A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century (2023)

From the Encyclopedia of Arts and Popular Culture

A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century(1899) is a book byHenrique Agostinho Bier.

Complete text

A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL IN THE 18TH CENTURY

VON

HENRY A. BIER

author ofa suburban pastoral, "ThelVaysc/YaU" usw.

"What is immortal in music must live / must perish in life" - SCHILLER

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NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANION

1899

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PREFACE.

Historians of French and German literature are accustomed to singling out a period or department of their subject and calling it a "novel" or "romantic school". Authors of the history of English literature, while recognizing the importance of England's participation in this great movement in European literature, generally do not give it a place of its own in the arrangement of their themes, treating it in italics as a tendency present in the work of individual authors. ; and kept a simple

• i chronological classification of eras in "Georgian",

, ^ the "Victorian," &c. The reason for this may lie in the fact that, although Romanticism began earlier in England than on the Continent, and borrowed as much as it borrowed in the international exchange of literary products, the native movement was more gradual and dispersed. It never reached such a compact form, nor reached such a critical point so definitively as in Germany and France. There was never quite a "romantic school" or ubiquitous romantic fashion in England.

So there is nothing in English that corresponds to Heine's fascinating sketch.The Romantic School", or almost as fascinating and much more sympathetic" by Theophile Gautier.romance story. "If we can imagine a composite character of Byron and De Quincey narrating his half-loving, half-satirical reminiscences of the contemporary literary movement, perhaps we have something almost equivalent. For Byron, like Heine, was a penitent romantic with "radical ideas under his hat" and a critical theory at odds with his practice; while De Quincey was an early student of Wordsworth and Coleridge - as Gautier was one of Victor Hugo - and at the same time an intelligent and slightly mischievous person he was a designer of personal characteristics.

The present volume consists essentially of a series of lectures given in electives at Yale College. In the revision for publication, I made an effort to get the air out of the conference room, but some repetition and didactics may have been inadvertently left there. Some of the methods and results of these studies have already been presented. to the public in "The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement", by my current partner and former partner. Professor William Lyon Phelps. Professor Phelps' booklet (originally a doctoral thesis) essentially follows the selection and organization of topics in my lectures. In turn, I had the advantage of using their independent research on points I touched on very little; and, in particular, his very extensive treatment of Spenserian imitations.

At first he intended to title the book "Chapter in a History of English Romanticism, etc."; for, though it is quite complete in its treatment, it does not pretend to be exhaustive. By far not all eighteenth-century writers whose works contain romantic motifs

restores you v

is submitted here for review. This unique genius William Blake, eg. for example. B. where the influence of "Ossian" among others is so obvious that I leave it untouched; because his writings-partly because of their strange manner of publication-had no effect on his generation and form no link in the chain of literary currents.

If this volume is well received, I hope soon to be able to publish a continuing study of nineteenth-century English Romanticism.

H. A. B.

October 1898.

STATE NORMAL SCHOOL

CONTENT.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The specific subject, i

II. Los Augustos, 24

3. The Spencerians, 62

IV. The Landscape Poets, 102

V. The Miltonic Group, 146

VISA. The Warton School, 186

VIII. Gothic Revival, . . -. . . .221

VIII. Percy and the Ballads 265

IX. OssiAN, 306

X. Thomas Chatterton, 339

XI. The German Tributary, 374

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AN ENGLISH ROMANCE STORY.

CHAPTER I.

Zbe Sujeto 2)ef!ncJ>.

To attempt a rigid definition of the word romantic from the outset would be to anticipate the contents of this volume. To answer the question: what is or was the novel? Or at least what is or was English romanticism? – is one of my main purposes here, and the reader is invited to sift through a mass of literary documents and give some thought before forming a full and clear idea of ​​the subject. Even so, you will hardly feel inclined to give a lexical definition of the novel. There are words that mean so much, that contain in themselves so much of the history of the human mind, that any condensed explanation of their meaning - any definition which is not at the same time a reasonably long description - needs little more than to provide a convenient identifier. How can we define words like renaissance, philistine, sentimental, transcendent, bohemian, pre-raphaelite, impressionist, realist in one sentence? Definition is negative. He

2i/1 History of English Romanticism.

It may be possible to find a word form that differentiates romance from everything else - saying in one sentence what it is not - but adding positive content to the definition - saying what romance is requires a very different approach and more step-by-step procedures step by step.*

However, a rough and working definition may be helpful to get you started. / Romanticism, then, in the sense in which I will use the word in general, means the representation in modern art or literature of the life and thought of the Middle Ages. / To this definition it is necessary to add some other elements, proposing from time to time some modifications of the same. It is temporary, timid, resilient, but it will serve us until we are ready to replace it with a better one. This is the definition given by Heine in his brilliant little book on the Romantic school in Germany: 'All pure medieval poetry', he adds, 'has a certain definite character which distinguishes it from £tj:y_Q£, the Greeks and the Romans. Based on this difference, the first is called romantic, the second classic, however, these names are incorrect.

• Definitions do not arise a priori, except perhaps in

Mathematics. In the story, they imperceptibly emerge from the patient study of reality. If Mr. Deschanel did not give us the definition of romanticism that we just asked for, it is true because his teaching intends to prepare us precisely for this definition. We will find you where you should be, at the end of the course and not at the beginning. - F. Brunetihe: "Classical and Romanticism, Critical Studies", Volume III. pg. 296.

f But what was the romantic school in Germany? It was nothing but the revival of medieval poetry manifested in its songs, statues and buildings, art and life. — The Romantic School (Cotta edition), p. 158

Thing ^Definitely. $

drove and caused the most annoying mess yet.

Some of the sources of this confusion will now be considered. At the same time, the passage is a reminder that romance, when used as a term in literary nomenclature, is not a word in itself but a word of reference. It implies its opposite: the classic; and the ingenuity of the critics has been used to the utmost in explaining and developing the many points of contrast. Thus, in order to have a complete idea of ​​the Romantic period, we must also have an idea of ​​the Classical period. Now there is an obvious resemblance between the thought and art of the nations of ancient heathen and a. túglil:--aELd ^rt^gf the people of f^jidaL Kurnpe. All will agree to name the Parthenon, the "Diana" of the Louvre, the "Oedipus" of Sophocles, the classical prayers of Demosthenes; and name the cathedral of Chartres, the walls of Nuremberg - the pearl of the Middle Ages -LegendAurea' by Jacobus de Voragine, 'Tristan and Isolde' by Gottfried von Straßburg and the illuminations in a romantic Catholic missal from the 13th century.

The same difference exists between modern works conceived in the spirit of ancient or medieval art, or executed in direct imitation. It's easy to decide that Flaxman's profile drawings in Homer's illustration are classics; that the tragedies of Alfieri, "Iphigenie auf Tauris" by Goethe and by LandorHellenic", Gibson's statues, paintings by David andthe Church of the Magdalene in Paris is classical, at least in its intention and in the models it follows; while "Notre Dame de Paris" by Victor Hugo, "Notre Dame de Paris" by Scott

• "The Romantic School" (Fleishman translation), p. 13

4 <v^ History of English Romanticism.

No less romantically inspired are "Ivanhoe", "The Magic Ring" by Fouquó and the painting "The Childhood of Mary" by Rossetti.

However, critics have used the terms Classical and Romantic in broader terms. They defined or envisioned ways of thinking, feeling, traits and styles that distinguished classical from romantic art; and consequently applied the words to works which "are necessarily neither ancient nor medieval in matter"; "thus, for example, the productions of Greek and Roman genius are believed to have been marked by clarity, simplicity, moderation, unity." of form, subordination of the part to the whole; and therefore^ "Modern works which give that impression of noble simplicity and austerity, of harmony in construction, economy of means, and clear and definite outline, are often called classical works, irrespective of the historical period with which they deal." With this in mind, it is common to say that Wordsworth's "Michael" is a classic, or that Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea" is a classic, although perhaps Wordsworth celebrates the virtues of a Westmoreland shepherd and Goethe tells the story of two lovers. rustics on the German border at the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

On the other hand, it is said that the work of medieval poets and artists was marked by an excess of feeling, by too wasteful decoration, a strong sense of color and a weak sense of form, an attention to detail to the detriment of the main impression. and a consequent tendency towards the exaggerated, the fantastic and the grotesque. It's not unusual

The defined topic. 5

therefore, poets like Byron and Shelley must be classed as Romantics by virtue of their qualities, though none could be further from medieval habits of thought than the author of "Don Juan" or the author of "La Rebellion de." Islam".

But the extension of these contradictory concepts to the work of writers who have as little in common with antiquity or the Middle Ages as Wordsworth, on the one hand, and Byron, on the other, does not stop there. It is one of the literary historian's shames that almost every word he uses has two meanings, one critical and one popular. In common parlance, classjc means pretty much anything that's good. If we consult our dictionaries, we find its definition something like this: 'By the greatest authority in literature and art; pure; chaste; refined; used originally and chiefly by the best Greek and Roman writers, but also applied to the best modern authors or their works." "Classic, n. A work of recognized excellence and authority." In this sense, "Robinson Crusoe" is a classic; "Pilgrim's Progress" is a classic; any literature regularly recommended to young writers as a safe model for developing a style is a classic. .

On the contrary, the word romance, as it is popularly used, expresses an air of disapproval. He

• A classic is any artist whose school we can

without fear that their teachings or examples will deceive us. Or else he owns it. . . Characteristics whose imitation, if it doesn't do any good, can't do any harm either. — F. Brtmetihe, 'Critical Studies', Vol. III. p300

6 <^ History of English Romanticism.

Dictionaries make it synonymous with sentimental, imaginative, wild, extravagant, chimerical, all obviously derived from its most critical definition7. age <;ha<; nppnspH t n the r.lass- _ _ sicalj.ntig^ueJ' – The etymology of Romanticism is familiar. The various dialects that arose from the corruption of Latin were referred to by their common name (Ro??ians). The name was then applied to each piece

\ Literature written in this vernacular rather than \ Old Classical Latin. And the most popular form of writing in Provençal, Old French and Spanish was the chivalrous adventure fairy tale, known par excellence as romance, roman or romance. The adjective romantic comes much later, implying a certain degree of critical attention to the type of fiction it describes in order to generalize about its peculiarities. It first spread in the second half of the 17th century and the first years of the 18th century; and, of course, in what is considered a classical period, it was cast from birth with that tone of disapproval which was popularly noted.

The feature that critics found in the novels of the Middle Ages, and in that very different type of novels that arose in the 17th Urfe - was the fantastic improbability of their adventures. Hence the general acceptance of Romantic work in terms such as "a romantic notion", "a romantic escape", "an act of romantic generosity". Applying the adjective to the landscape was something

The defined topic. 7

later;* and abstract romanticism is of course much later; how the literary movement, or 'revolution of taste', to which it is entitled, was not sufficiently developed until the beginning of the nineteenth century to claim a name in England as in Germany and France, and its baptism no doubt came from abroad, from the disputed Literature that followed the careers of German romanticism and French romanticism.

While we accept Heine's definition for the moment, it will be useful to examine some of the broader meanings that have been ascribed to the words classical and romantic, and some of the analyzes that have been attempted to examine the qualities that make a work of art. art classic yet another romantic. Walter Pater took them to indicate opposing tendencies or elements present in varying proportions in all good art. The essential function of glass art and literature, he thought, is to provide measure, purity, and moderation. what at least long experience has shown us will never displease us, and in the classical literature of Greece and Rome, as in the classics of the last century, the essential classical element is this quality of 'order'. in the beauty they really possess in supreme measure.” f “Therefore, the charm of what is

• Mr. Perry thinks that one of the first instances of using the

The word romantic comes from the diarist Evelyn in 1654: "There is also a very romantic seat on the side of that terrible mountain." – English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, by Thomas Sergeant Perry, p. 148, note

\ "Romanticismo", Macmillan's Magazine, vol. XXXV.

8 zThe History of English Romanticism.

Classics in art or literature are well-known stories that we can hear again and again because they are so well told. Added to the sheer beauty of its form is the casual, quiet charm of familiarity."

On the other hand, he defines the romantic character in art as "the addition of strangeness to beauty", a definition reminiscent of Bacon's dictum: "There is no eminent beauty which does not have a certain strangeness in proportion". As the search for beauty — continues the priest — is an integral part of every artistic organization, it is the addition of curiosity to this search for beauty that constitutes the romantic temperament. terms classical and classicism applied to the literature of Greece and Rome, and to modern works conceived in the same spirit, although he recognizes that there are certain eras in the world in which the classical_tradition dominates___/.<? ., en^jv1iklhM the _respect for authenticity^_the love of order and decoration^_the propensity to follow rules and standards, the acceptance of academic and conventional standards overcome strangeness and novelty. for example, the august age of Rome, the century of Louis XIV in France, the days of Pope and Johnson in England; in fact, the entire 18th century in all parts of Europe.

Nor would I limit the word romanticism to works in the spirit of the Middle Ages. "The essential elements," he says, "of the romantic spirit are curiosity and love of beauty; and it is only as an incidental effect of these qualities that the Middle Ages seek; for in the overburdened atmosphere

The defined topic. 9

In the realm of the Middle Ages there are untapped sources of romantic effect, of strange beauty that can be conquered by a strong imagination of improbable or distant things.” Contrary to the literary tradition of the last century, he loved the strange adventure and looked for it in the Middle Ages.

Once again, the essayist carefully emphasizes that there are certain predominantly romantic epochs. "Outbursts of that spirit naturally occur at certain moments: moments when ... people come to art and poetry after a long boredom with a deep thirst for intellectual excitement." He mentions as naturally romantic periods the time of the first Provençal troubadour poetry: the years after the Bourbon Restoration in France (say, 1815-30); and "the late Middle Ages; so that medieval poetry centering on Dante is often contrasted with Greek or Roman poetry, as Romantic poetry with classical."

Thus, in Pater's use of the terms, Classic and Romantic do not describe particular literatures or particular periods of literary history, but rather certain qualities and balancing tendencies that run through the literatures of all times and countries. There were romantic writings among Greeks and Romans; in the Middle Ages there were classical writings; moreover, classical and romantic traits can be found in the same author. If there is a poet who can safely be called a classic, it is Sophocles; and yet Pater explains that Sophocles' Philoctetes, if published today, would be called romantic. And he points out - which has already been pointed out many times - that the

/

lo <iA History of English l^pmanticism.

The "Odyssey"* is more romantic than the "Iliad": it is more a novel than a heroic epic. The adventures of the wanderer Odysseus, the visit to the land of the lotus eaters, the encounter with the Lestrygonians, the experiences in Polyphemus' cave, taking into account the different feelings and customs, remind the assiduous reader of Romans d' Medieval Aventura. Pater quotes De Stendhal as saying that all good art was romantic in his time. 'Romance', says De Stendhal, 'is the art of presenting people with those literary works which, given the present state of their habits and beliefs, can give them the greatest possible pleasure; classicism, on the other hand, gives them gifts that gave their great-grandparents the greatest pleasure”, a definition that is epigrammatic, if unconvincing. De Stendhal (Henri Beyle) was a pioneer and particular champion of the cause of French Romanticism and, in his use of the term, Romanticism.

• The Odyssey was explained allegorically throughout

Sense. At least the Circe episode obviously lends itself to such an interpretation. Circe's cup became a metaphor for the sensual intoxication that turns men into beasts; Milton considers himself a follower of Homer in 'Comus' and almost consciously teaches a lesson of temperance to Puritan times rather than to ancient Ionian Greeks in times which have no record beyond his poem.

f "Racine and Shakespeare, Studies in Romanticism" (1823), p. 32nd edition. by Michel Levy Freres, 1854. This also seems to be the opinion of M. Emile Deschanel, whose book "Le Romantisme des Classiques" (Paris, 1883) is reviewed by M. Brunetiere in an article already quoted several times. "All the classics," according to M. Deschanel - or so his critic says - "already had a romantic beginning." And again: "A romantic would simply be a classic on the way to conquest; and, conversely, a classic would not be until a romantic arrived."

7th definite subject. eleven

stands for progress, Ubertv. originality and the sj3iri.t^ of the future; Classicism, through conservatism ^_aut horitj, imitation, the spirit of the past. According to him, the romantic artwork ej[gry_£rood is a classic in kingmaking. The future as a standard to which new artists/artists have to conform. )

It may be worth completing the concept of the term by considering some other proposed definitions of romance. Dr F. H. Hedge, in an article in the Atlantic Mo)ithly of March 1886, asked:What do we mean by that?romantic? Goethe, he says, characterized the difference between Classicism and Romanticism “as synonymous with the healthy and the morbid. Schiller suggests "naive and sentimental". 'f Most [German critics] considered this identical with the difference between ancient and modern, which was partly true, but explained nothing. None of the given definitions can be accepted as fully satisfactory."];

dr Hedge himself finds the origin of romantic feelings in admiration and mystery. "Xbe/jgssence of Romanticism". er e.ja^ritfts, i'_is_jnysi£ry"; y^/' reinforces the point by asserting the application of the word ^ to the landscape, they are romantic: the public road is not.

• "Classical and Romantic", Vol. LVII.

\ Veja "On Naive and Sentimental Poetry" de Schiller.

X The word romance, after fifty years and more discussions

in love, he is still very lazy and is doing well today

floating — Brunetière, ibid.

12 and ^ history

Broc|k's Secret. . . it's romantic compared to the wide river." <* Moonlight is romantic compared to daylight." Dr Hedge attributes this taste for the mysterious "to the influence of the Christian religion, which immensely deepened the mystery of life and suggested something beyond and beyond the world of sense."

This enchantment of wonder or mystery is perhaps just another name for that "strangeness added to beauty" which Pater regards as the distinguishing characteristic of Romantic art. Later in the same article, Dr. Hedge that "the essence of romance is striving." Much could be said in defense of this position. It has often been pointed out, e.g. for example, that a Gothic cathedral expresses aspiration and a Greek temple satisfies abundance. Indeed, if we agree that, in general, the Classical period equates to Antiquity and the Romantic period to the Middle Ages, it will be strange that we do not discover many differences between the two that can hardly be treated in a single book. phrase. dr Hedge himself lists several qualities of Romantic art that can hardly be included in his essential and defining category of admiration or aspiration. Thus he proclaims that "the peculiarity of the classical style is the writer's restraint, self-repression"; while "the romantic is self-reflective". “The clear, dispassionate and unbiased presentation of the s ^- j[ect...

The topic "Definitely. 13

romantic style. This contrast is developed at length by the essayist when he insists on the "cold reserve and colorless simplicity of the classical style, where the medium is lost in the object"; and "on the other hand, the introspection, the sentimental intensity, the subjective coloring of the Romantic style".

Another distinguishing feature of the Romantic spirit identified by Dr. Hedge mentioned in common with many other critics is inaccuracy or incompleteness

your reactions. This, of course, is a consequence of his sense of mystery and effort. Schopenhauer said that music is characteristic of modern art because of its subjective and indeterminate nature. Follow this line of thinking. dr Hedge observes that "the romantic is related in some way to the classical, as music is to the fine arts ... [music] does not represent a finished ideal, but suggests ideals beyond the capacity of the canvas" or works of art in stone on the intellect, music on the feelings, one affects us by what it presents, the other by what it suggests. This, it seems to me, is essentially the difference between classical and romantic poetry as examples of the former, and Scott and Shelley for the latter school.

Here, then, we have proposed a third criterion for determining the essential distinction of Romantic art. First it was mystery, then aspiration; now it is the appeal to the emotions by the method of suggestion. And yet there is perhaps no contradiction on the part of the critic in this constant shifting of his terrain. Apparently, it presents different facets of the same *truth; he means by this mystery one thing, effort, vagueness, incompleteness, emotional suggestion - ||^

14 '^ History of English l^pmanticism.

ness: that quality or impact that we all feel is present in romantic works and absent in classical works, but which we find difficult to describe in a single term. It is open to anyone who sifts through our critical vocabulary to extract the broadest meanings they can from related word pairs such as classic and romantic, fantasy and imagination, intelligence and humor, reason and understanding, passion and feeling. For example, let's briefly develop this claim that the ideal of classical art is "completeness" and the ideal of Roman art is undefined or suggestive.

aT W. Schlegel had already used "two" creative arts to illustrate the difference between classical and romantic, as Dr. Hedge uses the visual arts and music. I am referring to Schlegel's famous dictum that the genius of ancient drama is sculptural and that of romantic drama pictorial. A Greek temple, statue or poem has no more imperfections and no longer offers promises, it indicates nothing beyond what it expresses. It fills the sense, leaves nothing to the imagination. It stands straight, symmetrical, sharply defined in daylight. There is nothing else to do with it; there's no hiding it. But in romantic art there is seldom such fullness. The worker takes time, I might add, his ideal escapes him. Is a Gothic cathedral really finished? Is "Faust" over? Is "Hamlet" explained? The modern mind is mystical; your architecture, painting, poetry use the shadow

• What really makes a classic is the balance in it.

all skills that contribute to the completion of the artwork. — Brunetiere, ibid.

\"Classes of Dramatic Arts and Literature\".

The topic "Definitely. fifteen

unfold their maximum effect: shadows and colors instead of contours. On the heroic Greek stage there were a few figures, two or three at the most, grouped like statues and projected in relief at the apex of the scene: in Greek architecture, a few clean, simple lines; in Greek poetry, clear ideas are easily expressed. - can be described in language and especially in sensual images.

Modern theater is full of characters and colors, and the distance disappears in the middle of the scene. This love of perspective is repeated in the halls of cathedrals*, the love of color in cathedral windows, and the darkness looms in the shadows of the vaults. In our poetry, in our religion, these obscure thoughts prevail. We are not looking for completeness here. The beyond, the unspeakable attracts us. Hence the greatest spirituality of romantic literature, its deepest emotion, its most passionate tenderness. But hence also its sentimentality, its melancholy and, above all, the morbid fascination that the thought of death exerts on the Gothic mind. Classical nations focused their attention on life and light and paid little attention to darkness and the grave. Death was neither sacred nor beautiful to them. Their decent funerals or cremation rites seem designed more to hide their deformities than to prolong their memories. The presence of the corpse was defilement. No Greek could have invented a book like the "Hydriotaphia" or the "Anatomy of Melancholy".

• Far to the west, the long, long valley recedes,

Where twilight likes to linger.

– BeattiesMemory beds."

1 6 cA History of English Romanticism.

It can be seen that Dr. Hedge Pater agrees that he wants a more philosophical statement of the difference between the Classical and Romantic periods than the usual one, which simply makes the difference between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He says: “It must not be assumed that antiquity and classicism, on the one hand, and modernity and romanticism, on the other hand, are inseparably one; so that you will not find anything approaching the romantic in any Greek author. "or novel, nor in any classical author". Page in the literature of modern Europe... The literary boundary line is not identical with the chronological line”. And just as Dad says the Odyssey is more romantic than the Iliad, Dr. Hedge that "the story of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius' 'Golden Ass' is as much a romance as any other seventeenth-century composition." or the eighteenth century.” Medievalism regards this simply as an accident of romanticism: Scott is most romantic in his subjects, but Byron in his humour.

Also Mr. Sidney Colvinf denies that "a predilection for classical subjects... can cause a writer to deviate from what we mean by the word 'classical' as opposed to what we mean by the word 'romantic'". The distinction is deeper and it is a revelation

• The modernity of this "last born of myths" lies

partly in its spiritual, quasi-Christian conception of love, partly in its allegorical theme, the attainment of immortality of the soul through love. The Catholic idea of ​​penance is also suggested in Psyche's "long wanderings". This apologist was the darling of Platonic poets like Spenser and Milton. See "The Fairy Queen", Book III. I sing, saw verse 1 and "Comus", verses 1002-11.

f “Walter Savage Lander Selection”, Preface, p. vii.

The subject T) defined. 17

much less staining of the subject than of the treatment. . . In classical writing, each idea is evoked as openly as possible and at the same time with equal clarity in the mind; it is displayed in white light and can act on its own.* In romantic writing, on the other hand, all objects are displayed by a colorful, iridescent atmosphere. Around each main idea, the romantic evokes a cloud of subsidiary and secondary ideas to increase its impact, but at the risk of confusing its outline. The romantic writer's temperament is again one of excitement, while the classical writer's temperament is one of self-control. . . On the one hand, there is calm, on the other, enthusiasm. The virtues of a style are strength of understanding, with clarity and impartiality in presentation; the virtues of the other style are the brilliance of the mind, with magic and richness of suggestion”. uncertainty', the flickering, iridescent, vibrant or colored light - the 'halo' - with which the romantic surrounds his subject. . with its exciting uncertainties and rich suggestions, it can be more attractive than the classic form with its composed precision and measure of statement. . . But, on the other hand, unlike the true classic, the Romantic style lends itself to inferior work. Excited and almost verbalized second-rate ideas derive from a

• See also Walter Bagehot's essay on "Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque

Art.“ „Literary Studies, Works“ (Hartford, 1889), Bd. I.S. 200.

i8e/f History of English Romanticism.

delusional attraction that can pass you off as top notch for a while and by all but the nicest of judges. Whereas one cannot be under any illusions about true classical writing. It presents us with ideas calmly framed in words that define them precisely, ideas whose appeal does not depend on their halo but on themselves.

As examples of these contrasting styles, Mr. Colvin juxtaposes passages from Keats's The Old Mariner and Ode to a Mockingbird with passages dealing with similar themes from Landor's Gebir and Imaginary Conversations. The contrast can be made even clearer by studying a piece like Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," where the romantic form is applied to classical themes; or comparing Tennyson's "Tllysses" and "The Lotus Eaters". which Homeric themes are treated in a classical and romantic way.

Alfred de Musset, who in his early years was an important figure among French romantics, wrote a magnificent satire on the confused and contradictory definitions of the word romanticism that were fashionable in the third and fourth decades of this century. he writes from the little village of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre to the editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes and asks him to tell them what romance means. For two years, Dupuis and his friend Cotonet assumed that the term applied only to the theater and meant contempt for units. Shakespeare, for example, makes people travel

• Cartas de Dupuis y Cotonet (i 836), "CEuvres Completes" (Char-

Pentier Edition, 1881), Volume IX. pg. 194.

.^

7. ID of the fined subject. 19

From Rome to London and from Athens to Alexandria in fifteen minutes. His heroes live ten or twenty years between two acts. Its heroines, angels of virtue for a whole scene, need only walk through the scenes to reappear as wives, adulteresses, widows and grandmothers. There, we told ourselves, is the romantic. On the contrary, Sophocles leaves Jesus sitting on a rock from the beginning of his tragedy, even at great personal inconvenience. All the characters are looking for him one by one. Maybe he gets up now and then, though I doubt it; unless out of respect for Theseus, who smugly walks in and out of the street during the play. . . There, we told ourselves, is the classic."

But in 1828, the letter continues, “we learned that there is romantic poetry and classical poetry, romantic novels and classical novels, romantic odes and classical odes; no, a line, sir, a lonely line can be romantic.” or classical, as the mood suited. When we got this news, we couldn't close our eyes all night. Two years of peaceful conviction passed like a dream. All of our ideas were turned upside down when Aristotle's rules were no longer the demarcation line that separated the literary realms, where did you stand and what could you trust? a book?... Fortunately a famous preface appeared the same year, which we devoured immediately.*... I said this very clearly

• Preface to "Cromwell" by Victor Hugo, dated October 1827.

The play was printed in 1828 but was not performed.

20 <iA history of English l^Pmanticism.

that novel was nothing but the union of the ludic and the serious, the grotesque and the horrible, the humorous and the horrendous, that is, if you prefer, comedy and tragedy.

This definition was accepted by zealous researchers for a year, until they realized that Aristophanes - not to mention other ancients - mixed tragedy and comedy in his dramas. Once again the friends were plunged into darkness, and their confusion was deepened when they were out walking one afternoon and overheard a comment from the sous-pre'fet's niece. This young woman had fallen in love with the English way of life, which was eerily evident by the fact that she wore a green veil, orange gloves and silver-rimmed glasses. As she passed passers-by, she turned to a watermill by the ford, where there were sacks of grain, geese and a harnessed ox, and called out to her housekeeper, "Voila, a romantic place."

This mysterious phrase piqued MM's waning curiosity. Dupuis and Cotonet and renewed their investigations. A newspaper passage led them to believe for a time that Romanticism was an imitation of the Germans, perhaps supplemented by the English and Spanish. So they were tempted to imagine that it could just be a matter of literary form, possibly that verse breeze (parent verse) they make so much noise about. "From 1830 to 1831 we were convinced that romanticism was the historical style [genre historique] or, if you like, that craze that our authors have recently adopted to portray the characters of their romances and melodramas Charlemagne, Francis I .or naming Enrique IV ., The-

7 he Tfefined object. twenty-one

instead of Amadis, Oronte or Saint-Albin. . . From 1831 until the following year, we thought it was the intimate genre that was talked about a lot. But despite all the pain we endured, we could never figure out what Gejire Intiine was. "Intimate" romances are like any other. They are at volumes of two octaves with plenty of margin. . . They have a yellow cover and cost fifteen francs.” From 1832 to 1833 they conjectured that Romanticism might be a system of philosophy and political economy.

Finally, they remember a certain lawyer who, in 1824, was the first to publicize these literary debates. They explain their difficulties and ask him for an answer to the question: what is romance? After a long conversation, they arrive at this final definition. Romance, my dear sir! No, it is certainly not contempt for unities, nor the alliance of the comic and the tragic, nor anything in the world that can be expressed in words. In vain do you grasp the butterfly's wing; the powder that gives it the color stays on the fingers. Romance is the star that cries, it is the wind that moans, it is the night that shudders, the bird that flies and the flower that exudes perfume: it is the sudden rush, the ecstasy gone, the cistern under the palm trees, the rosy hope with her thousand loves, the angel and the pearl, the white mantle of the willows. It is the infinite and the starry" etc. etc.

Then M. Ducoudray, a magistrate of the department, gives his theory of the novel, which he

22 r^ History of English Romanticism.

as a result of religious and political backlash under the restored Bourbon monarchy of Louis XV. visa. and Carlos X. "The mania for the ballad, coming from Germany, met one fine day with Legitimist poetry in the Ladvocat bookstore; and the two, hoe in hand, entered a cemetery at dusk to unearth the Middle Ages." The predilection for the Middle Ages, adds M. Ducoudray, survived the 1830 revolution, and romanticism even entered the service of freedom and progress, where it is a patent anachronism, "using Ronsard's style to celebrate the railways , and to imitate Dante" ... when he sings the praises of Washington and Lafayette." Dupuis was tempted to accept M. Ducoudray's explanation, but Cotonet was not satisfied. He shut himself up for four months, at the end of which he announced his discovering that the true and only difference between the classic and the romantic is that the latter uses many adjectives, he clarifies his principle by reciting passages from "Pablo e Virgínia" and "Cartas Portuguesas", written in a romantic style.

So Musset points out a critical bubble with the point

its satire; and still the bubble won't go away.

There really has to be a bigger difference

which is between the classic and the romantic, from the terms

remain and are perceived as useful. It may be true that the

romantic temperament that is subjective and excited tends to

\ to an excess of adjectives; is the adjective that

-/Part of speech that attributes qualities, and it is there-

/ mainly used more freely by emotional people. Even so

it would be possible to eliminate all adjectives, not

\ absolutely necessary, from one of the Tieck girls con-

The topic "Definitely. 23

disturbing at least its romantic character.

It remains to add that romance is a two-way word. Now he opposes realism as he once opposed classicism. For in a sense its freedom and anarchy, its love of the new, of experimentation, "strangeness plus beauty" are opposed to the classic respect for rules, models, formulas, precedents, conventions; otherwise, his dissatisfaction with things as they are, his idealism, his aspirations, his mysticism contrast with the realist's conscious adherence to facts. "*Ivanhoe" is a kind of romance;

• • The marble faun is different.*

• In modern times, romance is a permanent trend

of the human spirit, was opposed to what is called realism. . . [But] there is, it seems to us, just one basic note that every novel has. . . have in common, and that is, a deep disgust for the world as it is, and a desire to present in literature what is supposed to be nobler and better. —H.H. Boyesen, Essays on German Literature, pp. 358 and 356.

CHAPTER 11. Bugustans XLbc.

The Romantic movement in England was part of the general reaction in Europe against the spirit of the eighteenth century. It started a little earlier in England than in Germany and much earlier in France, where literary conservatism was oddly associated with political radicalism. In England, the reaction was initially insidious, timid and unconscious. It only gained importance in the seventh decade of the century and only culminated in the first years of the nineteenth century. The Medieval Renaissance was just one example - albeit a significant one - of this movement; but it is with this side that the present treatise will chiefly deal. So I'll have a lot to say about Scott; very little about Byron, intensely romantic as he was in many senses of the word. That doesn't stop me from looking at elements other than the Middle Ages that fall under the term "romanticism" from time to time.

Returning then to our preliminary definition - Heine's definition - of romanticism as a reproduction of life in the Middle Ages in modern art and literature, it should be clarified that the term "Middle Ages" is to be understood here in a liberal sense. Sense. Contributions to Romantic Literature, such as Macpher-

24

Die E^ugustaner. 25

Collins's "Ossian", "Ode on the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands", and Gray's translations from Welsh and Norse refer to periods before the era of Christian chivalry and feudalism, dating from about the 11th to the 15th centuries. with the term "Middle Ages" being applied more strictly. The same is true, at least for the basics, of ancient heroic epics like "Beowulf" and "Nibelungenlied", the Icelandic "sagas" and similar products from ancient pagan Europe that reached the United States. in the form of mythologies, popular beliefs, customs, rites, songs and traditions. These began to attract scholarly attention in the middle of the last century and have left a deep impression on contemporary literature.

Again, the royal influence of the Middle Ages extended beyond the exact end of the Middle Ages, which is usually dated to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The great Italian Romantic poets, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, wrote the Pagan Renaissance in full bloom , making free use of Greek and Roman mythologies and the fables of Homer, Virgil and Ovid; and yet his work can hardly be described as classic. Nor the work of his English students Spenser and Sidney; while all Spanish and English dramas of the 16th and 17th centuries (up to 1640 and with occasional exceptions like Ben Jonson) are romantic. Calderón is romantic; Shakespeare and Fletcher are romantics. If we agree that medieval literature encompasses all the ancient literature of Europe inspired by sources other than Greek and Latin, we will not do too much violence to it.

26 (^^ History of English T^manticism.

habitual critical use of the word. I say ancient literature to exclude very modern writings like "Robinson Crusoe" or "Gulliver's Travels" or Fielding's novels, which are neither classic nor romantic but the original creation of our own time. Our research has nothing to do with works like these, although they are perhaps the most characteristic production of the 18th century.

Needless to say, the reproduction or imitation of medieval life by the romantics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contains a splendid mixture of modern thought and feeling. The glowing images of feudal society in Scott and Fouque's novels, even if they are carefully correct in every verifiable historical detail, do not give an accurate picture of that society.* Rather, they give the impression that the . picturesque for a way of life that seemed neither strange nor picturesque to the people who lived it, but only to the man who seeks it for respite from the everyday, or at least familiar, conditions of the world.

• Another notable weakness of the era is its habit of seeking

Back, in passionate romantic idleness, to the bygone era without understanding it all the time... so Scott gives almost half his intellectual power to a loving but futile dream about the past; and he spends half his literary work reviving it, not in reality, but on the stage of fiction: undertakings which were the best of the kind of modernism ever undertaken, but which are still successful only so far as Scott dons the old armor. the eternal human nature he knew; and wholly unsuccessful in painting the armor itself, which he was unfamiliar with. . . . His romances and antiques, his chivalry and monasticism are all false, and he knows them {aXsQ.-Ruskin, "Modern Painters" vol. third page 279 (First American edition, i860).

Die <i/Jugtislanos. 27

modern world. The fruit of the modern imagination acting on medieval material can be a perfectly legitimate, if not original, art form. It may even have a charm of its own, unlike either parent, but like Euphorion, son of Faust and Helen of Troy, a cross between Hellas and the Middle Ages. Scott's tales in verse are better poetry than the metrical English romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Tennyson gave the Arthurian legends a more perfect form than did Sir Thomas Malory, their author, or Walter Map and Chrestien of Troyes, their pretended inventors. But of course, to study the Middle Ages as it really was, you need not go to Tennyson and Scott, but to Roland's Chanson and the Divine Comedy and the Romance of the Rose. , and the Chronicles of Villehardouin, Joinville and Froissart.

And the more this study is done, the clearer it becomes that "medieval" and "romantic" are not synonymous. The Middle Ages were not at all romantic: it is modern romanticism that makes or finds it. He sees its strange, vivid quirks in the glow of distance. Chaucer's temperament, for example, was not at all romantic. That "common sense" that Dryden mentions as his exceptional quality; this "deep tone" which Lowell extols in him, and which keeps him close to the common ground of experience, infuses his greatest work, the Canterbury Tales, with an insistent realism. It is true that Chaucer shared the beliefs and influences of his time and was a follower of its literary fashions. In his version of the "Romanaunt of the Rose", his imitations of Machault and his early works in general,

28 and The History of English Romanticism.

he used the medieval machinery of allegory and dreams. In "Troilus and Cresseide" and the story of "Palamon and Arcite", he takes romantic love and chivalrous honor to a higher level than his role model Boccaccio. But the deftly practical Pandarus of the above poem - a character created almost entirely by Chaucer - is the personification of Sancho Panza's anti-romantic attitude and remarkable anticipation; while "Sir Thopas' Rhyme" is a burlesque unlike any romance of chivalric fantasy.* Chaucer's pages are colorful with jousts, hunting parties, stately feasts, miracles of saints, exploits; but they also correspond to everyday life in fourteenth-century England. They have the naïveté and chatteriness that are hallmarks of medieval work, but not the weirdness and grotesqueness that are said to be hallmarks of Romantic work. It's not archaic speech, but a certain spiritual twist that makes uniqueness what it is. Herbert and Fuller are colorful; Blake is grotesque; Donne and Charles Lamb are deliberately pictorial, subtle and paradoxical. But Chaucer is always direct, broad and natural.

Even Dante, the poet of the Catholic Middle Ages; Dante, the mystic, the idealist, with his intense spirituality and passion for symbolism, has sometimes been called a classic because of the vigorous construction of his great poem and his scholastic rigor of method.

The relationship between modern romantic literature

• See also the clever attempt at popular fiction in Nun Preste's Tale:

"This story is also trewe, I suppose, as is Lancelot de Lake's book, which women look up to with full admiration."

The rtAigiistans. 29

situated between the literature of the Renaissance and the ancient literatures of Greece and Rome. But there is the difference that, while Renaissance writers did not conform to their standard, the modern Romantic schools surpassed their teachers, perhaps not intellectually, but certainly in the artistic merit of their product. Generally marvelous and stimulating, and here and there beautiful in the details of execution, medieval literature offers few examples of technical perfection. The civilization they reflected, though superior in potential to classical civilizations, had not yet reached the same level of development, inferior in intelligence and the ripe fruits of a long culture. The epithets of Gothic ignorance, coarseness and barbarism which eighteenth-century critics so freely applied to the whole subject of the so-called Middle Ages were not wholly unjustified. Dante is almost the only strictly medieval poet whose form of work seems suited to the content; for Boccaccio and Petrarch are already on the threshold of the Renaissance.

In the design arts, the case has been partially reversed. If Renaissance artists could not match the Greeks in sculpture and architecture, they probably surpassed them in painting. On the other hand, Gothic restorers never fully learned the secret of medieval builders. If the analogy is not carried too far, however, the Romantic Revival can be seen as a weak counterpart to the Renaissance. Just as the fragments of a half-forgotten civilization came together in the fifteenth century; Greek manuscripts were researched, cleaned, edited and printed: statues, coins.

30 ^ History of English Romanticism.

Vases excavated and placed in museums: rubble taken from temples, amphitheaters, basilicas; until gradually the whole picture of the ancient world grew in sublime beauty, and kindled a spiritual excitement which has few parallels in history; thus, in the eighteenth century, the despised ages of monasticism, feudalism, and superstition began to reassert their claims to the imagination. Ruins of castles and abbeys, chainmail, illuminated missals, handwritten novels, ballads in black letters, ancient tapestries and wood carvings took on a new value. First antiquarians and virtuosos, then poets and novelists, they reconstructed an image of medieval society.

True, the subsequent movement of both was much weaker. There was no difference between modern times and the Middle Ages, as there was between antiquity and the Middle Ages, as a result of the fall of the Roman state and the migration of peoples. Furthermore, no rubble of ten centuries has accumulated in the remains of medieval culture. Around 1700, the Middle Ages weren't that far away. The nations and languages ​​of Europe remained within the same borders that delimited them two centuries earlier. Indeed, the advance of mechanical arts and sciences, the discovery and colonization of America, the invention of the printing press and gunpowder, and the Protestant Reformation drew sharp boundaries between modern and medieval life. However, Christianity formed a link, although in Protestant countries the continuity between earlier and later forms of religion was broken. Just compare the list of pilgrims Chaucer found in the tabard with the company Captain Sentinel and

O <^ugustaner. 31

Peregrine Pickle likely finds himself at a suburban inn to see how the face of English society changed between the 1400s and 1700s. What happened to the knight, the prioress, the summer, the monk, the pardoner, the squire, the alchemist, the monk? ; and where can you find them or their equivalents across England?

The narrowness of my subject obliges me to treat English Romanticism as a chapter in literary history, even at the risk of adopting a narrow approach. It would be unphilosophical, however, to treat them as purely aesthetic issues, completely losing sight of their deeper sources in the religious and ethical currents of the time. Because it was in part a return of warmth and color to English letters; and that was only a symptom of the return of heat and color, that is, of feeling and imagination, a|; English life and thought: in church, politics, philosophy. The romanticism that wanted to extract from the mass the beauty that the present lacked was just a phase of that rebellion against the cold and spiritual death of the first half of the eighteenth century, which has had different faces in the present. Berkeley's idealism, in the Methodist and evangelical revival led by Wesley and Whitefield, and in the sentimentality manifested in the writings of Richardson and Sterne. On the Continent they corresponded to German Pietism, to Transcendentalism. the philosophy of Kant and his followers and the emotional excesses of works such as Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloise and Goethe's The Sorrows of Werther. "

The novel was then more than a new literary modality; a taste cultivated by amateurs

>-■!

32 zThe History of English Romanticism.

Virtuosi like Horace Walpole, university recluses like Gray, and antiquarians like Joseph and Thomas Warton. It was the effort of the poetic imagination to create a richer environment for itself; but it was also, in its deepest meaning, a search by the human spirit for a more ideal kind of religion and ethics than could be found in the official ecclesiastical scholarship and formal morals of the day. Mr. Leslie Stephen* points out the connection between the three trends known as sentimentalism, romanticism and naturalism. This certainly explains why early English sentimentalists like Richardson and Sterne were anything but romantic. "A modern sentimentalist would probably express his feelings by describing a past state of society. He would paint an ideal society in the Middle Ages and revive the holy monk and the humble nun for our edification." He attributes his later interest in the Middle Ages to advances in historical research in the latter half of the 18th century and the growth of the antiquities book trade. "Men like Malone and Stevens began those painful investigations which amassed a whole literature of the meager records of our playwrights and, in the great industry of Thomas Warton, his brother Joseph ventured to defend the then paradoxical thesis

• "History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century", vol.

Hey dude. xiii. Section VII

f Sentimentalism approaches its object through feelings; romance through fantasy.

Los a/Iuguesianos. 33

that Spenser was as important a man as Pope. A renewed interest in the minutest details of the past was awakened everywhere.” At first, according to Mr. Stephen, the result of these investigations was “an irrational disregard for the past. The modern philosopher who could extract all knowledge from his own brain; the skeptic who overthrew the old dogmas; or the freethinker of any shade who rejoiced in the destruction of ecclesiastical tyranny and boasted of his conscious superiority over his ancestors. Everything ancient was nonsense; and gothic, an epithet applied to all medieval art, philosophy, or social order, became a mere term of contempt." "Back to nature" expresses an underlying sentiment... sentimental and romantic movements... Zur To return to nature means, in a way, finding a new expression for emotions repressed by existing conventions, or, on the other hand, returning to a simpler social order, which had not yet suffered a series of particular and extraordinary conditions... Exit Breaking out of routine or throwing off old-fashioned shackles can be done in two ways. The intellectual horizon can be broadened to include more age groups and countries; or men can

34 e^ History of English Romanticism.

Try to go back to the thoughts and emotions common to all races and get rid of superficial encrustations. The first method, that of the Romantics, aims at expanding our knowledge, the second, that of the naturalistic school, at basing our philosophy on deeper principles.”*

The Classical or Pseudo-Classical period in English literature lasted from the mid-17th century to the end of the 18th century. Since the Romantic Revival was a protest against this prevailing fashion, it is necessary to ask a little more precisely what we mean when we say that the time of Queen Anne and the first two Georges was our august or classical age. How was it classic? And was it something more classic than the Milton era or the Landor era, for example? If the "Dunciad" and theattempt on man" are

• Ruskin also shows the common element in the novel and

Naturalism: a desire to escape the formalism of Augustus. I'll compress the passage a bit: "Powdering the hair, patching the cheeks, maturing the body, tying the feet, were all part of the same system that reduced the streets to brick walls and the paintings to stains of brown." The reaction to this condition was inevitable, and consequently men flee to the fields and mountains, and find among them color, liberty, variety, and power, and rejoice in all the wildest ravages of the slopes opposite Gower Street. only about the existing inanimate nature that our lack of personal beauty and clothing has brought us. Their imagination, as seen in our ancestors, constantly haunts us. We like to remember the customs of that time. of chivalry We are looking for the furniture and characters of our romanticism in the centuries that we profess to have overcome in everything... to find life. " - Modern Painters, vol. third page 260.

Los <iAnffustans. 35

"^6

Classics, what is Keats' "Hyperion"? And by what quality can we place under one title such disparate things as Prior's Carmen Seculare and Tennyson's Ulysses, or Gay's Trivia and Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon? Obviously, the Queen Anne writers had a different view of antiquity than our 19th century poets. Her classicism was of a special kind: she was, as has often been remarked, more Latin than Greek and more French than Latin. Victor Hugo speaks of "cette poesie fardee, mouchetee, poudrec, du dix-huitieme siecle, cette litterature a paniers, a pompons et a falbalas". f Watteau's wardrobe contrasts with the simple folds

• Though devoted in their admiration of antiquity, writers

of the seventeenth century did not always clearly understand the object of their worship. While they may understand the Latin tradition, they certainly never entered the freer and more original spirit of Greek art. They have only an incomplete and superficial idea of ​​Hellenism. . . Boileau celebrates, but does not understand Pindar. . . Homer did not understand the seventeenth century any better than Pindar did. What we miss about them is what we love most about their epic: the imposing reflection of a semi-barbarian civilization. . . No society could be less prepared than that of the seventeenth century to feel and understand the spirit of primitive antiquity. To appreciate Homer, it was felt necessary to civilize the barbarian, turn him into a ruthless writer, and convince him that the word "dumb" in Greek is a "very noble" expression. — ^^xLissier:The Literary Movement in France' {trans-lation, 1S97), pp. 8-10. So Addison apologizes for Homer's failure to heed the qualities of delicacy, decency, and what the French call hiensance (decency), the necessity of which was only discovered in later times. See The Spectator, #160.

f Preface to "Cromwell".

A

36^t;^ but there is clarity without subtlety or depth. You never try to express a thought or express a feeling that is not easily understood. Wordsworth's mysticism, Shelley's incoherence, Browning's obscurity - to cite only modern examples - emanate not from inferior art, but from; greater difficulty in finding expression for an entirely different set of ideas.

Again, the literature of the Restoration and Queen Anne periods - which may be considered as such for present purposes - was classical, or at least unromantic, in its self-possession, objectivity and lack of curiosity; or, as a hostile critic would say, in her coldness of feeling, in the softness of her imagination, and in her narrow and imperfect sense of beauty. It was not simply a literature of this world, but of the world, of the ieau nionde, of high life, of fashion, of society, of the court and the city, of salons, clubs, cafes, gatherings, ombré parties. He was social, urbane, sociable, intensely, if not largely human. He cared little for the land or nature out there, and nothing for life in distant times and places. His interest turned to civilization and that peculiarly artificial kind of civilization which he considered predominant. Venice, Switzerland, the Alhambra, the Nile, the American forests and islands of the South Seas were as indifferent to him as the Middle Ages and the customs of the Scottish Highlands. the sensitivity to

Got it, I want to talk about it”, “Imaginary Conversations”, Series 2, Conversation XV. Landor's contempt for German literature is telling.

44 t^ History of English 'T^manticism.

Picturesque, a fondness for local color and everything surprising, idiosyncratic and peculiarly national in foreign forms hits a romantic note. Ijl disliked the 18th centurystrangeness added to beauty”;v\T disapproved of anything original, exotic, tropical, weird for the same reason he disapproved of mountains and Gothic architecture.

Professor Gates says that the work of English literature in the first quarter of the present century was "the rediscovery and reclaiming of the concrete." The special task of the eighteenth century was to order, systematize, and name; his favorite methods were analysis "and generalization. It required no new experience... The abstract, the typical, the general, all these were everywhere exalted to the detriment of the image, the specific experience, the vital fact."* Classic Tragedy, E. B. Committed to presenting only the universal, abstract, and enduring truths of human character and passion, f The impression

• "Newman's Selections", Introduction, pp. xlvii-xlviii,

■j- Racine claims that reason and reason are always the same. What is the result of this generalization? Heroes can be transported from one era to another, from one country to another, without causing any surprises. Your Achilles is no more Greek than the Poro Indians; Andromache feels and speaks like a seventeenth-century princess: Phsedra experiences a Christian's repentance. —Pellissier, “Literary Movement in France,” p. i8.

By replacing the ideal figures of tragic art with people with concrete, individual lives, Romanticism was forced to define its physiognomy through a series of accidental local details. In the name of universal truth, the classics rejected the coloring of time and place; and this is exactly what the romantics look for under the name of special reality. — Ibid. P. 220. Similarly, Moctezuma's Mexicans in Dryden's Emperor of the Indies have no more national individuality than the Spanish Moors in his Conquest of Granada. The only attempt at this

O (iAugust. 45

The vision of the mysterious East of modern travelers and poets such as Byron, Southey, De Quincey, Moore, Hugo*, Ruckert and Gerard de Nerval is unparalleled in the eighteenth century. Oriental allegory or moral apologist, as practiced by Addison in articles such as The Vision of Mirza and Johnson in Rasselas, is rather muted in color and assumes the hue it has. of the Old Testament. It is significant that the romantic Collins sought to turn decadent pastoralism into a new direction by writing a series of "Eclogues of the East" in which dervishes and camel drivers replaced shepherds, but the experiment failed. no lucky Milton had more of the East on his mind than any of his successors. His "vulture created by Imaus, whose snowy crest borders the wandering tartar"; his "Sericana Plains, where the Chinese drive their light wagons"; his "Last Taprobane Indian Island" are touches of paint that anticipate a more modern mood than Addison's.

"The difference," says Matthew Arnold, "between real poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and their whole school is, in short, this: poetry is conceived and composed in its intelligence; real poetry is conceived and composed in the soul." The representative minds of the eighteenth century were like Voltaire, . the master of deceit, destroying superstition with

/

The local color in "Aurungzebe" - a heroic work based on the story of a contemporary East Indian potentate who died seven years after the author - is the introduction of the suttee and a mention or two of elephants.

• Siehe „Les Orientales“ (Hugo) e „Les Nuits du

Rhamadan" and "The Legend of Caliph Hakcm".

46 iA History of English Manticism.

his hideous smile; Gibbon, "the lord of irony",Sat-upholding a solemn creed with solemn mockery”; and Hume, with his deep philosophical skepticism, dry conservatism, and cold disdain for "zeal" of any kind. The characteristic products of this period were satire, burlesque and parody: "Hudibras", "Absalom and Achitophel", from the World", "Gulliver's Travels", and "The Robbery of the Castle". . " and "The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse"; Buckingham's "Rehearsal" and Swift's "Meditation on a Broomstick"; heroic gags like "Dunciad" and "MacFlecknoe" and "Dispensary" by Garth and John Phillips and "Splendid Shilling" by Addison and "Machinse Gesticulantes"; Prior's "Soul", a philosophical parody; Gay's "Trivia" and "The Shepherd's Week" and "The Beggars' Opera", a "Newgate Pastoral"; "Town Eclogues" by Swift and Lady Montague and Others. Literature was a polished mirror in which the happy world saw its own smiling face. It projected a very bright picture of the surface of society, showing manners but not the elemental passions. of human nature. In general, she leaves an impression of hardness, superficiality and lightness. The polite cynicism of Congreve, the cruel cynicism of Swift, the malice of Pope, the gentleness of Addison, the reckless worldliness of Prior and Gay are seldom relieved by any reference to the ideal. The prose of the time was excellent, but the poetry was simply rhyming prose. The recent renaissance of Queen Anne's architecture, clothing and jewelry, the resurgence of society's verse in Dobson and others, is perhaps

The Augustinians. 47

symptomatic of the prosaic reaction of the present generation to romantic excesses and our discovery of our picturesqueness in that age of artificiality which seemed so unpicturesque to our ancestors. The palanquin, the blue china, the fan, the farthingale and the powdered headdress have already reached the "frost of times" and are displayed in a fascinating perspective, as well as the chain corset, the suede doublet, the hood and the fabric . Hofschacht were seen by men of Scott's generation.

Once again, the 18th century was classic when it came to authority. He wanted to be disciplined, follow the rules, discover a \ ' ■•; Remedial formulas in all arts to establish dishes of flavor and canons of composition, to uphold norms, copy models and standards, adhere to conventions, and punish injustices. In a word, his spirit was academic. Horace was his favorite teacher, not the Horace of the odes, but the Horace of the satires and epistles, and especially the Horace interpreted by Boileau.* The Ars Poetica was translated into English by the Count of Roscommon and imitated by Boileau in his "L' Art Poetique", which produced many children in England; including an "Essay on Satire" and an "Essay on Poetry" by the Earl of Mulgrave; f an “essay on

• The rules a nation obeys, born to serve;

And Boileau, still on Horace's right, falters.

— Text,j Essay on criticism".\ These critical essays in verse seem to have been particularly affected by this noble order; for a little later we have one, "On Unnatural Flights in Poetry," from the Earl of Lansdowne, "Granville the Courteous."

48 tThe History of English Romanticism.

translated verse" by the Earl of Roscommon, who, says Addison,even makes a noble poetry out of rules”;*and Pope's well-known "Essay on Criticism."

The lesson of Pope's essay, in a nutshell, is to follow nature, and in order that you may follow nature, observe the rules which are only "nature-methodical" and also imitate the old ones.

"So learn a fair appreciation of the old rules; to copy nature is to copy it."

Thus, Virgil seemed above the law of criticism when he began to compose the Aeneid, but when he began to study Homer he found that nature and Homer were one and the same. Or,

"It controls the bold design and so strictly regulates its effort to limit itself."

Not encouraging, but controlling, restricting, regulating is the infallible rule of this critical school. Literature, in the state in which they found it, seemed to them to need the bridle more than the spur,

Addison's scholarship was almost entirely Latin, though it was Virgilian rather than Horatian. Macaulay f says of Addison's Observations on Italy: 'As far as we know, Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Beni, Lorenzo de' Medici or Machiavelli saw Ariosto's tomb, and that he versed on the Gondoliers in Venice heard Tasso sing, but Tasso and Ariosto meant far less to him than Valerio Flaco and Sidonio Apollinaris.

• "Letter to Sacheverel." f "Addison Essay."

O <^ugustaner. 49

The Ticino River resembles a verse from Silio. The sulphurous current of Albula suggests several passages from Martial. But he has nothing to say about the famous Santa Croce dead; he walks through the forest of Ravenna without thinking of Ghostbusters, and up and down Rimini without thinking of Francesca. In Paris he eagerly sought an introduction to Boileau; but he does not seem fully aware that in Florence he was close to a poet with whom Boileau could not be compared: the greatest lyric poet of modern times [!] Vincenzio Filicaja. . . The truth is that Addison knew little and cared less about the literature of modern Italy. His favorite role models were Latinos. His favorite critics were the French. Half of the Tuscan poetry he read seemed monstrous, the other half tacky."

There was no academia in England, but a critical tradition that was almost as influential. French critics gave the law: Boileau, Dacier, LeBossu, Rapin, Bouhours; English critics proclaimed it: Dennis, Langbaine, Rymer, Gildon, and others little now

• Sweet twilight hour! - in solitude

from the pine forest and the peaceful coast that borders the ancient forest of Ravenna,

Rooted where Adrian's wave once flowed, Whither was the last stronghold of the Caesars,

Green Forest! that Boccaccio's legends and Dryden's lies enchanted me as I loved the twilight hour and you!

- Don Juan. f I must sincerely agree with Monsieur Boileau that a verse of Virgil is worth all Tasso's clinquant or tinsel. — Spectator, #5.

5© e/^ History of English Romanticism.

to read. Three highly regarded authors in three successive generations - Dryden, Addison and Johnson - cemented a literary opinion that can essentially be described as classic and sweet, albeit with minor variations. Therefore, everyone agreed that it was the writer's duty to be "right". It was good indeed to be "brave", but brave with discretion. Dryden considered Shakespeare a greater poet than Jonson, but an inferior artist. He was to be admired but not approved of. Admittedly, Homer was not quite as sure as Virgil either, although he had more "fire." Chesterfield preferred Vergil to Homer and both to Tasso. But of all the epics, he liked reading the Henriade best. As for "Paradise Lost", he couldn't read it. William Walsh, “the judge and friend of the Muses”, advised the young pope that “there was still a way open for him to surpass each of his predecessors, and that was by correction; though, indeed, we have had several great poets, we have not hitherto been able to boast of one who was perfectly right, and who therefore advised him to make this quality his special study. "The best of the moderns in all languages," he wrote Pope, "are those who have most closely copied the ancients." Pope was grateful for the advice and mentions his donor in Essay on Criticism as having received it.

' 'taught his muse to sing, prescribed her tones and clipped her ten wings.'

But what was right? In the drama E., for example, the observance of the units was almost universally recommended, but by no means universally practised.

The <iAugustans. 51

Johnson, himself a staunch disciple of Dryden and Pop, exposed the stage illusion fallacy on the supposed need to defend the unity of time and place. However, in his own tragedy, Irene, Johnson followed Aristotle's rules. He delivered "Cato" "undoubtedly the finest production of Addison's genius", but acknowledged that its success introduced, or among us confirmed, its use of overly declamatory dialogue, nonchalant elegance and cold philosophy. Addison, on the other hand, had little regard for poetic justice for Johnson to uphold. Addison praised the old English ballads, which Johnson found mean and silly, and cautiously praised* "fairy writing", a romantic fantasy. who despised Johnson.f

Critical opinion advocated the separation of tragedy and comedy, and Addison wrote a sentence condemning half of the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher: "The tragicomedy which is the product of the English theater is one of the leading." monstrous inventions that would never have occurred to a poet. rhyme, in the French manner, or in blank verse, following the precedent of the old English stage, was a moot point. Dryden initially defended rhyme and used it in his 'Acts of Strength', and it is significant that he defended its use and the justification for it.

• Viewers. No. 419.

t Check your Collins life. % viewers, #40. ^■

EU--

52 tA History of English Romanticism.

would limit the poet's imagination. But after that he was "tired of his beloved mistress, rhyme" and returned to blank verse in his later works.

As for non-dramatic poetry, Restoration critics agreed that blank verse was too "low" for a poem of heroic proportions; and although Addison favored him in epic poetry, Johnson was his stubborn enemy and thought him utterly immoral. But just in case. Gray couldn't stand blank lines outside of Milton. It is curious that rhyme, a medieval invention, has been associated with the classical school of poets of the last century; while blank verse, the closest English equivalent of the language of Attic tragedy, was a symbol of Romantic poets like Thomson and Akenside. The reason for this was twofold: the rhyme was marked by the authority of the French Alexandrian tragic; and, secondly, it meant restraint where blank verse meant freedom, “the old freedom recovering in heroic poetry from the wearisome modern slavery of rhyme.” * Among his many thousands of rhyming couplets, Pope did not leave a blank verse. beyond the few lines which contributed to Thomson's "Seasons". Even the heroic couplet of earlier poets was considered too loosely structured. 'The excellence and dignity of it,' says Dryden, 'was never fully known until Mr. Waller taught her; he first made a simple writing art; he first showed us how to make sense of verse, which, in the verse of those who preceded him, runs for so many years.

• "The Verse": Preface to "Paradise Lost".

The zAugustans. 55

curves, the profile of a Doric capital probably due. its shape to the firm hand and uncontrolled taste of the designer. To trust many of the theories propounded by the architectural authorities of the last century is to believe that some of the greatest monuments the world has ever built owe their greatest beauty to an intimate knowledge of arithmetic. Column diameter was divided into modules: modules were divided into minutes; the minutes in fractions of themselves. One height was assigned to the axis, another to the entablature. . . Scholars sometimes debated the distance between the pillars of a porch.”*

This mode of measurement is reminiscent of disputes among French critics over whether the unit of time meant thirty, twenty-four, or twelve hours, or the actual time needed to do the work; or the geometric method ofSaturday Newspapers" inViewers. In "Paradise Lost", Addison attempts to compose an epic according to Aristotle's rules. Is the story about a great achievement? Does it begin in medias res, as it should, or ab ovo LedcB, as Horace said an epic should not? Does it introduce the introductory theme in Episode mode using Homer and Virgil's tried-and-true recipe? Contrary to the practice of the ancients, does it have allegorical characters? Does the poet invade his poem personally, thus blending lyric and epic styles? etc. Not a word about Milton's Puritanism, or his worldview, or his working relationship to his environment. None of that historic and sympathetic method that

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

$6nA History of English T^omantics.

they strive to place the reader in the perspective of the poet through whom modern critics, from Lessing to Sainte-Beuve, have revolutionized their art. Addison sees "Paradise Lost" very differently from Miltons: as a manufactured product that is tested against standard fabrics from well-known manufacturers such as the authors of the Iliad and Neida.

When Queen Anne's poetry took a serious turn, the general zeitgeist often led her down paths of ethical and didactic verse. "He humbled himself with the truth and moralized his song", she found her favorite pastime in the sententious expression of commonplaces: the epigram in satire, the maxim in serious work. It became a poetry of aphorisms she taught us with her father

"Only virtue is happiness below";

or, with Young, that

"Procrastination is the thief of time", or, with Johnson, who

"Slow rise in depressive poverty score."

When he tried to face the passions concretely, he found himself impotent. The Pope's "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard" rings hollow: it is rhetoric, not poetry. The final lines of "The Dunciad", so strangely praised by Thackeray, with their tone and grandiose choice of words, are not particularly imaginative. The poet simply seeks a culmination of the false sublime, like an orator who intentionally adds sound play to his speech. The Pope is always “heard”, never “heard”.

The <^ugtistans. 57

The poverty of lyrics in the classical period is particularly significant because song is the most primitive and spontaneous type of poetry and the most direct expression of personal feelings. Whatever the poets of the Pope's time could do, they could not sing. They are the despair of anthologists.* Here and there, among the brilliant thinkers, storytellers and satirists in verse, there appears a brilliant epigrammatist like Prior, or a ballad writer like Henry Carey, whose

• • Sally in Our Alley" shows the singing, not the talking.

Song, voice, but hardly the lyrical scream. Gay's "Blackeyed Susan" has a real quality, although its Rococo details are more than half invented. Sweet William is as much an operatic sailor as Bumkinet or Grubbinol are shepherds, and his courtship is garnished with presumptions like these:

"As we sail to the beautiful shores of India,

Your eyes are bright diamonds, your breath is the hot storm of Africa,

Her skin is ivory, so white. So every beautiful sight I see awakens in my soul the charm of beautiful Sue."

The same was true of the poetry of external nature and the poetry of human passion. In Addison's "Letter from Italy", in the Pope's "Pastorals" and

• Palgrave says that after 1660 the poetry of the Passion became distorted,

for "ease and an artificial tone"; and that "it was almost inactive during the hundred years between the days of Wither and Suckling and the days of Burns and Cowper", "Golden Treasury" (Sever and Francis Edition, 1866), pp. 379-80.

f With the exception of Lady Winchelsea's "Night Dream" and a passage or two in Pope's "Windsor Forest", the poetry of the period between the publication of "Paradise Lost"

$8 <iA History of English 'T(Omancy.

"Windsor Forest," the image, while not really false, is vague and conventional, and the language abounds in classical blandness, descriptive epithets, and second-hand generalities from older poets who might one day have cast their "eyes in the object". " " Have written. A crimson flora paints the enamelled floor; happy murmurs sway in the storm; Eridanus by wandering meadows of flowers; serene scenes of gold* and radiant views arise; while everywhere are gentle zephyrs, jungle shadows, twisting valleys, rumbling shores, silvery floods, crystalline fountains, feathered notebooks, and the gifts of Phoebus, Philomel, and Ceres help the crimson year. This is how Pope translated the famous moonlight passage in his translation of the Iliad:

"Then the valleys shine, the rocks rise in perspective, From all the heavens a deluge of glory pours down," etc.

"It is strange to think of an enthusiast," says Wordsworth, "reciting these verses under the cover of a moonlit sky, without his ecstasies being in the least disturbed by suspicion of their absurdity." The poetic diction that Wordsworth opposed was an outward sign of the classical preference for the general over the concrete. The vocabulary has been Latinized because in English mof propre is compound.

and the "Seasons" [1667-1726] do not contain a single new image of an external nature. —Wordsworth, Appendix to Lyric Ballads, (1815).

• Gild is a perfect mark of eighteenth-century descriptive verse:

the shore is golden, as are the woods, the clouds, &c. Contentment gilds the scene, and the stars gild the gloomy night (Parnell) or the shining lamppost (Pope).

7b e <iAiigutans. 59

Monly is a Saxon word, while its Latin synonym has a comfortable vagueness that keeps the subject at bay. Of a similar bent was the rhetorical favorite of personification, which gave abstractions a false air of life by the simple technique of capitalizing them. Therefore:

“From song to song slipped icy caution, till declamation roared while passion slept; Yet virtue still deigned to take the stage, philosophy remained though nature fled,... Exulting madness gladly greeted the day, And pantomime and music asserted their dominion.”*

Everything was personified: Britannia, justice, freedom, science, melancholy, night. Even the smallpox vaccination was invoked as a goddess,

"Vaccination, heavenly girl, come down!" f

But circumlocution or periphrasis was the main means by which the Augusta poet avoided precision and achieved a noble style. It allowed him to speak of a woman as "nymph" or "beautiful"; of sheep as "hair care"; of Pisces as "the scaly trunk"; and of a picket fence like "Spiculated Bale". Lowell says of Pope's followers: "Just as the teacher made it a principle to avoid the mean or the mean, the students strove to escape the common. They achieved this by means simple to paraphrase. They called everything else." A boat went with them

"'The shiny leather that covers the limbs.'

♦Johnson, "Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane", 1747. f Véase Coleridge, "Biographia Literaria", cap. xviii.

6th ^ History of English Romanticism.

the coffee was

"'The fragrant juice of the brown mocha berry', "*

“The direct appeal to nature and the naming of specific objects,” says Mr. Gosse, “replaced them with second-hand generalities and allusions. They no longer mention the daffodil and daffodil, but allow themselves a general reference to the vernal crown of flora... It was vulgar to say that the moon was rising, the chivalrous expression being "Cynthia raises her silver horn!" Women became nymphs in this new language, fruits became "Pomona's treasures", a horse became "the impatient steed" was lost... they were Pomona's treasures. This transition from private to common language was seen as a great gain in elegance. The use of one of these graceful counters was considered a coin of poetic language, intended to bring the orator closer to the grace of Latinity, the old direct mode of speaking was considered crude and futile, so that a romantic poet wishing to allude to caterpillars might do so. he easily did so without straining his wits by introducing the word "caterpillars", while the classical poet had to prove himself as a scholar and a gentleman by inventing such circumlocutions as "the creeping scourge".

• Essay on Pope, in "My Study Windows".

f “From Shakespeare to Pope,” pp. g-ii.

Los zAtigtistans. 6i

this detracts from the green level. . . In the generation after Pope, really smart writers spoke of a "frozen cistern" when referring to a cold bath, and of "a noisy hunt" when referring to a pack of dogs.

It would be a mistake to assume that the men of the Pope generation, including Pope himself, were totally devoid of romantic feelings. There is a strong romantic accent in the Countess of Winchelsea's Ode to the Nightingale; on her "Night Dream"; in Parnell's 'Night Piece on Death' and in the works of various Scottish poets such as Allan Ramsay and Hamilton of Bangour, whose ballad 'The Braes of Yarrow' is certainly a strange poem straight from the heart of the eighteenth century. But these are eddies and crosscurrents in the current of literary currents. We are always in danger of forgetting that the literature of an era does not express its entire spirit, but only its prevailing spirit. There is usually a latent, silent body of thought and feeling that remains unarticulated or nearly unarticulated. It is this prevailing spirit and fashion that I have tried to describe in this chapter. If the image does not seem believable or somehow exaggerated, the reader should already consult the chapters "Classicism" and "The Pseudoclassics" of M. Pellissier's "Literary Movement in France" several times. related to. They describe a literary situation which had a very close analogue in England,

CHAPTER III. XLbc Spenscrtans.

Dissatisfaction with a prevailing mood or fashion in literature is more likely to be expressed in a new, independent critique of life or a return to older types. However, as the original creative genius is not always available, a literary revolution usually starts with imitation. He looks to the past for inspiration and replaces it with a series of new models that differ as much as possible from the ones he follows today. In all European countries the classical tradition had concealed what was most national and individual in its earlier culture under a smooth, uniform veneer. To break with modern conventions, England and Germany, and later France, returned to the ancient sources of national life; not always wise at first, but obeying true instinct.

To what extent did a knowledge of, or love for, the old romantic literature of England survive among Dryden's and Pop's contemporaries? It is not difficult to give an answer to this question. Prefaces by Dryden, Critical Treatises by Dennis, Winstanley, Oldmixon, Rymer, Langbaine, Gildon, Shaftesbury, and many others, together with hundreds of passages in prologues and epilogues to plays; in periodical essays such as Taf/er and Spectator; in essays in verse

62

Los Spenserianer. 63

like those of Roscommon, Mulgrave, and Pope; in prefaces to various editions of Shakespeare and Spenser; in letters, memoirs, etc., they furnish much evidence that neglect and contempt dominated all but a few English writers who wrote before the middle of the seventeenth century. The exceptions, of course, were those great masters whose genius triumphed over all changes of taste: Shakespeare and Milton and, to a lesser extent, Chaucer and Spenser. Chaucer still had readers of purely medieval authors, and there were reprints of works by him in 1687, 1721 and 1737*, although no critical editions appeared until Tyrwhitts 1775-1778. It is likely, however, that the common reader, if he reads Chaucer at all, will read him in modern versions like the "Fables" of Dryden and Pope.January and May".Dryden's preface contains some admirable criticisms of Chaucer, though it is clear from what he says about the old poet's verse that the mystery of Middle English singing and pronunciation had already been lost. Prior and Pope, who seem to have been chiefly attracted by the outsiders among the Canterbury Tales, made an unsuccessful experiment in burlesque imitation of Chaucerian language.

Outside of Chaucer, and except among professional and antiquarian scholars, the whole corpus poetartwi of the English Middle Ages was unremembered: none of the metrical romances, the rhyming chronicles, the legends of the saints, the wonders, the minstrel ballads, the sermons in verse. . , devotional books, animal fables,

• A small part of the "Canterbury Tales". Edited by Morel.

64 t/1 History of English Romanticism.

courtly or popular allegories and love songs from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. Nor was there any knowledge of or interest in the masterpieces of medieval literature in languages ​​other than English; on works as representative as the "Nibelungenlied", theSong of Roland", the"Roman de la Rose", "Parzival" by Wolfram von Eschenbach, "Tristan" by Gottfried von Straßburg, "Arme Heinrich" by Hartmann von Aue, the chronicles of Villehardouin, Joinville and Froissart, the "Death Artus", the "Dies Irse", the texts of the troubadour Bernard de Ventadour and the minstrel Walther von der Vogelweide, the Spanish ballads, the poems of the Old Edda, the ballads of "Amis et amile". and "Aucassin et Nicolete", writings by Villon, the "De Imitatione Christi" attributed to Thomas a Kempis. Dante was barely read.

