^v --q, %^^^T' .0'' If. ^T^ 
 
 
 ^ c,'?^ ''^fe'. t^ A^ // 
 
 
 
 ^"X 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 ^*^°,<» 
 
 
 v-^' 
 
 ^-.0 9*^' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •^^^* 
 
 "^..%^' 
 
 *^.^* 
 
 
 
 
 " '*bV^ 
 
 ^^-^^^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^ " o hO' /^^ 
 
 "-^c,^' 
 
 
 
 -^^ -^^Mm^^r ''^^^<i oV'^^^Pi'' '>'^c«^ -^jm^.:. '^^^ 
 
 
 6°^ 
 
A HISTORY OF ENGLISH 
 ROMANTICISM IN THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 HENRY A. BEERS 
 
 AuthtfTofA Suittrban Pattoral," "Tkt WaytcfYalt,^''*tc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1 90 1 
 
ROMANCE. 
 
 
 My love dwelt in a Northern land. \ 
 
 A gray tower in a forest green 
 Was hers, and far on either hand 
 
 The long wash of the waves was seen, 
 And leagues on leagues of yellow sand, 
 
 The woven forest boughs between. 
 
 And through the silver Northern light 
 
 The sunset slowly died away, 
 And herds of strange deer, lily-white, 
 
 Stole forth among the branches grey ; 
 About the coming of the light, 
 
 They fled like ghosts before the day. 
 
 I know not if the forest green 
 
 Still girdles round that castle grey; 
 
 I know not if the boughs between 
 The white deer vanish ere the day; 
 
 Above my love the grass is green, 
 My heart is colder than the clay. 
 
 ANDREW LANG. 
 
 Copyright, 1901, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. 
 
 Published November, igor 
 
 The M3RARY OF 
 
 OCNOSESS, 
 Ty»o Coriti fttctivLy 
 
 NOV. 13 1?0c 
 
 C..-,- ' ^ KXc " - 
 COF , ... 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The present volume is a sequel to " A History of Eng- 
 lish Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century " (New 
 York: Henry Holt & Co., 1899). References in the 
 footnotes to "Volume I." are to that work. The difficul- 
 ties of this second part of my undertaking have been of 
 a kind just opposite to those of the first. As it concerns 
 my subject, the eighteenth century was an age of begin- 
 nings; and the problem was to discover what latent ro- 
 manticism existed in the writings of a period whose spirit, 
 upon the whole, was distinctly unromantic. But the tem- 
 per of the nineteenth century has been, until recent years, 
 prevailingly romantic in the wider meaning of the word. 
 And as to the more restricted sense in which I have 
 chosen to employ it, the mediasvalising literature of the 
 nineteenth century is at least twenty times as great as 
 that of the eighteenth, both in bulk and in vakie. Ac- 
 cordingly the problem here is one of selection; and of 
 selection not from a list of half-forgotten names, like 
 Warton and Hurd, but from authors whose work is still 
 the daily reading of all educated readers. 
 
 As I had anticipated, objection has been made to the 
 narrowness of my definition of romanticism. But every 
 writer has a right to make his own definitions; or, at 
 least, to say what his book shall be about. I have not 
 
vi Treface. 
 
 written a history of the " liberal movement in English 
 literature"; nor of the "renaissance of wonder"; nor of 
 the " emancipation of the ego." Why not have called the 
 book, then, "A History of the Mediaeval Revival in Eng- 
 land " ? Because I have a clear title to the use of ro- 
 mantic in one of its commonest acceptations ; and, for my- 
 self, 1 prefer the simple dictionary definition, *' pertaining 
 to the style of the Christian and popular literature of the 
 Middle Ages," to any of those more pretentious explana- 
 tions which seek to express the true inwardness of ro- 
 mantic literature by analysing it into its elements, select- 
 ing one of these elements as essential, and rejecting all 
 the rest as accidental. 
 
 M. Brunetibre. for instance, identifies romanticism with 
 lyricism. It is the "emancipation of the ego." This 
 formula is made to fit Victor Hugo, and it will fit Byron. 
 But M. Brunetibre would surely not deny that Walter 
 Scott's work is objective and dramatic quite as often as 
 it is lyrical. Yet what Englishman will be satisfied with 
 a definition oi romantic vih\ch excludes Scott? Indeed, 
 M. Brunetibre himself is respectful to the traditional 
 meaning of the word. "Numerous definitions," he says, 
 " have been given of Romanticism, and still others are 
 continually being offered; and all, or almost all of them, 
 contain a part of the truth. Mme. de Stael was right 
 when she asserted in her 'Allemagne' that Paganism 
 and Christianity, the North and the South, antiquitj' and 
 the Middle Ages, having divided between them the his- 
 tory of literature, Romanticism in consequence, in con- 
 trast to Classicism, was a combination of chivalry, the 
 Middle Ages, the literatures of the North, and Christian- 
 ity. It should be noted, in this connection, that some 
 
^Preface. vii 
 
 thirty years later Heinrich Hein e, in the book in which 
 he will rewrite Mme. de Stael's, will not give such a very 
 different idea of Romanticism." And if, in an analysis 
 of the romantic movement throughout Europe, any single 
 element in it can lay claim to the leading place, that ele- 
 ment seems to me to be the return of each country to its 
 national past; in other words, mediaevalism. 
 
 A definition loses its usefulness when it is made to 
 connote too much. Professor Herford says that the 
 "organising conception" of his "Age of Wordsworth" 
 is romanticism. But if Cowper and Wordsworth and 
 Shelley are romantic, then almost all the literature of the 
 years 1 798-1830 is romantic. I prefer to think of Cow- 
 per as a naturalist, of Shelley as an idealist, and of 
 Wordsworth as a transcendental realist, and to reserve 
 the name romanticist for writers like Scott, Coleridge, 
 and Keats; and I think the distinction a serviceable 
 one. Again, I have been censured for omitting Blake 
 from my former volume. The omission was deliberate, 
 not accidental, and the grounds for it were given in the 
 preface. Blake was not discovered until rather late in 
 the nineteenth century. He was not a link in the chain 
 of influence which I was tracing. I am glad to find my 
 justification in a passage of Mr. Saintsbury's "History 
 of Nineteenth Century Literature " (p. 13): "Blake ex- 
 ercised on the literary history of his time no influence, 
 and occupied in it no position. . . . The public had 
 little opportunity of seeing his pictures, and less of 
 reading his books. . . . He was practically an unread 
 man." 
 
 But I hope that this second volume may make more 
 clear the unity of my design and the limits of my subject. 
 
viii Treface. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to add that no absolute estimate 
 is attempted of the writers whose works are described in 
 this history. They are looked at exclusively from a sin- 
 gle point of view. H. A. B. 
 April, 1901. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Walter Scott, i 
 
 II, Coleridge, Bowles, and the Pope Controversy, 48 
 
 III. Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the Dante Revival, 90 
 
 IV. The Romantic School in Germany, . . . 132 
 
 V. The Romantic Movement in France, . . 173 
 
 VI. Diffused Romanticism in the Literature of 
 
 THE Nineteenth Century, .... 227 
 
 VII. The Pre-Raphaelites, 282 
 
 VIII. Tendencies and Results, 352 
 
A HISTORY OF ENGLISH 
 ROMANTICISM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 TKIlaltcr Scott.* 
 
 It was reserved for Walter Scott, " the Ariosto of the 
 North," "the historiographer royal of feudalism," to ac- 
 complish the task which his eighteenth-century forerun- 
 ners had essayed in vain. He possessed the true en- 
 chanter's wand, the historic imagination. With this in 
 his hand, he raised the dead past to life, made it once 
 more conceivable, made it even actual. Before Scott no 
 genius of the highest order had lent itself wholly or 
 mainly to retrospection. He is the middle point and the 
 culmination of English romanticism. His name is, all 
 in all, the most important on our list. " Towards him all 
 the lines of the romantic revival converge."! The popu- 
 lar ballad, the Gothic romance, the Ossianic poetry, the 
 
 * Scott's translations from the German are considered in 
 the author's earlier volume, "A History of English Romanti- 
 cism in the Eighteenth Centur5^ " Incidental mention of Scott 
 occurs throughout the same volume ; and a few of the things 
 there said are repeated, in substance though not in form, in 
 the present chapter. It seemed better to risk some repetition 
 than to sacrifice fulness of treatment here. 
 
 f "The Development of the English Novel," by Wilbur L. 
 Cross, p. 131. 
 
2 <^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 new German literature, the Scandinavian discoveries, 
 these and other scattered rays of influence reach a focus 
 in Scott. It is true that his delineation of feudal society 
 is not final. There were sides of mediaeval life which he 
 did not know, or understand, or sympathize with, and 
 some of these have been painted in by later artists. That 
 his pictures have a coloring of modern sentiment is no 
 arraignment of him but of the genre. All romanticists 
 are resurrectionists; their art is an elaborate make-be- 
 lieve. It is enough for their purpose if the world which 
 they re-create has the look of reality, the verisimile if not 
 the verum. That Scott's genius was in extenso rather 
 than in intenso ; that his work is largely improvisation ; 
 that he was not a miniature, but a distemper painter, 
 splashing large canvasses with a coarse brush and gaudy 
 pigments, all these are commonplaces of criticism. Scott's 
 handling was broad, vigorous, easy, careless, healthy, free. 
 He was never subtle, morbid, or fantastic, and had no 
 niceties or secrets. He was, as Coleridge said of Schil- 
 ler, "master, not of the intense drama of passion, but the 
 diffused drama of history." Therefore, because his qual- 
 ities were popular and his appeal was made to the people, 
 the general reader, he won a hearing for his cause, which 
 Coleridge or Keats or Tieck, with his closer workman- 
 ship, could never have won. He first and he 2X0x1^ popu- 
 larised romance. No literature dealing with the feudal 
 past has ever had the currency and the universal success 
 of Scott's. At no time has medievalism held so large a 
 place in comparison with other literary interests as dur- 
 ing the years of his greatest vogue, say from 1805 to 1830. 
 The first point to be noticed about Scott is the thor- 
 oughness of his equipment. While never a scholar in 
 
Walter Scott. 3 
 
 the academic sense, he was, along certain chosen lines, 
 a really learned man. He was thirty-four when he pub- 
 lished "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (1805), the 
 first of his series of metrical romances and the first of his 
 poems to gain popular favour. But for twenty years he 
 had been storing his mind with the history, legends, and 
 ballad poetry of the Scottish border, and was already a 
 finished antiquarian. The bent and limitations of his 
 genius were early determined, and it remained to the end 
 wonderfully constant to its object. At the age of twelve 
 he had begun a collection of manuscript ballads. His 
 education in romance dated from the cradle His lulla- 
 bies were Jacobite songs; his grandmother told him tales 
 of moss-troopers, and his Aunt Janet read him ballads 
 from Ramsay's " Tea-table Miscellany," upon which his 
 quick and tenacious memory fastened eagerly. The bal- 
 lad of " Hardiknute," in this collection, he knew by heart 
 before he could read. " It was the first poem I ever 
 learnt — the last I shall ever forget." Dr. Blacklock in- 
 troduced the young schoolboy to the poems of Ossian and 
 of Spenser, and he committed to memory " whole duans 
 of the one and cantos of the other." " Spenser," he says, 
 " I could have read forever. Too young to trouble myself 
 about the allegory, I considered all the knights and ladies 
 and dragons and giants in their outward and exoteric 
 sense, and God only knows how delighted I was to find 
 myself in such society." A little later Percy's " Rel- 
 iques" fell into his hands, with results that have already 
 been described.* 
 
 As soon as he got access to the circulating library in 
 Edinburgh, he began to devour its works of fiction, char- 
 * Vol. i., p. 300. 
 
4 e^ History of English ^{omanticism. 
 
 acteristically rejecting love stories and domestic tales, 
 but laying hold upon " all that was adventurous and ro- 
 mantic," and in particular upon " everything which 
 touched on knight-errantry." For two or three years he 
 used to spend his holidays with his schoolmate, John 
 Irving, on Arthur's Seat or Salisbury Crags, where they 
 read together books like " The Castle of Otranto " and 
 the poems of Spenser and Ariosto; or composed and nar- 
 rated to each other " interminable tales of battles and 
 enchantments" and "legends in which the martial and 
 the miraculous always predominated." The education of 
 Edward Waverley, as described in the third chapter of 
 Scott's first novel, was confessedly the novelist's own 
 education. In the "large Gothic room" which was the 
 library of Waverley Honour, the young book-worm pored 
 over " old historical chronicles " and the writings of Pulci, 
 Froissart, Brantome, and De la Noue; and became "well 
 acquainted with Spenser, Drayton, and other poets who 
 have exercised themselves on romantic fiction — of all 
 themes the most fascinating to a youthful imagination." 
 
 Yet even thus early, a certain solidity was apparent in 
 Scott's studies. " To the romances and poetry which I 
 chiefly delighted in," he writes, " I had always added the 
 study of history, especially as connected with military 
 events." He interested himself, for example, in the art 
 of fortification ; and when confined to his bed by a child- 
 ish illness, found amusement in modelling fortresses and 
 " arranging shells and seeds and pebbles so as to repre- 
 sent encountering armies, ... I fought my way thus 
 through Vertot's ' Knights of Malta ' — a book which, as 
 it hoveied between history and romance, was exceedingly 
 dear to me." 
 
Walter Scott. 5 
 
 Every genius is self-educated, and we find Scott from 
 the first making instinctive selections and rejections 
 among the various kinds of knowledge offered him. At 
 school he would learn no Greek, and wrote a theme in 
 which he maintained, to the wrath of his teacher, that 
 Ariosto was a better poet than Homer. In later life he 
 declared that he had forgotten even the letters of the 
 Greek alphabet. Latin would have fared as badly, had 
 not his interest in Matthew Paris and other monkish 
 chroniclers "kept up a kind of familiarity with the lan- 
 guage even in its rudest state." " To my Gothic ear, the 
 ' Stabat Mater,' the ' Dies Irae,' * and some of the other 
 hymns of the Catholic Church are more solemn and af- 
 fecting than the fine classical poetry of Buchanan." In 
 our examination of Scott's early translations from the 
 German,! it has been noticed how exclusively he was at- 
 tracted by the romantic department of that literature, 
 passing over, for instance, Goethe's maturer work, to fix 
 upon his juvenile drama "Gotz von Berlichingen." 
 Similarly he learned Italian just to read in the original 
 the romantic poets Tasso, Ariosto, Boiardo, and Pulci. 
 When he first went to London in 1799, "his great anx- 
 iety," reports Lockhart, "was to examine the antiquities 
 of the Tower and Westminster Abbey, and to make some 
 researches among the MSS. of the British Museum." 
 From Oxford, which he visited in 1803, he brought away 
 only "a grand but indistinct picture of towers and chapels 
 and oriels and vaulted halls " ; having met there a recep- 
 
 * The sixth canto of the " Lay" closes with a few lines trans- 
 lated from the "Dies Irae " and chanted by the monks in Mel- 
 rose Abbey. 
 
 t Vol. i., pp. 389-404. 
 
6 (sA History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 tion which, as he modestly acknowledges, " was more than 
 such a truant to the classic page as myself was entitled to 
 expect at the source of classic learning." Finally, in his 
 last illness, when sent to Rome to recover from the effects 
 of a paralytic stroke, his ruling passion was strong in 
 death. He examined with eagerness the remains of the 
 mediaeval city, but appeared quite indifferent to that older 
 Rome which speaks to the classical student. It will be 
 remembered that just the contrary of this was true of Ad- 
 dison, when he was in Italy a century before.* Scott 
 was at no pains to deny or to justify the one-sidedness of 
 his culture. But when Erskine remonstrated with him 
 for rambling on 
 
 "through brake and maze 
 With harpers rude, of barbarous days, " 
 
 and urged him to compose a regular epic on classical 
 lines, he good-naturedly but resolutely put aside the ad- 
 vice. 
 
 "Nay, Erskine, nay — On the wild hill 
 Let the wild heath-bell f flourish still .... 
 Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale, 
 Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale ! " % 
 
 * Vol. i., pp. 48-49. 
 
 f "Scott was entirely incapable of entering into the spirit 
 of any classical scene. He was strictly a Goth and a Scot, 
 and his sphere of sensation may be almost exactly limited by 
 the growth of heather," — Ruskin, "Modern Painters," vol. 
 iii., p. 317. 
 
 X " Marmion " : Introduction to Canto third. In the pref- 
 ace to "The Bridal of Triermain, " the poet says : "According 
 to the author's idea of Romantic Poetry, as distinguished 
 from Epic, the former comprehends a fictitious narrative, 
 framed and combined at the pleasure of the writer ; beginning 
 and ending as he may judge best ; which neither exacts nor 
 refuses the use of supernatural machinery ; which is free 
 from the technical rules of the Epi!e. ... In a word, the 
 author is absolute master of his country and its inhabitants." 
 
Walter Scott. 7 
 
 Scott's letters to Erskine, Ellis, Leyden, Ritson, Miss 
 Seward, and other literary correspondents are filled with 
 discussions of antiquarian questions and the results of 
 his favourite reading in old books and manuscripts. He 
 communicates his conclusions on the subject of " Arthur 
 and Merlin " or on the authorship of the old metrical ro- 
 mance of " Sir Tristram." * He has been copying manu- 
 scripts in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. In 1791 
 he read papers before the Speculative Society on " The 
 Origin of the Feudal System," " The Authenticity of Os- 
 sian's Poems," "The Origin of the Scandinavian Mythol- 
 ogy." Lockhart describes two note-books in Scott's hand- 
 writing, with the date 1792, containing memoranda of 
 ancient court records about Walter Scott and his wife, 
 Dame Janet Beaton, the " Ladye " of Branksome in the 
 "Lay"; extracts from "Guerin de Montglave "; copies 
 of "Vegtam's Kvitha" and the "Death-Song of Regner 
 Lodbrog," with Gray's English versions; Cnut's verses on 
 passing Ely Cathedral; the ancient English "Cuckoo 
 Song," and other rubbish of the kind.f When in 1803 
 he began to contribute articles to the Edinburgh Review, 
 his chosen topics were such as " Amadis of Gaul," Ellis' 
 
 * Scott's ascription of "Sir Tristram" to Thomas the 
 Rhymer, or Thomas of Erceldoune, was doubtless a mistake. 
 His edition of the romance was printed in 1804. In 1800 he 
 had begun a prose tale, "Thomas the Rhymer," a fragment 
 of which is given in the preface to the General Edition of 
 the Waverley Novels (1829). This old legendary poet and 
 prophet, who flourished circa 1280, and was believed to have 
 been carried off by the Queen of Faerie into Eildon Hill, fas- 
 cinated Scott's imagination strongly. See his version of the 
 "True Thomas'" story in the "Minstrelsy, " as also the editions 
 of this very beautiful romance in Child's "Ballads," in the 
 publications of the E. E. Text So. ; and by Alois Brandl, Ber- 
 lin : 1880. 
 f See vol. i., p. 390. 
 
8 t/f History of English '^ofnanticism. 
 
 " Specimens of Ancient English Poetry," Godwin's 
 "Chaucer," Sibbald's "Chronicle of Scottish Poetry," 
 Evans'" Old Ballads," Todd's " Spenser," "The Life and 
 Works of Chatterton," Southey's translation of "The 
 Cid," etc. 
 
 Scott's preparation for the work which he had to do 
 was more than adequate. His reading along chosen 
 lines was probably more extensive and minute than an} 
 man's of his generation. The introductions and notes to 
 his poems and novels are even overburdened with learn* 
 ing. But this, though important, was but the lesser part 
 of his advantage. "The old-maidenly genius of anti- 
 quarianism " could produce a Strutt * or even perhaps a 
 Warton ; but it needed the touch of the creative imagi- 
 nation to turn the dead material of knowledge into works 
 of art that have delighted millions of readers for a hun- 
 dred years in all civilised lands and tongues. 
 
 The key to Scott's romanticism is his intense local 
 feeling.f That attachment to place which, in most men, 
 is a sort of animal instinct, was with him a passion. To 
 set the imagination at work some emotional stimulus is 
 required. The angry pride of Byron, Shelley's revolt 
 against authority, Keats' almost painfully acute sensitive- 
 ness to beauty, supplied the nervous irritation which was 
 wanting in Scott's slower, stronger, and heavier tempera- 
 ment. The needed impetus came to him from his love of 
 country. Byron and Shelley were torn up by the roots 
 and flung abroad ; but Scott had struck his roots deep 
 
 * See the General Preface to the Waverley Novels for some 
 remarks on " Queenhoo Hall " which Strutt began and Scott 
 completed. 
 
 t Cf. vol. i., p. 344. 
 
Walter Scott. 9 
 
 into native soil. His absorption in the past and rever- 
 ence for everything that was old, his conservative prej- 
 udices and aristocratic ambitions, all had their source in 
 this feeling. Scott's Toryism was of a different spring 
 from Wordsworth's and Coleridge's, It was not a reac- 
 tion from disappointed radicalism; nor was it the result 
 of reasoned conviction. It was inborn and was nursed 
 into a sentimental Jacobitism by ancestral traditions and 
 by an early prepossession in favour of the Stuarts — a 
 Scottish dynasty — reinforced by encounters with men in 
 the Highlands who had been out in the '45. It did not 
 interfere with a practical loyalty to the reigning house 
 and with what seems like a somewhat exaggerated defer- 
 ence to George IV. Personally the most modest of men, 
 he was proud to trace his descent from "auld Wat of 
 Harden " * and to claim kinship with the bold Buccleuch. 
 He used to make annual pilgrimages to Harden Tower, 
 " the incunabula of his race " ; and " in the earlier part of 
 his life," says Lockhart, "he had nearly availed himself 
 of his kinsman's permission to fit up the dilapidated /<?<?/ 
 for his summer residence." 
 
 Byron wrote : " I twine my hope of being remembered 
 in my line with my land's language." But Scott wished 
 to associate his name with the land itself. Abbotsford 
 was more to him than Newstead could ever have been to 
 Byron; although Byron was a peer and inherited his 
 domain, while Scott was a commoner and created his. 
 Too much has been said in condemnation of Scott's 
 
 *"I am therefore descended from that ancient chieftain 
 whose name I have made to ring in many a ditty, and from 
 his fair dame, the Flower of Yarrow — no bad genealogy for 
 a Border minstrel. " 
 
lo d/^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 weakness in this respect; that his highest ambition was 
 to become a iaird and found a family; that he was more 
 gratified when the King made him a baronet than when 
 the public bought his books; that the expenses of Ab- 
 botsford and the hospitalities which he extended to all 
 comers wasted his time and finally brought about his 
 bankruptcy. Leslie Stephen and others have even made 
 merry over Scott's Gothic,* comparing his plaster-of- 
 Paris 'scutcheons and ceilings in imitation of carved oak 
 with the pinchbeck architecture of Strawberry Hill, and 
 intimating that the feudalism in his romances was only a 
 shade more genuine than the feudalism of "The Castle 
 of Otranto." Scott was imprudent; Abbotsford was his 
 weakness, but it was no ignoble weakness. If the ideal 
 of the life which he proposed to himself there was scarcely 
 a heroic one, neither was it vulgar or selfish. The artist 
 or the philosopher should perhaps be superior to the am- 
 bition of owning land and having " a stake in the coun- 
 try," but the ambition is a very human one and has its 
 good side. In Scott the desire was more social than 
 personal. It was not that title and territory were feathers 
 in his cap, but that they bound him more closely to the 
 dear soil of Scotland and to the national, historic past. 
 
 The only deep passion in Scott's poetry is patriotism, 
 the passion of place. In his metrical romances the rush 
 of the narrative and the vivid, picturesque beauty of the 
 
 * " He neither cared for painting nor sculpture, and was to- 
 tally incapable of forming a judgment about them. He had 
 some confused love of Gothic architecture because it was dark, 
 picturesque, old and like nature ; but could not tell the worst 
 from the best, and built for himself probably the most incon- 
 gruous and ugly pile that gentlemanly modernism ever de- 
 vised." — Ruskin, "Modern Painters," vol. iii., p. 271. 
 
Walter Scott. 1 1 
 
 descriptions are indeed exciting to the imagination; but 
 it is only when the chord of national feeling is touched 
 that the verse grows lyrical, that the heart is reached, and 
 that tears come into the reader's eyes, as they must have 
 done into the poet's. A dozen such passages occur at 
 once to the memory; the last stand of the Scottish nobles 
 around their king at Flodden; the view of Edinburgh — 
 "mine own romantic town" — from Blackford Hill: 
 
 "Fitz-Eustace' heart felt closely pent: 
 As if to give his rapture vent, 
 The spur he to his charger lent, 
 
 And raised his bridle-hand. 
 And, making demi-volte in air, 
 Cried, ' Where's the coward that would not dare 
 
 To fight for such a land?'" 
 
 and the still more familiar opening of the sixth canto in 
 the " Lay " — " Breathes there the man," etc. : 
 
 "O Caledonia ! stern and wild. 
 Meet nurse for a poetic child ! 
 Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, 
 Land of the mountain and the flood. 
 Land of my sires ! what mortal hand 
 Can e'er untie the filial band 
 That knits me to thy rugged strand? " 
 
 In such a mood geography becomes poetry and names 
 are music* Scott said to Washington Irving that if he 
 did not see the heather at least once a year, he thought 
 he would die. 
 
 Lockhart tells how the sound that he loved best of all 
 sounds was in his dying ears — the flow of the Tweed over 
 its pebbles. 
 
 Significant, therefore, is Scott's treatment of landscape, 
 and the difference in this regard between himself and 
 
 * See vol. i., p. 200. 
 
12 ft^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 his great contemporaries. His friend, Mr. Morritt of 
 Rokeby, testifies: "He was but half satisfied with the 
 most beautiful scenery when he could not connect it with 
 some local legend." Scott had to the full the romantic 
 love of mountain and lake, yet "to me," he confesses, 
 "the wandering over the field of Bannockburn was the 
 source of more exquisite pleasure than gazing upon the 
 celebrated landscape from the battlements of Stirling 
 Castle. I do not by any means infer that I was dead to 
 the feeling of picturesque scenery. . . . But show me an 
 old castle or a field of battle and I was at home at once." 
 And again: "The love of natural beauty, more especially 
 when combined with ancient ruins or remains of our 
 fathers' piety* or splendour, became with me an insati- 
 able passion." It was not in this sense that high moun- 
 tains were a " passion " to Byron, nor yet to Wordsworth. 
 In a letter to Miss Seward, Scott wrote of popular poetry: 
 "Much of its peculiar charm is indeed, I believe, to be 
 attributed solely to its locality. ... In some verses of 
 that eccentric but admirable poet Coleridge f he talks of 
 
 'An old rude tale that suited well 
 The ruins wild and hoary.' 
 
 I think there are few who have not been in some de- 
 gree touched with this local sympathy. Tell a peasant 
 an ordinary tale of robbery and murder, and perhaps you 
 
 * The Abbey of Tintern was irrelevant to Wordsworth. — 
 Herford, "The Age of Wordsworth," Int., p. xx. 
 
 ■)• " Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but harmo- 
 nious, opposites in this; — that every old ruin, hill, river or 
 tree called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical 
 associations; . . . whereas, for myself . . . I believe I should 
 walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more interest 
 in it than in any other plain of similar features." — Coleridge, 
 "Table Talk," August 4. 1833. 
 
Walter Scott. 13 
 
 may fail to interest him ; but, to excite his terrors, you 
 assure him it happened on the very heath he usually 
 crosses, or to a man whose family he has known, and you 
 rarely meet such a mere image of humanity as remains 
 entirely unmoved. I suspect it is pretty much the same 
 with myself." 
 
 Scott liked to feel solid ground of history, or at least \i 
 of legend, under his feet. He connected his wildest ' 
 tales, like "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve of St. John," with 
 definite names and places. This Antaeus of romance lost 
 strength, as soon as he was lifted above the earth. With 
 Coleridge it was just the contrary. The moment his 
 moonlit, vapory enchantments touched ground, the con- 
 tact " precipitated the whole solution." In 1813 Scott 
 had printed " The Bridal of Triermain " anonymously, 
 with a preface designed to mislead the public; having 
 contrived, by way of a joke, to fasten the authorship of 
 the piece upon Erskine. This poem is as pure fantasy 
 as Tennyson's "Day Dream," and tells the story of a 
 knight who, in obedience to a vision and the instructions 
 of an ancient sage " sprung from Druid sires," enters an 
 enchanted castle and frees the Princess Gyneth, a natural 
 daughter of King Arthur, from the spell that has bound 
 her for five hundred years. But true to his instinct, the 
 poet lays his scene not in vacuo, but near his own beloved 
 borderland. He found, in Burns' "Antiquities of West- 
 moreland and Cumberland" mention of a line of Rolands 
 de Vaux, lords of Triermain, a fief of the barony of Gils- 
 land; and this furnished him a name for his hero. He 
 found in Hutchinson's " Excursion to the Lakes " the 
 description of a cluster of rocks in the Vale of St. John's, 
 which looked, at a distance, like a Gothic castle; this 
 
14 c/^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 supplied him with a hint for the whole adventure. Mean- 
 while Coleridge had been living in the Lake Country. 
 The wheels of his " Christabel " had got hopelessly 
 mired, and he now borrowed a horse from Sir Walter and 
 hitched it to his own wagon. He took over Sir Roland 
 de Vaux of Triermain and made him the putative father 
 of his mysterious Geraldine, although, in compliance 
 with Scott's romance, the embassy that goes over the 
 mountains to Sir Roland's castle can find no trace of it. 
 In Part I. Sir Leoline's own castle stood nowhere in 
 particular. In Part II. it is transferred to Cumberland, 
 a mistake in art almost as grave as if the Ancient Mar- 
 iner had brought his ship to port at Liverpool. 
 
 Wordsworth visited the "great Minstrel of the Border" 
 at Abbotsford in 183 1, shortly before Scott set out for 
 Naples, and the two poets went in company to the ruins 
 of Newark Castle. It is characteristic that in " Yarrow 
 Revisited," which commemorates the incident, the Bard 
 of Rydal should think it necessary to offer an apology 
 for his distinguished host's habit of romanticising 
 nature — that nature which Wordsworth, romantic neither 
 in temper nor choice of subject, treated after so dif- 
 ferent a fashion, 
 
 "Nor deem that localised Romance 
 
 Plays false with our affections ; 
 Unsanctifies our tears — made sport 
 
 For fanciful dejections : 
 Ah no ! the visions of the past 
 
 Sustain the heart in feeling 
 Life as she is — our changeful Life, 
 
 With friends and kindred dealing," 
 
 The apology, after all, is only half-hearted. For while 
 Wordsworth esteemed Scott highly and was careful to 
 
Walter Scott. 15 
 
 speak publicly of his work with a qualified respect, it is 
 well known that, in private, he set little value upon it, 
 and once somewhat petulantly declared that all Scott's 
 poetry was not worth sixpence. He wrote to Scott, of 
 "Marmion": " I think your end has been attained. That 
 it is not the end which I should wish you to propose to 
 yourself, you will be aware." He had visited Scott at 
 Lasswade as early as 1803, and in recording his impres- 
 sions notes that "his conversation was full of anecdote 
 and averse from disquisition." The minstrel was a 
 racotiteur and lived in the past; the bard was a moralist 
 and lived in the present. 
 
 There are several poems of Wordsworth's and Scott's 
 touching upon common ground which serve to contrast 
 their methods sharply and to illustrate in a striking way 
 the precise character of Scott's romanticism. " Helvel- 
 lyn " and "Fidelity" were written independently and 
 celebrate the same incident. In 1805 a young man lost 
 his way on the Cumberland mountains and perished of 
 exposure. Three months afterwards his body was found, 
 his faithful dog still watching beside it. Scott was a 
 lover of dogs — loved them warmly, individually; so to 
 speak, personally; and all dogs instinctively loved Scott.* 
 
 Wordsworth had a sort of tepid, theoretical benevo- 
 lence towards the animal creation in general. Yet as 
 between the two poets, the advantage in depth of feeling 
 
 * See the delightful anecdote preserved by Carlyle about the 
 little Blenheim cocker who hated the "genus acrid-quack" 
 and formed an immediate attachment to Sir Walter. Words- 
 worth was far from being an acrid quack, or even a solemn 
 prig — another genus hated of dogs — but there was something 
 a little unsympathetic in his personality. The dalesmen 
 liked poor Hartley Coleridge better. 
 
1 6 <iA History of English 'T{omanticism. 
 
 is, as usual, with Wordsworth. Both render, with per- 
 haps equal power, though in characteristically different 
 ways, the impression of the austere and desolate grandeur 
 of the mountain scenery. But the thought to which 
 Wordsworth leads up is the mysterious divineness of in- 
 stinct 
 
 "... that strength of feeling, great 
 Above all human estimate :" — 
 
 while Scott conducts his story to the reflection that Na- 
 ture has given the dead man a more stately funeral than 
 the Church could have given, a comparison seemingly 
 dragged in for the sake of a stanzaful of his favourite 
 Gothic imagery. 
 
 "When a Prince to the fate of the Peasant has yielded. 
 The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall ; 
 With 'scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded, 
 
 And pages stand mute by the canopied pall : 
 Through the courts at deep midnight the torches are gleam- 
 ing. 
 In the proudly arched chapel the banners are beammg, 
 Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming, 
 Lamenting a chief of the people should fall." 
 
 Wordsworth and Landor, who seldom agreed, agreed 
 that Scott's most imaginative line was the verse in 
 " Helvellyn " : 
 
 "When the wind waved his garment how oft didst thou 
 start ! " 
 
 In several of his poems Wordsworth handled legendary 
 subjects, and it is most instructive here to notice his 
 avoidance of the romantic note, and to imagine how Scott 
 would have managed the same material. In the prefa- 
 tory note to "The White Doe of Rylstone," Wordsworth 
 himself pointed out the difference. " The subject being 
 
Walter Scott. 17 
 
 taken from feudal times has led to its being compared to 
 some of Sir Walter Scott's poems that belong to the same 
 age and state of society. The comparison is inconsid- 
 erate. Sir Walter pursued the customary and very natu- 
 ral course of conducting an action, presenting various 
 turns of fortune, to some outstanding point on which the 
 mind might rest as a termination or catastrophe. The 
 course I attempted to pursue is entirely different. Every- 
 thing that is attempted by the principal personages in 
 ' The White Doe ' fails, so far as its object is external 
 and substantial. So far as it is moral and spiritual it 
 succeeds." 
 
 This poem is founded upon "The Rising in the 
 North," a ballad given in the *' Reliques," which re- 
 counts the insurrection of the Earls of Northumberland 
 and Westmoreland against Elizabeth in 1569. Richard 
 Norton of Rylstone, with seven stalwart sons, joined in 
 the rising, carrying a banner embroidered with a red 
 cross and the five wounds of Christ. The story bristled 
 with opportunities for the display of feudal pomp, and it 
 is obvious upon what points in the action Scott would 
 have laid the emphasis; the muster of the tenantry of the 
 great northern Catholic houses of Percy and Neville; the 
 high mass celebrated by the insurgents in Durham Cathe- 
 dral; themarchof the Nortonsto Brancepeth; the eleven 
 days' siege of Barden Tower; the capture and execution 
 of Marmaduke and Ambrose; and — by way of episode — 
 the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346.* But in conform- 
 ity to the principle announced in the preface to the 
 
 * Scott could scarcely have forborne to introduce the figure 
 of the Queen of Scots, to insure whose marriage with Norfolk 
 was one of the objects of the rising. 
 
i8 aA History of English ^{omauticisni. 
 
 "Lyrical Ballads" — that the feeling should give impor- 
 tance to the incidents and situation, not the incidents and 
 situation to the feeling — Wordsworth treats all this out- 
 ward action as merely preparatory to the true purpose of 
 his poem, a study of the discipline of sorrow, of ruin and 
 bereavement patiently endured by the Lady Emily, the 
 only daughter and survivor of the Norton house. 
 
 "Action is transitory — a step, a blow. . . . 
 Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, 
 And has the nature of intinity. 
 
 Yet through that darkness (infinite though it seem 
 And irrenioveable) gracious openings lie. . . . 
 Even to the t'ountain-head of peace divine." 
 
 With the story of the Nortons the poet connects a local 
 tradition which he found in Whitaker's " History of the 
 Deanery of Craven " ; of a white doe which haunted the 
 churchyard of Bolton Priory, Between this gentle crea- 
 ture and the forlorn Lady of Rylstone he establishes the 
 mysterious and soothing sympathy which he was always 
 fond of imagining between the soul of man and the things 
 of nature.* 
 
 Or take again the '' Song at the Feast of Brougham 
 Castle," an incident in the Wars of the Roses. Lord 
 Clifford, who had been hidden away in infancy from the 
 vengeance of the Yorkists and reared as a shepherd, is 
 restored to the estates and honours of his ancestors. 
 High in the festal hall the impassioned minstrel strikes 
 his harp and sings the triumph of Lancaster, urging the 
 shepherd lord to emulate the warlike prowess of his fore- 
 fathers. 
 
 * For a full review of "The White Doe " the reader should 
 consult Principal Shairp's "Aspects of Poetry," i88i. 
 
Walter Scott. 19 
 
 "Armour rustinj? in his halls 
 On the blood of Clifford calls ; 
 'Quell the Scot,' exclaims the Lance — 
 Bear me to the heart of France 
 Is the longing of the Shield." 
 
 Thus far the minstrel, and he has Sir Walter with 
 him; for this is evidently the part of the poem that he 
 liked and remembered, when he noted in his journal that 
 " Wordsworth could be popular * if he would — witness 
 the ' Feast at Brougham Castle ' — ' Song of the Cliffords,' 
 I think, is the name." But the exultant strain ceases 
 and the poet himself speaks, and with the transition in 
 feeling comes a change in the verse; the minstrel's song 
 was in the octosyllabic couplet associated with metrical 
 romance. But this Clifford was no fighter — none of 
 Scott's heroes. Nature had educated him. 
 
 "In him the savage virtue of the Race " was dead. 
 
 "Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills. 
 The silence that is in the starry sky. 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills." 
 
 Once more, consider the pronounced difference in sen- 
 timent between the description of the chase in " Hart- 
 leap Well " and the opening passage of "The Lady of 
 the Lake " : 
 
 "The stag at eve had drunk his fill. 
 Where danced the moon on Monan's rill," etc.f 
 
 * Scott averred that Wordsworth offended public taste on 
 system. 
 
 fThis is incomparable, not only as a masterpiece of ro- 
 mantic narrative, but for the spirited and natural device by 
 which the hero is conducted to his adventure. R. L. Steven- 
 son and other critics have been rather hard upon Scott's de- 
 fects as an artist. He was indeed no stylist : least of all a 
 precieux. There are no close-set mosaics in his somewhat 
 
20 qA History of English '^omariticism. 
 
 Scott was a keen sportsman, and his sympathy was with 
 the hunter.* Wordsworth's, of course, was with the 
 quarry. The knight in his poem — who bears not unsug- 
 gestivelythe name of "Sir Walter" — has outstripped all 
 his companions, like Fitz James, and is the only one in 
 at the death. To commemorate his triumph he frames a 
 basin for the spring whose waters were stirred by his 
 victim's dying breath; he plants three stone pillars to 
 mark the creature's hoof-prints in its marvellous leap 
 from the mountain to the springside; and he builds a 
 pleasure house and an arbour where he comes with his 
 paramour to make merry in the summer days. But Na- 
 ture sets her seal of condemnation upon the cruelty and 
 vainglory of man. "The spot is curst"; no flowers or 
 grass will grow there; no beast will drink of the fountain. 
 Part I. tells the story without enthusiasm but without 
 comment. Part II. draws the lesson 
 
 "Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." 
 
 The song of Wordsworth's " Solitary Reaper" derives 
 a pensive sorrow from " old, unhappy, far-off things and 
 battles long ago." But to Scott the battle is not far off, 
 but a vivid and present reality. When he visited the 
 
 slip-shod prose, and he did not seek for the right word "with 
 moroseness," like Landor. But, in his large fashion, he was 
 skilful iu inventing impressive effects. Another instance is 
 the solitary trumpet that breathed its "note of defiance" in 
 the lists of Ashby-de-la-Zouch. which has the genuine melo- 
 dramatic thrill — like the horn of Hernani or the bell that tolls 
 in "Venice Preserved." 
 
 * See the "Hunting Song" in his continuation of "Queen- 
 hoo Hall "— 
 
 "Waken, lords and ladies gay, 
 On the mountain dawns the day." 
 
Walter Scott. 2 1 
 
 Trosachs glen, his thought painly was, " What a place for 
 a fight! " And when James looks down on Loch Katrine 
 his first reflection is, "What a scene were here . . . 
 
 "For princely pomp or churchman's pride ! 
 On this bold brow a lordly tower ; 
 In that soft vale a lady's bower ; 
 On yonder meadow, far away. 
 The turrets of a cloister grej'," etc. 
 
 The most romantic scene was not romantic enough for 
 Scott till his imagination had peopled it with the life of 
 a vanished age. 
 
 The literary forms which Scott made peculiarly his 
 own, and in which the greater part of his creative work 
 was done, are three: the popular ballad, the metrical 
 romance, and the historical novel in prose. His point 
 of departure was the ballad.* The material amassed in 
 his Liddesdale "raids" — begun in 1792 and continued 
 for seven successive years — was given to the world in the 
 " Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border " (Vols. I. and II. in 
 1802; Vol. III. in 1803), a collection of ballads histori- 
 cal, legendary, and romantic, with an abundant apparatus 
 in the way of notes and introductions, illustrating the 
 history, antiquities, manners, traditions, and superstitions 
 of the Borderers. Forty-three of the ballads in the 
 "Minstrelsy" had never been printed before; and of the 
 remainder the editor gave superior versions, choosing 
 with sureness of taste the best among variant readings, 
 and with a more intimate knowledge of local ways and 
 language than any previous ballad-fancier had com- 
 manded. He handled his texts more faithfully than 
 Percy, rarely substituting lines of his own. " From 
 
 *See vol. i., pp. 277 and 390. 
 
22 c/^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 among a hundred corruptions," says Lockhart, *' he seized, 
 with instinctive tact, the primitive diction and imagery, 
 and produced strains in which the unbroken energy of 
 half-civilised ages, their stern and deep passions, their 
 daring adventures and cruel tragedies, and even their 
 rude wild humour are reflected with almost the brightness 
 of a Homeric mirror." 
 
