ltonic

way of its own. It is another example of that curiously topsy-turvy condition of things in which rhyme was a mark of the classic, and blank verse of the romantic. For Milton is the most truly classical of English poet

a design which, if carried out, might have anticipated Tennyson and so deprived us of "The Idyls of the King." "I betook me," he writes, "among those loft

ais Rutupina per

asidos regnum v

agunque duces, p

icos Britonum s

rturo fatali f

s, assumptaque

i dolu

upon decorative richness of detail. His diction became naked and severe, and he employed rhyme but sparingly, even in the choral parts of "Samson Agonistes." In short, like Goethe, he grew classical as he grew old. It has been mentioned that "Paradise Lost" did much to keep alive the tradition of English blank verse through a period remarkable for its bigoted devotion to rhyme, and especially to the heroic couplet. Yet it was, after all, Milton's early poetry, in which rhyme is used-though used so differently from the way in which Pope used it-that counted for most in the history of the romantic movement. Professor Masson contradicts t

plete editions of Milton's poetry, they were regarded merely as pendents to "Paradise Lost" and floated by its reputation. "Whatever causes," says Dryden, "Milton alleges for the abolishing of rime . . . his own particular reason is plainl

7] which are now universally known,; but which, by a strange fatality, lay in a sort of obscurity, the private enjoyment of a few curious readers, till they were set to admirable music by Mr. Handel. And indeed this volume of Milton's miscellaneous poems ha

there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting. . . Surely no man could have fancied that he read 'Lycidas' with pleasure, had he not known its author." He acknowledges that "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" are "noble efforts of imagination"; and that, "as a series of lines," "Comus" "may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with which the votaries have received it." But he makes peevish objections to its dramatic probability, finds its dialogues and soliloquies tedious, and unm

so Collins and Gray-immortal names-drew fresh music from Milton's organ pipes, while for the others he set the tune. The Wartons, indeed, though imitative always in their verse, have an independent and not inconsiderable position in criticism and literary scholarship, and I shall return to them later in that connection. Mason, whose "English Garden" has been reviewed in chapter iv,

ary current, not uncommon in youthful artists, of which Chatterton's precocious verses are a remarkable instance. Composed only ten years later than the completed "Seasons," and five years before Shenstone began

e lays of ar

to Shakspere's

siast, in Milton's o

esign like

ules unfettered

d method, ro

lans irregula

rsa

ousand fountai

aters to the d

ose some pine-

aggy, whence

ling roars; or

g stands the mo

tree sc

appears at every turn, not only in single epithets like "Lydian airs," "the level brine," "low-thoughted cares," "the light fant

ed Dryads, of

epherds seen; t

ed meads and

ens decked with a

ver fall in c

Cynthia in h

blue concave

level mead, a

s sister, con

ugged brow and

ul above this

tered world: t

ar the rollin

ul turnin

lied upon. The first was published in 1747; the second "surreptitiously printed in a magazine and afterward inserted in Pearch's miscellany," finally revised and published by the author in

ull letha

oary beadsman'

f peaceful and warlike pleasures presented in an order which correspond

nbend my mi

oister's si

ed oaks their

ce with my d

t some heave

ed in Augu

pleased, the

Theocritu

nacreon, mi

asy love-la

e these, if

hee I string

r in the original. Tityrus is made to lament the dead shepherd in very incorrect Middle English. Colin Clout speaks two stanzas of the form used in the first eclogue of "The Shepherd's Calendar," and three stanzas of the form used in "The Fa?rie Queene." Thyrs

swain his Dor

e honors risin

rove to court t

arts and dallia

d beneath an h

uds the welkin

t the larks and c

ith them ceased th

sion and a good ear. The second, a fine fancy, modeled upon the antique, a bad ear, a great variety of words and images with no choice at all. They both deserve to last some years, but will not." Gray's critical acuteness is not altogether at fault in this judgment, but half of his prophecy has failed, and his mention of Collins is singularly inappreciative. The names of Collins and Gray are now closely associated in literary history, but in l

most nearly resemble Mi

ightingale," all in the

ll serve as a speci

, by the rig

hrough the

d white-robe

eeps her fe

nd Youth each

trip with

ir lily-cro

rose-lip'd Hebe

Sapphics which Milton had employed in his translation of Horace's "Ode to Pyrrha." There are Miltonic reminiscences like

s wreath my

r, will dwel

is much less slavish than

of Milton and Akenside, with frequent touches of Thomson, Spenser, and Pope's "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard." Warton was a lad of seventeen when his poem was written: it was published anonymously

een sublime, t

my soul; to c

, to twilight c

ul Melancholy

e midnight

ined abbey's m

t, at twiligh

me western wind

levelled rule s

acred silence

eech-owl's note,

ing caverns dar

eze, that rustl

ivy, that wit

me wasted

sullen shades

e room a blindly

bers scatter

houts, that throug

festive ech

lowly cricket's

our of silen

ile, that like t

s cheat the

usion, and per

up which Reaso

tamps the monst

t of them at every pore. Thomas Warton's poems, issued separately from time to time, were first published collectively in 1777. They are all imitativ

