A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century

pense

nly begins with imitation. It seeks inspiration in the past, and substitutes a new set of models as different as possible from those which it finds currently followed. In every country of Europe the classical tradition had hidden whatever was most national, most

s, memoirs, etc., supply a mass of testimony to the fact that neglect and contempt had, with a few exceptions, overtaken all English writers who wrote before the middle of the seventeenth century. The exceptions, of course, were those supreme masters whose genius prevailed against every change of taste: Shakspere and Milton, and, in a less degree, Chaucer and Spenser. Of authors strictly mediaeval, Chaucer still had readers, and there were reprints of his works in 1687, 1721, and 1737,[1] although no critical edition appeared until Tyrwhitt's in 1775-78. It is

enturies. Nor was there any knowledge or care about the masterpieces of medieval literature in other 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 of Strasburg, the "Arme Heinrich" of Harmann von Aue, the chronicles of Villehardouin, Joinville, and

than he has with Aeschuylus, Thucydides, and Lucretius, at first hand. But it may be confidently asserted that he knows much more about them; that he thinks them worth knowing about; and that through modern, popular versions of them-through poems, historical romances, literary histories, essays and what not-he has in his mind's eye a picture of the Middle Age, perhaps as definite and fascinating as

t ribaldry is l

elton heads of

anguage but th

for 'Christ's Kirk

e George Herbert and Robert Herrick-favorites with our own generation-prose authors like Sir Thomas Browne-from whom Coleridge and Emerson drew inspira

ruled, as h

sal monarc

ad no longer a following. Pope "versified" some of Donne's rugged satires, and Johnson quoted passages from him as examples of the bad taste of the me

w reads

m," a sort of biographical dictionary of ancient and modern authors. In the preface, he says: "As for the antiquated and fallen into obscurity from their former credit and reputation, they are, for the most part, th

plays, "indulged a little too much to the French way of continual rime." One passage, at least, in Philips' preface has been thought to be an echo of Milton's own judgment on the pretensions of the new school of poetry. "Wit, ingenuity, and learning in verse; even elegancy itself, though that comes nearest, are one thing. True native poetry is another; in which there is a certain air and spirit which perhaps the most learned and judicious in other arts do not perfectly apprehend, much less is it attainable by any study or industry. Nay, though all the laws of heroic poem, all the laws of tragedy were exactly observed, yet still this to

on that criticism begins. "Dryden," says Dr. Johnson, "may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine, upon principles, the merit of composition. . . Dryden's 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy' [1667] was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing."[6] The old theater was dead and Shakspere now emerged from amid its ruins, as th

s, where flower

k, if any w

entence if I

's grave action

fathers rise

hame is lost in

ste.[8] Few handsomer tributes have been paid to Shakspere's genius than were paid in prose and verse, by the critics of our classical age, from Dryden to Johnson. "To begin then with Shakspere," says the former, in

magic could n

rcle none durs

Johnson, "may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and cl

f many-colored

s, and then ima

here was an absurdity in this contradiction; and that the real fault was not in Shakspere, but in the standards by which he was tried. Here are the tests which technical criticism has always been seeking to impose, and they are not confined to the classical period only. They are used by Sidney, who took the measure of the English buskin before Shakspere had begun to write; by Jonson, who measured socks with him in his own day; by Matthew Arnold, who wanted an English Academy, but in whom the academic vaccine, after so long a transmission, worked but mildly. Shakspere violated the unities; his plays we

illes. He complains that he makes the good and the bad perish promiscuously; and that in "Coriolanus"-a play which Dennis "improved" for the new stage-he represents Menenius as a buffoon and introduces the rabble in a most undignified fashion.[14] Gildon, again, says that Shakspere must have read Sidney's "Defence of Posey" and therefore, o

much the nobler apartments, though we are often conducted to them by dark, odd and uncouth passages. Nor does the whole fail to strike us with greater reverence, though many of the parts are childish, ill-placed and unequal to its grandeur." This view of Shakspere continued to be the rule until Coleridge and Schlegel taught the new century that this child of fancy was, in reality, a profound and subtle artist, but that the principles of his art-as is always the case with creative genius working freely and instinctively-were learned by practice, in the concrete, instead of being consciously thrown out by the workman himself into an ab

re was, at first, no conscious, concerted effort toward something of creative activity. The new group of poets, partly contemporaries of Pope, partly successors to him-Thomson, Shenstone, Dyer, Akenside, Gray, Collins, and the Warton brothers-found their point of departure