 In the second volume of the "Minstrelsy" were in- 
 cluded what Scott calls his " first serious attempts in 
 verse," viz., "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve of St. John," 
 which had been already printed in Lewis' "Tales of 
 Wonder," Both pieces are purely romantic, with a strong 
 tincture of the supernatural ; but the first — Scott himself 
 draws the distinction — is a " legendary poem," and the 
 second alone a proper " ballad." " Glenfinlas," * founded 
 on a Gaelic legend, tells how a Highland chieftain while 
 hunting in Perthshire, near the scene of "The Lady of the 
 Lake," is lured from his bothie at night and torn to 
 pieces by evil spirits. There is no attempt here to pre- 
 serve the language of popular poetry; stanzas abound in 
 a diction of which the following is a fair example: 
 
 "Long have I sought sweet Mary's heart, 
 And dropp'd the tear and heaved the sigh : 
 But vain the lover's wily art 
 Beneath a sister's watchful eye." 
 
 *' The Eve of St, John " employs common ballad stuff, the 
 visit of a murdered lover's ghost to his lady's bedside — 
 
 "At the lone midnight hour, when bad spirits have power" — 
 
 but the poet, as usual, anchors his weird nightmares 
 firmly to real names and times and places, Dryburgh 
 
 * The Glen of the Green Women. 
 
Walter Scott. 23 
 
 Abbey, the black rood of Melrose, the Eildon-tree, the 
 bold Buccleuch, and the Battle of Ancram Moor (1545). 
 The exact scene of the tragedy is Smailholme Tower, the 
 ruined keep on the crags above his grandfather's farm 
 at Sandynowe, which left such an indelible impression 
 on Scott's childish imagination.* "The Eve" is in bal- 
 lad style and verse : 
 
 "Thou liest, thou liest, thou little foot page, 
 Loud dost thou lie to me ! 
 
 For that knight is cold, and low laid in the mould, 
 All under the Eildon tree." 
 
 In his " Essay on the Imitation of Popular Poetry," 
 Scott showed that he understood the theory of ballad 
 composition. When he took pains, he could catch the 
 very manner as well as the spirit of ancient minstrelsy; 
 but if his work is examined under the microscope it is 
 easy to detect flaws. The technique of the Pre-Raphael- 
 ites and other modern balladists, like Rossetti and Mor- 
 ris, is frequently finer; they reproduce more scrupulously 
 the formal characteristics of popular poetry : the burden, 
 
 * "And still I thought that shattered tower 
 
 The mightiest work of human power; 
 
 And marvelled as the aged hind 
 
 With some strange tale bewitched my mind, 
 
 Of foragers who, with headlong force, 
 
 Down from that strength had spurred their horse, 
 
 Their Southern rapine to renew. 
 
 Far in the distant Cheviots blue ; 
 
 And, home returning, filled the hall 
 
 With revel, wassail-rout and brawl." — "Marmion." In- 
 troduction to Canto Third. See Lockhart for a de- 
 scription of the view from Smailholme, apropos 
 of the stanza in "The Eve of St. John" : 
 
 "That lady sat in mournful mood ; 
 Looked over hill and vale : 
 O'ver Tweed's fair flood, and Mertoun's wood, 
 And all down Teviot dale." 
 
24 e^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 the sing-song repetitions, the quaint turns of phrase, the 
 imperfect rimes, the innocent, childlike air of the me- 
 digeval tale-tellers. Scott's vocabulary is not consist- 
 ently archaic, and he was not always careful to avoid 
 locutions out of keeping with the style of Volkspoesie* 
 He was by no means a rebel against eighteenth-century 
 usages.f In his prose he is capable of speaking of a lady 
 as an "elegant female." In his poetry he will begin a 
 ballad thus: 
 
 "The Pope he was saying the high, high mass 
 All on St. Peter's day" ; 
 
 and then a little later fall into this kind of thing: 
 
 "There the rapt poet's step may rove, 
 And yield the muse the day : 
 There Beauty, led by timid Love, 
 May shun the tell-tale ray," etc. % 
 
 It is possible to name single pieces like "The Ancient 
 Mariner," and "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and "Rose- 
 Mary," of a rarer imaginative quality and a more perfect 
 workmanship than Scott often attains; yet upon the whole 
 and in the mass, no modern balladry matches the success 
 of his. The Pre-Raphaelites were deliberate artists, con- 
 sciously reproducing an extinct literary form; but Scott 
 had lived himself back into the social conditions out of 
 which ballad poetry was born. His best pieces of this 
 class do not strike us as imitations but as original, spon- 
 
 * See vol. i.. pp. 394-395- 
 
 f Scott's verse "is touched both with the facile redundance 
 of the medifEval romances in which he was steeped, and with 
 the meretricious phraseology of the later eighteenth century, 
 which he was too genuine a literary Torj- wholly to put aside." 
 — "The Age of Wordsworth," C. H. Herford, London. 1897. 
 
 I "The Gray Brother" in vol. iii. of the "Minstrelsy." 
 
Walter Scott. 25 
 
 taneous, and thoroughly alive. Such are, to particularise 
 but a few, "Jock o' Hazeldean," " Cadyow Castle," on 
 the assassination of the Regent Murray; "The Reiver's 
 Wedding," a fragment preserved in Lockhart's " Life " ; 
 "Elspeth's Ballad" ("The Red Harlow") in "The An- 
 tiquary"; Madge Wildfire's songs in "The Heart of 
 Mid-Lothian," and David Gellatley's in "Waverley"; 
 besides the other scraps and snatches of minstrelsy too 
 numerous for mention, sown through the novels and 
 longer poems. For in spite of detraction, Walter Scott 
 remains one of the foremost British lyrists. In Mr. Pal- 
 grave's " Treasury " he is represented by a larger number 
 of selections than either Milton, Byron, Burns, Campbell, 
 Keats, or Herrick ; making an easy fourth to Wordsworth, 
 Shakspere, and Shelley. And in marked contrast with 
 Shelley especially, it is observable of Scott's contribu- 
 tions to this anthology that they are not the utterance of 
 the poet's personal emotion; they are coronachs, pibrochs, 
 gathering songs, narrative ballads, and the like — objec- 
 tive, dramatic lyrics touched always with the light of his- 
 tory or legend. 
 
 The step from ballad to ballad-epic is an easy one, and 
 it was by a natural evolution that the one passed into the 
 other in Scott's hands. " The Lay of the Last Minstrel " 
 (1805) was begun as a ballad on the local tradition of 
 Gilpin Horner and at the request of the Countess of Dal- 
 keith, who told Scott the story. But his imagination was 
 so full that the poem soon overflowed its limits and ex- 
 panded into a romance illustrative of the ancient manners 
 of the Border. The pranks of the goblin page run in 
 and out through the web of the tale, a slender and some- 
 what inconsequential thread of diablerie. Byron had his 
 
26 e/^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 laugh at it in " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers " ; * 
 and in a footnote on the passage, he adds: "Never was 
 any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork 
 of this production." The criticism was not altogether 
 undeserved; for the "Lay" is a typical example of ro- 
 mantic, as distinguished from classic, art both in its 
 strength and in its weakness; brilliant in passages, faulty 
 in architechtonic, and uneven in execution. Its super- 
 natural machinery — Byron said that it had more "gram- 
 arye " than grammar — is not impressive, if due exception 
 be made of the opening of Michael Scott's tomb in Canto 
 Second. 
 
 When the " Minstrelsy " was published, it was remarked 
 that it " contained the elements of a hundred historical 
 romances." It was from such elements that Scott built 
 up the structure of his poem about the nucleus which the 
 Countess of Dalkeith had given him. He was less con- 
 cerned, as he acknowledged, to tell a coherent story than 
 to paint a picture of the scenery and the old warlike, life 
 of the Border; that tableau large de la vie which the 
 French romanticists afterwards professed to be the aim 
 of their novels and dramas. The feud of the Scotts and 
 Carrs furnished him with a historic background; with 
 this he enwove a love story of the Romeo and Juliet pat- 
 tern. He rebuilt Melrose Abbey, and showed it by moon- 
 light; set Lords Dacre and Howard marching on a 
 Warden-raid, and roused the border clans to meet them; 
 threw out dramatic character sketches of " stark moss- 
 
 * "And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood, 
 Decoy young border-nobles through the wood. 
 And skip at every step. Lord knows how high. 
 And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why." 
 
Walter Scott. 27 
 
 riding Scots " like Wat Tinlinn and William of Deloraine ; 
 and finally enclosed the whole in a cadre most happily 
 invented, the venerable, pathetic figure of the old min- 
 strel who tells the tale to the Duchess of Monmouth at 
 Newark Castle. 
 
 • The love story is perhaps the weakest part of the poem. 
 Henry Cranstoun and Margaret of Branksome are noth- 
 ing but lay figures. Scott is always a little nervous when 
 the lover and the lady are left alone together. ' The fair 
 dames in the audience expect a tender scene, but the 
 harper pleads his age, by way of apology, gets the busi- 
 ness over as decently as may be, and hastens on with comic 
 precipitation to the fighting, which he thoroughly enjoys.* 
 The " light-horseman stanza" which Scott employed 
 in his longer poems was caught from the recitation by 
 Sir John Stoddart of a portion of Coleridge's " Christabel," 
 then still in manuscript. The norm of the verse was the 
 eight-syllabled riming couplet used in most of the Eng- 
 lish metrical romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries. It is a form of verse which moves more swiftly 
 than blank verse or the heroic couplet, and is perhaps 
 better suited for romantic poetry. f But it is liable to 
 grow monotonous in a long poem, and Coleridge's un- 
 surpassed skill as a metrist was exerted to give it free- 
 dom, richness, and variety by the introduction of ana- 
 psestic lines and alternate rimes and triplets, breaking 
 up the couplets into a series of irregular stanzas. 
 
 * "Now leave we Margaret and her knight 
 To tell you of the approaching fight." 
 
 —Canto Fifth, xiii. 
 f Landor says oddly of Warton that he "had lost his ear by 
 laying it down on low swampy places, on ballads and son- 
 nets." 
 
28 iA History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 With " The Lay of the Last Minstrel " romanticism 
 came of age and entered on its career of triumph. One 
 wishes that Collins and Tom Warton might have lived 
 to hail it as the light, at last, towards which they had 
 struggled through the cold obstruction of the eighteenth 
 century. One fancies Dr. Johnson's disgust over this 
 new Scotch monstrosity, which had every quality that he 
 disliked except blank verse; or Gray's delight in it, tem- 
 pered by a critical disapproval of its loose construction 
 and irregularity. Scott's romances in prose and verse 
 are still so universally known as to make any review of 
 them here individually an impertinence. Their impact 
 on contemporary Europe was instantaneous and wide- 
 spread. There is no record elsewhere in literary history 
 of such success. Their immense sales, the innumerable 
 editions and translations and imitations of them, are mat- 
 ters of familiar knowledge. Poem followed poem, and 
 novel, novel in swift and seemingly exhaustless succes- 
 sion, and each was awaited by the public with unabated 
 expectancy. Here once more was a poet who could tell 
 the world a story that it wanted to hear ; a poet 
 
 "Such as it had 
 In the ages glad, 
 Long ago." 
 
 The Homeric* quality which criticism has attributed 
 or denied to these poems is really there. The difference, 
 the inferiority is obvious of course. They are not in the 
 grand style; they are epic on a lower plane, ballad-epic, 
 bastard-epic perhaps, but they are epic. No English verse 
 
 * Does not the quarrel of Richard and Philip in "The Tal- 
 isman " remind one irresistibly of Achilles and Agamemnon in 
 the "Iliad"? 
 
Walter Scoit. 29 
 
 narrative except Chaucer's ranks, as a whole, above 
 Scott's. Chaucer's disciple, William Morris, has an 
 equal flow and continuity, and keeps a more even level 
 of style; but his story-telling is languid compared with 
 Scott's. The latter is greater in the dynamic than in the 
 static department — in scenes of rapid action and keen 
 excitement. His show passages are such as the fight in 
 the Trosachs, Flodden Field, William of Deloraine's 
 ride to Melrose, the trial of Constance, the muster on the 
 Borough Moor, Marmion's defiance to Douglas, the com- 
 bat of James and Roderick Dhu, the summons of the fiery 
 cross, and the kindling of the need-fires — those romantic 
 equivalents of the Xa^7ca8-q(p6poi in the " Agamemnon." 
 
 In the series of long poems which followed the "Lay," 
 Scott deserted the Border and brought in new subjects of 
 romantic interest, the traditions of Flodden and Bannock- 
 burn, the manners of the Gaelic clansmen, and the wild 
 scenery of the Perthshire Highlands, the life of the 
 Western Islands, and the rugged coasts of Argyle. Only 
 two of these tales are concerned with the Middle Ages, 
 strictly speaking: "The Lord of the Isles" (1813), in 
 which the action begins in 1307; and "Harold the 
 Dauntless" (1817), in which the period is the time of the 
 Danish settlements in Northumbria. " Rokeby " (1812) 
 is concerned with the Civil War. The scene is laid in 
 Yorkshire. " Marmion " (1808), and "The Lady of the 
 Lake" (1810), like "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," had 
 to do with the sixteenth century, but the poet imported 
 mediaeval elements into all of these by the frankest an- 
 achronisms. He restored St. Hilda's Abbey and the 
 monastery at Lindisfarne, which had been in ruins for 
 centuries, and peopled them again with monks and nuns. 
 
30 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 He revived in De Wilton the figure of the palmer and 
 the ancient custom of pilgrimage to Palestine. And he 
 transferred "the wondrous wizard, Michael Scott" from 
 the thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth. But, 
 indeed, the state of society in Scotland might be de- 
 scribed as mediaeval as late as the middle of the sixteenth 
 century. It was still feudal, and in great part Catholic. 
 Particularly in the turbulent Borderland, a rude spirit of 
 chivalry and a passion for wild adventure lingered among 
 the Eliots, Armstrongs, Kerrs, Rutherfords, Homes, John- 
 stons, and other marauding clans, who acknowledged no 
 law but march law, and held slack allegiance to " the 
 King of Lothian and Fife." Every owner of a half-ruin- 
 ous " peel " or border keep had a band of retainers within 
 call, like the nine-and-twenty knights of fame who hung 
 their shields in Branksome Hall; and he could summon 
 them at short notice, for a raid upon the English or a 
 foray against some neighbouring proprietor with whom 
 he was at feud. 
 
 But the literary form under which Scott made the deep- 
 est impression upon the consciousness of his own genera- 
 tion and influenced most permanently the future literature 
 of Europe, was prose fiction. As the creator of the his- 
 torical novel and the ancestor of Kingsley, Ainsworth, 
 Bulwer, and G. P. R. James; of Manzoni, Freytag, Hugo, 
 Merimee, Dumas, Alexis Tolstoi, and a host of others, 
 at home and abroad, his example is potent yet. English 
 fiction is directly or indirectly in his debt for "Romola," 
 " Hypatia," " Henry Esmond," and "The Cloister and 
 the Hearth." In several countries the historical novel 
 had been trying for centuries to get itself born, but all its 
 attempts had been abortive. "Waverley" is not only 
 
Walter Scott 31 
 
 vastly superior to "Thaddeus of Warsaw" (1803) and 
 "The Scottish Chiefs" (1809) ; it is something quite dif- 
 ferent in kind.* The Waverley Novels, twenty-nine in 
 number, appeared in the years 18 14-31. The earlier 
 numbers of the series, "Waverley," "Guy Mannering," 
 "The Antiquary," "Old Mortality," " The Black Dwarf," 
 "Rob Roy," "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," "The Bride 
 of Lammermoor," and " A Legend of Montrose," were 
 Scotch romances of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies. In"Ivanhoe" (18 19) the author went to England 
 for his scene, and back to the twelfth century for his </ 
 period. Thenceforth he ranged over a wide region in 
 time and space; Elizabethan England (" Kenilworth"), 
 the France and Switzerland of Louis XL and Charles 
 the Bold (" Quentin Durward " and " Anne of Geier- 
 stein "), Constantinople and Syria ("Count Robert of 
 Paris," "The Betrothed," and "The Talisman") in the 
 age of the Crusades, The fortunes of the Stuarts, in- 
 terested him specially and engaged him in "Wood- 
 stock," "The Fortunes of Nigel," "The Monastery," and 
 its sequel, "The Abbot." He seems to have had, in the 
 words of Mr. R, H. Hutton, "something very like per- 
 sonal experience of a few centuries." 
 
 Scott's formula for the construction of a historical 
 romance was original with himself, and it has been fol- 
 lowed by all his successors. His story is fictitious, his 
 hero imaginary. Richard I. is not the hero of " Ivan- 
 hoe," nor Louis XL of " Quentin Durward." Shak- 
 spere dramatised history; Scott romanticised it. Still 
 
 *For a review of English historical fiction before Scott, con- 
 sult Professor Cross' "Development of the English Novel," 
 pp. 110-114. 
 
32 <^ History of E-nglisb liomanticism. 
 
 it is history; the private story is swept into the stream 
 of large public events; the fate of the lover or the ad- 
 venturer is involved with battles and diplomacies, with 
 the rise and fall of kings, dynasties, political parties, 
 nations. Stevenson says, comparing Fielding with Scott, 
 that " in the work of the latter ... we become suddenly 
 conscious of the background. ... It is curious enough 
 to think that 'Tom Jones' is laid in the year '45, and 
 that the only use he makes of the rebellion is to throw a 
 troop of soldiers in his hero's way." * And it is this 
 background which is, after all, the important thing in 
 Scott — the leading impression; the broad canvas, the 
 swarm of life, the spirit of the age, the reconstitution of 
 an extinct society. This he was able to give with seem- 
 ing ease and without any appearance of " cram." Chron- 
 icle matter does not lie about in lumps on the surface of 
 his romance, but is decently buried away in the notes. 
 In his comments on " Queenhoo Hall " he adverts to the 
 danger of a pedantic method; and in his "Journal" 
 (October i8th, 1826) he writes as follows of his own nu- 
 merous imitators: "They have to read old books and 
 consult antiquarian collections, to get their knowledge. 
 I write because I have long since read such works and 
 possess, thanks to a strong memory, the information which 
 they have to seek for. This leads to a dragging in his- 
 torical details by head and shoulders, so that the interest 
 of the main piece is lost in minute description of events 
 which do not affect its progress." 
 
 Of late the recrudescence of the historical novel has 
 revived the discussion as to the value of the genre. It 
 
 * "Familiar Studies of Men and Books," by R. L. Steven- 
 son. Article, "Victor Hugo's Romances." 
 
Walter Scott. 33 
 
 may be readily admitted that Scott's best work is realis- 
 tic, and is to be looked for in such novels as " The An- 
 tiquary," " Old Mortality," " The Heart of Mid-Lothian," 
 and in characters like Andrew Fairservice, Bailie Nicol 
 Jarvie, Dandie Dinmont, Dugald Dalgetty, Jeanie Deans, 
 Edie Ochiltrie, which brought into play his knowledge 
 of men, his humour, observation of life, and insight into 
 Scotch human nature. Scott knew these people; he had 
 to divine James I., Louis XL, and Mary Stuart. The 
 historical novel is a tour deforce. Exactly how knights- 
 templars, burgomasters, friars, Saracens, and Robin 
 Hood archers talked and acted in the twelfth century, we 
 cannot know. But it is just because they are strange to 
 our experience that they are dear to our imagination. 
 The justification of romance is its unfamiliarity — 
 *' strangeness added to beauty " — " the pleasure of sur- 
 prise" as distinguished from "the pleasure of recogni- 
 tion." Again and again realism returns to the charge 
 and demands of art that it give us the present and the 
 actual; and again and again the imagination eludes the 
 demand and makes an ideal world for itself in the blue 
 distance. 
 
 Two favourite arts, or artifices, of all romantic schools, 
 are " local colour " and " the picturesque." " Vers I'an 
 de grace 1827," writes Prosper Merimee, " j'etais roman- 
 iiqiie. Nous disions aux classiqties ; vos Grecs ne sont 
 pas des Grecs, vos Romains ne sont pas des Romains; 
 vous ne savez pas donner a vos compositions la couleur 
 locale. Point de salut sans la couleur locale.^'' * 
 
 *"Le Roman Historique a I'Epoque Romantique." Essai 
 sur r influence de Walter Scott. Par Louis Maigron. Paris 
 (Hachette), 1898, p. 331, note. And ibid., p. 330: "Au 
 
34 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 As to the picturesque — a word that connotes, in its 
 critical uses, some quality in the objects of sense which 
 strikes us as at once novel, and characteristic in its nov- 
 elty — while by no means the highest of literary arts, it is 
 a perfectly legitimate one.* Cre^y is not, at bottom, a 
 more interesting battle thai? Gettysburg because it was 
 
 lieu que les classiques s'eflforgaient tou jours, a travers las 
 modifications que les pays, les temps et les circonstances 
 peuvent apporter aux sentiments et aux passions des hommes, 
 d'atteindre a ce que ces passions et ces sentiments conservent 
 de permanent, d'immuable et d'eternel, c'est au contraire a 
 r expression de I'accidentel et du relatif que les novateurs de- 
 vaient les efforts de leur art. Plus simplement, a la place de 
 la verite humaine, ils devaient mettre la verite locale." Pro- 
 fessor Herford says that what Scott "has in common with the 
 Romantic temper is simply the feeling for the picturesque, for 
 colour, for contrast." "Age of Wordsworth," p. 121. 
 
 * De Quincey da^WQ?, picturesgne as "the characteristic 
 pushed into a sensible excess." The word began to excite 
 discussion in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. See 
 vol. i., p. 185, for Gilpin's "Observations on Picturesque 
 Beauty. " See also Uvedale Price, " Essays on the Picturesque 
 as Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful," three 
 vols., 1794-96. Price finds the character of the picturesque to 
 consist in roughness, irregularity, intricacy, and sudden vari- 
 ation. Gothic buildings are more picturesque than Grecian, 
 and a ruin than an entire building. Hovels, cottages, mills, 
 interiors of old barns are picturesque. " In mills particularly, 
 such is the extreme intricacy of the wheels and the wood 
 work : such is the singular variety of forms and of lights and 
 shadows, of mosses and weather stains from the constant 
 moisture, of plants springing from the rough joints of the 
 stones — that, even without the addition of water, an old mill 
 has the greatest charm for a painter" (i., 55). He mentions, 
 as a striking example of picturesque beauty, a hollow lane or 
 by-road with broken banks, thickets, old neglected pollards, 
 fantastic roots bared by the winter torrents, tangled trailers 
 and wild plants, and infinite variety of tints and shades (i., 
 23-29) . He denounces the improvements of Capability Brown 
 (see "Romanticism," vol. i., p. 124) : especially the clump, 
 the belt and regular serpentine walks with smooth turf edges, 
 the made water with uniformly sloping banks — all as insip- 
 idly formal, in their way, as the old Italian gardens which 
 Brown's landscapes displaced. 
 
Walter Scott. 35 
 
 fought with bows and arrows, but it is more picturesque 
 to the modern imagination just for that reason. Why 
 else do the idiots in "MacArthur's Hymn" complain 
 that "steam spoils romance at sea"? Why did Ruskin 
 lament when the little square at the foot of Giotto's Tower 
 in Florence was made a stand for hackney coaches? 
 Why did our countryman Halleck at Alnwick Towers 
 resent the fact that " the Percy deals in salt and hides, 
 the Douglas sells red herring " ? And why does the pic- 
 turesque tourist, in general, object to the substitution of 
 naphtha launches for gondolas on the Venetian canals? 
 Perhaps because the more machinery is interposed be- 
 tween man and the thing he works on, the more imper- 
 sonal becomes his relation to nature. 
 
 Carlyle, in his somewhat grudging estimate of Scott, 
 declares that "much of the interest of these novels results 
 from contrasts of costume. The phraseology, fashion of 
 arms, of dress, of life belonging to one age is brought 
 suddenly with singular vividness before the eyes of an- 
 other. A great effect this; yet by the very nature of it an 
 altogether temporary one. Consider, brethren, shall not 
 we too one day be antiques and grow to have as quaint a 
 costume as the rest? . . . Not by slashed breeches, 
 steeple hats, buff belts, or antiquated speech can romance- 
 heroes continue to interest us; but simply and solely, in 
 the long run, by being men. Buff belts and all manner 
 of jerkins and costumes are transitory; man alone is 
 perennial." * Carlyle's dissatisfaction with Scott arises 
 from the fact that he was not a missionary nor a transcen- 
 dental philosopher, but simply a teller of stories. Heine 
 was not troubled in the same way, but he made the iden- 
 * " Essay on Walter Scott." 
 
36 zA History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 tical criticism. *' Like the works of Walter Scott, so also 
 do Fouque's romances of chivalry * remind us of the 
 fantastic tapestries known as Gobelins, whose rich texture 
 and brilliant colors are more pleasing to our eyes than 
 edifying to our souls. We behold knightly pageantry, 
 shepherds engaged in festive sports, hand-to-hand com- 
 bats, and ancient customs, charmingly intermingled. It 
 is all very pretty and picturesque, but shallow; brilliant 
 superficiality. Among the imitators of Fouque, as among 
 the imitators of Walter Scott, this mannerism of portray- 
 ing — not the inner nature of men and things, but merely 
 the outward garb and appearance — was carried to still 
 greater extremes. This shallow art and frivolous style is 
 still [1833] in vogue in Germany as well as in England 
 and France. ... In lieu of a knowledge of mankind, our 
 recent novelists evince a profound acquaintance with 
 clothes." f 
 
 * Andrew Lang reminds us that, after all, only three of the 
 Waverley Novels are "chivalry romances." The following 
 are the only numbers of the series that have to do with the 
 Middle Ages: "Count Robert of Paris," czr^rt 1090 a. d. ; "The 
 Betrothed," 1 1S7 ; "The Talisman," 1193; " Ivanhoe, " 1194 ; 
 "The Fair Maid of Perth," 1402; "Quentin Durward," 1470; 
 "Anne of Geierstein," 1474-77. 
 
 ■j- " The Romantic School in Germany, " p. 187. Cf. Stendhal, 
 "Walter Scott et la Princesse de Cleves." "Mes reflexions 
 seront mal accueilles. Une immense troupe de litterateurs 
 est iuteressee a porter aux nues Sir Walter Scott et sa mani- 
 ere. L' habit et le collier de cuivre d'un serf du moyen age 
 sont plus facile a decrire que les mouvements du coeur hu- 
 main. . . . N'oublions pas un autre avantage de I'ecole de 
 Sir Walter Scott : la description d'un costume et la. pass d'un 
 personnage . . . prennent au moins deux pages. Les mouve- 
 ments de r&mefourniraient a peine quelques lignes. Ouvrez 
 au hazard un des volumes de la ' Princesse de Cleves, ' prenez 
 dix pages au hasard, et ensuite comparez les aux dix pages 
 d" Ivanhoe ' ou de ' Quentin Durward ' : cesderniers ouvrages 
 ont un merite historique. lis apprennent quelques petites 
 
Walter Scott. 37 
 
 Elsewhere Heine acknowledges a deeper reason for 
 the popularity of the Scotch novels. " Their theme . . . 
 is the mighty sorrow for the loss of national peculiarities 
 swallowed up in the universality of the newer culture — 
 a sorrow which is now throbbing in the hearts of all peo- 
 ples. For national memories lie deeper in the human 
 breast than is generally thought." But whatever rank 
 may be ultimately assigned to the historical novel as an 
 art form, Continental critics are at one with the British 
 in crediting its invention to Scott. "It is an error," says 
 Heine, "not to recognise Walter Scott as the founder of 
 the so-called historical romance, and to endeavour to 
 trace it to German imitation." He adds that Scott was a 
 Protestant, a lawyer and a Scotchman, accustomed to 
 action and debate, in whose works the aristocratic and 
 democratic elements are in wholesome balance ; " where- 
 as our German romanticists eliminated the democratic 
 element entirely from their novels, and returned to the 
 ruts of those crazy romances of knight-errantry that fiour- 
 
 choses sur I'histoire aux gens qui I'ignorent ou qui le savent 
 mal. Ce merite historique a cause un grand plaisir: je ne le 
 nie pas, mais c'est ce merite historique qui se fanera le pre- 
 mier. . . . Dans 146 ans, Sir Walter Scott ne sera pas a la 
 hauteur ou Corneille nous apparait 146 ans apres sa mort." 
 "To write a modern romance of chivalry," says Jeffrey, in his 
 review of "Marmion " in the Edinbtirgh, "seems to be much 
 such a phantasy as to build a modern abbey or an English 
 pagoda. . . . [Scott's] genius, seconded by the omnipo- 
 tence of fashion, has brought chivalry again into temporary 
 favor. Fine ladies and gentlemen now talk, indeed, of 
 donjons, keeps, tabards, 'scutcheons, tressures, caps of 
 maintenance, portcullises, wimples, and we know not what 
 besides ; just as they did, in the days of Dr. Darwin's popu- 
 larity, of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and 
 polyandria. That fashion, however, passed rapidly away, 
 and Mr. Scott should take care that a different sort of ped- 
 antry," etc. 
 
38 t// History of English Romanticism, 
 
 ished before Cervantes." * '" Quel est I'ouvrage litt^- 
 raire," asks Stendhal in 1823,! "qui a le plus reussi en 
 France depuis dix ans? Les romans de Walter Scott. 
 . . . On s'est moque a Paris pendant vingt ans du roman 
 historique; I'Academie a prouve doctement le ridicule de 
 ce genre; nous y croyions tous, lorsque Walter Scott a 
 paru, son Waverley a la main; et Balantyne, son libraire 
 vient de mourir millionaire." \ 
 
 Lastly the service of the Waverley Novels to history 
 was an important one. Palgrave says that historical fic- 
 tion is the mortal enemy of history, and Leslie Stephen 
 adds that it is also the enemy of fiction. In a sense both 
 sayings are true. Scott was not always accurate as to 
 facts and sinned freely against chronology. But he 
 rescued a wide realm from cold oblivion and gave it 
 back to human consciousness and sympathy. It is treat- 
 ing the past more kindly to misrepresent it in some par- 
 ticulars, than to leave it a blank to the imagination. 
 The eighteenth-century historians were incurious of li/e. 
 Their spirit was general and abstract; they were in search 
 of philosophical formulas. Gibbon covers his subject 
 with a lava-flood of stately rhetoric which stiffens into a 
 uniform stony coating over the soft surface of life. Scott 
 is primarily responsible for that dramatic, picturesque 
 
 *For an exhaustive review of Scott's influence on the evo- 
 lution of historical fiction in France, consult Maigron, " Le 
 Roman Historique," etc. A longish passage from this work 
 will be found at the end of the present chapter. For English 
 imitators and successors of the Waverley Novels, see Cross, 
 "Development of the English Novel," pp. 136-48. See also 
 De Quincey's "Literary Reminiscences," vol. iii., for an 
 amusing account of "Walladmor" (1824), a pretended Ger- 
 man translation of a non-existent Waverley novel. 
 
 f "Racine et Shakespeare." X "Don Quixote." 
 
Walter Scott. 39 
 
 treatment of history which we find in Michelet and Car- 
 lyle. "These historical novels," testifies Carlyle, "have 
 taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and 
 yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and 
 others, till so taught; that the bygone ages of the world 
 were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state 
 papers, controversies, and abstractions of men. ... It is 
 a great service, fertile in consequences, this that Scott 
 has done; a great truth laid open by him," * In France, 
 too, historians like Barante and Augustin Thierry, were 
 Scott's professed disciples. The latter confesses, in a 
 well-known passage, that " Ivanhoe " was the inspirer of 
 his "Conquete d'Angleterre," and styles the novelist "le 
 plus grand maitre qu'il y ait jamais eu en fait de divi- 
 nation historique." f 
 
 Scott apprehended the Middle Ages on their spectacu- 
 lar, and more particularly, their military side. He ex- 
 hibits their large, showy aspects: battles, processions, 
 hunts, feasts in hall, tourneys, J sieges, and the like. The 
 motley mediaeval world swarms in his pages, from the 
 king on his throne down to the jester with his cap and 
 bells. But it was the outside of it that he saw ; the noise, 
 bustle, colour, stirring action that delighted him. Into its 
 spiritualities he did not penetrate far; its scholasticisms, 
 strange casuistries, shuddering faiths, grotesque distor- 
 
 * "Sir Walter Scott." 
 
 f Dix ans d' etudes historiques" : preface. 
 
 X Walter Bagehot says that " Ivanhoe " "describes the Mid- 
 dle Ages as we should have wished them to be, " ignoring 
 their discomforts and harsh barbarism. "Every boy has 
 heard of tournaments and has a firm persuasion that in an 
 age of tournaments life was thoroughly well understood. A 
 martial society where men fought hand to hand on good 
 horses with large lances," etc. ("The Waverley Novels"). 
 
40 tA History of English l^omanticism . 
 
 tions of soul; its religious mysticisms, asceticisms, 
 agonies; the ecstactic reveries of the cloister, terrors of 
 hell, and visions of paradise. It was the literature of 
 the knight, not of the monk, that appealed to him. He 
 felt the awfulness and the beauty of Gothic sacred archi- 
 tecture and of Catholic ritual. The externalities of the 
 mediseval church impressed him, whatever was pictur- 
 esque in its ceremonies or august in its power. He pic- 
 tured effectively such scenes as the pilgrimage to Melrose 
 in the "Lay"; the immuring of the renegade nun in 
 " Marmion " ; the trial of Rebecca for sorcery by the 
 Grand Master of the Temple in " Ivanhoe." Ecclesiasti- 
 cal figures abound in his pages, jolly friars, holy hermits, 
 lordly prelates, grim inquisitors, abbots, priors, and 
 priests of all descriptions, but all somewhat conventional 
 and viewed ab extra. He could not draw a saint.* Sig- 
 nificant, therefore, is his indifference to Dante, the poet 
 par excellence of the Catholic Middle Age, the epitomizer 
 of mediaeval thought. " The plan " of the " Divine Com- 
 edy," "appeared to him unhappy; the personal malignity 
 and strange mode of revenge presumptuous and uninter- 
 esting." Scott's genius was antipathetic to Dante's; and 
 he was as incapable of taking a lasting imprint from his 
 intense, austere, and mystical spirit, as from the nebulous 
 gloom of the Ossianic poetry. Though conservative, he 
 was not reactionary after the fashion of the German 
 " throne-and-altar " romanticists, but remained always a 
 good Church of England man and an obstinate opponent 
 
 *"Of enthusiasm in religion Scott always spoke very se- 
 verely. ... I do not think there is a single study in all his 
 romances of what may be fairly called a pre-eminently spiri- 
 tual character" (R. H. Hutton : "Sir Walter Scott," p. 126). 
 
Walter Scott. 41 
 
 of Catholic emancipation.* "Creeds are data in his 
 novels," says Bagehot; "people have dififerent creeds, 
 but each keeps his own." 
 
 Scott's interest in popular superstitions was constant. 
 As a young man — in his German ballad period — they 
 affected his imagination with a " pleasing horror." But 
 as he grew older, they engaged him less as a poet than 
 as a student of Cultur geschichte. 
 
 A wistful sense of the beauty of these old beliefs — a 
 rational smile at their absurdity — such is the tone of his 
 "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" (1830), a pas- 
 sage or two from which will give his attitude very pre- 
 cisely; an attitude, it will be seen, which is after all not 
 so very different from Addison's, allowing for the dis- 
 tance in time and place, and for Scott's livelier imagina- 
 tion.! Scott had his laugh at Mrs. Radcliffe, and in his 
 
 *" Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink to dust, 
 with all its absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful 
 risk. The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good com- 
 petence of nonsense will always find believers" ("Diary" 
 for 1829). 
 
 t See vol. i., p. 42. "We almost envy the credulity of 
 those who. in the gentle moonlight of a summer night in Eng- 
 land, amid the tangled glades of a deep forest, or the turfy 
 swell of her romantic commons, could fancy they saw the 
 fairies tracing their sportive ring. But it is in vain to regret 
 illusions which, however engaging, must of necessity yield 
 their place before the increase of knowledge, like shadows at 
 the advance of morn " ("Demonology," p. 183). "Tales of 
 ghosts and demonology are out of date at forty years of age 
 and upward. ... If I were to write on the subject at all, it 
 should have been during a period of life when I could have 
 treated it with more interesting vivacity. . . . Even the pres- 
 ent fashion of the world seems to be ill-suited for studies of 
 this fantastic nature ; and the most ordinary mechanic has 
 learning sufficient to laugh at the figments which in former 
 times were believed by persons far advanced in the deepest 
 knowledge of the age " {Ibid., p. 398). 
 
42 e/^ History of English ^{omanticism. 
 
 reviews of Hoffmann's "Tales" and Maturin's "Fatal 
 Revenge" * he insists upon the delicacy with which the 
 supernatural must be treated in an age of disbelief. His 
 own management of such themes, however, though much 
 superior to Walpole's or Mrs. Radcliffe's, has not the 
 subtle art of Coleridge. The White Lady of Avenel, 
 e.g., in "The Abbot," is a notorious failure. There was 
 too much daylight in his imagination for spectres to be 
 quite at home. " The shapes that haunt thought's wilder- 
 nesses " ; the "night side of things"; the real shudder 
 are not there, as in Hawthorne or in Poe. Walter Pater f 
 says that Meinhold's " Amber Witch " has more of the 
 true romantic spirit than Tieck, who was its professional 
 representative. On the contrary, it has less of the ro- 
 mantic spirit, but more of the mediseval fact. It is a 
 literal, realistic handling of the witch superstition, as 
 Balzac's " Succube," in the "Contes Drolatiques" is a 
 satirical version of similar material. But Tieck's 
 "Marchen " are the shadows thrown by mediaeval beliefs 
 across a sensitive, modern imagination, and are in result, 
 therefore, romantic. Scott's dealing with subjects of the 
 kind is midway between Meinhold and Tieck. He does 
 not blink the ugly, childish, stupid, and cruel features 
 of popular superstition, but throws the romantic glamour 
 over them, precisely as he does over his "Charlie over 
 the water" Jacobites. J 
 
 Again Scott's apprehension of the spirit of chivalry, 
 though less imperfect than his apprehension of the spirit 
 
 * See vol. i., pp. 249 and 420. 
 
 f "Postscript" to "Appreciations." 
 
 X For the rarity of the real romantic note in mediaeval writ- 
 ers see vol. i., pp. 26-28, and Appendix B to the present 
 chapter. 
 
Walter Scott. 43 
 
 of mediceval Catholicism, was but partial. Of the themes 
 which Ariosto sang — 
 
 "Le donne, i cavalier, I'arme, gli amori, 
 Le cortesie, I'audaci imprese io canto" — 
 
 the northern Ariosto sang bravely the arme and the 
 andaci imprese ; less confidently the amori and the cortesie. 
 He could sympathise with the knight-errant's high sense 
 of honour and his love of bold emprise; not so well with 
 his service of dames. Mediaeval courtship or " love- 
 drurye," the trembling self-abasement of the lover before 
 his lady, the fantastic refinements and excesses of gal- 
 lantry, were alien to Scott's manly and eminently practi- 
 cal turn of mind. It is hardly possible to fancy him 
 reading the "Roman de la Rose" with patience — he 
 thought " Troilus and Creseyde " tedious, which Rossetti 
 pronounces the finest of English love poems; or selecting 
 for treatment the story of Heloise or Tristram and Iseult, 
 or of " Le Chevalier de la Charette " ; or such a typical 
 mediaeval life as that of Ulrich von Liechtenstein.* 
 These were quite as truly beyond his sphere as a church 
 legend like the life of Saint Margaret or the quest of the 
 Sangreal. In the "Talisman" he praises in terms only 
 less eloquent than Burke's famous words, "that wild 
 spirit of chivalry which, amid its most extravagant and 
 fantastic flights, was still pure from all selfish alloy — 
 generous, devoted, and perhaps only thus far censurable, 
 that it proposed objects and courses of action inconsistent 
 with the frailties and imperfections of man." In " Ivan- 
 hoe," too, there is something like a dithyrambic lament 
 
 * See "Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature," by Ed- 
 ward T. McLaughlin, p. 34. 
 
44 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 over the decay of knighthood — "The 'scutcheons have 
 long mouldered from the walls," etc.; but even here, en- 
 thusiasm is tempered by good sense, and Richard of the 
 Lion Heart is described as an example of the "brilliant 
 but useless character of a knight of romance." All this 
 is but to say that the picture of the Middle Age which 
 Scott painted was not complete. Still it was more nearly 
 complete than has yet been given by any other hand; 
 and the artist remains, in Stevenson's phrase, "the king 
 of the Romantics." 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 "Jamais homme de genie n'a eu I'honneur et le bon- 
 heur d'etre imite par plus d'hommes de genie, si tous les 
 grands ecrivains de I'epoque romantique depuis Victor 
 Hugo jusqu'k Balzac et depuis Alfred de Vigny jusqu'^ 
 Merimee, lui doivent tous et se sont tous glorifies de 
 lui devoir quelque chose. ... II doit nous suffire pour 
 I'instant d'affirmer que I'influence de Walter Scott est h. 
 la racine meme des grandes oeuvres qui ont donne au 
 nouveau genre tant d'eclat dans notre litterature; que 
 c'est elle qui les a inspire'es, suscitees, fait eclore; que 
 sans lui nous n'aurions ni ' Hans d'Islande,' ni ' Cinq- 
 Mars,' ni ' Les Chouans,' ni la ' Chronique de Charles 
 IX.,' ni ' Notre Dame de Paris,' . . . Ce n'est rien moins 
 que le romantisme lui-meme dont elle a hate I'incubation, 
 facilite I'eclosion, aide' le developpement." — Maigron, 
 "Le Roman Historique," p. 143. 
 
