, though they touched the stringwhich, in the Gothic imagination, vibrates with a musical shiver to thethought of death. There is something that accords with the spirit ofGothic ecclesiastical architecture, with Gray's "ivy-mantled tower"--his"long-drawn aisle and fretted vault"--in the paraphernalia of the tombwhich they accumulate so laboriously; the cypress and the yew, the owland the midnight bell, the dust of the charnel-house, the nettles thatfringe the grave-stones, the dim sepulchral lamp and gliding specters. 

 "The wind is up. Hark! how it howls! Methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary, Doors creak and windows clap, and night's foul bird, Rocked in the spire, screams loud: the gloomy aisles, Black-plastered and hung 'round with shreds of scutcheons And tattered coats-of-arms, send back the sound, Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults, The mansions of the dead. "[20]

Blair's mortuary verse has a certain impressiveness, in its gloomymonotony, not unlike that of Quarles' "Divine Emblems. " Like the"Emblems, " too, "The Grave, " has been kept from oblivion by the art ofthe illustrator, the well-known series of engravings by Schiavonetti fromdesigns by Wm. Blake. 

But the thoughtful scholarly fancy of the more purely romantic poetshaunted the dusk rather than the ebon blackness of midnight, and listenedmore to the nightingale than to the screech-owl. They were quietists, and their imagery was crepuscular. They loved the twilight, with itsbeetle and bat, solitude, shade, the "darkening vale, " the mossyhermitage, the ruined abbey moldering in its moonlit glade, grots, caverns, brooksides, ivied nooks, firelight rooms, the curfew bell andthe sigh of the Aeolian harp. [21] All this is exquisitely put inCollins' "Ode to Evening. " Joseph Warton also wrote an "Ode to Evening, "as well as one "To the Nightingale. " Both Wartons wrote odes "ToSolitude. " Dodsley's "Miscellanies" are full of odes to Evening, Solitude, Silence, Retirement, Contentment, Fancy, Melancholy, Innocence, Simplicity, Sleep; of Pleasures of Contemplation (Miss Whately, Vol. IX. P. 120) Triumphs of Melancholy (James Beattie, Vol. X. P. 77), andsimilar matter. Collins introduced a personified figure of Melancholy inhis ode, "The Passions. "

 "With eyes upraised, as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sat retired; And from her wild, sequestered seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul; And dashing soft from rocks around, Bubbling runnels joined the sound; Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole, Or o'er some haunted stream, with fond delay, Round a holy calm diffusing Love of peace and lonely musing, In hollow murmurs died away. "

Collins was himself afflicted with a melancholia which finally developedinto madness. Gray, a shy, fastidious scholar, suffered from inheritedgout and a lasting depression of spirits. He passed his life as acollege recluse in the cloistered retirement of Cambridge, residing atone time in Pembroke, and at another in Peterhouse College. He held thechair of modern history in the university, but never gave a lecture. Hedeclined the laureateship after Cibber's death. He had great learning, and a taste most delicately correct; but the sources of creative impulsedried up in him more and more under the desiccating air of academic studyand the increasing hold upon him of his constitutional malady. "Melancholy marked him for her own. " There is a significant passage inone of his early letters to Horace. Walpole (1737): "I have, at thedistance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (vulgar call it acommon) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing init but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices. . . Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches and other veryreverend vegetables that, like most other ancient people, are alwaysdreaming out their old stories to the winds. . . At the foot of one ofthese, squats ME, I, (il penseroso) and there grow to the trunk for awhole morning. "[22] To Richard West he wrote, in the same year, "Lowspirits are my true and faithful companions"; and, in 1742, "Mine is awhite Melancholy, or rather Leucocholy, for the most part . . . But thereis another sort, black indeed, which I have now and then felt. "

When Gray sees the Eton schoolboys at their sports, he is sadly reminded:

 "--how all around them wait The ministers of human fate And black Misfortune's baleful train. "[23]

"Wisdom in sable garb, " and "Melancholy, silent maid" attend thefootsteps of Adversity;[24] and to Contemplation's sober eye, the race ofman resembles the insect race:

 "Brushed by the hand of rough mischance, Or chilled by age, their airy dance They leave, in dust to rest. "[25]

Will it be thought too trifling an observation that the poets of thisgroup were mostly bachelors and _quo ad hoc_, solitaries? Thomson, Akenside, Shenstone, Collins, Gray, and Thomas Warton never married. Dyer, Mason, and Joseph Warton, were beneficed clergymen, and took untothemselves wives. The Wartons, to be sure, were men of cheerful and evenconvivial habits. The melancholy which these good fellows affected wasmanifestly a mere literary fashion. They were sad "only for wantonness, "like the young gentlemen in France. "And so you have a garden of yourown, " wrote Gray to his young friend Nicholls, in 1769, "and you plantand transplant, and are dirty and amused; are you not ashamed ofyourself? Why, I have no such thing, you monster; nor ever shall beeither dirty or amused as long as I live. " Gray never was; but theWartons were easily amused, and Thomas, by all accounts, not unfrequentlydirty, or at least slovenly in his dress, and careless and unpolished inhis manners, and rather inclined to broad humor and low society. 

Romantically speaking, the work of these Miltonic lyrists marks anadvance upon that of the descriptive and elegiac poets, Thomson, Akenside, Dyer, and Shenstone. Collins is among the choicest of Englishlyrical poets. There is a flute-like music in his best odes--such as theone "To Evening, " and the one written in 1746--"How sleep the brave, "which are sweeter, more natural, and more spontaneous than Gray's. "TheMuse gave birth to Collins, " says Swinburne; "she did but give suck toGray. " Collins "was a solitary song-bird among many more or lessexcellent pipers and pianists. He could put more spirit of color into asingle stroke, more breath of music into a single note, than could allthe rest of the generation into all the labors of their lives. "[26]Collins, like Gray, was a Greek scholar, and had projected a history ofthe revival letters. There is a classical quality in his verse--notclassical in the eighteenth-century sense--but truly Hellenic; a union, as in Keats, of Attic form with romantic sensibility; though in Collins, more than in Keats, the warmth seems to comes from without; the statue ofa nymph flushed with sunrise. "Collins, " says Gosse, "has the touch of asculptor; his verse is clearly cut and direct: it is marble pure, butalso marble cold. "[27] Lowell, however, thinks that Collins "was thefirst to bring back into poetry something of the antique flavor, andfound again the long-lost secret of being classically elegant withoutbeing pedantically cold. "[28]

These estimates are given for what they are worth. The coldness which isfelt--or fancied--in some of Collins' poetry comes partly from theabstractness of his subjects and the artificial style which he inherited, in common with all his generation. Many of his odes are addressed toFear, Pity, Mercy, Liberty, and similar abstractions. Thepseudo-Pindaric ode, is, in itself, an exotic; and, as an art form, isresponsible for some of the most tumid compositions in the history ofEnglish verse. Collins' most current ode, though by no means his bestone, "The Passions, " abounds in those personifications which, as has beensaid, constituted, in eighteenth century poetry, a sort of feeblemythology: "wan Despair, " "dejected Pity, " "brown Exercise, " and "Musicsphere-descended maid. " It was probably the allegorical figures inMilton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso, " "Sport that wrinkled carederides, " "spare Fast that oft with gods doth diet, " etc. , that gave anew lease of life to this obsolescent machinery which the romanticistsought to have abandoned to the Augustan schools. 

The most interesting of Collins' poems, from the point of view of theseinquiries, is his "Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands ofScotland. " This was written in 1749, but as it remained in manuscripttill 1788, it was of course without influence on the minds of itsauthor's contemporaries. It had been left unfinished, and some of theprinted editions contained interpolated stanzas which have since beenweeded away. Inscribed to Mr. John Home, the author of "Douglas, " itspurpose was to recommend to him the Scottish fairy lore as a fit subjectfor poetry. Collins justifies the selection of such "false themes" bythe example of Spenser, of Shakspere, (in "Macbeth"), and of Tasso

 "--whose undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders which he sung. "

He mentions, as instances of popular beliefs that have poeticcapabilities, the kelpie, the will-o'-the-wisp, and second sight. Healludes to the ballad of "Willie Drowned in Yarrow, " and doubtless with aline of "The Seasons" running in his head, [29] conjures Home to "forgetnot Kilda's race, " who live on the eggs of the solan goose, whose onlyprospect is the wintry main, and among whose cliffs the bee is neverheard to murmur. Perhaps the most imaginative stanza is the ninth, referring to the Hebrides, the chapel of St. Flannan and the graves ofthe Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian kings in Icolmkill:

 "Unbounded is thy range; with varied skill Thy muse may, like those feathery tribes which spring From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing, Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle, To that hoar pile which still its ruins shows; In whose small vaults a pygmy folk is found, Whose bones the delver with his spade upthrows, And culls them, wondering, from the hallowed ground; Or thither, where, beneath the showery west, The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid; Once foes, perhaps, together now they rest, No slaves revere them and no wars invade. Yet frequent now at midnight's solemn hour, The rifted mounds their yawning cells unfold, And forth the monarchs stalk with sovereign power, In pageant robes, and wreathed with sheeny gold, And on their twilight tombs aerial council hold. "

Collins' work was all done by 1749; for though he survived ten yearslonger, his mind was in eclipse. He was a lover and student ofShakspere, and when the Wartons paid him a last visit at the time of hisresidence with his sister in the cloisters of Chichester Cathedral, hetold Thomas that he had discovered the source of the "Tempest, " in anovel called "Aurelio and Isabella, " printed in 1588 in Spanish, Italian, French, and English. No such novel has been found, and it was seeminglya figment of Collins' disordered fancy. During a lucid interval in thecourse of this visit, he read to the Wartons, from the manuscript, his"Ode on the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands"; and also a poemwhich is lost, entitled, "The Bell of Arragon, " founded on the legend ofthe great bell of Saragossa that tolled of its own accord whenever a kingof Spain was dying. 

Johnson was also a friend of Collins, and spoke of him kindly in his"Lives of the Poets, " though he valued his writings little. "He hademployed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction and subjects of fancy;and by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delightedwith those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and towhich the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in populartraditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delightedto rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificenceof golden palaces, to repose by the water-falls of Elysian gardens. Thiswas, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius;the grandeur of wildness and the novelty of extravagance were alwaysdesired by him, but were not always attained. "[30]

Thomas Gray is a much more important figure than Collins in theintellectual history of his generations; but this superior importancedoes not rest entirely upon his verse, which is hardly more abundant thanCollins', though of a higher finish. His letters, journals, and otherprose remains, posthumously published, first showed how long an arc hismind had subtended on the circle of art and thought. He was sensitive toall fine influences that were in the literary air. One of the greatestscholars among English poets, his taste was equal to his acquisitions. He was a sound critic of poetry, music, architecture, and painting. Hismind and character both had distinction; and if there was something atrifle finical and old-maidish about his personality--which led the youngCantabs on one occasion to take a rather brutal advantage of his nervousdread of fire--there was also that nice reserve which gave to Milton, when _he_ was at Cambridge, the nickname of the "lady of Christ's. "

A few of Gray's simpler odes, the "Ode on the Spring, " the "Hymn toAdversity" and the Eton College ode, were written in 1742 and printed inDodsley's collection in 1748. The "Elegy" was published in 1751; the two"sister odes, " "The Progress of Poesy" and "The Bard, " were struck offfrom Horace Walpole's private press at Strawberry Hill in 1757. Gray'spopular fame rests, and will always rest, upon his immortal "Elegy. " Hehimself denied somewhat impatiently that it was his best poem, andthought that its popularity was owing to its subject. There are notwanting critics of authority, such as Lowell and Matthew Arnold, who havepronounced Gray's odes higher poetry than his "Elegy. " "'The Progress ofPoesy, '" says Lowell, "overflies all other English lyrics like aneagle. . . It was the prevailing blast of Gray's trumpet that, more thananything else, called men back to the legitimate standard. "[31] With alldeference to such distinguished judges, I venture to think that thepopular instinct on this point is right, and even that Dr. Johnson is notso wrong as usual. Johnson disliked Gray and spoke of him with surlyinjustice. Gray, in turn, could not abide Johnson, whom he called _Ursamajor_. Johnson said that Gray's odes were forced plants, raised in ahot-house, and poor plants at that. "Sir, I do not think Gray afirst-rate poet. He has not a bold imagination, nor much command ofwords. The obscurity in which he has involved himself will not persuadeus that he is sublime. His 'Elegy in a Churchyard' has a happy selectionof images, but I don't like what are called his great things. " "Heattacked Gray, calling him a 'dull fellow. ' Boswell: 'I understand hewas reserved, and might appear dull in company; but surely he was notdull in poetry. ' Johnson: 'Sir, he was dull in company, dull in hiscloset, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way and that made manypeople think him GREAT. He was a mechanical poet. ' He then repeatedsome ludicrous lines, which have escaped my memory, and said, 'Is notthat GREAT, like his odes?'. . . 'No, sir, there are but two goodstanzas in Gray's poetry, which are in his "Elegy in a CountryChurchyard. " He then repeated the stanza--

 "'For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, '" etc. 

"In all Gray's odes, " wrote Johnson, "there is a kind of cumbroussplendor which we wish away. . . These odes are marked by glitteringaccumulations of ungraceful ornaments; they strike rather than please;the images are magnified by affectation; the language is labored intoharshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnaturalviolence. . . His art and his struggle are too visible and there is toolittle appearance of ease and nature. . . In the character of his'Elegy, ' I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the commonsense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all therefinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of learning, must be finallydecided all claims to poetical honors. The 'Churchyard' abounds withimages which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to whichevery bosom returns an echo. "

There are noble lines in Gray's more elaborate odes, but they do make asa whole that mechanical, artificial impression of which Johnsoncomplains. They have the same rhetorical ring, the worked-up fervor inplace of genuine passion, which was noted in Collins' ode "On thePassions. " Collins and Gray were perpetually writing about the passions;but they treated them as abstractions and were quite incapable ofexhibiting them in action. Neither of them could have written a ballad, a play, or a romance. Their odes were bookish, literary, impersonal, retrospective. They had too much of the ichor of fancy and too littlered blood in them. 

But the "Elegy" is the masterpiece of this whole "Il Penseroso" school, and has summed up for all English readers, for all time, the poetry ofthe tomb. Like the "Essay on Man, " and "Night Thoughts" and "The Grave, "it is a poem of the moral-didactic order, but very different in resultfrom these. Its moral is suffused with emotion and expressed concretely. Instead of general reflections upon the shortness of life, the vanity ofambition, the leveling power of death, and similar commonplaces, we havethe picture of the solitary poet, lingering among the graves at twilight(_hora datur quieti_), till the place and the hour conspire to work theireffect upon the mind and prepare it for the strain of meditation thatfollows. The universal appeal of its subject and the perfection of itsstyle have made the "Elegy" known by heart to more readers than any otherpoem in the language. Parody is one proof of celebrity, if not ofpopularity, and the "sister odes" were presently parodied by Lloyd andColman in an "Ode to Obscurity" and an "Ode to Oblivion. " But the"Elegy" was more than celebrated and more than popular; it was the mostadmired and influential poem of the generation. The imitations andtranslations of it are innumerable, and it met with a response asimmediate as it was general. [32] One effect of this was to consecratethe ten-syllabled quatrain to elegiac uses. Mason altered the sub-titleof his "Isis" (written in 1748) from "An Elegy" to "A Monologue, " becauseit was "not written in alternate rimes, which since Mr. Gray's exquisite'Elegy in the Country Church-yard' has generally obtained, and seems tobe more suited to that species of poem. "[33] Mason's "Elegy written in aChurch-yard in South Wales" (1787) is, of course, in Gray's stanza and, equally of course, introduces a tribute to the master:

 "Yes, had he paced this church-way path along, Or leaned like me against this ivied wall, How sadly sweet had flowed his Dorian song, Then sweetest when it flowed at Nature's call. "[34]

It became almost _de rigueur_ for a young poet to try his hand at achurchyard piece. Thus Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, in his"Memoirs, " records the fact that when he was an undergraduate atCambridge in 1752 he made his "first small offering to the press, following the steps of Gray with another church-yard elegy, written onSt. Mark's Eve, when, according to rural tradition, the ghost of thosewho are to die within the year ensuing are seen to walk at midnightacross the churchyard. "[35] Goldsmith testifies to the prevalence of thefashion when, in his "Life of Parnell, " he says of that poet's "NightPiece on Death"[36] that, "with very little amendment, " it "might be madeto surpass all those night-pieces and church-yard scenes that have sinceappeared. " But in this opinion Johnson, who says that Parnell's poem "isindirectly preferred by Goldsmith to Gray's 'Churchyard, '" does notagree; nor did the public. [37]

Gray's correspondence affords a record of the progress of romantictaste for an entire generation. He set out with classicalprepossessions--forming his verse, as he declared, after Dryden--andended with translations from Welsh and Norse hero-legends, and with anadmiration for Ossian and Scotch ballads. In 1739 he went to France andItaly with Horace Walpole. He was abroad three years, though in 1741 hequarreled with Walpole at Florence, separated from him and made his wayhome alone in a leisurely manner. Gray is one of the first of moderntravelers to speak appreciatively of Gothic architecture, and of thescenery of the Alps, and to note those strange and characteristic aspectsof foreign life which we now call picturesque, and to which everyitinerary and guidebook draws attention. Addison, who was on his travelsforty years before, was quite blind to such matters. Not that he waswithout the feeling of the sublime: he finds, _e. G. _, an "agreeablehorror" in the prospect of a storm at sea. [38] But he wrote of hispassage through Switzerland as a disagreeable and even frightfulexperience; "a very troublesome journey over the Alps. My head is stillgiddy with mountains and precipices; and you can't imagine how much I ampleased with the sight of a plain. "

"Let any one reflect, " says the _Spectator_, [39] "on the disposition ofmind he finds in himself at his first entrance into the Pantheon at Rome, and how his imagination is filled with something great and amazing; and, at the same time, consider how little, in proportion, he is affected withthe inside of a Gothic cathedral, though it be five times larger than theother; which can arise from nothing else but the greatness of the mannerin the one, the meanness in the other. "[40]

Gray describes the cathedral at Rheims as "a vast Gothic building of asurprising beauty and lightness, all covered over with a profusion oflittle statues and other ornaments"; and the cathedral at Siena, whichAddison had characterized as "barbarous, " and as an instance of "falsebeauties and affected ornaments, " Gray commends as "labored with a Gothicniceness and delicacy in the old-fashioned way. " It must be acknowledgedthat these are rather cold praises, but Gray was continually advancing inhis knowledge of Gothic and his liking for it. Later in life he becamesomething of an antiquarian and virtuoso. He corresponded with Rev. Thomas Wharton, about stained glass and paper hangings, which Wharton, who was refitting his house in the Gothic taste, had commissioned Gray tobuy for him of London dealers. He describes, for Wharton's benefit, Walpole's new bedroom at Strawberry Hill as "in the best taste ofanything he has yet done, and in your own Gothic way"; and he advises hiscorrespondent as to the selection of patterns for staircases and arcadework. There was evidently a great stir of curiosity concerningStrawberry Hill in Gray's coterie, and a determination to be Gothic atall hazards; and the poet felt obliged to warn his friends that zealshould not outrun discretion. He writes to Wharton in 1754: "I rejoiceto find you at last settled to your heart's content, and delight to hearyou talk of giving your house some _Gothic ornaments_ already. If youproject anything, I hope it will be entirely within doors; and don't letme (when I come gaping into Coleman Street) be directed to the gentlemenat the ten pinnacles, or with the church porch at his door. " Again, tothe same (1761): "It is mere pedantry in Gothicism to stick to nothingbut altars and tombs, and there is no end to it, if we are to sit uponnothing but coronation chairs, nor drink out of nothing but chalices orflagons. " Writing to Mason in 1758 about certain incongruities in one ofthe latter's odes, he gives the following Doresque illustration of hispoint. "If you should lead me into a superb Gothic building, with athousand clustered pillars, each of them half a mile high, the walls allcovered with fret-work, and the windows full of red and blue saints thathad neither head nor tail, and I should find the Venus de Medici inperson perked up in a long niche over the high altar, as naked as she wasborn, do you think it would raise or damp my devotions?"[41] He made ita favorite occupation to visit and take drawings from celebrated ruinsand the great English cathedrals, particularly those in the Cambridgefens, Ely and Peterboro'. These studies he utilized in a short essay onNorman architecture, first published by Mitford in 1814, and incorrectlyentitled "Architectura Gothica. "

Reverting to his early letters from abroad one is struck by theanticipation of the modern attitude, in his description of a visit to theGrande Chartreuse, which he calls "one of the most solemn, the mostromantic, and the most astonishing scenes. "[42] "I do not remember tohave gone ten paces without an exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant withreligion and poetry. . . One need not have a very fantastic imaginationto see spirits there at noonday. "[43] Walpole's letter of about the samedate, also to West, [44] is equally ecstatic. It is written "from ahamlet among the mountains of Savoy. . . Here we are, the lonely lordsof glorious desolate prospects. . . But the road, West, the road!Winding round a prodigious mountain, surrounded with others, all shaggedwith hanging woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds! Below atorrent breaking through cliffs, and tumbling through fragments ofrocks!. . . Now and then an old foot bridge, with a broken rail, aleaning cross, a cottage or the ruin of an hermitage! This sounds toobombast and too romantic to one that has not seen it, too cold for onethat has. " Or contrast with Addison's Italian letters passages likethese, which foretoken Rogers and Byron. We get nothing so sympathetictill at least a half century later. "It is the most beautiful of Italiannights. . . There is a moon! There are starts for you! Do not you hearthe fountain? Do not you smell the orange flowers? That building yonderis the convent of St. Isidore; and that eminence with the cypress-treesand pines upon it, the top of Mt. Quirinal. "[45] "The Neapolitans worktill evening: then take their lute or guitar and walk about the city, orupon the sea shore with it, to enjoy the _fresco_. One sees their littlebrown children jumping about stark naked and the bigger ones dancing withcastanets, while others play on the cymbal to them. "[46] "Kennst dud asLand, " then already? The

 "small voices and an old guitar, Winning their way to an unguarded heart"?

And then, for a prophecy of Scott, read the description of NetleyAbbey, [47] in a letter to Nicholls in 1764. "My ferryman, " writes Grayin a letter to Brown about the same ruin, "assured me that he would notgo near it in the night time for all the world, though he knew much moneyhad been found there. The sun was all too glaring and too full of gaudsfor such a scene, which ought to be visited only in the dusk of theevening. "

 "If thou woulds't view fair Melrose aright Go visit it by the pale moonlight, For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins, Gray. "

In 1765, Gray visited the Scotch Highlands and sent enthusiastichistories of his trip to Wharton and Mason. "Since I saw the Alps, Ihave seen nothing sublime till now. " "The Lowlands are worth seeingonce, but the mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be visited inpilgrimage once a year. None but those monstrous creatures of God knowhow to join so much beauty with so much horror. A fig for your poets, painters, gardeners, and clergymen that have not been among them. "

Again in 1770, the year before his death, he spent six weeks on a ramblethrough the western counties, descending the Wye in a boat for fortymiles, and visiting among other spots which the muse had then, or hassince, made illustrious, Hagley and the Leasowes, the Malvern Hills andTintern Abby. But the most significant of Gray's "Lilliputian travels, "was his tour of the Lake Country in 1769. Here he was on ground that hassince become classic; and the lover of Wordsworth encounters with asingular interest, in Gray's "Journal in the Lakes, " written nearlythirty years before the "Lyrical Ballads, " names like Grasmere, Winander, Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Derwentwater, Borrowdale, and Lodore. Whatdistinguishes the entries in this journal from contemporary writing ofthe descriptive kind is a certain intimacy of comprehension, a depth oftone which makes them seem like nineteenth-century work. To Gray thelandscape was no longer a picture. It had sentiment, character, meaning, almost personality. Different weathers and different hours of the daylent it expressions subtler than the poets had hitherto recognized in thebroad, general changes of storm and calm, light and darkness, and thesuccessions of the seasons. He heard Nature when she whispered, as wellas when she spoke out loud. Thomson could not have written thus, norShenstone, nor even, perhaps, Collins. But almost any man of cultivationand sensibility can write so now; or, if not so well, yet with the sameaccent. A passage or two will make my meaning clearer. 

"To this second turning I pursued my way about four miles along itsborders [Ulswater], beyond a village scattered among trees and calledWater Mallock, in a pleasant, grave day, perfectly calm and warm, butwithout a gleam of sunshine. Then, the sky seeming to thicken, thevalley to grown more desolate, and evening drawing on, I returned by theway I came to Penrith. . . While I was here, a little shower fell, redclouds came marching up the hills from the east, and part of a brightrainbow seemed to rise along the side of Castle Hill. . . The calmnessand brightness of the evening, the roar of the waters, and the thumpingof huge hammers at an iron forge not far distant, made it a singularwalk. . . In the evening walked alone down to the lake after sunset andsaw the solemn coloring of night draw on, the last gleam of sunshinefading away on the hilltops, the deep serene of the waters, and the longshadows of the mountains thrown across them till they nearly touched thehithermost shore. At distance heard the murmur of many waterfalls notaudible in the day-time. [48] Wished for the moon, but she was dark to meand silent, hid in her vacant inter-lunar cave. "[49]

"It is only within a few years, " wrote Joseph Warton in 1782, "that thepicturesque scenes of our own country, our lakes, mountains, cascades, caverns, and castles, have been visited and described. "[50] It was inthis very year that William Gilpin published his "Observations on theRiver Wye, " from notes taken upon a tour in 1770. This was the same yearwhen Gray made his tour of the Wye, and hearing that Gilpin had prepareda description of the region, he borrowed and read his manuscript in June, 1771, a few weeks before his own death. These "Observations" were thefirst of a series of volumes by Gilpin on the scenery of Great Britain, composed in a poetic and somewhat over-luxuriant style, illustrated bydrawings in aquatinta, and all described on the title page as "Relativechiefly to Picturesque Beauty. " They had great success, and several ofthem were translated into German and French. [51]

[1] "An Apology for Smectymnuus. "

[2] Lines 162-168. See also "Mansus, " 80-84. 

[3] "What resounds In fable or romance of Uther's son, Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabbia. " --_Book I_, 579-587. 

[4] "Faery damsels met in forest wide By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore. " --_Book II_, 359-361. 

[5] "Masson's Life of Milton, " Vol. VI. P. 789

[6] "Essay on Pope, " Vol. I. Pp. 36-38 (5th edition). In the dedicationto Young, Warton says: "The Epistles (Pope's) on the Characters of Menand Women, and your sprightly Satires, my good friend, are morefrequently perused and quoted than 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' ofMilton. "

[7] The Rev. Francis Peck, in his "New Memoirs of the Life and PoeticalWorks of Mr. John Milton, " in 1740, says that these two poems are justlyadmired by foreigners as well as Englishmen, and have therefore beentranslated into all the modern languages. This volume contains, amongother things, "An Examination of Milton's Style"; "Explanatory andCritical Notes on Divers Passages of Milton and Shakspere"; "TheResurrection, " a blank verse imitation of "Lycidas, " "Comus, " "L'Allegro"and "Il Penserosa, " and the "Nativity Ode. " Peck defends Milton's rhymedpoems against Dryden's strictures. "He was both a perfect master of rimeand could also express something by it which nobody else ever thoughtof. " He compares the verse paragraphs of "Lycidas" to musical bars andpronounces its system of "dispersed rimes" admirable and unique. 

[8] "Life of Milton. "

[9] "Il Pacifico: Works of William Mason, " London, 1811, Vol. I. P. 166. 

[10] "Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects. "

[11] "To Fancy. "

[12] _Cf_. Gray's "Elegy, " first printed in 1751:

 "Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower, The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient, solitary reign. "

[13] "On the Approach of Summer. " The "wattled cotes, " "sweet-briarhedges, " "woodnotes wild, " "tanned haycock in the mead, " and "valleyswhere mild whispers use, " are transferred bodily into this ode from"L'Allegro. "

[14] Three volumes appeared in 1748; a second edition, with Vol. IV. Addedin 1749, Vols. V. And VI. In 1758. There were new editions in 1765, 1770, 1775, and 1782. Pearch's continuations were published in 1768(Vols. VII. And VIII. ) and 1770 (Vols. IX. And X. ); Mendez's independentcollection in 1767; and Bell's "Fugitive Poetry, " in 18 volumes, in1790-97. 

[15] The reader who may wish to pursue this inquiry farther will find thefollowing list of Miltonic imitations useful: Dodsley's "Miscellany, " I. 164, Pre-existence: "A Poem in Imitation of Milton, " by Dr. Evans. Thisis in blank verse, and Gray, in a letter to Walpole, calls it "nonsense. "II. 109. "The Institution of the Order of the Garter, " by Gilbert West. This is a dramatic poem, with a chorus of British bards, which is severaltimes quoted and commended in Joseph Warton's "Essay on Pope. " West's"Monody on the Death of Queen Caroline, " is a "Lycidas" imitation. III. 214, "Lament for Melpomene and Calliope, " by J. G. Cooper; also a"Lycidas" poem. IV. 50, "Penshurst, " by Mr. F. Coventry: a very closeimitation of "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso. " IV. 181, "Ode to Fancy, " bythe Rev. Mr. Merrick: octosyllables. IV. 229, "Solitude, an Ode, " by Dr. Grainger: octosyllables. V. 283, "Prologue to Comus, " performed at Bath, 1756. VI. 148, "Vacation, " by----, Esq. : "L'Allegro, " very close--

 "These delights, Vacation, give, And I with thee will choose to live. "

IX. (Pearch) 199, "Ode to Health, " by J. H. B. , Esq. : "L'Allegro. " X. 5, "The Valetudinarian, " by Dr. Marriott; "L'Allegro, " very close. X. 97, "To the Moon, " by Robert Lloyd: "Il Penseroso, " close. Parody is one ofthe surest testimonies to the prevalence of a literary fashion, and inVol X. P 269 of Pearch, occurs a humorous "Ode to Horror, " burlesquing"The Enthusiast" and "The Pleasures of Melancholy, " "in the allegoric, descriptive, alliterative, epithetical, hyperbolical, and diabolicalstyle of our modern ode wrights and monody-mongers, " form which I extracta passage:

 "O haste thee, mild Miltonic maid, From yonder yew's sequestered shade. . . O thou whom wandering Warton saw, Amazed with more than youthful awe, As by the pale moon's glimmering gleam He mused his melancholy theme. O Curfew-loving goddess, haste! O waft me to some Scythian waste, Where, in Gothic solitude, Mid prospects most sublimely rude, Beneath a rough rock's gloomy chasm, Thy sister sits, Enthusiasm. "

"Bell's Fugitive Poetry, " Vol. XI, (1791), has a section devoted to"poems in the manner of Milton, " by Evans, Mason, T. Warton and a Mr. P. (L'Amoroso). 

[16] See James Thomson's "City of Dreadful Night, " xxi. Also thefrontispiece to Mr. E. Stedman's "Nature of Poetry" (1892) and pp. 140-41of the same. 

[17] "Eighteenth Century Literature, " pp. 209, 212. 

[18] "English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, " pp. 375, 379. 

[19] Joseph mentions as one of Spenser's characteristics, "a certainpleasing melancholy in his sentiments, the constant companion of anelegant taste, that casts a delicacy and grace over all his composition, ""Essay on Pope, " Vol. II. P. 29. In his review of Pope's "Epistle ofEloisa to Abelard, " he says: "the effect and influence of Melancholy, whois beautifully personified, on every object that occurs and on every partof the convent, cannot be too much applauded, or too often read, as it isfounded on nature and experience. That temper of mind casts a gloom onall things. 

 "'But o'er the twilight grows and dusky caves, ' etc. " --_Ibid_, Vol. I. P. 314. 

[20] "The Grave, " by Robert Blair. 

[21] The aeolian harp was a favorite property of romantic poets for ahundred years. See Mason's "Ode to an Aeolus's Harp" (Works, Vol. I. P. 51). First invented by the Jesuit, Kircher, about 1650, and described inhis "Musurgia Universalis, " Mason says that it was forgotten for upwardsof a century and "accidentally rediscovered" in England by a Mr. Oswald. It is mentioned in "The Castle of Indolence" (i. Xl) as a novelty:

 "A certain music never known before Here lulled the pensive melancholy mind"--

a passage to which Collins alludes in his verses on Thomson's death--

 "In yon deep bed of whispering reeds His airy harp shall now be laid. "

See "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" I. 341-42 (1805)

 "Like that wild harp whose magic tone Is wakened by the winds alone. "

And Arthur Cleveland Coxe's (_Christian Ballads_, 1840)

 "It was a wind-harp's magic strong, Touched by the breeze in dreamy song, "

And the poetry of the Annuals _passim_. 

[22] _Cf. _ the "Elegy":

 "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, " etc. 

[23] "On a Distant Prospect of Eton College. "

[24] "Hymn to Adversity"

[25] "Ode on the Spring. "

[26] "Ward's English Poets, " Vol. III. Pp. 278-82. 

[27] "Eighteenth Century Literature, " p. 233. 

[28] "Essay on Pope. "

[29] See _ante_, p. 114. 

[30] "Life of Collins. "

[31] Essay on "Pope. "

[32] Mr. Perry enumerates, among English imitators, Falconer, T. Warton, James Graeme, Wm. Whitehead, John Scott, Henry Headly, John Henry Moore, and Robert Lovell, "Eighteenth Century Literature, " p. 391. Amongforeign imitations Lamartine's "Le Lac" is perhaps the most famous. 

[33] "Mason's Works, " Vol. I. P. 179. 

[34] _Ibid. _, Vol. I. P. 114. 

[35] _Cf_. Keats' unfinished poem, "The Eve of St. Mark, "

[36] Parnell's collected poems were published in 1722. 

[37] Not the least interesting among the progeny of Gray's "Elegy" was"The Indian Burying Ground" of the American poet, Philip Freneau(1752-1832). Gray's touch is seen elsewhere in Freneau, _e. G. _, in "TheDeserted Farm-house. "

 "Once in the bounds of this sequestered room Perhaps some swain nocturnal courtship made: Perhaps some Sherlock mused amid the gloom, Since Love and Death forever seek the shade. "

[38] _Spectator_, No. 489. 

[39] No. 415. 

[40] John Hill Burton, in his "Reign of Queen Anne" give a passage from aletter of one Captain Burt, superintendent of certain road-makingoperations in the Scotch Highlands, by way of showing how very modern aperson Carlyle's picturesque tourist is. The captain describes theromantic scenery of the glens as "horrid prospects. " It was considerablylater in the century that Dr. Johnson said, in answer to Boswell's timidsuggestion that Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects, "Ibelieve, sir, you have a great many, Norway, too, has noble wildprospects, and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman eversees is the high-road that leads him to England. "

[41] See also Gray's letter to Rev. James Brown (1763) inclosing adrawing, in reference to a small ruined chapel at York Minster; and aletter (about 1765) to Jas. Bentham, Prebendary of Ely whose "Essay onGothic Architecture" has been wrongly attributed to Gray. 

[42] To Mrs. Dorothy Gray, 1739. 

[43] To Richard West, 1739. 

[44] Gray, Walpole, and West had been schoolfellows and intimates at Eton. 

[45] To West, 1740. 

[46] To Mrs. Dorothy Gray, 1740. 

[47] "Pearch's Collection" (VII. 138) gives an elegiac quatrain poem on"The Ruins of Netley Abbey, " by a poet with the suggestive name of GeorgeKeate; and "The Alps, " in heavy Thomsonian blank verse (VII. 107) by thesame hand. 

[48] "A soft and lulling sound is heard Of streams inaudible by day. " _The White Doe of Rylstone, Wordsworth_. 

[49] "Samson Agonistes. "

[50] "Essay on Pope" (5th ed. ), Vol. II. P. 180. 

[51] These were, in order of publication: "The Mountains and Lakes ofCumberland and Westmoreland" (2 vols. ), 1789; "The Highlands ofScotland, " 1789; "Remarks on Forest Scenery, " 1791; "The Western Parts ofEngland and the Isle of Wight, " 1798; "The Coasts of Hampshire, " etc. , 1804; "Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, " etc. , 1809. The last twowere posthumously published. Gilpin, who was a prebendary of Salisbury, died in 1804. Pearch's "Collection" (VII. 23) has "A Descriptive Poem, "on the Lake Country, in octosyllabic couplets, introducing Keswick, Borrowdale, Dovedale, Lodore, Derwentwater, and other familiar localities. 

CHAPTER VI. 

The School of Warton

In the progress of our inquiries, hitherto, we have met with little thatcan be called romantic in the narrowest sense. Though the literarymovement had already begun to take a retrospective turn, few distinctlymediaeval elements were yet in evidence. Neither the literature of themonk nor the literature of the knight had suffered resurrection. It wasnot until about 1760 that writers began to gravitate decidedly toward theMiddle Ages. The first peculiarly mediaeval type that contrived tosecure a foothold in eighteenth-century literature was the hermit, afigure which seems to have had a natural attraction, not only forromanticizing poets like Shenstone and Collins, but for the wholegeneration of verse writers from Parnell to Goldsmith, Percy andBeattie--each of whom composed a "Hermit"--and even for the authors of"Rasselas" and "Tom Jones, " in whose fictions he becomes a stockcharacter, as a fountain of wisdom and of moral precepts. [1]

A literary movement which reverts to the past for its inspiration isnecessarily also a learned movement. Antiquarian scholarship must leadthe way. The picture of an extinct society has to be pieced togetherfrom the fragments at hand, and this involves special research. So longas this special knowledge remains the exclusive possession ofprofessional antiquaries like Gough, Hearne, Bentham, Perry, Grose, [2] itbears no fruit in creative literature. It produces only local histories, surveys of cathedrals and of sepulchral monuments, books about Druidicremains, Roman walls and coins, etc. , etc. It was only when men ofimagination and of elegant tastes were enlisted in such pursuits that thedry stick of antiquarianism put forth blossoms. The poets, of course, had to make studies of their own, to decipher manuscripts, learn OldEnglish, visit ruins, collect ballads and ancient armor, familiarizethemselves with terms of heraldry, architecture, chivalry, ecclesiologyand feudal law, and in other such ways inform and stimulate theirimaginations. It was many years before the joint labors of scholars andpoets had reconstructed an image of medieval society, sharp enough inoutline and brilliant enough in color to impress itself upon the generalpublic. Scott, indeed, was the first to popularize romance; mainly, nodoubt, because of the greater power and fervor of his imagination; butalso, in part, because an ampler store of materials had been alreadyaccumulated when he began work. He had fed on Percy's "Reliques" inboyhood; through Coleridge, his verse derives from Chatterton; and theline of Gothic romances which starts with "The Castle of Otranto" isremotely responsible for "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman. " But Scott toowas, like Percy and Walpole, a virtuoso and collector; and the vastapparatus of notes and introductory matter in his metrical tales, and inthe Waverley novels, shows how necessary it was for the romantic poet tobe his own antiquary. 

As was to be expected, the zeal of the first romanticists was not alwaysa zeal according to knowledge, and the picture of the Middle Age whichthey painted was more of a caricature than a portrait. A large share ofmedieval literature was inaccessible to the general reader. Much of itwas still in manuscript. Much more of it was in old and rare printedcopies, broadsides and black-letter folios, the treasure of greatlibraries and of jealously hoarded private collections. Much was indialects little understood-forgotten forms of speech-Old French, MiddleHigh German, Old Norse, medieval Latin, the ancient Erse and Cymrictongues, Anglo-Saxon. There was an almost total lack of apparatus forthe study of this literature. Helps were needed in the shape of modernreprints of scarce texts, bibliographies, critical editions, translations, literary histories and manuals, glossaries of archaicwords, dictionaries and grammars of obsolete languages. These weregradually supplied by working specialists in different fields ofinvestigation. Every side of medieval life has received illustration inits turn. Works like Tyrwhitt's edition of Chaucer (1775-78); thecollections of mediaeval romances by Ellis (1805), Ritson (1802), andWeber (1810); Nares' and Halliwell's "Archaic Glossary" (1822-46), Carter's "Specimens of Ancient Sculpture and Paintings" (1780-94), Scott's "Demonology and Witchcraft" (1830), Hallam's "Middle Ages"(1818), Meyrick's "Ancient Armour" (1824), Lady Guest's "Mabinogion"(1838), the publications of numberless individual scholars and of learnedsocieties like the Camden, the Spenser, the Percy, the Chaucer, the EarlyEnglish Text, the Roxburgh Club, --to mention only English examples, takenat random and separated from each other by wide intervals of time, --areinstances of the labors by which mediaeval life has been made familiar toall who might choose to make acquaintance with it. 

The history of romanticism, after the impulse had once been given, islittle else than a record or the steps by which, one after another, newfeatures of that vast and complicated scheme of things which we looselycall the Middle Ages were brought to light and made available as literarymaterial. The picture was constantly having fresh details added to it, nor is there any reason to believe that it is finished yet. Some of thefinest pieces of mediaeval work have only within the last few years beenbrought to the attention of the general reader; _e. G. _, the charming oldFrench story in prose and verse, "Aucassin et Nicolete, " and thefourteenth-century English poem, "The Perle. " The future holds stillother phases of romanticism in reserve; the Middle Age seems likely to beas inexhaustible in novel sources of inspiration as classical antiquityhas already proved to be. The past belongs to the poet no less than thepresent, and a great part of the literature of every generation willalways be retrospective. The tastes and preferences of the individualartist will continue to find a wide field for selection in the richquarry of Christian and feudal Europe. 

It is not a little odd that the book which first aroused, in modernEurope, an interest in Norse mythology should have been written by aFrenchman. This was the "Introduction à l'Histoire de Dannemarc, "published in 1755 by Paul Henri Mallet, a native of Geneva and sometimeprofessor of Belles Lettres in the Royal University at Copenhagen. Thework included also a translation of the first part of the Younger Edda, with an abstract of the second part and of the Elder Edda, and versionsof several Runic poems. It was translated into English, in 1770, byThomas Percy, the editor of the "Reliques, " under the title, "NorthernAntiquities; or a Description of the Manners, Customs, Religion, and Lawsof the ancient Danes. " A German translation had appeared a few yearsearlier and had inspired the Schleswig-Holsteiner, Heinrich Wilhem vonGerstenberg, to compose his "Gedicht eines Skalden, " which introduced theold Icelandic mythology into German poetry in 1766. Percy had publishedindependently in 1763 "Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, translated from theIcelandic Language. "

Gray did not wait for the English translation of Mallet's book. In aletter to Mason, dated in 1758, and inclosing some criticisims on thelatter's "Caractacus" (then in MS. ), he wrote, "I am pleased with theGothic Elysium. Do you think I am ignorant about either that, or the_hell_ before, or the _twilight_. [3] I have been there and have seen itall in Mallet's 'Introduction to the History of Denmark' (it is inFrench), and many other places. " It is a far cry from Mallet's "Systemof Runic Mythology" to William Morris' "Sigurd the Volsung" (1877), butto Mallet belongs the credit of first exciting that interest inScandinavian antiquity which has enriched the prose and poetry not onlyof England but of Europe in general. Gray refers to him in his notes on"The Descent of Odin, " and his work continued to be popular authority onits subject for at least half a century. Scott cites it in hisannotations on "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (1805). 

Gray's studies in Runic literature took shape in "The Fatal Sisters" and"The Descent of Odin, " written in 1761, published in 1768. These wereparaphrases of two poems which Gray found in the "De Causis ContemnendaeMortis" (Copenhagen, 1689) of Thomas Bartholin, a Danish physician of theseventeenth century. The first of them describes the Valkyrie weavingthe fates of the Danish and Irish warriors in the battle of Clontarf, fought in the eleventh century between Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, and Brian, King of Dublin; the second narrates the descent of Odin to Niflheimer, toinquire of Hela concerning the doom of Balder. [4] Gray had designedthese for the introductory chapter of his projected history of Englishpoetry. He calls them imitations, which in fact they are, rather thanliteral renderings. In spite of a tinge of eighteenth-century diction, and of one or two Shaksperian and Miltonic phrases, the translatorsucceeded fairly well in reproducing the wild air of his originals. Hisbiographer, Mr. Gosse, promises that "the student will not fail . . . Inthe Gothic picturesqueness of 'The Descent of Odin, ' to detect notes andphrases of a more delicate originality than are to be found even in hismore famous writings; and will dwell with peculiar pleasure on thosepassages in which Gray freed himself of the trammels of an artificial andconventional taste, and prophesied of the new romantic age that wascoming. "

Celtic antiquity shared with Gothic in this newly around interest. Heretoo, as in the phrase about "the stormy Hebrides, " "Lycidas" seems tohave furnished the spark that kindled the imaginations of the poets. 

 "Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas? For neither were ye playing on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids lie, Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. "

Joseph Warton quotes this passage twice in his "Essay on Pope" (Vol I. , pp. 7 and 356, 5th ed. ), once to assert its superiority to a passage inPope's "Pastorals": "The mention of places remarkably romantic, thesupposed habitation of Druids, bards and wizards, is far more pleasing tothe imagination, than the obvious introduction of Cam and Isis. " Anothertime, to illustrate the following suggestion: "I have frequently wonderedthat our modern writers have made so little use of the druidical timesand the traditions of the old bards. . . Milton, we see, was sensible ofthe force of such imagery, as we may gather from this short but exquisitepassage. " As further illustrations of the poetic capabilities of similarthemes, Warton gives a stanza from Gray's "Bard" and some lines fromGilbert West's "Institution of the Order of the Garter" which describethe ghosts of the Druids hovering about their ruined altars at Stonehenge:

 "--Mysterious rows Of rude enormous obelisks, that rise Orb within orb, stupendous monuments Of artless architecture, such as now Oft-times amaze the wandering traveler, By the pale moon discerned on Sarum's plain. "

He then inserts two stanzas, in the Latin of Hickes' "Thesaurus, " of anold Runic ode preserved by Olaus Wormius (Ole Worm) and adds anobservation upon the Scandinavian heroes and their contempt of death. Druids and bards now begin to abound. Collins' "Ode on the Death of Mr. Thomson, " _e. G. _, commences with the line

 "In yonder grave a Druid lies. "

In his "Ode to Liberty, " he alludes to the tradition that Mona, thedruidic stronghold, was long covered with an enchantment of mist--work ofan angry mermaid:

 "Mona, once hid from those who search the main, Where thousand elfin shapes abide. "

In Thomas Warton's "Pleasures of Melancholy, " Contemplation is fabled tohave been discovered, when a babe, by a Druid

 "Far in a hollow glade of Mona's woods, "

and borne by him to his oaken bower, where she

 "--loved to lie Oft deeply listening to the rapid roar Of wood-hung Menai, stream of druids old. "

Mason's "Caractacus" (1759) was a dramatic poem on the Greek model, witha chorus of British bards, and a principal Druid for choragus. The sceneis the sacred grove in Mona. Mason got up with much care the descriptionof druidic rites, such as the preparation of the adder-stone and thecutting of the mistletoe with a gold sickle, from Latin authorities likePliny, Tacitus, Lucan, Strabo, and Suetonius. Joseph Warton commendshighly the chorus on "Death" in this piece, as well as the chorus ofbards at the end of West's "Institution of the Garter. " For thematerials of his "Bard" Gray had to go no farther than historians andchroniclers such as Camden, Higden, and Matthew of Westminster, to all ofwhom he refers. Following a now discredited tradition, he represents thelast survivor of the Welsh poetic guild, seated, harp in hand, upon acrag on the side of Snowdon, and denouncing judgment on Edward I, for themurder of his brothers in song. 

But in 1764 Gray was incited, by the publication of Dr. Evans'"Specimens, "[5] to attempt a few translations from the Welsh. The mostconsiderable of these was "The Triumphs of Owen, " published among Gray'scollected poems in 1768. This celebrates the victory over theconfederate fleets of Ireland, Denmark, and Normandy, won about 1160 by aprince of North Wales, Owen Ap Griffin, "the dragon son on Mona. " Theother fragments are brief but spirited versions of bardic songs in praiseof fallen heroes: "Caràdoc, " "Conan, " and "The Death of Hoel. " They wereprinted posthumously, though doubtless composed in 1764. 

The scholarship of the day was not always accurate in discriminatingbetween ancient systems of religion, and Gray, in his letters to Mason in1758, when "Caractacus" was still in the works, takes him to task formixing the Gothic and Celtic mythologies. He instructs him that Wodenand his Valhalla belong to "the doctrine of the Scalds, not of theBards"; but admits that, "in that scarcity of Celtic ideas we laborunder, " it might be permissible to borrow from the Edda, "dropping, however, all mention of Woden and his Valkyrian virgins, " and "withoutentering too minutely on particulars"; or "still better, to graft anywild picturesque fable, absolutely of one's own invention, upon the Druidstock. " But Gray had not scrupled to mix mythologies in "The Bard, "thereby incurring Dr. Johnson's censure. "The weaving of the windingsheet he borrowed, as he owns, from the northern bards; but theirtexture, however, was very properly the work of female powers, as the artof spinning the thread of life in another mythology. Theft is alwaysdangerous: Gray has made weavers of the slaughtered bards, by a fictionoutrageous and incongruous. "[6] Indeed Mallet himself had a veryconfused notion of the relation of the Celtic to the Teutonic race. Hespeaks constantly of the old Scandinavians as Celts. Percy points outthe difference, in the preface to his translation, and makes thenecessary correction in the text, where the word Celtic occurs--usuallyby substituting "Gothic and Celtic" for the "Celtic" of the original. Mason made his contribution to Runic literature, "Song of Harold theValiant, " a rather insipid versification of a passage from the "KnytlingaSaga, " which had been rendered by Bartholin into Latin, from him intoFrench by Mallet, and from Mallet into English prose by Percy. Masondesigned it for insertion in the introduction to Gray's abortive historyof English poetry. 

The true pioneers of the mediaeval revival were the Warton brothers. "The school of Warton" was a term employed, not without disparagingimplications, by critics who had no liking for antique minstrelsy. Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of Thomas Warton, vicar ofBasingstoke, who had been a fellow of Magdalen and Professor of Poetry atOxford; which latter position was afterward filled by the younger of histwo sons. It is interesting to note that a volume of verse by ThomasWarton, Sr. , posthumously printed in 1748, includes a Spenserianimitation and translations of two passages from the "Song of RagnerLodbrog, " an eleventh-century Viking, after the Latin version quoted bySir Wm. Temple in his essay "Of Heroic Virtue";[7] so that the romanticleanings of the Warton brothers seem to be an instance of heredity. Joseph was educated at Winchester, --where Collins was hisschoolfellow--and both of the brothers at Oxford. Joseph afterwardbecame headmaster of Winchester, and lived till 1800, surviving hisyounger brother ten years. Thomas was always identified with Oxford, where he resided for forty-seven years. He was appointed, in 1785, Camden Professor of History in the university, but gave no lectures. Inthe same year he was chosen to succeed Whitehead, as Poet Laureate. Bothbrothers were men of a genial, social temper. Joseph was a man of someelegance; he was fond of the company of young ladies, went into generalsociety, and had a certain renown as a drawing-room wit and diner-out. He used to spend his Christmas vacations in London, where he was a memberof Johnson's literary club. Thomas, on the contrary, who waxed fat andindolent in college cloisters, until Johnson compared him to a turkeycock, was careless in his personal habits and averse to polite society. He was the life of a common room at Oxford, romped with the schoolboyswhen he visited Dr. Warton at Winchester, and was said to have ahankering after pipes and ale and the broad mirth of the taproom. BothWartons had an odd passion for military parades; and Thomas--who was abeliever in ghosts--used secretly to attend hangings. They were alsoremarkably harmonious in their tastes and intellectual pursuits, eagerstudents of old English poetry, Gothic architecture, and Britishantiquities. So far as enthusiasm, fine critical taste, and elegantscholarship can make men poets, the Wartons were poets. But their workwas quite unoriginal. Many of their poems can be taken to pieces andassigned, almost line by line and phrase by phrase, to Milton, Thomson, Spenser, Shakspere, Gray. They had all of our romantic poet Longfellow'sdangerous gifts of sympathy and receptivity, without a tenth part of histechnical skill, or any of his real originality as an artist. LikeLongfellow, they loved the rich and mellow atmosphere of the historicpast:

 "Tales that have the rime of age, And chronicles of eld. "

The closing lines of Thomas Warton's sonnet "Written in a Blank Leaf ofDugdale's Monasticon"[8]--a favorite with Charles Lamb--might have beenwritten by Longfellow:

 "Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers. "

Joseph Warton's pretensions, as a poet, are much less than his youngerbrother's. Much of Thomas Warton's poetry, such as his _facetiae_ in the"Oxford Sausage" and his "Triumph of Isis, " had an academic flavor. These we may pass over, as foreign to our present inquiries. So, too, with most of his annual laureate odes, "On his Majesty's Birthday, " etc. Yet even these official and rather perfunctory performances testify tohis fondness for what Scott calls "the memorials of our forefathers'piety or splendor. " Thus, in the birthday odes for 1787-88, and the NewYear ode for 1787, he pays a tribute to the ancient minstrels and toearly laureates like Chaucer and Spenser, and celebrates "the Druid harp"sounding "through the gloom profound of forests hoar"; the fanes andcastles built by the Normans; and the

 "--bright hall where Odin's Gothic throne With the broad blaze of brandished falchions shone. "

But the most purely romantic of Thomas Warton's poems are "The Crusade"and "The Grave of King Arthur. " The former is the song which

 "The lion heart Plantagenet Sang, looking through his prison-bars, "

when the minstrel Blondel came wandering in search of his captive king. The latter describes how Henry II. , on his way to Ireland, was feasted atCilgarran Castle, where the Welsh bards sang to him of the death ofArthur and his burial in Glastonbury Abbey. The following passageanticipates Scott:

 "Illumining the vaulted roof, A thousand torches flamed aloof; From many cups, with golden gleam, Sparkled the red metheglin's stream: To grace the gorgeous festival, Along the lofty-windowed hall The storied tapestry was hung; With minstrelsy the rafters rung Of harps that with reflected light From the proud gallery glittered bright: While gifted bards, a rival throng, From distant Mona, nurse of song, From Teivi fringed with umbrage brown, From Elvy's vale and Cader's crown, From many a shaggy precipice That shades Ierne's hoarse abyss, And many a sunless solitude Of Radnor's inmost mountains rude, To crown the banquet's solemn close Themes of British glory chose. "

Here is much of Scott's skill in the poetic manipulation of place-names, _e. G. _, "Day set on Norham's castled steep, And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone"--

names which leave a far-resounding romantic rumble behind them. Anotherpassage in Warton's poem brings us a long way on toward Tennyson's "WildTintagel by the Cornish sea" and his "island valley of Avilion. "

 "O'er Cornwall's cliffs the tempest roared: High the screaming sea-mew soared: In Tintaggel's topmost tower Darkness fell the sleety shower: Round the rough castle shrilly sung The whirling blast, and wildly flung On each tall rampart's thundering side The surges of the tumbling tide, When Arthur ranged his red-cross ranks On conscious Camlan's crimsoned banks: By Mordred's faithless guile decreed Beneath a Saxon spear to bleed. Yet in vain a Paynim foe Armed with fate the mightly blow; For when he fell, an elfin queen, All in secret and unseen, O'er the fainting hero threw Her mantle of ambrosial blue, And bade her spirits bear him far, In Merlin's agate-axled car, To her green isle's enameled steep Far in the navel of the deep. "

Other poems of Thomas Warton touching upon his favorite studies are the"Ode Sent to Mr. Upton, on his Edition of the Faery Queene, " the "MonodyWritten near Stratford-upon-Avon, " the sonnets, "Written at Stonehenge, ""To Mr. Gray, " and "On King Arthur's Round Table, " and the humorousepistle which he attributes to Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, denouncingthe bishops for their recent order that fast-prayers should be printed inmodern type instead of black letter, and pronouncing a curse upon theauthor of "The Companion to the Oxford Guide Book" for his disrespectfulremarks about antiquaries. 