, and "The Castle of Indolence" has never wanted admirers, tragedies like "Agamemnon" and "Sophonisba" have been long forgotten. An imitation of Shakspere to any effective purpose must obviously have take the shape of a play; and neither Gray nor Collins nor Akenside, nor any of the group, was capable of a play. Inspiration of a kind, these early romanticists did draw from Shakspere. Verbal reminiscences of him abound in Gray. Collins was a diligent student of his works. His "Dirge

ragedy and the sentimental comedy of domestic life, what the French call la tragédie bourgeoise and la comédie larmoyante. In truth the theater was now dying; and though, in the comedies of

ty; nor medieval, but perpetually modern and contemporaneous in his universality. The very familiarity of his plays, and their continuous performance, although in mangled forms, was a reason why they could take little part in a literary revival; f

the sense, it must have been a relief to turn to the amplitude of Spencer's stanza, "the full strong sail of his great verse." To a generation surfeited with Pope's rhetorical devices-antithesis, climax, anticlimax-and fatigued with the unrelaxing brilliancy and compression of his language; the escape from epigrams and point (snap after snap, like a pack of fire-crackers), from a style which has

rning is a da

poet about whom question has arisen whether he is a poet at all-for the most purely poetic of our poets, "the poet's poet." And finally, i

e absence of passion and intensity in Spenser, his lack of dramatic power, the want of actuality in his picture of life, the want of brief energy and nerve in his style; just as we weary of Pope's inadequate sense of beauty. But at a time when English poetry had

ers. Milton confessed to Dryden that Spenser was his "poetical father." Dryden himself and Cowley, whose practice is so remote from Spenser's, acknowledged their debt to him. The passage from Cowley's essay "On Myself" is familiar: "I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never read any book but of devotion-but there was wont to lie) Spenser's works. This I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights and giants and monsters and brave houses which I found everywhere there (thought my understanding had little to do with all this), and, by degrees, with the tinkling of the rime and dance of the numbers; so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve year

se is more melodious than any other English poet's except Mr. Waller's.[19] Ambrose Philips-Namby Pamby Philips-whom Thackeray calls "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 some mildly commendatory remarks about S

ext, warmed wi

les amused a

yet uncultiva

poet's fancy

fields and unfr

agons and enc

tic tale, that

understanding

n allegories

moral lies to

eased at distan

reys, battles, f

distress and co

ok too near, t

easing landsca

orks-being the third folio of the "Fa?rie Queene"-in 1679, but no critical edition till 1715. Meanwhile the title of a book issued in 1687 shows that Spenser did not escape that process of "improvement" which we have seen applied to Shakspere: "Spenser Redivivus; containing the First Book of the 'Fa?ry Queene.' His Essential Design Preserv

northern wa

team behind th

ocean waves

ed, and sendeth

the wide deep

nser

or of the Roman legionaries, over which is occasionally thrown something that looks very much like a toga. The lists in which they run a tilt have the fa?ade of a Greek temple for a background. The house of Busyrane is Louis Quatorze architecture, and Amoret is chained to a renaissance column with Corinthian capital and classical draperies. Hughes' glossary of obsolete terms includes words which are in daily use

etween Spenser's work and Gothic architecture, and apologizes for his author, on the ground that, at the time when he wrote, "the remains of the old Gothick chivalry were not quite abolished." "He did not much revive the curiosity of the public," says Johnson, in his life of Hughes; "for near thirty years elapsed bef

orns of Elfland may be heard faintly blowing in 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 "a whole 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

ariably as a most merry conceited jest; especially if the first letter be pronounced as a y, instead of, what it really is, a mere abbreviation of th. But in order that this may be so, the language travestied should not be too old. There would be nothing amusing, for example, in a burlesque imitation of Beowulf, because the Anglo-Saxon of the original is utterly strange to the modern reader. It is conceivable that quick-witted Athenians of the time of Aristophanes might find something quaint in Homer's Ionic dialect, akin to that quaintness which we fi

rince Fred, it will be remembered, was a somewhat flamboyant figure in the literary and personal gossip of his day. He quarreled with his father, George II, who "hated boetry and bainting," and who was ironically fed with soft dedication by Pope in his "Epistle to Augustus"; also with his father's prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, "Bob, the poet's foe." He left the court in dudgeon and set up an opposition court of his own where he rallied about him

ates the frequent employment of this form in occasional pieces of a humorous intention. It describes a domestic boating

blood of ancien

scalps he ha

ad sight to Christ

s a masque of virtues,-Faith, Hope, Mercy, etc.,-and closes with a compliment to Pope's "Messiah." The preface to his "Hymn to May," has some bearing upon our inquiries: "As Spenser is the most descriptive and florid of all our English writers, I attempted to imitate his manner in the following vernal poem. I have been very sparing of the antiquated words which are too frequent in most of the imitations of this author. . . His lines are most musically sweet, and his descriptions mo