 " II nous faut d'abord constater que c'est veritablement 
 de Walter Scott, et de Walter Scott seal, que commence 
 cette fureur des choses du moyen age, cette manie de 
 
Walter Scott. 45 
 
 couleur locale qui sevit avec tant d'intensite quelque 
 temps avant et longtemps apres 1830, et done qu'il reste, 
 au moins pour ce qui est de la description, le principal 
 initiateur de la generation nouvelle. Sans doute et de 
 toute part, cette resurrection du moyen age e'tait des long- 
 temps preparee. Le ' Genie du Christianisme,' le * Cours 
 de litterature dramatique ' de Schlegel, T'Allemagne' de 
 Mme. de Stael avaient fait des moeurs chretiennes et 
 chevaleresques le fondement et la condition de renouvelle- 
 ment de I'art frangais. Et, en effet, des 1802, le moyen 
 age etait decouvert, la cathedrale gothique restaurde, I'art 
 Chretien remis k la place eminente d'oli il aurait fallu ne 
 jamais le laisser choir. Mais ou sont les ceuvres execu- 
 tees d'apres ce modele et ces principes? S'il est facile 
 d'apercevoir et de determiner la cathedrale religieuse de 
 Chateaubriand, est il done si aise de distinguer sa cathe- 
 drale poetique? . . . Uncourantvigoureux, que le' Genie 
 du Christianisme' et les 'Martyrs' ont puissamment 
 contribue k de'terminer, fait deriver les imaginations vers 
 les choses gothiques; volontiers, I'esprit frangais se re- 
 tourne alors vers le passe comme vers la seule source de 
 poesie; et voici qu'un Stranger vient se faire son guide 
 et fait miroiter, devant tous les yeux eblouis, la fantas- 
 magorie du moyen age, donjons et creneaux, cuirasses et 
 belles armures, haquen^es et palefrois, chevaliers re- 
 splendissants et mignonnes et delicates chatelaines. . . . 
 Sur ses traces, on se precipita avec furie dans la voie 
 qu'il venait subitement d'e'largir. Ce moyen age, jusqu'k 
 lui si convoitd et si infecond, devinait enfin une source 
 in^puisable d'emotions et de productions artistiques. 
 La ' cathedrale ' etait bien restauree cette fois. Elle le 
 fut meme trop, et borda trop obstinement tous les sentiers 
 
46 <i/l History of English l^manticism. 
 
 litteraires. Mais de cet exces, si vite fatigant, c'est 
 Walter Scott et non Chateaubriand, quoi qu'il en ait pu 
 dire, qui reste le grand coupable. II fit plus que de- 
 couvrir le moyen age; il le mit ^ la mode parmi les 
 Frangais," — Ibid., pp. 195 j^ 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 "The magical touch and the sense of mystery and all 
 the things that are associated with the name romance, 
 when that name is applied to ' The Ancient Mariner,' or 
 ' La Belle Dame sans Merci,' or ' The Lady of Shalott,' 
 are generally absent from the most successful romances of 
 the great mediaeval romantic age. . . . The true roman- 
 tic interest is very unequally distributed over the works 
 of the Middle Ages, and there is least of it in the au- 
 thors who are most representative of the ' age of chivalry.' 
 There is a disappointment prepared for any one who 
 looks in the greater romantic authors of the twelfth cen- 
 tury for the music of ' The Faery Queene ' or ' La Belle 
 Dame sans Merci.' . . . The greater authors of the 
 twelfth century have more affinity to the ' heroic romance ' 
 of the school of the ' Grand Cyrus ' than to the dreams of 
 Spenser or Coleridge. . . . The magic that is wanting to 
 the clear and elegant narrative of Benoit and Chrestien 
 will be found elsewhere; it will be found in one form in 
 the mystical prose of the ' Queste del St. Graal ' — a very 
 different thing from Chrestien's ' Perceval ' — it will be 
 found, again and again, in the prose of Sir Thomas 
 Malory; it will be found in many ballads and ballad 
 burdens, in ' William and Margaret,' in ' Binnorie,' in 
 the ' Wife of Usher's Well,' in the ' Rime of the Count 
 
Walter Scott. 47 
 
 Arnaldos,' in the ' Konigskinder '; it will be found in the 
 most beautiful story of the Middle Ages, ' Aucassin and 
 Nicolette,' one of the few perfectly beautiful stories in 
 the world." — "Epic and Romance," W. P. Ker, London, 
 1897, P-371.^ 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 Colerf5gc, JBowIes, aiiO tbe pope Controversi^. 
 
 While Scott was busy collecting the fragments of 
 Border minstrelsy and translating German ballads,* two 
 othex young poets, far to the south, were preparing their 
 share in the literary revolution. In those same years 
 (1795-98) Wordsworth and Coleridge were wandering to- 
 gether over the Somerset downs and along the coast of 
 Devon, catching glimpses of the sea towards Bristol or 
 Linton, and now and then of the skeleton masts and gos- 
 samer sails of a ship against the declining sun, like those 
 of the phantom bark in " The Ancient Mariner." The 
 first fruits of these walks and talks was that epoch-making 
 book, the " Lyrical Ballads " ; the first edition of which 
 was published in 1798, and the second, with an addi- 
 tional volume and the famous preface by Wordsworth, in 
 1800. The genesis of the work and the allotment of its 
 parts were described by Coleridge himself in the " Bio- 
 graphia Literaria" (18 17), Chapter XIV. 
 
 ** During the first year that Mr, Wordsworth and I were 
 neighbours our conversations turned frequently on the 
 two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the 
 sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth 
 
 * For Coleridge's relations with German romance, see vol. 
 i., pp. 419-21. For his early interest in Percy, Ossian, and 
 Chatterton, ibid., pp. 299, 328, 368-70. 
 
 48 
 
Coleridge, Bowles, and the T'ope Controversy. 49 
 
 of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by 
 the modifying colours of imagination. . , . The thought 
 suggested itself that a series of poems might be composed 
 of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were 
 to be, in part at least, supernatural ; . . . for the second 
 class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life. . . . 
 It was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to 
 persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic. 
 , . . With this view I wrote ' The Ancient Mariner,' and 
 was preparing, among other poems, ' The Dark Ladie ' 
 and the ' Christabel,' in which I should have more nearly 
 realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt." 
 
 Coleridge's contributions to romantic poetry are few 
 though precious. Weighed against the imposing array of 
 Scott's romances in prose and verse,* they seem like 
 two or three little gold coins put into the scales to bal- 
 ance a handful of silver dollars. He stands for so much 
 in the history of English thought, he influenced his own 
 and the following generation on so many sides, that his 
 romanticism shows like a mere incident in his intellectual 
 history. His blossoming time was short at the best, and 
 ended practically with the century. After his return from 
 Germany in 1799 and his settlement at Keswick in 1800, 
 he produced little verse of any importance beyond the 
 second part of "Christabel" (written in 1800, published 
 in 1816). His creative impulse failed him, and he be- 
 came more and more involved in theology, metaphysics, 
 political philosophy, and literary criticism. 
 
 ♦ "There is as much difference between Coleridge's brief 
 poem 'Christabel' and all the narrative poems of Walter 
 Scott ... as between a precious essence and a coarse imita- 
 tion of it got up for sale" (Leigh Hunt's "Autobiographj'," 
 p. 197). 
 
50 iA History of English 'T^manticism. 
 
 It appears, therefore, at first sight, a little odd that 
 Coleridge's German biographer, Professor Brandl, should 
 have treated his subject under this special aspect,* and 
 attributed to him so leading a place in the romantic 
 movement. Walter Scott, if we consider his life-long 
 and wellnigh exclusive dedication of himself to the work 
 of historic restoration — Scott, certainly, and not Cole- 
 ridge was the "high priest of Romanticism." f Brandl is 
 dissatisfied with the term Lake School, or Lakers, com- 
 monly given to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, and 
 proposes instead to call them the Romantic School, Ro- 
 manticists (^Romantiker), surely something of a misnomer 
 when used of an eclectic versifier like Southey, or a poet 
 of nature, moral reflection, and humble life like Words- 
 worth. Southey, in casting about him for a theme, some- 
 times became for the nonce and so far as subject goes, a 
 romancer; as in " Joan of Arc " (1799), "Madoc" (1805), 
 and " Roderick the Goth " (1814) ; not to speak of trans- 
 lations like "Amadis of Gaul," " Palmerin of England," 
 and "The Chronicle of the Cid." But these were not 
 due to the compelling bent of his genius, as in Scott. 
 They were miscellaneous jobs, undertaken in the regular 
 
 * "Samuel Taylor Coleridge und die Englische Romantik," 
 Alois Brandl, Berlin, 18S6. 
 
 t It is in view of his critical attitude, not of his poetry, that 
 Saintsbury applies this title to Coleridge. "The attitude was 
 that of a medisevalism inspired by much later learning, but 
 still more by that intermediate or decadent Greek philosophy 
 which had so much influence on the Middle Ages themselves. 
 This is, in other words, the Romantic attitude, and Coleridge 
 was the high priest of Romanticism, which, through Scott 
 and Byron, he taught to Europe, repreaching it even to Ger- 
 man)', from which it had partly come " ("A Short History of 
 English Literature," by George Saintsbury, London, 1898, 
 p. 656). 
 
Coleridge, Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 5 1 
 
 course of his business as a manufacturer of big, irregu- 
 lar epics, Oriental, legendary, mythological, and what 
 not; and as an untiring biographer, editor, and hack 
 writer of all descriptions. Southey was a mechanical 
 poet, with little original inspiration, and represents noth- 
 ing in particular. Wordsworth again, though innovating 
 in practice and theory against eighteenth-century tradi- 
 tion, is absolutely unromantic in contrast with Scott and 
 Coleridge. 
 
 But it will be fair to let the critic defend his own 
 nomenclature; and the passage which I shall quote will 
 serve not only as another attempt to define romanticism, 
 but also to explain why Brandl regards the Lake poets as 
 our romantic school par excelle72ce. " ' Lake School ' is a 
 name, but no designation. This was felt in England, 
 where many critics have accordingly fallen into the oppo- 
 site extreme, and maintained that the members of this 
 group of poets had nothing in common beyond their per- 
 sonal and accidental conditions. As if they had only 
 lived together, and not worked together! In truth they 
 were bound together by many a strong tie, and above all 
 by one of a polemical kind, namely, by the aversion for 
 the monotony that had preceded them, and by the strug- 
 gle against merely dogmatic rules. Unbending uniform- 
 ity is death! Let us be various and individual as life 
 itself is. . . . Away with dry Rationalism! Let us fight 
 it with all the powers we possess; whether by bold Pla- 
 tonism or simple Bible faith; whether by enthusiastic 
 hymns, or dreamy fairy tales; whether by the fabulous 
 world of distant times and zones, or by the instincts of 
 the children in the next village. Let us abjure the ever- 
 recommended nostrum of imitation of the old masters in 
 
52 z/J History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 poetry, and rather attach ourselves to homely models, and 
 endeavour, with their help, lovingly and organically to 
 develop their inner life. These were the aims of Walter 
 Scott and his Scotch school, only with such changes as 
 local differences demanded. Individuality in person, 
 nationality, and subject, and therefore the emphasis of all 
 natural unlikeness, was the motto on both sides of the 
 Tweed. And, as these men, when confronted by ele- 
 ments peculiar, rare, and marvellous, designated such 
 elements as ' romantic,' so may they themselves be justly 
 called the ' Romantic School.' But the term is much 
 misused, and requires a little elucidation. Shakespeare 
 is usually called a romantic poet. He, however, never 
 used the expression, and would have been surprised if 
 any one had applied it to him. The term presupposes 
 opposition to the classic style, to rhetorical deduction, 
 and to measured periods, all of which were unknown in 
 the time of the Renaissance, and first imported in that of 
 the French Revolution. On the other hand, Words- 
 worth, Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, and Walter Scott's cir- 
 cle all branched off from the classical path with a direct- 
 ness andconsistency which sharply distinguish them from 
 their predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Their 
 predecessors had not broken with the Greek and Latin 
 school, nor with the school of Pope; Chatterton copied 
 Homer; Cowper translated him; Burns in his English 
 verses, and Bowles in his sonnets, adhered to what is 
 called the * pig-tail period'! The principal poems com- 
 posed in the last decennium of the eighteenth century 
 . . . adhered still more to classic tradition. In London 
 the satires of Mathias and Gifford renewed the style of 
 the ' Dunciad,' and the moral poems of Rogers that of 
 
Coleridge, Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 53 
 
 the ' Essay on Man.' Landor wrote his youthful ' Gebir ' 
 in the style of Virgil, and originally in Latin itself. The 
 amateur in German literature, William Taylor of Nor- 
 wich, and Dr. Sayers, interested themselves especially for 
 those works by Goethe which bear an antique character 
 — for ' Iphigenia,' 'Proserpina,' 'Alexis and Dora.' Only 
 when the war with France drew near was the classical 
 feeling interrupted. Campbell, the Scotchman, and 
 Moore, the Irishman, both well schooled by translations 
 from the Greek, recalled to mind the songs of their own 
 people, and rendered them popular with the fashionable 
 world — though only by clothing them in classic garb. 
 How different to the ' artificial rust' of ' Christabel '; to 
 the almost exaggerated homeliness of ' We Are Seven'; 
 and to the rude ' Lay of the Last Minstrel ' ! When at 
 last, with the fall of Napoleon, the great stars — Byron, 
 Shelley, Keats, and later the mature Landor — rose in the 
 hemisphere, they had all imbibed from the Romantic 
 school a warmer form of thought and feeling, and a num- 
 ber of productive impulses; though, Euphorion-like, they 
 still regarded the antique as their parent. They expressed 
 much appreciation of the Romantic school, but their hearts 
 were with ^schylus and Pindar. They contended for 
 national character, but only took pleasure in planting it 
 on classic soil. Byron's enthusiasm for Pope was not 
 only caprice; nor was it mere chance that Byron should 
 have died in Greece, and Shelley and Keats in Italy. 
 Compared with what we may call these classical mem- 
 bers of the Romantic school, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
 Scott . . . may be said to have taken nothing, whether 
 in the form of translation or imitation, from classical 
 literature; while they drew endless inspiration from the 
 
54 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 Middle Ages. In their eyes Pope was only a lucid, 
 able, and clever journeyman. It is therefore fair to con- 
 sider them, and them alone, as exponents of the Romantic 
 school." * 
 
 As to Byron and Shelley this criticism may do; as to 
 Chatterton and Keats it is misleading. Wordsworth 
 more romantic than Chatterton ! More romantic than 
 Keats, because the latter often, and Wordsworth seldom, 
 treats subjects from the antique! On the contrary, if 
 ''the name is graven on the workmanship," "Michael" 
 and "The Brothers" are as classical as "Hyperion" or 
 " Laodamia " or " The Hamadryad " ; " bald as the bare 
 mountain-tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur." 
 Bagehot expressly singles Wordsworth out as an example 
 of pure or classic art, as distinguished from the ornate 
 art of such poets as Keats and Tennyson. And Mr. 
 Colvin hesitates to classify him with Landor only be- 
 cause of his " suggestive and adumbrative manner " — not, 
 indeed, he acknowledges, a romantic manner, and yet 
 " quite distinct from the classical " ; i.e., because of the 
 transcendental character of a portion of his poetry. But 
 whatever may be true of the other members of the group, 
 Coleridge at his best was a romantic poet. " Christabel " 
 and "The Ancient Mariner," creations so exquisite 
 sprung from the contact of modern imagination with 
 mediaeval beliefs, are enough in themselves to justify the 
 whole romantic movement. 
 
 Among the literary influences which gave shape to 
 Coleridge's poetry, Percy's ballads and Chatterton's 
 
 * "Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic 
 School," by Alois Brandl. Lady Eastlake's translation, 
 London, 1887, PP- 219-23. 
 
Coleridge, Bowles, and the Vope Controversy. 55 
 
 " Rowley Poems " are obvious and have already been 
 mentioned. In his first volume of verse (1796), there is 
 manifest a still stronger impulse from the sonnets of the 
 Rev. William Lisle Bowles. We have noticed the reap- 
 pearance of this discarded stanza form in the work of 
 Gray, Mason, Edwards, Stillingfleet, and Thomas Warton, 
 about the middle of the last century.* In 1782 Mrs. 
 Charlotte Smith published a volume of sonnets, treating 
 motives from Milton, Gray, Collins, Pope's " Eloisa " and 
 Goethe's "Werther." But the writer who — through his 
 influence upon Wordsworth more especially — contributed 
 most towards the sonnet revival, was Bowles. In 1789 he 
 had published a little collection of fourteen sonnets,f 
 which reached a second edition with six pieces additional, 
 in the same year. " His sonnets came into Wordsworth's 
 hands (1793)," says Brandl, "just as he was leaving 
 London with some friends for a morning's excursion; he 
 seated himself in a recess on Westminster Bridge, and 
 was not to be moved from his place till he had finished 
 the little book. Southey, again, owned in 1832 that for 
 forty years, he had taken the sweet and artless style of 
 Bowles for a model." J In the first chapter of his " Bio- 
 graphia Literaria" (1817) Coleridge tells how, when he 
 had just entered on his seventeenth year, " the sonnets of 
 Mr. Bowles, twenty in number and just then published in 
 a quarto pamphlet, were first made known and presented " 
 to him by his school-fellow at Christ's Hospital, Thomas 
 
 * See vol. i., pp. 160-61. 
 
 f " Fourteen Sonnets, written chiefly on Picturesque 
 Spots," Bath, 1789. 
 
 t "Samuel Taylor Coleridge," p. 37. Cf. Wordsworth's 
 Sonnets "Upon Westminster Bridge" (1802) and "Scorn Not 
 the Sonnet. " 
 
$6 <iA History of English l{omanticism. 
 
 Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta. "It was a 
 double pleasure to me . , . that I should have received, 
 from a friend so revered, the first knowledge of a poet 
 by whose works, year after year, I was so enthusiastically 
 delighted and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will 
 not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness and im- 
 petuous zeal with which I laboured to make proselytes, 
 not only of my companions, but of all with whom I con- 
 versed, of whatever rank and in whatever place. As my 
 school finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I 
 made, within less than a year and a half, more than forty 
 transcriptions, as the best presents I could offer to those 
 who had in any way won my regard. And with almost 
 equal delight did I receive the three or four following 
 publications of the same author." To Bowles' poems 
 Coleridge ascribes the credit of having withdrawn him 
 from a too exclusive devotion to metaphysics and also a 
 strengthened perception of the essentially unpoetic char- 
 acter of Pope's poetry. " Among those with whom I con- 
 versed there were, of course, very many who had formed 
 their taste and their notions of poetry from the writings 
 of Pope and his followers; or, to speak more generally, 
 in that school of French poetry, condensed and invigo- 
 rated by English understanding, which had predominated 
 from the last century, I was not blind to the merits of 
 this school, yet . . . they gave me little pleasure. . . , 
 I saw that the excellence of this kind consisted in just 
 and acute observations on men and manners in an artifi- 
 cial state of society, as its matter and substance; and in 
 the logic of wit, conveyed in smooth and strong epigram- 
 matic couplets, as its form, . . . The matter and diction 
 seemed to me characterized not so much by poetic 
 
Coleridge, 'Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 57 
 
 thoughts as by thoughts translated into the language of 
 poetry." Coleridge goes on to say that, in a paper written 
 during a Cambridge vacation, he compared Darwin's 
 "Botanic Garden" to a Russian ice palace, "glittering, 
 cold, and transitory " ; that he expressed a preference for 
 Collins' odes over those of Gray; and that in his "de- 
 fence of the lines running into each other, instead of 
 closing at each couplet; and of natural language . . . 
 such as / wi// remember thee, instead of 
 
 . . . Thy image on her wing 
 Before my fancy's eye shall memory bring" 
 
 he had continually to appeal to the example of the older 
 English poets from Chaucer to Milton, "The reader," 
 he concludes, "must make himself acquainted with the 
 general style of composition that was at that time deemed 
 poetry, in order to understand and account for the effect 
 produced on me by the sonnets, the ' Monody at Matlock ' 
 and the ' Hope ' of Mr. Bowles; for it is peculiar to origi- 
 nal genius to become less and less striking, in proportion 
 to its success in improving the taste and judgment of its 
 contemporaries. The poems of West, indeed, had the 
 merit of chaste and manly diction, but they were cold, 
 and, if I may so express it, only dead-coloured; while in 
 the best of Warton's, there is a stiffness which too often 
 gives them the appearance of imitations from the Greek. 
 Whatever relation, therefore, of cause or impulse, Percy's 
 collection of ballads may bear to the most popular poems 
 of the present day, yet in the more sustained and elevated 
 style of the then living poets, Cowper and Bowles were, to 
 the best of my knowledge, the first who combined natural 
 thoughts with natural diction ; the first who reconciled 
 
$8 eA History of English %omanticism. 
 
 the heart with the head." Coleridge adds in a note that 
 he was not familiar with Cowper's "Task" till many 
 years after the publication of Bowles' sonnets, though it 
 had been published before them (1785). 
 
 It would be hard to account for the effect of Bowles' 
 sonnets on Coleridge, did we not remember that it is not 
 necessarily the greatest literature that comes home to us 
 most intimately, but that which, for some reason, touches 
 us where we are peculiarly sensitive. It is a familiar 
 experience with every reader, that certain books make an 
 appeal to him which is personal and individual, an ap- 
 peal which they make to few other readers — perhaps to 
 no other reader — and which no other books make to him. 
 It is something in them apart from their absolute value 
 or charm, or rather it is something in /itm, some private 
 experience of his own, some occult association in depths 
 below consciousness. He has a perfectly just estimate 
 of their small importance in the abstract; they are not 
 even of the second or third rank. Yet they speak to him ; 
 they seem written to him — are more to him, in a way, 
 than Shakspere and Milton and all the public library of 
 the world. In the line of light bringers who pass from 
 hand to hand the torch of intelligential fire, there are 
 men of most unequal stature, and a giant may stoop to 
 take the precious flambeau from a dwarf. That Scott 
 should have admired Monk Lewis, and Coleridge rever- 
 enced Bowles, only proves that Lewis and Bowles had 
 something to give which Scott and Coleridge were pecul- 
 iarly ready to receive. 
 
 Bowles' sonnets, though now little read, are not un- 
 readable. They are tender in feeling, musical in verse, 
 and pure in diction. They were mostly suggested by 
 
Coleridge, "Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 59 
 
 natural scenery, and are uniformly melancholy. Bowles 
 could suck melancholy out of a landscape as a weasel 
 sucks eggs. His sonnets continue the elegiac strain of 
 Shenstone, Gray, Collins, Warton, and the whole "II 
 Penseroso" school, but with a more personal note, ex- 
 plained by a recent bereavement of the poet. " Those 
 who know him," says the preface, " know the occasions 
 of them to have been real; to the public he might only 
 mention the sudden death of a deserving young woman 
 with whom 
 
 Sperabat longos heu ! ducere soles, 
 Et fido acclinis consumuisse sinu. . . . 
 
 This is nothing to the public; but it may serve in some 
 measure to obviate the common remark on melancholy 
 poetry, that it has been very often gravely composed, when 
 possibly the heart of the writer had very little share in 
 the distress he chose to describe. But there is a great 
 difference between natural 2iX\d fabricated feelings even 
 in poetry." Accordingly while the Miltonic group of 
 last-century poets went in search of dark things — grots, 
 caverns, horrid shades, and twilight vales; Bowles' mood 
 bestowed its color upon the most cheerful sights and 
 sounds of nature. The coming of summer or spring; 
 the bells of Oxford and Ostend ; the distant prospect of 
 the Malvern Hills, or the chalk cliffs of Dover; sunrise 
 on the sea, touching "the lifted oar far off with sudden 
 gleam"; these and the like move him to tears equally 
 with the glimmer of evening, the sequestered woods of 
 Wensbeck, the ruins of Netley Abbey,* or the frowning 
 battlements of Bamborough Castle, where 
 
 * Cf. vol. i., p. 182. 
 
6o c^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 " Pity, at the dark and stormy hour 
 Of midnight, when the moon is hid on high. 
 Keeps her lone watch upon the topmost tower." 
 
 In " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers " Byron calls 
 
 Bowles "the maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers," 
 
 whose 
 
 "... muse most lamentably tells 
 What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells."* 
 
 Bowles' attitude had thus something more modern than 
 that of the eighteenth-century elegiacs, and in unison 
 with Coleridge's doctrine, that 
 
 "... we receive but what we give, 
 And in our life alone does nature live : 
 Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud." f 
 
 A number of Bowles' sonnets were addressed to rivers, 
 the Tweed, the Cherwell at Oxford, the Wensbeck, and 
 the Itchin near Winton, poems which stand midway be- 
 tween Thomas Warton's " To the River Lodon" and Cole- 
 ridge's " To the River Otter," with Wordsworth's sonnet 
 sequence, "On the River Duddon." A single sonnet of 
 
 * See Sonnet xvii., "On Revisiting Oxford." 
 See also Sonnet xi., "At Ostend: " 
 
 "The mournful magic of their mingled chimes 
 First waked my wondrous childhood into tears," 
 
 And C/. Francis Mahony's "The Bells of Shandon" — 
 
 "Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood, 
 Fling round my cradle their magic spells." 
 
 And Moore's "Those Evening Bells." The twang of the 
 wind-harp also resounds through Bowles' Sonnets. See for 
 the ..Eolus' harp, vol. i., p. 165, and C/. Coleridge' s poem, 
 "The Eolian Harp." 
 
 f "Dejection: An Ode " (1802). 
 
Coleridge, 'Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 6i 
 
 Bowles will be enough to give a taste of his quality and 
 to show what Coleridge got from him,* 
 
 Bowles was a disciple in the "School of Warton." He 
 was " one of Joseph Warton's Winchester wonders," says 
 Peter Cunningham, in a note in the second edition of 
 Campbell's "Specimens of the British Poets"; "and the 
 taste he imbibed there for the romantic school of poetry 
 was strengthened and confirmed by his removal to Trin- 
 ity College, Oxford, when Tom Warton was master there." 
 Bowles was always prompt to own that he had learned his 
 literary principles from the Wartons; and among his 
 poems is a monody written on the death of his old teacher, 
 the master of Winchester College. His verses abound in 
 Gothic imagery quite in the Wartonian manner; the 
 " castle gleaming on the distant steep " ; " the pale moon- 
 light in the midnight aisle " ; " some convent's ancient 
 walls," along the Rhine. Weak winds complain like 
 spirits through the ruined arches of Netley Abbey: 
 
 "The beam 
 Of evening smiles on the gray battlement, 
 And yon forsaken tower that time has rent." 
 
 * SONNET XX. 
 November, lygs. 
 There is strange music in the stirring wind 
 When lowers the autumnal eve, and all alone 
 To the dark wood's cold covert thou art gone 
 Whose ancient trees, on the rough slope reclined, 
 Rock, and at times scatter their tresses sear. 
 If in such shades, beneath their murmuring. 
 Thou late hast passed the happier hours of spring, 
 With sadness thou wilt mark the fading year ; 
 Chiefly if one with whom such sweets at morn 
 Or eve thou'st shared, to distant scenes shall stray. 
 O Spring, return ! return, auspicious May ! 
 But sad will be thy coming, and forlorn, 
 If she return not with thy cheering ray. 
 Who from these shades is gone, gone far away." 
 
62 zA History of English l^pmanticism. 
 
 His lines on Shakspere recall Collins in their in- 
 sistence upon the "elvish" things in the plays: "The 
 Tempest," " Midsummer Night's Dream," the weird sis- 
 ters in "Macbeth," Ophelia's songs, the melancholy 
 Jacques. The lines to Burke on his "Reflections on the 
 Revolution in France," echo his celebrated dirge over 
 fallen chivalry: 
 
 "Though now no more proud chivalry recalls 
 The tourneys bright and pealing festivals ; 
 Though now on high her idle spear is hung. 
 Though time her mouldering harp has half unstrung," etc.* 
 
 The "Hymn to Woden" alludes to Gray's "Fatal Sis- 
 ters." " St. Michael's Mount " summons up the forms of 
 the ancient Druids, and sings how Fancy, 
 
 "Sick of the fluttering fancies that engage 
 The vain pursuits of a degenerate age, . . . 
 Would fain the shade of elder days recall, 
 The Gothick battlements, the bannered hall ; 
 Or list of elfin harps the fabling rhyme ; 
 Or, wrapt in melancholy trance sublime, 
 Pause o'er the working of some wondrous tale, 
 Or bid the spectres of the castle hail ! " 
 
 Bowles' influence is traceable in Coleridge's earliest 
 volume of verse (1796) in a certain diffused softness and 
 gentle sensibility. This%legiac tone appears particularly 
 in effusions ^like "Happiness," "The Sigh," "To a 
 Young Ass," " To the Autumnal Moon," " Lines on an 
 Autumnal Evening," "To the Nightingale"; in "Melan- 
 choly: A Fragment" and "Elegy; imitated from Aken- 
 side," both in the " Sibylline Leaves" (1797); and in 
 numerous "lines," "monodies," "epitaphs," "odes," and 
 
 *Cf. Scott's " Harp of the North, that mouldering long hast 
 hung," etc. "Lady of the Lake," Canto L 
 
Coleridge, Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 63 
 
 " stanzas." * Coleridge soon came to recognise the weak- 
 ness of his juvenile verses, and parodied himself — and 
 incidentally Bowles — in three sonnets printed at the 
 end of Chapter I. of the " Biographia Literaria," de- 
 signed to burlesque his own besetting sins, a " doleful 
 egotism," an affected simplicity, and the use of "elabo- 
 rate and swelling language and imagery." He never 
 attained much success in the use of the sonnet form. A 
 series of twelve sonnets in his first collection opens with 
 one to Bowles: 
 
 "My heart has thanked thee, Bowles ! for those soft strains 
 Whose sadness soothes me, like the murmuring 
 Of wild bees in the sunny showers of spring," etc. 
 
 More important to our inquiries than the poetry of 
 Bowles is the occasion which he gave to the revival, under 
 new conditions, of the Pope controversy. For it was over 
 the body of Pope that the quarrel between classic and 
 romantic was fought out in England, as it was fought out 
 in France, a few years later, over the question of the 
 dramatic unities and the mixture of tragedy and comedy 
 in the drame. In 1806, just a half century after Joseph 
 Warton published the first volume of his " Essay on 
 Pope," Bowles' edition of the same poet appeared. In 
 the life of Pope which was prefixed, the editor made 
 some severe strictures on Pope's duplicity, jealousy, and 
 other disagreeable traits, though not more severe than 
 have been made by Pope's latest editor, Mr. Elwin, who 
 has backed up his charges with an array of evidence 
 fairly overwhelming. The edition contained likewise an 
 
 * "Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here. 
 To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear? " 
 
 — "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." 
 
64 tA History of English '^Romanticism. 
 
 essay on "The Poetical Character of Pope," in which 
 Bowles took substantially the same ground that had been 
 taken by his master, Joseph Warton, fifty years before. 
 He asserted in brief that, as compared with Spenser, 
 Shakspere, and Milton, Pope was a poet of the second 
 order; that in his descriptions of nature he was inferior 
 to Thomson and Cowper, and in lyrical poetry to Dryden 
 and Gray; and that, except in his " Eloisa" and one or 
 two other pieces, he was the poet of artificial manners 
 and of didactic maxims, rather than of passions. Bowles' 
 chief addition to Warton's criticism was the following 
 paragraph, upon which the controversy that ensued chiefly 
 hinged: "All images drawn from what is beautiful or 
 sublime in the works of nature are more beautiful and 
 sublime than any images drawn from art, and they are 
 therefore J>er se (abstractedly) more poetical. In like 
 manner those passions of the human heart, which belong 
 to nature in general, zxq. per se more adapted to the higher 
 species of poetry than those derived from incidental and 
 transient manners." 
 
 The admirers of Pope were not slow in joining issue 
 "with his critic, not only upon his general estimate of the 
 poet, but upon the principle here laid down. Thomas 
 Campbell, in his" Specimens of the British Poets" (1819), 
 defended Pope both as a man and a poet, and maintained 
 that "exquisite descriptions of artificial objects are not 
 less characteristic of genius than the description of sim- 
 ple physical appearances." He instanced Milton's de- 
 scription of Satan's spear and shield, and gave an ani- 
 mated picture of the launching of a ship of the line as 
 an example of the " sublime objects of artificial life." 
 Bowles replied in a letter to Campbell on " The Invari- 
 
Coleridge, Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 65 
 
 able Principles of Poetry." He claimed that it was the 
 appearances of nature, the sea and the sky, that lent sub- 
 limity to the launch of the ship, and asked: "If images 
 derived from art are as beautiful and sublime as those 
 derived from nature, why was it necessary to bring your 
 ship off the stocks?" He appealed to his adversary 
 whether the description of a game of ombre was as poet- 
 ical as that of a walk in the forest, and whether " the sylph 
 of Pope, ' trembling over the fumes of a chocolate pot,' 
 be an image as poetical as that of delicate and quaint 
 Ariel, who sings ' Where the bee sucks, there lurk {sic) 
 I,' " Campbell replied in the New Monthly Magazine, 
 of which he was editor, and this drew out another rejoin- 
 der from Bowles. Meanwhile Byron had also attacked 
 Bowles in two letters to Murray (182 1), to which the in- 
 defatigable pamphleteer made elaborate replies. The 
 elder Disraeli, Gifford, Octavius Gilchrist, and one Mar- 
 tin M'Dermot also took a hand in the fight — all against 
 Bowles — and William Roscoe, the author of the " Life of 
 Lorenzo de Medici, " attacked him in an edition of Pope 
 which he brought out in 1824. The rash detractor of the 
 little Twitnam nightingale soon found himself engaged 
 single-handed against a host; but he was equal to the 
 occasion, in volubility if not in logic, and poured out a 
 series of pamphlets, covering in all some thousand pages, 
 and concluding with " A Final Appeal to the Literary 
 Public" (1825), followed by "more last words of Baxter," 
 in the shape of "Lessons in Criticism to William Ros- 
 coe" (1825). 
 
 The opponents of Bowles maintained, in general, that 
 in poetry the subject is nothing, but the execution is all ; 
 that one class of poetry has, as such, no superiority over 
 
66 <i/l History of English l^mantictsm. 
 
 another; and that poets are to be ranked by their excel- 
 lence as artists, and not according to some imaginary 
 scale of dignity in the different orders of poetry, as epic, 
 didactic, satiric, etc. " There is, in fact," wrote Roscoe, 
 "no poetry in any subject except what is called forth by 
 the genius of the poet, , . . There are no great subjects 
 but such as are made so by the genius of the artist." 
 Byron said that to the question " whether ' the description 
 of a game of cards be as poetical, supposing the execution 
 of the artists equal, as a description of a walk in a forest,' 
 it may be answered that the materials are certainly not 
 equal, but that the ar/isf who has rendered the game of 
 cards poetical is by far the greater of the two. But all 
 this ' ordering ' of poets is purely arbitrary on the part of 
 Mr. Bowles. There mayor may not be, in fact, different 
 'orders' of poetry, but the poet is always ranked accord- 
 ing to his execution, and not according to his branch of 
 the art." Byron also contended, like Campbell, that art 
 is just as poetical as nature, and that it was not the water 
 that gave interest to the ship but the ship to the water. 
 "What was it attracted the thousands to the launch? 
 They might have seen the poetical * calm water' at Wrap- 
 ping or in the London lock or in the Paddington Canal 
 or in a horse-pond or in a slop-basin." Without natural 
 accessories — the sun, the sky, the sea, the wind — Bowles 
 had said, the ship's properties are only blue bunting, coarse 
 canvas, and tall poles. " So they are," admits Byron, 
 "and porcelain is clay, and man is dust, and flesh is 
 grass; and yet the two latter at least are the subjects of 
 much poesy. . . . Ask the traveller what strikes him as 
 most poetical, the Parthenon or the rock on which it 
 stands. . . . Take away Stonehenge from Salisbury plain 
 
Coleridge, Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 67 
 
 and it is nothing more than Hounslow Heath or any other 
 unenclosed down. . . . There can be nothing more poet- 
 ical in its aspect than the city of Venice; does this de- 
 pend upon the sea or the canals? ... Is it the Canal 
 Grande or the Rialto which arches it, the churches which 
 tower over it, the palaces which line and the gondolas 
 which glide over the waters, that render this city more 
 poetical than Rome itself? . . . Without these the water 
 would be nothing but a clay-coloured ditch. . , . There 
 would be nothing to make the canal of Venice more poet- 
 ical than that of Paddington." 
 
 There was something futile about this whole discus-' 
 sion. It was marked with that fatally superficial and 
 mechanical character which distinguished all literary 
 criticism in Europe before the time of Lessing in Ger- 
 many, and of Wordsworth and Coleridge in England. In 
 particular, the cardinal point on which Pope's rank as a 
 poet was made to turn was really beside the question. 
 There is no such essential distinction as was attempted 
 to be drawn between "natural objects" and "objects of 
 artificial life," as material for poetry. In a higher syn- 
 thesis, man and all his works are but a part of nature, 
 as Shakspere discerned: 
 
 " Nature is made better by no mean 
 But nature makes that mean : so over that art 
 Which you say adds to nature, is an art 
 That nature made : the art itself is nature." 
 
 Shakspere, as well as Pope, dealt with artificial life, 
 i.e., with the life of man in society, but how differently! 
 The reason why Pope's poetry fails to satisfy the heart 
 and the imagination resides not in his subjects — so far 
 Campbell and Byron were right — but in his mood; in his 
 
68 qA History of English 'T{pmanticism. 
 
 imperfect sense of beauty and his deficiency in the high- 
 est qualities of the poet's soul. I may illustrate this by 
 an arrow from Byron's own quiver. To prove how much 
 poetry may be associated with " a simple, household, 
 * indoor,' artificial, and ordinary image," he cites the 
 famous stanza in Cowper's poem to Mrs. Unwin : 
 
 "Thy needles, once a shining store, 
 For my sake restless heretofore, 
 Now rust disused and shine no more, 
 My Mary." 
 
 Let us contrast with this a characteristic passage from 
 " The Rape of the Lock," which also contains an artificial 
 image : 
 
 "On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore 
 Which Jews might kiss and intidels adore." 
 
 What is the difference.'* It is in the feeling of the poet. 
 Pope's couplet is very charming, but it is merely gal- 
 lantry, a neatly turned compliment, playful, only half 
 sincere, a spice of mockery lurking under the sugared 
 words; while in Cowper's lines the humble domestic im- 
 plement is made sacred by the emotions of pity, sorrow, 
 gratitude, and affection with which it is associated. The 
 reason why Pope is not a high poet — or perhaps a poet at 
 all in the best sense of the word — is indicated by Cole- 
 ridge with his usual acuteness and profundity in a sen- 
 tence already quoted; that Pope's poetry both in matter 
 and diction was " characterised not so much by poetic 
 thoughts, as by thoughts translated into the language of 
 poetry." 
 
 Bowles, on the whole, had hold of the right end of the 
 controversy; his instinct was correct, but he was a 
 wretched controversialist. As a poet in the minor key, 
 
Coleridge, 'Bowles, and the Tope Contro'versy. 69 
 
 he was tolerable; but as a prose writer, he was a very 
 dull person and a bore. He was rude and clumsy; he 
 tried to be sarcastic and couldn't; he had damnable iter- 
 ation. Lowell speaks of his "peculiarly helpless way," 
 and says: "Bowles, in losing his temper, lost also what 
 little logic he had, and though, in a vague way, aestheti- 
 cally right, contrived always to be argumentatively wrong. 
 Anger made worse confusion in a brain never very clear, 
 and he had neither the scholarship nor the critical faculty 
 for a vigorous exposition of his own thesis. Never was 
 wilder hitting than his, and he laid himself open to dread- 
 ful punishment, especially from Byron, whose two letters 
 are masterpieces of polemic prose," Indeed, the most 
 interesting feature of the Pope controversy is Byron's part 
 in it and the light which it sheds on his position in rela- 
 tion to the classic and romantic schools. Before the defi 
 nite outbreak of the controversy, Byron had attacked 
 Bowles for his depreciation of Pope, in " English Bards 
 and Scotch Reviewers" (1809), in a passage in which he 
 wished that Bowles had lived in Pope's time, so that 
 Pope might have put him into the " Dunciad." 
 
 It seems at first sight hard to reconcile Byron's evi- 
 dently sincere admiration for Pope with the ultra-roman- 
 tic cast of his own poetry — romantic, as Pater says, 
 in mood if not in subject. In his early fondness for 
 Ossian, his intense passion, his morbid gloom, his ex- 
 altation in wild and solitary places, his love of night and 
 storm, of the desert and the ocean, in the careless and 
 irregular outpour of his verse, in his subjectivity, the 
 continual presence of the man in the work — in all these 
 particulars Byron was romantic and would seem to have 
 had little in common with Pope. But there was another 
 
7© ft/f History of English 'T^pmanticism. 
 
 side to Byron — and William Rossetti thinks his most 
 characteristic side — viz., his wit and understanding; and 
 this side sympathised heartily with Pope. It is well 
 known that when Byron came back from the East he had 
 in his trunk besides the manuscript of "Childe Harold," 
 which he thought little of, certain " Hints from Horace" 
 which the world thinks less of, but which he was eager to 
 have published, while Dallas was urging him to print 
 "Childe Harold." "English Bards and Scotch Re- 
 viewers" is a thoroughly Popeian satire; and "The 
 Vision of Judgment," though not in couplets but in ottava 
 rima, is one of the best personal satires in English. It 
 has all of Pope's malicious wit, with a sweep and glow, 
 which belonged to Byron as a poet rather than as a satirist, 
 and which Pope never had. Lowell thinks, too, that what 
 Byron admired in Pope was "that patience in careful fin- 
 ish which he felt to be wanting in himself and in most 
 of his contemporaries." 
 
 With all this there probably mingled something of 
 perversity and exaggeration in Byron's praises of Pope. 
 He hated the Lakers, and he delighted to use Pope 
 against them as a foil and a rod. He at least was every- 
 thing that they were not. Doubtless in the Pope contro- 
 versy, his "object was mainly mischief," as Lowell says. 
 Byron loved a fight; he thought the Rev. W. L. Bowles 
 an ass, and he determined to have some fun with him. 
 Besides the two letters to Murray in 182 1, an open letter 
 of Byron's to Isaac Disraeli, dated March 15, 1820, and 
 entitled " Some Observations upon an article in Black- 
 wood's Magazine,'''' * contains a long passage in vindica- 
 tion of Pope and in denunciation of contemporary poetry 
 * No. xxix., August, 1819, "Remarks on Don Juan." 
 