Nymph! and

lead a b

tastic-fo

t yellow-tress?

ley, Dryden, Pindar, Vergil, Dante, and others; but what he could not well point out, because it was probably unconscious, was the impulse which Milton frequently gave to the whole exercise of his imagination. It is not often that Gray treads so closely i

o'er-arc

templati

Camus linger

he blush

your le

leam of Cynthia

m, far from the

y side, and soft-

trice and capable impressure" of a passing literary fashion. If we look through Dodsley's collection,[14] we find a mélange of satires in the manner of Pope, humorous fables in the manner of Prio

Shaksperian nor the Miltonic model. Mason wrote fourteen sonnets at various times between 1748 and 1797; the earlier date is attached, in his collected works, to "Sonnet I. Sent to a Young Lady with Dodsley's Miscellanies." They are of the strict Italian or Miltonic form, and abound in Miltonic allusions and wordings. All but four of Thomas Edwards' fifty sonnets, 1750-65, are on Milton's model. Thirteen of them were printed in Dodsley's second volume. They have little value, nor have those of Benjamin Stillingfleet, some o

eam, wild stream

motely Wordsworth's serie

745, the last important survivors of the Queen Anne wits; and already the reaction against gayety had set in, in the deliberate and exaggerated solemnity which took possession of all departments of verse, and even invaded the theater; where Melpomene gradually crowded Thalia off the boards, until sentimental comedy-la comedie larmoyante-was in tu

inty sweet as lo

ration was not the tragic T

that transcend

Miltonic maid," P

f the wit, rhetorical glitter, and straining after point familiar in Queen Anne verse, in strange combination with a "rich note of romantic despair."[17] Mr. Perry, too, describes Young's language as "adorned with much of the crude ore of romanticism. . . At this period the properties of the poet were but few: the tomb

themes, both by precept and example.[19] Blair and Young, however, are scarcely to be reckoned among the romanticists. They were heavy didactic-moral poets, for the most part, though they touched the string which, in the Gothic imagination, vibrates with a musical shiver to the thought of death. There is something that accords with the spirit of Go

. Hark! how it

ver heard a s

indows clap, and

re, screams loud:

hung 'round with s

ts-of-arms, send

ier airs, from

ns of the

rles' "Divine Emblems." Like the "Emblems," too, "The Grave," has been kept from oblivion by the ar

ge, the ruined abbey moldering in its moonlit glade, grots, caverns, brooksides, ivied nooks, firelight rooms, the curfew bell and the sigh of the Aeolian harp.[21] All this is exquisitely put in Collins' "Ode to Evening." Joseph Warton also wrote an "Ode to Evening," as well as one "To the Nightingale." Both Wartons wrote odes "To Solitude." Dodsley's

praised, as

ncholy sa

wild, seque

distance mad

he mellow horn h

soft from

nnels joine

d glooms the ming

unted stream, w

oly calm

ace and lo

murmurs

sources of creative impulse dried up in him more and more under the desiccating air of academic study and the increasing hold upon him of his constitutional malady. "Melancholy marked him for her own." There is a significant passage in one of his early letters to Horace. Walpole (1737): "I have, at the distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (vulgar call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices. . . Both vale and hill a

schoolboys at their spor

l around

ters of h

ortune's balef

tend the footsteps of Adversity;[24] and to Contemplatio

he hand of ro

by age, the

in dust to

convivial habits. The melancholy which these good fellows affected was manifestly a mere literary fashion. They were sad "only for wantonness," like the young gentlemen in France. "And so you have a garden of your own," wrote Gray to his young friend Nicholls, in 1769, "and you plant and transplant, and are dirty and amused; are you not ashamed

ns "was a solitary song-bird among many more or less excellent pipers and pianists. He could put more spirit of color into a single stroke, more breath of music into a single note, than could all the rest of the generation into all the labors of their lives."[26] Collins, like Gray, was a Greek scholar, and had projected a history of the revival letters. There is a classical quality in his verse-not classical in the eighteenth-century sense-but truly Hellenic; a union, as in Keats, of Attic form