 "May'st thou pore in vain For dubious doorways! May revengeful moths Thy ledgers eat! May chronologic spouts Retain no cipher legible! May crypts Lurk undiscovered! Nor may'st thou spell the names Of saints in storied windows, nor the dates Of bells discover, nor the genuine site Of abbots' pantries!"

Warton was a classical scholar and, like most of the forerunners of theromantic school, was a trifle shame-faced over his Gothic heresies. SirJoshua Reynolds had supplied a painted window of classical design for NewCollege, Oxford; and Warton, in some complimentary verses, professes thatthose "portraitures of Attic art" have won him back to the true taste;[9]and prophesies that henceforth angels, apostles, saints, miracles, martyrdoms, and tales of legendary lore shall--

 "No more the sacred window's round disgrace, But yield to Grecian groups the shining space. . . Thy powerful hand has broke the Gothic chain, And brought my bosom back to truth again. . . For long, enamoured of a barbarous age, A faithless truant to the classic page-- Long have I loved to catch the simple chime Of minstrel harps, and spell the fabling rime; To view the festive rites, the knightly play, That decked heroic Albion's elder day; To mark the mouldering halls of barons bold, And the rough castle, cast in giant mould; With Gothic manners, Gothic arts explore, And muse on the magnificence of yore. But chief, enraptured have I loved to roam, A lingering votary, the vaulted dome, Where the tall shafts, that mount in massy pride, Their mingling branches shoot from side to side; Where elfin sculptors, with fantastic clew, O'er the long roof their wild embroidery drew; Where Superstition, with capricious hand, In many a maze, the wreathëd window planned, With hues romantic tinged the gorgeous pane, To fill with holy light the wondrous fane. "[10]

The application of the word "romantic, " in this passage, to the mediaevalart of glass-staining is significant. The revival of the art in our ownday is due to the influence of the latest English school of romanticpoetry and painting, and especially to William Morris. Warton'sbiographers track his passion for antiquity to the impression left uponhis mind by a visit to Windsor Castle, when he was a boy. He used tospend his summers in wandering through abbeys and cathedrals. He keptnotes of his observations and is known to have begun a work on Gothicarchitecture, no trace of which, however, was found among hismanuscripts. The Bodleian Library was one of his haunts, and he wasfrequently seen "surveying with quiet and rapt earnestness the ancientgateway of Magdalen College. " He delighted in illuminated manuscriptsand black-letter folios. In his "Observations on the Faëry Queene"[11]he introduces a digression of twenty pages on Gothic architecture, andspeaks lovingly of a "very curious and beautiful folio manuscript of thehistory of Arthur and his knights in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, written on vellum, with illuminated initials and head-pieces, in which wesee the fashion of ancient armour, building, manner of tilting and otherparticulars. "

Another very characteristic poem of Warton's is the "Ode Written atVale-Royal Abbey in Cheshire, " a monastery of Cistercian monks, foundedby Edward I. This piece is saturated with romantic feeling and writtenin the stanza and manner of Gray's "Elegy, " as will appear from a pair ofstanzas, taken at random:

 "By the slow clock, in stately-measured chime, That from the messy tower tremendous tolled, No more the plowman counts the tedious time, Nor distant shepherd pens the twilight fold. 

 "High o'er the trackless heath at midnight seen, No more the windows, ranged in array (Where the tall shaft and fretted nook between Thick ivy twines), the tapered rites betray. "

It is a note of Warton's period that, though Fancy and the Muse surveythe ruins of the abbey with pensive regret, "severer Reason"--the realeighteenth-century divinity--"scans the scene with philosophic ken, "and--being a Protestant--reflects that, after all, the monastic houseswere "Superstition's shrine" and their demolition was a good thing forScience and Religion. 

The greatest service, however, that Thomas Warton rendered to the studiesthat he loved was his "History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to theClose of the Sixteenth Century. " This was in three volumes, publishedrespectively in 1774, 1777, and 1781. The fragment of a fourth volumewas issued in 1790. A revised edition in four volumes was published in1824, under the editorship of Richard Price, corrected, augmented, andannotated by Ritson, Douce, Park, Ashby, and the editor himself. In 1871appeared a new revision (also in four volumes) edited by W. CarewHazlitt, with many additions, by the editor and by well-known Englishscholars like Madden, Skeat, Furnivall, Morris, and Thomas and AldisWright. It should never be forgotten, in estimating the value ofWarton's work, that he was a forerunner in this field. Much of hislearning is out of date, and the modern editors of his history--Price andHazlitt--seem to the discouraged reader to be chiefly engaged, in theirfootnotes and bracketed interpellations, in taking back statements thatWarton had made in the text. The leading position, _e. G. _, of hispreliminary dissertation, "Of the Origin of Romantic Fiction inEurope"--deriving it from the Spanish Arabs--has long since beendiscredited. But Warton's learning was wide, if not exact; and it wasnot dry learning, but quickened by the spirit of a genuine man ofletters. Therefore, in spite of its obsoleteness in matters of fact, hishistory remains readable, as a body of descriptive criticism, or acontinuous literary essay. The best way to read it is to read it as itwas written--in the original edition--disregarding the apparatus ofnotes, which modern scholars have accumulated about it, but rememberingthat it is no longer an authority and probably needs correcting on everypage. Read thus, it is a thoroughly delightful book, "a classic in itsway, " as Lowell has said. Southey, too, affirmed that its publicationformed an epoch in literary history; and that, with Percy's "Reliques, "it had promoted, beyond any other work, the "growth of a better tastethan had prevailed for the hundred years preceding. "

Gray had schemed a history of English poetry, but relinquished the designto Warton, to whom he communicated an outline of his own plan. The"Observations on English Metre" and the essay on the poet Lydgate, amongGray's prose remains, are apparently portions of this projected work. 

Lowell, furthermore, pronounces Joseph Warton's "Essay on the Genius andWritings of Pope" (1756) "the earliest public official declaration of waragainst the reigning mode. " The new school had its critics, as well asits poets, and the Wartons were more effective in the former capacity. The war thus opened was by no means as internecine as that waged by theFrench classicists and romanticists of 1830. It has never been possibleto get up a very serious conflict in England, upon merely aestheticgrounds. Yet the same opposition existed. Warton's biographer tells usthat the strictures made upon his essay were "powerful enough to damp theardor of the essayist, who left his work in an imperfect state for thelong space of twenty-six years, " _i. E. _, till 1782, when he published thesecond volume. 

Both Wartons were personal friends of Dr. Johnson; they were members ofthe Literary Club and contributors to the _Idler_ and the _Adventurer_. Thomas interested himself to get Johnson the Master's degree from Oxford, where the doctor made him a visit. Some correspondence between them isgiven in Boswell. Johnson maintained in public a respectful attitudetoward the critical and historical work of the Wartons; but he had nosympathy with their antiquarian enthusiasm or their liking for oldEnglish poetry. In private he ridiculed Thomas' verses, and summed themup in the manner ensuing:

 "Whereso'er I turn my view, All is strange yet nothing new; Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong; Phrase that time has flung away, Uncouth words in disarray, Tricked in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode and elegy and sonnet. "

And although he added, "Remember that I love the fellow dearly, for all Ilaugh at him, " this saving clause failed to soothe the poet's indignantbreast, when he heard that the doctor had ridiculed his lines. Anestrangement resulted which Johnson is said to have spoken of even withtears, saying "that Tom Warton was the only man of genius he ever knewwho wanted a heart. "

Goldsmith, too, belonged to the conservative party, though Mr. Perry[12]detects romantic touches in "The Deserted Village, " such as the line, "Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe, "

or

 "On Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side. "

In his "Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning" (1759)Goldsmith pronounces the age one of literary decay; he deplores the vogueof blank verse--which he calls an "erroneous innovation"--and the"disgusting solemnity of manner" that it has brought into fashion. Hecomplains of the revival of old plays upon the stage. "Old pieces arerevived, and scarcely any new ones admitted. . . The public are againobliged to ruminate over those ashes of absurdity which were disgustingto our ancestors even in an age of ignorance. . . What must be done?Only sit down contented, cry up all that comes before us and advance eventhe absurdities of Shakspere. Let the reader suspend his censure; Iadmire the beauties of this great father of our stage as much as theydeserve, but could wish, for the honor of our country, and for his owntoo, that many of his scenes were forgotten. A man blind of one eyeshould always be painted in profile. Let the spectator who assists atany of these new revived pieces only ask himself whether he would approvesuch a performance, if written by a modern poet. I fear he will findthat much of his applause proceeds merely from the sound of a name and anempty veneration for antiquity. In fact, the revival of those _pieces offorced humor, far-fetched conceit and unnatural hyperbole which have beenascribed to Shakspere_, is rather gibbeting than raising a statue to hismemory. "

The words that I have italicized make it evident that what Goldsmith wasreally finding fault with was the restoration of the original text ofShakspere's plays, in place of the garbled versions that had hithertobeen acted. This restoration was largely due to Garrick, but Goldsmith'slanguage implies that the reform was demanded by public opinion and bythe increasing "veneration for antiquity. " The next passage shows thatthe new school had its _claque_, which rallied to the support of the oldBritish drama as the French romanticists did, nearly a century later, tothe support of Victor Hugo's _melodrames_. [13]

"What strange vamped comedies, farcical tragedies, or what shall I callthem--speaking pantomimes have we not of late seen?. . . The piecepleases our critics because it talks Old English; and it pleases thegalleries because it has ribaldry. . . A prologue generally precedes thepiece, to inform us that it was composed by Shakspere or old Ben, orsomebody else who took them for his model. A face of iron could not havethe assurance to avow dislike; the theater has its partisans whounderstand the force of combinations trained up to vociferation, clappingof hands and clattering of sticks; and though a man might have strengthsufficient to overcome a lion in single combat, he may run the risk ofbeing devoured by an army of ants. "

Goldsmith returned to the charge in "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1766), where Dr. Primrose, inquiring of the two London dames, "who were thepresent theatrical writers in vogue, who were the Drydens and Otways ofthe day, " is surprised to learn that Dryden and Rowe are quite out offashion, that taste has gone back a whole century, and that "Fletcher, Ben Jonson and all the plays of Shakspere are the only things that godown. " "How, " cries the good vicar, "is it possible the present age canbe pleased with that antiquated dialect, that obsolete humor, thoseovercharged characters which abound in the works you mention?"Goldsmith's disgust with this affectation finds further vent in his "Lifeof Parnell" (1770). "He [Parnell] appears to me to be the last of thatgreat school that had modeled itself upon the ancients, and taughtEnglish poetry to resemble what the generality of mankind have allowed toexcel. . . His productions bear no resemblance to those tawdry thingswhich it has, for some time, been the fashion to admire. . . Hispoetical language is not less correct than his subjects are pleasing. Hefound it at that period in which it was brought to its highest pitch ofrefinement; and ever since his time, it has been gradually debasing. Itis, indeed, amazing, after what has been done by Dryden, Addison, andPope, to improve and harmonize our native tongue, that their successorsshould have taken so much pains to involve it into pristine barbarity. These misguided innovators have not been content with restoringantiquated words and phrases, but have indulged themselves in the mostlicentious transpositions and the harshest constructions; vainlyimagining that, the more their writings are unlike prose, the more theyresemble poetry. They have adopted a language of their own, and callupon mankind for admiration. All those who do not understand them aresilent; and those who make out their meaning are willing to praise, toshow they understand. " This last sentence is a hit at the allegedobscurity of Gray's and Mason's odes. 

To illustrate the growth of a retrospective habit in literature Mr. Perry[14] quotes at length from an essay "On the Prevailing Taste for theOld English Poets, " by Vicesimus Knox, sometimes master of Tunbridgeschool, editor of "Elegant Extracts" and honorary doctor of theUniversity of Pennsylvania. Knox's essays were written while he was anOxford undergraduate, and published collectively in 1777. By this timethe romantic movement was in full swing. "The Castle of Otranto" andPercy's "Reliques" had been out more than ten years; many of the Rowleypoems were in print; and in this very year, Tyrwhitt issued a completeedition of them, and Warton published the second volume of his "Historyof English Poetry. " Chatterton and Percy are both mentioned by Knox. 

"The antiquarian spirit, " he writes, "which was once confined toinquiries concerning the manners, the buildings, the records, and thecoins of the ages that preceded us, has now extended itself to thosepoetical compositions which were popular among our forefathers, but whichhave gradually sunk into oblivion through the decay of language and theprevalence of a correct and polished taste. Books printed in the blackletter are sought for with the same avidity with which the Englishantiquary peruses a monumental inscription, or treasures up a Saxon pieceof money. The popular ballad, composed by some illiterate minstrel, andwhich has been handed down by tradition for several centuries, is rescuedfrom the hands of the vulgar, to obtain a place in the collection of theman of taste. Verses which, a few years past, were thought worthy theattention of children only, or of the lowest and rudest orders, are nowadmired for that artless simplicity which once obtained the name ofcoarseness and vulgarity. " Early English poetry, continues the essayist, "has had its day, and the antiquary must not despise us if we cannotperuse it with patience. He who delights in all such reading as is neverread, may derive some pleasure from the singularity of his taste, but heought still to respect the judgment of mankind, which has consigned tooblivion the works which he admires. While he pores unmolested onChaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Occleve, let him not censure our obstinacyin adhering to Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Pope. . . Notwithstanding theincontrovertible merit of many of our ancient relics of poetry, I believeit may be doubted whether any one of them would be tolerated as theproduction of a modern poet. As a good imitation of the ancient manner, it would find its admirers; but, considered independently, as anoriginal, it would be thought a careless, vulgar, inartificialcomposition. There are few who do not read Dr. Percy's own pieces, andthose of other late writers, with more pleasure than the oldest ballad inthe collection of that ingenious writer. " Mr. Percy quotes another paperof Knox in which he divides the admirers of English poetry into twoparties: "On one side are the lovers and imitators of Spenser and Milton;and on the other, those of Dryden, Boileau, and Pope"; in modern phrase, the romanticists and the classicists. 

Joseph Warton's "Essay on Pope" was an attempt to fix its subject's rankamong English poets. Following the discursive method of Thomas Warton's"Observations on the Faerie Queen, " it was likewise an elaboratecommentary on all of Pope's poems _seriatim_. Every point wasillustrated with abundant learning, and there were digressions amountingto independent essays on collateral topics: one, _e. G. _, on Chaucer, oneon early French Metrical romances; another on Gothic architecture:another on the new school of landscape gardening, in which Walpole'sessay and Mason's poem are quoted with approval, and mention is made ofthe Leasowes. The book was dedicated to Young; and when the secondvolume was published in 1782, the first was reissued in a revised formand introduced by a letter to the author from Tyrwhitt, who writes that, under the shelter of Warton's authority, "one may perhaps venture to avowan opinion that poetry is not confined to rhyming couplets, and that itsgreatest powers are not displayed in prologues and epilogues. "

The modern reader will be apt to think Warton's estimate of Pope quitehigh enough. He places him, to be sure, in the second rank of poets, below Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton, yet next to Milton and aboveDryden; and he calls the reign of Queen Anne the great age of Englishpoetry. Yet if it be recollected that the essay was published onlytwelve years after Pope's death, and at a time when he was still commonlyheld to be, if not the greatest poet, at least the greatest artist inverse, that England had ever produced, it will be seen that Warton'sopinions might well be thought revolutionary, and his challenge to thecritics a bold one. These opinions can be best exhibited by quoting afew passages from his book, not consecutive, but taken here and there asbest suits the purpose. 

"The sublime and the pathetic are the two chief nerves of all genuinepoesy. What is there transcendently sublime or pathetic in Pope?. . . He early left the more poetical provinces of his art, to become a moral, didactic, and satiric poet. . . And because I am, perhaps, unwilling tospeak out in plain English, I will adopt the following passage ofVoltaire, which, in my opinion, as exactly characteristizes Pope as itdoes his model, Boileau, for whom it was originally designed. 'Incapablepeut-être du sublime qui élève l'áme, et du sentiment qui l'attendrit, mais fait pour éclairer ceux à qui la nature accorda l'un et l'autre;laborieux, sévère, précis, pur, harmonieux, il devint enfin le poëte dela Raison. '. . . A clear head and acute understanding are not sufficientalone to make a poet; the most solid observations on human life, expressed with the utmost elegance and brevity, are morality and notpoetry. . . It is a creative and glowing imagination, _acer spiritus acvis_, and that alone, that can stamp a writer with this exalted and veryuncommon character. "

Warton believes that Pope's projected epic on Brutus, the legendary foundof Britain, "would have more resembled the 'Henriade' than the 'Iliad, 'or even the 'Gierusalemme Liberata'; that it would have appeared (if thisscheme had been executed) how much, and for what reasons, the man that isskillful in painting modern life, and the most secret foibles and folliesof his contemporaries, is, THEREFORE, disqualified for representing theages of heroism, and that simple life which alone epic poetry cangracefully describe. . . Wit and satire are transitory and perishable, but nature and passion are eternal. " The largest portion of Pope's work, says the author's closing summary, "is of the didactic, moral, andsatiric kind; and consequently not of the most poetic species of poetry;when it is manifest that good sense and judgment were hischaracteristical excellencies, rather than fancy and invention. . . Hestuck to describing modern manners; but those manners, because they arefamiliar, uniform, artificial, and polished, are in their very nature, unfit for any lofty effort of the Muse. He gradually became one of themost correct, even, and exact poets that ever wrote. . . Whateverpoetical enthusiasm he actually possessed, he withheld and stifled. Theperusal of him affects not our minds with such strong emotions as we feelfrom Homer and Milton; so that no man of a true poetical spirit is masterof himself while he reads them. . . He who would think the 'FaerieQueene, ' 'Palamon and Arcite, ' the 'Tempest' or 'Comus, ' childish andromantic might relish Pope. Surely it is no narrow and niggardlyencomium to say, he is the great poet of Reason, the first of ethicalauthors in verse. "

To illustrate Pope's inferiority in the poetry of nature and passion, Warton quotes freely by way of contrast, not only from Spenser andMilton, but from such contemporaries of his own as Thomson, Akenside, Gray, Collins, Dyer, Mason, West, Shenstone, and Bedingfield. Hecomplains that Pope's "Pastorals" contains no new image of nature, andhis "Windsor Forest" no local color; while "the scenes of Thomson arefrequently as wild and romantic as those of Salvator Rosa, varied withprecipices and torrents and 'castled cliffs' and deep valleys, with pinymountains and the gloomiest caverns. " "When Gray published his exquisiteode on Eton College . . . Little notice was taken of it; but I suppose nocritic can be found that will not place it far above Pope's 'Pastorals. '"

A few additional passages will serve to show that this critic's literaryprinciples, in general, were consciously and polemically romantic. Thushe pleads for the _mot précis_--that shibboleth of the nineteenth-centuryromanticists--for "_natural, little_ circumstances" against "those whoare fond of _generalities_"; for the "lively painting of Spenser andShakspere, " as contrasted with the lack of picturesqueness and imagery inVoltaire's "Henriade. " He praises "the fashion that has lately obtained, in all the nations of Europe, of republishing and illustrating their oldpoets. "[15] Again, commenting upon Pope's well-known triplet, "Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full-resounding line, The long majestic march and energy divine!"

he exclaims: "What! Did Milton contribute nothing to the harmony andextent of our language?. . . Surely his verses vary and resound as much, and display as much majesty and energy, as any that can be found inDryden. And we will venture to say that he that studies Miltonattentively, will gain a truer taste for genuine poetry than he thatforms himself on French writers and their followers. " Elsewhere heexpresses a preference for blank verse over rhyme, in long poems onsubjects of a dignified kind. [16]

"It is perpetually the nauseous cant of the French critics, and of theiradvocates and pupils, that the English writers are generally incorrect. If correctness implies an absence of petty faults, this perhaps may begranted; if it means that, because their tragedians have avoided theirregularities of Shakspere, and have observed a juster economy in theirfables, therefore the 'Athalia, ' for instance, is preferable to 'Lear, 'the notion is groundless and absurd. Though the 'Henriade' should beallowed to be free from any very gross absurdities, yet who will dare torank it with the 'Paradise Lost'?. . . In our own country the rules ofthe drama were never more completely understood than at present; yet whatuninteresting, though faultless, tragedies have we lately seen!. . . Whether or no the natural powers be not confined and debilitated by thattimidity and caution which is occasioned by a rigid regard to thedictates of art; or whether that philosophical, that geometrical andsystematical spirit so much in vogue, which has spread itself from thesciences even into polite literature, by consulting only reason, has notdiminished and destroyed sentiment, and made our poets write from and tothe head rather than the heart; or whether, lastly, when just models, from which the rules have necessarily been drawn, have once appeared, succeeding writers, by vainly and ambitiously striving to surpassthose . . . Do not become stiff and forced. " One of these uninteresting, though faultless tragedies was "Cato, " which Warton pronounces a"sententious and declamatory drama" filled with "pompous Romansentiments, " but wanting action and pathos. He censures the tameness ofAddison's "Letter from Italy. "[17] "With what flatness and unfeelingnesshas he spoken of statuary and painting! Raphael never received a morephlegmatic eulogy. " He refers on the other hand to Gray's account of hisjourney to the Grande Chartreuse, [18] as worthy of comparison with one ofthe finest passages in the "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard. "

This mention of Addison recalls a very instructive letter of Gray on thesubject of poetic style. [19] The romanticists loved a rich diction, andthe passage might be taken as an anticipatory defense of himself againstWordsworth's strictures in the preface to the "Lyrical Ballads. " "Thelanguage of the age, " wrote Gray, "is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse . . . Differs in nothing from prose. Our poetry has a language peculiar to itself; to which almost everyonethat has written has added something, by enriching it with foreign idiomsand derivatives; nay, sometimes words of their own composition orinvention. Shakspere and Milton have been great creators in thisway . . . Our language has an undoubted right to words of an hundredyears old, provided antiquity have not rendered them unintelligible. Intruth Shakspere's language is one of his principal beauties; and he hasno less advantage over your Addisons and Rowes in this, than in thoseother great excellencies you mention. Every word in him is a picture. "He then quotes a passage from "Richard III. , " and continues, "Pray put methe following lines into the tongue of our modern dramatics. To me theyappear untranslatable, and if this be the case, our language is greatlydegenerated. "

Warton further protests against the view which ascribed the introductionof true taste in literature to the French. "Shakspere and Miltonimitated the Italians and not the French. " He recommends also thereintroduction of the preternatural into poetry. There are some, hesays, who think that poetry has suffered by becoming too rational, deserting fairyland, and laying aside "descriptions of magic andenchantment, " and he quotes, _à propos_ of this the famous stanza aboutthe Hebrides in "The Castle of Indolence. "[20] The false refinement ofthe French has made them incapable of enjoying "the terrible graces ofour irregular Shakspere, especially in his scenes of magic andincantations. These _Gothic_ charms are in truth more striking to theimagination than the classical. The magicians of Ariosto, Tasso, andSpenser have more powerful spells than those of Apollonius, Seneca, andLucan. The enchanted forest of Ismeni is more awfully and tremendouslypoetical than even the grove which Caesar orders to be cut down in Lucan(i. Iii. 400), which was so full of terrors that, at noonday or midnight, the priest himself dared not approach it--

 "'Dreading the demon of the grove to meet. '

"Who that sees the sable plumes waving on the prodigious helmet in theCastle of Otranto, and the gigantic arm on the top of the greatstaircase, is not more affected than with the paintings of Ovid andApuleius? What a group of dreadful images do we meet with in the Edda!The Runic poetry abounds in them. Such is Gray's thrilling Ode on the'Descent of Odin. '"

Warton predicts that Pope's fame as a poet will ultimately rest on his"Windsor Forest, " his "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, " and "The Rape ofthe Lock. " To this prophecy time has already, in part, given the lie. Warton preferred "Windsor Forest" and "Eloisa" to the "Moral Essays"because they belonged to a higher kind of poetry. Posterity likes the"Moral Essays" better because they are better of their kind. They werethe natural fruit of Pope's genius and of his time, while the others wereartificial. We can go to Wordsworth for nature, to Byron for passion, and to a score of poets for both, but Pope remains unrivaled in hispeculiar field. In other words, we value what is characteristic in theartist; the one thing which he does best, the precise thing which he cando and no one else can. But Warton's mistake is significant of thechanging literary standards of his age; and his essay is one proof out ofmany that the English romantic movement was not entirely withoutself-conscious aims, but had its critical formulas and its programme, just as Queen Anne classicism had. 

[1] Dr. Johnson had his laugh at this popular person:

 "'Hermit hoar, in solemn cell Wearing out life's evening gray, Strike thy bosom, sage, and tell What is bliss, and which the way?'

 "Thus I spoke, and speaking sighed, Scarce suppressed the starting tear: When the hoary sage replied, '_Come, my lad, and drink some beer. _'"

[2] "Grose's Antiquities of Scotland" was published in 1791, and Burnswrote "Tam o'Shanter" to accompany the picture of Kirk Alloway in thiswork. See his poem, "On the late Captain Grose's Peregrinations throughScotland. "

[3] "Ragnarök, " or "Götterdämmerung, " the twilight of the Gods

[4] For a full discussion of Gray's sources and of his knowledge of OldNorse, the reader should consult the appendix by Professor G. L. Kittredge to Professor W. L. Phelps' "Selections from Gray" (1894, pp. Xl-1. ) Professor Kittredge concludes that Gray had but a slightknowledge of Norse, that he followed the Latin of Bartholin in hisrenderings; and that he probably also made use of such authorities asTorfaeus' "Orcades" (1697), Ole Worm's "Literatura Runica" (Copenhagen, 1636), Dr. George Hickes' monumental "Thesaurus" (Oxford, 1705), andRobert Sheringham's "De Anglorum Gentis Origine Disceptatio" (1716). Dryden's "Miscellany Poems" (1716) has a verse translation, "The Wakingof Angantyr, " from the English prose of Hickes, of a portion of the"Hervarar Saga. " Professor Kittredge refers to Sir William Temple'sessays "Of Poetry" and "Of Heroic Virtue. " "Nichols' Anecdotes" (I. 116)mentions, as published in 1715, "The Rudiments of Grammar for the EnglishSaxon Tongue; with an Apology for the study of Northern Antiquities. "This was by Mrs. Elizabeth Elstob, and was addressed to Hickes, thecompiler of the "Thesaurus. "

[5] "Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards, translatedinto English, " by Rev. Evan Evans, 1764. The specimens were ten innumber. The translations were in English prose. The originals wereprinted from a copy which Davies, the author of the Welsh dictionary, hadmade of an ancient vellum MS. Thought to be of the time of Edward II, Edward III, and Henry V. The book included a Latin "Dissertatio deBardis, " together with notes, appendices, etc. The preface makes mentionof Macpherson's recently published Ossianic poems. 

[6] "Life of Gray. "

[7] See Phelps' "English Romantic Movement, " pp. 73, 141-42. 

[8] Wm Dugdale published his "Monasticon Anglicanum, " a history of Englishreligious houses, in three parts, in 1655-62-73. It was accompanied withillustrations of the costumes worn by the ancient religious orders, andwith architectural views. The latter, says Eastlake, were rude andunsatisfactory, but interesting to modern students, as "preservingrepresentations of buildings, or portions of buildings, no longer inexistence; as, for instance, the _campanile_, or detached belfry ofSalisbury, since removed, and the spire of Lincoln, destroyed in 1547. "

[9] "Verses on Sir Joshua Reynolds' Painted Window. " _Cf. _ Poe, "ToHelen":

 "On desperate seas long wont to roam Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. "

[10] This apology should be compared with Scott's verse epistle to WmEreskine, prefixed to the third canto of "Marmion. "

 "For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask The classic poet's well-conned task?" etc. 

Scott spoke of himself in Warton's exact language, as a "truant to theclassic page. "

[11] See _ante_, pp. 99-101_. _

[12] "Eighteenth Century Literature, " p. 397. 

[13] Lowell mentions the publication of Dodsley's "Old Plays, " (1744) as, like Percy's "Reliques, " a symptom of the return of the past. Essay on"Gray. "

[14] "Eighteenth Century Literature, " pp. 401-03. 

[15] It is curious, however, to find Warton describing Villon as "a pertand insipid ballad-monger, whose thoughts and diction were as low andilliberal as his life, " Vol. II. P. 338 (Fifth Edition, 1806). 

[16] Warton quotes the follow bathetic opening of a "Poem in Praise ofBlank Verse" by Aaron Hill, "one of the very first persons who tooknotice of Thomson, on the publication of 'Winter'":

 "Up from Rhyme's poppied vale! And ride the storm That thunders in blank verse!" --Vol. II. P. 186. 

[17] See _ante_, p. 57. 

[18] See _ante_, p. 181. 

[19] To Richard West, April, 1742. 

[20] See _ante_, p. 94. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Gothic Revival. 

One of Thomas Warton's sonnets was addressed to Richard Hurd, afterwardBishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and later of Worcester. Hurd was afriend of Gray and Mason, and his "Letters on Chivalry and Romance"(1762) helped to initiate the romantic movement. They perhaps owed theirinspiration, in part, to Sainte Palaye's "Mémoires sur l'ancienneChevalerie, " the first volume of which was issued in 1759, though thethird and concluding volume appeared only in 1781. This was a monumentalwork and, as a standard authority, bears much the same relation to theliterature of its subject that Mallet's "Histoire de Dannemarc" bears toall the writing on Runic mythology that was done in Europe during theeighteenth-century. Jean Baptiste de la Curne de Sainte Palaye was ascholar of wide learning, not only in the history of mediaevalinstitutions but in old French dialects. He went to the south of Franceto familiarize himself with Provençal: collected a large library ofProvençal books and manuscripts, and published in 1774 his "Histoire deTroubadours. " Among his other works are a "Dictionary of FrenchAntiquities, " a glossary of Old French, and an edition of "Aucassin etNicolete. " Mrs. Susannah Dobson, who wrote "Historical Anecdotes ofHeraldry and Chivalry" (1795), made an English translation of SaintePalaye's "History of the Troubadours" in 1779, and of his "Memoirs ofAncient Chivalry" in 1784. 

The purpose of Hurd's letters was to prove "the pre-eminence of theGothic manners and fictions, as adapted to the ends of poetry, above theclassic. " "The greatest geniuses of our own and foreign countries, " heaffirms, "such as Ariosto and Tasso in Italy, and Spenser and Milton inEngland, were seduced by these barbarities of their forefathers; wereeven charmed by the Gothic romances. Was this caprice and absurdity inthem? Or may there not be something in the Gothic Romance peculiarlysuited to the view of a genius and to the ends of poetry? And may notthe philosophic moderns have gone too far in their perpetual ridicule andcontempt of it?" After a preliminary discussion of the origin ofchivalry and knight-errantry and of the ideal knightly characteristics, "Prowess, Generosity, Gallantry, and Religion, " which he derives from themilitary necessities of the feudal system, he proceeds to establish a"remarkable correspondency between the manners of the old heroic times, as painted by their romancer, Homer, and those which are represented tous in the books of modern knight-errantry. " He compares, _e. G. _, theLaestrygonians, Cyclopes_, _Circes, and Calypsos of Homer, with thegiants, paynims, sorceresses encountered by the champions of romance; theGreek aoixoi with the minstrels; the Olympian games with tournaments; andthe exploits of Hercules and Theseus, in quelling dragons and othermonsters, with the similar enterprises of Lancelot and Amadis de Gaul. The critic is daring enough to give the Gothic manners the preferenceover the heroic. Homer, he says, if he could have known both, would havechosen the former by reason of "the improved gallantry of the feudaltimes, and the superior solemnity of their superstitions. The gallantrywhich inspirited the feudal times was of a nature to furnish the poetwith finer scenes and subjects of description, in every view, than thesimple and uncontrolled barbarity of the Grecian. . . There was adignity, a magnificence, a variety in the feudal, which the other wanted. "

An equal advantage, thinks Hurd, the romancers enjoyed over the paganpoets in the point of supernatural machinery. "For the more solemnfancies of witchcraft and incantation, the horrors of the Gothic wereabove measure striking and terrible. The mummeries of the pagan priestswere childish, but the Gothic enchanters shook and alarmed allnature. . . You would not compare the Canidia of Horace with the witchesin 'Macbeth. ' And what are Virgil's myrtles, dropping blood, to Tasso'senchanted forest?. . . The fancies of our modern bards are not only moregallant, but . . . More sublime, more terrible, more alarming than thoseof the classic fables. In a word, you will find that the manners theypaint, and the superstitions they adopt, are the more poetical for beingGothic. "

Evidently the despised "Gothick" of Addison--as Mr. Howells puts it--wasfast becoming the admired "Gothic" of Scott. This pronunciamento of veryadvanced romantic doctrine came out several years before Percy's"Reliques" and "The Castle of Otranto. " It was only a few years laterthan Thomas Warton's "Observations on the Faërie Queene" and Joseph's"Essay on Pope, " but its views were much more radical. Neither of theWartons would have ventured to pronounce the Gothic manners superior tothe Homeric, as materials for poetry, whatever, in his secret heart, hemight have thought. [1] To Johnson such an opinion must have seemed flatblasphemy. Hurd accounts for the contempt into which the Gothic hadfallen on the ground that the feudal ages had never had the good fortuneto possess a great poet, like Homer, capable of giving adequate artisticexpression to their life and ideals. _Carent vate sacro_. Spenser andTasso, he thinks, "came too late, and it was impossible for them to painttruly and perfectly what was no longer seen or believed. . . As it is, we may take a guess of what the subject was capable of affording to realgenius from the rude sketches we have of it in the old romancers. . . The ablest writers of Greece ennobled the system of heroic manners, whileit was fresh and flourishing; and their works being masterpieces ofcomposition, so fixed the credit of it in the opinion of the world, thatno revolution of time and taste could afterward shake it. Whereas theGothic, having been disgraced in their infancy by bad writers, and a newset of manners springing up before there were any better to do themjustice, they could never be brought into vogue by the attempts of laterpoets. " Moreover, "the Gothic manners of chivalry, as springing out ofthe feudal system, were as singular as that system itself; so that whenthat political constitution vanished out of Europe, the manners thatbelonged to it were no longer seen or understood. There was no exampleof any such manners remaining on the face of the earth. And as theynever did subsist but once, and are never likely to subsist again, peoplewould be led of course to think and speak of them as romantic andunnatural. "

Even so, he thinks that the Renaissance poets, Ariosto and Spenser, owetheir finest effects not to their tinge of classical culture but to theirromantic materials. Shakspere "is greater when he uses Gothic mannersand machinery, than when he employs classical. " Tasso, to be sure, triedto trim between the two, by giving an epic form to his romanticsubject-matter, but Hurd pronounces his imitations of the ancients "faintand cold and almost insipid, when compared with his originalfictions. . . If it was not for these _lies_ [_magnanima mensogna_] ofGothic invention, I should scarcely be disposed to give the 'GierusalemmeLiberata' a second reading. " Nay, Milton himself, though finallychoosing the classic model, did so only after long hesitation. "Hisfavorite subject was Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. On thishe had fixed for the greater part of his life. What led him to changehis mind was partly, as I suppose, his growing fanaticism; partly hisambition to take a different route from Spenser; but chiefly, perhaps, the discredit into which the stories of chivalry had now fallen by theimmortal satire of Cervantes. Yet we see through all his poetry, wherehis enthusiasm flames out most, a certain predilection for the legends ofchivalry before the fables of Greece. " Hurd says that, if the "FaërieQueene" be regarded as a Gothic poem, it will be seen to have unity ofdesign, a merit which even the Wartons had denied it. "When an architectexamines a Gothic structure by the Grecian rules he finds nothing butdeformity. But the Gothic architecture has its own rules by which; whenit comes to be examined, it is seen to have its merit, as well as theGrecian. "

The essayist complains that the Gothic fables fell into contempt throughthe influence of French critics who ridiculed and disparaged the Italianromancers, Ariosto and Tasso. The English critics of theRestoration--Davenant, Hobbes, Shaftesbury--took their cue from theFrench, till these pseudo-classical principles "grew into a sort of acant, with which Rymer and the rest of that school filled their flimsyessays and rumbling prefaces. . . The exact but cold Boileau happened tosay something about the _clinquant_ of Tasso, " and "Mr. Addison, [2] whogave the law in taste here, took it up and sent it about, " so that "itbecame a sort of watchword among the critics. " "What we have gotten, "concludes the final letter of the series, "by this revolution, is a greatdeal of good sense. What we have lost is a world of fine fabling, theillusion of which is so grateful to the _charméd spirit_ that, in spiteof philosophy and fashion 'Faery' Spenser still ranks highest among thepoets; I mean with all those who are earlier come of that house, or haveany kindness for it. "

We have seen that, during the classical period, "Gothic, " as a term inliterary criticism, was synonymous with barbarous, lawless, and tawdry. Addison instructs his public that "the taste of most of our Englishpoets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic. "[3] After commending theFrench critics, Bouhours and Boileau, for their insistence upon goodsense, justness of thought, simplicity, and naturalness he goes on asfollows: "Poets who want this strength of genius, to give that majesticsimplicity to nature which we so much admire in the works of theancients, are forced to hunt after foreign ornaments, and not to let anypiece of wit, of what kind soever, escape them. I look upon thesewriters as Goths in poetry, who, like those in architecture, not beingable to come up to the beautiful simplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have endeavored to supply its place with all the extravagances of anirregular fancy. " In the following paper (No. 63), an "allegoricalvision of the encounter of True and False Wit, " he discovers, "in a verydark grove, a monstrous fabric, built after the Gothic manner and coveredwith innumerable devices in that barbarous kind of sculpture. " Thistemple is consecrated to the God of Dullness, who is "dressed in thehabit of a monk. " In his essay "On Taste" (No. 409) he says, "I haveendeavored, in several of my speculations, to banish this Gothic tastewhich has taken possession among us. "

The particular literary vice which Addison strove to correct in thesepapers was that conceited style which infected a certain school ofseventeenth-century poetry, running sometimes into such puerilities asanagrams, acrostics, echo-songs, rebuses, and verses in the shape ofeggs, wings, hour-glasses, etc. He names, as special representatives ofthis affectation, Herbert, Cowley, and Sylvester. But it is significantthat Addison should have described this fashion as Gothic. It has inreality nothing in common with the sincere and loving art of the oldbuilders. He might just as well have called it classic; for, as heacknowledges, devices of the kind are to be found in the Greek anthology, and Ovid was a poet given to conceits. Addison was a writer of puretaste, but the coldness and timidity of his imagination, and the maximsof the critical school to which he belonged, made him mistake forspurious decoration the efflorescence of that warm, creative fancy whichran riot in Gothic art. The grotesque, which was one expression of thissappy vigor, was abhorrent to Addison. The art and poetry of his timewere tame, where Gothic art was wild; dead where Gothic was alive. Hecould not sympathize with it, nor understand it. "Vous ne pouvez pas lecomprendre; vous avez toujours haï la vie. "

I have quoted Vicesimus Knox's complaint that the antiquarian spirit wasspreading from architecture and numismatics into literature. [4] We meetwith satire upon antiquaries many years before this; in Pope, inAkenside's Spenserian poem "The Virtuoso" (1737); in Richard OwenCambridge's "Scribleriad" (1751):

 "See how her sons with generous ardor strive, Bid every long-lost Gothic art revive, . . . Each Celtic character explain, or show How Britons ate a thousand years ago; On laws of jousts and tournaments declaim, Or shine, the rivals of the herald's fame. But chief that Saxon wisdom be your care, Preserve their idols and their fanes repair; And may their deep mythology be shown By Seater's wheel and Thor's tremendous throne. "[5]

The most notable instance that we encounter of virtuosity invading theneighboring realm of literature is in the case of Strawberry Hill and"The Castle of Otranto. " Horace Walpole, the son of the great primeminister, Robert Walpole, was a person of varied accomplishments andundoubted cleverness. He was a man of fashion, a man of taste, and a manof letters; though, in the first of these characters, he entertained oraffected a contempt for the last, not uncommon in dilettante authors anddandy artists, who belong to the _beau monde_ or are otherwise sociallyof high place, _teste_ Congreve, and even Byron, that "rhyming peer. "Walpole, as we have seen, had been an Eton friend of Gray and hadtraveled--and quarreled--with him upon the Continent. Returning home, hegot a seat in Parliament, the entrée at court, and various lucrativesinecures through his father's influence. He was an assiduous courtier, a keen and spiteful observer, a busy gossip and retailer of socialtattle. His feminine turn of mind made him a capital letter-writer; andhis correspondence, particularly with Sir Horace Mann, English ambassadorat Florence, is a running history of backstairs diplomacy, courtintrigue, subterranean politics, and fashionable scandal during thereigns of the second and third Georges. He also figures as an historianof an amateurish sort, by virtue of his "Catalogue of Royal and NobleAuthors, " "Anecdotes of Painting, " and "Historic Doubts on Richard III. "Our present concern with him, however, lies quite outside of these. 

It was about 1750 that Walpole, who had bought a villa at StrawberryHill, on the Thames near Windsor, which had formerly belonged to Mrs. Chenevix, the fashionable London toy-woman, began to turn his house intoa miniature Gothic castle, in which he is said to have "outlived threesets of his own battlements. " These architectural experiments went onfor some twenty years. They excited great interest and attracted manyvisitors, and Walpole may be regarded as having given a real impetus tothe revival of pointed architecture. He spoke of Strawberry Hill as acastle, but it was, in fact, an odd blend of ecclesiastical andcastellated Gothic applied to domestic uses. He had a cloister, achapel, a round tower, a gallery, a "refectory, " a stair-turret withGothic balustrade, stained windows, mural scutcheons, and Gothicpaper-hangings. Walpole's mock-gothic became something of alaughing-stock, after the true principles of medieval architecture werebetter understood. Since the time when Inigo Jones, court architect toJames I. , came back from Italy, where he had studied the works ofPalladio; and especially since the time when his successor, SirChristopher Wren, had rebuilt St. Paul's in the Italian Renaissancestyle, after the great fire of London in 1664, Gothic had fallen more andmore into disuse. "If in the history of British art, " says Eastlake, "there is one period more distinguished than another for the neglect ofGothic, it was certainly the middle of the eighteenth century. " Butarchitecture had this advantage over other arts, it had left memorialsmore obvious and imposing. Medieval literature was known only to thecurious, to collectors of manuscript romances and black-letter ballads. The study of medieval arts like tempera painting, illuminating, glass-staining, wood-carving, tapestry embroidery; of the science ofblazonry, of the details of ancient armor and costumes, was the pursuitof specialists. But Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, SalisburyCathedral, and York Minster, ruins such as Melrose and Fountain Abbeys, Crichton Castle, and a hundred others were impressive witnesses for thecivilization that had built them and must, sooner or later, demandrespectful attention. Hence it is not strange that the Gothic revivalwent hand in hand with the romantic movement in literature, if indeed itdid not give it its original impulse. 

"It is impossible, " says Eastlake, [6] speaking of Walpole, "to peruseeither the letters or the romances of this remarkable man, without beingstruck by the unmistakable evidence which they contain of his medievalpredilections. His 'Castle of Otranto' was perhaps the first modern workof fiction which depended for its interest on the incidents of achivalrous age, and it thus became the prototype of that class of novelwhich was afterward imitated by Mrs. Radcliffe and perfected by SirWalter Scott. The feudal tyrant, the venerable ecclesiastic, the forlornbut virtuous damsel, the castle itself with its moats and drawbridge, itsgloomy dungeons and solemn corridors, are all derived from a mine ofinterest which has since been worked more efficiently and to betterprofit. But to Walpole must be awarded the credit of its discovery andfirst employment. "

Walpole's complete works[7] contain elaborate illustrations and groundplans of Strawberry Hill. Eastlake give a somewhat technical account ofits constructive features, its gables, buttresses, finials, lath andplaster parapets, wooden pinnacles and, what its proprietor himselfdescribes as his "lean windows fattened with rich saints. " From this Iextract only the description of the interior, which was "just what onemight expect from a man who possessed a vague admiration for Gothicwithout the knowledge necessary for a proper adaptation of its features. Ceilings, screens, niches, etc. , are all copied, or rather parodied, fromexisting examples, but with utter disregard for the original purpose ofthe design. To Lord Orford, Gothic was Gothic, and that sufficed. Hewould have turned an altar-slab into a hall-table, or made a cupboard ofa piscine, with the greatest complacency, if it only served his purpose. Thus we find that in the north bed-chamber, when he wanted a model forhis chimney-piece, he thought he could not do better than adopt the formof Bishop Dudley's tomb in Westminster Abbey. He found a pattern for thepiers of his garden gate in the choir of Ely Cathedral. " The ceiling ofthe gallery borrowed a design from Henry VII. 's Chapel; the entrance tothe same apartment from the north door of St. Alban's; and one side ofthe room from Archbishop Bourchier's tomb at Canterbury. Eastlake'sconclusion is that Walpole's Gothic, "though far from reflecting thebeauties of a former age, or anticipating those which were destined toproceed from a re-development of the style, still holds a position in thehistory of English art which commands our respect, for it served tosustain a cause which had otherwise been well-nigh forsaken. "

James Fergusson, in his "History of the Modern Styles of Architecture, "says of Walpole's structures: "We now know that these are veryindifferent specimens of the true Gothic art, and are at a loss tounderstand how either their author or his contemporaries could ever fancythat these very queer carvings were actual reproductions of the detailsof York Minster, or other equally celebrated buildings, from which theywere supposed to have been copied. " Fergusson adds that the fashion setby Walpole soon found many followers both in church and housearchitecture, "and it is surprising what a number of castles were builtwhich had nothing castellated about them except a nicked parapet and anoccasional window in the form of a cross. " That school of bastard Gothicillustrated by the buildings of Batty Langley, and other early restorersof the style, bears an analogy with the imitations of old English poetryin the last century. There was the same prematurity in both, the samedefective knowledge, crudity, uncertainty, incorrectness, feebleness ofinvention, mixture of ancient and modern manners. It was not until thetime of Pugin[8] that the details of the medieval building art were wellenough understood to enable the architect to work in the spirit of thatart, yet not as a servile copyist, but with freedom and originality. Meanwhile, one service that Walpole and his followers did, by revivingpublic interest in Gothic, was to arrest the process of dilapidation andsave the crumbling remains of many a half-ruinous abbey, castle, orbaronial hall. Thus, "when about a hundred years since, Rhyddlan Castle, in North Wales, fell into the possession of Dr. Shipley, Dean of St. Asaph, the massive walls had been prescriptively used as stone quarries, to which any neighboring occupier who wanted building materials mightresort; and they are honey-combed all round as high as a pick-ax couldreach. "[9] "Walpole, " writes Leslie Stephen, "is almost the first modernEnglishman who found out that our old cathedrals were really beautiful. He discovered that a most charming toy might be made of medievalism. Strawberry Hill, with all its gimcracks, its pasteboard battlements andstained-paper carvings, was the lineal ancestor of the new law-courts. The restorers of churches, the manufacturers of stained glass, the moderndecorators and architects of all varieties, the Ritualists and the HighChurch party, should think of him with kindness. . . That he was quiteconscious of the necessity for more serious study, appears in hisletters; in one of which, _e. G. _, he proposes a systematic history ofGothic architecture such as has since been often executed. "[10] Mr. Stephen adds that Walpole's friend Gray "shared his Gothic tastes, withgreatly superior knowledge. "

Walpole did not arrive at his Gothicism by the gate of literature. Itwas merely a specialized development of his tastes as a virtuoso andcollector. The museum of curiosities which he got together at StrawberryHill included not only suits of armor, stained glass, and illuminatedmissals, but a miscellaneous treasure of china ware, enamels, faïence, bronzes, paintings, engravings, books, coins, bric-a-brac, andmemorabilia such as Cardinal Wolsey's hat, Queen Elizabeth's glove, andthe spur that William III. Wore at the Battle of the Boyne. Walpole'sromanticism was a thin veneering; underneath it, he was a man of theeighteenth century. His opinions on all subjects were, if notinconsistent, at any rate notoriously whimsical and ill-assorted. Thusin spite of his admiration for Gray and his--temporary--interest inOssian, Chatterton, and Percy's ballads, he ridiculed Mallet's and Gray'sRunic experiments, spoke contemptuously of Spenser, Thomson, andAkenside, compared Dante to "a Methodist parson in bedlam, " andpronounced "A Midsummer Night's Dream" "forty times more nonsensical thanthe worst translation of any Italian opera-books. "[11] He said thatpoetry died with Pope, whose measure and manner he employed in his ownverses. It has been observed that, in all his correspondence, he makesbut a single mention of Froissart's "Chronicle, " and that a sneer at LadyPomfret for translating it. 

Accordingly we find, on turning to "The Castle of Otranto, " that, just asWalpole's Gothicism was an accidental "sport" from his generalvirtuosity; so his romanticism was a casual outgrowth of hisarchitectural amusements. Strawberry Hill begat "The Castle of Otranto, "whose title is fitly chosen, since it is the castle itself that is thehero of the book. The human characters are naught. "Shall I evenconfess to you, " he writes to the Rev. William Cole (March 9, 1765), "what was the origin of this romance? I waked one morning in thebeginning of last June from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream fora head filled, like mine, with Gothic story), and that, on the uppermostbanister of a great staircase, I saw a gigantic hand in armor. In theevening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in the least whatI intended to say or relate. The work grew on my hands. . . In short, Iwas so engrossed with my tale, which I completed in less than two months, that one evening I wrote from the time I had drunk my tea, about sixo'clock, till half an hour after one in the morning. "

"The Castle of Otranto, A Gothic Story, " was published in 1765. [12]According to the title page, it was translated from the original Italianof Onuphrio Muralto--a sort of half-pun on the author's surname--by W. Marshall, Gent. This mystification was kept up in the preface, whichpretended that the book had been printed at Naples in black-letter in1529, and was found in the library of an old Catholic family in the northof England. In the preface to his second edition Walpole described thework as "an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient andthe modern": declared that, in introducing humorous dialogues among theservants of the castle, he had taken nature and Shakspere for his models;and fell foul of Voltaire for censuring the mixture of buffoonery andsolemnity in Shakspere's tragedies. Walpole's claim to having created anew species of romance has been generally allowed. "His initiative inliterature, " says Mr. Stephen, "has been as fruitful as his initiative inart. 'The Castle of Otranto, ' and the 'Mysterious Mother, ' were theprogenitors of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances, and probably had a stronginfluence upon the author of 'Ivanhoe. ' Frowning castles and gloomymonasteries, knights in armor and ladies in distress, and monks, andnuns, and hermits; all the scenery and characters that have peopled theimagination of the romantic school, may be said to have had their originon the night when Walpole lay down to sleep, his head crammed full ofWardour Street curiosities, and dreamed that he saw a gigantic hand inarmor resting on the banisters of his staircase. "

It is impossible at this day to take "The Castle of Otranto" seriously, and hard to explain the respect with which it was once mentioned bywriters of authority. Warburton called it "a master-piece in the Fable, and a new species likewise. . . The scene is laid in Gothic chivalry;where a beautiful imagination, supported by strength of judgment, hasenabled the reader to go beyond his subject and effect the full purposeof the ancient tragedy; _i. E. _, to purge the passions by pity and terror, in coloring as great and harmonious as in any of the best dramaticwriters. " Byron called Walpole the author of the last tragedy[13] andthe first romance in the language. Scott wrote of "The Castle ofOtranto": "This romance has been justly considered, not only as theoriginal and model of a peculiar species of composition attempted andsuccessfully executed by a man of great genius, but as one of thestandard works of our lighter literature. " Gray in a letter to Walpole(December 30, 1764), acknowledging the receipt of his copy, says: "Itmakes some of us cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o'nights. " Walpole's masterpiece can no longer make anyone cry even alittle; and instead of keeping us out of bed, it sends us there--orwould, if it were a trifle longer. For the only thing that is tolerableabout the book is its brevity, and a certain rapidity in the action. Macaulay, who confesses its absurdity and insipidity, says that noreader, probably, ever thought it dull. "The story, whatever its valuemay be, never flags for a single moment. There are no digressions, orunreasonable descriptions, or long speeches. Every sentence carries theaction forward. The excitement is constantly renewed. " Excitement istoo strong a word to describe any emotion which "The Castle of Otranto"is now capable of arousing. But the same cleverness which makesWalpole's correspondence always readable saves his romance from theunpardonable sin--in literature--of tediousness. It does go along andmay still be read without a too painful effort. 