Coleridge, 'Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 7 1 
 
 — a passage which is important not only as showing 
 Byron's opinions, but as testifying to the very general 
 change in taste which had taken place since 1756, when 
 Joseph Wartonwas so discouraged by the public hostility 
 to his " Essay on Pope" that he withheld the second vol- 
 ume for twenty-six years. " The great cause of the pres- 
 ent deplorable state of English poetry," writes Byron, " is 
 to be attributed to that absurd and systematic deprecia- 
 tion of Pope in which, for the last few years, there has 
 been a kind of epidemical concurrence. Men of the most 
 opposite opinions have united upon this topic." He then 
 goes on to praise Pope and abuse his own contemporaries, 
 especially the Lake poets, both in the most extravagant 
 terms. Pope he pronounces the most perfect and harmo- 
 nious of poets. " Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge," 
 he says, " had all of them a very natural antipathy to 
 Pope . . . but they have been joined in it by . . . the 
 whole heterogeneous mass of living English poets except- 
 ing Crabbe, Rogers, Gifford, and Campbell, who, both 
 by precept and practice, have proved their adherence ; and 
 by me, who have shamefully deviated in practice, but have 
 ever loved and honoured Pope's poetry with my whole 
 soul." There is ten times more poetry, he thinks, in the 
 " Essay on Man " than in the " Excursion " ; and if you 
 want passion, where is to be found stronger than in the 
 "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard"? To the sneer that 
 Pope is only the " poet of reason " Byron replies that he 
 will undertake to find more lines teeming with imagina- 
 tion in Pope than in any two living poets. "In the mean 
 time," he asks, "what have we got instead? . . . The 
 Lake school," and "a deluge of flimsy and unintelligible 
 romances imitated from Scott and myself." He proph- 
 
72 t/^ History of English '^manticism. 
 
 esies that all except the classical poets, Crabbe, Rogers, 
 and Campbell, will survive their reputation, acknowl- 
 edges that his own practice as a poet is not in harmony 
 with his principles, and says: "I told Moore not very 
 long ago, ' We are all wrong except Rogers, Crabbe, and 
 Campbell.'" In the first of his two letters to Murray, 
 Byron had taken himself to task in much the same way. 
 He compared the romanticists to barbarians who had 
 " raised a mosque by the side of a Grecian temple of the 
 purest architecture"; and who were "not contented with 
 their own grotesque edifice unless they destroy the prior 
 and purely beautiful fabric which preceded, and which 
 shames them and theirs for ever and ever. I shall be 
 told that amongst those I have been (or it may be still 
 am) conspicuous — true, and I am ashamed of it. I have 
 been amongst the builders of this Babel . . . but never 
 among the envious destroyers of the classic temple of 
 our predecessor." " Neither time nor distance nor grief 
 nor age can ever diminish my veneration for him who is 
 the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all 
 feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of 
 my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps he may 
 be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book 
 of Life." * 
 
 * "Time was, ere 3'et in these degenerate days 
 Ignoble themes obtained mistaken praise. 
 When sense and wit with poesy allied. 
 No fabled graces, flourished side by side. . . . 
 Then, in this happy isle, a Pope's pure strain 
 Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain ; 
 A polished nation's praise aspired to claim. 
 And raised the people's, as the poet's fame. . . . 
 [But] Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot. 
 Resign their hallowed bays to Walter Scott." 
 
 — "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." 
 
Coleridge, 'Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 73 
 
 Strange language this from the author of "Childe 
 Harold " and " The Corsair " ! But the very extravagance 
 of Byron's claims for Pope makes it plain that he was 
 pleading a lost cause. When Warton issued the first vol- 
 ume of his " Essay on Pope," it was easy for leaders of 
 literary opinion, like Johnson and Goldsmith, to pooh- 
 pooh the critical canons of the new school. But when 
 Byron wrote, the esthetic revolution was already accom- 
 plished. The future belonged not to Campbell and Gif- 
 ford and Rogers and Crabbe, but to Wordsworth and 
 Scott and Coleridge and Shelley and Keats; to Byron 
 himself, the romantic poet, but not to Byron the laudator 
 temporis acti. The victory remained with Bowles, not 
 because he had won it by argument, but because opinion 
 had changed, and changed probably once and for all.* 
 
 *For the benefit of any reader who may wish to follow up 
 the steps of the Pope controversy, I give the titles of Bowles' 
 successive pamphlets. " The Invariable Principles of Poetry : 
 A Letter to Thomas Campbell, Esq.," 1819. "A Reply to an 
 'Unsentimental Sort of Critic,'" Bath, 1820. [This was :n 
 answer to a review of "Spence's Anecdotes" in the Qiiarh'r- 
 /)' for October, 1820.] "A Vindication of the Late Editor of 
 Pope's Works, " London, 1821, second edition. [This was 
 also a reply to the Oiiarierly reviewer and to Gilchrist's 
 letters in the London Magazine, and was first printed in 
 vol. xvii., Nos. 33, 34, and 35 of the Pamphleteer.'^ "An 
 Answer to Some Observations of Thomas Campbell, Esq., in 
 his Specimens of British Poets" (1S22). "An Address to 
 Thomas Campbell, E.sq., Editor of the New Monthly Maga- 
 zine, in Consequence of an Articl«fin that Publication " (1822). 
 " Letters to Lord Byron on a Question of Poetical Criticism, " 
 London, 1822. "A Final Appeal to the Literary Public Rel- 
 ative to Pope, in Reply to Certain Observations of Mr. Ros- 
 coe," London, 1825. "Lessons in Criticism to William Ros- 
 coe, Esq., with Further Lessons in Criticism to a Quarterly 
 Reviewer." London, 1S26. Gilchrist's three letters to Bowles 
 were published in 1820-21. M'Dermot's "Letter to the Rev. 
 W. L. Bowles in Reply to His Letter to Thomas Campbell, 
 Esq.. and to His Two Letters to Lord Byron," was printed at 
 London, in 1822. 
 
74 <^ History of English 'T^manticism. 
 
 Coleridge's four contributions to the " Lyrical Ballads " 
 included his masterpiece, " The Ancient Mariner." This 
 is the high-water mark of romantic poetry; and, familiar 
 as it is, cannot be dismissed here without full examina- 
 tion. As to form, it is a long narrative ballad in seven 
 " fyts " or parts, and descends from that " Bible of the 
 romantic reformation," Bishop Percy's " Reliques." The 
 verse is the common ballad stanza — eights and sixes — 
 enriched by a generous use of medial rhyme and alliter- 
 tion: 
 
 "The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew. 
 The furrow followed free : 
 We were the first that ever burst 
 Into that silent sea " ; 
 
 varied and prolonged, moreover, by the introduction of 
 additional lines with alternate riming, with couplets 
 and sometimes with triplets. There are many five-lined 
 and six-lined stanzas, and one — the longest in the poem 
 — of nine lines. But these metric variations are used 
 with temperance. The stanza form is never complex; it 
 is built up naturally from the ballad stanza upon which 
 it rests and to which it constantly returns as its norm and 
 type. Of the one hundred and forty-two stanzas in the 
 poem, one hundred and six are the ordinary four-lined 
 stanzas of popular poetry. The language, too, is not 
 obtrusively archaic as it is in Chatterton and some 
 of the Spenserians; at most an occasional "wist" 
 or "eftsoons"; now and then a light accent, in ballad 
 fashion, on the final syllable of a rime-word like mar- 
 iner or countrie. There is no definite burden, which 
 would have been out of place in a poem that is narrative 
 and not lyrical ; but the ballad habits of phrase repeti- 
 
Coleridge, Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 75 
 
 tion and question and answer are sparingly employed. * In 
 reproducing tiie homely diction of old popular minstrelsy, 
 Coleridge's art was nicer than Scott's and more perfect 
 at every point. How skilfully studied, e.g., is the sim- 
 plicity of the following: 
 
 "The moving moon went up the sky 
 And nowhere did abide : 
 Softly she was going tip.'" 
 
 "Day after day, day after day 
 We stuck. " 
 
 "The naive artlessness of the Middle Ages," says 
 Brandi, " became in the hands of the Romantic school, 
 an intentional form of art." The impression of antiquity 
 is heightened by the marginal gloss which the poet added 
 in later editions, composed in a prose that has a quaint 
 beauty of its own, in its mention of " the creatures of the 
 calm " ; its citation of " the learned Jew Josephus and the 
 Platonic Constantinopilitan, Michael Psellus," as au- 
 thorities on invisible spirits; and in passages like that 
 Dantesque one which tells how the mariner " in his lone- 
 liness and fixedness yearneth towards the journeying 
 moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move on- 
 wards; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and 
 
 * "With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, 
 We could not laugh nor wail," etc. 
 
 "With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, 
 Agape they heard me call," etc. 
 
 "Are those her sails that glance in the sun 
 Like restless gossamers? 
 Are those her ribs, " etc. 
 
 Cf. "Christabel": 
 
 "Is the night chilly and dark? 
 The night is chilly, but not dark." 
 
 And see vol. i., p. 271. 
 
1$ <iA History of English '^manticism. 
 
 is their appointed rest, and their native country, and 
 their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, 
 as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a 
 silent joy at their arrival." 
 
 In "The Ancient Mariner" there are present in the 
 highest degree the mystery, indefiniteness, and strange- 
 ness which are the marks of romantic art. The period 
 is not strictly mediagval, for mariners in the Middle Ages 
 did not sail to the south polar regions or lie becalmed 
 in the equatorial seas. But the whole atmosphere of the 
 poem is mediaeval. The Catholic idea of penance or ex- 
 piation is the moral theme enwrought with the story. The 
 hermit who shrives the mariner, and the little vesper bell 
 which biddeth him to prayer are Catholic touches, and so 
 are the numerous pious oaths and ejaculations: 
 
 " By him who died on cross " : 
 
 " Heaven's mother send us grace " : 
 
 "The very deep did rot. O Christ 
 Tliat ever this should be ! " 
 
 The albatross is hung about the mariner's neck instead 
 of the crucifix, and drops off only when he blesses the 
 creatures of the calm and is able to pray. The sleep 
 which refreshes him is sent by " Mary Queen " from 
 heaven. The cross-bow with which he shoots the bird is 
 a mediaeval property. The loud bassoon and the bride's 
 garden bower and the procession of merry minstrels who 
 go nodding their heads before her are straight out of the 
 old land of balladry. One cannot fancy the wedding 
 guest dressed otherwise than in doublet and hose, and 
 perhaps wearing those marvellous pointed shoes and 
 hanging sleeves which are shown in miniature paintings 
 of the fifteenth century. And it is thus that illustrators 
 
Coleridge, 'Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 77 
 
 of the poem have depicted him. Place is equally indefi- 
 nite with time. What port the ill-fated ship cleared from 
 we do not know or seek to know ; only the use of the 
 word /7'r>^' implies that it was somewhere in "the north 
 countree " — the proper home of ballad poetry. 
 
 Coleridge's romances were very differently conceived 
 from Scott's. He wove them out of " such stuff as 
 dreams are made on." Industrious commentators have 
 indeed traced features of "The Ancient Mariner" to 
 various sources. Coleridge's friend, Mr. Cruikshank. 
 had a dream of a skeleton ship. Wordsworth told him 
 the incident, which he read in Shelvocke's voyages, of a 
 certain Captain Simon Hatley who shot a black albatross 
 south of Terra del Fuego, in hopes that its death might 
 bring fair weather. Brandl thinks that the wedding ban- 
 quet in Monk Lewis' " Alonzo the Brave and the Fair 
 Imogene," furnished a hint; and surmises — what seems 
 unlikely — that Coleridge had read a certain epistle by 
 Paulinus, a bishop of the fourth century, describing a 
 vessel which came ashore on the coast of Lucania with 
 only one sailor on board, who reported that the ship had 
 been deserted, as a wreck, by the rest of the crew, and 
 had since been navigated by spirits. 
 
 But all this is nothing and less than nothing. "The 
 Ancient Mariner" is the baseless fabric of a vision. We 
 are put under a spell, like the wedding guest, and carried 
 off to the isolation and remoteness of mid-ocean. Through 
 the chinks of the narrative, the wedding music sounds 
 unreal and far off. What may not happen to a man alone 
 on a wide, wide sea? The line between earthly and un- 
 earthly vanishes. Did the mariner really see the spec- 
 tral bark and hear spirits talking, or was it all but the 
 
78 <iA History of English l^omanticistn. 
 
 phantasmagoria ofc the calenture, the fever which attacks 
 the sailor on the tropic main, so that he seems to see 
 green meadows and water brooks on the level brine? No 
 one can tell ; for he is himself the only witness, and the 
 ship is sunk at the harbour mouth. One conjectures that 
 no wreckers or divers will ever bring it to the top again. 
 Nay, was not the mariner, too, a spectre? Now he is 
 gone, and what was all this that he told me, thinks the 
 wedding guest, as he rises on the morrow morn. Or did 
 he tell me, or did I only dream it? A light shadow cast 
 by some invisible thing swiftly traverses the sunny face 
 of nature and is gone. Did we see it, or imagine it? 
 Even so elusive, so uncertain, so shadowy and phantom- 
 like is the spiriting of this wonderful poem. "Poetry," 
 says Coleridge, " gives most pleasure when only gener- 
 ally and not perfectly understood. It was so by me with 
 Gray's ' Bard ' and Collins' odes. * The Bard' once in- 
 toxicated me, and now I read it without pleasure." * 
 There is no danger that his own poem will ever lose its 
 attractiveness in this way. Something inexplicable will 
 remain to tease us, like the white Pater Noster and St. 
 Peter's sister in Chaucer's night-spell.t 
 
 *"Anima Poetae," 1895, p. 5. This recent collection of 
 marginalia has an equal interest with Coleridge's well-known 
 "Table Talk." It is the English equivalent of Hawthorne's 
 "American Note Books, "full of analogies, images, and re- 
 flections — topics and suggestions for possible development 
 in future romances and poems. In particular it shows an 
 abiding prepossession with the psj'chology of dreams, appa- 
 ritions, and mental illusions of all sorts. 
 
 f " Jesu Crist and Seint Benedight 
 
 Blisse this hous fi-om every wicked wight. 
 Fro the nightes mare, the white Pater Noster ; 
 Where wonest thou, Seint Peter's suster. " 
 
 —"The Miller's Tale." 
 
Coleridge, 'Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 79 
 
 Pater subtly connects Coleridge's poetic method with 
 his philosophical idealism. "The too palpable intruders 
 from a spiritual world, in almost all ghost literature, in 
 Scott and Shakespeare even, have a kind of coarseness 
 or crudeness. . . . ' The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ' 
 has the plausibility, the perfect adaptation to reason and 
 life, which belongs to the marvellous, when actually pre- 
 sented as part of a credible experience in our dreams. 
 . . . The spectral object, so crude, so impossible, has 
 become plausible, as ' the spot upon the brain that will 
 show itself without,' and is understood to be but a condi- 
 tion of one's own mind, for which — according to the scep- 
 ticism latent at least in so much of our modern philos- 
 ophy — the so-called real things themselves are but spectra 
 after all. It is this finer, more delicately marvellous 
 supernaturalism, the fruit of his more delicate psychol- 
 ogy, which Coleridge infuses into romantic narrative, itself 
 also then a new or revived thing in English literature; 
 and with a fineness of weird effect in ' The Ancient Mar- 
 iner ' unknown in those old, more simple, romantic legends 
 and ballads. It is a flower of mediasval, or later German 
 romance, growing up in the peculiarly compounded atmos- 
 phere of modern psychological speculation, and putting 
 forth in it wholly new qualities." 
 
 In " The Ancient Mariner," as in most purely romantic 
 poetry, the appeal is more to the imagination than to the 
 heart or the conscience. Mrs. Barbauld complained that 
 it was improbable and had no moral. Coleridge ad- 
 mitted its improbability, but said that it had too much 
 moral ; that, artistically speaking, it should have had no 
 more moral than a fairy tale. The lesson of course is 
 that of kindness to animals — "He prayeth well who lov- 
 
8o t/1 History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 eth well," etc. But the punishment of the mariner, and 
 still more of the mariner's messmates, is so out of pro- 
 portion to the gravity of the offence as to be slightly 
 ludicrous when stated by Leslie Stephen thus: "People 
 who approve of the unnecessary killing of an albatross 
 will die a lingering death by starvation." The moral, as 
 might be guessed, was foisted upon the poem by Words- 
 worth, and is identical with that of " Hart-Leap Well." 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge started to write "The An- 
 cient Mariner" jointly; and two or three lines in the 
 poem, as it stands, were contributed by Wordsworth. But 
 he wanted to give the mariner himself " character and 
 profession"; and to have the dead seamen come to life 
 and sail the ship into port; and in other ways laid so 
 heavy a hand upon Coleridge's airy creation that it be- 
 came plain that a partnership on these terms was out of 
 the question, and Wordsworth withdrew altogether. If 
 we must look for spiritual sustenence in the poem, we 
 shall find it perhaps not so much in any definite warning 
 against cruelty to creatures, as in the sentiment of the 
 blessedness of human companionship and the omnipres- 
 ence of God's mercy; in the passage, e.g., 
 
 "O wedding guest ! this soul hath been 
 Alone on a wide, wide sea," etc. — 
 
 where the thought is the same as in Cowper's " Soliloquy 
 of Alexander Selkirk," even to the detail of the " church- 
 going bell." 
 
 The first part of " Christabel " wa«; written in 1797; 
 the second in 1800; and the poem, in its unfinished state, 
 was given to the press in 18 16. Meanwhile it had be- 
 come widely known in manuscript. Coleridge used to 
 
Coleridge, Bowles, and the 'Pope Controversy. 8 1 
 
 read it to literary circles, and copies of it had got about. 
 We have seen its influence upon Scott. Byron too ad- 
 mired it greatly, and it was by his persuasion that Cole- 
 ridge finally published it as a fragment, finding himself 
 unable to complete it, and feeling doubtless that the 
 public regarded him much as the urchins in Keats' poem 
 regarded the crone 
 
 " Who keepeth close a wondrous riddle book, 
 As spectacled she sits in chimney nook." 
 
 " Christabel " is more distinctly mediaeval than " The 
 Ancient Mariner," and is full of Gothic elements: a 
 moated castle, with its tourney court and its great gate 
 
 . . . "ironed within and without, 
 Where an army in battle array had marched out " : 
 
 a feudal baron with a retinue of harpers, heralds, and 
 pages; a lady who steals out at midnight into the moon- 
 lit oak wood, to pray for her betrothed knight; a sorceress 
 who pretends to have been carried off on a white palfrey 
 by five armed men, and who puts a spell upon the 
 maiden. 
 
 If "The Ancient Mariner" is a ballad, "Christabel" 
 is, in form, a roman d^aventures, or metrical chivalry tale, 
 written in variations of the octosyllabic couplet. These 
 variations, Coleridge said, were not introduced wantonly 
 but " in correspondence with some transition, in the na- 
 ture of the imagery or passion," A single passage will 
 illustrate this: 
 
 " They passed the hall that echoes still, 
 Pass as lightly as you will. 
 The brands were flat, the brands were dying 
 Amid their own white ashes lying; 
 
82 <^ History of English %omanticism. 
 
 But when the lady passed, there came 
 
 A tongue of light, a fit of flame ; 
 
 And Christabel saw the lady's eye. 
 
 And nothing else saw she thereb}', 
 
 Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall. 
 
 Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. 
 
 O softly tread, said Christabel, 
 
 My father seldom sleepeth well." 
 
 When, after the hurrying anapaests, the verse returns to 
 the strict iambic measure in the last couplet, the effect is 
 a hush, in harmony with the meaning of the words.* 
 
 " Christabel " is not so unique and perfect a thing as 
 "The Ancient Mariner," but it has the same haunting 
 charm, and displays the same subtle art in the use of the 
 supernatural. Coleridge protested that it " pretended to 
 be nothing more than a common fairy tale." f But Lowell 
 asserts that it is "tantalising in the suggestion of deeper 
 meanings than were ever there." There is, in truth, a 
 hint of allegory, like that which baffles and fascinates in 
 Christina Rossetti's " Goblin Market " ; a hint so elusive 
 that the comparison often made between Geraldine 
 and Spenser's Duessa, is distressing to a reader of 
 sensitive nerves. That mystery which is a favourite 
 weapon in the romanticist armoury is used again here 
 with consummate skill. What was it that Christabel 
 saw on the lady's bosom? We are left to conjecture. It 
 was " a sight to dream of, not to tell," J and the poet 
 keeps his secret. Lamb, whose taste was very fine in 
 these matters, advised Coleridge never to finish the poem. 
 Brandl thinks that the idea was taken from the curtained 
 
 * Vide supra, p. 27. 
 \ "Biographia Literaria," chap. xxiv. 
 
 j Keats quotes this line in a letter about Edmund Kean. 
 Forman's ed., vol. iii., p. 4. 
 
Coleridge. Bowles, and the T^ope Controversy, "i-r) 
 
 picture in the "Mysteries of Udolpho"; and he also con- 
 siders that the general situation — the castle, the forest, 
 the old father and his young daughter, and the strange 
 lady — are borrowed from Mrs, Radcliffe's " Romance 
 of the Forest " ; and that Burger's " Lenore," Lewis' 
 " Alonzo," and some of the Percy ballads contributed a 
 detail here and there. But Qiiellenjorschtmgeii of this 
 kind are very unimportant. It is more important to note 
 the superior art with which the poet excites curiosity and 
 suspends — not simply, like Mrs. Radcliffe, postpones — 
 the gratification of it to the end, and beyond the end, of 
 the poem. Was Geraldine really a witch, or did she only 
 seem so to Christabel? The angry moan of the mastiff 
 bitch and the tongue of flame that shot up as the lady 
 passed — were they omens, or accidents which popular 
 superstition interprets into omens? Was the malignant 
 influence which Geraldine exerted over the maiden super- 
 natural possession, or the fascination of terror and repug- 
 nance? Did she really utter the words of a charm, or 
 did her sweet bedfellow dream them? And once more, 
 what was that upon her breast — " that bosom old- -that 
 bosom cold''? Was it a wound, or the mark of a ser- 
 pent, or some foul and hideous disfigurement — or was it 
 only the shadows cast by the swinging lamp? 
 
 That isolation and remoteness, that preparation of the 
 reader's mind for the reception of incredible things, which 
 Coleridge secured in " The Ancient Mariner " by cutting 
 off his hero from all human life amid the solitude of the 
 tropic sea, he here secured— in a less degree, to be sure 
 — by the lonely midnight in Sir Leoline's castle. Geral- 
 dine and her victim are the only beings awake except 
 the hooting owls. There is dim moonlight in the wood. 
 
84 <t/1 History of English '^manticism. 
 
 dim firelight in the hall, and in Christabel's chamber 
 "the silver lamp burns dead and dim." 
 
 The second part of the poem was less successful, partly 
 for the reason, as the reviewers pointed out, that it un- 
 dertakes the hardest of tasks, " witchery by daylight." 
 But there were other reasons. Three years had passed 
 since the poem was begun. Coleridge had been to Ger- 
 many and had settled at Keswick. The poet had been 
 lost in the metaphysician, and he took up his interrupted 
 task without inspiration, putting force upon himself. The 
 signs of effort are everywhere visible, and it is painfully 
 manifest that the poet cannot recover the genial, creative 
 mood in which he had set out. In particular it is ob- 
 servable that, while there is no mention of place in the 
 first part, now we have frequent references to Windermere, 
 Borrowdale, Dungeon Ghyll, and other Lake Country 
 localities familiar enough in Wordsworth's poetry, but 
 strangely out of place in " Christabel." It was certainly 
 an artistic mistake to transfer Sir Leoline's castle from 
 fairyland to Cumberland.* There is one noble passage 
 in the second part, the one which Byron prefixed to his 
 " Farewell " to Lady Byron : 
 
 "Alas ! they had been friends in youth," etc. 
 
 But the stress of personal emotion in these lines is not 
 irji harmony with the romantic context. They are like a 
 patch of cloth of gold let into a lace garment and strain- 
 ing the delicate tissue till it tears. 
 
 The example of "The Ancient Mariner," and in a still 
 greater degree of " Christabel," was potent upon all sub- 
 sequent romantic poetry. It is seen in Scott, in Byron, 
 
 * Vide supra, p. 14. 
 
Coleridge, ^ozvles, and the T'ope Controversy. 85 
 
 and in Keats, not only in the modelling of their tales, 
 but in single lines and images. In the first stanza of the 
 " Lay " Scott repeats the line which occurs so often in 
 " Christabel "— " Jesu Maria shield her well!" In the 
 same poem, the passage where the Lady Margaret steals 
 out of Branksome Tower at dawn to meet her lover in the 
 wood, gliding down the secret stair and passing the 
 bloodhound at the portal, will remind all readers of 
 " Christabel." The dialogue between the river and 
 mountain spirits will perhaps remind them of the ghostly 
 antiphonies which the "Mariner" hears in his trance. 
 The couplet 
 
 "The seething pitch and molten lead 
 Reeked like a witch's caldron red." 
 
 is, of course, from Coleridge's 
 
 "The water, like a witch's oils, 
 Burned green and blue and white." 
 
 In "The Lord of the Isles " Scott describes the "elvish 
 lustre " and " livid flakes " of the phosphorescence of the 
 sea, and cites, in a note, the description, in "The An- 
 cient Mariner," of the sea snakes from which 
 
 "The elvish light 
 Fell off in hoary flakes." 
 
 The most direct descendant of " Christabel " was " The 
 Eve of St. Agnes." Madeline's chamber, "hushed, 
 silken, chaste," recalls inevitably the passage in the 
 
 older poem: 
 
 " The moon shines dim in the open air, 
 And not a moonbeam enters here. 
 But they withoiit its light can see 
 The chamber carved so curiously, 
 
86 (^ History of English T^omanticism. 
 
 Carved with figures strange and sweet, 
 All made out of the carver's brain, 
 For a lady's chamber meet : 
 The lamp with twofold silver chain 
 Is fastened to an angel's feet." 
 
 The rest of Coleridge's ballad work is small in quan- 
 tity and may be dismissed briefly. "Alice du Clos" has 
 good lines, but is unimportant as a whole. The very 
 favourite poem " Love " is a modern story enclosing a 
 mediaeval one. In the moonshine by the ruined tower 
 the guileless Genevieve leans against the statue of an 
 armed man, while her lover sings her a tale of a wan- 
 dering knight who bore a burning brand upon his shield 
 and went mad for the love of " The Lady of the Land." * 
 The fragment entitled " The Dark Ladie " was begun 
 as a " sister tale " to " Love." The hero is a " knight 
 that wears the griffin for his crest." There are only fif- 
 teen stanzas of it, and it breaks off with a picture of an 
 imaginary bridal procession, whose "nodding minstrels" 
 recall "The Ancient Mariner," and incidentally some 
 things of Chatterton's. Lines of a specifically romantic 
 colouring are of course to be found scattered about nearly 
 everywhere in Coleridge; like the musical little song that 
 follows the invocation to the soul of Alvar in " Remorse " : 
 
 "And at evening evermore, 
 In a chapel on the shore, 
 Shall the chanters sad and saintly — 
 Yellow tapers burning faintly — 
 Doleful masses chant for thee, 
 Miser e7-e Do7nine ! " 
 
 * Brandl thinks that this furnished Keats with a hint or two 
 for his "Belle Dame sans Merci. " Coleridge's "Dejection: 
 An Ode " is headed with a stanza from "the grand old ballad 
 of Sir Patrick Spence." 
 
Coleridge, T3owles, and the Tope Controversy. 87 
 
 or the wild touch of folk poesy in that marvellous opium 
 dream, " Kubla Khan " — the " deep romantic chasm " : 
 
 "A savage place, as holy and enchanted 
 As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 
 By woman wailing for her demon lover." 
 
 Or the well-known ending of "The Knight's Grave": 
 
 "The knight's bones are dust, 
 And his good sword rust ; 
 His soul is with the saints, I trust." 
 
 In taking account of Coleridge's services to the cause 
 of romanticism, his critical writings should not be over- 
 looked. Matthew Arnold declared that there was some- 
 thing premature about the burst of creative activity in 
 English literature at the opening of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, and regretted that the way had not been prepared, 
 as in Germany, by a critical movement. It is true that 
 the English romantics put forth no body of doctrine, no 
 authoritative statement of a theory of literary art. Scott 
 did not pose as the leader of a school, or compose 
 prefaces and lectures like Hugo and Schlegel,* As a 
 
 *"The English Romantic critics did not form a school. 
 Like everything else in the English Romantic movement, its 
 criticism was individual, isolated, sporadic, unsystematised. 
 It had no oflficial mouthpiece, like Sainte-Beuve and the 
 Globe; its members formed no compact phalanx like that 
 which, towards the close of our period, threw itself upon the 
 'classiques' of Paris. Nor did they, with the one exception of 
 Coleridge, approach the Romantic critics of Germany in range 
 of ideas, in grasp of the larger signiiicance of their own move- 
 ment. It was only in Germany that the ideas implicit in the 
 great poetic revival were explicitly thought out in all their 
 manj'-sided bearing upon society, history, philosophy, relig- 
 ion ; and that the pioblem of criticism, in particular, was pre- 
 sented in its full depth and richness of meaning. . . . As 
 English Romanticism achieved greater things on its creative 
 than on its critical side, so its criticism was more remarkable 
 
88 zA History of English l^manticistn. 
 
 contributor to the reviews on his favourite topics, he was 
 no despicable critic; shrewd, good-natured, full of spe- 
 cial knowledge, anecdote, and illustration. But his crit- 
 icism was never polemic, and he had no quarrel with the 
 classics. He cherished an unfeigned admiration for 
 Dryden, whose life he wrote and whose works he 
 edited. Doubtless he would cheerfully have admitted the 
 inferiority of his own poetry to Dryden's and Pope's. 
 He had no programme to announce, but just went ahead 
 writing romances; in practice an innovator, but in theory 
 a literary conservative. 
 
 Coleridge, however, was fully aware of the scope of the 
 new movement. He represented, theoretically as well 
 as practically, the reaction against eighteenth-century 
 academicism, the Popean tradition* in poetry, and the 
 maxims of pseudo-classical criticism. In his analysis 
 and vindication of the principles of romantic art, he 
 brought to bear a philosophic depth and subtlety such as 
 had never before been applied in England to a merely 
 belletristic subject. He revolutionised, for one thing, the 
 critical view of Shakspere, devoting several lecture 
 courses to the exposition of the thesis that " Shak- 
 spere's judgment was commensurate with his genius." 
 These lectures borrowed a number of passages from A. 
 W, von Schlegel's " Vorlesungen iiber Dramatische Kunst 
 
 on that side which is akin to creation — in the subtle apprecia- 
 tion of literary quality — than in the analysis of the principles 
 on which its appreciation was founded " (C. H. Herford : 
 "The Age of Wordsworth," p. 50). 
 
 * See "Biographia Literaria," chap. i. "From the com- 
 mon opinion that the English style attained its greatest per- 
 fection in and about Queen Anne's reign, I altogether dis- 
 sent " (Lecture "Ou Style," March 13, 1S18). 
 
Coleridge, "Bowles, and the Tope Controversy. 89 
 
 und Litteratur," delivered at Vienna in 1808, but en- 
 grafted with original matter of the highest value. Com- 
 pared with these Shakspere notes, with the chapters on 
 Wordsworth in the " Biographia Literaria," and with the 
 obiter dicta sown through Coleridge's prose, all previous 
 English criticism appears crude and superficial, and the 
 contemporary squabble over Pope like a scolding match 
 in the nursery. 
 
 Coleridge's acute and sympathetic insight into the 
 principles of Shaksperian drama did not save him from 
 producing his abortive "Zapolya" in avowed imitation 
 of the "Winter's Tale." What curse is on the English 
 stage that men who have done work of the highest grade 
 in other departments, as soon as they essay playwriting, 
 become capable of failures like "The Borderers" and 
 "John Woodville" and "Manfred" and "Zapolya"? 
 As for " Remorse," with its Moorish sea-coasts, wild 
 mountains, chapel interiors with painted windows, torch- 
 light and moonlight, dripping caverns, dungeons, daggers 
 and poisoned goblets, the best that can be said of it is 
 that it is less bad than "Zapolya." And of both it may 
 be said that they are romantic not after the fashion of 
 Shakspere, but of those very German melodramas which 
 Coleridge ridiculed in his " Critique on Bertram." * 
 
 * See vol. i., p. 421 ff. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 •Reats, Xelgb Ibimt, an& tbe Dante IRevival. 
 
 In the interchange of literary wares between England 
 and Germany during the last years of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, it is observable that the English romantics went no 
 further back than to their own contemporaries for their 
 knowledge of the Deutsche Vergangenheit. They trans- 
 lated or imitated robber tragedies, chivalry tales, and 
 ghost ballads from the modern restorers of the Teutonic 
 Mittelalter ; but they made no draughts upon the original 
 storehouse of German mediaeval poetry. There was no 
 such reciprocity as yet between England and the Latin 
 countries. French romanticism dates, at the earliest, 
 from Chateaubriand's "Ge'nie du Christianisme" (1802), 
 and hardly made itself felt as a definite force, even in 
 France, before Victor Hugo's "Cromwell" (1828). But 
 in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Italy, Spain, 
 and France began to contribute material to the English 
 movement in the shape of translations like Gary's " Di- 
 vine Comedy" (1814); Lockhart's "Spanish Ballads" 
 (1824) ; Southey's " Amadis of Gaul " (1803), " Palmerin 
 of England" (1807), and "The Chronicle of the Cid" 
 (1808); and Rose's* " Partenopex of Blois" (1807). 
 By far the most influential of these was Gary's " Dante." 
 
 * Scott's friend, William Stewart Rose — to whom the first 
 verse epistle in " Marmion " is addressed. He also translated 
 the "Orlando Furioso" (1823-31). His "Partenopex" was 
 made from a version in modern French. 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the Tfante Revival. 91 
 
 Hitherto the Italian Middle Age had impressed itself 
 upon the English imagination not directly but through 
 the richly composite art of the Renaissance schools of 
 painting and poetry; through Raphael and his followers; 
 through the romances of Ariosto and Tasso and their 
 English scholar, Spenser. Elizabethan England had been 
 supplied with versions of the "Orlando Furioso"* and 
 the " Gierusalemme Liberata," by Harrington and Fair- 
 fax — the latter still a standard translation and a very ac- 
 complished piece of versification. Warton and Hurd and 
 other romanticising critics of the eighteenth century were 
 perpetually upholding Ariosto and Tasso against French 
 detraction : 
 
 "In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, 
 And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow 
 No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, 
 That whetstone of the teeth — monotony in wire ! " f 
 
 Scott's eager championship of Ariosto has already been 
 mentioned. J But the stuff of the old Charlemagne epos is 
 sophisticated in the brilliant pages of Ariosto, who 
 follows Pulci and Boiardo, if not in burlesquing chivalry 
 outright, yet in treating it with a half irony. Tasso is 
 serious, but submits his romantic matter — Godfrey of 
 Boulogne and the First Crusade — to the classical epic 
 mould. It was pollen from Italy, but not Italy of the 
 Middle Ages, that fructified English poetry in the six- 
 
 * A new translation of the "Orlando," by Hoole, appeared 
 in 1773-83 ; of Tasso's "Jerusalem " in 1763 ; and of Metasta- 
 sio's dramas in 1767. These were in the heroic couplets of 
 Pope. 
 
 f "Childe Harold," Canto iv., xxxviii. And Cf. vol. i., pp. 
 25, 49, 100, 170, 219, 222-26. 
 
 X Vide supra, p. 5. 
 
92 z/1 History of English l^manticism. 
 
 teenth century. Two indeed of g/i a7itichi, "the all 
 Etruscan three," communicated an impulse both earlier 
 and later. Love sonneteering, in emulation of Petrarca, 
 began at Henry VIII.'s court. Chaucer took the sub- 
 stance of "Troilus and Creseyde" and "The Knightes 
 Tale" from Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and "Teseide"; 
 and Dryden, who never mentions Dante, versified three 
 stories from the " Decameron." But Petrarch and 
 Boccaccio were not mediaeval minds. They represent the 
 earlier stages of humanism and the new learning. Dante 
 was the genuine ho^nme du moyen age, and Dante was 
 the latest of the great revivals. " Dante," says Carlyle, 
 "was the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the thought 
 they lived by stands here in everlasting music." 
 
 The difficulty, not to say obscurity, of the " Divine 
 Comedy"; its allusive, elliptical style; its scholasticism 
 and allegorical method; its multitudinous references to 
 local politics and the history of thirteenth-century Italy, 
 defied approach. Above all, its profound, austere, mys- 
 tical spirituality was abhorrent to the clear, shallow 
 rationalism of the eighteenth century, as well as to the 
 religious liberalism of the seventeenth and the joyous 
 sensuality of the sixteenth. Goethe the pagan disliked 
 Dante, no less than Scott the Protestant.* In particular, 
 deistic France, arbiter elega?itiarum, felt with a shiver of 
 repulsion, 
 
 " How grim the master was of Tuscan song." 
 
 "I estimate highly," wrote Voltaire to an Italian cor- 
 respondent, " the courage with which you have dared to 
 
 * Vide supra, p. 40. Goethe pronounced the " Inferno " 
 abominable, the "Purgatorio " doubtful, and the "Paradiso " 
 tiresome (Plumptre's "Dante," London, 1887, vol. ii., p. 484)' 
 
Keats, Leigh Hmit, and the T>ante 'T{evival. 93 
 
 say that Dante was a madman * and his work a monster, 
 . . . There are found among us and in the eighteenth 
 century, people who strive to admire imaginations so 
 stupid and barbarous." A French translation of the 
 "Divine Comedy" had been printed by the Abbe Gran- 
 gierf at Paris in 1596; but Rivarol, whose "Inferno" 
 was published in 1783, was the first Frenchman, says 
 Lowell, to divine Dante's greatness. The earliest Ger- 
 man version was Bachenschwanz's prose translation of 
 the "Commedia" (Leipsic, 1767-69),! but the German 
 romantic school were the first to furnish a sympathetic 
 interpretation of Dante to their countrymen. 
 
 Chaucer was well acquainted with the work of " the 
 grete poet of Florence," and drew upon him occasionally, 
 though by no means so freely as upon Boccaccio. Thus 
 in "The Menkes Tale" he re-tells, in a very inferior 
 fashion, the tragedy of Ugolino. In "The Parliament of 
 Foules " and " The Hous of Fame " there are distinct 
 imitations of Dante. A passage from the " Purgatory " 
 is quoted in the " Wif of Bathes Tale," etc. Spenser 
 probably, and Milton certainly, knew their Dante. Mil- 
 ton's sonnet to Henry Lawes mentions Dante's en- 
 counter with the musician Casella " in the milder shades 
 of Purgatory." Here and there a reference to the " Di- 
 vine Comedy " occurs in some seventeenth-century Eng- 
 lish prose writer like Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy Tay- 
 lor. It is thought that the description of Hell in 
 Sackville's "Mirror for Magistrates" shows an acquaint- 
 
 * See Walpole's opinion, vol. i., p. 235. 
 
 f For early manuscript renderings see " Les Plus Anciennes 
 Traductions Frangaisesde la Divine Comedie, " par C. Morel, 
 Paris, i8q7. 
 
 $ Lowell says Kannegiesser's, 1809. 
 
94 =^ History of English 'T^omanticism. 
 
 ance with the " Inferno." But Dante had few readers in 
 England before the nineteenth century. He was prac- 
 tically unknown there and in all of Europe outside of 
 Italy, "His reputation," said Voltaire, "will go on in- 
 creasing because scarce anybody reads him." And half 
 a century later Napoleon said the same thing in the same 
 words: "His fame is increasing and will continue to in- 
 crease because no one ever reads him." 
 
 In the third volume of his " History of English Poetry " 
 (1781), Thomas Warton had spoken of the "Divine Com- 
 edy " as " this wonderful compound of classical and ro- 
 mantic fancy, of pagan and Christian theology, of real 
 and fictitious history, of tragical and comic incidents, of 
 familiar and heroic manners, and of satirical and sub- 
 lime poetry. But the grossest improprieties of this poem 
 discover an originality of invention, and its absurdities 
 often border on sublimity. We are surprised that a poet 
 should write one hundred cantos on hell, paradise, and 
 purgatory. But this prolixity is partly owing to the want 
 of art and method, and is common to all early com- 
 positions, in which everything is related circumstantially 
 and without rejection, and not in those general terms 
 which are used by modern writers." Warton is shocked 
 at Dante's "disgusting fooleries" and censures his de- 
 parture from Virgilian grace. Milton "avoided the 
 childish or ludicrous excesses of these bold inventions 
 . . . but rude and early poets describe everything." But 
 Warton felt Dante's greatness. " Hell," he wrote, 
 "grows darker at his frown." He singled out for special 
 mention the Francesca and Ugolino episodes. 
 
 If Warton could write thus it is not surprising to dis- 
 cover among classical critics either a total silence as to 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the "Dante 'T^evival. 95 
 
 Dante, or else a systematic depreciation. Addison does 
 not mention him in his Italian travels; and in his "Sat- 
 urday papers " misses the very obvious chance for a com- 
 parison between Dante and Milton such as Macaulay 
 afterwards elaborated in his essay on Milton. Gold- 
 smith, who knew nothing of Dante at first hand, wrote 
 of him with the usual patronising ignorance of eighteenth- 
 century criticism as to anything outside of the Greek 
 and Latin classics: "He addressed a barbarous people 
 in a method suited to their apprehension; united purga- 
 tory and the river Styx, St. Paul and Virgil, heaven 
 and hell together; and shows a strange mixture of good 
 sense and absurdity. The truth is, he owes most of his 
 reputation to the obscurity of the times in which he 
 lived." * 
 
 In 1782, William Hayley, the biographer of Cowper 
 and author of that very mild poem "The Triumphs of 
 Temper," published a verse " Essay on Epic Poetry " 
 in five epistles. In his notes to the third epistle, he 
 gave an outline of Dante's life with a translation of 
 his sonnet to Guido Cavalcanti and of the first three can- 
 tos of the " Inferno." " Voltaire," he says, has spoken 
 of Dante " with that precipitate vivacity which so fre- 
 quently led the lively Frenchman to insult the reputation 
 of the noblest writers." He refers to the "judicious and 
 spirited summary " of the " Divine Comedy " in Warton, 
 and adds, " We have several versions of the celebrated 
 story of Ugolino; but I believe no entire canto of Dante 
 has hitherto appeared in our language. . . . The author 
 has been solicited to execute an entire translation of 
 Dante, but the extreme inequality of this poet would render 
 *" Present State of Polite Learning " (1759). 
 