, in itself, an exotic; and, as an art form, is responsible for some of the most tumid compositions in the history of English verse. Collins' most current ode, though by no means his best one, "The Passions," abounds in those personifications which, as has been said, constituted, in eighteenth century poetry, a sort of feeble mythology: "wan Despair," "dejecte

f course without influence on the minds of its author's contemporaries. It had been left unfinished, and some of the printed editions contained interpolated stanzas which have since been weeded away. Inscribed to Mr. John Home, the a

d Believed the magic w

a line of "The Seasons" running in his head,[29] conjures Home to "forget not Kilda's race," who live on the eggs of the solan goose, whose only prospect is the wintry main, and among whose cliffs the be

thy range; wit

e those feathery

rocks, extend he

marge of each

le which still

vaults a pygm

delver with hi

ondering, from th

ere, beneath t

s of three fair

haps, together

ere them and

ow at midnight

ds their yawnin

narchs stalk wit

, and wreathed w

light tombs aeri

hat he had discovered the source of the "Tempest," in a novel called "Aurelio and Isabella," printed in 1588 in Spanish, Italian, French, and English. No such novel has been found, and it was seemingly a figment of Collins' disordered fancy. During a lucid interval in the course of this v

ted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on t

how long an arc his mind had subtended on the circle of art and thought. He was sensitive to all fine influences that were in the literary air. One of the greatest scholars among English poets, his taste was equal to his acquisitions. He was a sound critic of poetry, music, architecture, and painting. His mind and character bo

verflies all other English lyrics like an eagle. . . It was the prevailing blast of Gray's trumpet that, more than anything else, called men back to the legitimate standard."[31] With all deference to such distinguished judges, I venture to think that the popular instinct on this point is right, and even that Dr. Johnson is not so wrong as usual. Johnson disliked Gray and spoke of him with surly injustice. Gray, in turn, could not abide Johnson, whom he called Ursa major. Johnson said that Gray's odes were forced plants, raised in a hot-house, and poor plants at that. "Sir, I do not think Gray a first-rate poet. He has not a bold imagination, nor much command of words. The obscurity in which he has involved himself will not

umb forgetfulne

. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. . . His art and his struggle are too visible and there is too little appearance of ease and nature. . . In the character of his 'Elegy,' I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncor

of genuine passion, which was noted in Collins' ode "On the Passions." Collins and Gray were perpetually writing about the passions; but they treated them as abstractions and were quite incapable of exhibiting them

ace and the hour conspire to work their effect upon the mind and prepare it for the strain of meditation that follows. The universal appeal of its subject 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 one proof of celebrity, if not of popularity, and the "sister odes" were presently parodied by Lloyd and Colman in an "Ode to Obscurity" 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. The imitations and translations o

ced this church

me against th

t had flowed h

n it flowed at Na

ard elegy, written on St. Mark's Eve, when, according to rural tradition, the ghost of those who are to die within the year ensuing are seen to walk at midnight across the churchyard."[35] Goldsmith testifies to the prevalence of the fashion when, in his "Life of Parnell," he says of that poet's "Night Piece o

pole at Florence, separated from him and made his way home alone in a leisurely manner. Gray is one of the first of modern travelers to speak appreciatively of Gothic architecture, and of the scenery of the Alps, and to note those strange and characteristic aspects of foreign life which we now call picturesque, and to which every itinerary and guidebook draws attention. Addison, who was on his travels forty years before,

ination is filled with something great and amazing; and, at the same time, consider how little, in proportion, he is affected with the inside of a Gothic cathed

has yet done, and in your own Gothic way"; and he advises his correspondent as to the selection of patterns for staircases and arcade work. There was evidently a great stir of curiosity concerning Strawberry Hill in Gray's coterie, and a determination to be Gothic at all hazards; and the poet felt obliged to warn his friends that zeal should not outrun discretion. He writes to Wharton in 1754: "I rejoice to find you at last settled to your heart's content, and delight to hear you talk of giving your house some Gothic ornaments already. If you project anything, I hope it will be entirely within doors; and don't let me (when I come gaping into Coleman Street) be directed to the gentlemen at the ten pinnacles, or with the church porch at his door." Again, to the same (1761): "It is mere pedantry in Gothicism to stick to nothing but altars and tombs, and there is no end to it, if we are to sit upon nothing but coronation cha

. . Here we are, the lonely lords of glorious desolate prospects. . . But the road, West, the road! Winding round a prodigious mountain, surrounded with others, all shagged with hanging woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds! Below a torrent breaking through cliffs, and tumbling through fragments of rocks!. . . Now and then an old foot bridge, with a broken rail, a leaning cross, a cottage or the ruin of an hermitage! This sounds too bombast and too romantic to one that has not seen it, too cold for one that has." Or contrast with Addison's Italian letters passages like these, which foretoken Rogers and Byron. We get nothing so sympathetic till at

guitar, Winning their w

tter to Brown about the same ruin, "assured me that he would not go near it in the night time for all the world, though he knew much money had b

s't view fair

by the pal

beams of l

flout, the

e till now." "The Lowlands are worth seeing once, but the mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year. None but those monstrous