There's nothing strange about that; many of these things were still in manuscript and in unknown languages. Old Norse, Old French, Middle High German, Middle English, Medieval Latin. It would be bold to say that the common reader, or even the educated reader, knows them at first hand much better today than their eighteenth-century ancestor did; or much more than he has with Aeschylus, Thucydides, and Lucretius at first hand. But it can be safely said that he knows a lot more about her; that you consider them worthy of being known; and that through modern and popular versions of it, through poems, historical novels, literary histories, essays,

The Spencerians. Sixty-five

and what not, you have in mind an image of the Middle Ages, perhaps as definite and intriguing as the image of classical antiquity. The credit for this goes to the Romantic movement. For the defining characteristic of the last century's attitude towards the Middle Ages as a whole was not its ignorance but its lack of curiosity. I didn't want to know about it* From time to time the Pope insinuates, one

• Sixteenth [sic. Qucere, 17th century?] had a

instinctive dislike for the crude literature of the Middle Ages, the product of such a strange and incoherent civilization. Classicism finds here nothing but crudeness and barbarism, not suspecting that it might contain germs that, with time and genius, could become poetic growth, no doubt less pure, but no doubt more complex in its harmonies and character. more expressive. beauty shape. The history of our ancient poetry, which Boileau has traced in a few lines, clearly shows how much he ignored or misrepresented it. The strange and confusing architecture of Gothic cathedrals provided further evidence of the clumsiness and perverted taste of our ancestors to those who saw beauty in the symmetry of line and purity of form. All memories of the great poetic works of the Middle Ages are completely erased. In those barbarous times, no one suspected the existence of classical ages in their own way; No one imagines, not his heroic songs, not his adventure novels, not the rich generosity of lyrical styles, not the naive and touching crudity of the Christian drama. The seventeenth century turned away scornfully from the monuments of national genius it discovered; I find them sometimes shocking in their crudeness, sometimes childlike in their sophistication. Indeed, these unfortunate excavations only serve to strengthen their cult of simple and correct beauty, whose models can be found in Greece and Rome. Why dream of penetrating the darkness of our origins? Today's society is too pleased with itself to be distracted by studying a past it doesn't understand. Inner story themes and heroes are also forbidden, Corneille is Latin, Racine is Greek; Childebrande's name alone is enough to ridicule an epic. – Pellissier, pp. 7-8.

66 t^ History of English %omantik.

pedantic antiquarian, university professor, may feign admiration for some obsolete author:

Chaucer's worst curses are memorized and the bestial heads of Skelton houses quote: No other language is liked than "Queen of the Faeries"; "*

But beyond that, the large body of Elizabethans and

Stuart's literature was already out of date. playwright

of the rank of Marlowe and Webster, poets like

George Herbert and Robert Herrick: Favorites of

our own generation: prose writers like Sir Thomas

Browne, who inspired Coleridge and Emerson

Inspiration - into the "part of the tares and" had fallen

worn faces." Even the authors of so young, almost

contemporary, supposedly dressed that Carew had

stylized

"- a king who ruled as he saw fit,

The universal monarchy of sagacity”:

or like Cowley, whom Dryden called the favorite of his youth, and who in his lifetime was thought a better poet than Milton; even Donne and Cowley lost their following. Pope "versified" some of Donne's crude satires, and Johnson cited passages from him as examples of the bad taste of metaphysical poets. This in the "Life of Cowley" with which Johnson began his "Life of Poets" as if Cowley were the first of the moderns. But,

"Who's reading Cowley now?"

asks the Pope in 1737.* The year of the Restoration (1660) draws a sharp line between the

• „Brief an Augustus“.

Los Spenserianer. 67

old and new. In 1675, a year after Milton's death, his nephew Edward Philips published Theatrum Poetarum, a sort of biographical dictionary of ancient and modern authors. In the preface he says: “Those who have been superseded and forgotten by their former fame and reputation are, for the most part, those who have written beyond the bounds of the present age; for let us look back some thirty or forty years, and after that time we shall find a profound silence from poets, with the exception of a few playwrights."

This testimony is all the more convincing because Philips was a kind of laudator temporis acti. He praises several old English poets and ridicules several new ones, such as Cleaveland and Davenant, who were pro-royal. He complains that "nothing yet pleases so much as what is written in the polished style of our contemporary language, which of late has been considered so refined"; that "we must be so obedient to French custom as to follow established fashions"; that imitation of Corneille spoiled the English scene; and that Dryden "in keeping with the moderate and gallant humor of the age" in his heroic works "indulged too much in the French style of running rhyme." At least one passage in Philips' preface is intended to reflect Milton's own judgment of the claims of the new school of poets. “Sharpness, wit, and wisdom in verse; even elegance itself, however closer, is one thing. True vernacular poetry is another, in which there is a certain air and spirit which perhaps the most learned and sane in other arts have not."

68 o^ History of English Romanticism.

much less is possible for any studio or industry. Even if all the laws of heroic poetry were strictly observed, all the laws of tragedy, not even this tour entrejeant, this poetic energy, if I may call it that, would be necessary to give life to all the others; resplendent in the rudest, unpolished, and archaic language, and perhaps wanting in the most polished and reformed language. Look at Spenser, with all his rusty and dated words, with all his coarse verse; but take it with you everywhere, and we will find a graceful and poetic majesty in it. Likewise, for all his unarchived lines, his indigestible ramblings and fantasies, the laughter of the critics, Shakespeare must be recognized as a poet superior to many who excel him in varying degrees in literature.

Critics laugh! Let us dwell on this sentence, for it is the key to the whole attitude of Augustus' mind towards "our ancient tragic poet." Shakespeare was already a national treasure. Indeed, only after the Restoration do we find clear recognition of him as one of the greatest, perhaps even the greatest, playwrights of all time. Because criticism only begins after restoration. "Dryden," says Dr. Johnson, "may rightly be considered the father of English criticism, the writer who first taught us to determine the principle of the value of composition... Dryden's 'Essay of Dramatic Poetry' [1667] was the first regular and valuable treatise about the art of writing". f The old theater was dead and Shakespeare was now emerging

• it means learning. + "The Life of Dryden".

Los Spenserian. 69

of its ruins as the only indisputable legacy of the Elizabethan era to world literature. Not only was he the darling of the people, but he united the voices of all authoritative leaders of literary opinion at a critical moment, at a time when the rules of dramatic art were opposed to its practice. Pope's lines are consistent with the veneration with which Shakespeare's memory was held a century after his death.

"On the banks of the Avon, where everlasting flowers bloom, if I only ask if the grass can grow; a tragic sentence, if I dare worthily mock Betterton's epistle... How our fathers will rage, and they will curse, all shame is lost in George's old age."*

The Shakespearean tradition has not been broken in the history of English literature and drama. His works, in one way or another, have always kept the stage to the public's taste, even in the most degenerate state.

• „Brief an Augustus“.

f The tradition in relation to Chaucer, Spenser and Milton is almost as continuous. A course in what Lowell calls "repentance reading" in Restoration criticism will convince anyone that these four names have already clearly emerged as the four greatest English poets. See especially Winstanley, "Lives of the English Poets", 1687; Langbaine, "An Account of the English Dramatic Poets", 1691; Dennis, "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare", 1712; Gildon, "The Complete Art of Poetry", 1718. The fact mentioned by Macaulay that Sir Wm. Temple doesn't mention any of the four, it's not important. Temple refers by name to only three Englishmen

Witze", Sidney, Bacon and Selden. This very superficial performance by Temple was a contribution to the futile controversy surrounding the

70 <iThe History of the English Novel.

paid for the genius of Shakespeare as they were paid for prose and verse by the critics of our classical age, from Dryden to Johnson. "First, then with Shakespeare", says the former in his Essay of Dramatic Poetry, "was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the greatest and most complete soul. And he admits that in the prologue to his adaptation of The Tempest

"Shakespeare's magic could not be duplicated: in that circle no one dared to step beyond him."

"The poet whose works I undertook to revise," writes Dr. Johnson, "may now begin to assume the dignity of an elder, and claim the privilege of established fame and prescribed worship."*

"Each colorful life changed exhausted worlds and then imagined new ones." f

However, Dryden made a lot of presumptuous mistakes and Johnson a lot of stupid mistakes about Shakespeare; while lesser critics like Thomas Rymer and Mrs. Charlotte Lenox talked nonsense and obscenities about the finer details of "Macbeth" and "Othello". Because if we look more closely, we notice that all those who gave birth

relative merits of antiquity and modernity, which are of interest today only because they gave Bentley an opportunity to demonstrate his great erudition in his Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris (1698) and Swift his power of irony in The Battle of Demonstrating the Books ” (1704).

• Preface to "The Works of Shakespeare", 1765.

f Foreword given by Garrick at the opening of the Drury Lane Theatre, 1747.

j: "The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered and Examined", 1678.

§ "Illustrated Shakespeare", 1753.

Los Spenserianer. 71

Witnessing Shakespeare's greatness, he tempered his praise with a vehement disapproval of his methods. He was an incredible genius, but a very flawed artist. He was the supreme dramatic poet, but he didn't know his trade. Apparently no one - except to some extent Johnson - realized that there was an absurdity in this contradiction; and that the real fault was not in Shakespeare but in the standards by which he was tested. These are the tests that technical criticism has always tried to impose, and they are not limited to the classical period. They are worn by Sidney, who measured the English boot before Shakespeare began writing; to Jonson, who once measured socks with him; by Matthew Arnold, who wanted an English academy, but where the academic vaccine worked only marginally after such a long transmission. Shakespeare violated the units; his plays were neither true comedies nor true tragedies; he knew little Latin and even less Greek; he lacked art and sometimes sense, he committed anachronisms and bohemian shipwrecks; he wrote it hastily, not dry enough, and failed in a big way. He was "uneducated, untrained in a barbarous age"; a wild and erratic child of nature, ignorant of the rules, ignorant of the old patterns, and succeeding - when successful - by chance and the sheer power of genius; his works were “erased”, his lame arguments, his bombastic speeches; he was guilty of "a solekism or a notorious lack of meaning" on every page. *

Langbaine undoubtedly defends it against Drydens

• See Reasons for Criticism in Dryden's Tragedy and Defense.

of the epilogue to the conquest of Granada".

72 <tA History of English T^omantics.

Censorship. But Dennis laments his ignorance of the poetic art, and the disadvantage he is at in being unfamiliar with the ancients. Had he known his salus, he would have painted a fairer picture of Caesar; and if he had read Horace "Ad Pisones" he would have been a better Achilles. He complains that he is promiscuous about killing the good guys and the bad guys; and that in "Coriolanus", a work which Dennis "improved" for the new phase, he portrays Menenius as a buffoon, portraying the rabble in the most undignified manner. Gildon, for his part, says that Shakespeare must have read the Defense of Poetry and therefore should have known the rules, and that his neglect was due to laziness. "Money seems to have been his object more than his reputation, and because of this he was always in a hurry... mind his business and fill his house." f It would be easy but tedious to multiply the evidence for this condescending attitude towards Shakespeare. Perhaps in the closing words of his preface, Pope expresses the general mood of his school as correctly as any of Shakespeare, one can, with all his faults and with all the irregularities of his drama.

• "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare", 1712.

f "A Arte da Poesia", pp. 63 and 99. C/. Pope, "Charter to Augustus":

' 'Shakespeare (whom you and all theaters proclaim divine style, peerless what you will) For gain, not fame, he undertook his wandering flight, and became immortal against himself.

Los Spenserianer. 73

Consider his works compared to those more finished and regular, like an imposing old piece of Gothic architecture compared to a clean, modern building. The latter is more elegant and dazzling, but the former is stronger and more solemn. . . It has a much greater variety and much nobler rooms, although we are often led to them through dark, strange and crude corridors. The whole does not fail to impress us with the utmost astonishment, although many of the parts are childish, out of place, and do not correspond to their size. This view of Shakespeare remained the rule until Coleridge and Schlegel taught the new century that this child of the imagination was indeed a profound and subtle artist, but that the principles of his art are, as ever, creative genius working freely and instinctively. they were learned through concrete actions rather than consciously throwing them away. converted into abstract theory by the worker himself, must therefore be discovered by a reverent study of his work and go deeper than the rules of French criticism. Schlegel, whose Lectures on Dramatic Art were translated into English in 1815, expresses indignation at the current misunderstanding of Shakespeare's English: "That foreigners, and especially the French, are wont to speak in the strangest language of antiquity and the Middle Ages, as if cannibalism had been defined for the first time." in Europe was terminated by Louis XIV, I must consider that this view of Shakespeare may be pardonable. But that the English accept such slander ... it is incomprehensible to me.

• For a more detailed discussion of this topic, see “A History of

Commentary on the Writings of Shakespeare", in the companion volume

74 - v^ History of English Romanticism.

The beginnings of the Romantic movement in England were uncertain. There was a vague disagreement with current literary estimates, a vague dissatisfaction with prevailing literary fashions, especially with the then purely intellectual poetry, which did not

from Knight's pictorial edition. Editions of Shakespeare published in the century after the Restoration were the Third Folio, 1664; the fourth folio, 1685; Rowe's (the first critical edition, with Life, etc.) 1709 (second edition, 1714); Pope, 1725 (second edition, 1728); Theobald's, 1733', Hanmer's 1744; Warburton Pope, 1747; and Johnson's, 1765. Though Shakespeare's plays continued to be performed, they were mostly staged versions. Tate turned "Lear" into a comedy. Davenant and Dryden turned The Tempest into The Haunted Island, turning empty verse into rhymes and introducing new characters, while Shad Well turned it into an opera. Dryden rewrote "Troilus and Cressida"; Davenant, "Macbeth". Davenant put together what he called The Law Against Lovers, Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing. Dennis recast Merry Wives of Windsor as The Comical Gallant; Tate, "Richard IL" as "The Sicilian Usurper"; and Otway, "Romeo and Juliet", as "Caius Marius". Lord Lansdowne turned The Merchant of Venice into The Jew of Venice, where Shylock was played as a comic book character until the time of Macklin and Kean. Durfey performed with "Cymbeline". Gibber turned "King John" into "Papal Tyranny", and his version was performed well into Macready's time. Gibber's stage version of "Richard II" is still performed. Cumberland "grafted" new features into "Helm of Athens" for Garrick's theater around 1775. Lives of Lyttelton, Vol. I.p. 315). He mentions a review by Tate, another by Dennis ('The Invader of His Country') and a third given by the elder Sheridan at Covent Garden in 1764 and taken from Shakespeare's Tragedy and a compilation of an independent play by Shakespeare. Thompson's name. "Then came Kembles' edition in 1789, in which...much of Thomson's nonsense still survives."

jo

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not feeding the soul But at first there was no conscious, concentrated effort towards something better; still less was there a sudden burst of creative activity. The new group of poets, partly contemporaries of Pope, partly successors: Thomson, / ^ 'Shenstone, Dyer, Akenside, Gray, Collins and the. ^ Avarton Brothers: Found their starting point in the loving study and restoration of ancient authors. From what has been said about the survival of Shakespeare's influence, it can be expected that he was the most important name among the pioneers of English Romanticism. There are several reasons why this was not the case.

In the first place, the genius of the new poets was more lyrical or descriptive than dramatic. The separation between literature and theater was not yet complete; and obedient to the expectation that every literary man should try to write plays, Thomson at least, like his friend and pupil Mallet, composed a series of dramas. But even so, they were no better than failures; and duringThe seasons".survived all changes in taste, and "The Castle of Indolence" never wanted fans, tragedies like "Agamemnon" and "Sophonisba" have long been forgotten. An imitation of Shakespeare for any effective purpose must obviously have taken the form of a play; and neither Gray nor Collins nor Akenside or anyone in the group was able to make a move. Inspired in a way, these early romantics drew inspiration from Shakespeare. Verbal memories of him abound in W Gray. Collins was a diligent student of his works. His "Dirge in Cymbeline" is an exquisite variation

76 ca. History of English L^pmanlicism.

on a Shakespearean theme. In the delirium of his recent illness, he told Warton that he had found the long-sought-for original plot of "The Tempest" in an Italian novel. By the way, it should be noted that the Romantics were attracted by the poetic, as opposed to the dramatic, aspect of Shakespeare's genius; to his works, in which fairy tales and supernatural machines appear, such as "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream",

Here, too, the theater has its own history, and as far as it has progressed, it has not been in the direction of more poetic or romantic drama, but more in the direction of tragic and sentimental prose. Comedy of domestic life, what the French call /a frag/die bourgeoisie and la comedie larmoyante. Indeed, the theater was now dying; and though it exuded a radiant, dying splendor in the comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan, the true dramatic talent of the century had already sought other outlets in the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett.

Finally, one good reason why the novel didn't start with the imitation of Shakespeare is that Shakespeare is inimitable. There is not one way to get it, but a hundred ways; he is not the poet of the novel, but of humanity; not medieval, but always modern and contemporary in its universality. The great familiarity of their works and their continual performance, albeit in distorted form, was one of the reasons why they could have little share in a literary renaissance; for what has never been forgotten cannot be revived. Later, with the surprise of a discovery, Shakespeare came to Germany and France and fathered Schiller.

7los Spenserianos. 77

and Victor Hugo. In 18th century England, it produced only the fakes from Ireland.

On the flag of the new school was not Shakespeare, but Spenser, written in large letters. If there is a poet who is the epitome of romanticism, whose art is the opposite of Pope's art, it is the poet of The Queen of the Faeries. To ears that have heard the jingle of the couplet since childhood, with its monotonous recurring rhyme, its inescapable caesura, its strong imprisonment of meaning, it must have been a relief to turn to the vastness of Spenser's stanza, "The sail full and strong". of his great verse". For a generation fed up with the Pope's rhetorical devices (antithesis, climax, anticlimax) and tired of the incessant glare and compression of his language; the escape from the epigram and the point (click by click, like a pack of firecrackers ), in a style that made each of its lines a proverb or a topical quote; the parables and lengthy detail must have been so reassuring. Switching from Pope to Spenser meant shifting platitudes, deftly packaged verbally into easily transportable formulas of the memory, through an infinity of concrete images: changes in mountains such as,

"A little study is a dangerous thing"

for a series of colorful paintings by the greatest painter of English poets. It was the exchange of the most prosaic of our poets - a poet about whom doubts arose as to whether he is a poet - for the purest of our poets, the 'poet of poets'. And finally it was about changing the world

78 iA History of English 'T^pmanticism.

Everyday customs and artificial society to an imaginary magical realm, "out of space, out of time".

English poetry oscillates between the poles of Spenser and pop. The poets considered by race to be the most truly national, poets like Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron, are in the middle of the road. Neither Spenser nor Pope is very satisfying. Over time, we grew tired of Spenser's lack of passion and intensity, his lack of dramatic power, the lack of punctuality in his portrayal of life, the lack of brief energy and courage in his style; just as we're fed up with Pope's inadequate sense of beauty. But at a time when English poetry had abandoned its proper function - the refreshment and elevation of the soul through the imagination - Spenser's poetry, the poetry of ideal beauty, was the most natural corrective. Whatever his shortcomings, he was by no means "conceived and composed in his mind".

Spenser did not fare as well as Shakespeare with the shift in public tastes after the Restoration. Elizabeth's time had no literary or book reviews, and her critical survivals are the sparsest. But the eulogies of many hands published with the Faerie Queene and the numerous references to Spenser throughout the poetic literature of the period leave no doubt that he was ranked first among English poets by his contemporaries. His supremacy tradition certainly lasted until the mid-17th century, if not longer. His influence is not only visible in the work of self-confessed students like Giles and Phineas Fletcher, the pastoral poet William

Los Spenserianer. 79

Browne and Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, but in the verses of Johnson, Fletcher, Milton, and many others. Milton confessed to Dryden that Spenser was his "poetic father". Dryden and Cowley themselves, whose practice is so far removed from Spenser's, pleaded guilty to him. The passage from Cowley's essay "On Myself" is well known: "I remember when I first began to read, and for my amusement I used to lie down in my mother's drawing-room (by what accident I don't know, as she never read every book except the devotion (but lied) to Spenser's works, I stumbled upon and was immensely enchanted by the tales of knights, giants, monsters, and mighty houses I encountered along the way (although my understanding had little to do with any of them dem ), and little by little with the clink of rhymes and the dance of numbers, so that I think I read it all before I was twelve, and so became as desperately a poet as a child a eunuch... It is a place- It is commonplace that Spenser has produced more poets than any other writer. Even Pope, whose empire he returned from Faerieland to overthrow, assured Spence that he enjoyed reading Faerie Queen as a boy and read it with equal gusto years later. it is all too easy to assume that writers are insensitive to the beauties of an opposing school. Pope was quite incapable of romantic poetry, but not for that reason incapable of appreciating it. He was very fond of Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd; he admired "The Seasons" and credited Thomson with adding a few lines of his own to "Summer" amidst his youthful Old English parodies.

8th t/^ History of English Romanticism.

Poets is a play titled "The Alley," a not-so-funny burlesque of Bower of Bliss's famous description.*

As for Dryden, his admiration for Spenser is bound up with the same kind of critical disapproval that we note in his praise of Shakespeare. He says that the "Queen of the Fairies" lacks uniformity: the language is not as outdated as is commonly believed and is understandable after some practice; but the choice of stanza is an unfortunate one, though Spenser's verse is nevertheless more melodious than that of any English poet except Mr. Waller, f Ambrose Philips - Namby Pamby Philips - whom Thackeray calls "an idyllic, dark cockney". , for which he cited The Shepherd's Calendar as a model in the introduction to his insipid Pastorals, 1709. Steele published some mildly flattering remarks about Spenser in the Spectator No. 540 (November 19, 1712). Taken together, it is clear that throughout the classical period Spenser's greatness was taken more on faith, but this belief was accompanied by a general indifference to his writings. Addison's lines in his Epistle to Sacheverel; An Account of the Greatest English Poets", 1694, are probably accurate enough to reflect the opinion of most readers:

Then old Spenser, ablaze with poetic fury. In ancient tales, a barbarian age frolics; a time that, although uncultivated and harsh, continued where the poet's imagination led, through pathless fields and rare floods. Forest.

• "Queen of the Fairies", II.xiii. 71

f "Essay on satire". Philips has a good word for the Spenserian stanza: "The more stately and stately in epic poems, especially

Los Spenserianer. 8i

But now the mystical tale that once delighted can no longer charm a compassionate age. Long-conceived allegories become exaggerated. While boring morale is clearly down. We looked very happy from afar at all the gun and palfrey shows, battles, fields and fights. and damsels in distress and polite gentlemen, but if we look too closely the shadows disappear and all the pleasant sights disappear.

Addison admitted to Spence that she had never read Spenser when she wrote this passage! As late as 1754, Thomas Warton speaks of him as "that admired but forgotten poet"* and Mr. Kitchin claims that "between 1650 and 1750 there are very few records of him and very few editions of his works". f There was a reprint of Spenser's works in 1679, the third folio of 'Faerie Queene', but no critical edition until 1715. Meanwhile, the title of a book published in 1687 indicates that Spenser did not escape this process of 'improvement'. we use in Shakespeare: "Spenser Redivivus; contains the first quality book 'Feenkönigin'." The preface praises Spenser but declares that "his style seems no less incomprehensible today than the outdated".

Especially the heroic action, Spenser's stanza... stands above the road of couplet or alternation of just four lines, I'm sure if revived it would soon be recognised.” – Theatrum Poetatarum. Preface, pp. 3-4 .

• "Observations on the Fairy Queen", Vol. II. P. 317.

f "The Faery Queene", Book I., Oxford, 1869. Introduction, p. XX

82 iA History of English Romance.

last of our English or Saxon dialect." An example of this publication in heroic numbers should suffice:

"Therefore the northern wagoner placed his team of seven behind the unshakable star, which was on the waves of the ocean but never got wet, but is unshakable and stands firm, and sends light far and wide to all in the far and deep wandering."

— Spender*

In 1715, John Hughes published his six-volume edition of Spenser's works. This was the poet's first attempt at a critical text and was accompanied by a biography, a glossary, an essay on allegorical poetry, and some remarks on the 'fairy queen'. It is curious to find, in the engravings of Du Guernier's drawings which illustrate the Hughes volumes, that Spenser's knights wore the helmets and armor of Roman legionaries, over which something very like a cloak is occasionally thrown. performed against the backdrop of the facade of a Greek temple. Busyrane's house is of Louis Quatorze architecture, and Amoret is chained to a Renaissance column with Corinthian capital and classical drapes. Hughes' Glossary of Obsolete Terms contains words that modern writers use every day: scared, sinister, challenged, useless, carol, cowardly, gloomy, helpless, raid, guerdon, hurry, welkin, last year. If words like these and many that Warton notes in his "Observations" really needed an explanation, that is surprising.

• "singing" ii. fourth me

' 'By this time, Bootes' team had passed well beyond the North Star, as the night hours were waning.'

- quality man.

7los Spenserianos. 83

a testament not only to how much our early poets were forgotten, but also to the poverty to which the vocabulary of English poetry had been reduced by 1700.

In his preface to Faerie Queene, the editor makes the usual complaints that the poet has chosen such a flawed stanza, "so romantic a story" and a model or framework for the whole that seems so monstrous when "examining the rules of epic narrative poetry "; he draws the old-fashioned comparison between Spenser's work and Gothic architecture, and apologizes for its author, claiming that at the time he wrote "the vestiges of ancient Gothic chivalry were not yet "not aroused much public curiosity," Johnson says in his Life of Hughes; "Nearly thirty years elapsed before its edition was reprinted." the most elaborate interpretation of the allegory.

In the meantime, that series of Spenser imitations, which form an interesting section of eighteenth-century verse, appeared in gradually increasing numbers. The series was started by a highly unlikely person, Matthew Prior, whose 'Ode to the Queen', 1706, was a ten-line modification of Spenser's stanza, using some archaisms like wee and ween, but it was in some ways very nonsensical. . . . Already in the second decade of the century, the trumpets of the land of elves sounded softly in the poems.

84 «^ History of English Romanticism.

by Rev. Samuel Croxall, the ^Esop translator

• ' Fables." Mr. Gosse* quotes Croxall's own description

his poetry, designed to bring out "the dry and insipid matter" of the age with "a whole sliver of rich, bright scarlet". His two plays, "*The Vision", 1715, and "The Fair Circassian", 1720, though written in couplet, display a rosy color and lush imagery evidently learned from Spenser. In 1713, under the pseudonym Nestor Ironside, he published An Original Canto of Spenser and in 1714 Another Original Canto, both, of course, on the Faerie Queene stanza. Century by dozens of poets, including many well-known names like Akenside, Thomson, Shenstone and Thomas Warton, and many second- and third-rate writers of verse, f

• "Literature of the 18th century", p. 139

f For a full discussion of this subject, the reader is referred to Phelps' "Earnings of the English Romantic Movement," Chapter IV, "The Spenser Revival." In Spenser's Todd edition, vol. I. But the list appended by Prof. Phelps, while not exhaustive, is certainly the most comprehensive ever published and may be reprinted here. 1706: Before: "Ode to the Queen". 1713-21: Prior (?): "Colin's Mistake". 1713: Croxall: "An Original Song by Spenser." 1714: Croxall: "Another Original Canticle". 1730 (ca.): Whitehead: "Vision of Solomon", "Ode to the Hon. Charles Townsend", "Ode to the same". 1736: Thompson: "Epitalamium". 1736: Cambridge: "Marriage of Frederick". 1736-37: Boyse: "The Olive Tree", "Psalm XLII". 1737: Akenside: "The Virtuous". 1739: West: "Travel Abuse". 1739: Anon.: "A New Song of Spenser's Fairy Queen." 1740: Boyse: "Ode to the Marquess of Tavistock". 1741 (circa): Boyse: "Vision of Patience". 1742: Shenstone: "The Professor". 1742-50: Cambridge: ^'Archimage'. 1742: Dodsley: 'Pain and Patience'. 1743:

Los Spenserianer. 85

It should be noted that many, if not most, imitations were initially performed in a burlesque spirit; as is evident not only from the poems themselves, but also from the correspondence of Shenstone and others.* The old-fashioned language of an ancient author is itself a challenge to the parodist: try our imitations of modern ballads. There is something ridiculous about the old spelling look and sound of words like efsones a.vid perdy; while the Ye Olde Booke Store sign, in Old English above the door of a bookshop, invariably strikes the public as a smug and very lighthearted joke; especially when the first letter is pronounced like a y,

Anon.: "The Triumph of Albion". 1744 (approximately): Dodsley: 'Death of Mr. Pope'. 1744: Akenside: "Ode to Curio". 1746: Blacklock: "Ode to Divine Love", "Philantheus". 1747: Freemasons; Stanzas in "Museums". 1747: Ridley: "Psyche". 1747: Lowth: "Hercules' Choice". 1747: Upton: "A New Song of Spenser's Fairy Queen." 1747: Bedingfield: "Education of Achilles". 1747: Pitt: "The Jordan". 1748: T. Warton, Sr.: "Philander". ij748: Thomson: "The Sloth Castle." 1749: Potter: "A Farewell Hymn to the Country." 1750: T. Warton: "Tomorrow". 1751: West: "Education". 1751: T. Warton: "Elegie on the Death of Prince Frederick." 1751: Mendez: "The Seasons". 1751: Lloyd: "The Progress of Envy." 1751: Akenside: "Ode". 1751: Smith: "Tales." 1753: T. Warton: "A Pastoral in the Manner of Spenser." 1754: Denton: "Immortality". 1755: Arnold: "The Mirror". 174S-5S: Mendez: "Escudero de Damas". 1756: Smart: "Hymn to the Supreme Being". 1757: Thompson: "The Nativity", "Anthem to May". 1758: Akenside: "To the landlords of England." 1759: Wilkie: "A Dream". 1759: Poem in "Ralph's Miscellany". 1762: Denton: “House of Superstition. 1767: Mickle: "The Concubine". 176S: Downman: "Land of the Muses". 1771-74: Beattie: "The Minstrel". 1775: Anonymous: "Land of the Free". 1775: Mickle: stanzas of the Introduction to Lusíada. " ■""^^^

• Veja Phelps, pp. 66-68.

86 zA History of English l^omanficism.

instead of what it really is, a mere abbreviation of fk. But the disguised language must not be too old for that. There would be nothing comic about a burlesque imitation of Beowulf, for example, as the Anglo-Saxon nature of the original is utterly alien to the modern reader. It is conceivable that the spirited Athenians of Aristophanes' time found something strange in Homer's Ionian dialect, similar to the strangeness we find in Chaucer; but a modern Greek would have to be very Attic to see a provocation to joy in the use of the genitive in-oto instead of the genitive in-ov. Again, when one encounters an ancient author one is unaware of their archaic nature: Chaucer's final e no longer strikes him as funny, nor does the fact that he speaks of little birds as birds. And so it was that eighteenth-century poets, who began with burlesque imitations of the "fairy queen," soon fell in love with her grave beauties.

The only poems in this series that have found a permanent place in literature are those by Shenstone.

• • Teacher" and "Castle of Indo-

But a quick review of several other group members is advisable. Two of them were written in Oxford in honor of the marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1736: one by Richard Owen Cambridge; by William Thompson, then BA and then Fellow of Queen's College.

• See the superb edition of the Cambridge "Works" edited by

1803 his son.

Los Spenserianer. 87

figure somewhat conspicuous in the literary and personal gossip of his day. He quarreled with his father George II, who "hated boetry and bustle" and who was ironically fed with polite devotion by the Pope in his "Letter to Augustus"; also with his father's prime minister. Sir Robert Walpole, "Bob, the Poet's Enemy". Displeased, he left the court and set up his own opposition court, where he gathered around him scholars who had fallen into a neglect that was a strange contrast to their former importance in the reign of Queen Anne, Frederick's main ally in these policies, his secretary, George Lord Lyttelton, the elegant if somewhat amateurish author of Dialogues of the Dead and other works; Friend of Fielding, neighbor of Shenstone in Hagley, and employer of Thomson, by whom he received the benefit of Surveyor of the Leeward Islands.

The Cambridge Marriage Verses had a stanza of ten lines. His Archiimage, written in strict Spenserian stanza, illustrates the frequent use of this form in casual plays with humorous intent. He describes a domestic sailing party on the Thames, at which one of the rowers was a family servant and barber who used to do the chaplain's hair:

"Blood would also spill from the ancient jewel whose disheveled tresses he hung in a row around his cave, a sad sight for Christian eyes, I think."

In contrast, Thompson's experiments were quite serious. He had real poetic feeling, but little talent. In an attempt to reproduce Spenser's richness of imagery and the smooth modulation of his verses, he only manages to become laboriously embellished. To be

88 BC BC History of English Romanticism.

the stanzas are nerveless, though they are not without music. His university exercise "The Nativity" of 1736 is a vision of Christmas that comes to the shepherd boy Thomalin playing the flute on the banks of the Isis. He unfolds the pastoral machinery, includes a masquerade of virtues-faith, hope, mercy, etc. - and concludes with a eulogy to the Pope's "Messiah". The preface to his 'Hymn to May' has something to do with our research: 'As Spenser is the most graphic and florid of all our English writers, I have tried to imitate his style in the spring poem that follows. I have been very sparing with old-fashioned words, very common in most of this author's imitations... His verses are sweeter musically and his descriptions more tender, exuberant, even to the point of pictorial excess, but it is still music and painting from nature without ambitious flourishes or epigrammatic phrases in his writing, but a beautiful simplicity that appeals far more than the sparkle of a sharp wit. The "Anthem to May" is in Phineas Fletcher's seven-line stanza.

• • Purple Island”; a poem, says Thompson, "succinctly

at this time, however, better in an allegorical way (alongside 'The Fairy Queen') in English".

William Wilkie, a Scottish clergyman and teacher with eccentric habits and unkempt appearance, published A Dream: in the Manner of Spenser in 1759, which cannot be mentioned here for its own sake, but for the evidence it provides. a growing impatience with classical constraints. The play was a trailer for Wilkie's epic Epigony. As the poet walks through the Tweed, he falls asleep and has a vision of Homer scolding him for the nakedness of his clothes.

EU

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"Epigony". The dreamer blames the critics

"By the muses to laws so severe that all their songs are frivolous and poor."

Shakespeare, in der Tat,

"He broke every web boundary set by fools"; but the only reward for your daring

Does our degenerate and boring old age say he wrote by accident and could barely read?

One of the first Spenserians was Gilbert West, the translator of Pindar, who published On the Abuse of Travelling: A Canto in Imitation of Spenser in 1739. A very docile poet, the only quality in Spenser that he managed to capture was his vastness. He used the allegorical machinery of the "fairy queen" for moral and slightly satirical purposes. travel abuse",

• "Sir. Walpole and I have always wondered if you should never do this

Mention a certain imitation of Spenser published last year by one of his namesakes, which we are all excited and excited about. —Gray's letter to Richard West, Florence, July 16, 1740. There was no connection between Gilbert West and Gray's friend at Eton, though the former also appears to have been an Etonian, and later at Oxford, "where he " says Dr. Johnson, "was seduced by a more breezy lifestyle," says Dr., supplied by his uncle. However, Cambridge met Gray, Walpole and Richard West at Eton. Gray's lone sonnet was composed after Richard West's death in 1742; and it is worth noting that in the introduction to Cambridge's works there are several sonnets by his friend Thomas Edwards, himself a lover of Spenser, whose "sugar sonnets among his private friends" began about 1750 and numbered fifty.

9© c// History of English Romanticism.

The Knight of the Red Cross is tricked by the Archmage into boarding a painted boat piloted by Curiosity which takes him to a foreign shore where he is entertained by a group of easy maidens whose leader is "Hight Politessa" and whose fawning the knight resists. From there he is led to a majestic castle (the court of Louis XV, whose minister – perhaps Cardinal Fleury? – is a “wrinkled old sorcerer”); and finally to Rome, where a lady named Vertu holds court in the ruins of the Coliseum among pantomimes, violinists, flutists, eunuchs, painters, and ciceroni.

Likewise, the music in "Education" tells how a knight of the fairies, while leading his son to Paidia's house, encounters the giant Custom and defeats him in single combat. There is a certain humor in the description of the stream of science into which the learning crowd reluctantly dips and stands on the sidelines.

"A birch grove rising from the shore. Throwing its fallen buds into the flood And poisoning the whole flood with its bitter sap."

The play is a tedious indictment of the meticulous teaching methods of English schools and universities. A passage satirizing artificial horticulture is quoted later. West had a country house at Wickham, Kent, where, says Johnson,* "he was frequently visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they tired of quarreling and debate, would go to Wickham for books and rest, a decent table and a decent table." he found literary conversation. There is a walk by Pitt in Wickham. Like many contemporary poets, West was interested in landscaping and some

• "Western Life".

7los Spenserianos. 91

Some of his shorter pieces belong to that inscriptional literature to which Lyttelton, Akenside, Shenstone, Mason and others have contributed so much. It can be said of their imitations of Spenser that their archaism is extraordinarily correct* - if that is a compliment - a trait they may have commended to Gray, whose scholarship on this, as on all points, was very accurate. The obligation to be properly "out of date" in vocabulary weighed heavily on the consciences of most of these Spenser imitators. For example, "The Squire of Dames" by wealthy Jew Moses Mendez is filled with rarely seen expensive words like benty, frannion, etc., which Spenser himself could not explain.

One of the happiest results of this literary fad was William Shenstone's "Schoolmistress" (^ published in unfinished form in 1737 and finally completed in 1742. This is an affectionate, half-humored description of the little ladies' school). from the home village of Shenstone and all, and it has just the right idyllic feel. Goldsmith obviously had this in mind when he designed the image of the school in his ** Deserted Village.

• Lloyd defined Wimpled in „The Progress of Envy“ also „hung

down"; and Akenside uses the ^« ending for the singular verb in "The Virtuoso"!

f Cf. "And as they looked, they realized their horror was greater."

- Shenstone: "And still they looked, and still the astonishment grew."

“Goldsmiths. "The mixed noises that come from there. They betray the little house of learning."

- Shenstone. "There in his noisy mansion, able to rule," etc.

“Goldsmiths.

)

92 BC BC History of the English novel.

modestly a theme of Spenser's majestic verse, and the grave and ancient words are very picturesque. The humor of "The Schoolmistress" is genuine, not dependent on sheer burlesque, as in the Pope and Cambridge experiments; and soothes with a certain tenderness, as in the case of the hen with her chicks, which enters through the open door of the school in search of crumbs, and the pain of the little sister, who sees her brother being whipped and the tremor is the kid who played in the absence of the queen :

"Warning, when the little bird looks at your antics, he will whisper in your ear and the whole scene will unfold."

But the only one of Spenser's professed scholars to capture the master's brilliance and splendor was James Thomson. It is the privilege of genius to be original even in its imitations. Thomson took form and color from Spenser, but added something of his own, and the result has a value quite independent of its success as a reproduction. "The Castle of Inertia", 1748*, is a beautiful poem; at least the first part, because the second book is irritating allegorically and somewhat complicated in plot. There is a magical art in describing the "land of the sleeping head", with its "apathetic climate" always "between June and May", its "dove howling in the middle of the dense forest", its solemn pine forests on the hills, its cheerful castles in the summer clouds and their noise

• The poem was seen and perhaps partially written fourteen

or fifteen years ago.

f Cf. Tennyson's "Land Where Night Ever Shined" “The lotus eaters.

Los Spenserianer. 93

remove the most important ones. The essence of Thomson's vision is found in Spenser's House of Morpheus (** Faerie Queene), book i. I sing 41, and his Country of Idlese anticipates Tennyson's own Lotus Land, but lines like these There was something new in eighteenth-century poetry:

“There was nothing around but images of rest: woods that lull sleep and quiet meadows in between; And flowerbeds that sleepily sway the kest, Breath of poppies; and beds of pleasant green Where no creeping creature ever saw. Meanwhile, innumerable bright streams played and spread the splendor of their waters far and wide; who, as they argued in the sunny clearing, though restless, made a sleepy murmur.

"The Castle of Indolence" had the romantic iridescence, the "atmosphere" that the sharp contours of Augustan verse lack. That is, it produces an effect that cannot be fully explained by what the poet says; an effect produced by subtle sensations evoked by sounds and vague associations evoked by words. The poet himself cannot tell the secret of this art. But poetry of this kind cannot be translated into prose - like Pope's - any more than music can be translated into language without losing its essential character. Like Spenser, Thomson was an excellent colorist and his art was largely painterly. But he has hints of an imagination rarer, if not greater, than anything in Spenser. Spenser's Fairyland is an unreal region, but hardly a supernatural one. Rarely does a peek behind the curtain frighten him.

94 <^ History of English T^pmanticism.

hovering between nature and the supernatural, as in Milton

"Languages ​​of air that syllable men's names on sands and shores and in desert wastelands."

At least one stanza from "The Castle of Indolence" has some of that power:

“As if a shepherd from the Hebrides, far removed from the great melancholy (whether the idea of ​​solitude deceives him, or whether the beings of the air sometimes condescend to incarnate our senses in the plains), on the bare hills or in the lowlands The time of the valley sees the ocean Phoebus plunge into his chariot, a huge crowd moving to and fro, then suddenly the wonderful spectacle disappears into thin air.

It may be presumed that Johnson and Boswell, in their travels through the Hebrides or the Western Isles, saw nothing of the 'ghostly puppets' alluded to in this passage, the most imaginative of the Spenserian school to that of Keats.

"Magical frames opening in the foam of dangerous seas in abandoned fairy lands."

William Julius Mickle, the translator of 'Lusiad', was a more important poet than any of the Spencerian imitators discussed so far, with the exception of 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 Cunor Hall, which was reminiscent of Scott's Kenilworth and almost gave the novel its name.

jo

Los Spenserianer. 95

The other was the dialect song from "The Mariner's Wife" that Burns so admired:

"His heart is sincere, his speech is kind,

Your breath like calling air. Your foot has music in it

When going up the stairs. Because there is no happiness at home

No luck on a '. There is little joy at home

If our guide is not there." *

Like Thomson, Mickle was a Scotsman who came to London to further his literary fortune. He received some encouragement from Lyttelton, but his hopes of getting substantial help from this British patron were dashed. His biographer tells us that "at about the age of thirteen, when he accidentally came across Spenser's 'Faerie Queene', he was immediately struck by the colorful descriptions of this much-admired old bard and pushed him hard to develop his style and to imitate his style. . politeness." f In 1767 Mickle published "The Concubine", a poem by Spenser in two cantos. In the preface to his second edition of 1778, in which the title was changed to Syr Martyn, he said: "The richness and presumption of the description, the pictorial simplicity and, above all, the ridiculousness that the phraseology of the old Spenser and Art are so happy and particularly receptive that they tend to appreciate it not only as

• Mickle's authorship of this song has been disputed in favor of

a certain Jean Adams, a poor Scottish professor whose poems were printed in Glasgow in 1734.

fRev. "Life of Mickle" de John Sim em "Mickle's Poetical Works", 1806, p. XI.

96 (^^ History of English Romanticism.

better, but only form of composition adapted to the theme".

"Syr Martyn" is a narrative poem not without animation, especially where the author forgets his spenser. But in the second canto he feels compelled to introduce an absurd allegory in which the nymph Disipation and her henchman Self-imposition lead the hero into the cave of dissatisfaction. This is what Mickle writes when he thinks of the "fairy queen":

Once he, freed from the evil sorcerer's spell, fled from the magical charms of his false duessa, and quaed went mad, and a hydra fell, he received a fair lady in his arms, while bards and minstrels sang the sweet alarms of gentle love, otherwise as his former slave: Eke was to sing, in courtly and artful terms, The Gallant Feast served by the seneschal, knights and ladies in a hoffer or painted hall.

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

"Awake, west winds, through the lonely valley. And imaginatively return to your fairy bower! Even now, with balsamic freshness, breathe the storm flapping soft wings on the still lake; shimmering whispers wake through the pale willows, and the night comes with dewy hair; In Desmond's musty towers the trembling ryegrass and blue of bluebells slowly turn to and fro, and now and then the beautiful wails are renewed by mullahs."

A reader would not be guilty of guessing who should correspond to this stanza, which Scott greatly admired, with one of Spenser's opening passages "The Lady of the Lake".

But there is no need to expand this catalog further.

Los Spenserianer. 97

further. By mid-century, Spencerism had become so fashionable that Dr. Johnson, who was walking around the temple of the British muse Uke, a sort of classic watchdog.The imitation of Spenser", he saidRambler of May 14, 1751: "Through the influence of some learned and ingenious men, it seems likely that the age is gaining the most agreeable teaching devices. But I have far from having the same respect for your diction as for your verse His style has been allowed to be vicious for its time, so obscured by ancient words and idiosyncratic phrases and so far removed from common usage that Jonson boldly declares that he wrote no language: it tires the ear by its uniformity and the attention by its length. Life was certainly given to us for purposes other than picking up what our ancestors wisely discarded and learning what is of no value except because it has been forgotten.

• See "Essay on the Pope," by Joseph Warton, vol. II. P. 35. "Tem

lately it has been fashionable to imitate Spenser; but the resemblance of most of these copies lies more in their use of some of their ancient expressions than in their capture of their actual form. Some, however, were performed with joy and with attention to that simplicity, that tenderness of feeling and those little touches of nature that make up Spenser's character. I take special pleasure in mentioning two of them, The Schoolmistress, by Mr. Shenstone, and The Education of Achilles, by Mr. Bedingfield. And also the beautiful "Minstrel" by Dr. Seattle. To this must be added the exquisite piece of wild and romantic imagery, Thomson's 'Castle of Indolence'.

98 <IA History of English T^pmanticism.

West's imitations of Spenser: "Such compositions do not belong to the great achievements of the intellect, for their effect is local and transient: they appeal not to reason or passion, but to memory, and postulate an accidental or artificial state of mind. imitation of Spenser is nothing to an enthusiastic reader who has never read Spenser."

The critic is partially right. The interesting points of a parody are lost on a reader unfamiliar with the subject being parodied. And as for legitimate imitations, the more skilfully the copyist follows his copy, the less value his work will have. Eighteenth-century Spencerians such as West, Cambridge, and Lloyd, who followed his model most closely, were shrouded in obscurity. Its real service was to revive a taste for a better-than-fashionable kind of poetry, and particularly to give English verse a form of stanzas which, in the hands of later poets who used them, became such noble instruments. with as much freedom and power, as if they had never seen the "fairy queen". Rarely does anyone think of Spenser when reading Childe Harold* or Adonais or Saint Agnes' Eve; but if you read West, or Cambridge, or even Shenstone and Thomson, you'll remember it at any moment. However, if you needed to impersonate someone, you could call Dr.

• Byron arguably started his first song with Spencer.

serism He called his poem 'romanaunt' and his servant, poor Fletcher, 'stalch yeoman' and peppered his stanzas with subtlety, thought and extravagance, but dropped this affectation in the later songs and made no further forays into the subject. the average age.

The dispenser turns brown. 99

Johnson that Spenser is better imitated than Pope. In Spenser's imitation there was at least a future, a development; while the imitation of Pope constantly headed towards Darwin's "Botanical Garden".

Another document in the history of this Spencerian revival deserves mention, that of Thomas Warton.

• • Observations on the Fairy Queen', 1754. Warton

he wrote with genuine pleasure in his subject. Taste of him was downright romantic. But the apologetic air assumed by antiquarian scholars when they dared recommend their favorite studies to the attention of a classically minded public is not absent from Warton's commentary. He writes as if he feels the pressure of a hostile atmosphere around him. “We who live by the rules of the time of writing tend to examine each composition according to the laws we have been taught to regard as the sole criterion of excellence. Critical taste is universal, and we demand the same order and design that is expected of any modern interpretation, in poems that were never thought of or intended... art*... that's it: Reading Spenser, when the critic is dissatisfied but the reader is in a trance". True, he is not romantic. The materials take great liberties, but not

• Pope, "snatches a grace beyond the reach of art."

– Essay on criticism.

loo<iThe History of English Romanticism.

materials impede order and discernment”. Warton assures the reader that Spenser's language is not "as difficult and archaic as is commonly supposed"; and he defends it against Hume's reproach* that "Homer copied true natural manners... but the English poet's pencil was used to sketch the affections, presumptions, and absurdities of chivalry.

However, he began his commentary with typical denunciations of “Gothic ignorance and barbarism”: “In the Renaissance one would expect that, instead of the Romantic form of poetic composition… a new and more legitimate taste for writing… before such a change was effected . We find that Ariosto, many years after the revival of literature, rejected truth for magic, preferring Boiardo's ridiculous and inconsistent excursions into the veracity and uniformity of Greek and Roman models, has the restoration of ancient scholarship had any effective or immediate improvement in the state of criticism? Beni, one of the most celebrated critics of the 16th century, who compares Ariosto to Homer". , I have hitherto contented myself with the dominant maxims of modern criticism to praise classical propriety. Despite this prudent determination of conformity, the author

• "History of England", Vol. II. P. 739.

Los Spenserianer. loi

In his second volume he is encouraged to speak of the pseudo-classical poetry of his own time as follows: "A poetry was achieved in which the imagination of correctness, the sublimity of description gave way to delicacy of feeling, and majestic images of conceit and epigram. Poets now began to pay more attention to words than to things and objects. The sweeter beauties of happy expression were preferred to the bold strokes of great imagination. Satire, that bane of the sublime, it was imported from France. Muses were libertines at court, and courtly life and family manners became their only subjects."

By the time those words were written, Spenser had done his job. The color, the music, the perfume returned to the English song andgolden tongueRomance with a Joyous Sound" stood at the door of the new era, waiting for it to open.

CHAPTER IV Poets XLbc XanDscape.

In literature dealing with country life or the natural landscape, there is nothing necessarily romantic. However, we can accept with some reservations the truth of Professor McClintock's statement that "the beginning and existence of a creative and romantic movement is almost always demonstrated through the love, study and interpretation of physical nature". * Why this must be true in all cases of the Romantic movement that began in the eighteenth century is pretty obvious. Ruskin and Leslie Stephen have already been cited as witnesses that naturalism and romanticism had a common root: namely, the desire to escape into the open air and into freer conditions, after a strictly regimented literature, dealing with the inner workings of of a highly artificial society. Pastoral care had ceased to bring relief. Pretending to extol innocence and simplicity, it became utterly unreal and conventional in the hands of Cockneys like Philips and Pope. As the romantic spirit embraced the poetry of nature, it manifested itself in a passion for the wild, for grandeur, for solitude. There was relatively little of it, even in the verses of Thomson, Shenstone, Akenside and Dyer.

• WD McClintock, "The Romantic and Classical Periods in English."

Literatur", Chautauquan, Bd. XIV. S. 157,

The Feet of the Landscape. 103

Still the work of these pioneers in theback toNature “represents transition and must be considered in any complete history of the Romantic movement. The first two, as we have seen, were among the first Spenserians: Dyer was a landscape painter and poet; and Shenstone was one of the best landscapers. But it's the beginning that matters. It will be unnecessary to trace the history of nature poetry back to its later developments, it will not be necessary to look at the writings of Cowper and Crabbe, for example: none of them was romantic at all, not even Wordsworth, whose art on the whole was anything but romantic.

Before turning to the above-named writers one by one, it will be well to notice the general change in verse forms, which was an outward sign of the revolution in poetic feeling. Spenser's imitation was just one example of the willingness to abandon the heroic couplet in favor of other types he supplanted and in favor of greater variety. 'During the twenty-five years,' says Mr. Gosse, 'from the publication of Thomson's 'Spring' ['Winter'] in 1726 to Gray's 'Elegy' in 1751, the nine or ten most important poems or collections became. kind, generally somber, majestic indeed, romantic in the extreme, ready, ignorant indeed, but respectful, to revert to what was "gothic" in manners, architecture, and language; all show a more or less vague effort for the study of nature, and none is composed in the heroic couplet hitherto imposed with so much energy in grave verse.

104 (v^ History of English T{omantics.

"Thoughts" and "The Grave" are written in white

to go back

* The Castle of Preguiça' and 'The School-

V > i lover * in the Spenserian stanza; 'The Spleen' and

I *Grongar Hill' in eight syllables, while the early odes

Gray's and Collins' are superbly composed

Variety of simple but novel lyrical measures." *

The only significant writer to use blank lines in non-dramatic poetry between the publication of Paradise Regained in 1672 and Thomson's Winter in 1726 was John Philips. In the brief introduction to Paradise Lost, the poet of L'Allegro and II Pensaroso, forgetting or despising the grace of his young muse, had spoken of rhyme as "an invention of a barbarous age." as "a trivial matter and without any real enjoyment of the music". Milton's example, of course, could not fail to lend dignity and authority to the majestic pace he had employed; and Philip's mock heroic The Splendid Shilling (1701), his occasional Blenheim (1705), and his Georgian Cyder (1706) were all direct imitations of Milton. But the almost solitary character of Philips' experiments was recognized by Thomson in his allusion to the last poem:

"Philips, the bard of Pomona, the second to dare nobly, in unhindered verse. With British freedom, sing British songs." f

Referring to Milton's imitations of Philips, Johnson said that if the latter "had written after the improvements made by Dryden, it would be reasonable

• "Literature of the 18th century", p. 207.

f "Autumn", lines 645-47.

The landscape “Poet. 105

I think he would have allowed a nicer modulation of numbers in his work.” * Johnson hated Adam Smith, but when Boswell mentioned Smith's preference for rhyme over blank verse in his rhetoric courses at the University of Glasgow, he exclaimed a doctor,Lord I was in it onceCompany with Smith and we didn't get along; but if I had known he loved the rhyme as much as you tell me, I would have embraced him."

In 1725, James Thomson, a young Scotsman, came to London to improve his literary skills. His compatriot David Malloch, or Mallet as he was called in England, then family tutor to the Duke of Montrose, brought Thomson into the title society and helped him write "Winter", the first part of "The Seasons", written in 1726 was published. Thomson's friend and biographer (1762), Rev. Patrick Murdoch, says the poem was 'hardly read, universally admired; except for those who are not used to feeling or looking for anything in poetry beyond satirical or epigrammatic humor, a clever antithesis richly embellished with rhymes.” Thomson and Pope, not only in theme and sentiment, but also in diction and verse. Thomson's style is flowery and exuberant, his numbers flowing and diffused, while Pope was so accustomed to the English ear that he understood both language and meter.is one of the most quotable of poets, while Thomson's long poem, despite

• "Life of Philip".

io6 iA History of English 'T^manticism.

its continued popularity has contributed a single sentence to today's trading actions:

"Teach the young idea to shoot."

Winter was followed by summer in 1727, spring in 1728, and the full seasons in 1730. Thomson made many changes and additions in later editions. The original "Seasons" contained only 3,902 lines (excluding "Hymn"), while the final author's revision of 1746 yielded 5,413. Evidence that The Seasons was the work of a new and independent genius is provided by the many imitations to which it soon spawned. In Germany, Haydn set a passage from Brookes's translation (1745) to music. J. P. Uz (1742) and Wieland each produced a "Frühling" in Thomson's manner; but the most notable of his German pupils was Ewald Christian von Kleist, whose "Frühling" (1749) was a description of a spring walk in 460 hexameters, accompanied, as in Thomson's "Hymne", by a kind of "Gloria in. excelsis, the creator of nature". , Armstrong, Dyer, Somerville, and Mallet "Eminence," says Gosse, * "between 1725 and 1750, who did not in some was

• "Literature of the 18th century", p. 221

The t'oets of the landscape. 107

Guided or influenced by Thomson, whose genius is fertile in English literature to this day".

We have become so accustomed to a more intimate treatment and a more spiritual interpretation of nature that we are perhaps too inclined to underestimate Thomson's simple descriptive or pictorial method. Compared with Wordsworth's mysticism, with Shelley's passionate pantheism, with Byron's romantic melancholy before mountains and sea, with Keats's joyous re-creation of mythology, with Thoreau's Indian approach to the deepest mysteries, with a a dozen other moods familiar to the modern mind seem unimaginative to us. Thomson has been compared to Rubens as a colorist; and perhaps the brilliance, breadth and vital energy of its best passages, like those of the great Rubens paintings, leave our finer perceptions intact and we ask for something more esoteric, more intense. There are still enduring and solid qualities in Thomson's landscape art that can still enjoy an intact flavor even now. For a reader of his generation, The Seasons must have been the revelation of a new world of beauty. Passages such as those describing the first rains of spring, the storm of summer, fishing for trout, bathing the sheep, and the horrors of the winter night were not only foreign to the audience of the time, but also new. Poetry.

That the poet was something like a natural scientist, who wrote with love and "a look at the thing", is shown by a hundred touches, like "auricles with shining flour";

"The yellow wallflower with iron brown cast" or

io8 tt/^ History of English l{omanticism.

"The crane knows its time, with its tangled beak, To shake the sonorous swamp." *

Thomson's landscape was real. His pictures of external nature are never false and rarely vague like Pope's. In a letter to Lyttelton he speaks of "the muses of the great country of the plain, not the little fancy muses of Richmond Hill". Its contours, while less sharp and detailed than Cowper's, are more expansive. Coleridge's comparison of the two poets is well known: "The love of nature seems to have led Thomson to a merry religion and to a dark religion which led Cowper to the love of nature... In chastity of diction and harmony of empty verse Cowper leaves Thomson immensely beneath him, but I still believe the latter was the born poet."

Geologist Hugh Miller, visiting Lyttelton's cottage at Hagley in 1845, describes Thomson's famous spring landscape:

"Meanwhile you gain height, from whose gleaming forehead the explosive prospect expands immensely around and, carried over the hill and the valley and the forest and the grass and the green field and the dark heather in between, by pillars that rise rise Elevates you, marred by domestic smoke, your gaze wanders far... There where the rugged landscape, gradually rising, grows rough into craggy hills, above which the Cambrian mountains, like distant clouds, combing the blue horizon, rise dark.

• See Chaucer: "And like a Bitoure he staggers in the swamp."

- I know the Tale of Bathe. f Phillimore's "La vida de Lyttelton", vol. Yes 286

The Feet of the Landscape. 109

• • The whole perspective,” says Miller*, “one of the

most beautiful in England, and eminently characteristic of the best of the English countryside, enabled me to understand what I considered a peculiarity, and in some measure a defect, in the landscapes of the poet Thomson. The Scottish reader must have been surprised to list rather than describe very broad perspectives. His paintings are often mere catalogues, in which single words stand for classes of objects, and in which all poetry seems to consist of an overwhelming sense of vastness, imbued with surprising variety. . . Now, the Hagley's Hill perspective gave me the true explanation for this bullet style. Measured along the horizon, it must be at least eighty miles long; measured laterally, in front of the observer, at least twenty. . . The actual area must exceed a thousand square miles than fall short: the fields it is spread on are small, averaging only the area of ​​a square stadium. . . Among them are countless huts, mansions, villages, cities. Here the surface is pockmarked with innumerable holes; troubled there by innumerable hills; everything is an amazing and overwhelming variety, a variety that neither pen nor pencil can adequately express; and so the description, even in the hands of a teacher, is reduced to a mere enumeration. The image becomes the catalog."

Wordsworth pronunciation fThe Seasons” ** a workof inspiration", saying much of it "was written

• "First Impressions of England", p. 135.

f Attached to the preface of the second edition of “Lyric Ballads”.

in the <i/l History of English Romanticism.

of himself and noble of himself", but complained that the style was vicious. In fact, Thomson's diction is not always worthy of his poetic feeling and his panoramic power over the landscape. funny... The moving lover next door hidden by the stream in which his beloved bathes - the famous "comic bath" - is described asthe latent demon"; and if thePoets discouraging the use of earthworms as bait for trout, he puts it this way:

"But let not the tormented convulsive worm on your hook writhe in dying folds," etc.

The poets had begun to withdraw from the city into the countryside, but in their retreat into the shadows of the jungle they were sometimes accompanied, but just as often by Milton's "Nymph of the Mountain, Sweet Liberty": the Nymph of Shenstone, "Shy Elegance," Virgil reminded her.

Thomson's blank verse, but, as Coleridge says,

Inferior to Cowper, it is often richly musical and with

an energy not borrowed from Milton, nor from Cowper.

appropriate, at least in his translation of Homer.* Mr.

• Of course there are Miltonian reminiscences in "The Seasons".

The "spotted disk" of the moon ("Autumn", 1091) is Milton's "spotted disk".

Globe". The apostrophe of light ("Primavera" 90-96) lends its

"divine efflux" from Milton's "shining efflux of bright essence"

incriar" ("Paradise Lost", III. 1-12.) e ^/. "Autumn",

783-84:

— the Imaus expands

Through the dark borders of wandering tartar",

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

'' - Nonsense

Under the shelter of a frozen island

While the night dominates the sea."

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

The Feet of the Landscape. 1 1 1

Saintsbury* discovers a mannerism in the verse of The Seasons, which he illustrates by quoting three lines with which the poet closes "the culmination of three descriptive passages, all in the space of half a dozen pages", namely:

"And Egypt rejoices under the spreading wave." "And Mecca is saddened by the long delay." "And Thule roars through its farthest islands."

It would be easy to add many more cases of this type of climacteric lineage, e.g. Gram. ("Summer", 859),

"And the Ocean trembles for its green dominion."

For the blank verse of The Seasons is blank verse that has passed through the sieve of the heroic couplet. Though in the flow and continuity of his measure, as already said, Thomson offers the greatest contrast to Pope's verse system; but wherever he tries to be nervous, his modulation is more reminiscent of Pope's antithetical stratagem than the freer structure of Shakespeare or Milton. For example ("Spring", 1015):

"It fills all the senses and sighs in all veins."

it {ibid. 1 104):

"You burn the nerves and boil in the veins."

To break the monotony of a descriptive poem, the author introduces moralizing digressions: advice to peasants and shepherds in the manner of "Georgians"; Praise to her patrons such as Lyttelton, Bubb Dodington and the Countess of

• "Ward's English Poets", Vol. third page 171.

112 c^ History of English T^omantics.

Herford; and sentimental narrative episodes, such as the tales of Damon and Musidora* and Celadon and Amelia in "Summer" and of Lavinia and Palemonf in "Autumn", as from time to time his gaze roamed over natural phenomena in strange climates, arctic nights, summer tropical, etc. Wordsworth claims that these sentimental passages

• are the parts of the job that were probably the most

efficient at first recommending the author to general attention.” They look pretty boring to us now. But many future photos cast their shadows on The Seasons page. poultry and breeds of rabbits; his preference for the countryside over the city; his passions for domestic love and Golden Age innocence; its contrast between the misery of the poor and the reckless luxury of the rich. These are all features of the poem, foreshadowing the sentimentality of Sterne and Goldsmith and the humiliation of Cowper and Burns, and in particular anticipating that half-feigned itch for simplicity evoked in Rousseau's writings and Bernardin's idyllic images of Paul and Virginia. of San Pedro.

• Originally, there were iAree ladies in the bathroom scene!

f It was this episode which provided Pope with the lines (207-14) "Ill-thought of beauty, she was bad beauty," etc., forming his solitary essay in blank verse. Thomson told Collins that he got his first reference to "The Seasons" from the names of the departments-spring, summer, autumn, winter-in Pope's "Pastorals."

X Appendix to the Preface to the Second Edition of Lyric Ballads.

The Feet of the Landscape. 113

going so far as to condemn the use of animal feed in a passage reminiscent of Goldsmith's stanza:*

"No herds roaming freely in the valley to kill I condemn: taught by the power that sympathizes with me, I learn to sympathize with them."

Something was in the air. Pope was not a sentimental man, but even Pope had written

“The lamb that your excitement condemns to bleed today, if I had your reason, would it jump and play? Delighted to the end, she plucks the floral food. And lick the hand that just rose to spill your blood." F

It doesn't seem that Thomson was personally averse to a leg of lamb. His denunciations of luxury and his praise of early risers and cold baths sound rather hollow on the lips of a bard - "fatter than a bard's complexion" - who used to stay in bed until noon and who, as he put it, was a wild Johnson, * "Perhaps he never had a hard time in his life." Not without a tinge of malice, Johnson reports that the Countess of Hertford, "whose habit it was every summer to invite a poet into the country to hear her verse and help her with her studies," she turned politely to Thomson, "who was more delighted to amuse himself with Lord Hertford and his friends than to help his lordship.

• "Or recluse."

f "Test on Man", Letter I.

\"False luxury, the man won't wake up?" etc

- Summer, § 67 "Even if the cold winter sharpens the bright tide, I would remain shivering slightly on the edge."

- /i>ii^. 1259-60,

\

114 «t/^ History of English Romance.

poetic operations, and therefore I never received a call again.”*

The romantic note is not lacking in "The Seasons", but it is not noticeable. Thomson's theme was the changes of the year affecting the English countryside, a gentle, cultivated landscape of meadows, gardens, fields, orchards, sheep tracks and forest reserves. Only occasionally does that attraction to the wild, terrifying, mysterious, primitive which characterizes the romantic mood in naturalistic poetry show itself in touches like these:

"High from the top of a craggy cliff, Perched above the depths, like a wondrous frown On the coast of Kilda, whose lonely race delivers the setting sun to Indian worlds." f

"Or where the North Ocean surges in gigantic eddies around the barren and melancholy islands of far-off Thule, and the Atlantic wave laps between the tempestuous Hebrides."

Compare also the description of the storm in

the mountains ("Summer", 1156-68), concluding with the

Lines:

"From afar the heights of the Cheviot moor gleam, and Thule roars through its last islands."

The Western Isles seem to have held a special fascination for Thomson. The passages quoted above, and the stanza from The Castle of Indolence quoted on page 94, gave Collins the key to his Ode to the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, which, according to Lowell, contained the entire school romance.

• "Thomson's Life". {"Spring." 755-58.

t “Autumn,” 862-65.

The Feet of the Landscape. 115

by the root. Thomson may have found the embryonic atom in Milton's Stormy Hebrides, in Lycidas, whose echoes are continued in Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper:

"Breaking the silence of the seas beneath the furthest Hebrides".

Even Pope, who had a soul, was not immune to it, as was his

"Strong as wolves on the stormy cliff, orcas howl with the roar of the deep north." *

The melancholy that Victor Hugo proclaims as a hallmark of Romantic art, and that we will see grow in English poetry throughout the century, is also palpable in "The Seasons" in a passage like the following:

"Oh, take me, then, to distant muddy shadows, to twilight groves and visionary dales, to weeping grottos and prophetic darkness; where angelic figures pierce the solemn twilight, mighty sway or seem to sweep; and more than voices human beings through the void, Profound one, grasp the enthusiastic ear;" f

or what resembles "II Pensaroso":

“Now all in the midst of the difficulties of the year.

In the wild depths of winter, while outside The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my refuge

• „Brief an Augustus“.

f 'Herbst', 1030-37. Cowper CF

"Oh, to a hut in a vast desert.

ii6 <i/J History of English Romanticism.

between the groaning forest and the shore,

struck by the boundless multitude of waves,

A rural, protected and isolated environment;

Where reddish fire and glowing candles unite

To light up the dark. There let me sit diligently

And speak loudly with the mighty dead." *

The revival of supernatural and popular superstition as literary material after a rationalizing and skeptical era is signaled in a passage like this:

"Ahead they travel many breathless heights. And a low and little frequented valley, where at nightfall the fairies gather. At various games and parties, to spend the summer night, as the tales of the cities tell. One avoids the grave of him whose misfortune has pressed against his own sad bosom to lift the hand of impious violence. One avoids also the lonely tower, whose dark chambers shelter, that is, the imaginative dreams of the night, the screaming ghost."

It may not be instructive to note the occurrence of the word romantic at various points in the poem:

' 'Bright shadows and sympathetic darkness Where the somber twilight clings to the romantically falling brook. f

This comes from a passage where romantic love returns to poetry after its long eclipse; and in which the lover is depicted wandering through groups of trees in "meditative twilight" or moonlight

• "Winter", 424-32. f 'spring', 1026-28.

The Feet of the Landscape. 117

and along the brooks.* The word applies equally to clouds, "rolled in romantic forms they awaken the dream of fancy"; and on the landscape of Scotland: "Caledonia from a Romantic Perspective". In a more subtle way, lines like these feel romantic:

"Breathe your quiet song into the reaper's heart. Like homecoming under the merry moon;"

or this one, from the relative lightness of summer

Abend:

"A faint wandering ray, Seen from the imperfect surfaces of things, Casts half an image to the weary eye."

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

"Ghosts ride the storm tonight:

Sweet is his voice amidst the gusts of wind: his songs a7-e from other worlds.'

Have you never observed (while the swaying winds blow hard) that pause when the gust recovers and rises to the ear with a shrill, plaintive note, like the soul of a Jollian harp? I assure you, nothing in the world sounds like the voice of a ghost. At times, Thomson had a sympathetic ear: he didn't turn a blind eye and describe it gloriously, but gave it a different, different, scarier twist. tip

• Shakespeare's "The gorse forest whose shade the bachelor dies"

or; "

Fletchers

"springs and pathless groves,

Places that pale passion loves” and its

"Moonlight walks when all birds are safe except bats and owls."

ii8 <iA History of English T^pmanticism.

repeat the lines: he is in his 'winter'." The lines Gray had in mind were probably these (191-94):

"Yet, they say, in the charged air are heard long groans, shrill tones, and distant sighs, uttered by the demon of the night, warning the wretched devotee of pain and death."

Thomson appears to have been a lazy, good-natured man, constant in friendship, and well liked by his friends. He had a little house and land on Kew Lane, where he composed poetry on autumn nights and enjoyed listening to the nightingales in Richmond Garden; and where, Collins sang in his Ode to the Poet's Death (1748),

"Memory often lurks on the beach,

When the Thames sings in summer, it's dry. And he often takes the swift oar to soothe his gentle spirit."

Collins moved from the Thomson home to Richmond and left the neighborhood after his friend's death.

Joseph Warton testified in his Essay on Pope (1756) that The Seasons was "very useful in spreading a taste for the beauties of nature and scenery". Evidence of this widespread taste was the emergence of the new or natural school of landscaping. This was purely English art, and Gray, writing in 1763*, says: 'Forty years have not yet passed since art was born among us; and it is certain that there was nothing like it in Europe”: he adds that “our skill in gardening and gardening” is “the only

• Brief an Howe, 10 de setembro.

The landscape “Poet. 1 1 9

Flavors we can call our own, the only evidence of our original talent for pleasure." "Not forty years" brings us back to the date of The Seasons (1726-30) accurately enough, and perhaps does not give Thomson no due To the credit of acknowledging him in large part as the father of the National School of Landscape Anglais, given reasons of delight in the natural taste still established in Germany and France, Schopenhauer translates the philosophy of contrasting styles thus: “The great difference between the styles The English garden and the old French garden are ultimately based on the fact that the former in the object

• Brief a Howe, November 1763,

t Alice Amherst ("History of Gardening in England", 1896, p. 283) mentions a French and an Italian work entitled "Plan de Jardins dans le gout Anglais", Copenhagen, 1798; and "Del Arte dei Giardini Inglesi", Milan, 1801. "This passion for imitating nature", says the same authority, "was part of the general reaction which was taking place not only in horticulture, but also in the world of literature... and fashion. In civilized Europe, the extremely artificial French taste had taken the lead, and people were now trying to throw off the shackles of their exaggerated formalism. The poets of the day were also pioneers of this school of literature. Nature. Dyer, in his poem 'Grongar Hill', and Thomson, in his 'Seasons', conjured up images which gardeners and architects of the day sought to emulate.” See in this work, for good examples of the formal garden, the plan of Belton House, Lincoln, page 245; of Brome Hall, Suffolk; of Greenhouse and Euston Canal, page 201; and the scroll patterns of lawns and flowerbeds on pages 217-18.

I20 iThe History of English Romanticism.

ive, the latter in the subjective sense, that is, in the former the will of nature, as manifested (objectified) in the tree, the mountain, and the water, is brought into the purest possible expression of its ideas, /. ^., of its very essence. In French gardens, on the contrary, only the will of the owner is reflected, submitted to nature, so that, instead of his own ideas, he assumes the forms that are imposed on him as proof of his slavery: hedges pruned, trees cut in all possible shapes, straight alleys, arched paths, etc.

It would be unfair to blame the faulty taste of the Pope's generation for the formal garden style that prevailed when The Seasons was written. The Old Italian, French or Dutch Garden - as it was variously called - predates Augustus, who simply inherited it from the 17th century. In Bacon's essay on gardens, as well as in Cowley's and Sir William Temple's essays on the same subject, the ideal amusement park closely resembles what Le Notre at Versailles so brilliantly accomplished. Addison, indeed, in the Spectator (No. 414) and Pope himself in The Guardian (No. 173) ridiculed the excesses of the prevailing fashion, and Pope attacked them in his description of Timon's manor in his Letter to the Earl of Burlington (1731), which was thought to be destined for the Canons, seat of the Duke of Chandos.

• On the temple grounds of Moor Park, Hertfordshire, for example. for example there

they were lead-covered terraces. Charles II imported some of Le Notre's pupils and assistants, who designed the grounds of Hampton Court to French taste. The Labyrinth of Hampton Court still existed in Walpole's time (1770).