96 tA History of Enj^lisb l^manticism. 
 
 such a work a very laborious undertaking; and it appears 
 very doubtful how far such a version would interest our 
 country. Perhaps the reception of these cantos may dis- 
 cover to the translator the sentiments of the public." 
 Hayley adopted "triple rhyme," i.e., the terza rima, and 
 said that he did not recollect it had ever been used 
 before in English. His translation is by no means con- 
 temptible — much better than Boyd's, — but fails entirely 
 to catch Dante's manner or to keep the strange precision 
 and picturesqueness of his phrase. Thus he renders 
 
 " Chi per hmgo silenzio parea fioco, " 
 
 " Whose voice was like the whisper of a lute " ; 
 
 and the poet is made to address Beatrice — O donna di 
 virtu — as " bright fair," as if she were one of the belles 
 in "The Rape of the Lock." In this same year aversion 
 of the " Inferno " was printed privately and anonymously 
 by Charles Rogers, a book and art collector and a friend 
 of Sir Joshua Reynolds, But the first complete transla- 
 tion of the "Comedy" into English was made by Henry 
 Boyd, a clergyman of the Irish Church; the "Inferno" 
 in 1785 (with a specimen from Ariosto) ; the whole in 
 1802. Boyd was a quite obscure person, author among 
 other things of a Spenserian poem entitled " The Wood- 
 man's Tale," and his translation attracted little notice. 
 In his introduction he compares Dante with Homer, and 
 complains that " the venerable old bard . . . has been 
 long neglected " ; perhaps, he suggests, because his poem 
 could not be tried by Aristotle's rules or submitted to the 
 usual classical tests. 
 
 "Since the French, the restorers of the art of criticism, 
 cast a damp upon original invention, the character of 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the IDante 'T^evival. 97 
 
 Dante has been thrown under a deeper shade. That 
 agreeable and volatile nation found in themselves an 
 insuperable aversion to the gloomy and romantic bard, 
 whose genius, ardent, melancholy, and sublime, was so 
 different from their own." 
 
 Boyd used a six-lined stanza, a singularly ill chosen 
 medium for rendering the terza rima ; and his diction 
 was as wordy and vague as Dante's is concise and sharp 
 of edge. A single passage will illustrate his manner: 
 
 "So full the symphony of grief arose, 
 My heart, responsive to tiie lovers' woes, 
 
 With thrilling sympathy convulsed my breast. 
 Too strong at last for life my passion grew, 
 And, sickening at the lamentable view, 
 
 I fell like one by mortal pangs oppressed." * 
 
 The first opportunity which the mere English reader 
 had to form any real notion of Dante, was afforded by 
 Henry Francis Gary's translation in blank verse (the 
 "Inferno," with the Italian text in 1805; the entire 
 "Commedia" in 1814, with the title "The Vision of 
 Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise"). This was a work of 
 talent, if not of genius; and in spite of the numerous 
 versions in prose and verse that have since appeared, it 
 continues the most current and standard Dante in Eng- 
 land, if not in America, where Longfellow naturally 
 challenges precedence. The public was as yet so un- 
 prepared to appreciate Dante that Gary's work received 
 little attention until brought into notice by Goleridge; 
 and the translator was deeply chagrined by the indiffer- 
 
 * " Mentre che I'uno spirto questo disse, 
 L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade 
 I venni men, cosi com' io morisse ; 
 E cadde come corpo morte cade." 
 
 — " Inferno, " Canto v. 
 
98 <tA History of English %omanticism. 
 
 ence, not to say hostility, with which his labours were 
 acknowledged. In the memoir * of Gary by his son there 
 is a letter from Anne Seward — the Swan of Lichfield — 
 which throws a singular light upon the critical taste of 
 the "snug coterie and literary lady" of the period. She 
 writes : " How can you profess to be charmed with the 
 few faint outlines of landscape painting in Dante, who 
 are blind to the beautiful, distinct, and profuse scenery 
 in the pages of Ossian?" She goes on to complain 
 that the poem, in its English dress, is vulgar and obscure. 
 Coleridge devoted to Dante a part of his series of lec- 
 tures given at London in 1818, reading copious selections 
 from Gary's version. The translator had claimed, in his 
 introduction, that the Florentine poet " leaves to Homer 
 and Shakespeare alone the power of challenging the pre- 
 eminence or equality." Goleridge emphasized the "end- 
 less, subtle beauties of Dante"; the vividness, logical 
 connection, strength, and energy of his style. In this he 
 pronounced him superior to Milton; and in picturesque- 
 ness he affirmed that he surpassed all other poets ancient 
 or modern. With characteristic penetration he indicated 
 the precise position of Dante in mediaeval literature; his 
 poetry is "the link between religion and philosophy"; 
 it is "christianized, but without the further Gothic acces- 
 sion of proper chivalry"; it has that "inwardness which 
 . . . distinguishes all the classic from all the modern 
 poetry." It was perhaps in consequence of Goleridge's 
 praise that Gary's translation went into its second edition 
 in 18 19, the year following this lecture course, A third 
 was published in 183 1. Italians used to complain that 
 the foreign reader's knowledge of the " Divine Gomedy " 
 * Vol. i., p. 236. 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the IDante l^evival. 99 
 
 was limited to the " Inferno," and generally to the Ugolino 
 and Francesca passages. Coleridge's quotations are all 
 from the "Inferno," and Lowell thinks that he had not 
 read beyond it. He testified that the Ugolino and Fran- 
 cesca stories were already "so well known and admired 
 that it would be pedantry to analyse them." Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds had made a painting of the former subject. In 
 1800 William Blake produced a series of seven engrav- 
 ings in illustration of the "Inferno." In 1817 Flaxman 
 began his illustrations of the whole "Commedia," ex- 
 tending to a hundred plates.* 
 
 In 1819-20 Byron was living at Ravenna, the place of 
 Dante's death and burial f and of the last years of his 
 exile. He used to ride for hours together through Ra- 
 venna's " immemorial wood," X and the associations of 
 the scene prompted him to put into English (March, 1820) 
 the Francesca episode, that " thing woven as out of rain- 
 bows on a ground of eternal black." In the letter to 
 Murray, sent with his translation, he wrote: "Enclosed 
 you will find, line for line, in third rhyme {terza rifua), 
 of which your British blackguard reader as yet under- 
 stands nothing, Fanny of Rimini. You know that she 
 was born here, and married and slain, from Gary, Boyd, 
 and such people." In his diary, Byron commented scorn- 
 fully on Frederick Schlegel's assertions that Dante had 
 never been a favourite with his own countrymen; and 
 
 * Plumptre's "Dante," vol. ii., p. 439. 
 
 f "Ungrateful Florence ! Dante sleeps afar, 
 
 Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore." 
 
 — "Childe Harold," iv., 57. 
 X See vol. i., p. 49 ; and " Purgatorio, " xxviii., 19-20. 
 
 "Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie 
 Per la pineta in sui lito di Chiassi." 
 
loo <i/l History of English 'T^manticism. 
 
 that his main defect was a want of gentle feelings. " JVof 
 a favourite! Why they talk Dante — write Dante — and 
 think and dream Dante at this moment (1821) to an ex- 
 cess which would be ridiculous, but that he deserves it. 
 . . . Of gentle feelings! — and Francesca of Rimini — and 
 the father's feelings in Ugolino — and Beatrice — and ' La 
 Pia ' ! Why there is a gentleness in Dante beyond all 
 gentleness." Byron had not the patience to be a good 
 translator. His rendering is closer and, of course, more 
 spirited than Hayley's; but where long search for the 
 right word was needed, and a delicate shading of phrase 
 to reproduce without loss the meaning of this most mean- 
 ing and least translatable of masters, Byron's work shows 
 haste and imperfection. 
 
 " Love, who to none beloved to love again 
 
 Remits." 
 
 is neither an idiomatic nor in any way an adequate eng- 
 lishing of 
 
 "Amor, che a nuUo amato amar perdona." 
 
 Nor does 
 
 "Accursed was the book and he who wrote," 
 
 fully give the force of the famous 
 
 "Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse." * 
 
 The year before Byron had composed "The Prophecy of 
 Dante," an original poem in four cantos, in terza rima, 
 
 * He did better in free paraphrase than in literal transla- 
 tion. Cf. Stanza cviii., in "Don Juan," Canto iii. — 
 
 "Soft hour ! which wakes the wish and melts the heart " — 
 
 with its original in the " Purgatorio, " viii., 1-6. 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the 'Dante l^evtval. loi 
 
 "... imitative rhyme, 
 Harsh Runic copy of the South 's sublime." * 
 
 The poem foretells " the fortunes of Italy in the ensuing 
 centuries," and is a rheotorical piece, diffuse and de- 
 clamatory, and therein quite the opposite of Dante. It 
 manifests Byron's self-conscious habit of submitting his 
 theme to himself, instead of losing himself in his theme. 
 I/e is Dante in exile, and Gemma Donati is Lady Byron — 
 
 "That fatal she, 
 Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought 
 Destruction for a dowry — this to see 
 And feel and know without repair, hath taught 
 A bitter lesson ; but it leaves me free : 
 I have not vilely found nor basely sought. 
 They made an exile not a slave of me." 
 
 Dante's bitter and proud defiance found a response in 
 Byron's nature, but his spirit, as a whole, the English 
 poet was not well fitted to interpret. In the preface to 
 " The Prophecy," Byron said that he had not seen the 
 ferza rbna tried before in English, except by Hayley, 
 whose translation he knew only from an extract in the 
 notes to Beckford's " Vathek." 
 
 Shelley's kn owledge and appreciation of Dante might 
 be proved from isolated images and expressions in many 
 parts of his writings. He translated the sonnet to Guido 
 Cavalcanti with greater freedom and elegance than Hay- 
 ley, and wrote a short copy of verses on the Hunger 
 Tower at Pisa, the scene of Ugolino's sufferings. In the 
 preface to " Epipsychidion " he cites the " Vita Nuova " 
 as^e utterance of an idealised and spiritualised love 
 l ike that which his own poem records. In the "Defence 
 QtPo_etry"he pays a glowing tribute_Jo._Dante_ as the 
 
 * Dedication to La Guiccioli. 
 
I02 <i/l History of English l^manticism. 
 
 second of epic poets and " the first awakener of entranced 
 Europe." His poetry is the bridge "which unites the 
 modern and the ancient world." Contrary to the prevail- 
 ing critical tradition, Shelley preferred the "Purgatory" 
 and the "Paradise "to the "Hell." Shelley also em- 
 ployed ^erza rima in his fragmentary pieces, " Prince 
 Athanase," "The Triumph of Life," "The Woodman and 
 the Nightingale," and in one of his best lyrics, the "Ode 
 to the West Wind," * written in 1819 "in a wood that 
 skirts the Arno, near Florence." This linked measure, 
 so difficult for the translator and which gives a hampered 
 movement to Byron's and Hayley's specimens of the " In- 
 ferno," Shelley may be said to have really domesticated 
 in English verse by his splendid handling of it in orig- 
 inal work: 
 
 " Make me thy lyre even as the forest is : 
 What if my leaves are falling, like its own? 
 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 
 Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 
 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, 
 My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! " 
 
 Shelley expressed to Medwin his dissatisfaction with 
 all English renderings from Dante — even with Gary — and 
 announced his intention, or desire, to translate the whole 
 of the " Divine Comedy " in terza rima. Two specimens 
 of this projected version he gave in "Ugolino," and 
 "Matilda Gathering Flowers" ("Purg.," xxviii., 1-5 1). 
 He also made a translation of the first canzone of the 
 " Gonvito." 
 
 After the appearance of Gary's version, critical com- 
 
 *But in this poem each thirteenth and fourteenth line make 
 a couplet, thus breaking up the whole into a series of loose 
 sonnets. 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the T)ante l^vival. 1 03 
 
 prehension of Dante grew rapidly. In the same year 
 when Coleridge gave his lectures, Hallam published his 
 "Middle Ages," which contained a just though somewhat 
 coldly worded estimate of the great Italian. This was 
 amplified in his later work, "The Literature of Europe" 
 (1838-39). Hallam said that Dante was the first name 
 in the literature of the Middle Ages, the creator of his 
 nation's poetry, and the most original of all writers, and 
 the most concise. But he blamed him for obscurity, 
 forced and unnatural turns of expression, and barbarous 
 licenses of idiom. The " Paradise " seemed to him tedi- 
 ous, as a whole, and much of the " Purgatory " heavy. 
 Hallam repeated, if he did not originate that nice bit of 
 discernment, that in his " Paradise " Dante uses only 
 ihree^l^a^mg ideas — light, music, and motion. Then 
 came Macaulay's essay " Milton," in the Edinburgh for 
 1825, with the celebrated parallel between the "Divine 
 Comedy " and the " Paradise Lost," and the contrast be- 
 tween Dante's " picturesque " and Milton's " imaginative " 
 method. Macaulay's analysis has been questioned by 
 Ruskin and others; some of his positions were perhaps 
 mistaken, but they were the most advanced that English 
 Dante criticism had as yet taken up. And finally came 
 Carlyle's vivid piece of portrait painting in " Hero Wor- 
 ship" (1841). The first literal prose translation of any 
 extent from the "Commedia" was the "Inferno" by 
 Carlyle's brother John (1849). 
 
 Since the middle of the century Dante study and Dante 
 literature in English-speaking lands have waxed enor- 
 mously. Dante societies have been founded in England 
 and America. Almost every year sees another edition, a 
 new commentary or a fresh translation in prose, in blank 
 
104 "^^ History of English l{omanticism. 
 
 verse, in ferza rivia, or in some form of stanza. It is 
 not exaggerating to say that there is more public mention 
 of Dante now in a single year than in all the years of the 
 eighteenth century together. It would be interesting, if 
 it were possible, to count the times that Dante's name 
 occurs in English writings of the eighteenth and then of 
 the nineteenth century; afterwards to do the same with 
 Ariosto and Tasso and compare the results. It would be 
 found that, while the eighteenth century set no very high 
 value on Ariosto and Tasso, it ignored Dante altogether; 
 and that the nineteenth has put aside the superficial medi- 
 aevalism of the Renaissance romancers and gone back to 
 the great religious romancer of the Italian Middle Age. 
 There is no surer plummet than Dante's to sound the 
 spiritual depth of a time. It is in the nineteenth century 
 first that Shakspere and Dante took possession of the 
 European mind. In 1800 Shakspere was an English, 
 or at most an English and German poet, and Dante 
 exclusively an Italian. In 1900 they had both become 
 world poets. Shakspere's foreign conquests were the 
 earlier and are still the wider, as wide perhaps as the 
 expanse — 
 
 "That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne." 
 
 But the ground that Dante has won he holds with equal 
 secureness. Not that he will ever be popular, in Shak- 
 spere's way; and yet it is far gone when the aesthete in 
 a comic opera is described as a '' Francesca da Rimini 
 young man." 
 
 As a stimulus to creative work the influence of Dante, 
 though not entirely absent, is not conspicuous in the first 
 half of the century. It is not until the time of the Ros- 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the T)ante 1{evival. 105 
 
 settis in England and of Longfellow and Dr. Parsons in 
 America that any poetry of a really Dantesque inspira- 
 tion and, at the same time, of high original value was 
 added to our literature.* 
 
 The first fruits of the Dante revival in England, in the 
 shape of original production, was Leigh Hunt's "Story 
 of Rimini" (1816)— "Mr. Hunt's smutty story of Ri- 
 mini," as the Tory wits of Blackwood were fond of calling 
 it in their onslaughts upon the Cockney school. This 
 was a romaunt in four cantos upon the already familiar 
 episode of Francesca, that " lily in the mouth of Tartarus." 
 Hunt took Dryden's " Fables " as his model in versifica- 
 tion, employing the heroic couplet with the frequent va- 
 riation of the triplet and the alexandrine. The poem is 
 not at all Dantesque in its lax and fluent sweetness, and 
 in that colloquial, familiar manner which is constant in 
 all Hunt's writing, both prose and verse; reminding 
 one, at its best, of Chaucer, who was, indeed, one of his 
 favourite masters. Hunt softens the ferocity of the tale 
 as given by Boccaccio, according to whom the husband 
 Giovanni Malatesta was a cripple, and killed the lovers 
 in flagra7ite delicto. Hunt makes him a personable man, 
 though of proud and gloomy temper. He slays his 
 brother Paolo in chivalrous fashion and in single combat, 
 and Francesca dies of a broken heart. The descriptive 
 portions of the " Story of Rimini" are charming: the 
 
 * T. W. Parsons' "Lines on a Bust of Dante" appeared in 
 the Boston Advertisei' in 1841. His translation of the first 
 ten cantos of the " Inferno" was published in 1843: later in- 
 stalments in 1867 and 1893. Longfellow's version of the 
 "Divine Comedy" with the series of sonnets by the translator 
 came out in 1867-70. For the Dante work of the Rossettis, 
 'Vide i7ifra, pp. 282 ff. 
 
io6 5/7 History of English 'T^pmanticism. 
 
 feudal procession with trumpeters, heralds, squires, and 
 knights, sent to escort home the bride; the pine forest 
 outside Ravenna; and the garden at Rimini in which the 
 lovers used to meet — 
 
 "Places of nestling green for poets made." 
 
 Hunt had a quick eye for colour; a fondness, not al- 
 together free from affectation, for dainty phrases; and 
 a feminine love of little niceties in dress, tapestry, 
 needlework, and furnishings. The poem was written 
 mostly in prison where its author spent two years for a 
 libel on the Prince Regent. Byron used to visit him 
 there and bring him books bearing on Francesca's his- 
 tory. Hunt brought into the piece romantic stuff from 
 various sources, including a summary of the book which 
 betrayed the lovers to their fatal passion, the romance of 
 "Lancelot du Lac." And Giovanni speaks to his dying 
 brother a paraphrase of the celebrated eulogy pronounced 
 over Lancelot by Sir Ector in the " Morte Darthur": 
 
 "And. Paulo, thou wert the completest knight 
 That ever rode with banner to the fight ; 
 And thou wert the most beautiful to see, 
 That ever came in press of chivalry : 
 And of a sinful man thou wert the best 
 That ever for his friend put spear in rest ; 
 And thou wert the most meek and cordial 
 That ever among ladies eat in hall ; 
 And thou wert still, for all that bosom gored. 
 The kindest man that ever struck with sword." 
 
 Hunt makes the husband discover his wife's infidelity 
 by overhearing her talking in her sleep. In many other 
 particulars he enfeebles, dandifies, and sentimentalises 
 Dante's fierce, abrupt tragedy; holding the reader by the 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the Tfante Revival 107 
 
 button while he prattles in his garrulous way of Paulo's 
 " taste "— 
 
 "The very nose, lightly yet firmly wrought, 
 
 Showed taste " — 
 and of 
 
 "The two divinest things in earthly lot, 
 
 A lovely woman in a rural spot ! " 
 
 a couplet which irresistibly suggests suburban picnics. 
 
 Yet no one in his generation did more than Leigh 
 Hunt to familiarise the English public with Italian ro- 
 mance. He began the study of Italian when he was a 
 schoolboy at Christ Hospital, being attracted to Ariosto 
 by a picture of Angelica and Medoro, in West's studio. 
 Like his friend Keats, on whose " Eve of St. Agnes " he 
 wrote an enthusiastic commentary,* Hunt was eclectic in 
 his choice of material, drawing inspiration impartially 
 from the classics and the romantics; but, like Keats, he 
 became early a declared rebel against eighteenth-century 
 traditions and asserted impulse against rule. " In anti- 
 quarian corners," he says, in writing of the influences of 
 his childish days, "Percy's 'Reliques' were preparing a 
 nobler age both in poetry and prose," At school he fell 
 passionately in love with Collins and Gray, composed a 
 "Winter" in imitation of Thomson, one hundred stanzas 
 of a "Fairy King" in emulation of Spenser, and a long 
 poem in Latin inspired by Gray's odes and Malet's 
 "Northern Antiquities." In 1802 [aetate 18] he pub- 
 lished a volume of Xh^'s,^ juvenilia — odes after Collins and 
 Gray, blank verse after Thomson and Akenside, and a 
 " Palace of Pleasure " after Spenser's " Bower of Bliss." f 
 
 * "The Seer." 
 
 f He named a daughter, born while he was in prison, after 
 Spenser's Florimel. 
 
io8 <iA History of English Romanticism. 
 
 It was in this same year that on a visit to Oxford, he was 
 introduced to Kett, the professor of poetry, who expressed 
 a hope that the youthful bard might be inspired by "the 
 muse of Warton," whom Hunt had never read. There 
 had fallen in Hunt's way when he was a young man, 
 Bell's edition of the poets, which included Chaucer and 
 Spenser. "The omission of these in Cooke's edition," 
 he says, " was as unpoetical a sign of the times as the 
 present familiarity with their names is the reverse. It 
 was thought a mark of good sense; as if good sense, in 
 matters of literature, did not consist as much in knowing 
 what was poetical poetry, as brilliant wit." Of his 
 "Feast of the Poets" (1814) he writes: * "I offended all 
 the critics of the old or French school, by objecting to 
 the monotony of Pope's versification, and all the critics of 
 the new or German school by laughing at Wordsworth." 
 In the preface to his collected poems [1832] occurs the 
 following interesting testimony to the recentness of the 
 new criticism. " So long does fashion succeed in palm- 
 ing its petty instincts upon the world for those of a nation 
 and of nature, that it is only of late years that the French 
 have ceased to think some of the most affecting passages 
 in Shakespeare ridiculous. . . . Yet the English them- 
 selves, no great while since, half blushed at these criti- 
 cisms, and were content if the epithet ' bizarre ' (' 7'ofre 
 bizarre Shakespeare ') was allowed to be translated into 
 ' a wild, irregular genius.' Everything was wild and 
 irregular except rhymesters in toupees. A petty con- 
 spiracy of decorums took the place of what was becoming 
 to humanity." In the summer of 1822 Hunt went by 
 sailing vessel through the Mediterranean to Italy. The 
 *" Autobiography," p. 200 (ed. of 1870). 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the T>ante l^vival. 109 
 
 books which he read chiefly on board ship were "Don 
 Quixote," Ariosto, and Berni; and his diary records 
 the emotion with which he coasted the western shores of 
 Spain, the ground of Italian romance, where the Pay- 
 nim chivalry used to land to go against Charlemagne: 
 the scene of Boiardo's " Orlando Inamorato " and Ari- 
 osto's " Orlando Furioso." " I confess I looked at these 
 shores with a human interest, and could not help feeling 
 that the keel of our vessel was crossing a real line, over 
 which knights and lovers had passed. And so they 
 have, both real and fabulous; the former not less roman- 
 tic, the latter scarcely less real. . . . Fair speed your 
 sails over the lucid waters, ye lovers, on a lover-like sea! 
 Fair speed them, yet never land; for where the poet has 
 left you, there ought ye, as ye are, to be living forever — 
 forever gliding about a summer sea, touching at its flow- 
 ery islands and reposing beneath its moon," 
 
 Hunt's sojourn in Italy, where he lived in close asso- 
 ciation with Byron and Shelley, enabled him to preciser 
 his knowledge of the Italian language and literature. In 
 1846 he published a volume of " Stories from the Italian 
 Poets," containing a summary or free paraphrase in prose 
 of the "Divine Comedy" and the poems of Pulci, Boi- 
 ardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, " with comments throughout, 
 occasional passages versified and critical notices of the 
 lives and genius of the authors." Like our own roman- 
 ticist poet Longfellow, who rediscovered Europe for 
 America, Leigh Hunt was a sympathetic and interpreta- 
 tive rather than a creative genius; and like Longfellow, 
 an admirable translator. Among his collected poems are 
 a number of elegant and spirited versions from various 
 mediasval literatures. " The Gentle Armour " is a play- 
 
no iA History of English l^manticism. 
 
 ful adaptation of a French fabliau " Les Trois Chevaliers 
 et la Chemise," which tells of a knight whose hard-hearted 
 lady set him the task of fighting his two rivals in the 
 lists, armed only in her smock; and, in contrition for 
 this harsh imposure, went to the altar with her faith- 
 ful champion, wearing only the same bloody sark as her 
 bridal garment. At least this is the pretty turn which 
 Hunt gave to the story. In the original it had a coarser 
 ending. There are also, among these translations from 
 mediaeval sources, the Latin drinking song attributed to 
 Walter Map — 
 
 Mz'/iz est propositum in taberna mori — 
 
 and Andrea de Basso's terrible " Ode to a Dead Body," 
 in fifteenth-century Italian; which utters, with extraor- 
 dinary power, the ascetic thought of the Middle Age, 
 dwelling with a kind of gloomy exultation on the foulness 
 of the human frame in decay. 
 
 In the preface to his " Italian Poets," Hunt speaks of 
 " how widely Dante has re-attracted of late the attention 
 of the world." He pronounces him " the greatest poet for 
 intensity that ever lived," and complains that his metri- 
 cal translators have failed to render his "passionate, 
 practical, and creative style — a style which may be said 
 to write things instead of words." Hunt's introduction 
 is a fine piece of critical work. His alert, sparkling, and 
 nimble intellect — somewhat lacking in concentration and 
 seriousness — but sensitive above all things to the pic- 
 turesque, was keenly awake to Dante's poetic greatness. 
 On the other hand, his cheerful philosophy and tolerant, 
 not to say easy-going moral nature, was shocked by the 
 Florentine's bitter pride, and by what he conceives to be 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the "Dante T^vival. m 
 
 his fanaticism, bigotry, superstition, and personal vindic- 
 tiveness, when 
 
 " Hell he peoples with his foes, 
 Dark scourge of many a guilty line." 
 
 Hunt was a Universalist, and Dante was a Catholic 
 Calvinist, There was a determined optimism about 
 Hunt, and a buoyancy as of a cork or other light body, 
 sometimes a little exasperating to men of less sanguine 
 temperament.* He ends by protesting that Dante is a 
 semi-barbarian and his "Divine Comedy" too often an 
 infernal tragedy. " Such a vision as that of his poem 
 (in a theological point of view) seems no better than the 
 dream of an hypochondriacal savage." It was some 
 years before this, in his lecture on " The Hero as Poet," 
 delivered in 1840, that a friend of Leigh Hunt, of a tem- 
 perament quite the opposite of his, had spoken a very 
 different word touching this cruel scorn — this sceva iiidig- 
 Jiatio of Dante's. Carlyle, like Hunt, discovered intejisity 
 to be the prevailing character of Dante's genius, em- 
 blemed by the pinnacle of the city of Dis; that "red-hot 
 cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity of 
 gloom." Hunt, the Universalist, said of Dante, "when 
 he is sweet-natured once he is bitter a hundred times." 
 "Infinite pity," says Carlyle, the Calvinist, "yet also in- 
 finite rigour of law; it is so nature is made; it is so 
 Dante discerned that she was made. What a paltry no- 
 tion is that of his ' Divine Comedy's ' being a poor sple- 
 netic, impotent terrestrial libel; putting those into hell 
 whom he could not be avenged upon on earth ! I suppose 
 
 * See Dickens' caricature of him as Harold Skimpole in 
 ^ Bleak House." 
 
112 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 if ever pity tender as a mother's was in the heart of any 
 man, it was in Dante's. But a man who does not know 
 rigour cannot pity either. His very pity will be cowardly, 
 egoistic — sentimentality, or little better. . , . Morally 
 great above all we must call him; it is the beginning of 
 all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love; 
 as, indeed, what are they but the inverse or converse of 
 his love? " 
 
 It is interesting to note that, antipathetic as Hunt's 
 nature was, in many ways, not only to the individual 
 Dante but to the theological thought of which he was the 
 spokesman, in his view of 'the sacred art of the Italian 
 Middle Age he anticipated the Pre-Raphaelites and the 
 modern interpreters of Dante. Here is a part of what 
 he says of the paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa: 
 "The best idea, perhaps, which I can give an English- 
 man of the general character of the painting is by refer- 
 ring him to the engravings of Albert Durer and the seri- 
 ous parts of Chaucer. There is the same want of proper 
 costume — the same intense feeling of the human being, 
 both in body and soul — the same bookish, romantic, and 
 retired character — the same evidences, in short, of antiq- 
 uity and commencement, weak (where it is weak) for 
 want of a settled art and language, but strong for that 
 very reason in first impulses, and in putting down all 
 that is felt. . . . The manner in which some of the hoary 
 saints in these pictures pore over their books and carry 
 their decrepit old age, full of a bent and absorbed feeble- 
 ness — the set limbs of the warriors on horseback — the 
 sidelong unequivocal looks of some of the ladies playing 
 on harps and conscious of their ornaments — the people 
 of fashion seated in rows, with Time coming up unawares 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the 'Dante l^evival. 113 
 
 to destroy them — the other rows of elders and doctors of 
 the Church, forming part of the array of heaven — the 
 uplifted hand of Christ denouncing the wicked at the 
 day of judgment — the daring satires occasionally intro- 
 duced against monks and nuns — the profusion of atti- 
 tudes, expressions, incidents, broad draperies, ornaments 
 of all sorts, visions, mountains, ghastly looking cities, 
 fiends, angels, sibylline old women, dancers, virgin brides, 
 mothers and children, princes, patriarchs, dying saints; 
 it would be simply blind injustice to the superabundance 
 and truth of conception in all this multitude of imagery 
 not to recognize the real inspirers as well as harbingers 
 of Raphael and Michael Angelo, instead of confining the 
 honour to the Masaccios and Peruginos, [who] . . , are 
 no more to be compared with them than the sonneteers 
 of Henry VIII. 's time are to be compared with Chaucer. 
 Even in the very rudest of the pictures, where the souls 
 of the dying are going out of their mouths, in the shape 
 of little children, there are passages not unworthy of 
 Dante and Michael Angelo. . . . Giotto, be thou one to 
 me hereafter, of a kindred brevity, solidity, and stateli- 
 ness with that of thy friend, Dante! " * 
 
 Amiong^_all_the._ writers of his generation, Keats was 
 most purely the poet, the artist of the beautiful. His 
 
 * " When I was last at Haydon' s, " wrote Keats to his brother 
 George in 1818-19, "I looked over a book of prints taken from 
 the fresco of the church at Milan, the name of which I forget. 
 In it were comprised specimens of the first and second age 
 of art in Italy. I do not think I ever had a greater treat out 
 of Shakespeare ; full of romance and the most tender feeling ; 
 magnificence of drapery beyond everything I ever saw, not 
 excepting Raphael's — but grotesque to a curious pitch — yet 
 still making up a fine whole, even finer to me than more ac- 
 complished works, as there was left so much room for imagi- 
 nation." 
 
114 c^ History of English l^manticism. 
 
 sensitive imagination thrilled to every touch of beauty 
 from whatever quarter. That his work is mainly retro- 
 spective and eclectic in subject is because a young poet's 
 mind responds more readily to books than to life, and 
 this young poet did not outlive his youth. In t he Greek 
 mythology he found a world of lovely images ready to 
 his hand ; in the poetry of Spenser, Chaucer, and Ariosto 
 he found another such world. Arcadia and Faeryland — 
 "the realms of gold" — he rediscovered them both for 
 himself, and he struck into the paths that wound through 
 their enchanted thickets with the ardour of an explorer. 
 This was the very mood of the Renaissance — this_g£rual 
 heat which fuses together the pagan and the Christian 
 systems — this indifference of the creative imagination to 
 the mere sources and materials of its creations. Indeed, 
 there is in Keats' style a " natural magic " which forces 
 us back to Shakspere for comparison ; a noticeable like- 
 ness to the diction of the Elizabethans, when the classics 
 were still a living spring of inspiration, and not a set of 
 copies held in terrorem over the head of every new poet. 
 -—Keats' break with the classical tradition was early and 
 decisive. In his first volume (1S17) there is a piece en- 
 titled "Sleep and Poetry," composed after a night passed 
 at Leigh Hunt's cottage near Hampstead, which contains 
 his literary declaration of faith. After speaking of the 
 beauty that fills the universe, and of the office of Imag- 
 ination to be the minister and interpreter of this beauty, 
 as in the old days when " here her altar shone, even in 
 this isle," and "the muses were nigh cloyed with 
 honours," he asks: 
 
 "Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism 
 Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the IDante l^vival. 115 
 
 Made great Apollo blush for this, his land. 
 
 Men were thought wise who could not understand 
 
 His glories: with a puling infant's force, 
 
 They swayed about upon a rocking horse 
 
 And thought it Pegasus. Ah, dismal-souled ! 
 
 The winds of heaven blew, the ocean rolled 
 
 Its gathering waves — ye felt it not. The blue 
 
 Bowed its eternal bosom, and the dew 
 
 Of summer night collected still, to make 
 
 The morning precious. Beautj' was awake ! 
 
 Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead 
 
 To things ye knew not of — were closely wed 
 
 To musty laws, lined out with wretched rule 
 
 And compass vile : so that ye taught a school 
 
 Of dolts to smooth, inlay and clip and fit ; 
 
 Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit. 
 
 Their verses tallied. Easy was the task : 
 
 A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask 
 
 Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race ! 
 
 That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face, 
 
 And did not know it, — no, thej' went about, 
 
 Holding a poor decrepit standard out. 
 
 Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and, in large, 
 
 The name of one Boileau ! " 
 
 This complaint, so far as it relates to the sfy/e of the 
 rule-ridden eighteenth-century poetry, had been made 
 before : by Cowper, by Wordsworth, by Coleridge. But 
 Keats, with his instinct for beauty, pierces to the core of 
 the matter. It was because of Pope's defective sense of 
 the beautiful that the doubt arose whether he was a poet 
 at all. It was because of its 
 
 "... forgetting the great end 
 Of Poetry, that it should be a friend 
 To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man," 
 
 that the poetry of the classical school was so unsatisfying. 
 This is one of the very few passages of Keats that are at 
 all doctrinal* or polemic; and as such it has been re- 
 
 *Against the hundreds of maxims from Pope, Keats fur- 
 nishes a single motto — the first line of "Endymion " — 
 "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." 
 
ii6 <iA History of English T^omantict'sm. 
 
 peatedly cited by biographers and essayists and literary 
 historians. Lowell quotes it, in his essay on Dryden, 
 and adds : " Keats was the first resolute and wilful heretic, 
 the true founder of the modern school, which admits no 
 cis-Elizabethan authority save Milton." Mr. Gosse 
 quotes it and says, *' in these lines he has admirably 
 summed up the conceptions of the first half of the present 
 century with regard to classical poetry." * The passage 
 was still fresh when Byron, in the letter to Disraeli al- 
 ready quoted f (March 15th, 1820), held it up to scorn as 
 the opinion of " a young person learning to write poetry 
 and beginning by teaching the art. . . . The writer of 
 this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of the 
 six or seven new schools, in which he has learned to 
 write such lines and such sentiments as the above. He 
 says ' easy were the task ' of imitating Pope, or it may be 
 of equalling him, I presume. I recommend him to try 
 before he is so positive on the subject, and then compare 
 what he will have //len written, and what he has now 
 written, with the humblest and earliest compositions of 
 Pope, produced in years still more youthful than those 
 of Mr. Keats when he invented his new ' Essay on Criti- 
 cism,' entitled ' Sleep and Poetry ' (an ominous title) from 
 whence the above canons are taken." 
 
 In a manuscript note on this passage made after Keats' 
 death, Byron wrote: "My indignation at Mr, Keats' de- 
 preciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice 
 to his own genius. . . . He is a loss to our literature; 
 and the more so, as he himself, before his death, is said 
 
 *"From Shakespeare to Pope." See also Sidney Colvin's 
 "Keats," New York, 1887, pp. 61-64. 
 f Vide supra, p. 70. 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the HDante l^evtval. 117 
 
 to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right 
 line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical 
 models of the language." Keats made a study of Dry- 
 den's versification before writing " Lamia " ; but had he 
 lived to the age of Methusaleh, he would not have 
 "reformed his style" upon any such classical models 
 as Lord Byron had in mind. Classical he might 
 have become, in the sense in which " Hyperion " is 
 classical; but in the sense in which Pope was class- 
 ical — never. Pope's Homer he deliberately set aside 
 for Chapman's — 
 
 "Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold." * 
 
 Keats had read Virgil, but seemingly not much Latin 
 poetry besides, and he had no knowledge of Greek. He 
 made acquaintance with the Hellenic world through 
 classical dictionaries and a study of the casts in the 
 British Museum. But his intuitive grasp of the antique 
 ideal of beauty stood him in as good stead as Landor's 
 scholarship. In such work as " Hyperion " and the " Ode 
 on a Grecian Urn " he mediates between the ancient and 
 the modern spirit, from which Landor's clear-cut mar- 
 bles stand aloof in chill remoteness. As concerns his 
 equipment, Keats stands related to Scott in romance 
 learning much as he does to Landor in classical scholar- 
 ship. He was no antiquary, and naturally made mistakes 
 of detail. In his sonnet '* On First Looking into Chap- 
 man's Homer," he makes Cortez, and not Balboa, the 
 
 * That he knew Pope's version is evident from a letter to 
 Haydon of May, 1817, given in Lord Houghton's "Life." 
 
ii8 <iA History of English %omanticism. 
 
 discoverer of the Pacific. A propos oi a line in "The 
 Eve of St. Agnes " — 
 
 "And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor " — 
 
 Leigh Hunt called attention to the fact that rushes and 
 not carpets covered the floors in the Middle Ages. In 
 the same poem, Porphyro sings to his lute an ancient 
 ditty, 
 
 "In Provence called 'La Belle Dame sans Merci.' " 
 
 The ditty was by Alain Chartier, who was not a trouba- 
 dour, but a Norman by birth and a French court poet of 
 the fifteenth century. The title, which Keats found in a 
 note in an edition of Chaucer, pleased his fancy and sug- 
 gested his ballad,* of the same name, which has nothing 
 in common with Chartier's poem. The latter is a con- 
 ventional love estrif in the artificial taste of the time. 
 But errors of this sort, which any encyclopaedia can cor- 
 rect, are perfectly unimportant. 
 
 Byron's sneer at Keats, as " a tadpole of the Lakes," 
 was ridiculously wide of the mark. He was nearly of 
 the second generation of romantics; he was only three 
 years old when "The Ancient Mariner" was published; 
 " Christabel " and Scott's metrical romances had all been 
 issued before he put forth his first volume. But though 
 
 * He could have known extremely little of mediaeval litera- 
 ture ; yet there is nothing anywhere, even in the far more in- 
 structed Pre-Raphaelite school which catches up the whole 
 of the true mediaeval romantic spirit — the spirit which ani- 
 mates the best parts of the Arthurian legend, and of the wild 
 stories which float through mediaeval tale-telling, and make 
 no small figure in mediaeval theology — as does the short piece 
 of 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'" (Saintsbury : "A Short 
 History of English Literature," p. 673). 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the T>ante l^vival. 119 
 
 he owes much to Coleridge * and more perhaps to Chat- 
 terton, he took no imprint from Wordsworth, and cared 
 nothing for Scott. Keats, like his friend Hunt, turned \ 
 instinctively away from northern to southern Gothic; j 
 from rough border minstrelsy to the mythology and ro- 
 mance of the races that dwelt about the midland sea. 
 Keats' sensuous nature longed for " a beaker full of the 
 warm South." *' I have tropical blood in my veins," 
 wrote Hunt, deprecating " the criticism of a Northern 
 climate " as applied to his " Story of Rimini," Keats' 
 death may be said to have come to him from Scotland, 
 not only by reason of the brutal attacks in Blackwood's 
 — to which there is some reason for believing that Scott 
 was privy — but because the hardships and exposure of 
 his Scotch tour laid the foundation of his fatal malady. 
 He brought back no literary spoils of consequence from 
 the North, and the description of the journey in his letters 
 makes it evident that his genius could not find itself there. 
 This uncomfortable feeling of alienation is expressed in 
 his " Sonnet on Visiting the Tomb of Burns." The 
 Scotch landscape seems " cold — strange." • 
 
 "The short-lived paly Summer is but won 
 From Winter's ague." 
 
 And in the letter from Dumfries, enclosing the sonnet 
 he writes : " I know not how it is, the clouds, the sky, the 
 houses, all seem anti-Grecian and anti-Charlemagnish." 
 Charlemagnish is Keats' word for the true mediaeval- 
 romantic. It is noteworthy that Keats avoided Scott's 
 favourite verse forms. " La Belle Dame sans Merci " 
 is not in the minstrel ballad measure; and when Keats 
 
 * Vide supra, p. 85. And for Keats' interest in Chatter- 
 ton see vol. i., pp. 370-72. 
 
I20 c/f History of English 'T^pmanticism. 
 
 uses the eight-syllabled couplet, he uses it very differently 
 from Scott, without the alternate riming which prevails in 
 " The Lay of the Last Minstrel " and all the rest of the 
 series. 
 
 A spark from Spenser kindled the flame of poetry in 
 Keats. His friend, Cowden Clarke, read him the " Epi- 
 thalamium " one day in 1812 in an arbour in the old 
 school garden at Enfield, and lent him a copy of "The 
 Faery Queene " to take home with him. " He romped 
 through the scenes of the romance," reports Mr. Clarke, 
 " like a young horse turned into a spring meadow." 
 There is something almost uncanny — like the visits of a 
 spirit — about these recurrent appearances of Spenser in 
 English literary history. It must be confessed that now- 
 adays we do not greatly romp through "The Faery 
 Queene." There even runs a story that a certain pro- 
 fessor of literature in an American college, being con- 
 sulted about Spenser by one of his scholars, exclaimed 
 impatiently, " Oh, damn Spenser! " But it is worth while 
 to have him in the literature, if only as a starter for 
 young poets. Keats' earliest known verses are an " Imi- 
 tation of Spenser " in four stanzas. His allusions to him 
 are frequent, and his fugitive poems include a " Sonnet 
 to Spenser" and a number of "Spenserian Stanzas." 
 But his only really important experiment in the measure 
 of " The Faery Queene " was " The Eve of St. Agnes." 
 It was with fine propriety that Shelley chose that meas- 
 ure for his elegy on Keats in " Adonais." Keats made a 
 careful study of Spenser's verse, the 
 
 "Spenserian vowels that elope with ease " — 
 and all the rest of it. His own work in this kind is 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the 'Dante l^vival. 121 
 
 thought to resemble most closely the " Psyche " of the 
 Irish poetess, Mary Tighe, published in 1805 * on the 
 well-known fable of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius. It 
 is inferred that Keats knew the poem from a mention of 
 the author in one of his pieces. He also wrote an "Ode 
 to Psyche," which seems, however, to have been inspired 
 by an engraving in Spenser's "Polymetis." .Mrs. Tighe 
 was one of the latest and best of the professed imitators 
 of Spenser. There is beauty of a kind in her languidly 
 melodious verse and over-profuse imagery, but it is not 
 the passionate and quintessential beauty of Keats. She 
 is quite incapable of such choice and pregnant word 
 effects as abound in every stanza of " St. Agnes " : 
 
 " Unclasps her warmed jewels, one by one " : 
 
 " Buttressed from moonlight " : 
 "The raVi?,\c, yearni7ig like a God in pain " : 
 "The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion." 
 