There is nothing very new in the plot, which has all the stock propertiesof romantic fiction, as common in the days of Sidney's "Arcadia" as inthose of Sylvanus Cobb. Alfonso, the former lord of Otranto, had beenpoisoned in Palestine by his chamberlain Ricardo, who forged a willmaking himself Alfonso's heir. To make his peace with God, the usurperfounded a church and two convents in honor of St. Nicholas, who "appearedto him in a dream and promised that Ricardo's posterity should reign inOtranto until the rightful owner should be grown too large to inhabit thecastle. " When the story opens, this prophecy is about to be fulfilled. The tyrant Manfred, grandson of the usurper, is on the point ofcelebrating the marriage of his only son, when the youth is crushed todeath by a colossal helmet that drops, from nobody knows where, into thecourtyard of the castle. Gigantic armor haunts the castle piecemeal: amonstrous gauntlet is laid upon the banister of the great staircase; amailed foot appears in one apartment; a sword is brought into thecourtyard on the shoulders of a hundred men. And finally the proprietorof these fragmentary apparitions, in "the form of Alfonso, dilated to animmense magnitude, " throws down the walls of the castle, pronounces thewords "Behold in Theodore the true heir of Alfonso, " and with a clap ofthunder ascends to heaven. Theodore is, of course, the young peasant, grandson of the crusader by a fair Sicilian secretly espoused _en route_for the Holy Land; and he is identified by the strawberry mark of oldromance, in this instance the figure of a bloody arrow impressed upon hisshoulder. There are other supernatural portents, such as a skeleton witha cowl and a hollow voice, a portrait which descends from its panel, anda statue that bleeds at the nose. 

The novel feature in the "Castle of Otranto" was its Gothic setting; the"wind whistling through the battlements"; the secret trap-door, with ironring, by which Isabella sought to make her escape. "An awful silencereigned throughout those subterraneous regions, except now and then someblasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating onthe rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness. The wind extinguished her candle, but an imperfect ray of cloudedmoonshine gleamed through a cranny in the roof of the vault and felldirectly on the spring of the trap-door. " But Walpole's medievalism wasvery thin. He took some pains with the description of the feudalcavalcade entering the castle gate with the great sword, but the passageis incorrect and poor in detail compared with similar things in Scott. The book was not an historical romance, and the manners, sentiments, language, all were modern. Walpole knew little about the Middle Ages andwas not in touch with their spirit. At bottom he was a trifler, afribble; and his incurable superficiality, dilettantism, and want ofseriousness, made all his real cleverness of no avail when applied tosuch a subject as "The Castle of Otranto. "[14]

Walpole's tragedy, "The Mysterious Mother, " has not even that degree ofimportance which secures his romance a niche in literary history. Thesubject was too unnatural to admit of stage presentation. Incest, whentreated in the manner of Sophocles (Walpole justified himself by theexample of "Oedipus"), or even of Ford, or of Shelley, may possibly claima place among the themes which art is not quite forbidden to touch; butwhen handled in the prurient and crudely melodramatic fashion of thisparticular artist, it is merely offensive. "The Mysterious Mother, "indeed, is even more absurd than horrible. Gothic machinery is present, but it is of the slightest. The scene of the action is a castle atNarbonne and the _châtelaine_ is the heroine of the play. The othercharacters are knights, friars, orphaned damsels, and feudal retainers;there is mention of cloisters, drawbridges, the Vaudois heretics, and theassassination of Henri III. And Henri IV. ; and the author's Whig andProtestant leanings are oddly evidenced in his exposure of priestlyintrigues. 

"The Castle of Otranto" was not long in finding imitators. One of thefirst of these was Clara Reeve's "Champion of Virtue" (1777), styled onits title-page "A Gothic Story, " and reprinted the following year as "TheOld English Baron. " Under this latter title it has since gone throughthirteen editions, the latest of which, in 1883, gave a portrait of theauthor. Miss Reeve had previously published (1772) "The Phoenix, " atranslation of "Argenis, " "a romance written in Latin about the beginningof the seventeenth century, by John Barclay, a Scotchman, and supposed tocontain an allegorical account of the civil wars of France during thereign of Henry III. "[15] "Pray, " inquires the author of "The Champion ofVirtue" in her address to the reader, "did you ever read a book called, 'The Castle of Otranto'? If you have, you will willingly enter with meinto a review of it. But perhaps you have not read it? However, youhave heard that it is an attempt to blend together the most attractiveand interesting circumstances of the ancient romance and modernnovel. . . The conduct of the story is artful and judicious; and thecharacters are admirably drawn and supported; the diction polished andelegant; yet with all these brilliant advantages, it palls upon themind. . . The reason is obvious; the machinery is so violent that itdestroys the effect it is intended to excite. Had the story been keptwithin the utmost _verge_ of probability, the effect had beenpreserved. . . For instance, we can conceive and allow of the appearanceof a ghost; we can even dispense with an enchanted sword and helmet, butthen they must keep within certain limits of credibility. A sword solarge as to require a hundred men to lift it, a helmet that by its ownweight forces a passage through a court-yard into an archedvault . . . When your expectation is wound up to the highest pitch, thesecircumstances take it down with a witness, destroy the work ofimagination, and, instead of attention, excite laughter. . . In thecourse of my observations upon this singular book, it seemed to me thatit was possible to compose a work upon the same plan, wherein thesedefects might be avoided. "

Accordingly Miss Reeve undertook to admit only a rather mild dose of themarvelous in her romance. Like Walpole she professed to be simply theeditor of the story, which she said that she had transcribed ortranslated from a manuscript in the Old English language, a now somewhatthreadbare device. The period was the fifteenth century, in the reign ofHenry VI. , and the scene England. But, in spite of the implication ofits sub-title, the fiction is much less "Gothic" than its model, and itsmodernness of sentiment and manners is hardly covered with even thefaintest wash of mediaevalism. As in Walpole's book, there are a murderand a usurpation, a rightful heir defrauded of his inheritance and rearedas a peasant. There are a haunted chamber, unearthly midnight groans, aghost in armor, and a secret closet with its skeleton. The tale isinfinitely tiresome, and is full of that edifying morality, finesentiment and stilted dialogue--that "old perfumed, powdered D'Arblayconversation, " as Thackeray called it--which abound in "Evelina, ""Thaddeus of Warsaw, " and almost all the fiction of the last quarter ofthe last century. Still it was a little unkind in Walpole to pronouncehis disciple's performance tedious and insipid, as he did. 

This same lady published, in 1785, a work in two volumes entitled "TheProgress of Romance, " a sort of symposium on the history of fiction in aseries of evening conversations. Her purpose was to claim for the proseromance an honorable place in literature; a place beside the verse epic. She discusses the definitions of romance given in the currentdictionaries, such as Ainsworth's and Littleton's _Narratioficta--Scriptum eroticum--Splendida fabula_; and Johnson's "A militaryfable of the Middle Ages--A tale of wild adventures of war and love. "She herself defines it as "An heroic fable, " or "An epic in prose. " Sheaffirms that Homer is the father of romance and thinks it astonishingthat men of sense "should despise and ridicule romances, as the mostcontemptible of all kinds of writing, and yet expatiate in raptures onthe beauties of the fables of the old classic poets--on stories far morewild and extravagant and infinitely more incredible. " After reviewingthe Greek romances, like Heliodorus' "Theagenes and Chariclea, " shepasses on to the chivalry tales of the Middle Ages, which, she maintains, "were by no means so contemptible as they have been represented by laterwriters. " Our poetry, she thinks, owes more than is imagined to thespirit of romance. "Chaucer and all our old writers abound with it. Spenser owes perhaps his immortality to it; it is the Gothic imagery thatgives the principal graces to his work. . . Spenser has made more poetsthan any other writer of our country. " Milton, too, had a hankeringafter the romances; and Cervantes, though he laughed Spain's chivalryaway, loved the thing he laughed at and preferred his serious romance"Persiles and Sigismonda" to all his other works. 

She gives a list, with conjectural dates, of many medieval romances inFrench and English, verse and prose; but the greater part of the book isoccupied with contemporary fiction, the novels of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Crébillon, Marivaux, Rousseau, etc. She commends ThomasLeland's historical romance "Longsword, Earl of Salisbury" (1762), as "aromance in reality, and not a novel:--a story like those of the MiddleAges, composed of chivalry, love, and religion. " To her second volumeshe appended the "History of Charoba, Queen of Egypt, " englished from theFrench of Vattier, professor of Arabic to Louis XIV. , who had translatedit from a history of ancient Egypt written in Arabic. This was thesource of Landor's poem, "Gebir. " When Landor was in Wales in 1797, RoseAylmer--

 "Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes, May weep but never see"--

lent him a copy of Miss Reeve's "Progress of Romance, " borrowed from acirculating library at Swansea. And so the poor forgotten thing retainsa vicarious immortality, as the prompter of some of the noblest passagesin modern English blank verse and as associated with one of the tenderestpassages in Landor's life. 

Miss Reeve quotes frequently from Percy's "Essay on the AncientMinstrels, " mentions Ossian and Chatterton and refers to Hurd, Warton, and other authorities. "It was not till I had completed my design, " shewrites in her preface, "that I read either Dr. Beattie's 'Dissertation onFable and Romance' or Mr. Warton's 'History of English Poetry. '" Theformer of these was an essay of somewhat more than a hundred pages by theauthor of "The Minstrel. " It is of no great importance and followspretty closely the lines of Hurd's "Letters on Chivalry and Romance, " towhich Beattie repeatedly refers in his footnotes. The author pursues thebeaten track in inquiries of the kind: discusses the character of theGothic tribes, the nature of the feudal system, and the institutions ofchivalry and knight-errantry. Romance, it seems, was "one of theconsequences of chivalry. The first writers in this way exhibited aspecies of fable different from all that had hitherto appeared. Theyundertook to describe the adventures of those heroes who professedknight-errantry. The world was then ignorant and credulous andpassionately fond of wonderful adventures and deeds of valor. Theybelieved in giants, dwarfs, dragons, enchanted castles, and everyimaginable species of necromancy. These form the materials of the oldromance. The knight-errant was described as courteous, religious, valiant, adventurous, and temperate. Some enchanters befriended andothers opposed him. To do his mistress honor, and to prove himselfworthy of her, he was made to encounter the warrior, hew down the giant, cut the dragon in pieces, break the spell of the necromancer, demolishthe enchanted castle, fly through the air on wooden or winged horses, or, with some magician for his guide, to descend unhurt through the openingearth and traverse the caves in the bottom of the ocean. He detected andpunished the false knight, overthrew or converted the infidel, restoredthe exiled monarch to his dominions and the captive damsel to herparents; he fought at the tournament, feasted in the hall, and bore apart in the warlike processions. "

There is nothing very startling in these conclusions. Scholars likePercy, Tyrwhitt, and Ritson, who, as collectors and editors, rescued thefragments of ancient ministrelsy and gave the public access to concretespecimens of mediaeval poetry, performed a more useful service than mildclerical essayists, such as Beattie and Hurd, who amused their leisurewith general speculations about the origin of romance and whether it camein the first instance from the troubadours or the Saracens or theNorsemen. One more passage, however, may be transcribed from Beattie's"Dissertation, " because it seems clearly a suggestion from "The Castle ofOtranto. " "The castles of the greater barons, reared in a rude but grandstyle of architecture, full of dark and winding passages, of secretapartments, of long uninhabited galleries, and of chambers supposed to behaunted with spirits, and undermined by subterraneous labyrinths asplaces of retreat in extreme danger; the howling of winds through thecrevices of old walls and other dreary vacuities; the grating of heavydoors on rusty hinges of iron; the shrieking of bats and the screaming ofowls and other creatures that resort to desolate or half-inhabitedbuildings; these and the like circumstances in the domestic life of thepeople I speak of, would multiply their superstitions and increase theircredulity; and among warriors who set all danger at defiance, wouldencourage a passion for wild adventure and difficult enterprise. "

One of the books reviewed by Miss Reeve is worth mentioning, not for itsintrinsic importance, but for its early date. "Longsword, Earl ofSalisbury, An Historical Romance, " in two volumes, and published twoyears before "The Castle of Otranto, " is probably the first fiction ofthe kind in English literature. Its author was Thomas Leland, an Irishhistorian and doctor of divinity. [16] "The outlines of the followingstory, " begins the advertisement, "and some of the incidents and moreminute circumstances, are to be found in some of the ancient Englishhistories. " The period of the action is the reign of Henry III. Theking is introduced in person, and when we hear him swearing "by myHalidome, " we rub our eyes and ask, "Can this be Scott?" But we are soondisabused, for the romance, in spite of the words of the advertisement, is very little historical, and the fashion of it is thinly wordy andsentimental. The hero is the son of Henry II. And Fair Rosamond, but hisspeech is Grandisonian. The adventures are of the usual kind: the_dramatis personae_ include gallant knights who go a-tilting with theirladies' gloves upon their casques, usurpers, villains, pirates, a wickedmonk who tries to poison the hero, an oppressed countess, a distresseddamsel disguised as a page, a hermit who has a cave in a mountain side, etc. The Gothic properties are few; though the frontispiece to the firstvolume represents a cowled monk raising from the ground the figure of aswooning knight in complete armor, in front of an abbey church with animage of the Virgin and Child sculptured in a niche above the door; andthe building is thus described in the text: "Its windows crowded with thefoliage of their ornaments, and dimmed by the hand of the painter; itsnumerous spires towering above the roof, and the Christian ensign on itsfront, declared it a residence of devotion and charity. " An episode inthe story narrates the death of a father by the hand of his son in theBarons' War of Henry III. But no farther advantage is taken of thehistoric background afforded by this civil conflict, nor is Simon deMontfort so much as named in the whole course of the book. 

Clara Reeve was the daughter of a clergyman. She lived and died atIpswich (1725-1803). Walter Scott contributed a memoir of her to"Ballantyne's Novelists' Library, " in which he defended Walpole's frankuse of the supernatural against her criticisms, quoted above, and gavethe preference to Walpole's method. [17] She acknowledged that herromance was a "literary descendant of 'Otranto';" but the author of thelatter, evidently nettled by her strictures, described "The Old EnglishBaron, " as "Otranto reduced to reason and probability, " and declared thatany murder trial at the Old Bailey would have made a more interestingstory. Such as it is, it bridges the interval between its model and thenovels of Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis' "Monk" (1795), and Maturin's "FatalRevenge, or the Family of Montorio" (1807). [18]

Anne Radcliffe--born Ward in 1764, the year of "Otranto"--was the wife ofan editor, who was necessarily absent from home much of the time untillate at night. A large part of her writing was done to amuse herloneliness in the still hours of evening; and the wildness of herimagination, and the romantic love of night and solitude which pervadesher books, are sometimes accounted for in this way. In 1809 it wascurrently reported and believed that Mrs. Radcliffe was dead. Anotherform of the rumor was that she had been insane by continually poring overvisions of horror and mystery. Neither report was true; she lived till1823, in full possession of her faculties, although she published nothingafter 1797. The circulation of such stories shows how retired, and evenobscure, a life this very popular writer contrived to lead. 

It would be tedious to give here an analysis of these once famousfictions _seriatim_. [19] They were very long, very much alike, and verymuch overloaded with sentiment and description. The plots werecomplicated and abounded in the wildest improbabilities and in thoseincidents which were once the commonplaces of romantic fiction and whichrealism has now turned out of doors: concealments, assassinations, duels, disguises, kidnappings, escapes, elopements, intrigues, forged documents, discoveries of old crimes, and identifications of lost heirs. Thecharacters, too, were of the conventional kind. There were dark-browed, crime-stained villains--forerunners, perhaps of Manfred and Lara, for thecritics think that Mrs. Radcliffe's stories were not without importantinfluence on Byron. [20] There were high-born, penitent dames who retiredto convents in expiation of sins which are not explained until thegeneral raveling of clews in the final chapter. There were bravoes, banditti, feudal tyrants, monks, inquisitors, soubrettes, and simpledomestics _a la_ Bianca, in Walpole's romance. The lover was of the typeadored by our great-grandmothers, handsome, melancholy, passionate, respectful but desperate, a user of most choice English; with large blackeyes, smooth white forehead, and jetty curls, now sunk, Mr. Perry says, to the covers of prune boxes. The heroine, too, was sensitive andmelancholy. When alone upon the seashore or in the mountains, at sunsetor twilight, or under the midnight moon, or when the wind is blowing, sheoverflows into stanza or sonnet, "To Autumn, " "To Sunset, " "To the Bat, ""To the Nightingale, " "To the Winds, " "To Melancholy, " "Song of theEvening Hour. " We have heard this pensive music drawing near in thestrains of the Miltonic school, but in Mrs. Radcliffe the romantic gloomis profound and all-pervading. In what pastures she had fed is manifestfrom the verse captions that head her chapters, taken mainly from Blair, Thomson, Warton, Gray, Collins, Beattie, Mason, and Walpole's "MysteriousMother. " Here are a few stanzas from her ode "To Melancholy":

 "Spirit of love and sorrow, hail! Thy solemn voice from far I hear, Mingling with evening's dying gale: Hail, with thy sadly pleasing tear!

 "O at this still, this lonely hour-- Thine own sweet hour of closing day-- Awake thy lute, whose charmful power Shall call up fancy to obey:

 "To paint the wild, romantic dream That meets the poet's closing eye, As on the bank of shadowy stream He breathes to her the fervid sigh. 

 "O lonely spirit, let thy song Lead me through all thy sacred haunt, The minster's moonlight aisles along Where specters raise the midnight chant. "

In Mrs. Radcliffe's romances we find a tone that is absent fromWalpole's: romanticism plus sentimentalism. This last element had begunto infuse itself into general literature about the middle of the century, as a protest and reaction against the emotional coldness of the classicalage. It announced itself in Richardson, Rousseau, and the youthfulGoethe; in the _comédie larmoyante_, both French and English; found itscleverest expression in Sterne, and then, becoming a universal vogue, deluged fiction with productions like Mackenzie's "Man of Feeling, " MissBurney's "Evelina, " and the novels of Jane Porter and Mrs. Opie. Thackeray said that there was more crying in "Thaddeus of Warsaw" than inany novel he ever remembered to have read. [21] Emily, in the "Mysteriesof Udolpho" cannot see the moon, or hear a guitar or an organ or themurmur of the pines, without weeping. Every page is bedewed with thetear of sensibility; the whole volume is damp with it, and ever and anona chorus of sobs goes up from the entire company. Mrs. Radcliffe'sheroines are all descendents of Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe, but undermore romantic circumstances. They are beset with a thousanddifficulties; carried off by masked ruffians, immured in convents, heldcaptive in robber castles, encompassed with horrors natural andsupernatural, persecuted, threatened with murder and with rape. Butthough perpetually sighing, blushing, trembling, weeping, fainting, theyhave at bottom a kind of toughness that endures through all. They rebukethe wicked in stately language, full of noble sentiments and moraltruths. They preserve the most delicate feelings of propriety insituations the most discouraging. Emily, imprisoned in the gloomy castleof Udolpho, in the power of ruffians whose brawls and orgies fill nightand day with horror, in hourly fear for her virtue and her life, sendsfor the lord of the castle, --whom she believes to have murdered heraunt, --and reminds him that, as her protectress is now dead, it would notbe proper for her to stay any longer under his roof thus unchaperoned, and will he please, therefore, send her home?

Mrs. Radcliffe's fictions are romantic, but not usually mediaeval insubject. In the "Mysteries of Udolpho, " the period of the action is theend of the sixteenth century; in the "Romance of the Forest, " 1658; in"The Italian, " about 1760. But her machinery is prevailingly Gothic andthe real hero of the story is commonly, as in Walpole, some hauntedbuilding. In the "Mysteries of Udolpho" it is a castle in the Apennines;in the "Romance of the Forest, " a deserted abbey in the depth of thewoods; in "The Italian, " the cloister of the Black Penitents. Themoldering battlements, the worm-eaten tapestries, the turret staircases, secret chambers, underground passages, long, dark corridors where thewind howls dismally, and distant doors which slam at midnight all derivefrom "Otranto. " So do the supernatural fears which haunt these abodes ofdesolation; the strains of mysterious music, the apparitions which glidethrough the shadowy apartments, the hollow voices that warn the tyrant tobeware. But her method here is quite different from Walpole's; she tacksa natural explanation to every unearthly sight or sound. The hollowvoices turn out to be ventriloquism; the figure of a putrefying corpsewhich Emily sees behind the black curtain in the ghost chamber at Udolphois only a wax figure, contrived as a _memento mori_ for a formerpenitent. After the reader has once learned this trick he refuses to beimposed upon again, and, whenever he encounters a spirit, feels sure thata future chapter will embody it back into flesh and blood. 

There is plenty of testimony to the popularity of these romances. Thackeray says that a lady of his acquaintance, an inveterate novelreader, names Valancourt as one of the favorite heroes of her youth. "'Valancourt? And who was he?' cry the young people. Valancourt, mydears, was the hero of one of the most famous romances which ever waspublished in this country. The beauty and elegance of Valancourt madeyour young grandmamma's' gentle hearts to beat with respectful sympathy. He and his glory have passed away. . . Enquire at Mudie's or the LondonLibrary, who asks for the 'Mysteries of Udolpho' now. "[22] Hazlitt saidthat he owed to Mrs. Radcliffe his love of moonlight nights, autumnleaves and decaying ruins. It was, indeed, in the melodramaticmanipulation of landscape that this artist was most original. "Thescenes that savage Rosa dashed" seemed to have been her model, andcritics who were fond of analogy called her the Salvator Rosa of fiction. It is here that her influence on Byron and Chateaubriand is mostapparent. [23] Mrs. Radcliffe's scenery is not quite to our modern taste, any more than are Salvator's paintings. Her Venice by moonlight, hermountain gorges with their black pines and foaming torrents, are notprecisely the Venice and the Alps of Ruskin; rather of the operaticstage. Still they are impressive in their way, and in this departmentshe possessed genuine poetic feels and a real mastery of the art ofpainting in distemper. Witness the picture of the castle of Udolpho, onEmily's first sight of it, and the hardly less striking description, inthe "Romance of the Forest, " of the ruined abbey in which the La Mottefamily take refuge: "He approached and perceived the Gothic remains of anabbey: it stood on a kind of rude lawn, overshadowed by high andspreading trees, which seemed coeval with the building, and diffused aromantic gloom around. The greater part of the pile appeared to besinking into ruins, and that which had withstood the ravages of timeshowed the remaining features of the fabric more awful in decay. Thelofty battlements, thickly enwreathed with ivy, were half demolished andbecome the residence of birds of prey. Huge fragments of the easterntower, which was almost demolished, lay scattered amid the high grass, that waved slowly in the breeze. 'The thistle shook its lonely head: themoss whistled to the wind. '[24] A Gothic gate, richly ornamented withfretwork, which opened into the main body of the edifice, but which wasnow obstructed with brushwood, remained entire. Above the vast andmagnificent portal of this gate arose a window of the same order, whosepointed arches still exhibited fragments of stained glass, once the prideof monkish devotion. La Motte, thinking it possible it might yet sheltersome human being, advanced to the gate and lifted a massy knocker. Thehollow sounds rung through the emptiness of the place. After waiting afew minutes, he forced back the gate, which was heavy with iron-work, andcreaked harshly on its hinges. . . From this chapel he passed into thenave of the great church, of which one window, more perfect than therest, opened upon a long vista of the forest, through which was seen therich coloring of evening, melting by imperceptible gradations into thesolemn gray of upper air. "

Mrs. Radcliffe never was in Italy or Switzerland or the south of France;she divined the scenery of her romances from pictures and descriptions atsecond hand. But she accompanied her husband in excursions to the Lakesand other parts of England, and in 1794 made the tour of the Rhine. [25]The passages in her diary, recording these travels, are much superior inthe truthfulness and local color of their nature sketching to anything inher novels. Mrs. Radcliffe is furthermore to be credited with a certainskill in producing terror, by the use of that favorite weapon in thearmory of the romanticists, mystery. If she did not invent a newshudder, as Hugo said of Baudelaire, she gave at least a new turn to theold-fashioned ghost story. She creates in her readers a feeling ofimpending danger, suspense, foreboding. There is a sense of unearthlypresences in these vast, empty rooms; the silence itself is ominous;echoes sound like footfalls, ghostly shadows lurk in dark corners, whispers come from behind the arras, as it stirs in the gusts ofwind. [26] The heroine is afraid to look in the glass lest she should seeanother face there beside her own; her lamp expires and leaves her in thedark just as she is coming to the critical point in the manuscript whichshe has found in an old chest, etc. , etc. , But the tale loses itsimpressiveness as soon as it strays beyond the shade of the battlements. The Gothic castle or priory is still, as in Walpole, the nucleus of thestory. 

Two of these romances, the earliest and the latest, though they are theweakest of the series, have a special interest for us as affording pointsof comparison with the Waverly novels. "The Castles of Athlin andDunbayne" is the narrative of a feud between two Highland clans, and itsscene is the northeastern coast of Scotland, "in the most romantic partof the Highlands, " where the castle of Athlin--like Uhland's "Schloss amMeer"--stood "on the summit of a rock whose base was in the sea. " Thiswas a fine place for storms. "The winds burst in sudden squalls over thedeep and dashed the foaming waves against the rocks with inconceivablefury. The spray, notwithstanding the high situation of the castle, flewup with violence against the windows. . . The moon shone faintly byintervals, through broken clouds, upon the waters, illumining the whitefoam which burst around. . . The surges broke on the distant shores indeep resounding murmurs, and the solemn pauses between the stormy gustsfilled the mind with enthusiastic awe. " Perhaps the description slightlyreminds of the picture, in "Marmion, " of Tantallon Castle, the hold ofthe Red Douglases on the German Ocean, a little north of Berwick, whosefrowning towers have recently done duty again in Stevenson's "DavidBalfour. " The period of the action is but vaguely indicated; but, as theweapons used in the attack on the castle are bows and arrows, we mayregard the book as mediaeval in intention. Scott says that the scene ofthe romance was Scotland in the dark ages, and complains that the authorevidently knew nothing of Scottish life or scenery. This is true; hercastles might have stood anywhere. There is no mention of the pipes orthe plaid. Her rival chiefs are not Gaelic caterans, but just plainfeudal lords. Her baron of Dunbayne is like any other baron; or rather, he is unlike any baron that ever was on sea or land or anywhere elseexcept in the pages of a Gothic romance. 

"Gaston de Blondville" was begun in 1802 and published posthumously in1826, edited by Sergeant Talfourd. Its inspiring cause was a visit whichthe author made in the autumn of 1802 to Warwick Castle and the ruins ofKenilworth. The introduction has the usual fiction of an old manuscriptfound in an oaken chest dug up from the foundation of a chapel of BlackCanons at Kenilworth: a manuscript richly illuminated with designs at thehead of each chapter--which are all duly described--and containing a"trew chronique of what passed at Killingworth, in Ardenn, when ourSoveren Lord the Kynge kept ther his Fest of Seynt Michel: with yemarveylous accident that there befell at the solempnissacion of themarriage of Gaston de Blondeville. With divers things curious to beknown thereunto purtayning. With an account of the grete Turney thereheld in the year MCCLVI. Changed out of the Norman tongue by Grymbald, Monk of Senct Marie Priori in Killingworth. " Chatterton's forgeries hadby this time familiarized the public with imitations of early English. The finder of this manuscript pretends to publish a modernized version ofit, while endeavoring "to preserve somewhat of the air of the old style. "This he does by a poor reproduction, not of thirteenth-century, but ofsixteenth-century English, consisting chiefly in inversions of phrase andthe occasional use of a _certes_ or _naithless_. Two words in particularseem to have struck Mrs. Radcliffe as most excellent archaisms: _ychon_and _his-self_, which she introduces at every turn. 

"Gaston de Blondville, " then, is a tale of the time of Henry III. Theking himself is a leading figure and so is Prince Edward. Otherhistorical personages are brought in, such as Simon de Montfort and Mariede France, but little use is made of them. The book is not indeed, inany sense, an historical novel like Scott's "Kenilworth, " the scene ofwhich is the same, and which was published in 1821, five years beforeMrs. Radcliffe's. The story is entirely fictitious. What differences itfrom her other romances is the conscious attempt to portray feudalmanners. There are elaborate descriptions of costumes, upholstery, architecture, heraldic bearings, ancient military array, a tournament, aroyal hunt, a feast in the great hall at Kenilworth, a visit of state toWarwick Castle, and the session of a baronial court. The ceremony of the"voide, " when the king took his spiced cup, is rehearsed with a painfulaccumulation of particulars. For all this she consulted Leland's"Collectanea, " Warton's "History of English Poetry, " the "Household Bookof Edward IV. , " Pegge's "Dissertation on the Obsolete Office of Esquireof the King's Body, " the publications of the Society of Antiquaries andsimilar authorities, with results that are infinitely tedious. WalterScott's archaeology is not always correct, nor his learning alwayslightly borne; but, upon the whole, he had the art to make his cumbrousmaterials contributory to his story rather than obstructive of it. 

In these two novels we meet again all the familiar apparatus of secrettrap-doors, sliding panels, spiral staircases in the thickness of thewalls, subterranean vaults conducting to a neighboring priory or a cavernin the forest, ranges of deserted apartments where the moon looks inthrough mullioned casements, ruinous turrets around which the night windsmoan and howl. Here, too, once more are the wicked uncle who seizes uponthe estates of his deceased brother's wife, and keeps her and herdaughter shut up in his dungeon for the somewhat long period of eighteenyears; the heroine who touches her lute and sings in pensive mood, tillthe notes steal to the ear of the young earl imprisoned in the adjacenttower; the maiden who is carried off on horseback by bandits, till hershrieks bring ready aid; the peasant lad who turns out to be the baron'sheir. "His surprise was great when the baroness, reviving, fixed hereyes mournfully upon him and asked him to uncover his arm. " Alas! thesurprise is not shared by the reader, when "'I have indeed found mylong-lost child: that strawberry, '"[27] etc. , etc. "Gaston deBlondville" has a ghost--not explained away in the end according to Mrs. Radcliffe's custom. It is the spirit of Reginald de Folville, KnightHospitaller of St. John, murdered in the Forest of Arden by Gaston deBlondville and the prior of St. Mary's. He is a most robust apparition, and is by no means content with revisiting the glimpses of the moon, butgoes in and out at all hours of the day, and so often as to becomesomewhat of a bore. He ultimately destroys both first and secondmurderer: one in his cell, the other in open tournament, where hisexploits as a mysterious knight in black armor may have given Scott ahint for his black knight at the lists of Ashby-de-la-Zouche in "Ivanhoe"(1819). His final appearance is in the chamber of the king, with whom heholds quite a long conversation. "The worm is my sister, " he says: "themist of death is on me. My bed is in darkness. The prisoner isinnocent. The prior of St. Mary's is gone to his account. Be warned. "It is not explained why Mrs. Radcliffe refrained from publishing thislast romance of hers. Perhaps she recognized that it was belated andthat the time for that sort of thing had gone by. By 1802 Lewis' "Monk"was in print, as well as several translations from German romances;Scott's early ballads were out, and Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner. " Thatvery year saw the publication of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. "By 1826 the Waverley novels had made all previous fiction of the Gothictype hopelessly obsolete. In 1834 two volumes of her poems were given tothe world, including a verse romance in eight cantos, "St. Alban'sAbbey, " and the verses scattered through her novels. By this time Scottand Coleridge were dead; Byron, Shelley, and Keats had been dead foryears, and Mrs. Radcliffe's poesies fell upon the unheeding ears of a newgeneration. A sneer in "Waverley" (1814) at the "Mysteries of Udolpho"had hurt her feelings;[28] but Scott made amends in the handsome thingswhich he said of her in his "Lives of the Novelists. " It is interestingto note that when the "Mysteries" was issued, the venerable Joseph Wartonwas so much entranced that he sat up the greater part of the night tofinish it. 

The warfare between realism and romance, which went on in the days ofCervantes, as it does in the days of Zola and Howells, had its skirmishedalso in Mrs. Radcliffe's time. Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey, " writtenin 1803 but published only in 1817, is gently satirical of Gothicfiction. The heroine is devoted to the "Mysteries of Udolpho, " which shediscusses with her bosom friend. "While I have 'Udolpho' to read, I feelas if nobody could make me miserable. O the dreadful black veil! Mydear Isabella, I am sure there must be Laurentina's skeleton behind it. "

"When you have finished 'Udolpho, '" replies Isabella, "we will read 'TheItalian' together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more ofthe same kind for you. . . I will read you their names directly. Herethey are in my pocket-book. 'Castle of Wolfenbach, ' 'Clermont, ''Mysterious Warnings, ' 'Necromancer of the Black Forest, ' 'MidnightBell, ' 'Orphan of the Rhine, ' and 'Horrid Mysteries. '"

When introduced to her friend's brother, Miss Morland asks him at once, "Have you ever read 'Udolpho, ' Mr. Thorpe?" But Mr. Thorpe, who is not aliterary man, but much given to dogs and horses, assures her that henever reads novels; they are "full of nonsense and stuff; there has notbeen a tolerably decent one come out since 'Tom Jones, ' except the'Monk. '" The scenery about Bath reminds Miss Morland of the south ofFrance and "the country that Emily and her father traveled through in the'Mysteries of Udolpho. '" She is enchanted at the prospect of a drive toBlaize Castle, where she hopes to have "the happiness of being stopped intheir way along narrow, winding vaults by a low, grated door; or even ofhaving their lamp--their only lamp--extinguished by a sudden gust of windand of being left in total darkness. " She visits her friends, theTilneys, at their country seat, Northanger Abbey, in Glouchestershire;and, on the way thither, young Mr. Tilney teases her with a fancy sketchof the Gothic horrors which she will unearth there: the "sliding panelsand tapestry"; the remote and gloomy guest chamber, which will beassigned her, with its ponderous chest and its portrait of a knight inarmor: the secret door, with massy bars and padlocks, that she willdiscover behind the arras, leading to a "small vaulted room, " andeventually to a "subterraneous communication between your apartment andthe chapel of St. Anthony scarcely two miles off. " Arrived at the abbey, she is disappointed at the modern appearance of her room, but contrivesto find a secret drawer in an ancient ebony cabinet, and in this a rollof yellow manuscript which, on being deciphered, proves to be a washingbill. She is convinced, notwithstanding, that a mysterious door at theend of a certain gallery conducts to a series of isolated chambers whereGeneral Tilney, who is supposed to be a widower, is keeping his unhappywife immured and fed on bread and water. When she finally gainsadmission to this Bluebeard's chamber and finds it nothing but a suite ofmodern rooms, "the visions of romance were over. . . Charming as wereall Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and charming even as were the works of allher imitators, it was not in them, perhaps, that human nature, at leastin the midland counties of England was to be looked for. "

[1] But compare the passage last quoted with the one from Warton's essay_ante_, p. 219. 

[2] See _ante_, p. 49. 

[3] _Spectator_, No. 62. 

[4] See _ante_, p. 211. 

[5] "Works of Richard Owen Cambridge, " pp. 198-99. Cambridge was one ofthe Spenserian imitators. See _ante_, p. 89, _note_. In LadyLuxborough's correspondence with Shenstone there is much mention of a Mr. Miller, a neighboring proprietor, who was devoted to Gothic. On theappearance of "The Scribleriad, " she writes (January 28, 1751), "Iimagine this poem is not calculated to please Mr. Miller and the rest ofthe Gothic gentlemen; for this Mr. Cambridge expresses a dislike to theintroducing or reviving tastes and fashions that are inferior to themodern taste of our country. "

[6] "History of the Gothic Revival, " p. 43. 

[7] "Works of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, " in five volumes, 1798. "ADescription of Strawberry Hill, " Vol. II. Pp. 395-516. 

[8] Pugin's "True Principles of Gothic Architecture" was published in 1841. 

[9] "Sketches of Eminent Statesmen and Writers, " A. Hayward (1880). In anote to "Marmion" (1808) Scott said that the ruins of Crichton Castle, remarkable for the richness and elegance of its stone carvings, were thenused as a cattle-pen and a sheep-fold. 

[10] "Hours in a Library, " Second Series: article, "Horace Walpole. "

[11] Letter to Bentley, February 23, 1755. 

[12] Five hundred copies, says Walpole, were struck off December 24, 1764. 

[13] "The Mysterious Mother, " begun 1766, finished 1768. 

[14] "The Castle of Otranto" was dramatized by Robert Jephson, under thetitle "The Count of Narbonne, " put on at Covent Garden Theater in 1781, and afterward printed, with a dedication to Walpole. 

[15] James Beattie, "Dissertation on Fable and Romance. " "Argenius, " wasprinted in 1621. 

[16] "The Dictionary of National Biography" miscalls it "Earl ofCanterbury, " and attributes it, though with a query, to _John_ Leland. 

[17] See also, for a notice of this writer, Julia Kavanagh's "EnglishWomen of Letters. "

[18] Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" (1820) had some influence on theFrench romantic school and was utilized, in some particulars, by Balzac. 

[19] Following is a list of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances: "The Castles ofAthlin and Dunbayne" (1789); "Sicilian Romance" (1790); "Romance of theForest" (1791); "Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794); "The Italian" (1797);"Gaston de Blondville" (1826). Collections of her poems were publishedin 1816, 1834, and 1845. 

[20] See "Childe Harold, " canto iv, xviii. 

[21] "Roundabout Papers, " "A Peal of Bells. " "Monk" Lewis wrote atsixteen a burlesque novel, "Effusions of Sensibility, " which remained inMS. 

[22] "O Radcliffe, thou once wert the charmer Of girls who sat reading all night: They heroes were striplings in armor, Thy heroines, damsels in white. " --_Songs, Ballads and Other Poems_. 

By Thos. Haynes Bayly, London, 1857, p. 141. 

 "A novel now is nothing more Than an old castle and a creaking door, A distant hovel, Clanking of chains, a gallery, a light, Old armor and a phantom all in white, And there's a novel. " --_George Colman, "The Will. "_

[23] Several of her romances were dramatized and translated into French. It is curious, by the way, to find that Goethe was not unaware ofWalpole's story. See his quatrain "Die Burg von Otranto, " first printedin 1837. 

 "Sind die Zimmer sämmtlich besetzt der Burg von Otranto: Kommt, voll innigen Grimmes, der erste Riesenbesitzer Stuckweis an, and verdrängt die neuen falschen Bewohner. Wehe! den Fliehenden, weh! den Bleibenden also geschiet es. "

[24] Ossian. 

[25] See her "Journey through Holland, " etc. (1795)

[26] _cf. _ Keats, "The Eve of Saint Agnes":

 "The arras rich with hunt and horse and hound Flattered in the besieging wind's uproar, And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. "

[27] "Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. "

[28] See Julia Kavanagh's "English Women of Letters. "

CHAPTER VIII. 

Percy and the Ballads. 

The regeneration of English poetic style at the close of the last centurycame from an unexpected quarter. What scholars and professional men ofletters had sought to do by their imitations of Spenser and Milton, andtheir domestication of the Gothic and the Celtic muse, was much moreeffectually done by Percy and the ballad collectors. What they hadsought to do was to recall British poetry to the walks of imagination andto older and better models than Dryden and Pope. But they could not jumpoff their own shadows: the eighteenth century was too much for them. While they anxiously cultivated wildness and simplicity, their dictionremained polished, literary, academic to a degree. It is not, indeed, until we reach the boundaries of a new century that we encounter a GulfStream of emotional, creative impulse strong enough and hot enough tothaw the classical icebergs till not a floating spiculum of them is left. 

Meanwhile, however, there occurred a revivifying contact with onedepartment, at least, of early verse literature, which did much to clearthe way for Scott and Coleridge and Keats. The decade from 1760 to 1770is important in the history of English romanticism, and its mostimportant title is Thomas Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry:Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of our EarlierPoets, " published in three volumes in 1765. It made a less immediate andexciting impression upon contemporary Europe than MacPherson's "Poems ofOssian, " but it was more fruitful in enduring results. The Germans makea convenient classification of poetry into _Kunstpoesie_ and_Volkspoesie_, terms which may be imperfectly translated as literarypoetry and popular poetry. The English _Kunstpoesie_ of the Middle Ageslay buried under many superincumbent layers of literary fashion. Oblivion had overtaken Gower and Occleve, and Lydgate and Stephen Hawes, and Skelton, and Henryson and James I. Of Scotland, and well-nigh Chaucerhimself--all the mediaeval poetry of the schools, in short. But it wasknown to the curious that there was still extant a large body of popularpoetry in the shape of narrative ballads, which had been handed downchiefly by oral transmission, and still lived in the memories and uponthe lips of the common people. Many of these went back in their originalshapes to the Middle Ages, or to an even remoter antiquity, and belongedto that great store of folk-lore which was the common inheritance of theAryan race. Analogues and variants of favorite English and Scottishballads have been traced through almost all the tongues of modern Europe. Danish literature is especially rich in ballads and affords valuableillustrations of our native ministrelsy. [1] It was, perhaps, due in partto the Danish settlements in Northumbria and to the large Scandinavianadmixture in the Northumbrian blood and dialect, that "the northcountrie" became _par excellence_ the ballad land: LowlandScotland--particularly the Lothians--and the English bordering counties, Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Cumberland; with Yorkshire andNottinghamshire, in which were Barndale and Sherwood Forests, RobinHood's haunts. It is not possible to assign exact dates to these songs. They were seldom reduced to writing till many years after they werecomposed. In the Middle Ages they were sung to the harp by wanderingminstrels. In later times they were chanted or recited by ballad-singersat fairs, markets, ale-houses, street-corners, sometimes to theaccompaniment of a fiddle or crowd. They were learned by ancient dames, who repeated them in chimney corners to children and grandchildren. Inthis way some of them were preserved in an unwritten state, even to thepresent day, in the tenacious memory of the people, always at bottomconservative and, under a hundred changes of fashion in the literarypoetry which passes over their heads, clinging obstinately to old songsand beliefs learned in childhood, and handing them on to posterity. Walter Scott got much of the material for his "Ministrelsy of the Border"from the oral recitation of pipers, shepherds, and old women in EttrickForest. Professor Child's--the latest and fullest balladcollection--contains pieces never before given in print or manuscript, some of them obtained in America![2]

Leading this subterranean existence, and generally thought unworthy thenotice of educated people, they naturally underwent repeated changes; sothat we have numerous versions of the same story, and incidents, descriptions, and entire stanzas are borrowed and lent freely among thedifferent ballads. The circumstance, _e. G. _, of the birk and the briarspringing from the graves of true lovers and intertwisting their branchesoccurs in the ballads of "Fair Margaret and Sweet William, " "Lord Thomasand Fair Annet, " "Lord Lovel, " "Fair Janet, " and many others. The knightwho was carried to fairyland through an entrance in a green hillside, andabode seven years with the queen of fairy, recurs in "Tam Lin, " "ThomasRymer, "[3] etc. Like all folk-songs, these ballads are anonymous and maybe regarded not as the composition of any one poet, but as the property, and in a sense the work, of the people as a whole. Coming out of anuncertain past, based on some dark legend of heart-break or blood-shed, they bear no author's name, but are _ferae naturae_ and have the flavorof wild game. They were common stock, like the national speech; everyonecould contribute toward them: generations of nameless poets, minstrels, ballad-singers modernized their language to suit new times, altered theirdialect to suit new places, accommodated their details to differentaudiences, English or Scotch, and in every way that they thought fitadded, retrenched, corrupted, improved, and passed them on. 

Folk-poetry is conventional; it seems to be the production of a guild, and to have certain well understood and commonly expected tricks of styleand verse. Freshness and sincerity are almost always attributes of thepoetry of heroic ages, but individuality belongs to a high civilizationand an advanced literary culture. Whether the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"are the work of one poet or of a cycle of poets, doubtless the rhetoricalpeculiarities of the Homeric epics, such as the recurrent phrase and theconventional epithet (the rosy-fingered dawn, the well-greaved Greeks, the swift-footed Achilles, the much-enduring Odysseus, etc. ) are due tothis communal or associative character of ancient heroic song. As in thecompanies of architects who built the mediaeval cathedrals, or in theschools of early Italian painters, masters and disciples, the manner ofthe individual artist was subdued to the tradition of his craft. 

The English and Scottish popular ballads are in various simple stanzaforms, the commonest of all being the old _septenarius_ or "fourteener, "arranged in a four-lined stanza of alternate eights and sixes, thus:

 "Up then crew the red, red cock, And up and crew the gray; The eldest to the youngest said ''Tis time we were away. '"[4]

This is the stanza usually employed by modern ballad imitators, likeColeridge in "The Ancient Mariner, " Scott in "Jock o' Hazeldean, "Longfellow in "The Wreck of the Hesperus, " Macaulay in the "Lays ofAncient Rome, " Aytoun in the "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers. " Many ofthe stylistic and metrical peculiarities of the ballads arose from thefact that they were made to be sung or recited from memory. Such areperhaps the division of the longer ones into fits, to rest the voice ofthe singer; and the use of the burden or refrain for the same purpose, asalso to give the listeners and bystanders a chance to take up the chorus, which they probably accompanied with a few dancing steps. [5] Sometimesthe burden has no meaning in itself and serves only to mark time with a_Hey derry down_ or an _O lilly lally_ and the like. Sometimes it hasmore or less reference to the story, as in "The Two Sisters":

 "He has ta'en three locks o' her yellow hair-- Binnorie, O Binnorie-- And wi' them strung his harp sae rare-- By the bonnie mill-dams of Binnorie. "

Again it has no discoverable relation to the context, as in "RiddlesWisely Expounded"--

 "There was a knicht riding frae the east-- _Jennifer gentle and rosemarie_-- Who had been wooing at monie a place-- _As the dew flies over the mulberry tree. _"

Both kinds of refrain have been liberally employed by modern balladists. Thus Tennyson in "The Sisters":

 "We were two sisters of one race, _The wind is howling in turret and tree;__ _She was the fairer in the face, _O the earl was fair to see. "_

While Rossetti and Jean Ingelow and others have rather favored theinconsequential burden, an affectation travestied by the late Mr. C. S. Calverley:

 "The auld wife sat at her ivied door, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) A thing she had frequently done before; And her spectacles lay on her aproned knees. 

 "The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese), And I met with a ballad, I can't say where, Which wholly consisted of lines like these. "[6]

A musical or mnemonic device akin to the refrain was that sing-songspecies of repetend so familiar in ballad language:

 "She had na pu'd a double rose, a rose but only twa. "

 "They had na sailed a league, a league, A league but barely three. 

 "How will I come up? How can I come up? How can I come to thee?"

An answer is usually returned in the identical words of the question; andas in Homer, a formula of narration or a commonplace of description doesduty again and again. Iteration in the ballads is not merely foreconomy, but stands in lieu of the metaphor and other figures of literarypoetry:

 "'O Marie, put on your robes o' black, Or else your robes o' brown, For ye maun gang wi' me the night, To see fair Edinbro town. '

 "'I winna put on my robes o' black, Nor yet my robes o' brown; But I'll put on my robes o' white, To shine through Edinbro town. '"

Another mark of the genuine ballad manner, as of Homer and _Volkspoesie_in general, is the conventional epithet. Macaulay noted that the gold isalways red in the ballads, the ladies always gay, and Robin Hood's menare always his merry men. Doughty Douglas, bold Robin Hood, merryCarlisle, the good greenwood, the gray goose wing, and the wan water areother inseparables of the kind. Still another mark is the frequentretention of the Middle English accent on the final syllable in wordslike contrié, barón, dinére, felàwe, abbày, rivére, monéy, and itsassumption by words which never properly had it, such as ladý, harpér, weddíng, watér, etc. [7] Indeed, as Percy pointed out in hisintroduction, there were "many phrases and idioms which the minstrelsseem to have appropriated to themselves, . . . A cast of style andmeasure very different from that of contemporary poets of a higher class. "

Not everything that is called a ballad belongs to the class of poetrythat we are here considering. In its looser employment the word hassignified almost any kind of song: "a woeful ballad made to his mistress'eyebrow, " for example. "Ballade" was also the name of a somewhatintricate French stanza form, employed by Gower and Chaucer, and recentlyreintroduced into English verse by Dobson, Lang, Goose, and others, alongwith the virelay, rondeau, triolet, etc. There is also a numerous classof popular ballads--in the sense of something made _for_ the people, though not _by_ the people--are without relation to our subject. Theseare the street ballads, which were and still are hawked about byballad-mongers, and which have no literary character whatever. There aresatirical and political ballads, ballads versifying passages in Scriptureor chronicle, ballads relating to current events, or giving the historyof famous murders and other crimes, of prodigies, providences, and allsorts of happenings that teach a lesson in morals: about George Barnwelland the "Babes in the Wood, " and "Whittington and his Cat, " etc. : balladslike Shenstone's "Jemmy Dawson" and Gay's "Black-eyed Susan. " Thousandsof such are included in manuscript collections like the "Pepysian, " orprinted in the publications of the Roxburghe Club and the Ballad Society. But whether entirely modern, or extant in black-letter broadsides, theyare nothing to our purpose. We have to do here with the folk-song, the_traditional_ ballad, product of the people at a time when the people washomogeneous and the separation between the lettered and unletteredclasses had not yet taken place: the true minstrel ballad of the MiddleAges, or of that state of society which in rude and primitiveneighborhoods, like the Scottish border, prolonged mediaeval conditionsbeyond the strictly mediaeval period. 

In the form in which they are preserved, a few of our ballads are olderthan the seventeenth or the latter part of the sixteenth century, thoughin their origin many of them are much older. Manuscript versions of"Robin Hood and the Monk" and "Robin Hood and the Potter" exist, whichare referred to the last years of the fifteenth century. The "LytelGeste of Robyn Hode" was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1489. The"Not-Brown Maid" was printed in "Arnold's Chronicle" in 1502. "TheHunting of the Cheviot"--the elder version of "Chevy Chase"--wasmentioned by Philip Sidney in his "Defence of Poesie" in 1850. [8] Theballad is a narrative song, naïve, impersonal, spontaneous, objective. The singer is lost in the song, the teller in the tale. That is itsessence, but sometimes the story is told by the lyrical, sometimes by thedramatic method. In "Helen of Kirkconnell" it is the bereaved lover whois himself the speaker: in "Waly Waly, " the forsaken maid. These aremonologues; for a purely dialogue ballad it will be sufficient to mentionthe power and impressive piece in the "Reliques" entitled "Edward. "Herder translated this into German; it is very old, with Danish, Swedish, and Finnish analogues. It is a story of parricide, and is narrated in aseries of questions by the mother and answers by the son. The commonestform, however, was a mixture of epic and dramatic, or direct relationwith dialogue. A frequent feature is the abruptness of the opening andthe translations. The ballad-maker observes unconsciously Aristotle'srule for the epic poet, to begin _in medias res_. Johnson noticed thisin the instance of "Johnny Armstrong, " but a stronger example is found in"The Banks of Yarrow:"

 "Late at e'en, drinking the wine, And ere they paid the lawing, They set a combat them between, To fight it in the dawing. "

With this, an indirect, allusive way of telling the story, which Goethementions in his prefatory note to "Des Sängers Fluch, " as a constant noteof the "Volkslied. " The old ballad-maker does not vouchsafe explanationsabout persons and motives; often he gives the history, not expressly norfully, but by hints and glimpses, leaving the rest to conjecture;throwing up its salient points into a strong, lurid light against abackground of shadows. The knight rides out a-hunting, and by and by hisriderless horse comes home, and that is all:

 "Toom[9] hame cam the saddle But never cam he. "

Or the knight himself comes home and lies down to die, reluctantlyconfessing, under his mother's questioning, that he dined with histrue-love and is poisoned. [10] And again that is all. Or

 "--In behint yon auld fail[11] dyke, I wot there lies a new-slain knight; And naebody kens that he lies there, But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair. 

 "His hound is to the hunting game, His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame, His lady's ta'en another mate, So we may mak our dinner sweet. "

A whole unuttered tragedy of love, treachery, and murder lies back ofthese stanzas. This method of narration may be partly accounted for bythe fact that the story treated was commonly some local country-sidelegend of family feud or unhappy passion, whose incidents were familiarto the ballad-singer's audience and were readily supplied by memory. Onetheory holds that the story was partly told and partly sung, and that thelinks and expositions were given in prose. However this may be, theartless art of these popular poets evidently included a knowledge of theuses of mystery and suggestion. They knew that, for the imagination, thepart is sometimes greater than the whole. Gray wrote to Mason in 1757, "I have got the old Scotch ballad [Gil Maurice] on which 'Douglas'[Home's tragedy, first played at Edinburgh in 1756] was founded. It isdivine. . . Aristotle's best rules are observed in it in a manner whichshews the author never had heard of Aristotle. It begins in the fifthact of the play. You may read it two-thirds through without guessingwhat it is about; and yet, when you come to the end, it is impossible notto understand the whole story. "

It is not possible to recover the conditions under which these folk-songs"made themselves, "[12] as it were, or grew under the shaping hands ofgenerations of nameless bards. Their naïve, primitive quality cannot beacquired: the secret is lost. But Walter Scott, who was steeped to thelips in balladry, and whose temper had much of the healthy objectivity ofan earlier age, has succeeded as well as any modern. Some of his balladsare more perfect artistically than his long metrical romances; those ofthem especially which are built up from a burden or fragment of oldminstrel song, like "Jock o' Hazeldean"[13] and the song in "Rokeby":

 "He turned his charger as he spake Upon the river shore, He gave the bride-reins a shake, Said 'Adieu for evermore, My love! And adieu for evermore!'"