The Feet of the Landscape. 121

• ' Your gardens call beside your admiration,

Face the wall in every direction you look! No pleasant complexity in the middle, no witty wildness to muddle the scene; Grove beckons to Grove, each alley has a sibling, and half of the platform just mirrors the other. The suffering eye that sees nature badly. Trees carved into statues, statues thick as trees; With here a source never to be touched; And there is a summer house that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails through bowers of myrtle; There gladiators fight or die in flowers; With no water, he sees the fallen seahorse screaming and the swallows perched in Nilus's dusty urn."

The criticism, however, which draws an analogy between the French garden, with its careful regularity and artificial smoothness, and the couplets written by Pope, is not merely imaginative: an analogy such as exists between the whole classical school of poetry and architecture. copied by Palladio and introduced into England by Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. The land consisted of rectangular lots bordered by straight streets, sometimes paved with sand of different colors and bordered by formal boxes and holly hedges. The lawn was decorated with flowerbeds cut in geometric shapes and provided at regular intervals with yew trees cut into cubes, cones, pyramids, spheres, sometimes figures of giants, birds, animals and ships, the so-called "Topiary Works" { opus topiariuni ). Terraces, fountains, bowling alleys (Fr. Boulingrin), statues, arcades, quincunx, trellises and labyrinths or artificial labyrinths filled the scene. The complex was surrounded by a wall that separated the garden from the surrounding landscape.

12 2i/1 History of English Romanticism.

"If a Frenchman reads of the Garden of Eden," says Horace Walpole in his essay On Modern Gardening (written in 1770 and published in 1785), "I do not doubt it, but conclude that it was something like Versailles, with trimmed hedges." , berceaiix and trellises... The measured floor, the tipping and the étoile imposed their unsatisfactory monotony on all royal and noble gardens... Many French woods look like green chests placed on poles... In the garden of the Marshal de Biron in Paris , consisting of fourteen acres, each lane being buttoned on either side by rows of flowerpots, succeeding each other in their seasons. When I saw it, there were nine thousand pots of asters, or la retne Marguerite. When my brother was married, at Lady Orford's house, at Piddletown, in Dorsetshire, there was a double precinct of thirteen gardens, each not much larger, I suppose, than a hundred square feet, with a corresponding set of gates; and before you entered them, a narrow defile was passed between two stone terraces, rising above your head and topped by a row of pyramidal yews. A bowling green was all nice grass: a circular lake the size of splendor.”*

Walpole cites Theobalds and Nonsuch as famous examples of the old formal garden style; Stourhead, Hagley and Stowe: Lyttelton's brother-in-law's country house. Lord Cobham - of the new. He says mottos and coats of arms were sometimes carved from yew, boxwood, and holly. It refers to a recent work by the Reverend Thomas Whately, or

• It is worth noting that Batty Langley, the failed restorer of

As early as 1728, he recommended the natural style of the landscaped garden in his "New Principles of Garden Art".

The Feet of the Landscape. 123

Wheatley, "Observations on Modern Gardening", 1770; and to a poem, then and still in manuscript, but Amherst* supplies passages entitled "The Rise and Progress of the Present Taste in Planting Parks, Recreation Areas, Gardens, etc. In a Poetic Epistle to Lord Viscount Irwin", 1767 .

Gray's friend and publisher, the Reverend William Mason, in his 1757 poem The English Garden, speaks of the French garden as a thing of the past.

"Oh, how different from the scene that forms my imagination,

Has madness conspired with wealth until now?

To plant that formal, boring and disjointed scene

What used to be called a garden! Great Britain still

He has many terrible wounds on his chest.

Given by cruel couple when borrowing help

They tried in vain to learn geometric skills

With cord, plumb bob and insensitive scissors

Form with green what the master builder has shaped

with stone.

hence the side walls

shorn yew; the thorny arms of the holly

Cut in high arches; the tonsil box,

Weave many curls in mosaic mode

Around the patterned rug on the lawn. . .

The terraced hill rose; the long line

Shallow channel with deep hole". f

But now the poet continues. Gusto "raise your voice"

j

“With the terrible noise, the terrace will sink by itself; in the green, embroidered with brittle knots, the almond yews wither and fall; the fountain no longer dares to cast its spent glass into the sky, but pours healingly over the dry grass. "

• "History of Gardening in England".

f I. 384-404.

124 <^ History of English Romanticism.

The new school had the intolerance of the Reformers. Brown's relentless skill and his Myrmidons devastated many a pristine but beautiful ancient garden with its avenues, terraces and sundials, the loss of which we deeply regret now that the Queen Anne Renaissance has taught us to appreciate the Rococo beauties that make up The Landscapes Faux Brown Scrolled.

We may linger a little on Mason's 'English Garden', as an example of those crude didactic poems in blank verse produced from Philips' 'Cyder' and Thomson's 'Seasons', of which Mallet's 'Excursion' (1728) belongs. , Somerville's Chase (1734), Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination (1742-44), Armstrong's Art of Preservation Health (1744), Dyer's Fleece (1757) and Grainger's Sugar Cane (1764). Mason's blank verse, like Mallets, is a strong imitation of Thomson's, and the influence of Thomson's pompous diction is at its worst here. The whole poem is a classic example of the absurdity of didactic poetry. Particularly moving is the author's effort to be poetic in describing the different types of fences designed to keep sheep out of their pens.

"Certainly ungrateful, When the subject is thus, it becomes the poet's task: he must, however, seek to find, by modulation, Of varied cadence and chosen phrase, Exact but free, without daring inflation, To appreciate this subject. "

Consequently, he honors his topic by speaking of a net as "the athlete's work of hemp" and of a gun as a "work of hemp".

• ■ ^ "- failed tube

Whose iron entrails hide the explosion of sulfur, satanic machine! "

The Landscape "Toets. 125

When he names an ice house, he does so in the form of a riddle:

"-the rough structure where winter strikes, in a conical pit that its frosts make hoarse, that summer can chill its lukewarm drink with cold luxury."

This kind of word choice is the hallmark of all eighteenth-century poetry and poets; not just by those who used the classic couplet, but also by the romanticizing group that embraced the Blankverse. The best of them are not free from it, not even Gray, not even Collins; and permeates Wordsworth's first verse, his Descriptive Sketches and Night Walk published in 1793.

Borrowing from The Seasons, Mason introduced a sentimental love story in his third book, Alcander and Nerina. He informs his readers (Book II. 34-78) that many gardeners have gone to extremes in reacting against straight slopes with the use of zigzag meanders; and recommends that they follow the natural curves of the paths that the milkmaid takes "from ridge to ridge" through the pastures, or

- "the hare runs to his dew-flecked roost on the thyme moors".

The prose commentary on Mason's poem by W. Burgh* states that this was the formal style of the garden.

• <<

The Works of William Mason", em 4 volumes, Londres, 1811.

126 zA History of English l^manticism.

began to decline in the early eighteenth century, although the new fashion had only recently reached its perfection. Mason mentions Pope as a champion of true taste,* but the descriptions of his famous village at Twickenham, with its grotto, bushes and artificial mounds, hardly suggest to the modern reader a successful attempt to reproduce nature. To be sure. The Pope was only five years old

• See Pope's article in The Guardian (173) for some fairly extensive details.

Nonsense about topiary work. "All art," he asserts, "consists in the imitation and study of nature." “It seems that our study consists in escaping from nature, not only in the various shades of green in the most regular and formal forms, but” etc. etc. Also Addison, Spectator 414, June 25, 1712, defends "the careless strokes of nature" against "the beautiful touches and embellishments of art" and complains that "our British gardeners love to deviate, instead of pleasing nature as much as possible. . Our trees grow in cones, spheres and pyramids. We see shear marks on all the plants and shrubs. I don't know if I'm singular in my opinion, but I'd rather look at a tree in all its exuberance and proliferation of branches and boughs than see it cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure like this." See also Spectator, 477, for a beautiful sketch of a garden decorated with “beautiful wild nature.” Gilbert West's Speserian poem “Education,” 1751 (see ante, p. 90), contains in six stanzas an attack on the geometric garden, of which I present only one line .

''Other wonders of sports scissors. They found beautifully adorned nature: globes, spiral columns, pyramids and pillars. Crowned with budding urns and budding statues; And horizontal dials on the floor, In a living box designed by crafty artists; and galleys in good condition, not on long voyages. But because their roots were always firmly anchored, so were all their sails, their bellies expanding with every gust.

The Feet of the Landscape. 127

Acres to experience and the parkland setting that characterizes the English landscape garden requires a lot of space. Art is the natural growth of a country where the Mayorazgo has kept large estates in the hands of the nobility and nobility and where the passion for sport has maintained the nobility and nobility of the country for a large part of the year. Even Shenstone - whose location Mason praises - Shenstone in Leasowes with its 300 acres found its little joy embarrassingly eclipsed by the neighborhood's great Lyttelton Park in Hagley.

The general principle of the New School or English School was to imitate nature; Let the trees keep their shape, replace the winding paths with straight lanes and natural waterfalls or quick jets of water in marble pools. The plan on which Shenstone worked is explained in his "Disjoint Thoughts on Gardening"* (1764), from which a few sentences give the direction of reform: "The landscape should contain enough variety to form an image on the canvas." and that's not bad evidence, as I believe the landscaper is a better designer than the gardener. The eye needs some kind of balance here, but not one that interferes with the likely nature. A forest or a hill can balance a house or an obelisk; for accuracy would be unpleasant... The predilection of other times for straight avenues to their homes, straight walks through their woods, and, finally, all kinds of straights where the foot has something to walk, is not easy to explain. before... to

• "Essays on Men and Manners", Shenstone's Works, vol. II.,

Dodley edition.

128 <iThe History of English Romanticism.

standing still and examining these paths may bring a little satisfaction from the resulting shift in perspective; but to go on indefinitely without finding any change in the scenery accompanying our change of location must give a person of good taste real pain. . . I had an idea of ​​what it must be like to run locked in for a few minutes

Lord D's high trimmed yew hedges run straight

parallel at a distance of about three meters and are perfectly designed to exclude all types of objects. . . Side trees in views should be in such a condition that they are likely to have grown naturally. . . The form of the soil, the disposition of the trees and the form of the water must be sacred to nature; and forms that discover art must not be allowed. . . The taste of the commoner and the common peasant is in all respects the same: the former gilds his balls, paints his stones and statues white, plants his trees in lines or circles, cuts his yews into four squares or cones, or gives the who may from the likeness of birds, or bears, or men: he pours his streams into jets d'eatij, in short, he admires no part of nature except her ductility; he shows everything that dazzles, requires effort or surprises because it is not natural. The farmer is his admirer. . . The water should always appear as a jagged lake or meandering stream. . . Toppings that appear like this are usually bad. You discover art in the province of nature.”

There is certainly a correspondence between this new taste for picturesque gardening, which preferred freedom, variety, irregularity, and naturalness to rule, monotony, uniformity, and artificiality, and that new taste for literature, which discarded the couplet for blank spaces.

The Feet of the Landscape. 129

Verses or to various forms of stanzas that left the world of society in the solitude of nature and finally went to the remnants of Gothic and the crude fragments of Norse and Celtic antiquity in search of new stimuli. .

Both Walpole and Mason speak of William Kent, the architect and landscaper, as influential in introducing a purer taste to the art of gardening. Kent was a friend of the Pope and a. Protégé of Lord Burlington, to whom Pope dedicated his above-quoted "Epistle on the Use of Riches" (see page 121) and who gave Kent a home in his country house. Kent is said to have realized that he drew his love of gardening from descriptive passages in Spenser, whose poetry he illustrated. Walpole and Mason also agree on the contrast of artificial gardening in Milton's day with the image of Eden in "Paradise Lost":

' '-where not the fine art in us strangers, But nature's blessings over hills and valleys shed flowers worthy of paradise; while everywhere dark grottoes and caverns with cool nooks and gurgling waters that spill over the slopes or are held back by shores edged in crystalline lakes. It composes a rural property in different shades."

But it is worth noting that he retired in "L'Allegro".

leisure', likes ^^ well-kept gardens', while

pick me up

"Rest and health retire to the windswept lawn or deep forest."

Walpole says that Kent's "guiding principle was that nature abhors the straight line". Kent "jumped over the fence and saw that all nature was a garden. He felt

130 <iThe History of English Romanticism.

the enchanting contrast of mountain and valley, which merge imperceptibly. . . and watched as the loose woods crowned a slight rise with gay ornaments. . . The great principles he worked on were perspective, light and shadow. . . But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful country, none surpassed his dealings with water. Say goodbye to canals, circular pools and waterfalls that cascade down marble steps. . . The gentle stream has been taught to appear to meander at will.'* Treatment of the garden as part of the overall landscape has generally been accomplished by removing walls, hedges and other enclosures and replacing ha. It is curious that Walpole, as we speak of Capability Brown, does not mention the Leasowes, whose owner, William Shenstone, author of 'The School-Mistress', is one of 'the most interesting amateur gardeners in England', says Hugh Miller, 'brought up poets much better than Shenstone, but it never produced a great landscaper".

At Oxford, Shenstone had signaled his natural taste by wearing his own hair in place of the wig, which was then (1732) generally in fashion. an annuity of about three hundred pounds. His temper was slow, withdrawn and somewhat melancholy; and instead of pursuing a professional career he settled on his estate, and about 1745

• "On Modern Gardening", Werke des Earl of Orford,

Londres, 1798, Bd. II.

f Graves, "Reminiscences of Shenstone", 1788.

The Countryside T^oets. 131

He started doing this 2, ferme ornce. There he woos the peasant muse in elegy, ode, and pastoral ballad, singing the beauties of simplicity and the vanity of ambition in the vocal palette, and mixing with these chords lamentations of Delia's cruelty and the meagerness of her own purse, which she takes seriously. hampered him in his landscaping projects. Mr. Saintsbury described Shenstone as a master of "the natural-artificial style in poetry". to hide the poet's horticultural aspirations. “Whether it's tracing a path around undulating curves and placing a bench at each curve where there's an object to capture the view; Let the water flow where you hear it and stagnate where you see it; Leaving gaps where the eye pleases and swelling the crop where there is something to hide requires great mental powers, I won't ask. and that when Hagley's visitors asked to see Shenstone's house, their host deftly guided them to uncomfortable vantage points, urging them to z.” f Graves, however, denies that there was any rivalry between Hagley's large estate and the poet's small estate. “The truth is,” he writes, “the Lyttelton family left so often

• "Ward's English Poets", Vol. terceiro 271.

t "The Life of Shenstone."

132 <iA history of English l^manticism.

then with his company to the Leasowes, who were unwilling to invade Mr. Shenstone at every opportunity, and frequently went to the main lookout points, hoping that no one would regularly guide them throughout the tour. go. Of that Mr. Shenstone sometimes complained wistfully.

Shenstone, in his Thoughts on Gardening, describes various means he put into practice for increasing the apparent distance of objects or lengthening the perspective of an avenue by enlarging it in the foreground and planting dark-leaved trees there. , such as yew and spruce, "then with increasingly withered trees until they ended in almond willow or white willow". It certainly must have been provocative for Lord Lyttleton to invite a party at the end or end of such a tour, and thus spoil the whole trick. Johnson claims that Shenstone's house was in disrepair and that "nothing irritated him more than asking if there were fish in his water". 'In time,' continues the doctor, 'her expenses caused a noise around her, which made the bleating of the lamb and the singing of the goldfinch overwhelming; and its woods were haunted by beings very different from deer and fairies, “namely, the bailiffs; but Graves denies it.

The Leasowes' fame attracted visitors from all over the country: literary figures such as Spence, Home and Dodsley: dazzling tourists who came out of curiosity; and nobles who came or sent their gardeners for advice on how to plan their own plots. Lyttelton brought in William Pitt, who was so interested that he offered to contribute £200 towards the improvements.

The Feet of the Landscape. 133

an offer Shenstone turned down. Pitt had some skill in landscape gardening, which he practiced at Enfield Chase and later at Hayes.* Thomson, who was Lyttelton's guest at Hagley every summer for the last three or four years of his life, obviously knew the Leasowes. There are many references to the 'descriptive sweet bard' in Shenstone f.'s poems, and a memorial seat has been inscribed in a part of the site known as Vergil's Grove.This seat," says Dodsley, "is placed in asteep slope at the edge of the valley, from which the view is drawn down to the plain below by the light shining ahead and the murmur of several waterfalls, where the meandering stream breaks pleasantly. In front of this seat, the floor rises again in a slight concavity until it becomes a kind of babbling fountain, where a small stream runs from a rough niche carved in the rock by ferns, liverworts and aquatic algae. . . The whole scene is dull and gloomy." J

English landscape gardening is a noble art. AND

• See Before, p.90, for his visits to Gilbert West at Wickham.

f See especially “A Pastoral Ode” and “Verses Written in Late 1748”.

|: "A Description of the Leasowes by R. Dodsley", Shenstone's

Works, Vol. II, pp 287-320 (3rd ed.) This description is accompanied by a map. For other descriptions, see Graves' "Recollections", Hugh Miller's "First Impressions of England", and Wm. Howitt (1846), vol. I, pp. 258-63. The latter features an engraving of the house and grounds. Miller, who was at Hagley - "The British Tempe" - and Leasowes nearly a century after Shenstone began to beautify his father's fields, says that Leasowes was the poet's most elaborate poem, "the singularly witty composition written in an English lot using Shenstone's taste and genius for twenty years".

134 «i^ History of English Romanticism.

The principles are solid and of lasting application. However, we are so advanced in our passion for nature that we men of Shenstone's day tend to grow impatient with the degree of artificiality present in even the most skilful falsification of the natural landscape. The poet no longer writes odes to Rural Elegance, nor sings

“Transport, more related to singing,

In the peaceful destination of a beautiful valley, to catch gentle hints of nature's language,

And let Arcadia flourish; Whether we go round the sloping hill,

Or soft under the green mead; if we break the stream that falls,

Or they lead through intricate labyrinths, Or into the hideous room of the mulberry trees.

Encouraging neglected rose bushes to flourish; Or leave a sheltered lake calm

It reflects flowers, forests and capitals and illuminates the entire scene."

If we can't have the mountains, the jungle or the rough sea, at least we can have the Thomson.great simple country", subjected to the will of man.use, but not for your pleasure. The modern climate prefers a path to a winding avenue and an ancient orchard, or a stony pasture to a lawn adorned with scrub. “I confess,” says Howitt, “that I have always found so much ado about nothing in the 'Leasowes'; such a parade of miniature waterfalls, lakes, streams washed here and there; Surprises in the layout of the woods and the curvature of the paths... that I wished with all my heart to have good rural health".

Because the "natural-artificial" is a feature of Shen-

The Feet of the Landscape. 135

Stone gardeners no less than their poetry. He closed each view, highlighting each opening in its undergrowth, and each place that commanded perspective, with an object that was like an exclamation point for the beauty of the scene: a rustic bench, a manor, a Gothic niche, a grotto, a Hermitage. , a memorial urn or obelisk dedicated to Lyttelton, Thomson, Somerville,* Dodsley or some other friend. He provided them with inscriptions expressing sentiments appropriate to the place, passages from Virgil, or verses in English or Latin written by himself. Walpole says that Kent went so far in his imitation of the natural landscape that he planted dead trees in Kensington Garden. Walpole himself seems to approve of such devices as artificial ruins, "a pretended spire of a distant church or an unreal bridge to disguise the end of the water". Shenstone did not overcome these minor effects: he built a "ruined priory" and the temple of Pan out of rough, unhewn stone; He placed a statue of a hissing faun and another of the Venus dei J' Medici beside a vase of goldfish.

Some of the Shenstone inscriptions have escaped the ravages of time. For example, the motto engraved on the urn dedicated to the memory of his cousin Miss Dolman was prefaced by Byron in his "Elegie on Thyrza": "Heuquanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!" The custom of inscription continued down to the time of Wordsworth, who composed a number for Sir George Beaumont's land.

• See "Lady Luxborough's Letters to Shenstone", 1775, for more details

Correspondence in an urn he erected in Somerville's memory. She was Bolingbroke's sister, held a position at Barrels and exchanged visits with Shenstone.

136 't/1 History of English Thomianism.

color tone. One of Akenside's best pieces is his "Inscription to a Grotto", which is not unworthy of Landor. Matthew Green, author of The Spleen, wrote a 250-line poem about Queen Caroline's famous grotto in Richmond Garden. "A grotto," says Johnson of the even more famous of the Pope's mansion at Twickenham, "is not infrequently the desire or pleasure of an Englishman who needs courtesy more than shelter from the sun"; but the increasing emphasis on the moss cave and the hermit's cell, both in descriptive verse and in gardening, was symptomatic. It was a note of imminent romance and that thoughtful, elegiac tone that one finds in the works of Gray, Collins and the Wartons. It marked the Muse's withdrawal from the heights of the world to the cool and remote valley of life. Throughout mid-century literature, the nervous ear can discern the trickle of spring water in the rocky walls of the grotto. In Hagley, halfway up the hill. Miller saw a semi-octagonal temple dedicated to Thomson's genius. Rising from a grassy depression with a wide open view, it was the favorite resting place of the poet of The Seasons. In a bleak, secluded ravine, he found a white pedestal supporting an urn engraved by Lyttelton in Shenstone's memory. This contrast of situation appeared to the emblematic tourist. Shenstone, he says, was an egoist, and his niche, true to character, excludes the distant landscape. Gray, calling The Schoolmistress a masterpiece of its kind, made a rather disparaging mention of the author.* “I have read

• *'Letter to Nichols', June 24, 1769.

The Feet of the Landscape. 137

an 8th volume of Shenstone's letters; poor man! he always desired money, fame and other accolades; and his whole philosophy was to retire against his will and live in a place which his taste had adorned, but which he only enjoyed when notable people came to see and praise him", Gray no doubt made from reading the book Shenstone Benefits .Elegies" that precede their own "Inscribed Elegy".the Country Churchyard ”(1751). He took Shenstone's verse, which Shenstone had borrowed from the love elegies of a now forgotten poet, James Hammond, a squire to Prince Frederick and a friend of Cobham, Lyttelton and Chesterfield. "Why Hammond or other writers," says Johnson, "thought the ten-syllable quatrain to be elegiac, it is difficult to say. The character of the elegy is gentle and subdued, but this stanza was furnished by Dryden . . . all the measures our language offers.”*

• Drydens Annus mirabilis, Davenants Gondibert und Sir

John Davies' "Nosce Teipsum" was written in this stanza, but the universal topicality of Gray's poem associated it almost exclusively with elegiac poetry for many years. Slienstone's complete poems were not published until 1764, although some of them were printed in Dodsley's Miscellanies. Few of his elegies are dated in the collected editions (Elegy VIII, 1745; XIX, 1743; XXI, 1746), but Graves says they were all written before Grays. The following lines will remind any reader of the relevant passages in Gray's "Churchyard":

“O foolish muses who diligently strive

To grace the cold and unreasoning sanctuary with bays!

"When the free spirit leaves its humble body

trample the sky crowned with radiant garlands;

j

tu

138 iA History of English To^omantics.

After The Schoolmistress, Shenstone's most captivating poem is his Pastoral Ballad, written in 1743 in four parts and in a rapid, anapestic tempo. Most readers are familiar with the beginning of the stanza:

' 'I found a present for my fair, found out where the wood pigeons are bred.'

Dr Johnson recognized the beauty of imagination:

"He took leave of me so sweetly,

I thought he asked me to come back; "

and used to quote and praise the well known lines **Written in an inn at Henley:

"Anyone who has traveled through the tedious routine of life, wherever its seasons may be, can sigh at the thought that he has found the warmest of welcomes at an inn."

As for Shenstone's blank verse - of which there are not many - the Doctor says: "Your blank verse, those

Tell me, will he hear the distant voice of fame or will he hear the eccentric sweetness in the sound? "

- Elegy II

• ' I saw his coffin cross the plain in shame."

- Elegy III.

"No wild ambitions ignited her flawless bosom."

—Elegia XV.

"Through the thin veil of the dark shadow of night, near a lonely shrine or a green burial," etc.

- Elegy IV

"The bright twilight and the doubtful dawn

You will see your steps return to those sad scenes

Constants like the crystalline dew govern the grass", etc.

-Ibid,

7 Make sure the landscape. 139

Those who can read them will likely find them to be the blank verse of their neighbors.” Shenstone encouraged Percy to publish his Hallows. Plans for the Abbotsford site were somewhat influenced by Dodsley's description of the Leasowes, which Scott was studying. with a lot of interest.

In 1744, Mark Akenside, a rural northerner partly educated in Scotland, published his *Pleasures of Imagination, later rewritten and distorted as The Pleasures of the Imagination. The title and part of the outline of The Poem's Thoughts are taken from Addison's series of articles on the subject (Spectator, #41 1-42 1). Akenside was a scholar and a respected physician. His poem, printed when he was just old, has enjoyed a popularity that is difficult to explain today. Gray complained of its inaccuracy, saying it had been published nine years earlier but acknowledging that it rose "up to the best, particularly in description" from time to time. As a man, Akenside was tough, formal, and dogmatic. Smollett caricatures him in Peregrine Pickle. Johnson hated his Whig principles, and when he settled in Northampton he portrays him as having "deafened the place with cries of freedom" to which Akenside's work belonged, and told Boswell that he could not read it. However, he speaks of this with a certain reserved respect, which seems more like a concession to contemporary opinion than an appreciation of the critics themselves. He even admits that Akenside "has fewer nasty inventions than most of its empty music brethren". Lowell says that the very title of Akenside's poem indicated "far from level".

• "The Akenside Life".

I40 e/f History of English Romanticism.

Daily motorway to mountain roads and less inland views. The poem was rigid and involuntary, but within its bowels were the seeds of nobler births. Without him, 'Lines Written at Tintern Abbey' would never have been possible."

One cannot read The Pleasures of the Imagination without realizing that the author was obsessed with poetic feeling, and a feeling of the kind we commonly call romantic. At least its teaching, if not its practice, was in keeping with the new impulse that was sweeping over English poetry. Thus he celebrates the celestial genius and inspiration of nature and decries "critical verse" and the effort to climb Parnassus "through obsessive obedience". He summons the quirky school's new muse:

"Indulgent fantasy ^ of the fertile shores of Avon, whence your rosy fingers pluck fresh flowers and dew to scatter over the lawn where Shakespeare lies."

But Akenside is very abstract. Instead of photos, it presents dissertations to the reader. A poem that deals with imagination rather than method will inevitably remain not poetry but a lecture on poetry: a theory of beauty, not an example of it, Akenside might have chosen Milton's lines as his motto:

“How charming is divine philosophy!

Or maybe you remembered what Milton said about poetry's duty to be simple, sensual and passionate. Akenside's is none of those things; It's inside

7th landscape test. 141

on the contrary, dark, metaphysical and consequently cold. Following Addison, he calls the greatness and novelty of /. That is, the sublime and the wonderful, like beauty, are the main sources of imaginative pleasure, and the whole poem is an appeal to what we are now used to calling the ideal. There is a passage in the first book which is beautiful in spirit and, though to a lesser degree, in expression:

"Whoever casts his diligent eye over the wide horizon of the Alpine heights to watch the Nile or the Ganges rolling its glittering waves

Across mountains, across plains, across dark realms of shadow. And continents of sand, will your gaze linger on the corners of a sparse stream that murmurs at your feet? The highborn soul despises resting its sky-reaching wing under its native prey. Tired of the earth and this daytime scene, she jumps high above the airfields; chase the flying storm; Ride the lightning that flies across the sky; Or, subdued by hurricanes and squalls from the north, sweep the vast expanses of day."

The clue to this passage came from a paragraph in Addison's second article (Spectator, 412), and the emotion is the same as that expressed by Goethe in the well-known lines from Faust:

"But it is innate in all

That your feeling pushes you up and onward," etc.

But how far superior is the German poet to the English one in sharpness of detail, ingenuity, and kinetic energy!

Akenside is among the first spenserians on account of his "Virtuous" (1737) and several odes.

142 iThe History of English Romanticism.

composed in a ten-line variation of Spenser's stanza. A collection of his "Odes" appeared in 1745 - a year before those of Collins and Joseph Warton - and a second in 1760. They are of little value, but here and there they show traces of Milton's mean poetry and elegiac humour. along with the lyric verses of the time, particularly notable in a passage about the nightingale in Ode XV. Book I, "To the Evening Star". The Pleasures of Imagination produced numerous descendants of similarly titled plays, including Joseph Warton's Pleasures of Melancholy, Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, and Rogers' The Pleasures of Memory.

In the same year as Thomson's "Winter" (1726), two descriptive short plays, "Grongar Hill" and "The Country Walk", written by John Dyer, a young Welshman, were published in an eight-syllable couplet and poetic mixtures. . of "L'Allegro" and "II Pensaroso" by Milton. ("Grongar Hill" was a kind of irregular ode with alternating rhymes in the first edition; but it was much improved and rewritten in couplets in later editions.)

Dyer was a landscape painter trained at Westminster School, studied under Richardson in London and spent time roaming the Welsh mountains practicing his craft. Grongar Hill is really a pictorial poem, a sketch of the landscape seen from the top of his favorite South Wales peak. It's a light, sloppy, even slovenly piece of work, but with a lightness and airiness that contrasts pleasantly with the heaviness of Thomson and Akenside. When Dyer wrote Blankverse he fell on the Thorn

The landscape “Poet. 143

Sonian diction, "umbent sheep" and "purple heartwood forests". ,But inGrongar Hill" - although hecalls the sun Phoebus - the shortest measure seems to bring shortest words, and has lines of eloquent simplicity -

"The warm wooded low valleys, The windy wild high peaks:"

or the final passage to which Wordsworth alludes in his sonnet about Dyer, "As much as the thrush sings on Grongar Hill":

"Grass and flowers drift silently over meadows and mountain tops... And often you hear the thrush in the murmur of the brook when all is still. In the woods of Grongar Hill."

Wordsworth was drawn to Dyer's love of 'mountain grass' and the 'broad, breezy hills' and 'the bare, wide, breezy wilderness of Snowdon'. The "power of the hills" was within him. Like Wordsworth, he moralized his song. In "Grongar Hill", the crumbling tower hints at the transience of human life: the rivers flowing into the sea recall the race of man from birth to death; and Campbell's couplet,

"This distance charms the eye and dresses the mountain in its blue color"*

It is believed that he owes something to Dyer.

"Although these peaks are smooth and beautiful, dressed in the colors of the air that appear brown and harsh to those traveling close to the desert, we are still walking the same bumpy road, the present is still a cloudy day."

• "The Joys of Hope".

144 4^ History of English Romanticism.

Dyer went to Rome to continue his art studies, and on his return he published his Ruins of Rome in white verse in 1740. He was not very successful as a painter and eventually received commissions, married and established himself as a country parson. In 1757 he published his most ambitious work, The Fleece, a poem in blank verse and four books describing wool growing in England. "The theme of 'The Fleece,' sir," Johnson explained, "cannot be made poetic. How can a man write poetically about Serges and drug addicts?" Indeed, didactic poetry often leads to ridiculous descents. Commandments like "beware of rot," "Lock up, lock up, lover" and

"—The usefulness of salt teaches its slow lovers";

With recipes for mange and advice on different types of wool combs, they're deadly. Such a poem should become poetic, involving episodes and digressions not inherent in the subject itself, but artificially attributed to it. Such is the affectionate reference to the poet's home town of Carmarthenshire quoted in Wordsworth's sonnet.

"...this gentle stretch of Cambria, deep bay, land of Dimetia, surrounded by green hills, lulled by the sound of the ocean."

Lowell admired the line about the Siberian exiles, he knew

"In the dark plane of adversity".

Miltonian reminiscences are common in Dyer. Sabrina comes from "Comus"; "bosky blur" and "softer shepherd" of the same; "The Light Fantastic Finger" from "L'Allegro"; "Sola Level" and

The Feet of the Landscape. 145

"neither shall the polluted worm infect the crying flocks," from "Lycidas"; "Public public be your joy, even if few", from "Paraíso Perdido".

"Mr. Dyer," Gray wrote to Horace Walpole in 1751, "has more poetry in his imagination than almost any of us, but he is rude and implacable." Akenside, who helped Dyer polish the manuscript of The Fleece, said that he would "regulate his opinion of the prevailing taste according to the fate of Dyer's 'Fleece'; the romantic element in Dyer's imagination is most evident in his love of mountains and ancient ruins. Johnson cites a line in "The Ruins of Rome" appreciatively:

"In the dark of night the hermit, often in the midst of his prayers, hears with horror the voice of time moving away from the towers." *

These were classic ruins. Perhaps the doctor's sympathy would not have spread so quickly to the image of the crumbling Gothic tower in "Grongar Hill" or the "lone gray and moss-covered Stonehenge" in "The Fleece."

• Ver por Wordsworth

"An accidental scream breaking the still air, or the unimaginable thread of time."

- Walkability: Satinets Ecclesiásticos, 34

SLAINOORLIAL ESCOLA,

•■*► •<■* MtWumk W

KAPITEL V. tibe /Dbiltonlc (3ruup.

The fact that Spenser's importance in the eighteenth-century Romantic revival did not outweigh Milton's influence confirms our observation that Augustan literature was

• • classic" in its own way. It's another example

from that strangely inverted state in which rhyme was the hallmark of the classics and blank verse of the romantics. For Milton is the true classical English poet; and yet, from the perspective of the eighteenth century, he looked like a romantic. In any case, it was his romantic side that conquered and appropriated him in the new school of poets.

This side was more present in Milton than his collected works indicate. He is known to have once drafted an Arthuriad, a draft which, if carried out, might have anticipated Tennyson and so deprived us of The Idylls of the King. "I was carried away," he writes, "among those noble fables and romances which in solemn song recount the deeds of chivalry."* And in the Epitaphium Damonis he thus communicates his intention to the reader:

I myself, Rutupina de los Dardanias, by the waters of the waters, will say.

• "An apology for Srectymnuus."

146

7el Grupo Dailtonic. i47

Brennus and Arviragus, the chiefs, first of Belinus and lastly of Armorican, settlers under the right of the Britons; Arthur becomes pregnant through a deadly betrayal; Lying faces took over Gorloi's arms, Merlin's trick."*

The 'Britain Affair' never quite lost the fascination it held over his youthful imagination, as evidenced by passages in 'Paradise Lost'1 and even 'Paradise Regained'. But with his increasing rigor, both religious and literary, Milton eventually gravitated towards Hebrew subjects and Hellenic art forms. He wrote Homeric epics and Aeschylian tragedies instead of masks and sonnets, rhyming pieces in the Italian style, such as "L'Allegro" and "II Pensaroso", and strophic poems, such as the "Ode of the Nativity", played with Elizabethan concepts. She relied more and more on pure construction and the power of thought and less on decorative details. His diction became bare and severe, and he used rhymes, but sparingly. even in coral

• Lines 162-168. See also "Mansus", 80-84.

f" that resonates

In the fable or romance of Uther's son,

Received with British and Armorican knights;

And all who were ever baptized or unbelievers,

Directly in Aspramont or Montalban,

Damascus, Morocco, Trebizond,

Or the one that Biserta sent from the African coast

When Karl fell with all his nobility

Por Fontarabbia".

—Buch I. 579-587,

X “Fairy girls were found throughout the forest

by knights of Logres or Lyon,

Lancelot, O Pelleas, O Pellenor."

– Perhaps II.359-361.

148 t/^ History of English Romanticism.

Parts of "Samson Agonistes". In short, like Goethe, he became a classic with age. "Paradise Lost" is said to have done much to keep the English tradition of blank verse alive in an age noted for its intolerant devotion to rhyme, and particularly the heroic couplet. Still, it was Milton's early poetry, which uses rhyme - though used so differently from Pope's - that told most in the history of the Romantic movement. Professor Masson contradicts the common claim that Paradise Lost was first popularized by the Addison Saturday newspapers. While this series was running, Tonson (1711-13) published an edition of Milton's poetical works which was "the ninth of 'Paradise Lost', the eighth of 'Paradise Regained', the seventh of 'Samson Agonistes' and the sixth of of the Little Poems. The previous editions of the Little Poems were 1645, 1673, 1695, 1705, and 1707. Six editions in 68 years is certainly not a great variety. After 1713, Milton's expenses rapidly multiplied; until 1763

• • Paradise Lost" was in its forty-sixth year and the youngest

Poems at thirty.*

Addison occasionally selected a passage from Milton's Juvenile Poems in The Spectator; but from all available evidence it does not seem doubtful that they have been comparatively neglected, and that, although they have been republished from time to time in complete editions of Milton's poems, they have been regarded only as pendants from "Paradise Lost" and have floated in their wake. side . To call. "Whatever the causes," says Dryden, "Milton advocates the abolition of frost...

• Masson's "A Life of Milton", vol. SEEN. p. 789.

7el Grupo zMiltonic. 149

The particular reason is clearly that rhyming was not his talent: he had neither skill nor grace to do it: which is manifest in his “Juvenilia” or verses written in his youth; where his rhyme is always restrained and forced, and hardly comes from him.” Joseph Warton wrote in 1756* after quoting extensively from the “Ode to the Nativity”, which he says is “not sufficiently read or admired”, he continues as follows: “I have been chiefly concerned with this ode, which is far less famous than that 'L'Allegro' and 'II Pensaroso', which are now well known; but which, by a strange fate, was left in a sort of obscurity for the private enjoyment of some curious readers, until Mr. Handel put on admirable music. And indeed this volume of Milton's several poems

• "Essay on the Pope", Vol. I. pp. 36-38 (5th edition). at Dedi

Warton tells Young: "[The Pope's] letters on the character of men and women, and his lively satires, my good friend, are more frequently examined and quoted than Milton's L'Allegro and II Pensaroso."

■)• The Reverend Francis Peck, in his 1740 New Memoirs of the Life and Poetic Works of Mr. John Milton, says that these two poems are rightly admired by foreigners and Englishmen alike, and have therefore been translated into English in all modern languages. This volume includes "An Examination of Milton's Style"; "Explanatory Notes and Criticisms on Various Passages from Milton and Shakespeare"; "The Resurrection", a blank-verse imitation of Milton by "a friend of the London publishing house", with analysis of "Lycidas", "Comus", "L'Allegro" and "II Penseroso", in addition to "Natividade". Ode." Peck defends Milton's rhyming poems against Dryden's criticisms. “He was a perfect master of rhyme and also managed to express something that no one else had thought of.” He compares the verse paragraphs of “Lycidas” to musical bars and explains his system of “scattered rhymes” in an admirable and unique way.

150 <iThe History of English Manticism.

until recently it has not received the attention it deserves. Am I to offend any sane admirer of pop by pointing out that these youthful descriptive poems by Milton, as well as his Latin elegies, are far more suspenseful than the previous author can boast?

The first critical edition of Little Poems was published in 1785 by Thomas Warton, whose notes have been of great use to all subsequent publishers. As late as 1779, Dr. Johnson of the same poems with a lack of appreciation that today seems absolutely appalling. "Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes strain their own judgment into a false admiration of his little plays, and persuade themselves into thinking that the only thing unique is admirable." Of Lykidas he says: “There is no nature in this poem because there is no truth; there is no art, because there is nothing new no one could imagine that he was reading "Lykidas" with pleasure if he had not met its author." He recognizes that "L'Allegro" and "II Pensaroso" are "noble undertakings of the imagination"; and that "Comus" "as a set of verses" "may be worthy of all the admiration with which the devotees have received it". "Sabrina fair" - "hard in diction and unmusical in numbers!" Of the sonnets he says: 'They deserve no particular criticism; for it can only be said that the best is not bad.”* Boswell reports, Hannah

• "Milton's Life".

The Daylitonic Group. 151

more after I putI wonder what the poet"Whoever wrote 'Paradise Lost' should have written such bad sonnets," Johnson replied. "Milton, ma'am, was a genius who could carve a colossus from a rock, but he couldn't carve heads from cherry pits."

The influence of Milton's small poetry is first noticed in the fifth decade of the century and in the work of a new group of lyric poets: Collins, Gray, Mason and the brothers Joseph and Thomas Warton. For all of them, Milton was a teacher. But just as Thomson and Shenstone got original effects from Spenser's verses, while West, Cambridge and Lloyd were only echoes; then Collins and Gray, immortal names, teased new tunes from Milton's organ pipes as he tweaked the melody for the others. The Wartons, though always imitative in their verse, have an independent and not insignificant position in literary criticism and scholarship, and I will return to them on this point later. Mason, whose "English Garden" was reviewed in Chapter IV, was a much lesser poet and a rather absurd person. He imitated first Milton and then Gray so closely that his work is often read as a parody. In general, the Miltonian Revival manifested itself more diffusely and indirectly than the Spenserian; but there was no lack of formal imitations either, and it will be convenient to list some of them here in order of date.

1740 Joseph Warton, then Vice-Chancellor of Oxford,), a graduate, wrote his poem in blank verse "The Enthusiast or Nature Lover". It was the work of an eighteen-year-old young man who had that instinct for the future, for the entire literary current, which is not uncommon in young people.

152 <^ History of English Romanticism.

Artists, of whom Chatterton's early verses are a notable example. Composed just ten years after the completion of Seasons and five years before Shenstone began carving his miniature wild landscapes at Leasowes, it is decidedly modern and romantic in its preference for wild landscapes over cultivated landscapes and fantasy fiction over soil fiction.

"What are Addison's witty, coldly correct ballads to Shakespeare's wild trills?"

asks the delighted young man in Milton's own expression. And again

“Can Kent design like nature? . . .

Though he boldly flouts form and method according to unencumbered rules, the scornful round and angular planes, irregularly large? . . .

Versailles can boast of a thousand fountains capable of sending the tormented waters to distant skies; Yet let me choose a steep, hairy, pine-crowned abyss, from which a sparkling torrent roars like Anio; or a black heather where the dark juniper roams, or a bruised yew tree.

The enthusiast visits "dark woods" and loves to listen to "hollow winds and constantly crashing waves" and "meowing sounds of the sea". Milton appears everywhere, not just in single epithets like "Lydian Airs", "The Level Sole", "Low Thought Concerns", "The Light Fantastic Dance", but in all soul, imagery and everything in between.

The zmiltonic group. 153

Diction of the Poem A few lines illustrate this better than any description.

"You green-robed dryads, often in the dark of night

Seen by the astonished shepherds; to brown forests, little visited and wild meadows without paths. Take me out of gardens adorned with the vanity of art.

Pomp. . . But never let me fail in the cloudless night when Cynthia silently descends the hollow blue slides in her silver carriage. . . To find some mead and there to invoke the sister of Old Midnight, the wise woman of contemplation (queen of the rough brow and the fixed and severe gaze). To lift my soul above this small country. This world shackled by madness: to clear my ears so I can hear the music of rolling planets and melodic spinning spheres.

Mason's Miltonian imitations "Musseus", "II Bellicoso" and "II Pacifico" were written in 1744, according to its author, but his statements are not always reliable. It was published in 1747; the second "printed secretly in a diary and then entered in Pearch's Miscellany", finally revised and published by the author in 1797; the third first printed in 1748 in Cambridge Verses on the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. These pieces follow the copy in every detail," II Bellicoso, for example, begins the incantation.

"Therefore, sleepy and dull peace,

Born in the dark cell of an old trinket! "

The genealogies of peace and war are recited and contrasting images of the joys of peace and war are presented in an equally precise corresponding order.

154 e^ History of English %omanticism.

enter Milton's possibleThe Allegro" and "IITaken in consideration."

“Then, to calm myself down, I will wander amidst the silent darkness of the monastery; or, where the shadows of the fringed oaks fade, I flirt with my dear muse, and often remember a heavenly melody sung in the reign of Augustus... Or, very glad, I become the Greek page, if sweet Theocritus commits , or happy Anakreon, happy spectrum, Carol, your easy love, turn on the light... And joys like these, when peace inspires. Peace, with you I sing the lyre". *

"Musseus" was a monody on the death of the Pope, using the pastoral machinery and assorted irregular measure of "Lycidas". Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, under the names of Tityrus, Colin Clout, and Thyrsis, are depicted in mourning, like Camus and St. Peter in the original. Tityrus is said to mourn the dead shepherd in very false Middle English. Colin Clout delivers two stanzas in the form used in the first eclogue of "The Shepherd's Calendar" and three stanzas in the form used in "The Fairy Queen", Thyrsis speaks in blank verse and the shadow of Musaeus gives him Answer (Papa) in heroic couplets. Verbal parodies of "Lycidas" abound: "Laureate hearse", "renounce all vain excuses", "without borrowing a poetic misfortune", etc.; and the last passage is rephrased as follows:

• "I1 Pacific: Works of William Mason", London, 1811, vol.

i p 166

The OAiltonic Group, 155

Thus the amorous gallant rehearsed his porridge Dorian, the highest honors of manhood rose on his cheek: Trembling he strove to woo the melodic maiden, With childish arts and flirtations too feeble, Unseen, unheard of under a hawthorn shade. But now a darkness darkens the sky. He started to itch; And now the larks came down and stopped singing: they stopped, and with them the shepherd stopped.

In 1746 appeared a small volume of odes, fourteen in number, by Joseph Warton and another by William Collins.* Gray noted the event in a letter to Thomas Wharton thus: “Have you seen the works of two young authors, one? Mr. Warton and Mr. Collins, both ode writers? Interestingly, each is half of a great man and one is the opposite of the other. The first has little inventiveness, a very poetic choice of expression and good hearing. The second, a beautiful fantasy, modeled on antiquity, poor hearing, great variety of words and images without choice. Both deserve to last a few years, but they won't." Gray's critical acumen does not wholly fail this judgment, but half of his prophecy has failed, and his mention of Collins is extremely ungrateful. The names Collins and Gray are now closely related. literary history, but in life the two men were in no way connected. Collins and the Wartons, on the other hand, were personal friends. Joseph Warton and Collins had been schoolmates at Winchester and originally it was thought that their odes, published in the same month (December) they would be published together in one volume Warton's collection was immediate.

• "Odes on Various Descriptive and Allegorical Themes".

156 <t/l History of English To^omantics.

fully successful; but Collins's was a failure and the author burned the unsold copies in his disappointment.

Warton's odes most similar to Milton are "To Fancy",For Solitude” and “Forthe nightingale", all in eight-syllable couplets. A single passage will serve as an example of its quality:

"I, Goddess, sometimes lead by the right hand through the yellow mead, where joy and peace clad in white meet, and Venus keeps her festive court: where joy and youth meet nightly, and travel light , with swift feet, nodding lily, crowned heads where rosy Hebe's laughter leads, &c.*

Collins' Ode to Simplicity is in the stanza of the Ode to the Nativity, and his beautiful Ode to the Night is in the rhyming sapphic used by Milton in his translation of the Ode to Pyrrha, Horaces. There are Miltonian throwbacks like "Folding Star", "religious flashes", "playing with the tangles of hair", and in the last couplet of "Ode to Fear",

"Your crown of cypresses determines my medicine, and I, oh fear, will stay with you."

But on the whole, Collins is far less submissive in his imitation than Warton.

Joseph Warton's younger brother Thomas wrote in 1745 and in 1747 published The Pleasures of Melancholy, a blank verse poem of three hundred and fifteen lines composed in nearly equal parts by Milton.

• "Para a fantasy."

The [Miltonic Group. 157

and Akenside, with frequent touches on Thomson, Spenser, and Pope's "Letter of Eloisa to Abelard." Warton was a boy of seventeen when his poem was written: it was published anonymously, and some have attributed it to Akenside, whose Pleasures of the Imagination (1744) naturally suggested the title. A single passage suffices to show how well the young poet knew his Milton:

“Oh, lead me, exalted Queen, into solemn darkness, in solidarity with my soul; to the sad shadows, to the ruined seats, to the twilight cells and arbors, where pensive melancholy loves to brood, her dearest night spirits... of eve hour, if through some western window the waning moon sheds its long plane of vibrating light: while all around is the dark and sacred stillness, save for the lonely sound of the little owl building its bower amid musty, dark, and musty caverns. moist; * or the quiet breeze whispering in the leaves of the resplendent ivy that clothes a desolate tower in a green mantle... Then, when the dark shadows of the night close, Where across space a blinding darkness and glowing The dying embers spread far away

From the crazed screams of Mirth, festively echoing through the lighted ceiling, let me sit, blessed with the sleepy song of the lowly cricket. . .

• Cf. Gray's "Elegy", first printed in 1751:

"Save it from this ivy-covered tower,

The desperate owl complains to the moon about those who approach her secret bower and disturb her former lonely kingdom."

158 iA History of English To^omantics.

This sobering hour of silence will expose

The smile of false madness that is like blinding spells

The cunning Comus deceives the unweeping eye

Use illusion of 6/ear and convince to drink

This enchanted mug that is the fairest mark of sanity

Unmold and stamp the monster onto the man.

I italicize the most direct borrowings, but both Wartons were so saturated with Milton's language, verse, and imagery that it oozed out of every pore. Thomas Warton's poems, published separately from time to time, were first published together in 1777. They are all imitative, and most of them imitate Milton. His two best odes, 'El primero de Abril' and 'Al acerceran el verano', are written in eight familiar syllables.

"Hurry, nymph! and hand in hand, With you I lead a plump company; Brings joy with fantastic feet, With sport, the yellow-haired boy," etc.*

While one cannot read a page of Gray and Collins without being reminded of Milton, it is usually done in more subtle ways than here. Gray, for example, was careful in his notes to record his oral engagements with Milton, as well as with Shakespeare, Cowley, Dryden, Pindar, Virgil, Dante, and others; but what he could not name, because he was probably unconscious, was the impulse which Milton often gave to all his imagination. It's not often that Gray steps on Milton's foot so close.

• "Close to summer." The "cotes de zarzos", "candy-

Heather Hedges”, “Wildwood Notes”, “Mead-cured Hay Fowl” e “Valleys Carrying Gentle Whispers” fundem-se corporalmente nesta ode a “L' Allegro”.

O'Ailtonic Group. 159

Steps as in his last poem, the Ode written to music given at Cambridge in 1769 for the inauguration of the Duke of Grafton as chancellor; in which Milton has to sing a verse in the meter of the "Ode of the Nativity":

Its arched brown groves

This contemplation loves Where slender Camus dwells with delight;

many times at dawn

I trod her flat lawn, oft-wooed, Cynthia's splendor shining like silver, In dark cloisters far from the haunted places of madness, with freedom at my side and soft-eyed melancholy.

Not only the aforementioned poets, but also many obscure poets are witnesses of this Miltonian revival. It is usually the humble poetry of an era that most clearly preserves the "scarred and efficient impression" of a literary fad. If we examine the Dodsley collection* we find a mixture of satires in the Pope style, humorous fables in the Prior style, empty verse didactic pieces in the Thomson and Akenside styles, elegiac quatrains in the Shenstone and Gray styles. , Pindaric odes ad nauseam, with imitations of Spenser and Milton, f

• In 1748 three volumes appeared; a second edition, with vol.

IV. Added 1749, Vols. V. and VI. in 1758. There were new editions in 1765, 1770, 1775, and 1782. Parch's continuations were published in 1768 (Volumes VII and VIII) and 1770 (Volumes IX and X); the independent collection of Méndez in 1767; and Bell's "Fugitive Poetry", in 18 volumes, 1790-1797.

The reader who wishes to continue this investigation will find the following list of Milton imitations useful: Dodsley's "Miscellany", I. 164, Preexistence: "A Poem in Imitation of Milton", by Dr. Evans. This is blank verse, and Gray calls it "nonsense" in a letter to Walpole. II. 109, “The Establishment of

16th it/J History of English Romanticism.

The growing popularity of Milton's Little Poetry is responsible for the sonnet's revival. Gray's solitary sonnet on the death of his friend Richard West was composed in 1742, but was not printed until 1775, after the author's death. This was the sonnet chosen by Wordsworth in the appendix to the preface of the second edition of Lyrical Ballads to illustrate his critique of eighteenth-century false poetry. The style is elegant, if a little artificial. official: the order of rhymes does not conform to the Shakespearean or Miltonic models. Mason wrote fourteen sonnets at various times between 1748 and 1797; the earlier date is associated with 'Sonnet I Sent to a Young Girl' in his Collected Works. with Dodsley's miscellany". They are strictly Italian or Miltonian and rich in Miltonian allusions.

the Order of the Garter" by Gilbert West. This is a dramatic poem with a chorus of British bards, quoted and praised several times in Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope. West's "Monody on the Death of the Queen Caroline" "is an imitation of Lycidas". III. 214, "Lament for Melpomene and Calliope", by J.G. Cooper; also a poem "Lycidas". IV. 50, "Penshurst", by Mr. F. Coventry: a poem in very close imitation of "L'Allegro" and "II Pensaroso." IV. 181, "Ode to Fancy", by Rev. Mr. Merrick: Octosyllables IV.229, "Solitude, an Ode", by Dr 'Allegro", next.

"These joys, holidays, give,

And I will choose to live with you."

IX. (Parch) 199, "Ode to Health," by J.H.B., Esq.: "The Allegro."

X.5, "The Valetudinarian", by Dr. Marriott: 'L'Allegro', see}' close. X. 97, "To the Moon", by Robert Lloyd: "Thoughtful II", close. Parody is one of the surest testimonies to the supremacy of a literary fashion, and in vol. X p 269 by Parch, a humorous "Ode to Horror", burlesque "The Enthusiast" and "The Pleasure".

The zmiltonic group. i6i

and essays. All but four of Thomas Edwards' fifty sonnets, 1750-65, follow Milton's model. Thirteen of these were printed in Dodsley's second volume. They are of little value, nor are Benjamin Stillingfleet's, some of which seem to have been written before 1750. Of far greater interest are Thomas Warton's sonnets, nine in number and a million copies each. Warton's complete poems were not published until 1777 and his sonnets are undated, but some of them seem to have been written as early as 1750. They are elegantly expressed and reflect their author's antiquarian taste. They were praised by Hazlitt, Coleridge and Lamb; and one of them, "To the River Lodon", would have suggested Coleridge's "To the River Otter".

"Dear Heimatbach, wild Westbach..."

uras of melancholy", "in the allegorical, descriptive, alliterative, epithetic, hyperbolic and diabolical style of our modern ode and monodigo writers", from which I extract a passage:

"Oh, hurry up, sweet millionaire girl,

From the abducted shadow of the local yew tree. . . O thou that wandering Warton saw. Moved by more than childlike wonder, as by the bright splendor of the pale moon, he reflected on his melancholy theme. Oh loving goddess of curfew, hurry up! Oh, take me to a Scythian desert! Where, in Gothic solitude. Average prospects are the rudest. Beneath the dark abyss of rough rock lies his sister. Enthusiasm."

"Bell's Fleeting Poetry", Vol. XI. (1791), has a section devoted to "Poems in the Miltonian Manner" by Evans, Mason, T. Warton, and Mr. P. (L'Amoroso).

162 a^ History of the English language since ancient times.

and, perhaps further afield, Wordsworth's On the River Duddon series.

Milton's poem which made the deepest impression on the new school of poets was II Thoughtful. This little masterpiece, which encapsulated in "Attic Choice" imagery the joys that Burton and Fletcher and many others found in the indulgence of casual humor, fell into a trend stream. Pope had died in 1744, Swift in 1745, the last great survivors of the Queen Anne joke; and the backlash against gaiety had already begun, in the deliberate and exaggerated solemnity which gripped every verse department and even penetrated the theatre; where Melpomene gradually pushed Thalia off the board until the sappy comedy - a larmoyantic C07nedie - was kicked out by the taunts of Garrick, Goldsmith and Sheridan. That elegiac mood, that love of isolation and seclusion, which was evident in Shenstone, has now become the dominant note in English poetry. The imaginative literature of the 1740s-60s was largely the literature of depressed minds. The generation was convinced with Fletcher

"Nothing is so sweet and tender as beautiful melancholy."

But the muse of his inspiration was not the tragic titan of Dürer's painting:

"The melancholy that transcends ingenuity". *

rather the "sweet Miltonian girl," Thoughtful Meditation. There were different shades of melancholy from which

• See James Thomson's City of Dreadful Night, xxi. He too

Frontispiece to "Nature of Poetry" (1892) by Mr. E.C. Stedman and pp. 140-41 of the same.

miltonian group, 163

Wartons' delicate gray to Young's mourning saberNight Thoughts" (1742-44) by Blair"Tumba" (1743). Gosse fala de Young como "o elo entre este grupo de poetas e seus predecessores do período augustino". De fato, seu poema exibe muito da sagacidade, brilho retórico e procura de um ponto familiar nos versos da rainha Anne, em uma estranha combinação com uma "rica nota de desespero romântico". * O Sr. Perry também descreve a linguagem de Young. como "adornado com muito do mineral bruto do romantismo... Havia poucas propriedades do poeta neste período: a tumba, o ocasional corvo ou coruja gritando, e a lua pálida com esqueletos e fantasmas sorridentes... A Ding The Um dos quais os poetas nunca se cansaram foi o túmulo... Era a visão dramática - digamos melodramática? - do túmulo, como se despertasse uma agradável tristeza que preparava os leitores para a explosão romântica f ^\

This elegiac sentiment, of course, found its fullest expression in Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Cemetery" (1751). Collins also has "more funereal airs than Christmas carols", with two of his warmest lyrics being "Dirge in Cymbeline" and "Ode on the Death of Mr. Thomson". And the Wartons continually praised such subjects, both by precept and example. J Blair and Young,

• "Literature of the 18th Century", p. 2og, 212.

f "English Literature in the 18th Century", pp. 375, 379.

J Joseph mentions as one of Spenser's traits "a certain agreeable melancholy in his feelings, the constant company of an elegant taste, giving delicacy and grace to his whole composition", "Essay on Pope", vol. II. P. 29. In his review of the Pope's "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard," he says: "The effect and influence of melancholy, beautifully personified, on every object that

164 <^ History of English T^omantics.

but they can hardly be counted among the romantics. They were, for the most part, heavy didactic-moral poets, although they played the chord that vibrates with musical shudder in the gothic imaginary at the thought of death. There is something in the spirit of Gothic church architecture, with Gray's "ivy-covered spire", its "long nave and open vault", in the funerary paraphernalia they so carefully stack: the cypress and yew, the owl and at midnight. bell, the dust from the ossuary, the nettles that line the tombstones, the dim tomb lamp, and the ghosts that glide by.

"The wind has risen. Hear! how it howls! It seems to me I never heard a noise so terrible and so loud: the desolate corridors. Clad in black and draped in shields with torn banners and coats of arms, they return laden with heavy air from the vaults low places, the abodes of the dead."*

Blair's death verses have a certain piercing power in their somber monotony, not unlike Quarles' Divine Emblems. Like the "Emblems", "The Tomb" was saved from oblivion by the artist's art, the well-known series of prints by Schiavonetti based on drawings by Wm. Blake.

But the thoughtful and erudite "majority imagination

It happens and in all parts of the monastery it cannot be acclaimed enough and not read much as it is based on nature and experience. This mental temper overshadows all things.

"'But about twilight groves and dark caves' etc."

—/fez., vol. I p. 314.

• "The Grave" by Robert Blair.

The zmiltonic group. 165

purely romantic poets haunted the twilight instead of the black midnight and heard the nightingale more than the screech of the owl. They were quietists and their images were weak. They loved the twilight with its beetle and its bat, solitude, shade, the "dark valley", the hermitage covered with moss, the ruined monastery collapsing into the moonlit clearing, the caves, the caves, the banks of creeks that with ivy-covered corners, firelit rooms, exit bell, and the sigh of the Seolian harp.* All this is exquisitely expressed in Collins' "Ode to the Night." Joseph Warton also wrote aZimmer aAfternoon", as well as ato the nightingale".Both Wartons wrote odes "To Solitude". Dodsley's "Miscellaneous" are full of odes to Night, Solitude,

• The Seolian harp was a favorite property of Romantic poets for a long time.

one hundred years. See Mason's "Ode to the Harp of a Bowl" (Works, Vol. I, p. 51). First invented by the Jesuit Kircher around 1650 and described in his Musurgia Universalis, Mason says it was forgotten for over a century and "accidentally rediscovered" in England by Mr. Oswald. It is mentioned as a novelty in "El Castillo de la Indolencia" (i. xl):

"A certain song that has never been known before

Here the pensive and melancholy mind lulled "—

a passage Collins alludes to in his verses about Thomson's death:

"Upon this deep bed of whispering reeds now lies your ethereal harp."

See "The Ballad of the Last Minstrel" I. 341-42 (1805). "Like that wild harp whose magical sound is awakened only by the winds."

Y Arthur Cleveland Coxe {Christian Ballads, 1840)

"It was the magic of a strong wind harp played by the breeze in a dream song."

and the poetry of the /aj-jm annuals.

i66 <^ History of English Romanticism.

silence, retreat, contentment, fantasy, melancholy, innocence, simplicity, dream; of the Pleasures of Contemplation (Miss Whately, Vol. IX. p. 120) Triumphs of Melancholy (James Beattie, Vol. X. p. 77), and the like. Collins introduced a personified figure of melancholy in his ode "The Passions".

"With eyes uplifted, like a soul, pale melancholy sat retracted; and from her seat wild and remote, in notes sweetened by distance. She poured down the soft horn her pensive soul; joined the sound; Across glades and darkness the mingled measure crept, Or across an enchanted stream, with loving delay, Around a holy stillness that spreads, love of peace and solitary meditation, In hollow murmurs they died away.

Collins himself was seized by a melancholy that eventually turned to madness. A shy and demanding scholar, Gray suffered from hereditary gout and long-standing depression. He spent his university life in Cambridge seclusion, residing part-time at Pembroke and part-time at Peterhouse College. He held the chair of modern history at the university, but he never taught. He declined the award winner after Cibber's death. He had great learning and the best right taste; but the sources of creative impulse dried up in him more and more under the dry air of academic study and the growing control of his constitutional disease. "Melancholy marked him as his own." There is a significant passage in one of his early letters to Horace Walpole

7el Grupo zMiltonic. 167

(1737): "At a distance of half a mile across a green road I have a forest (the vernacular calls it common) entirely mine, at least as good as such, because I see nothing human in it but myself... It is a small chaos of mountains and precipices... Both the valley and the hill are covered with venerable beeches and other highly revered plants which, like most ancient peoples, are always dreaming their ancient tales in the wind... In the foot of one of these squat I, I, (il penseroso) and there they grow to the stem for a whole acre.” * To Richard West he wrote in the same year: "Fatigue is my true and faithful companion."; and 1742: "Mine is chiefly a white melancholy, or rather leucocole ... but there is another kind, black even, that I felt from time to time".

As Gray watches the Eton school children playing sports, he ruefully remembers:

"- how are you waiting for the ministers of human fate and the terrible train of black misfortune, "f

"Wisdom dressed in sabers" and "Melancholy, still a girl" follow in the footsteps of misfortune; J and to the sober eye of contemplation, the race of man resembles the race of insects:

"Created by the hand of hard misfortune, Or chilled with age, their aerial dance, They walk in the dust to rest." §

• Compare to "elegy":

'There at the foot of that leaning beech grove,' &c. f 'In a distant perspective of Eton College'. X "Anthem to Adversity". § "Ode to Spring",

1 68 «A history of English tomancy.

Is it too trivial to observe that the poets of this group were mostly single and occasionally lonely? Thomson, Akenside, Shenstone, Collins, Gray and Thomas Warton were never married. Dyer, Mason and Joseph Warton were favorite ministers and were married. The Wartons were, no doubt, men of cheerful and even cordial manners. The melancholy that gripped these good boys was evidently a mere literary fad. You were sadonly for debauchery", like the young lords inFrance.And so you have your own garden."Gray wrote to his young friend Nicholls in 1769: "And you plant and transplant and be dirty and merry, have you no shame? Well, I have none of that, you freak; nor will I ever be dirty or merry." As long as he lives." Gray never was; but the Wartons were easily amused, and Thomas, it seems, was not infrequently dirty, or at least slovenly in his clothes, and slovenly and illiterate in his manners, and quite inclined to vulgar humor. and ordinary company.

From a Romantic point of view, the work of these Milton poets marked an advance over that of the descriptive and elegiac poets Thomson, Akenside, Dyer and Shenstone. Collins is one of the finest English poets. There is flute music in his best odes, such as To Evening and How sleep the brave, written in 1746, which are sweeter, more natural and spontaneous than Gray's. "The muse gave birth to Collins," says Swinburne; "She's done nothing but take care of Grey." Collins was a lone songbird among many more or less excellent flutists and pianists.

The [Miltonic Group. 169

Spirit of color in one stroke, more touch of music in one note than all the rest of the generation in all its struggles.”* Collins, like Gray, was a Greek scholar and wrote a history of the rebirth of letters. have a classical quality, not classical in the eighteenth-century sense but truly Hellenic, a combination, as in Keats, of Attic form with a Romantic sensibility, though in Collins more than Keats the warmth seems to come from outside: the statue of a nymph, rendered by the aurora is blushing. “Collins,” says Gosse, “has a sculptor's touch; his verse is clear and direct: he is pure marble, but also cold as marble. However, Lowell thinks that Collinswas the first to returnold taste for poetry and rediscovered the long-lost secret of being "classically elegant without being pedantically cold".

These estimates are given for what they are worth. The coldness felt-or imagined-in some of Collins' poetry stems in part from the abstraction of his subjects and the artificial style he inherited, as did his entire generation. Many of his odes address fear, compassion, mercy, freedom, and similar abstractions. The Pseudo-Pindaric ode is exotic in itself; and as an art form it is responsible for some of the most timid compositions in the history of English verse. Collins's most recent, though by no means his best, ode, The Passions, abounds in those personifications which, it has been said, were a kind of weakness in eighteenth-century poetry.

• "Ward's English Poets", Vol. third pp. 278-8

f "Literature of the Eighteenth Century", p. 233. I try on the “Pope”.

17° c// History of English tomency.

Mythology: "pale despair", "desperate piety", "brown exercise" and "virgin descended from the musical sphere". It was probably the allegorical figures in Milton's "L'Allegro" and "II Pensaroso", "Sport that doubled care ridrids", "trains Fasting that often with gods diets", etc., that gave new impetus to life. . to that old-fashioned machinery which the Romantics should have left to the Augustan schools.

The most interesting of Collins' poetry, from the point of view of this research, is his "Ode to the Popular Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands". It was written in 1749, but naturally, as it remained in manuscript until 1788, it had no influence on the minds of its author's contemporaries. It remained unfinished and some of the printed editions contained interpolated stanzas which were removed. It was signed by Mr. John Home, the author of Douglas, for the purpose of recommending the Scottish tales to him as a suitable subject for poetry. Collins justifies the selection of such "false subjects" with the example of Spenser, Shakspere (in "Macbeth") and Tasso.

"-whose mind no doubt believed the magical wonders he sang of."

He mentions kelp, will-o'-the-wisp, and clairvoyance as examples of popular beliefs that have poetic abilities. Alluding to the ballad of 'Willie Drowned in Yarrow', he no doubt conjures up a line from 'The Seasons' in his head* 'not to forget the race of Kilda', who live on goose eggs, their only prospect is winter

• See Anne, page 114.

The Dailytoyiic Group. 171

head, and between whose cliffs the bee never murmurs. Perhaps the most imaginative stanza is the ninth, which refers to the Hebrides, St Flannan's Chapel and the tombs of Scottish, Irish and Norwegian kings at Icolmkill:

"Unlimited is its reach; with varied abilities

Your muse, like those feathered logs that sprout from your rough rocks, can spread the wings of your apron,

around the damp edge of every frigid island in the Hebrides to this rubbish heap still showing its ruins;

In whose vault lies a pygmy people whose bones the digger vomits with his shovel,

and chooses them with amazement from the holy ground;

Or there, where, in the western rain. The mighty kings of three beautiful kingdoms are defined;

Once enemies perhaps, now they rest together, No slave adores them and no war invades them.

However, often now at the solemn hour of midnight. The cracked mounds unfold their gaping cells.

And the monarchs advance with sovereign power, in parading robes and crowned with bright gold, and in their twilight tombs they hold the council of the air."

Collins' work was completed in 1749; for though he lived ten years still, his spirit was in darkness. He was a lover and student of Shakespeare, and when the Wartons last visited him while he was with his sister in the cloisters of Chichester Cathedral, he told Thomas that he had found the source of theStorm", in a novel called "* Aurelioand Isabella', printed in English, French, Italian and Spanish in 1588. No such novel has been found and seems to have been the product of Collins' confused imagination. for the Wartons, the manuscript,

172 z/1 History of English Manticism.

his "Ode to the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands"; and also a lost poem entitled "*La Campana de Aragón", based on the legend of the great bell of Zaragoza, which rang alone each time a king of Spain died.

Johnson was also a friend of Collins and spoke kindly of him in his Lives of Poets, although he placed little value on his writings. “His mind was mainly occupied with works of fiction and fantasies; and he indulged in some peculiar habits of thought, and was most delighted with those flights of fancy which transcend the bounds of nature, and with which the mind is reconciled only through them. He loved fairies, ghosts, giants and monsters; he loved to wander the meanders of wandering enchantment, to behold the splendor of golden palaces, to repose by the falls of the Elysee Gardens, the character of his inclination more than his genius; the grandeur of the savage and the novelty of extravagance were always desired by him, but not always achieved. *

Thomas Gray is a far more important figure in the intellectual history of his generation than Collins; but this superior importance does not rest entirely on its verse, which is scarcely more copious than Collins's, though better finished. His posthumously published letters, diaries, and other remnants of prose showed for the first time how long his thoughts roamed the circles of art and thought. He was receptive to all good influences in the literary air. Like him was one of the most learned among English poets

• "Long live Collins."

The Dsiltonian Group. 173

immediately with your purchases. He was a strong critic of poetry, music, architecture and painting. Both his mind and character were excellent; and if there was something about his rather touchy, spinsterish personality - which once led young cantabs to brutally exploit their nervous fear of fire - there was also that comfortable reserve which earned Milton, when he was at Cambridge, the nickname Desbride of Christ."

Some of Gray's simpler odes, the Ode to Spring, the Hymn to Adversity and the Eton College Ode, were written in 1742 and printed in the Dodsley Collection in 1748. The "Elegy" was published in 1751; the two sister odes, The Progress of Poetry and The Bard, were canceled in 1757 by Horace Walpole's private printer at Strawberry Hill. ." He himself denied with some impatience that it was his best poem, thinking that its popularity was due to its subject. There is no lack of authoritative critics, such as Lowell and Matthew Arnold, who found Gray's odes superior poetry to his own. "Elegy." "'The Progress of Poetry,'" says Lowell, "soars like an eagle above all other English letters... .”* Bei With all due deference to such eminent judges, I venture to believe that the instinct of the people are right on this point, and even though Dr. Johnson is not as wrong as ever Johnson disliked Gray and spoke of him with sullen unfairness.

• Essay on "Daddy".

174 <!^ History of English Romanticism.

Gray, on the other hand, couldn't stand Johnson, whom he called the Big Dipper. Johnson said Gray's odes were forced plants grown in a greenhouse, and bad plants.Sir, I don't think Gray is top notch.Poet. He doesn't have a wild imagination or a great command of languages. The darkness in which he has shrouded himself will not convince us that he is sublime. His 'Elegy in a Graveyard' has a happy selection of images, but I don't like what they call the big things." "He attacked Gray and called him a 'boring fellow'. Boswell: “I understand that he was reserved and could appear boring in company; but he certainly wasn't boring at poetry. Johnson: "Sir, he was boring in company, boring in his closet, boring everywhere. It was boring in a new way and that made a lot of people think he was amazing. He was a mechanical poet. Then he repeated some ridiculous lines that popped out of my head and I said, 'Isn't that great, like your odes?' . . . ' No, sir, there are but two good stanzas in Gray's poetry, and that is in his 'Elegy on a Country Cemetery.' Then he repeated the line:

"'To whom, a prey of silent oblivion,'", etc.

“In all of Gray's odes,” wrote Johnson, “there is a kind of heavy splendor which we would like to see fade away... These odes are marked by bright clusters of graceful flourishes; they surprise more than they please; images are magnified by affectation; the language is worked too hard. The writer's mind seems to work with unnatural violence... His art and struggle are too ostentatious and there is too little semblance of calm and nature... In the character of his 'Elegía' I am happy to agree

7th £ Miltonic Group. 175

common reader; for the common sense of the reader, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, must, after all the subtleties of refinement and the dogmatism of scholarship, finally decide all claims to poetic honors. 'Churchyard' abounds with images that find a mirror in every mind and feelings that echo in every chest."

There are noble lines in Gray's more elaborate odes, but overall they give off that contrived, mechanical feel Johnson complains about. They have the same rhetorical tone, exalted zeal rather than genuine passion, that was presented in the Collins ode "On the Passions". Collins and Gray wrote continually about the passions; but they treated them as abstractions and were totally unable to show them in action. None of them could have written a ballad, a play or a novel. His odes were literal, literary, impersonal, retrospective. They had a lot of fantasy discharge and little red blood.