 Keats' intimate association with Leigh Hunt, whose 
 acquaintance he made in i8i6,was not without influence 
 on his literary development. He admired the " Story of 
 Rimini," f and he adopted in his early verse epistles and 
 in "Endymion" (1818), that free ante-Popean treatment 
 of the couplet with eiijambement, or overflow, double 
 rimes, etc., which Hunt had practised in the poem itself 
 and advocated in the preface. Many passages in " Ri- 
 mini " and in Keats' couplet poems anticipate, in their 
 easy flow, the relaxed versification of " The Earthly Para- 
 dise." This was the Elizabethan type of heroic couplet, 
 
 *The Diet. Nat. Biog. mentions doubtfully an earlier edi- 
 tion in 1795. 
 
 |: See "Sonnet on Leigh Hunt's Poem 'The Story of Ri- 
 mini.'" Forman's ed., vol. ii., p. 229. 
 
12 2 <v'^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 and its extreme instance is seen in William Chamber- 
 layne's "Pharonnida" (1659). There is no proof of 
 Keats' alleged indebtedness to Chamberlayne, though 
 he is known to have been familiar with another specimen 
 of the type, William Browne's " Britannia's Pastorals." 
 Hunt also confirmed Keats in the love of Spenser, 
 and introduced him to Ariosto whom he learned to 
 read in the Italian, five or six stanzas at a time. Dante 
 he read in Gary's translation, a copy of which was the 
 only book that he took with him on his Scotch trip. 
 "The fifth canto of Dante," he wrote (March, 18 19), 
 "pleases me more and more; it is that one in which he 
 meets with Paulo and Francesca." He afterwards 
 dreamed of the story and wrote a sonnet upon his dream, 
 which Rossetti thought " by far the finest of Keats' son- 
 nets " next to that on Chapman's " Homer." * Mr. J. M. 
 Robertson thinks that the influence of Gary's "Dante" is 
 visible in " Hyperion," especially in the recast version 
 "Hyperion: A Vision." f And Leigh Hunt suggests 
 that in the lines in " The Eve of St. Agnes "— 
 
 "The sculptured dead on each side seem to freeze, 
 Emprisoned in black, purgatorial rails : 
 Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries. 
 He passeth by ; and his weak spirit fails ^^ 
 
 To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails — 
 
 the germ of the thought is in Dante.t Keats wished 
 
 *See Forman's ed., vol. ii., p. 334- , ^„ . , „, 
 
 t "New Essays toward a Critical Method, London, 1897, 
 
 p. 256. 
 
 1 " Come, per sostentar solaio o tetto. 
 Per mensola talvolta una figura 
 Si vede giunger le ginocchia al petto. 
 La qual fa del non ver vera rancura 
 Nascere in chi la vede." 
 
 — " Puigatorio, " Canto x., 130-34- 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the T)ante %evival. 123 
 
 that Italian might take the place of French in English 
 schools. To Hunt's example was also due, in part, that 
 fondness for neologisms for which the latter apologises 
 in the preface to "Rimini," and with which Keats was 
 wont to enrich his diction, as well as with Chattertonian 
 archaisms, Chapmanese compounds, " taffeta phrases, 
 silken terms precise" from Elizabethan English, and 
 coinages VHviO. poesied, Jollying, eye-earnestly — licenses and 
 affectations which gave dire offence to Gifford and the 
 classicals generally. 
 
 In the 1820 volume, which includes Keats' maturest 
 work, there was a story from the "Decameron," "Isa- 
 bella, or the Pot of Basil," which tells how a lady ex- 
 humes the body of her murdered lover, cuts off the head 
 and buries it in a pot of sweet basil, which she keeps 
 in her chamber and waters with her tears. It was per- 
 haps symptomatic of a certain morbid sensibility in 
 Keats to select this subject from so cheerful a writer 
 as Boccaccio. This intensity of love surviving in face 
 of leprosy, torment, decay, and material horrors of all 
 kinds; this passionate clinging of spirit to body, is a 
 mediaeval note, and is repeated in the neo-romantic 
 school which derives from Keats; in Rossetti, Swin- 
 burne, Morris, O'Shaughnessy, Marzials, and Paine. 
 Think of the unshrinking gaze which Dante fixes upon 
 the tortures of the souls in pain; of the wasted body 
 of Christ upon the cross; of the fasts, flagellations, 
 mortifications of penitents; the unwashed friars; the 
 sufferings of martyrs. Keats apologises for his en- 
 deavour "to make old prose in modern rime more 
 sweet," and for his departure from the even, unexcited 
 narrative of his original : 
 
124 c^ History of English l^pmanticism. 
 
 " O eloquent and famed Boccaccio, 
 Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon. . . . 
 For venturing syllables that ill beseem 
 The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme. . . . 
 
 Ah ! wherefore all this wormy circumstance? 
 Why linger at the yawning tomb so long? 
 O for the gentleness of old Romance, 
 The simple plaining of the minstrel's song." 
 
 But it is just this wormy circumstance that rivets the 
 poet's attention ; his imagination lingers over Isabella 
 kissing the dead face, pointing each eyelash, and wash- 
 ing away the loam that disfigures it with her tears; over 
 the basil tufts growing rankly from the mouldering head. 
 
 "The thing was vile with green and livid spot," 
 
 but Keats' tenderness pierces the grave. 
 
 It is instructive to compare " Isabella " with Dryden's 
 " Sigismonda and Guiscardo," also from the " Decameron" 
 and surcharged with the physically horrible. In this tale 
 Tancred sends his daughter her lover's heart in a golden 
 goblet. She kisses the heart, fills the cup with poison, 
 drinks, and dies. The two poems are typical examples 
 of romantic and classical handling, though neither is 
 quite a masterpiece in its kind. The treatment in Dry- 
 den is cool, unimpassioned, objective — like Boccaccio's, 
 in fact. The story is firmly told, with a masculine energy 
 of verse and language. Sigismonda and Tancred are 
 characters, confronted wills, as in drama, and their 
 speeches are like tirades from a tragedy of Racine. But 
 here Dryden's rhetorical habit and his fondness for rea- 
 soning in rime run away with him, and make his art 
 inferior to Boccaccio's. Sigismonda argues her case like 
 counsel for the defendant. She even enjoys her own 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the T)ante Revival. 125 
 
 argument and carries it out with a gusto into abstrac- 
 tions. 
 
 " But leaving that : search we the secret springs, 
 And backward trace the principles of things ; 
 There shall we find, that when the world began 
 One common mass composed the mould of man," etc. 
 
 Dryden's grossness of taste mars his narrative at sev- 
 eral points. The satirist in him will not let him miss 
 the chance for a sneer at priests and another at William 
 III.'s standing army. -^He makes his heroine's love igno- 
 bly sensual. She is a widow, who having "tasted mar- 
 riage joys," is unwilling to live single. Dryden's dour- 
 geois manner is capable even of ludicrous descents. 
 
 "The sudden bound awaked the sleeping sire. 
 And showed a sight no parent can desire." 
 
 In Keats' poem there are no characters dramatically 
 opposed. Lorenzo and Isabella have no individuality 
 apart from their love; passion has absorbed character. 
 The tale is not evolved firmly and continuously, but with 
 lyrical outbursts, a poignancy of sympathy at the points 
 of highest tragic tensity and a swooning sensibility all 
 through, that sometimes breaks into weakness. There 
 can be no question, however, which poem is the moxt/elt; 
 no question, either, as to which method is superior — at 
 least as between these two artists, and as applied to sub- 
 jects of this particular kind. 
 
 "Isabella" is \x\ ottava rima, "The Eve of St. Agnes" 
 in the Spenserian stanza. This exquisite creation has 
 all the insignia of romantic art and has them in a dan- 
 gerous degree. It is brilliant with colour, richly ornate, 
 tremulous with emotion. Only the fine instinct of the 
 
126 <-A History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 artist saved it from the overladen decoration and cloying 
 sweetness of " Endymion," and kept it chaste in its 
 warmth. As it is, the story is almost too slight for its 
 descriptive mantle "rough with gems and gold." Such 
 as it is, it is of Keats' invention and of the " Romeo and 
 Juliet" variety of plot. A lover who is at feud with his 
 mistress' clan ventures into his foemen's castle while a 
 revel is going on, penetrates by the aid of her nurse to 
 his lady's bower, and carries her off while all the house- 
 hold are sunk in drunken sleep. All this in a night of 
 wild weather and on St. Agnes' Eve, when, according to 
 popular belief, maidens might see their future husbands 
 in their dreams, on the performance of certain conditions. 
 The resemblance of this poem to " Christabel " at several 
 points, has already been mentioned,* and especially in 
 the description of the heroine's chamber. But the differ- 
 ences are even more apparent. Coleridge's art is tem- 
 perate and suggestive; spiritual, too, with an unequalled 
 power of haunting the mind with a sense of ghostly pres- 
 ences. In his scene the touches are light and few; all 
 is hurried, mysterious, shadowy. But Keats was a word 
 painter, his treatment more sensuous than Coleridge's, 
 and fuller of imagery. He lingers over the figure of the 
 maiden disrobing, and over the furnishings of her room. 
 The Catholic elegancies of his poem, as Hunt called 
 them, and the architectural details are there for their own 
 sake — as pictures; the sculptured dead in the chapel, the 
 foot-worn stones, the cobwebbed arches, broad hall pillar, 
 and dusky galleries; the "little moonlight room, pale, 
 latticed^ chill"; the chain-drooped lamp: 
 
 "The carven angels ever eager-eyed " 
 * Vide stipra, p. S5. 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the T>ante "T^evwal. 127 
 
 that 
 
 "Stared, where upon their heads the cornice rests, 
 With hair blown back and wings put crosswise on their 
 breasts." 
 
 Possibly " La Belle Dame sans Merci " borrows a hint 
 from the love-crazed knight in Coleridge's "' Love," who 
 is haunted by a fiend in the likeness of an angel ; but 
 here the comparison is to Keats' advantage. Not even 
 Coleridge sang more wildly well than the singer of this 
 weird ballad strain, which has seemed to many critics * 
 the masterpiece of this poet, wherein his " natural 
 magic" reaches its most fascinating subtlety and purity 
 of expression. 
 
 The famous picture of the painted " casement, high and 
 triple-arched " in Madeline's chamber, " a burst of rich- 
 ness, noiseless, coloured, suddenly enriching the moon- 
 light, as if a door of heaven were opened," f should be 
 compared with Scott's no less famous description of the 
 east oriel of Melrose Abbey by moonlight, and the com- 
 parison will illustrate a distinction similar to that already 
 noted between the romanticism of Coleridge and Scott. 
 The latter is here depicting an actual spot, one of the 
 great old border abbeys; national pride and the pathos 
 of historic ruins mingle with the description. Made- 
 line's castle stood in the country of dream ; and it was 
 an "elfin storm from fairyland" that came to aid the 
 
 *Rossetti, Colvin, Gates, Robertson, Forman , and others, 
 f Leigh Hunt. It has been objected to this passage that 
 moonlight is not strong enough to transmit colored rays, like 
 sunshine (see Colvin's "Keats," p. i6o). But the mistake — 
 if it is one — is shared by Scott. 
 
 "The moonbeam kissed the holy pane 
 And threw on the pavement a blood}' stain." 
 
 — "Lay of the Last Minstrel," Canto ii. , xi. 
 
128 <iA History of English Romanticism. 
 
 lovers' flight,* and all the creatures of his tale are but 
 the 
 
 "Shadows haunting fairily 
 The brain new stuffed in youth with triumphs gay 
 Of old Romance." 
 
 In Keats is the romantic escape, the longing to 
 
 "leave the world unseen, 
 And with thee fade away into the forest dira."f 
 
 Keats cared no more for history than he did for con- 
 temporary politics. Courthope % quotes a passage from 
 " Endymion " to illustrate his indifference to everything 
 but art: 
 
 " Hence, pageant history ! Hence, gilded cheat ! . . . 
 Many old rotten-timbered boats there be 
 Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified 
 To goodly vessels ; many a sail of pride. 
 And golden-keeled, is left unlaunched and dry. 
 But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly 
 About the great Athenian admiral's mast? 
 What care though striding Alexander past 
 The Indus with his Macedonian numbers? 
 
 . . . Juliet leaning 
 Amid her window-flowers, — sighing, — weaning 
 Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow. 
 Doth more avail than these : the silver flow 
 Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, 
 Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den. 
 Are things to brood on with more ardency 
 Than the death-day of empires." 
 
 * It is interesting to learn that the line 
 
 " For o'er the Southern moors 
 I have a home for thee " 
 
 read in the original draught "Over the bleak Dartmoor," etc. 
 Dartmoor was in sight of Teignmouth where Keats once 
 spent two months ; but he cancelled the local allusion in obe- 
 dience to a correct instinct. 
 
 t " Ode to a Nightingale." 
 
 i:"The Liberal Movement in English Literature," Lon- 
 don, 1885, p. 181. 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the T)ante 'Revival. 1 29 
 
 This passage should be set beside the complaint in 
 "Lamia" of the disenchanting touch of science: 
 
 "There was an awful rainbow once in heaven," etc. 
 
 Keats is the poet of romantic emotion, as Scott of ro- 
 mantic action. Professor Gates says that Keats' heroes X 
 never do anything.* It puzzles the reader of " The Eve 
 of St. Agnes" to know just why Porphyro sets out the 
 feast of cates on the little table by Madeline's bedside 
 unless it be to give the poet an opportunity for his lus- 
 cious description of "the lucent syrups tinct with cinna- 
 mon " and other like delicacies. In the early fragment 
 "Calidore," the hero — who gets his name from Spenser 
 — does nothing in some hundred and fifty lines but assist 
 two ladies to dismount from their palfreys. To revert, as 
 before, to Ariosto's programme, it was not the arme and 
 aiidaci imprese which Keats sang, but the domie, the 
 amon\ and the cortesie. Feudal war array was no con- 
 cern of his, but the " argent revelry " of masque and 
 dance, and the " sil_ver-snarling trumpets " in the musi- 
 cians' gallery. He was the poet of the lute and the 
 nightingale, rather than of the shock of spear in tourney 
 and crusade. His " Specimen of an Induction to a 
 Poem " begins 
 
 " Lo ! I must tell a tale of chivalry." 
 
 But he never tells it. The piece evaporates in visions of 
 pure loveliness; " large white plumes " ; sweet ladies on 
 the worn tops of old battlements; light-footed damsels 
 standing in sixes and sevens about the hall in courtly 
 talk. Meanwhile the lance is resting against the wall. 
 
 * "Studies and Appreciations." Lewis ^' Gates. New 
 York, 1S90, p. 17. V 
 
130 <t/l History of English l^pmanticism. 
 
 "Ah ! shall I ever tell its cruelty, 
 When the fire flashes from a warrior's eye, 
 And his tremendous hand is grasping it? " 
 
 " No," answers the reader, " I don't think you ever 
 will. Leave that sort of thing to Walter Scott, and go 
 on and finish your charming fragment of 'The Eve of St. 
 Mark,' which stops provokingly just where Bertha was 
 reading the illuminated manuscript, as she sat in her 
 room of an April evening, when 
 
 ' On the western window panes. 
 The chilly sunset faintly told 
 Of unmatured green valleys cold. ' " * 
 
 This quaintly attractive fragment of Keats was written 
 while he was living in the old cathedral and college city 
 of Winchester. " Some time since," he writes to his 
 brother George, September, 18 19, " I began a poem called 
 ' The Eve of St. Mark, ' quite in the spirit of town quietude, 
 I think it will give you the sensation of walking about an 
 old country town in a coolish evening." The letter de- 
 scribes the maiden-lady-like air of the side streets, with 
 doorsteps fresh from the flannel, the doors themselves 
 black, with small brass handles and lion's head or ram's 
 head knockers, seldom disturbed. He speaks of his 
 walks through the cathedral yard and two college-like 
 squares, grassy and shady, dwelling-places of deans and 
 prebendaries, out to St. Cross Meadows with their Gothic 
 tower and Alms Square. Mr. Colvin thinks that Keats 
 " in this piece anticipates in a remarkable degree the 
 feeling and method of the modern pre-Raphaelite 
 schools " ; and that it is " perfectly in the spirit of Ros- 
 
 * See vol. i., p. 371, and for Cumberland's poem, on the 
 same superstition, ibid., 177. 
 
Keats, Leigh Hunt, and theT>ante l^evival. 131 
 
 setti (whom we know that the fragment deeply impressed 
 and interested)." Mr. Forman, indeed, quotes Rossetti's 
 own dictum (works of John Keats, vol. ii., p. 320) that 
 the poem "shows astonishingly real mediaevalism for one 
 not bred as an artist," 
 
 It is in the PtecRaghaelites that Keats' influence on 
 our later poetry is seen in its most concentrated shape. 
 But it is traceable in Tennyson, in Hood, in the Brown- 
 ings, and in many others, where his name is by no means 
 written in water. "Wordsworth," says Lowell, "has in- 
 fluenced most the ideas of succeeding poets; Keats their 
 forms." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ^be TRomantic Scbool in ©erman^.* 
 
 Cross-fertilization, at least in these modern eras, is 
 as necessary in the life of a literature as in that of an 
 animal or a plant. English romanticism, though it 
 started independently, did not remain an isolated phe- 
 
 * Besides the authorities quoted or referred to in the text, 
 the materials used in this chapter are drawn mainly from the 
 standard histories of German literature ; especially from 
 Georg Brandes' " Hauptstromungen in der Litteratur des 
 Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts " (1872-76); Julian Schmidt's 
 " Geschichte der Deutschen Litteratur " (Berlin, 1890); H.J. 
 T. Hettner's " Litteraturgeschichte" (Braunschweig, 1872); 
 Wilhelm Scherer's "History of German Literature" (Cony- 
 beare's translation. New York, 1886) ; Karl Hillebrand's 
 "German Thought" (trans.. New York, 1880); Vogt und 
 Koch's "Geschichte der Deutschen Litteratur" (Leipzig and 
 Wien, 1897). My own reading in the German romantics 
 is by no means extensive. I have read, however, a number 
 of Tieck's "Marchen" and of Fouque's romances; Novalis' 
 "Hymns to the Night" and "Heinrich von Ofterdiugen" ; A. 
 W. Schlegel's "Lectures on Dramatic Literature" and F. 
 Schlegel's "Lucinde " ; all of Uhland's ballads and most of 
 Heine's writings in verse and prose; a large part of "Des 
 Knaben Wunderhorn," and the selections from Achim von 
 Arnini, Clemens Brentano, and Joseph Gorres contained in 
 Koch's "Deutsche National Litteratur," 146 Band (Stuttgart, 
 1891). These last include Brentano's "Die Erfindung des 
 Rosenkranzes. " " Kasperl und Annerl," " Gockel und Hinkerl, " 
 etc., and Arnim's " Kronenwachter, " a scene from "Die Pap- 
 stin Johanna," etc. I have, of course, read Madame de 
 Stael's "L'AUemagne " ; all of Carlyle' s papers on German 
 literature, with his translations ; the Grimm fairy tales and 
 the like. 
 
 132 
 
The 'Romantic School in Germany. 133 
 
 nomenon; it was related to the general literary move- 
 ment in Europe. Even Italy had its romantic movement; 
 Manzoni began, like Walter Scott, by translating Biirger's 
 " Lenore " and " Wild Huntsman " ; and afterwards, like 
 Schlegel in Germany and Hugo in France, attacked the 
 classical entrenchments in his " Discourse of the Three 
 Unities." It is no part of our undertaking to write the 
 history of the romantic schools in Germany and France. 
 But in each of those countries the movement had points 
 of likeness and unlikeness which shed light upon our 
 own ; and an outline sketch of the German and French 
 schools will help the reader better to understand both 
 what English romanticism was, and what it was not. 
 
 In Germany, as in England, during the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, the history of romanticism is a history of arrested 
 development. Romanticism existed in solution, but was 
 not precipitated and crystallised until the closing years 
 of the period. The current set flowing by Biirger's bal- 
 lads and Goethe's "Gotz," was met and checked by a 
 counter-current, the new enthusiasm for the antique pro- 
 moted by Winckelmann's * works on classic art, by the 
 neo-paganism of Goethe's later writings, and by the in- 
 fluence of Lessing's f clear, rationalising, and thoroughly 
 Protestant spirit.| 
 
 We may note, at the outset, the main features in which 
 the German romanticism differed from the English. 
 First, then, it was more definitely a movemefit. It was 
 organised, self-conscious, and critical. Indeed, it was 
 
 *" Gedanken iiber die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke 
 in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst," 1755. " Geschichte der 
 Kunst des Alterthums, " 1764. 
 
 f "Laocoon," 1766. 
 
 X See vol. i., chap. xi. ; and particularly pp. 3S3-87. 
 
134 <^ History of English l^manticism. 
 
 ' in criticism and not in creative literature that its highest 
 (•successes were won. Coleridge, Scott, and Keats, like 
 
 I their English forerunners in the eighteenth century,* 
 worked independently of one another. They did not 
 tconspire to a common end; had little personal contact — ■ 
 Iwere hardly acquaintances, and in no sense a "school." 
 iButthe German romanticists constituted a compact group 
 ;with coherent aims. They were intimate friends and as- 
 fsociates; travelled, lived, and worked together; edited 
 •'each other's books and married each other's sisters.f 
 They had a theory of art, a programme, and a propa- 
 ganda; were aggressive and polemical, attacking their 
 adversaries in reviews, and in satirical tales, J poems, 
 and plays. Their headquarters were at Jena, " the cen- 
 tral point," says Heine, "from which the new aesthetic 
 dogma radiated. I advisedly say dogma, for this school 
 began with a criticism of the art productions of the past, 
 and with recipes for the art works of the future." Their 
 organ was the Athenceum, established by Friedrich Schle- 
 gel at Berlin in 1798, the date of Wordsworth's and Cole- 
 ridge's " Lyrical Ballads," and the climacteric year of 
 English and German romanticism. 
 
 The first number of the AthencBum contained the mani- 
 festo of the new school, written by Friedrich Schlegel, 
 the seminal mind of the coterie. The terms of this pro- 
 nunciamento are somewhat rapt and transcendental ; but 
 through its mist of verbiage, one discerns that the ideal 
 
 * See vol. i., pp. 422-23. 
 
 f Novalis' and Wackenroder's remains were edited by Tieck 
 and F. Schlegel. Arnim married Brentano's sister Bettina — 
 Goethe's Bettina. 
 
 X E.g., Tieck's "Der Gestiefelte Kater," against Nicolai 
 and the Aufkldrimg. 
 
The Romantic School in Germany. 135 
 
 of romantic art is announced to be: beauty for beauty's 
 sake, the union of poetry and life, and the absolute free- 
 dom of the artist to express himself. " Romantic poetry," 
 says Schlegel — "and, in a certain sense, all poetry ought 
 to be romantic — should, in representing outward objects, 
 also represent itself." There is nothing here to indicate 
 the precise line which German romantic poetry was to 
 take; but there is the same rejection of authority, the 
 same assertion of the right of original genius to break a 
 path for itself, which was made, in their various ways, by 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge in the " Lyrical Ballads," by 
 Keats in *' Sleep and Poetry," and by Victor Hugo in 
 the preface to " Cromwell." 
 
 A second respect in which German romanticism differed 
 from English was in its thoroughgoing character. It is 
 the disposition of the German mind to synthesise thought 
 and life, to carry out theory into practice. Each of those 
 imposing systems of philosophy, Kant's, Fichte's, Schel- 
 ling's, Hegel's, has its own cesthetik as well as its own 
 ethik. It seeks to interpret all human activities from a 
 central principle; to apply its highest abstractions to 
 literature, government, religion, the fine arts, and society. 
 The English mind is practical rather than theoretical. 
 It is sensible, cautious, and willing to compromise; dis- 
 trusting alike the logical habit of the French to push out 
 premises into conclusions at all hazards; and the Ger- 
 man habit of system-building. The Englishman has no 
 system; he has his whim, and is careless of consistency. 
 It is quite possible for him to have an aesthetic liking 
 for the Middle Ages, without wishing to restore them as 
 an actual state of society. It is hard for an Englishman 
 to understand to what degree a literary man, like Schiller, 
 
136 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 was influenced in his writings by the critical philosophy 
 of Kant; or how Schelling's transcendental idealism was 
 used to support Catholicism, and Hegel made a prop to 
 Protestant orthodoxy and Junkerism. " Tragedies and 
 romances," wrote Mme. de Stael, "have more importance 
 in Germany than in any other country. They take them 
 seriously there; and to read such and such a book, or 
 see such and such a play, has an influence on the destiny 
 and the life. What they admire as art, they wish to in- 
 troduce into real life; and poetry, philosophy, the ideal, 
 in short, have often an even greater empire over the Ger- 
 mans than nature and the passions." In proof of this, 
 she adduces the number of young Germans who com- 
 mitted suicide in consequence of reading "Werther"; 
 or took to highway robbery in emulation of "Die Rau- 
 ber." 
 
 Jin England, accordingly, romanticism was a merely 
 literary revolution and kept strictly within the domain of 
 * art. Scott's political conservatism was indeed, as we 
 have seen, not unrelated to his antiquarianism and his 
 fondness for the feudal past; but he remained a Protes- 
 tant Tory. And as to his Jacobitism, if a Stuart pre- 
 tender had appeared in Scotland in 18 15, we may be 
 sure that the canny Scott would not have taken arms in 
 his behalf against the Hanoverian king. Coleridge's 
 reactionary politics had nothing to do with his roman- 
 ticism; though it would perhaps be going too far to deny 
 that his reverence for what was old and tested by time 
 in the English church and constitution may have had its 
 root in the same temper of mind which led him to com- 
 pose archaic ballad-romances like " Christabel " and 
 " The Dark Ladye." But in Germany " throne and altar " 
 
7he 'Romantic School in Germany. 137 
 
 became the shibboleth of the school; half of the roman- 
 ticists joined the Catholic Church, and the new litera- 
 ture rallied to the side of aristocracy and privilege. 
 
 A third respect in which the German movement differed 
 from the English is partly implied in what has been said 
 above. In Germany the romantic revival was contempo- 
 raneous with a great philosophical development which 
 influenced profoundly even the lighter literature of the 
 time. Hence the mysticism which is found in the work 
 of many of the romanticists, and particularly in the writ- 
 ings of Novalis. Novalis was a disciple of Schelling, 
 and Schelling the continuator of Fichte. Fichte's "Wis- 
 senschaftslehre " (1794) is the philosophical corner-stone , 
 
 of the German romantic school. The freedom of the! J'' 
 
 fancy from the thraldom of the actual world; the right of 1 ••^' 
 the Ego to assert itself fully; the principle formulated ' 
 by Friedrich Schlegel, that " the caprice of the poet knows ] 
 no law"; all these literary doctrines were corollaries of 
 Fichte's objective idealism.* It is needless to say that, 
 while romantic art usually partakes of the mysterious, there 
 
 * As to the much-discussed romantic irony, the theory of 
 which played a part in the German movement corresponding 
 somewhat to Hugo's doctrine of the grotesque, it seems to 
 have made no impression in England. I can discover no 
 mention of it in Coleridge. Carlyle, in the first of his two 
 essays on Richter (1827) , expressly distinguishes true humour 
 from irony, which he describes as a faculty of caricature, 
 consisting "chiefly in a certain superficial distortion or I'ever- 
 sal of objects " — the method of Swift or Voltaire. That is, 
 Carlyle uses irony in the common English sense ; the Socratic 
 irony, the irony of the "Modest Proposal." The earliest at- 
 tempt that I have encountered to interpret to the English 
 public what Tieck and the Schlegels meant by "irony " is an 
 article in Blackwood' s for September, 1835, on "The Modern 
 German School of Irony " ; but its analysis is not very einge' 
 hend. 
 
138 c/^ History of English 'T{omanticism. 
 
 is nothing of this philosophical or transcendental mys- 
 ticism in the English romanticists. If we were to expect 
 it anywhere it would be in Coleridge, who became the 
 mediator between German and English thought. But 
 Coleridge's poetry was mainly written before he visited 
 Germany and made acquaintance with the systems of 
 Kant and Schelling; and in proportion as his specula- 
 tive activity increased, his creative force declined. There 
 is enough of the marvellous and the unexplained in 
 " Christabel," and "The Ancient Mariner"; but the 
 " mystic ruby " and the " blue flower " of the Teutonic 
 symbolists are not there. 
 
 The German romantic school, in the limited and pre- 
 cise sense of the term, consisted of the brothers August 
 Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Fried- 
 rich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Johann Dietrich Gries, 
 Tieck's friend Wackenroder, and — at a distance — 
 Zacharias Werner, the dramatist; besides a few others, 
 their associates or disciples, whose names need not here 
 be mentioned. These were, as has been said, personal 
 friends; they began to be heard of about 1795 ; and their 
 quarters were at Jena and Berlin. A later or younger group 
 (^Spdtrotnantiker) gathered in 1808 about the Zcitung Jiir 
 Einsiedler, published at Heidelberg. These were Clem- 
 ens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, Ludwig Uhland, Joseph 
 Gorres, and the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. 
 Arnim, Brentano, and Gorres were residing at the time at 
 Heidelberg; the others contributed from a distance. 
 Arnim edited the Einsiedler ; Gorres was teaching in the 
 university. There were, of course, many other adherents 
 of the school, working individually at different times and 
 places, scattered indeed all over Germany, and of various 
 
The 'Romantic School in Germany, 139 
 
 degrees of importance or unimportance, of whom I need 
 mention only Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, the popular 
 novelist and author of " Undine." 
 
 The history of German romanticism has been repeat- 
 edly told. There are exhaustive treatments of the sub- 
 ject by Julian Schmidt, Koberstein, Hettner (" Die Ro- 
 mantische Schule," Braunschweig, 1850); Haym ("Die 
 Romantische Schule," Berlin, 1870); by the Danish 
 critic, Georg Brandes (" Den Romantiske Skole i Tydsk- 
 land "). But the most famous review of this passage of 
 literary history is the poet Heine's brilliant little book, 
 " Die Romantische Schule," * published at Paris in 1833. 
 This was written as a kind of supplement to Mme. de 
 Stael's "L'Allemagne" (1813), and was intended to in- 
 struct the French public as to some misunderstandings 
 in Mme. de Stael's book, and to explain what German 
 romanticism really was. Professor Boyesen cautions us 
 to be on our guard against the injustice and untrustworth- 
 iness of Heine's report. The warning is perhaps not 
 needed, for the animus of his book is sufficiently obvious. 
 Heine had begun as a romantic poet, but he had parted 
 company with the romanticists because of the reactionary 
 direction which the movement took. He had felt the 
 spell, and he renders it with wonderful vividness in his 
 history of the school. But, at the same time, the impa- 
 tience of the political radical and the religious sceptic — 
 the "valiant soldier in the war for liberty" — and the 
 bitterness of the exile for opinion's sake, make them- 
 
 * An English translation was published in this country in 
 1882. See also H. H. Boyesen 's "Essays on German Litera- 
 ture" (1892) for three papers on the "Romantic School in 
 Germany. " 
 
T40 <-A History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 selves felt. His sparkling and malicious wit turns the 
 whole literature of romanticism into sport; and his abuse 
 of his former teacher, A. W, Schlegel, is personal and 
 coarse beyond description. Twenty years ago, he said, 
 when he was a lad, what overflowing enthusiasm he would 
 have lavished upon Uhland! Reused to sit on the ruins 
 of the old castle at Diisseldorf declaiming Uhland's poem 
 
 "A wandering shepherd young and fair 
 Beneath the roj'al castle strayed." 
 
 "But so much has happened since then! What then 
 seemed to me so grand; all that chivalry and Catholi- 
 cism; those cavaliers that hack and hew at each other in 
 knightly tournaments; those gentle squires and virtuous 
 dames of high degree; the Norseland heroes and minne- 
 singers; the monks and nuns; ancestral tombs thrilling 
 with prophetic powers ; colourless passion, dignified by the 
 high-sounding title of renunciation, and set to the ac- 
 companiment of tolling bells; a ceaseless whining of the 
 'Miserere'; how distasteful all that has become tome 
 since then ! " And — of Fouque's romances — " But our 
 age turns away from all fairy pictures, no matter how 
 beautiful. . . . This reactionary tendency, this continual 
 praise of the nobility, this incessant glorification of the 
 feudal system, this everlasting knight-errantry balderdash 
 . . . this everlasting sing-song of armours, battle-steeds, 
 high-born virgins, honest guild-masters, dwarfs, squires, 
 castles, chapels, minnesingers, faith, and whatever else 
 that rubbish of the Middle Ages may be called, wearied 
 us." 
 
 It is a part of the irony of things that this satirist of 
 romance should have been precisely the one to compose 
 
The ^{omantic School in Germany. 141 
 
 the most popular of all romantic ballads; and that the 
 most current of all his songs should have been the one in 
 which he sings of the enchantress of the Rhine, 
 
 "Ich weiss niclit was soil es bedeuten 
 Dass Ich so traurig bin." 
 
 The "Loreley" is translated into many tongues, and is 
 sung everywhere. In Germany it is a really national 
 song. And yet the tale on which it is founded is not 
 an ancient folk legend — " ein Mahrchen aus alten Zeiten " 
 — but a modern invention of Clemens Brentano, who first 
 published it in 1802 in the form of a ballad inserted in 
 one of his novels : 
 
 "Zu Bacharach am Rheine 
 Wohnt' eine Za^||berin : 
 Sie war so schon und feine 
 Und riss viel Herzen bin." 
 
 A certain forgotten romanticist, Graf Loeben, made a 
 lyrical tale out of it 19 1821, and Heine composed his 
 ballad in 1824, afterwards set to the mournful air in 
 which it is now universally familiar. 
 
 It has been mentioned that Heine's " Romantische 
 Schule " was a sort of continuation and correction of 
 Mme. de Stael's "L'AlIemagne." That very celebrated 
 book was the result of the distinguished lady's residence 
 in Germany, and of her determination to reveal Germany 
 to France. It has been compared in its purpose to the 
 "Germania" of Tacitus, in which the historian held up 
 the primitive virtues of the Teutonic race as a lesson and 
 a warning to corrupt Rome. Mme. de Stael had arranged 
 to publish her book in 18 10, and the first impression of 
 ten thousand copies had already been printed, when the 
 
142 i/J History of English %omanticism. 
 
 whole edition was seized and destroyed by the police, 
 and the author was ordered to quit France within twenty- 
 four hours. All this, of course, was at the instance of 
 Napoleon, who was by no means above resenting the 
 hostility of a lady author. But the Minister of Police, 
 General Savary, assumed the responsibility of the affair; 
 and to Mme. de Stael's remonstrance he wrote in reply : 
 " It appeared to me that the air of this country did not 
 agree with you, and we are not yet reduced to seek for 
 models amongst the people you admire [the Germans]. 
 Your last work is not French." It was not, accordingly, 
 until 1813 that Mme. de Stael's suppressed work on Ger- 
 many saw the light. 
 
 The only passages in it that need engage our attention 
 are those in which the author endeavours to interpret to 
 a classical people the literature of a Gothic race. In 
 her chapter entitled " Of Classic and Romantic Poetry," 
 she says: "The word romantic has been lately introduced 
 in Germany to designate that kind of poetry which is de- 
 rived from the songs of the troubadours; that which owes 
 its birth to the union of chivalry and Christianity." She 
 mentions the comparison — evidently derived from Schle- 
 gel's lectures which she had attended — of ancient poetry 
 to sculpture and modern to painting; explains that the 
 French incline towards classic poetry, and the English — 
 "the most illustrious of the Germanic nations" — towards 
 "that which owes its birth to chivalry and romance." 
 "The English poets of our times, without entering into 
 concert with the Germans, have adopted the same system. 
 Didactic poetry has given place to the fictions of the Mid- 
 dle Ages." She observes that simplicity and definite- 
 ness, that a certain corporeality and externality — or what 
 
The Romantic School in Germany. 143 
 
 in modern critical dialect we would call objectivity — are 
 notes of antique art; while variety and shading of colour, 
 and a habit of self-reflection developed by Christianity 
 [subjectivity], are the marks of modern art. "Simplicity 
 in the arts would, among the moderns, easily degenerate 
 into coldness and abstraction, while that of the ancients 
 was full of life and animation. Honour and love, valour 
 and pity, were the sentiments which distinguished the 
 Christianity of chivalrous ages; and those dispositions of 
 the soul could only be displayed by dangers, exploits, 
 love, misfortunes — that romantic interest, in short, by 
 which pictures are incessantly varied." Mme. de Stael's 
 analysis here does not go very deep, and her expression 
 is lacking in precision; but her meaning will be obvious 
 to those who have well considered the various definitions 
 and expositions of these contrasted terms with which we 
 set out. Without deciding between the comparative mer- 
 its of modern classic and romantic work, Mme. de Stael 
 points out that the former must necessarily be imitative. 
 "The literature of the ancients is, among the moderns, a 
 transplanted literature; that of chivalry and romance is 
 indigenous. . . . The literature of romance is alone capa- 
 ble of further improvement, because, being rooted in our 
 own soil, that alone can continue to grow and acquire 
 fresh life; it expresses our religion; it recalls our his- 
 tory." Hence she notes the fact that while the Spaniards 
 of all classes know by heart the verses of Calderon; 
 while Shakspere is a popular and national poet among 
 the English ; and the ballads of Goethe and Biirger are 
 set to music and sung all over Germany; the French 
 classical poets are quite unknown to the common people, 
 " because the arts in France are not, as elsewhere, natives 
 
144 «^ History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 of the very country in which their beauties are displayed." 
 In her review of German poetry she gives a brief descrip- 
 tion, among other things, of the " Nibelungen Lied," and 
 a long analysis of Biirger's "Leonora" and "Wilde 
 Jager" She says that there are four English translations 
 of "Leonora," of which William Spenser's is the best. 
 "The analogy between the English and German allows a 
 complete transfusion of the originality of style and versi- 
 fication of Biirger. ... It would be difficult to obtain 
 the same result in French, where nothing strange or odd 
 seems natural." She points out that terror is " an in- 
 exhaustible source of poetical effect in Germany. . . . 
 Stories of apparitions and sorcerers are equally well re- 
 ceived by the populace and by men of more enlightened 
 minds." She notes the fondness of the new school for 
 Gothic architecture, and describes the principles of 
 Schlegelian criticism. She transcribes A. W. Schlegel's 
 praises of the ages of faith and the generous brotherhood 
 of chivalry, and his lament that "the noble energy of 
 ancient times is lost," and that "our times alas! no 
 longer know either faith or love." The German critics 
 aflfirm that the best traits of the French character were 
 effaced during the reign of Louis XIV. ; that " literature, 
 in ages which are called classical, loses in originality 
 what it gains in correctness " ; that the French tragedies 
 are full of pompous affectation ; and that from the middle 
 of the seventeenth century, a constrained and affected 
 manner had prevailed throughout Europe, symbolised by 
 the wig worn by Louis XIV. in pictures and bas-reliefs, 
 where he is portrayed sometimes as Jupiter and some- 
 times as Hercules clad only in his lion's skin — but al- 
 ways with the perruque. Heine complains that Mme. de 
 
The 'Romantic School in Germany. 145 
 
 Stael fell into the hands of the Schlegels, when in Ger- 
 many, and that her account of German literature was col- 
 oured by their prejudices; that William Schlegel, in par- 
 ticular, became her escort at all the capitals of Europe 
 and won great eclat thereby 
 
 Schlegel's elegiac lament over the decay of chivalry 
 may remind the English reader of the famous passage in 
 Burke * about Marie Antoinette. " Little did I dream 
 that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon 
 her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of 
 honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords 
 must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a 
 look that threatened her with insult. But the age of 
 chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and 
 calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is 
 extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold 
 that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submis- 
 sion, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the 
 heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit 
 of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the 
 cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment 
 and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibil- 
 ity of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain 
 like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated 
 ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under 
 which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its gross- 
 ness." t 
 
 But Burke's reaction against the levelling spirit of 
 
 *Gentz, "The German Burke," translated the "Reflections 
 on the Revolution in France " into German in 1796. 
 
 f See also in the same tract, Burke's tribute to the value of 
 hereditary nobility, and remember that these were the words 
 of a Whig statesman. 
 
146 tt// History of English Romanticism. 
 
 French democracy was by no means so thoroughgoing as 
 the romanticist protest in Germany, It was manifestly 
 impossible to revive the orders of chivalry, as a practical 
 military system; or to recreate the feudal tenures in their 
 entirety. Nor did even the most romantic of the German 
 romanticists dream of this. They appealed, however, to 
 the knightly principles of devotion to church and king, 
 of honour, of religious faith, and of personal loyalty to 
 the suzerain and the nobility. It was these political 
 and theological aspects of the movement that disgusted 
 Heine. He says that just as Christianity was a reaction 
 against Roman materialism; and the Renaissance a re- 
 action against the extravagances of Christian spiritual- 
 ism ; and romanticism in turn a reaction against the vapid 
 imitations of antique classic art; "so also do we now 
 behold a reaction against the re-introduction of that 
 Catholic, feudal mode of thought, of that knight-errantry 
 and priestdom, which were being inculcated through lit- 
 erature and the pictorial arts, . . . For when the artists 
 of the Middle Ages were recommended as models , . . 
 the only explanation of their superiority that could be 
 given was that these men believed in that which they de- 
 picted. , . , Hence the artists who were honest in their 
 devotion to art, and who sought to imitate the pious dis- 
 tortions of those miraculous pictures, the sacred uncouth- 
 ness of those marvel-abounding poems, and the inex- 
 plicable mysticisms of those olden works , , made a 
 pilgrimage to Rome, where the vicegerent of Christ was 
 to re-invigorate consumptive German art with asses' 
 milk." 
 
