which took place not in this country only, but in France and Germany, about the time of the French Revolution. During that stirring epoch, when old creeds and old modes of government were worn loosely for want of a better covering, a revolutionary spirit was abroad, not in poetry only, but in politics, in philosophy, in science, and in all forms of literary art. No doubt Mr. Palgrave is right in thinking that the French Revolution was only one result, and in itself by no means the most important, of that far wider and far greater spirit which, through inquiry and doubt, through pain and triumph, sweeps mankind round the circles of its greater development.1 But the French Revolution itself, attracting the profound attention, and, in its earlier stages, the fond sympathy, of all those aspiring young souls who, tired of effete and outworn formulas, were looking eagerly forward to the dawn of a better day, was unquestionably an important factor in the new literary renascence which produced such great results.

Of the general characteristics of the brilliant band of poets whom we shall have to deal with in this chapter, no better summary could be furnished than that given by Mr. Palgrave. They "carried to further perfection the later tendencies of the century preceding in simplicity of narrative, reverence for human passion and character in every sphere, and impassioned love of nature whilst maintaining, on the whole, the advances in art made since the Restoration, they renewed the half-forgotten melody and depth of tone which marked the best Elizabethan writers; lastly, to what was thus inherited they added a richness in language and a variety in metre, a force and fire in narrative, a tenderness and bloom in feeling, an insight into the finer passages of the soul, and the inner meanings of the landscape, a larger and wiser humanity, hitherto hardly attained, and perhaps unattainable even by predecessors of not inferior individual genius." But before proceeding to the discussion of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their compeers, we must go back to the more prominent sources of the magnificent stream of poetry whose course it is so pleasant 1 "Golden Treasury," p. 320.

and inspiring to trace. Only a few of the more significant can be mentioned here. Bishop Percy, by the publication in 1765 of his "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," revealed to many, to whom they had hitherto been unknown, the wealth of true poetry, of free, wild, natural feeling, which lay in our old ballads. The semi-apologetic tone of his preface shows how such things were generally regarded by the cultured society of his day. "In a polished age like the present," he says, “I am sensible that many of these reliques of antiquity will require great allowances to be made for them. . . . The editor hopes he need not be ashamed of having bestowed some of his idle hours on the ancient literature of our own country, or in regaining from oblivion some pieces (though but the amusements of our ancestors) which tend to place in a striking light their taste, genius, sentiments, or manners." Thomas Warton's "History of English Poetry ".(1774-1778), which is still, despite its many inaccuracies, a useful and entertaining work, did good service by attracting the attention of cultured people to our old poets, which then, in most cases, if known at all, were only known at second hand. The same author's elaborate essay on the "Faerie Queen" answered a similar purpose. More important, however, than prose works, though these were largely efficacious in educating the public taste, were the poems which heralded the coming era. Of these, "Ossian," published in 1762, is one of the most remarkable. Whether the work of James Macpherson, or whether translated from ancient Gaelic manuscripts-a question which has led to discussions as eager, as interminable, and nearly as profitless, as those about the authorship of the letters of "Junius," "Ossian" may almost be called an epoch-making poem. It attracted profound attention both in this country and abroad, and the work, which has been admired by critics so keensighted and able as Goethe and Mr. Matthew Arnold, deserved better treatment at the hands of Macaulay than to be spoken of with ill-judging and unintelligent contempt. Descriptions. of Nature in her wildest and stormiest aspects, as seen beneath a lowering and tempest-tossed sky, in the most barren and

desolate mountain solitudes, afforded quite a new sensation to readers of the Georgian era. Goethe, in the thirteenth book of his "Dichtung und Wahrheit," while recording the state of mind which led him to the composition of "Werther," and which, being generally prevalent, brought about the great enthusiasm with which that book was received, says, speaking of the fondness for gloomy literature and the feeling of melancholy dissatisfaction which then pervaded many youthful minds: "And that to all this melancholy a perfectly suitable locality might not be wanting, Ossian had charmed us even to the Ultima Thule, where on a grey, boundless heath, wandering among prominent moss-covered gravestones, we saw the grass around us moved by an awful wind, and a heavily clouded sky above us. It was not till moonlight that the Caledonian night became day; departed heroes, faded maidens, floated around us, until at last we really thought we saw the spirit of Lodo in his fearful form." Something of the spirit of "Ossian" animates the pseudo-antique "Mediæval Romances" (1768) of Thomas Chatterton