But the Elegy is the masterpiece of this whole school, II Pensaroso, and it summed up the poetry of the grave for all English readers for all time. Like the "Essay on Man" and "Night Thoughts" and "The Grave" it is a moral didactic poem, but with very different results from them. His morality is emotionally colored and concretely expressed. Instead of general thoughts about the brevity of life, the vanity of ambition, the leveling power of death, and similar platitudes, we have the image of the solitary poet lingering in the twilight (hora datur qiiieti) among the tombs, hitherto the place and the Hour conspire to produce their effect on the mind

4

176 zThe History of English Manticism.

and prepare you for the tension of the next meditation. The universal appeal of its theme and the perfection of its style have made The Elegy known by heart to more readers than any other poem in the language. Parody is a test of fame, if not popularity, and Lloyd and Colman parodied the "sister odes" in an "Ode to Darkness" and an "Ode to Oblivion". But the "elegy" was more than celebrated and more than popular; it was the most admired and influential poem of the generation. Imitations and translations abound, and it found an immediate and universal response.* One of its effects was to consecrate the ten-syllable quatrain to elegiac use. Mason changed the subtitle of his 'Isis' (written 1748) from 'An Elegy' to 'A Monologue' because 'it is not written in alternating rhyme, which has been common since the exquisite 'Elegy in the Country Church' Yard' of Mr. Gray. Mason's 'Elegy Written in a Cemetery in South Wales' (1787) is, of course, in Gray's stanza and also in /; Ourse presents a tribute to the teacher:

"Yes, if she had walked down that church street, or leaned against that ivy wall as I did, how sadly sweet her Doric song would have flown, sweeter than if it had flown at nature's call." %

• Mr. Perry is one of the English impersonators. falconer,

T. Warton, James Graeme, Wm. Whitehead, John Scott, Henry Headly, John Henry Moore and Robert Lovell, "Literature of the Eighteenth Century", p. 391. Among foreign imitations, "Le Lac" by Lamartine is perhaps the most famous.

f "Mason's work", Bd. Ich pg. 179.

XLbid., Bd. Yo p. 114.

Milton Group. lyj

It was almost de rigueur for a young poet to try his luck at a cemetery play. Thus Richard Cumberland, the playwright, records in his 'Memoirs' that, as a student at Cambridge in 1752, he 'made his first small offer to the press, following in Gray's footsteps with another elegy in the churchyard'. , written on the eve of Saint Mark, when, according to peasant tradition, the spirits of those who will die in the coming year pass through the cemetery at midnight”. ” he says of this poet's "Night Piece on Death" that "with very little improvement" "could surpass all night plays and graveyard scenes that have existed since." But this opinion is contradicted by Johnson, who says that Goldsmith indirectly prefers Parnell's poem to Gray's Churchyard; Neither does the public. J

Gray's correspondence provides a record of the evolution of romantic taste over a generation. He began with classical premises - his verse, he explained, by Dryden - and ended with translations of Welsh and Norse heroic legends and

• See Keats' unfinished poem "St Mark's Eve".

Parnell's collected poems were published in 1722. X No less interesting among the descendants of Gray's "Elegy" was "The Indian Burying Ground" by the American poet Philip Freneau (1752-1832). Gray's touch can be seen in other parts of Freneau, for example. for example, in "The Abandoned Farm".

"Once within the confines of this secluded space

Perhaps he made a nocturnal courtship: Perhaps a Sherlock reflected in the midst of darkness, As love and death always seek the shadow.

178 in The History of the English Novel.

with admiration for the ballads of Ossian and Scotch. In 1739 he traveled to France and Italy with Horace Walpole. He was abroad for three years, although in 1741 he fell out with Walpole in Florence, separated from him, and returned home alone without haste. Gray is one of the first modern travelers to speak appreciatively of the Gothic architecture and landscape of the Alps, noting those strange and distinctive aspects of alien life which we now call the picturesque and to which all itineraries and guidebooks refer. . It is amazing that Addison, who was on her travels forty years ago, was ignorant of such things. Not that he lacks a feeling for the sublime: he finds e.g. P. with mountains and precipices; and you can't imagine how happy I am to see a plain."

'Let each one think,' says the spectator, 'of the frame of mind he finds on his first entrance into the Pantheon at Rome, and how his imagination is filled with something great and terrible; and, at the same time, consider how little in proportion the interior of a Gothic cathedral touches it, even when five times the size of the other, which may come from nothing but grandeur of kind in the one, and meanness in the other. !

• Spectators, nº 489,

FEMALE 415.

X John Hill Burton Gives Passage on His Reign of Queen Anne

The €Miltonic Group. 179

Gray describes Reims Cathedral as "a vast Gothic building of impressive beauty and lightness, all covered with a profusion of small statues and other ornaments"; and Siena Cathedral, which Addison described as "barbaric" and an example of "false beauty and ostentatious ornament" and praised by Gray as "crafted with Gothic delicacy and old-fashioned refinement". Admittedly, that's a very cold compliment, but Gray continued to expand his knowledge and love of Gothic art. In later life he became something of an antiquarian and virtuoso. He corresponded with the Reverend Thomas Wharton about the stained-glass windows and paper curtains that Wharton, who was renovating his house in the Gothic style, had Gray buy from London dealers. He describes, to Wharton, Walpole's new room at Strawberry Hill as "the best flavor of anything he ever made, and in his own gothic style"; and advises your correspondent on the selection of patterns for stairs and arches. There was obviously a lot of curiosity about Strawberry Hill in the Gray clique and a determination to be goth.

Tell from a letter from Captain Burt, supervisor of certain road works in the Scottish Highlands, to show how modern Carlyle's picturesque tourist is. The captain describes the romantic landscape of the valleys as "dreadful prospects". It was at the very end of the century when Dr. Johnson, in response to Boswell's cautious hint, said that Scotland had many prospects, noble and wild: "I think, sir, that it has many. Norway also has noble wild views, and Lapland is known for its wonderful wild landscapes and But, sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect a Scotsman ever saw is the royal road that leads to England.

i8o iA History of English Romanticism.

Directed; and the poet felt compelled to warn his friends that zeal must not outweigh discretion. He wrote to Wharton in 1754: 'I am pleased that you have finally settled down to your taste, and I am pleased to hear you speak of giving your house a Gothic embellishment already. If you plan something, I hope it's fully within the gates; and let me not (as I look upon Coleman Street) speak to the Lord about the ten pinnacles, or the porch of the church at his door. Again about the same (1761): 'It is mere pedantry in the Gothic to cling to nothing but altars and tombs, and there is no end to it if we only sit in coronation chairs and drink nothing. "they are but cups or pitchers." In a letter to Mason in 1758 concerning certain inconsistencies in one of the latter's odes, he gives the following Doresca illustration of his statement: "If you take me to a great Gothic building with a thousand columns, each half a mile high, the walls all covered with arabesques and the windows full of red and blue saints, without head or tail, and if I found the Venus de Medici herself animated in a long niche in the high altar, As naked as when she was born, do you think my would devotion increase or decrease? and I made drawings of the famous ruins and great English cathedrals, especially those in the marshes of Cambridge, Ely and Peterboro.

• See also Gray's letter to the Rev. James Brown (1763) which contains: the

Drawing relating to a small ruined chapel at York Minster; and a letter (circa 1765) to Jas. Bentham, Elys Benefices, whose "Essay on Gothic Architecture" was erroneously attributed to Gray.

The zmiltonic group. i8i

short essay on Norman architecture, first published by Mitford in 1814 and erroneously titled *Architecture Gothica.

Going back to his first letters from abroad, the anticipation of the modern attitude is striking in his description of a visit to the Grande Chartreuse, which he calls "one of the most solemn, romantic and surprising scenes". * *' I don't remember walking ten paces without exclaiming that there was no restriction. It is not an abyss, it is not a stream, it is not a cliff, but it is full of religion and poetry. . . You don't have to have a very fantastic imagination to see ghosts there at noon.” Walpole's letter, dated about the same date, also to West, J., is equally jubilant. It says “from a village in the Savoy Mountains. . . Here we are, the lonely lords of glorious and desolate prospects. . . But the way, west, the way! Wrapping around a wonderful mountain surrounded by others, all covered by overhanging beams, obscured by pine trees or lost in the clouds! Under a creek that breaks through cliffs and falls between rocks! . . . From time to time, an old walkway with a broken railing, a crooked cross, a small house or the ruins of a hermitage! That sounds too bombastic and romantic to anyone who hasn't seen it, too cold to anyone who has."

• At the Sra. Dorothy Grey, 1739.

f A Richard West, 1739.

JGray, Walpole and West were schoolmates and close friends at Eton.

1 82 tA History of English Romanticism.

It's the most beautiful Italian night. . . There is a moon! There are stars for you! Can't you hear the source? Can't you smell the orange blossoms? That building over there is the Convent of San Isidoro; and that hill with cypresses and pines on top, the top of Quirinal Hill.the neapolisTanners work until late at night: then they take their lute or guitar and take them for a walk around town or along the seaside to enjoy the coolness. You can see their little dark-haired children jumping around naked and the older ones dancing with castanets while others play cymbals for them.” f “You know the country”, then already?

"little voices and an old guitar penetrating an unprotected heart"?

And then, for a prophecy of Scott's, read the description of Netley Abbey, J, in a letter to Nicholls in 1764. "My boatman," writes Gray in a letter to Brown of the same ruins, "assured me that he would not ." would go away." . for nothing in the world near him at night, though he knew much money had been found there. The sun was too bright and too ostentatious for such a scene to be visited only at dusk."

"If you would not see fair Melrose well, visit her by pale moonlight, by the glad rays of day, Gild, but by mockery, by ruins, Grey."

• West, 1740.

f At Sra. Dorothy Grey, 1740.

i j. 'Parch's Collection' (VII. 138) offers an elegiac quatrain on 'The Ruins of Netley Abbey' by a poet with the suggestive name of George Keate; and "Los Alpes", in heavy white Thomsonian verse (VII. 107), by the same hand.

tu

Milton Group. 183

In 1765 Gray visited the Scottish Highlands and sent enthusiastic reports of his journey to Wharton and Mason. "Since I've seen the Alps, I haven't seen anything sublime." “The plains are worth seeing once, but the mountains are breathtaking and must be visited once a year on pilgrimage. Only these monstrous creatures of God know how to combine such beauty with such terror. A fig for its poets, painters, gardeners and clergymen who were not among them".

Again in 1770, the year before his death, he spent six weeks on a tour of the western counties, traveling forty miles up the Wye in a boat, visiting, among other things, places which the Muse had made famous, or since. Done, Hagley and the Leasowes, Malvern Hills and Tintern Abbey. But the most significant of Gray's "Lilliputian travels" was his tour of the Lake Country in 1769. Here he was on ground that has since become a classic; and Wordsworth's Lover finds with unique interest in Gray's Journal in the Lakes, written nearly thirty years before Lyrical Ballads, such names as Grasmere, Winander, Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Derwentwater, Borrowdale, and Lodore. What sets this diary entries apart from contemporary descriptive literature is a certain intimacy of understanding, a depth of tone that makes it feel like a nineteenth-century work. For Gray, the landscape was no longer an image. It had feeling, character, meaning, almost personality. Different climates and different times of day gave it more subtle forms of expression than poets had hitherto recognized in the broad general alternations of storm and calm, light and dark.

i84 aA History of English l^pmanticism.

Ness and the succession of seasons. He heard nature when she whispered as well as when she spoke aloud. Thomson could not have written like that, nor could Shenstone, and perhaps even Collins. But almost any sensible, educated person can write this now; or, if not so well, with the same accent. A passage or two will clarify my meaning.

On this second bend I leftfour miles along its [Ulswater] borders, past a tree-lined village called Water Mallock, on a fine burial day, perfectly still and warm, but without a ray of sunshine. Then the sky seemed thicker, the valley more desolate, and night approached, and I turned back the way I had come to Penrith. . . While I was here a little rain fell, red clouds rolled over the eastern hills, and part of a bright rainbow seemed to come up the side of Castle Hill. . . The stillness and brightness of the afternoon, the murmur of the water and the beating of huge hammers in an iron forge not far away made this a unique walk. . . In the evening, after sunset, he would go alone to the lake and see the solemn coloring of the approaching night, the last glimmer of the sun fading over the tops of the hills, the deep stillness of the water and the long shadows of the sea. the mountains thrown over them almost touching them on the last bank. In the distance, I heard the roar of many waterfalls, inaudible during the day.* I wished for the moon, but it was dark and silent to me, hidden in its empty interlunar cavity.

• A soft, lulling noise can be heard

Of inaudible streams of Da^.”—T/i^ White Doe of Rylstone, Wordsworth. \ "Samson agonists."

Milton Group. 185

"It is but a few years from now," wrote Joseph Warton in 1782,than the picturesque scenes of our ownour country, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, caves and castles were visited and described.”* In the same year, William Gilpin published his Observations on the River Wye, from notes taken during a voyage in 1770. This was the same year in which that Gray made his journey to Wye, and, hearing that Gilpin had prepared a description of the country, borrowed his manuscript, and read it in June, 1771, a few weeks before his own death, in this series of volumes by Gilpin, in the interior of Great Britain. Brittany, written in a poetic and somewhat exaggerated style, illustrated with aquatint drawings, and everything described on the title page as "mainly relating to picturesque beauty". "They were very successful and some of them were translated into German and French, f

• "Essay on the Pope" (5th ed.). volume II. P. 180.

f These were, in the order of their publication: "The Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland" (2 vols.), 1789; "The Highlands of Scotland", 1789; "Observations on the Wooded Landscape", 1791; "The Western Parts of England and the Isle of Wight", 1798; "Hampshire Shores" etc., 1804; "Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex", etc., 1809. The last two were published posthumously. Gilpin, who was a benefactor of Salisbury, died in 1804. Pearch's 'Collection' (VII, 23) contains 'A Descriptive Poem' about Lakeland in couplets of eight syllables, introducing Keswick, Borrowdale, Dovedale, Lodore, Derwentwater and other known locations.

CHAPTER VI. Iclarton School ZBC.

In the course of our investigations so far, we have found little that could be described as romantic in the strictest sense. Although the literary movement had already begun to take a retrospective turn, few distinctly medieval elements were discernible. Neither the monk's literature nor the Lord's literature had seen a resurrection. It was only around 1760 that writers began to turn decisively to the Middle Ages. The first particularly medieval type to gain a foothold in eighteenth-century literature was the hermit, a character who seems to have a natural appeal not only to Romantic poets like Shenstone and Collins but also to the entire generation of versifiers from Parnell, Goldsmith, Percy and Beattie, each of whom composed a *'Hermit', and even to the authors of

• • Rasselas" and "Tom Jones", in his fictions

becomes a common character, as a source of wisdom and moral imperatives, f

f dr Johnson laughed at this popular figure: "'Hermit with shaggy hair, in a solemn cell, wearing the twilight of life.

"So I spoke, and as I spoke I sighed. I scarcely suppressed the initial tear: when the wise old man replied: 'Come, boy, and have a beer. *"186

IVarton School. 187

A literary movement inspired by the past is necessarily also an academic movement. Antiquarian science must go on. The image of a disappeared society must be reconstructed from the available fragments, which requires a special study. As long as this specialized knowledge remains in the exclusive possession of professional antiquarians like Gough, Hearne, Bentham, Perry, Grose*, it will not bear fruit in creative literature. It produces only local histories, studies of cathedrals and funerary monuments, books of Druidic remains, Roman walls and coins, etc. etc. the antique dealer gave flowers. Poets, of course, had to conduct their own studies, decipher manuscripts, learn Old English, visit ruins, collect ancient ballads and armor, familiarize themselves with concepts of heraldry, architecture, chivalry, ecclesiology and feudal law, as well as inform and stimulate their imaginations. It took many years for the combined efforts of scholars and poets to reconstruct a picture of medieval society sharp enough in contours and bright enough in color to impress the general public. In fact, Scott was the first to popularize the novel; principally, no doubt, from the greater vigor and fervor of his imagination; but sometimes also >^; for a larger stock of material had already been accumulated when he began work. he had fed on

• "Grose's Antiquities of Scotland" was published in 1791 and

Burns wrote "Tarn o' Shanter" to accompany Kirk Alloway's image in this work. See his poem On the Late Captain Grose's Pilgrimages Through Scotland.

188 <v^ History of English l^Pmanticism.

Percy's childhood "Hallows"; through Coleridge, verses from him derive from Chatterton; and the series of Gothic novels beginning with The Castle of Otranto is loosely responsible for Ivanhoe and The Talisman. But Scott, like Percy and Walpole, was also a virtuoso and collector; and the vast array of notes and introductory material in his metrical tales and Waverley's novels show how necessary it was for the Romantic poet to be his own antiquarian.

Not surprisingly, the zeal of the early Romantics was not always a zeal for learning, and the picture of the Middle Ages they painted was a caricature rather than a portrait. Much of medieval literature was inaccessible to the general reader. Much of it was still in manuscript. There was much more in rare antique prints, black pamphlets and folios, treasures from great libraries and carefully guarded private collections. Much of it was in poorly understood dialects - forgotten forms of speech - Old French, Middle High German, Old Norse, Medieval Latin, the ancient Cimmerian and Ersian languages, Anglo-Saxon. There was an almost complete lack of apparatus for studying this literature. Help was needed in the form of modern reprints of rare texts, bibliographies, critical editions, translations, literary histories and manuals, glossaries of archaic words, dictionaries and grammars of obsolete languages. These were gradually provided by specialists working in various areas of research. Every aspect of medieval life was illustrated in turn. Works such as Tyrwhitt's edition of Chaucer (1775-78); the collections of medieval romances by Ellis (1805), Ritson (1802), and Weber (1810);

The Battleschool ton. 189

Nares und Halliwells „Ancient Glossary“ (1822-46), CartersAncient sculptures and paintingsings" (1780-94), Scott's "Demonology and Witchcraft" (1830), Hallam's "Middle Ages" (1818), Meyrick's "Ancient Armor" (1824), Lady Guest's "Mabinogion" (1838), the publications by numerous scholarly individuals and scholarly societies such as Camden, Spenser, Percy, Chaucer, Early English Text, Roxburgh Club, to cite only English examples, taken at random and separated by large intervals of time, are examples of the works that marked medieval life and become known to all who decide to meet him.

The history of Romanticism, once begun, is little more than a record of the steps by which successive features were brought to light in that vast and complex scheme of things which we loosely call the Light of the Middle Ages. and made available as literary material. New details were constantly being added to the image and there is no reason to believe that it is already finished. Some of the best parts of the medieval work have come to the general reader's attention only in recent years; My. B. the charming old French story in prose and verse "Aucassin et Nicolete" and the 14th century English poem "The Perle". The future reserves other phases of the novel; the Middle Ages seem as inexhaustible for new sources of inspiration as classical antiquity has shown. The past belongs to the poet as much as the present, and much of the literature of each generation will always belong to him.

igo ^ History of English l^omantidom.

Analysis. The individual artist's tastes and preferences will continue to find a wide field to choose from in the rich quarry of Christian and feudal Europe.

Not surprisingly, the book that first sparked interest in Norse mythology in modern Europe was written by a Frenchman. This was the "Introduction to the History of Dannemarc" published in 1755 by Paul Henri Mallet, a native of Geneva and for a time Professor of Fine Letters at the Royal University of Copenhagen. The work also included a translation of the first part of the Little Edda with an abridgment of the second part and the Great Edda, as well as versions of several runic poems. It was translated into English in 1770 by Thomas Percy, editor of Reliques, under the title Antiquities of the North; or, a description of the Manners, Customs, Religion and Laws of the Ancient Danes”. A German translation appeared a few years earlier and inspired the Schleswig-Holsteiner Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg to write his "Poem of a Skald", which introduced ancient Icelandic mythology into German poetry in 1766. Percy had independently "Five pieces of rune poetry translated from the Icelandic language" in 1763.

Gray did not wait for the English translation of Mallet's book. In a 1758 letter to Mason, which contained some criticism of his "Caractacus" (then handwritten), he wrote: "I rejoice in Gothic Elysium, or the /le// before it, or the dawn*

• "Ragnarok" or "Götterdämmerung", the twilight of the gods.

The Warton School. 191

I have been there and seen everything in Mallet's "Introduction to the History of Denmark" (in French) and many other places. "It's very different from Mallet's 'Rune Mythology System' to William Morris's." Sigurd the Volsung' (1877), but to Mallet's credit for awakening for the first time an interest in Scandinavian antiquity which enriched prose and poetry not only in England but throughout Europe. Gray refers to him in his notes to "The Descent of Odin", and his work remained a popular authority on the subject for at least half a century, citing Scott in his notes to "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (1805). .

Gray's studies of runic literature took the form of The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin, written in 1761 and published in 1768. They were paraphrases of two poems Gray found in De Causis Contemnendse Mortis (Copenhagen). , 1689) by Thomas Bartholin, a 17th-century Danish physician. The first shows the Valkyrie weaving the fate of Danish and Irish warriors at the Battle of Clontarf, fought between Sigurd, Earl of Orkney and Brian, King of Dublin in the 11th century; the second tells of Odin's descent to Niflheimer to ask Hela about Balder's fate*. Gray designed them for launch.

• For a complete discussion of Gray's sources and knowledge of

Old Norse, the reader is referred to Professor G. L. Kittredge's Appendix to Professor W. L. Phelps's "Grey Selections" (1894, pp. xl-1). Professor Kittredge concludes that Gray had only a minimal knowledge of Norse, which in his versions followed Bartholin's Latin; and that he probably also used such authorities as Torfaeus's "Orcades" (1697), Ole Worm's "Literature".

192 <l/1 History of English l^manticism.

productive chapter in his projected history of English poetry. He calls them counterfeits for what they really are and not literal versions. Despite a nuance of 18th-century diction and a phrase or two from Shakespeare and Milton, the translator has managed to capture the wild atmosphere of his originals very well. His biographer, Mr. Gosse, promises that "the student will not fail ... to discover in the Gothic images of the 'Descent of Odin' notes and phrases of a finer originality than is found even in his work". most famous writings; and he will dwell with particular pleasure on the passages in which Gray broke free from the shackles of artificial and conventional taste and prophesied of the arrival of a new romantic age.

Celtic antiquity shared this newly awakened interest with Gothic. Here too, as in the movement of 'The Stormy Hebrides', 'Lycidas' seems to have been the spark that ignited the poets' imaginations.

Where were you, nymphs, when the merciless abyss closed over the heads of your beloved Lykidas?

Runica" (Copenhagen, 1636), Dr. George Hickes's Thesaurus monumental (Oxford, 1705) and Robert Sheringham's De Anglorum Gentis Origine Disceptatio (1716). Dryden's Miscellany Poems (1716) has a verse translation, Angantyr's Awakening, from Hickes's English prose, part of the Hervarar saga. Professor Kittredge refers to Sir William Temple's essays Of Poetry and Of Virtue heroic. "Anecdotes of Nichols" (I. 116), published 1715, "The Rudiments of Grammarmar for the English Saxon Tongue; with an apology for the study of northern antiquities.” This was from Mrs. Elizabeth Elstob and was addressed to Hickes, the author of the Thesaurus.

IVarton School. 193

where lie their old bards, the famous druids,

Still on Mona High's hairy top

Not even where Deva spreads her stream of sorcerers."

Joseph Warton quotes this passage twice in his "Essay on Pope" (Vol. i. pp. 7 and 356, 5th ed.), once to assert its superiority over a passage in Pope's "Pastorals": "The mention of remarkably romantic locations, the supposed abode of druids, bards and sorcerers, is far more pleasing to the imagination than the apparent introduction of Ham and Isis." On another occasion, to illustrate the following suggestion: "I have often wondered that our modern writers make use of the time of the Druids and the lore of the ancient bards... Milton, as we see, was sensitive to the power of such images, as we may infer of this brief but exquisite passage". As other illustrations of the poetic skill of similar subjects, Warton offers a stanza from Gray's "Bard" and a few lines from Gilbert West's "Institution of the Order of the Garter" describing the spirits of Druids hovering over their crumbling altars at Stonehenge. :

"—Mysterious rows of crude, vast obelisks, rising from sphere within sphere, startling monuments of naive architecture, as they now often startle the wandering traveller. By the pale moon discerned on the plain of Sarum."

He then inserts two stanzas in Latin from Hickes' "Thesaurus" from an ancient runic ode preserved by Olaus Wormius (Ole Worm), and adds a remark about Scandinavian heroes and their contempt for death. Druids and Bards now start in Abundance. collins

194 t/^ history of English %omantictsm.

'Ode on the death of Mr. Thomson', ^r. B. starts with the line

"In this tomb lies a druid."

In his "Ode to Freedom", he alludes to folklore that Mona, the druid fortress, was long shrouded in a mist spell, the work of an enraged mermaid:

Mona, once hidden from those looking on the high street, "Where dwell a thousand elven forms"

In Thomas Warton's The Pleasures of Melancholy, contemplation is said to have been discovered as a baby by a Druid.

"In the distance, in a clearing in the forest of Mona",

and led by him to his oak bower, where

"- Loved to lie. Often hearing the swift roar of Menai hanging from the wood, chain of ancient druids."

Mason's "Caractacus" (1759) was a Greek-style dramatic poem with a chorus of British bards and a chief druid for the chorus. The setting is Mona's sacred grove. Mason carefully obtained descriptions of Druidic rites, such as the making of the viper stone and the cutting of mistletoe with a golden sickle, from such Latin authorities as Pliny, Tacitus, Lucan, Strabo, and Suetonius. Joseph Warton praises the chorus of "Death" in this piece, as well as the bards' chorus at the end of West's "Institution of the League". For his "Bard" materials, Gray had to look no further than historians and chroniclers such as Camden, Higden, and Matthew.

IVarton School. 195

of Westminster to which he refers. In keeping with a now-discredited tradition, it shows the last survivor of the Welsh Poets' Guild, harp in hand, perched on a rock on the slopes of Snowdon, denouncing Edward I's trial for the murder of his singing brothers.

But in 1764, with the publication of Dr. Evans's "Specimens"* led to some attempts at translation from Welsh. The most important of these was "The Triumphs of Owen", published in 1768 among Gray's Complete Poems. It celebrates victory over the Confederate fleets of Ireland, Denmark and Normandy, some 160% won by a Prince of North Wales. Owen Ap Griffin, "the dragon son of Mona". The other tracks are short but energetic versions of bardic songs in praise of fallen heroes: "Caradoc", "Conan" and "The Death of Hoel". They were printed posthumously, although they were undoubtedly composed in 1764.

Scholarship of the time was not always accurate in distinguishing between ancient systems of religion, and Gray criticized it in his letters to Mason in 1758, when "Caractacus" was still in progress, for mixing Gothic and Celtic mythologies. He instructs him that Woden and his Valhalla belong

• "Some specimens of the poetry of the ancient Welsh bards,

translated into English', by Rev. Evan Evans, 1764. Copies numbered ten. The translations were in English prose. The originals were printed from a copy made by Davies, the author of the Welsh Dictionary, of an ancient Manuscript on parchment, believed to date from the period of Edward II, Edward III and Henry V. The book contained a 'Dissertatio de Bardis' in Latin, together with notes, appendices, etc. Ossian poems.

196 <iA History of English Romance.

to "the doctrine of brewmasters, not bards"; but he admits that "with this dearth of Celtic ideas under which we work", it might be permissible to borrow from the Edda, "however removing all mention of Woden and his Valkyrie maidens" and "without much responsiveness". Details". ". ; or "better still, to apply to the Druid stock every wild and picturesque fable utterly invented by one's own." But Gray had no qualms about mixing mythologies in "The Bard," and in doing so drew the censure of Dr. Johnson stops. “The cloth of the sheet, as he owns it, he borrowed from the bards of the north; but its texture was nevertheless very much the work of feminine powers, like the art of weaving the thread of life in another mythology. Theft is always dangerous: Gray has transformed sacrificed bards into weavers through scandalous and incongruous fiction. * In fact, Mallet himself had a very confused conception of the relation of the Celtic race to the Germanic. He constantly speaks of ancient Scandinavians as Celts. Percy points out the difference in the preface to his translation and makes corrections where the word celtic occurs, usually replacing "gothic and celtic" with "celtic" in the original. Mason made his contribution to runic literature, "Song of Harold the Brave", a rather tasteless versification of a passage from the "Knytlinga Saga" which was translated into Latin by Bartholin, into French by Mallet, and into English prose by Mallet Percy. Mason designed it to fit in with Gray's introduction to the failed history of English poetry.

• "Grey's Life".

IVarton School. 197

The true pioneers of the Medieval Renaissance were the Warton brothers. "Warton School" was a term used, not without derogatory implications, by critics who disliked the old minstrel. Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of Thomas Warton, vicar of Basingstoke, who had been a member of Magdalen and professor of poetry at Oxford; whose last position was later filled by the younger of their two children. It is interesting to note that a volume of verse by Thomas Warton, Sr., printed posthumously in 1748, contains a Spenserian imitation and translations of two passages from the 'Song of Ragner Lodbrog', an eleventh-century Viking, later known as the The Latin is cited by Sir Wm. Templer in his essay "Of Heroic Virtue"; * Lest the romantic tendencies of the Warton brothers appear to be an example of heredity, Joseph was brought up in Winchester, where Collins was his schoolmate, and both brothers in Oxford. Joseph later became Warden of Winchester and lived until 1800, outliving his younger brother by ten years. Thomas has always identified with Oxford, where he lived for forty-seven years. He was appointed Camden Professor of History at the university in 1785, but did not teach. In the same year he was elected Poet Laureate to succeed Whitehead. Both brothers were men of affable and social temperament. Joseph was a man of some elegance; he enjoyed the company of girls, was a part of society at large, and had a reputation as a witty tavern keeper and innkeeper. He spent the Christmas holidays in London, where he was a member of Johnson's Literary Club.

• Ver Phelps' English Romantic Movement, pp. 73, 141-42.

198 <^ History of English 'T^omanticistn'.

In contrast, Thomas, who grew fat and lethargic in the college convent until Johnson compared him to a turkey, was careless in his personal habits and averse to good company. He was the life of the Oxford common room, joking with the students when he was Dr. Warton in Winchester, and it is said that he longed for whistles and ale and the great merriment of the tavern. Both Wartons had a strange passion for military parades; and Thomas, who believed in spirits, used to secretly attend executions. They were also remarkably harmonious in their intellectual tastes and aspirations, avid students of Old English poetry, Gothic architecture and British antiquities. Insofar as enthusiasm, keen critical taste, and elegant erudition can make poets of men, the Wartons were poets. But his work was unoriginal. Many of his poems can be broken down and attributed almost line by line and sentence by sentence to Milton, Thomson, Spenser, Shakespeare, Gray. They had all the dangerous gifts of sympathy and receptivity of our Romantic poet Longfellow, without a tenth of his technical skill, and none of his true originality as an artist. Like Longfellow, they loved the rich and peaceful atmosphere of the historic past:

"Tales that have the chill of age and chronicles of yesteryear."

The last lines of Thomas Warton's sonnet,

• 'Written on a Blank Sheet of Monasticon of Dugdale'

• &^

• Wm. Dugdale published his Monasticon Anglicanum, op.

History of English Religious Houses, in Three Parts, 1655-62-73. It was accompanied by illustrations of the costumes of ancient religious orders and architectural sights. the latter,

The Battleschool ton. 199

- a favorite of Charles Lamb - may have been written by Longfellow:

"Neither rough nor barren are the crooked ways

Old-fashioned, but full of flowers." ^^

Joseph Warton's aspirations as a poet lag behind those of his younger brother. Many of Thomas Warton's poems, such as his Oxford paper Sausage and his Triumph of Isis, had academic overtones. We can ignore them because they are extraneous to our current investigations. The same is true of most of his prize-winning annual odes, "On Her Majesty's Birthday" etc.

• ' the monuments of the piety or splendor of our ancestors".

Thus, in the 1787-88 Birthday Songs and 1787 New Year Songs, he pays homage to former minstrels and early laureates such as Chaucer and Spenser, and celebrates "the Druid harp" sounding "through the dark forest and deep surrounded"; the temples built by the Normans and castles; is that

"-brilliant hall where Odin's gothic throne glowed with the broad glow of swinging scimitars."

But Thomas Warton's most romantic poems are The Crusade and The Tomb of King Arthur. The first is the song

"The Plantagenet Lionheart Sang looking through the bars of his prison."

says Eastlake, they were crude and unsatisfactory, but of interest to modern students, as "they have preserved representations of buildings or parts of buildings which no longer exist; such as the free-standing steeple or belfry of Salisbury, which has now been removed, and which has been destroyed in 1547 Lincoln Needle".

EU

200 ^ History of English Thiomanticism.

when Blondel the minstrel wandered in search of his captive king. The latter depicts Henry II being celebrated at Cilgarran Castle on his way to Ireland, where Welsh bards sang to him of Arthur's death and his burial in Glastonbury Abbey. The following passage anticipates Scott:

' 'Illuminated the vaulted ceiling, A thousand torches flashed in the distance; From massive goblets, gleaming gold, hissed Meteglin's red stream: To adorn the splendid feast, The historic tapestry hung along the high glass hall; With minstrels resounded the sheaves of harps, gleaming brightly in the reflected light of the proud gallery: while the accomplished bards, a rival mob, by far Mona, nurse of song, of Teivi, lined with brown shade, of Elvy Valley, and Crown Caders, From many shaggy chasms shading Lerne's raucous abyss, And from many sunless solitudes From Radnor's innermost mountains, Rough To crown the banquet's solemn close, The chosen themes of British glory.

Much of Scott's skill in the poetic manipulation of place names is evident here, <?. ^.,

"The day passed over rugged Norham Castle. And the beautiful River Tweed, wide and deep, and the lonely Cheviot Mountains" -

Names that leave a romantic rumor. Another passage from Warton's poem takes us to Tennyson's Savage.

7 tons of war college. 201

Tintagel by the Cornish Sea" e seu "Valley of Avilion Island".

"Over the cliffs of Cornwall the tempest raged: high rose the howling mouth of the sea: upon the highest tower of Tintaggel Darksome the hail fell: round the rugged castle the whirlwind of the blast sang shrill, and hurled itself fiercely on all sides of the high Wall thundered the tidal waves as Arthur lined his rows of red crosses on Camlan's conscious crimson back: By Mordred's treacherous cunning he commanded to bleed under a Saxon spear But in vain an enemy of Paynim , armed with fate, the Queen's mighty stroke, all hidden and unseen, upon the helpless heroes, she threw her mantle of blue ambrosia and commanded her spirits to carry him away, in Merlin's agate-axle chariot, to the rough enamel. from your verdant isle deep in the navel of the deep."

Other poems by Thomas Warton relating to his favorite studies are the Ode Sent to Mr. Upton, in his Faery Queene Edition, the Monody Written Near Stratford-upon-Avon, the Sonnets Written at Stonehenge. "To Mr. Gray" and "At King Arthur's Round Table" and the humorous letter which he attributes to the antiquarian Thomas Hearne, in which he denounces the bishops for their recent order that the Lenten prayers be printed in modern letters in instead of black. letter and cursed the author

202 <vf History of English Romanticism.

by The Companion to the Oxford Guide Book for their irreverent commentary on antiquities.

Let the vengeful moths eat your account books! That chronological flows do not contain readable numbers! Let the crypts lurk undetected! Discover the bells, still the true location of the abbots' pantries!

Warton was a classical scholar and, like most precursors of the Romantic school, was somewhat embarrassed by its Gothic heresies. Sir Joshua Reynolds provided a classically designed painted window for New College, Oxford; and Warton, in a few supplementary verses, confesses that these "pictures of Attic art" restored their true taste;* and prophesies that henceforth angels, apostles, saints, miracles, martyrs, and tales of legendary lore:

"No longer the round shame of the holy window, but give the gleaming space to the Grecian groups... Thy mighty hand broke the gothic chain and restored my bosom to truth... Long in love with a barbarous age, An unfaithful absence of the classic side –

• "Verses on the window painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds". W/. poetry

"Helena":

"On desperate seas I wandered long past her hyacinth hair, her classical face. Her naiad air carried me home to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome."

The Warton School. 203

I have long loved capturing the simple timbre

of jugglers' harps, and spell the fable;

See the festive rites, the chivalrous game,

who graced heroic Albion's greatest day;

To mark the musty halls of brave barons.

and the rough lock cast in an enormous mould;

With gothic modes explore gothic arts,

And reflect on the splendor of times gone by.

But boss, in ecstasy I loved to stroll

A tenacious adherent, the vaulted dome,

where the high waves that rise with pride

Its mixed branches dart to and fro;

Wo goblin sculptor, with a fantastic ball.

Her wild embroidery was marked on the long quilt;

Where superstition, with a capricious hand.

In many labyrinths the crowned window is planned.

With romantic tones dyed the fair table,

To fill the wonderful sanctuary with holy light.”*

The application of the word “romantic” in this passage to medieval stained glass art is significant. The art's revival today is credited to the influence of the late English school of poetry and romantic painting, and William Morris in particular. Warton's biographers trace his passion for the ancient world to the impression made on his memory by a visit to Windsor Castle as a child. He spent summers wandering around abbeys and cathedrals. He wrote his observations and is known to have started work on Gothic architecture,

• This apology should be compared to Scott's letter in verse

Wm. Erskine, prefixed to the third song of "Marmion".

"To me, so nourished, you ask me the classical poet's well-planned task?" etc.

Scott, in Warton's exact language, referred to himself as a "classic missing from the page".

T (

204 a/^ History of English Omanism.

However, no trace has been found among his manuscripts. The Bodleian Library was one of his favorite places and he was often seentopography withsilent and rapt solemnity the ancient entrance of Magdalen College.” He liked illuminated manuscripts and sheets in black letters. In his 'Observations on the Fairy Queen' he gives a twenty-page digression on Gothic architecture, and speaks fondly of the curious and beautiful folio manuscript of the History of Arthur and his Knights in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, written on parchment, with illuminated initials and headgear, in which we see the fashion for ancient armour, construction, inclination of shape, and other peculiarities".

Another highly distinguished poem by Warton is the 'Ode Written at Vale-Royal Abbey in Cheshire', a Cistercian monastery founded by Edward I. This piece is full of romantic sentiment and is written in the style and verse of Gray's "Elegy". as evidenced by some randomly chosen stanzas:

"Through the slow clock, measured in majestic tolls, The mighty tolling of the massive tower, The farmer no longer counts the weary time, Not even a distant shepherd bends twilight's fold.

"Seen high above the trackless wasteland at midnight, No more windows, lined up in a long line (Where high shaft and corner are combed between thick tendrils of ivy) that betray sharp rites."

It is a note from Warton's time that, while Fantasia and the Muse gaze upon the abbey ruins with reflective regret, the "sterner reason" - the true eighteenth-century deity - "surveys the scene with philosophical acumen" and

• See above, pp. 99-101.

The Battleschool ton. 205

– as a Protestant – reflects that monastic houses were after all “sanctuaries of superstition” and their destruction was a good thing for science and religion.

However, Thomas Warton's greatest credit to the studies he loved was his 'History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the End of the Sixteenth Century'. This was in three volumes, published in 1774, 1777 and 1781 respectively. A fragment of a fourth volume was published in 1790. A revised edition in four volumes was published in 1824 under the editorship of Richard Price, corrected, enlarged and annotated by Ritson, Douce, Park, Ashby and the editor himself. In 1871 a new revision (also in four volumes) appeared, edited by W. Carew Hazlitt, with many additions, by the editor and by well-known English scholars such as Madden, Skeat, Furnivall, Morris, and Thomas and Aldis Wright. In assessing the value of Warton's work, it should never be forgotten that he was a pioneer in this field. Much of his knowledge is outdated, and the modern editors of his story—Price and Hazlitt—seem to the discouraged reader primarily concerned, in their footnotes and heckling, with recanting statements Warton had made in the text. The leadership position, e.g. B. his preliminary dissertation "On the origin of romantic fiction in Europe" - derived from the Spanish Arabs - has long been discredited. But Warton's knowledge was extensive, if not precise; and it was no dry learning, but animated by the spirit of a true man of letters. In this way, his story remains readable, despite its actual obsolescence, as a corpus of descriptive criticism or as a continuous literary essay. the best way around

206 <iA history of English T^manticism.

to read it is to read it as it was written, in the original edition, regardless of the apparatus of annotations that modern scholars have accumulated over it, but remembering that it is no longer an authority and will probably have to be corrected on each page. Read like that, it's a delightful book, "a classic in its own right," as Lowell put it. Southey also claimed that its publication marked an epoch in literary history; and that with Percy's "Relics" he promoted, beyond any other work, the "growth of better taste than in the last hundred years."

Gray had written a History of English Poetry, but he gave the draft to Warton, to whom he gave an outline of his own plan. The Observations on English Meters and the essay on the poet Lydgate, among the remnants of Gray's prose, seem to be part of this work proposal.

Lowell also declares that Joseph Warton's Essay Concerning the Genius and Writings of the Pope (1756) is "the first official public declaration of war against the prevailing fashion." The new school had its critics as well as its poets, and the Wartons were more effective in their former capacity. The war thus open was not as internal as that of the French classics and romantics of the 1830s. It has never been possible, for purely aesthetic reasons, to provoke a very serious conflict in England. However, there was the same resistance. Warton's biographer tells us that the criticism of his essay "was strong enough to dampen the essayist's zeal, which left his work in an imperfect state for a long period of twenty-six years." <?., until 1782, when he published the second volume.

The Warton School. 207

Both Warton Averes are personal friends of Dr. Johnson; They were members of the Literary Club and members of Adventurer's Idle. Thomas was interested in Johnson doing his MA at Oxford, where the doctor visited him. Some correspondence between them occurs at Boswell. Johnson maintained a public respect for the Wartons' critical and historical work; but he was not sympathetic to her antiquarian enthusiasm or her fondness for Old English poetry. In particular, he mocked Thomas' verses and summarized them as follows:

“Wherever I turn my eyes, everything is strange, but nothing new; endless toil all the time, endless toil to be wrong; the tense of the sentence is thrown out, coarse words in disarray, adorned with collars and old bonnets, ode and elegy and sonnet."

And although he added: "Remember that I love the fellow very much because I laugh at him," this saving clause could not calm the poet's indignant chest when he learned that the doctor had mocked his lines. An estrangement followed, which Johnson reportedly even discussed in tears, saying "that Tom ^^^ Warton was the only man of genius I knew who wanted a heart".

Goldsmith was also of the Conservative Party, although Perry* discovers romantic traits in "The Deserted Village", such as the verse,

• "Literature of the 18th century", p. 397

268 c/f History of English l^pmanticism.

"Where wild Altama murmurs in her grief",

Ö

On the Torno cliffs or on the Pambamarca side.

In his "Inquiry into the Present State of Cultivated Learning" (1759) Goldsmith explains the first era of literary decay; he laments the vogue for blank verse, which he calls a "misguided innovation", and the "disgusting solemnity of manner" that brought it into vogue. He complains about the resurgence of old plays on stage. "Old plays are revived and new ones hardly admitted... The public is once again forced to rummage through those ashes of absurdity that disgusted our ancestors even in times of ignorance... What to do? Just feel content, scream Do it all what comes our way, and we move on to the absurdity of Shakespeare. Let the reader lift his censure. I admire the beauties of this great father of our stage as much as they deserve, but you may like it, for the honor of our country, and also for his own, that many of his scenes have been forgotten. A one-eyed man must always be painted in profile. The spectator who sees one of these recently revived plays only wonders whether he would approve of such an interpretation, if it were written by a modern poet, I fear you will find that much of their applause is due simply to the sound of a name and a vain reverence for antiquity. Indeed, the revival of these plays of stilted humour, far-fetched conceit, and unnatural hyperbole7 has been attributed to Shakespeare, is more meaningless than erect a statue in his honor."

The words I've italicized make that clear.

7IVarton School. 209

What Goldsmith found truly flawed was restoring the original text of Shakespeare's plays, rather than the confused versions that had hitherto been presented. This restoration was largely due to Garrick, but Goldsmith's language suggests that the Reformation was prompted by public opinion and the growing "cult of antiquity". The following passage shows that the new school had its claque, which rallied in support of the old British drama, as the French Romantics did nearly a century later in support of the melodies of Victor Hugo. '^

"What strange vampire comedies, ridiculous tragedies, or what shall I call them, talking pantomimes have we not seen lately? ... The play attracts our critics because it speaks in Old English; and it pleases the galleries because it contains lewdness... The prologue usually precede the play to inform us that it was composed by Shakespeare, or old Ben, or someone else who modeled them, so that we understand the power of combinations that lead to Alto, claps and rattles are practiced with the sticks; and although a man is strong enough to defeat a lion in single combat, he may be in danger of being devoured by an army of ants.

Goldsmith returned to office in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), where Dr.

• Lowell mentions Dodsley's throwing of Old Plays.

(1744) as a symptom of a return to the past, like Percy's "Relics". Essay on "Gray".

2IO nA History of English 'T(pmantcism.

"As the day goes on", he is surprised to learn that Dryden and Rowe are quite dated, that the flavor goes back a whole century, and that "Fletcher, Ben Jonson and all of Shakespeare's plays are the only things that happen". How, exclaims the good shepherd, is it possible that these days rejoice in that old-fashioned dialect, that old-fashioned humor, those artistic characters that abound in the works you mention? Goldsmith's aversion to this affectation finds further expression in his Life of Parnell (1770). which caused the generality of mankind to rise above. . . His stagings are not reminiscent of those kitsch things that have been in fashion for a long time to be admired. . . Its poetic language is no less correct than its themes are pleasant. He found it the moment it was raised to its highest refinement; and since then it has gradually declined. It is really surprising, after what Dryden, Addison and Pope did to improve and harmonize our native language, that their successors took the trouble to wrap it in primitive barbarism. These misguided innovators were not content with restoring obsolete words and phrases, but indulged in the wildest transpositions and crudest constructions; it is in vain to imagine that the more his writings resemble prose, the more they resemble poetry. They have adopted a language of their own and are attracting the attention of mankind. Those who do not understand are silent: and those who understand

The Warton School.

211

its meaning they are willing to extol to show that they understand.” This last phrase strikes at the alleged obscurity of Gray and Mason's odes.

To illustrate the growth of a retrospective habit in literature, Mr. Perry* quotes at length from an essay "On the Prevailing Taste for Old English Poets" by Vicesimus Knox, former master of the Tunbridge School, editor of Excerpts elegant. and an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Knox's essays were written while he was a student at Oxford and published together in 1777. By this time, the Romantic movement was in full swing. "The Castle of Otranto" and Percyrelics "hadhe has been gone for over ten years: many of Rowley's poems have been printed; and in the same year Tyrwhitt published a complete edition of it, and Warton published the second volume of it.english historyPoetry." Chatterton and Percy are mentioned by Knox.

"The antiquarian spirit," he writes, "once confined to the study of the customs, buildings, records, and coins of ages that preceded us, has now extended itself to those poetic compositions which were popular with our ancestors and have fallen into decay." of language and the predominance of correct and polite taste are gradually being forgotten. Books in black letters are sought after with the same eagerness with which the English antiquarian examines a monumental inscription, or guards a Saxon Ballad coin composed by an illiterate and by tradition passed down

• "Literature of the Eighteenth Century", pp. 401-0. . . .

212 i/J History of English Romanticism.

For several centuries it was rescued from the hands of the people to have a place in the collection of the man of good taste. Verses, which a few years ago were only worthy of the attention of children or the lower and coarser classes, are now admired for that simple simplicity which was once called coarseness and vulgar essayism,had its day, and the antique dealer doesn't needDespise us if we cannot read it patiently. He who delights in all the unread reading may delight in the singularity of his taste, but he must nevertheless respect the judgment of mankind which casts into oblivion the works he admires. While he studies Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Occleve undisturbed, let him not blame our obstinacy in keeping Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Pope. . . Despite the undeniable merit of many of our ancient poetry relics, I find it doubtful that any of them will be tolerated as the product of a modern poet. A good imitation of the old style, he would find admirers; but considered original anyway, it would be considered a sloppy, vulgar and unartificial composition. There are few who appreciate Dr. Percy himself, and those of other late writers, cannot read with more pleasure than the oldest ballad in this brilliant writer's collection." Mr. Perry cites another article by Knox, in which admirers are divided, and divide English poetry into two parts:on one side arethe lovers and imitators of Spenser and Milton; and on the other side those of Dryden, Boileau and Pope": in modern terms, the Romantics and the Classics. Joseph Warton's "Essay on Pope" was an attempt

The Warton School. 213

to establish his subject's standing among English poets. Following the discursive method of Thomas Warton's "Observations on the Fairy Queen", it was also an extensive commentary on all the poems in Pope's series. Every point was illustrated with a wealth of insights, and there were digressions that became independent essays on accompanying themes: um, <?. B. in Chaucer, one of the first French metrical novels; another on Gothic architecture; another on the new school of landscaping, approvingly citing Walpole's essay and Mason's poem, and mentioning the Leasowes. The book was dedicated to Young; and when the second volume was published in 1782, the first was reprinted in revised form, prefaced by a letter from Tyrwhitt to the author, who writes that, under Warton's authority, "it may perhaps be ventured to admit that Poetry is not confined to the couplets and that his greatest powers are not shown in prologues and epilogues".

The modern reader will be inclined to believe that Warton's estimate of Pope is quite high. No doubt he places him in the second rank of poets, below Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, but next to Milton and above Dryden; and he calls the reign of Queen Anne the great age of English poetry. If, however, we consider that the essay was not published until twelve years after Pope's death, and at a time when he was still considered, if not the greatest poet, at least the greatest verser that England ever produced, we shall see, that Warton's views can be seen as revolutionary and his defiance of critics as daring. These opinions are best expressed by quoting

214 <^ History of the English "T^mantic".

some passages from his book, not consecutive, but taken here and there as best suit the purpose.

“The sublime and the pathetic are the two main nerves of all genuine poetry. What is transcendentally sublime or pathetic about Pope? ... He soon left the more poetic provinces of his art to become a moral, didactic, and satirical poet. .. And perhaps not inclined to speak plainly, I adopt the following passage from Voltaire, which I think characterizes Pope as precisely as his model Boileau, for whom it was originally intended: “Incapable peut-etre du sublime qui ^leve I'ame, et you sentiment qui I'attendrit, mais fait pour eclairer ceux a qui la nature accord I'un et l'autre; laborieux, strict, precise, pur, harmonieux, il devint enfin le poete de la raison... A clear mind and a sharp mind alone are not enough to make a poet; the strongest observations on human life, expressed with the greatest elegance and brevity, are morals, not poetry... It is creative and brilliant thinking, an imagination, acer spiritus ac vis, and that alone can a writer with this sublime and form a very unusual character."

Warton believes that Pope's epic about Brutus, the legendary founder of Great Britain,tiveit sounded more like "Henriade" than "Iliad" or even "Gerusalemme Liberata"; How it would have looked (if this plan had been carried out), how much and for what reasons the man who is adept at portraying modern life and the most secret foibles and follies of his contemporaries is therefore incapable of portraying the ages of heroism, and this simple life, which is the only epic poetry that can gracefully represent

7. War school ton. 215

attendant. . . Wit and satire are ephemeral and ephemeral, but nature and passion are eternal.” Most of Pope's work, the author concludes, “is didactic, moral and satirical; and consequently not of the most poetical kind of poetry; from which it is evident that common sense and judgment were his distinguishing assets, rather than imagination and invention... He confined himself to describing modern customs; but these customs, being familiar, uniform, artificial, and polite, are inherently unsuitable for any lofty aspirations of the Muse. Gradually, he became one of the most correct, consistent, and exacting poets who ever wrote... Whatever poetic enthusiasm he really possessed, he stifled and repressed. Reading it doesn't affect our minds with the strong emotions we feel for Homer and Milton; so that no man of true poetic spirit is master of himself when he reads them. . . Anyone who thinks 'Faerie Queene', 'Palamon and Arcite', 'Tempest' or 'Comus' is childish and romantic might like Pope. It is certainly no small compliment to say that he is the great poet of reason, the foremost writer of ethical verse."

To illustrate Pope's inferiority in the poetry of nature and passion, Warton cites not only Spenser and Milton as a contrast, but such contemporaries as Thomson, Akenside, Gray, Collins, Dyer, Mason. , West, Shenstone and Bedingfield. He complains that Pope's "Pastorals" contained no new pictures of nature and his "Windsor Forest" had no local color; while "Thomson's scenes are often as wild and romantic as Salvador Rosa's, motley with chasms and torrents and

2x6 aA History of 'T{pmanticism English.

'fortified crags' and deep valleys, crested with pines and the darkest caves." "When Gray published his exquisite ode at Eton College. . . little attention was paid to him; but I suppose you can't find a critic who doesn't place it high above Pope's "Pastorals." "

A few additional passages are intended to show that this critic's literary principles were, on the whole, consciously and polemically romantic. Thus he defends the mot precis - that motto of the nineteenth-century Romantics - for "little natural facts" against "the universal lover."; For him"vivid painting of Spenser and Shakespeare", in contrast to the lack of pictures and images in Voltaire's "Henriade". He praises "the fashion which has lately taken hold in all the nations of Europe for republishing and illustrating their ancient poets".

"Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to unite the change of verse, the full and vibrant line, the long majestic march and the divine energy!"

he exclaims, "What! Has Milton contributed nothing to the harmony and expansion of our language? ... Surely his verse varies and sounds as much and displays as much majesty and energy as can be found in Dryden. And we dare say that that who studies Milton attentively will develop a truer taste for true poetry than that formed among French writers and their followers.

• However, it is curious that Warton Villon as "a

impertinent and insipid ballad dealer, whose thoughts and language were as vile and illiberal as his life", vol. II. p. 338 (5th edition, 1806).

The Warton School. 2 1 7

expresses a preference for blank verse over rhyme in long poems on noble subjects.*

• • It's always the sick song of the French.

Critics, their supporters, and students of English writers are often wrong. If correctness implies the absence of minor errors, perhaps this may be conceded: if it means that, because his tragedians avoided Shakespeare's irregularities, and observed a fairer economy in his fables, the "Athalia," for instance, is preferable

• Lear', the notion is unfounded and absurd. Although

*Henriade' may be free of gross nonsense, but who dares classify it as 'Paradise Lost'? . . . In our own country, the rules of drama have never been better understood than they are now; but what uninteresting though unsullied tragedies have we lately seen! . . . If natural powers are constrained and weakened by that timidity and caution which a rigid regard for the dictates of art evokes; or whether that philosophic, geometrical, and systematic spirit, so fashionable, which spread from the sciences to good literature, consulting reason alone, did not lessen and destroy feeling, and drive our poets to heart to write more from and to the head than in the head; or if, after all, only models that the rules need

• Warton quotes the following Batic overture from a "Poem in

In Praise of Blank Verse" by Aaron Hill, "one of the first people to notice Thomson in the publication 'Winter'":

"Climb the poppy valley of Rhyme! And ride the storm that thunders in white verse!"

— Vol. J I p. 186

2i8 c// History of English anti-tantism,

they were designed, they appeared once, they follow the writers and strive vainly and ambitiously to surpass them... don't become rigid and forced. He censures the kindness of Addison's 'Letter from Italy'. “With what monotony and insensibility he spoke of statues and paintings! Raphael never received a more phlegmatic praise." On the other hand, he refers to Gray's account of his trip to the Grande Chartreuse as comparable to one of the best passages in the "Letter of Eloisa to Abelard".

This mention of Addison brings to mind a very instructive letter from Gray on the subject of poetic style. J Romantics loved rich diction, and the passage could be read as a preemptive defense of Wordsworth's criticism in the preface to 'Lyric Ballads'. "The language of the age," wrote Gray, "is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse differs nothing from prose. The writing world has added something, with idioms and foreign derivations." words enriched, nay, sometimes of their own composition or invention.

• See above, page 57. f See above, p. i8l.

^: An Richard West, abril de 1742.

The Battleschool ton. 219

Shakespeare's incomprehensible language is truly one of his chief beauties; and in this he has no less advantage over his Addisons and Rowes than in the other great achievements he mentions. Every word in it is a picture.” He then quotes a passage from “Richard III” and continues: “Please translate the following lines into the language of our modern dramaturgy. They seem untranslatable to me, and if so, then our language is very degenerate."

Warton also protests against the opinion that credits the French with introducing true taste into literature. * "Shakespeare and Milton imitated the Italians, not the French." " and on this subject quotes the famous stanza about the Hebrides in The Castle of Laziness. enchantments. These Gothic pendants are really more attractive to the imagination than the classic ones. The sorcerers of Ariosto, Tasso and Spenser have more powerful spells than the ones of Apollonius, Seneca, and Lucan. The enchanted forest of Ismeni is more terrible and immensely more poetic than the forest cut down by Caesar in Lucan (i. iii. 400), which was so full of terror that the priest did not dare to half-meet it. day or midnight. approach her—

"For fear the grove demon will be found."

• See Before, p. 94.

2 29 t/^ History of English %ofnantictictsm.

Who, seeing the saber feathers fluttering on the mighty helmet of the Castle of Otranto and the enormous arm at the top of the grand staircase, is not more moved than by the paintings of Ovid and Apuleius? What a ghostly world of images we find in the Edda! Runic poetry abounds in them. This is the exciting Ode of Gray about the "Descent of Odin". "

Warton predicts that Pope's fame as a poet will eventually rest on Windsor Woods, his Letter from Eloisa to Abelard, and The Breaching of the Keyhole. Time has already partially refuted this prophecy. Warton preferred Windsor Forest and Eloisa to Moral Essays because they belonged to a superior class of poetry. Posterity prefers "moral essays" because they are the best of their kind. They were the natural fruit of Pope's genius and time, while the others were artificial. We may go to Wordsworth for nature, Byron for passion, and twenty poets for both, but Pope is unrivaled in his particular field. That is, we value the quality of the artist; the one thing he does best, the one thing he can do that no one else can. But Warton's error points to the changing literary standards of his day; and his essay is one of many proofs that English Romanticism was not wholly without self-conscious aims, but had its critical formulas and program just like Queen Anne's classicism.

CHAPTER VII. ubc(5otbic "Kevival.

One of Thomas Warton's sonnets was addressed to Richard Hurd, later Bishop of Lichfield and Cov-Entry and later of Worcester. Hurd was a friend of Gray and Mason, and his Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762) helped start the Romantic movement. Perhaps they owe their inspiration in part to Sainte Palaye's 'Memoires sur l'ancienne Chevalerie', the first volume of which was published in 1759, although the third and final volume did not appear until 1781. As a standard of authority it bears the same relation to literature on the subject such as Mallets Histoire de Dannemarc in all writings on runic mythology in Europe in the eighteenth century. Jean Baptiste de la Curne de Sainte Palaye was a scholar of extensive knowledge not only in the history of medieval institutions but also in ancient French dialects. He went to the south of France to see Provence: he gathered a large library of Provencal books and manuscripts and published his "Histoire des Troubadours" in 1774. His other works include a "Dictionary of French Antiquities", a Glossary of Old French and an edition of "Aucassin et Nicolete". Mrs. Susannah Dobson, who wrote Historical Anecdotes of Heraldry and Chivalry

2 22 A history of English ^gmanticisra.

(1795) made an English translation of his History of the Troubadours of Sainte Palaye in 1779 and his Memoirs of Ancient Chivalry in 1784.

The purpose of Kurd's letters was to demonstrate "the supremacy of manners and Gothic fiction, adapted for poetic purposes, over classical". "The greatest geniuses at home and abroad", he says, "like Ariosto and Tasso were in" / Italy and Spenser and Milton in England

C seduced by these barbarities of their ancestors; / they were enchanted even by Gothic novels. Wai this whim and nonsense in them? Or is there not something in the Gothic novel particularly suited to the visions of genius and the purposes of poetry? And haven't modern philosophers gone too far in their constant mockery and scorn? After an introductory discussion of the origin of chivalry and wandering chivalry, and the ideal-typical chivalric qualities of "valor, generosity, gallantry and religion" derived from the military requirements of the feudal system, he goes on to describe a "remarkable correspondence between the customs of ancient heroic times, described by your great novelist Homer, and those that are presented to us in the books of the modern knight errant". of the novel, the Greek dotSot with the minstrels, the Olympic games with tournaments, and the exploits of Hercules and Theseus in subduing dragons and other monsters, with the similar firms Lancelot and Amadis of Gaul The critic dares to say to the Gothic man:

11

The Neo-Gothic. 223

ner's preference for the heroic. If Homer, he says, could have known both, he would have chosen the former because of "the improved gallantry of the feudal age and the superior solemnity of its superstition. The gallantry which inspired the feudal age inherently furnished the poet in every respect with better scenes and themes of description than the simple and unbridled barbarism of the Greeks... There was a dignity, a splendor, a variety in the feudal that the other coveted.

A similar advantage, Hurd believes, was enjoyed by novelists over heathen poets in regard to supernatural machines. "To the most solemn fantasies of witchcraft and enchantment, the horrors of the Goths were terrifying and terrible. The mummies of heathen priests were childish, but

Klo goth charmers shuddered and frightened all nature. . . You would not compare Horace's Canidia with the witches of 'Macbeth'. More gallant, if not... sublime, more terrifying, more alarming than those of classical fables. the superstitions they adopt are more poetic because they are gothic.

apparently the despisedGothick" de Addison — como;Mr. Howells says he quickly became Scott's "goth" admirer. This proclamation of a sophisticated Romantic doctrine predates Percy's Hallows and The Castle of Otranto. It was only a few years after Thomas Warton, Observations on the Fairy Queen and

/

^

224 A history of English 'T^pmanticism,

JoseEssay on the Pope", but his views were manymore radical. None of the Wartons would have dared declare that Gothic manners were superior to Homeric manners as material for poetry, whatever their sincere opinion.* Such an opinion must have seemed to Johnson mere blasphemy. Hurd registers the contempt suffered by the Gothic, considering that the feudal age was never lucky enough to have a great poet like Homer, capable of giving his life and ideals adequate artistic expression. Carent vate sacrum. Spenser and Tasso, he thinks, "were too late and found it impossible to really and perfectly paint what was no longer seen or believed ... As it stands, we can guess what the subject was capable of offering". genius of the rough sketches we have of it in ancient romances... The ablest writers of Greece ennobled the system in heroic ways while it was new and flourishing; and his works, being masterpieces of composition, established the credit, in the opinion of the world, that no revolution of time and taste could afterwards shake them, while the Gothic, which had fallen out of favor with bad writers in its infancy , and a New number of customs which arose before there was anything better to do justice to them, they could never be brought into fashion by the attempts of later poets to make the system themselves; so that when this political constitution disappeared from Europe, the mores which accompanied it did not

• But compare the last quoted passage with Warton's book.

Essay before, p. 219.

The Neo-Gothic. ^-' 225

ever seen or understood. No examples of such ways remain on earth. And since they only existed once and probably never will again, naturally people would regard them and speak of them as romantic and unnatural."

However, he believes that the Renaissance poets Ariosto and Spenser owe their best effects not to the touch of classical culture, but to Romantic materials. shakespeareis bigger when usedGothic and machine manners as if he employed the classical." Tasso no doubt tried to strike a balance between the two, giving his romantic theme an epic form, but Hurd describes his imitations of antiquity as "weak and cold and almost tasteless at the compare them. to his original fictions. . . Were it not for these lies \jnagnanima viensogna\ of Gothic invention, he would hardly have been willing to read 'Gierusalemme Liberata' a second time. long hesitation.” His favorite subject was Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. He had been fixated on this for most of his life - a different path than Spenser's, but above all perhaps the disrepute which the immortal satires of Cervantes' tales of chivalry now brought, but in all his poetry we see where they most they burn, a certain predilection for chivalric legends rather than Greek fables.

226 <i/l History of English Romanticism.

poem, will be seen to have a true unity of design, a merit which even the Wartons denied. "When an architect examines a Gothic building according to Greek rules, he finds nothing but deformations. But Gothic architecture has its own rules by which, when examined, it has value, as does Greek architecture."

The essayist complains that Gothic fables fell into disrepute under the influence of French critics who ridiculed and belittled the Italian novelists Ariosto and Tasso. The English critics of"The restoration - Davenant, Hobbes, Shaftesbury - took timefollowing the lead of the French, until these pseudo-classical tenets "became the kind of ditty with which Rymer and the rest of that school filled their flimsy essays and roaring prefaces... Tasso's clinquant" and "Mr. Addison,* taking advantage of the law here, took and sent", so that "it became something of a catchphrase among the critics". "What we have achieved", concludes the final letter of the series, "with this revolution, much common sense is philosophy and fashion, * Faery 'Spenser still ranks first among poets - I mean among all those who come from this House or they do good.

We have seen that "gothic" as a term in literary criticism during the classical period was synonymous with barbaric, lawless, and in poor taste. addison

• See Before, p. 49.

Gothic life. 227

educate your audiencethe taste of most of ourBoth English poets and readers are extremely Gothic.” simplicity that we so admire in the works of antiquity are compelled to hunt out strange ornaments and let not a spark of ingenuity of any kind escape. I see these writers as Goths in poetry who, like those in architecture, unable to match the beautiful simplicity of the ancient Greeks and Romans, strove to fill their place with all the extravagances of irregular fancy." next work (No. 63), a " allegorical vision of the meeting of the true and the false spirit", discovers "in a very dark forest a monstrous web constructed in the Gothic manner and covered with countless artifices. Type of barbarian sculpture". This temple is dedicated to the god of clumsiness who is "dressed in the habit of a monk". I have endeavored in several of my speculations to banish that Gothic taste which has taken hold of us.

The particular literary vice that Addison sought to correct in these articles was that vain style which infected a certain seventeenth-century school of poetry, sometimes encountering such childish things as anagrams, acrostics, echoing songs, hieroglyphs, and verse in the form of eggs, wings, hourglasses, etc. He

• Spectators, nº 62,

2 28 zThe History of English Romanticism.

He names, as particular representatives of this tendency, Herbert, Cowley and Sylvester. But it is significant that Addison called this fashion goth. In fact, it has nothing to do with the sincere and loving art of the ancient master builders. He might as well have called it a classic; for, as he himself admits, such implements are to be found in the Greek anthology, and Ovid was a presumptuous poet. Addison was a writer of pure taste, but the coldness and timidity of his imagination, and the maxims of the critical school to which he belonged, led him to misunderstand the flowering of that warm and creative imagination so widespread in Gothic art to confuse. . Addison resented the grotesqueness expressed in that cheesy energy. The art and poetry of his time was tame, while Gothic art was wild; dead where Gotham lived. I couldn't sympathize with him or understand him. "Vous ne pouvez pas comprendre; vous avez toujours hai la vie".

I quoted Vicesimus Knox's complaint that the antiquarian spirit had spread from architecture and numismatics to literature.* We encountered antiquarian satire many years earlier; in Pope, in Akenside's Spenserian poem The Virtuoso (1737); in Richard Owen Cambridge's Scribleriad (1751):

“See how your children work with generous zeal.

• See atU, p. 211

Gothic levivism. 229

But the chief of Saxon wisdom be your concern,

Preserve your idols and repair your temples;

And let us show you its deep mythology

By the wheel of Seater and the mighty throne of Thor.”*

The most notable example of virtuosity invading the neighboring realm of literature is the case of Strawberry Hill and The Castle of Otranto. Horace Walpole, son of the great Prime Minister Robert Walpole, was a person of diverse accomplishments and undeniable intelligence. He was a man of fashion, a man of taste, and a man of literature; though in the first of these figures he cherishes or feigns contempt for the second, which is common in amateur authors and dandy artists belonging to l/eau monde or of high social status, test Congreve and even Byron, that "rhyming partner". Walpole, as we have seen, had been Gray's friend at Eton and had traveled - and fought - with him all over the continent. When he returned home, his father's influence earned him a seat in Parliament, access to the courts, and several lucrative sinecures. He was a zealous courtier, a keen and spiteful observer, a busy gossip, and a complete gossip of society gossip. His female mentality made him a capitalist; and your race

• "Works of Richard Owen Cambridge", pp. 198-99. Cambridge

he was one of the Spenserian imitators. See Before, page 8g, Caution. In Lady Luxborough's correspondence with Shenstone there is much mention of a certain Mr. Miller, a neighboring owner, who was concerned with goth. Of the appearance of The Scribleriad he writes (January 28, 1751): 'I imagine this poem is not intended to please Mr. Miller and the rest of the goth gentlemen; therefore, Mr. Cambridge expresses its distaste for introducing "or reviving tastes and fashions inferior to the modern taste of our country".

230 iA History of English l^omanticism.

Spundence, particularly with Sir Horace Mann, the English ambassador in Florence, is a continuing tale of clandestine diplomacy, court intrigue, clandestine politics and fashionable scandals during the reigns of the second and third Georges. He also appears as an amateur historian of the court, by virtue of his “Catalog of Royal and Noble Authors”, “Anecdotes of Painting” and “Historical Doubts about Richard III”. However, our current preoccupation with him goes far beyond that. About 1750 Walpole, having purchased a villa on Strawberry Hill on the Thames near Windsor formerly owned by Mrs. Chenevix, the posh toymaker from London, has begun converting her home into a miniature Gothic castle. , in which he is said to have "survived three sets of his own battlements". These architectural experiments lasted for about twenty years. They aroused great interest and attracted many visitors, and Walpole can be seen as a true catalyst for the renaissance of pointed architecture. He spoke of Strawberry Hill as a castle, but it was actually a strange mixture of ecclesiastical and crenellated Gothic used for domestic use. It had a cloister, a chapel, a round tower, a gallery, a "refectory", a stair tower with a Gothic balustrade, stained glass, wall shields and Gothic paper tapestries. Walpole's faux Gothic became a laughing stock as the true principles of medieval architecture became better understood. From the time when Iñigo Jones, court architect of James I, returned from Italy where he had studied the works of Palladio; and especially since the time when his successor, Sir Christopher Wren, had St. Paul's Basilica remodeled in the Italian Renaissance style,

EU

The Neo-Gothic. 231

After the great fire of London in 1664, Gothic fell increasingly out of fashion.yes in historyIn British art”, says Eastlake, “there is one period more important than the other for the neglect of Gothic art, certainly the middle of the 18th century”. Known only to the curious, collectors of novels and ballads handwritten in black letters, Salisbury and York Minster, ruins such as Melrose and Fountain Abbeys, Crichton Castle and hundreds more were impressive witnesses to the civilization that raised them and must sooner or later demand respectful attention. It is not surprising that the Gothic Revival disappeared along with the Romantic movement in literature, if it did not give it its original impetus.

“It is impossible,” says Eastlake*, speaking of Walpole, “to examine the letters or novels of this remarkable man without being struck by the unmistakable evidence they contain of his medieval predilections, the first modern fiction whose interest hinged on the events of an age of chivalry. and thus became the prototype of the type of novel later written by Mrs.

• "History of the Gothic Revival," p. 43.

232 c// History of English tomantism.

Radcliffe and perfected by Sir Walter Scott. The feudal tyrant, the venerable cleric, the lost but virtuous maiden, the castle itself with its moats and drawbridges, its gloomy dungeons and solemn corridors, all come from an interesting mine which has since been mined with efficiency and ever-increasing profit. . But for Walpole it must be "the third credit of his discovery and first excavation".

The Complete Works of Walpole* contains elaborate illustrations and floor plans of Strawberry Hill. East-Lake gives a somewhat technical description of its structural features, its gables, buttresses, finials, plaster slats and parapets, spiers, and what its owner himself describes as its "narrow windows enriched with rich saints". I only collect here the description of the interior, which “was exactly what would be expected of a man who entertained a vague admiration for the Gothic, without the knowledge necessary for a correct adjustment of his facial features. Ceilings, screens, niches, etc... are all copied, or rather parodied, from existing examples, but in total disregard of the original design intent. For Lord Orford, goth was goth, and that was enough. He would have turned an altar slab into a parlor table, or made a pool cupboard, with the utmost presumption, if it had served his purpose, so we find that in the north room, when he needed a model for his fireplace, he thought it best to take the form of Bishop Dudley's tomb in Westminster Abbey. He found a pattern for the pillars of his garden gate in the choir of Ely Cathedral."

• "Works of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford", em cinco volumes,

1798. "A Description of Strawberry Hill", vol. II P. 395-516.

The Neo-Gothic. 233

The roof of the gallery borrowed a design from Henry VII, the chapel of; the entrance to the same apartment through the north gate of St. Alban's; and one side of Archbishop Bourchier's tomb hall at Canterbury. Eastlake's conclusion is that Walpole's Gothic, "although far from reflecting the beauties of earlier ages, or anticipating those that were destined to emerge from a new stylistic development, still occupies a position in the history of English art that is ours." support a cause that would otherwise have been abandoned.