Here Scott catches the very air of popular poetry, and the dovetailing isdone with most happy skill. "Proud Maisie is in the Wood" is a fineexample of the ballad manner of story-telling by implication. [14]

As regards their subject-matter, the ballads admit of a roughclassification into the historical, or _quasi_-historical, and the purelylegendary or romantic. Of the former class were the "riding-ballad" ofthe Scottish border, where the forays of moss-troopers, the lifting ofblackmail, the raids and private warfare of the Lords of the Marches, supplied many traditions of heroism and adventure like those recorded in"The Battle of Otterburn, " "The Hunting of the Cheviot, " "JohnnieArmstrong, " "Kinmont Willie, " "The Rising in the North" and"Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas. " Of the fictitious class, some wereshortened, popularized, and generally degraded versions of the chivalryromances, which were passing out of favor among educated readers in thesixteenth century and fell into the hands of the ballad-makers. Such, toname only a few included in the "Reliques, " were "Sir Lancelot du Lake, ""The Legend of Sir Guy, " "King Arthur's Death" and "The Marriage of SirGawaine. " But the substance of these was not of the genuine popularstuff, and their personages were simply the old heroes of court poetry inreduced circumstances. Much more impressive are the original folk-songs, which strike their roots deep into the ancient world of legend and evenof myth. 

In this true ballad world there is a strange commingling of paganism andCatholic Christianity. It abounds in the supernatural and the marvelous. Robin Hood is a pious outlaw. He robs the fat-headed monks, but will notdie unhouseled and has great devotion to Our Blessed Lady; who appearsalso to Brown Robyn, when he is cast overboard, hears his confession andtakes his soul to Heaven. [15] When mass has been sung and the bells ofmerry Lincoln have rung, Lady Maisry goes seeking her little Hugh, whohas been killed by the Jew's daughter and thrown into Our Lady'sdraw-well fifty fathom deep, and the boy answers his mother miraculouslyfrom the well. [16] Birds carry messages for lovers[17] and dyingmen, [18] or show the place where the body lies buried and thecorpse-candles shine. [19] The harper strings his harp with three goldenhairs of the drowned maiden, and the tune that he plays upon them revealsthe secret of her death. [20] The ghosts of the sons that have perishedat sea come home to take farewell of their mother. [21] The spirit of theforsaken maid visits her false lover at midnight;[22] or "the dead comesfor the quick, "[23] as in Burger's weird poem. There are witches, fairies, and mermaidens[24] in the ballads: omens, dreams, spells, [25]enchantments, transformations, [26] magic rings and charms, "gramarye"[27]of many sorts; and all these things are more effective here than in poetslike Spenser and Collins, because they are matters of belief and not ofmake-believe. 

The ballads are prevailingly tragical in theme, and the tragic passionsof pity and fear find an elementary force of utterance. Love is strongas death, jealousy cruel as the grave. Hate, shame, grief, despair speakhere with their native accent:

 "There are seven forsters at Pickeram Side, At Pickeram where they dwell, And for a drop of thy heart's bluid They wad ride the fords of hell. "[28]

 "O little did my mother think, The day she cradled me, What lands I was to travel through, What death I was to dee. "[29]

The maiden asks her buried lover:

 "Is there any room at your head, Sanders? Is there any room at your feet? Or any room at your twa sides, Where fain, fain would I sleep?"[30]

 "O waly, waly, but love be bonny A little time while it is new;[31] But when 'tis auld it waxeth cauld And fades awa' like morning dew. . . 

 "And O! if my young babe were born, And set upon the nurse's knee, And I mysel' were dead and gane, And the green grass growing over me!"

Manners in this world are of a primitive savagery. There are treachery, violence, cruelty, revenge; but there are also honor, courage, fidelity, and devotion that endureth to the end. "Child Waters" and "Fair Annie" donot suffer on a comparison with Tennyson's "Enid" and Chaucer's story ofpatient Griselda ("The Clerkes Tale") with which they have a commontheme. It is the medieval world. Marauders, pilgrims, and wanderinggleemen go about in it. The knight stands at his garden pale, the ladysits at her bower window, and the little foot page carries messages overmoss and moor. Marchmen are riding through the Bateable Land "by the hielight o' the moon. " Monks are chanting in St. Mary's Kirk, trumpets areblowing in Carlisle town, castles are burning; down in the glen there isan ambush and swords are flashing; bows are twanging in the greenwood;four and twenty ladies are playing at the ball, and four and twentymilk-white calves are in the woods of Glentanner--all ready to be stolen. About Yule the round tables begin; the queen looks over the castle-wall, the palmer returns from the Holy Land, Young Waters lies deep in Stirlingdungeon, but Child Maurice is in the silver wood, combing his yellowlocks with a silver comb. 

There is an almost epic coherence about the ballads of the Robin Hoodcycle. This good robber, who with his merry men haunted the forests ofSherwood and Barnsdale, was the real ballad hero and the darling of thepopular fancy which created him. For though the names of his confessor, Friar Tuck; his mistress, Maid Marian; and his companions, Little John, Scathelock, and Much the miller's son, have an air of reality, --andthough the tradition has associated itself with definitelocalities, --there is nothing historical about Robin Hood. Langland, inthe fourteenth century, mentions "rhymes of Robin Hood"; and efforts havebeen made to identify him with one of the dispossessed followers of Simonde Montfort, in "the Barons' War, " or with some still earlierfree-booter, of Hereward's time, who had taken to the woods and lived byplundering the Normans. Myth as he is, he is a thoroughly nationalconception. He had the English love of fair play; the English readinessto shake hands and make up when worsted in a square fight. He killed theKing's venison, but was a loyal subject. He took from the rich and gaveto the poor, executing thus a kind of wild justice. He defied legalauthority in the person of the proud sheriff of Nottingham, therebyappealing to that secret sympathy with lawlessness which marks avigorous, free yeomanry. [32] He had the knightly virtues of courtesy andhospitality, and the yeomanly virtues of good temper and friendliness. And finally, he was a mighty archer with the national weapons, thelong-bow and the cloth-yard shaft; and so appealed to the national loveof sport in his free and careless life under the greenwood tree. Theforest scenery give a poetic background to his exploits, and though theballads, like folk-poetry in general, seldom linger over naturaldescriptions, there is everywhere a consciousness of this background anda wholesome, outdoor feeling:

 "In somer, when the shawes be sheyne, And leves be large and long, Hit is full mery in feyre foreste To here the foulys song:

 "To se the dere draw to the dale, And leve the hillis hee, And shadow hem in the levës grene, Under the grene-wode tre. "[33]

Although a few favorite ballads such as "Johnnie Armstrong, " "ChevyChase, " "The Children in the Wood, " and some of the Robin Hood ones hadlong been widely, nay almost universally familiar, they had hardly beenregarded as literature worthy of serious attention. They were lookedupon as nursery tales, or at best as the amusement of peasants andunlettered folk, who used to paste them up on the walls of inns, cottages, and ale-houses. Here and there an educated man had had asneaking fondness for collecting old ballads--much as people nowadayscollect postage stamps. Samuel Pepys, the diarist, made such acollection, and so did John Selden, the great legal antiquary and scholarof Milton's time. "I have heard, " wrote Addison, "that the late LordDorset, who had the greatest wit tempered with the greatest candor, andwas one of the finest critics as well as the best poets of his age, had anumerous collection of old English ballads, and a particular pleasure inthe reading of them. I can affirm the same of Mr. Dryden. " Dryden's"Miscellany Poems" (1684) gave "Gilderoy, " "Johnnie Armstrong, " "ChevyChase, " "The Miller and the King's Daughter, " and "Little Musgrave andthe Lady Barnard. " The last named, as well as "Lady Anne Bothwell'sLament" and "Fair Margaret and Sweet William, "[34] was quoted in Beaumontand Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle, " (1611). Scraps of themare sung by one of the _dramatis personae_, old Merrythought, whosespeciality is a damnable iteration of ballad fragments. References toold ballads are numerous in the Elizabethan plays. Percy devoted thesecond book of his first series to "Ballads that Illustrate Shakspere. "In the seventeenth century a few ballads were printed entire in poeticmiscellanies entitled "Garlands, " higgledy-piggledy with pieces of allkinds. Professor Child enumerates nine ballad collections beforePercy's. The only ones of any importance among these were "A Collectionof Old Ballads" (Vols I. And II. In 1723, Vol III. In 1725), ascribed toAmbrose Philips; and the Scotch poet, Allan Ramsay's, "Tea TableMiscellany, " (in 4 vols. , 1714-40) and "Evergreen" (2 vols. , 1724). Thefirst of these collections was illustrated with copperplate engravingsand supplied with introductions which were humorous in intention. Theeditor treated his ballads as trifles, though he described them as"corrected from the best and most ancient copies extant"; and said thatHomer himself was nothing more than a blind ballad-singer, whose songshad been subsequently joined together and formed into an epic poem. Ramsay's ballads were taken in part from a manuscript collection of someeight hundred pages, made by George Bannatyne about 1570 and stillpreserved in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. 

In Nos. 70, 74, and 85, of the _Spectator_, Addison had praised thenaturalness and simplicity of the popular ballads, selecting for specialmention "Chevy Chase"--the later version--"which, " he wrote, "is thefavorite ballad of the common people of England; and Ben Jonson used tosay he had rather have been the author of it than of all his works"; and"the 'Two Children in the Wood, ' which is one of the darling songs of thecommon people, and has been the delight of most Englishmen in some partof their age. " Addison justifies his liking for these humble poems byclassical precedents. "The greatest modern critics have laid it down asa rule that an heroic poem should be founded upon some important preceptof morality adapted to the constitution of the country in which the poetwrites. Homer and Virgil have formed their plans in this view. "Accordingly he thinks that the author of "Chevy Chase" meant to point amoral as to the mischiefs of private war. As if it were not preciselythe _gaudium certaminis_ that inspired the old border ballad-maker! Asif he did not glory in the fight! The passage where Earl Percy took thedead Douglas by the hand and lamented his fallen foe reminds Addison ofAeneas' behavior toward Lausus. The robin red-breast covering thechildren with leaves recalls to his mind a similar touch in one ofHorace's odes. But it was much that Addison, whose own verse was soartificial, should have had a taste for the wild graces of folk-song. Hewas severely ridiculed by his contemporaries for these concessions. "Hedescended now and then to lower disquisitions, " wrote Dr. Johnson, " andby a serious display of the beauties of 'Chevy Chase, ' exposed himself tothe ridicule of Wagstaff, who bestowed a like pompous character on 'TomThumb'; and to the contempt of Dennis, who, considering the fundamentalposition of his criticism, that 'Chevy Chase' pleases and ought to pleasebecause it is natural, observes that 'there is a way of deviating fromnature . . . By imbecility, which degrades nature by faintness anddiminution'. . . In 'Chevy Chase' . . . There is a chill and lifelessimbecility. The story cannot possibly be told in a manner that shallmake less impression on the mind. "[35]

Nicholas Rowe, the dramatist and Shakspere editor, had said a good wordfor ballads in the prologue to "Jane Shore" (1713):

 "Let no nice taste despise the hapless dame Because recording ballads chant her name. Those venerable ancient song enditers Soared many a pitch above our modern writers. . . Our numbers may be more refined than those, But what we've gained in verse, we've lost in prose. Their words no shuffling double meaning knew: Their speech was homely, but their hearts were true. . . With rough, majestic force they moved the heart, And strength and nature made amends for art. "

Ballad forgery had begun early. To say nothing of appropriations, likeMallet's, of "William and Margaret, " Lady Wardlaw put forth her"Hardyknut" in 1719 as a genuine old ballad, and it was reprinted as suchin Ramsay's "Evergreen. " Gray wrote to Walpole in 1760, "I have beenoften told that the poem called 'Hardicanute' (which I always admired andstill admire) was the work of somebody that lived a few years ago. ThisI do not at all believe, though it has evidently been retouched by somemodern hand. " Before Percy no concerted or intelligent effort had beenmade toward collecting, preserving, and editing the _corpus poetarum_ ofEnglish minstrelsy. The great mass of ancient ballads, so far as theywere in print at all, existed in "stall copies, " _i. E. _, single sheets ofbroadsides, struck off for sale by balladmongers and the keepers ofbook-stalls. 

Thomas Percy, the compiler of the "Reliques, " was a parish clergyman, settled at the retired hamlet of Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire. Foryears he had amused his leisure by collecting ballads. He numbered amonghis acquaintances men of letters like Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Grainger, Farmer, and Shenstone. It was the last who suggested the planof the "Reliques" and who was to have helped in its execution, had nothis illness and death prevented. Johnson spent a part of the summer of1764 on a visit to the vicarage of Easton Maudit, on which occasion Percyreports that his guest "chose for his regular reading the old Spanishromance of 'Felixmarte of Hircania, ' in folio, which he read quitethrough. " He adds, what one would not readily suspect, that the doctor, when a boy, "was immoderately fond of reading romances of chivalry, andhe retained his fondness for them through life. . . I have heard himattribute to these extravagant fictions that unsettled turn of mind whichprevented his ever fixing in any profession. " Percy talked over hisproject with Johnson, who would seem to have given his approval, and evento have added his persuasions to Shenstone's. For in the preface to thefirst edition of the "Reliques, " the editor declared that "he couldrefuse nothing to such judges as the author of the _Rambler_ and the lateMr. Shenstone"; and that "to the friendship of Mr. Johnson he owes manyvaluable hints for the conduct of his work. " And after Ritson hadquestioned the existence of the famous "folio manuscript, " Percy's nephewin the advertisement to the fourth edition (1794), cited "the appealpublicly made to Dr. Johnson . . . So long since as in the year 1765, andnever once contradicted by him. "

In spite of these amenities, the doctor had a low opinion of ballads andballad collectors. In the _Rambler_ (No. 177) he made merry over oneCantilenus, who "turned all his thoughts upon old ballads, for heconsidered them as the genuine records of the natural taste. He offeredto show me a copy of 'The Children in the Wood, ' which he firmly believedto be of the first edition, and by the help of which the text might befreed from several corruptions, if this age of barbarity had any claim tosuch favors from him. " "The conversation, " says Boswell, "having turnedon modern imitations of ancient ballads, and someone having praised theirsimplicity, he treated them with that ridicule which he always displayedwhen that subject was mentioned. " Johnson wrote several stanzas inparody of the ballads; _e. G. _, "The tender infant, meek and mild, Fell down upon a stone: The nurse took up the squealing child, But still the child squealed on. "

And again:

 "I put my hat upon my head And walked into the Strand; And there I met another man Whose hat was in his hand. "

This is quoted by Wordsworth, [36] who compares it with a stanza from "TheChildren in the Wood":

 "Those pretty babes, with hand in hand, Went wandering up and down; But never more they saw the man Approaching from the town. "

He says that in both of these stanzas the language is that of familiarconversation, yet one stanza is admirable and the other contemptible, because the _matter_ of it is contemptible. In the essay supplementaryto his preface, Wordsworth asserts that the "Reliques" was "ill suited tothe then existing taste of city society, and Dr. Johnson . . . Was notsparing in his exertions to make it an object of contempt": and that "Dr. Percy was so abashed by the ridicule flung upon his labors . . . That, though while he was writing under a mask he had not wanted resolution tofollow his genius into the regions of true simplicity and genuine pathos(as is evinced by the exquisite ballad of 'Sir Cauline' and by many otherpieces), yet when he appeared in his own person and character as apoetical writer, he adopted, as in the tale of 'The Hermit of Warkworth, 'a diction scarcely distinguishable from the vague, the glossy andunfeeling language of his day. " Wordsworth adds that he esteems thegenius of Dr. Percy in this kind of writing superior to that of any othermodern writer; and that even Bürger had not Percy's fine sensibility. Hequotes, in support of this opinion, two stanzas from "The Child of Elle"in the "Reliques, " and contrasts them with the diluted and tricked-outversion of the same in Bürger's German. 

Mr. Hales does not agree in this high estimate of Percy as a balladcomposer. Of this same "Child of Elle" he says: "The present fragment ofa version may be fairly said to be now printed for the first time, as inthe 'Reliques' it is buried in a heap of 'polished' verses composed byPercy. That worthy prelate, touched by the beauty of it--he had asoul--was unhappily moved to try his hand at its completion. Awax-doll-maker might as well try to restore Milo's Venus. There arethirty-nine lines here. There are two hundred in the thing called the'Child of Elle' in the 'Reliques. ' But in those two hundred lines allthe thirty-nine originals do not appear. . . On the whole, the union ofthe genuine and the false--of the old ballad with Percy's tawdryfeebleness--makes about as objectionable a _mésalliance_ as in the storyitself is in the eyes of the father. "[37] The modern ballad scholars, intheir zeal for the purity of the text, are almost as hard upon Percy asRitson himself was. They say that he polished "The Heir of Linne" tillhe could see his own face in it; and swelled out its 126 lines to 216--"afine flood of ballad and water. "[38] The result of this piecing andtinkering in "Sir Cauline"--which Wordsworth thought exquisite--theyregard as a heap of tinsel, though they acknowledge that "theseadditional stanzas show, indeed, an extensive acquaintance with oldballadry and a considerable talent of imitation. "

From the critical or scholarly point of view, these strictures aredoubtless deserved. It is an editor's duty to give his text as he findsit, without interpolations or restorations; and it is unquestionable thatPercy's additions to fragmentary pieces are full of sentimentalism, affectation, and the spurious poetic diction of his age. An experiencedballad amateur can readily separate, in most cases, the genuine portionsfrom the insertions. But it is unfair to try Percy by modern editorialcanons. That sacredness which is now imputed to the _ipsissima verba_ ofan ancient piece of popular literature would have been unintelligible tomen of that generation, who regarded such things as trifles at best, andmostly as barbarous trifles--something like wampum belts, or nose-rings, or antique ornaments in the _goût barbare et charmant des bijoux goths_. Percy's readers did not want torsos and scraps; to present them withacephalous or bobtailed ballads--with _cetera desunt_ and constellationsof asterisks--like the manuscript in Prior's poem, the conclusion ofwhich was eaten by the rats--would have been mere pedantry. Percy knewhis public, and he knew how to make his work attractive to it. Thereaders of that generation enjoyed their ballad with a large infusion ofPercy. If the scholars of this generation prefer to take theirs without, they know where to get it. 

The materials for the "Reliques" were drawn partly from the Pepyscollection at Magdalen College, Cambridge; from Anthony Wood's, made in1676, in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford; from manuscript and printedballads in the Bodleian, the British Museum, the archives of theAntiquarian Society, and private collections. Sir David Dalrymple sent anumber of Scotch ballads, and the editor acknowledged obligations toThomas Warton and many others. But the nucleus of the whole was acertain folio manuscript in a handwriting of Charles I. 's time, containing 191 songs and ballads, which Percy had begged, then still veryyoung, from his friend Humphrey Pitt, of Prior's-Lee in Shropshire. Whenhe first saw this precious document, it was torn, unbound, and mutilated, "lying dirty on the floor under a bureau in the parlor, being used by themaids to light the fire. " The first and last leaves were wanting, and"of 54 pages near the beginning, half of every leaf hath been tornaway. "[39] Percy had it bound, but the binders trimmed off the top andbottom lines in the process. From this manuscript he professed to havetaken "the greater part" of the pieces in the "Reliques. " In truth hetook only 45 of the 176 poems in his first edition from this source. 

Percy made no secret of the fact that he filled _lacunae_ in hisoriginals with stanzas, and, in some cases, with nearly entire poems ofhis own composition. But the extent of the liberties that he took withthe text, although suspected, was not certainly known until Mr. Furnivallfinally got leave to have the folio manuscript copied and printed. [40]Before this time it had been jealously guarded by the Percy family, andaccess to it had been denied to scholars. "Since Percy and his nephewprinted their fourth edition of the 'Reliques' from the manuscript in1794, " writes Mr. Furnivall in his "Forewords, " "no one has printed anypiece from it except Robert Jamieson--to whom Percy supplied a copy of'Child Maurice' and 'Robin Hood and the Old Man' for his 'Popular Balladsand Songs' (1806)--and Sir Frederic Madden, who was allowed--by one ofPercy's daughters--to print 'The Grene Knight, ' 'The Carle of Carlisle'and 'The Turk and Gawin' in his 'Syr Gawaine' for the Bannatyne Club, 1839. " Percy was furiously assailed by Joseph Ritson for manipulatinghis texts; and in the 1794 edition he made some concessions to thelatter's demand for a literal rescript, by taking off a few of theornaments in which he had tricked them. Ritson was a thoroughlycritical, conscientious student of poetic antiquities and held the righttheory of an editor's functions. In his own collection of early Englishpoetry he rendered a valuable service to all later inquiries. Theseincluded "Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry, " 1791; "Ancient Songs, " 1792;"Scottish Songs, " 1794; "Robin Hood, " 1795; besides editions of LaurenceMinot's poems, and of "Gammer Gurton's Needle, " as well as other titles. He was an ill-tempered and eccentric man: a vegetarian, a free-thinker, aspelling reformer, [41] and latterly a Jacobin. He attacked Warton aswell as Percy, and used to describe any clerical antagonist as a"stinking priest. " He died insane in 1803. Ritson took issue with thetheory maintained in Percy's introductory "Essay on the AncientMinstrels, " viz. : that the minstrels were not only the singers, butlikewise the authors of the ballads. But Ritson went so far in his rageagainst Percy as to deny the existence of the sacred Folio Manuscript, until convinced by abundant testimony that there was such a thing. Itwas an age of forgeries, and Ritson was not altogether withoutjustification in supposing that the author of "The Hermit of Warkworth"belonged in the same category with Chatterton, Ireland, and MacPherson. 

Percy, like Warton, took an apologetic tone toward his public. "In apolished age, like the present, " he wrote, "I am sensible that many ofthese reliques of antiquity will require great allowances to be made forthem. Yet have they, for the most part, a pleasing simplicity and manyartless graces, which, in the opinion of no mean critics, have beenthought to compensate for the want of higher beauties. " Indeed howshould it have been otherwise? The old ballads were everything which theeighteenth century was not. They were rough and wild, where that wassmooth and tame; they dealt, with fierce sincerity, in the elementarypassions of human nature. They did not moralize, or philosophize, orsentimentalize; were never subtle, intellectual, or abstract. They wereplain English, without finery or elegance. They had certain popularmannerisms, but none of the conventional figures of speech or rhetoricalartifices like personifications, periphrasis, antithesis, and climax sodear to the Augustan heart. They were intent on the story--not on thestyle--and they just told it and let it go for what it was worth. 

Moreover, there are ballads and ballads. The best of them are noble inexpression as well as feeling, unequaled by anything in our medievalpoetry outside of Chaucer; unequaled by Chaucer himself in point ofintensity, in occasional phrases of a piercing beauty:

 "The swans-fethers that his arrowe bar With his hart-blood they were wet. "[42]

 "O cocks are crowing a merry mid-larf, A wat the wild fule boded day; The salms of Heaven will be sung, And ere now I'll be missed away. "[43]

 "If my love were an earthly knight, As he's an elfin gray, A wad na gie my sin true love For no lord that ye hae. "[44]

 "She hang ae napkin at the door, Another in the ha, And a' to wipe the trickling tears, Sae fast as they did fa. "[45]

 "And all is with one chyld of yours, I feel stir at my side: My gowne of green, it is too strait: Before it was too wide. "[46]

Verse of this quality needs no apology. But of many of the ballads, Dennis' taunt, repeated by Dr. Johnson, is true; they are not merelyrude, but weak and creeping in style. Percy knew that the best of themwould savor better to the palates of his contemporaries if he dressedthem with modern sauces. Yet he must have loved them, himself, in theirnative simplicity, and it seems almost incredible that he could havespoken as he did about Prior's insipid paraphrase of the "Nut BrownMaid. " "If it had no other merit, " he says of that most lovely ballad, "than the having afforded the ground-work to Prior's 'Henry and Emma, 'this ought to preserve it from oblivion. " Prior was a charming writer ofepigram, society verse, and the humorous _conte_ in the manner of LaFontaine; but to see how incapable he was of the depth and sweetness ofromantic poetry, compare a few lines of the original with the "hubbub ofwords" in his modernized version, in heroic couplets:

 "O Lord, what is this worldes blisse That changeth as the mone! The somer's day in lusty May Is derked before the none. I hear you say farewel. Nay, nay, We departe not so soon: Why say ye so? Wheder wyle ye goo? Alas! what have ye done? Alle my welfare to sorrow and care Shulde change if ye were gon; For in my minde, of all mankynde, I love but you alone. "

Now hear Prior, with his Venus and flames and god of love:

 "What is our bliss that changeth with the moon, And day of life that darkens ere 'tis noon? What is true passion, if unblest it dies? And where is Emma's joy, if Henry flies? If love, alas! be pain, the pain I bear No thought can figure and no tongue declare. Ne'er faithful woman felt, nor false one feigned The flames which long have in my bosom reigned. The god of love himself inhabits there With all his rage and dread and grief and care, His complement of stores and total war, O cease then coldly to suspect my love And let my deed at least my faith approve. Alas! no youth shall my endearments share Nor day nor night shall interrupt my care; No future story shall with truth upbraid The cold indifference of the nut-brown maid; Nor to hard banishment shall Henry run While careless Emma sleeps on beds of down. View me resolved, where'er thou lead'st, to go: Friend to thy pain and partner of thy woe; For I attest fair Venus and her son That I, of all mankind, will love but thee alone. "

There could be no more striking object lesson than this of the plethorafrom which English poetic diction was suffering, and of the sanativevalue of a book like the "Reliques. "

"To atone for the rudeness of the more obsolete poems, " and "to take offfrom the tediousness of the longer narratives, " Percy interspersed a fewmodern ballads and a large number of "little elegant pieces of the lyrickind" by Skelton, Hawes, Gascoigne, Raleigh, Marlowe, Shakspere, Jonson, Warner, Carew, Daniel, Lovelace, Suckling, Drayton, Beaumont andFletcher, Wotton, and other well-known poets. Of the modern ballads theonly one with any resemblance to folk-poetry was "The Braes o' Yarrow" byWilliam Hamilton of Bangour, a Scotch gentleman who was "out in theforty-five. " The famous border stream had watered an ancient land ofsong and story, and Hamilton's ballad, with its "strange, fugitivemelody, " was not unworthy of its traditions. Hamilton belongs to theMilton imitators by virtue of his octosyllabics "Contemplation. "[47] His"Braes o' Yarrow" had been given already in Ramsey's "Tea TableMiscellany, " The opening lines--

 "Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride, Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow"--

are quoted in Wordsworth's "Yarrow Unvisited, " as well as a line of thefollowing stanza:

 "Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass, Yellow on Yarrow's bank the gowan: Fair hangs the apple frae the rock, Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowin'. "

The first edition of the "Reliques" included one acknowledged child ofPercy's muse, "The Friar of Orders Grey, " a short, narrative ballad madeup of song snatches from Shakspere's plays. Later editions afforded hislonger poem, "The Hermit of Warkworth, " first published independently in1771. 

With all its imperfections--perhaps partly in consequence of itsimperfections--the "Reliques" was an epoch-making book. The nature ofits service to English letters is thus stated by Macaulay, in theintroduction to his "Lays of Ancient Rome": "We cannot wonder that theballads of Rome should have altogether disappeared, when we remember howvery narrowly, in spite of the invention of printing, those of our owncountry and those of Spain escaped the same fate. There is, indeed, little doubt that oblivion covers many English songs equal to any thatwere published by Bishop Percy; and many Spanish songs as good as thebest of those which have been so happily translated by Mr. Lockhart. Eighty years ago England possessed only one tattered copy of 'ChildWaters' and 'Sir Cauline, ' and Spain only one tattered copy of the noblepoem of the 'Cid. ' The snuff of a candle, or a mischievous dog, might ina moment have deprived the world forever of any of those finecompositions. Sir Walter Scott, who united to the fire of a great poetthe minute curiosity and patient diligence of a great antiquary, was butjust in time to save the precious reliques of the Minstrelsy of theBorder. "

But Percy not only rescued, himself, a number of ballads fromforgetfulness; what was equally important, his book prompted others tohunt out and publish similar relics before it was too late. It was theoccasion of collections like Herd's (1769), Scott's (1802-03), andMotherwell's (1827), and many more, resting on purer texts and edited onmore scrupulous principles than his own. Futhermore, his ballads helpedto bring about a reform in literary taste and to inspire men of originalgenius. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, all acknowledged thegreatest obligations to them. Wordsworth said that English poetry hadbeen "absolutely redeemed" by them. "I do not think there is a writer inverse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge hisobligations to the 'Reliques. ' I know that it is so with my friends;and, for myself, I am happy that it is so with my friends; and, formyself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of myown. "[48] Without the "Reliques, " "The Ancient Mariner, " "The Lady ofthe Lake, " "La Belle Dame sans Merci, " "Stratton Water, " and "TheHaystack in the Floods" might never have been. Perhaps even the "LyricalBallads" might never have been, or might have been something quite unlikewhat they are. Wordsworth, to be sure, scarcely ranks among romantics, and he expressly renounces the romantic machinery:

 "The dragon's wing, The magic ring, I shall not covet for my dower. "[49]

What he learned from the popular ballad was the power of sincerity and ofdirect and homely speech. 

As for Scott, he has recorded in an oft-quoted passage the impressionthat Percy's volumes made upon him in his school-days: "I remember wellthe spot where I read these volumes for the first time. It was beneath ahuge plantain tree in the ruins of what had been intended for anold-fashioned arbor in the garden I have mentioned. The summer day spedonward so fast that, notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, Iforgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was stillfound entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and to remember was, in this instance, the same thing; and henceforth I overwhelmed myschool-fellows, and all who would hearken to me, with tragicalrecitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, Icould scrape a few shillings together, I bought unto myself a copy ofthese beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm. "

The "Reliques" worked powerfully in Germany, too. It was received inLessing's circle with universal enthusiasm, [50] and fell in with thatnewly aroused interest in "Volkslieder" which prompted Herder's "Stimmender Völker" (1778-79). [51] Gottfried August Bürger, in particular, was apoet who may be said to have been made by the English ballad literature, of which he was an ardent student. His poems were published in 1778, andincluded five translations from Percy: "The Child of Elle" ("DieEntführung"), "The Friar of Orders Grey" ("Graurock"), "The Wanton Wifeof Bath" ("Frau Schnips"), "King John and the Abbot of Canterbury" ("DerKaiser und der Abt"), and "Child Waters" ("Graf Walter"). A. W. Schlegelsays that Burger did not select the more ancient and genuine pieces inthe "Reliques"; and, moreover, that he spoiled the simplicity of theoriginals in his translations. It was doubtless in part the success ofthe "Reliques" that is answerable for many collections of old Englishpoetry put forth in the last years of the century. Tyrwhitt's "Chaucer"and Ritson's publications have been already mentioned. George Ellis, afriend and correspondent of Walter Scott, and a fellow of the Society ofAntiquaries, who was sometimes called "the Sainte Palaye of England, "issued his "Specimens of Early English Poets" in 1790; edited in 1796 G. L. Way's translations from French _fabliaux_ of the twelfth andthirteenth centuries; and printed in 1805 three volumes of "Early EnglishMetrical Romances. "

It is pleasant to record that Percy's labors brought him publicrecognition and the patronage of those whom Dr. Johnson used to call "thegreat. " He had dedicated the "Reliques" to Elizabeth Percy, Countess ofNorthumberland. Himself the son of a grocer, he liked to think that hewas connected by blood with the great northern house whose exploits hadbeen sung by the ancient minstrels that he loved. He became chaplain tothe Duke of Northumberland, and to King George III. ; and, in 1782, Bishopof Dromore in Ireland, in which see he died in 1811. 

This may be as fit a place as any to introduce some mention of "TheMinstrel, or the Progress of Genius, " by James Beattie; a poem oncewidely popular, in which several strands of romantic influence are seentwisted together. The first book was published in 1771, the second in1774, and the work was never completed. It was in the Spenserian stanza, was tinged with the enthusiastic melancholy of the Wartons, followed thelandscape manner of Thomson, had elegiac echoes of Gray, and was perhapsnot unaffected, in its love of mountain scenery, by MacPherson's"Ossian. " But it took its title and its theme from a hint in Percy's"Essay on the Ancient Minstrels. "[52] Beattie was Professor of MoralPhilosophy in the University of Aberdeen. He was an amiable, sensitive, deeply religious man. He was fond of music and of nature, and was easilymoved to rears; had "a young girl's nerves, " says Taine, "and an oldmaid's hobbies. " Gray, who met him in 1765, when on a visit to the Earlof Strathmore at Glammis Castle, esteemed him highly. So did Dr. Johnson, partly because of his "Essay on Truth" (1770), a shallowinvective against Hume, which gained its author an interview with GeorgeIII. And a pension of two hundred pounds a year. Beattie visited Londonin 1771, and figured there as a champion of orthodoxy and aheaven-inspired bard. Mrs. Montagu patronized him extensively. SirJoshua Reynolds painted his portrait, with his "Essay on Truth" under hisarm, and Truth itself in the background, an allegoric angel holding thebalances in one hand, and thrusting away with the other the figures ofPrejudice, Skepticism, and Folly. Old Lord Lyttelton had the poet out toHagley, and declared that he was Thomson come back to earth, to sing ofvirtue and of the beauties of nature. Oxford made him an LL. D. : he wasurged to take orders in the Church of England; and Edinburgh offered himthe chair of Moral Philosophy. Beattie's head was slightly turned by allthis success, and he became something of a tuft-hunter. But he stuckfaithfully to Aberdeen, whose romantic neighborhood had first inspiredhis muse. The biographers tell a pretty story of his teaching his littleboy to look for the hand of God in the universe, by sowing cress in agarden plot in the shape of the child's initials and leading him by thisgently persuasive analogy to read design in the works of nature. 

The design of "The Minstrel" is to "trace the progress of a PoeticalGenius, born in a rude age, " a youthful shepherd who "lived in Gothicdays. " But nothing less truly Gothic or medieval could easily beimagined than the actual process of this young poet's education. Insteadof being taught to carve and ride and play the flute, like Chaucer'ssquire who

 "Cowde songes make and wel endite, Juste and eek daunce, and wel purtraye and write, "

Edwin wanders alone upon the mountains and in solitary places and isinstructed in history, philosophy, and science--and even in Vergil--by anaged hermit, who sits on a mossy rock, with his harp beside him, anddelivers lectures. The subject of the poem, indeed, is properly theeducation of nature; and in a way it anticipates Wordsworth's "Prelude, "as this hoary sage does the "Solitary" of "The Excursion. " Beattiejustifies his use of Spenser's stanza on the ground that it "seems, fromits Gothic structure and original, to bear some relation to the subjectand spirit of the poem. " He makes no attempt, however, to followSpenser's "antique expressions. " The following passage will illustrateas well as any the romantic character of the whole:

 "When the long-sounding curfew from afar Loaded with loud lament the lonely gale, Young Edwin, lighted by the evening star, Lingering and listening, wandered down the vale. There would he dream of graves and corses pale, And ghosts that to the charnel-dungeon throng, And drag a length of clanking chain, and wail, Till silenced by the owl's terrific song, Or blast that shrieks by fits the shuddering aisles along. 

 "Or when the settling moon, in crimson dyed, Hung o'er the dark and melancholy deep, To haunted stream, remote from man, he hied, Where fays of yore their revels wont to keep; And there let Fancy rove at large, till sleep A vision brought to his entrancëd sight. And first a wildly murmuring wind gan creep Shrill to his ringing ear; then tapers bright, With instantaneous gleam, illumed the vault of night. 

 "Anon in view a portal's blazing arch Arose; the trumpet bids the valves unfold; And forth a host of little warriors march, Grasping the diamond lance and targe of gold. Their look was gentle, their demeanor bold, And green their helms, and green their silk attire; And here and there, right venerably old, The long-robed minstrels wake the warbling wire, And some with mellow breath the martial pipe inspire. "[53]

The influence of Thomson is clearly perceptible in these stanzas. "TheMinstrel, " like "The Seasons, " abounds in insipid morality, thecommonplaces of denunciation against luxury and ambition, and the praiseof simplicity and innocence. The titles alone of Beattie's minor poemsare enough to show in what school he was a scholar: "The Hermit, " "Ode toPeace, " "The Triumph of Melancholy, " "Retirement, " etc. , etc. "TheMinstrel" ran through four editions before the publication of its secondbook in 1774. 

[1] Svend Grundtvig's great collection, "Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, " waspublished in five volumes in 1853-90. 

[2] Francis James Child's "English and Scottish Popular Ballads, " issuedin ten parts in 1882-98 is one of the glories of American scholarship. 

[3] _Cf. _ The Tannhäuser legend and the Venusberg. 

[4] "The Wife of Usher's Well. "

[5] It should never be forgotten that the ballad (derived from_ballare--to dance)_ was originally not a written poem, but a song anddance. Many of the old tunes are preserved. A number are given inChappell's "Popular Music of the Olden Time, " and in the appendix toMotherwell's "Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern" (1827). 

[6] "A Ballad. " One theory explains these meaningless refrains asremembered fragments of older ballads. 

[7] Reproduced by Rossetti and other moderns. See them parodied in RobertBuchanan's "Fleshly School of Poets":

 "When seas do roar and skies do pour, Hard is the lot of the sailór Who scarcely, as he reels, can tell The sidelights from the binnacle. "

[8] "I never heard the old song of Percie and Douglas that I found not myheart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by someblind crouder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evilapparelled in the dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age, what would itwork, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar!"

[9] Empty: "Bonnie George Campbell. "

[10] "Lord Randall. "

[11] Turf: "The Twa Corbies. "

[12] I use this phrase without any polemic purpose. The question oforigins is not here under discussion. Of course at some stage in thehistory of any ballad the poet, the individual artist, is present, thoughthe precise ration of his agency to the communal element in the work isobscure. For an acute and learned view of this topic, see theIntroduction to "Old English Ballads, " by Professor Francis B. Gummere(Atheneum Press Series), Boston, 1894. 

[13] From "Jock o' Hazel Green. " "Young Lochinvar" is derived from"Katherine Janfarie" in the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. "

[14] "Scott has given us nothing more complete and lovely than this littlesong, which unites simplicity and dramatic power to a wildwood music ofthe rarest quality. No moral is drawn, far less any conscious analysisof feeling attempted: the pathetic meaning is left to be suggested by themere presentment of the situation. Inexperienced critics have oftennamed this, which may be called the Homeric manner, superficial from itsapparent simple facility. "--_Palgrave: "Golden Treasury"_ (Edition of1866), p. 392. 

[15] "Brown Robyn's Confession. " Robin Hood risks his life to take thesacrament. "Robin Hood and the Monk. "

[16] "Sir Hugh. " _Cf. _ Chaucer's "Prioresse Tale. "

[17] "The Gay Goshawk. "

[18] "Johnnie Cock. "

[19] "Young Hunting. "

[20] "The Twa Sisters. "

[21] "The Wife of Usher's Well. "

[22] "Fair Margaret and Sweet William. "

[23] "Sweet William's Ghost. "

[24] "Clerk Colven. "

[25] "Willie's Lady. "

[26] "Kemp Owyne" and "Tam Lin. "

[27] "King Estmere. "

[28] "Johnnie Cock. "

[29] "Mary Hamilton. "

[30] "Sweet William's Ghost. "

[31] "The Forsaken Bride. " _Cf. _ Chaucer:

 "Love is noght old as when that it is newe. " --_Clerkes Tale. _

[32] What character so popular as a wild prince--like Prince Hal--whobreaks his own laws, and the heads of his own people, in a democratic way?

[33] "Robin Hood and the Monk. "

[34] For a complete exposure of David Mallet's impudent claim to theauthorship of this ballad, see Appendix II. To Professor Phelps' "EnglishRomantic Movement. "

[35] "Life of Addison. "

[36] Preface to second edition of the "Lyrical Ballads. "

[37] "Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript" (1867), Vol. II. IntroductoryEssay by J. W. Hales on "The Revival of Ballad Poetry in the EighteenthCentury. "

[38] _Ibid. _

[39] "Advertisement to the Fourth Edition. "

[40] In four volumes, 1867-68. 

[41] Spelling reform has been a favorite field for cranks to disportthemselves upon. Ritson's particular vanity was the past participle ofverbs ending in _e; e. G. , perceiveed. _ _Cf. _ Landor's notions of asimilar kind. 

[42] "The Hunting of the Cheviot. "

[43] "Sweet William's Ghost. "

[44] "Tam Lin. "

[45] "Fair Annie. "

[46] "Child Waters. "

[47] See Phelps' "English Romantic Movement, " pp. 33-35. 

[48] Appendix to the Preface to the 2nd edition of "Lyrical Ballads. "

[49] "Peter Bell. "

[50] Scherer: "Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur, " p. 445. 

[51] In his third book Herder gave translations of over twenty pieces inthe "Reliques, " besides a number from Ramsay's and other collections. His selections from Percy included "Chevy Chase, " "Edward, " "The Boy andthe Mantle, " "King Estmere, " "Waly, Waly, " "Sir Patric Spens, " "YoungWaters, " "The Bonny Earl of Murray, " "Fair Margaret and Sweet William, ""Sweet William's Ghost, " "The Nut-Brown Maid, " "The Jew's Daughter, "etc. , etc. ; but none of the Robin Hood ballads. Herder's prefacetestifies that the "Reliques" was the starting-point and the kernel ofhis whole undertaking. "Der Anblick dieser Sammlung giebts offenbar dassich eigentlich von _Englishchen_ Volksliedern ausging und auf siezurückkomme. Als vor zehn und mehr Jahren die 'Reliques of AncientPoetry' mir in die Hände fielen, freuten mich einzelne Stücke so sehr, dass ich sie zu übersetzen versuchte. "--_Vorrede zu den Volksliedern. Herder's Sämmtlichee Werke_, Achter Theil, s. 89 (Carlsruhe, 1821). 

[52] Stanzas 44-46, book i. Bring in references to ballad literature ingeneral and to "The Nut-Brown Maid" and "The Children in the Wood" inparticular. 

[53] Book I. Stanzas 32-34. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Ossian

In 1760 appeared the first installment of MacPherson's "Ossian. "[1]Among those who received it with the greatest curiosity and delight wasGray, who had recently been helping Mason with criticisms on his"Caractacus, " published in 1759. From a letter to Walpole (June 1760) itwould seem that the latter had sent Gray two manuscript bits of the asyet unprinted "Fragments, " communicated to Walpole by Sir DavidDalrymple, who furnished Scotch ballads to Percy. "I am so charmed, "wrote Gray, "with the two specimens of Erse poetry, that I cannot helpgiving you the trouble to inquire a little farther about them; and shouldwish to see a few lines of the original, that I may form some slight ideaof the language, the measures and the rhythm. Is there anything known ofthe author or authors; and of what antiquity are they supposed to be? Isthere any more to be had of equal beauty, or at all approaching it?"

In a letter to Shonehewer (June 29, ) he writes: "I have received anotherScotch packet with a third specimen . . . Full of nature and noble wildimagination. "[2] And in the month following he writes to Wharton: "Ifyou have seen Stonehewer, he has probably told you of my old Scotch(rather Irish) poetry. I am gone mad about them. They are said to betranslations (literal and in prose) from the _Erse_ tongue, done by oneMacPherson, a young clergyman in the Highlands. He means to publish acollection he has of these specimens of antiquity, if it be antiquity;but what plagues me, is, I cannot come at any certainty on that head. Iwas so struck, so _extasié_ with their infinite beauty, that I writ intoScotland to make a thousand enquiries. " This is strong language for aman of Gray's coolly critical temper; but all his correspondence of aboutthis date is filled with references to Ossian which enable the modernreader to understand in part the excitement that the book created amongGray's contemporaries. The letters that he got from MacPherson wereunconvincing, "ill-wrote, ill-reasoned, calculated to deceive, and yetnot cunning enough to do it cleverly. " The external evidence disposedhim to believe the poems counterfeit; but the impression which they madewas such that he was "resolved to believe them genuine, spite of theDevil and the Kirk. It is impossible to convince me that they wereinvented by the same man that writes me these letters. On the otherhand, it is almost as hard to suppose, if they are original, that heshould be able to translate them so admirably. "

On August 7 he writes to Mason that the Erse fragments have beenpublished five weeks ago in Scotland, though he had not received his copytill the last week. "I continue to think them genuine, though my reasonsfor believing the contrary are rather stronger than ever. " David Hume, who afterward became skeptical as to their authenticity, wrote to Gray, assuring him that these poems were in everybody's mouth in the Highlands, and had been handed down from father to son, from an age beyond allmemory and tradition. Gray's final conclusion is very much the same withthat of the general public, to which the Ossianic question is even yet apuzzle. "I remain still in doubt about the authenticity of these poems, tho' inclining rather to believe them genuine in spite of the world. Whether they are the inventions of antiquity, or of a modern Scotchman, either case is to me alike unaccountable. _Je m'y perds. _"

We are more concerned here with the impression which MacPherson's books, taking them just as they stand, made upon their contemporary Europe, thanwith the history of the controversy to which they gave rise, and which isstill unsettled after more than a century and a quarter of discussion. Nevertheless, as this controversy began immediately upon theirpublication, and had reference not only to the authenticity of theOssianic poems, but also to their literary value; it cannot be altogetherignored in this account. The principal facts upon which it turned may begiven in a nut-shell. In 1759 Mr. John Home, author of the tragedy of"Douglas, " who had become interested in the subject of Gaelic poetry, metin Dumfriesshire a young Scotchman, named James MacPherson, who wastraveling as private tutor to Mr. Graham of Balgowan. MacPherson had inhis possession a number of manuscripts which, he said, were transcriptsof Gaelic poems taken down from the recital of old people in theHighlands. He translated two of these for Home, who was so much struckwith them that he sent or showed copies to Dr. Hugh Blair, Professor ofRhetoric in the University of Edinburgh. At the solicitation of Dr. Blair and Mr. Home, MacPherson was prevailed upon to make furthertranslations from the materials in his hands; and these, to the number ofsixteen, were published in the "Fragments" already mentioned, with apreface of eight pages by Blair. They attracted so much attention inEdinburgh that a subscription was started, to send the compiler throughthe Highlands in search of more Gaelic poetry. 

The result of the researches was "Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in SixBooks: Together with several other poems, composed by Ossian the son ofFingal. Translated from the Gaelic language by James MacPherson, "London, 1762; together with "Temora, an Ancient Epic Poem in EightBooks, " etc. , etc. , London, 1763. MacPherson asserted that he had madehis versions from Gaelic poems ascribed to Ossian or Oisin, the son ofFingal or Finn MacCumhail, a chief renowned in Irish and Scottish songand popular legend. Fingal was the king of Morven, a district of thewestern Highlands, and head of the ancient warlike clan or race of theFeinne or Fenians. Tradition placed him in the third century andconnected him with the battle of Gabhra, fought in 281. His son, Ossian, the warrior-bard, survived all his kindred. Blind and old, seated in his empty hall, or the cave of the rock; alone save for thewhite-armed Malvina, bride of his dead son, Oscar, he struck the harp andsang the memories of his youth: "a tale of the times of old. "

MacPherson translated--or composed--his "Ossian" in an exclamatory, abrupt, rhapsodical prose, resembling somewhat the English of Isaiah andothers of the books of the prophets. The manners described were heroic, the state of society primitive. The properties were few and simple; thecars of the heroes, their spears, helmets, and blue shields; the harp, the shells from which they drank in the hall, etc. Conventional compoundepithets abound, as in Homer: the "dark-bosomed" ships, the "car-borne"heroes, the "white-armed" maids, the "long-bounding" dogs of the chase. The scenery is that of the western Highlands; and the solemn monotonousrhythm of MacPherson's style accorded well with the tone of hisdescriptions, filling the mind with images of vague sublimity anddesolation: the mountain torrent, the dark rock in the ocean, the mist onthe hills, the ghosts of heroes half seen by the setting moon, thethistle in the ruined courts of chieftains, the grass whistling on thewindy heath, the blue stream of Lutha, and the cliffs of sea-surroundedGormal. It was noticed that there was no mention of the wolf, common inancient Caledonia; nor of the thrush or lark or any singing bird; nor ofthe salmon of the sealochs, so often referred to in modern Gaelic poetry. But the deer, the swan, the boar, eagle, and raven occur repeatedly. 

But a passage or two will exhibit the language and imagery of the wholebetter than pages of description. "I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls, and thevoice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removedfrom its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there itslonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from thewindows, the rank grass of the wall waved round its head. Desolate isthe dwelling of Moina, silence is in the house of her fathers. Raise thesong of mourning, O bards, over the land of strangers. They have butfallen before us; for, one day, we must fall. Why dost thou build thehall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day; yet afew years, and the blast of the desert comes; it howls in thy emptycourt, and whistles round thy half-worn shield. "[3] "They rose rustlinglike a flock of sea-fowl when the waves expel them from the shore. Theirsound was like a thousand streams that meet in Cona's vale, when, after astormy night, they turn their dark eddies beneath the pale light of themorn. As the dark shades of autumn fly over hills of grass; so, gloomy, dark, successive came the chiefs of Lochlin's[4] echoing woods. Tall asthe stag of Morven, moved stately before them the King. [5] His shiningshield is on his side, like a flame on the heath at night; when the worldis silent and dark, and the traveler sees some ghost sporting in thebeam. Dimly gleam the hills around, and show indistinctly their oaks. Ablast from the troubled ocean removed the settled mist. The sons of Erinappear, like a ridge of rocks on the coast; when mariners, on shoresunknown are trembling at veering winds. "[6]

The authenticity of the "Fragments" of 1760 had not passed withoutquestion; but MacPherson brought forward entire epics which, he asserted, were composed by a Highland bard of the third century, handed downthrough ages by oral tradition, and finally committed--at least inpart--to writing and now extant in manuscripts in his possession, thereensued at once a very emphatic expression of incredulity. Among the mosttruculent of the disbelievers was Dr. Johnson. He had little liking forScotland, still less for the poetry of barbarism. In his tour of theWestern Islands with Boswell in 1773, he showed an insensibility, andeven a kind of hostility, to the wild beauties of Highland scenery, whichgradually affects the reader with a sense of the ludicrous as he watcheshis sturdy figure rolling along on a small Highland pony by sequesteredLoch Ness, with its fringe of birch trees, or between the prodigiousmountains that frown above Glensheal; or seated in a boat off the Mull ofCantyre, listening to the Erse songs of the rowers:

 "Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. "

"Dr. Johnson, " says Boswell, "owned he was now in a scene of as wildnature as he could see; but he corrected me sometimes in my inaccurateobservations. 'There, ' said I, 'is a mountain like a cone. ' Johnson:'No, sir. It would be called so in a book, but when a man comes to lookat it, he sees it is not so. It is indeed pointed at the top, but oneside of it is larger than the other. ' Another mountain I called immense. Johnson: 'No; it is no more than a considerable protuberance. '"

Johnson not only disputed the antiquity of MacPherson's "Ossian, " but hedenied it any poetic merit. Dr. Blair having asked him whether hethought any man of a modern age could have written such poems, heanswered: "Yes, sir: many men, many women and many children. " "Sir, " heexclaimed to Reynolds, "a man might write such stuff forever, if he would_abandon_ his mind to it. " To Mr. MacQueen, one of his Highland hosts, he said: "I look upon MacPherson's 'Fingal' to be as gross an impositionas ever the world was troubled with. " Johnson's arguments were mostly _apriori_. He asserted that the ancient Gael were a barbarous people, incapable of producing poetry of the kind. Long epics, such as "Fingal"and "Temora, " could not be preserved in memory and handed down by word ofmouth. As to ancient manuscripts which MacPherson pretended to have, there was not a Gaelic manuscript in existence a hundred years old. 