t, in Gray's "Journal in the Lakes," written nearly thirty years before the "Lyrical Ballads," names like Grasmere, Winander, Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Derwentwater, Borrowdale, and Lodore. What distinguishes the entries in this journal from contemporary writing of the descriptive kind is a certain intimacy of comprehension, a depth of tone which makes them seem like nineteenth-century work. To Gray the landscape was no longer a picture. It had sentiment, character, meaning, almost personality. Different weathers

little shower fell, red clouds came marching up the hills from the east, and part of a bright rainbow seemed to rise along the side of Castle Hill. . . The calmness and brightness of the evening, the roar of the waters, and the thumping of huge hammers at an iron forge not far distant, made it a singular walk. . . In the evening walked alone down to the lake after sunset and saw the solemn

tes taken upon a tour in 1770. This was the same year when Gray made his tour of the Wye, and hearing that Gilpin had prepared a description of the region, he borrowed and read his manuscript in June, 1771, a few weeks before his own death. These "Observations" were the first of a series of volumes by

logy for Sm

168. See also

hat re

romance of

ritish and Ar

ince, baptize

Aspramont,

Marocco, o

rta sent fro

in with all h

ntara

I, 5

amsels met i

of Logres,

Pelleas, or

II, 35

ife of Milton,"

"The Epistles (Pope's) on the Characters of Men and Women, and your sprightly Satires, my goo

ong other things, "An Examination of Milton's Style"; "Explanatory and Critical Notes on Divers Passages of Milton and Shakspere"; "The Resurrection," a blank verse imitation of "Lycidas," "Comus," "L'Allegro" and "Il Penserosa," and the "Nativity Ode." Peck defends Milton's rhym

fe of M

of William Mason," Londo

al Descriptive and

"To F

"Elegy," first

om yonder ivy-

l does to the

ndering near h

ncient, soli

es," "woodnotes wild," "tanned haycock in the mead," and "valleys where

new editions in 1765, 1770, 1775, and 1782. Pearch's continuations were published in 1768 (Vols. VII. and VIII.) and 17

f the Garter," by Gilbert West. This is a dramatic poem, with a chorus of British bards, which is several times quoted and commended in Joseph Warton's "Essay on Pope." West's "Monody on the Death of Queen Caroline," is a "Lycidas" imitation. III. 214, "Lament for Melpomene and Calliope," by J. G. Cooper; also a "Lycidas" poem. IV.

ights, Vac

hee will cho

ose. Parody is one of the surest testimonies to the prevalence of a literary fashion, and in Vol X. p 269 of Pearch, occurs a humorous "Ode to Horror," burlesquing "The Enthusiast" and "The Plea

ee, mild Mi

ew's sequeste

wandering

more than

le moon's gl

is melanch

oving godd

o some Scyt

n Gothic

ts most sub

ugh rock's g

r sits, E

ction devoted to "poems in the manner of Milton," b

xxi. Also the frontispiece to Mr. E. Stedman's "N

Century Literatur

re in the Eighteenth C

is composition," "Essay on Pope," Vol. II. p. 29. In his review of Pope's "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard," he says: "the effect and influence of Melancholy, who is beautifully personified, on eve

rows and dusky caves,' et

rave," by R

51). First invented by the Jesuit, Kircher, about 1650, and described in his "Musurgia Universalis," Mason says that it was forgotten for upwa

music never

he pensive me

lins alludes in his ve

bed of whis

rp shall no

he Last Minstrel"

ild harp who

by the wi

and Coxe's (Chris

ind-harp's

he breeze in

ry of the An

. the "

ot of yonder nod

ant Prospect of

mn to Ad

e on the

lish Poets," Vol

h Century Liter

ssay on

e ante,

ife of

say on

itehead, John Scott, Henry Headly, John Henry Moore, and Robert Lovell, "Eighteenth Century L

s Works," Vo

., Vol. I

finished poem, "Th

lected poems were

Indian Burying Ground" of the American poet, Philip Freneau (1752-1832). G

ounds of this

wain nocturnal

herlock mused

Death forever s

ctator,

No.

s. The captain describes the romantic scenery of the glens as "horrid prospects." It was considerably later in the century that Dr. Johnson said, in answer to Boswell's timid suggestion that Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects, "I believe,

to a small ruined chapel at York Minster; and a letter (about 1765) to Jas. Bentham, Pr

s. Dorothy

ichard We

West had been schoolfell

o West

s. Dorothy

Ruins of Netley Abbey," by a poet with the suggestive name of George Keate;

and lulling s

s inaudib

e of Rylston

mson Ago

ope" (5th ed.),

land and the Isle of Wight," 1798; "The Coasts of Hampshire," etc., 1804; "Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex," etc., 1809. The last two were posthumously published. Gilpin, who was a prebendary of Salisbury, di