James Fergusson, in his 'History of Modern Architectural Styles', says of Walpole's structures: '* We now know that these are very indifferent specimens of genuine Gothic art, and we do not know how either their author or his contemporaries could ever have imagined that these strange carvings were genuine reproductions of the details of York Minster, or other equally famous buildings, from which they must have been copied. Architecture of churches as of houses, "and it is astonishing how many castles were built which had nothing more crenellated than an irregular parapet and occasional cruciform windows". This school of bastard Gothic, exemplified by the buildings of Batty Langley and other early restorers of this style, has an analogy with the imitations of old English poetry of the last century. In both there was the same rashness, the same lack of knowledge, the same rudeness, insecurity, imprecision, lack of invention, the mixture of

234 <^ History of English T^manticism.

ancient and modern customs. Only Pugin* understood the details of medieval architecture so well that the architect could work in the spirit of that art, not like a slavish copyist, but with freedom and originality. One service that Walpole and his followers, however, did to revitalize public interest in the Gothic style was to stop the process of decay and save the remains of many abbeys, castles or stately halls in ruins. "Then, when Rhyddlan Castle, in North Wales, came into the possession of Dr. Shipley, Dean of St. Asaph, the massive walls were duly used as quarries, accessible to any neighbor who wished, the materials of constructions could overturn and reach the height of an axe.f "Walpole", writes Leslie Stephen, "is almost the first modern Englishman to discover that our ancient cathedrals were really beautiful. He found that a very charming toy could be made of the Middle Ages Strawberry Hill, with all its gimmicks, cardboard battlements and colored paper carvings, was the lineal ancestor of the new courthouses.

• Pugin's "True Principles of Gothic Architecture" Published

Published in 1841.

f "Sketches of Eminent Statesmen and Writers", A. Hayward (1880). In a note to "Marmion" (1808) Scott said that the ruins of Crichton Castle, remarkable for the richness and elegance of their stone carvings, were then used as a stable and sheepfold.

The Neogothic, 235

well aware of the need for more serious study, appears in his letters; in one of them, for example PDividedhis Gothic taste, with far superior knowledge.

Walpole did not arrive at his Gothic through the door of literature. It was simply a specialized development of his taste as a virtuoso and collector. The museum of curiosities he set up on Strawberry Hill included not only armour, stained glass and illuminated missals, but also an assortment of china, enamels, earthenware, bronzes, paintings, prints, books, coins and trinkets. -a-brac and souvenirs like Cardinal Wolsey's hat. Queen Elizabeth's gauntlet and spur, which William III. He used it at the Battle of the Boyne. Walpole's novel was a thin veneer; below, he was a man of the 18th century. His opinions on all subjects, if not contradictory, were notoriously capricious and tenuous. Thus, despite his admiration for Gray and his (temporary) interest in the ballads of Ossian, Chatterton and Percy, he mocked Mallet and Gray's rune experiments, spoke disparagingly of Spenser, Thomson and Akenside, compared Dante to "a Methodist minister ". . . in Chaos" and delivered "A Midsummer Night's Dream" "40 times more absurd than the worst translation of an Italian opera book".

• "Library Hours", Second Row; Article "Horace Wal-

Pole."

f Brief an Bentley, February 23, 1755,

236 <t/1 History of English Romanticism.

used in its own verse. It has been noted that in all his correspondence he mentions Froissart's 'Chronicle' once and that he mocks Lady Pomfret for translating it.

So, turning to "The Castle of Otranto", we find that even when Walpole's Gothicism was an accidental "sport" of his general virtuosity; his romance was therefore an accidental consequence of his architectural distractions. Strawberry Hill produced The Castle of Otranto, the title of which was well chosen as the castle itself is the hero of the book. The human characters are nothing. “If I must confess to you,” he writes to Rev. William Cole (March 9, 1765), “What was the origin of this novel? I woke up one morning in early June of last year from a dream I could only recover from, was that I believed I was in an old castle (a very natural dream for a goth head full of gothic stories like mine) and that I saw a giant hand in armor on the top banister of a grand staircase I lay down and began to write, not knowing anything I was going to say or tell. The work grew in my hands... In short, I was so absorbed in my story, which ended in less than two months, that one afternoon, after drinking my tea, I wrote around six o'clock, until one o'clock. half in the morning.

The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic History was published in 1765.* According to the title page, it was translated from the original Italian by Onuphrio Muralto, a kind of pun on the author's surname.

• Five hundred copies, says Walpole, were deleted on December 24,

1764.

The Neo-Gothic. 237

—By W. Marshall, Gent. This mystification continued in the preface, which claimed that the book was printed in black ink in Naples in 1529 and found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in northern England. In the preface to its second edition, Walpole described the work as "an attempt to blend the two kinds of novel, the ancient and the modern": he explained that, by introducing humorous dialogues between the castle's servants, he had taken on nature. and Shakespeare for his models; and he was furious with Voltaire for criticizing the mixture of buffoonery and solemnity in Shakespeare's tragedies. Walpole's claim to have created a new kind of novel was universally accepted. 'Your initiative in literature,' says Mr. Stephen, 'was as fruitful as his art venture. "The Castle of Otranto" and "The Mysterious Mother" were the progenitors of Mrs. Radcliffe, and probably had a strong influence on the author of "Ivanhoe". nuns and hermits - it could be said that all the scenes and characters that occupied the imagination of the romantic school were created on the night when Walpole lay down to sleep, his head full of Wardour Street curiosities, and dreamed that he was a huge hand in armor resting on the banister of his stairs.

Nowadays it is impossible to take "The Castle of Otranto" seriously and it is difficult to explain with what respect it has already been mentioned by authoritative writers. Warburton called it "a masterpiece of fable and also a new breed ... The scene unfolds

238 (vf History of English 'T{omanticism.

gothic chivalry; where a beautiful imagination, aided by the power of judgment, enabled the reader to go beyond his subject, and to realize the whole purpose of the ancient tragedy; /. that is, to purify the passions with pity and terror, with coloring as grand and harmonious as in any of the best dramatists.” Byron named Walpole the author of the last tragedy* and the first novel in the language. Scott wrote of The Castle of Otranto: "This novel has rightly been regarded not only as the original and model of a peculiar type of composition attempted and successfully executed by a man of great genius, but also as one of the masterpieces of our fiction. popular.. Gray says in a letter to Walpole (December 30, 1764) acknowledging receipt of his copy: "It makes some of us cry, and in general we are all afraid to go to bed at night." does not nobody else cries, and instead of getting us out of bed, sends us there, or would have done so if it had been a little longer, for the only tolerable thing about the book is its brevity and a little speed in the action. Macaulay, "admitting its absurdity and blandness say that probably no reader has ever found it boring. There are no digressions, unreasonable descriptions and long speeches. Each sentence moves the story forward. The emotion is constantly renewed.” Emotion is too strong a word to describe any emotion that the Castle of Otranto can now evoke. But the same cunning that always makes Walpole's correspondence readable saves his novel.

• "The Mysterious Mother", begun in 1766, completed in 1768.

The Neo-Gothic. 239

unforgivable sin - in literature - of boredom. It continues and can still be read without very painful effort.

There is nothing very new in the plot, which has all the hallmarks of romantic novels as common in Sydney's X'rcadia times as in Sylvanus Cobbs. Alfonso, the former lord of Otranto, was poisoned in Palestine by his chamberlain Ricardo, who forged a will making him Alfonso's heir. To make his peace with God, the usurper founded a church and two monasteries in honor of Saint Nicholas, who "appeared to him in a dream promising that Richard's posterity would rule in Otranto until the rightful owner grew up to inhabit it". . the castle. from someone known where, A gigantic armor slowly stalks the castle: a monstrous gauntlet is placed on the banister of the grand staircase, a chained foot appears in a dwelling, a sword is brought into the courtyard on the shoulders of a hundred men, and finally breaks Possessor from these fragmentary apparitions in "Alfonso's disguise, enlarged to monstrous grandeur," he enters the castle walls, utters the words, "Behold in Theodore Alfonso the true heir," and with a thunderclap he ascends to heaven. Theodore is the natural peasant boy , grandson of the crusader with a beautiful Sicilian woman secretly married on the way to the Holy Land, and in this case is identified with the strawberry brandy of the ancient novel Die

240 tA History of English 'T{pmanticism.

Figure of a bloodied arrow engraved on his shoulder. There are other supernatural omens, such as a hooded, hollow-voiced skeleton, a portrait descending from its panel, and a statue bleeding from its nose.

What was new about the "Castle of Otranto" was its "Gothic frame", the "wind whistling through the battlements" and the doctor's secret trap.

• "*- that Isabella tried to escape. "A terrible

Absolute stillness reigned in these subterranean regions, save for the occasional gust of wind that shook the doors through which he had passed and which, creaking on rusty hinges, echoed in this long labyrinth of darkness. The wind blew out the sail, but an imperfect ray of clouded moonlight shone through a crack in the vaulted ceiling and fell directly onto the spring of the trapdoor. of the feudal cavalry entering the castle gate with the greatsword, but the passage is wrong and lacking in detail compared to similar things in Scott. The book was not a historical novel, and the moods, the feelings, the language, everything was modern. Walpole knew little of "the Middle Ages and had no contact with their spirit". Deep down he was frivolous, frivolous; and his incurable shallowness, amateurishness, and lack of seriousness rendered all his real intelligence useless when applied to a subject like "The Castle of Otranto."

• "The Castle of Otranto" was dramatized by Robert Jephson,

entitled "The Count of Narbonne", performed at the Covent Garden Theater in 1781 and later printed with a dedication to Walpole.

The Neo-Gothic. 241

Walpole's tragedy, The Mysterious Mother, does not even have the level of importance that gives his novel a niche in literary history. The subject was too unnatural to justify the stage presentation. Incest, if treated like Sophocles (Walpole justified himself with the example of "Oedipus"), or even Ford or Shelley, can claim a place among the themes that art does not have. ; but when treated in this particular artist's lascivious and intensely melodramatic manner, it's nothing short of insulting. "The Mysterious Mother" is even more absurd than it is horrible. Gothic machines are present, but minimal. The setting for the action is a castle in Narbonne, and Castellana is the heroine of the work. The other characters are knights, monks, orphan girls and feudal servants; Monasteries, drawbridges, the heretics of Vaud and the assassination of Henry III. and Henry IV are mentioned, and the author's Whig and Protestant leanings are strangely evident in his account of priestly intrigues.

"El Castillo de Otranto" did not take long to find imitators. One of the first was that of Clara Reeve.

• • Champion of Virtue" (1777), drawn on title page

"A Gothic Story" and reprinted the following year as "The Old English Baron". Under the latter title, it has had thirteen editions, the last of which, in 1883, featured a portrait of the author. Miss Reeve had earlier published (1772) The Phoenix, a translation of Argenis, "a Romance written in Latin in the early seventeenth century by John Barclay, a Scotsman, and which contained an allegorical representation of the common wars of France during

242 <i/l History of English Romanticism.

the reign of Henry III. "* "Please", asks the author of O Campeão da Virtude in her speech to the reader, "have you ever read a book called The Castle of Otranto? If so, feel free to join me for a review. But haven't you read it? However, you must have heard that it is an attempt to combine the most attractive and interesting circumstances of ancient romance and modern romance. . . The stirring of the story is witty and reasonable; the characters are drawn and supported admirably; polished and elegant expression; However, with all these brilliant benefits, it boggles the mind. . . The reason is obvious; the machinery is so violent that it destroys the effect it intends to produce. If the story had stayed within the bounds of probability, the effect would have been preserved. . . For example, we can imagine and allow a ghost to appear; we can even dispense with the enchanted sword and helmet, but then they have to stay within certain limits of credibility. A sword so great that a hundred men must lift it, a helmet that by its own weight forces the passage through a court to an arched vault, . . . When his expectation is at its highest, these circumstances knock him down as a witness, destroying the work of the imagination, and attracting laughter instead of attention. . . In the course of my observations of this unique book, it seemed possible to compose a work on the same plane which would avoid these shortcomings."

So Miss Reeve promised to admit only one

• James Beattie, „Dissertation über Fable and Romance“. "Ar-

genis", was printed in 1621.

7be gothic l^evival. 243

a rather mild dose of the wonderful in his novel. Like Walpole, she claimed to be simply the editor of the story, which she said she had transcribed or translated from an Old English manuscript, now somewhat worn equipment. The period was the 15th century, in the reign of Henry VI, and the setting was England. But despite the implication of its subtitle, the fiction is much less

• "Gothic" as its model and its modernity of feeling

Mentality and manners are hardly covered with the slightest hint of the Middle Ages. As in Walpole's book, there is murder and usurpation, a legitimate heir being robbed of his inheritance and raised as a peasant. There's a haunted chamber, eerie midnight howls, an armored ghost, and a secret closet with his skeleton. The story is endlessly drawn out, and full of that uplifting moral, good sentiments, and stilted dialogue—that "old perfumed powdery talk of D'Arblay," as Thackeray called it—that Evelina abounds with.Thaddeus of Warsaw" and almost allthe fiction of the last quarter of the last century. Still, it was a little off-putting for Walpole to describe his student's performance as dull and dull.

The same lady published in 1785 a work in two volumes entitled The Progress of Romance, a kind of symposium on the history of fiction in a series of evening lectures. Its aim was to give the prose novel a place of honor in literature; a place close to epic in verse. She discusses definitions of the novel in current dictionaries such as Narratio ficta - Scriptum eroticum - Splendida fabula by Ainsworth and Littleton; and Johnson

• "A Military Fable of the Middle Ages - The Tale of a Savage

244 <^ History of English Romanticism.

Adventures of war and love.” She herself defines it as “heroic fable” or “epic in prose”. Claiming that Homer is the father of the novel, he finds it incredible that reasonable people "should despise and deride romances as the most contemptible of all kinds of writing, and yet remain in awe of the beauties of human fables". stories more fanciful and infinitely more incredible." After reviewing Greek romances such as Theagenes and Chariclea by Heliodorus, she turns to medieval tales of chivalry, which, she says, "were not as despicable as later writers portrayed them ". Romanticism than he imagines." “Chaucer, and all our ancient writers, abound in it. Spenser perhaps owes his immortality to him; Milton also had a nostalgia for the novel, and Cervantes, though he mocked the chivalry of Spain, loved what he laughed at and preferred his serious novel, Persiles and Sigismonda, to all his other earlier works.

Gives a list of probable dates of many medieval romances in French and English, verse and prose; but most of the book is taken up by contemporary fiction, the novels of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Crebillon, Marivaux, Rousseau, etc. He praises Thomas Leland Longsword's historical novel, Earl of Salisbury (1762) as "really a novel and not a Roman: — a story like that of the Middle Ages, composed of chivalry, love,

The Gothic 'T^evtval. 245

and Religion." To his second volume he added the "History of Charoba, Queen of Egypt," translated from the French by Vattier, Louis XIV's teacher of Arabic, who had translated it from a history of ancient Egypt written in Arabic. from Landor's poem "Gebir" When Landor was in Wales in 1797, Rose Aylmer was...

"Rose Aylmer, those piercing eyes may cry but they'll never see" -

he lent her a copy of Progress of Romance by Miss Reeves, which she had borrowed from a Swansea circulation library. And so the poor forgotten thing retains a vicarious immortality, originating in some of the noblest passages of modern English white verse, and connected with one of the most tender passages in Landor's life.

Miss Reeve frequently quotes from Percy's Essay on Ancient Minstrels, mentions Ossian and Chatterton, and refers to Hurd, Warton, and other authorities. "It was not until I had completed my draft," he writes in his preface, "did I read Dr. Beattie's 'Dissertation on Fables and Romance' or Mr. Warton's 'History of English Poetry'." The first of these was an essay of just over 100 pages by the author of The Minstrel.It is insignificant and closely borrows from Hurd's "Letters on Chivalry and Romance," to which Beattie repeatedly refers in his footnotes. follows the paths already trodden in investigations of this type: it analyzes the character of the Gothic tribes, the essence of the feudal system and the institutions of chivalry and knight-errant.

246 BC BC History of English Romanticism.

Apparently it was "one of the consequences of chivalry", then ignorant and gullible and passionately in love with adventures and wonderful exploits. They believed in giants, dwarves, dragons, enchanted castles and every imaginable kind of necromancy. These form the materials of the ancient novel. The errant knight has been described as gentle, religious, courageous, adventurous and even-tempered. Some mages befriended him and others resisted him. To honor his beloved and prove himself worthy of her, he had to face the warrior, defeat her and slay the giant, cut the dragon to pieces, break the spell of the necromancer, destroy the enchanted castle, fly through the air on horses. wooden or winged or fly unharmed across the open field and through the sky with a wizard while his guide dug the bottom of the ocean He discovered and punished the false knight, he overthrew or converted the unbelievers, he restored the exiled monarch to his dominion, and the maiden captive to her parents; He fought in the tournament, celebrated in the hall and participated in campaigns.

These conclusions are not very surprising. Scholars like Percy, Tyrwhitt, and Ritson, who, as collectors and publishers, rescued the fragments of the old minstrel and made available to the public concrete specimens of medieval poetry, rendered more useful services than moderate clerical essayists like Beattie and Hurd entertained their spare books. . time

The Neo-Gothic. 247

general speculation about the origin of the novel and whether it originated primarily with the troubadours, Saracens or Scandinavians. However, another passage from Seattle's "dissertation" can be transcribed, as it clearly appears to be a hintThe castle of Otranto." "The castles of thegreat barons created in a crude but grand style of architecture, full of dark and winding passages, secret chambers, long uninhabited galleries and chambers said to be haunted by ghosts and subverted by underground labyrinths as refuges in dire situations. Danger; the howling of winds through cracks in old walls and other dark voids; the creak of heavy doors on rusted iron hinges; the screeching of bats and the screeching of owls and other creatures that swarm into abandoned or half-occupied buildings; These and similar circumstances in the home life of the people of whom I speak would increase their superstition and increase their credulity; and among warriors who braved all dangers, they cherished a passion for wild adventures and difficult undertakings.

One of the books reviewed by Miss Reeve deserves mention, not because of its real importance, but because of its antiquity. Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, An Historical Romance, published in two volumes two years before The Castle of Otranto, is probably the first fiction of its kind in English literature. Its author was Thomas Leland, an Irish historian and Doctor of Divinity.* “The outline of the following story,” begins the advertisement, “and some of the

• The Dictionary of National Biography incorrectly calls him "Count von

Canterbury" and attributes it, albeit with some doubt, to John Leland.

248 <iA History of English l^omanticism.

More precise incidents and circumstances can be found in some of the early English historians.1 The time period of the action is the reign of Henry III. The king is introduced in person, and hearing him curse "by my halo" we rub our eyes and ask, "Could it be Scott?" and the fashion hardly verbose and sentimental.The hero is the son of Henry II and the fair Rosamond, but his speech is The adventures are of the usual variety: Dramatis Persone are valiant knights charging with their ladies' gauntlets on their helmets, usurpers, scoundrels, pirates, an evil monk trying to poison the hero, a downtrodden countess, a tormented maiden disguised as a page, a hermit who has a cave in a mountainside, etc. the figure of a knight passed out in full armor from the ground, in front of a abbey church with an image of the Virgin and Child carved in a niche above the door, and the building is described in the text thus: 'Its windows are filled with the foliage of its ornaments, and are darkened by the painter's hand; its many turrets rising above the roof, and the Christian insignia on its brow, proclaimed it a residence of devotion and charity." An episode in the story relates the death of a father at the hands of his son in Henry III's War of the Barons. the historical background of this civil war is no longer used and Simon de Montfort is not mentioned throughout the book.

The Neo-Gothic. 249

Clara Reeve was the daughter of a clergyman. He lived and died at Ipswich (i 725-1803). Walter Scott contributed one of his memoirs to Ballantyne's Novelists' Library, in which he defended Walpole's explicit use of the supernatural against his above-cited criticisms and favored Walpole's method.* She acknowledged that their novel was "literature." . Descendant of 'Otranto';" but its author, evidently irritated by his criticisms, described "The Old English Baron" as "Otranto reduced to reason and probability" and asserted that any murder trial at the Old Bailey would have done exactly as he fills it. the gap between his model and Mrs. Radcliffe's novels Lewis's Monk (1795) and Maturin's Fatal Vengeance, or the Family of Montorio (1807).

Anne Radcliffe - born at Ward in 1764, in the year of 'Otranto' - was a publisher's wife, necessarily away from home most of the time until late at night. Much of her writing was meant to amuse her solitude in the quiet hours of the night; and her wildness of imagination, the nocturnal romantic love and loneliness that permeate her books are sometimes explained in this way. In 1809, Mrs. Radcliffe was reported dead. Another form of rumor was that she had gone mad from constantly studying visions of horror and mystery. None

• See also, for a paper by this author, “English

"women writers".

f Maturin's 'Melmoth the Wanderer' (1820) had some influence on the French Romantic school and was used in some detail by Balzac.

norte

250 iThe History of English Romanticism.

the report was true; she lived in full possession of her faculties until 1823, although she published nothing after 1797. The proliferation of such stories shows how reclusive and even obscure was the life of this popular writer.

It would be tedious to provide an analysis of these once-famous serial fictions here. They were too long, too similar, and too overloaded with sentiment and description. The plots were intricate and full of the craziest improbabilities and those incidents that were once commonplace in romantic fiction and that realism now barred: "Hides, murders, duels, disguises, kidnappings, elopements..." Escapes, intrigues, documents forgeries, discoveries of ancient crimes and identifications of lost heirs. The characters were also conventional in nature. There were dark brown criminal villains, perhaps progenitors of

^\Fred and Lara Why Critics Think Ms. Rad-

L. Cliffe's stories had an important influence

I in Byron.^' There were repentant ladies of high birth

who retired to monasteries to atone for their sins

They are only explained with the general breakdown of wires

f in the last chapter. There were braves, bandits,

/ feudal tyrants, monks, inquisitors, soubrettes and

Domestic singles à la Bianca, in Walpole's Romance. The lover was one of those who adored our great-grandfather.

/,

• The following is a list of Mrs. Radcliffe: 'The Castles

of Athlin and Dunbayne' (1789); "Sicilian Romance" (1790); "Forest Romance" (1791); "Udolfo's Mysteries" (1794); "The Italian" (1797); "Gaston of Blondville" (1826). Collections of his poems were published in 1816, 1834 and 1845.

f See "Childe Harold," canto iv, xviii.

7 gothic life. 251

I \ mothers, beautiful, melancholy, passionate, respectful but desperate, users of the finest English; with large black eyes, a smooth white forehead, and black curls, now sunken, says Mr. Perry, on plum box tops. The heroine was also sensitive and melancholy. When she is alone by the sea or in the mountains, at sunset or dusk or under the midnight moon or when the wind blows, she

^ transitions to a stanza or sonnet: To autumn, to twilight, to the bat, to the nightingale, to the winds, to melancholy, to the evening song. “We hear this melancholy song approaching the Miltonic school in chords, but with Mrs. Radcliffe romantic melancholy is deep and piercing "Mysterious Mother" by Blair, Thomson, Warton, Gray, Collins, Beattie, Mason and Walpole Here are some stanzas from his ode to melancholy:

'*^ -' /^Spirit of Love and Sorrow, Hail!

v.. I hear your solemn voice from afar, mingling with the dying afternoon storm: Hail, with your sad pleasant tear! '

"Oh, in this stillness, in this lonely hour -

Your sweet hour of graduation day: Awaken your lute, whose enchanting power will call the imagination to obedience:

"To paint the wild, romantic dream that meets the poet's closed eye as he breathes his fervent sigh on the bank of a dark stream.

t<*>

252 ca. History of English l^manism.

"Oh lonely spirit, let your song

Lead me through all your holy places, the moonlit halls of the cathedral where ghosts sing their midnight song.

/

In the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe finds a tone missing from Walpole's novels: romance plus sentimentality. This last element began to be released in mainstream literature in mid-century as a protest and reaction against the emotional coldness of the classical age. - It was announced by Richardson, I Rousseau and the young Goethe; in the comedy Larmoyant, in French and English; It found its sly expression — joie de vivre in stars — and then became a fad, flooding fiction with productions like Mackenzie's "Man of Feeling," Miss E. Keiña. Burney and Jane's novels. Porter and Mrs. Opie.” Thackeray said there was more weeping in Thaddeus of Warsaw than in any novel he can remember. * / Emily, in "Myster- /

Udolfo's stories "cannot see the moon, nor a guitar, nor an organ, nor hear the rustling of the pines, without crying. , and from time to time a chorus of sobs rises from the whole company. The heroines of Mrs. Radcliffe are all descendants of Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe, but under ,

more romantic circumstances. (JYou will be harassed by a "Tt".

/ a thousand difficulties; kidnapped by masked bandits, \*~'

/ 1 /^ Immured in monasteries, imprisoned in thieves' castles, ' / ^' ' surrounded by natural and supernatural terrors^

• "Rotunda Papers", "A Ring of Bells". "Monge" Lewis

At the age of sixteen, he wrote a burlesque novel, Effusions of Sensibility, which remained in manuscript.

The Neo-Gothic. 253

persecuted, threatened with murder and rape. [^ But though they sigh, blush, tremble, weep, faint constantly, deep down they have a kind of hardness that endures everything.j) They upbraid the wicked in majestic language, full of noble sentiments and moral truths. You maintain the best sense of decency in the scariest of situations. Emily, a prisoner in the gloomy castle of Udolfo, held by bandits whose quarrels and orgies fill day and night with horror and fear for her virtue and her life at every hour, sends for the lord of the castle in whom she believes. after she kills your aunt, and reminds her that now that her protector is dead, it would not be proper for her to remain under his roof without a chaperone, and that therefore you would like to send her home?

The novels of Mrs. Radcliffe are romantic, but typically don't have a medieval theme. In "Udolfo's Mysteries" the period of action is the end of the 16th century; insideRomance™'oT^EF^'T'oresT,"'™1^5T^^ in 'The Italian', c. 1760. But its machinery is predominantly Gothic, and the real hero of the story is general, as in Wa 1 p o 1 e/ 'S o me 'Faun teff^ ^ ^ CurlQW 'In the 'Mysteries of Udolfo' is a castle in Tfie, Apennines; in 'Romance of the Forest' an abandoned abbey deep in the forest; in 'The Italian' the convent of the Black Penitents: the moldy battlements, worm-eaten tapestries, stairs of towers, secret chambers, underground passages, dark corridors where the wind howls sadly and distant doijrs that slam the door at midnight that haunt these dwellings of desolation;

I n-'-^^

- - -EU

^

254 <v^ History of English Omanism.

Chords of eerie music, the wraiths gliding through the gloomy apartments, the hollow voices warning the tyrant to beware. But his method here is quite different from Walpole's; She adds a natural explanation for every supernatural sight or sound. Hollow voices become ventriloquism; The form of a decaying corpse that Emily sees behind the black curtain in Udolpho's spirit chamber is only a wax figure. Intended to be a Mori keepsake for an old schoolboy, once the reader has learned this trick, he doesn't want to be forced to do it again, and whenever he encounters a ghost, he feels reassured that a future chapter will reincarnate them. in the flesh. e^bkipd^...,.

f There are many testimonies to the popularity of these novels. Thackeray says that a lady he knows, an avid reader of novels, called Valancourt one of the favorite heroes of her youth. "*Valancourt? And who was he?" shout the young people. Valancourt, my dears, was the hero of one of the most famous novels ever published in this country. Valancourt's beauty and elegance made the tender hearts of her young grandmothers pulsate with respectful sympathy. and his fame is gone... Ask Mudie's or the London Library who are now inquiring about the 'Udolfo Mysteries'."* Hazlitt said he owed Mrs.

• "Oh Radcliffe, you were the charmer once

Of the girls who stayed up all night to read: Their heroes were boys in armor, their heroines girls in white." -.-*» — Songs, ballads and other poems.

me for Haynes Bayly, Londres, 1857, p. 141,

/

The Neo-Gothic. 255

Radcliffe his love of moonlit nights, autumn leaves and crumbling ruins. By the way, it was in the melodramatic manipulation of the landscape that this artist was most original. "It seems the scenes with Wild Trósa" were his model, and analogy-loving critics dubbed her the Salvator Rosa of fiction. It is here that her influence on Byron and Chateaubriand is most evident.* Mrs. Radcliffe is not exactly to our modern liking, nor are Salvator's pictures of his moonlit Venice, its mountain passes with their black pines and sparkling torrents, not quite Ruskin's Venice and the Alps, but the opera's backdrop. They are still impressive in her own way, and in this area she possessed a true poetic feeling and mastery of the art of tempera painting. Note the image of Udolfo's castle at Emily's first sight, and the no less startling description of the "romance of the forest", the ruined abbey

R"

vi

A romance is no more

than an old lock and a squeaky door,

A distant hut, a chain ring, a gallery, a light, ancient armor and a ghost all in white.

And there's a romance."

– George Colman, “Das Testament“.

• Several of his novels have been dramatized and translated

French. Incidentally, it is curious to verify whether Goethe was not unaware of Walpole's story. See his quatrain The Castle of Otranto, first printed in 1837.

"When all the rooms of the Castle of Otranto are occupied: the first giant owner, Bitchweis, comes in mourning and expels the new false residents. woe! the fugitives, woe! to those who stay behind, that's how it is".

256 ^ History of English Romanticism.

where the La Motte family finds refuge: "He went over and looked at the Gothic remains of an abbey: it stood on a kind of rough lawn, shaded by tall, leafy trees, contemporary with the building and exuding a romantic melancholy during the greatest part of the hill seemed to have sunk into ruins, and what had withstood the ravages of time showed the remains of the most terrible and weather-beaten clothes. which / slowly swayed in the wind. 'The thistle shakes its / solitary head: the moss whistles in the wind.' The Gothic door, rich in ornate arabesques, and opening into the main part of the building, but now barred with weeds, was left untouched. Over the huge and splendid portal of this gate a window of the same order was erected, with pointed arches and fragments of stained glass still on display, once the pride of monastic devotion^ ) "La Motte, thinking

If it is possible that it can still accommodate people,

He walked to the door and picked up a huge knocker. Hollow sounds echoed through the emptiness of the place. After waiting a few minutes, he pushed open the door, which was heavy iron and the hinges creaked loudly. . . From this chapel he passed into the nave of the great church, whence one window, more perfect than the others, gave a wide view of the forest, through which the rich colors of the afternoon were seen, blending in imperceptible gradations with the solemn gray. the upper air."

• Ossian.

The Neo-Gothic. 257

Mrs. Radcliffe has never been to Italy, Switzerland or the south of France; guess the setting of his novels from second-hand photos and descriptions. But she accompanied her husband on excursions to the lakes and other parts of England, and in 1794 she took a cruise on the Rhine, drawing nothing in her novels. Furthermore, Mrs. Radcliffe must be credited with a certain ability to induce terror through the use of her favorite weapon in the novel's arsenal, the mystery. If he didn't invent a new emotion, as Hugo de Baudelaire said, did he at least put a new spin on the old one? ghost story. She creates in her readers a sense of imminent danger, suspense, foreboding. There is a sense of supernatural presences in these vast empty spaces; Silence itself is strange; Echoes sound like footsteps, ghostly shadows lurk in dark corners, whispers resound from behind the tapestry swaying in the gusts of wind. her lamp goes out, and she is left in the dark as soon as she reaches the point qj-iti of the manuscript she found in an old chest, etc., etc., beyond the shadow of the battlements. He

• See his "Journey through Holland," &c. (1795).

\See. Keats, "To St. Agnes's Eve":

'w\ "Arras teemed with game, horses and hounds fluttered in the tumult of the besieging wind, and long carpets rose above the howling ground."

1

258 c/^ History of English Romanticism.

The Gothic castle or convent remains, as in Walpole, the heart of history.

Two of these novels, the first and last, are of particular interest to us, although they are the weakest in the series, as they offer points of comparison with Waverley's novels. "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne" is the tale of a rivalry between two Highland clans, and its setting is the northeast coast of Scotland, "in the most romantic part of the Highlands", where Athlin Castle, like Uhlands. "Castle by the sea" - stood "on a rock whose foot was in the sea". This was a good spot for storms. "The winds pierced the depths in sudden gusts, hurling the foaming waves against the rocks with unimaginable fury. The foam lashed violently against the windows, despite the high position of the castle... The moon shone in faint intervals, broken clouds, above the Waters illuminating the white foam that burst all around... The waves crashed on distant shores in deep, echoing murmurs, and the solemn pauses between the stormy squalls filled the mind with enthusiastic admiration. Perhaps the description is somewhat reminiscent of that Image in "Marmion" of Tantallon Castle, the stronghold of Red Douglas on the German Ocean north of Berwick, whose grim towers have recently resumed their role in Stevenson's territory.David Bal-four'. the author apparently knew nothing

The Neo-Gothic. 259

of Scottish or country life. This is true; their castles could be anywhere. There is no mention of pipes or chess. Their rival chiefs are not Gaelic Caterans, but simple feudal lords. Your Baron of Dunbayne is like any other Baron; nay, he is unlike any baron that ever was on sea or land or anywhere but in the pages of a gothic novel.

• • Gaston de Blondville" began in 1802 and published

Published posthumously in 1826, edited by Sergeant Talfourd. Its inspiring occasion was a visit by the author to Warwick Castle and the ruins of Kenilworth in the autumn of 1802. The introduction has the usual fiction of an ancient manuscript found in an oak chest unearthed from the foundations of a Black Canons chapel at Kenilworth: a richly illuminated manuscript, with drawings at the beginning of each chapter, duly described, and a 'Trew Chronicle of what happened at Killingworth in Ardenn, when our sovereign lord of the Kynge was there celebrating his feast of Seynt Michel: with the wonderful accident that took place at the wedding ceremony of Gaston de Blondeville Buyers. With an account of the great Turney celebrated in the year MCCLVI, altered from the Norman language by Grymbald, monk of the Senct Marie Priori at Killijigworth. Chatterton forgeries had already presented the public with the first English imitations. The discoverer of this manuscript intends to publish a modernized version of it while striving to "keep some of the air of the old style". This is done by a poor reproduction, not of the thirteenth century, but of sixteenth-century English, which consists chiefly of

26. c/f History of English Romanticism.

Sions phrases and the occasional use of cerfes or naithless. Two words in particular seem to have struck Mrs. Radcliffe as the most prominent archaisms: ychon and himself, which she presents at every turn.

So "Gaston de Blondville" is a story from the time of Henry III. The King himself is an important figure, as is Prince Edward. Other historical figures such as Simón de Montfort and María de Francia are included but little used. The book is by no means a historical novel like Scott's Kenilworth, which has the same scene and was published in 1821, five years before Mrs. Radcliffe. The story is entirely fictional. What sets it apart from his other novels is the deliberate attempt to portray feudal mores. There are detailed descriptions of dress, upholstery, architecture, heraldic bearing, ancient military sets, a tourney, a royal hunt, a feast in the great hall at Kenilworth, an official visit to Warwick Castle and a baron's seance. Court. The "Emptiness" ceremony, when the king took his pot of spices, is rehearsed with a painful accumulation of detail. For all this he consulted Leland's Collectanea, Warton's History of English Poetry, Pegge's Domestic Book of Edward IV, Pegge's Dissertation on the Obsolete Office of Squire of the King's Body, the publications of the Society of Antiquaries, and similar authorities, with infinitely tedious results. . Walter Scott's archeology is not always accurate, nor is his knowledge always taken lightly; But overall, he had the art of adding his heavy material to his story rather than getting in the way of it.

In these two novels, we meet all the relatives

The Neo-Gothic. 261

secret trapdoors, sliding doors, spiral staircases in the thickness of the walls, underground vaults that lead to a neighboring convent or a grotto in the forest, rows of deserted dwellings where the moon peeps through double arches, towers, ruins around which the night winds groan and howl. Here again is the evil uncle who confiscates the property of his late brother's wife and keeps her and her daughter imprisoned in his dungeon for a long period of eighteen years; the heroine playing her lute and singing thoughtfully until the notes reach the ear of the young earl imprisoned in the adjacent tower; the girl being led by bandits on horseback until her screams bring help; the farm boy, who turns out to be the baron's heir. "His surprise was great when the baroness, who was recovering, looked up sadly at him and asked him to bare his arm." poor me! the surprise is not shared by the reader when "yes, it's my Felipe!", she said with great emotion; * I have indeed found my long-lost son: this strawberry,' * etc., etc. "Gaston of Blondville" has a ghost that is a real ghost, which is not explained in Mrs. Radcliffe at the end. It is the ghost of Reginald de Folville, Knight Hospitaller of St. John, murdered in the Forest of Arden by Gaston de Blondville and Prior of St. Mary's. Very stout looking, she is not content to see the moon flashes again, but comes and goes at any hour of the day, so often that it becomes quite dull. He eventually destroys the first and second assassins: one in his cell, the other

• "Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne".

262 <v^ History of English 'T^manticism.

in open tournament where his exploits as the mysterious knight in black armor may have given Scott a reference to his black knight in Ashby-de-la-Zouche's lists in "Ivanhoe" (1819). His last appearance is in the king's chambers, with whom he has a long conversation. "The worm is my sister," says he, "the mist of death is upon me. My bed is dark. The prisoner is innocent. The Prior of St. Mary's is on him. Be careful." It is not explained why Mrs. Radcliffe refrained from publishing his latest novel. Maybe he realized it was late and the time for something like this was over. In 1802, Lewis's "Monk" was being printed, as were several translations of German novels; Gone are Scott's early ballads and Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border was published the same year. By 1826, Waverley's novels had rendered all previous Gothic novels hopelessly obsolete. In 1834 two volumes of his poetry were given to the world, including a romance in verse in eight cantos, 'St. Alban's Abbey' and the stray verses of his romances. By this time Scott and Coleridge were dead; Byron, Shelley and Keats had been dead for years, and Mrs. Radcliffe's poetry had fallen on the unsuspecting ears of a new generation. A mockery in Waverley (1814) of Udolfo's Mysteries hurt their feelings;* but Scott corrected the good things he said about it in his “Lives of the Novelist.” It is interesting to note that when the “Mysteries” were published, the Venerable Joseph Warton was so intrigued that he stayed up most of the night to complete it.

• See Women of English Letters by Julia Kavanagh.

^7 T^ Swinging gothic creature. 263

/The War between Realism and Romanticism, the ^^ continued in the days of Cervantes, as it was in the days of

[•^ of Zola and Howell's, also had its skirmishes in the time of Mrs. Radcliffe. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, written in 1803 and not published until 1817, is a mild satire of Gothic fiction.

I fought with your soulmate. "While I have to read Ij 'Udolfo' I feel as if no one can make me unhappy. Oh, the hideous black veil! My dear Isabella, I'm sure behind it must be Laurentina's skeleton."

"When you finish 'Udolfo'", replies Isabel, "we'll read 'The Italian' together, and I've made a list of ten or twelve more of the same type... I'll read 'Schloss Wolfenbach' for you." Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Black Forest Necromancer, Midnight Bell, The Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrific Mysteries.

When she was introduced to her friend's brother. Miss Morland promptly asks, "Have you read Udolfo, Mr. Thorpe?” But Mr. Thorpe, who is not a man of letters but is very fond of dogs and horses, assures her that he never reads novels; are "full of nonsense and all; there hasn't been a decent medium since 'Tom Jones', except thatMonk'". Bath's landscape reminds her of Miss.Morland of southern France and "the land through which Emily and her father traveled in 'Udolfo's Mysteries'". She is excited at the prospect of a trip to Blaize Castle, where she hopes to be lucky enough to be stopped.

EU

EU

EU

264 tt/f History of English Romanticism.

through narrow and winding vaults, through a low door with bars; have me or even your lamp - your only lamp -

• ' exterminated by a sudden gust of wind and beings

I was left in total darkness.” She visits her friends who are Til-

{neys, at his country house, Northanger Abbey

Gloucestershire; and along the way, young Mr. Tilney teases her with an extravagant sketch of the gothic horrors she will discover there: theSlidepanels and tapestries"; the secluded and gloomy guest room assigned to her, with its heavy chest and portrait of a knight in armour: the secret door with massive bars and padlocks that she will discover behind the arras that lead to a " small vaulted room" and eventually leads to an "underground connection between his residence and the chapel of St. Anthony just two miles away" from his room, but he manages to find a secret drawer in an ancient ebony cabinet and inside it a scroll of yellow manuscript which, if deciphered, turns out to be a laundry note.The end of a certain gallery leads to a series of secluded chambers in which General Tilney, said to be a widower, remains closed to his unhappy wife and fed on bread. and water, he finds nothing but a row of modern rooms, "the visions of romance are over. . . As charming as all of Mrs. Radcliffe, and charming though the works of all her imitators were, perhaps it was not in them that human nature was to be found, at least not in the middle counties of England.

CHAPTER VIII. ipercB anO tbe JBaUa&s.

The renewal of English poetic style at the end of the last century came from an unexpected place. What professional scholars and literati attempted in their imitations of Spenser and Milton and in taming the Gothic and Celtic muse, Percy and the ballad collectors achieved far more effectively. What they tried to do was to bring British poetry into the halls of the imagination and older and better models than Dryden and Pope. But they couldn't get out of their own shadow: the 18th century was too much for them. While they eagerly cultivated wildness and simplicity, their diction remained polished, literary, and academic to some extent. Indeed, it is only on the threshold of a new century that we are encountering a Gulf Stream of emotional and creative impulses strong and hot enough to melt classic icebergs until not a single floating tip remains.

In the meantime, however, there was refreshing contact with at least one early verse department, which did much to pave the way for Scott, Coleridge and Keats. The 1760s to 1770s are important in English history. Romance, and its most important title is that of Thomas Percy

Relics of Old English Poetry: Composed by

265

4<

266 d/^ History of English T^omantics.

"Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of our Early Poets", published in three volumes in 1765. It made a much more immediate and moving impression on contemporary Europe than MacPherson's work "PoeRis, de Ossian", but was more fruitful in terms of lasting results. The Germans make a practical division of poetry into artistic poetry and popular poetry, terms that can be loosely translated as literary poetry and popular poetry. The Middle Ages lie buried in many underlying layers of literary fashion. Forgetting has taken hold of Gower and Occleve and Lydgate and Stephen H^wes and Skelton and Henryson and James I of Scotland and almost Chaucer himself: in short, all the medieval poetry of the schools. in the form of narrative ballads, handed down chiefly orally and still living in the minds and lips of the common people, many of them continuing in their original form in the Middle Ages or still later in antiquity, and belonging to that great treasure of folklore which was the common heritage. of the Aryan race. Analogues and variants of English and Scottish folk ballads have been traced into almost every language in modern Europe. Danish literature is particularly rich in ballads and offers valuable illustrations from the music of our native ministers.

• A grande colection de Svend Grundtvig, "Danmarks Gamle Folke-

viser", was published in five volumes in 1853-1890.

Tercy and the Ballads. 267

The North Country has become party country par excellence: the Scottish lowlands, especially the Lothians, and the English border counties of Northumberland, Westmoreland and Cumberland; with Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire containing the woods of Barndale and Sherwood, Robin Hood's favorite haunts. ". It is not possible to assign exact dates to these songs. They were rarely rewritten until many years after their creation. In the Middle Ages, itinerant minstrels sang them on the harp. In later times, they were sung or recited by ballad singers at fairs, markets , breweries, street corners, sometimes accompanied by a fiddle or a crowd. They were learned by old ladies who repeated them in the corners of the chimney for their children and grandchildren. running through their minds, clinging stubbornly to old songs and beliefs learned in childhood and handing them down to posterity, Walter Scott received much of the material for his "Ministrelsy of the Border" from the Oral Recitation of Whistlers, Shepherds and Old Women in Ettrick Forest Professor Child, the latest and most complete collection of ballads, contains pieces never before printed or handwritten, some purchased in America!*

They lead this subterranean existence and are generally considered unworthy of the attention of educated people.

• „English and Scottish Folk Ballad“ by Francis James Child.

Published in ten parts from 1882-1898, it is one of the pinnacles of American scholarship.

268 (see History of English Romanticism.

naturally subject to repeated changes; so that we have innumerable versions of the same story, and whole incidents, descriptions, and lines are borrowed and freely borrowed between the various ballads. The fact is. For example, of the birch and heather which sprout from the graves of true lovers and intertwine their branches appears in the ballads of "Fair Margaret and Sweet William", "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet",

• • Lord Lovel", "Fair Janet" and many others.

Knight, who was brought to Fairyland through a gate in a green hill and lived with the Fairy Queen for seven years, is repeated in "Tam Lin", "Thomas

Rymer", * etc. Like all popular songs, they are ballads

I am anonymous and cannot be considered the work of a single poet, but the property and, in a sense, the work of the people as a whole. Coming from an uncertain past, based on an obscure legend of heartbreak or bloodshed, they are not named after the author, but are natural and flavored with the game. They were joint actions, like the national discourse. Everyone could contribute: generations of anonymous poets, minstrels, revelers modernized their language to adapt to the times, altered their dialect to adapt to new places, adjusted their details to suit different audiences, English or Scottish, and in any other way that wanted, they added. reduced, damaged, improved and transferred.

Popular poetry is conyientonaj; it appears to be a guild production and to have certain well-understood and commonly expected verses and stylistic tricks. ↑ Freshness and sincerity are almost always attributes of the poetry of heroic times, but individuality is part of it.

• See the legend of Tannhäuser and the Venusberg.

Tercy and the Ballads. 269

high culture and high literary culture. Whether the Iliad and the Odyssey are the work of one poet or a cycle of poets, the rhetorical peculiarities of the Homeric epics, such as the recurring phrase and the conventional epithet (the red-fingered dawn, the leggy Greek, the agile Achilles, Persevering Odysseus, etc.) are due to this communal or associative character of ancient heroic song. As in the architectural firms that built medieval cathedrals, or in the schools of early Italian painters, teachers, and pupils, the form of the individual artist was subject to the tradition of his craft.

English and Scottish folk ballads are found in various single-stanza forms, the most common of all being the ancient septenarius or **fourteen", arranged in a four-line stanza alternating eights and sixes, thus:

"Arise, then, tame the red, red rooster, and rise and tame the gray one; The eldest said to the youngest, 'It is time for us to depart.'"*

This is the verse often used by imitators of modern ballads, such as Coleridge in "The Ancient Mariner", ~Sc"ott in "Jock o' Hazeldean", Longfellow in "The Wreck of the Hesperus", Macaulay in "Lays of Ancient Rome " . . , “Aytoun in “Lays of the Scottish / Cavaliers". Many of the stylistic and metric peculiarities of the ballads arose from the fact that they had to be sung or recited from memory. Maybe it's due to the ballad department. longer in bursts to rest the singer's voice; and the use of freight or

• "Ushers Brunnenfrau".

2 70 ^ History of English T^omantics.

Chorus for the same purpose, as well as to allow listeners and passers-by to pick up on the chorus, which they probably accompanied with a few dance steps. a Jley Derry Down or an O Lilly Lally and the like. Sometimes it is more or less related to the story, as in "The Two Sisters":

"He took three locks of her yellow hair - Binnorie, oh Binnorie - And with it he seldom played his harp - By the fair dams of Binnorie."

Again, there is no discernible relationship to context, as in "Enigmas Wisely Declared":

"There rode a knight through the East, Jennifer Gentle and Rosemarie, courting money in a place as dew flies on a mulberry tree."

\ Modern composers have made liberal use of both types of choruses. So Tennyson in "The Sisters":

\

“We were two sisters of the same race, \ The wind howls in the tower and in the tree;

She was prettier in face, the Count was prettier to look at."

/\Whereas Rossetti and Jean Ingelow et al favored a more trivial tension, an affectation camouflaged by the late Mr. C.S. Calverley:

• It should never be forgotten that the ballad (derived from ballare

— dance) was not originally a written poem, but ja-.song aud.dance. Many of the old songs have been preserved. A number is given in Chappellell's Popular Music of Ancient Times and in the appendix to Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern (1827).

Tercy and the Ballads. 271

"The old woman sat at her ivy gate,

(butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) Something I've made many times;

And her glasses rested on her knee-length aprons.

"The farmer's daughter has light brown hair (butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) and I came across a ballad, I don't remember where. It was all lines like that."

A similar musical or mnemonic device to the chorus was this type of sung repetition so familiar in the language of ballads:

"She hadn't done a double rose, one rose, just two."

"They did not sail one league, league, league, but only three."

"How am I going to get up? How am I going to get up? How am I going to get to you?"

Normally, an answer with the same words as the question is returned; and as in Homer, a narrative formula or banal description always does its job. The iteration in the Ballads is not just for economy, but replaces ^Metaghor and other figures of literary poetry:

"Oh, Marie, put on your black tunic, or your brown tunic, for your Maun bonds with me in the night. To see the fair city of Edinbro.”

I will not wear my black robe

nor my brown robes; But I will put on my white robes

To shine in the city of Edinbro. "

• "A Ballad". One theory explains these nonsensical refrains as

he remembered snippets from old ballads.

272 (sA History of English 'Romanticism.

Another characteristic of true Layman modes, such as that of Homer and of popular poetry generally, is the conventional epithet. Macaulay noted that gold is always red in ballads, women are always merry, and Robin Hood's men are always his merry men. Bold Douglas, bold Robin Hood, jolly Carlisle, good green forest, gray goose wing and pale water are other inseparable elements of this type. Another feature is the frequent retention of the Middle English accent on the last syllable of words like contrie, baron, dinere, felawe, abay, rivere, money and its adoption of words that never really had it like lady, harper, marriage. . , water, etc.* Indeed, as Percy noted in his introduction, there were "many phrases and idioms which minstrels seem to have appropriated ... an occupation of style and measure very different from that of contemporary upper-class poets" .

Not everything called a ballad belongs to the class of poetry we are considering here. In its broadest usage, the word means just about every type of song: "a pathetic ballad performed on your lover's brow", for example. "Ballad" was also the name of a rather complicated French strophic form used by Gower and Chaucer, and recently reintroduced into English verse by Dobson, Lang, Gosse and others, along with virelay, rondeau, triolet, etc. There is also a large class of popular ballads, in

• Reproduced by Rossetti and other moderns. see them parodied

and Robert Buchanan's "Carnal School of Poets":

"When the seas roar and the skies overflow, the sailor's fate is difficult, who can barely make out the sidesails of the binnacle as he staggers about."

Tercy and the Ballads. 273

the feeling of having done something for the people, although not for the people, which has nothing to do with our topic. They are the street songs that were and are preached by the songwriters and do not have a literary character. There are satirical and political novels, novels that deal with passages of Scripture or chronicles, novels that relate to current events or tell the story of murders and other famous crimes, child prodigies, providences, and any event that teaches subjects a lesson in morality. : about George Barnwell and "Babes in the Wood" and "Whittington and his Cat" etc.; Ballads like "Jemmy Dawson" by Shenstone and "Black-eyed Susan" by Gay. Thousands of them are included in manuscript collections such as Pepysian or reprinted in Roxburghe Club and Ballad Society publications. But whether they are quite modern or exist in black-printed pamphlets, they are not for our purpose. Here we have the popular song, the traditional romancero, product of the people at a time when people were homogeneous and the division between illiterate and illiterate classes had not yet occurred: the true romancero minstrel of the Middle East. / Ages, or that state of society which, in rough and primitive quarters like the Scottish borders, prolonged medieval conditions beyond the strictly medieval period.

Few of our ballads that survive predate the second half of the sixteenth century, though many of them are of much earlier origin. There are handwritten versions of "Robin Hood and the Monk" and "Robin Hood and the Potter" that refer to the latter.

274 e^ History of English Romanticism.

years of the fifteenth century. Robyn Hode's "Lytel Geste" was printed in 1489 by Wynkyn de Worde. The Not-Brown Maid was printed in Arnold's Chronicle in 1502. "The Hunting of the Cheviot": the early version of "Chevy Chase" — mentioned by Philip Sidney in his Defense of Poetry in 1580.* The ballad is a narrative song, naive, impersonal, spontaneous, practical. The singer is lost in the song, the narrator in the story. That is its essence, but sometimes the story is told by the lyrical method, sometimes by the dramatic method. In "Helen of Kirkconnell" the grieving lover himself is the speaker, in "Waly Waly" the abandoned girl. These are monologues; for a purely dialogic ballad, it is enough to mention the powerful and impressive piece of the "Relíquias" entitled "Eduardo". Herder translated this into German; it is very old, with Danish, Swedish and Finnish analogues. It is a story of parricide and is told in a series of questions from the mother and answers from the son. However, the most common form was a mixture of epic and dramatic, or directly related to dialogue. A common feature is the abruptness of the opening and transitions. The ballad writer unconsciously adheres to Aristotle's rule for the epic poet, begin in viedias res. Johnson noted this in the case of "Johnny Armstrong", but a stronger example is found in "The Banks of Yarrow":

• "I never heard the old Percie and Douglas song I couldn't find

my heart was touched more than by a trumpet; and yet it is sung by a blind crouder, with no more hoarse voice than a coarse style; who, dressed so poorly in the dust and cobwebs of this uncivil age, what would he do adorned with the beautiful eloquence of Pindar?

Tercy and the Ballads. 275

"At the end of the afternoon they drank the wine and before paying the bill they fought among themselves to fight at dawn."

With that, an indirect narrative style rich in allusions, which Goethe mentions in his preliminary comments on Des Sanger's Curse as a constant of the "folk song", "The old ballad singer does not give himself explanations about people". and motives; he often does not tell the story explicitly or fully, but through hints and glimpses, leaving the rest to guesswork; casting its salient points in strong, eerie light against a background of shadows. The rider rides to hunt, and to his riderless horse he comes home, and that's all:

"Toom *hame took the chair but never occupied it."

Or the Lord himself comes home and lies down to die, reluctantly confessing to his mother's question that he ate with his true love and was poisoned. And again, that's it. ANY

"Behind that old dyke, I know, is a gentleman who's just been killed, and nobody knows he's lying there. Except his hawk, his dog, and the fair lady.

“His dog is for wild cattle. His hawk brings the ham of wild birds, His mistress has another servant. So that we can make our dinner sweet.

Behind these verses lies an unspoken tragedy of love, betrayal and murder. This method of

• Vazio: "Bonnie George Campbell". f "Lorde Randall".

iTurf: "Los Twa Corbies".

276 <iThe History of the English Novel.

The narrative can be explained in part by the fact that the tale treated was usually a local peasant legend of family feuds or unhappy passions, the incidents of which "were familiar and easy to remember for the ballad singer's audience". One theory holds that the story was partly told and partly sung, and that connections and explanations were given in prose. Be that as it may, the naive art of these popular poets evidently involved a knowledge of the use of mystery and suggestion. Did you know that the part is sometimes greater than the whole." Gray wrote to Mason in 1757: "I have the old Scottish ballad [Gil Maurice] in which 'Douglas' [Home's tragedy, first performed at Edinburgh in 1756 ] was founded. it's divine. . He follows Aristotle's best rules in a way that shows the author has never heard of Aristotle. It begins in the fifth act of the play. You can read two-thirds of it without guessing what it's about; And yet, in the end, it's impossible not to understand the whole story."

It is no longer possible to reconstruct the conditions in which these folk songs “made themselves”*, so to speak, or grew under the creative hands of generations.

of nameless bards. Its naive and primitive quality.

cannot be acquired: the secret is lost. but walter

.3

1^1,3 * I use this term without any controversial purpose. the question after

-' The origins are not in dispute here. Of course, at some point in the

In the story of each ballad, the poet, the individual artist, is present, although the precise relation of his activity to the collective element of the work is not clear. For an insightful and scholarly review of the subject, see Professor Francis B. Gummere's Introduction to "Old English Ballads" (Athenreum Press Series), Boston, 1894.

\

I^ercy and the ballads. 277

Scott, soaked to the brim with ballads and whose temperament had much of the healthy directness of ancient times, was as successful as any modern man. Some of his ballads are more artistically perfect than his long metered romances; especially those constructed from a charge or fragment of the old minstrel song, asJock o' Hazel-dean"* and the song in "Rokeby":

"He turned his steed as he spoke on the riverbank, shook the reins and said, 'Goodbye forever. My love! And goodbye forever.'"

Here Scott captures the very air of popular poetry, and the union is accomplished with the happiest skill. "Proud Maisie is in the Wood" is a good example of a ballad narrative by implication, f

Thematically, ballads can be divided into historical or quasi-historical and purely legendary or romantic. Of the first type belonged the "riding ballads" of the Scottish borders, where the raids of moss soldiers,

♦ De "Jock o' Hazel Green". 'Young Lochinvar' descende de 'Katherine Janfarie' e 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border'.

Scott has given us nothing more complete and beautiful than this little song, which combines simplicity and dramatic power with wild music of the rarest quality. it is left to the mere representation of the situation. Inexperienced critics have often labeled this style, which may be called the Homeric style, superficial because of its seemingly simple ease.” — Palgrave; "Golden T^ViZ^wr^" (1866 edition), p. 392.

S/

278 a/^ History of the English Lipmantic.

The March Lords' riot of extortion, invasion, and private warfare provided many traditions of heroism and adventure, as recounted in The Battle of Otterburn, The Hunt for the Cheviot, Johnnie Armstrong, Willie Kinmont. , "The Rising in the North" and "Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas". Of the fictional kind, there were some abbreviated, popular, and generally discredited versions of chivalric romances that fell out of favor with the educated. Readers in the 16th century fell into the hands of ballad singers such as those featured in The Relics, Sir Lancelot du Lake, The Legend of Sir Guy, The Death of King Arthur, to name a few. . and "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine". But the content of these plays was not really folkloric, and their characters were just the ancient heroes of court poetry in reduced circumstances. Much more impressive are the original folk songs, which delve their roots deep into the ancient world of legends and even myths.

In this true world of ballads there is a strange mixture of paganism and Catholic Christianity. It abounds in the supernatural and wonderful. Robin Hood is a pious outlaw. He steals from stubborn monks, but he doesn't die homeless and has a great devotion to Our Lady; who also appears to Brown Robyn when he is thrown overboard, hears his confession and takes his soul to heaven: Hugh, you have been murdered. to the Jew's daughter

• "Robyn Brown's Confession". Robin Hood risks taking his own life

o sacramento. "Robin Hood e o Monge".

Tercy and the Ballads. 279

and threw fifty fathoms into Our Lady's well, and the child miraculously answered the well's mother.* Birds carry messages for lovers and the dying! or show the place where the corpse is buried and the corpse's candles are lit. The harpist plays his harp with three of the drowned girl's golden hairs, and the melody he plays over them reveals the mystery of her death. || The spirits of children who perished at sea return home to bid farewell to their mother.^ The spirit of the abandoned virgin visits her false lover at midnight; Poem. There are witches, fairies and mermaids JJ in ballads: omens, dreams, enchantments, §§ enchantments, transfigurations, |||1 magic rings and amulets, "gramarye"^^ of various kinds; and all these things are more effective here than with poets like Spenser and Collins because they are a matter of belief and not imagination.

The ballads have an intoxicatingly tragic theme, and the tragic passions of pity and fear form an elemental expressiveness. Love is strong like death, jealousy

• "Lord Hugo". See Chaucer's Tale of the Prioresse.

f "The gay hawk". X "Johnny Gallo". § "young game".

II "The Twa Sisters".

•[[ "Ushers Brunnenfrau".

• • "Lovely Margaret and sweet William."

ff "The Ghost of Sweet Williams".

ii "Secretary Colven".

§§ "Willies Lady".

III "Camp Owyne" and "Tam Lin" 11 "King Estmere"

28. e// History of English l^manticism.

cruel as grievous hatred, shame, pain, despair speak here in their native accent:

"There are seven rangers in Pickeram Side, in Pickeram where they live, and for a drop of sorrow they would ride the fords of hell." *

"Oh, little did my mother think the day she rocked me, what countries she would travel, what death she would suffer." f

The girl asks the buried lover:

"Is there somewhere on your head, Sanders? Is there somewhere at your feet? Or somewhere on either side of you?

Where would I voluntarily sleep? "X

"Oh well, but love is good while it's young; § but when it's old, it gets old."

And it goes away like the morning dew. . .

"And oh! if my baby were born and sat in the nurse's lap, and I myself were dead and putrid,

And the green grass that grows over Honey

The ways of this world are primitive savagery. There is treachery, violence, cruelty, revenge; but there is also honor, courage, loyalty and devotion.

• "João Galo".

f „Maria Hamilton“.

i "The Ghost of Sweet William".

§ "The Abandoned Bride." W/. Driver:

"Love is not as old as it is new."

“Gierke's fairy tale.

Tercy and the Ballads. 281

that lasts until the end. "Child Waters" and "Fair Annie" do not suffer in comparison with Tennyson's "Enid" and Chaucer's story about the patient Griselda ("The Clerkes Tale"), with whom they share a common theme. It's the medieval world. Looters, pilgrims and wandering revelers roam it. The gentleman is in his pale garden, the lady "sitting in her bower, and the little foot bears messages over moss and marsh. Monks singing in St. Mary's Kirk, | Trumpets sound in Carlisle town, castles burn; There is an ambush in the pass and swords flash; bows ring in the forest green; twenty-four ladies play ball and twenty-four milkmaids. There are white calves in the woods of Glentanner, all ready to be stolen. The Round Tables begin near Christmas; the Queen watches over Above the castle walls, the clapper returns from the Holy Land, Young Waters lies deep in Stirling's dungeon, but Child; Maurice is in Silverpine, combing his yellow hair with a silver comb.

The ballads of the Robin Hood cycle have an almost epic context. This good thief, who stalked the woods of Sherwood and Barnsdale with his merry men, was the true hero of the ballad and the darling of the popular fantasy which produced him. For though the names of her confessor Friar Tuck; her lover. Maid Mariana; and his companions Little John, Scathelock and Much the Miller's have an air of reality, and although the lore has been linked to specific locations, there is nothing historical about Robin Hood. Langland, in the fourteenth

ySS^

282 t/^ History of English %omanticism.

Century, mentions "Robin Hood Rhymes"; and efforts have been made to identify him with one of Simon de Montfort's dispossessed followers in 'The War of the Barons', or with an even older filibuster of Hereward's time, who went into the woods and lived for the plunder of the Normans. The myth as it is is an entirely national conception. He had the English penchant for fair play, the English willingness to shake hands and make peace if you win a straight fight. He killed the king's stag, but he was a loyal subject. He took from the rich and gave to the poor, administering a kind of brutal justice. He questioned legal authority in the person of the proud Sheriff of Nottingham, appealing to that secret sympathy for lawlessness which marks an energetic and free yeomanry. finally, he was a mighty archer with the national weapons, the longbow and javelin thrower. ; and so, in his free and carefree life under the green tree, he appealed to the national love of sport. The forest setting gives his exploits a poetic backdrop, and although the ballads, like popular poetry generally, rarely dwell on natural descriptions, there is an awareness of that backdrop and a healthy outdoor feel throughout. places. :

"In Somer, when the Shawes are sheyne, And the Laves are great and long, Hit is full of joy in the feyre forest. So far the song of the Foulys:

• What character as popular as a wild prince, like Prince Hal,

Who is democratically breaking their own laws and the heads of their own people?

Tercy and the Ballads. 283

"To see the right, go into the valley and raise the hills and shade the green plains under the green forest." *

Although some favorite ballads like "Johnniel Armstrong", "Chevy Chase", "The Children in the Wood" and some by Robin Hood were long overdue; widely, almost universally, known, have hardly been regarded as literature worthy of serious attention. They were considered children's fairy tales or, at best, entertainment for peasants and illiterates, who pasted them on the walls of inns, huts and breweries. Here and there an educated man developed an insidious penchant for collecting old ballads, as postage stamps are collected today. Samu£l„£|)y'%, the chronicler, assembled such a collection, as did John Selden, the great jurist and antiquarian of Milton's day. "I have heard," wrote Addison, "that the late Lord Dorset, who had the most open humour, and was one of the best critics and poets of his age, had a large collection of old English ballads, and a peculiar pleasure in reading them. " I can say the same of Mr. Dryden." Dryden's "Miscellaneous Poems" (1684) yielded "Gircferoy", "Johnnie Armstrong", "Chevy Chase", "The Miller and the King's Daughter", and "Little Musgrave and the Lady Barnard". ., as well as " Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament" and "Fair Margaret and Sweet William", f was written in Beau-

• "Robin Hood e o Monge".

f For a full account of David Mallet's brazen claim to authorship of this ballad, see Appendix II on Professor Phelps's "English Romantic Movement". *

284 <iA history of English t{omantics.

"Knights of the Burning Slope" by mont_and Fletcher, by mont_and Fletcher (1611). Parts of it are sung by one of the dramatic characters, old Merrythought, whose specialty is bloody iterations of ballad parts. References to old ballads abound on Elizahetban. j) sets. Percy dedicated the second -book- Q^^ to the first. 5£xi£S_^^

• ' Ballads that illustrate Shakespeare.' in the seven

Some ballads in poetic anthologies entitled "Garlands" were printed in full in the 19th century, arbitrarily mixed with pieces of all kinds. Professor Child lists nine complete ballads before Percy's. The only ones of note among them were "A Collection of Old Ballads" (Vols. I. and II. 1723, Vol. III. 1725), attributed to Agibrose Philips; and the Scottish poet Allan jRamsaj, "Tea Table Miscellany" (in 4 vols, 1714-40) and "Evergreen" (2 vols, 1724). The first of these collections was illustrated with engravings and provided with humorous introductions. The editor treated his ballads as trifles, although he described them as "corrected from the oldest and best surviving copies"; and he said that Homer himself was nothing more than a blind ballad singer whose songs were later collected and made into an epic poem. The Ballads of Ramsay derive in part from a manuscript collection of around 800 pages made by George Bannatyne around 1570 and still held at the Law Library in Edinburgh.

In numbers 70, 74 and 85 of The Spectator, Addison praised the naturalness and simplicity of the popular ballads and made special mention of "Chevy Chase", the most recent version, "which", he wrote, "the common people's favorite ballad from England; and

'Percy and the 'Ballads'. 285

Ben Jonson used to say that I would rather have been the author of it than all his work"; and "that 'Xw^ Children in the Wood' which is one of the favorite songs of the common people, and which was the delight of the English in part of your time.” Addison justifies her fondness for these humble poems by classical precedent. to the constitution of the country in which the poet is writing. Homer and Virgil developed their plans with this in mind.” Consequently, he believes that the author of "Chevy Chase" intended to aim a cautionary tale about the shenanigans of private warfare. The old composer of border ballads! As if he didn't brag about the battle! The passage in which Earl Percy took the dead Douglas by the hand and mourned the death of his enemy reminds Addison of Aeneas' behavior towards Lausus. Children with Leaves reminds him of a similar touch in one of Horace's odes. But that was exactly what Addison, whose verses were so fictitious, must have had a fondness for the wild graces of the popular song. For these concessions he was fiercely ridiculed by his contemporaries. "He descended to lower criticisms from time to time," wrote Dr. that 'there is a

286 c// History of English Romanticism.

way to deviate from nature... by imbecility degrading nature by impotence and diminution'... In 'Chevy Chase'. . . there's a shudder and some lifeless jerks. It's not possible to tell the story in a way that has less of an impact on the brain."

Nicholas Rowe, playwright and editor of Shakespeare, had a good word for ballads in the preface

• • Jane Shore" (1713):

"Let no good taste scorn the unfortunate lady for recording ballads, sing her name.

But what we gain in verse we lose in prose. His words did not know the double meaning of shuffling: their language was simple, but their hearts were sincere. . , With raw and majestic power they moved the heart, And power and nature made peace through art.”

J Ballad's spoofing started early. do not say anything

/ Appropriations, such as Mallet's, of "William and Mar-

1 garet', Lady Wardlaw drew her 'Hardyknut'.

1719 as a true old ballad and was reprinted

as such in Ramsay's "Evergreen". gray wrote to

Walpole in 1760: "I have often been told that the

Poem called "Hardicanute" (which I've always admired

and still admire) was the work of someone who lived

A few years ago. But I don't think anything of it

'N has obviously been retouched by some modern

"^\ hands". Not tuned or smart before Percy

Efforts have been made to collect, preserve,

e edit o Corpics Poetarum dos menestreis ingleses.

• "To Addison's Life".

Tercy and the Ballads. 287

The great mass of old ballads, as far as they were printed, existed inPostal copies", /. e., individuallySheets or pamphlets taken out for sale by singers and booksellers.

Thomas Percy, the author of Reliques, was a parson in the ancient village of Easton Maudit in Northamptonshire. For years, he entertained his spare time by collecting ballads. He counted among his well known writers such as Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Grainger, Farmer and Shenston. Jt was the last to come up with the Hallows' plan, and would have helped bring it about had his illness and death not been averted. Johnson spent part of the summer of 1764 visiting the rectory at Easton Maudit. On this occasion, Percy reports that his guest "selected for his regular reading the ancient Spanish romance of *Felixmarte de Hircania', folio, which he read through." As a child "he had an excessive fondness for reading romances of chivalry, and retained this fondness for them all his life... I have heard him attribute to these wild fictions that disturbing frame of mind which prevented him from setting up any work of persuasion." ". Mr. Johnson owes many valuable suggestions to the accomplishment of his work.” And after Ritson questioned it

K"

288 cyf History of English T^pmanticism.

Existence of the famous "folio manuscript", Percy's nephew, in announcing the fourth edition (1794), cited "the appeal which was publicly made to Dr. Johnson ... as early as 1765, and never, or only once, the contradicted ". for him."

Despite these niceties, the doctor had little opinion of romantics and novel collectors. In The Rambler (No. 177) he indulged in a ditty that 'concentrated all his thoughts on old ballads, believing them to be true records of natural taste'. He offered to show me a copy of 'Children in the Woods,'" "which he held fast to the first edition, and by which the text might be freed from various tampering, if this age of barbarism could demand such a favor from him. " "The conversation", says Boswell, "turned to modern imitations of old ballads, and someone who praised their simplicity treats them with that ridicule which he always displayed whenever such a subject was mentioned." Johnson wrote several verses in parody of the ballads ; my. grams.,

"The tender child, meek and meek, Fell upon a stone: The nurse caught the squealing child, But the child squealed on." And again:

J. "I put my hat on

S E entered the beach;

And there I met another man

Whose hat was in his hand.

This is quoted by Wordsworth*, who compares it to “=>*. a line from "Children in the Woods":

• Preface to the second edition of "Lyric Ballads".

Tercy and the Ballads. 289

"Those pretty children, holding hands. They walked back and forth, but they never saw the village man come back."

He says that the language in both stanzas is that of a familiar conversation, but one stanza is admirable and the other contemptible because the . the thing is damnable. In the sup-trial! Commenting on its preface, Wordsworth states that "Reliques" "did not sit well with the tastes of the time". of the Titjr Society, and Dr. Johnson, . . he endeavored to make him an object of contempt" and that "Dr. . . who, though he wrote under a mask, would not have the determination to follow his genius into the regions of true simplicity and genuine pathos (as Sir Cauline's exquisite ballad and many other pieces prove) when he appeared in his own person and character as a poetic writer, he adopted, as in the story of 'The Hermit of Warkworth', a diction almost indistinguishable from the vague, brilliant, and insensitive language of his age.” Wordsworth adds that he was the genius of Dr. In this style of writing, Percy considers himself superior to any other modern writer, and not even Burger had Percy's fine sensibility. He cites two stanzas of "Elle's Boy" in "Hallows" and the contrasts with Burger's diluted and manipulated version in German to support this view.

Mr. Hales disagrees with this high regard for Percy as a ballad songwriter. Of this "son of Elle" he says: "The present fragment of a version

tu

\

290 t/f History of English Romanticism.

it is fair to say that it is now being printed for the first time, buried in the shrines in a heap of "polished" verse composed by Percy. This worthy prelate, touched by her beauty—she had a soul—was sadly moved to try his luck at the conclusion. A wax doll maker could also try to restore the Venus de Milo. There are thirty-nine lines here. There are two hundred in the so-called "Elle's Child" in the "Hallows". But in those two hundred lines the original thirty-nine do not appear. . . Overall, the marriage of the real and the fake—the old ballad with Percy's vulgarity—makes the mismatch as offensive in the father's eyes as what is contained in the story itself. jealous of the purity of the text, they are almost as hard on Percy as Ritson himself. He is said to have polished "Linne's Heir" until he could see his own face in it, and expanded its 126 verses to 216 - "a beautiful flood of ballads and water". .f The result of this union and retouching of "Sir Cauline" - which Wordsworth found exquisite - they consider a lot of tinsel, although they recognize it

• ' these additional stanzas really show an extensive

V' familiarity with the old ballad and a considerable talent for imitation".