It is now quite well established that Dr. Johnson was wrong on all thesepoints. To say nothing of the Homeric poems, the ancient Finns, Scandinavians, and Germans were as barbarous as the Gael; yet theyproduced the Kalewala, the Edda, and the Nibelungen Lied. The Kalewala, a poem of 22, 793 lines--as long as the Iliad--was transmitted orallyfrom a remote antiquity and first printed in 1849. As to Gaelicmanuscripts, there are over sixty in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, varying in age from three hundred to five hundred years. [7] There is, _e. G. _, the "Glenmasan Manuscript" of the year 1238, containing the storyof "Darthula, "[8] which is the groundwork of the same story inMacPherson's "Ossian. " There is the important "Dean of Lismore's Book, "a manuscript collection made by Dean MacGregory of Lismore, Argyleshire, between 1512 and 1529, containing 11, 000 lines of Gaelic poetry, some ofwhich is attributed to Ossian or Oisin. One of the poems is identical insubstance with the first book of MacPherson's "Temora;" although Mr. Campbell says, "There is not one line in the Dean's book that I canidentify with any line in MacPherson's Gaelic. "[9]

Other objections to the authenticity of MacPherson's translations restedupon internal evidence, upon their characteristics of thought and style. It was alleged that the "peculiar tone of sentimental grandeur andmelancholy" which distinguishes them, is false to the spirit of all knownearly poetry, and is a modern note. In particular, it was argued, MacPherson's heroes are too sensitive to the wild and sublime in nature. Professor William R. Sullivan, a high authority on Celtic literature, says that in the genuine and undoubted remains of old Irish poetrybelonging to the Leinster or Finnian Cycle and ascribed to Oisin, thereis much detail in descriptions of arms, accouterments, and articles ofindoor use and ornament, but very little in descriptions of outwardnature. [10] On the other hand, the late Principal Shairp regards this"sadness of tone in describing nature" as a strong proof of authenticity. "Two facts, " he says, "are enough to convince me of the genuineness ofthe ancient Gaelic poetry. The truthfulness with which it reflects themelancholy aspects of Highland scenery, the equal truthfulness with whichit expresses the prevailing sentiment of the Gael, and his sad sense ofhis people's destiny. I need no other proofs that the Ossianic poetry isa native formation, and comes from the primeval heart of the Gaelicrace. "[11] And he quotes, in support of his view, a well-known passagefrom Matthew Arnold's "Study of Celtic Literature": "The Celts are theprime authors of this vein of piercing regret and passion, of thisTitanism in poetry. A famous book, MacPherson's 'Ossian, ' carried, inthe last century, this vein like a flood of lava through Europe. I amnot going to criticise MacPherson's 'Ossian' here. Make the part of whatis forged, modern, tawdry, spurious in the book as large as you please;strip Scotland, if you like, of every feather of borrowed plumes which, on the strength of MacPherson's 'Ossian, ' she may have stolen from that_vetus et major Scotia_--Ireland; I make no objection. But there willstill be left in the book a residue with the very soul of the Celticgenius in it; and which has the proud distinction of having brought thissoul of the Celtic genius into contact with the nations of modern Europe, and enriched all our poetry by it. Woody Morven, and echoing Lora, andSelma with its silent halls! We all owe them a debt of gratitude, andwhen we are unjust enough to forget it, may the Muse forget us! Chooseany one of the better passages in MacPherson's 'Ossian, ' and you can see, even at this time of day, what an apparition of newness and of power sucha strain must have been in the eighteenth century. "

But from this same kind of internal evidence, Wordsworth draws just theopposite conclusion. "The phantom was begotten by the snug embrace of animpudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition. It traveled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin consistence took itscourse through Europe upon the breath of popular applause. [12]. . . Openthis far-famed book! I have done so at random, and the beginning of theepic poem 'Temora, ' in eight books, presents itself. 'The blue waves ofUllin roll in light. The green hills are covered with day. Trees shaketheir dusky heads in the breeze. Gray torrents pour their noisy streams. Two green hills with aged oaks surround a narrow plain. The blue courseof a stream is there. On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha. His spearsupports the king: the red eyes of his fear are sad. Cormac rises on hissoul with all his ghastly wounds. . . ' Having had the good fortune to beborn and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I havefelt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world underthe name of Ossian. From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that theimagery was spurious. In nature everything is distinct, yet nothingdefined into absolute, independent singleness. In MacPherson's work itis exactly the reverse: everything (that is not stolen) is in this mannerdefined, insulated, dislocated, deadened, yet nothing distinct. It willalways be so when words are substituted for things. To say that thecharacters never could exist; that the manners are impossible; and that adream has more substance than the whole state of society, as theredepicted, is doing nothing more than pronouncing a censure whichMacPherson defied. . . Yet, much as these pretended treasures ofantiquity have been admired, they have been wholly uninfluential upon theliterature of the country. No succeeding writer appears to have caughtfrom them a ray of inspiration; no author in the least distinguished hasventured formally to imitate them, except the boy Chatterton, on theirfirst appearance. . . This incapability to amalgamate with theliterature of the Island is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that thebook is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other todemonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless. Contrast, inthis respect, the effect of MacPherson's publication with the 'Reliques'of Percy, so unassuming, so modest in their pretensions. "

Other critics have pointed out a similar indistinctness in the humanactors, no less than in the landscape features of "Fingal" and "Temora. "They have no dramatic individuality, but are all alike, and all extremelyshadowy. "Poor, moaning, monotonous MacPherson" is Carlyle'salliterative description of the translator of "Ossian"; and it must beconfessed that, in spite of the deep poetic feeling which pervades thesewritings, and the undeniable beauty of single passages, they havedamnable iteration. The burden of their song is a burden in every sense. Mr. Malcolm Laing, one of MacPherson's most persistent adversaries, whopublished "Notes and Illustrations to Ossian" in 1805, essayed to show, by a minute analysis of the language, that the whole thing was afabrication, made up from Homer, Milton, the English Bible, and othersources. Thus he compared MacPherson's "Like the darkened moon when shemoves, a dim circle, through heaven, and dreadful change is expected bymen, " with Milton's

 "Or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs. "

Laing's method proves too much and might be applied with like results toalmost any literary work. And, in general, it is hazardous to draw hardand fast conclusions from internal evidence of the sort just reviewed. Taken altogether, these objections do leave a strong bias upon the mind, and were one to pronounce upon the genuineness of MacPherson's "Ossian, "as a whole, from impressions of tone and style, it might be guessed thatwhatever element of true ancient poetry it contains, it had beenthoroughly steeped in modern sentiment before it was put before thepublic. But remembering Beowulf and the Norse mythology, one mighthesitate to say that the songs of primitive, heroic ages are alwaysinsensible to the sublime in nature; or to admit that melancholy is aCeltic monopoly. 

The most damaging feature of MacPherson's case was his refusal or neglectto produce his originals. The testimony of those who helped him incollecting and translating leaves little doubt that he had materials ofsome kind; and that these consisted partly of old Gaelic manuscripts, andpartly of transcriptions taken down in Gaelic from the recitation of agedpersons in the Highlands. These testimonies may be read in the "Reportof the Committee of the Highland Society, " Edinburgh, 1805. [13] It istoo voluminous to examine here, and it leaves unsettled the point as tothe precise use which MacPherson made of his materials, whether, _i. E. _, he gave literal renderings of them, as he professed to do; or whether hemanipulated them--and to what extent--by piecing fragments together, lopping, dove-tailing, smoothing, interpolating, modernizing, as Percydid with his ballads. He was challenged to show his Gaelic manuscripts, and Mr. Clerk says that he accepted the challenge. "He deposited themanuscripts at his publishers', Beckett and De Hondt, Strand, London. Headvertised in the newspapers that he had done so; offered to publish themif a sufficient number of subscribers came forward; and in the _LiteraryJournal_ of the year 1784, Beckett certifies that the manuscripts hadlain in his shop for the space of a whole year. "[14]

But this was more than twenty years after. Mr. Clerk does not show thatJohnson or Laing or Shaw or Pinkerton, or any of MacPherson's numerouscritics, ever saw any such advertisement, or knew where the manuscriptswere to be seen; or that--being ignorant of Gaelic--it would have helpedthem if they had known; and he admits that "MacPherson's subsequentconduct, in postponing from time to time the publication, when urged toit by friends who had liberally furnished him with means for thepurpose . . . Is indefensible. " In 1773 and 1775, _e. G. _, Dr. Johnsonwas calling loudly for the production of the manuscripts. "The state ofthe question, " he wrote to Boswell, February 7, 1775, "is this. He andDr. Blair, whom I consider as deceived, say that he copied the poem fromold manuscripts. His copies, if he had them--and I believe him to havenone--are nothing. Where are thee manuscripts? They can be shown ifthey exist, but they were never shown. _De non existentibus et nonapparentibus eadem est ratio. _" And during his Scotch trip in 1773, at adinner at Sir Alexander Gordon's, Johnson said: "If the poems were reallytranslated, they were certainly first written down. Let Mr. MacPhersondeposit the manuscripts in one of the colleges at Aberdeen, where thereare people who can judge; and if the professors certify theirauthenticity, then there will be an end of the controversy. If hedoes not take this obvious and easy method, he gives the best reason todoubt. "

Indeed the subsequent history of these alleged manuscripts casts thegravest suspicion on MacPherson's good faith. A thousand pounds werefinally subscribed to pay for the publication of the Gaelic texts. Butthese MacPherson never published. He sent the manuscripts which wereultimately published in 1807 to his executor, Mr. John Mackenzie; and heleft one thousand pounds by his will to defray the expense of printingthem. After MacPherson's death in 1796, Mr. Mackenzie "delayed thepublication from day to day, and at last handed over the manuscripts tothe Highland Society, "[15] which had them printed in 1807, nearly a halfcentury after the first appearance of the English Ossian. [16] These, however, were not the identical manuscripts which MacPherson had found, or said that he had found, in his tour of exploration through theHighlands. They were all in his own handwriting or in that of hisamanuenses. Moreover the Rev. Thomas Ross was employed by the society totranscribe them and conform the spelling to that of the Gaelic Bible, which is modern. The printed text of 1807, therefore, does not representaccurately even MacPherson's Gaelic. Whether the transcriber took anyfurther liberties than simply modernizing the spelling cannot be known, for the same mysterious fate that overtook MacPherson's originalcollections followed his own manuscript. This, after being at one timein the Advocates' Library, has now utterly disappeared. Mr. Campbellthinks that under this double process of distillation--a copy byMacPherson and then a copy by Ross--"the ancient form of the language, ifit was ancient, could hardly survive. "[17] "What would become ofChaucer, " he asks, "so maltreated and finally spelt according to modernrules of grammar and orthography? I have found by experience that analteration in 'spelling' may mean an entire change of construction andmeaning, and a substitution of whole words. "

But the Gaelic text of 1807 was attacked in more vital points than itsspelling. It was freely charged with being an out-and-out fabrication, atranslation of MacPherson's English prose into modern Gaelic. Thisquestion is one which must be settled by Gaelic scholars, and these stilldisagree. In 1862 Mr. Campbell wrote: "When the Gaelic 'Fingal, 'published in 1807, is compared with any one of the translations whichpurport to have been made from it, it seems to me incomparably superior. It is far simpler in diction. It has a peculiar rhythm and assonancewhich seem to repel the notion of a mere translation from English, assomething almost absurd. It is impossible that it can be a translationfrom MacPherson's English, unless there was some clever Gaelic poet[18]then alive, able and willing to write what Eton schoolboys call'full-sense verses. '" The general testimony is that MacPherson's ownknowledge of Gaelic was imperfect. Mr. Campbell's summary of the wholematter--in 1862--is as follows: "My theory then is, that about thebeginning of the eighteenth century, or the end of the seventeenth, orearlier, Highland bards may have fused floating popular traditions intomore complete forms, engrafting their own ideas on what they found; andthat MacPherson found their works, translated and altered them; publishedthe translation in 1760;[19] made the Gaelic ready for the press;published some of it in 1763, [20] and made away with the evidence of whathe had done, when he found that his conduct was blamed. I can see noother way out of the maze of testimony. " But by 1872 Mr. Campbell hadcome to a conclusion much less favorable to the claims of the Gaelictext. He now considers that the English was first composed by MacPhersonand that "he and other translators afterward worked at it and made aGaelic equivalent whose merit varies according to the translator's skilland knowledge of Gaelic. "[21] On the other hand, Mr. W. F. Skene and Mr. Archibald Clerk, are confident that the Gaelic is the original and theEnglish the translation. Mr. Clerk, who reprinted the Highland Society'stext in 1870, [22] with a literal translation of his own on alternatepages and MacPherson's English at the foot of the page, believesimplicitly in the antiquity and genuineness of the Gaelic originals. "MacPherson, " he writes, "got much from manuscripts and much from oralrecitation. It is most probable that he has given the minor poemsexactly as he found them. He may have made considerable changes in thelarger ones in giving them their present form; although I do not believethat he, or any of his assistants, added much even in the way ofconnecting links between the various episodes. "

To a reader unacquainted with Gaelic, comparing MacPherson's English withMr. Clerk's, it certainly looks unlikely that the Gaelic can be merely atranslation from the former. The reflection in a mirror cannot be moredistinct than the object it reflects; and if Mr. Clerk's version can betrusted (it appears to be more literal though less rhetorical thanMacPherson's) the Gaelic is often concrete and sharp where MacPherson isgeneral; often plain where he is figurative or ornate; and sometimes of ameaning quite different from his rendering. Take, _e. G. _, the closingpassage of the second "Duan, " or book, of "Fingal. "

"An arrow found his manly breast. He sleeps with his loved Galbina atthe noise of the sounding surge. Their green tombs are seen by themariner, when he bounds on the waves of the north. "--_MacPherson_. 

 "A ruthless arrow found his breast. His sleep is by thy side, Galbina, Where wrestles the wind with ocean. The sailor sees their graves as one, When rising on the ridge of the waves. " --_Clerk_

But again Mr. Archibald Sinclair, a Glasgow publisher, a letter from whomis given by Mr. Campbell in his "Tales of the West Highlands, " has "nohesitation in affirming that a considerable portion of the Gaelic whichis published as the original of his [MacPherson's] translation, isactually translated back from the English. " And Professor Sullivan says:"The so-called originals are a very curious kind of mosaic, constructedevidently with great labor afterward, in which sentences or parts ofsentences of genuine poems are cemented together in a very inferiorword-paste of MacPherson's own. "[23]

It is of course no longer possible to maintain what Mr. Campbell says isthe commonest English opinion, viz. , that MacPherson invented thecharacters and incidents of his "Ossian, " and that the poems had noprevious existence in any shape. The evidence is overwhelming that thereexisted, both in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands traditions, tales, and poems popularly attributed to Oisin, the son of Finn MacCumhail. Butno poem has been found which corresponds exactly to any single piece inMacPherson; and Sullivan cites, as one proof of the modern and spuriouscharacter of these versions, the fact that they mingle names from theancient hero-cycle, like Darthula, Cuthullin, and Conlach, with namesbelonging to the Finnian cycle, as is never the case in the authentic andundoubted remains of Celtic poetry. Between 1760, the date ofMacPherson's "Fragments, " and 1807, the date of the Highland Society'stext, there had been published independently nine hundred lines ofOssianic verse in Gaelic in Gillie's collection, 1786, and Stewart's, 1804. In 1780 Dr. Smith had published his "Ancient Lays, " a freetranslation from Gaelic fragments, which he subsequently printed (1787)under the title "Sean Dàna, " Smith frankly took liberties with hisoriginals, such as we may suppose that MacPherson took with his; but hemade no secret of this and, by giving the Gaelic on which his paraphraserested, he enabled the public to see how far his "Ancient Lays, " werereally ancient, and how far they were built up into poetic wholes by hisown editorial labors. [24]

Wordsworth's assertion of the failure of MacPherson's "Ossian" to"amalgamate with the literature of this island" needs somequalifications. That it did not enter into English literature in aformative way, as Percy's ballads did, is true enough, and is easy ofexplanation. In the first place, it was professedly a prose translationfrom poetry in another tongue, and could hardly, therefore, influence theverse and diction of English poetry directly. It could not even workupon them as directly as many foreign literatures have worked; as theancient classical literatures, _e. G. _, have always worked; or as Italianand French and German have at various times worked; for the Gaelic waspractically inaccessible to all but a few special scholars. Whatever itsbeauty or expressiveness, it was in worse case than a dead language, forit was marked with the stigma of barbarism. In its palmiest days it hadnever been what the Germans called a _Kultursprache_; and now it was theidiom of a few thousand peasants and mountaineers, and was rapidlybecoming extinct even in its native fastnesses. 

Whatever effect was to be wrought by the Ossianic poems upon the Englishmind, was to be wrought in the dress which MacPherson had given them. And perhaps, after all, the tumid and rhetorical cast of MacPherson'sprose had a great deal to do with producing the extraordinary enthusiasmwith which his "wild paraphrases, " as Mr. Campbell calls them, werereceived by the public. The age was tired of polish, of wit, ofover-civilization; it was groping toward the rude, the primitive, theheroic; had begun to steep itself in melancholy sentiment and to feel adawning admiration of mountain solitudes and the hoary past. Suddenlyhere was what it had been waiting for--"a tale of the times of old"; andthe solemn, dirge-like chant of MacPherson's sentences, with the peculiarmanner of his narrative, its repetitions, its want of transitions, suitedwell with his matter. "Men had been talking under their breath, and in amincing dialect so long, " says Leslie Stephen, "that they were easilygratified and easily imposed upon by an affectation of vigorous andnatural sentiment. "

The impression was temporary, but it was immediate and powerful. Wordsworth was wrong when he said that no author of distinction exceptChatterton had ventured formally to imitate Ossian. A generation afterthe appearance of the "Fragments" we find the youthful Coleridge alludingto "Ossian" in the preface[25] to his first collection of poems (1793), which contains two verse imitations of the same, as _ecce signum_:

 "How long will ye round me be swelling, O ye blue-tumbling waves of the sea? Not always in caves was my dwelling, Nor beneath the cold blast of the tree, " etc. , etc. [26]

In Byron's "House of Idleness" (1807), published when he was a Cambridgeundergraduate, is a piece of prose founded on the episode of Nisus andEuryalus in the "Aeneid" and entitled "The Death of Calmar and Orla--AnImitation of MacPherson's Ossian. " "What form rises on the roar ofclouds? Whose dark ghost gleams in the red stream of tempests? Hisvoice rolls on the thunder. 'Tis Orla, the brown chief of Orthona. . . Lovely wast thou, son of blue-eyed Morla, " etc. After reading severalpages of such stuff, one comes to feel that Byron could do this sort ofthing about as well as MacPherson himself; and indeed, that Johnson wasnot so very far wrong when he said that anyone could do it if he wouldabandon his mind to it. Chatterton applied the Ossianic verbiage in anumber of pieces which he pretended to have translated from the Saxon:"Ethelgar, " "Kenrick, " "Cerdick, " and "Gorthmund"; as well as in acomposition which he called "Godred Crovan, " from the Manx dialect, andone from the ancient British, which he entitled "The Heilas. " He did notcatch the trick quite so successfully as Byron, as a passage or two from"Kenrick" will show: "Awake, son of Eldulph! Thou that sleepest on thewhite mountain, with the fairest of women; no more pursue the dark brownwolf: arise from the mossy bank of the falling waters: let thy garmentsbe stained in blood, and the streams of life discolor thy girdle. . . Cealwulf of the high mountain, who viewed the first rays of the morningstar, swift as the flying deer, strong as a young oak, fiery as anevening wolf, drew his sword; glittering like the blue vapors in thevalley of Horso; terrible as the red lightning bursting from thedark-brown clouds, his swift bark rode over the foaming waves like thewind in the tempest. "

In a note on his Ossianic imitation, Byron said that Mr. Laing had provedOssian an impostor, but that the merit of MacPherson's work remained, although in parts his diction was turgid and bombastic. [27] A poem inthe "Hours of Idleness, " upon the Scotch mountain "Lachin Y Gair, " hastwo Ossianic lines in quotation points--

 "Shades of the dead! have I not heard your voices Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?"

Byron attributed much importance to his early recollections of Highlandscenery, which he said had prepared him to love the Alps and "blueFriuli's mountains, " and "the Acroceraunian mountains of old name. " Butthe influence of Ossian upon Byron and his older contemporaries wasmanifested in subtler ways than in formal imitations. It fell in withthat current of feeling which Carlyle called "Wertherism, " and helped toswell it. It chimed with the tone that sounds through the German _Sturmund Drang_ period; that impatience of restraint, that longing to givefull swing to the claims of the elementary passions, and that desperationwhen these are checked by the arrangements of modern society, which weencounter in Rousseau and the young Goethe. Hence the romantic gloom, the Byronic _Zerrissenheit_, to use Heine's word, which drove the poetfrom the rubs of social life to waste places of nature and sometimes tosuicide. In such a mood the mind recurred to the language of Ossian, asthe fit expression of its own indefinite and stormy griefs. 

"Homer, " writes Werther, "has been superseded in my heart by the divineOssian. Through what a world does this angelic bard carry me! With himI wander over barren wastes and frightful wilds; surrounded by whirlwindsand hurricanes, trace by the feeble light of the moon the shades of ournoble ancestors; hear from the mountainous heights, intermingled with theroaring of waves and cataracts, their plaintive tones stealing fromcavernous recesses; while the pensive monody of some love-strickenmaiden, who heaves her departing sighs over the moss-clad grave of thewarrior by whom she was adored, makes up the inarticulate concert. Itrace this bard, with his silver locks, as he wanders in the valley andexplores the footsteps of his fathers. Alas! no vestige remains buttheir tombs. His thought then hangs on the silver moon, as her sinkingbeams play upon the rippling main; and the remembrance of deeds past andgone recurs to the hero's mind--deeds of times when he gloried in theapproach of danger, and emulation nerved his whole frame; when the paleorb shone upon his bark, laden with the spoils of his enemy, andilluminated his triumphant return. When I see depicted on hiscountenance a bosom full of woe; when I behold his heroic greatnesssinking into the grave, and he exclaims, as he throws a glance at thecold sod which is to lie upon him: 'Hither will the traveler who issensible of my worth bend his weary steps, and seek the soul-enliveningbard, the illustrious son of Fingal; his foot will tread upon my tomb, but his eyes shall never behold me'; at this time it is, my dear friend, that, like some renowned and chivalrous knight, I could instantly draw mysword; rescue my prince from a long, irksome existence of languor andpain; and then finish by plunging the weapon into my own breast, that Imight accompany the demi-god whom my hand had emancipated. "[28]

In his last interview with Charlotte, Werther, who had already determinedupon suicide, reads aloud to her, from "The Songs of Selma, " "that tenderpassage wherein Armin deplores the loss of his beloved daughter. 'Aloneon the sea-beat rocks, my daughter was heard to complain. Frequent andloud were her cries. What could her father do? All night I stood on theshore. I saw her by the faint beam of the moon, '" etc. The reading isinterrupted by a mutual flood of tears. "They traced the similitude oftheir own misfortune in this unhappy tale. . . The pointed allusion ofthose words to the situation of Werther rushed with all the electricrapidity of lightning to the inmost recesses of his soul. "

It is significant that one of Ossian's most fervent admirers wasChateaubriand, who has been called the inventor of modern melancholy andof the primeval forest. Here is a passage from his "Génie duChristianisme":[29] "Under a cloudy sky, on the coast of that sea whosetempests were sung by Ossian, their Gothic architecture has somethinggrand and somber. Seated on a shattered altar in the Orkneys, thetraveler is astonished at the dreariness of those places: sudden fogs, vales where rises the sepulchral stone, streams flowing through wildheaths, a few reddish pine trees, scattered over a naked desert studdedwith patches of snow; such are the only objects which present themselvesto his view. The wind circulates among the ruins, and their innumerablecrevices become so many tubes, which heave a thousand sighs. Longgrasses wave in the apertures of the domes, and beyond these aperturesyou behold the flitting clouds and the soaring sea-eagle. . . Long willthose four stones which mark the tombs of heroes on the moors ofCaledonia, long will they continue to attract the contemplative traveler. Oscar and Malvina are gone, but nothing is changed in their solitarycountry. 'Tis no longer the hand of the bard himself that sweeps theharp; the tones we hear are the slight trembling of the strings, producedby the touch of a spirit, when announcing at night, in a lonely chamber, the death of a hero. . . So when he sits in the silence of noon in thevalley of his breezes is the murmur of the mountain to Ossian's ear: thegale drowns it often in its course, but the pleasant sound returns again. "

In Byron's passion for night and tempest, for the wilderness, themountains, and the sea, it is of course impossible to say how large ashare is attributable directly to MacPherson's "Ossian, " or moreremotely, through Chateaubriand and other inheritors of the Ossianicmood. The influence of any particular book becomes dispersed and blendedwith a hundred currents that are in the air. But I think one has often aconsciousness of Ossian in reading such passages as the famous apostropheto the ocean in "Childe Harold"--

 "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!"--

Which recalls the address to the sun in Carthous--"O thou that rollestabove, round as the shield of my fathers, "--perhaps the most hackneyed_locus classicus_ in the entire work; or as the lines beginning, "O that the desert were my dwelling place;"[30]

or the description of the storm in the Jura:

 "And this is in the night: Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber. Let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight A portion of the tempest and of thee. "[30]

Walter Scott, while yet a lad, made acquaintance with Ossian through Dr. Blacklock, and was at first delighted; but "the tawdry repetitions of theOssianic phraseology, " he confesses, "disgusted me rather sooner thanmight have been expected from my age. " He afterward contributed an essayon the authenticity of the poems to the proceedings of the SpeculativeClub of Edinburgh. In one sense of the word Scott was the most romanticof romanticists; but in another sense he was very little romantic, andthere was not much in his sane, cheerful, and robust nature upon whichsuch poetry as Ossian could fasten. [31] It is just at this point, indeed, that definitions diverge and the two streams of romantic tendencypart company. These Carlyle has called "Wertherism" and "Götzism"[32]_i. E. _ sentimentalism and mediaevalism, though so mild a word assentimentalism fails to express adequately the morbid despair to which"Werther" gave utterance, and has associations with works of a verydifferent kind, such as the fictions of Richardson and Sterne. InEngland, Scott became the foremost representative of "Götzism, " and Byronof "Wertherism. " The pessimistic, sardonic heroes of "Manfred, " "ChildeHarold, " and "The Corsair" were the latest results of the "Il Penseroso"literature, and their melodramatic excesses already foretokened areaction. 

Among other testimonies to Ossian's popularity in England are thenumerous experiments at versifying MacPherson's prose. These were notover-successful and only a few of them require mention here. The Rev. John Wodrow, a Scotch minister, "attempted" "Carthon, " "The Death ofCuthullin" and "Darthula" in heroic couplets, in 1769; and "Fingal" in1771. In the preface to his "Fingal, " he maintained that there was noreasonable doubt of the antiquity and authenticity of MacPherson's"Ossian. " "Fingal"--which seems to have been the favorite--was againturned into heroic couplets by Ewen Cameron, in 1776, prefaced by theattestations of a number of Highland gentlemen to the genuineness of theoriginals; and by an argumentative introduction, in which the authorquotes Dr. Blair's _dictum_ that Ossian was the equal of Homer and Vergil"in strength of imagination, in grandeur of sentiment, and in nativemajesty of passion. " National pride enlisted most of the Scotch scholarson the affirmative side of the question, and made the authenticity ofOssian almost an article of belief. Wodrow's heroics were merelyrespectable. The quality of Cameron's may be guessed from a half dozenlines:

 "When Moran, one commissioned to explore The distant seas, came running from the shore And thus exclaimed--'Cuthullin, rise! The ships Of snowy Lochlin hide the rolling deeps. Innumerable foes the land invade, And Swaran seems determined to succeed. '"

Whatever impressiveness belonged to MacPherson's cadenced prose was lostin these metrical versions, which furnish a perfect _reductio adabsurdum_ of the critical folly that compared Ossian with Homer. Homercould not be put in any dress through which the beauty and interest ofthe original would not appear. Still again, in 1786, "Fingal" was doneinto heroics by a Mr. R. Hole, who varied his measures with occasionalballad stanzas, thus:

 "But many a fair shall melt with woe At thy soft strain in future days, And many a manly bosom glow, Congenial to thy lofty lays. "

These versions were all emitted in Scotland. But as late as 1814"Fingal" appeared once more in verse, this time in London, and in avariety of meters by Mr. George Harvey; who, in his preface, expressedthe hope that Walter Scott would feel moved to cast "Ossian" into theform of a metrical romance, like "Marmion" or "The Lay of the LastMinstrel. " The best English poem constructed from MacPherson is "The SixBards of Ossian Versified, " by Sir Egerton Brydges (dated in 1784). [33]The passage selected was the one which Gray so greatly admired, [34] froma note to "Croma, " in the original "Fragments. " Six bards who have metat the hall of a chieftain, on an October night, go out one after anotherto observe the weather, and return to report their observations, eachending with the refrain "Receive me from the night, my friends. " Thewhole episode is singularly arresting, and carries a conviction ofreality too often wanting in the epic portions of MacPherson's collection. 

Walpole, at first, was nearly as much charmed by the "Fragments" as Grayhad been. He wrote to Dalrymple that they were real poetry, naturalpoetry, like the poetry of the East. He liked particularly the synonymfor an echo--"son of the rock"; and in a later letter he said that alldoubts which he might once have entertained as to their genuineness haddisappeared. But Walpole's literary judgments were notoriouslycapricious. In his subsequent correspondence with Mason and others, hebecame very contemptuous of MacPherson's "cold skeleton of an epic poem, that is more insipid than 'Leonidas. '" "Ossian, " he tells Mason, in aletter dated March, 1783, has become quite incredible to him; but Mrs. Montagu--the founder of the Blue Stocking Club--still "holds her feast ofshells in her feather dressing-room. "

The Celtic Homer met with an even warmer welcome abroad than at home. Hewas rendered into French, [35] German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, and possibly other languages. Bonaparte was a great lover of Ossian, andcarried about with him a copy of Cesarotti's Italian version. Aresemblance has been fancied between MacPherson's manner and thegrandiloquent style of Bonaparte's bulletins and dispatches. [36] InGermany Ossian naturally took most strongly. He was translated intohexameters by a Vienna Jesuit named Michael Denis[37] and produced manyimitations. Herder gave three translations from "Ossian" in his "Stimmender Völker" (1778-79) and prefixed to the whole collection an essay"Ueber Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker" written in 1773. Schiller wasone of the converts; Klopstock and his circle called themselves "bards";and an exclamatory and violent mannerism came into vogue, known in Germanliterary history as _Bardengebrüll_. MacPherson's personal history neednot be followed here in detail. In 1764 he went to Pensacola assecretary to Governor Johnston. He was afterward a governmentpamphleteer, writing against Junius and in favor of taxing the Americancolonies. He was appointed agent to the Nabob of Arcot; sat inParliament for the borough of Camelford, and built a handsome Italianvilla in his native parish; died in 1796, leaving a large fortune, andwas buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1773 he was ill-advised enough torender the "Iliad" into Ossianic prose. The translation was overwhelmedwith ridicule, and probably did much to increase the growing disbelief inthe genuineness of "Fingal" and "Temora. "

[1] "Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or Erse language. " Edinburgh, MDCCLX. 70pp. 

[2] This was sent him by MacPherson and was a passage not given in the"Fragments. "

[3] From "Carthon. "

[4] Scandinavia

[5] An unconscious hexameter. 

[6] From "Fingal" book ii. 

[7] See the dissertation by Rev. Archibald Clerk in his "Poems of Ossianin the Original Gaelic, with a literal translation into English. " 2vols. , Edinburgh, 1870. 

[8] This story as been retold, from Irish sources, in Dr. R. D. Joyce'spoem of "Deirdrè, " Boston, 1876. 

[9] See "Leabhar na Feinne, Heroic Gaelic Ballads, Collected in Scotland, chiefly from 1512 to 1871. Arranged by J. F. Campbell, " London, 1872. Selections from "The Dean of Lismore's Book" were edited and published atEdinburgh in 1862, by Rev. Thomas MacLauchlan, with a learnedintroduction by Mr. W. F. Skene. 

[10] Article on "Celtic Literature" in the "Encyclopedia Britannica. "

[11] "Aspects of Poetry, " by J. C. Shairp, 1872, pp. 244-45 (AmericanEdition). 

[12] Appendix to the Preface to the Second Edition of "Lyrical Ballads. "Taine says that Ossian "with Oscar, Malvina, and his whole troop, madethe tour of Europe; and, about 1830, ended by furnishing baptismal namesfor French _grisettes_ and _perruquiers_. "--_English Literature_, Vol. II. P. 220 (American Edition). 

[13] The Committee found that Gaelic poems, and fragments of poems, whichthey had been able to obtain, contained often the substance, andsometimes the "literal expression (the _ipsissima verba_)" of passagesgiven by MacPherson. "But, " continues the "Report, " "the Committee hasnot been able to obtain any one poem the same in title and tenor with thepoems published by him. It is inclined to believe that he was in use tosupply chasms and to give connection, by inserting passages which he didnot find; and to add what he conceived to be dignity and delicacy to theoriginal composition, by striking out passages, by softening incidents, by refining the language: in short, by changing what he considered as toosimple or too rude for a modern ear. "

[14] "Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems. " See _ante_, p. 313. 

[15] Clerk. 

[16] "The Poems of Ossian in the Original Gaelic, with a LiteralTranslation into Latin by the late Robert Macfarland, etc. , Publishedunder the Sanction of the Highland Society of London, " 3 vols. , London, 1807. The work included dissertations on the authenticity of the poemsby Sir Jno. Sinclair, and the Abbé Cesarotti (translated). Four hundredand twenty-three lines of Gaelic, being the alleged original of theseventh book of "Temora, " had been published with that epic in 1763. 

[17] "Popular Tales of the West Highlands, " J. F. Campbell, Edinburgh, 1862. Vol. IV. P. 156. 

[18] He suggests Lachlan MacPherson of Strathmashie, one of MacPherson'shelpers. "Popular Tales of the West Highlands. "

[19] "Fragments, " etc. 

[20] Seventh book of "Temora. " See _ante_, p. 321. 

[21] "Leabhar Na Feinne, " p. Xii. 

[22] See _ante_, p. 313, note. 

[23] "Encyclopaedia Britannica": "Celtic Literature. "

[24] For a further account of the state of the "authenticity" question, see Archibald McNeil's "Notes on the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems, "1868; and an article on "Ossian" in _Macmillan's Magazine_, XXIV. 113-25. 

[25] "The sweet voice of Cona never sounds so sweetly as when it speaks ofitself. "

[26] "The Complaint of Ninathoma. "

[27] For some MS. Notes of Byron in a copy of "Ossian, " see Phelps'"English Romantic Movement, " pp. 153-54. 

[28] "Sorrows of Werther, " Letter lxviii. 

[29] "Caledonia, or Ancient Scotland, " book ii. Chapter vii. Part iv. 

[30] "Childe Harold, " canto iii. 

[31] The same is true of Burns, though references to Cuthullin's dogLuath, in "The Twa Dogs"; to "Caric-thura" in "The Whistle"; and to"Cath-Loda" in the notes on "The Vision, " show that Burns knew his Ossian. 

[32] From Goethe's "Götz von Berlichingen. "

[33] See "Poems by Saml. Egerton Brydges, " 4th ed. , London, 1807. Pp. 87-96. 

[34] See _ante_, p. 117. 

[35] There were French translations by Letourneur in 1777 and 1810: byLacaussade in 1842; and an imitation by Baour-Lormian in 1801. 

[36] See Perry's "Eighteenth Century Literature, " p. 417. 

[37] One suspects this translator to have been of Irish descent. He wasborn at Schärding, Bavaria, in 1729. 

CHAPTER X. 

Thomas Chatterton. 

The history of English romanticism has its tragedy: the life and death ofThomas Chatterton--

 "The marvelous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride. "[1]

The story has been often told, but it may be told again here; for, asidefrom its dramatic interest, and leaving out of question the absolutevalue of the Rowley poems, it is most instructive as to the conditionswhich brought about the romantic revival. It shows by what processantiquarianism became poetry. 

The scene of the story was the ancient city of Bristol--old Saxon_Bricgestowe_, "place of the bridge"--bridge, namely, over the Avonstream, not far above its confluence with the Severn. Here Chattertonwas born in 1752, the posthumous son of a dissipated schoolmaster, whoseancestors for a hundred and fifty years had been, in unbroken succession, sextons to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe. Perhaps it may be more thanan idle fancy to attribute to heredity the bent which Chatterton's geniustook spontaneously and almost from infancy; to guess that some mysteriousante-natal influence--"striking the electric chain wherewith we aredarkly bound"--may have set vibrating links of unconscious associationrunning back through the centuries. Be this as it may, Chatterton wasthe child of Redcliffe Church. St. Mary stood by his cradle and rockedit; and if he did not inherit with his blood, or draw in with hismother's milk a veneration for her ancient pile; at least the waters ofher baptismal font[2] seemed to have signed him with the token of herservice. Just as truly as "The Castle of Otranto" was sprung fromStrawberry Hill, the Rowley poems were born of St. Mary's Church. 

Chatterton's father had not succeeded to the sextonship, but he was asub-chanter in Bristol Cathedral, and his house and school in Pile Streetwere only a few yards from Redcliffe Church. In this house Chattertonwas born, under the eaves almost of the sanctuary; and when his motherremoved soon after to another house, where she maintained herself bykeeping a little dame's school and doing needle work, it was still onRedcliffe Hill and in close neighborhood to St. Mary's. The churchitself--"the pride of Bristowe and the western land"--is described as"one of the finest parish churches in England, "[3] a rich specimen oflate Gothic or "decorated" style; its building or restoration dating fromthe middle of the fifteenth century. Chatterton's uncle by marriage, Richard Phillips, had become sexton in 1748, and the boy had the run ofthe aisles and transepts. The stone effigies of knights, priests, magistrates, and other ancient civic worthies stirred into life under hisintense and brooding imagination; his mind took color from the red andblue patterns thrown on the pavement by the stained glass of the windows;and he may well have spelled out much of the little Latin that he knewfrom "the knightly brasses of the tombs" and "cold _hic jacets_ of thedead. "

It is curious how early his education was self-determined to its peculiarends. A dreamy, silent, solitary child, given to fits of moodiness, hewas accounted dull and even stupid. He would not, or could not, learnhis letters until, in his seventh year, his eye was caught by theilluminated capitals in an old music folio. From these his mother taughthim the alphabet, and a little later he learned to read from ablack-letter Bible. "Paint me an angel with wings and a trumpet, " heanswered, when asked what device he would choose for the littleearthenware bowl that had been promised him as a gift. [4] Colston'sHospital, where he was put to school, was built on the site of ademolished monastery of Carmelite Friars; the scholars wore blue coats, with metal plates on their breasts stamped with the image of a dolphin, the armorial crest of the founder, and had their hair cropped short inimitation of the monkish tonsure. As the boy grew into a youth, therewere numbered among his near acquaintances, along with the vintners, sugar-bakers, pipe-makers, apothecaries, and other tradesmen of theBristol _bourgeoisie_, two church organists, a miniature painter, and anengraver of coats-of-arms--figures quaintly suggestive of that minglingof municipal life and ecclesiastical-mediaeval art which is reproduced inthe Rowley poems. 

"Chatterton, " testifies one of his early acquaintances, "was fond ofwalking in the fields, particularly in Redcliffe meadows, and of talkingof his manuscripts, and sometimes reading them there. There was one spotin particular, full in view of the church, in which he seemed to take apeculiar delight. He would frequently lay himself down, fix his eyesupon the church, and seem as if he were in a kind of trance. Then on asudden he would tell me: 'That steeple was burnt down by lightning: thatwas the place where they formerly acted plays. '" "Among his earlystudies, " we are told, "antiquities, and especially the surroundings ofmedieval life, were the favorite subjects; heraldry seems especially tohave had a fascination for him. He supplied himself with charcoal, black-lead, ochre, and other colors; and with these it was his delight todelineate, in rough and quaint figures, churches, castles, tombs ofmailed warriors, heraldic emblazonments, and other like belongings of theold world. "[5]

Is there not a breath of the cloister in all this, reminding one of thechild martyr in Chaucer's "Prioresse Tale, " the "litel clergeon, sevenyeer of age"?

 "This litel child his litel book lerninge, As he sat in the scole at his prymer, He 'Alma redemptoris' herde singe, As children lerned hir antiphoner. "

A choir boy bred in cathedral closes, catching his glimpses of the skynot through green boughs, but through the treetops of the Episcopalgardens discolored by the lancet windows of the clear-stories; dreamingin the organ loft in the pauses of the music, when

 "The choristers, sitting with faces aslant, Feel the silence to consecrate more than the chant. "

Thus Chatterton's sensitive genius was taking the impress of itsenvironment. As he pored upon the antiquities of his native city, theidea of its life did sweetly creep into his study of imagination; and hegradually constructed for himself a picture of fifteenth-century Bristol, including a group of figures, partly historical and partly fabulous, allcentering about Master William Canynge. Canynge was the rich Bristolmerchant who founded or restored St. Mary Redcliffe's; was several timesmayor of the city in the reigns of Henry VI. And Edward IV. , and oncerepresented the borough in Parliament. Chatterton found or fabled thathe at length took holy orders and became dean of Westbury College. AboutCanynge Chatterton arranged a number of _dramatis personae_, some ofwhose names he discovered in old records and documents, such asCarpenter, Bishop of Worcester, and Sir Theobald Gorges, a knight ofWraxhall, near Bristol; together with others entirely of his owninvention--as John a Iscam, whom he represents to have been a canon ofSt. Augustine's Abbey in Bristol; and especially one Thomas Rowley, parish priest of St. John's, employed by Canynge to collect manuscriptsand antiquities. He was his poet laureate and father confessor, and tohim Chatterton ascribed most of the verses which pass under the generalname of the Rowley poems. But Iscam was also a poet and Master Canyngehimself sometimes burst into song. Samples of the Iscam and the Canyngemuse diversify the collection. The great Bristol merchant was amediaeval Maecenas, and at his house, "nempned the Red Lodge, " wereplayed interludes--"Aella, " "Goddwyn, " and "The Parliament ofSprites"--composed by Rowley, or by Rowley and Iscam collaborating. Canynge sometimes wrote the prologues; and Rowley fed his patron withsoft dedication and complimentary verses: "On Our Lady's Church, " "Letterto the dygne Master Canynge, " "The Account of W. Canynges Feast, " etc. The well-known fifteenth-century poet Lydgate is also introduced intothis literary _cénacle_, as John Ladgate, and made to exchange verseepistles with Rowley in eighteenth-century fashion. Such is theremarkable fiction which the marvelous boy erected, as a scaffolding forthe fabric of sham-antique poetry and prose, which he build up during theyears 1767 to 1770, _i. E. _, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth year ofhis age. 

There is a wide distance between the achievements of this untaught lad ofhumble birth and narrow opportunities, and the works of the great SirWalter, with his matured powers and his stores of solid antiquarian lore. But the impulse that conducted them to their not dissimilar tasks was thesame. In "Yarrow Revisited, " Wordsworth uses, _à propos_ of Scott, theexpression "localized romance. " It was, indeed, the absorbing localfeeling of Scott, his patriotism, his family pride, his attachment to thesoil, that brought passion and poetry into his historical pursuits. WithChatterton, too, this absorption in the past derived its intensity fromhis love of place. Bristol was his world; in "The Battle of Hastings, "he did not forget to introduce a Bristowan contingent, led by a certainfabulous Alfwold, and performing prodigies of valor upon the Normans. The image of mediaeval life which he succeeded in creating was, ofcourse, a poor, faint _simulacrum_, compared with Scott's. He lackedknowledge, leisure, friends, long life--everything that was needed togive his work solidity. All that he had was a creative, thoughundisciplined imagination, together with an astonishing industry, persistence, and secretiveness. Yet with all his disadvantages, hiswork, with all its imperfections, is far more striking than the imitativeverse of the Wartons, or the thin, diffused medievalism of Walpole andClara Reeve. It is the product of a more original mind and a moreintense conception. 

In the muniment room over the north porch of St. Mary Redcliffe's wereseveral old chests filled with parchments: architectural memoranda, church-wardens' accounts, inventories of vestments, and similar parishdocuments. One of these chests, known as Master Canynge's coffer, hadbeen broken open some years before, and whatever was of value among itscontents removed to a place of safety. The remainder of the parchmentshad been left scattered about, and Chatterton's father had carried anumber of them home and used them to cover copy-books. The boy's eye wasattracted by these yellow sheep-skins, with their antique script; heappropriated them and kept them locked up in his room. 

How early he conceived the idea of making this treasure-trove responsiblefor the Rowley myth, which was beginning to take shape in his mind, isuncertain. According to the testimony of a schoolfellow, by nameThistlethwaite, Chatterton told him in the summer of 1764 that he had anumber of old manuscripts, found in a chest in Redcliffe Church, and thathe had lent one of them to Thomas Philips, an usher in Colston'sHospital. Thistlethwaite says that Philips showed him this manuscript, apiece of vellum pared close around the edge, on which was traced in paleand yellow writing, as if faded with age, a poem which he thinksidentical with "Elinoure and Juga, " afterward published by Chatterton inthe _Town and Country Magazine_ for May, 1769. One is inclined todistrust this evidence. "The Castle of Otranto" was first published inDecember, 1764, and the "Reliques, " only in the year following. Thelatter was certainly known to Chatterton; many of the Rowley poems, "TheBristowe Tragedie, " _e. G. _, and the ministrel songs in "Aella, " showballad influence[6]; while it seems not unlikely that Chatterton wasmoved to take a hint from the disguise--slight as it was--assumed byWalpole in the preface to his romance. [7] But perhaps this was notneeded to suggest to Chatterton that the surest way to win attention tohis poems would be to ascribe them to some fictitious bard of the MiddleAges. It was the day of literary forgery; the Ossian controversy wasraging, and the tide of popular favor set strongly toward the antique. Aseries of avowed imitations of old English poetry, however clever, wouldhave had small success. But the discovery of a hitherto unknownfifteen-century poet was an announcement sure to interest the learned andperhaps a large part of the reading public. Besides, instances are notrare where a writer has done his best work under a mask. The poemscomposed by Chatterton in the disguise of Rowley--a dramatically imagined_persona_ behind which he lost his own identity--are full of a curiousattractiveness; while his acknowledged pieces are naught. It is notworth while to bear down very heavily on the moral aspects of this kindof deception. The question is one of literary methods rather than ofethics. If the writer succeeds by the skill of his imitations, and theingenuity of the evidence that he brings to support them, in actuallyimposing upon the public for a time, the success justifies the attempt. The artist's purpose is to create a certain impression, and the choice ofmeans must be left to himself. 

In the summer of 1764 Chatterton was barely twelve, and wonderful as hisprecocity was, it is doubtful whether he had got so far in the evolutionof the Rowley legend as Thistlethwaite's story would imply. But it iscertain that three years later, in the spring of 1767, Chatterton gaveMr. Henry Burgum, a worthy pewterer of Bristol, a parchment emblazonedwith the "de Bergham, " coat-of-arms, which he pretended to have found inSt. Mary's Church, furnishing him also with two copy-books, in which weretranscribed the "de Bergham, " pedigree, together with three poems inpseudo-antique spelling. One of these, "The Tournament, " described ajoust in which figured one Sir Johan de Berghamme, a presumable ancestorof the gratified pewterer. Another of them, "The Romaunte of theCnyghte, " purported to be the work of this hero of the tilt-yard, "whospent his whole life in tilting, " but notwithstanding found time to writeseveral books and translate "some part of the Iliad under the title'Romance of Troy. '"

All this stuff was greedily swallowed by Burgum, and the marvelous boynext proceeded to befool Mr. William Barrett, a surgeon and antiquary whowas engaged in writing a history of Bristol. To him he supplied copiesof supposed documents in the muniment room of Redcliffe Church: "Of theAuntiaunte Forme of Monies, " and the like: deeds, bills, letters, inscriptions, proclamations, accounts of churches and other buildings, collected by Rowley for his patron, Canynge: many of which thissingularly uncritical historian incorporated in his "History of Bristol, "published some twenty years later. He also imparted to Barrett twoRowleian poems, "The Parliament of Sprites, " and "The Battle of Hastings"(in two quite different versions). In September, 1768, a new bridge wasopened at Bristol over the Avon; and Chatterton, who had now beenapprenticed to an attorney, took advantage of the occasion to sendanonymously to the printer of _Farley's Bristol Journal_ a description ofthe mayor's first passing over the old bridge in the reign of Henry II. This was composed in obsolete language and alleged to have been copiedfrom a contemporary manuscript. It was the first published ofChatterton's fabrications. In the years 1768-69 he produced and gave toMr. George Catcott the long tragical interude "Aella, " "The BristoweTragedie, " and other shorter pieces, all of which he declared to betranscripts from manuscripts in Canynge's chest, and the work of ThomasRowley, a secular priest of Bristol, who flourished about 1460. Catcottwas a local book-collector and the partner of Mr. Burgum. He wassubsequently nicknamed "Rowley's midwife. "

In December, 1768, Chatterton opened a correspondence with James Dodsley, the London publisher, saying that several ancient poems had fallen intohis hands, copies of which he offered to supply him, if he would send aguinea to cover expenses. He inclosed a specimen of "Aella. " "Themotive that actuates me to do this, " he wrote, "is to convince the worldthat the monks (of whom some have so despicable an opinion) were not suchblockheads as generally thought, and that good poetry might be wrote inthe dark days of superstition, as well as in these more enlightenedages. " Dodsley took no notice of the letters, and the owner of theRowley manuscripts next turned to Horace Walpole, whose tastes as avirtuoso, a lover of Gothic, and a romancer might be counted on to enlisthis curiosity in Chatterton's find. The document which he prepared forWalpole was a prose paper entitled "The Ryse of Peyncteynge yn Englande, wroten by T. Rowleie, 1469, for Mastre Canynge, " and containing _interalia_, the following extraordinary "anecdote of painting" about Afflem, an Anglo-Saxon glass-stainer of Edmond's reign who was taken prisoner bythe Danes. "Inkarde, a soldyer of the Danes, was to slea hym; onne theNete before the Feeste of Deathe hee founde Afflem to bee hys BroderAffrighte chanynede uppe hys soule. Gastnesse dwelled yn his Breaste. Oscarre, the greate Dane, gave hest hee shulde bee forslagene with thecommeynge Sunne: no tears colde availe; the morne cladde yn roabes ofghastness was come, whan the Danique Kynge behested Oscarre to arraie hysKnyghtes eftsoones for Warre. Afflem was put yn theyre flyeyngeBattailes, sawe his Countrie ensconced wyth Foemen, hadde hys Wyfe andeChyldrenne brogten Capteeves to hys Shyppe, ande was deieynge wytheSoorowe, whanne the loude blautaunte Wynde hurled the battayle agaynstean Heck. Forfraughte wythe embolleynge waves, he sawe hys Broder, Wyfeand Chyldrenne synke to Deathe: himself was throwen onne a Banke ynne theIsle of Wyghte, to lyve hys lyfe forgard to all Emmoise: thus moche forAfflem. "[8]

This paper was accompanied with notes explaining queer words and givingshort biographical sketches of Canynge, Rowley, and other imaginarycharacters, such as John, second abbot of St. Austin's Minster, who wasthe first English painter in oils and also the greatest poet of his age. "Take a specimen of his poetry, 'On King Richard I. ':

 "'Harte of Lyone! Shake thie Sworde, Bare this mortheynge steinede honde, ' etc. "

The whole was inclosed in a short note to Walpole, which ran thus:

"Sir, Being versed a little in antiquitys, I have met with severalcurious manuscripts, among which the following may be of Service to you, in any future Edition of your truly entertaining Anecdotes ofPainting. [9] In correcting the mistakes (if any) in the Notes, you willgreatly oblige Your most humble Servant, Thomas Chatterton. "

Walpole replied civilly, thanking his correspondent for what he had sentand for his offer of communicating his manuscripts, but disclaiming anyability to correct Chatterton's notes. "I have not the happiness ofunderstanding the Saxon language, and, without your learned notes, shouldnot have been able to comprehend Rowley's text. " He asks where Rowley'spoems are to be found, offers to print them, and pronounces the AbbotJohn's verses "wonderful for their harmony and spirit. " Thisencouragement called out a second letter from Chatterton, with anotherand longer extract from the "Historie of Peyncteynge yn Englande, "including translations into the Rowley dialect of passages from a pair ofmythical Saxon poets: Ecca, Bishop of Hereford, and Elmar, Bishop ofSelseie, "fetyve yn Workes of ghastlienesse, " as _ecce signum_:

 "Nowe maie alle Helle open to golpe thee downe, " etc. 

But by this time Walpole had begun to suspect imposture. He had beenlately bitten in the Ossian business and had grown wary in consequence. Moreover, Chatterton had been incautious enough to show his hand in hissecond letter (March 30). "He informed me, " said Walpole, in his historyof the affair, "that he was the son of a poor widow . . . That he wasclerk or apprentice to an attorney, but had a taste and turn for moreelegant studies; and hinted a wish that I would assist him with myinterest in emerging out of so dull a profession, by procuring himsomeplace. " Meanwhile, distrusting his own scholarship, Walpole hadshown the manuscripts to his friends Gray and Mason, who promptlypronounced them modern fabrications and recommended him to return themwithout further notice. But Walpole, good-naturedly considering that itwas no "grave crime in a young bard to have forged false notes of handthat were to pass current only in the parish of Parnassus, " wrote hisingenious correspondent a letter of well-meant advice, counseling him tostick to his profession, and saying that he "had communicated histranscripts to much better judges, and that they were by no meanssatisfied with the authenticity of his supposed manuscripts. " Chattertonthen wrote for his manuscripts, and after some delay--Walpole having beenabsent in Parish for several months--they were returned to him. 

In 1769 Chatterton had begun contributing miscellaneous articles, inprose and verse, to the _Town and Country Magazine_, a London periodical. Among these appeared the eclogue of "Elinoure and Juga, "[10] the only oneof the Rowley poems printed during its author's lifetime. He had nowturned his pen to the service of politics, espousing the side of Wilkesand liberty. In April, 1770, he left Bristol for London, and casthimself upon the hazardous fortunes of a literary career. Most tragicalis the story of the poor, unfriended lad's struggle against fate for thenext few months. He scribbled incessantly for the papers, receivinglittle or no pay. Starvation confronted him; he was too proud to askhelp, and on August 24 he took poison and died, at the age of seventeenyears and nine months. 

With Chatterton's acknowledged writings we have nothing here to do; theyinclude satires in the manner of Churchill, political letters in themanner of Junius, squibs, lampoons, verse epistles, elegies, "Africaneclogues, " a comic burletta, "The Revenge"--played at Marylebone Gardensshortly after his death--with essays and sketches in the style that the_Spectator_ and _Rambler_ had made familiar: "The Adventures of a Star, ""The Memoirs of a Sad Dog, " and the like. They exhibit a precociouscleverness, but have no value and no interest today. One gets fromChatterton's letters and miscellanies an unpleasant impression of hischaracter. There is not only the hectic quality of too early ripenesswhich one detects in Keats' correspondence; and the defiant swagger, theaffectation of wickedness and knowingness that one encounters in theyouthful Byron, and that is apt to attend the stormy burst of irregulargenius upon the world; but there are things that imply a more radicalunscrupulousness. But it would be harsh to urge any such impressionsagainst one who was no more than a boy when he perished, and whose briefcareer had struggled through cold obstruction to its bitter end. Thebest traits in Chatterton's character appear to have been his proudspirit of independence and his warm family affections. 