 A number of the romanticists were Catholic by birth. 
 There was Joseph von Eichendorff, e.g., who had a strong 
 
The %omantic School in Germany. 147 
 
 admiration for the Middle Ages, wrote sacred poetry, and 
 published in 1815 a novel entitled " Ahnung und Gegen- 
 wart," the hero of which ends by retiring to a monastery. 
 And Joseph Gorres, who published a work on German 
 Volksbilcher'^' (1807); a follower of Schelling and editor 
 of Der Rheinische Merkur, a violent anti-Gallican jour- 
 nal during the war of liberation. Gorres, according to 
 Heine, " threw himself into the arms of the Jesuits," and 
 became the " chief support of the Catholic propaganda at 
 Munich " ; lecturing there on universal history to an audi- 
 ence consisting chiefly of pupils from the Romish semi- 
 naries. Another Sj>dfromantiker, born Catholic, was 
 Clemens Brentano, whom Heine describes in 1833 as 
 having lived at Frankfort for the last fifteen years in 
 hermit-like seclusion, as a corresponding member of the 
 propaganda. For six years (1818-24) Brentano was con- 
 stantly at the bedside of the invalid nun, Anna Katharina 
 Emmerich, at Diilmen. She was a " stigmatic," afflicted, 
 i e., with a mysterious disease which impressed upon her 
 body marks thought to be miraculous counterfeits of the 
 wounds of Christ. She had trances and visions, and 
 uttered revelations which Brentano recorded and after- 
 wards published in several volumes, that were translated 
 into French and Italian and widely circulated among the 
 faithful. 
 
 As adherents of the romantic school who were born and 
 bred Protestants, but became converts to the Catholic 
 faith, Heine enumerates Friedrich Schlegel, Tieck, No- 
 valis, Werner, Schiitz, Carove, Adam Miiller, and Count 
 
 * Dream books, medicine books, riddle books, almanacs, 
 craftsmen's proverbs, fabulous travels, prophecies, legends, 
 romances and the like, hawked about at fairs. 
 
148 z/1 History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 Stolberg, This list, he says, includes only authors; "the 
 number of painters who in swarms simultaneously abjured 
 Protestantism and reason was much larger." But Tieck 
 and Novalis never formally abjured Protestantism. They 
 detested the Reformation and loved the mediaeval Church, 
 but looked upon modern Catholicism as a degenerate 
 system. Their position here was something like that of 
 the English Tractarians in the earlier stages of the Oxford 
 movement. Novalis composed " Marienlieder." Tieck 
 complained of the dryness of Protestant ritual and the- 
 ology, and said that in the Middle Ages there was a unity 
 {Einheif) which ought to be again recovered. All Europe 
 was then one fatherland with a single faith. The period 
 of the Arthursage was the blossoming time of romance, 
 the vernal season of love, religion, chivalry, and — sorcery ! 
 He pleaded for the creation of a new Christian, Catholic 
 mythology. 
 
 In 1808 Friedrich Schlegel became a Roman Catholic 
 — or, as Heine puts it — " went to Vienna, where he at- 
 tended mass daily and ate broiled fowl." His wife, a 
 daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, a Jewess by race, fol- 
 lowed her husband into the Catholic Church. Zacharias 
 Werner, author of a number of romantic melodramas, the 
 heroes of which are described as monkish ascetics, relig- 
 ious mystics, and " spirits who wander on earth in the 
 guise of harp-players " — Zacharias Werner also went to 
 Vienna and joined the order of Ligorians. This conver- 
 sion made a prodigious noise in Germany. It occurred 
 at Rome in 181 1, and the convert afterwards witnessed 
 the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, 
 that annual miracle in which Newman expresses so firm 
 a belief. Werner then spent two years in the study of 
 
The 1{pmanUc School in Germany. 149 
 
 theology, visited Our Lady's Chapel at Loretto in 1813; 
 was ordained priest at Aschaffenburg in 1814; and 
 preached at St. Stephen's Church, Vienna, on the vanity 
 of worldly pleasures, with fastings many, with castiga- 
 tions and mortifications of the flesh. The younger Voss 
 declared that Werner's religion was nothing but a poetic 
 coquetting with God, Mary, the wounds of Christ, and 
 the holy carbuncle {Karjunkelstem). He had been a 
 man of dissolute life and had been divorced from three 
 wives. " His enthusiasm for the restoration of the Mid- 
 dle Ages," says Heine, "was one-sided; it applied only 
 to the hierarchical, Catholic phase of mediaevalism; feu- 
 dalism did not so strongly appeal to his fancy. . . . Pater 
 Zacharias died in 1823, after sojourning for fifty-four 
 years in this wicked, wicked world." Carlyle contrib- 
 uted to the Foreign J^eviewin 1828 an essay on "Werner's 
 Life and Writings," with translations of passages from 
 his drama, "The Templars in Cyprus." 
 
 But the conversion which caused the greatest scandal 
 was that of Count Friedrich Stolberg, whose apostasy 
 was denounced by his early friend Voss, the translator 
 of Homer, in a booklet entitled " Wie ward Fritz Stol- 
 berg ein Unfreier?" Voss showed, says Heine, that 
 " Stolberg had secretly joined an association of the no- 
 bility which had for its purpose to counteract the French 
 ideas of liberty; that these nobles entered into a league 
 with the Jesuits; that they sought, through the re-estab- 
 lishment of Catholicism, to advance also the interests of 
 the nobility." * 
 
 The German literary historians agree that the fresh 
 outbreak of romanticism in the last decade of the eigh- 
 * For Stolberg see also vol. i., pp. 376-77. 
 
150 t/^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 teenth century was the resumption of an earlier movement 
 which had been interrupted; that it was furthered by the 
 new feeling of German nationality aroused by the Bona- 
 partist tyranny; and finally that it was a protest against 
 the flat mediocrity which ruled in the ultra-evangelical 
 circle headed by Nicolai, the Berlin bookseller and edi- 
 tor. Into this mere Philistinism had narrowed itself the 
 nobler rationalism of Lessing, with its distrust of Trdu- 
 merei and Schwdrmerei — of superstition and fanaticism. 
 "Dry light is best," says Bacon, but the eye is hungry 
 for colour, that has looked too steadily on the lumen siccum 
 of the. reason; and then imagination becomes the prism 
 which breaks the invisible sunbeam into beauty. Hence 
 the somewhat extravagant romantic love of colour, and the 
 determination to believe, at all hazards and even in the 
 teeth of reason. Hence the imperfectly successful at- 
 tempt to force back the modern mind into a posture of 
 child-like assent to the marvellous. Tieck's " Mahrchen " 
 and the Grimm brothers' nursery tales belong to this 
 "renascence of wonder," like Lewis' "Tales of Terror," 
 Scott's " Demonology," and Coleridge's " Christabel " in 
 England. "The tendencies of 1770 to 1780," says 
 Scherer, "which had now quite disappeared, asserted 
 themselves with new and increased force. The nations 
 which were groaning under Napoleon's oppression sought 
 comfort in the contemplation of a fairer and grander 
 past. Patriotism and mediaevalism became for a long 
 time the watchwords and the dominating fashion of the 
 day." 
 
 Allowing for the differences mentioned, the romantic 
 movements in England and Germany offer, as might be 
 expected, many interesting parallels. Carlyle, writing 
 
The 'T^m antic School in Germany. 151 
 
 in 1827,* says that the recent change in German litera- 
 ture is only a part of a general change in the whole liter- 
 ature of Europe. " Among ourselves, for instance, within 
 the last thirty years, who has not lifted up his voice with 
 double vigour in praise of Shakespeare and nature, and 
 vituperation of French taste and French philosophy? 
 Who has not heard of the glories of old English litera- 
 ture; the wealth of Queen Elizabeth's age; the penury of 
 Queen Anne's; and the inquiry whether Pope was a poet? 
 A similar temper is breaking out in France itself, her- 
 metically sealed as that country seemed to be against all 
 foreign influences; and doubts are beginning to be enter- 
 tained, and even expressed, about Corneille and the three 
 unities. It seems to be substantially the same thing 
 which has occurred in Germany, and been attributed to 
 Tieck and his associates; only that the revolution which 
 is here proceeding, and in France commencing, appears 
 in Germany to be completed." 
 
 In Germany, as in England — in Germany more than 
 in England — other arts beside literature partook of the 
 new spirit. The brothers Boissere'e agitated for the com- 
 pletion of the " Kolner Dom," and collected their famous 
 picture gallery to illustrate the German, Dutch, and Flem- 
 ish art of the fifteenth century; just as Gothic came into 
 fashion in England largely in consequence of the writ- 
 ings of Walpole, Scott, and Ruskin. Like our own later 
 Pre-Raphaelite group, German art critics began to praise 
 the naive awkwardness of execution and devout spiritual- 
 ity of feeling in the old Florentine painters, and German 
 artists strove to paint like Era Angelico. Friedrich 
 Schlegel gave a strong impulse to the study of mediaeval 
 
 * " Ludwig Tieck " : Introductions to " German Romance. " 
 
152 <iA History of English Romanticism. 
 
 art, and Heine scornfully describes him and his friend 
 Joseph Gorres, rummaging about " among the ancient 
 Rhine cities for the remains of old German pictures and 
 statuary which were superstitiously worshipped as holy 
 relics." Tieck and his friend Wackenroder brought back 
 from their pilgrimage to Dresden in 1796 a devotion, a 
 kind of sentimental Mariolatry, to the celebrated Madon- 
 nas of Raphael and Holbein in the Dresden gallery ; 
 and from their explorations in Niirnberg, that Ferle des 
 Mittelalters^ an enthusiasm for Albrecht Diirer, This 
 found expression in Wackenroder's " Herzensergiessun- 
 gen eines Kunstliebenden Klosterbruders " ; and in 
 Tieck's novel, " Sternbald's Wanderungen," in which he 
 accompanies a pupil of Diirer to Rome. Wackenroder, 
 like Tieck's other friend, Novalis, was of a consumptive, 
 emotional, and somewhat womanish constitution of mind 
 and body, and died young. Tieck edited his remains, 
 including letters on old German art. The standard edi- 
 tions of their joint writings are illustrated by engravings 
 after Diirer, one of which in particular, the celebrated 
 " Knight, Death, and the Devil/' symbolizes the mysteri- 
 ous terrors of Tieck's own tales, and of German romance 
 in general. The knight is in complete armour, and is 
 riding through a forest. On a hilltop in the distance are 
 the turrets of a castle; a lean hound follows the knight; 
 on the ground between his horse's hoofs sprawls a lizard- 
 like reptile; a figure on horseback approaches from the 
 right, with the face half obliterated or eaten away to the 
 semblance of a skull, and snakes encircling the temples. 
 Behind comes on a demon or goblin shape, with a tall 
 curving horn, which is "neither man nor woman, neither 
 beast nor human," but one of those grotesque and ob- 
 
The l^mantic School in Germany. 153 
 
 scene monsters which the mediaeval imagination sculp- 
 tured upon the cathedrals. This famous copperplate 
 prompted Fouque's romance, " Sintram and his Com- 
 panions." He had received a copy of it for a birthday 
 gift, and brooded for years over its mysterious signifi- 
 cance; which finally shaped itself in his imagination into 
 an allegory of the soul's conflict with the powers of dark- 
 ness. His whole narrative leads up to the description 
 of Diirer's picture, which occupies the twenty-seventh and 
 climacteric chapter. The school of young German Pre- 
 Raphaelite art students, associated at Rome in 1810 under 
 the leadership of Overbeck and Cornelius, was considera- 
 bly influenced by Wackenroder's " Herzensergiessungen." 
 
 Music, too, and particularly church music, was affected 
 by the new taste. The ancient music of the " Dies Irae" 
 and other Latin hymns was revived; and it would not be 
 far wrong to say that the romantic school sowed the seed 
 of Wagner's great music-dramas, profoundly Teutonic and 
 romantic in their subject matter and handling and in their 
 application of the united arts of poetry, music, and scene- 
 painting to old national legends such as "Parzival," 
 "Tannhauser,"* "The Knight of the Swan," and the 
 "Nibelungen Hoard." 
 
 History, too, and Germanic philology took impulse 
 from this fresh interest in the past. Johannes Miiller, in 
 his "History of the Swiss Confederation" (1780-95), 
 drew the first appreciative picture of mediaeval life, and 
 caught, in his diction, something of the manner of the 
 old chroniclers. As in England ancient stores of folk- 
 lore and popular poetry were gathered and put forth by 
 
 *Brentano's fragment "Die Erfindung des Rosenkranzes, " 
 begun in 1803, deals with the Tannhauser story. 
 
154 c^ History of English 1{omanticism . 
 
 Percy, Ritson, Ellis, Scott, and others, so in Germany the 
 Grimm brothers' universally known collections of fairy 
 tales, legends, and mythology began to appear.* Tieck 
 published in 1803 his " Minnelieder aus dem Schwab- 
 ischen Zeitalter." Karl Simrock made modern versions 
 of Middle High German poetry. Uhland, whose "Wal- 
 ther von der Vogelweide," says Scherer, "gave the 
 first complete picture of an old German singer," carried 
 the war into Africa by going to Paris in 18 10 and mak- 
 ing a study of the French Middle Age. He introduced 
 the old French epics to the German public, and is re- 
 garded, with A. W. Schlegel, as the founder of romance 
 philology in Germany, 
 
 A pupil of Bodmer,f the Swiss Christian Heinrich 
 Myller, had issued a complete edition of the "Nibelun- 
 genlied" in 1784-85. The romantic school now took up 
 this old national epic and praised it as a German Iliad, 
 unequalled in sublimity and natural power. Uhland 
 gave a great deal of study to it, and A. W. Schlegel lec- 
 tured upon it at Berlin in 1801-2, Both Schlegel and 
 Tieck made plans to edit it; and Friedrich von der 
 Hagen, inspired by the former's lectures, published four 
 editions of it, and a version in modern German. " For 
 a long time," testifies Heine, " the ' Nibelungenlied ' was 
 the sole topic of discussion among us. . . . It is difificult 
 for a Frenchman to form a conception of this work, or 
 even of the language in which it is written. It is a lan- 
 guage of stone, and the verses are, as it were, blocks of 
 granite." By way of giving his French readers a notion 
 
 * " Kinder und Hausmahrchen " (1812-15). "Deutsche 
 Sagen" (1816). " Deutsche Mythologie" (1835). 
 f See vol. i., pp. 375-76. 
 
The 'T^omantic School in Germany. 155 
 
 of the gigantic passions and rude, primitive strength of 
 the poem, he imagines a battle of all the Gothic cathe- 
 drals of Europe on some vast plain, and adds, "But no! 
 even then you can form no conception of the chief char- 
 acters of the ' Nibelungenlied'; no steeple is so high, no 
 stone so hard as the fierce Hagen, or the revengeful 
 Chrimhilde." 
 
 Another work which corresponds roughly with Percy's 
 "Reliques," asthe " Nibelungenlied" with Macpherson's 
 "Ossian," was " Des Knaben Wunderhorn " (The Boy's 
 Magic Trumpet), published in 1806-8 by Clemens Bren- 
 tano and Achim von Arnim, with a dedication to Goethe. 
 This was a three-volume collection of German songs, 
 and although it came much later than Percy's, and after 
 the imitation of old national balladry in Germany was 
 already well under way, so that its relation to German 
 romanticism is not of an initial kind, like that of Percy's 
 collection in England; still its importance was very 
 great. It influenced all the lyrical poetry of the Roman- 
 tic school, and especially the ballads of Uhland. ** I 
 cannot sufficiently extol this book," says Heine. "It 
 contains the sweetest flowers of German poesy. . . . On 
 the title page ... is the picture of a lad blowing a horn ; 
 and when a German in a foreign land views this picture, 
 he almost seems to hear the old familiar strains, and 
 homesickness steals over him. ... In these ballads one 
 feels the beating of the German popular heart. Here is 
 revealed all its sombre merriment, all its droll wit. Here 
 German wrath beats furiously the drum ; here German 
 satire stings; here German love kisses. Here we behold 
 the sparkling of genuine German wine, and genuine Ger- 
 man tears." 
 
156 o^ History of English %omanticism. 
 
 The German romantic school, like the English, but 
 more learnedly and systematically, sought to reinforce its 
 native stock of materials by motijs drawn from foreign 
 literatures, and particularly from Norse mythology and 
 from Spanish romance. Percy's translation of Malet: 
 Gray's versions from the Welsh and the Scandinavian : 
 Southey's " Chronicles of the Cid " and Lockhart's trans- 
 lations of the Spanish ballads are paralleled in Germany 
 by William Schlegel's, and Uhland's, and others' studies 
 in old Norse mythology and poetry; by Tieck's transla- 
 tion of " Don Quixote " * and by Johann Dietrich Gries' 
 of Calderon. The romanticists, indeed, and especially 
 Tieck and A. W. Schlegel, were most accomplished trans- 
 lators. Schlegel's great version of Shakspere is justly 
 esteemed one of the glories of the German tongue. 
 Heine affirms that it was undertaken solely for polem- 
 ical purposes and at a time (1797) when the enthusiasm 
 for the Middle Ages had not yet reached an extravagant 
 height. " Later, when this did occur, Calderon was 
 translated and ranked far above Shakespeare. . . . For 
 the works of Calderon bear most distinctly the impress 
 of the poetry of the Middle Ages, particularly of the two 
 principal epochs, knight-errantry and monasticism. The 
 pious comedies of the Castilian priest-poet, whose poet- 
 ical flowers had been besprinkled with holy water and 
 canonical perfumes . . . were now set up as models, and 
 Germany swarmed with fantastically pious, insanely pro- 
 found poems, over which it was the fashion to work one's 
 
 * "If Cervantes' purpose," says Heine, "was merely to de- 
 scribe the fools who sought to restore the chivalry of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, . . . then it is a peculiarly comic irony of accident 
 that the romantic school should furnish the best translation of 
 a book in which their own folly is most amusingly ridiculed." 
 
The 'T^mantic School in Germany. 157 
 
 self into a mystic ecstasy of admiration, as in ' The De- 
 votion to the Cross ' ; or to fight in honour of the Ma- 
 donna, as in ' The Constant Prince.' . . . Our poetry 
 said the Schlegels, is superannuated. . . . Our emotions 
 are withered ; our imagination is dried up. . . . We must 
 seek again the choked-up springs of the naive, simple 
 poetry of the Middle Ages, where bubbles the elixir of 
 youth." Heine adds that Tieck, following out this pre- 
 scription, drank so deeply of the medieeval folk tales 
 and ballads that he actually became a child again and 
 fell to lisping. 
 
 There is a suggestive analogy between the position of 
 the Warton brothers in England and the Schlegel brothers 
 in Germany. The Schlegels, like the Wartons, were 
 leaders in the romantic movement of their time and coun- 
 try, and were the inspirers of other men. The two pairs 
 were alike also in that their best service was done in the 
 field of literary history, criticism, and exposition, while 
 their creative work was imitative and of comparatively 
 small value. Friedrich Schlegel's scandalous romance 
 " Lucinde " is of much less importance than his very 
 stimulating lectures on the "History of Literature" and 
 the " Wisdom and Languages of India " ; * and his elder 
 brother, though an accomplished metrist and translator, 
 was not successful in original verse. But this resem- 
 blance between the Wartons and the Schlegels must not 
 be pressed too far. Here, as at many other points, the 
 German movement had greater momentum. The Wartons 
 were men of elegant scholarship after their old-fashioned 
 
 * F. Schlegel's declamations against printing and gun pow- 
 der in his Vienna lectures of 1810 foretoken Ruskin's philip- 
 pics against railways and factories. 
 
iS8 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 kind, a kind which joined the usual classical culture of 
 the English universities to a liberal— and in their cen- 
 tury somewhat paradoxical — enthusiasm in antiquarian 
 pursuits. But the Schlegels were men of really wide 
 learning and of depth in criticism. Compared with their 
 scientific method and grasp of principles, the " Observa- 
 tions " and " Essays " of the Wartons are mere dilettant- 
 ism. To the influence of the Schlegels is not unfairly 
 attributed the origin in Germany of the sciences of com- 
 parative philology and comparative mythology, and the 
 works of scholars like Bopp, Diez, and the brothers 
 Grimm. Herder* had already traced the broad cosmo- 
 politan lines which German literary scholarship was to 
 follow, with German thoroughness and independence. 
 And Heine acknowledges that "in reproductive criticism, 
 where the beauties of a work of art were to be brought 
 out clearly ; where a delicate perception of individualities 
 was required; and where these were to be made intelli- 
 gible, the Schlegels were far superior to Lessing." The 
 one point at which the English movement outweighed 
 the German was Walter Scott, whose creative vigour and 
 fertility made an impact upon the mind of Europe to 
 which the romantic literature of the Continent affords no 
 counterpart. 
 
 The principles of the Schlegelian criticism were first 
 communicated to the English public by Coleridge; who, 
 in his lectures on Shakspere and other dramatists, 
 helped himself freely to William Schlegel's " Vorlesun- 
 gen iiber dramatische Kunst und Litteratur," f Heine 
 
 * See vol. i., pp. 300, 337, 416. 
 
 f Vide stipra, p. 88. A. W. Schlegel was in England in 
 1823. Tieck met Coleridge in England in 1818, having made 
 his acquaintance in Italy some ten years before. 
 
The l^mantic School m Germany. 159 
 
 denounces the shallowness of these principles and their 
 failure to comprehend the modern mind. " When Schle- 
 gel seeks to depreciate the poet Biirger, he compares his 
 ballads with the old English ballads of the Percy col- 
 lection, and he shows that the latter are more simple, 
 more naive, more antique, and consequently more poet- 
 ical. . . . But death is not more poetical than life. The 
 old English ballads of the Percy collection exhale the 
 spirit of their age, and Burger's ballads breathe the spirit 
 of our time. The latter, Schlegel never understood. . . . 
 What increased Schlegel's reputation still more was the 
 sensation which he excited in France, where he also at- 
 tacked the literary authorities of the French, . . . showed 
 the French that their whole classical literature was worth- 
 less, that Moliere was a buffoon and no poet, that Racine 
 likewise was of no account . . . that the French are the 
 most prosaic people of the world, and that there is no 
 poetry in France," It is well known that Coleridge de- 
 tested the French, as " a light but cruel race " ; that he 
 undervalued their literature and even affected an igno- 
 rance of the language. The narrowness of Schlegelian 
 criticism was only the excess of Teutonism reacting 
 against the previous excesses of Gallic classicism. 
 
 The deficiency of creative imagination in the Schlegels 
 was supplied by their disciple Ludwig Tieck, who made 
 the " Mahrchen," or popular traditionary tale, his pecul- 
 iar province. It was Wackenroder who first drew his 
 attention to " those old, poorly printed Volksbitcher, with 
 their coarse wood-cuts which had for centuries been cir- 
 culating among the peasantry, and which may still be 
 picked up at the book-stalls of the Leipzig fairs." * 
 * Boyesen : "Aspects of the Romantic School." 
 
i6o ,t/J History of English Romanticism. 
 
 Tieck's volume of " Volksmahrchen " (1797) gave repro- 
 ductions of a number of these old tales, such as the 
 " Haimonskinder," the " Schone Magelone," "Tann- 
 hauser," and the " Schildbiirger," His "Phantasus" 
 (18 1 2) contained original tales conceived in the same 
 spirit. Scherer says that Tieck uttered the manifesto of 
 German romanticism in the following lines from the 
 overture of his " Kaiser Octavianus " : 
 
 "Mondbeglanzte Zaubernacht, 
 Die den .Sinn gefangen halt, 
 Wundervolle Mahrchenwelt, 
 Steig auf in der alten Pracbt ! " 
 
 " Forest solitude " [ WaMeinsamkeit] , says Boyesen,* 
 "churchyards at midnight, ruins of convents and baron- 
 ial castles ; in fact, all the things which we are now apt 
 to call romantic, are the favourite haunts of Tieck's muse. 
 . . . Tieck was excessively fond of moonlight and liter- 
 ally flooded his tales with its soft, dim splendour; there- 
 fore moonlight is now romantic. . . . He never allows a 
 hero to make a declaration of love without a near or dis- 
 tant accompaniment of a bugle (^Schalmei or Waldhorn); 
 accordingly the bugle is called a romantic instrument." 
 
 "The true tone of that ancient time," says Carlyle,f 
 "when man was in his childhood, when the universe 
 within was divided by no wall of adamant from the uni- 
 verse without, and the forms of the Spirit mingled and 
 dwelt in trustful sisterhood with the forms of the Sense, 
 was not easy to seize and adapt with any fitness of ap- 
 plication to the feelings of modern minds. It was to 
 penetrate into the inmost shrines of Imagination, where 
 
 * Jl)id. 
 
 \ "Ludwig Tieck," in "German Romance." 
 
The l^pm antic School in Germany. i6i 
 
 human passion and action are reflected in dim and fitful, 
 but deeply significant resemblances, and to copy these 
 with the guileless, humble graces which alone can become 
 them. . . . The ordinary lovers of witch and fairy matter 
 will remark a deficiency of spectres and enchantments, 
 and complain that the whole is rather dull. Cultivated 
 free-thinkers, again, well knowing that no ghosts or elves 
 exist in this country, will smile at the crack-brained 
 dreamer, with his spelling-book prose and doggerel verse, 
 and dismiss him good-naturedly as a German Lake poet." 
 " In these works," says Heine, " there reigns a mysterious 
 intenseness, a peculiar sympathy with nature, especially 
 with the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The reader 
 feels himself transported into an enchanted forest; he 
 hears the melodious gurgling of subterranean waters; at 
 times he seems to distinguish his own name in the rus- 
 tling of the trees. Ever and anon a nameless dread seizes 
 upon him as the broad-leaved tendrils entwine his feet; 
 strange and marvellous wild flowers gaze at him with 
 their bright, languishing eyes; invisible lips mockingly 
 press tender kisses on his cheeks; gigantic mushrooms, 
 which look like golden bells, grow at the foot of the 
 trees; large silent birds sway to and fro on the branches 
 overhead, put on a sapient look and solemnly nod their 
 heads. Everything seems to hold its breath; all is hushed 
 in awed expectation; suddenly the soft tones of a hunter's 
 horn are heard, and a lovely female form, with waving 
 plumes on head and falcon on wrist, rides swiftly by on 
 a snow-white steed. And this beautiful damsel is so ex- 
 quisitely lovely, so fair; her eyes are of the violet's hue, 
 sparkling with mirth and at the same time earnest, sin- 
 cere, and yet ironical; so chaste and yet so full of tender 
 
1 62 <i/l History of Ettglisb 'Romanticism. 
 
 passion, like the fancy of our excellent Ludwig Tieck. 
 Yes, his fancy is a charming, high-born maiden, who in 
 the forests of fairyland gives chase to fabulous wild beasts ; 
 perhaps she even hunts the rare unicorn, which may only 
 be caught by a spotless virgin." 
 
 In 1827 Carlyle * published translations of five of 
 Tieck's " Mahrchen," viz. : " The Fair-Haired Eckbert," 
 "The Trusty Eckart," "The Elves," "The Runenberg," 
 and " The Goblet." He mentioned that another tale had 
 been already Englished — " The Pictures " (Die Gemalde). 
 This version was by Connop Thirwall, who had also ren- 
 dered "The Betrothal" in 1824. In spite of Carlyle's 
 recommendations, Tieck's stories seem to have made 
 small impression in England. Doubtless they came too 
 late, and the romantic movement, by 1827, had spent its 
 first force in a country already sated with Scott's poems 
 and novels. Sarah Austin, a daughter of William Tay- 
 lor of Norwich, went to Germany to study German litera- 
 ture in this same year 1827. In her " Fragments from 
 German Prose Writers" (1841), she speaks of the small 
 success of Tieck's stories in England, but testifies that 
 A. W. Schlegel's dramatic lectures had been translated 
 early and the translation frequently reprinted. Another 
 of the Norwich Taylors — Edgar — was the translator of 
 Grimm's " Haus- und Kinder-Mahrchen." Julius Hare, 
 who was at school at Weimar in the winter of 1804-5, 
 rendered three of Tieck's tales, as well as Fouque's 
 "Sintram" (1820). 
 
 It is interesting to note that Tieck was not unknown to 
 Hawthorne and Poe. The latter mentions his " Journey 
 into the Blue Distance " in his " Fall of the House of 
 * "German Romance," four vols., Edinburgh. 
 
The 'T{pmanttc School in Germany. 163 
 
 Usher " ; and in an early review of Hawthorne's " Twice- 
 Told Tales" (1842) and "Mosses from an Old Manse" 
 (1846), at a time when their author was still, in his own 
 words, " the obscurest man of letters in America," Poe 
 acutely pointed out a resemblance between Hawthorne 
 and Tieck; " whose manner," he asserts, " in some of his 
 works, is absolutely identical with that habitual to Haw- 
 thorne." One finds a confirmation of this apergu — or 
 finds, at least, that Hawthorne was attracted by Tieck — 
 in passages of the "American Note-Books," where he 
 speaks of grubbing out several pages of Tieck at a sit- 
 ting, by the aid of a German dictionary. Colonel Hig- 
 ginson ("Short Studies"), apropos of Poe's sham learn- 
 ing and his habit of mystifying the reader by imaginary 
 citations, confesses to having hunted in vain for this fas- 
 cinatingly entitled "Journey into the Blue Distance"; 
 and to having been laughed at for his pains by a friend 
 who assured him that Poe could scarcely read a word of 
 German. But Tieck did really write this story, " Das 
 Alte Buch : oder Reise ins Blaue hinein," which Poe 
 misleadingly refers to under its alternate title. There 
 is, indeed, a hint of allegory in Tieck's " Mahrchen " — 
 which are far from being mere fairy tales — that reminds 
 one frequently of Hawthorne's shadowy art — of such 
 things as "Ethan Brand," or "The Minister's Black 
 Veil," or "The Great Carbuncle of the White Moun- 
 tains." There is, e.g.^ "The Elves," in which a little 
 girl does but step across the foot-bridge over the brook 
 that borders her father's garden, to find herself in a 
 magic land where she stays, as it seems to her, a few 
 hours; but returns home to learn that she has been absent 
 seven years. Or there is " The Runenberg," where a 
 
164 e^ History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 youth wandering in the mountains, receives from a sorcer- 
 ess, through the casement of a ruined castle, a wondrous 
 tablet set with gems in a mystic pattern; and years after- 
 ward wanders back into the mountains, leaving home 
 and friends to search for fairy jewels, only to return again 
 to his village, an old and broken-down man, bearing a 
 sackful of worthless pebbles which appear to him the 
 most precious stones. And there is the story of " The 
 Goblet," where the theme is like that of Hawthorne's 
 " Shaker Bridal," a pair of lovers whose union is thwarted 
 and postponed until finally, when too late, they find that 
 only the ghost or the memory of their love is left to mock 
 their youthful hope. 
 
 But the mystic, par excellence, among the German ro- 
 manticists was Novalis, of whose writings Carlyle gave 
 a sympathetic account in the Foreign Reviezv for 1829. 
 Novalis' " Hymns to the Night," written in Ossianic 
 prose, were perhaps not without influence on Longfellow 
 ("Voices of the Night"), but his most significant work 
 was his unfinished romance "Heinrichvon Ofterdingen." 
 The hero was a legendary poet of the time of the Cru- 
 sades, who was victor in a contest of minstrelsy on the 
 Wartburg. But in Novalis' romance there is no firm 
 delineation of mediaeval life — everything is dissolved 
 in a mist of transcendentalism and allegory. The story 
 opens with the words: "I long to see the blue flower; 
 it is continually in my mind, and I can think of nothing 
 else." Heinrich falls asleep, and has a vision of a won- 
 drous cavern and a fountain, beside which grows a tall, 
 light blue flower that bends towards him, the petals show- 
 ing "like a blue spreading ruff in which hovered a lovely 
 face." This blue flower, says Carlyle, is poetry, "the 
 
The l^pmantk School in Germany. 165 
 
 real object, passion, and vocation of young Heinrich." 
 Boyesen gives a subtler interpretation. "This blue 
 flower," he says, " is the watchword and symbol of the 
 school. It is meant to symbolise the deep and nameless 
 longings of a poet's soul. Romantic poetry invariably 
 deals with longing; not a definite formulated desire for 
 some attainable object, but a dim mysterious aspiration, 
 a trembling unrest, a vague sense of kinship with the 
 infinite,* a consequent dissatisfaction with every form of 
 happiness which the world has to offer. The object of 
 the romantic longing, therefore, so far as it has any ob- 
 ject, is the ideal, . . . The blue flower, like the absolute 
 ideal, is never found in this world; poets may at times 
 dimly feel its nearness, and perhaps even catch a brief 
 glimpse of it in some lonely forest glade, far from the 
 haunts of men, but it is in vain to try to pluck it. If for 
 a moment its perfume fills the air, the senses are intoxi- 
 cated and the soul swells with poetic rapture." f It 
 would lead us too far afield to follow up the traces of this 
 mystical symbolism in the writings of our New England 
 transcendentalists. One is often reminded of Novalis' 
 blue flower in such a poem as Emerson's " Forerunners," 
 or Lowell's "Footpath," or Whittier's " Vanishers," or 
 in Thoreau's little parable about the horse, the hound, 
 and the dove which he had long ago lost and is still 
 seeking. And again one is reminded of Tieck when 
 Thoreau says : " I had seen the red election birds brought 
 from their recesses on my comrades' strings and fancied 
 that their plumage would assume stranger and more daz- 
 
 * A. W. Schlegel says that romantic poetry is the represen- 
 tation {Darstellntig) of the infinite through symbols, 
 f "Novalis and the Blue Flower." 
 
1 66 zA History of English 'T^omanticism. 
 
 zling colours in proportion as I advanced farther into the 
 darkness and solitude of the forest." Heinrich von 
 Ofterdingen travels to Augsburg to visit his grandfather, 
 conversing on the way with various shadowy persons, a 
 miner, a hermit, an Eastern maiden named Zulma, who 
 represent respectively, according to Boyesen, the poetry 
 of nature, the poetry of history, and the spirit of the 
 Orient. At Augsburg he meets the poet Klingsohr (the 
 personification, perhaps, of poetry in its full develop- 
 ment). With his daughter Matilda he falls in love, 
 whose face is that same which he had beheld in his 
 vision, encircled by the petals of the blue flower. Then 
 he has a dream in which he sees Matilda sink and disap- 
 pear in the waters of a river. Then he encounters her in 
 a strange land and asks where the river is. " Seest thou 
 not its blue waves above us? " she answers. "He looked 
 up and the blue river was flowing softly over their heads." 
 "This image of Death, and of the river being the sky in 
 that other and eternal country " * — does it not once more 
 remind us of the well-known line in Channing's "A 
 Poet's Hope "— 
 
 "If my bark sink, 'tis to another sea" ; 
 or of Emerson's " Two Rivers " : 
 
 "Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, 
 Repeats the music of the rain. 
 But sweeter rivers pulsing flit 
 Through thee, as thou through Concord plain " ? 
 
 But transcendentalism is one thing and romanticism is 
 another, and we may dismiss Novalis with a reminder of 
 the fact that the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, once 
 published at Concord, took for its motto a sentence from 
 
 * Carlyle. 
 
Tbel^mantic School in Germany. 167 
 
 his " Bliithenstaub " (Flower-pollen): " Philosophy can 
 bake no bread, but she can procure for us God, freedom, 
 and immortality." * 
 
 Brentano and Von Arnim have had practically no influ- 
 ence in England. Erentano's most popular story was 
 translated by T. W. Appell, under the title, " Honour, 
 or the Story of the Brave Casper and the Fair Annerl : 
 With an Introduction and Biographical Notice" (Lon- 
 don, 1847). The same story was rendered into French 
 in the Correspondant iox 1859 (" Le Brave Kasperl et la 
 Belle Annerl "). Three tales of Arnim were translated 
 by The'ophile Gautier, as " Contes Bizarres " (Paris, 1856). 
 Arnim's best romance is " Die Kronenwachter " (1817). 
 Scherer testifies that this " combined real knowledge of 
 the Reformation period with graphic power"; and adds: 
 "It was Walter Scott's great example which, in the sec- 
 ond decade of this century, first made conscientious faith- 
 fulness and study of details the rule in historical novel- 
 writing." Longfellow's " German Poets and Poetry " 
 (1845) includes nothing from Arnim or Brentano. Nor 
 did Thomas Roscoe's "German Novelists" (four vol- 
 umes), nor George Soane's " Specimens of German Ro- 
 mance," both of which appeared in 1826. 
 
 The most popular of the German romanticists was 
 Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouque', the descendant of 
 a family exiled from France by the Revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes, and himself an officer in the Prussian 
 army in the war of liberation. Fouque's numerous ro- 
 mances, in all of which he upholds the ideal of Christian 
 knighthood, have been, many of them, translated into 
 
 * Selections from Novalis in an English translation were 
 published at London in 1891. 
 
1 68 <t/J History of English '^{pmanticism. 
 
 English. "Aslauga's Knight" appeared in Carlyle's 
 *' Specimens of German Romance " (1827); "Sintram," 
 "Undine," and " Der Zauberring" had been translated 
 even earlier. " Thiodolf the Icelander" and others have 
 also been current in English circulating libraries. 
 Carlyle acknowledges that Fouque's notes are few, and 
 that he is possessed by a single idea. " The chapel and 
 the tilt yard stand in the background or the foreground 
 in all the scenes of his universe. He gives us knights, 
 soft-hearted and strong-armed; full of Christian self- 
 denial, patience, meekness, and gay, easy daring; they 
 stand before us in their mild frankness, with suitable 
 equipment, and accompaniment of squire and dame. . . . 
 Change of scene and person brings little change of sub- 
 ject; even when no chivalry is mentioned, we feel too 
 clearly the influence of its unseen presence. Nor can it 
 be said that in this solitary department his success is of 
 the very highest sort. To body forth the spirit of 
 Christian knighthood in existing poetic forms; to wed 
 that old sentiment to modern thoughts, was a task which 
 he could not attempt. He has turned rather to the fic- 
 tions and machinery of former days." Heine says that 
 Fouque's Sigurd the Serpent Slayer has the courage of 
 a hundred lions and the sense of two asses. But Fouque's 
 "Undine" (1811) is in its way a masterpiece and a 
 classic. This story of the lovely water-sprite, who re- 
 ceived a soul when she fell in love with the knight, and 
 with a soul, a knowledge of human sorrow, has a slight 
 resemblance to the conception of Hawthorne's '* Marble 
 Faun." Coleridge was greatly fascinated by it. He 
 read the original several times, and once the American 
 translation, printed at Philadelphia. He said that it was 
 
The '^mantic School in Germariy. 169 
 
 beyond Scott, and that Undine resembled Shakspere's 
 Caliban in being a literal creation. 
 
 But in general Fouque's chivalry romances, when 
 compared with Scott's, have much less vigour, variety, 
 and dramatic force, though a higher spirituality and a 
 softer sentiment. The Waverley novels are solid with a 
 right materialistic treatment. It was Scott's endeavour 
 to make the Middle Ages real. The people are there, 
 as well as chevaliers and their ladies. The history of 
 the times is there. But in Fouque the Middle Ages be- 
 come even more unreal, fairy-like, fantastic than they 
 are in our imaginations. There is nothing but tourney- 
 ing, love-making, and enchantment. Compare the rumour 
 of the Crusades and Richard the Lion Heart in " Der 
 Zauberring " with the stalwart flesh-and-blood figures in 
 "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman." A wavering moon- 
 shine lies all over the world of the Fouque romances, like 
 the magic light which illumines the Druda's castle in 
 " Der Zauberring," on whose battlements grow tall white 
 flowers, and whose courts are filled with unearthly music 
 from the perpetual revolution of golden wheels. "On 
 the romantic side," wrote Richter, in his review of 
 " L'Alleniagne " in the Yi%\^€i\)%xgJahrbucheriox\Z\z^, 
 "we could not wish the Briton to cast his first glance 
 at us; for the Briton — to whom nothing is so poetical as 
 the common weal — requires (being used to the weight of 
 gold), even for a golden age of poetry, the thick golden 
 wing-cases of his epithet-poets; not the transparent gos- 
 samer wings of the Romanticists; no many-coloured but- 
 terfly dust; but, at lowest, flower-dust that will grow to 
 something." 
 
 Ax\ot\\QX Spdtromajitiker -who has penetrated to the Eng- 
 
170 z/1 History of English %omanticism. 
 
 lish literary consciousness is the Swabian Ludwig Uhland, 
 the sweetest lyric poet of the romantic school. Uhland 
 studied the poems of Ossian, the Norse sagas, the " Nibe- 
 lungenlied" and German hero legends, the Spanish ro- 
 mances, the poetry of the trouveres and the troubadours, 
 and treated motives from all these varied sources. His 
 true field, however, was the ballad, as Tieck's was the 
 popular tale ; and many of Uhland's ballads are favourites 
 with English readers, through excellent translations. 
 Sarah Austin's version of one of them is widely familiar: 
 
 " Many a year is in its grave 
 Since I crossed this restless wave, " etc. 
 
 Longfellow translated three: "The Black Knight," 
 " The Luck of Edenhall," and " The Castle by the Sea." 
 It is to be feared that the last-named belongs to what 
 Scherer calls that " trivial kind of romanticism, full of 
 sadness and renunciation, in which kings and queens with 
 crimson mantles and golden crowns, kings' daughters and 
 beautiful shepherds, harpers, monks, and nuns play a 
 great part," But it has a haunting beauty, and a dreamy 
 melody like Goethe's "Es war ein Konig in Thule." 
 The mocking Heine, who stigmatises Fouque's knights 
 as combinations of iron and sentimentality, complains 
 that in Uhland's writings too " the naive, rude, powerful 
 tones of the Middle Ages are not reproduced with ideal- 
 ised fidelity, but rather they are dissolved into a sickly, 
 sentimental melancholy. . . . The women in Uhland's 
 poems are only beautiful shadows, embodied moonshine; 
 milk flows in their veins, and sweet tears in their eyes, 
 i.e., tears which lack salt. If we compare Uhland's 
 knights with the knights in the old ballads, it seems to 
 
'The l^omantic School in Germany. 1 7 1 
 
 us as if the former were composed of suits of leaden 
 armour, entirely filled with flowers, instead of flesh and 
 bones. Hence Uhland's knights are more pleasing to 
 delicate nostrils than the old stalwarts, who wore heavy 
 iron trousers and were huge eaters and still huger drink- 
 ers." 
 
 Upon the whole it must be concluded that this second 
 invasion of England by German romance, in the twenties 
 and early thirties of the nineteenth century, made a lesser 
 impression than the first irruption in, say, 1795 to 18 10, 
 in the days of Biirger and " Gotz," and " The Robbers," 
 and Monk Lewis and the youthful Scott. And the rea- 
 son is not far to seek. The newcomers found England 
 in possession of a native romanticism of a very robust 
 type, by the side of which the imported article showed 
 like a delicate exotic. Carlyle affirms that Madame de 
 Stael's book was the precursor of whatever acquaintance 
 with German literature exists in England. He himself 
 worked valiantly to extend that acquaintance by his arti- 
 cles in the Edi?iburgh and Foreign Review, and by his 
 translations from German romance. But he found among 
 English readers an invincible prejudice against German 
 mysticism and German sentimentality. The romantic 
 chiaroscuro, which puzzled Southey even in "The An- 
 cient Mariner," became dimmest twilight in Tieck's 
 "Mahrchen" and midnight darkness in the visionary 
 Novalis. The Weichheit, Wehmtcth, and Sehnsucht nach 
 der Unendlichkeit of the German romanticists were moods 
 not altogether unfamiliar in English poetry. " Now stirs 
 the feeling infinite," sings Byron. 
 