From a critical or academic point of view, these criticisms are undoubtedly deserved. It is the editor's duty to present his text as he finds it, without insertions or restorations; and that's out of the question

,, /* "Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript" (1867), Vol.11. introduction

'"^-{J. W. Hales' inductive essay on ''The Renaissance of Ballad Poetry in the Eighteenth Century'. ibid.

tu

Tercy and the Ballads. 291

Percy's additions to fragmentary pieces are full of sentimentality, affectation and the spurious poetic language of his time. A seasoned ballad enthusiast can easily separate the original parts from the insoles in most cases. But it's unfair to judge Percy by modern editorial standards. This sanctity, now attributed to the ipsissima verba of an “^^^ ancient piece of popular literature, would have been incomprehensible to the men of this generation, who regarded such things as trifles at best and mostly barbaric.” trifles, something like wampum belts or nose rings or antique ornaments at GoAt barbare et charmant des bijoux goihs. Readers of Percys did not want torsos and cleavages to present them with headless ballads or bob-^^^ con cetera desunt and constellations of asterisks, like the manuscript of the Priors poem, whose Being Eaten by Rats at the end would have been mere pedantry. Percy knew his audience and knew how to make his work compelling. Readers of this generation enjoyed its ballad with a heavy Percy retelling. If the scholars of this generation prefer theirs without, they know where to get it.

The materials for the "Relics" were taken in part from the Pepys collection, at Magdalen College, Cambridge; by Anthony Wood, made in 1676, at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; of ballads written and printed in the Bodleian, the British Museum, the archives of the Society of Antiquaries, and in private collections. Sir David Dalrymple sent in several Scottish ballads and the publisher confirmed his commitments to Thomas Warton and many others. But the essence of it all was one

292 <vf History of English Romanticism.

A certain folio manuscript, handwritten by Charles I, in period I, containing 191 songs and ballads, solicited by Percy when he was very young from his friend Humphrey Pitt of Prior's-Lee in Shropshire. When she first saw this precious document, it was torn, loose and mangled, "dirty on the floor under a chest of drawers in the drawing-room, being used by the maids to light the fire". The first and last pages were missing, and "of the 54 pages at the beginning, half of each page has been torn out."* Percy had it bound, but the binders cut the top and bottom lines in the process. From this manuscript he admitted to extracting "most" of the "relics". In fact, he took only 45 of the 176 poems in his first edition from this source.

Percy made no secret of the fact that he filled lacimx in his originals with stanzas and, in some cases, almost complete poems of his own composition. But the extent of liberties taken with the text, though suspicious, was not known with certainty until Mr. Furnivall eventually obtained permission to copy and print the folio manuscript. Before that, the Percy family closely guarded him. Scholars were denied access. "Since Percy and his nephew printed their fourth edition of the 'Relics' from the manuscript in 1794," writes Mr. Furnivall in his "Prefaces", "no one printed a fragment except Robert Jamieson, to whom Percy made a copy available. ." Child Maurice" and "Robin Hood and the Old Man" for their "Popular Ballads and Songs" (1806) - and Sir Frederic Madden,

• "Announcement of the Fourth Edition".

f In four volumes, 1867-68.

Tercy and the Ballads. 293

who was authorized by one of Percy's daughters to print The Grene Knight, The Carle of Carlisle and The Turk and Gawin in her Syr Gawaine for the Bannatyne Club, 1839.” Percy was furious that Joseph Ritson was attacked for manipulating his texts, and in the 1794 edition he made some concessions to their demand for a literal rescript, removed some of the embellishments with which he had misled them, and adhered to the correct theory of the functions of a editor Having his own collections of Old English poetry, he rendered a valuable service to all subsequent researchers. "Robin Hood", 1795; as well as editions of poems by Laurence Minot and "The Gammer Gurton Needle", among other titles. He was a moody, eccentric man: vegetarian, freethinker. , a spelling reformer, * and later a Jacobin. He attacked Warton and Percy, describing each clerical antagonist as a "stinking priest". "Essay on! the Ancient Minstrels", namely: What were minstrels? not only the singers, but also the authors of the] ballads. This question is of particular interest to antique dealers. But Ritson, in his rage against Percy, went so far as to deny the existence of the sacred Folio Manuscript until he was convinced by numerous testimonies.

• Spelling reform was a favorite place for the freaks to hang out.

himself. Ritson's particular vanity was the past participle of verbs ending in e; My. for example, noticed. See Lander's ideas of a similar nature.

294 t^ History of English t^pmanticism.

that there is such a thing. It was an age of forgery, and Ritson, not entirely wrong, assumed that the author of The Warkworth Hermit belonged in the same league as Chatterton, Ireland, and MacPherson.

Percy, like Warton, sounded apologetic to the audience. "In a refined age," he wrote, "I am well aware that many of these relics of antiquity will require large concessions, in the opinion of unniggery critics, to make up for the want of superior beauties." were otherwise? The old romances were everything the eighteenth century was not. i They were rough and wild where that was soft and gentle; they dealt with the elemental passions of human nature with savage sincerity. They didn't moralize or philosophize or sentimentalize; they were never subtle, intellectual or abstract. They used plain English, without subtlety or elegance. It had certain popular mannerisms, but none of the conventional idioms or rhetorical devices like personification, perphrase, antithesis, and climax that were so dear to Augustus's heart. They focused on the story, not Style I, and just told it and let it go for what it was worth.

In addition, there are ballads and ballads. The best of them are noble both in expression and feeling, unrivaled in our medieval poetry outside Chaucer; unequaled by Chaucer himself in intensity, in occasional phrases of piercing beauty:

Tercy and the Ballads. 295

"'The swan fethare who wet his arrow with the blood of his stag.' *

• Oh, the roosters crow merrily

A wild glow heralded the day; Heaven's psalms will be sung, and before that they'll miss me, "f

"If my love were an earthly knight, As he is a gray goblin, A wad na gie my true love For no master has you." %

"Hang a napkin on the door, another on the door, and to wipe away the tears, hide them as quickly as they are." §

"And everything is with your child, I feel moved next to me: my green dress is too tight: before it was too wide." ||

A verse of this quality needs no apology. But of many of the ballads, Dennis' mockery, played by Dr. Johnson is repeated, it is true; They are not only rude, but also weak and furtive in style. Percy knew that the best of them would be more palatable to his contemporaries if he seasoned them with modern sauces. Still he must have loved her even in her primitive simplicity, and it seems almost incredible that he could have spoken thus over the insipid paraphrase of Prior de Nut Brown Maid. 'If it had no other merit', he says of this beautiful ballad, 'than having formed the basis for the work of Prior* Henry and

• "The Cheviot Hunt". %"Tarnlin".

f "Sweet William's ghost." § "Fair Annie."

II "Son of the Waters".

296 eA History of English l^manticism.

Emma, ​​this is to keep you from oblivion. Prior was a charming writer of epigrams, social verse, and humorous speeches in the manner of La Fontaine; but to see how incapable he was of the depth and sweetness of romantic poetry, compare some lines in the original with the "outburst of words" in its modernized version in heroic couplets:

"Oh, lord, what is the fortune of this world that changes like money! Somer's day in bold May threatens none. I hear you say goodbye. No, no, we're not leaving so soon. Why do you say that? Wheder wyle Are you going? Ouch! What have you done? All my well-being of sadness and sadness would change Shulde if you were; For in my mind, of all mankind, I love only you.

Now listen to Prior with his Venus and Flames and the God of Love:

What is our joy that changes with the moon and the day of life that grows dark before noon? What is true passion if it dies without a blessing? And where is Emma's joy when Henry flies? Unfortunately, if love is pain, then I cannot imagine pain and cannot explain it in words. A faithful wife never felt or pretended to be the flames that have long reigned in my bosom. The true God of love dwells there with all its anger and fear and pain and sorrow, its abundance of supplies and all its warfare. Oh, then stop coldly suspecting my love and let my actions at least confirm my belief. Alas, no youth will share my affection: neither day nor night will they interrupt my care;

Tercy and the Ballads. 297

No future history will really censure the black maiden's cold indifference; However, to a severe banishment Henry will run "While carefree Emma sleeps on featherbeds. Face me resolutely whither you lead me to go: Friend of thy sorrows and companion of thy afflictions; for I vouch for fair Venus and your son who I am All mankind will love only you."

There could not be a more conspicuous object lesson than this on the fullness of English poetic diction, and on the healing value of a book like the Hallows.

• • To atone for the rudeness of the most old-fashioned

Poems" and "to escape the tedium of long tales", Percy inserted a few modern ballads and a large number of "elegant little pieces of the lyrical type" by Skelton, Hawes, Gascoigne, Raleigh, Marlowe, Shakspere, Jonson, Warner, Carew, Daniel, Lovelace, Suckling, Drayton, Beaumont and Fletcher, Wotton and other well-known poets, a Scottish gentleman who was "on his way at forty-five. The famous frontier current had watered an ancient land of song and tale, and Hamilton's ballad with its "strange and fleeting melody" was not unworthy of its traditions. Hamilton is one of Milton's imitators for his eight-syllable "Contemplation". Miscellaneous Table."

"Busk is, busk is, minha linda, linda noiva, busk is, busk is, minha bela Mark" -

• See Phelps's English Romantic Movement, pp. 33-35.

298 <i/J History of English Romanticism.

are quoted in Wordsworth's "Yarrow Unvisited", as well as a line from the following stanza:

"Sweet the birch smells, green it grows, green grows the grass, yellow on the shore of the yarrow of the Gowan: the apple hangs beautifully from the rock. Sweet is the wave that flows from the yarrow."

The first edition ofRelics" contain aAcknowledged son of Percy's muse,the monk ofGray Orders", a short narrative ballad composed of fragments of songs from Shakespeare's works. Later editions allowed for his longer poem, "The Hermit of Warkworth", first published independently in 1771.

For all its imperfections - perhaps in part as a result of its imperfections - Hallows was an epoch-making book. Macaulay, therefore, in the introduction to his Lays of Ancient, asserts the nature of his service to English literature. Rome": "It is not surprising that the ballads of Rome have completely disappeared, when we remember how, despite the invention of the printing press, those of our own country and those of Spain narrowly escaped the same fate. Indeed, there is little doubt that Oblivion includes many English songs to rival those published by Bishop Percy; and many Spanish songs as good as the best translated with so much joy by Mr. Lockhart. Eighty years ago, England had only a tattered copy of Niño de las Aguas and Sir Cauline, and Spain only a tattered copy of the noble poem Cid. Smoke from a candle or a mischievous dog could have killed the world forever in one moment from any of these beautiful compositions. Sir Walter Scott, who combined meticulous curiosity and patient industry with the fire of a great poet.

Tercy and the Ballads.

299

Agency of a great antiques dealer, arrived just in time to rescue the prized relics of the Minstrelsy of the Frontier." But Percy not only saved several ballads from oblivion, he also sought out and published similar relics before they did. such as Herds (1769), Scotts (1802-03), and Motherwells (1827) and many others, based on purer texts and edited on more conscious principles than his own, contributed to a reform of literature. of original genius Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, all recognized the greatest obligations to them.

• • I don't think there's a modern day verse writer

On this day, wouldn't you be proud to recognize your commitments to *Reliques.' I know it's like that with my friends; and for myself, I am happy to take this opportunity to make a public confession of my own." sans Merci", "Stratton\Water" and "The Haystack in the Floods" could/never would have been. Perhaps even the "Lyric Ballads" were never like that or something quite different from what they are. Admittedly, Wordsworth hardly counts among the Romantics, and he expressly dispenses with the Romantic machinery:

tu^

"The dragon's wing, the magic ring, I will not covet my dowry." f

• Addendum to the Preface of the 2nd Edition of “Lyrical Romance,

t "Peter Bell".

300 <iThe History of English Romanticism.

Yes, what he learned from the popular ballad was the power of sincerity and direct, simple language.

As for Scott, in an often quoted passage, he captured the impression the Percy volumes made on him when he was in school: "I remember well the place where I first read these volumes. It was under a huge sycamore tree. Ruins of which it had been assigned to an old-fashioned pavilion in whose garden I have already mentioned.The summer's day passed so swiftly that, in spite of the great thirteen-year-old appetite, I forgot the long-awaited mealtime and still reveled in my intellectual feast. Reading and remembering were, in this case the same thing, and henceforth burdened my schoolmates and all who heard me with tragic recitations of Bishop Percy's ballads. Copy of these dear volumes; I don't think I ever read a book so often or with so much enthusiasm."

The “Hallows” also had a powerful effect in Germany. It was received with general enthusiasm* in Lessing's circle and coincided with the renewed interest in 'folk songs' which motivated Herder's 'Stimmender Volker' (1778/79). f gottfried august

• Scherer: "History of German Literature", p. 445.

f In his third book, Herder translated more than twenty pieces from the "Hallows", in addition to several from the Ramsay and other collections. His Percy picks included "Chevy Chase", "Edward", "The Boy and the Mantle", "King Estmere", "Waly, Waly", "Sir Patrick Spens", "Young Waters", "The Bonny Earl". de Murray", "Fair Margaret and Sweet William", "The Ghost of Sweet William", "The Dark Maiden", "The Jew's Daughter" etc.

\^

Tercy and the Ballads. 301

Burger, in particular, was a poet who can be said to have been trained in English ballad literature, of which he was an ardent student. His poems were published in 1778 and included five translations of Percy: Elle's Child, The Friar of the Gray Orders, The Rake of Bath, "King John and the Abbot of Canterbury" ("The Emperor and the Abbot") and "Child Waters " ("Count Walter"). AW Schlegel says that Burger did not select the oldest, most authentic pieces of "Hallows"; and, moreover, he spoiled the plainness of the originals in his translations. No doubt it was in part the success of the "Reliques" that explains many of the collections of Old English poetry that emerged in the later years of the century. Tyrwhitt's "Chaucer"/ and Ritson's publications have already been mentioned. George Ellis, a friend and correspondent of Walter Scott and a member of the Society of Antiquaries, who was sometimes referred to as "the Sainte Palaye of England", published his "Samples of the Early English Poets" in 1790; published in 1796, translations of G. L. Ways from the French Fabliaux of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and he printed three volumes of Early English Metrical Romances in 1805.

but none of the ballads of Robin Hood. Herder's preface attests that the "Hallows" were the starting point and core of his entire enterprise. “When you look at this collection, you realize that I actually started with English folk songs and went back to them. When 'Relics of Ancient Poetry' fell into my hands ten years or more ago, I loved the individual pieces so much that I decided to try to translate them." Karlsruhe, 1821).

302 <iA history of English T^manticism.

It is good to report that Percy's works have earned him public acclaim and patronage from those who support Dr. Johnson used to call "the great ones". He dedicated the Hallows to Elizabeth Percy, Countess of Northumberland. As a shopkeeper's son himself, he liked to think he was connected to V, the great house of the north, whose exploits were related by blood.

sung by the old minstrels - whom he loved. He became chaplain to the Duke of Northumberland and King George III; and 1782 Bishop of Dromore in Ireland, at whose see he died in 1811.

This may be as appropriate a place as any to mention James Beattie's The Minstrel, or the Progress of Genius; a once very popular poem in which various romantic influences are intertwined. The first book was published in 1771, the second in 1774, and the work was never completed. It was in Spenser's verse, tinged with the enthusiastic melancholy of the Wartons, it followed Thomson's landscape style, it had Gray's elegiac overtones, and it was perhaps not unaffected in its love of mountain scenery by MacPherson's Ossian. But he took his title and subject from a piece of Percy's Essay on Ancient Minstrels. Beattie was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. He was a kind, sensitive and deeply religious man. He enjoyed music and nature, and was also easily moved to tears: she had "the courage of a girl", says Taine, "and the taste of an old maid." Gray, who met him on a visit to the Earl in 1765

• stanzas 44-46, book i., contain references to ballad literature in

em geral, e "The Dark-Haired Maid" e "Children in the Woods" em particular.

Tercy and the Ballads. 303

he was highly regarded by Strathmore at Glammis Castle. The same goes for Dr. Johnson, in part because of his

• • Essay Concerning Truth” (1770), um insulto superficial

Hume, which gave its author an interview with George III. and a pension of two hundred pounds a year. Beattie visited London in 1771 and appeared there as a defender of orthodoxy and a heavenly-inspired bard. Mrs. Montagu sponsored him extensively. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted his portrait with his Essay on Truth under his arm and Truth itself in the background, an allegorical angel holding the scales in one hand and pushing the figures of prejudice, skepticism and madness with the other. Old Lord Lyttelton brought the poet to Hagley, declaring him to be Thomson, who had returned to earth to sing of the virtue and beauty of nature. Oxford made him an LL. D.: he was urged to take orders in the Church of England; and Edinburgh offered him the chair of moral philosophy. Beattie's head turned slightly with all this success and he became something of a will-o'-the-wisps chaser. But he remained loyal to Aberdeen, whose romantic neighborhood inspired his muse. Biographers tell a beautiful story in which she teaches her little boy to seek the hand of God in the universe, plants watercress in a garden in the shape of the boy's initials, and through this gently persuasive analogy leads him to draw in the works of nature to read.

the project ofThe minstrel "is there to" follow the program."Cattle of poetic genius, born in raw age", a shepherd boy "living in Gothic times". But nothing less truly Gothic or medieval could easily be imagined than the actual process of this young poet.

304 c^ History of English Romanticism.

Education. Instead of learning to carve and ride

and play the flute like Chaucer's squire who

"Cowde songs make and break, Juste and Eek dance and treat well and write."

Wandering alone through mountains and lonely places, Edwin is tutored in history, philosophy and science and even Virgil by an old hermit who sits on a mossy rock with his harp at his side and lectures. The theme of the poem is, in fact, the education of nature; and somewhat anticipates Wordsworth's "Prelude", as this wise old man does the "Patience" of "The Excursion". some bearing on the subject and spirit of the poem. However, he does not try to follow Spenser's "old expressions". The following passage will illustrate, as well as any other, the romantic character of it all:

' 'When the long curfew from afar heralded the lonely storm with a howling howl, young Edwin, lit by the evening star, wandered Resting and listening through the glen. There he dreamed of tombs and pale corpses and ghosts that haunted the chameleons' dungeons, and he pulled a piece of jingling chain and wailed until the terrible owl's song silenced him. Or the screeching blast to match the shuddering hallways.

“Or when the setting moon, tinged with scarlet, hung over the dark and melancholy depths. In the enchanted brook, far from men, he hid. sleep A vision brought to his ravishing vision.

_1

Tercy and the Ballads. 3^5

And first there was a wild and murmuring wind

shrill to your ringing ears; then narrows brilliantly,

With instantaneous flash, it illuminated the vault of night.

A moment later, before the glowing arch of a portal

I woke up; the trumpet commands the opening of the valves;

And at the head marches a troop of little warriors,

Hold the diamond spear and the golden target.

His gaze was friendly, his demeanor courageous,

and green their helmets, and green their silk garments;

And here and there just venerable old man.

Minstrels in long robes raise the trill of wire,

And some give wings to the martial whistle with a soft breath.” *

Thomson's influence is clearly discernible in these verses. "The Minstrel", like "The Seasons". is rich in vapid morality, the platitudes of | Denouncing luxury and ambition and praising simplicity and innocence. The titles of Beattie's little poems suffice to show what school he was a scholar in: The Hermit, Ode to Peace, Triumph of Melancholy, Retreat, etc., etc. Minstrel lived through four editions, before his second book was published in 1774.

• Book I. stanzas 32-34.

CHAPTER IX. ©00jan.

The first part of MacPherson's Ossian appeared in 1760. * Among those who received it with the greatest curiosity and joy was Gray, who had recently helped Mason to critique his Caractacus, published in 1759. A letter to Walpole (June 1760) indicates that the latter had sent Gray two manuscript parts as yet unprinted from the "Fragments", which were communicated to Walpole by Sir David Dalrymple, who supplied Percy with Scottish ballads. 'I am so delighted', wrote Gray, 'with the two copies of Erse's poems, that I cannot help bothering to inquire a little more about them; and I want to see a few lines of the original to get a rough idea of ​​the language, meter and rhythm. Is anything known about the author or authors and how old are they supposed to be? Are there others of equal beauty or close?

In a letter to Stonehewer (29 June) he writes: "I have received another packet of whiskey with a third specimen ... full of wild nature and noble imagination."

• ' 'Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of

Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or Ersian languages.” Edinburgh, MDCCLX. 70 pages.

306 «

The cheese. 307

tion.”* And the following month he writes to Wharton: “If you've seen Stonehewer, he's probably told you about my old Scottish (or rather Irish) poetry. I was crazy about them. They are said to be translations (literal and prose) from the Erse language by one MacPherson, a young Highland clergyman. He intends to publish whatever collection he has of these ancient specimens, if they are ancient; but what worries me is that I can't be sure of that. I was so impressed, so enraptured by its infinite beauty, that I wrote to Scotland asking a thousand questions.' This is strong language for a man of Grey's cold, judgmental temperament, but all of his correspondence from that date is full of references. .Experiences at Ossian which enable the modern reader to understand in part the enthusiasm which the book aroused among Gray's contemporaries do so skillfully." External evidence led him to believe that the poems were false, but the impression they made was so great that he was "determined to believe that they were real, despite the devil and the church. It is impossible to convince myself that they were invented by the same man who writes these letters to me. On the other hand, it is almost as difficult to believe that if they are original , he might so admirably translate them.

On 7 August he tells Mason that the Erse fragments were published in Scotland five weeks ago, although he only received his copy last year.

• This was sent to him by MacPherson and was a pass that was not given.

the "Fragments".

30 8 <iThe History of English Romanticism.

Week. ** I still believe they are genuine, although my reasons for believing the contrary are stronger than ever." David Hume, who later doubted their authenticity, wrote to Gray assuring him that these poems were on everyone's lips "In the Highlands and passed down from father to son, from a time beyond memory and tradition. Gray's final conclusion is very similar to that of the general public, to whom the Ossian question is still a mystery." The authenticity of these poems, though I am inclined to believe them to be genuine despite the world, whether ancient inventions or a Scotsman modern, both equally inexplicable to me.

We are more concerned here with the impression that MacPherson's books, such as they are, made in contemporary Europe than with the history of the controversy they provoked, which remains unresolved after more than a century and a half. discussion room. However, since this controversy began immediately after their publication and concerned not only the authenticity of the Ossian poems, but also their literary value; cannot be completely ignored on this account. The most important facts turned over can be summarized in a few words. In 1759, Mr. John Home, author of the Douglas tragedy, who was interested in Gaelic poetry, met in Dumfriesshire a young Scotsman named James MacPherson, who was Mr. Graham deBal. -gowan. MacPherson had in his possession several manuscripts which he said were copies

Ossian. 309

Gaelic Poems from the Recital of the Elders in the Highlands. He translated two of them for Home, who was so impressed that he sent copies to Dr. Hugh Blair, professor of rhetoric at the University of Edinburgh, sent or showed. At the request of Dr. Blair and Mr. Home, MacPherson was persuaded to do more translations of the materials in his hands; and these, sixteen in number, were published in thefragments" alreadymentioned, with an eight-page preface by Blair. They attracted so much attention in Edinburgh that a subscription was started to send the author across the Highlands in search of more Gaelic poetry.

The result of these investigations was "Fingal, an ancient epic in six books: together with several other poems, composed by Ossian, son of Fingal. Translated from the Gaelic by James MacPherson", London, 1762; together with "Temora, an Ancient Epic Poem in Eight Books", etc., etc., London, 1763. MacPherson claimed that he made his versions of Gaelic poems which Ossian, or Oisin, son of Fingal, or Finn MacCumhail, a well-known chief in Irish and Scottish songs and folk legends. Fingal was king of Morven, a district in the western highlands, and head of the ancient Clan or warrior people, the Feinne or Fenians. Tradition places her in the third century and links her to the Battle of Gabhra, fought in 281. Her son Ossian, the warrior bard, outlived all his kin. Blind and old, sitting in his empty hall or cave in the rock; except Malvina with white arms, a friend of her late son Oscar, played the harp and

3IO dA History of English 'T^pmanticism.

he sang of the memories of his youth: "a story of times gone by".

MacPherson translated - or composed - his "Ossian" into rough, rhapsodic exclamations somewhat reminiscent of the English of Isaiah and other books of the prophets. The customs described were heroic, the primitive state of society. The properties were few and simple; the chariots of heroes, their blue spears, helmets and shields; the harp, the shells from which they drank in the hall, &c. Conventional compound epithets abound, as in Homer: the "dark-breasted" ships, the "chariot" heroes, the "white-armed maidens," the "long prancing hounds. The landscape is that of the Western Highlands; and the solemn, monotonous rhythm of MacPherson's style suited well the tone of his descriptions, filling the mind with images of vague grandeur and desolation: the mountain stream, the dark rock in the ocean, the mist on the hills, the ghosts of mid-day. night heroes seen from the setting moon, the thistle in the ruins of the chiefs' courts, the grass whistling on the windswept moor, the blue stream of Lutha and the sea-fringed cliffs of Gormal The common wolf has been observed in ancient Caledonia it has not been mentioned; nor of the thrush, nor the lark, nor any songbird; nor the salmon of the sea lakes so often mentioned in modern Gaelic poetry. But the deer, the swan, the wild boar, the eagle and the crow keep appearing.

But a passage or two will better represent language and general imagery than pages of description. I saw the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire echoed through the halls,

Ossian. S^'

and the voice of the people will no longer be heard. The Clutha Creek was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook its head there alone; the moss whistled in the wind. The fox looked out the windows, the thick grass on the wall rippling around its head. Moina's house destroyed, silence in her parents' house. Raise a dirge, O bards, over the land of strangers. They simply fell before us; Because one day we must fall. Why do you build the hall, son of winged days? You look down from your towers today; a few more years and the blast of the desert will come; Howl in your empty yard and whistle at your half-worn shield.”* “They rose whispering like a flock of seabirds when the waves drove them from the shore. Its murmur was like a thousand brooks that meet in the valley of Cona, turning their dark eddies into the pale morning light after a stormy night. How dark autumn shadows fly across the grassy hills; so dark, dark, came the chiefs of the soundwoods of Lochlin. Tall as the stag of Morven, the king loomed before them. J His bright shield is at his side, like a flame in the clearing of night; when the world is still and dark and the traveler sees a ghost playing on the beam. The surrounding hills glow dimly, dimly showing their oak trees. A gust from the turbulent ocean dissipated the gathering mist. Erin's children appear like a crest on the beach; when sailors on unknown shores shiver in the swirling winds.” §

The authenticity of the 1760 "fragments" had

• From "Carthon.";}: An unconscious hexameter,

f Scandinavia. § From "Fingal", Book ii.

312 c/f History of English Romanticism.

certainly not approved; but when MacPherson produced entire epics, which he claimed were composed by a 3rd-century Highland bard, handed down through the centuries by oral tradition, and finally - at least in part - written down and now survive in his hands as the manuscript was immediately a very emphatic expression of disbelief. One of the toughest non-believers was Dr. Johnson. He had little sympathy for Scotland and even less for the poetry of barbarism. On his tour of the Western Isles with Boswell in 1773, he exhibited an insensibility and even a kind of hostility towards the wild beauties of the Highland interior, which gradually affects the reader with a sense of the ridiculous when they look at his portly figure. , or rolling along remote birch-fringed Loch Ness or among the wonderful mountains above Glensheal on a small Highland pony; or he sits in a boat at Cantyre Dock and listens to Erse's rowing songs:

"Breaking the silence of the seas beneath the furthest Hebrides".

"Dr. Johnson," says Boswell, "recognized that I was now in a scene of the wildest nature he could see, but he sometimes corrected my inaccurate observations. 'There,' I said, 'is a mountain like a cone. ' Johnson: "No, sir. I'd say that in a book, but when a man looks at it, he sees it's not. It's actually facing up, but on one side." is bigger than the other. I called another mountain huge. Johnson: 'No, it's just a significant bulge.' "

Ossian. 313

Johnson not only questioned the age of MacPherson's Ossian, but denied any poetic value. When questioned by Dr. Blair, asked if he thought any man of modern times could have written such poetry, he replied: "Yes sir: many men, many women and many children." "Sir," he called to Reynolds, "a man could write these things down forever if he would give himself to them." To Mr. Mac-Queen, one of his Highland hosts, he said, "I think MacPherson's 'Fingal' is as rude an impertinence as it has troubled the world." Johnson's arguments were mostly a priori. He claimed that the ancient Gaels were a barbarous people, incapable of producing poetry of this kind. Long epics like "Fingal" and "Temora" could not be preserved in memory or transmitted by word of mouth. As for the ancient manuscripts MacPherson claimed to possess, no hundred-year-old Gaelic manuscripts exist.

It is now well established that Dr. Johnson was wrong on all these counts. Not to mention the Homeric poems, the ancient Finns, Scandinavians and Germans were as barbarous as the Gaels; however, they produced the Kalevala, the Edda and the Nibelungenlied. The Kalevala, a poem of 22,793 lines - as long as the Iliad - has been transmitted orally from distant antiquity and was first printed in 1849. Of the Gaelic manuscripts, there are over sixty in the Edinburgh Solicitors' Library, ranging in antiquity from three to three years. One hundred to five hundred years.* Heu, e. for example, the

• See the Reverend Archibald Clerk's dissertation on his Poems of

Ossian in the original Gaelic, with literal English translation." 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1870.

314 e^ History of English Romanticism.

Glenmasan MS of 1238, which contains the story of Darthula* underlying the same story in MacPherson's Ossian. There is the important "Dean of Lismore's Book", a collection of manuscripts made between 1512 and 1529 by Dean MacGregor of Lismore, Argyleshire, containing 11,000 lines of Gaelic poetry, some attributed to Ossian or Oisin. One of the poems is essentially identical to MacPherson's first "Fear" book, although Mr. Campbell say:

• • There isn't a single line in Dean's book that can do that.

identified with any line of MacPhersonian Gaelic." f

Other objections to the authenticity of MacPherson's translations were based on internal evidence, on his traits of thought and style. The "peculiar tone of sentimental grandeur and melancholy" that characterizes them does not correspond to the spirit of all known ancient poetry and is a modern touch. In particular, it has been argued, MacPherson's heroes are very sensitive to wild and sublime nature. Professor William R. Sullivan, a great authority on Celtic literature, says that in the undisputed genuine traces of ancient Irish poetry belonging to the Leinster or Finnian cycle, attributed to Oisin, many details are found in the descriptions of weapons, equipment and articles. . Intern use

• This story is taken from Irish sources in Dr. RD

Poem by Joyce from "Deirdre", Boston, 1876.

f See 'Leabhar na Feinne, Heroic Gaelic Ballads, Collected in Scotland, chiefly 1512 to 1871. Arranged by J. F. Campbell.' London, 1872. Excerpts from the 'Dean's Book of Lismore' were edited and published at Edinburgh in 1862 by the Rev. .Thomas MacLauchlan, with a learned introduction by Mr. W.F. Skene.

Ossian. 315

and ornaments, but very little in the descriptions of external nature.* On the other hand, the late director Shairp considers this "sadness of tone when describing nature" strong evidence of authenticity. "Two facts," he says, "suffice to convince me of the authenticity of ancient Gaelic poetry. The truth with which it reflects the melancholy aspects of the Highland landscape, the same truth with which it expresses the prevailing mood of the Gaels and their sad understanding of the destiny of his people. I need no further proof that Ossianian poetry is an indigenous formation and originating from the primitive heart of the Gaelic race. f And he cites a well-known passage from Matthew Arnold's 'Research of Celtic Literature' to support his point point of view: 'The Celts are the main authors of this striving for remorse and penetrating passion, this titanism in poetry." A famous book, MacPherson's 'Ossian', has carried this vein like a lava flow across Europe during the last century. I won't criticize MacPherson's 'Ossian' here. The book is as big as you like; strip Scotland, if you like, of all the feathers of the borrowed feathers he might have stolen after MacPherson's "Ossian" of this vetus et major Scotia: Ireland; but there will remain in the book a remnant with the soul of Celtic genius in them, and who are proud to have brought that soul of Celtic genius into contact with the nations of modernity.

• Article on "Celtic Literature" in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica".

f "Aspects of Poetry", by J. C. Shaimp, 1872, pp. 244-45 (American edition).

31 6 A History of English Romanticism.

Europe, and thereby enriched all our poetry. Woody Morven and the echoes of Lora and Selma with their silent corridors! We all owe them a debt of gratitude, and if we are unfair enough to forget, may the muse forget us! Pick up any of the best passages from MacPherson's 'Ossian' and you can see, even at this time of day, what a novelty and vigor such a variety must have been in the eighteenth century.'

But Wordsworth draws exactly the opposite conclusion from this kind of internal evidence. "The spirit was generated by the comfortable embrace of an insolent mountaineer in a cloud of tradition. It traveled south, where it was acclaimed, and the fine consistency made its way through Europe, to universal applause.* . . . Open this famous book I made randomly and it marks the beginning of the epic poem "Terrors" in eight books. "Ullin's blue waves roll in the light. The green hills are covered by the day. The trees sway their dark heads in the wind Gray torrents spill their rushing streams Two green hills with ancient oaks encircle a narrow plain There is the blue course of a stream On its banks lay the karar of Atha His spear sustains the king: the red eyes of his fear is sad Cormac towers above your soul with all its terrible wounds... How lucky I was to have been born and bred in a mountainous country,

• Addendum to the Preface of the Second Edition by Lyral Bal-

Boys.” Taine says that Ossian “toured Europe with Oscar, Malvina and his whole gang; and finally provided baptismal names for French grisettts and perruquiers around 1830.” – English Literature, Vol. II, page 220 (American edition).

Ossian. 3^7

I try, since I was a child I feel the falsehood that permeates the volumes imposed on the world under the name of Ossian. From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew the pictures were wrong. Everything is different in nature, but nothing is defined in an absolute and independent unity. With MacPherson it is the opposite: everything (that is not stolen) is defined, isolated, displaced, dampened, but nothing more. It will always be like this when words are replaced by things. Saying the characters could never exist; that good manners are impossible; and that a dream has more substance than the whole state of society as described, there is only one rebuke which MacPherson has challenged. . . But however much these supposed treasures of antiquity were admired, they had no influence on the country's literature. No later writer seems to have drawn a ray of inspiration from them; no author dared formally imitate them, except the Chatterton boy in his first appearance. . . This inability to merge with island literature is, I believe, crucial evidence that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should I demand of any other that it be a forgery, as bold as it is worthless. In that regard, compare the impact of MacPherson's release with Percy's Hallows, so humble, so humble in its claims."

Other critics noted a similar lack of distinction in the human actors, not least in the landscape features of "Fingal" and "Temora". They have no dramatic individuality, but they are all the same and all different.

3i8 iA History of English Romanticism,

extremely gloomy, "Poor moaning, gloomy MacPherson" is Carlyle's alliterative description of the translator of "Ossian"; and it must be admitted that, despite the deep poetic feeling that pervades these writings, and the undeniable beauty of each passage, they have a deplorable iteration. The indictment of your song is an indictment in every way, Mr. Malcolm Laing, one of MacPherson's most obstinate opponents, who published Notes and Illustrations for Ossian in 1805, tried to show by careful analysis of the language that it was all a fabrication, made up of Homer, Milton, the English Bible and other sources.

• • Like the dark moon when it moves, a twilight

circle, in the sky, and people are expecting a terrible change", with Miltons

"Or behind the moon, in a dark eclipse, a cataclysmic twilight falls upon half the nations, and fear of change confounds monarchs."

Laing's method proves too much and can be applied to almost any literary work with similar results. And in general, drawing quick and straightforward conclusions from internal evidence of the kind we've just reviewed is risky. Together these objections leave a strong bias in the mind, and if one were to decide the authenticity of MacPherson's Ossian as a whole, on the basis of impressions of tone and style, one might assume that it contains some element of true ancient poetry. which was completely imbued with modern feelings before being presented to the public. But in memory of Beowulf and

Ossian. 3^9

In Norse mythology one might hesitate to say that the songs of primitive and heroic ages are always impervious to the sublime of nature; or admit that melancholy is a Celtic monopoly.

The most damaging feature of MacPherson's case was his refusal or omission to produce his manuscripts. The testimonies of those who helped him collect and translate leave little doubt that he had some material; and that these consisted partly of ancient Gaelic manuscripts, and partly of Gaelic transcriptions taken from the recitations of Highland elders. These testimonies may be consulted in the "Report of the Committee of the Highland Society", Edinburgh, 1805.* It is too voluminous to go into here, and makes clear the precise use which MacPherson made of his materials if , / . that is, gave literal versions of what he said; or whether he manipulated them - and to what extent - composing, trimming, compounding, smoothing, interpolating, modernizing them as Percy did his ballads. He was asked to show his Gaelic

• The committee found that Gaelic poems and fragments of

The poems they were able to obtain often included the content and sometimes the "literal expression (la ipsissima verba)" of passages given by MacPherson. "But," continues the Report, "the committee was unable to obtain a poem of the same title and tenor as the poems it published, to insert found passages, and to add to the original composition what it considered dignity and subtlety, deleting passages, softening incidents, refining the language: in short, changing what he considered too simple or too crude for a modern ear.

320 c^ History of English Ophantism.

Manuscripts, and Mr. Clerk says he accepted the challenge. "He deposited the manuscripts with his publishers Beckett and De Hondt, Strand, London in 1784. Beckett confirms that the manuscripts remained in his shop for a whole year." *

But that was over twenty years later. Mr. Clerk does not show that Johnson, Laing, Shaw or Pinkerton, or any of MacPherson's many critics, ever saw such an advertisement or knew where the manuscripts could be consulted; or that, not knowing Gaelic, it would have helped if they did; and admit itMacPher-Your son's subsequent conduct of postponing publication from time to time, when urged by friends who generously provided him with funds for that purpose, cannot be excused.” In 1773 and 1775, ^-S-i dr Johnson, therefore, attributes the production of the manuscripts. “The situation,” he wrote to Boswell on February 7, 1775, “is as follows. he and Dr Blair, who I think was tricked into saying he copied the poem from old manuscripts. Copies of it, if he had them-and I don't think he has them-are nothing. Where are the manuscripts? They can be viewed if they exist, but have never been viewed. De non existantibus et non evidentbus eadem est ratio." And during his trip to Scotland in 1773, at a dinner with Sir Alexander Gordon, Johnson said: "If the poems were really translated, they were certainly the first

• "Dissertation on the Authenticity of Poems". See "/^, p. 313.

Ossian. 321

written. Let Mr. MacPherson to deposit the manuscripts in one of the colleges at Aberdeen, where there are people who can judge; and if the professors vouch for its authenticity, the controversy is over. If you don't use this obvious and simple method, you're giving the best reason to doubt."

Indeed, the subsequent history of these alleged manuscripts raises the gravest suspicion of MacPherson's credibility. Eventually £1000 was subscribed to pay for the publication of the Gaelic texts. But these MacPhersons were never published. He sent the manuscripts, which were finally published in 1807, to his executor, Mr. John Mackenzie; and he left £1,000 in his will to cover the cost of the printing. After MacPherson's death in 1796, Mr. Mackenzie "delayed publication overnight and finally gave the manuscripts to the Highland Society"*, which printed them in 1807, nearly half a century after the first Eng.-Lisch Ossian appeared. f However, these were not the identical manuscripts that MacPherson found or claimed to have found in his exploration of the Highlands. They were all in his own handwriting or amanuensis. Furthermore, the Reverend Thomas Ross was hired by the Society to transcribe them.

• Attendant.

f "The Poems of Ossian in the Original Gaelic, with a Literal Translation into Latin by the late Robert Macfarland, etc., Published under the Sanction of the Highland Society of London", 3 vols., London, 1807. The work included dissertations on the authenticity of Sir Jno's poems. Sinclair and Abbot Cesarotti (translated). In 1763, 423 Gaelic lines were published with this epic, believed to be the original of Temora's seventh book.

322 eA History of English l^manticism.

and adapt the spelling to that of the Gaelic Bible, which is modern. The 1807 printed text, therefore, does not even accurately represent MacPherson's Gaelic. Whether the transcriber took more liberties than simply modernizing the spelling is unknown, for the same mysterious fate that befell the original MacPherson collections followed his own manuscript. Once at the Lawyers' Library, it disappeared completely. Mr. Campbell thinks that under this process of double distillation - a MacPherson copy and then a Ross copy - "the ancient form of the language, if ancient, could scarcely survive."* "What would become of Chaucer?" he asks, "so worn out and finally written according to modern rules of grammar and spelling? I have found from experience that a change in 'spelling' can mean a complete change in construction and meaning and a replacement of whole words."

But the 1807 Gaelic text has been attacked on more important points than its spelling. It has been openly accused of being a mere forgery, a translation of MacPherson's English prose into modern Gaelic. This question needs to be resolved by Gaelic scholars and they still disagree. In 1862, Mr. Campbell wrote: "If one compares the Gaelic 'Fingal' published in 1807 with any of the translations which are claimed to have been made of it, it seems to me incomparably superior. It is much simpler in diction, has a peculiar rhythm and assonance which seem to repel the idea of ​​a mere translation from English,

• "Crazy Tales of the Western Highlands", JF Campbell,

Edinburgh, 1862. vol. 4. p. 156.

Ossian. 323

as something almost absurd. It is impossible that it could be a translation from the English by MacPherson, unless there was an intelligent Gaelic poet* able and willing at the time to write what Eton scholars call 'Significant Verses', quoting Mr. Campbell, 1862 of the whole case as follows: 'My theory, then, is that of the early eighteenth century or late seventeenth century or earlier. Highland bards may have fused the floating lore into more complete forms, grafting their own ideas onto what they found. and that MacPherson found, translated and modified his works; he published the translation in 1760; f Gaelic prepared for printing; he published part of it in 1763 and removed evidence of what he had done when he found his behavior guilty. I see no other way out of the labyrinth of evidence.” But in 1872 Mr. Campbell reached a conclusion far less favorable to the Gaelic text's claims. He now maintains that the English was first composed by MacPherson and that "he and other translators later worked on it and created a Gaelic equivalent, the merit of which varies according to the translator's skill and knowledge of Gaelic". of leading Gaelic authorities, Mr. W.F. Skene and Mr. Archibald Clerk, are you sure that the Gaelic is the original and that

• He suggests Lachlan MacPherson of Strathmashie, one of the Mac-

Pherson's helpers. "Folk Tales of the Western Highlands". f "fragments", &c.

X Seventh book of "Temora". See Ante, page 321. § "The Book of the Enemy," page 321. xiii.

324 <i/l History of English Manticism.

Translation from English. Mr. Clerk, who reprinted the Highland Society text in 1870* with his own literal translation on alternate pages and MacPherson's English at the bottom of the page, implicitly believes in the antiquity and authenticity of the Gaelic originals. “MacPherson,” he writes, “draws much from manuscript and much from oral recitation. Most likely he reproduced the smaller poems exactly as he found them. I don't think he or any of his assistants did much to help establish the connections between the various episodes.

For a reader unfamiliar with Gaelic, comparing MacPherson's English with Mr. Clerk, it certainly seems unlikely that the Gaelic could simply be a translation of the former. The reflection in a mirror cannot be brighter than the object it reflects; and if Mr. Clerk can be trusted (it seems more literal, though less rhetorical than MacPherson's), Gaelic is often concrete and high-pitched where MacPherson is general; often simple where figurative or ornate; and sometimes of quite different meaning from their interpretation. take, for instance for example, the last passage of the second "Duan" or book of "*Fingal".

• • An arrow struck his manly chest. He is sleeping

with his beloved Galbina to the sound waves. The mariner sees their green graves when he leaps over the northern waves." -MacPherson.

• See before, p. 313, note.

Ossian. 325

"A merciless arrow struck her chest. Her dream is by your side, Galbina, where the wind fights the ocean.

-Attendant.

But then again, Mr. Archibald Sinclair, a Glasgow publisher whose letter is supplied by Mr. Campbell in his Tales of the West Highlands hesitates "to assert that a considerable part of the Gaelic originally written by him, which is published is [MacPherson's] translation, is really translated from the English." And Professor Sullivan says: " The so-called originals are a very curious kind of mosaic, evidently constructed with great difficulty after the fact, in which sentences or clauses from actual poems are added to be put together. in a heap of words far below the original poem itself." MacPherson." *

It is clear that it is no longer possible to maintain the general English opinion of Mr. Campbell that MacPherson invented the characters and events of his 'Ossian' and that the poems did not previously exist at all. . The evidence is overwhelming that there were traditions, stories and poems popularly attributed to Oisin, son of Finn Mac-Cumhail, both in Ireland and in the Scottish Highlands. However, no poems have been found that exactly match a single MacPherson play; and Sullivan cites as proof of the modern and false character of these versions, the fact that they mix names from the ancient hero cycle, like Darthula, CuthuUin, and Conlach, with names belonging to him.

• >'

Encyclopaedia Britannica": "Keltische Literatur".

326 A History of English Romanticism.

the Finnish cycle, as never occurs in the authentic and indisputable vestiges of Celtic poetry. Between 1760, the date of the MacPherson fragments, and 1807, the date of the Highland Society text, 900 lines of Osseno-Gaelic verse were independently published in the collection of Gillie, 1786, and Stewart, 1804. In 1780 Dr. Smith publishes his Ancient Lays, a free translation of Gaelic fragments which he later (1787) printed under the title Sean Dana, Smith taking open liberties with his originals, as we may presume MacPherson did with his; but he made no secret of it, and by providing the Gaelic on which his paraphrase was based, he allowed the public to see how ancient his "old songs" were really ancient, and how far they were built into poetic wholes of their own. editorial work.*

Wordsworth's claim about the failure of MacPherson's Ossian to "blend in with the literature of the island" requires some qualification. That it did not form such a formative part of English literature as Percy's ballads is quite certain and easy to explain. Firstly, it is said to have been a prose translation of poetry into another language, and therefore could hardly directly influence the verse and diction of English poetry. She couldn't even edit them as directly as many foreign literatures; like the ancient classical literatures, p. for example, I always worked; or like italian

• For a more detailed description of the status of the "authenticity" issue

see Notes on the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems by Archibald McNeil, 1868; and an article on "Ossian" in Macmillaiis Magazine, XXIV, 1 13-25.

Ossian. 327

and French and German worked on several occasions; for Gaelic was virtually inaccessible to all but a few expert scholars. Regardless of its beauty or expressiveness, it was worse than a dead language, as it carried the stigma of barbarism. In its best days, it was never what Germans call the language of culture; and now it was the language of a few thousand peasants and highlanders, and it was rapidly dying out even in its native strongholds.

Whatever Ossianic's poems might have in the minds of the English, it would be in the dress MacPherson had given them. And perhaps the coy, rhetorical tone of MacPherson's prose has a lot to do with evoking the extraordinary enthusiasm with which his prose was written."wild paraphrases", as Mr. Campbell calls them,They were welcomed by the public. The age was tired of refinement, of ingenuity, of too much civilization; groped for the raw, the primitive, the heroic; he began to sink into a feeling of melancholy and a growing admiration for the solitude of the mountains and the ancient past. Suddenly, here was what I'd been waiting for: "a tale from the old days"; and the solemn lamentation of MacPherson's movements, with the peculiar form of its narrative, its repetitions, its want of transition, suited its theme well. "Men have spoken softly and in a delicate dialect for so long," says Leslie Stephen, "♦ that they have been easily gratified and easily deceived by an affectation of strong and natural feelings."

The impression was temporary, but it came back immediately.

328 A History of English Romanticism.

diet and powerful. Wordsworth was wrong to say that no notable author, except Chatterton, had formally dared to imitate Ossian. A generation after the appearance of the "Fragments" we find the young Coleridge in the preface* to his first collection of poems (1793), which contains two lines imitated from her, alluding to "Ossian" as an ecce signum:

How long will you grow around me, oh blue waves of the sea? My home wasn't always in caves,

Nor under the cold breath of the tree" etc. etc. f

In Byron's Hours of Idleness (1807), published while he was still a student at Cambridge, there is a piece of prose based on the episode of Nisus and Euryalus in Envy entitled The Death of Calmar and Orla - An imitation of Ossian by MacPherson".

• What form rises above the whispering clouds? your darkness

Ghost shines in the red current of storms? His voice echoes in the thunder. It's Orla, Orthona's brunette boss. . . You were charming, blue-eyed son of Morla', &c. After reading several pages of this type of material, one concludes that Byron could do it as well as MacPherson himself; and, indeed, Johnson was not so far off the mark when he said that anyone could do it if he wanted to.

• "Cona's sweet voice never sounds so sweet as when

He's talking about himself."

t "Queixa de Ninathoma."

Ossian. 329

rick", "Cerdick" and "Gorthmund", as well as a composition he called the Manx dialect "Godred Crovan" and an Old English one he called "The Heilas". , as a passage or two in "Kenrick" will show: "Awake, son of Eldulph! let your clothes be stained with blood and the streams of life stain your waist... High mountain Cealwulf, who saw the first rays of the morning star, swift as a flying stag, strong as a young oak, fiery as a night wolf, unsheathed his sword; shining like the blue smoke in the valley of Horso: terrible like the red lightning that bursts from the brown clouds, its swift barking swept the foaming waves like the wind in a storm".

In a note about his Ossianic impersonation, Byron said that Mr. Laing had shown that Ossian was an imposter, but that credit for MacPherson's work remained, although his diction was at times bombastic and bombastic. The Scottish mound "Lachin Y Gair" has two Ossianic lines in quotes:

"Shadows of the dead! Didn't I hear their voices rising above the stormy night breeze?"

Byron treasured his earliest memories of the mountainous landscape, which he said prepared him to love the Alps and the 'blue Friuli'.

• For some MS. Byron's notes on an edition of "Ossian", see Phelps'

"English Romantic Movement", S. 153-54.

33*^ A History of English Romanticism.

mountains" and "the well-known Acroceraunian mountains". But Ossian's influence on Byron and his older contemporaries manifested itself in more subtle ways than formal imitations. He fell into that emotional current that Carlyle called "Wertherism" and which resonated with the tone conveyed the German Sturm-imd-Drang-Zeit sounds, that impatience for moderation, that eagerness to give full impetus to the demands of the elementary passions, and that despair when these are suppressed by the institutions of modern society, which we see in Rousseau and the young Goethe, hence the romantic melancholy, the Byronic turmoil, to use Heine's phrase, which led the poet from the ruins of social life to the wastes of nature and sometimes to suicide, an apt expression of his own vague and tempestuous annoyances.

Homer," writes Werther, "was replacedmy heart to the divine Ossian. To what world is this angelic bard taking me! With him I wander through desolate deserts and terrible swamps; Surrounded by hurricanes and hurricanes, in the dim light of the moon, trace the shadows of our noble ancestors; hear it from the heights of the mountains mingled with the roar of waves and waterfalls, their melancholy tones pouring out of cavernous alcoves; while the brooding monody of a young girl in love casting her farewell sighs over the mossy grave of the warrior who adored her makes up the inarticulate concerto. I follow this silver-haired bard as he wanders the valley, following in the footsteps of his parents. poor me! there are no traces

Ossian. 33 1

but their tombs His thought then hovers over the silver moon, while its undulating rays play in the undulating current; and the memory of past and past actions returns to the hero's mind, actions of times when he boasted of approaching danger, and emulation animated his whole body; while the pale orb gleamed above his boat, laden with his enemy's booty, illuminating his triumphant return. When I see a chest full of pain in his face; when I see his heroic greatness sink in the grave, and he exclaims, looking at the cold ground that will fall upon him, "Here the traveler, knowing my worth, will bend his weary steps and seek the bard that gladdens the soul, the famous son of Fingal; his foot shall tread my grave, but his eyes shall never see me'; At that moment, my dear friend, as a famous and chivalrous knight, I could at once draw my sword; deliver my prince from a long and wearisome existence of weariness and pain; and then I conclude by thrusting the weapon into my own chest, so that I may accompany the demigod my hand has freed.

In his last interview with Charlotte, Werther, who has already made up his mind to commit suicide, reads to her that tender passage from "The Songs of Selma" in which Armin mourns the loss of his beloved daughter. 'Alone at sea'. . - Hitting the rocks, my daughter was heard complaining. Her screams were frequent and loud. What could her father do? I stayed on the beach all night. Interrupted by a shared stream of tears. 'They tracked their photo

• "Werthers Leiden", Breve Ixviii.

332 A History of English Romanticism.

own misfortune in this unfortunate story. . . The harsh allusion of those words to Werther's situation penetrated to the depths of his soul with all the electric swiftness of lightning.

It is significant that one of Ossian's most ardent admirers was Chateaubriand, who is credited with inventing modern melancholy and the jungle. Here is a passage from his Genie du Christianisme: * “Under a clouded sky, on the shore of that sea whose storms Ossian sang, there is something grand and dark in its Gothic architecture. Upon a shattered altar in Orkney, the traveler sits marveling at the sadness of those places: sudden mists, valleys where the tombstone rises, streams flowing through wild swamps, a few reddish pines scattered across a barren desert, covered with patches of snow. - these are the only objects that present themselves. before your eyes. The wind circulates through the ruins, and its countless fissures are transformed into so many tubes that exhale a thousand sighs. Tall grasses sway in the openings of the domes, and behind these openings you can see the fluttering clouds and the harbor of the soaring eagle... For a long time these four stones, which mark the tombs of heroes on the Caledonian moors, have attracted the contemplative traveler for a long time ahead. Oscar and Malvina left, but nothing has changed in their lonely land. It is no longer the bard's own hand that plays the harp; the tones we hear are the slight tremor of the strings produced by the touch of a ghost announcing a hero's death in a lonely chamber at night. . . So if you're sitting in the valley in the midday silence

• "Caledonia or Old Scotland", Book ii. Chapter 7 Passive.

Ossian. 333

its breeze is the whisper of the mountain in Ossian's ear: the storm drowns it many times in its course, but the pleasant sound returns.

It is clear that in Byron's passion for night and storm, for wilderness, for mountain and sea, it is impossible to say what part can be attributed directly to MacPherson's "Ossian" or more remotely to Chateaubriand and other heirs of the Ossenian mentality. The influence of a given book spreads and mixes with a hundred currents that are in the air. But I think we often have an Ossian conscience when reading passages like the famous apostrophe to the ocean in **Childe Harold“—

"Roll, you deep dark ocean, roll!" —

it recalls the direction of the sun in Carthon - 'O thou that art above, round as the shield of my fathers', perhaps the most banal locus classicus of the whole work; or how the lines begin

"I wish the desert were my home;"*

or the description of the storm in the Jura:

“And that is in the night: the most glorious night. You were not sent to sleep. *

Walter Scott learned Ossian as a boy from Dr. He met Blacklock and was enthusiastic at first; but "the corny repetitions of Ossian phraseology", he admits, "disgusted me".

• c

Childe Harold”, Canto 3.

334 ^ History of English Romanticism.

much sooner than would be expected at my age.” He later contributed an essay on the authenticity of the poems to meetings of the Edinburgh Speculative Club. In one sense of the word Scott was the most romantic of all romantics, but in another sensual sense he was very unromantic, and there was not much in his sane, cheerful, resilient nature that poetry like Ossian's medievalism could cling to. , though so bland a word as sentimentality, fails to adequately express the morbid despair that "Werther" evoked, and has associations with works of a very different kind, such as the novels of Richardson and Sterne. In England, Scott became He became the leading exponent of Byron's "Gotzism" and "Wertherism". , "Childe Harold" and "O Corsário" were the last products of the literature of "II Pensaroso", and their melodramatic excesses already announced a reaction.

Among other testimonies to Ossian's popularity in England are MacPherson's many experiments in prose versification. These were not very successful and only a few of them will be mentioned here. Reverend John Wodrow, a Scottish minister,

• The same goes for Burns, although there are references to Cuthullin's dog.

I Luath in The Twa Hounds; to 'Caric-thura' in 'The Whistle'; Land to 'Cath-Loda' in the liner notes for 'The Vision' show that Burns knew his Ossian.

f O “Götz von Berlinchingen” de Goethe.

Ost'an. 335

"Tried" "Carthon", "The Death of Cuthullin" and "Darthula" in full feat in 1769 and "Fingal" in 1771. In the preface to hisFingal",he asserted that there was no reasonable doubt as to the antiquity and authenticity of MacPherson's Ossian. "Fingal", which seems to have been a favourite, was again adapted into heroic couplets by Ewen Cameron in 1776, preceded by statements by various Highland lords on the authenticity of the originals; and through an argumentative introduction in which the author Dr. Blair's statement cites Ossian as equaling Homer and Virgil "in the power of imagination, the grandeur of feeling, and the innate majesty of passion". National pride recruited most Scottish scholars to the affirmative side of the issue, making Ossian's authenticity almost an article of faith. Wodrow's exploits were simply respectable. Cameron's quality can be guessed from half a dozen lines:

"When Moran, one of those charged with exploring the distant seas, rushed from the shore and cried, 'Cuthullin, arise! Lochlin's ships covered with snow hide the depths. ."

Everything impressive about MacPherson's melodious prose is lost in these metrical versions, which offer a perfect ad absurdum reduction of the critical madness that compared Ossian to Homer. Homer could not wear a dress that did not bring out the beauty and interest of the original. Again, 1786,Fingal" became

33^ A History of English Romanticism.

Heroism of a Mr. R. Hole, who varied his bars with occasional lines from ballads, like this:

"But many beauties will melt with pain from her soft tension in days to come, and many a man's breasts will glisten with her exalted bearing."

All these versions were issued in Scotland. But still in 1814 "Fingal" appeared again in verse, this time in London, and in a variety of meters by Mr. George Harvey; who in his preface expressed the hope that Walter Scott would be persuaded to give "Ossian" the form of a metrical novel, like "Marmion" or "The Ballad of the Last Minstrel". The best English poem constructed by MacPherson is The Six Bards of Ossian Versified by Sir Egerton Brydges (dated 1784). * The passage chosen was one Gray so admired, from a note on "Chroma" in the "Original Fragments". "Six bards, meeting in a chieftain's hall on an October night, go out one by one to observe the weather and return to report their observations, each ending with the refrain: 'Receive me from the night, my friends. ” The whole episode is exceptionally compelling, instilling a conviction in reality that is often lacking in the epic parts of MacPherson's collection.

At first, Walpole was almost as enthusiastic about the "Shards" as Gray was. He wrote to Dalrymple that they were real poetry, natural poetry, like the poetry of the East. He especially liked them

• See "Poems by Saml. Egerton Brydges", 4th ed., London, 1807.

p. 87-96.

f See above, p. 117

Ossian. 337

Synonym of Echo - "son of the rock"; and in a later letter he said that any doubts he might have had about its authenticity had been removed. But Walpole's literary judgments were notoriously capricious. In his subsequent correspondence with Mason and others he was extremely dismissive of the "cold skeleton of a MacPherson epic poem more tedious than 'Leonidas'. "Ossian", he says to Mason in a letter dated March 1783, became It was wholly unbelievable to him; but Mrs Montagu, founder of the Blue Stocking Club, still keeps "her feast of seashells in her feathered dressing room."

Celtic Homer received an even warmer reception abroad than they did at home. It has been translated into French*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish and possibly other languages. Bonaparte was a great lover of Ossian and carried a copy of Cesarotti's Italian version with him. One imagines a resemblance between MacPherson's style and the bombastic style of Bonaparte's bulletins and dispatches. In Germany, of course, Ossian absorbed more power. It was translated into hexameters by a Viennese Jesuit named Michael Denis J. and produced many imitations. In his "Stimmen der Volker" (1778/79) Herder gave three translations of "Ossian" and placed an essay at the beginning of the entire collection

• There were French translations by Letourneur in 1777 and 1810:

by Lacaussade in 1842; and an imitation of Baour-Lorm in 1801.

f Siehe Perrys "Literature of the 18th century", p. 417

X This translator is believed to be of Irish descent. He was born in 1729 in Scharding, Bavaria.

338 A History of English Romanticism.

• • Of Ossian and the Songs of the Ancient People."

1773. Schiller was one of the converts; Klopstock and his circle called themselvesbards" and aExclamations and violent manners became fashionable, known in the history of German literature as the bard's roar. It is not necessary to trace MacPherson's personal history in detail here. In 1764 he went to Pensacola as secretary to Governor Johnston. He was later a government pamphleteer, writing against Junius and for taxation of the American colonies. He was appointed agent of the nabob of Arcot; he sat in Parliament for Camelford Borough, and built a fine Italianate villa in his native parish; He died in 1796, leaving a large fortune and buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1773 he was so foolish as to turn the "Iliad" into Osean prose. The translation was ridiculed and probably did much to fuel the growing disbelief in the authenticity of "Fingal" and "Temora".

CHAPTER X

ttbomas Cbatterton.

The History of English Romanticism Has Its Tragedy: The Life and Death of Thomas Chatterton -

"The wonderful boy, the sleepless soul perished in his pride" *

The story has been told many times, but it can be retold here; for, in addition to its dramatic interest and no doubt about the sheer value of Rowley's poetry, it is very instructive as to the conditions that brought about the Romantic revival. It shows the process by which the antique became poetry.

The setting of the story was the ancient city of Bristol, Old Saxon Briggestowe, "bridge place", i.e. bridge over the River Avon, not far above its confluence with the Severn. Here Chatterton was born in 1752, the posthumous son of a dissolute schoolmaster whose ancestors had been sextons at St Mary Redcliffe for one hundred and fifty consecutive years. Perhaps it is more than presumption to ascribe to heredity the inclination which Chatterton's genius took spontaneously and almost from childhood; guess at some mysterious prenatal influence -hit the trams

• Wordsworth, "Determination and Independence".

339

34° A History of English Romanticism.

Chain to which we are connected in the dark" - may have built living connections of unconscious associations going back through the centuries. Be that as it may, Chatterton was a child of Redcliffe Church. St. Mary stood by her cradle and rocked her and rocked her a, if he inherited no reverence for his ancient source from his blood, nor from his mother's milk, at least the water from its source * shone upon him as a sign of his service Having signed "Castle of Otranto" Coming from Strawberry Hill , Rowley's poems were born in St. Mary's Church.

Chatterton's father did not succeed him as sexton, but as underchanter at Bristol Cathedral, and his home and school in Pile Street were just a few yards from Redcliffe Church. In this house Chatterton was born almost under the roof of the sanctuary; and when her mother soon after moved to another house, where she supported a little lady's school and did needlework, she was still at Redcliffe Hill and near St Mary's. The church itself, "the pride of Bristowe and the western country", is described asone of the finest parish churches in England', fa rich specimen of the late Gothic or "ornate" style; The construction or restoration dates back to the mid-15th century. Chatterton's uncle by marriage, Richard Phillips, became a sexton in 1748, and the boy took charge of the corridors and transepts. He

• January 1, 1753.

f "The Poetic Works of Thos. Chatterton. With an Essay on the Poems of Rowley by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat and a Treatise by Edward Bell"; in two volumes. London, 1871, vol. I.p. XV.

Thomas Chatterton. 341

Stone figures of knights, priests, magistrates and other old bourgeois dignitaries came to life under his intense and melancholy imagination; her mind picked up colors from the red and blue patterns thrown onto the sidewalk by the stained-glass windows; and he may have explained much of what little Latin he knew about "the chivalrous bronzes of tombs" and "the cold coats of the dead."

It is curious how early his education was self-determined for his peculiar ends. Dreamy, quiet and lonely child, prone to tantrums, he was considered boring and even stupid. He was unwilling or unable to learn the lyrics until age seven, when he saw the capital letters illuminated on an old sheet of music. From these, his mother taught him the alphabet and, a little later, he learned to read a black Bible. "Draw me an angel with wings and a trumpet," he replied when asked which instrument he would choose for the small clay bowl he had been promised as a gift.* Colston Hospital, where he was sent for school, was built in site of a ruined monastery of Carmelite monks; Scholars wore blue robes with metal pectorals engraved with the image of a dolphin, the Founder's coat of arms, and wore their hair cut short in imitation of monastic tonsure. When the boy was young, among his closest acquaintances, along with winegrowers, confectioners, pipe makers, apothecaries and other merchants of the Bristol gentry, were two church organists, a miniaturist and a heraldic engraver.

• Willcox edition of Chattertou's Poetical Works, Cambridge,

1842, Ed. I p. XXI.

342 A History of English Romanticism.

Characters that strangely resemble the mixture of urban life and ecclesiastical-medieval art reproduced in Rowley's poetry.

"Chatterton," attests one of his early acquaintances,** loved to walk in the fields, especially in the Redcliffe meadows, and would talk of his manuscripts, and sometimes read them there. At one point, at the sight of the church, he looked particularly pleased. He used to go to bed looking at the church and appearing in a trance. Then he said to me suddenly: 'This steeple was set on fire by lightning, this was the place where the plays used to be performed.' 'Among his early studies', we are told, 'antiquities and especially the scene of medieval life were among his favorite subjects; Heraldry seems to have particularly fascinated him. He stocked up on charcoal, lead black, ochre, and other colors; and with them he delighted in sketching in rough and picturesque figures churches, castles, tombs of armored warriors, heraldic coats of arms, and other similar ornaments of the old world.

Is there not a monastic touch to all this, reminiscent of the child martyred in Chaucer's Prioresse's Tale, the "little clergyman at the age of seven"?

"This little boy learned his little book. As he sat in his pulpit at school, He herde 'Alma redemptoris' sang, How children learn their antiphon."

A choirboy brought up in the cathedral closes and glimpses the sky, not through green branches, but

• "Edward Bell Reminiscences", p. xxiv.

Thomas Cbatterton. 343

of the treetops of the episcopal gardens, colored by the pointed windows of the transparent floors; dreaming in the organ gallery during the music's intervals,

Se

"Chorists sit with crooked faces. They feel the silence more than the singing."

This was how Chatterton's sensitive genius took impressions of his surroundings. As he pored over the antiques of his hometown, his idea of ​​life sweetly crept into his study of imagination; and little by little he built up a picture of fifteenth-century Bristol, including a group of figures, part historical, part fabulous, all centered on the master William Canynge. Canynge was the wealthy Bristol merchant who founded or restored St Mary Redcliffe's; under Henry VI. He was mayor of the city several times. and Edward IV, and has represented the community in Parliament. Chatterton discovered or said that he eventually received Holy Orders and became Dean of Westbury College. About Canynge Chatterton arranged a series of dramatis personae, some of which he discovered in ancient records and documents, such as Carpenter, Bishop of Worcester, and Sir Theobald Gorges, a gentleman of Wraxhall, near Bristol; along with others wholly invented by him, such as John a Iscam, whom he describes as a canon of St. Augustine's Abbey, Bristol; and especially one Thomas Rowley, vicar of St. John's, employed by Canynge to collect manuscripts and antiquities. He was her poet prince and confessor, and Chatterton has attributed to him most of the lines that bear the common name of Rowley's poems. But Iscam was also a poet and

344 ^ History of English Romanticism.

Master Canynge himself sometimes broke into song. Samples from the Muse of Iscam and Canynge add to the collection. The great merchant of Bristol was a medieval Mscenas, and at his house, 'nempned the Red Lodge', interludes were played - 'Aella', 'Goddwyn' and 'The Parliament of Sprites' - composed either by Rowley or by Rowley. and Iscam work together. Canynge sometimes wrote the forewords; and Rowley fed his patron with dedications and polite eulogies: "On the Church of Our Lady," "Letter to Master Dygne Canynge," "W. Canynges's Feast Account," etc. The well-known fifteenth-century poet Lydgate also wrote: Century is introduced into this literary circle as John Ladgate and is forced to exchange letters in verse with Rowley in eighteenth-century style. Such is the remarkable fiction which the wonder boy erected as scaffolding for the fabric of the old false poetry and prose he was building in the years 1767 to 1770. H. from fifteen to eighteen years old.

There is a great distance between the achievements of this ignorant boy of humble birth and few opportunities, and the works of the great Sir Waiter, with his mature powers and reserves of solid antiquarian tradition. But the impulse that impelled them to their no different tasks was the same. In "Yarrow Revisited", Wordsworth uses the phrase "localized novel" about Scott. Indeed, it was Scott's endearing local spirit, his patriotism, his family pride, his connection to the country that brought passion and poetry to his historic pursuits. For Chatterton, too, this preoccupation with the past drew its intensity from his love of that place.

Thomas Chatterton. 345

Bristol was her world; at the Battle of Hastings he did not forget to present a contingent from Bristowan, led by a fabulous Alfwold, who performed miracles of valor over the Normans. The picture of medieval life that he managed to create was, of course, a weak and poor simulacrum compared to Scott's. He lacked knowledge, leisure, friends, long life, everything necessary to consolidate his work. All he had was a creative, if undisciplined, imagination, coupled with incredible diligence, persistence, and secrecy. But for all its faults, his work, with all its imperfections, is far more startling than the imitative verse of the Wartons or the thin, hazy medievalism of Walpole and Clara Reeve. It is the product of a more original mind and intense imagination.

In the document room above the north portico of St. Mary Redcliffe had several old chests full of parchment: architectural memos, church bills, guardian bills, inventories of vestments, and similar parish papers. One of these chests, known as Master Canynge's Chest, was opened several years ago and anything of value in its contents was moved to a secure location. The rest of the parchments were scattered about, and Chatterton's father took several home and used them to cover notebooks. The boy's eyes were drawn to those yellow sheepskins with their ancient writing; he appropriated them and kept them locked in his room.

It is not known how far in advance he had the idea of ​​blaming this hidden treasure for the myth of Rowley that was beginning to form in his mind.

346 A History of English Romanticism.

According to a schoolmate named Thistlethwaite, Chatterton told him in the summer of 1764 that he had several ancient manuscripts which had been found in a chest at Redcliffe Church and that he had lent one to Thomas Philips. , receptionist at Colston Hospital. Thistlethwaite says that Philips showed him this manuscript, a piece of parchment, trimmed close to the edges, and upon which was written, in faded yellow letters as if faded with age, a poem which he believes was written with "Elinoure and Juga" is identical. published later. by Chatterton in the Town and Country Magazine of May 1769. One tends to be suspicious of this evidence. "The Castle of Otranto" was published for the first time in December 1764, and the "Relics" only the following year. The latter was undoubtedly known to Chatterton; many of Rowley's poems, "The Bristowe Tragedie", p. B. and the minstrel songs on "Aella", show influence from ballads*; though it does not seem improbable that Chatterton was led to insinuate the disguise, however slight, which Walpole adopted in the preface to his novel. to attribute it to his poetry would be to attribute it to a fictional bard of the Middle Ages. It was Counterfeit Day; the Ossian controversy raged and the wave of popular favor

• See ("Battle of Hastings", i. xx)

"The gray goose gear that was placed on her, Eftsoons with steaming crimson blood was wet"

with verses from "Chevy Chase" {ante, p. 295). Undoubtedly, before the release of "Relics", the ballad was very relevant. f See above, p. 237.

Thomas Chatterton. 347

lean heavily on the old. A series of overt imitations of Old English poetry, however clever, would have little success. But the discovery of a hitherto unknown 15th-century poet was an announcement that would interest scholars and perhaps most readers. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for a writer to have done his best work under a mask. The poems Chatterton wrote in the guise of Rowley - a dramatically imagined figure behind whom he lost his own identity - are full of a strange attraction; while its recognized parts are nothing. It's not worth getting too bogged down in the moral aspects of this kind of deception. The issue is more one of literary method than of ethics. If the writer, by the skill of his imitations and the ingenuity of the evidence he presents to support them, can really win the public over for a while, success justifies the attempt. The artist's aim is to create a certain impression, and the choice of means must be left to him.

- In the summer of 1764, Chatterton was barely twelve years old, and surprising as his precocity was, it is doubtful that he would have gone as far in developing the Rowley legend as the Thistlethwaite story would imply. What is certain, however, is that three years later, in the spring of 1767, Chatterton presented Mr. Henry Burgum, a tin worthy of Bristol, a parchment adorned with the crest of "Bergham", which he said I found. at St Mary's Church and also provided him with two notebooks in which the family tree of "Bergham" was written, along with three poems in pseudo-ancient script. One of them, "The

34^ A History of English Romanticism.

Tournament" described a tournament in which a certain Sir Johan de Berghamme, supposed ancestor of the prized pewter, appeared. Another, "El Romanunte del Cnyghte", claimed to be the work of this marshalling yard hero, "who devoted his whole Life of Inclination to ", but still found time to write several books and translate "a part of the Iliad under the title * Romance of Troy". "

All this was eagerly swallowed by Burgum, and the boy wonder then began to deceive Mr. William Barrett, a surgeon and antiquarian, who was busy writing a history of Bristol. He provided him with copies of alleged documents in the Ammunition Room of Redcliffe Church: "De la Auntiaunte 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 this singularly uncritical historian included in his History of Bristol, published some twenty years later. He also shared with Barrett two of Rowle's poems, The Goblin Parliament and The Battle of Hastings (in two very different versions). In September 1768 a new bridge over the Avon was opened at Bristol; and Chatterton, now a barrister, took the opportunity to send anonymously to Farley's Bristol Journal printers a description of the mayor's first change of the old bridge under Henry II. This was written in outdated language and supposedly copied from a contemporary manuscript. It was the first release by Chatterton Fabrications. In 1768-69 he produced and supplied Mr. George

Thomas Chatterton. 349

Catcott the long tragic interlude "Aella",ANDBristowe Tragedie' and other shorter pieces, which he claims are all transcriptions of manuscripts in the Canynge trunk, and the work of Thomas Rowley, a lay priest from Bristol who flourished around 1460. Catcott was a local book collector and partner of Mr. Burgum was later called "Rowley's midwife".