The death of an obscure penny-a-liner, like young Chatterton, made littlenoise at first. But gradually it became rumored about in London literarycoteries that manuscripts of an interesting kind existed at Bristol, purporting to be transcripts from old English poems; and that the finder, or fabricator, of the same was the unhappy lad who had taken arsenic theother day, to anticipate a slower death from hunger. It was in April, 1771, that Walpole first heard of the fate of his would-be _protégé_. "Dining, " he says, "at the Royal Academy, Dr. Goldsmith drew theattention of the company with an account of a marvelous treasure ofancient poems lately discovered at Bristol, and expressed enthusiasticbelief in them; for which he was laughed at by Dr. Johnson, who waspresent. I soon found this was the _trouvaille_ of my friend Chatterton, and I told Dr. Goldsmith that this novelty was known to me, who might, ifI had pleased, have had the honor of ushering the great discovery to thelearned world. You may imagine, sir, we did not all agree in the measureof our faith; but though his credulity diverted me, my mirth was soondashed; for, on asking about Chatterton, he told me he had been in Londonand had destroyed himself. "

With the exception of "Elinour and Juga, " already mentioned, the Rowleypoems were still unprinted. The manuscripts, in Chatterton'shandwriting, were mostly in the possession of Barrett and Catcott. Theypurported to be copies of Rowley's originals; but of these allegedoriginals, the only specimens brought forward by Chatterton were a fewscraps of parchment containing, in one instance, the first thirty-fourlines of the poem entitled "The Storie of William Canynge"; in another aprose account of one "Symonne de Byrtonne, " and, in still others, thewhole of the short-verse pieces, "Songe to Aella" and "The Accounte of W. Canynge's Feast. " These scraps of vellum are described as about sixinches square, smeared with glue or brown varnish, or stained with ochre, to give them an appearance of age. Thomas Warton had seen one of them, and pronounced it a clumsy forgery; the script not of the fifteenthcentury, but unmistakably modern. Southey describes another as written, for the most part, in an attorney's regular engrossing hand. Mr. Skeat"cannot find the slightest indication that Chatterton had ever seen a MS. Of early date; on the contrary, he never uses the common contractions, and he was singularly addicted to the use of capitals, which in old MSS. Are rather scarce. "

Boswell tells how he and Johnson went down to Bristol in April, 1776, "where I was entertained with seeing him inquire upon the spot into theauthenticity of Rowley's poetry, as I had seen him inquire upon the spotinto the authenticity of Ossian's poetry. Johnson said of Chatterton, 'This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered myknowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things. '"

In 1777, seven years after Chatterton's death, his Rowley poems werefirst collected and published by Thomas Tyrwhitt, the Chaucerian editor, who gave, in an appendix, his reasons for believing that Chatterton wastheir real author, and Rowley a myth. [11] These reasons are convincingto any modern scholar. Tyrwhitt's opinion was shared at the time by allcompetent authorities--Gray, Thomas Warton, and Malone, the editor of the_variorum_ Shakspere, among others. Nevertheless, a controversy sprangup over Rowley, only less lively than the dispute about Ossian, which hadbeen going on since 1760. Rowley's most prominent champions were theRev. Dr. Symmes, who wrote in the _London Review_; the Rev. Dr. Sherwin, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_; Dr. Jacob Bryant, [12] and Jeremiah Milles, D. D. , Dean of Exeter, who published a sumptuous quarto edition of thepoems in 1782. [13] These asserters of Rowley belonged to the class ofamateur scholars whom Edgar Poe used to speak of as "cultivated oldclergymen. " They had the usual classical training of Oxford andCambridge graduates, but no precise knowledge of old English literature. They had the benevolent curiosity of Mr. Pickwick, and thegullibility--the large, easy swallow--which seems to go with theclerico-antiquarian habit of mind. 

Nothing is so extinct as an extinct controversy; and, unlike the Ossianpuzzle, which was a harder nut to crack, this Rowley controversy wasreally settled from the start. It is not essential to our purpose togive any extended history of it. The evidence relied upon by thesupporters of Rowley was mainly of the external kind: personaltestimony, and especially the antecedent unlikeliness that a boy ofChatterton's age and imperfect education could have reared such anelaborate structure of deceit; together with the inferiority of hisacknowledged writings to the poems that he ascribed to Rowley. ButTyrwhitt was a scholar of unusual thoroughness and acuteness; and, havinga special acquaintance with early English, he was able to bring to thedecision of the question evidence of an internal nature which became moreconvincing in proportion as the knowledge necessary to understand hisargument increased; _i. E. _, as the number of readers increased, who knewsomething about old English poetry. Indeed, it was nothing but thegeneral ignorance of the spelling, flexions, vocabulary, and scansion ofMiddle English verse, that made the controversy possible. 

Tyrwhitt pointed out that the Rowleian dialect was not English of thefifteenth century, nor of any century, but a grotesque jumble of archaicwords of very different periods and dialects. The orthography andgrammatical forms were such as occurred in no old English poet known tothe student of literature. The fact that Rowley used constantly thepossessive pronominal form _itts_, instead of _his_; or the other factthat he used the termination _en_ in the singular of the verb, was aloneenough to stamp the poems as spurious. Tyrwhitt also showed that thesyntax, diction, idioms, and stanza forms were modern; that if modernwords were substituted throughout for the antique, and the spellingmodernized, the verse would read like eighteenth-century work. "Ifanyone, " says Scott, in his review of the Southey and Cottle edition, "resists the internal evidence of the style of Rowley's poems, we makehim welcome to the rest of the argument; to his belief that the Saxonsimported heraldry and gave armorial bearings (which were not known tillthe time of the Crusades); that Mr. Robert [_sic_] Canynge, in the reignof Edward IV. , encouraged drawing and had private theatricals. " In thisarticle Scott points out a curious blunder of Chatterton's which hasbecome historic, though it is only one of a thousand. In the descriptionof the cook in the General Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales, " Chaucerhad written:

 "But gret harm was it, as it thoughte me, That on his schyne a mormal hadde he, For blankmanger he made with the beste. "

_Mormal_, in this passage, means a cancerous sore, and _blankmanger_ is acertain dish or confection--the modern _blancmange_. But a confusedrecollection of the whole was in Chatterton's mind, when among thefragments of paper and parchment which he covered with imitations ofancient script, and which are now in the British Museum, --"The YellowRoll, " "The Purple Roll, " etc. , --he inserted the following title in "TheRolls of St. Bartholomew's Priory, " purporting to be old medicalprescriptions; "The cure of mormalles and the waterie leprosie; the rolleof the blacke mainger"; turning Chaucer's innocent _blankmanger_ intosome kind of imaginary _black mange_. 

Skeat believes that Chatterton had read very little of Chaucer, probablyonly a small portion of the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales. " "If hehad really taken pains, " he thinks, "To _read_ and _study_ Chaucer ofLydgate or any old author earlier than the age of Spenser, the Rowleypoems would have been very different. They would then have borne someresemblance to the language of the fifteenth century, whereas they arerather less like the language of that period than of any other. Thespelling of the words is frequently too late, or too bizarre, whilst manyof the words themselves are too archaic or too uncommon. "[14] But thisinternal evidence, which was so satisfactory to Scott, was so littleconvincing to Chatterton's contemporaries that Tyrwhitt felt called uponto publish in 1782 a "Vindication" of his appendix; and Thomas Warton putforth in the same year an "Enquiry, " in which he reached practically thesame conclusions with Tyrwhitt. And yet Warton had devoted thetwenty-sixth section of the second volume of his "History of EnglishPoetry" (1778, ) to a review of the Rowley poems, on the ground that "asthey are held to be real by many respectable critics, it was his duty togive them a place in this series": a curious testimony to the uncertaintyof the public mind on the question, and a half admission that the poemsmight possibly turn out to be genuine. [15]

Tyrwhitt proved clearly enough that Chatterton wrote the Rowley poems, but it was reserved for Mr. Skeat to show just _how_ he wrote them. The_modus operandi_ was about as follows: Chatterton first made, for hisprivate use, a manuscript glossary, by copying out the words in theglossary to Speght's edition of Chaucer, and those marked as old inBailey's and Kersey's English Dictionaries. Next he wrote his poem inmodern English, and finally rewrote it, substituting the archaic wordsfor their modern equivalents, and altering the spelling throughout intoan exaggerated imitation of the antique spelling in Speght's Chaucer. The mistakes that the he made are instructive, as showing how closely hefollowed his authorities, and how little independent knowledge he had ofgenuine old English. Thus, to give a few typical examples of the many inMr. Skeat's notes: in Kersey's dictionary occurs the word _gare_, definedas "cause. " This is the verb _gar_, familiar to all readers ofBurns, [16] and meaning to cause, to make; but Chatterton, taking it forthe _noun_, cause, employs it with grotesque incorrectness in suchconnections as these:

 "Perchance in Virtue's gare rhyme might be then": "If in this battle luck deserts our gare. "

Again the Middle English _howten_ (Modern English, _hoot_) is defined bySpeght as "hallow, " _i. E. _, halloo. But Kersey and Bailey misprint this"hollow"; and Chatterton, entering it so in his manuscript list of oldwords, evidently takes it to be the _adjective_ "hollow" and uses it thusin the line:

 "Houten are wordes for to telle his doe, " _i. E. _, Hollow are words to tell his doings. 

Still again, in a passage already quoted, [17] it is told how the "Wyndehurled the Battayle"--Rowleian for a small boat--"agaynste an Heck. "_Heck_ in this and other passages was a puzzle. From the context itobviously meant "rock, " but where did Chatterton get it? Mr. Skeatexplains this. _Heck_ is a provincial word signifying "rack, " i. E. , "hay-rack"; but Kersey misprinted it "rock, " and Chatterton followed him. A typical instance of the kind of error that Chatterton was perpetuallycommitting was his understanding the "Listed, bounded, " _i. E. , edged_ (asin the "list" or selvage of cloth) for "bounded" in the sense of_jumped, _ and so coining from it the verb "to liss"=to jump:

 "The headed javelin lisseth here and there. "

Every page in the Rowley poems abounds in forms which would have been asstrange to an Englishman of the fifteenth as they are to one of thenineteenth century. Adjectives are used for nouns, nouns for verbs, pastparticiples for present infinitives; and derivatives and variants areemployed which never had any existence, such as _hopelen_=hopelessness, and _anere_=another. Skeat says, that "an analysis of the glossary inMilles's edition shows that the genuine old English words correctly used, occurring in the Rowleian dialect, amount to only about _seven_ per cent, of all the old words employed. " It is probable that, by constant use ofhis manuscript glossary, the words became fixed in Chatterton's memoryand he acquired some facility in composing at first hand in this oddjargon. Thus he uses the archaic words quite freely as rhyme words, which he would not have been likely to do unless he had formed the habitof thinking to some degree, in Rowleian. 

The question now occurs, apart from the tragic interest of Chatterton'scareer, from the mystery connected with the incubation and hatching ofthe Rowley poems, and from their value as records of a very unusualprecocity--what independent worth have they as poetry, and what has beenthe extent of their literary influence? The dust of controversy has longsince settled, and what has its subsidence made visible? My own beliefis that the Rowley poems are interesting principally as literarycuriosities--the work of an infant phenomenon--and that they have littleimportance in themselves, or as models and inspirations to later poets. I cannot help thinking that, upon this subject, many critics have losttheir heads. Malone, _e. G. _, pronounced Chatterton the greatest geniusthat England had produced since Shakspere. Professor Masson permitshimself to say: "The antique poems of Chatterton are perhaps as worthy ofbeing read consecutively as many portions of the poetry of Byron, Shelley, or Keats. There are passages in them, at least, quite equal toany to be found in these poets. "[18] Mr. Gosse seems to me much nearerthe truth: "Our estimate of the complete originality of the Rowley poemsmust be tempered by a recollection of the existence of 'The Castle ofOtranto' and 'The Schoolmistress, ' of the popularity of Percy's'Reliques' and the 'Odes' of Gray, and of the revival of a taste forGothic literature and art which dates from Chatterton's infancy. Hencethe claim which has been made for Chatterton as the father of theromantic school, and as having influenced the actual style of Coleridgeand Keats, though supported with great ability, appears to beovercharged. So also the positive praise given to the Rowley poems, asartistic productions full of rich color and romantic melody, may bedeprecated without any refusal to recognize these qualities in measure. There are frequent flashes of brilliancy in Chatterton, and one or twovery perfectly sustained pieces; but the main part of his work, ifrigorously isolated from the melodramatic romance of his career, issurely found to be rather poor reading, the work of a child of exaltedgenius, no doubt, yet manifestly the work of a child all through. "[19]

Let us get a little closer to the Rowley poems, as they stand in Mr. Skeat's edition, stripped of their sham-antique spelling and with theirlanguage modernized wherever possible; and we shall find, I think, thattried by an absolute standard, they are markedly inferior not only totrue mediaeval work like Chaucer's poems and the English and Scottishballads, but also to the best modern work conceived in the same spirit:to "Christabel" and "The Eve of St. Agnes, " and "Jock o'Hazeldean" and"Sister Helen, " and "The Haystack in the Flood. " The longest of theRowley poems is "Aella, " "a tragycal enterlude or discoorseynge tragedie"in 147 stanzas, and generally regarded as Chatterton's masterpiece. [20]The scene of this tragedy is Bristol and the neighboring Watchet Mead;the period, during the Danish invasions. The hero is the warden ofBristol Castle. [21] While he is absent on a victorious campaign againstthe Danes, his bride, Bertha, is decoyed from home by his treacherouslieutenant, Celmond, who is about to ravish her in the forest, when he issurprised and killed by a band of marauders. Meanwhile Aella hasreturned home, and finding that his wife has fled, stabs himselfmortally. Bertha arrives in time to hear his dying speech and make thenecessary explanations, and then dies herself on the body of her lord. It will be seen that the plot is sufficiently melodramatic; thesentiments and dialogue are entirely modern, when translated out ofRowleian into English. The verse is a modified form of the Spenserian, aten-line stanza which Mr. Skeat says is an invention of Chatterton and astriking instance of his originality. [22] It answers very well indescriptive passages and soliloquies; not so well in the "discoorseynge"parts. As this is Chatterton's favorite stanza, in which "The Battle ofHastings, " "Goddwyn, " "English Metamorphosis" and others of the Rowleyseries are written, an example of it may be cited here, from "Aella. "

 _Scene_, Bristol. Celmond, _alone_. The world is dark with night; the winds are still, Faintly the moon her pallid light makes gleam; The risen sprites the silent churchyard fill, With elfin fairies joining in the dream; The forest shineth with the silver leme; Now may my love be sated in its treat; Upon the brink of some swift running stream, At the sweet banquet I will sweetly eat. This is the house; quickly, ye hinds, appear. 

 _Enter_ a servant. 

 _Cel. _ Go tell to Bertha straight, a stranger waiteth here. 

The Rowley poems include, among other things, a number of dramatic orquasi-dramatic pieces, "Goddwyn, " "The Tournament, " "The Parliament ofSprites"; the narrative poem of "The Battle of Hastings, " and acollection of "eclogues. " These are all in long-stanza forms, mostly inthe ten-lined stanza. "English Metamorphosis" is an imitation of apassage in "The Faërie Queene, " (book ii. Canto x. Stanzas 5-19). "TheParliament of Sprites" is an interlude played by Carmelite friars atWilliam Canynge's house on the occasion of the dedication of St. MaryRedcliffe's. One after another the _antichi spiriti dolenti_ rise up andsalute the new edifice: Nimrod and the Assyrians, Anglo-Saxon ealdormenand Norman knights templars, and citizens of ancient Bristol. Amongothers, "Elle's sprite speaks":

 "Were I once more cast in a mortal frame, To hear the chantry-song sound in mine ear, To hear the masses to our holy dame, To view the cross-aisles and the arches fair! Through the half-hidden silver-twinkling glare Of yon bright moon in foggy mantles dressed, I must content this building to aspere, [23] Whilst broken clouds the holy sight arrest; Till, as the nights grow old, I fly the light. Oh! were I man again, to see the sight!"

Perhaps the most engaging of the Rowley poems are "An Excelente Balade ofCharitie, " written in the rhyme royal; and "The Bristowe Tragedie, " inthe common ballad stanza, and said by Tyrwhitt to be founded on anhistorical fact: the excecution at Bristol, in 1461, of Sir BaldwinFulford, who fought on the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses. The best quality in Chatterton's verse is its unexpectedness, --suddenepithets or whole lines, of a wild and artless sweetness, --which goes farto explain the fascination that he exercised over Coleridge and Keats. Imean such touches as these:

 "Once as I dozing in the witch-hour lay. "

 "Brown as the filbert dropping from the shell. "

 "My gorme emblanchèd with the comfreie plant. "

 "Where thou may'st here the sweetè night-lark chant, Or with some mocking brooklet sweetly glide. "

 "Upon his bloody carnage-house he lay, Whilst his long shield did gleam with the sun's rising ray. "

 "The red y-painted oars from the black tide, Carved with devices rare, do shimmering rise. "

 "As elfin fairies, when the moon shines bright, In little circles dance upon the green; All living creatures fly far from their sight, Nor by the race of destiny be seen; For what he be that elfin fairies strike, Their souls will wander to King Offa's dyke. "

The charming wildness of Chatterton's imagination--which attracted thenotice of that strange, visionary genius William Blake[24]--is perhapsseen at its best in one of the minstrel songs in "Aella. " This isobviously an echo of Ophelia's song in "Hamlet, " but Chatterton gives ita weird turn of his own:

 "Hark! the raven flaps his wing In the briared dell below; Hark! the death owl loud doth sing To the nightmares, as they go. My love is dead. Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree. 

 "See the white moon shines on high, [25] Whiter is my true-love's shroud, Whiter than the morning sky, Whiter than the evening cloud. My love is dead, " etc. 

It remains to consider briefly the influence of Chatterton's life andwritings upon his contemporaries and successors in the field of romanticpoetry. The dramatic features of his personal career drew, naturally, quite as much if not more attention than his literary legacy toposterity. It was about nine years after his death that a clericalgentleman, Sir Herbert Croft, went to Bristol to gather materials for abiography. He talked with Barrett and Catcott, and with many of thepoet's schoolmates and fellow-townsmen, and visited his mother andsister, who told him anecdotes of the marvelous boy's childhood and gavehim some of his letters. Croft also traced Chatterton's footsteps inLondon, where he interviewed, among others, the coroner who had presidedat the inquest over the suicide's body. The result of these inquiries hegave to the world in a book entitled "Love and Madness" (1780). [26]Southey thought that Croft had treated Mrs. Chatterton shabbily, inmaking her no pecuniary return from the profits of his book; andarraigned him publicly for this in the edition of Chatterton's workswhich he and Joseph Cottle--both native Bristowans--published in threevolumes in 1803. This was at first designed to be a subscription editionfor the benefit of Chatterton's mother and sister, but, the subscriptionsnot being numerous enough, it was issued in the usual way, through "thetrade. "

It was in 1795, just a quarter of a century after Chatterton's death, that Southey and Coleridge were married in St. Mary Redcliffe's Church tothe Misses Edith and Sara Fricker. Coleridge was greatly interested inChatterton. In his "Lines on Observing a Blossom on the First ofFebruary, 1796, " he compares the flower to

 "Bristowa's bard, the wondrous boy, An amaranth which earth seemed scarce to own, Blooming 'mid poverty's drear wintry waste. "

And a little earlier than this, when meditating his pantisocracy schemewith Southey and Lovell, he had addressed the dead poet in his indignant"Monody on the Death of Chatterton, " associating him in imagination withthe abortive community on the Susquehannah:

 "O Chatterton, that thou wert yet alive! Sure thou would'st spread thy canvas to the gale, And love with us the tinkling team to drive O'er peaceful freedom's undivided dale; And we at sober eve would round thee throng, Hanging enraptured on thy stately song, And greet with smiles the young-eyed poesy All deftly masked as hoar antiquity. . . Yet will I love to follow the sweet dream Where Susquehannah pours his untamed stream; And on some hill, whose forest-frowning side Waves o'er the murmurs of his calmer tide, Will raise a solemn cenotaph to thee, Sweet harper of time-shrouded ministrelsy. "

It might be hard to prove that the Rowley poems had very much to do withgiving shape to Coleridge's own poetic output. Doubtless, without them, "Christabel, " and "The Ancient Mariner, " and "The Darke Ladye" wouldstill have been; and yet it is possible that they might not have beenjust what they are. In "The Ancient Mariner" there is the ballad strainof the "Reliques, " but _plus_ something of Chatterton's. In such linesas these:

 "The bride hath paced into the hall Red as a rose is she: Nodding their heads before her, goes The merry minstrelsy;"

or as these:

 "The wedding guest here beat his breast For he heard the loud bassoon:"

one catches a far-away reverberation from certain stanzas of "TheBristowe Tragedie:" this, _e. G. _, "Before him went the council-men In scarlet robes and gold, And tassels spangling in the sun, Much glorious to behold;"

and this:

 "In different parts a godly psalm Most sweetly they did chant: Behind their backs six minstrels came, Who tuned the strung bataunt. "[27]

Among all the young poets of the generation that succeeded Chatterton, there was a tender feeling of comradeship with the proud and passionateboy, and a longing to admit him of their crew. Byron, indeed, said thathe was insane; but Shelley, in "Adonais, " classes him with Keats among"the inheritors of unfulfilled renown. " Lord Houghton testifies thatKeats had a prescient sympathy with Chatterton in his early death. Hededicated "Endymion" to his memory. In his epistle "To George FeltonMathew, " he asks him to help him find a place

 "Where we may soft humanity put on, And sit, and rhyme, and think on Chatterton. "[28]

Keats said that he always associated the season of autumn with the memoryof Chatterton. He asserted, somewhat oddly, that he was the purestwriter in the English language and used "no French idiom or particles, like Chaucer. " In a letter from Jane Porter to Keats about the reviewsof his "Endymion, " she wrote: "Had Chatterton possessed sufficientmanliness of mind to know the magnanimity of patience, and been awarethat great talents have a commission from Heaven, he would not havedeserted his post, and his name might have been paged with Milton. "

Keats was the poetic child of Spenser, but some traits of manner--hard todefine, though not to feel--he inherited from Chatterton. In hisunfinished poem, "The Eve of St. Mark, " there is a Rowleian accent in thepassage imitative of early English, and in the loving description of theold volume of saints' legends whence it is taken, with its

 "--pious poesies Written in smallest crow-quill size Beneath the text. "

And we cannot but think of the shadow of St. Mary Redcliffe fallingacross another young life, as we read how

 "Bertha was a maiden fair Dwelling in th' old Minster-square; From her fireside she could see, Sidelong, its rich antiquity, Far as the Bishop's garden-wall";

and of the footfalls that pass the echoing minster-gate, and of theclamorous daws that fall asleep in the ancient belfry to the sound of thedrowsy chimes. Rossetti, in so many ways a continuator of Keats'artistry, devoted to Chatterton the first of his sonnet-group, "FiveEnglish Poets, "[29] of which the sestet runs thus:

 "Thy nested home-loves, noble Chatterton; The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed space Thy gallant sword-play:--these to many an one Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown And love-dream of thine unrecorded face. "

The story of Chatterton's life found its way into fiction and upon thestage. Afred de Vigny, one of the French romanticists, translator of"Othello" and "The Merchant of Venice, " introduced it as an episode intohis romance, "Stello ou les Diables Bleus, " afterward dramatized as"Chatterton, " and first played at Paris on February 12, 1835, with greatsuccess. De Vigny made a love tragedy out of it, inventing a sweetheartfor his hero, in the person of Kitty Bell, a role which became one ofMadame Dorval's chief triumphs. On the occasion of the revival of DeVigny's drama in December, 1857, Théophile Gautier gave, in the_Moniteur_, [30] some reminiscences of its first performance, twenty-twoyears before. 

"The parterre before which Chatterton declaimed was full of pale, long-haired youths, who firmly believed that there was no other worthyoccupation on earth but the making of verses or of pictures--art, as theycalled it; and who looked upon the bourgeois with a disdain to which thedisdain of the Heidelberg or Jena 'fox' for the 'philistine' hardlyapproaches. . . As to money, no one thought of it. More than one, as inthat assembly of impossible professions which Theodore de Banvilledescribes with so resigned an irony, could have cried without falsehood'I am a lyric poet and I live by my profession. ' One who has not passedthrough that mad, ardent, over-excited but generous epoch, cannot imagineto what a forgetfulness of material existence the intoxication, or, ifyou prefer, infatuation of art pushed the obscure and fragile victims whowould rather have died than renounce their dream. One actually heard inthe night the crack of solitary pistols. Judge of the effect produced insuch an environment by M. Afred Vigney's 'Chatterton'; to which, if youwould comprehend it, you must restore the contemporary atmosphere. "[31]

[1] Wordsworth, "Resolution and Independence. "

[2] January 1, 1753. 

[3] "The Poetical Works of Thos. Chatterton. With an Essay on the RowleyPoems by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat and a Memoir by Edward Bell"; in twovolumes. London, 1871, Vol. I. P. Xv. 

[4] Willcox's edition of "Chatterton's Poetical Works, " Cambridge, 1842, Vol. I. P. Xxi. 

[5] "Memoir by Edward Bell, " p. Xxiv. 

[6] _Cf. _ ("Battle of Hastings, " i. Xx)

 "The grey-goose pinion, that theron was set, Eftsoons with smoking crimson blood was wet"

With the lines from "Chevy Chase" (_ante_, p. 295). To be sure theballad was widely current before the publication of the "Reliques. "

[7] See _ante_, p. 237. 

[8] Walter Scott quotes this passage in his review of Southey and Cottle'sedition of Chatterton in the Edinburgh _Review_ for April, 1804, andcomments as follows: "While Chatterton wrote plain narrative, he imitatedwith considerable success the dry, concise style of an antique annalist;but when anything required a more dignified or sentimental style, hemounted the fatal and easily recognized car of the son of Fingal. "

[9] Publication begun 1761: 2d edition 1768. Chatterton's letter wasdated March 25 [1769]. 

[10] See _ante_, p. 346. 

[11] "Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley andothers in the fifteenth century. The greatest part now first publishedfrom the most authentic copies, with engraved specimens of one of theMSS. To which are added a preface, an introductory account of theseveral pieces, and a glossary. London: Printed for T. Payne & Son atthe Mews Gate. MDCCLXXVII. "

[12] "Observations upon the Poems of Thomas Rowley, " 2 vols. 1781. 

[13] Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol in the fifteenthcentury by Thomas Rowley, Priest, etc. With a commentary in which theantiquity of them is considered and defended. 

[14] "Essay on the Rowley Poems:" Skeat's edition of "Chatterton'sPoetical Works, " Vol. II. P. Xxvii. 

[15] For a bibliography of the Rowley controversy, consult the article onChatterton in the "Dictionary of National Biography. "

[16] "Ah, gentle dames! It gars me greet. " --_Tam o'Shanter_

[17] _Ante_, p. 350. 

[18] "Chatterton. A Story of the Year 1770, " by David Masson London, 1874. 

[19] "Eighteenth Century Literature, " p. 334. 

[20] A recent critic, the Hon. Roden Noel ("Essays on Poetry and Poets, "London, 1886), thinks that "'Aella' is a drama worthy of theElizabethans" (p. 44). "As to the Rowley series, " as a whole, he does"not hesitate to say that they contain some of the finest poetry in ourlanguage" (p. 39). The Choric "Ode to Freedom" in "Goddwyn" appears toMr. Noel to be the original of a much admired passage in "Childe Harold, "in which war is personified, "and at any rate is finer"!

[21] See in Wm. Howitt's "Homes of the Poets, " Vol. I. Pp. 264-307, thedescription of a drawing of this building in 1138, done by Chatterton andinserted in Barrett's "History. "

[22] For some remarks on Chatterton's metrical originality, see "Ward'sEnglish Poets, " Vol. III, pp. 400-403. 

[23] Look at. 

[24] Blake was an early adherent of the "Gothic artists who built theCathedrals in the so-called Dark Ages . . . Of whom the world was notworthy. " Mr. Rossetti has pointed out his obligations to Ossian andpossibly to "The Castle of Otranto. " See Blake's poems "Fair Eleanor"and "Gwin, King of Norway. "

[25] Chatterton's sister testifies that he had the romantic habit ofsitting up all night and writing by moonlight. Cambridge Ed. P. Lxi. 

[26] Other standard lives of Chatterton are those by Gregory, 1789, (reprinted and prefixed to the Southey and Cottle edition): Dix, 1837;and Wilson, 1869. 

[27] Rowleian: there is no such instrument known unto men. The romanticlove of _color_ is observable in this poem, and is strong everywhere inChatterton. 

[28] See also the sonnet: "O Chatterton, how very sad thy fate"--Given inLord Houghton's memoir. "Life and Letters of John Keats": By R. MoncktonMilnes, p. 20 (American Edition, New York, 1848). 

[29] Chatterton, Blake, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley. "The absolutelymiraculous Chatterton, " Rossetti elsewhere styles him. 

[30] "Historie du Romantisme, " pp. 153-54. 

[31] "Chatterton, " a drama by Jones and Herman, was played at thePrincess' Theater, London, May 22, 1884. 

CHAPTER XI. 

The German Tributary

Up to the last decade of the eighteenth century the romantic movement inGreat Britain had been self-developed and independent of foreigninfluence, except for such stimulus as it had found, once and again, inthe writings of continental scholars like Sainte Palaye and Mallet. Butnow the English literary current began to receive a tributary stream fromabroad. A change had taken place in the attitude of the German mindwhich corresponds quite closely to that whose successive steps we havebeen following. In Germany, French classicism had got an even firmerhold than in England. It is well-known that Frederick the Great(1740-86) regarded his mother-tongue as a barbarous dialect, hardly fitfor literary use. In his own writings, prose and verse, he invariablyemployed French; and he boasted to Gottsched that from his youth up hehad not read a German book. [1]

But already before the middle of the century, and just about the time ofthe publication of Thomason's "Seasons, " the so-called Swiss school, under the leadership of the Züricher, Johann Jacob Bodmer, had begun anational movement and an attack upon Gallic influences. Bodmer foughtunder Milton's banner, and in the preface to his prose translation of"Paradise Lost" (1732), he praised Shakspere as the English Sophocles. In his "Abhandlung von dem Wunderbaren" ("Treatise on the Marvelous, "1740) he asserted the claims of freedom, nature, and the inspiredimagination against the rules of French critics, very much as the Wartonsand Bishop Hurd did a few years later in England. _Deutscheit, Volkspoesie_, the German past, the old Teutonic hero-age, with the_Kaiserzeit_ and the Middle Ages in general, soon came into fashion. "Asearly as 1748 Bodmer had published specimens from the Minnesingers, in1757 he had brought out a part of the Nibelungenlied, in 1758 and 1759 amore complete collection of the Minnesingers, and till 1781, till justbefore his death, he continued to produce editions of the MiddleHigh-German poems. Another Swiss writer, Christian Heinrich Myller, apupil of Bodmer's . . . Published in 1784 and 1785 the whole of theNibelungenlied and the most important of the chivalrous epics. Lessing, in his preface to Gleim's 'War-songs, ' called attention to the MiddleHigh German poets, of whom he continued to be throughout his life anardent admirer. Justus Möser took great interest in the Minnesingers. About the time when 'Götz' appeared, this enthusiasm for early Germanpoetry was at its strongest, and Bürger, Voss, Miller, and Höltz wroteMinnesongs, in which they imitated the old German lyric poets. In 1773Gleim published 'Poems after the Minnesingers, ' and in 1779 'Poems afterWalther von der Vogelweide. ' Some enthusiasts had already hailed theNibelungenlied as the German Iliad, and Bürger, who vied hard with therest, but without much success, in turning Homer into German, insisted ondressing up the Greek heroes a little in the Nibelungen style. He and afew other poets loved to give their ballads a chivalrous character. Fritz Stolberg wrote the beautiful song of a German boy, beginning, 'MeinArm wird stark und gross mein Muth, gib, Vater, mir ein Schwert'; and thesong of the old Swabian knight--'Sohn, da hast du meinen Speer; meinemArm wird er zu schwer. ' Lessing's 'Nathan, ' too, appealed to thisenthusiasm for the times of chivalry, and must have strengthened thefeeling. An historian like the Swiss, Johannes Müller, began to show theMiddle Ages in a fairer light, and even to ascribe great merits to thePapacy. But in doing so, Johannes Müller was only following in Herder'ssteps. Herder . . . Had written against the self-conceit of his age, itspride in its enlightenment and achievements. He found in the Middle Agesthe realization of his aesthetic ideas, namely, strong emotion, stirringlife and action, everything guided by feeling and instinct, not by morbidthought: religious ardor and chivalrous honor, boldness in love andstrong patriotic feeling. "[2]

When the founders of a truly national literature in Germany cut loosefrom French moorings, they had an English pilot aboard; and in thetranslations from German romances, dramas, and ballads that were made byScott, Coleridge, Taylor, Lewis, and others, English literature wasmerely taking back with usury what it had lent its younger sister. Mention has already been made of Bürger's and Herder's renderings fromPercy's "Reliques, "[3] an edition of which was published at Göttingen in1767; as well as of the strong excitement aroused in Germany byMacPherson's "Ossian. "[4] This last found--besides the VienneseDenis--another translator in Fritz Stolberg, who carried his medievalismso far as to join the Roman Catholic Church in 1800. Klopstock's"Kriegslied, " written as early as 1749, was in the meter of "ChevyChase, " which Klopstock knew through Addison's _Spectator_ papers. Through Mallet, the Eddaic literature made an impression in Germany as inEngland; and Gerstenberg's "Gedicht eines Skalden" (1766), one of thefirst-fruits of the German translation of the "Historire de Dannemarc, "preceded by two years the publication--though not the composition--ofGray's poems from the Norse. 

But the spirit which wrought most mightily upon the new German literaturewas Shakspere's. During the period of French culture there had beenpractically no knowledge of Shakspere in Germany. In 1741 Christian vonBorck, Prussian ambassador to London, had translated "Julius Caesar. "This was followed, a few years later, by a version of "Romeo and Juliet. "In 1762-66 Wieland translated, in whole or in part, twenty-twoShakspere's plays. His translation was in prose and has been longsuperseded by the Tieck-Schlegel translation (1797-1801-1810). Goethefirst made acquaintance with Shakspere, when a student at Leipsic, through the detached passages given in "Dodd's Beauties of Shakspere. "[5]He afterward got hold of Wieland's translation, and when he went toStrassburg he fell under the influence of Herder, who inspired him withhis own enthusiasm for "Ossian, " and the _Volkslieder_, and led him tostudy Shakspere in the original. 

Young Germany fastened upon and appropriated the great English dramatistwith passionate conviction. He became an object of worship, an articleof faith. The Shakspere _cultus_ dominated the whole _Sturm- undDrangperoide_. The stage domesticated him: the poets imitated him: thecritics exalted him into the type and representative (_Urbild_) ofGermanic art, as opposed to and distinguished from the art of the Latinraces, founded upon a false reproduction of the antique. [6] It was arecognition of the essential kinships between the two separated branchesof the great Teutonic stock. The enthusiastic young patriots of theGöttinger _Hain_, --who hated everything French and called each other bythe names of ancient bards, --accustomed themselves to the use ofShaksperian phrases in conversation; and on one occasion celebrated thedramatist's birthday so uproariously that they were pounced upon by thepolice and spent the night in the lockup. In Goethe's circle atStrassburg, which numbered, among others, Lenz, Klinger, and H. L. Wagner, this Shakspere mania was _de rigueur_. Lenz, particularly, whotranslated "Love's Labour's Lost, " excelled in whimsical imitations of"such conceits as clownage keeps in pay. "[7] Upon his return toFrankfort, Goethe gave a feast in Shakspere's honor at his father's house(October 14, 1771), in which healths were drunk to the "Will of allWills, " and the youthful host delivered an extravagant eulogy. "Thefirst page of Shakspere's that I read, " runs a sentence of this oration, "made me his own for life, and when I was through with the first play, Istood like a man born blind, to whom sight has been given by an instant'smiracle. I had a most living perception of the fact that my being hadbeen expanded a whole infinitude. Everything was new and strange; myeyes ached with the unwonted light. "[8]

Lessing, in his onslaught upon the French theater in his "HamburgischeDramaturgie" (1767-69), maintained that there was a much closer agreementbetween Sophocles and Shakspere in the essentials of dramatic art thanbetween Sophocles and Racine or Voltaire in their mechanical copies ofthe antique. In their own plays, Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller all tookShakspere as their model. But while beginning with imitation, they camein time to work freely in the spirit of Shakspere rather than in hismanner. Thus the first draught of Goethe's "Götz von Berlichingen"conforms in all externals to the pattern of a Shaksperian "history. " Theunity of action went overboard along with those of time and place; thescene was shifted for a monologue of three lines or a dialogue of six;tragic and comic were interwoven; the stage was thronged with a motleyvariety of figures, humors, and conditions--knights, citizens, soldiers, horse-boys, peasants; there was a court-jester; songs and lyric passageswere interspersed; there were puns, broad jokes, rant, Elizabethanmetaphors, and swollen trunk-hose hyperboles, with innumerableShakesperian reminiscences in detail. But the advice of Herder, to whomhe sent his manuscript, and the example of Lessing, whose "EmiliaGalotti" had just appeared, persuaded Goethe to recast the piece and giveit a more independent form. 

Scherer[9] says that the pronunciamento of the new national movement inGerman letters was the "small, badly printed anonymous book" entitled"Von Deutscher Art und Kunst, einige fliegende Blätter" ("Some LooseLeaves about German Style and Art"), which appeared in 1773 and containedessays by Justus Möser, who "upheld the liberty of the ancient Germans asa vanished ideal"; by Johann Gottfried Herder, who "celebrated the meritsof popular song, advocated a collection of the German _Volkslieder_, extolled the greatness of Shakspere, and prophesied the advent of aGerman Shakspere"; and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who praised the StrassburgMinster and Gothic architecture[10] in general, and "asserted that art, to be true, must be characteristic. The reform, or revolution, whichthis little volume announced was connected with hostility to France, andwith a friendly attitude toward England. . . This great movement was, infact, a revulsion from the spirit of Voltaire to that of Rousseau, fromthe artificiality of society to the simplicity of nature, from doubt andrationalism to feeling and faith, from _a priori_ notions[11] to history, from hard and fast aesthetic rules to the freedom of genius. Goethe's'Götz' was the first revolutionary symptom which really attracted muchattention, but the 'Fly-sheets on German Style and Art' preceded thepublication of 'Götz, ' as a kind of programme or manifesto. " EvenWieland, the mocking and French-minded, the man of consummatetalent but shallow genius, the representative of the _Aufklärung_(_Éclaircissement_, Illumination) was carried away by this new stream oftendency, and saddled his hoppogriff for a ride _ins alte romantischeLand_. He availed himself of the new "Library of Romance" which CountTressan began publishing in France in 1775, studied Hans Sachs andHartmann von Aue, experiments with Old German meters, and enriched hisvocabulary from Old German sources. He poetized popular fairy tales, chivalry stories, and motives from the Arthurian epos, such as "Gandalin"and "Geron der Adeliche" ("Gyron le Courteois"). But his best andbest-known work in this temper was "Oberon" (1780) a rich composite ofmaterials from Chaucer, "A Midsummer Night's Dream, " and the Frenchromance of "Huon of Bordeaux. "[12]

From this outline--necessarily very imperfect and largely at secondhand--of the course of the German romantic movement in the eighteenthcentury, it will nevertheless appear that it ran parallel to the Englishmost of the way. In both countries the reaction was against the_Aufklärung_, _i. E. _, against the rationalistic, prosaic, skeptical, common-sense spirit of the age, represented in England by deisticalwriters like Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Bolingbroke, and Tindal in thedepartment of religious and moral philosophy; and by writers likeAddison, Swift, Prior, and Pope in polite letters; and represented mostbrilliantly in the literatures of Europe by Voltaire. In opposition tothis spirit, an effort was now made to hark back to the ages of faith; torecover the point of view which created mythology, fairy lore, andpopular superstitions; to _believe_, at all hazards, not only in God andthe immortal soul of man, but in the old-time corollaries of thesebeliefs, in ghosts, elves, demons, and witches. 

In both countries, too, the revolution, as it concerned form, was a breakwith French classicism and with that part of the native literature whichhad followed academic traditions. Here the insurrection was far moreviolent in Germany than in England, [13] partly because Gallic influencehad tyrannized there more completely and almost to the supplanting of thevernacular by the foreign idiom, for literary uses; and partly becauseGermany had nothing to compare with the shining and solid achievements ofthe Queen Anne classics in England. It was easy for the new school ofGerman poets and critics to brush aside _perruques_ like Opitz, Gottsched, and Gellert--authors of the fourth and fifth class. But Swiftand Congreve, and Pope and Fielding, were not thus to be disposed of. Wehave noted the cautious, respectful manner in which such innovators asWarton and Percy ventured to question Pope's supremacy and to recommendolder English poets to the attention of a polite age; and we have seenthat Horace Walpole's Gothic enthusiasms were not inconsistent withliterary prejudices more conservation than radical, upon the whole. InEngland, again, the movement began with imitations of Spenser and Milton, and, gradually only, arrived at the resuscitation of Chaucer and medievalpoetry and the translation of Bardic and Scaldic remains. But in Germanythere was no Elizabethan literature to mediate between the modern mindand the Middle Age, and so the Germans resorted to England and Shaksperefor this. 

In Germany, as in England, though for different reasons, the romanticrevival did not culminate until the nineteenth century, until theappearance of the _Romantische Schule_ in the stricter sense--of Tieck, Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Wackenroder, Fouqué, Von Arnim, Brentano, and Uhland. In England this was owing less to arrested development thanto the absence of genius. There the forerunners of Scott, Coleridge, andKeats were writers of a distinctly inferior order: Akenside, Shenstone, Dyer, the Wartons, Percy, Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, "Monk" Lewis, the boyChatterton. If a few rise above this level, like Thomason, Collins, andGray, the slenderness of their performance, and the somewhat casualnature of their participation in the movement, diminish their relativeimportance. Gray's purely romantic work belongs to the last years of hislife. Collins' derangement and early death stopped the unfolding of manybuds of promise in this rarely endowed lyrist. Thomson, perhaps, cametoo early to reach any more advanced stage of evolution than Spenserism. In Germany, on the contrary, the pioneers were men of the highestintellectual stature, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller. But there themovement was checked for a time by counter-currents, or lost in broadertides of literary life. English romanticism was but one among manycontemporary tendencies: sentimentalism, naturalism, realism. Germanromanticism was simply an incident of the _sturm- und Drangperiode_, which was itself but a temporary phase of the swift and many-sidedunfolding of the German mind in the latter half of the last century; oneelement in the great intellectual ferment which threw off, among otherproducts, the Kantian philosophy, the "Laocoön, " "Faust, " and "WilhelmMeister"; Winckelmann's "Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums" andSchiller's "Wallenstein" and "Wilhelm Tell. " Men like Goethe andSchiller were too broad in their culture, too versatile in their talents, too multifarious in their mental activities and sympathies to beclassified with a school. The temper which engendered "Götz" and "DieRäuber" was only a moment in the history of their _Entwickelung_; theypassed on presently into other regions of thought and art. 

In Goethe especially there ensued, after the time of his _ItalienischeReise_, a reversion to the classic; not the exploded pseudo-classic ofthe eighteenth-century brand, but the true Hellenic spirit whichexpressed itself in such work as "Iphigenie auf Tauris, " "Hermann undDorothea, " and the "Schöne Helena" and "Classische Walpurgis-Nacht"episodes in the second part of "Faust. " "In his youth, " says Scherer, "alove for the historical past of Germany had seized on the minds of many. Imaginative writers filled the old Teutonic forests with Bards and Druidsand cherished an enthusiastic admiration for Gothic cathedrals and forthe knights of the Middle Ages and of the sixteenth century. . . InGoethe's mature years, on the contrary, the interest in classicalantiquity dwarfed all other aesthetic interests, and Germany and Europewere flooded by the classical fashion for which Winckelmann had given thefirst strong impulse. The churches became ancient temples, themechanical arts strove after classical forms, and ladies affected thedress and manners of Greek women. The leaders of German poetry, Goetheand Schiller, both attained the summit of their art in the imitation ofclassical models. "[14] Still the ground recovered from the Middle Agewas never again entirely lost; and in spite of this classicalprepossession, Goethe and Schiller, even in the last years of thecentury, vied with one another in the composition of romantic ballads, like the former's "Der Erlkonig, " "Der Fischer, " "Der Todtentanz, " and"Der Zauberlehrling, " and the latter's "Ritter Toggenburg, " "Der Kampfmit dem Drachen, " and "Der Gang nach dem Eisenhammer. "

On comparing the works of a romantic temper produced in England and inGermany during the last century, one soon becomes aware that, though theoriginal impulse was communicated from England, the continental movementhad greater momentum. The _Gründlichkeit_, the depth and thoroughness ofthe German mind, impels it to base itself in the fine arts, as inpolitics and religion, on foundation principles; to construct for itspractice a theoria, an _aesthetik_. In the later history of Germanromanticism, the medieval revival in letters and art was carried out witha philosophic consistency into other domains of thought and madeaccessory to reactionary statecraft and theology, to Junkerism andCatholicism. Meanwhile, though the literary movement in Germany in theeighteenth century did not quite come to a head, it was more critical, learned, and conscious of its own purposes and methods than the kindredmovement in England. The English mind, in the act of creation, workspractically and instinctively. It seldom seeks to bring questions oftaste or art under the domain of scientific laws. During the classicalperiod it had accepted its standards of taste from France, and when itbroke away from these, it did so upon impulse and gave either no reasons, or very superficial ones, for its new departure. The elegantdissertations of Hurd and Percy, and the Wartons, seem very dilettantishwhen set beside the imposing systems of aesthetics propounded by Kant, Fichte, and Schelling; or beside thorough-going _Abhandlungen_ like the"Laocoön, " the "Hamburgische Dramaturgie, " Schiller's treatise "Uebernaïve and sentimentalische Dichtung, " or the analysis of Hamlet'scharacter in "Wilhelm Meister. " There was no criticism of this kind inEngland before Coleridge; no Shakspere criticism, in particular, tocompare with the papers on that subject by Lessing, Herder, Gerstenberg, Lenz, Goethe, and many other Germans. The only eighteenth-centuryEnglishman who would have been capable of such was Gray. He had therequisite taste and scholarship, but even he wanted the philosophicbreadth and depth for a fundamental and _eingehend_ treatment ofunderlying principles. 

Yet even in this critical department, German literary historians creditEngland with the initiative. Hettner[15] mentions three English critics, in particular, as predecessors of Herder in awakening interest in popularpoetry. These were Edward Young, the author of "Night Thoughts, " whose"Conjectures on Original Composition" was published in 1759: Robert Wood, whose "Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer" (1768) wastranslated into German, French, Spanish, and Italian; and Robert Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, who was Professor of Poetry at Oxford delivered therein 1753 his "Praelectiones de Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum, " translated intoEnglish and German in 1793. The significance of Young's brilliant littleessay, which was in form a letter addressed to the author of "Sir CharlesGrandison, " lay in its assertion of the superiority of genius to learningand of the right of genius to be free from rules and authorities. It wasa sort of literary declaration of independence; and it asked, insubstance, the question asked in Emerson's "Nature": "Why should not wealso enjoy an original relation to the universe?" Pope had said, in his"Essay on Criticism, "[16] "follow Nature, " and in order to follow Nature, learn the rules and study the ancients, particularly Homer. "Nature andHomer were the same. " Contrariwise, Young says: "The less we copy therenowned ancients, we shall resemble them the more. . . Learning . . . Is a great lover of rules and boaster of famedexamples . . . And sets rigid bounds to that liberty to which geniusoften owes its supreme glory. . . Born _originals_, how comes it to passthat we die _copies_?. . . Let not great examples or authoritiesbrowbeat thy reason into too great a diffidence of thyself. . . Whilethe true genius is crossing all public roads into fresh untrodden ground;he [the imitative writer], up to the knees in antiquity, is treading thesacred footsteps of great examples with the blind veneration of a bigotsaluting the sacred toe. " Young asserts that Shakspere is equal ingreatness to the ancients: regrets that Pope did not employ blank versein his translation of Homer, and calls Addison's "Cato" "a piece ofstatuary. "

Robert Wood, who visited and described the ruins of Balbec and Palmrya, took his Iliad to the Troad and read it on the spot. He sailed in thetrack of Menelaus and the wandering Ulysses; and his acquaintance withEastern scenery and life helped to substitute a fresher apprehension ofHomer for the somewhat conventional conception that had prevailed throughthe classical period. What most forcibly struck Herder and Goethe inWood's essay was the emphasis laid upon the simple, unlettered, and evenbarbaric state of society in the heroic age: and upon the primitive andpopular character (_Ursprünglichkeit, Volksthümlichkeit_) of the Homericpoems. [17] This view of Homer, as essentially a minstrel orballad-maker, has been carried so far in Professor Newman's translationsas to provoke remonstrance from Matthew Arnold, who insists upon Homer's"nobility" and "grand style. "[18] But with whatever exaggeration it mayhave latterly been held, it was wholesomely corrective and stimulatingwhen propounded in 1768. 

Though the final arrival of German romanticism, in its fullness, waspostponed too late to modify the English movement, before the latter hadspent its first strength, yet the prelude was heard in England and foundan echo there. In 1792 Walter Scott was a young lawyer at Edinburgh andhad just attained his majority. 

 "Romance who loves to nod and sing With drowsy head and folded wing, To _him_ a painted paroquet Had been--a most familiar bird-- Taught _him_ his alphabet to say, To lisp his very earliest word. "[19]

He had lain from infancy "in the lap of legends old, " and was alreadylearned in the antiquities of the Border. For years he had been makinghis collection of _memorabilia_; claymores, suits of mail, Jedburgh axes, border horns, etc. He had begun his annual raids into Liddesdale, insearch of ballads and folk lore, and was filling notebooks with passagesfrom the Edda, records of old Scotch law-cases, copies of early Englishpoems, notes on the "Morte Darthur, " on the second sight, on fairies andwitches; extracts from Scottish chronicles, from the Books of Adjournal, from Aubrey, and old Glanvil of superstitious memory; tables of theMoeso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Runic alphabets and transcripts relatingto the history of the Stuarts. In the autumn or early winter of thatyear, a class of six or seven young men was formed at Edinburgh for thestudy of German, and Scott joined it. In his own account of the matterhe says that interest in German literature was first aroused in Scotlandby a paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in April, 1788, byHenry Mackenzie, the "Addison of the North, " and author of that mostsentimental fictions, "The Man of Feeling. " "The literary persons ofEdinburgh were then first made aware of the existence of works of geniusin a language cognate with the English, and possessed of the same manlyforce of expressions; they learned at the same time that the taste whichdictated the German compositions was of a kind as nearly allied to theEnglish as their language; those who were from their youth accustomed toadmire Shakspere and Milton became acquainted for the first time with arace of poets who had the same lofty ambition to spurn the flamingboundaries of the universe and investigate the realms of Chaos and oldNight; and of dramatists who, disclaiming the pedantry of the unities, sought, at the expense of occasional improbabilities and extravagance, topresent life on the stage in its scenes of wildest contrast, and in allits boundless variety of character. . . Their fictitious narratives, their ballad poetry, and other branches of their literature which areparticularly apt to bear the stamp of the extravagant and thesupernatural, began also to occupy the attention of the Britishliterati. " Scott's German studies were much assisted by Alexander FrazerTytler, whose version of Schiller's "Robbers" was one of the earliestEnglish translations from the German theater. [20]

In the autumn of 1794 Miss Aikin, afterward Mrs. Barbauld, entertained aparty at Dugald Stewart's by reading a translation of Bürger's ghastlyballad "Lenore. " The translation was by William Taylor of Norwich; ithad not yet been published, and Miss Aikin read it from a manuscriptcopy. Scott was not present, but his friend Mr. Cranstoun described theperformance to him; and he was so much impressed by his description thathe borrowed a volume of Burger's poems from his young kinswoman bymarriage, Mrs. Scott of Harden, a daughter of Count Brühl of Martkirchen, formerly Saxon ambassador at London, who had a Scotchwoman for his secondwife, the dowager Countess of Egremont. Scott set to work in 1795 tomake a translation of the ballad for himself, and succeeded so well inpleasing his friends that he had a few copies struck off for privatecirculation in the spring of 1796. In the autumn of the same year hepublished his version under the title "William and Helen, " together with"The Chase, " a translation of Bürger's "Der Wilde Jäger. " The two poemsmade a thin quarto volume. It was printed at Edinburgh, was anonymous, and was Walter Scott's first published book. Meanwhile Taylor had givenhis rendering to the public in the March number of the _MonthlyMagazine_, introducing it with a notice of Burger's poems; and the verysame year witnessed the appearance of three other translations, one by J. T. Stanley (with copperplate engravings), one by Henry James Pye, thepoet laureate, and one by the Hon. William Robert Spencer, --author of"Beth Gelert. " "Too Late I Stayed, " etc. , --with designs by Lady DianaBeauclerc. (A copy of this last, says Allibone, in folio, on vellum, sold at Christie's in 1804 for L25 4s. ) A sixth translation, by the Rev. James Beresford, who had lived some time in Berlin, came out about 1800;and Schlegel and Brandl unite in pronouncing this the most faithful, ifnot the best, English version of the ballad. [21]

The poem of which England had taken such manifold possession, under thevaried titles "Lenore, " "Leonore, " "Leonora, " "Lenora, " "Ellenore, ""Helen, " etc. , was indeed a noteworthy one. In the original, it remainsBürger's masterpiece, and in its various English dresses it gainedperhaps as many graces as it lost. It was first printed at Göttingen inBoie's "Musen Almanach" in 1773. It was an uncanny tale of a soldier ofFrederick the Great, who had perished in the Seven Years' War, and whocame at midnight on a spectral steed to claim his ladylove and carry heroff a thousand miles to the bridal bed. She mounts behind him and theyride through the phantasms of the night till, at cock-crow, they come toa churchyard. The charger vanishes in smoke, the lover's armor dropsfrom him, green with the damps of the grave, revealing a skeleton within, and the maiden finds that her nuptial chamber is the charnel vault, andher bridegroom is Death. "This poem, " says Scherer, "leaves on us, tosome degree, the impression of an unsolved mystery; all the details areclear, but at the end we have to ask ourselves what has really happened;was it a dream of the girl, a dream in which she died, or did the ghostreally appear and carry her away?"[22] The story is managed, indeed, with much of that subtle art which Coleridge used in "The AncientMariner" and "Christabel"; so that the boundary between the earthly andthe unearthly becomes indefinite, and the doubt continually occurswhether we are listening to a veritable ghost-story, or to some finerform of allegory. "Lenore" drew for its materials upon ballad motivescommon to many literatures. It will be sufficient to mention "SweetWilliam's Ghost, " as an English example of the class. 