e not for its own sake, but for the evidence that it affords of a growing impatience of classical restraints. The piece was a pendant to Wilkie's epic, the "Epigoniad." Walkin

muses to su

songs are frivo

ere, i

cobweb limits f

y reward of

dull, degener

y chance, and that h

he allegorical machinery of the "Fa?rie Queene" for moral and mildly satirical ends. Thus, in "The Abuse of Traveling," the Red Cross Knight is induced by Archimago to embark in a painted boat steered by Curiosity, which wafts him over to a foreign shore where he is entertained by a bevy of light damsels whose leader "hight Politessa,

aidia, encounters the giant Custom and worsts him in single combat. There is some humor in the description of th

e that, waving

n the tide i

er juice empoison

rsation. There is at Wickham, a walk made by Pitt." Like many contemporary poets, West interested himself in landscape gardening, and some of his shorter pieces belong to that literature of inscriptions to which Lyttelton, Akenside, Shenstone, Mason, and others contributed so profusely. It may be said for his Spenserian imitations that their archaisms are unusually correct[29]-if that be any praise-a feature which perhaps re

Goldsmith evidently had it in memory when he drew the picture of the school in his "Deserted Village."[30] The application to so humble a theme of Spenser's stately verse and grave, ancient words gives a very quaint effect. The humor of "The Schoolmistress" is genuine, not dependent on the more burlesque, as in Pope's and Cambridge'

little bird thei

her ear and all

Indolence," 1748,[31] is a fine poem; at least the first part of it is, for the second book is tiresomely allegorical, and somewhat involved in plot. There is a magic art in the description of the "land of drowsy-head," with its "listless climate" always "atween June and May,"[32] its "stockdove's plaint amid the forest deep," its hillside woods of solemn p

around but i

groves and quie

that slumberous

athed; and beds

t was creeping

ered glittering

erywhere thei

ickered through

ll themselves, a lu

e associations evoked by the words. The secret of this art the poet himself cannot communicate. But poetry of this kind cannot be translated into prose-as Pope's can-any more than music can be translated into speech, without losing its essential character. Like Spenser, Thomson was an exquisite colorist and his

that syllabl

ores and desert

wer in one stanza, at least,

epherd of the

amid the me

e lone fancy

al beings so

odied to our

ocean Phoebus

mbly moving

in air dissolves

Western Islands, saw nothing of the "spectral puppet play" hinted at in this

ents opening

eas in fairy

Thomson and the possible exception of Shenstone. He wrote at least two poems that are likely to be remembered. One of these was the ballad of "Cumnor Hall" which

heart, sae smo

h like ca

foot has

mes up t

nae luck abo

nae luc

le pleasure

gudeman's

y in his way, he was immediately struck with the picturesque descriptions of that much admired ancient bard and powerfully incited to imitate his style and manner."[34] In 1767 Mickle published "The Concubine," a Spenserian poem in two cantos. In the preface to his second edition, 1778, in which the title was changed to "Syr

cond canto he feels compelled to introduce an absurd allegory, in which the nymph Dissipation and her henchman Self-Impo

freed from fous

lse Duessa's

aid, yclept

auteous lady

minstrels chaunt

e, unlike his

ing, in courtl

ast, served up

dies gent in pain

e writes when he

winds, through

o thy faerie

almy freshness,

downy wing t

willows falteri

es with locks b

oldering turre

ye-grass and th

on fair Mulla's

assign this stanza-which Scott greatly admired-to one of

ry is perhaps one of the most pleasing vehicles of instruction. But I am very far from extending the same respect to his diction or his stanza. His style was, in his own words and peculiarities of phrase, and so remote from common use that Jonson boldly pronounces him to have written no language. His stanza is at once difficult and unpleasing: tiresome to the ear by its uniformity, and to the attention by its length. . . Life is surely given us for other purposes than to gather what our ancestors have

viving a taste for a better kind of poetry than the kind in vogue, and particularly in restoring to English verse a stanza form, which became so noble an instrument in the hands of later poets, who used it with as much freedom and vigor as if they had never seen the "Fa?rie Queene." One is seldom reminded of Spenser while reading "Childe Harold"[36] or "Adonais" or "The Eve of Saint Agnes";

omposition by those laws which we have been taught to think the sole criterion of excellence. Critical taste is universally diffused, and we require the same order and design which every modern performance is expected to have, in poems where they never were regarded or intended. . . If there be any poem whose graces please because they are situated beyond the reach of art[37] . . . it is this. In reading Spenser, 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 it by epic rules, as to