In December 1768 Chatterton opened a correspondence with James Dodsley, the London publisher, in which he said he had found several ancient poems, of which he offered to give him copies if he would send a guinea to defray the cost. Attached is a copy of "^lla". “My motive for doing this,” he wrote, “is to persuade the world that monks (some of whom hold such dismissive views) were not as stupid as was generally supposed, and that in the 19th century good poetry could be written. ". dark days of superstition, as well as in these more enlightened ages", Dodsley ignored the letters, and the owner of the Rowley manuscripts turned to Horace Walpole, whose preferences as virtuoso, Gothic lover and novelist were understandable. Walpole prepared, was a prose article entitled "The Ryse of Peyncteynge yn England, written by T. Rowleie, 1469, for Master Canynge," which contained, among other things, an extraordinary "anecdote of painting. About Affiem, an Anglo- Saxon glazier in Edmond's reign captured by Danes "Inkarde, a soldier of the Danes, wanted to kill him; on the web before Death Party, he founded AfHem as her brother.

35° ^ History of English Romanticism.

Afrighte chaynede uppe hys soule. Guestnesse resided in her chest. Oscarre the Great Dane did his best with la commeynge Sunne: no cold tears; The next day, Danique Kynge hired Oscarre to prepare his Knyghtes efts for Warre. Caught in the crossfire, Afflem saw his country riddled with enemies, had his wife and Chyldrenne give capital to his ship, and ended Soorowe when the raucous blue-yellow Wynde shot him. By waves of embalming he saw his brother, Wyfe, and Chyldrenne sink to their deaths: he himself was cast upon a bank on the Isle of Wyghe to live out his life in the name of all Emmoise: then moche to Aflem.

This article was accompanied by notes explaining rare words and providing brief biographical sketches of Canynge, Rowley and other fictional characters such as John, 2nd Abbot of St Austin's Minster, who was the first English oil painter and also the greatest poet of his day. 'Take a sample of his poetry, *On King Richard I.':

'" ¡Harte de Lyone! Shake Sworde here,

Bare thie mortheynge steinede honde' etc."

It was all contained in a short note to Walpole,

which turned out like this:

• Walter Scott cites this passage in his review of Southey and

Chatterton's Cottle in the Edinburgh Review, April 1804, commenting: 'Although Chatterton wrote a simple narrative, he imitated with considerable success the dry and concise style of an ancient analyst; but when something called for a more dignified interpretation or sentimental style, he drove the deadly and easily recognizable car of Fingal's son."

Thomas Chatterton. 351

"Sir, knowing a little about antiquities, I found several curious manuscripts, which may be useful to you in any future edition of your truly amusing Anecdotes of Painting.* Correcting errors (if any) in the notes, you will be very pleased

"Your most humble servant,

"Thomas Chatterton".

Walpole responded politely, thanking his correspondent for what he had sent and his offer to pass on his manuscripts, but refrained from any opportunity to correct Chatterton's notes. I am not fortunate enough to understand the Saxon language and without your scholarly commentary I would not have been able to understand Rowley's text. He asks where to find Rowley's poems, offers to have them printed, and claims that Abbot John's verse is "wonderful in its harmony and spirit". This encouragement prompted Chatterton to write a second letter containing another long extract from the "History of Peyncteynge yn England", which contains translations into Rowley's dialect of passages by two mythical Saxon poets: Ecca, Bishop of Hereford, and Elmar, Bishop of Selseie, " fetyve yn Workes of ghastly", as ecce signuni:

"New maie alle Helle aberto para golpear-te downe" etc.

But by this time, Walpole had begun to suspect fraud. Lately, he has become involved in the Ossian case and has begun to distrust him. Advance-

• Publication began in 1761: 2nd edition in 1768. Chatterton's letter was

of March 25th [1769]-

352 <v^ History of English Romanticism.

Furthermore, Chatterton was quick enough to show his hand on his second card (March 30th). "He informed me," said Walpole in his history of the case, "that he was the son of a poor widow ... that he was a paralegal or apprentice, but that he had a taste and inclination for more elegant studies; and he interpreted expressed the wish that I might help him in my interest in getting out of so tedious a profession by getting him a job. Meanwhile, Walpole showed the manuscripts to his friends Gray and Mason, who distrusted their own learning, which they quickly recognized and declared to be lies. but Walpole, promptly considering that it was "no serious crime for a young bard to have forged hand notes, customary only in the parish of Parnassus", wrote his witty correspondent a well-founded letter of advice. intended, advising him to retain his profession, and saying that he had "communicated his transcripts to far better judges, and they were by no means satisfied with the authenticity of his alleged manuscripts", Chatterton then demanded his manuscripts, and after some delay ( Walpole was absent from Paris for several months), they were returned to him.

In 1769, Chatterton began contributing several articles in prose and verse to the Town and Country Magazine, a London periodical. Among them appeared the eclogue of "Elinoure and Juga",* the only one of Rowley's poems to be printed during its author's lifetime. Now he had put his pen to work on politics and sided with Wilkes and company.

• Ver atite^ p. 346

jo

Thomas Chatterton. 353

Freedom. In April 1770 he left Bristol for London and embarked on the serendipity of a literary career. Most tragic is the story of the poor friendless boy's struggle with fate over the next few months. He continually scribbled in newspapers and received little or no salary. Hunger confronted him; Too proud to ask for help, on 24 August he took poison and died aged seventeen years and nine months.

We have nothing to do here with Chatterton's recognized writings; they include satires in the style of Churchill, political epistles in the style of Junius, Abortions, Lampoons, epistles in verse, elegies, "African Eclogues", a comic burletta, "Vengeance", performed at Marylebone Gardens shortly after his death, with essays and sketches in the style with which the viewer and the wanderer became familiar: "The Adventures of a Star", "The Memoirs of a Sad Dog" and the like. They exhibit a precocious intelligence, but today they are of no value or interest. An unpleasant impression of his character is gained from Chatterton's letters and compilations. There is not just the frantic quality of premature maturity that one discovers in Keats's correspondence; and the defiant arrogance, spite, and knowledge found in young Byron, suited to accompany the tempestuous outburst of irregular genius in the world; but there are things which imply a more radical unscrupulousness. But it would be hard to foist such impressions on someone who was just a child when he died and whose short career fought cold odds to the bitter end. Chatterton's Best Character Traits

354 c^ History of English Manticism.

seem to have been their proud spirit of independence and warm family affection.

The death of an obscure mercenary like young Chatterton made little noise at first. But gradually a rumor began to circulate in London literary circles that manuscripts of an interesting kind existed in Bristol, supposedly transcriptions of old English poems; and that the discoverer or creator was the unfortunate boy who had recently taken arsenic to prevent a slower hunger. In April 1771 Walpole learned of the fate of his supposed protégé for the first time. “At dinner,” he says, “Dr. Johnson, who was present, laughed at him.” I soon discovered that it was my friend Chatterton's trovaille, and I told Dr. a great discovery for the scholarly world. You may imagine, sir, that we were not all agreed as to the extent of our faith, but though I was distracted by his credulity, my mirth soon faded, for when I asked him about Chatterton, he told me he was in London, and self-destructed".

With the exception of the aforementioned "Elinour and Juga", Rowley's poems have not yet been printed. The manuscripts, handwritten by Chatterton, were largely the property of Barrett and Catcott. They pretended to be copies of Rowley's originals; but of these supposed originals, the only specimens produced by Chatterton were some pieces of parchment.

Thomas Chatterton. 355

it contains in one example the first thirty-four lines of the poem entitled "The Story of William Canynge"; in another, a prose account of a "Symonne de Byrtonne," and in others the whole play in short verse,Song for Aella" and "The Story of W.Feast of Canynge". These pieces of parchment are described as being about six inches square, stained with brown glue or varnish, or stained with ocher to give them an aged appearance. Thomas Warton had seen one and declared it a forgery. clumsy; the manuscript does not date from the fifteenth century, but is unmistakably modern. Another is described by Southey as being written largely in the regular, captivating hand of a barrister. Mr. Skeat "cannot find the slightest indication that Chatterton ever have seen an EM. date; on the contrary, he never used the usual contractions, and he was more addicted to capital letters than in ancient manuscripts. They are quite rare."

Boswell recounts how he and Johnson went to Bristol in April 1776, "where I was amused to see him question the authenticity of Rowley's poetry on the spot, just as I saw him question the authenticity of Ossian's poetry questioned on the spot", Johnson said. to Chatterton. "This is the most extraordinary young man I've ever met. It's wonderful how the little dog wrote things like that."

In 1777, seven years after Chatterton's death, Rowley's poems were collected and published for the first time by Thomas Tyrwhitt, the Chaucerian publisher, who gave in an appendix his reasons for believing that Chatterton was their true author and Rowley a myth. *

• "The poems are said to have been written in Bristol by Thomas

Rowley and others in the 15th century. more now

35*5 c^ History of the English "^mantic".

These reasons convince all modern scholars. Tyrwhitt's opinion was shared by all relevant authorities at the time, including Gray, Thomas Warton and Malone, the editor of the Shakespeare va?-torum. However, a controversy over Rowley arose which was only less lively than the controversy over Ossian which had been raging since 1760. Rowley's most prominent supporters were the Rev. doctor Symmes, writing in the London Review; Rev Dr. Sherwin in Gentleman's Magazine; Jacob Bryant* and Jeremiah Milles, D.D., Provost of Exeter, who in 1782 published a splendid quarto edition of the 'old clergyman' poems of English literature. They had Mr. Pickwick and the gullibility - the big, easy drink - that seems to accompany the spirit of a clergyman's second-hand bookshop.

Nothing is dead like a dead controversy; and unlike the Ossian puzzle, which was a tough nut to crack, this Rowley controversy was actually resolved

First published from the most authentic specimens, with recorded specimens from one of the manuscripts. There is also a preface, an introduction to the individual parts, and a glossary. London: Printed for T. Payne & Son at Mews Gate. MDCCLXXVII".

"*Remarks on the Poems of Thomas Rowley", 2 vols. 1781.

"f Poems said to have been written in Bristol in the 15th century by Thomas Rowley, Priest, etc. With a commentary acknowledging and defending their antiquity."

Thomas Chatterton. 357

the beginning. It is not essential for our purpose to give a detailed history of it. The evidence on which Rowley's supporters relied was mainly external: personal testimony, and in particular the prior improbability that a boy of Chatterton's age and imperfect upbringing could have constructed so elaborate a structure of deceit; along with the inferiority of his acknowledged writings to the poetry he attributed to Rowley. But Tyrwhitt was a scholar of uncommon meticulousness and insight; and having a special knowledge of Old English, he was able to bring to the decision of the question evidence of an internal nature, which became more persuasive as the knowledge needed to understand his argument increased; /. that is, as the number of readers who knew something about Old English poetry increased. In fact, it was nothing more than general ignorance of Middle English spelling, inflection, vocabulary, and verse consultation that made the controversy possible.

Tyrwhitt pointed out that Rowle's dialect was not the English of the fifteenth century, or any century, but a grotesque mishmash of archaic words from very different times and dialects. The spelling and grammatical forms were like those of an old English poet familiar to the student of literature. The fact that Rowley consistently uses the possessive pronoun forms itts rather than his; or the other fact that he used the endings en in the singular of the verb was enough to flag the poems as spurious. Tyrwhitt also showed that the syntax, diction, idioms and stanza forms were modern; that if modern words replaced all the old ones, and those

358 z/l History of English Romanticism.

modernized spelling, the verse would read like an eighteenth-century work. "If anyone," says Scott in his review of the Southey and Cottle edition, "resist the internal evidence of the style of Rowley's poetry, we welcome the remainder of the argument, his belief that the Saxons imported heraldry and gave coats of arms. (which hitherto were not known at the time of the Crusades); that in the reign of Edward IV Mr. Robert [sic] Canynge encouraged drawing and had private theatrical productions. In this article Scott points out a curious error of Chatterton's which has become historic , though it is only one in a thousand. In describing the cook in the general prologue to "The Canterbury Tales", Chaucer wrote:

"But it seemed to me a great evil that in his Schyne he had a mormal for the crib in white that he had made with the best."

Mormal in this passage means a cancerous sore, and blajikmanger is a specific dish or confection: the modern blancmajige. But a dim recollection of all this was in Chatterton's mind, as among the fragments of paper and parchment which he covered with imitations of ancient writings, and which are now in the British Museum, "The Yellow Scroll", "The Purple Scroll". ' etc. - inserted the following title into 'The Scrolls of the Priory of St. Bartholomew', purporting to be ancient medicinal prescriptions: 'The Cure for Mormalles and Aqueous Leprosy; the role of "Black Mainger"; he turned Chaucer's innocent white cradle into a sort of imaginary black scab.

Skeat believes that Chatterton read very little about Chaucer, probably only a small part of the

Thomas Chatterton. 359

Lodge for the "Canterbury Tales". "If he had really cared," he thinks, "to read and study Chaucer or Lydgate or any other author before Spenser's era, Rowley's poetry would have been very different. Then they would have had some resemblance to the language of the 15th century , though they resembled less the language of that period than any other. The spelling of the words is generally very late or very odd, while many of the words themselves are very archaic or very unusual.* But this internal evidence, so satisfying to Scott , was so unconvincing to Chatterton's contemporaries that Tyrwhitt felt compelled to publish a Vindication of his Appendix in 1782, and Thomas Warton presented an 'Inquiry' in the same year, in which he reached the same conclusions as Tyrwhitt. , Warton devoted the twenty-sixth paragraph of the second volume of his History of English Poetry (1778) to a review of Rowley's poems, claiming that "so many respectable critics believe them to be real". , it was his duty to give them a place in this series": a curious testament to the uncertainty of public opinion on the issue and a timid admission that the poems might turn out to be genuine, f

Tyrwhitt clearly showed that Chatterton wrote Rowley's poems, but Skeat was secretive about how he wrote them. The modus operandi \idiS dibo\^t S.S is as follows: Chatterton did first,

• "Essay on Rowley's Poems:" Skeat's Edition von "Chatterton's."

Poetic Works", Vol. II. p. xxvii.

f For a bibliography of the Rowley controversy, see the article on Chatterton in the Dictionary of National Biography.

360 <i/l History of English Romanticism.

for his private use, a handwritten glossary copying the glossary words in Chaucer's Speght edition and those marked old in the Bailey and Kersey English dictionaries. He then wrote his poem in modern English and eventually rewrote it, replacing archaic words with their modern equivalents and changing the spelling to an exaggerated imitation of the old spelling in Speght's Chaucer. The mistakes he made are instructive, as they show how closely he followed his authorities and how little independent knowledge he had of genuine Old English. To cite a few typical examples of the many in Mr. Skeat: In Kersey's dictionary the word gare occurs, defined as <*cause". This is the verb gar, familiar to all readers of Burns*, and to cause means to do; but Chatterton, thinking it was, cause, uses it. o with grotesque inaccuracy in connections like these:

"Perhaps in rhyme gare devirtue it could mean: "When luck leaves our gare in this fight."

Again, Middle English /lowfe/i (Modern English, Aoot) is defined by Speght as "hallow", t. for example, hello. But Kersey and Bailey got it wrong.oco" andChatterton, inserting it thus into his handwritten list of ancient words, apparently takes it as the adjective "hollow" and uses it thus in the line:

"Houten are words that someone says to the bottom", that is, Hollow are words to narrate someone's actions.

Again, in a passage already quoted, it says that

• "Oh, ladies! I look forward to saying hello."

— Tarn o'Shanter. f Ante, Seite. 350.

Thomas Chatterton. 3*5 1

o "Wynde threw the Battayle" - Rowleian by one

small boat - "agaynste in the stern". heck on this and

other passages was a mystery. out of context is

obviously meant "rock", but where did Chatterton come from?

He? Mr. Skeat explains this. Hell, he's a provincial

Word means "shelf"/. <?., "observer"; but kersey

he misspelled "rock" and Chatterton did the same.

An example of the type of error that Chatterton

was constantly involved was his understanding of

"Enumerated, limited", /. i.e. with frames (as in "list" or

fabric edge) by "limited" in the sense of

jimiped and thus coined the verb "to liss" =

to jump:

"The main spear whistles here and there."

Every page of Rowley's poetry is filled with melodies that would have been as alien to a fifteenth-century Englishman as it was to a nineteenth-century Englishman. Adjectives are used for nouns, nouns for verbs, past participles for present infinitives; and derivatives and variants that never existed are used, such as hopelen = hopelessness and others ■=! other. Skeat says that "analysis of the glossary in the Milles edition shows that the actual Old English words used correctly and appearing in the Rowleian dialect represent only about seven percent of all old words in use". It is likely that constant use of his handwritten glossary fixed the words in Chatterton's memory and gave him some ability to compose at first hand in this strange jargon. As such, he uses archaic words freely as rhyming words, which he probably wouldn't have done if he hadn't gotten into the habit of thinking in Rowleian terms to some extent.

362 tA History of English Manticism.

Leaving aside the tragic interest in Chatterton's career, the mystery surrounding the incubation and hatching of Rowley's poetry, and their value as records of uncommon precocity, the question now arises: what independent value do they have as such? Poetry, and how great was its literary influence? The dust of controversy has long since settled, and what signaled its collapse? My own belief is that Rowley's poems are mostly interesting as literary curiosities - the work of a childish freak - and are of little importance in themselves or as models and inspirations for later poets. I can't help thinking that many critics have lost their minds on this subject. Malone, E.B. proclaimed Chatterton the greatest genius that England has produced since Shakespeare. Professor Masson might say, "Perhaps these old Chatterton poems are as much worth reading as some parts of Byron, Shelley, or Keats poems are worth reading." found in these poets.”* Mr. Gosse seems to me much closer to the truth: “Our assessment of the complete originality of Rowley's poems must be tempered by the reminder of the existence of 'The Castle of Otranto' and 'The Schoolmistress'. the popularity of Percy's "Kings" and Gray's "Odes" and the revival of Chatterton's childhood taste for Gothic literature and art. Hence the claim that Chatterton was made as the father of school romance and an influencer of today's

• "Chatterton. A History of the Year 1770" by David Masson,

London, 1874.

Thomas Chatterton. 363

Coleridge and Keats' style, while ably supported, seems overworked. Likewise, the positive praise given to Rowley's poems as artistic productions, rich in color and romantic melody, can be dismissed without refusing to give due recognition to these qualities. In Chatterton there are frequent flashes of brilliance and one or two perfectly sustained plays; but most of his work, if rigorously isolated from the melodramatic romance of his career, certainly proves to be rather poor reading, a child's work of sublime genius, to be sure, but evidently a child's work through and through. "*

Let's get a little closer to Rowley's poems as they appear in Mr. Skeats, stripped of its old spelling and modernized with its language wherever possible; and we shall find, I think, that when tested on an absolute level, they are markedly inferior not only to genuine medieval works, such as Chaucer's poems and English and Scottish ballads, but also to the best modern work conceived in the same spirit: "Christabel and "St. Agnes Eve" and "Jock o' Hazeldean" andSister Helen” and “AHaystack in the Flood". The longest of Rowley's poems is "Aella", "a tragic interlude or discoorseynge tragedy" at 147 stanzas and is widely considered Chatterton's masterpiece. The setting for this tragedy is Bristol and neighboring Watchet.

• "Literature of the 18th century", p. 334

f A recent critic, the Hon. Roden Noel ("Essays on Poetry and Poets", London, 1386), thinks that "'Aella' is a drama worthy of the Elizabethans" (p. 44). "Of the Rowley series" as a whole, "he has no hesitation in saying that it contains some of the finest poetry in our language" (p. 39). The "Ode to Liberty" chorus in "Goddwyn" strikes Mr. Santa a great original

364 c/^ History of English Romanticism.

mead; the weather during the Danish invasions. The hero is the guardian of Bristol Castle.* During a victorious campaign against the Danes, his girlfriend Bertha is seduced from her home by her treacherous lieutenant Celmond, who intends to rape her in the forest. He is surprised by a gang of marauders and killed. Meanwhile, Aella has returned home and, realizing her wife has run away, stabs herself. Bertha arrives in time to hear his death speech and give the necessary explanations, whereupon she herself dies over her master's body. The plot will be considered sufficiently melodramatic; The sentiments and dialogue are thoroughly modern when translated into English by Rowleian. The verse is a modified form of the Spenserian, a stanza of ten lines which, according to Mr. Skeat, is Chatterton's invention and a remarkable example of his originality. Responds very well to descriptive passages and soliloquies; not so good at the "voice" parts. As this is a favorite verse of Chatterton, writing "The Battle of Hastings", "Goddwyn", "English Metamorphosis" and others in Rowley's series, here is an example from "Aella".

Scene, Bristol. Celmond alone. The world is dark with night; the winds stop, the moon shines dimly with its pale light; Resurrected goblins fill the silent graveyard,

passage admired by Childe Harold personifying war, "and it sure is better"!

• See in Wm. Ilowitt's "Homes of the Poets", Vol. I, pp. 264-307,

the description of an 1138 drawing of this building made by Chatterton and included in Barrett's History.

■j- For some comments on Chatterton's metrical originality, see "Ward's English Poets", vol. third pp. 400-403. ^

Thomas Chatterton. 365

with elf fairies joining the dream; The forest glistens with silvery silt; Now that my love is satisfied with your treatment; On the verge of a rapid stream. At the sweet feast, I will eat sweets. This is the house; Hinds coming soon.

A servant enters. zel. Tell Bertha directly, a stranger is waiting here.

Rowley's poetry includes a series of dramatic or quasi-dramatic pieces, "Goddwyn",The Tournament", "The Parliamentof Sprites", the narrative poem of "The Battle of Hastings" and a collection of "Eclogues". These are all in long stanza forms, chiefly in the ten-line stanza. "English Metamorphosis" is an imitation of a passage in " The Faerie Queene", (Book II. Canto x. stanzas 5-19) 'The Parliament of the Sprites' is an interlude performed by Carmelite friars on the occasion of the inauguration of St. Mary RedcHffe in the house of William Canynge other than aiitici spiriti doletitt, mutually extol and hail the new building: Nimrod and the Assyrians, the Eldormen Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Knights Templar, and the citizens of old Bristol, among others, "Elle's Elf speak":

“If I were again in a mortal frame, hearing the sound of the chapel singing in my ear, listening to the masses of Our Lady, seeing the crossed corridors and the beautiful arches! By the half-hidden silver glow Splendor of that bright moon in Maatles's misty dress, I must content this edifice, * while the broken clouds withhold the sacred vision 'till, when the nights grow old, the light fades the vision!'

• Mira A.

366 <tThe History of English Manticism.

Perhaps the most interesting of Rowley's poems is "An Excellent Balade of Charity", written in royal rhyme; and "The Bristowe Tragedie", in the common stanza of the Lay, and Tyrwhitt says it is based on a historical event: the execution at Bristol in 1461 of Sir Baldwin Fulford, who had fought on the side of the Lancastrians in the Wars of the Roses. . The best quality of Chatterton's verse is its unpredictability - sudden epithets or whole lines, with a wild, naive sweetness - which accounts for much of his fascination with Coleridge and Keats. I mean ringtones like this:

"Once, when I was napping at the witching hour."

"Brown like the hazelnuts that fall from the shell."

Mygorma adorned with the comfrey plant."

"Where can you be here, the lark's sweet song, or glide sweetly with a mocking brook." %

"In his bloody carnage he lay, while his long shield gleamed in the ray of the rising sun."

"Oars varnished red and oily carved with rare tools stand resplendent."

“Like elven fairies when the moon shines bright, they dance in little circles in the green; Offa's Dyke."

The charming wildness of Chatterton's imagination - which caught the eye of that strange visionary genius William Blake* - is perhaps best seen in him.

• Blake was an early advocate of "Gothic artists who

Cathedrals in the so-called Dark Ages... whose world was

EU

Thomas Chatterton. 367

one of the minstrel songs inAella." That's ob-obviously an echo of Ophelia's song in "Hamlet", but Chatterton puts her own weird spin on it:

"Hear! The crow beats its wings in the berry-covered valley below; hear! The death owl sings aloud to the nightmares as they depart.

“Behold, the white moon shines upon me, * Whiter is the shroud of my true love, Whiter than the morning sky, Whiter than the evening cloud. My love is dead", etc.

It remains to briefly consider the influence of Chatterton's life and writings on his contemporaries and successors in the field of romantic poetry. The dramatic features of his personal career naturally attracted as much or more attention than his literary legacy to posterity. About nine years after his death, a clergyman, Sir Herbert Croft, went to Bristol to gather material for a biography. He spoke with Barrett and Catcott and many of the poet's schoolmates and townsfolk, and visited his mother and sister, who told and gave him stories of the wonderful boy's childhood.

he is not worthy.” Mr. Rossetti pointed out his obligations to Ossian and possibly to the Castle of Otranto. See Blake's poems "Fair Eleanor" and "Gwin, King of Norway".

• Chatterton's sister testifies that he had a romantic habit

sit up all night writing in the moonlight. Cambridge edition. pixi.

368 A history of English 'T^manticism.

some of your letters. Croft also followed in Chatterton's footsteps in London, where, among other things, he interviewed the coroner who had conducted the examination of the suicide bomber's body. The result of these investigations he conveyed to the world in a book entitled "Love and Torly" (1780). Southey thought that Croft had treated Mrs. Chatterton unhappily gave her no financial compensation for her book profits; and publicly sued him for it in the edition of Chatterton's Works, which he and Joseph Cottle - both of Bristowan - published in three volumes in 1803. It was originally intended as a subscription edition for the benefit of Mother and Sister Chatterton, but the signatures were not. As it was large enough, it was distributed in the usual way throughANDto act."

In 1795, just a quarter of a century after Chatterton's death, Southey and Coleridge were married at St. Mary Redclife, Misses Edith and Sara Fricker. Coleridge took a keen interest in Chatterton. In his "Lines on the Observation of a Flower on February 1, 1796", he compares the flower to

"The bard of Bristowa, the wonder child, An amaranth the land scarce seemed to have, Blossomed amidst the dreary winter wastes of poverty."

And just before that, while contemplating his plan of panisocracy with Southey and Lovell, he had addressed the dead poet and associated him with him in his indignant "Monody on the death of Chatterton."

• Other standard Chatterton Lives are Gregory's, 1789,

(reprinted and prefixed in the Southey and Cottle edition): Dix, 1837; and Wilson, 1869.

Thomas Chatterton. 369

fantasizes about the aborted church in Susquehannah;

"Oh Chatterton, that you are still alive!

Surely you would open your sails to the storm, And love with us the tinkling gear to sail through the undivided valley of peaceful liberty; And we would join you on the eve of sobriety. Cling ecstatically to its majestic song and smilingly salute the poetry of youthful eyes, all deftly masquerading as obscure antiquity. . . But I'd love to follow the sweet dream Where Susquehannah waters her wild stream; And upon a hill whose wooded slope swells to the murmur of its calmest tide, A solemn cenotaph will be erected for you sweet minstrel-harper wrapped in time.

It may be difficult to show that Rowley's poetry had much to do with shaping Coleridge's own poetry. Without a doubt, without them, "Christabel" and "The Ancient Mariner" and

• • It still would have been "The Darke Ladye"; and still

they might not have been exactly what they are. There's the ballad of "Reliques" in "The Ancient Mariner", but also some chatter. In lines like this:

"The bride has entered the hall. She is red as a rose: beckoning her, the merry minstrel goes;"

11

or how are you:

"The wedding guest here beat his chest because he heard the loud bassoon:"

37° <iThe History of English Romanticism.

one catches a distant echo of certain lines from "The Bristowe Tragedie": "this, for example,

"Before him went counselors in robes of scarlet and gold, and tassels shining in the sun, very splendid to behold;"

it's at:

"In several parts a pious psalm. Very sweetly they sang: Behind his back came six minstrels, Tuning the bataunt string." *

Among all the young poets of the generation that followed Chatterton there was a tender feeling of camaraderie with the proud and passionate boy, and a desire to welcome him into their crew. Byron actually said he was crazy; but Shelley counts him among the "heirs of unrealized glory" with Keats in "Adonais". Lord Houghton testifies that Keats had a prescient sympathy for Chatterton in his untimely death. He dedicated "Endymion" to his memory. In his letter "To George Felton Mathew", he asks her to help him find a place

"Where we can dress in soft humanity, And sit and rhyme and think of Chatterton." f

Keats said he always associated autumn with memories of Chatterton. He claimed,

• Rowleian: There is no such instrument known to man. He

the romantic love of color is evident in this book and strong in Chatterton. «

f See also sonnet: 'O Chatterton, hov/ very sad thy fate' - given in Lord Houghton's Memoirs. 'Life and Letters of John Keats': By R. Monckton Milnes, p. 20 (American edition, New York, 1848).

Thomas Cbattoii. 371

somewhat strange that he was the purest writer in English, using "no French idiom or particles like Chaucer". In a letter from Jane Porter to Keats about criticism of his Endymion, she wrote: "If Chatterton had manhood enough to know the magnanimity of patience, and realized that great talent has a mission from heaven, he would not leave his post and his name. could be on Milton's page.

Keats was Spenser's poetic son, but he inherited some traits from Chatterton that are difficult to define if not to feel. In his unfinished poem, "St. Mark's Eve," there is a Rowle accent in the passage which mimics Primitive English, and in the affectionate description of the ancient volume of legends of the saints from which it derives, with its

"-pious poetry written in the smallest size of a crow's feather below the text."

And we can't help but think of the shadow of St. Mary Redcliffe falling on another young life as we read how

Bertha was a pretty girl

Living on the old Münsterplatz; From his fireplace he could see the rich antiquity beside the bishop's garden wall”;

and of the footsteps passing through the cathedral's tinkling gate, and of the resounding croaking that falls asleep in the old belfry to the sound of sleepy chimes. Rossetti, in many ways a follower of Keats' art, dedicated the first of his sonnets to Chatterton:

372 ^ History of English Romanticism.

Group "Five English Poets"*, whose sextet reads as follows:

"Your nested domestic love, noble Chatterton; the angel-trodden stairway that could haunt your soul to Redcliffe's tower; and in the armored space of the world

Your brave sword fight: - which for many

they are always sweet; Like your unknown grave and the love dream of your unknown face."

The story of Chatterton's life found its way into fiction and onto the stage. Alfred de Vigny, one of the French romantics, translator of Othello and The Merchant of Venice, presented it as an episode in his novel Stello ou les Diables Bleus, later dramatized as Chatterton. First produced on February 12, 1835 in Paris to great success, De Vigny turned it into a love tragedy by conceiving a bride for its heroine in the person of Kitty Bell, a role that became one of Madame Dorval's greatest triumphs. on the occasion of the rebirth. of De Vigny's drama in December 1857 presented Théophile Gautier at the MonHeur with some reminiscences of his first performance twenty-two years earlier.

The patch before which Chatterton declaimed was full of pale, long-haired youths who firmly believed that there was no dignified occupation on earth but doing verse or painting, art, as they called it, and aiming for bourgeois eyes. down with a contempt which the Heidelberg or Jena fox's contempt for the "bourgeois" could hardly match.

• Chatterton, Blake, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley. „El absolutamente

the wonderful Chatterton," Rossetti elsewhere calls him. \"History of Romanticism,' pp. 153-54.

Thomas Chatterton. 373

Nobody thought about money. More than one could have exclaimed without falsehood, as in those impossible professions that Theodore de Banville describes with such resigned irony: I am a lyric poet and I live by my profession. Anyone who hasn't gone through this crazy, passionate, exhausted, but generous period cannot imagine to what oblivion of material existence drunkenness or, if that were the case, obsession with art led the somber and fragile victims who would rather die than give up the dream. from him. Indeed, the click of individual pistols could be heard at night. judgment on the effect of M. Alfred Vigny's "Chatterton" in such an environment; to which, if you want to understand it, you must restore the contemporary atmosphere." *

• "Chatterton", a drama by Jones and Herman, was presented at

Princess' Theatre, London, 22nd May 1884.

KAPITEL XL Zbc ©deutsch u;ributacs.

By the last decade of the eighteenth century, the Romantic movement had developed in Britain itself and was independent of foreign influence, except for the encouragement it found repeatedly in the writings of Continent scholars such as Sainte Palaye and Mallet. . But now the English literary current began to receive a foreign branch. There had taken place a change in the German mind quite analogous to that whose successive steps we have followed. In Germany, French classicism gained an even stronger foothold than in England. It is known that Frederick the Great (1740-1786) considered his mother tongue a barrier. Baroque dialect, not suitable for literature. In his own writings, in prose and verse, he used French without exception; and he boasted to Gottsched that he had not read a German book since his youth.*

But even before mid-century, and just at the time of the publication of Thomson's "Seasons", the so-called Swiss school, under the leadership of the Zurich Johann Jacob Bodmer, had launched a national movement and attack against Gallic culture. influences. . Bodmer fought under Milton's banner,

• "History of German Literature" by Scherer, translation by Conybeare

tion, vol. II. pg. 26

374

The German tributary. 375

and in the preface to his prose translation of Paradise Lost (1732) he praised Shakespeare as the English Sophocles. In his Treatise on the Marvelous (1740) he set the claims of liberty, nature and inspired imagination against the rules of the French critics, just as the Wartons and Bishop Hurd did in England a few years later. Imperial times and the Middle Ages in general soon came into fashion. "As early as 1748 Bodmer published copies of The Minnesingers, in 1757 he brought out part of the Nibelungenlied, in 1758 and 1759 a more complete collection of The Minnesingers, and until 1781, shortly before his death, he continued to produce high volume editions of poems. Middle German Another Swiss writer Christian Heinrich Mujler, student of Bodmer ... published the whole of the Nibelungenlied and the most important of the chivalrous epics in 1784 and 1785. Lessing, in his preface to Gleim's "War Songs", called the attention to Middle High German poets, of whom he remained an ardent admirer throughout his life. Justus Moser was intensely interested in the minnesingers. This enthusiasm for Old German poetry was strongest at the time of the publication of Götz, and Burger, Voss, Miller and Holtz wrote Minnelieder, in which they imitated ancient German poets. In 1773, Gleim published "Poems after the Minnesingers" and in 1779 "Poems after Walther von der Vogelweide." Some enthusiasts had already hailed the Nibelungenlied as the German Iliad and Burger competing with others, but without

376 ca. History of English Romanticism.

Quite successful in turning Homer into a German, he insisted on dressing the Greek heroes a bit in the Nibelung style. He and several other poets loved to give their ballads a chivalrous character. Fritz Stolberg wrote a beautiful song for German boys that began: "My arm is growing strong and my courage great, give me a sword, father"; and the song of the old Swabian lord: “Son, there is my spear; My arm is getting really heavy. Lessing's "Nathan" also appealed to this enthusiasm for chivalric times and must have strengthened the sentiment. A historian like the Swiss Johannes Müller began to show the Middle Ages in a fairer light and even to attribute great merits to the papacy. In doing so, Johannes Müller merely followed in Herder's footsteps. Shepherd . . he had written against the conceit of his time, its pride in its enlightenment and its achievements. In the Middle Ages he found the realization of his aesthetic ideas, namely strong emotion, vivid life and action, all guided by feeling and instinct, not pathological thinking; religious zeal and chivalrous honor, boldness in love and strong patriotic sentiment.”*

When the founders of a genuine national literature in Germany sailed from French anchorages, they had an English pilot on board; and in the translations of German novels, dramas, and ballads by Scott, Coleridge, Taylor, Lewis, and others, English literature was simply unrestrainedly taking back what it had borrowed from its younger sister. Burger's and Herder's versions of Percy's "Reliques" were once featured in an issue

• Scherer, Bd. II. p. 100-1 123-2 f Vgl. anU, S. 300-3

7th German tributary. 377

it was published in Göttingen in 1767; as well as the great commotion that MacPherson's caused in GermanyOssian.”* The latter found – beside theThe Viennese Denis, another Fritz Stolbergf translator, who continued his medieval studies until joining the Roman Catholic Church in 1800. Klopstock's "War Song", written in 1749, was in the meter of "Chevy Chase", which Klopstock knew from Addison's Spectator roles. Through Mallet, Eddaic literature made an impression in both Germany and England; and Gersternberg's Poem of a Skald (1766), one of the first fruits of the German translation of the Histoire de Dannemarc, predated the publication - though not the composition - of Gray's poems in Norse by two years.

But the spirit that most influenced new German literature was Shakespeare. In the era of French culture, Shakespeare was virtually unknown in Germany. In 1741, Christian von Borck, the Prussian ambassador in London, translated Julius Caesar. A few years later, a version of Romeo and Juliet appeared. 1762-66 Wieland translated 22 Shakespeare plays in whole or in part. His translation was in prose and has long since been superseded by Tieck-Schlegel's (1797-1801-1810) translation. Goethe was first introduced to Shakespeare as a student in Leipzig through individual passages in Dodd's The Beauties of Shakespeare. f He arrived later

• See above, pp. 337-38.

f'The Beauties of Shakespeare. Regularly screened each piece. With general index. Digest them with the right minds.” By Rev. Wm. Dodd, 1752.

378 iA History of English To^omantics.

He obtained Wieland's translation and when he went to Strasbourg he fell under the influence of Herder, who inspired him with his own enthusiasm for "Ossian" and folk songs and led him to study Shakespeare in the original.

Young Germany seized the great English playwright with passionate conviction and made him her own. He became an object of worship, an article of faith. The cult of Shakespeare dominated the entire period of storm and desire. The stage tamed him: poets imitated him; critics hailed her as a type and representative (image U'7) of Germanic art opposed and distinguished from the art of the Latin races, based on a misrepresentation of antiquity.* It was a recognition of the essential kinship between the two separate branches of the great Germanic tribe. Gottinger Hain's enthusiastic young patriots, who hated everything French and called each other by the names of old bards, became accustomed to Shakespeare's phrases in conversation; and once they celebrated the playwright's birthday with so much noise that the police attacked them and they spent the night in jail. In Goethe's circle in Strasbourg, which counted

• "It wasn't just the depth of poetry that drew her to Shakespeare

drew, there was a certainty that German art and style were here." - Hettner's history of German literature - ^ w. S'S-I- p. 51. "That is, the distancing of the French from their English relatives .. .was in its historical origin and growth essentially the rebellion of the fortified Germanic folk nature against the crushing superiority of the Romanesque world of forms" etc. - Ibid., p. 47 Review of the performances of Shakespeare's leading roles by German actors such as Schröder and Fleck.

The German tributary. 379

According to Lenz, Klinger and H.L. Wagner, among other things, this Shakespearean mania was mandatory. Lenz in particular, who translated Love's Labor's Lost, excelled at whimsical imitations of "fantasies like hired shenanigans". 14, 17 71), in which the "will of all wills" was drunk to health and the young innkeeper gave an extravagant eulogy. “The first page of Shakespeare that I read”, says a phrase of that phrase, “made me his for life, and when I finished the first play, I was blind from birth, I gained sight.' for a moment of miracle. I was very vividly aware of the fact that my being had expanded into infinity. Everything was new and strange, my eyes hurt from the unusual light.

Lessing, in his attack on the French theater in his "Hamburgische Dramaturgie" (1767-69), considered that there was a much closer agreement between Sophocles and Shakespeare on the essentials of dramatic art than between Sophocles and Racine or Voltaire in their mechanical copies. . of antiquity. In their own works, Lessing, Goethe and Schiller took Shakespeare as their model. But although they began in imitation, over time they began to work freely in art.

• “We hear an echo of those merry conversations

that friends were amused by Shakespeare's translation of Love's Labor's Lost into Shakespearean phrases and jokes. "-Hettner, p. 244.

f See the full sentence (in Hettner, p. 120) which most vividly expresses Shakespeare's influence on the newly awakened minds of Germany.

380 e^ History of the English 'T^omanticistn.

The spirit of Shakespeare more than its kind. Thus the first draft of Goethe's "Götz von Berlichingen" corresponds in all external respects to the pattern of a Shakespearean "history". The unity of action overflowed with that of time and place; the scene was changed to a three-line monologue or six-line dialogue; the tragic and the comic were intertwined; the stage was filled with a colorful variety of figures, moods and conditions: knights, burghers, soldiers, knights, peasants; there was a jester; Songs and lyrical passages were interspersed; there were puns, crude jokes, diatribes, Elizabethan metaphors and inflated exaggerations with countless Shakespearean throwbacks in the details. But the advice of Herder, to whom he sent his manuscript, and the example of Lessing, whose Emilia Galotti had just appeared, persuaded Goethe to reformulate the play more independently.

Scherer* says that the herald of the new national movement in German literature is the "*misprinted anonymous booklet" entitled "From Art and German Art, Some Flying Leaves". appeared in 1773 and contained essays by Justus Moser, who "defended the freedom of the old Germans as a vanished ideal"; by Johann Gottfried Herder, who "celebrated the virtues of folk song, championed a collection of German folk songs, extolled the greatness of Shakespeare, and prophesied the advent of a German Shakespeare"; and Johann Wolfgang Goethe praising Strasbourg Cathedral

• "Deutsche Literatur", Bd. II. pp. 82-83.

The German tributary. 381

and Gothic architecture* in general, and "he asserted that art must indeed be distinctive. The great movement was indeed a turning away from the spirit of Voltaire towards that of Rousseau, from the artificiality of society to the simplicity of nature, from doubt and the rationalism to emotion and belief, from a priori conceptions to history, from hard and fast aesthetic rules to the freedom of genius.' Goethe's "Götz" was the first revolutionary symptom to really attract much attention, but the "Leaflets on German Style and Art" preceded the publication of

• Götz', as a kind of program or manifesto".

Wieland, the mocker and Frenchman, the man of consummate talent but shallow genius, the representative of the Enlightenment, fell in with this new trend and saddled his hippogriff for a ride in the salt land of Ronantian. He used the new "Library of Novels" that Count Tressan published in France in 1775, studied Hans Sachs and Hartmann von Aue, experimented with Old German metrics, and enriched his vocabulary with Old German sources. He poetized folk tales, chivalric tales and motifs from Arthurian epics such as "Gandalin" and "Geron the Noble" ("Gyron le Courteois").

• “Among all the men of the eighteenth century was

Goethe, on the other hand, was the first to feel and understand the splendor of Gothic architecture, which had long been despised.” – Hettner, 3.3.1., p. 120.

f Builds the Ideal.

382 a/^ History of English l^manticism.

But his best and most famous work in this vein was Oberon (1780), a rich combination of material from Chaucer, A Midsummer Night's Dream and the French novel *Huon de Bordeaux.*

However, what is evident from this necessarily very imperfect and largely second-hand sketch of the course of the German Romantic movement in the eighteenth century is that it was largely parallel to that of England. In both countries the reaction was against the Enlightenment, that is, against the rationalist, prosaic, skeptical and reasonable zeitgeist defended in England by deist writers like Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Bolingbroke and Tindal in the department of religious and moral philosophy; and of such writers as Addison, Swift, Prior, and Pope in polite letters; and most brilliantly represented in the literature of Europe by Voltaire. Against this spirit, attempts have now been made to go back to the times of faith; recover the point of view that created mythology, fairy tales and popular superstition; believe at all costs not only in God and the immortal soul of man, but also in the ancient consequences of that belief, in ghosts, goblins, devils and witches.

In both countries, too, the revolution was formally a break with French classics and with that part of native literature that followed academic traditions. Here the revolt in Germany was much more violent than in England, f

• Scherer, II. 129-3 "Oberon" was translated into English by William

Sotheby em 1798.

f "I shall soon tire of classical poetry," wrote Burger in 1775. "Characteristics": by Erich Schmidt (Berlin 1886) p. 205. "Oh, what a bloody word: classic!"

v

uX

fy^nxAJl

The German tributary. 383

partly because the Gallic influence had tyrannized there more completely and almost supplanted the vernacular by the foreign language for literary purposes; and '^^ -i-^^- in part because Germany had nothing to compare with the brilliant and solid achievements of the Queen Anne classics in England. The new school of German poets and critics found it easy to brush aside perriques like Opitz, Gottsched, and Gellert, fourth- or fifth-grade authors. But Swift and Congreve and Pope and Fielding are not to be dismissed. We observe the cautious and respectful way in which innovators like Warton and Percy dared to challenge Pope's supremacy and commend older English poets to the attention of a learned age; and we have seen that Horace Walpole's Gothic enthusiasm was not incompatible with conservative rather than radical literary prejudices in general. In England, too, the movement began with imitations of Spenser and Milton and only gradually led to the revival of Chaucer and medieval poetry and the translation of what remained of Bardic and Scaldic. But in Germany there was no Elizabethan literature that could mediate between the modern mind and the Middle Ages, so the Germans turned to England and Shakespeare for that.

In Germany as in England, although in a different way

\ Reasons, the romantic renaissance reached its peak only in the 19th century, until the emergence of the

– calls Herder. "It was this word, otherwise known as true education, which supplanted the ancients as living models... This word

buried many geniuses under the rubble of words. . .

You stole flowering fruit trees from the homeland!" —Hettner

3. 3. I.s. 50,

384 <^ History of English Romanticism.

Romantic school in the real sense: by Tieck, Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Wackenroder, Fouque, Von Arnim, Brentano and Uhland. In England this was less due to inhibited development than to the absence of genius. There the progenitors of Scott, Coleridge and Keats were writers of a distinctly inferior rank: Akenside, Shenstone, Dyer, the Wartons, Percy, Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, the Chatterton boy. When some rise above this level, such as Thomson, Collins and Gray, the sparseness of their output and the somewhat haphazard nature of their involvement in the movement diminish their relative importance. Gray's purely romantic work belongs to the last years of his life. Collins' mental illness and untimely death interrupted the development of many promising shoots in this rarely gifted lyricist. Thomson may have arrived too early to reach a more advanced stage of evolution than Spenserism. In Germany, on the other hand, the pioneers were men of the highest intellectual level, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller. But there the movement was for a time stopped by the currents or drowned in the wider tides of literary life. English romanticism was just one of many contemporary trends: sentimentalism, naturalism, realism. German Romanticism was only an event of the Sturm und Drang period, itself only a passing phase in the rapid and varied development of the German spirit in the second half of the last century; an element in the great intellectual ferment which produced, among others, the Kantian philosophy, "Laocoon", "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister"; "History of Ancient Art" by Winckelmann and

The German tributary. 385

Wallenstein by Schiller and William Tell. Men like Goethe and Schiller were too broad in their culture, too varied in their talents, too diverse in their intellectual pursuits and sympathies to be assigned to one school. The temperament that produced "Götz" and "Die Rauber" was just one moment in their developmental history; then they moved on to other areas of thought and art.

Especially with Goethe, after his time in Italy he returned to the classics; not the exploited pseudoclassical of the 18th century, but the true Hellenic spirit expressed in works like Iphigenie auf Tauris, Hermann und Dorothea and Schöne Helena and Classical Walpurgis Night. Episodes from the second part of *'Faust." "In his youth," says Scherer, "a love for Germany's turbulent past gripped many minds. Imaginative writers filled the ancient Teutonic forests with bards and druids and had an enthusiastic admiration for Gothic cathedrals and knights of the Middle Ages and the 16th century. . . In Goethe's mature years, however, interest in classical antiquity eclipsed all other aesthetic interests, and Germany and Europe were swept away by the classical fashion that had given Winckelmann his first strong impetus. Churches became ancient temples, mechanical arts strove to take on classical forms, and ladies influenced the dress and manners of Greek women. The leaders of German poetry, Goethe and Schiller, reached the pinnacle of their art by imitating classical models.

• "German Literature", Vol. II. p. 230

386 <iThe History of English Romanticism.

rescued from the Middle Ages, it was never completely lost again; and despite this classical disposition, Goethe and Schiller continued to compete in the last years of the century in the composition of romantic ballads, like the old "Der Erlkönig".

• The Fisherman, The Dance of Death and The Magic.

Apprentice" and the latter's "Knight Toggenburg", "Fighting the Dragon" and "The Walk to the Iron Hammer".

If we compare the works of a romantic nature that were created in England and Germany in the last century, we quickly realize that the continental movement, although the original impetus came from England, had a greater impetus. The sincerity, depth and meticulousness of the German spirit lead him to base himself on fundamental principles in the visual arts as well as in politics and religion; to construct a theory, a (bsihetik.) for its practice. In the later history of German Romanticism, the medieval revival in literature and art was carried out with philosophical coherence in other areas of thought, becoming a vehicle for the politics and reactionary theology of Junkerism and Catholicism. a climax in the 18th century, in the act of creation was more critical, more scientific and more conscious of its own aims and methods than the similar movement in England, works practically and instinctively, it rarely tries to submit questions of taste or art to the scientific laws, he took over his standards of taste from France in the classical period, and when he broke with them, he spontaneously did E

The German tributary. 387

He gave no reasons or only very superficial reasons to leave again. The elegant dissertations of Hurd and Percy and the Wartons look very amateurish compared to the imposing aesthetic systems proposed by Kant, Fichte and Schelling; or in addition to complete treatises such as the "Laocoon", the "Hamburgische Dramaturgische", Schiller's treatise

• • On Naive and Sentimental Poetry" and

analysis of Hamlet's character in "Wilhelm Meister". Before Coleridge there was no such criticism in England; especially no criticism of Shakespeare compared with articles by Lessing, Herder, Gerstenberg, Lenz, Goethe and many other Germans. The only 18th-century Englishman capable of such a thing was Gray. He had the necessary taste and erudition, but even he wanted the philosophical breadth and depth for a fundamental and ingenious treatment of the underlying principles.

But even in this critical area, German literary historians believe that England is capable of seizing the initiative. Hettner* names three English critics in particular as Herder's predecessors to spark interest in popular poetry. These were Edward Young, author of *Night Thoughts, whose Conjectures Concerning the Original Composition was published in 1759; Robert Wood, whose Essay Concerning the Original Genius and Writings of Homer (1768) was translated into German, French, Spanish, and Italian; and Robert Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, who in 1753, while Professor of Poetry at Oxford, delivered his Praelectiones de Sacra Poesi Hebrseorum translated into English,

• "Literary History", 3.3. her. pg. 30-3

388 c^ History of English Romanticism.

and Deutsch in 1793. The importance of Young's brilliant little essay, which took the form of a letter to the author from Sir Charles Grandison, lay in its assertion of the superiority of genius over knowledge and the right of genius to learn. to be free from rules and authorities. It was a kind of literary declaration of independence; and essentially asked the question posed in Emerson's "Nature": "Why shouldn't we also have a primal relationship to the universe?" Pope had said in his Essay on Criticism: "Follow nature" and follow nature, learn the rules and study the ancients, especially Homer. "Nature and Homer were the same." On the contrary, Young says, "The less we copy the ancient famous, the more we resemble them... Learning... that freedom" to which genius often owes its highest glory... Originals born, how do we die copies? Genius is crossing all public roads into new and uncharted territory; he [the imitative writer], sunk in antiquity, follows in the hallowed footsteps of great models with the blind reverence of a fanatic saluting the holy toe." Young asserts that Shakespeare is equal in size to the ancients: he regrets that Pope does not use blank lines in his translation of Homer and calls Addison's "Cato" "a piece of statue".

Robert Wood, who visited and described the ruins of Balbec and Palmyra, brought his Iliad to the Troads and

• See Before, page 48.

The German tributary. '389

read on the spot. He sailed in the footsteps of Menelaus and the wandering Odysseus; and his familiarity with Oriental landscape and life helped to replace the somewhat conventional notion that prevailed during the classical period with a fresher view of Homer. What most impressed Herder and Goethe in Wood's essay was the emphasis placed on the simple, illiterate, even barbaric state of society in the Heroic Age: and on the primitive and folkloric character of Homeric poetry. * This view that Homer was essentially a minstrel or ballad composer was carried so far in Professor Newman's translations that it provoked protests from Matthew Arnold, who insisted on Homer's "nobility" and "magnificent style". Whatever exaggerations have lately been made, it was wholly corrective and stimulating when proposed in 1768.

Although the final arrival of German Romanticism in its fullness was delayed too late to modify the English movement before it had exhausted its initial strength, the Prelude was still heard and echoed in England. In 1792, Walter Scott was a young barrister in Edinburgh, on the verge of coming of age.

• “Our polite neighbors, the French, seem to be very offended

certain images of primitive simplicity, so different from those refined modes of modern life in which they took the lead; and to this we may in part attribute the rude treatment our poet received from them.' - Essay on //i^w^r (Dublin Edition, 1776), p. 127.

f Ver Francis W. Newman's The Iliad (1856) and Arnold's Lectures on Translation Homer (1861),

39© c-^ History of English Romanticism.

"Novel that loves to nod and sing, sleepy head and folded wings, to him it was a painted parrot, a very familiar bird, taught him to say his alphabet, to babble his first word." *

He had been in the lap of ancient legends since childhood**' and he was already a connoisseur of Frontier antiques and had been accumulating his collection of memorabilia for years; Claymores, Mail, Jedburgh Axes, Frontier Horns etc. the Death Darthur. . , 'in the second vision about fairies and witches; extracts from Scottish chronicles, from the books of Adjournal, from Aubrey, and from the ancient Glanvil of superstition; Moeso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and runic alphabet tables and transcripts of the history of the Stuarts. In the autumn or early winter of that year, a class of six or seven young men was formed in Edinburgh to study the German language, and Scott joined them, and says that interest in German literature was first awakened in Scotland by a essay written by Henry Mackenzie, the 'Addison of the North' and author of the most sentimental of fictions, 'The Man of Feeling', read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in April 1788." ". "The literary people of Edinburgh were then the first to point to the existence of works of genius in a language related to English, and they had it.

• "Romanze", Edgar Poe.

The German tributary. 391

of the same masculine expressiveness; they learned at the same time that the taste which dictated German compositions was as similar to English as their language; those accustomed from youth to admire Shakespeare and Milton found for the first time a race of poets who had the same sublime ambition to despise the fiery limits of the universe and the realms of chaos and old nocturnal exploration; and by playwrights who rejected the pedantry of units and, at the expense of occasional improbabilities and extravagances, sought to represent life on the stage in its wildest contrasts and in all its limitless variety of characters. , . His fictional stories, ballad poetry and other branches of his literature particularly apt to bear the stamp of the bizarre and the supernatural also began to attract the attention of British literary figures. Scott's German studies were greatly aided by Alexander Frazer Tytler, whose version of Schiller's Thieves was one of the first English translations of the German drama.*

In the autumn of 1794, Miss. Aikin, later Mrs. Barbauld, threw a party at Dugald Stewart's house while reading a translation of Burger's terrible ballad "Lenore". The translation is by William Taylor of Norwich; had not yet been published and Ms. Aikin read it from a handwritten copy. Scott was not present, but his friend Mr. Cranstoun, described the performance to him; and was so impressed with her description that he borrowed a volume of Burger's poetry from his young kinsman by marriage,

• "A Life of Scott of Lockhart", Vol. I p. 163

392 c/f History of English 'T^omanticisut.

Mrs. Scott of Harden, daughter of Count Brühl von Martkirchen, former Saxon ambassador to London, who had a second Scottish wife, the Dowager Countess of Egremont. Scott set to work making a translation of the ballad for himself in 1795, and was so successful in pleasing his friends that he had some copies canceled for private circulation in the spring of 1796. In the autumn of the same year he published his version entitled "William and Helen", along with "The Chase", a translation of Burger's "Der Wilde Jäger". The two poems formed a narrow fourth volume. It was printed in Edinburgh, was anonymous, and represented Walter Scott's first published book. Taylor, for his part, presented his version to the public in the March issue of Monthly Magazine, featuring it with an advertisement for Burger's poetry, and the same year saw the appearance of three other translations, one by J. T. Stanley (with engravings) , one by Henry James Pye, the Prince Poet, and one by Hon. William Robert Spencer, author of Beth Gelert, Too Late I Stay, etc., with drafts by Lady Diana Beauclerc (a copy of the latter, Allibone says, folio, on parchment, sold at Christie's 1804 for 25 4s.). came out around 1800; and Schlegel and Brandl team up to deliver the most faithful, if not the best, English version of the ballad.*

• For full titles and descriptions of these translations, as well as for

on the influence of Burger's poems in England, see Alois Brandl: "Lenore in England," in Erich Schmidt's "Characteristics" (Berlin 1886), pp. 244-48. Taylor said in 1830 that there were no German poems

The German tributary. 393

The poem that England had adopted in so many different ways under the different titles "Lenore", "Leonore", "Leonora", "Lenora", "Ellenore", "Helen" and so on. one. In the original it remains Burger's masterpiece, and in its various English costumes it gained perhaps as much favor as it lost. It was first printed in 1773 in Göttingen in Boie's "Musen Almanach". It was the strange story of a soldier of Frederick the Great who perished in the Seven Years' War and arrived at midnight on a ghostly steed to claim his beloved and carry her the thousand miles to the bridal bed. She rides after him and they ride through the spirits of the night until they reach the graveyard at cockcrow. The steed disappears in the smoke, the lover's armor falls off, green with the dampness of the tomb, revealing a skeleton within, and the maiden finds her bridal chamber.

it has been translated so many times: "eight different versions are on my desk and I have read others." He claimed that his is the oldest, as it was written in 1790, although it was not printed until 1796. "Lenore" immediately won parody honors, the surest proof of its popularity. Brandl mentions two: "Miss Kitty", Edinburgh, 1797, and "The Hussar of Magdeburg, or the Midnight Phaeton", Edinburgh, 1800, and cites Mathias' satirical description of the work ("In Search of Literature", 1794 - 97 ) as "tudesque diablerie" and a "Bluebeard story for the nursery". Bibliographies mention a new translation in 1846 by Julia M. Cameron, with illustrations by Maclise; and I find in Allibone an advertisement for "The Ballad of Lenore: a Varioram Monograph", 4to, containing thirty metrical versions in English, to be published by Charles Lukens in 1866 in Philadelphia. Qua'fc if this is the same as Henry Clay Lukens ("Erratic Enrico") who published "Lean 'Nora" (Philadelphia, 1870; New York, 1878), a title that suggests humorous intentions, but a book I don't have I saw.

394 '^ History of English Romanticism.

it is the vault of the ossuary, and its friend is death. “This poem,” says Scherer, “in a sense gives the impression of an unsolved riddle; All the details are clear, but in the end we have to ask what really happened, was it a dream? of the girl, a dream in which she died, or did the ghost really appear and take her away?'* The story is indeed treated with much of that subtle artistry which Coleridge used in The Old Mariner and Christabel; so that the boundary between the earthly and the supernatural becomes blurred and the question repeatedly arises whether we are hearing a true ghost story or a more refined form of allegory. "Sweet William's Ghost" as an English class example.

Scott's friends assured him that his translation was superior to Taylor's, and Taylor himself wrote to him: "The ghost never appears so well as it does in you, or comes out as it does in Mr. Spencer." , which has a savagery and awkwardness not found in Scott's elaborate, literal interpretation, and which succeeds wonderfully in capturing the crassness, the raw, uncouth nature of the poetry. A few stanzas of each will illustrate the difference:

[William and Helen de Scott]

"Are you scared? Are you scared? The moon is shining clear:-

Are you afraid to walk with me? Alive! Alive! the dead can ride" -

"Oh William, leave her alone!"

• History of German Literature", Vol. II. p. 123.

The German tributary. 395

"Look over there! Look over there! What's shaking over there

And creaks in the pouring rain? gallows and steel, the accursed wheel;

A murderer in his jail.

"Hello! You delinquent, stay here:

We ride to the bridal bed; And you will dance a bondage dance

In front of me and my girlfriend."

And hurry up! Hurry up! crack, crack, crack!

The desolate form descends,* and swift as the wind through the hazel tree

The wild run supports.*

vagabond, vagabond! for the country they rode,

Squirt, squirt! along the sea: the flagellum is red, the spur drips blood.

The glowing stones run away.

[From "Lenora" by Taylor]

Look up, look up, an airy crew

On the role of round dance. The moon is bright and the night is blue

she can dimly see f

"Come on, ghost crewmen.

come and follow me And dance the wedding dance for us

When we're in bed, we will be."

And brush, brush, brush, the ghost crew

Come flying over their heads, everything whispers like withered leaves

This Wyde spreads the whirlpool.

• These are book phrases, not true ballad language.

\To see. The "Old IMariner":

"The party is over, the guests have been received, they have heard the roar of joy."

39<5 c^ History of English Romanticism.

Shout out! shout out! there they go

pay no attention to wet or dry, and horse and rider puff and puff,

and the shining stones fly.

And it was all in the moonlight

They fled after them; And backwards he crept over his head

The sky and all the stars.

Wander, roam the land they speed

Splash, splash across the sea: "Hurray!

Are you afraid to walk with me? "

It was this last stanza that intrigued Scott, because Mr. Cranstoun repeated it from memory; and kept it in its version without many changes. The sea is not mentioned in Burger, whose hero dies at the Battle of Prague, traveling only overland. But Taylor nationalized and individualized the matter, making his William a knight of Richard the Lionheart, who had fallen in the Holy Land. Scott followed him and made him a crusader in Frederic Barbarossa's army. Burger's poem was written in an eight-line stanza, but both Taylor and Scott chose the common English ballad verse, with its folk associations, as the best means of reproducing the story's growing substance; and Taylor gave his diction an archaic tone, all the more for effect. Lewis considered his version a masterpiece of translation, and indeed "far superior to the German in spirit and harmony". Taylor demonstrated similar skill in her performance of Bürger's second most popular ballad, Des Pfarrer's Daughter of Taubenhain, which was first printed.

\ The German tributary. 397

the April 1796 monthly under the rather odd title "The Girl from Fair Wone".

Taylor of Norwich did more than any other man of his generation to spread new German literature in England through his translations and critical articles in Monthly Review and Monthly Review. At the age of sixteen he was sent to study in Detmold, Westphalia, and spent over a year (1781-82) in Germany, where, on his way to England, he visited Goethe in Weimar with a letter of introduction. "When he became acquainted with this literature," wrote Lucy Aikin, "there was probably no English translation of any German author except into French, and it is very likely that he was the first English man of letters to read Goethe, Wieland, Lessing and Burger in the originals.”* Some years before the publication of his “Lenora”, he had translations of Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise” (1791) and Goethe’s “Iphigenie auf Tauris” (1793) printed for distribution. In the years 1829-1830 he collected his numerous newspaper articles and compiled them into a three-volume "Historical Report of German Poetry," which Carlyle treated in the Edinburgh Revueiv quite crudely, but without disrespect. Taylor's views were one-sided, not to say eccentric; he did not keep up with later movement in German thought; his critical views were out of date and his book unfortunately lacked unity and proper perspective. Carlyle was particularly shocked by the little space given to it

• 'Reminiscences of Wm. Taylor of Norwich', by JW Robberds

(1843). volume II. page. 573-

398 <v^ History of English l^manticism.

to Goethe.* But Taylor's truly brilliant talent for translation and his important service as a moderator and interpreter of German poetry for his own countrymen deserve to be ever remembered with gratitude. "You have left me hungry and thirsty for German poetry", Southey wrote him on February 24, 1799.

The year 1796 thus marks the confluence of the English and German Romantic movements. It seems a little strange that such a sane genius as Walter Scott made his debut at a horror exhibition. Lockhart relates this on the authority of Sir Alexander Wood, when he read to that gentleman his William and Helen "in a very slow and solemn tone" and then looked silently into the fire, exclaiming at the time, "I wish to God I could. " Obtain Totenkopf". Sir Alexander then escorted him to the home of John Bell, Surgeon, where the desired articles were procured and assembled in the poet's library. In the following years Scott continued to translate German ballads, romances and chivalric dramas. they remained manuscripts, the second publication (February 1799) was free Translation of Goethe's tragedy "Götz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand". The original was a very influential work in Germany. It was in front of the public for twenty-six years years and did this

• For Taylor's opinion on Carlyle's articles on Goethe Abroad

Review ^ see "Historical Review", vol. third pp. 378-79. f "Taylor's Memoirs", vol.I p. 255

7th German tributary. 399

produced numerous imitations, which Scott dabbled in in part before discovering it, the source of all the Ritterschauspiele deluge placed under the Reich's ban on participating in manors. "It would be difficult", wrote Carlyle, "to name two books alongside Werther's Sorrows and Götz which had a more profound influence on later European literature." "The happiness of 'Berlichingen mit der Eisernen Hand', though less sudden" - than that of Werther - "was no less sublime. In his own homeland, 'Götz', though now alone and childless, became a father of innumerable descendants of knights theatrical plays, feudal descriptions, and poetic and antiquarian representations, which, though long dead, made quite a splash in their time and generation, and among us their influence was perhaps most remarkable." The first entry in Sir Walter Scott's literary work 'The Prize' was a translation of 'Götz von Berlichingen' and if genius could be conveyed as instruction we might call this work of Goethe the root cause of 'Marmion' and 'Lady of the Lake', with everything that happened since then in the same work was hand continued... To what extent 'Götz von Berlichingen' really influenced Scott's literary destiny and if

• Among the most notable was "Maler" (Friedrich)

Müller's "Golo und Genoveva" (written 1781; published 1811); Count Torring's "Agnes Bernauerin" (1780); and "Sturm von Borberg" (1778) and "Fust von Stromberg" (1782) by Jacob Meyer. Some of them were very successful on stage.

400 c^ History of English Romanticism.

whether the rhyming novels and afterwards the prose novels of the author of Waverley did not continue as they were, must remain a very obscure question; obscure and unimportant. There is no doubt, however, that these two trends, which may be called Gothicism and Wertherism, and of which Scott was a representative with us, did and do tour Europe in places. In Germany, too, there was this loving, half-repentant critique: Germany had its Watchtower period in literature, and it was over before Scott even started."

Elsewhere, Carlyle protests against the notion, prevalent in English, that German literature “dwells with a peculiar conceit among wizards and ruined towers, with knights in armor, secret courts, monks, ghosts and bandits... insists, Heinse's Ardinghello and Miller's Siegwart to take, the works of Veit Weber the Younger and, above all, the immortal Kotzebue, as samples of German literature, one can find a lot: Black Forest and the glory of the Lubberland, sensuality and horror, the ghostly nun and the enchanted moonlight not gone, also impetuous thugs, with huge mustaches and the most feline eyes;

• "Essay on Walter Scott".

f Kotzebue's "The Stranger" still holds up on the English stage. Sheridan's Pizarro, a cover of Kotzebue's Españoles en Perú, was a longtime favourite; and "Monk" Lewis made another translation entitled "Rolla" in 1799, but it was never performed.

7th German tributary. 401

Ghosts and similar suspicious figures are encountered in abundance. We are little read in this bowls and daggers department; but we understand that it was cultivated quite diligently at the same time; although currently it appears to be practically abandoned. . . What are we to make of a German critic who has chosen his examples of British literature from The Ghost in the Castle, Mr. Lewis or The Mysteries of Udolf and Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus? . . . Faust, for example, passes for many of us as a mere tale of sorcery and magical art. It would not be more imprudent to think that 'Hamlet' depends mainly on the spirit that walks in it."

Let us now turn to the plays mentioned here and to the whole class of melodramas and melodramatic romances which have seethed through Germany in the last quarter of a century and found their way into English theaters and into circulation libraries in the form of translations. Adaptations, imitations, two works were remotely responsible: Goethe's "Götz" (1773) with its robber barons, secret court, imperialist troops, gypsies and insurgent peasants; and Schiller's The Robbers (1781), with its even more violent situations and more violent dramatis personams. It is true that this offspring of the Sturm-U7id Drangzeit, with its dealings with bandits, monks, inquisitors, confessionals, torture and poison, dungeons and prisons, the haunted tower, the screaming ghost and the solitary cell, was anticipated in England by the ' Castle of Otranto' and 'Mysterious Mother' by Walpole; but that narrow native creek was now wholly swamped by the roiling tide.

• "State of German Literature".

402 e/^ History of English T^manticism.

sensational Black Forest-Rhine case Mrs. Radcliffe had been drinking from outside sources. In 1794 he made the journey across the Rhine and published an account of his journey the following year. The knightly chain was not yet worn; Brentano didn't invent Lürlei's seductive charm or sing about Heine; nor did Byron reflect on "the rock castle of Drachenfels". The French armies were not far away and there were alerts and excursions along the border. But the beautiful hiker stopped at many places that were once dedicated to legends and songs: Mouse Tower, Roland Search and Siebengebirge. He watched the peasants in their picturesque costumes carrying baskets of earth across the steep terraces of the vineyards: the ruins of the robber barons above and the dark expanses of the romantic valleys that brought their tributaries north and south. .

Lockhart says Scott's translation of "Gotz" should have been published ten years earlier to have its full impact. For the English public had had enough of the melodramas and romances of Kotzebue and other strong Germans; and the brilliant parody of The Robbers entitled The Tramps, which Canning and Ellis published in the Anti-Jacobin, covered the entire race with scorn. The knightly romance, the feudal drama, the thief's game and the thief's romance, the monk's tale and the ghost story [Rittersück, Ritterroman, Rduber Stick, Rduberroman, Klostergeschichte, Gespensterlied] are all the rage in Germany as well as in Europe. England for this kind of fiction, satisfied, however crudely, the longing for the time of freedom, adventure, power

The German tributary. 403

action and emotion. As Lowell said of the New England transcendental movement, it was like breaking windows to get out. Ridiculous as many of them seem today, with their improbable plots and over-the-top characters they filled a need that neither the rationalizing minds of the Augustan age nor the Romantic poets who followed them with their elegiac sophistication satisfied their dispassionate strain of reflection and description. For the moment they seemed to be the new avatar of the tragic muse prophesied by Akenside, Collins and Warton, the answer to his call for something wild and primal, for Naturton's return to poetry and the long-lost power to excite tragic feeling, pity and fear. horror. This spirit infected not only the chivalric and gothic romance genres, but also prose literature in general. He is responsible for both sinister and fantastical creations such as Beckford's Vathek, St. Leon" and "Caleb Williams", Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein", "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvine the Rosencrucian" and the "Ormond" and "Wieland" by the American Charles Brockden Brown, forerunner of Hawthorne and Poe; tales of sleepwalkers and ventriloquists, of people in search of the elixir vitce, or of those who have committed the unpardonable sin, or those in their labs creating monsters or walking the halls of Eblis with their hearts on fire in their hands.

However, Lockhart denies that "Götz von Berlichingen" has anything in common with the absurdities that Canning ridiculed in Anti-Jacobin. He says it was a "broad, bold, free and more

(1/.

404 <iThe History of English Manticism.

picturesque representation of royal personages, customs and events." Think of the robber barons of the Rhine with "their raids on other people's lands, the castles besieged, the herds plundered, the knights captured, the bishop defeated and the feudal lord bewildered", found that Scott bore a resemblance to old life on the Scottish Borders with its moss soldiers, cattle raids and private warfare; and this, like Percy's "Hallows", provoked theMinstrelsy of the Scottish Border", wofür"Gotz" led to "Lay of the Last Minstrel" and "Marmion". He cites the passage from "Götz", where Selbiss, wounded, is carried away by two soldiers who climb a watchtower and tell their leader how to proceed. the battle; and asks: "Who does not recognize the true original of the death scene in 'Marmion' and the storm in 'Ivanhoe' in Goethe's drama?"

A unique character now appears on our stage, Matthew Gregory Lewis, commonly nicknamed "Monk" Lewis, after the title of his famous Romarkce. It is ironic that a muse as robust as Walter Scott's was cared for in infancy by a little creature like Lewis. His "Monk" appeared in 1795, when the author was only twenty years old. In 1798 Scott's friend William met Erskine Lewis in London. The latter was collecting materials for his Tales of Wonders, and when Erskine showed him Scott's William and Helen and The Wild Hunter and told him he had other manuscripts of the same type, Lewis asked Scott to find out. contribute to his collection. Consequently, Erskine put him in touch with Scott, who was very flattered by the monk's request, and wrote him this

The German tributary. 405

his ballads were at his service. Lewis responded and thanked him for the offer. "A ghost or a witch," he wrote, "that's not an ingredient in every dish I want to make my hobgoblin dinner out of." Later that year, Lewis arrived in Edinburgh and was introduced to Scott, who found one in him. strange contrast to the growing book terrors of him, a cheerful little man, headstrong, round-faced, a follower of fashion and a shrewd lockpicker. <? /^^/.' "They protruded like some insects and were flat in orbit. His person was extremely low and childlike; in fact he was the least important man she had ever seen, absolutely well made and well made... with him. He was a child and a spoiled child, but a child of great imagination; and so it was wasted on ghost stories and German romances. He had the best ear for rhythm I ever knew, sharper than Byron's."