Scott's friends assured him that his translation was superior toTaylor's, and Taylor himself wrote to him: "The ghost nowhere makes hisappearance so well as with you, or his exit so well as with Mr. Spencer. "But Lewis was right in preferring Taylor's version, which has a wildnessand quaintness not found in Scott's more literal and more polishedrendering, and is wonderfully successful in catching the _Grobheit_, therude, rough manner of popular poetry. A few stanzas from each willillustrate the difference:

 [From Scott's "William and Helen. "]

 "Dost fear? dost fear? The moon shines clear:-- Dost fear to ride with me? Hurrah! Hurrah! the dead can ride"-- "O William, let them be!"

 "See there! see there! What yonder swings And creaks 'mid whistling rain?" "Gibbet and steel, the accursed wheel; A murd'rer in his chain. 

 "Halloa! Thou felon, follow here: To bridal bed we ride; And thou shalt prance a fetter dance Before me and my bride. "

 And hurry! hurry! clash, clash, clash! The wasted form descends, [23] And fleet as wind through hazel bush The wild career attends. [23]

 Tramp, tramp! along the land they rode, Splash, splash! along the sea: The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, The flashing pebbles flee. 

 [From Taylor's "Lenora. "]

 Look up, look up, an airy crewe In roundel dances reele. The moone is bryghte and blue the night, May'st dimly see them wheel. [24]

 "Come to, come to, ye ghostlie crewe, Come to and follow me. And daunce for us the wedding daunce When we in bed shall be. "

 And brush, brush, brush, the ghostlie crew Come wheeling o'er their heads, All rustling like the withered leaves That wyde the whirlwind spreads. 

 Halloo! halloo! Away they goe Unheeding wet or drye, And horse and rider snort and blowe, And sparkling pebbles flye. 

 And all that in the moonshine lay Behynde them fled afar; And backward scudded overhead The skye and every star. 

 Tramp, tramp across the land they speede, Splash, splash across the sea: "Hurrah! the dead can ride apace, Dost fear to ride with me?"

It was this stanza which fascinated Scott, as repeated from memory by Mr. Cranstoun; and he retained it without much change in his version. Thereis no mention of the sea in Bürger, whose hero is killed in the battle ofPrague and travels only by land. But Taylor nationalized andindividualized the theme by making his William a knight of Richard theLion Heart's, who had fallen in Holy Land. Scott followed him and madehis a crusader in the army of Frederic Barbarossa. Bürger's poem waswritten in an eight-lined stanza, but Taylor and Scott both chose thecommon English ballad verse, with its folkloreish associations, as thebest vehicle for reproducing the grewsome substance of the story; andTaylor gave an archaic cast to his diction, still further to heighten theeffect. Lewis considered his version a masterpiece of translation, and, indeed, "far superior, both in spirit and in harmony, to the German. "Taylor showed almost equal skill in his rendering of Bürger's next mostpopular ballad, "Des Pfarrer's Tochter von Taubenhain, " first printed inthe _Monthly Magazine_ for April, 1796, under the somewhat odd title of"The Lass of Fair Wone. "

Taylor of Norwich did more than any man of his generation, by histranslations and critical papers in the _Monthly Magazine_ and _MonthlyReview_, to spread a knowledge of the new German literature in England. When a lad of sixteen he had been sent to study at Detmold, Westphalia, and had spent more than a year (1781-82) in Germany, calling upon Goetheat Weimar, with a letter of introduction, on his way home to England. "When his acquaintance with this literature began, " wrote Lucy Aikin, "there was probably no English translation of any German author butthrough the medium of the French, and he is very likely to have been thefirst Englishman of letters to read Goethe, Wieland, Lessing, and Bürgerin the originals. "[25] Some years before the publication of his "Lenora"he had printed for private distribution translations of Lessing's "Nathander Weise" (1791) and Goethe's "Iphigenie auf Tauris" (1793). In 1829-30he gathered up his numerous contributions to periodicals and put themtogether in a three-volume "Historic Survey of German Poetry, " which wasrather roughly, though not disrespectfully, handled by Carlyle in the_Edinburgh Review_. Taylor's tastes were one-sided, not to sayeccentric; he had not kept up with the later movement of German thought;his critical opinions were out of date, and his book was sadly wanting inunity and a proper perspective. Carlyle was especially scandalized bythe slight space accorded to Goethe. [26] But Taylor's really brillianttalent in translation, and his important service as an introducer andinterpreter of German poetry to his own countrymen, deserve always to begratefully remembered. "You have made me hunger and thirst after Germanpoetry, " wrote Southey to him, February 24, 1799. [27]

The year 1796, then, marks the confluence of the English and Germanromantic movements. It seems a little strange that so healthy a geniusas Walter Scott should have made his _dèbut_ in an exhibition of thehorrible. Lockhart reports him, on the authority of Sir Alexander Wood, as reading his "William and Helen" over to that gentleman "in a very slowand solemn tone, " and then looking at the fire in silence and presentlyexclaiming. "I wish to Heaven I could get a skull and two crossbones. "Whereupon Sir Alexander accompanied him to the house of John Bell, surgeon, where the desired articles were obtained and mounted upon thepoet's bookcase. During the next few years, Scott continued to maketranslations of German ballads, romances, and chivalry dramas. Theseremained for the present in manuscript; and some of them, indeed, such ashis versions of Babo's "Otto von Wittelsbach" (1796-97) and Meier's"Wolfred von Dromberg" (1797) were never permitted to see the light. Hissecond publication (February, 1799) was a free translation of Goethe'stragedy, "Götz von Berlichingen mit der Eisernen Hand. " The original wasa most influential work in Germany. It had been already twenty-six yearsbefore the public and had produced countless imitations, with some ofwhich Scott had been busy before he encountered this, the fountain headof the whole flood of _Ritterschauspiele_. [28] Götz was an historicalcharacter, a robber knight of Franconia in the fifteenth century, who hadchampioned the rights of the free knights to carry on private warfare andhad been put under the ban of the empire for engaging in feuds. "Itwould be difficult, " wrote Carlyle, "to name two books which haveexercised a deeper influence on the subsequent literature ofEurope"--than "The Sorrows of Werther" and "Gotz. " "The fortune of'Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, ' though less sudden"--thanWerther's--"was by no means less exalted. In his own country 'Götz, 'though he now stands solitary and childless, became the parent of aninnumerable progeny of chivalry plays, feudal delineations, andpoetico-antiquarian performances; which, though long ago deceased, madenoise enough in their day and generation; and with ourselves hisinfluence has been perhaps still more remarkable. Sir Walter Scott'sfirst literary enterprise was a translation of 'Götz von Berlichingen';and if genius could be communicated, like instruction, we might call thiswork of Goethe's the prime cause of 'Marmion' and 'The Lady of the Lake, 'with all that has since followed from the same creative hand. . . Howfar 'Götz von Berlichingen' actually affected Scott's literarydestination, and whether without it the rhymed romances, and then theprose romances of the author of Waverly, would not have followed as theydid, must remain a very obscure question; obscure and not important. Ofthe fact, however, there is no doubt, that these two tendencies, whichmay be named Götzism and Wertherism, of the former of which Scott wasrepresentative with us, have made and are still in some quarters makingthe tour of all Europe. In Germany, too, there was this affectionate, half-regretful looking-back into the past: Germany had its buff-belted, watch-tower period in literature, and had even got done with it beforeScott began. "[29]

Elsewhere Carlyle protests against the common English notion that Germanliterature dwells "with peculiar complacency among wizards and ruinedtowers, with mailed knights, secret tribunals, monks, specters, andbanditti. . . If any man will insist on taking Heinse's 'Ardinghello'and Miller's 'Siegwart, ' the works of Veit Weber the Younger, and aboveall the everlasting Kotzebue, [30] as his specimens of German literature, he may establish many things. Black Forests and the glories ofLubberland, sensuality and horror, the specter nun and the charmedmoonshine shall not be wanting. Boisterous outlaws also, with hugewhiskers and the most cat-o'-mountain aspect; tear-stainedsentimentalists, the grimmest man-haters, ghosts and the like suspiciouscharacters will be found in abundance. We are little read in thisbowl-and-dagger department; but we do understand it to have been at onetime rather diligently cultivated; though at present it seems to bemostly relinquished. . . What should we think of a German critic thatselected his specimens of British literature from 'The Castle Specter, 'Mr. Lewis' 'Monk, ' or the 'Mysteries of Udolpho, ' and 'Frankenstein, orthe Modern Prometheus'?. . . 'Faust, ' for instance, passes with many ofus for a mere tale of sorcery and art magic. It would scarcely be moreunwise to consider 'Hamlet' as depending for its main interest on theghost that walks in it. "[31]

Now for the works here named, as for the whole class of melodramas andmelodramatic romances which swarmed in Germany during the last quarter ofthe century and made their way into English theaters and circulatinglibraries, in the shape of translations, adaptations, imitations, twoplays were remotely responsible: Goethe's "Götz" (1773), with its robberknights, secret tribunal, imperialist troopers, gypsies, and insurgentpeasants; and Schiller's "Die Räuber" (1781), with its still more violentsituations and more formidable _dramatis personae_. True, this spawn ofthe _Sturm- und Drangzeit_, with its dealings in banditti, monks, inquisitors, confessionals, torture and poison, dungeon and rack, thehaunted tower, the yelling ghost, and the solitary cell, had beenanticipated in England by Walpole's "Castle of Otranto" and "MysteriousMother"; but this slender native stream was now quite overwhelmed in theturbid flood of sensational matter from the Black Forest and the Rhine. Mrs. Radcliffe herself had drunk from foreign sources. In 1794 she madethe tour of the Rhine and published a narrative of her journey in theyear following. The knightly river had not yet become hackneyed;Brentano had not invented nor Heine sung the seductive charms of theLürlei; nor Byron mused upon "the castled crag of Drachenfels. " TheFrench armies were not far off, and there were alarums and excursions allalong the border. But the fair traveler paused upon many a spot alreadysacred to legend and song: the Mouse Tower and Rolandseck and the SevenMountains. She noted the peasants, in their picturesque costumes, carrying baskets of soil to the steep vineyard terraces: the ruined keepsof robber barons on the heights, and the dark sweep of the romanticvalleys, bringing in their tributary streams from north and south. 

Lockhart says that Scott's translations of "Götz" should have beenpublished ten years sooner to have had its full effect. For the Englishpublic had already become sated with the melodramas and romances ofKotzebue and the other German _Kraftmänner_; and the clever parody of"The Robbers, " under the title of "The Rovers, " which Canning and Ellishad published in the _Anti-Jacobin_, had covered the entire species withridicule. The vogue of this class of fiction, the chivalry romance, thefeudal drama, the robber play and robber novel, the monkish tale and theghost story (_Ritterstück, Ritteroman, Räuberstuck, Räuberroman, Klostergeschichte, Gespensterlied_) both in Germany and England, satisfied, however crudely, the longing of the time for freedom, adventure, strong action, and emotion. As Lowell said of thetranscendental movement in New England, it was a breaking of windows toget at the fresh air. Laughable as many of them seem today, with theirimprobable plots and exaggerated characters, they met a need which hadnot been met either by the rationalizing wits of the Augustan age or bythe romanticizing poets who followed them with their elegiac refinement, and their unimpassioned strain of reflection and description. Theyappeared, for the moment, to be the new avatar of the tragic muse whereofAkenside and Collins and Warton had prophesied, the answer to theirdemand for something wild and primitive, for the return into poetry ofthe _Naturton_, and the long-absent power of exciting the tragicemotions, pity and terror. This spirit infected not merely thedepartment of the chivalry play and the Gothic romance, but prose fictionin general. It is responsible for morbid and fantastic creations likeBeckford's "Vathek, " Godwin's "St. Leon" and "Caleb Williams, " Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein, " Shelley's "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvine theRosicrucian, " and the American Charles Brockden Brown's "Ormond" and"Wieland, " forerunners of Hawthorne and Poe; tales of sleep-walkers andventriloquists, of persons who are in pursuit of the _elixir vitae_, orwho have committed the unpardonable sin, or who manufacture monsters intheir laboratories, or who walk about in the Halls of Eblis, carryingtheir burning hearts in their hands. 

Lockhart, however, denies that "Götz von Berlichingen" had anything incommon with the absurdities which Canning made fun of in the_Anti-Jacobin_. He says that it was a "broad, bold, free, and mostpicturesque delineation of real characters, manners, and events. " Hethinks that in the robber barons of the Rhine, with "their forays uponeach other's domains, the besieged castles, the plundered herds, thecaptive knights, the brow-beaten bishop and the baffled liege-lord, "Scott found a likeness to the old life of the Scotch border, with itsmoss-troopers, cattle raids, and private warfare; and that, as Percy's"Reliques" prompted the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, " so "Götz"prompted the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" and "Marmion. " He quotes thepassage from "Götz" where Selbiss is borne in, wounded, by two trooperswho ascend a watch-tower and describe to their leader the furtherprogress of the battle; and he asks "who does not recognize in Goethe'sdrama the true original of the death scene in 'Marmion' and the storm in'Ivanhoe'?"

A singular figure now comes upon our stage, Matthew Gregory Lewis, commonly nicknamed "Monk" Lewis, from the title of his famous romance. It is a part of the irony of things that so robust a muse as WalterScott's should have been nursed in infancy by a little creature likeLewis. His "Monk" had been published in 1795, when the author was onlytwenty. In 1798 Scott's friend William Erskine meet Lewis in London. The latter was collecting materials for his "Tales of Wonder, " and whenErskine showed him Scott's "William and Helen" and "The Wild Huntsman, "and told him that he had other things of the kind in manuscript, Lewisbegged that Scott would contribute to his collection. Erskineaccordingly put him in communication with Scott, who felt highlyflattered by the Monk's request, and wrote to him that his ballads werequite at his service. Lewis replied, thanking him for the offer. "Aghost or a witch, " he wrote, "is a _sine qua non_ ingredient in all thedishes of which I mean to compose my hobgoblin repast. " Later in thesame year Lewis came to Edinburgh and was introduced to Scott, who foundhim an odd contrast to the grewsome horrors of his books, being acheerful, foppish, round-faced little man, a follower of fashion and anassiduous tuft-hunter. "Mat had queerish eyes, " writes his _protégé_:"they projected like those of some insects, and were flattish on theorbit. His person was extremely small and boyish--he was indeed theleast man I ever saw, to be strictly well and neatly made. . . Thisboyishness went through life with him. He was a child and a spoiledchild, but a child of high imagination; and so he wasted himself on ghoststories and German romances. He had the finest ear for rhythm I ever metwith--finer than Byron's. "

Byron, by the way, had always a kindly feeling for Lewis, though helaughed at him in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers":

 "O wonder-working Lewis, Monk or Bard, Who fain would'st make Parnassus a churchyard; Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow; Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou; Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering specters hailed, thy kindred band, Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page, To please the females of our modest age-- All hail, M. P. , [32] from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train; At whose command grim women thron in crowds, And kings of fire, of water and of clouds, With 'small gray men, ' wild yagers and what not, To crown with honor thee and Walter Scott!"

In 1816, while on his way to Italy, Lewis sojourned for a space withByron and Shelley in their Swiss retreat and set the whole companycomposing goblin stories. The most remarkable outcome of this queersymposium was Mrs. Shelley's abnormal romance, "Frankenstein. " Thesignatures of Byron and Shelley are affixed, as witnesses, to a codicilto Lewis' will, which he drew at this time and dated at Maison Diodati, Geneva; a somewhat rhetorical document in which he provided for theprotection of the slaves on his Jamaica plantations. It was two yearsafter this, and on his return voyage from a visit to these West Indianestates, that Lewis died of yellow fever and was buried at sea. Byronmade this note of it in his diary:

 "I'd give the lands of Deloraine Dark Musgrave were alive again, "

that is, "I would give many a sugar cane Monk Lewis were alive again. "

Scott's modesty led him to depreciate his own verses as compared withLewis', some of which he recited to Ballantyne, in 1799, speaking oftheir author, says Lockhart, "with rapture. " But however fine an ear forrhythm Lewis may have had, his verse is for the most part execrable; andhis jaunty, jiggling anapaests and pragmatic manner are ludicrously outof keeping with the horrors of his tale, increasing the air of bathoswhich distinguishes his poetry:

 "A toad still alive in the liquor she threw, And loud shrieked the toad as in pieces it flew: And ever, the cauldron as over she bent, She muttered strange words of mysterious intent:"

or this from the same ballad:[33]

 "Wild laughing, the Fiend caught the hand from the floor, Releasing the babe, kissed the wound, drank the gore; A little jet ring from her finger then drew, Thrice shrieked a loud shriek and was borne from their view. "

Lewis would appear to have inherited his romantic turn from his mother, asentimental little dame whose youthful looks caused her often to be takenfor Mat's sister, and whose reading was chiefly confined to novels. Thepoor lady was something of a blue-stocking and aspired, herself, toliterary honors. Lewis' devotion to her is very charming, and theelder-brotherly tone of his letters to her highly amusing. But he had adislike of "female authorship": and the rumor having reached his ear thathis mother had written a novel and a tragedy and was preparing to printthem, he wrote to her in alarm, begging her to stay her hand. "I holdthat a woman has no business to be a public character, and that, inproportion as she acquires notoriety, she loses delicacy. I alwaysconsider a female author as a sort of half-man. " He was also, quiteproperly, shocked at some gossip which attributed "The Monk, " to hismother instead of to his mother's son. 

We read in the "Life and Correspondence of Matthew Gregory Lewis" (2vols. , London, 1839), that one of Mrs. Lewis' favorite books was "Glanvilon Witches. " Glanvil was the seventeenth-century writer whose "Vanity ofDogmatizing, "[34] and "Sadduceismus Triumphatus" rebuked the doubter andfurnished arguments for Cotton Mather's "Wonders of the Invisible World"(1693), an apology for his share in the Salem witchcraft trials; andwhose description of a ghostly drum, that was heard to beat every nightin a Wiltshire country house, gave Addison the hint for his comedy of"The Drummer. " Young Lewis gloated with a pleasing horror over Glanvil'spages and the wonderful copperplates which embellished them; particularlythe one which represents the devil beating his airy tympanum over Mr. Mompesson's house. In the ancient mansion of Stanstead Hall, belongingto a kinsman of his father, where the boy spent a part of his childhood, there was a haunted chamber known as the cedar room. "In maturer years, "says his biographer, "Lewis has frequently been heard to declare that atnight, when he was conducted past that gloomy chamber, on the way to hisdormitory, he would cast a glance of terror over his shoulder, expectingto see the huge and strangely carved folding doors fly open and disclosesome of those fearful shapes that afterward resolved themselves into theghastly machinery of his works. "

Lewis' first and most celebrated publication was "Ambrosio, or the Monk"(1795), a three-volume romance of the Gothic type, and a linealdescendant of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe. He began it at Oxford in 1792, describing it in a letter to his mother as "a romance in the style of'The Castle of Otranto. '" But in the summer of the same year he went toGermany and took up his residence at Weimar, where he was introduced toGoethe and made eager acquaintance with the bizarre productions of the_Sturm- und Drangperiode_. For years Lewis was one of the most activeintermediaries between the German purveyors of the terrible and theEnglish literary market. He fed the stage with melodramas and operas, and stuffed the closet reader with ballads and prose romances. [35]Meanwhile, being at The Hague in the summer of 1794, he resumed andfinished his "Monk, " in ten weeks. "I was induced to go on with it, " hewrote to his mother, "by reading the 'Mysteries of Udolpho, ' which is, inmy opinion, one of the most interesting books that has ever beenpublished. . . When you read it, tell me whether you think there is anyresemblance between the character given of Montoni . . . And my own. Iconfess that it struck me. " This innocent vanity of fancying a likenessbetween Anne Radcliffe's dark-browed villain and his own cherubicpersonality recalls Scott's story about the picture of Lewis, bySaunders, which was handed round at Dalkeith House. "The artist hadingeniously flung a dark folding-mantle around the form, under which washalf-hid a dagger, a dark lantern, or some cut-throat appurtenance; withall this, the features were preserved and ennobled. It passed from handto hand into that of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, hearing the generalvoice affirm that it was very like, said aloud, 'Like Mat Lewis! Why, that picture's like a man. '" "The Monk" used, and abused, the nowfamiliar apparatus of Gothic romance. It had Spanish grandees, heroinesof dazzling beauty, bravoes and forest banditti, foolish duennas andgabbling domestics, monks, nuns, inquisitors, magic mirrors, enchantedwands, midnight incantations, sorcerers, ghosts, demons; hauntedchambers, wainscoated in dark oak; moonlit castles with ruined towers andivied battlements, whose galleries rang with the shrieks and blasphemiesof guilty spirits, and from whose portals issued, when the castle clocktolled one, the specter of a bleeding nun, with dagger and lamp in hand. There were poisonings, stabbings, and ministrations of sleeping potions;beauties who masqueraded as pages, and pages who masqueraded as wanderingharpers; secret springs that gave admittance to winding stairs leadingdown into the charnel vaults of convents, where erring sisters wereimmured by cruel prioresses and fed on bread and water among theloathsome relics of the dead. 

With all this, "The Monk" is a not wholly contemptible work. There is acertain narrative power about it which puts it much above the level of"The Castle of Otranto. " And though it partakes of the stilted dialogueand false conception of character that abound in Mrs. Radcliffe'sromances, it has neither the excess of scenery nor of sentiment whichdistinguishes that very prolix narrator. There is nothing strictlymediaeval about it. The knight in armor cuts no figure and thehistorical period is not precisely indicated. But the ecclesiasticalfeatures lend it a semblance of mediaevalism; and one is reminded, thoughbut faintly, by the imprisonment of the offending sister in the sepulcherof the convent, of the scene in "Marmion" where Constance is immured inthe vaults of Lindisfarne--a frank anachronism, of course, on Scott'spart, since Lindisfarne had been in ruins centuries before the battle ofFlodden. The motto from Horace on the title page of "The Monk" sums upits contents, and indeed the contents of most of its author's writings, prose and verse--

 "Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos lemures portentaque. "

The hero Ambrosio is the abbot of St. Francis' Capuchin monastery inMadrid; a man of rigid austerity, whose spiritual pride makes him an easyprey to the temptations of a female demon, who leads him by degreesthrough a series of crimes, including incest and parricide, until hefinally sells his soul to the devil to escape from the dungeons of theInquisition and the _auto da fe_, subscribing the agreement, in approvedfashion, upon a parchment scroll with an iron pen dipped in blood fromhis own veins. The fiend, who enters with thunder and lightning, overwhose shoulders "waved two enormous sable wings, " and whose hair "wassupplied by living snakes, " then snatches up his victim and soars withhim to a peak of the Sierra Morena, where in a Salvator Rosa landscape oftorrents, cliffs, caverns, and pine forests, by the light of an operamoon, and to the sound of the night wind sighing hoarsely and "the shrillcry of mountain eagles, " he drops him over a precipice and makes an endof him. 

A passage from the episode of Agnes de Medina, the incarcerated nun, willillustrate Lewis' wonder-working arts: "A faint glimmering of lightwhich strained through the bars permitted me to distinguish thesurrounding horrors. I was oppressed by a noisome, suffocating smell;and perceiving that the grated door was unfastened, I thought that Imight possibly effect my escape. As I raised myself with this design, myhand rested upon something soft. I grasped it and advanced it toward thelight. Almighty God! what was my disgust! my consternation! In spite ofits putridity and the worms which preyed upon it, I perceived a corruptedhuman head, and recognized the features of a nun who had died some monthsbefore. . . A sepulchral lamp was suspended from the roof by an ironchain and shed a gloomy light through the dungeon. Emblems of death wereseen on every side; skills, shoulder-blades, thigh-bones and other relicsof mortality were scattered upon the dewy ground. . . As I shrunk fromthe cutting wind which howled through my subterraneous dwelling, thechange seemed so striking, so abrupt, that I doubted its reality. . . Sometimes I felt the bloated toad, hideous and pampered with thepoisonous vapors of the dungeon, dragging his loathsome length along mybosom; sometimes the quick, cold lizard roused me, leaving his slimytrack upon my face, and entangling itself in the tresses of my wild andmatted hair. Often have I, at waking, found my fingers ringed with thelong worms which bred in the corrupted flesh of my infant. "

"The Monk" won for its author an immediate and wide celebrity, assistedno doubt by the outcry against its immorality. Lewis tried to defendhimself by pleading that the outline and moral of his story were borrowedfrom "The History of Santon Barsisa" in the _Guardian_ (No. 148). Butthe voluptuous nature of some of the descriptions induced the AttorneyGeneral to enjoin the sale of the book, and Lewis bowed to public opinionso far as to suppress the objectionable passages in later editions. Lewis' melodrama "The Castle Specter" was first performed December 14, 1797, at Drury Lane, ran sixty nights and "continued popular as an actingplay, " says the biographer, "up to a very recent period. "[36] This isstrong testimony to the contemporary appetite for nightmare, for the playis a trumpery affair. Sheridan, who had a poor opinion of it, advisedthe dramatist to keep the specter out of the last scene. "It had beensaid, " explains Lewis in his preface, "that if Mr. Sheridan had notadvised me to content myself with a single specter, I meant to haveexhibited a whole regiment of ghosts. " The prologue, spoken by Mr. Wroughton, invokes "the fair enchantress, Romance":

 "The moonstruck child of genius and of woe, "

who

 "--Loathes the sun or blazing taper's light: The moonbeamed landscape and tempestuous night Alone she loves; and oft with glimmering lamp Near graves new opened, or midst dungeons damp, Drear forests, ruined aisles and haunted towers, Forlorn she roves and raves away the hours. "

The scene of the drama is Conway Castle in Wales, where abides EarlOsmond, a feudal tyrant of the "Otranto" type, who is planning anincestuous marriage with his own niece, concerning which he thussoliloquizes: "What though she prefer a basilisk's kiss to mine? Becausemy short-lived joy may cause her eternal sorrow, shall I reject thosepleasures sought so long, desired so earnestly? That will I not, byHeaven! Mine she is, and mine she shall be, though Reginald's bleedingghost flit before me and thunder in my ear 'Hold! Hold!'--Peace, stormyheart, she comes. " Reginald's ghost does not flit, because Reginald isstill in the flesh, though not in very much flesh. He is Osmond'sbrother and Angela's father, and the wicked Earl thought that he hadmurdered him. It turns out, however, that, though left for dead, he hadrecovered of his hurts and has been kept unbeknown in solitaryconfinement, in a dungeon vault under the castle, for the somewhat longperiod of sixteen years. He is discovered in Act V. , "emaciated, incoarse garments, his hair hanging wildly about his face, and a chainbound round his body. "

Reginald's ghost does not flit, but Evelina's does. Evelina isReginald's murdered wife, and her specter in "white and flowing garments, spotted with blood, " appears to Angela in the oratory communicating withthe cedar room, which is furnished with an antique bedstead and theportrait of a lady on a sliding panel. In truth, the castle isuncommonly well supplied with apparitions. Earl Herbert rides around itevery night on a white horse; Lady Bertha haunts the west pinnacle of thechapel tower; and Lord Hildebrand may be seen any midnight in the greathall, playing football with his own head. So says Motley the jester, whoaffords the comedy element of the play, with the help of a fat friar whoguzzles sack and stuffs venison pasties, and a soubrette after the"Otranto" pattern. 

A few poems were scattered through the pages of "The Monk, " including aballad from the Danish, and another from the Spanish. But the mostfamous of these was "Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene, " originalwith Lewis, though evidently suggested by "Lenore. " It tells how a loverwho had gone to Palestine presented himself at the bridal feast of hisfaithless fair one, just as the clock struck one and the lights burnedblue. At the request of the company, the strange knight raises his visorand discloses a skeleton head:

 "All present then uttered a terrified shout; All turned with disgust from the scene; The worms they crept in and the worms they crept out, And sported his eyes and his temples about While the spectre addressed Imogene. "

He winds his arms about her and sinks with his prey through the yawningground; and

 "At midnight four times in each year does her sprite, When mortals in slumber are bound. Arrayed in her bridal apparel of white, Appear in the hall with a skeleton knight And shriek as he whirls her around. 

 "While they drink out of skulls newly torn from the grave, Dancing round them pale spectres are seen. Their liquor is blood, and this horrible stave They how: 'To the health of Alonzo the Brave And his consort, the Fair Imogene!'"

Lewis' own contributions to his "Tales of Terror" and "Tales of Wonder, "were of his same raw-head and bloody-bones variety. His imaginationrioted in physical horrors. There are demons who gnash with iron fangsand brandish gore-fed scorpions; maidens are carried off by the WinterKing, the Water King, the Cloud King, and the Sprite of the Glen; theyare poisoned or otherwise done to death, and their wraiths revisit theirguilty lovers in their shrouds at midnight's dark hour and imprint clammykisses upon them with livid lips; gray friars and black canons abound;requiem and death knell sound through the gloom of the cloisters; echoroars through high Gothic arches; the anchorite mutters in his mossycell; tapers burn dim, torches cast a red glare on vaulted roofs; thenight wind blows through dark aisles; the owl hoots in the turret, anddying groans are heard in the lonely house upon the heath, where theblack and tattered arras molders on the wall. 

The "Tales of Wonder" included translations by Lewis from Goethe's"Fisher" and "Erl-King, " and from German versions of Runic ballads inHerder's "Stimmen der Völker. " Scott's "Wild Huntsman, " from Bürger, washere reprinted, and he contributed, in addition, "Frederick and Alice, "paraphrased from a romance-fragment in Goethe's opera "Claudina von VillaBella"; and three striking ballads of his own, "The Fire King, " a storyof the Crusades, and "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve of St. John, " Scottishtales of "gramarye. " There were two or three old English ballads in thecollection, such as "Clerk Colvin" and "Tam Lin"; a contribution fromGeorge Colman, Jr. , the dramatist, and one from Scott's eccentric friendLeyden; and the volume concluded with Taylor's "Lenora. "[37]

It is comical to read that the Monk gave Scott lectures in the art ofversification and corrected the Scotticisms and false rhymes in histranslations from Bürger; and that Scott respectfully deferred to hisadvice. For nothing can be in finer contrast with Lewis' penny dreadful, than the martial ring of the verse and the manly vigor of the style inScott's part of the book. This is how Lewis writes anapaests, _e. G. _:

 "All shrouded she was in the garb of the tomb, Her lips they were livid, her face it was wan; A death the most horrid had rifled her bloom And each charm of beauty was faded and gone. "

And this is how Scott writes them:

 "He clenched his set teeth and his gauntleted hand, He stretched with one buffet that page on the sand. . . For down came the Templars like Cedron in flood, And dyed their long lances in Saracen blood. "

It is no more possible to take Monk Lewis seriously than to take HoraceWalpole seriously. They are both like children telling ghost-stories inthe dark and trying to make themselves shudder. Lewis was even frivolousenough to compose paradies on his own ballads. A number of these_facetiae_--"The Mud King, " "Giles Jollup the Grave and Brown SallyGreen, " etc. --diversify his "Tales of Wonder. "

Scott soon found better work for his hands to do than translating Germanballads and melodramas; but in later years he occasionally went back tothese early sources of romantic inspiration. Thus his poem "The NobleMoringer" was taken from a "Sammlung Deutscher Volkslieder" published atBerlin in 1807 by Busching and Von der Hagen. In 1799 he had made a_rifacimento_ of a melodrama entitles "Der Heilige Vehme" in Veit Weber's"Sagen der Vorzeit. " This he found among his papers thirty years after(1829) and printed in "The Keepsake, " under the title of "The House ofAspen. " Its most telling feature is the description of the Vehm-Gerichtor Secret Tribunal, but it has little importance. In his "HistoricSurvey, " Taylor said that "Götz von Berlichingen" was "translated intoEnglish in 1799 at Edinburgh, by Wm. Scott, Advocate; no doubt the sameperson who, under the poetical but assumed name of Walter, had sincebecome the most extensively popular of the British writers"! Thisamazing statement is explained by a blunder on the title-page of Scott's"Götz, " where the translator's name is given as _William_ Scott. But itled to a slightly acrimonious correspondence between Sir Walter and theNorwich reviewer. [38]

The tide of German romance had begun to ebb before the close of thecentury. It rose again a few years later, and left perhaps more lastingtokens this second time; but the ripple-marks of its first invasion arestill discernible in English poetry and prose. Southey was clearly inerror when he wrote to Taylor, September 5, 1798: "Coleridge's ballad, 'The Ancient Mariner' is, I think, the clumsiest attempt at Germansublimity I ever saw. "[39] The "Mariner" is not in the least German, andwhen he wrote it, Coleridge had not been in Germany and did not know thelanguage. He had read "Die Rauber, " to be sure, some years before inTytler's translation. He was at Cambridge at the time, and one night inwinter, on leaving the room of a college friend, carelessly picked up andtook away with him a copy of the tragedy, the very name of which he hadnever heard before. "A winter midnight, the wind high and 'The Robbers'for the first time. The readers of Schiller will conceive what I felt. "He recorded, in the sonnet "To Schiller" (written December, 1794, orJanuary, 1795), the terrific impression left upon his imagination by

 --"The famished father's cry From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, "

and wish that he might behold the bard himself, wandering at eve--

 "Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood. "

Coleridge was destined to make the standard translation of "Wallenstein";and there are motives borrowed from "The Robbers" and "The Ghost-Seer" inhis own very rubbishy dramas, "Zapolya"--of which Scott made some use in"Peveril of the Peak"--and "Osorio" (1797). The latter was rewritten as"Remorse, " put on at Drury Lane January 23, 1813, and ran twenty nights. It had been rejected by Sheridan, who expressed a very proper contemptfor it as an acting play. The Rev. W. L. Bowles and Byron, who had readit in manuscript and strangely overvalued it, both made interest with themanager to have it tried on the stage. "Remorse" also took some hintsfrom Lewis' "Monk. "

But Coleridge came in time to hold in low esteem, if not precisely "TheRobbers" itself, yet that school of German melodrama of which it was thegrand exemplar. In the twenty-third chapter of the "BiographiaLiteraria" (1817) he reviewed with severity the Rev. Charles RobertMaturin's tragedy "Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldobrand, "[40] andincidentally gave the genesis of that whole theatric species "which ithas been the fashion, of late years, at once to abuse and to enjoy underthe name of the German Drama. Of this latter Schiller's 'Robbers' wasthe earliest specimen, the first-fruits of his youth. . . Only as _such_did the maturer judgment of the author tolerate the play. " Coleridgeavows that "The Robbers" and its countless imitations were due to thepopularity in Germany of the translations of Young's "Night Thoughts, "Hervey's "Meditations, " and Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe. " "Add theruined castles, the dungeons, the trap-doors, the skeletons, theflesh-and-blood ghosts, and the perpetual moonshine of a modernauthor[41] (themselves the literary brood of the 'Castle of Otranto, ' thetranslations of which, with the imitations and improvements aforesaid, were about that time beginning to make as much noise in Germany as theiroriginals were making in England), and, as the compound of theseingredients duly mixed, you will recognize the so-called _German_ Drama, "which "is English in its origin, English in its materials, and English byreadoption; and till we can prove that Kotzebue, or any of the wholebreed of Kotzebues, whether dramatists or romantic writers or writers ofromantic dramas, were ever admitted to any other shelf in the librariesof well-educated Germans than were occupied by their originals . . . Intheir mother country, we should submit to carry our own brat on our ownshoulders. "

Germany, rather than Italy or Spain, became under these influences for atime the favored country of romance. English tale-writers chose itsforests and dismantled castles as the scenes of their stories ofbrigandage and assassination. One of the best of a bad class offictions, _e. G. _, was Harriet Lee's "The German's Tale: Kruitzner, " inthe series of "Canterbury Tales" written in conjunction with her sisterSophia (1797-1805). Byron read it when he was fourteen, was profoundlyimpressed by it, and made it the basis of "Werner, " the only drama of hiswhich had any stage success. "Kruitzner" is conceived with some power, but monotonously and ponderously written. The historic period is theclose of the Thirty Years' War. It does not depend mainly for its effectupon the time-honored "Gothic" machinery, though it makes a moderate useof the sliding panel and secret passage once again. 

We are come to the gate of the new century, to the date of the "LyricalBallads" (1798) and within sight of the Waverly novels. Looking backover the years elapsed since Thomson put forth his "Winter, " in 1726, weask ourselves what the romantic movement in England had done forliterature; if indeed that deserves to be called a "movement" which hadno leader, no programme, no organ, no theory of art, and very littlecoherence. True, as we have learned from the critical writings of thetime, the movement, such as it was, was not all unconscious of its ownaims and directions. The phrase "School of Warton" implies a certainsolidarity, and there was much interchange of views and some personalcontact between men who were in literary sympathy; some skirmishing, too, between opposing camps. Gray, Walpole, and Mason constitute a group, encouraging each other's studies in their correspondence and occasionalmeetings. Shenstone was interested in Percy's ballad collections, andGray in Warton's "History of English Poetry. " Akenside read Dyer's"Fleece, " and Gray read Beattie's "Minstrel" in MS. The Wartons werefriends of Collins; Collins a friend and neighbor of Thomson; and Thomsona frequent visitor at Hagley and the Leasowes. Chatterton sought to putRowley under Walpole's protection, and had his verses examined by Masonand Gray. Still, upon the whole, the English romanticists had littlecommunity; they worked individually and were scattered and isolated as totheir residence, occupations, and social affiliation. It does not appearthat Gray ever met Collins, or the Wartons, or Shenstone or Akenside; northat MacPherson, Clara Reeve, Mrs. Radcliffe, and Chatterton ever saweach other or any of those first mentioned. There was none of thatunited purpose and that eager partisanship which distinguished theParisian _cénacle Romantische Schule_ whose members have been sobrilliantly sketched by Heine. 

But call it a movement, or simply a drift, a trend; what had it done forliterature? In the way of stimulus and preparation, a good deal. It hadrelaxed the classical bandages, widened the range of sympathy, roused acuriosity as to novel and diverse forms of art, and brought the literarymind into a receptive, expectant attitude favorable to original creativeactivity. There never was a generation more romantic in temper than thatwhich stepped upon the stage at the close of the eighteenth century: ageneration fed upon "Ossian" and Rousseau and "The Sorrows of Werther"and Percy's "Reliques" and Mrs. Radcliffe's romances. Again, in thedepartment of literary and antiquarian scholarship much had beenaccomplished. Books like Tyrwhitt's "Chaucer" and Warton's "History ofEnglish Poetry" had a real importance, while the collection andpreservation of old English poetry, before it was too late, by scholarslike Percy, Ritson, Ellis, and others was a pious labor. 

But if we inquire what positive additions had been made to the modernliterature of England, the reply is disappointing. No one will maintainthat the Rowley poems, "Caractacus, " "The Monk, " "The Grave of KingArthur, " "The Friar of Orders Gray, " "The Castle of Otranto, " and "TheMysteries of Udolpho" are things of permanent value: or even that "TheBard, " "The Castle of Indolence, " and the "Poems of Ossian" take rankwith the work done in the same spirit by Coleridge, Scott, Keats, Rossetti, and William Morris. The two leading British poets of the _findu siècle_, Cowper and Burns, were not among the romanticists. It wasleft for the nineteenth century to perform the work of which theeighteenth only prophesied. 

[1] Scherer's "History of German Literature, " Conybeare's Translation, Vol. II, p. 26. 

[2] Scherer, Vol. II. Pp. 123-24. 

[3] See _ante_, pp. 300-301. 

[4] See _ante_, pp. 337-38. 

[5] "The Beauties of Shakspere. Regularly selected from each Play. Witha general index. Digesting them under proper heads. " By the Rev. Wm. Dodd, 1752. 

[6] "Es war nicht blos die Tiefe der Poesie, welche sie zu Shakespearezog, es war ebenso sehr das sichere Gefühl, das hier germanische Art undKunst sei. "--_Hettner's Geschichte der deutschen Literatur_, 3. 3. 1. S. 51. "Ist zu sagen, dass die Abwendung von den Franzosen zu denstammverwandten Engländern . . . In ihrem geschichtlichen Ursprung undWachsthum wesentlich die Auflehnung des erstarkten germanischenVolksnaturells gegen die erdrückende Uebermacht der romanischenFormenwelt war, " etc. --_Ibid. _ s. 47. See also, ss. 389-95, for a reviewof the interpretation of the great Shaksperian roles by German actorslike Schröder and Fleck. 

[7] "Wir hören einen Nachklang jener fröhlichen Unterhaltungen, in denendie Freunde sich ganz und gar in Shakepear'schen Wendungen und Wortwitzenergingen, in seiner Uebersetzung von Shakespeare's 'Love's Labour'sLost'"--_Hettner_, s. 244. 

[8] See the whole oration (in Hettner, s. 120, ) which gives a most vividexpression of the impact of Shakspere upon the newly aroused mind ofGermany. 

[9] "German Literature, " Vol. II. Pp. 82-83

[10] "Unter allen Menschen des Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts war Geothe wiederder Erste, weicher die lang verachtete Herrlichkeit der gothischenBaukunst empfand und erfasste. "--_Hettner_, 3. 3. 1. , s. 120. 

[11] _Construirtes Ideal_. 

[12] Scherer, II. 129-31. "Oberon" was englished by William Sotheby in1798. 

[13] "Vor den classischen Dichtarten fängt mich bald an zu ekeln, " wroteBürger in 1775. "Charakteristiken": von Erich Schmidt (Berlin, 1886) s. 205. "O, das verwünschte Wort: Klassisch!" exclaims Herder. "DiesesWort war es, das alle wahre Bildung nach den Alten als noch lebendenMustern verdrangte. . . Dies Wort hat manches Genie unter einen Schuttvon Worten vergraben. . . Es hat dem Vaterland blühende Fruchtbäumeentzogen!"--_Hettner_ 3. 3. 1. S. 50. 

[14] "German Literature, " Vol. II. P. 230. 

[15] "Literaturegeschichte, " 3. 3. 1. S. 30-31. 

[16] See _ante_, p. 48. 

[17] "Our polite neighbors the French seem to be most offended at certainpictures of primitive simplicity, so unlike those refined modes of modernlife in which they have taken the lead; and to this we may partly imputethe rough treatment which our poet received from them"--_Essay on Homer_(Dublin Edition, 1776), p. 127. 

[18] See Francis W. Newman's "Iliad" (1856) and Arnold's "Lectures onTranslating Homer" (1861). 

[19] "Romance, " Edgar Poe. 

[20] "Lockhart's Life of Scott, " Vol. I. P. 163. 

[21] For full titles and descriptions of these translations, as well asfor the influence of Bürger's poems in England, see Alois Brandl: "Lenorein England, " in "Charakteristiken, " by Erich Schmidt (Berlin, 1886) ss. 244-48. Taylor said in 1830 that no German poem had been so oftentranslated: "eight different versions are lying on my table and I haveread others. " He claimed his to be the earliest, as written in 1790, though not printed till 1796. "Lenore" won at once the honors ofparody--surest proof of popularity. Brandl mentions two--"Miss Kitty, "Edinburgh, 1797, and "The Hussar of Magdeburg, or the Midnight Phaeton, "Edinburgh, 1800, and quotes Mathias' satirical description of the piece("Pursuits of Literature, " 1794-97) as "diablerie tudesque" and a "'BlueBeard' story for the nursery. " The bibliographies mention a newtranslation in 1846 by Julia M. Cameron, with illustrations by Maclise;and I find a notice in Allibone of "The Ballad of Lenore: a VariorumMonograph, " 4to, containing thirty metrical versions in English, announced as about to be published at Philadelphia in 1866 by CharlesLukens. _Quaere_ whether this be the same as Henry Clay Lukens ("ErraticEnrico"), who published "Lean 'Nora" (Philadelphia, 1870; New York, 1878), a title suggestive of a humorous intention, but a book which Ihave not seen. 

[22] "History of German Literature, " Vol. II. P. 123. 

[23] These are book phrases, not true ballad diction. 

[24] _Cf_. The "Ancient Mariner":

 "The feast is set, the guests are met, May'st hear the merry din. "

[25] "Memoir of Wm. Taylor of Norwich, " by J. W. Robberds (1843), Vol. II. P. 573. 

[26] For Taylor's opinion of Carlyle's papers on Goethe in the _ForeignReview_, see "Historic Survey, " Vol. III. Pp. 378-79. 

[27] "Memoir of Taylor, " Vol. I. P. 255. 

[28] Among the most notable of these was "Maler" (Friedrich) Müller's"Golo und Genoveva" (written 1781; published 1811); Count Törring's"Agnes Bernauerin" (1780); and Jacob Meyer's "Sturm von Borberg" (1778), and "Fust von Stromberg" (1782). Several of these were very successfulon the stage. 

[29] "Essay on Walter Scott. "

[30] Kotzebue's "The Stranger" ("Menschenhass und Reue") still keeps theEnglish stage. Sheridan's "Pizarro"--a version of Katzebue's "Spaniardsin Peru"-was long a favorite; and "Monk" Lewis made another translationof the same in 1799, entitled "Rolla, " which, however, was never acted. 

[31] "State of German Literature. "

[32] Lewis sat in Parliament for Hindon, Wilts, succeeding Beckford of"Vathek" and Fonthill Abbey fame. 

[33] "The Grim White Woman, " in "Tales of Wonder. "

[34] Matthew Arnold's lovely "Scholar Gypsy" was suggested by a passage inthis. 

[35] The following is a list of his principal translations: "The Minister"(1797), from Schiller's "Kabale and Liebe"; played at Covent Garden in1803, as "The Harper's Daughter. " "Rolla" (1799), from Kotzebue's"Spaniards in Peru. " "Adelmorn, or the Outlaw" (1800), played at DruryLane, 1801. "Tales of Terror" (1801) and "Tales of Wonder" (1801). (There seems to be some doubt as to the existence of the alleged Kelsoeditions of these in 1799 and 1800, respectively. See article on Lewisin the "Dict. Nat. Biog. ") "The Bravo of Venice" (1804), a proseromance, dramatized and played at Covent Garden, as "Rugantino, " in 1805. "Feudal Tyrants" (1807), a four-volume romance. "Romantic Tales" (1808), 4 vols. From German and French. 

[36] The printed play had reached its eleventh edition in 1803. 

[37] The "Tales of Terror, " and "Tales of Wonder" are reprinted in asingle volume of "Morley's Universal Library, " 1887. 

[38] See "Memoir of Wm. Taylor, " Vol. II. Pp. 533-38. 

[39] "Memoir of Taylor, " Vol. I. P. 223. 

[40] This was one of the latest successes of the kind. It was played atDrury Lane in 1816 for twenty-two nights, bringing the author 1000pounds, and the printed play reached the seventh edition within the year. Among Maturin's other works were "The Fatal Revenge" (1807), "Manuel"(Drury Lane, 1817) "Fredolfo" (Covent Garden, 1817), and his once famousromance, "Melmoth the Wanderer" (1820), see _ante_, p. 249. 

[41] Mrs. Radcliffe. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[This bibliography is intended to give practical aid to any reader whomay wish to follow up the history of the subject for himself. It by nomeans includes all the books and authors referred to in the text; stillless, all that have been read or consulted in the preparation of thework. ]

 Addison, Joseph. Works. New York, 1856. 6 vols. Akenside, Mark. Poetical Works. Gilfillan's ed. Edinburgh, 1837. Amherst, Alicia. "History of Gardening in England. " London, 1896. Arnold, Matthew. "The Study of Celtic Literature, " and "Lectures on Translating Homer. " London, 1893. Austen, Jane. "Northanger Abbey, " London, 1857. 

 Bagehot, Walter. "Literary Studies. " London, 1879. 2 vols. Beattie, James. Poetical Works. Gilfillan's ed. Edinburgh, 1854. Beckford, William. "History of the Caliph Vathek. " New York, 1869. Bell, John. "Classical Arrangement of Fugitive Poetry. " London, 1790-97. 18 vols. Blair, Robert. Poetical works. Gilfillan's ed. Edinburgh, 1854. Boswell, James. "Life of Samuel Johnson. " Fitzgerald's ed. London, 1874. 3 vols. Boswell, James. "Life of Samuel Johnson. " Abridged ed. New York, 1878. Boyesen, H. H. "Essays on German Literature. " New York, 1892. Brandl, Alois. "Lenore in England, " in "Characteristiken, " by Erich Schmidt. Berlin, 1886. Brunetière, Ferdinand. "Études Critiques. " Troisième Série. Tome III. Paris, 1890. Bryant, Jacob. "Observations upon the Poems of Thomas Rowley. " London, 1781. 2 vols. Brydges, Samuel Egerton. Poems. 4th ed. London, 1807. Bürger, Gottfriend August. "Sämmtliche Werke. " Gottingen, 1844. 4 vols. Byron, Geo. Gordon Noel. Works. London, 1832-33. 15 vols. 

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 Eastlake, Sir Charles L. "A History of the Gothic Revival. " London, 1872. Edwards, Thomas. Sonnets in "Canons of Criticism. " London, 1765. Ellis, George. "Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances. " London, 1811. 2d ed. 3 vols. Ellis, George. "Specimens of the Early English Poets. " London, 1803. 3d ed. 3 vols. Evans, Evan. "Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards. " London, 1764. 

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 Kavanagh, Julia. "English Women of Letters. " London, 1863. 2 vols. Keats, John. "Life and Letters. " By R. Monckton Milnes. New York, 1848. Keats, John. "Poetical Works. " Rossetti's ed. London. 1876. Knight, Charles. "Pictorial Shakspere. " London, 1867. 2d ed. 8 vols. Knox, V. "Essays. " London, 1803. 15th ed. 3 vols. Kotzebue, A. F. F. Von. "The Stranger, " in "Sargent's Modern Standard Drama. " New York, 1847. 2 vols. 

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 INDEX. 