"The marvellous boy,

The sleepless soul that perished in his pride,”

the story of whose stormy and ill-regulated life and tragic death by suicide, at the age of seventeen, is one of the most touching and melancholy pages of literary history. How powerfully the tide was turning in the direction of our older literature is clearly proved by the fact that in no age has the imitation of Spenser been more common than during the eighteenth century.1 The "Schoolmistress" (1742), incomparably the finest poem of William Shenstone, and the “Minstrel" (1774) of James Beattie, at one time Professor of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen, are both written in the Spenserian stanza. Beattie was a genuine poet, though not a very great one, and his descriptions of natural scenery and of the more delicate human emotions are drawn with loving sympathy and

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1 This fact is pointed out in an able and instructive article on English Poetry from Dryden to Cowper" in the Quarterly Review for July 1862.

William Blake.

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insight. In his own time he was more celebrated as the author of the "Essay on Truth" (a reply to the philosophical speculations of Humne regarding miracles) than as the writer of the "Minstrel "- -a curious instance of how incorrect contemporary judgments may be. The Essay on Truth," though extravagantly praised by Dr. Johnson and many other cele brated men of the time, and read with great admiration by that worthy monarch, George III., who bestowed a pension on its orthodox author, has long since taken its due place as a weak and insufficient handling of an important and difficult theme; while the "Minstrel" still retains its far from unimportant place in the history of English poetry.

Another poet, of a much more unique genius than Beattie, was William Blake (1757-1828), who occupies a place by himself among the forerunners of the new era. Charles Lamb rightly regarded him as "one of the most extraordinary personages of the age," for both as poet and painter his work was altogether original. His "Poetical Sketches," published in 1777, bear trace of the reviving influence of the Elizabethan poets; and the union of simplicity of language with truly poetical thoughts upon ordinary subjects in them and in his "Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul," anticipate Wordsworth. Blake's reputation stands much higher now than it did during his life, or for some time after his death. Of late years, the enthusiasm of many writers of high culture, who have found in him a vein of power marking him off from his contemporaries, have done much to bring into vogue the drawings and the poetry of this strange child of genius.1

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1 The "Poetical Sketches" are all the more remarkable when we remember that they were written between the twelfth and the twentieth year of his age. "Blake, in truth, when in his teens," says Mr. W. M. Rossetti (Prefatory Memoir to the Aldine Edition of Blake, p. cxv.), was a wholly unique poet; far ahead of his contemporaries, and of his predeces. sors of three or four generations, equally in what he himself could do, and in his sympathy for olden sources of inspiration. In his fragmentary drama of 'Edward the Third' we recognise one who has loved and studied Shakespeare to good purpose; and several of the shorter lyrics in the

Such is a brief outline of the more prominent minor poets of the latter part of the eighteenth century. We now come to William Cowper, whose character, alike as a man and a poet, is a singularly interesting and attractive one. A man of genius, but not of very powerful or original genius; full of good taste, and grace, and tenderness, but almost altogether destitute of fire and passion; fond of the country and of country things, yet far from being imbued with Wordsworth's passionate love of Nature, he was not at all the sort of writer whom we should expect to be one of the leaders in a literary revolution. Yet this position Cowper unconsciously occupied, partly by natural genius, partly by the accidents of his career.

The story of his life, darkened as it was by frequent thunderclouds of insanity, through which the blue sky of hope was unable to pierce, is a very touching one. Born in 1731, a descendant of an ancient family, which ranked not a few distinguished names among its members, the shrinking, sensitive boy had early experience of those hardships of life which he was so ill fitted to struggle against. At an elementary school to which he was sent, he was brutally tormented by one of the boys, whom he held in such dread that he did not dare to lift his eyes to his face, and knew him best by his shoe-buckle. Removed from this school, Cowper's spirits recovered their tone, and at the age of ten he was sent to Westminster, where he seems to have led a happy life enough, not studying very hard, but acquiring a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin, and distinguishing himself as a cricketer and football-player. After leaving Westminster, he was entered of the Inner Temple, and passed three very pleasant and very idle years as a law-clerk, making love to his cousin Theodora, and associating much with Edward Thurlow, 'Poetical Sketches' have the same sort of pungent perfume-undefinable but not evanescent-that belongs to the choicest Elizabethan songs; the like play of emotion,- —or play of colour, as it might be termed; the like ripeness and roundness, poetic, and intolerant of translation into prose. At the time when Blake wrote these songs, and for a long while before, no one was doing anything at all of the same kind. Not but that, even in Blake, lines and words occur here and there betraying the fadeur of the eighteenth century."