Byron, by the way, always had good feelings for Lewis, although he laughed at him in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers":

"O miracle worker Lewis, monk or bard,

Who would like to make Parnassus a cemetery? This! Yew wreaths, not laurels, tie his forehead; your muse a spirit, you the sexton of Apollo; When you take your stand in ancient tombs, by celebrated chattering ghosts, your gang of kin. Or draw chaste descriptions on your page to please women of our humble age: They all hail you, M. P.,* from whose infernal brain phantoms hatch from thin leaves, a frightful train;

• Lewis sat in Parliament replacing Beckford with Hindon, Wilts.

of "Vathek" and Fonthill Abbey fame.

4o6 n/J History of English T^omantics.

At his command, fierce women swarm, And kings of fire and water and cloud, With 'little gray men' and wild yagers and the like, To crown thee and Walter Scott with honour! "

In 1816, on his way to Italy, Lewis spent time with Byron and Shelley in their Swiss retreat and had the whole company write fairy tales. The most notable result of this bizarre symposium was Mrs. Shelley, Frankenstein. Byron's and Shelley's signatures appear as witnesses on a codicil of Lewis' will, which he drew up at the time and dated Maison Diodati, Geneva; a somewhat rhetorical document in which he provided for the protection of slaves on his Jamaican plantations. Two years later, Lewis died of yellow fever on his return journey from visiting these West Indies estates and was buried at sea. Byron made this entry in his diary:

that is.

"'I would bring the lands of Deloraine Dark Musgrave back to life'

"I would give a lot of cane. Monk Lewis was alive again."

Scott's modesty led him to despise his own verse in comparison with Lewis's, some of which he recited to Ballantyne in 1799, speaking of its author, says Lockhart, "with ecstasy". But no matter how good Lewis's ear for rhythm is, his verse is, for the most part, abominable; and his breezy, laid-back anapeists and pragmatic manners are ridiculously out of place.

The German tributary. 407

with the horrors of his story, adding to the banality that characterizes his poetry:

"A frog still alive in the liquid spat, and aloud the frog screamed as if it were being torn to pieces: and whenever it stooped over the cauldron it murmured strange words of mysterious intent:"

or that of the same ballad: *

"The demon grabbed his hand from the ground, laughing maniacally. He let go of the baby, kissed the wound, drank the blood, then pulled a small jet-black ring from his finger, let out a loud cry three times, and disappeared from sight."

Lewis seems to have inherited his romantic inclinations from his mother, a sentimental girl whose youthful appearance often led to her being mistaken for Mat's sister and whose reading was confined mainly to romance novels. The poor lady was something of a blue sock and aspired to literary honours, Lewis's devotion to her is very charming and the Big Brother tone of her letters is very amusing. But he disliked "female authorship"; and when he heard the rumor that her mother had written a novel and a tragedy and was preparing to publish them, he wrote to her in horror, begging her to keep her hands off. "I maintain that a woman doesn't need to be a public figure and that, as she gains notoriety, she loses refinement. I always see a writer as a kind of demi-human." He was also appropriately surprised by some rumors that attributed "The Monk" to his mother rather than his mother's son.

We read in the “Life and Correspondence of

• The fierce "White Lady" in "Tales of Wonder".

4o8 c/^ History of English l^Pmanticism.

Matthew Gregory Lewis' (2 vols., London, 1839) which is one of Mrs. Lewis was Glanvil on Witches. Triumphatus "rebuked the skeptic and provided arguments for Cotton Mather's 'Wonders of the Unseen World' (1693), an excuse for his involvement in the Salem witch trials; and his description of a ghostly drum heard playing nightly in a house A field trip in Wiltshire provided Addison with the lead for his comedy The Drummer.Mr. Mompesson's House In the former mansion of Stanstead Hall, owned by a relative of his father, where the boy spent part of his boyhood, there was an enchanted chamber known as the Cedar. Room. says his biographer: "Lewis used to say that at night, when he was led through this gloomy room on the way to his room, he would cast a startled glance over his shoulder, expecting to see the huge open doors." Oddly carved folding doors open, revealing some of those terrifying forms which later became the hideous machinery of his works".

Lewis's first and most famous publication was "Ambrose, or the Monk" (1795), a three-volume Gothic romance and direct descendant of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe. He started at Oxford.

(

v

• Matthew Arnold's charming "Scholar Gypsy" was suggested by

a pass on it.

The German tributary. 4^9

In 1792, in a letter to his mother, he described it as "a romance in the style of 'The Castle of Otranto'". But in the summer of the same year he went to Germany and settled in Weimar, where he met Goethe and became acquainted with the strange productions of the Sturtn und Drang period. For years, Lewis was one of the most active mediators between the German publishers of The Terrible and the English literary market. He fed the stage with melodramas and operas, and filled the reader's closet with ballads and prose romances. continue," he wrote his mother, "reading the 'Mysteries of Udolf,' which I consider one of the most interesting books ever published. character... and mine. I confess I was impressed. This innocent vanity of imagining a resemblance between Anne Radcliffe's brunette villain and her own angel

• The following is a list of major translations: "The

Minister" (1797) from Schiller's "Kabale und Liebe"; She performed at Covent Garden in 1803 as The Harpist's Daughter. "RoUa" (1799) from Kotzebue's "Spaniards in Peru" (1800), performed at Drury Lane, 1801. "Tales of Terror" (1801) and "Tales of Wonder" (1801) (There seems to be some doubt as to the existence from alleged Kelso editions of those editions of 1799 and 1800. See article on Lewis at the Diet listed as "Rugantino" "Feudal Tyrants" (1807), a four-volume novel "Romantic Tales" (1808), 4 volumes, German and French .

4IO <^ History of English Manticism.

Personality recalls Scott's story about the Saunders Lewis painting that was delivered to Dalkeith House. “The artist deftly threw a dark pleated cloak over the form, under which he half concealed a dagger, a dark lantern, or some slit-shaped accessory; with all this the traits were preserved and ennobled. This passed hand in hand by Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, hearing the general voice that he very much resembled himself, said in a loud voice: "Like Mat Lewis! This image is like a man', and abuses the already known trappings of Gothic romanticism. It had tall Spaniards, stunningly beautiful heroines, valiant men and thieves of the forest, stupid lovers and garrulous servants, monks, nuns, inquisitors, magic mirrors, enchanted wands, midnight spells, wizards, spirits, demons , haunted chambers paneled in dark oak, moonlit castles with ruined turrets and ivy-covered battlements, whose galleries echoed with the screams and curses of the culprits at their gates, when the castle clock struck one o'clock, the specter of a nun He appeared bleeding, dagger and lamp in hand. There have been poisonings, stabbings and the administration of sleeping pills, beauties disguised as pages and pages disguised as itinerant harpers, secret sources that give access to spiral stairs that lead to the vaults of the convent's ossuaries, where sisters recalcitrant people walled up by cruel prioresses and fed bread and water among the loathsome relics of the dead.

Despite all this, "El Monje" is not a completely reprehensible work. It has a certain narrative power that puts it well above the level of O

The German tributary. 411

Castle of Otranto.” And though he participates in the stilted dialogue and misrepresentation of characters that abound in Ms. Radcliffe, has none of the excess of scenery or feeling that characterizes such a long narrator. There is nothing strictly medieval about The Knight in Armor and the historical period is not specified, but the ecclesiastical features give it a medieval appearance and we remember, however vaguely, the captivity of the offending sister in the tomb of the conspiracy reminiscent of the scene in "Marmion". , where Constance is imprisoned in the vaults of Lindisfarne, of course, a blatant anachronism on Scott's part, as Lindisfarne lay in ruins centuries before the Battle of Flodden. Horace's motto on the first page of "The Monk" sums up its contents, and indeed the contents of most of its author's writings, prose and verse:

“Dreams, magical horrors, wonders, sagas, nocturnal lemurs and omens.

The hero Ambrosio is the abbot of the Capuchin monastery of San Francisco in Madrid; a man of austere economics whose spiritual pride makes him easy prey for the temptations of a female demon who gradually drive him into a series of crimes, including incest and patricide, until he finally sells his soul to the devil to escape it. the dungeons of the Inquisition and the Auto-da-fé and signed the agreement approvingly on parchment with an iron pen dipped in the blood of his own veins. The devil who enters with thunder and lightning, upon whose

412 c/f History of English l^Pmanticism.

Shoulders "rippling two mighty saber wings" and whose hair "was tended by living serpents", he seized his prey and climbed with it to a peak in the Sierra Morena where, in a Salvator Rosa landscape of torrents, cliffs, caves and forests of pine trees, in the light of an opera moon and the hoarse sigh of the night wind and "the shrill cry of mountain eagles", throw him off a cliff and finish him off.

_ A passage from the episode of Agnes of Medina, the Imprisoned Nun, illustrates Lewis' wonderful art: "A faint glimmer of light penetrating through the bars enabled me to discern the terrors that surrounded me. The door was unlocked, I thought I might escape. I got up with that drawing, my hand landed on something soft. I grabbed it and held it up to the light. Almighty God "What was that? My disgust, my astonishment! Despite its rot and the worms that shadowed it, I saw a corrupted human head and recognized the features of a nun who had died a few months earlier, hanging from the ceiling by an iron chain and casting a black light across the dungeon. Death's emblems were visible everywhere, skulls, shoulder blades, femurs and other relics of mortality strewn across the dewy ground. ... Shivering at the biting wind howling in my subterranean abode, the change seemed so startling, so abrupt, that I doubted its reality. . . Sometimes the toad looked bloated, hideous and spoiled by the noxious fumes of the dungeon,

The German tributary. 413

drag your disgusting length across my chest; Sometimes I was awakened by the swift, cold lizard leaving its slimy trail across my face and tangling itself in the wild, tangled strands of my hair. I have often woken up to find my fingers surrounded by the long worms that breed in my baby's spoiled flesh."

• • The monk “won an immediate and for his author

great fame, no doubt aided by the outcry against its immorality. Lewis tried to defend himself by claiming that his outline and moral came from "The Story of Santon Barsisa" in The Guardian (#148). But the exuberant nature of some of the descriptions led the attorney general to ban the book from sale, and Lewis bowed to public opinion to the extent of suppressing questionable passages in later editions. Lewis's melodrama The Ghost in the Castle opened at Drury Lane on 14 December 1797, ran for sixty nights and "remained popular as a play", says the biographer, "until recent times". It is a strong testament to the contemporary appetite for the nightmare, as the play is arrogant. Sheridan, who had little opinion on the matter, advised the playwright to keep the ghost out of the final scene. "It has been said," explains Lewis in his preface, "that, unless Mr. Sheridan had advised me to content myself with a single specter, I pretended to have exhibited a whole regiment of specters." The prologue, spoken by Mr. Wroughton, evokes "the beautiful enchantress, Romance":

"The Mad Child of Genius and Suffering",

• The printed work reached its eleventh edition in 1803.

414 "vf History of English Romanticism.

OMS

"-Swears by the sun, or by the light of a bright candle; she alone loves the moonlit field and the stormy night; and often with a bright lamp near freshly dug graves, or amid dank dungeons, gloomy forests , corridors in ruins and haunted places. towers, deserted she wanders and infuriates the hours".

The drama is set at Conway Castle in Wales, home to Earl Osmond, an "Otranto-type" feudal tyrant who plans an incestuous marriage to his own niece, of whom he says to himself, "And if she prefers kiss from a basilisk to mine." ? For my fleeting joy may cause your eternal pain, shall I refuse these long-sought-after, so ardently-desired joys? I won't, by heaven! Mine is and shall be mine! though Reginald's bloody spirit flutters before me and thunders in my ear, "Wait! Wait!" Hang on!" “Peace, stormy heart, is coming. Reginald's spirit is not floating, as Reginald is still in the flesh, albeit not much flesh. He's Osmond's brother and Angela's father, me and the thugs we thought murdered him. However, it turns out that although he was presumed dead, he recovered from his wounds and for a long six years was kept in solitary confinement in a vaulted dungeon/under the castle.

puberty years. He is discovered in Act V, "emaciated,

in rough clothes, hair disheveled over the face and a chain tied around the body.

Reginald's ghost doesn't levitate, but Evelina's ghost does. Evelina is Reginald's murdered wife, and her specter in "blood-stained, flowing white robes" appears to Angela in the oratory with whom she communes.

The German tributary. 415

the cedar bedroom furnished with an antique bed frame and a portrait of a lady on a sliding wall. In fact, the castle is extraordinarily well stocked with apparitions. Earl Herbert rides every night on a white horse; Lady Bertha haunts the west tower of the Chapel Tower; and Lord Hildebrand can be seen in the great hall every midnight playing football with his head. So says Motley the Fool, bringing the element of comedy to the play, aided by a fat monk devouring sacks and stuffing venison pies, and an "Otranto"-inspired soubrette.

A few poems were scattered across the pages of El Monje, including a ballad in Danish and another in Spanish. But the most famous of these was "Alonzo the Brave and the Beautiful Imogene", originally by Lewis, though apparently suggested by **Lenore. now when the hour strikes and the blue lights come on, at the company's request, the strange old man lifts his visor to reveal a skeleton head:

"There was a horrified scream from everyone present; everyone left the scene in disgust; maggots darted in and out, amusing themselves with their eyes and temples as the specter made its way towards Imogene."

He wraps her in his arms and falls out into the open with his prey; AND

"Four times a year, at midnight, when sleeping mortals are bound, their imp

4i6iA history of English l^omanticisni.

In her white wedding dress, she appears in the ballroom with a skeleton knight, squealing as he twirls her around.

"As they drink from skulls fresh from the grave, pale ghosts dance around them. Their drink is blood and that hideous pentagram."

Lewis's own contributions to his Tales of Terror and Tales of Wonder were in the same vein, with a lively head and bloodied bones. His imagination raged in physical terror. There are demons that gnash iron teeth and wield blood-fed scorpions; the maidens are kidnapped by the King of Winter, the King of Water, the King of Clouds and the Duende de la Cañada; They are poisoned or otherwise killed, and their ghosts visit their guilty lovers in their shrouds in the dark hour of midnight, pressing sticky kisses to them with pale lips; gray monks and black canons abound; Requiems and calls to death resound in the shadows of monasteries; echoing through soaring Gothic arches; murmurs the hermit in his mossy cell; Candles burn slowly, torches cast a red glow over the vaulted ceilings; the night wind blows through dark corridors; the hooting of the owl in the keep, and the dying moans are heard in the lonely house on the moor where the torn black arras rust on the wall.

The "Tales of Wonder" contained Lewis's translations of Goethe's "Fischer" and "Erl-König", as well as German versions of runic ballads in Herder's "Stimmen der Volker". Burgers Scott's "Wild Huntsman" is reprinted here, and he also contributed "Frederick and Alice", paraphrased by

The German tributary. 417

a romantic fragment in Goethe's opera Claudine von Villa Bella; and three powerful ballads of their own,

• • The Fire King", A History of the Crusades and "Glen-

Finns' and 'The Eve of St. John', Scottish 'gramarye' stories. There were two or three Old English ballads in the collection, such as "Clerk Colvin" and "Tam Lin", a contribution by George Colman Jr. , the playwright and one of Scott's eccentric friends, Leyden, and the band broke up with Taylor's "Lenora."*

It's funny to read that the monk lectured Scott on the art of verse and corrected Scots and rhyming errors in his hamburger translations; and that Scott respectfully followed his advice. For nothing could be in greater contrast to Lewis's Penny Dreadful than the martial tone of the verse and the virile power of the style in Scott's part of the book. As Lewis Anapest writes,

Sport.:

“She was all wrapped up in funeral clothes, her lips were pale, her face was pale; A terrible death had plucked the flower from her.

And every charm of beauty faded and disappeared."

And this is how Scott writes them:

"He clenched his teeth and gloved hand and slammed that side into the sand... For the Templars went down like Kidron in a flood, staining their long spears with Saracen blood." '\

You can't take Monk Lewis any more seriously than Horace Walpole. they are

• The "Tales of Terror" and "Tales of Wonder" will be reprinted in

a single volume of "Morley's Universal Library", 1887.

4 1 8 c// History of English Romanticism.

both like children telling ghost stories in the dark and trying to shake. Lewis was frivolous enough to compose parodies of his own ballads. Several of these facets - "The Mud King", "Giles JoUup the Grave and Brown Sally-Green", etc. - diversify their "Tales of Wonder".

Scott soon found a better job than translating German ballads and melodramas; but in later years he occasionally returned to these early sources of Romantic inspiration. then his poem

• • The noble Moringer” comes from a “collection

Deutscher Volkslieder" published in Berlin in 1807 by Busching and Von der Hagen. In 1799 he prepared a remake of a melodrama entitled "Der Heilige Vehme" on Veit Weber's "Sagen der Vorzeit". He found it thirty years later in his papers ( 1829) and reprinted in The Keepsake under the title "The House of Aspen". Its most revealing feature is the description of the Vehm Court, or Secret Court, but it is of little importance. von Berlichingen" "1799 in Edinburgh by Wm. Scott, lawyer; doubtless the same person who has since become the most popular British writer under the poetic but misleading name of Walter. where the translator's name is William Scott, but there was occasion for a slightly bitter correspondence between Sir Walter and the critic of Norwich.*

, the tide of German romanticism began to ebb

• See "Memoirs of Wm. Taylor", vol. II P. 533-38.

The German tributary. 419

before the end of the century. A few years later it reappeared, perhaps this second time leaving a more lasting mark; but the rippling marks of its first invasion are still discernible in English poetry and prose. Southey was clearly in the wrong when he wrote to Taylor on 5 September 1798: "Coleridge's ballad 'The Ancient Mariner' is, I believe, the clumsiest attempt at German greatness I ever saw."

• • Mariner" is not German at all, even if

wrote that Coleridge had not been to Germany and did not know the language. He had no doubt read The Robbers in Tytler's translation some years before. He was in Cambridge at the time, and one winter night, leaving the room of a college friend, he carelessly picked up and carried with him a copy of Tragedy, the name of which he had never heard before. "A winter midnight, the high wind and, for the first time, 'The Thieves'. Schiller's readers will imagine how I felt.” He recorded in the sonnet “To Schiller” (written in December 1794 or January 1795) the terrible impression this made on his imagination.

- "The Cry of the Hungry Father from the Dark Dungeon of the Time Hire Tower",

and wished he could see the bard himself, wandering at dusk...

"Under a vast and ancient forest that sways in storms."

Coleridge would do the standard translation of "Wallenstein"; and there's motifs from "The Robbers" and "The Ghost Seer"

• "Taylor's Memoirs", vol.I p. 223

42 o ^ History of English Manticism.

in his own very useless dramas, Zapolya - which Scott used in Peveril of the Peak - and Osorio (1797). The latter has been rewritten asRemorse", performed at Drury Lane on January 23, 1813,and ran twenty nights. It was rejected by Sheridan, who appropriately dismissed it as a prank. The Reverend W. L. Bowles and Byron, having read the manuscript and strangely exaggerated it, asked the manager to try it out on stage. "Remorse" also took cues from Lewis's "Monk".

But in time Coleridge had little regard, if not for The Thieves itself, then for that school of German melodrama of which he was the great example. In the twenty-third chapter of the "Biographia Literaria" (1817) he closely examines the tragedy "Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldobrand"* by the Reverend Charles Robert Maturin, and, incidentally, describes the genesis of the whole work. a theatrical genre that in recent years has become fashionable both to abuse and to have fun under the name of German drama. Of the latter, Schiller's Diebe was the first example, the first fruit of his youth. .. Only thus did the more mature judgment of the author bear the work.” Coleridge admits “The Robbers” and its countless imitations were due to popularity

• This was one of the last hits of its kind.

at Drury Lane in 1816 for twenty-two nights, and brought the author with him

^iooo, and the printed work reached its seventh edition within the

Year. Among Maturín's other works are Fatal Vengeance (1807), Manuel (Drury Lane, 1817), Fredolfo (Covent Garden, 1817) and his once-famous novel Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), see earlier, p.249.

7th German tributary. 421

in Germany, from translations of Young's "Night Thoughts", Hervey's "Meditations", and Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe". "Add the ruined castles, dungeons, trapdoors, skeletons, flesh-and-blood spirits and eternal moonlight of a modern author* (themselves are the literary descendants of 'Castle of Otranto', their translations with imitations mentioned and improvements, then began to make as much noise in Germany as their originals did in England), and when the combination of these ingredients is properly mixed, you will recognize the so-called German drama which "is English in origin, is English in material, and is English by reinterpretation; and until we can prove that Kotzebue, or any of the whole race of Kotzebue, whether playwrights or romantic writers or romantic drama writers, have never been admitted to any different shelves in the libraries of well-educated Germans than those occupied by their originals. ... in your homeland we must resign ourselves to carrying our own brat on our own shoulders."

Under these influences, for a time Germany became the favorite country of romanticism, more than Italy or Spain. English storytellers chose its forests and fallen castles as the backdrop for their stories of robbery and murder. One of the best in a bad class of fiction, ^. ^. , was Harriet Lee's The German's Tale: Kruitzner in the Canterbury Tales series, co-written with her sister Sophia (1797-1805). Byron read it when he was fourteen, was deeply impressed by it, and made it the basis of Werner, his only drama.

• Sra. Radcliffe.

422 c^ History of English T^omantics.

had some success on stage. "Kruitzner" is designed with some pressure, but is written in a monotone and heavy. The historical period is the end of the Thirty Years' War. Its effect does not primarily rely on the time-honored "gothic" machinery, but again makes moderate use of the sliding wall and secret passageway.

We are at the doors of the new century, in the date of the "Lyric Ballads" (1798) and in sight of the novels of Waverley. As we look back over the years since Thomson published his Winter in 1726, we wonder what the Romantic movement did for literature in England; deserves to be called a "movement" that had no leader, no program, no organ, no theory of art and very little coherence. As we learn from the critical writings of the time, the movement, as it were, was not wholly unaware of its own goals and directions. The term "Warton School" implies a certain solidarity, and there was much exchange of views and some personal contacts between men sympathetic to literature; also some skirmishes between opposing camps. Gray, Walpole, and Mason form a group and encourage each other to learn in their correspondence and occasional meetings. Shenstone was interested in Percy and Gray's collections of ballads in Warton's History of English Poetry. Akenside read Dyer's "Fleece" and Gray read Beattie's "Minstrel" on the MS. The Wartons were friends with Collins; Collins, friend and neighbor of Thomson; and Thomson, a frequent visitor to Hagley and the Leasowes. Chatterton tried to take Rowley under Walpole's wing, and his verses

The German tributary. 423

undermined by Mason and Gray. Despite this, English Romantics generally had little companionship; they worked individually and were dispersed and isolated as to location, occupation and social affiliation. It doesn't appear that Gray marked Collins, or the Wartons, or Shenstone, or Akenside; nor that MacPherson, Clara Reeve, Mrs. Radcliffe and Chatterton never saw each other or the first. There was not that united purpose and enthusiastic partisanship which characterized the Conaculum of Paris, whose history was told by Gautier, or that Romantic school whose members were so brilliantly sketched by Heine.

But call it a movement or just a deviation, a trend; What did he do for literature? In terms of encouragement and preparation, a lot. It loosened classical bandages, expanded the field of sympathy, aroused curiosity about new and diverse forms of art, and guided the literary mind into a receptive and expectant attitude conducive to original creative activity. There never was a generation with a more romantic temperament than that which radcliffe at the end of the eighteenth century. . A lot has happened again in the department of literature and antiquarian books. Books like Tyrwhitt's Chaucer and Warton's History of English Poetry were of real importance, while the collection and preservation of Old English poetry by scholars like Percy, Ritson, Ellis and others before it was too late to work was pious. .

But if we ask what were the positive additions

424 a// History of English journalism.

As for modern English literature, the response is disappointing. No one will argue that Rowley's poems "Caractacus", "The Monk", "King Arthur's Tomb", "The Friar of the Gray Orders", "The Castle of Otranto" and "The Mysteries of Udolfo" are Rowley's enduring stuff. . : or even that "The Bard", "The Castle of Indolence" and "Ossian's Poems" are equated with works created by Coleridge, Scott, Keats, Rossetti and William Morris in the same spirit. The two leading English poets of the j^n du slide, Cowper and Burns, were not romantics. It fell to the 19th century to carry out the work that the 18th century had only prophesied.

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EU

EU

INDEX.

Two Miraculous Treaty, 374

Travel Abuse, Los, 84, 89

Count two English dramatic poets, An, 69

Account of the Greatest English Poets, An, 80

accounts W.M. Canyon Festival, 344, 355

Adams, Juan, 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

Adelniorn, 409

Adonais, 98, 370

Adventurer, The, 207

One Star Adventures, 353

^ Do, 344, 346, 349, 363-65,

367

^ Ella, El, 56, 328

Aesop's Fables, 84

Agamemnon, 75

Ines 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 triumph, 85

Alfieri, Vittorio, 3

Alley, O, 80

Dictionary of Authors of Aibone, 392, 393

Alonso o Bravo, 415

Alpes, Die, 182

Ambrosio, go to the monk.

Amherst, Alicia, 119, 123

Friends and Amile, 64

Ancient Armor, 189

Old Pound, 326

Old Mariner, Der, 18, 262,

269, 299, 369, 394, 419 Ancient Songs, 293 Painting Anecdotes, 230, 351 Annus Mirabilis, 137 Other Original Songs, 84 Anti-Jacobin, The, 402, 403 Antiquities of Scotland, 187 Apology of Smectymnuus, 146 Apuleius, 146; Lucius, 16, 220 Arcadia, The Countess of Pembroke, 239 Archimage, 84 Gothic Architecture, 181 Ardinghello, 400 Argenis, 241, 242 Argument Against Description

Christian, 42 Ariosto, Louis, 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 Poetique, L', 47 Aspects of Poetry, 315 Atalanta at Calydon, 35 Athalie, 217

Atlantic Monthly, The, 11 Aucassin et Nicolete, 64, 189,

221

435

436

Index.

Austen, Jane, 263 Aytoun, Wm. I, 269

Beth Gelert, 391 Biographia Literaria, 59, 420 Black-eyed Susan, 57, 273 Babes in the Wood, ver Chil-Blacklock, Thos., 85, 333

Children at Blair Woods, Hugo, 309, 313, 320, 335

Babo, Joseph M., 398 Blair, Robert, 163, 164, 251

Bacon, Francis, 8, 120 years, Wm., 28, 164, 365, 366,

Bagehot, Walter, 17372

Bailey's Dictionary. 360 Blenheim, 104

Baladas Ilustrating Shakes - Boccaccio, Giovanni, 28, 29, 49

Pai, 284 Bodmer, JJ, 374, 375

Waage of the Romans around Ballantyne-Boiardo, M. M., 25, 100

ry, 249 Boileau-Despreaux, N., 35, 38,

Balzac, Honoré de, 249 47, 49, 65, 212, 214, 226, 227

Bancos de milenrama, Die, 274 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John,

Bannatyne, Geo., 284 Vizconde, 41, 135, 382

Banville, Theodore F. de. 373 Bonny Conde de Murray, The, Baour-Lormian, P. M. F. L., 300

337 Bonny George Campbell, 275

Barbauld, Anna L., 391 Borck, C. von, 377

Barclay, Jn., 241 Bossuet, J.B., 38

Barde, The, 173, 193, 194, 196, Boswell, Jas., 94, 105, 139, 150,

424 174. 288, 312, 320, 355

Barrett, Wm., 348, 354, 364, Jardim Botânico, The, 99

367 Bouhours, Dominica, 49, 227

Bartholin, Thos., 191, 196 Bowles, W.L., 420

Battle of Hastings, The, 345, Boy and the Cloak, The, 300

346, 348, 364, 365 Boyesen, H. H., 23

Batalla de Otterburn, The, 278 Braes of Yarrow, The, 61, 297 Bayly, T. H., 254 Brandl, Alois, 391-93

Beattie, Jas., 85, 97, 166, 186, Bravo von Venice, The, 409 242, 245-47, 251, 302-05, 422 Brentano, Clemens, 384, 402

Die Bristowe-Tragödie, La, 346,

349. 366, 370 Brockes, B.H., 106 Brown, "Ability", 124, 130 Brown, Chas. B., 403 Confession de Brown Robyn,

278

Beaumont and Fletcher, 284 Shakespearean Beauties, 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, Browne, Sir Thos., 40, 66

299 Browne, Wm., 79

Bells Fugitive Poetry, 159, Browning, Robert, 43

161 Brunettiere, Fernando, 2, 5, 11,

Bentham, Jas, 180 14

Beowulf, 25, 318 Bryant, Jacob, 356

Beresford, Jas., 391 Bridges, Saml. Egerton, 336

Berkeley, Geo., 31 Buchanan, Robt., 272

Bernart de Ventadour, 64 Citizens, G.A., 279, 289, 301,

Bertram, 420 375, 376, 382, ​​389-97. 416, 417

Index. 437

Burney, Francis, 252 Castillos de Athlin e Dun- Burning Babe, The, 41 Bayne, The, 250, 258, 261 Burns, Robt., 57, 95, 112, 187, Cath-Loda, 334

334, 360, 424 Catalog of Kings and Nobles

Burton, JH, 178 autores, 230

Burton, Robt., 162 Catón, 51. 218, 388

Byron, Geo. Gordon, Lord, 5, Literatur Celta (Sullivan),

16, 24, 36, 49, 78, 98, 107, 135, 315, 325

181, 222, 229, 238, 250, 255, Celtic Literature, on the study

262, 328-30, 333, 353, 362, 370, de (Arnold), 315

402, 405, 406, 420, 421, Cerdick, 329

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel

Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, von, 244

25 Cesarotti, M., 321, 337

Caleb Williams, 403 Masters of Virtue, The, 241-

Calverley, CS, 270 43

Cambridge, R.O., 84, 89, 92, Chanson de Roland, The, 27,

98, 151, 228, 229 64

Cameron, Ewen, 335 Chappell, Wm., 270

Cameron, Julia M., 393 Characteristics, 382, ​​391

Campbell, Thos., 142, 143 Chase, The (Scott), 391

Campbell, JF, 314, 322, 323, Chase, The (Somerville), 124

325, 327 Chateaubriand, F. A. de., 255,

Preserves, Geo., 402, 403 332, 333

Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), Chatterton (Jones e Her-

27. 63, 35 S. 359 Mann), 373

Cuentos de Canterbury (Lee), 421 Chatterton (Masson), 362

Caractacus, 190, 194, 195, 306, Chatterton (Vigny), 372, 373

424 Chatterton, Tho., 152, 188, 211,

Caradoc, 195 235, 245, 294, 317, 328, 339-

Carew, Thos., 66 73.384.422.423

Carey, Henry, 57 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 27, 28, 30,

Caric-thura, 334 63, 66, 69, 108, 154, 188, 199,

Carle de Carlisle, Die, 293 212, 213, 244, 266, 272, 279,

Carlyle, Thos., 317, 330, 334, 280, 294, 301, 304, 322, 342,

397-400 358-60, 363, 371, 382, ​​383, 423

Carmen Seculare, 35 Chesterfield, Philip Dormer

Carter, Jno., 189 Stanhope, Earl of. 40, 50, 137

Karton, 311, 333, 335 Chevy Chase, 274, 283-S6, 300,

Castelo da Preguiça, la, 75, 85, 346, 377

92-94, 97, 104, 114, 165, 219, Type. FJ, 267, 284

424 Kind Mauritius, 292

Schloss Otranto, The, 188, Elles Kind, The, 289, 290, 301

211, 215, 223, 229, 231, 236- Aguas del Niño, 281, 295, 298, 301

43, 247, 249, 253, 255, 340, Childe Harold, 98, 250, 333,

346, 362, 367. 401, 409, 411, 334, 364

414, 415, 421, 424 children in the forest, Los,

Castle Spectre, The, 401, 413-273, 2S3. 2S5. 288, 302

15 Choice of Hercules, Der, 85

43 8 Index.

Christian von Troyes, 27 Corneille, Pierre, 38, 65, 67

Christabel, 363, 369, 394 Corsair, The, 334

Christian Ballads, 165 Cottle, Joseph, 350, 358, 368

Church of Christ o* the Green, 66 Graf von Narbonne, The, 240

Churchill, Chas., 353 Country Walk, The, 142

Cibber, Colley, 74, 176 Cowley, Abraham, 37, 38, 53, Cid, El, 298 66, 79, 120, 228

Terrible Night City That, Cowper, Wm., 53, 57, 103, 108,

162 no, 112, 115, 424

Clarissa Harlowe, 252, 421 Coxe, AC, 165

Classic and Romantic, 11 Crabbe, Geo., 103

Classics and Romantics, 2 Crashaw, Richard, 41

Walpurgis Night Classic, 385 Croft, Herbert, 367, 368

Claudina von Villa Bella, 417 Croma, 336

Secretary, Archibald, 313, 320, 321, Cromwell, 19, 35

323, 324 Croxall, Saml., 84

Secretary Colvin, 279, 417 Crusade, The, 199

Clerkes Tale, The, 280, 281 Cumberland, Richard, 74, 177

Coleridge, ST, 59, 66, 73, Cumnor Hall, 94

108, 110, 161, 188, 262, 265, Cidra, 104, 124

269, 299, 328, 363. 366, 368,

369. 372, 376. 387. 388, 394, Ironside, Anne L., 49

419-21, 424 Dalrymple, Sir David, 291, Colin's Error, 84 306, 336

Collins, Wm., 25, 75, 104, nein, Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, / 112, 114, 118, 129, 136, 142, 266

151, 155, 156, 158, 163, 165, Dante Alighieri, 22, 28, 29, 64,

166, 168-72, 175, 184, 186, 193, 235

197, 215, 251, 279, 281, 384, Darke Ladye, The, 369

403, 422, 423 Darthula, 314. 335

Collection of old novels, A., Darwin, Erasmus, 99

284 Davenant, Wm., 67, 74, 137, 226

Colman, Geo., Jr., 176, 254, 417 David Balfour, 258

Colvin, Sidney, 16-18 Davies, John, 137

Oxford Companion on the Origin of the English Nation

Führer, 202 192

Complaint of Ninathoma, El, on the causes of the verdict

328 *Mortis, 191

Complete Poetry, The, On the Imitation of Christ, 64

69, 72 Dean of Lismore's Book, The, Comus, 16, 144, 149, 150, 215 314

Conan, 195 death of Calmar and Orla, La, concubine, La, 85, 95 328

Conjectures on Cuthullen's original death, The, 335

Position, 387 Death of Hoel, The, 195

Conquest of Granada, La, 44. Death of Mr. Pope, 85

Contemplation, 297 Defense of Poetry, 72, 274

Cooper's Hill, 39 Defense of Coriolanus's Epilogue, 72, 74 Conquest of Grenada, 71

Index. 439

DeFoe, Daniel, 40 Dream, A, 85

Demonology and Witchcraft, Dream of Gerontius, O, 41

42, 189 drummer, Der, 408

Demosthenes, 3 Dryden, J No., 27, 41, 44, 49, 50 Deirdre, 314-53. 62, 63, 66-68, 70, 71, 74,

Denham, Sir Jno., 39 79, 80, 104, 137, 148, 149, 177,

Denis, Michael, 337, 377 192, 209, 210, 212, 213, 2i6,

Dennis, Jno, 49, 62, 69, 72, 74, 265.283

285 Dugdale, Wm., 198

Descenso de Odin, The, 191, 192, Dunciad, The, 34, 56

220 ^ Dürer, Albrecht, 162

Deschanel, Emile, 2 D'Urfey, Thos., 74

Description of the Leasowes, Dyer, Jno., 75, 102, 103, 106,

133, 139 119, 124, 142-45. 168, 215,

Descriptive Poem, A, 185 422

Abandoned Farm /

177 Early English Metripal Ro-Deserted Village, The, 91, 207 Mances, 301

Art and German Art, Eastlake, Sir Chas., 54, 5, 199,

Some Flying Leaves, 231-33

of, 380, 381 Ecclesiastical Sonnets, 145

Old French Dictionary - Edda, The, 64, 190, ig6, 220,

Expressions, 221 313, 390

Dictionary of National Biog-Edinburgh Review, The, 350,

Bast, 359 397

Day of Wrath, 64 Education, 85, 89, 90, 126

dirge in Cymbeline, El, 75, education of Achilles, El,

163 85, 97

Bardis Dissertation, 195 Edward, 274, 300

Dissertation on Fable and Edwards, Thos., 53, 89, 161

Romance, 242, 245-47 Bursts of Sensitivity, 250

Dissertation on the Authentic Literature of the 18th Century

Stadt Ossian, 320 (Gosse), 84, 104, 106, 163,

Divine Comedy, La, 27 169, 362

Divine Emblems, 164 Elegant Extracts, 211

Dobson, Austin, 272 (Shenstones Elegien), 137, 138

Dobson, Susannah, 221 Elegy on the Death of Prince Dodd, Wm., 377 Frederick, 85

Doddington, Geo. Bubb, em Elegy an Thyrza, 135

Dodsley, Jas., 349 Elegy written in a cemetery Dodsley, Robert, 84, 85, 132, in South Wales, 176

133, 135, 139, 209 Elegy Written in a Country Dodsley's Miscellaneous, 137, 159, Graveyard, 103, 137, 157,

165 163, 167, 173-77, 204

Don Juan, 5, 49 Elioure and Also, 346, 352, Donne, Jno., 28, 37, 66 354

Dorset, Chas. Sackville, Earl Ellis, Geo., 188, 301, 402, 423

von, 283 Elstob, Elisabeth, 192

Douglas, 170, 276, 308 Emerson, R. W., 66, 388

440

Index.

Emilia Galotti, 380

Endymion, 370

English and Scottish Folk Ballads, The, 267

English Bards and Scottish Revisers, 405

English Garden, Der, 123-27,

151

English Literature in the Eighteenth Century (Perry), 7, 163, 207, 211, 337

English Metamorphosis, 364,

365 English Romantic Movement,

El (Phelps), 84, 85, 197,

283, 297, 329 English scholars,

249, 262 Enid. 281 question of authenticity

from Rowley's Poems, 359 Current State Examination

de Educación Cortés, 208 Enthusiast, The, 151-53, 160 Epigoniad, the, 89 Brief von Eloisa an Abaelard,

56, 157, 163, 218, 220 Brief and Augustus, 66, 69, 72,

115 Epistle to Mateus, 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 Dramatic Essay Poetry, 68 , 129 . 70 essays on antiquity and modernity

Lernen, 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 Shakespeare, 69, 72 Essay on the Ancient Minstrels, 245, 293, 302 Essay on Rowley's 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 St. Agnes Eve, The, 98, 257,

363 Johannisabend, La, 417 Markusabend, La, 177,

371 Evelina, 243, 252 Evelyn, Jno., 7 Evergreen, The, 284, 286 Excelente balada de Charitie, 284;

Para, 366 Field Trip, Die (Mallet), 124 Field Trip, Die (Wordsworth),

304

Fables, (.<Esop), 84

Fables (Drj^den), 63

Fairy Queen, La, 16, 37, 66, 77-101, 154, 215, 225, 365

White Annie, 281, 295

Circassian Fair, A, 84

Bela Eleanor, 367

Beautiful Janet, 268

Fair Margaret e Sweet William, 268, 279, 283, 286, 300

Farewell Home Hymn, A, 85

Death's Vengeance, A, 249, 420

Mortal Sisters, The, 191

Fausto, 27, 141, 384, 385, 401

Index.

441

Fergusson, Jas., 233 Feudal Tyrants, 409 Fichte, J. G., 387 Fielding, Henry, 26, 40, 76,

383 Filicaja, Vincentius, 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, It, 41 Fleece, It, 124, 144, 145, 422 School of Poets of the Flesh, It,

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 Fouque, F. de la M., 4, 26, 384 Fragmente antiker Poesie,

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, Felipe, 177 Ordensbruder Grey, El, 298,

301, 424 Froissart, Jean, 27, 64, 236 Von Shakespeare al Papa, 39,

60 Fröhling, Der, 106 Fuller, Thos., 28 Furnivall, F.J., 292 Fust von Stromberg, 399

Aguja de Gammer Gurton, 293 Gandalin, 381

go after the iron hammer

Die, 386 "Guirnaldas", Die, 284 Garrick, David, 162, 209, 287 Gaston de Blondville, 250, 259-

62 Gates, L. E., 41, 44 Gautier, Theophile, 372, 423 Gay Goshawk, The, 279 Gay, Jno., 35, 57, 273 Gebir, 18, 245 Proceedings of a Skull, 190, 423;

377 Genius of Christianity, The,

332 Gentle Shepherd, The, 79 Georgics, The, iii German's Tale, The, 421 Geron der Adelige, 381 Gerstenberg, H. W. von, 190,

377. 387 History of German Literature (Hettner) 300, 378,

387 art history of

Antiguidade, 384 Spirit Seer, The, 419 Gierusalem 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, II, 31, 141, 252, 255, 275,

330, 334, 377-81, 384-87, 389,

397-99, 404, 409, 416, 417 "Gottinger Hain", O, 378 Gotz von Berlichingen, 334,

375. 380, 381, 385. 393-404,

418 Golden Donkey, Der, 16

442

Index.

Tesoro dorado, The, 57, 277 Golo und Genoveva, 399 \Goldsmith, Oliver, 76, gi, 112, 113, 162, 177, 186, 207-11, 287,

354 Gondibert, 137 Goi'thmund, 329 Gosse, Edmund, 39, 53, 60, 84, 103, 106, 163, 169, 192, 272, 362 Gottfried de 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, 8g, 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, 216, 218 220 221 229 235 238 251 276 286 302 306-08 336 352 356 362 377 384 387 422 423 Verde, Mateo , 293 Grim White Woman, The, 407 Grongar Hill, 104, 119, 3,2, 14

145 Grose, Francis, 187 Reasons for criticism in Trageedy, The, 71 Grundtvig, Svend, 266 Guardian, The, 120, 126, 413 Guest, Lady Charlotte, 189 Gullivers Reisen, 26 Gummere, F.B., 276 Gwin, King of Norway, 367

Hagley, 108, Rekord, 122, 127, 131,

133, 136, 183, 303, 422 Hales, J. W., 289, 290 Hallam, Henry, 189 Haraburgian Dramaturgy,

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 , El,

299, 363 Hayward, A., 234 Hazlitt, Wm. , 161^254

-^faztrffrwrc., 205

Hearne, Thos., 201 Hedge, FH, 11, 14, 16

Heilas, The, 329 Saint Vehm, Der, 418 Heine, Heinrich, 2, 24, 330, 402,

423 Heredero de Lynne, The, 290 Helen of Kirkconnell, 274 Heliodorus, 244 Hellenics, 3 Henriade, The, 50, 214, 216,

217 Henry y 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 e 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, 381,

383, 387 Hicks, Geo., 192, 193 Hill, Aaron, 217 Hind und der Panther, The,

41 History of Denmark, 190, 221, 377

Index. 443

Troubadour's Story, 221, House of Aspen, The, 418

222 House of Superstitions, La, History of Romanticism, 372 85

Heral Historic Anecdotes- "How the Brave Sleep", 168

Dry and Cavalry, 221 Howitt, Wm., 133, 134, 364

Historical studies, 230 Hugo, Victor Marie, 3, 19, 35, Historical studies of German 36, 77, 115,

Poesie, 397, 398, 418 Hume, Robert, 100, 303, 308

Histórico de Peyncteynge em The Hunt for the Cheviot, The,

England, 351 <. -^, 278, 295

History of architecture, 233 Huon de Bordeaux, 382

History of Bristol, 348, 364 Hurd, Richard, 221-26, 245, 246, History of Charoba, Queen of 375, 387

Egypt, 245"; Hussar of Magdeburg, Der,

History of England (HunW; 393 u

100 / Hino (Thomson), 106

History of English Literature Hymn to Adversity, 167, 173

(Taine), 316 ^\ Hymn to Divine Love, 85

Hymn to the History of English Poetry May 85

(Warton), 36, 205, 206, 2it, Hino ao Supreme Being,

245, 260, 359, 432, 423 85

History of English Thought in Hyperion, 35

18th century, 32, A-^

41 Leisure, O.207i

History of Horticulture, 119, 123 Idylls of the King, The, 146

Historj'-de la literatura alemana II Bellicoso, 153

(Scherer), 374, 380, 382, ​​385, II Pacific, 153, 154

394 II Pensaroso, 104, 115, 142, 147, history of the opinion on the 149, 150, 154, 162, 170, 175,

Shakespeare's writings, 74 334

History of Santa Barsisa, 413 Iliad, A, 16, 36, 56, 58, 214;

54. 55. 231 Imaginary Conversations, 18, Hobbes, Thos., 226 43

Holty, LHC, 375 Immortality, 85

Hole, R., 336 Indian Burying Ground, The, Home, Jno., 132, 170, 276, 308, 177

309 Indian Emperor, The, 44

Homero, 3, 25, 35. 37, 50, 55, 100, Ingelow, Jean, 270

nº, 215, 222-24, 271, 284, 285, inscription for a cave, 136

310, 313, 318, 330, 335, 376, Institution des Ordens der

387-89 Liga, 159, 193, 194

Houses of Poets, 133, 364 Introduction to Lusíada, 85

Horace, 38, 47, 55. 72, 156, 223, Iphigenia of Tauris, 3, 385,

2S5, 4" 397

Houghton, J. Monckton Milnes, Irlanda, Wm. H., 77.294

Sir, 370 Irene, 51

Hours in a Library, 235 Isis, 176

Hours doing nothing, 329 Italian, Las, 250, 252, 263

444

Index.

Italian Journey, 385" Ivanhoe, 4, 23, 188, 237, 262, 404

Jamieson, Robert, 292 Jane Shore, 286 Januar und Mai, 63 Jemmy Dawson, 273 Jephson, Robert, 240 Jude's Daughter, The, 300 Jock o' Hazeldean, 269, 277, 277;

363

Johnnie Armstrong, 274, 278, 283

Gallo Johnnie, 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

Toinville, Jean Sire de, 27, 64

Jones, Inigo, 121, 230

Jonson, Ben, 25, 50, 71, 79, 97, 210, 285

Jordan, Der, 85

Journal in the Lakes, 183, 184

Journey through Holland, 257

Joyce, RD, 314

Julius Caesar, 377

june, letters from, 353

Kabbalah and Love, 409

Kalewala, El, 313

fight the dragon,

386 Kant, Immanuel, 31, 387 Katharine Janfarie, 277 Kavanagh, Julia, 249, 262 Keate, Geo., 182 Keats, Jno., 18, 35, 94, 107, 169,

177, 257, 262, 265, 353, 362,

363, 370-72, 424 Souvenir, The, 418 Kemp Owen, 279 Kenils Courage, 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, F. G., 338, 377 Knight, Chas., 74 Knight of the Burning Pistle,

Die, 284 Knox, v., 211, 212, 228 Knythinga Saga, Die, 196 Kotzebue, A.F.F. from, 400, 400;

409, 421 Song of War, 377 Kruitzner, 421, 422

La Bruyère, Jean de, 138

La Calprenede, G. de C. Chevalier de, 6

Lachin Y Gair, 329

The Lament of Lady Anne Bothwell, 283

Senhora das Sés, La, 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 Lander, W. S., 3, 18, 34, 42,

136, 245, 293 Lang, Andrew, 272 Langbaine, Gerard, 49, 62, 69, 71 Langley, Batty, 54, i2t, 233 Lansdowne, Geo. Grandville,

Conde de, 47, 74 Laocoon, 384, 387 Mädchen von Fair Wone, The, 397 Lay of the Last Juglar, The,

165, 191, 336. 404 Laity of Ancient Rome, 269, 298

Index.

445

Lay two Scottish Cavaliers,

269 ​​Book of Fein, 314, 323 Lear, 217 Leasowes, The, 127, 130-37,

139, 152, 183, 213, 422 Le Bossu, René, 49 Lectures on Translation

Homer, 389 Leyenda de Sir Guy, 278 Legenda Aurea, 3 Lee, Harriet y Sophia, 421 Le Lac, 176 Leland, Thos., 244, 247 Lelands Collectanea, 260 Lenora, 391-97. 4i5, 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 letters from Dupuis and Cotonet,

18-22 Lewis, M. G., 249, 252, 262, 376,

394. 396, 400, 401, 404-18, 420 Leiden, Jno., 417 Library of Romance, 381 Life of Lyttelton (Phillimore),

74, 108 lines about observing a flower,

368 lines written at Tintern Abbey, 140 Literary Movement in France, .

Die, 35, 44, 61 Literatura Runica, 191 Little Musgrave and Lady

Barnard, 283 Lives of English Poets

(Winstanley), 69 Lives of Novelists (Scott),

262

Lives of the Poets (Johnson),

51, 68, 90, 97, 105, 114, 131,

139, 150, 172, 196, 286 Lloyd. Roberto, 85, 91, 98, 151,

176 Lockhart, J. G., 29S, 391, 398,

402, 403, 406 Longfellow, H. W., 198, 199,

269 ​​​​​​​​Longinus, 38 Longsword, Conde de Salisbilpy,

244, 247, 248 Lord Lovel, 268 Lord Randall, 275 Lord Thomas e 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 Liirlei, Die, 402 Lukens, Chas., 393 Lusiad, The, 85, 94 Lycidas, 37, 115, 145, 149, 150,

154, 192 Lydgate, Jno., 206, 266, 344, 359 Lyric Ballads, 58, 109, 112,

160, 183, 218, 288, 299, 316,

422 Lytel Gesture from Robyn head,

274 Lytelton, Geo. Sir, 90, 91,

95, 108, III, 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, 306-3S, 377, 423

446

Index.

Madden, Sir Frederick, 292 Malherbe, Francois 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 Feelings, The, 252, 390 Mansus, 146 Manuel, 420 Map, Walter, 27 Marble Faun, The, 23 Mariner's Wife, The, 95 Marlowe, Christopher, 66 Marmion, 203, 234, 258, 336, 399, 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 Maturín, Caps. Roberto, 249,

420 Meditations (Harvey) 421 Melmoth the Wanderer, 249,

420 Memories of Old Che-

Valerie, 221, 222 Memoirs of a sad dog. 353 Mendez, Moses, 85, 91, 159 misanthropy and regret, 400 Merchant of Venice, The, 372 Meyrick, Sir Saml. R., 189 Michael. 4

Mickle, Wm. J., 85, 94-96 Middle Ages, El (Hallam) 189 A Midsummer Night's Dream, A,

76, 235, 382 Miller and the king's daughter,

Morrer, 283 Miller, Johann M., 375, 400

Miller, Hugo, 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, Nº III, 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-Imitationen in Dodsley, List of, 159-61

Minister, Ali, 409

Memory beds, Los, 375

Minot, Lawrence, 293

Memory beds, El, 85, 97, 245, 302-05, 422.

Minstrel Ancient and Modern, 270

Scottish Borders Minstrels, 262, 267, 277, 299, 404.

Spiegel, Der, 85

Miscellaneous Poems (Dryden), 192, 283

Miss Kitten, 393

Modern painter, 26, 34

Moser, Schoen, 375, 380

Molière, J.B.P., 38

Monasticon, Anglican um, 198

Monje, The, 249, 262, 263, 401, 404, 407-13. 420, 424

Monody on Chatterton's Death, 368.

Monody Written near Stratford-upon-Avon, 201

Monologue, A, 176

Montagu, Elizabeth R., 303,

Mensal 337, Die, 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

Index.

447

Müller, Friedrich, 399 Müller, Johannes, 376 Mulgrave, Jno. Sheffield, conde

de, 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 Udolfo, The,

250, 252-55, 262, 263, 401, 424

Glossary of Nares and Halliwell, i8g

Nathan the Wise, 376, 397

Nativity Dice 85

nature, 388

Natureza da Poesia, Die, 162

Spenser's New Song of the Fairy Queen, A, 84, 85

Newman, F. W., 389

Newman, JH, 41

Milton's New Memoirs, 149

New Garden Principles, 121

Song of the Nibelungs, Lot, 25, 64,

313. 375, 376 Nichols Anecdotes, 192 Night Piece on Death, 61, 177 Night Thoughts, 104, 163, 175,

387. 421 Noble Moringer, The, 418 Nocturnal Reverie, 57, 61 Noel, Roden, 363 Nonne Prestes Tale, The, 28 Northanger Abbey, 263, 264 Northern Antiquities, 190 Northumberland Traicionado por

Douglas, 278 Know thyself, 137 Maiden Not Brown, The, 274, 295,

296, 300, 302 Notes and illustrations for

Ossian, 318 Notes on Authenticity

Ossian Poems, 326 Notre Dame de Paris, 3

Eloísa Nueva, La, 31 Novalis, 384

Oberon, 382

Notes on the English Gauge, 206

Observations on Modern Gardening (Whately), 123

Observations on The Faery Queene, 99-101, 204, 213, 223

Observations on the Landscape of Great Britain, 185.

Remarks on the Poems of Thomas Rowley, 356

Odas, (of Akenside), 142

Odas, (Collins), 142, 155, 156

Oden, (de Gray), 362

Odas, (J. Wartons), 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. 1 April 158. On the Investiture of the Duke of Grafton 159. On the Morning of the 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. A una urna griega, 18. A un ruiseñor (Keats) 18. A un arpa ^olus, 165. A Curio, 85. A la tarde (Col-lins), 156, 165, 168 At night (Warton ), 165. To fear, 156. To freedom, 363. To freedom, 194. To oblivion, 176. To obscurity,

176. To peace, 305. To Pyrrha, 156. To simplicity, 156. To solitude, 165. To Hon. Charles Townsend,

448

Index.

84. To the Marquess of Tavis-stock, 84. To Nightingale (Warton), 165. To the Queen, 84. Written in Vale Royal Abbey, 204 Odyssey, The, 16, 269 CEdipus Rex, 3, 19, 241 Of Heroic Virtue, 192, 197 Poetry, 192 Old English Ballads, 276 Old English Baron, The, 241-

43, 249

Oldmixon, Jno., 62

Alte Werke (Dodsley) 209

Olive, Die, 84

At King Arthur's Round Table, 201

On Modern Gardening (Walpole), 123, 130

about me, 79

At the Church of Our Lady, 344

On the Prevailing Taste for Old English Poets, 211

No Rio Duddon, 162

On Witches (Glanvil), 408

Opie, Amelia, 252

Orkney Islands, 191

Origin of Romantic Fiction, A, 205

Spenser's original chant, An, 84

Ormond, 403

Osori, 420

Ossian (MacPherson), 25, 117, 178, 195, 235, 245, 256, 302, 306-38, 355, 356, 377, 378, 423, 424

Ossian, Poems by, in the original Gaelic (Scribe), 313

Ossian, Poems by, in the original Gaelic (in Gillie's collection), 326

Ossian, Poems by, in the original Gaelic (Highland Society text), 321, 324, 326

Ossian, Poems by, 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, no, 129, 145, 147, 148,

151, 217. 375 Paradise Regained, 147, 148 Parlamento de Sprites, The,

344, 365 Parnell, Thos., 58, 61, 177, 186,

210 Parzival, 64

Balada Pastoral, A., 138 Pastoral en route to

Spenser, A., 85 Pastoral Ode, A.. 133 Pastoral (Philips'), 80 Pastoral (Papst), 57, 112, 193,

215, 216 Pater, Walter, 7, 8, 16 Paul und Virginia, 22, 112 Parch Collection, 159, 182, 112;

185 Peck, F., 149

Pellissier, George, 35, 44, 61, 65 Pepys, Saml., 283, 291 Percy FohoMS., The, 288, 290-

93 Percy, Tos., 186, 196, 212,

235, 246, 272, 284, 306, 319,

326, 383, 387, 422. See also

relics. Pilgrim Pickles, 139 Pearl. Die, 189 Perry, TS, 7, 163, 176, 211,

212, 251, 337 Persiles e Sigismund, 244 Peter Bell, 299 Petrarch, Francesco, 29 Peveril of the Peak, 420 Pfarrer's filha, Des, 396 Phelps, W.L., 84, 85, 191, 197, 197;

283, 297, 329

Index. 449

Philander, 85 Preface to the Pope's Shakespeare,

Filanteu, 85 72

Philips, Ambrose, 80, 102, 284 Prelude, The, 304

Philips, Edward, 67, 80 Precio, Richard, 205

Philips, Jno., 104, 124 Prior, Matthew, 35, 57, 63, 84,

Phillimores Lyttelton vida, 159, 2gi, 295, 296, 382

74. 108 Prioresse Tale, The, 279, 342

Phcenix, The, 241 The Progress of Envy. the, 85, 91

Fragments of the Ancient Popular Progress of Poetry, lot, 173

Poetry, 293 Progress of Romanticism, The,

Pilgrimage, O, 5 243-45

Píndaro, 35, 54, 89 Prologue to the opening of

Pitt, Christopher, 85 Drury Lane, 59, 70

Pitt, Wm., 90, 132, 133 Proud Maisie, 277

Pizarro, 400 Psalm 41, 84

Plato, 42, 47 Psyche, 85

Alegrias da Esperança, The, 142, Pugin, A.N.W., 234

143 Pure, artistic and grotesque

Pleasures of the Imagination, The, Art, 17

124, 139-42, 157 Literary Activities, 393

Melancholy's Joys, The, Pye, H.J., 392

142, 156-58, 160, 161, 194

Joys of Memory, The, 142 Quarles, Francis, 164 Poe, Edgar A., ​​202, 356, 390,

403 Root. J. B., 38, 44, 65. 379

Poem in Praise of Blank Verse, Radcliffe, Anne, 232, 237, 249-

217 64.402.408.409.411.421.423

Poems after the Minstrels, Rambler, The, 97, 287, 288, 353

375 Ramsay, Allan, 61, 79, 284, 286,

Poems after Walther's 297, 300

Vogelweide, 375 lock breach. the, 36,

Pope, Alexander, 33, 36, 39, 41, Rapin, Rene. 49

47. 50-54. 56-59, 61, 63, 65, 66, Rasselas, 186

69, 72, 75, 77-79, 92, 93, 99, Rauber, Die. privateer.

102, 105, 108, 111-13, 115. 120, Reeve, Clara, 241-45, 247. 249-

121, 126, 129, 136, 149, 150, 64, 423

154. 157, 159. 162, 163, 193, Regnier, Mathurin, 38

210, 212-20, 228, 235, 265, 382, ​​Old English Relics

383, 388 poems, 139, 188, 190, 206. 209,

Ballads and Folk Songs 211.223.265.274.278.287-302,

(Jamieson), 292 317, 346, 362, 369, 376, 423

Folk Tales of Western Remorse, 420

Planalto 322, 323, 325 Report of the Committee of

Porter, Jane, 252, 371 Highland Society und Ossian,

Portuguese Letters, The, 22 319

Lectures on Sacred Poetry, Dissolution and Independence,

Hebrews, 387 339

Foreword to the retirement of Johnson's Shaks, 305

pere, 70 revenge, die, 353

45°

Index.

Revival of ballad poetry in

século XVIII, 290 Revolt in Islam, The, 5 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 202, 303 Richardson, Saml., 31, 32, 40,

76, 252, 421 enigmas wisely revealed,

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 Ladrones, Los, 385, 391, 402, 417,

418, 420 Robin Hood e o Monge, 273,

278, 283 Robin Hood and the Elder,

292 Robin Hood e o Potter,

273 Ballads of Robin Hood, which,

281-83, 301 Robin Hood (Ritson's), 292 Robinson Crusoe, 5, 26 Rogers, Saml., 142, 181 Rokeby, 277 RoUa, 400, 409 St. Bartholomew's Scrolls

Priorat, The, 358 Roman de la Rose, The, 37, 64 Romance, 390 Romance da Floresta, The,

250, 253, 255, 256 Ballads, A, 64 Romance and Classical in

English Literature, The, 102 Romantic Tales, 409 Romanticism (Pater). 7 Romantic School, A, 2, 423 Romant de la Rosa, A, 27 Romant de la Cnyghte, A,

348 Romeo und Julia, 377 Ronsard, Stone of, 22 Roscommon, W. Dillon, Earl

de, 47 Ross, Thos., 321, 322

Rossetti, D. G., 4, 270, 272. 367,

372, 424 Documentos de rotonda, 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 approaches to Anglo-Saxon

Grammatik, 192 Rugantino, 409 Netley Abbey Ruins, The,

182 Ruinen von Rom, The, 144, 145 Ruskin, Jno., 26, 34, 102, 255 Rymer, Thos., 49, 62, 70 Reyse of Peyncteynge in Eng-

Earth dies, 349

Sachs, Hans, 381 Sadduceismus Triuniphatus,

408 Sagen der Vorzeit, 418 Vuelo de Sanger, Der, 275 Abadía de Saint Alban, 262 Sainte-Beuve, C. A, 56 Sainte Palaye, J. B. de la C,

221, 222, 374 St, Irvine, the Rosicrucian,

403 St. Lambert, C. F., 106 St. Leo, 403

calle Pierre, J. H. B. de, 112 Saintsbury, Geo., iii, 131 Saisons, Les, 106 Sally in our Alley, 57 Salvator Rosa, 255 Collection of German Folk

Lieder, 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. the, 11, 76,

379, 384-87, 391, 401, 409, 419, 420

Index. 451

I Schlegel, A.W. of, 14, 73, Shenstone, Wm., 75, 84, 91, 97,

301, 377, 384, 392 98, 102, 103, year, 127, 130-39,

Schmidt, Erich, 382, ​​392 151, 152, 159, 162, 168, 184,

Bella Helena, Die, 385 186, 215, 229, 273, 2S7, 422,

Scholar Gypsy, La, 408 423

Lehrer, The, 84, 91, 92, Pastoralkalender, The, 154

97, 104, 130, 136, 138, 362 Sheridan, R. B., 76, 162, 400, Schopenhauer, Arthur, 119 413, 420

Scott, Sir Walter, 3, 16, 24, 26, Sheridan, Thos., 74

27, 42, 94, 96, 139, 187-89, 191, Sheringham, Roberto, 192

200, 203, 223, 232, 234, 238, el, 250, sicilian romance,

248, 249, 258, 260, 262, 267, 253

269, 277, 298-301, 333, 334. Sidney, Sir Philip, 25, 71, 72,

344. 350, 358, 359. 376. 389- 239, 274

96, 398-400, 402, 404-06, 410, Siegwart, 400

411, 416-18, 420, 424 Sigurd, o Volsung, 191

Schottic Poems (Ritson), 293 Sim, Jno., 94.

Scribleriad, La, 228, 229 Sinclair, Archibald, 325

Scudery, Madeleine de, 6 Sinclair, Sir Jno., 321

Sean Dana, 326 Sir Cauline, 289, 290, 298

Stationen, El (Méndez), 85 Sir Charles Grandison, 388

Stationen, The (Thomson), 52, Sir Hugh, 279

75. 79. 103. 105-20, 124, 170, Sir Lancelot du Lake, 278

152, 305, 374 Sir Patrick Spens, 300

Selden, John, 283 Hermana Helen, 363

A selection by Gray (Phelps), Sisters, The, 270

191 Six Ossian Bards Versified, Newman The Selections, 336

(Gates), 41, 44 Skeat, W. W., 340, 355, 358-61, Seven Champions of Christen- 364

dom, The, 37 Skene, W. F., 314, 323

Shadwell, Thos., 74 Sketches of Eminent States- Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley men, 234

Cooper, Conde de, 41, 62, 226, Smart, Christopher, 85

382 Smith, Adam, 105

Shairp, J.C., 315 Smollett, Tobias, 76, 139

Shakespeare's Amendments, List of. Lone Reaper, The, 115

74 Somerville, Wm., 106, 124, 135

Shakespeare Editions, List of. Song of Harald the Brave

74 196

Shakespeare Illustrated, 70 song by Ragner Lodbrog, 197

Shakespeare, Wm.. 18, 25, 40, 50, Song to lla, 355

51, 63, 68-78, 89, III, 117, 140, Songs of Selma, A, 331

170, 171, 198, 208-10, 213, 216 – Soneto a Chatterton, 370

19, 225, 237, 298, 362, 375, sonnet to the Lord. gray, 201

377-80, 3S3, 391 Soneto a Schiller, 419

Shelley, Mary, 403, 406 Sonnet for the River Lodon,

Shelley, PB, 5, 43, 107, 241, 161

362, 370, 372, 403, 406 Sophocles, 3, 19, 241, 379

452 summary.

Sophonisba, 75 Strawberry Hill, 173, 179, 229, Dolores de Werther, The, 31, 230, 232, 234, 236, 340

330-32, 399. 423 Tormenta de Borberg, 399

Sotheby's, Wm., 382 Stillen, Sir Jno., 57

Southey, Robert, 206, 299, 350, Cane, The, 124

355, 358, 368, 398, 419 Sullivan, Wm. R., 314, 325

Southwell, Robert, 41 Sweet Williams Ghost, 279, espanhol no Peru, The, 400, 280, 295, 300, 394

409 Swift, Jonathan, 40, 42, 162, specimens of ancient sculpture - 382

tura, 189 Swinburne, A. C, 35, 168

Early English specimens Syr Gawaine, 293

Poeta, 301 Sir Martyn, 95, 96

Specimens of the Welsh Bards, Rune Mythology System,

195 191

Spectators, The, 35, 37, 42, 49,

51, 55, 62, 120, 126, 139, 141, Taine, HA, 302, 316

148, 178, 227, 284. 353, 377 story of a vat, 42

Chaucer of Speght, 360 Tales of Terror, 409, 417

Spence, Joseph, 132 Tales of Wonder, 404, 409, 416 Spencer, W. R., 392, 394 -18

Spenser, Edmund, 16, 25, 33, Talisman, The, 188

37, 63, 68, 69, 77–101, 129, 151, Tam Lin, 268, 279, 295, 417

154, 157, 159, 163, 170, 198, Tam o'Shanter, 187, 360

199, 212, 213, 216, 2ig, 222, Tannhiuser, 268

224-26, 235, 244, 265, 279, 304, Tasso, Torcuato, 25, 49, 50, 359. 371 170, 219, 222-26

Spleen, El, 104, 136 Tate, Nahum, 74

Magnificent Schilling, O, 104 Tatler, O, 62

Senhoras Squire, The, 85, 91 Taylor, Jeremy, 40

Stanley, J. T., 392 Taylor, Wm., 376, 391-98, 417 – State of German Literature, 18

The, 401 Tea Table Miscellany, The, Stedman, E. C, 162 284, 297

Steevens, Geo., 32 Temora, 309, 313, 314, 316, 321, Stello, 372 323, 338

Stephen, Leslie, 32-34, 40, 102, Sturm, La, 70, 76, 171, 215

234, 237, 327 Templo, Sir Wm., 69, 120, 192, Sterne, Lawrence, 31, 32, 252 197

Stevenson, R.L., 258 Tennyson, Alfred, 18, 27, 35, Stillingfleet, Benjamin, 53, 161 92, 93, 146, 200, 270, 281

Voices of the Nations, 300, 337, Thackay, W.M., 56, 80, 252,

416 254

Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold, Tadeo de Varsovia, 243, 252

Graf, 376, 377 Thales, 85

History of William Canynge, Theagenes and Chariclea, 244

Yes, 355 Theater of Poets, 67, 81

Strange, Der, 400 Theocritus, 36

Stratton Water, 299 Tesauro (Hicks'), 192, 193

Index. 453

Thomas a Kempis, 64 On naive and sentimental

Thomas Rymer, 268 Talic Poetry, 11, 387

Thompson, Wm., 84 About Ossian and the Songs

Thomson, Jas., 52, 74, 75, 79, old Volker, 338

84, 85, 92-95. 97, 98, ^ 102-19; Uhland, Luis, 384

124, 133-36, 142, 151, 157, 159, Ulysses, 18, 35

168, 184, 198, 215, 235, 251, Disjointed thoughts on

302, 303, 305, 374, 384, 422 gardening, 127, 132

Thomson, Jas. (2d), 162 General Prayer, A, 41

Thoreau, HD, 107 Unnatural Flights into Poetry,

Tieck, Ludwig, 22, 377, 384 47

A Dice Country Lords by Eng-Upton, John, 85

Terra, 85 Uz, J.P., 106 Totentanz, Der, 386

To Helen, 202 to dogmatize vanity, A,

About melancholy, 251 408

Tom Jones, 186, 263 Vathek, 403, 405

Tom Thumb, 285 Virgil, 25, 37, 49, 50, 55, no,

"I stayed a long time", 392 223, 285, 335

Torfseus Thormodus, 191 verses by Sir Joshua Reynolds,

To the Nightingale (Mrs 202

Winchelsea), 61 lines written in 1748, 133

To the Nightingale (Sra. Rad-Vicar de Wakefield, The,

Stones), 251,209

To the nightingale. See odes. Vigny, Alfred Victor, Comte

Zum Flussotter, 161, 372, 373

Tournament, Die, 348, 365 Villehardouin, Geofifroy de, 27,

City and Countryside Magazine, 64

The, 346, 352 Villon, François, 64, 216

Justification tragedies of the last age (Tyrwhitt) 359

Attentive Die 70 Virtuoso Die 84, 91, 14I;

Tressan, L., E. de L., Comte 22S

of, 381 Vision, As (combustions), 334

Triumph der Isis, El, 199 Vision, El (Croxall), 84

Triumph der Melancholie, The, Vision of Patience, The, 84

305 Vision von Solomon, A, 84

Owen Trumps, Los, 195 Voltaire, F.M.A.de, 214, 216,

Tristan and Isolde, 3, 64 237, 379, 381, 382

Trivia, 35 By Arnim, Achim (L.J.),

Troilo y Cresseide, 28 384

True Principles of the Gothic Swirl, Jacobus de, 3

Architecture, 234 Lectures on Theater

Turk and Gawin, The, 293 Arts and Literature, 14

TVra Corbies, The, 275 Voss, J. H., 375 Two Sisters, The, 270, 279

Tyrwhitt, Thos., 63, 188, 211, Wackenroder, W. H., 384

213, 246, 301, 355-57. 359. Wagner, H.L., 379

423 Awakening of Angantyr, The, 192

Tytler, Sir AF, 391, 419 Wallenstein, 385, 419

454

Index.

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

Wali, Wali, 274, 300

Fornicating Wife of Bath, The, 301

Warburton, Wm., 237

Wardlaw, Right, 286

Ward's English Poets, 53, iii, 131, 169, 364

Warton, Joseph, 32, 75, 118, 142, 149, 151-53, 155. 156, 160, 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; 423;423;423; 423

Warton, Thos., Sr., 85, 197

Waverley Novels, The, 188, 258, 262, 400, 422

Path, GL, 301

Weber's Metric Romances, 188

Weber, Veit, 400, 418

Webster, Jno., 66

Werner, 421

Wesley, John, 31

Westen, Gilbert, 84, 85, 89-91, 98, 126, 133, 151, 160, 193, 194

Whately, Tos., 122

Apito, El. 334

White Deer Rylstone, The, 184

Weißfeld, Georgia, 31

Whitehead, Wm., 84, 197

Whittington and her cat

273 Wieland, 403 Wieland, CM, 106, 377, 378,

381, 397 Esposa de Usher's Well, The,

269, 279 Wild Hunters, The, 391 Wild Hunters, The, 404,

416 Wilkie, Wm., 85 Wilhelm Meister, 384, 387 Wilhelm Tell, 385 William y Helen, 391, 398,

404 Willie drowned in yarrow,

170 Willie's Lady, 279 A Vida de Wilson de Chatterton,

368 Winchelsea, Anne Fink,

Countess of, 57, 61 Winckelmann, J.J., 384, 385 Windsor Woods, 57, 58, 215,

220 Winstanley, William, 62, 69 Winter, ip3-io6, 142, 422 Wither, Geo., 57 Wodrow, Jno., 334, 335 Wolfram von Eschenbach,

64 Wolfred von Dromberg, 398 Wonders of the Unseen

Mundo, 408 Madera, Anthony, 291 Madera, Robert, 387-89 Worde, Wynkyn de, 274 Wordsworth, Wm., 4, s, 45, 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 Gusano, Ole, 191, 193 Naufragio del Hesperus, El,

269 ​​​​Zaunkönig, Sir Christopher, i2i.

230 Written in an inn at Henley,

138

Index. 455

Written at Stonehenge, 201 Young Hunt, 279

Written in Monasti-Young Lochinvar of Dugdale, 277

Fraude, 198 Young Waters, 300

Milenrama revisited, 344 Zapolya, 420

Unvisited Yarrow, 298 Zastrozzi, 403

Young, Edward, 56, 149, 163, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Der, 386

213, 387, 38S, 421 magic ring, R, 4

l^E FIN.

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