 Abhandlung von dem Wunderbaren, 374 Abuse of Traveling, The, 84, 89 Account of the English Dramatic Poets, An, 69 Account of the Greatest English Poets, An, 80 Account of Wm. Canynge's Feast, 344, 355 Adams, Jean, 95 Addison, Joseph, 35, 37, 40-42, 45, 46, 49-52, 55-57, 80, 120, 126, 139, 141, 148, 152, 178, 179, 181, 210, 218, 219, 223, 226-28, 283-85, 377, 382, 388, 408 Adelmorn, 409 Adonais, 98, 370 Adventurer, The, 207 Adventures of a Star, 353 Aella, 344, 346, 349, 363-65, 367 Aeneid, The, 56, 328 Aesop's Fables, 84 Agamemnon, 75 Agnes Bernauerin, 399 Aiken, Lucy, 391, 397 Akenside, Mark, 52, 75, 84, 85, 91, 102, 106, 124, 136, 139-42, 145, 157, 159, 168, 215, 228, 235, 403, 422, 423 Albion's Triumph, 85 Alfieri, Vittorio, 3 Alley, The, 80 Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, 392, 393 Alonzo the Brave, 415 Alps, The, 182 Ambrosio, see the Monk. Amherst, Alicia, 119, 123 Amis et Amile, 64 Ancient Armor, 189 Ancient Lays, 326 Ancient Mariner, The, 18, 262, 269, 299, 369, 394, 419 Ancient Songs, 293 Anecdotes of Painting, 230, 351 Annus Mirabilis, 137 Another Original Canto, 84 Anti-Jacobin, The, 402, 403 Antiquities of Scotland, 187 Apology for Smectymnuus, 146 Apuleius, Lucius, 16, 220 Arcadia, The Countess of Pembroke's, 239 Archimage, 84 Architectura Gothica, 181 Ardinghello, 400 Argenis, 241, 242 Argument against Abolishing Christianity, 42 Ariosto, Lodovico, 25, 100, 219, 222, 225, 226 Aristotle, 19, 38, 51, 55, 274, 276 Arme Heinrich, Der, 64 Armstrong, Jno. , 106, 124 Arnold's Chronicle, 274 Arnold, Matthew, 71, 173, 315, 389, 408 Ars Poetica, 47 Art of Preserving Health, 124 Art Poétique, L', 47 Aspects of Poetry, 315 Atalanta in Calydon, 35 Athalie, 217 Atlantic Monthly, The, 11 Aucassin et Nicolete, 64, 189, 221 Austen, Jane, 263 Aytoun, Wm. E. , 269

 Babes in the Wood, see Children in the Wood. Babo, Joseph M. , 398 Bacon, Francis, 8, 120 Bagehot, Walter, 17 Bailey's Dictionary, 360 Ballads that Illustrate Shakspere, 284 Ballantyne's Novelist's Library, 249 Balzac, Honoré de, 249 Banks of Yarrow, The, 274 Bannatyne, Geo. , 284 Banville, Théodore F. De, 373 Baour-Lormian, P. M. F. L. , 337 Barbauld, Anna L. , 391 Barclay, Jno. , 241 Bard, The, 173, 193, 194, 196, 424 Barrett, Wm. , 348, 354, 364, 367 Bartholin, Thos. , 191, 196 Battle of Hastings, The, 345, 346, 348, 364, 365 Battle of Otterburn, The, 278 Bayly, T. H. , 254 Beattie, Jas. , 85, 97, 166, l86, 242, 245-47, 251, 302-05, 422 Beaumont and Fletcher, 284 Beauties of Shakspere, The, 377 Beckford, Wm. , 403, 405 Bedingfield, Thos. , 85, 97, 215 Bell, Edward, 340, 342 Bell of Arragon, The, 172 Belle Dame sans Merci, La, 299 Bell's Fugitive Poetry, 159, 161 Bentham, Jas, 180 Beowulf, 25, 318 Beresford, Jas. , 391 Berkeley, Geo. , 31 Bernart de Ventadour, 64 Bertram, 420 Both Gélert, 391 Biographia Literaria, 59, 420 Black-eyed Susan, 57, 273 Blacklock, Thos. , 85, 333 Blair, Hugh, 309, 313, 320. 335 Blair, Robert, 163, 164, 251 Blake, Wm. , 28, 164, 365, 366, 372 Blenheim, 104 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 28, 29, 49 Bodmer, J. J. , 374, 375 Boiardo, M. M. , 25, 100 Boileau-Despreaux, N. , 35, 38, 47, 49, 65, 212, 214, 226, 227 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, 41, 135, 382 Bonny Earl of Murray, The, 300 Bonny George Campbell, 275 Borck, C. Von, 377 Bossuet, J. B. , 38 Boswell, Jas. , 94, 105, 139, 150, 174, 288, 312, 320, 355 Botanic Garden, The, 99 Bouhours, Dominique, 49, 227 Bowles, W. L. , 420 Boy and the Mantle, The, 300 Boyesen, H. H. , 23 Braes of Yarrow, The, 61, 297 Brandl, Alois, 391-93 Bravo of Venice, The, 409 Brentano, Clemens, 384, 402 Bristowe Tragedy, The, 346, 349, 366, 370 Brockes, B. H. , 106 Brown, "Capability, " 124, 130 Brown, Chas. B. , 403 Brown Robyn's Confession, 278 Browne, Sir Thos. , 40, 66 Browne, Wm. , 79 Browning, Robert, 43 Brunetière, Ferdinand, 2, 5, 11, 14 Bryant, Jacob, 356 Brydges, Saml. Egerton, 336 Buchanan, Robt. , 272 Bürger, G. A. , 279, 289, 301, 375, 376, 382, 389-97, 416, 417 Burney, Francis, 252 Burning Babe, The, 41 Burns, Robt. , 57, 95. 112, 187, 334, 360, 424 Burton, J. H. , 178 Burton, Robt. , 162 Byron, Geo. Gordon, Lord, 5, 16, 24, 36, 49, 78, 98, 107, 135, 181, 222, 229, 238, 250, 255, 262, 328-30, 333, 353, 362, 370, 402, 405, 406, 420, 421

 Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, 25 Caleb Williams, 403 Calverley. C. S. , 270 Cambridge, R. O. , 84, 89, 92, 98, 151, 228, 229 Cameron, Ewen, 335 Cameron, Julia M. , 393 Campbell, Thos. , 142, 143 Campbell, J. F. , 314, 322, 323, 325, 327 Canning, Geo. , 402, 403 Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), 27, 63, 358, 359 Canterbury Tales (Lee), 421 Caractacus, 190, 194, 195, 306, 424 Carádoc, 195 Carew, Thos. , 66 Carey, Henry, 57 Caric-thura, 334 Carle of Carlisle, The, 293 Carlyle, Thos. , 317, 330, 334, 397-400 Carmen Seculare, 35 Carter, Jno. , 189 Carthon, 311, 333, 335 Castle of Indolence, the, 75, 85, 92-94, 97, 104, 114, 165, 219, 424 Castle of Otranto, The, 188, 211, 215, 223, 129, 231, 236-43, 247, 249, 253, 255, 340, 346, 362, 367, 401, 409, 411, 414, 415, 421, 424 Castle Spectre, The, 401, 413-15 Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, The, 250, 258, 261 Cath-Loda, 334 Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, 230 Cato, 51, 218, 388 Celtic Literature (Sullivan), 315, 325 Celtic Literature, on the Study of (Arnold), 315 Cerdick, 329 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 244 Cesarotti, M. , 321, 337 Champion of Virtue, The, 241-43 Chanson de Roland, The, 27, 64 Chappell, Wm. , 270 Charakteristiken, 382, 391 Chase, The (Scott), 391 Chase, The (Somerville), 124 Chateaubriand, F. A. De. , 255, 332, 333 Chatterton (Jones and Herman), 373 Chatterton (Masson), 362 Chatterton (Vigny), 372, 373 Chatterton, Thos. , 152, 188, 211, 235, 245, 294, 317, 328, 339-73, 384, 422, 423 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 27, 28, 30, 63, 66, 69, 108, 154, 188, 199, 212, 213, 244, 266, 272, 279, 280, 294, 301, 304, 322, 342, 358-60, 363, 371, 382, 383, 433 Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of, 40, 50, 137 Chevy Chase, 274, 283-86, 300, 346, 377 Child, F. J. , 267, 284 Child Maurice, 292 Child of Elle, The, 289, 290, 301 Child Waters, 281, 295, 298, 301 Childe Harold, 98, 250, 333, 334, 364 Children in the Wood, The, 273, 283, 285, 288, 302 Choice of Hercules, The, 85 Chrestien de Troyes, 27 Christabel, 363, 369, 394 Christian Ballads, 165 Christ's Kirk o' the Green, 66 Churchill, Chas. , 353 Cibber, Colley, 74, 176 Cid, The, 298 City of Dreadful Night, The, 162 Clarissa Harlowe, 352, 421 Classic and Romantic, 11 Classiques et Romantiques, 2 Classische Walpurgisnacht, 385 Claudina von Villa Bella, 417 Clerk, Archibald, 313, 320, 321, 323, 324 Clerk Colvin, 279, 417 Clerkes Tale, The, 280, 281 Coleridge, S. T. , 59, 66, 73, 108, 110, 161, 188, 262, 265, 269, 299, 328, 363, 366, 368, 369, 372, 376, 387, 388, 394, 419-21, 424 Colin's Mistakes, 84 Collins, Wm. , 25, 75, 104, 110, 112, 114, 118, 129, 136, 142, 151, 155, 156, 158, 163, 165, 166, 168-72, 175, 184, 186, 193, 197, 215, 251, 279, 281, 384, 403, 422, 423 Collection of Old Ballads, A. , 284 Colman, Geo. , Jr. , 176, 254, 417 Colvin, Sidney, 16-18 Companion to the Oxford Guide Book, 202 Complaint of Ninathoma, The, 328 Complete Art of Poetry, The, 69, 72 Comus, 16, 144, 149, 150, 215 Conan, 195 Concubine, The, 85, 95 Conjectures on Original Composition, 387 Conquest of Granada, The, 44 Contemplation, 297 Cooper's Hill, 39 Coriolanus, 72, 74 Corneille, Pierre, 38, 65, 67 Corsair, The, 334 Cottle, Joseph, 350, 358, 368 Count of Narbonne, The, 240 Country Walk, The, 142 Cowley, Abraham, 37, 38, 53, 66, 79, 120, 228 Cowper, Wm. , 53, 57, 103, 108, 110, 112, 115, 424 Coxe, A. C. , 165 Crabbe, Geo. , 103 Crashaw, Richard, 41 Croft. Herbert, 367, 368 Croma, 336 Cromwell, 19, 35 Croxall, Saml. , 84 Crusade, The, 199 Cumberland, Richard, 74, 177 Cumnor Hall, 94 Cyder, 104, 124

 Dacier, Anne L. , 49 Dalrymple, Sir David, 291, 306, 336 Danmarks Gamie Folkeviser, 266 Dante Alighieri, 22, 28, 29, 64, 235 Darke Ladye, The, 369 Darthula, 314, 335 Darwin, Erasmus, 99 Davenant, Wm. , 67, 74, 137, 226 David Balfour, 258 Davies, John, 137 De Anglorum Gentis Origine, 192 De Causis Contemnendae Mortis, 191 De Imitatione Christi, 64 Dean of Lismore's Book, The, 314 Death of Calmar and Orla, The, 328 Death of Cuthullen, The, 335 Death of Hoel, The, 195 Death of Mr. Pope, 85 Defence of Poesy, 72, 274 Defence of the Epilogue to the Conquest of Granada, 71 De Foe, Daniel, 40 Demonology and Witchcraft, 42, 189 Demosthenes, 3 Deirdrè, 314 Denham, Sir Jno. , 39 Denis, Michael, 337, 377 Dennis, Jno. , 49, 62, 69, 72, 74, 285 Descent of Odin, The, 191, 192, 220 Deschanel, Émile, 2 Description of the Leasowes, 133, 139 Descriptive Poem, A, 185 Deserted Farm-house, The, 177 Deserted Village, The, 91, 207 Deutscher Art und Kunst, Einige Fliegende Blätter, von, 380, 381 Dictionary of French Antiquities, 221 Dictionary of National Biography, 359 Dies Irae, 64 Dirge in Cymbeline, The, 75, 163 Dissertatio de Bardis, 195 Dissertation on Fable and Romance, 242, 245-47 Dissertation on the Authenticity of Ossian, 320 Divine Comedy, The, 27 Divine Emblems, 164 Dobson, Austin, 272 Dobson, Susannah, 221 Dodd, Wm. , 377 Doddington, Geo. Bubb, 111 Dodsley, Jas. , 349 Dodsley, Robert, 84, 85, 132, 133, 135, 139, 209 Dodsley's Miscellany, 137, 159, 165 Don Juan, 5, 49 Donne, Jno. , 28, 37, 66 Dorset, Chas. Sackville, Earl of, 283 Douglas, 170, 276, 308 Dream, A, 85 Dream of Gerontius, The, 41 Drummer, The, 408 Dryden, Jno. , 27, 41, 44, 49, 50-53, 62, 63, 66-68, 70, 71, 74, 79, 80, 104, 137, 148, 149, 177, 192, 209, 210, 212, 213, 216, 265, 283 Dugdale, Wm. , 198 Dunciad, The, 34, 56 Dürer, Albrecht, 162 D'Urfey, Thos. , 74 Dyer, Jno. , 75, 102, 103, 106, 119, 124, 142-45, 168, 215, 422

 Early English Metrical Romances, 301 Eastlake, Sir Chas. , 54, 55, 199, 231-33 Ecclesiastical Sonnets, 145 Edda, The, 64, 190, 196, 220, 313, 390 Edinburgh Review, The, 350, 397 Education, 85, 89, 90, 126 Education of Achilles, The, 85, 97 Edward, 274, 300 Edwards, Thos. , 53, 89, 161 Effusions of Sensibility, 250 Eighteenth Century Literature (Gosse), 84, 104, 106, 163, l69, 362 Elegant Extracts, 211 Elegies (Shenstone's), 137, 138 Elegy on the Death of Prince Frederick, 85 Elegy to Thyrza, 135 Elegy Written in a Churchyard in South Wales, 176 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 103, 137, 157, 163, 167, 173-77, 204 Elinoure and Juga, 346, 352, 354 Ellis, Geo. , 188, 301, 402, 423 Elstob, Elizabeth, 192 Emerson, R, W. , 66, 388 Emilia Galotti, 380 Endymion, 370 English and Scottish Popular Ballads, The, 267 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 405 English Garden, The, 123-27, 151 English Literature in the Eighteenth Century (Perry), 7, 163, 307, 211, 337 English Metamorphosis, 364, 365 English Romantic Movement, The (Phelps), 84, 85, l97, 283, 297, 329 English Women of Letters, 249, 262 Enid, 281 Enquiry into the Authenticity of the Rowley Poems, 359 Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning, 208 Enthusiast, The, 151-53, 160 Epigoniad, the, 89 Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, 56, 157, 163, 218, 220 Epistle to Augustus, 66, 69, 72, 115 Epistle to Mathew, 370 Epistle to Sacheverel, 80 Epistle to the Earl of Burlington, 120, 129 Epitaphium Damonis, 146 Epithalamium, 84 Erl-King, The, 386, 416 Erskine, Wm. , 203, 404 Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 68, 70 Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning, 69 Essay on Criticism, 47, 50, 388 Essay on Gothic Architecture, 180 Essay on Gray (Lowell), 209 Essay on Homer, 387, 389 Essay on Man, 34, 41, 113, 175 Essay on Poetry, 47 Essay on Pope (Lowell), 60, 169, 173 Essay on Pope (Warton), 97, 118, 149, 160, 163, 185, 193, 206, 212-20, 224 Essay on Satire, 47, 80 Essay on Scott, 400 Essay on Shakspere, 69, 72 Essay on the Ancient Minstrels, 245, 293, 302 Essay on the Rowley Poems, 359 Essay on Truth, 303 Essays on German Literature, 23 Essays on Men and Manners, 127 Essays on Poetry and Poets, 363 Ethelgar, 328 Etherege, Geo. , 38 Evans, Evan, 195 Eve of St. Agnes, The, 98, 257, 363 Eve of St. John, The, 417 Eve of St. Mark, The, 177, 371 Evelina, 243, 252 Evelyn, Jno. , 7 Evergreen, The, 284, 286 Excellente Ballade of Charitie, An, 366 Excursion, The (Mallet), 134 Excursion, The (Wordsworth), 304

 Fables, (Aesop), 84 Fables (Dryden), 63 Faërie Queene, The, 16, 37, 66, 77-101, 154, 215, 225, 365 Fair Annie, 281, 295 Fair Circassian, The, 84 Fair Eleanor, 367 Fair Janet, 268 Fair Margaret and Sweet William, 268, 279, 283, 286, 300 Farewell Hymn to the Country, A, 85 Fatal Revenge, The, 249, 420 Fatal Sisters, The, 191 Faust, 27, 141, 384, 385, 401 Fergusson, Jas. , 233 Feudal Tyrants, 409 Fichte, J. G. , 387 Fielding, Henry, 26, 40, 76, 383 Filicaja, Vincenzio, 49 Fingal, 309, 311, 313, 317, 322, 324, 335, 336, 338 Fire King, The, 417 First Impressions of England, 109, 133 Fischer, Der, 386 Fisher, The, 416 Five English Poets, 372 Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, 190 Flaming Heart, The, 41 Fleece, The, 124, 144, 145, 422 Fleshly School of Poets, The, 272 Fletcher, Giles, 78 Fletcher, Jno. , 25, 51, 79, 117, 162, 210 Fletcher, Phineas, 78 Ford, Jno. , 241 Foreign Review, The, 398 Forsaken Bride, The, 280 Fouqué, F. De la M. , 4, 26, 384 Fragments of Ancient Poetry, 306, 307, 309, 311, 323, 326, 328, 336 Frankenstein, 401, 403, 406 Frederick and Alice, 416 Frederick, Prince of Wales, 84, 137 Fredolfo, 420 Freneau, Philip, 177 Friar of Orders Grey, The, 298, 301, 424 Froissart, Jean, 27, 64, 236 From Shakspere to Pope, 39, 60 Frühling, Der, 106 Fuller, Thos. , 28 Furnivall, F. J. , 292 Fust von Stromberg, 399

 Gammer Gurton's Needle, 293 Gandalin, 381 Gang nach dem Eisenhammer, Der, 386 "Garlands, " The, 284 Garrick, David, 162, 209, 287 Gaston de Blondville, 250, 259-62 Gates, L. E. , 41, 44 Gautier, Théophile, 372, 423 Gay Goshawk, The, 279 Gay, Jno. , 35, 57, 273 Gebir, 18, 245 Gedicht eines Skalden, 190, 377 Génie du Christianisme, Le, 332 Gentle Shepherd, The, 79 Georgics, The, 111 German's Tale, The, 421 Geron der Adeliche, 381 Gerstenberg, H. W. Von, 190, 377, 387 Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur (Hettner) 300, 378, 387 Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, 384 Ghost-Seer, The, 419 Gierusalemme Liberata, 214, 225 Gilderoy, 283 Gildon, Chas. , 49, 62, 69, 72 Giles Jollop, 418 Gil Maurice, 276 Gilpin, Wm. , 185 Glanvil, Joseph, 390, 408 Gleim, J. W. L. , 375 Glenfinlas, 417 Goddwyn, 344, 363-65 Godred Crovan, 329 Godwin, Wm. , 403 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 3, 4, 11, 31, 141, 252, 255, 275, 330, 334, 377-81, 384-87, 389, 397-99, 404, 409, 416, 417 "Göttinger Hain, " The, 378 Gotz von Berlichingen, 334, 375, 380, 381, 385, 398-404, 418 Golden Ass, The, 16 Golden Treasury, The, 57, 277 Golo und Genoveva, 399 Goldsmith, Oliver, 76, 91, 112, 113, 162, 177, 186, 207-11, 287, 354 Gondibert, 137 Gorthmund, 329 Gosse, Edmund, 39, 53, 60, 84, 103, 106, 163, 169, 192, 272, 362 Gottfried of Strassburg, 3, 64 Gottsched, J. C. , 374, 383 Gower, Jno. , 266, 272 Grainger, James, 124, 287 Granville, Geo. , 47 Grave, The, 104, 163, 164, 175 Grave of King Arthur, The, 199-201, 424 Graves, Richard, 130-33, 137 Gray, Thos. , 25, 32, 52, 53, 75, 89, 103, 117-19, 123, 136, 137, 139, 145, 151, 155, 157-60, 163, 164, 166-69, 172-85, 190-206, 199, 201, 204, 206, 209, 211, 215, 2l6, 2l8, 220, 221, 229, 235, 238, 251, 276, 286, 302, 306-08, 336, 352, 356, 362, 377, 384, 387, 422, 423 Green, Matthew, 136 Grene Knight, The, 293 Grim White Woman, The, 407 Grongar Hill, 104, 119, 142, 143, 145 Grose, Francis, 187 Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, The, 71 Grundtvig, Svend, 266 Guardian, The, 120, 126, 413 Guest, Lady Charlotte, 189 Gulliver's Travels, 26 Gummere, F. B. , 276 Gwin, King of Norway, 367

 Hagley, 108, 109, 122, 127, 131, 133, 136, 183, 303, 422 Hales, J. W. , 289, 290 Hallam, Henry, 189 Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 379, 387 Hamilton, Wm. , 61, 279 Hamlet, 387, 401 Hammond, Jas. , 137 Hardyknut, 286 Harper's Daughters, The, 409 Hartmann von Aue, 64, 381 Harvey, Geo. , 336 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 403 Haystack in the Flood, The, 299, 363 Hayward, A. , 234 Hazlitt, Wm. , 161, 254 Hazlitt, W. C. , 205 Hearne, Thos. , 201 Hedge, F. H. , 11, 14, 16 Heilas, The, 329 Heilige Vehm, Der, 418 Heine, Heinrich, 2, 24, 330, 409, 423 Heir of Lynne, The, 290 Helen of Kirkconnell, 274 Heliodorus, 244 Hellenics, 3 Henriade, The, 50, 214, 216, 217 Henry and Emma, 295, 296 Herbert, Geo. , 28, 66, 228 Herd, David, 299 Herder, J. G. Von, 274, 300, 301, 337, 376, 378, 380, 384, 387, 389, 416 Hermann und Dorothea, 4, 385 Hermit of Warkworth, The, 186, 289, 294, 298 Hermit, The (Beattie), 186, 305 Hermit, The (Goldsmith), 113, 186 Hermit, The (Parnell), 186 Herrick, Robert, 66 Hervarer Saga, The, 192 Hervey, Jas. , 421 Hettner, H. J. T. , 378, 379, 38l, 383, 387 Hicks, Geo. , 192, 193 Hill, Aaron, 217 Hind and the Panther, The, 41 Histoire de Dannemarc, 190, 221, 377 Histoire des Troubadours, 221, 222 Histoire du Romantisme, 372 Historical Anecdotes of Heraldry, and Chivalry, 221 Historic Doubts, 230 Historic Survey of German Poetry, 397, 398, 418 Historic of Peyncteynge in England, 351 History of Architecture, 233 History of Bristol, 348, 364 History of Charoba, Queen of Egypt, 245 History of England (Hume), 100 History of English Literature (Taine), 316 History of English Poetry (Warton), 36, 205, 206, 211, 245, 260, 359, 422, 423 History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 32, 41 History of Gardening, 119, 123 History of German Literature (Scherer), 374, 380, 382, 385, 394 History of Opinion on the Writings of Shakspere, 74 History of Santon Barsisa, 413 History of the Gothic Revival, 54, 55, 231 Hobbes, Thos. , 226 Hölty, L. H. C. , 375 Hole, R. , 336 Home, Jno. , 132, 170, 276, 308, 309 Homer, 3, 25, 35, 37, 50, 55, 100, 110, 215, 222-24, 271, 284, 285, 310, 313, 318, 330, 335, 376, 387-89 Homes of the Poets, 133, 364 Horace, 38, 47, 55, 72, 156, 223, 285, 411 Houghton, J. Monckton Milnes, Lord, 370 Hours in a Library, 235 Hours of Idleness, 329 House of Aspen, The, 418 House of Superstition, The, 85 "How Sleep the Brave, " 168 Howitt, Wm. , 133, 134, 364 Hugo, Victor Marie, 3, 19, 35, 36, 77, 115, 209 Hume, Robert, 100, 303, 308 Hunting of the Cheviot, The, 274, 278. 295 Huon of Bordeaux, 382 Hurd, Richard, 221-26, 245, 246, 375, 387 Hussar of Magdeburg, The, 393 Hymn (Thomson), 106 Hymn to Adversity, 167, 173 Hymn to Divine Love, 85 Hymn to May, 85 Hymn to the Supreme Being, 85 Hypenon, 35

 Idler, The, 207 Idyls of the King, The, 146 Il Bellicoso, 153 Il Pacifico, 153, 154 Il Penseroso, 104, 115, 142, 147, 149, 150, 154, 162, 170, 175, 334 Iliad, The, 16, 36, 56, 58, 214, 269, 313, 338, 388, 389 Imaginary Conversations, 18, 43 Immortality, 85 Indian Burying Ground, The, 177 Indian Emperor, The, 44 Ingelow, Jean, 270 Inscription for a Grotto, 136 Institution of the Order of the Garter, 159, 193, 194 Introduction to the Lusiad, 85 Iphigenie auf Tauris, 3, 385, 397 Ireland, Wm. H. , 77, 294 Irene, 51 Isis, 176 Italian, The, 250, 252, 263 Italienische Reise, 385 Ivanhoe, 4, 23, 188, 237, 262, 404

 Jamieson, Robert, 292 Jane Shore, 286 January and May, 63 Jemmy Dawson, 273 Jephson, Robert, 240 Jew's Daughter, The, 300 Jock o' Hazeldean, 269, 277, 363 Johnnie Armstrong, 274, 278, 283 Johnnie Cock, 279, 280 Johnson, Saml. , 37, 40, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 59, 66, 68, 70, 71, 89, 90, 94, 97, 99, 104, 105, 113, 131, 132, 136-39, 144, 145, 150, 151, 172-75, 177, 179, 186, 196-98, 207, 224, 243, 274, 285, 287-89, 295, 302, 303, 312, 313, 320, 328, 354, 355 Joinville, Jean Sire de, 27, 64 Jones, Inigo, 121, 230 Jonson, Ben, 25, 50, 71, 79, 97, 210, 285 Jordan, The, 85 Journal in the Lakes, 183, 184 Journey through Holland, 257 Joyce, R. D. , 314 Julius Caesar, 377 Junius, Letters of, 353

 Kabale mid Liebe, 409 Kalewala, The, 313 Kampf mit dem Drachen, Der, 386 Kant, Immanuel, 31, 387 Katharine Janfarie, 277 Kavanagh, Julia, 249, 262 Keate, Geo. , 182 Keats. Jno. , 18, 35, 94, 107, 169, 177, 257, 263, 265, 353, 362, 363, 370-72, 434 Keepsake, The, 418 Kemp Owen, 279 Kenilworth, 94, 260 Kenrick, 329 Kent, Wm. , 129, 135, 152 Kersey's Dictionary, 360, 361 King Arthur's Death, 278 King Estmere, 279, 300 King John and the Abbot, 301 Kinmont Willie, 278 Kittridge, G. L. , 191, 192 Kleist, E. C. Von, 106 Klinger, F. M. , 379 Klopstock, P. G. , 338, 377 Knight, Chas. , 74 Knight of the Burning Pestle, The, 284 Knox, V. , 211, 212, 228 Knythinga Saga, The, 196 Kotzebue, A. F. F. Von, 400, 409, 421 Kriegslied, 377 Kruitzner, 421, 423

 La Bruyère, Jean de, 138 La Calprenède, G. De C. Chevalier de, 6 Lachin Y Gair, 329 Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament, 283 Lady of the Lake, The, 96, 299, 399 La Fontaine, Jean de, 38 Laing, Malcolm, 318, 320, 329 L'Allegro, 104, 129, 142, 144, 147, 149, 150, 154, 158, 170 Lamartine, A. M. L. De, 176 Lamb, Chas. , 28, 161, 199 Land of Liberty, 85 Land of the Muses, The, 85 Landor, W. S. , 3, 18, 34, 42, 136, 245, 293 Lang, Andrew, 272 Langbaine, Gerard, 49, 62, 69, 71 Langley, Batty, 54, 121, 233 Lansdowne, Geo. Granville, Earl of, 47, 74 Laocoön, 384, 387 Lass of Fair Wone, The, 397 Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, 165, 191, 336, 404 Lays of Ancient Rome, 269, 298 Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, 269 Leabhar na Feinne, 314, 323 Lear, 217 Leasowes, The, 127, 130-37, 139, 152, 183, 213, 422 Le Bossu, René, 49 Lectures on Translating Homer, 389 Legend of Sir Guy, 278 Legenda Aurea, 3 Lee, Harriet and Sophia, 421 Le Lac, 176 Leiand, Thos. , 244, 247 Leland's Collectanea, 260 Lenora, 391-97, 415, 417 Lenox, Charlotte, 70 Lenz, J. M. R. , 379, 387 Leonidas, 337 Lessing, G. E. , 56, 300, 375, 376, 379, 380, 384, 387, 397 Letourneur, Pierre, 337 Letter from Italy, 57, 218 Letter to Master Canynge, 344 Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 221-26, 245 Letters to Shenstone, Lady Luxborough's, 135, 229 Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet, 18-22 Lewis, M. G. , 249, 252, 262, 376, 394, 396, 400, 401, 404-18, 420 Leyden, Jno. , 417 Library of Romance, 381 Life of Lyttelton (Phillimore), 74, 108 Lines on Observing a Blossom, 368 Lines Written at Tintern Abbey, 140 Literary Movement in France, The, 35, 44, 61 Literatura Runica, 191 Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard, 283 Lives of the English Poets (Winstanley), 69 Lives of the Novelists (Scott), 262 Lives of the Poets (Johnson), 51, 68, 90, 97, 105, 114, 131, 139, 150, 172, 196, 286 Lloyd, Robert, 85, 91, 98, 151, 176 Lockhart, J. G. , 298, 391, 398, 402, 403, 406 Longfellow, H. W. , 198, 199, 269 Longinus, 38 Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, 244, 247, 248 Lord Lovel, 268 Lord Randall, 275 Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, 268 Lotus Eaters, The, 18, 92 Love and Madness, 368 Love's Labour's Lost, 379 Lowell, J. R. , 27, 59, 114, 139, 144, 169, 173, 206, 209, 403 Lowth, Robert, 85, 387 Lürlei, Die, 402 Lukens, Chas. , 393 Lusiad, The, 85, 94 Lycidas, 37, 115, 145, 149, 150, l54, 192 Lydgate, Jno. , 206, 266, 344, 359 Lyrical Ballads, 58, 109, 112, 160, 183, 218, 288, 299, 316, 422 Lytel Geste of Robyn Hode, The, 274 Lyttelton, Geo. Lord, 90, 91, 95, 108, 111, 121, 127, 131, 132, 135-37, 303

 Mabinogion, The, 189 Macaulay, T. B. , 69, 238, 269, 272, 298 Macbeth, 223 McClintock, W. D. , 102 Mackenzie, Henry, 252, 390 Mackenzie. Jno. , 321 McLauchlan, Thos. , 314 Macmillan's Magazine, 326 McNeil, Archibald, 326 MacPherson, Jas. , 24, 195, 294, 302, 306-38, 377, 423 Madden, Sir Frederick, 292 Malherbe, François de, 38 Mallet, David, 75, 105, 106, 124, 235, 283, 286 Mallet, P. H. , 190, 191, 196, 221, 374, 377 Malone, Edmond, 32, 356, 362 Malory, Sir Thos. , 27 Manfred, 334 Man of Feeling, The, 352, 390 Mansus, 146 Manuel, 420 Map, Walter, 27 Marbie Faun, The, 23 Mariner's Wife, The, 95 Marlowe, Christopher, 66 Marmion, 203, 234, 258, 336, 399, 404, 411 Marriage of Frederick, 84 Marriage of Gawaine, The, 278 Mary Hamilton, 280 Mason, Wm. , 85, 91, 123-27, 129, 151, 153-55, 160, 165, 167, 176, 180, 183, 190, 194-96, 211, 213, 215, 221, 251, 276, 306, 307, 337, 352, 422, 423 Masson, David, 148, 362 Mather, Cotton, 408 Mathias, Thos. J. , 393 Maturin, Chas. Robert, 249, 420 Meditations (Harvey), 421 Melmoth the Wanderer, 249, 420 Mémoires sur l'ancienne Chevalerie, 221, 222 Memoirs of a Sad Dog, 353 Mendez, Moses, 85, 91, 159 Menschenhass und Reue, 400

 Merchant of Venice, The, 372 Meyrick, Sir Saml. R. , 189 Michael, 4 Mickle, Wm. J. , 85, 94-96 Middle Ages, The (Hallam) 189 Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 76, 235, 382 Miller and the King's Daughter, The, 283 Miller, Johann M. , 375, 400 Miller, Hugh, 108, 109, 130, 133, 136 Milles, Jeremiah, 356, 361 Milnes, R. Monckton, 370 Milton, Jno. , 16, 34, 37, 40, 52, 53, 55, 56, 63, 66, 69, 78, 79, 94, 104, 110, 111, 115, 129, 140, 142, 144, 146-62, 170, 173, 193, 199, 212, 213, 215, 216, 218, 219, 222, 225, 244, 265, 283, 297, 318, 371, 374, 391 Miltonic Imitations in Dodsley, List of, 159-61 Minister, The, 409 Minnesingers, The, 375 Minot, Lawrence, 293 Minstrel, The, 85, 97, 345, 302-05, 422. Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, 270 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 262, 267, 377, 299, 404. Mirror, The, 85 Miscellany Poems (Dryden), 192, 283 Miss Kitty, 393 Modern Painters, 26, 34 Möser, Justus, 375, 380 Molière, J. B. P. , 38 Monasticon, Anglicanum, 198 Monk, The, 249, 262, 263, 401, 404, 407-13, 420, 424 Monody on the Death of Chatterton, 368 Monody Written near Stratford-upon-Avon, 201 Monologue, A, 176 Montagu, Elizabeth R. , 303, 337 Monthly Magazine, The, 391, 392 Monthly Review, The, 397 Moral Essays, 220 More, Hannah, 151 Morning, 85 Morris, Wm. , 191, 203, 424 Morte Artus, 64, 390 Motherwell, Wm. , 270, 299 Mud King, The, 418 Mütler, Friedrich, 399 Müller, Johannes, 376 Mulgrave, Jno. Sheffield, Earl of, 47, 63 Murdoch, Patrick, 105 Musaeus, 85, 153-55 Musen Almanach, 393 Musset, Alfred de, 18-22 Myller, C. H. , 375 Mysterious Mother, The, 237, 238, 241, 251, 253, 401, 409 Mysteries of Udolpho, The, 250, 252-55, 262, 263, 401, 424

 Nares' and Halliwell's Glossary, 189 Nathan der Weise, 376, 397 Nativity, The, 85 Nature, 388 Nature of Poetry, The, 162 New Canto of Spenser's Fairy Queen, A, 84, 85 Newman, F. W. , 389 Newman, J. H. , 41 New Memoirs of Milton, 149 New Principles of Gardening, 121 Nibelungen Lied, The, 25, 64, 313, 375, 376 Nichols' Anecdotes, 192 Night Piece on Death, 61, 177 Night Thoughts, 104, 163, l75, 387, 421 Noble Moringer, The, 418 Nocturnal Reverie, 57, 61 Noel, Roden. 363 Nonnë Prestës Tale, The, 28 Northanger Abbey, 263, 264 Northern Antiquities, 190 Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas, 278 Nosce Teipsum, 137 Not-brown Maid, The, 274, 295, 296, 300, 302 Notes and Illustrations to Ossian, 318 Notes on the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems, 326 Nôtre Dame de Paris, 3 Nouvelle Héloise, La, 31 Novalis, 384

 Oberon, 382 Observations on English Meter, 206 Observations on Modern Gardening (Whately), 123 Observations on The Faëry Queene, 99-101, 204, 213, 223 Observations on The Scenery of Great Britain, 185 Observations upon the Poems of Thomas Rowley, 356 Odes, (Akenside's), 142 Odes, (Collins'), 142, 155, 156 Odes, (Gray's), 362 Odes, (J. Warton's), 142, 155, 156 Odes, For the New Year, 199. On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 167, 173, 216. On His Majesty's Birthday, 199. On the Approach of Summer, 158. On the Death of Thomson, 163, 165, 194. On the First of April, 158. On the Installation of the Duke of Grafton, 159. On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 147, 149, 150, 156. On the Passions, 166, 169, 175. On the Spring, 167, 173. On the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, 25, 114, 170-72. Sent to Mr. Upton, 201. To a Grecian Urn, 18. To a Nightingale (Keats) 18. To an Aeolus Harp, 165. To Curio, 85. To Evening (Collins), 156, 165, 168. To Evening (Warton), 165. To Fear, 156. To Freedom, 363. To Liberty, 194. To Oblivion, 176. To Obscurity, 176. To Peace, 305. To Pyrrha, 156. To Simplicity, 156. To Solitude, 165. To the Hon. Charles Townsend, 84. To the Marquis of Tavistock, 84. To the Nightingale (Warton), 165. To the Queen, 84. Written at Vale Royal Abbey, 204 Odyssey, The, 16, 269 Oedipus Rex, 3, 19, 241 Of Heroic Virtue, 192, 197 Of Poetry, 192 Old English Ballads, 276 Old English Baron, The, 241-43, 249 Oldmixon, Jno. , 62 Old Plays (Dodsley) 209

 Olive, The, 84 On King Arthur's Round Table, 201 On Modern Gardening (Walpole), 123, 130 On Myself, 79 On Our Lady's Church, 344 On the Prevailing Taste for the Old English Poets, 211 On the River Duddon, 162 On Witches (Glanvil), 408 Opie, Amelia, 252 Orcades, 191 Origin of Romantic Fiction, The, 205 Original Canto of Spenser, An, 84 Ormond, 403 Osorio, 420 Ossian (MacPherson's), 25, 117, 178, 195, 235, 245, 256, 302, 306-38, 355, 356, 377, 378, 423, 424 Ossian, Poems of, in the Original Gaelic (Clerk), 313 Ossian, Poems of, in the Original Gaelic (In Gillie's Collection), 326 Ossian, Poems of, in the Original Gaelic (Highland Society's Text), 321, 324, 326 Ossian, Poems of, in the Original Gaelic (In Stewart's Collection), 326 Othello, 372 Otto von Wittelsbach, 398 Otway, Thos. , 74, 210 Ovid, 25 Oxford Sausage, The, 199

 Pain and Patience, 84 Palamon and Arcite, 28, 215 Palgrave. F. T. , 57, 277 Pamela, 252 Paradise Lost, 50, 52, 55-57, 104, 110, 129, 145, 147, 148, 151, 217, 375 Paradise Regained, 147, 148 Parliament of Sprites, The, 344, 365 Parnell, Thos. , 58, 61, 177, 186, 210 Parzival, 64 Pastoral Ballad, A. , 138 Pastoral in the Manner of Spenser, A. , 85 Pastoral Ode, A. , 133 Pastorals (Philips'), 80 Pastorals (Pope's), 57, 112, 193, 215, 216 Pater, Walter, 7, 8, 16 Paul and Virginia, 22, 112 Pearch's Collection, 159, i82, 185 Peck, F. , 149 Pellissier, George, 35, 44, 61, 65 Pepys, Saml. , 283, 291 Percy Folio MS. , The, 288, 290-93 Percy, Thos. , 186, 196, 212, 235, 246, 272, 284, 306, 319, 326, 383, 387, 422. See also Reliques. Perigrine Pickle, 139 Perle, The, 189 Perry, T. S. , 7, 163, 176, 211, 212, 251, 337 Persiles and Sigismonda, 244 Peter Bell, 299 Petrarca, Francesco, 29 Peveril of the Peak, 420 Pfarrers Tochter, Des, 396 Phelps, W. L. , 84, 85, 191, 197, 283, 297, 329 Philander, 85 Philantheus, 85 Philips, Ambrose, 80, 102, 284 Philips, Edward, 67, 80 Philips, Jno. , 104, 124 Phillimore's Life of Lyttelton, 74, 108 Phoenix, The, 241 Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry, 293 Pilgrim's Progress, The, 5 Pindar, 35, 54, 89 Pitt, Christopher, 85 Pitt, Wm. , 90, 132, 133 Pizarro, 400 Plato, 42, 47 Pleasures of Hope, The, 142, 143 Pleasures of Imagination, The, 124, 139-42, 157 Pleasures of Melancholy, The, 142, 156-58, 160, 161, 194 Pleasures of Memory, The, 142 Poe, Edgar A. , 202, 356, 390, 403 Poem in Praise of Blank Verse, 217 Poems after the Minnesingers, 375 Poems after Walther von der Vogelweide, 375 Pope, Alexander, 33, 36, 39, 41, 47, 50-54, 56-59, 61, 63, 65, 66, 69, 72, 75, 77-79, 92, 93, 99, 102, 105, 108, 111-13, 115, 120, 121, 126, 129, 136, 149, 150, 154, 157, 159, 162, 163, 193, 210, 212-20, 228, 235, 265, 382, 383, 388 Popular Ballads and Songs (Jamieson), 292 Popular Tales of the West Highlands, 322, 323, 325 Porter, Jane, 252, 371 Portuguese Letters, The, 22 Praelectiones de Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum, 387 Preface to Johnson's Shakspere, 70 Preface to Pope's Shakspere, 72 Prelude, The, 304 Price, Richard, 205 Prior, Matthew, 35, 57, 63, 84, 159, 291, 295, 296, 382 Prioresse Tale, The, 279, 342 Progress of Envy, The, 85, 91 Progress of Poesy, The, 173 Progress of Romance, The, 243-45 Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane, 59, 70 Proud Maisie, 277 Psalm XLII. , 84 Psyche, 85 Pugin, A. N. W. , 234 Pure, Ornate and Grotesque Art, 17 Pursuits of Literature, 393 Pye, H. J. , 392

 Quarles, Francis, 164

 Racine, J. B. , 38, 44, 65, 379 Radcliffe, Anne, 232, 237, 249-64, 402, 408, 409, 411, 421, 423 Rambler, The, 97, 287, 288, 353 Ramsay, Allan, 61, 79, 284, 286, 297, 300 Rape of the Lock, The, 36, 220 Rapin, René, 49 Rasselas, 186 Räuber, Die. See Robbers. Reeve, Clara, 241-45, 247, 249-64, 423 Regnier, Mathurin, 38 Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 139, 188, 190, 206, 209, 211, 223, 265, 274, 278, 287-302, 317, 346, 362, 369, 376, 423 Remorse, 420 Report of the Committee of the Highland Society on Ossian, 319 Resolution and Independence, 339 Retirement, 305 Revenge, The, 353 Revival of Ballad Poetry in the Eighteenth Century, 290 Revolt of Islam, The, 5 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 202, 303 Richardson, Saml. , 31, 32, 40, 76, 252, 421 Riddles Wisely Expounded, 270 Ridley, G. , 85 Rime of Sir Thopas, The, 28 Rising in the North, The, 278 Ritson, Joseph, 188, 205, 246, 287, 290, 293, 294, 301, 423 Ritter Toggenburg, 386 Robbers, The, 385, 391, 402, 417, 418, 420 Robin Hood and the Monk, 273, 278, 283 Robin Hood and the Old Man, 292 Robin Hood and the Potter, 273 Robin Hood Ballads, The, 281-83, 301 Robin Hood (Ritson's), 292 Robinson Crusoe, 5, 26 Rogers, Saml. , 142, 181 Rokeby, 277 Rolla, 400, 409 Rolls of St. Bartholomew's Priory, The, 358 Roman de la Rose, The, 37, 64 Romance, 390 Romance of the Forest, The, 250, 253, 255, 256 Romancero, The, 64 Romantic and Classical in English Literature, The, 102 Romantic Tales, 409 Romanticism (Pater), 7 Romantische Schule, Die, 2, 423 Romaunt of the Rose, The, 27 Romaunte of the Cnyghte, The, 348 Romeo and Juliet, 377 Ronsard, Pierre de, 22 Roscommon, W. Dillon, Earl of, 47 Ross, Thos. , 321, 333 Rossetti, D. G. , 4, 270, 272, 367, 372, 424 Roundabout Papers, 252 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 31, 112, 252, 330, 381, 423 Rovers, The, 402 Rowe, Nicholas, 210, 219, 286 Rowley Poems, The, 211, 339-67, 424 Rudiments of Anglo-Saxon Grammar, 192 Rugantino, 409 Ruins of Netley Abbey, The, 182 Ruins of Rome, The, 144, 145 Ruskin, Jno. , 26, 34, 102, 255 Rymer, Thos. , 49, 62, 70 Reyse of Peyncteynge yn Englande, The, 349

 Sachs, Hans, 381 Sadduceismus Triumphatus, 408 Sagen der Vorzeit, 418 Sängers Fluch, Der, 275 Saint Alban's Abbey, 262 Sainte-Beuve, C. A, 56 Sainte Palaye, J. B. De la C. , 221, 222, 374 St. Irvine the Rosicrucian, 403 Saint Lambert, C. F. , 106 St. Leon, 403 St. Pierre, J. H. B. De, 112 Saintsbury, Geo. , 111, 131 Saisons, Les, 106 Sally in our Alley, 57 Salvator Rosa, 255 Sammlung Deutscher Volkslieder, 418 Samson Agonistes, 148, 184 "Saturday Papers, " Addison's, 148 Schelling, F. W. J. Von, 387 Scherer, Wilhelm, 300, 374, 376, 380, 382, 394 Schiller, J. C. F. Von, 11, 76, 379, 384-87, 391, 401, 409, 419, 420 Schlegel, A. W. Von, 14, 73, 301, 377, 384, 392 Schmidt, Erich, 382, 392 Schöne Helena, Die, 385 Scholar Gypsy, The, 408 Schoolmistress, The, 84, 91, 92, 97, 104, 130, 136, 138, 362 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 119 Scott, Sir Walter, 3, 16, 24, 26, 27, 42, 94, 96, 139, 187-89, 191, 200, 203, 223, 232, 234, 238, 248, 249, 258, 260, 262, 267, 269, 277, 298-301, 333, 334, 344, 350, 358, 359, 376, 389-96, 398-400, 402, 404-06, 410, 411, 416-18, 420, 424 Scottish Songs (Ritson's), 293 Scribleriad, The, 228, 229 Scudéry, Madeleine de, 6 Sean Dàna, 326 Seasons, The (Mendez), 85 Seasons, The (Thomson), 52, 75, 79, 103, 105-20, 124, 170, 152, 305, 374 Selden, John, 283 Selections from Gray (Phelps), 191 Selections from Newman (Gates), 41, 44 Seven Champions of Christendom, The, 37 Shadwell, Thos. , 74 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 41, 62, 226, 382 Shairp, J. C. , 315 Shakspere Alterations, List of, 74 Shakspere Editions, List of, 74

 Shakspere Illustrated, 70 Shakspere, Wm. , 18, 25, 40, 50, 51, 63, 68-78, 89, 111, 117, 140, 170, 171, 198, 208-10, 213, 216-19, 225, 237, 298, 362, 375, 377-80, 383, 391 Shelley, Mary, 403, 406 Shelley, P. B. , 5, 43, 107, 241, 362, 370, 372, 403, 406 Shenstone, Wm. , 75, 84, 91, 97, 98, 102, 103, 110, 127, 130-39, 151, 152, 159, 162, 168, 184, 186, 215, 229, 273, 287, 422, 423 Shepherd's Calendar, The, 154 Sheridan, R. B. , 76, 162, 400, 413, 420 Sheridan, Thos. , 74 Sheringham, Robert, 192 Sicilian Romance, The, 250, 253 Sidney, Sir Philip, 25, 71, 72, 239, 274 Siegwart, 400 Sigurd the Volsung, 191 Sim, Jno. , 94 Sinclair, Archibald, 325 Sinclair. Sir Jno. , 321

 Sir Cauline, 289, 200, 298 Sir Charles Grandison, 388 Sir Hugh, 279 Sir Lancelot du Lake, 278 Sir Patrick Spens, 300 Sister Helen, 363 Sisters, The, 270 Six Bards of Ossian Versified, The, 336 Skeat, W. W. , 340, 355, 358-61, 364 Skene, W. F. , 314, 323 Sketches of Eminent Statesmen, 234 Smart, Christopher, 85 Smith, Adam, 105 Smollett, Tobias, 76, 139 Solitary Reaper, The, 115 Somerville, Wm. , 106, 124, 135 Song of Harold the Valiant, 196 Song of Ragner Lodbrog, 197 Song to Aella, 355 Songs of Selma, The, 331 Sonnet to Chatterton, 370 Sonnet to Mr. Gray, 201 Sonnet to Schiller, 419 Sonnet to the River Lodon, 161 Sophocles, 3, 19, 241, 379 Sophonisba, 75 Sorrows of Werther, The, 31, 330-32, 399, 423 Sotheby, Wm. , 382 Southey, Robert, 206, 299, 350, 355, 358, 368, 398, 419 Southwell, Robert, 41 Spaniards in Peru, The, 400, 409 Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, 189 Specimens of Early English Poets, 301 Specimens of the Welsh Bards, 195 Spectator, The, 35, 37, 42, 49, 51, 55, 62, 120, 126, 139, 141, 148, 178, 227, 284, 353, 377 Speght's Chaucer, 360 Spence, Joseph, 132 Spencer, W. R. , 392, 394 Spenser, Edmund, 16, 25, 33, 37, 63, 68, 69, 77-101, 129, 151, 154, 157, 159, 163, 170, 198, 199, 212, 213, 216, 219, 222, 224-26, 235, 244, 265, 279, 304, 359, 371 Spleen, The, 104, 136 Splendid Shilling, The, 104 Squire of Dames, The, 85, 91 Stanley, J. T. , 392 State of German Literature, The, 401 Stedman, E. C. , 162 Steevens, Geo. , 32 Stello, 372 Stephen, Leslie, 32-34, 40, 102, 234, 237, 327 Sterne, Lawrence, 31, 32, 252 Stevenson, R, L. , 258 Stillingfleet, Benjamin, 53, 161 Stimmen der Völker, 300, 337, 416 Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold, Count, 376, 377 Storie of William Canynge, The, 355 Stranger, The, 400 Stratton Water, 299 Strawberry Hill, 173, 179, 229, 230, 232, 234, 236, 340 Sturm von Borberg, 399 Suckling, Sir Jno. , 57 Sugar Cane, The, 124 Sullivan, Wm. R. , 314, 325 Sweet William's Ghost, 279, 280, 295, 300, 394 Swift, Jonathan, 40, 42, 162, 382 Swinburne, A. C. , 35, 168 Syr Gawaine, 293 Syr Martyn, 95, 96 System of Runic Mythology, 191

 Taine, H. A. , 302, 316 Tale of a Tub, 42 Tales of Terror, 409, 417 Tales of Wonder, 404, 409, 416-18 Talisman, The, 188 Tam Lin, 268, 279, 295, 417 Tam o'Shanter, 187, 360 Tannhäuser, 268 Tasso, Torquato, 25, 49, 50, 170, 319, 222-26 Tate, Nahum, 74 Tatler, The, 62 Taylor, Jeremy, 40 Taylor, Wm. , 376, 391-98, 417-18 Tea Table Miscellany, The, 284, 297 Temora, 309, 313, 314, 316, 321, 323, 338 Tempest, The, 70, 76, 171, 215 Temple, Sir Wm. , 69, 120, 192, 197 Tennyson, Alfred, 18, 27, 35, 92, 93, 146, 200, 270, 28l Thackeray, W. M. , 56, 80, 252, 254 Thaddeus of Warsaw, 243, 252 Thales, 85 Theagenes and Chariclea, 244 Theatrum Poetarum, 67, 81 Theocritus, 36 Thesaurus (Hicks'), 192, 193 Thomas à Kempis, 64 Thomas Rymer, 268 Thompson, Wm. , 84 Thomson, Jas. , 52, 74, 75, 79, 84, 85, 92-95, 97, 98, 102-19, 124, 133-36, 142, 151, 157, 159, 168, 184, 198, 215, 235, 251, 302, 303, 305, 374, 384, 422 Thomson, Jas. (2d), 162 Thoreau, H. D. , 107 Tieck, Ludwig, 22, 377, 384 To Country Gentlemen of England, 85 Todtentanz, Der, 386 To Helen, 202 To Melancholy, 251 Tom Jones, 186, 263 Tom Thumb, 285 "Too Late I Stayed, " 392 Torfaeus Thormodus, 191 To the Nightingale (Lady Winchelsea), 61 To the Nightingale (Mrs. Radcliffe), 251 To the Nightingale. See Odes. To the River Otter, 161 Tournament, The, 348, 365 Town and Country Magazine, The, 346, 352 Tragedies of the Last Age Considered, The, 70 Tressan, L. E. De L. , Comte de, 381 Triumph of Isis, The, 199 Triumph of Melancholy, The, 305 Triumphs of Owen, The, 195 Tristan und Isolde, 3, 64 Trivia, 35 Troilus and Cresseide, 28 True Principles of Gothic Architecture, 234 Turk and Gawin, The, 293 Twa Corbies, The, 275 Two Sisters, The, 270, 279 Tyrwhitt, Thos. , 63, 188, 211, 213, 246, 30l, 355-57, 359, 423 Tytler, Sir A. F. , 391, 419

 Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, 11, 387 Ueber Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker, 338 Uhland, Ludwig, 384 Ulysses, 18, 35 Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening, 127, 132 Universal Prayer, The, 41 Unnatural Flights in Poetry, 47 Upton, John, 85 Uz, J. P. , 106

 Vanity of Dogmatizing, The, 408 Vathek, 403, 405 Vergil, 25, 37, 49, 50, 55, 110, 223, 285, 335 Verses to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 202 Verses Written in 1748, 133 Vicar of Wakefield, The, 209 Vigny, Alfred Victor, Comte de, 372, 373 Villehardouin, Geoffrey de, 27, 64 Villon, Francois, 64, 216 Vindication (Tyrwhitt's), 359 Virtuoso, The, 84, 91, 141, 228 Vision, The (Burns), 334 Vision, The (Croxall), 84 Vision of Patience, The, 84 Vision of Solomon, The, 84 Voltaire, F. M. A. De, 214, 216, 237, 379, 381, 382 Von Arnim, Achim (L. J. ), 384 Voragine, Jacobus de, 3 Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, 14 Voss, J. H. , 375

 Wackenroder, W. H. , 384 Wagner, H. L. , 379 Waking of Angantyr, The, 192 Wallenstein, 385, 419 Waller, Edmund, 38, 39, 52, 53, 80, 216 Walpole, Horace, 32, 89, 120, 122, 129, 130, 135, 145, 159, 166, 173, 178, 179, 181, 229-43, 249-55, 258, 286, 306, 336, 337, 349-52, 354, 383, 401, 408, 417, 422 Walsh, Wm. , 50, 53 Walther von der Vogelweide, 64 "Waly, Waly, " 374, 300 Wanton Wife of Bath, The, 301 Warburton, Wm. , 237 Wardlaw, Lady, 286 Ward's English Poets, 53, 111, 131, 169, 364 Warton, Joseph, 32, 75, 118, 142, 149, 151-53, 155, 156, l60, 163, 168, 171, 185, 193, 197-99, 206, 207, 212-20, 223, 226, 262, 302, 355, 375, 383, 387, 422, 423 Warton, Thos. , Jr. , 32, 36, 53, 75, 84, 85, 99-101, 150, 151, 156-58, 161, 163, 168, 171, 194, 197-207, 211, 213, 221, 224, 226, 245, 251, 260, 291, 293, 294, 302, 356, 359, 375, 387, 403, 422, 423 Warton, Thos. , Sr. , 85, 197 Waverley Novels, The, 188, 258, 262, 400, 422 Way, G. L. , 301 Weber's Metrical Romances, 188 Weber, Veit, 400, 418 Webster, Jno. , 66 Werner, 421 Wesley, Jno. , 31 West, Gilbert, 84, 85, 89-91, 98, 126, 133, 151, 160, 193, 194 Whately, Thos. , 122 Whistle, The, 334 White Doe of Rylstone, The, 184 Whitefield, Geo. , 31 Whitehead, Wm. , 84, 197 Whittington and his Cat, 273 Wieland, 403 Wieland, C. M. , 106, 377, 378, 381, 397 Wife of Usher's Well, The, 269, 279 Wilde Jäger, Der, 391 Wild Huntsman, The, 404, 416 Wilkie, Wm. , 85 Wilhelm Meister, 384, 387 Wilhelm Tell, 385 William and Helen, 391, 398, 404 Willie Drowned in Yarrow, 170 Willie's Lady, 279 Wilson's Life of Chatterton, 368 Winchelsea, Anne Finch, Countess of, 57, 61 Winckelmann, J. J. , 384, 385 Windsor Forest, 57, 58, 2l5, 220 Winstanley, William, 62, 69 Winter, 103-106, 142, 422 Wither, Geo. , 57 Wodrow, Jno. , 334, 335 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 64 Wolfred von Dromberg, 398 Wonders of the Invisible World, 408 Wood, Anthony, 291 Wood, Robert, 387-89 Worde, Wynkyn de, 274 Wordsworth, Wm. , 4, 5, 43, 58, 103, 107, 109, 112, 115, 135, 143-45, 160, 162, 183, 184, 218, 220, 288-90, 298, 299, 304, 316, 326, 328, 339, 344 Worm, Ole, 191, 193 Wreck of the Hesperus, The, 269 Wren, Sir Christopher, 121, 230 Written at an Inn at Henley, 138 Written at Stonhenge, 201 Written in Dugdale's Monasticon, 198

 Yarrow Revisited, 344 Yarrow Unvisited, 298 Young, Edward, 56, 149, 163, 213, 387, 388, 421 Young Hunting, 279 Young Lochinvar, 277 Young Waters, 300

 Zapolya, 420 Zastrozzi, 403 Zauberlehrling, Der, 386 Zauberring, Der, 4