ctual or immediate improvement in the state of criticism. Beni, one of the most celebrated critics of the sixteenth century, was still so infatuated with a fondness for the old Proven?al vein, that he ventured to write a regular dissertation, in which he compares Ariosto with Homer." Warton says again, of Ariosto and the Italian renaissance poets whom Spenser followed, "I have found no fault in general with their use of magical machinery; notwithstanding I have so far conformed to the reigning maxims of modern criticism as to recommend classical propriety." Notwithstanding this prudent determination to con

fragrance were stealing back again into English song, and "golden-tongued roma

f "The Canterbury Tal

fused architecture of Gothic cathedrals gave those who saw beauty in symmetry of line and purity of form but further evidence of the clumsiness and perverted taste of our ancestors. All remembrances of the great poetic works of the Middle Ages is completely effaced. No one supposes in those barbarous times the existence of ages classical also in their way; no one imagines either their heroic songs or romances of adventure, either the rich bounty of lyrical styles or the na?ve, touching crudity of the Christian drama. The seventeenth century turned disdainfully away from the monuments of national genius discovered

stle to

stle of

e., le

fe of D

stle to

he English Dramatic Poets," 1691; Dennis, "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakspere," 1712; Gildon, "The Complete Art of Poetry," 1718. The fact mentioned by Macaulay, that Sir Wm. Temple's "Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning" names none of the four, is without importance. Temple refers by name to only three English "wits," Sidney, Bacon, and Selden. This very

the "Plays of S

Garrick at the opening of

the Last Age Consider

pere Illust

ism in Tragedy" and "Defence of the

Genius and Writings

" pp. 63 and 99. Cf. Pop

m you and every

e, the matchles

lory, winged hi

ortal in his

s "Shakspe

to rhyme and introducing new characters, while Shadwell altered it into an opera. Dryden rewrote "Troilus and Cressida"; Davenant, "Macbeth." Davenant patched together a thing which he called "The Law against 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 and Juliet," as "Caius Marius." Lord Lansdowne converted "The Merchant of Venice" into "The Jew of Venice," wherein Shylock was played as a comic character down to the time of Macklin and Kean. Durfey tinkered "Cymbeline." Cibber metamorphosed "King John" into "Papal Tyranny," and his version was

e Queene,"

ic poems, especially of heroic argument, Spenser's stanza . . . is above the way either of couplet or alternation of

on the Fa?ry Queene

," Book I., Oxford, 18

nto" ii.

es' team far

r, when hours of

n of Q

h Century Liter

sion of this subject t

the English Romantic Mo

artial list of Spenseria

nser, Vol. I. But the

ive, is certainly the mo

ced. 1706: Prior: "Ode

stakes." 1713 Croxall

ll: "Another Original

lomon," "Ode to the Hono

6: Thompson: "Epithala

." 1736-37: Boyse: "Th

rtuoso." 1739: West: "A

Spenser's Fairy Queen."

" 1741 (circa): Boyse

choolmistress." 1742-50

nd Patience." 1743: An

"Death of Mr. Pope."

k: "Hymn to Divine Lov

saeus." 1747: Ridley:

1747: Upton: "A New Ca

eld: "Education of Ach

n, Sr.: "Philander." 17

tter: "A Farewell Hymn

: West: "Education." 17

ederick." 1751: Mendes

Envy." 1751: Akensid

on: "A Pastoral in the

1755: Arnold: "The Mi

6: Smart: "Hymn to the

y," "Hymn to May." 175

1759: Wilkie: "A Dream"

on: "House of Superstit

an: "Land of the Muses.

: "Land of Liberty." 17

tion to t

Phelps, p

ion of Cambridge's "Works,"

Eton friend, though it seems that 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 Richard West, at Eton.

Life o

mpled as "hung down"; and Akenside, in "The Virtu

y looked, they found

ens

gazed, and still

lds

ermixed, which

s little ten

ens

sy mansion, skill

lds

nd perhaps partly written, fou

n which it seemed always af

ed in favor of one Jean Adams, a poor Scotch school-m

of Mickle" in "Mickle's P

ner. Some, however, have been executed with happiness, and with attention to that simplicity, that tenderness of sentiment and those little touches of nature that constitute Spenser's character. I have a peculiar pleasure in mentioning two of th

is valet, poor Fletcher, a "stanch yeomán," and peppered his stanzas thinly with sooths and wights and_ whilom

ace beyond the reach of a

of England," V