 "Now more than ever seems it rich to die. 
 To cease upon the midnight with no pain, " 
 
172 (i// History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 cries Keats. But when Novalis, in his Todessehnsuchf^ 
 exclaims, " Death is the romance of life," the sentiment 
 has an alien sound. There was something mutually re- 
 pellent between the more typical phases of English and 
 German romanticism. Tieck and the Schlegels, we 
 know, cared little for Scott. We are told that Scott read 
 the Zeitimg Jiir Eiusiedler, but we are not told what he 
 thought of it. Perhaps romanticism, like transcendental- 
 ism, found a more congenial soil in New than in Old 
 England. Longfellow spent the winter of 1835-36 in 
 Heidelberg, calling on A. W. Schlegel at Bonn, on his 
 way thither. " Hyperion " (1839) ^^ saturated with Ger- 
 man romance. Its hero, Paul Flemming, knew " Des 
 Knaben Wunderhorn " almost by heart. No other Ger- 
 man book had ever exercised such " wild and magic in- 
 fluence upon his imagination." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ^be IRomanttc Movement in ffrancc* 
 
 French romanticism had aspects of its own which dis- 
 tinguished it from the English and the German alike. It 
 differed from the former and agreed with the latter in 
 being organised. In France, as in Germany, there was 
 a romantic school, whose members were united by com- 
 mon literary principles and by personal association. 
 There were sharply defined and hostile factions of classics 
 and romantics, with party cries, watchwords, and shibbo- 
 leths; a propaganda carried on and a polemic waged in 
 pamphlets, prefaces, and critical journals. Above all 
 there was a leader. Walter Scott was the great romancer 
 of Europe, but he was never the head of a school in his 
 own country in the sense in which Victor Hugo was in 
 France, or even in the sense in which the Schlegels were 
 in Germany. Scott had imitators, but Hugo had disci- 
 ples. 
 
 * It is scarcely necessary to say that no full-length picture 
 of the French romantic movement is attempted in this chap- 
 ter, but only such a sketch as should serve to illustrate its re- 
 lation to English romanticism. For the history of the move- 
 ment, besides the authorities quoted or referred to in the text. 
 I have relied principally upon the following : Petit de Julle- 
 ville : "Histoire de la Litterature Frangaise, " Tome vii., 
 Paris, 1899. Brunetiere : "Manual of the History of French 
 Literature " (authorized translation) , New York, 1898. L. 
 Bertrand : "La Fin du Classicisme, " Paris, 1897. Adolphe 
 Jullien : "Le Romantisme et L'Editeur Renduel," Paris, 
 1897. I have also read somewhat widely, though not exhaus- 
 
 173 
 
174 <^ History of English l^manticism. 
 
 One point in which the French movement differed from 
 both the English and the German was in the suddenness 
 and violence of the outbreak. It was not so much a 
 gradual development as a revolution, an explosion. The 
 reason of this is to be found in the firmer hold which 
 academic tradition had in France, the fountainhead of 
 eighteenth-century classicism. Romanticism had a spe- 
 cial work to do in the land of literary convention in as- 
 serting the freedom of art and the unity of art and life. 
 Everything that is in life, said Hugo, is, or has a right 
 to be in art. The French, in political and social matters 
 the most revolutionary people of Europe, were the most 
 conservative in matters of taste. The Revolution even 
 intensified the reigning classicism by giving it a republi- 
 can turn. The Jacobin orators appealed constantly to 
 the examples of the Greek and Roman democracies. The 
 Goddess of Reason was enthroned in place of God. Sun- 
 day was abolished, and the names of the months and of 
 the days of the week were changed. Dress under the 
 Directory was patterned on antique modes — the liberty 
 cap was Phrygian — and children born under the Repub- 
 
 tively, in the writings of the French romantics themselves, 
 including Hugo's early poems and most of his dramas and 
 romances; Nodier's " Contes en prose et en verse " ; nearly 
 all of Musset's works in prose and verse ; ditto of Theophile 
 Gautier's; Stendhal's "La Chartreuse de Parme," "Le 
 Rouge et le Noir," "Racine et Shakespeare," "Lord Byron 
 en Italie," etc. ; Vigny's "Chatterton, " "Cinq-Mars," and 
 many of his Scriptural poems; Balzac's " Les Chouans"; 
 Merimee's "Chronique de Charles IX.," and most of his 
 " Nouvelles " ; Chateaubriand' s " Le Genie du Christianisme " ; 
 some of Lamartine's "Meditations " ; most of George Sand's 
 novels, and a number of Dumas' ; many of Sainte-Beuve's 
 critical writings ; and the miscellanies of Gerard de Nerval 
 (Labrunie). Of many of these, of course, no direct use or 
 mention is made in the present chapter. 
 
The '^mantle [Movement in France. 175 
 
 lie were named after Roman patriots, Brutus, Cassius, etc. 
 The great painter of the Revolution was David,* who 
 painted his subjects in togas, with backgrounds of Greek 
 temples. Voltaire's classicism was monarchical and held 
 to the Louis XIV. tradition ; David's was republican. 
 And yet the recognised formulae of taste and criticism 
 were the same in 1800 as in 1775, or in 1675. 
 
 A second distinction of the French romanticism was 
 its local concentration at Paris. The centripetal forces 
 have always been greater in France than in England and 
 Germany. The earlier group of German Roinantiker -^z.^^ 
 indeed, as we have seen, united for a time at Jena and 
 Berlin ; and the Spatro7Jiantiker at Heidelberg. But this 
 was dispersion itself as compared with the intense focus- 
 sing of intellectual rays from every quarter of France 
 upon the capital. In England, I hardly need repeat, 
 there was next to no cohesion at all between the widely 
 scattered men of letters whose work exhibited romantic 
 traits. 
 
 In one particular the French movement resembled the 
 English more nearly than the German. It kept itself 
 almost entirely within the domain of art, and did not 
 carry out its principles with German thoroughness and 
 consistency into politics and religion. It made no efforts 
 towards a practical restoration of the Middle Ages. At 
 the beginning, indeed, French romanticism exhibited 
 something analogous to the Toryism of Scott, and the 
 reactionary y//«/(rrw« and neo-Catholicism of the Schle- 
 
 * "II a pour I'art du moyenage, un mepris voisin de la de- 
 mence et de la frenesie. . . . Voir le discours ou il propose de 
 mutiler les statues des rois de la faQade de Notre-Dame, pour 
 en former un piedestal a la statue du peuple frangais." Ber- 
 trand : "La Fin du Classicisme," pp. 302-3 and note. 
 
176 c/^ History of English l^omanticism, 
 
 gels. Chateaubriand in his " Genie du Christianisme " 
 attempted a sort of aesthetic revival of Catholic Christian- 
 ity, which had suffered so heavily by the deistic teachings 
 of the last century and the atheism of the Revolution. 
 Victor Hugo began in his "Odes et Ballades" (1822) 
 as an enthusiastic adherent of monarchy and the church. 
 "L'histoire des hommes," he wrote, "ne presente de 
 podsie que jugee du haut des idees monarchiques et re- 
 ligieuses," But he advanced quite rapidly towards liber- 
 alism both in politics and religion. And of the young 
 men who surrounded him, like Gautier, Labrunie, Sainte- 
 Beuve, Musset, De Vigny, and others, it can only be af- 
 firmed that they were legitimist or republican, Catholic 
 7 or agnostic, just as it happened and without affecting their 
 fidelity to the literary canons of the new school.* The 
 German romanticism was philosophical; the French was 
 artistic and social. The Parisian ateliers as well as the 
 Parisian salo?is were nuclei of revolt against classical 
 traditions. " This intermixture of art with poetry," says 
 Gautier,f " was and remains one of the characteristic 
 marks of the new school, and enables us to understand 
 why its earliest recruits were found more among artists 
 than among men of letters. A multitude of objects, 
 images, comparisons, which were believed to be irreduci- 
 ble to words, entered into the language and have stayed 
 there. The sphere of literature was enlarged, and now 
 includes the sphere of art in its measureless circle." 
 " At that time painting and poetry fraternised. The art- 
 ists read the poets and the poets visited the artists. 
 
 * But see, for the Catholic reaction in France, the writings 
 of Joseph de Maistre, especially "Du Pape " (1819). 
 •j- " Histoire du Romantisme " (1874). 
 
7be 'Tipmantic cMovement in France. 177 
 
 Shakspere, Dante, Goethe, Lord Byron, and Walter Scott 
 were to be found in the studio as in the study. There 
 were as many splotches of colour as of ink on the mar- 
 gins of those beautiful volumes that were so incessantly 
 thumbed. Imaginations, already greatly excited by them- 
 selves, were heated to excess by the reading of those for- 
 eign writings of a colouring so rich, of a fancy so free 
 and so strong. Enthusiasm mounted to delirium. It 
 seemed as if we had discovered poetry, and that was in- 
 deed the truth. Now that this fine flame has cooled and 
 that the positive-minded generation which possesses the 
 world is preoccupied with other ideas, one cannot imagine 
 what dizziness, what eblouissement was produced in us by 
 such and such a picture or poem, which people nowadays 
 are satisfied to approve by a slight nod of the head. 
 It was so new, so unexpected, so lively, so glowing! " * 
 
 The romantic school in France had not only its poets, 
 dramatists, and critics, but its painters, architects, sculp- 
 tors, musical composers, and actors. The romantic artist 
 par excellence was Eugene Delacroix, the painter of " The 
 Crusaders Entering Jerusalem. " The Greeks and Ro- 
 mans had been so abused by the decadent school of 
 David that they fell into complete disrepute at this time. 
 Delacroix's first manner was purely romantic, that is to 
 say, he borrowed nothing from the recollections or the 
 forms of the antique. The subjects that he treated were 
 relatively modern, taken from the history of the Middle 
 Ages, from Dante, Shakspere, Goethe, Lord Byron, or 
 Walter Scott." He painted " Hamlet," " The Boat of 
 Dante," "Tasso in Bedlam," "Marino Faliero," "The 
 Death of Sardanapalus," " The Combat of the Giaour and 
 * Ibid., 210. 
 
178 <i/J History of English %omanticism. 
 
 the Pasha," "The Massacre of the Bishop of Lie'ge," and 
 similar subjects. Goethe in his conversations with Eck- 
 erman expressed great admiration of Delacroix's inter- 
 pretations of scenes in " Faust " (the brawl in Auerbach's 
 cellar, and the midnight ride of Faust and Mephistopheles 
 to deliver Margaret from prison). Goethe hoped that 
 the French artist would go on and reproduce the whole 
 of " Faust," and especially the sorceress' kitchen and the 
 scenes on the Brocken. Other painters of the romantic 
 school were Camille Roqueplan, who treated motives 
 drawn from " The Antiquary " and other novels of Walter 
 Scott;* and Eugene Deveria, whose ''Birth of Henry 
 IV.," executed in 1827, when the artist was only twenty- 
 two years of age, was a masterpiece of colouring and 
 composition. The house of the Deveria brothers was 
 one of the rallying points of the Parisian romanticists. 
 And then there was Louis Boulanger, who painted "Ma- 
 zeppa " and " The Witches' Sabbath " (" La Ronde du 
 Sabbat "f); and the water-colour painter and engraver, 
 Celestin Nanteuil, who furnished innumerable designs 
 for vignettes, frontispieces, and book illustrations to the 
 writers of the romantic school. 
 
 "Of all the arts," says Gautier, "the one that lends 
 itself least to the expression of the romantic idea is qer- 
 tainly sculpture. It seems to have received from antiq- 
 uity its definitive form. . . . What can the statuary art 
 do without the gods and heroes of mythology who furnish 
 it with plausible pretexts for the nude, and for such 
 
 * Heine counted, in the Salon of 183 1, more than thirty pic- 
 tures inspired by Scott. 
 
 f Also " Le Roi Lear " (Salon of 1836) and " La Procession 
 du Pape des Fous " (aquarelle) for Hugo's "Notre-Dame de 
 Paris." 
 
The T{omantic [Movement in France. 179 
 
 drapery as it needs ; things which romanticism prescribes, 
 or did at least prescribe at that time of its first fervour? 
 Every sculptor is of necessity a classic." * Nevertheless, 
 he says that the romantic school was not quite unpro- 
 vided of sculptors. " In our inner circle (c^nade), Jehan 
 du Seigneur represented this art, austere and rebellious 
 to the fancy. . . . Jehan du Seigneur — let us leave in his 
 name of Jean this mediaeval h which made him so happy 
 and made him believe that he wore the apron of Ervein 
 of Steinbach at work on the sculptures of Strasburg min- 
 ster." Gautier mentions among the productions of this 
 Gothic-minded statuary an " Orlando Furioso," a bust of 
 Victor Hugo, and a group from the latter's romance, 
 " Notre Dame de Paris," the gipsy girl Esmeralda giving 
 a drink to the humpback Quasimodo. It was the en- 
 deavour of the new school, in the arts of design as well 
 as in literature, to introduce colour, novelty, picturesque- 
 ness, character. They studied the great Venetian and 
 Flemish colourists, neglected under the reign of David, 
 and " in the first moments of their fury against le poncif 
 dassique, they seemed to have adopted the theory of art 
 of the witches in 'Macbeth' — Fair is foul and foul is 
 fair " ; f i.e., they neglected a traditional beauty in favour 
 of the diaraderistic. " They sought the true, the new, the 
 picturesque perhaps more than the ideal ; but this re- 
 action was certainly permissible after so many Ajaxes, 
 Achilleses, and Philocteteses." 
 
 It is not quite so easy to understand what is meant by 
 romanticism in music as in literature. But Gautier 
 
 * Recall Schlegel's saying that the genius of the classic 
 drama was plastic and that of the romantic picturesque, 
 f Gautier, 192. 
 
i8o c/^ History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 names a number of composers as adhering to the roman- 
 tic school, among others, Hippolyte Monpon, who set to 
 music "the leaping metres, the echo-rimes, the Gothic 
 counter-points of Hugo's ' Odes et Ballades ' and songs 
 like Musset's ' L'Andalouse ' — 
 
 ' Avez vous vu dans Barcelone, ' 
 
 He believed like us in serenades, alcaldes, mantillas, 
 castinets; in all that Italy and that Spain, a trifle con- 
 ventional, which was brought into fashion by the author 
 of ' Don Paez,' of ' Portia,' and of the ' Marchioness of 
 Amalgui,' . . . 'Gastibelza, the Man with the Cara- 
 bine,' and that guitar, so profoundly Spanish, of Victor 
 Hugo, had inspired Monpon with a savage, plaintive air, 
 of a strange character, which long remained popular, and 
 which no romanticist — if any such is left — has forgotten." 
 A greater name than Monpon was Hector Berlioz, the 
 composer of " Romeo and Juliette " and " The Damnation 
 of Faust." Gautier says that Berlioz represented the ro- 
 mantic idea in music, by virtue of his horror of common 
 formulag, his breaking away from old models, the complex 
 richness of his orchestration, his fidelity to local colour 
 (whatever that may mean in music), his desire to make 
 his art express what it had never expressed before, "the 
 tumultuous and Shaksperian depth of the passions, rev- 
 eries amorous or melancholy, the longings and demands 
 of the soul, the indefinite and mysterious feelings which 
 words cannot render." Berlioz was a passionate lover of 
 German music and of the writings of Shakspere, Goethe, 
 and Scott. He composed overtures to " Waverley," 
 " King Lear," and " Rob Roy " ; a cantata on " Sardan- 
 apalus," and music for the ghost scene in " Hamlet " and 
 
The l^manttc [Movement in France. i8i 
 
 for Goethe's ballad, "The Fisher." He married an Eng- 
 lish actress whom he had seen in the parts of Ophelia, 
 Portia, and Cordelia. Berlioz efi revanche was better 
 appreciated in Germany than in France, where he was 
 generally considered mad; where his "Symphonic fan- 
 tastique " produced an effect analogous to that of the 
 first pieces of Richard Wagner; and where "the sympho- 
 nies of Beethoven were still thought barbarous, and pro- 
 nounced by the classicists not to be music, any more than 
 the verses of Victor Hugo were poetry, or the pictures of 
 Delacroix painting." And finally there were actors and 
 actresses who came to fill their roles in the new roman- 
 tic dramas, of whom I need mention only Madame Dor- 
 val, who took the part of Hugo's Marion Delorme, What 
 Gautier tells us of her is significant of the art that she 
 interpreted; that her acting was by sympathy, rather than 
 calculation; that it was intensely emotional; that she 
 owed nothing to tradition; her tradition was essentially 
 modern, dramatic rather than tragic* 
 
 Romanticism in France was, in a more special_sense 
 than in Germany and England^ an effort for^freedom, 
 passion, originality, as against rule, authority, conven- 
 tion. "Romanticism," says Victor Hugo,f "so many 
 times poorly defined, is nothing else than liberalis77i in 
 literature,... • . Lite rary libert y is the child of politi cal 
 IjbfiLll^. . . . After so many great things which our fa- 
 thers have done and which we have witnessed, here we are, 
 issued forth from old forms of society; why should we 
 not issue out of the old forms of poetry? A new people, 
 
 * This is a distinction more French than English : la trag- 
 idle vs. le draine. 
 
 f Preface to "Hernani." 
 
x82 <t/l History of English 'T{pmanticism. 
 
 a new art. While admiring the literature of Louis XIV., 
 so well adapted to his monarchy, France will know how to 
 have its own literature, peculiar, personal, and national — 
 this actual France, this France of the nineteenth century 
 to which Mirabeau has given its freedom and Napoleon 
 its power." And again : * " What I have been pleading 
 for is the liberty of art as against the despotism of sys- 
 tems, codes, and rules. It is my habit to follow at all 
 hazards what I take for inspiration, and to change the 
 mould as often as I change the composition. Dogmatism 
 in the arts is what I avoid above all things. God forbid 
 that I should aspire to be of the numtj^r of those, either 
 romantics or. classics, who make works according to their 
 system; who condemn themselves never to have more than 
 one form in mind, to always be proving something, to 
 follow any other laws than those of their organization 
 and of their nature. The artificial work of such men as 
 those, whatever talents they may possess, does not exist for 
 art. It is a theory, not a poetry." It is manifest that a 
 literary reform undertaken in this spirit would not long 
 consent to lend itself to the purposes of political or 
 religious reaction, or to limit itself to any single influence 
 like mediaevalism, but would strike out freely in a multi- 
 tude of directions; would invent new forms and adapt old 
 ones to its material ; and would become more and more 
 modern, various, and progressive. And such, in fact, 
 was the history of Victor Hugo's intellectual develop- 
 ment and of the whole literary movement in France which 
 began with him and with De Stendhal (Henri Beyle). 
 Th i s asse rti on of the freedom of th e individual artis t was 
 naturally accompaniedwith certain extravagances. "To 
 * Preface to "Cromwell." 
 
The l^omanttc CMovement in France. 183 
 
 develop freely all the caprices of thought," says Gautier,* 
 "even if they shocked taste, cp.nveri.tion, and rulei.._to hate 
 and' repel to the utmost what Horace calls ih^ prqfanum 
 vulgus, and what the moustached and hairy rapins call 
 grocers, philistines, or bourgeois; to celebrate love with 
 warmth enough to burn the paper (that they wrote on) ; 
 to set it up as the only end and only means of happiness; 
 to sanctify and deify art, regarded as a second creator; 
 such are the donnees of the programme which each sought 
 to realise according to his strength; the ideal and the 
 secret postulations of the young romanticists," 
 
 Inasmuch as the French romantic school, even more 
 than the English and the German, was a breach with tradi- 
 tion and an insurrection against existing conditions, it will 
 be well to notice briefly what the particular situation was 
 which the romanticists in France confronted, "To un- 
 derstand what this movement was and what it did," says 
 Saintsbury,f "we must point out more precisely what 
 were the faults of the older literature, and especially of 
 the literature of the late eighteenth century. They were, 
 in the first place, an extremely impoverished vocabulary, 
 no recourse being had to the older tongue for picturesque 
 archaisms, and little welcome being given to new phrases, 
 however appropriate and distinct. In the second place, 
 the adoption, especially in poetry, of an exceedingly con- 
 ventional method of speech, describing everything where 
 possible by an elaborate periphrasis, and avoiding di- 
 rect and simple terms. Thirdly, in all forms of litera- 
 ture, but especially in poetry and drama, the accept- 
 ance for almost every kind of work of cut-and-dried 
 
 * "Histoire du Romantisme, " p. 64. 
 
 f "Primer of French Literature," p. 115. 
 
184 <vf History of English l^omanticistn. 
 
 patterns,* to which it was bound to conform. We have 
 already pointed out that this had all but killed the tragic 
 drama, and it was nearly as bad in the various accepted 
 forms of poetry, such as fables, epistles, odes, etc. Each 
 piece was expected to resemble something else, and origi- 
 nality was regarded as a mark of bad taste and insufficient 
 culture. Fourthly, the submission to a very limited and 
 very arbitrary system of versification, adapted only to the 
 production of tragic alexandrines, and limiting even that 
 form of verse to one monotonous model. Lastly, the 
 limitation of the subject to be treated to a very few 
 classes and kinds." If to this description be added a 
 paragraph from Gautier's "Histoiredu Romantisme," we 
 shall have a sufficient idea of the condition of French 
 literature and art before the appearance of Victor Hugo's 
 "Odes et Ballades" (1826). "One cannot imagine to 
 what a degree of insignificance and paleness literature 
 had come. Painting was not much better. The last 
 pupils of David were spreading their wishywashy colours 
 over the old Graeco-Roman patterns. The classicists 
 found that perfectly beautiful; but in the presence of 
 these masterpieces, their admiration could not keep them 
 from putting their hands before their mouths to cover a 
 yawn ; a circumstance, however, that failed to make them 
 any more indulgent to the artists of the new school, 
 whom they called tattooed savages and accused of paint- 
 ing with a drunken broom." One is reminded by Mr. 
 Saintsbury's summary of many features which we have 
 observed in the English academicism of the eighteenth 
 
 * One of the principles of the romanticists was the melange 
 des genres, whereby the old lines between tragedy and com- 
 edy, e.g., were broken down, lyricism admitted into the 
 drama, etc. 
 
7he l^mantic (Movement in France. 185 
 
 century; the impoverished vocabulary, e.g., which makes 
 itself evident in the annotations on the text of Spenser 
 and other old authors; the horror of common terms, and 
 the constant abuse of the periphrasis — the "gelid cis- 
 tern," the " stercoraceous heap," the "spiculated pal- 
 ings," and the "shining leather that encased the limb." 
 And the heroic couplet in English usage corresponds very 
 closely to the French alexandrine. In their dissatisfac- 
 tion with the paleness and vagueness of the old poetic 
 diction, and the monotony of the classical verse, the new 
 school innovated boldly, introducing archaisms, neolo- 
 gisms, and all kinds of exotic words and popular locutions, 
 even argot ox Parisian slang; and trying metrical experi- 
 ments of many sorts. Gautier mentions in particular one 
 Theophile Dondey (who, after the fashion of the school, 
 anagrammatised his name into Philothe'e O'Neddy) as pre- 
 senting this caractere (Toiitrance et de tensioii. " The word 
 paroxyste, employed for the first time by Nestor Roque- 
 plan, seems to have been invented with an application to 
 Philothee. Everything \s ponsse in tone, high-coloured, 
 violent, carried to the utmost limits of expression, of an 
 aggressive originality, almost dripping with the unheard- 
 of {ruissilant cV inouisme) ; but back of the double-horned 
 paradoxes, sophistical maxims, incoherent metaphors, 
 swoln hyperboles, and words six feet long, are the poetic 
 feeling of the time and the harmony of rhythm." One 
 hears much in the critical writings of that period, of the 
 mot propre, the 7'ei's litre, and the rime brisL It was in 
 tragedy especially that the periphrasis reigned most 
 tyrannically, and that the introduction of the mot propre, 
 i.e., of terms that were precise, concrete, familiar, tech- 
 nical even, if needful, horrified the classicists. It was 
 
i86 c// History of English %omaniicism. 
 
 beneath the dignity of the muse — the elegant muse of the 
 Abbe Delille — Hugo tells us, to speak naturally. " She 
 underlines," in sign of disapprobation, "the old Cor- 
 neille for his way of saying crudely 
 
 'Ah, ne me brouillez pas avec la republique.' 
 She still has heavy on her heart his Tou^ beau, monsieur. 
 And many a seigneur and many a madame was needed to 
 make her forgive our admirable Racine his chiens so 
 monosyllabic. . . . History in her eyes is in bad tone 
 and taste. How, for example, can kings and queens who 
 swear be tolerated? They must be elevated from their 
 royal dignity to the dignity of tragedy. ... It is thus 
 that the king of the people (Henri IV.) polished by M. 
 Legouve, has seen his vejitre-saint-gris shamefully driven 
 from his mouth by two sentences, and has been reduced, 
 like the young girl in the story, to let nothing fall from 
 this royal mouth, but pearls, rubies, and sapphires — all of 
 them false, to say the truth." It seems incredible to an 
 Englishman, but it is nevertheless true that at the first 
 representations of "Hernani" in 1830, the simple ques- 
 tion and answer 
 
 "Est il minuit? — Minuit bientot " 
 raised a tempest of hisses and applause, and that the op- 
 posing factions of classics and romantics " fought three 
 days over this hemistich. It was thought trivial, famil- 
 iar, out of place; a king asks what time it is like a com- 
 mon citizen, and is answered, as if he were a farmer, 
 midnight. Well done! Now if he had only used some 
 
 fine periphrasis, e.g. : 
 
 I'heure 
 
 Atteindra bientot sa derniere demeure.* 
 
 * Stendhal, writing in 1823 ("Racine et Shakspere"), com- 
 
7he 1{omantic ^Movement in France. 187 
 
 If they could not away with definite words in the verse, 
 they endured very impatiently, too, epithets, metaphors, 
 comparisons, poetic words — lyricism, in short; those 
 swift escapes into nature, those soarings of the soul above 
 the situation, those openings of poetry athwart drama, so 
 frequent in Shakspere, Calderon, and Goethe, so rare in 
 our great authors of the eighteenth century." Gautier 
 gives, as one reason for the adherence of so many art- 
 ists to the romantic school, the circumstance that, being ac- 
 customed to a language freely intermixed with technical 
 terms, the motpropre had nothing shocking for them ; while 
 their special education as artists having put them into inti- 
 mate relation with nature, " they were prepared to feel the 
 imagery and colours of the new poetry and were not at 
 all repelled by the precise and picturesque details so dis- 
 agreeable to the classicists. . . . You cannot imagine 
 the storms that broke out in the parterre of the Theatre 
 Frangais, when the ' Moor of Venice,' translated by 
 
 plains that "it will soon be thought bad form to say, on the 
 French stage, ' Ferniez cctie fenetre' [window]: we shall 
 have to say, ' Fertnez cette croisee' [casement]. Two-thirds 
 of the words used in the parlours of the best people {du meil- 
 letir ton) cannot be reproduced in the theatre. M. Legouve, 
 in his tragedy ' Henri IV., ' could not make use of the patriot 
 king's finest saying, 'I could wish that the poorest peasant 
 in my kingdom might, at the least, have a chicken in his pot 
 of a Sunday.' English and Italian verse allows the poet to 
 say everything ; and this good French word pot would have 
 furnished a touching scene to Shakspere' s humblest pupil. 
 But la tragMie racinienne, with its style noble and its arti- 
 ficial dignity, has to put it thus, — in four alexandrines : 
 
 "' Je veux enfin qu'au jour marque pour le repos, 
 L'hote laborieux des modestes hameaux, 
 Sur sa table moins humble, ait, par ma bienfaisance, 
 Quelques-uns de ces mets reserves a I'aisance. '" 
 
 It was Stendhal (whose real name was Henri Beyle) who 
 said that Paris needed a chain of mountains on its horizon. 
 
i88 isA History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 Alfred de Vigny, grinding his teeth, reiterated his de- 
 mands for that handkerchief (tnouchoir) prudently denom- 
 inated bandeau (head-band, fillet) in the vague Shakspere 
 imitation of the excellent Ducis. A bell was called ' the 
 sounding brass'; the sea was * the humid element,' or 
 ' the liquid element,' and so on. The professors of rhet- 
 oric were thunderstruck by the audacity of Racine, who 
 in the ' Dream of Athalie ' had spoken of dogs as dogs — 
 molossi would have been better — and they advised young 
 poets not to imitate this license of genius. Accordingly 
 the first poet who wrote bell {cloche) committed an enor- 
 mity; he exposed himself to the risk of being cut by his 
 friends and excluded from society." * 
 
 As to the alexandrine, the recognised verse of French 
 tragedy, Victor Hugo tells us,f that many of the reform- 
 ers, wearied by its monotony, advocated the writing of 
 plays in prose. He makes a plea, however, for the re- 
 tention of the alexandrine, giving it greater richness and 
 suppleness by the displacement of the caesura, and the 
 free use of e7ija7nbe7tieiit or run-over lines; just as Leigh 
 Hunt and Keats broke up the couplets of Pope into a 
 freer and looser form of verse. " Hernani " opened with 
 an enjambement 
 
 "Serait ce deja lui? C'est bien a I'escalier 
 Derobe. " 
 
 This was a signal of fight — a challenge to the classicists 
 — and the battle began at once, with the very first lines 
 of the play.;j; In his dramas Hugo used the alexandrine, 
 but in his lyric poems, his wonderful resources as a 
 
 *Gautier, i88. 
 
 f "Cromwell, " 1827. 
 
 X Gautier, 107. 
 
'The Romantic ^Movement in France. 189 
 
 metrist were exhibited to the utmost in the invention of 
 the most bizarre, eccentric, and original verse forms. An 
 example of this is the poem entitled "The Djinns" in- 
 cluded in "Les Orientales" (1829), The coming and 
 going of the flying cohort of spirits is indicated by the 
 crescendo effect of the verse, beginning with a stanza in 
 lines of two syllables, rising gradually to the middle 
 stanza of the poem in lines of ten syllables, and then 
 dying away by exactly graded diminutions to the final 
 
 stanza : 
 
 "On doute 
 La nuit — 
 J'ecoute 
 Tout fuit, 
 Tout passe : 
 L'espace 
 Efface 
 Le bruit." * 
 
 But the earlier volume of "Odes et Ballades" (1826) 
 offers many instances of metrical experiments hardly less 
 ingenious. In "La Chasse du Burgrave" every rime is 
 followed by an echo word, alike in sound but different in 
 sense : 
 
 "II part, et Madame Isabelle, 
 
 Belle, 
 Dit gaiement du haut des remparts : 
 
 ' Pars ! ' 
 Tous las chasseurs sent dans la plaine, 
 
 Pleine 
 D'ardents seigneurs, de s^nechaux 
 
 Chauds." 
 
 The English reader is frequently reminded by Hugo's 
 verses of the queer, abrupt, and outrS measures, and fan- 
 
 *Musset's fantastic "Ballade a la Lune, " exaggerates the 
 romantic so decidedly as to seem ironical. It is hard to say 
 whether it is hj'perbole or parody. See Petit de Julleville, 
 vol. vii., p. 652. 
 
iQo <^ History of English '^{omanticism. 
 
 tastic rimes of Robert Browning. Compare with the 
 above, e.g., his " Love among the Ruins." 
 
 "Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles 
 Miles and miles 
 On the solitary pastures where our sheep. 
 Half asleep," etc. 
 
 From the fact, alread}'' pointed out, that the romantic 
 movement in France was, more emphatically than in Eng- 
 land and Germany, a breach with the native literary tra- 
 dition, there result several interesting peculiarities. The 
 first of these is that the new French school, instead of 
 fighting the classicists with weapons drawn from the old 
 arsenal of mediaeval France, went abroad for allies;. went 
 especially to the modern writers of England and Ger- 
 many. This may seem strange when we reflect that 
 French literature in the Middle Ages was the most influ- 
 ential in Europe; and that, from the old heroic song of 
 Roland in the eleventh century down to the very popular 
 court allegory, the " Roman de la Rose ", in the fourteenth, 
 and to the poems of Villon in the fifteenth, it afforded a 
 rich treasure-house of romantic material in the shape of 
 chronicles, chatisons de geste, ro?}ia?is (Taventures, fabliaux, 
 lais, legends of saints, homilies, miracles, songs, farces, 
 jeiispartis, pastourelles, ballades — of all the literary forms 
 in fact which were then cultivated. Nor was this mass 
 of work entirely without influence on the romanticists of 
 1830. Theophile Dondey, wrote a poem on Roland; 
 and Gerard de Nerval (Labrunie) hunted up the old pop- 
 ular songs and folklore of Touraine and celebrated their 
 naivete and truly national character. Attention was di- 
 rected to the Renaissance group of poets who preceded 
 the Louis XIV. writers — to Ronsard and "The Pleiade." 
 
The l^mantic {Movement in France. 191 
 
 Later the Old French Text Society was founded for the 
 preservation and publication of mediaeval remains. But 
 in general the innovating school sought their inspiration 
 in foreign literatures. Antony Deschamps translated 
 the " Inferno " ; Alfred de Vigny translated " Othello " as 
 the "Moor of Venice" (1829), and wrote a play on the 
 story of Chatterton,* and a novel, " Cinq Mars," which is 
 the nearest thing in French literature to the historical 
 romances of Scott. f Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo 
 were both powerfully impressed by Macpherson's "Os- 
 sian." Gerard de Nerval made, at the age of eighteen, 
 a translation of " Faust " (1828), which Goethe read with 
 admiration, and wrote to the translator, saying that he 
 had never before understood his own meaning so well. 
 " It was a difficult task at that time," says Gautier, " to 
 render into our tongue, which had become excessively 
 timid, the bizarre and mysterious beauties of this ultra- 
 romantic drama. . . . From his familiarity with Goethe, 
 Uhland, Biirger and L. Tieck, Gerard retained in his 
 turn of mind a certain dreamy tinge which sometimes 
 made his own works seem like translations of unknown 
 poets beyond the Rhine. . . . The sympathies and the 
 studies of Ge'rard de Nerval drew him naturally towards 
 Germany, which he often visited and where he made fruit- 
 ful sojourns; the shadow of the old Teutonic oak hovered 
 more than once above his brow with confidential mur- 
 murs; he walked under the lindens with their heart- 
 shaped leaves; on the margin of fountains he saluted 
 the elf whose white robe trails a hem bedewed by the 
 green grass; he saw the ravens circling around the moun- 
 
 *See vol. i., pp. 372-73. 
 f Gautier, 163. 
 
192 nA History of English '^{omanticism. 
 
 tain of Kyffhausen; the kobolds came out before him 
 from the rock clefts of the Hartz, and the witches of the 
 Brocken danced their grand Walpurgisnight round about 
 the young French poet, whom they took for a Jena stu- 
 dent. . . . He knows how to blow upon the postillion's 
 horn,* the enchanted melodies of Achim von Arnim and 
 Clement Brentano; and if he stops at the threshold of 
 an inn embowered in hop vines, the Schoppeti becomes 
 in his hands the cup of the King of Thule." Among 
 the French romanticists of Hugo's circle there was a 
 great enthusiasm for wild German ballads like Burger's 
 "Lenore" and Goethe's " Erl-King." The translation 
 of A. W. Schlegel's "Vorlesungen iiber Dramatische 
 Kunst und Litteratur," by Madame Necker de Saussure, 
 in 18 1 4, was doubtless the first fruits of Madame de 
 Stael's "Allemagne," published the year before. Gau- 
 tier himself and his friend Augustus Mac-Keat (Auguste 
 Maguet) collaborated in a drama founded on Byron's 
 " Parisina." " Walter Scott was then in the full flower 
 of his success. People were being initiated into the 
 mysteries of Goethe's ' Faust,' . . . and discovering 
 Shakspere under the translation, a little dressed up, of 
 Letourneur; and the poems of Lord Byron, ' The Corsair,' 
 ' Lara,' ' The Giaour,' * Manfred,' ' Beppo,' ' Don Juan,' 
 were coming to us from the Orient, which had not yet 
 grown commonplace." Gautier said that in le petit cena- 
 cle — the inner circle of the initiated — if you admired 
 Racine more than Shakspere and Calderon, it was an 
 opinion that you would do well to keep to yourself. 
 " Toleration is not the virtue of neophytes." As for 
 himself, who had set out as a painter — and only later de- 
 *"Des Knabeu Wunderhorn. " 
 
The l^mantic [Movement in France. 193 
 
 viated into letters — he was all for the Middle Ages: "An 
 old iron baron, feudal, ready to take refuge from the en- 
 croachments of the time, in the castle of Goetz von Ber- 
 lichingen." Of Bouchardy, the extraordinary author of 
 "Le Sonneur de Saint Paul," who "was to Hugo what 
 Marlowe was to Shakspere " — and who was playfully 
 accused of making wooden models of the plots of his 
 melodramas — Gautier says that he " planned his singular 
 edifice in advance, like a castle of Anne Radcliffe, with 
 donjon, turrets, underground chambers, secret passages, 
 corkscrew stairs, vaulted halls, mysterious closets, hiding 
 places in the thickness of the walls, oubliettes, charnel- 
 houses, crypts where his heroes and heroines were to 
 meet later on, to love, hate, fight, set ambushes, assas- 
 sinate, or marry. . . . He cut masked doors in the walls 
 for his expected personage to appear through, and trap 
 doors in the floor for him to disappear through." 
 
 The reasons for this resort to foreign rather than native 
 sources of inspiration are not far to seek. The romantic 
 movement in France was belated ; it was twenty or thirty 
 years behind the similar movements in England and 
 Germany. It was easier and more natural for Stendhal 
 or Hugo to appeal to the example of living masters like 
 Goethe and Scott, whose works went everywhere in trans- 
 lation and who held the ear of Europe, than to revive an 
 interest all at once in Villon or Guillaume de Lorris or 
 Chrestien de Troyes. Again, in no country had the di- 
 vorce between fashionable and popular literature been so 
 complete as in France; in none had so thick and hard a 
 crust of classicism overlain the indigenous product of 
 the national genius. It was not altogether easy for 
 Bishop Percy in 1765 to win immediate recognition from 
 
194 ^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 the educated class for Old English minstrelsy; nor for 
 Herder and Biirger in 1770 to do the same thing for the 
 German ballads. In France it would have been impossi- 
 ble before the Bourbon restoration of 1815. In England 
 and in Germany, moreover, the higher literature had al- 
 ways remained more closely in touch with the people. 
 In both of those countries the stock of ballad poetry and 
 folklore was much more extensive and important than in 
 France, and the habit of composing ballads lasted later. 
 The only French writers of the classical period who pro- 
 duced anything at all analogous to the German "Mahr- 
 chen " were Charles Perrault, who published between 
 1691-97 his famous fairy tales, including "Blue Beard," 
 ''The Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Riding-Hood," 
 "Cinderella," and "Puss in Boots"; and the Countess 
 d'Aulnoy (died 1720), whose "Yellow Dwarf" and 
 " White Cat " belong to the same department of nursery 
 tales.* 
 
 A curious feature of French romanticism was the way 
 in which the new-found liberty of art asserted itself in 
 manners, costume, and personal habits. Victor Hugo 
 himself was scrupulously correct and subdued in dress, 
 but his young disciples affected bright colours and rich 
 stuffs. They wore Spanish mantillas, coats with large 
 velvet lapels, pointed doublets or jerkins of satin or 
 damask velvet in place of the usual waistcoat; long hair 
 after the Merovingian fashion, and pointed beards. We 
 have seen that Shenstone was regarded as an eccentric, 
 and perhaps somewhat dangerous, person when at the 
 university, because he wore his own hair instead of a 
 wig. In France, half a century later, not only iheper- 
 * Charles Nodier vindicated the literary claims of Perrault 
 
The '^mantic ^Movement in France. 195 
 
 ruque, but the menton glabre was regarded as sympto- 
 matic of the classicist and the academician ; while the 
 beard became a badge of romanticism. At the beginning 
 of the movement, Gautier informs us, "there were only 
 two full beards in France, the beard of Eugene Deve'ria 
 and the beard of Petrus Borel. To wear them required 
 a courage, a coolness, and a contempt for the crowd truly 
 heroic. ... It was the fashion then ir- the romantic 
 school to be pale, livid, greenish, a trifle cadaverous, if 
 possible. It gave one an air of doom, '2>^xorv\z^ giao2irish, 
 devoured by passion and remorse." It will be remem- 
 bered that the rolling Byronic collar, open at the throat, 
 was much affected at one time by young persons of ro- 
 mantic temperament in England ; and that the conserva- 
 tive classes, who adhered to the old-fashioned stock and 
 high collar, looked askance upon these youthful innova- 
 tors as certainly atheists and libertines, and probably 
 enemies to society — would-be corsairs or banditti. It is 
 interesting, therefore, to discover that in France, too, the 
 final touch of elegance among the romantics was not to 
 have any white linen in evidence; the shirt collar, in 
 particular, being " considered as a mark of the grocer, 
 the bourgeois, the philistine." A certain gilet rouge 
 which Gautier wore when he led the claque at the first 
 performance of " Hernani " has become historic. This 
 flamboyant garment — a defiance and a challenge to the 
 academicians who had come to hiss Hugo's play — was, 
 in fact, 2i J) ourpoi?it or jerkin of cherry-coloured satin, cut 
 in the shape of a Milanese cuirass, pointed, busked, and 
 arched in front, and fastened behind the back with hooks 
 and eyes. From the imperturbable disdain with which 
 the wearer faced the opera-glasses and laughter of the 
 
196 c/f History of English Romanticism. 
 
 assembly it was evident that it would not have taken 
 much urging to induce him to come to the second night's 
 performance decked in a daffodil waistcoat.* The young 
 enthusiasts of k petit cenacle C2ixx\e.d their Byronism so far 
 that, in imitation of the celebrated revels at Newstead, 
 they used to drink from a human skull in their feasts at 
 A' Petit Moulin Rouge. It had belonged to a drum-major, 
 and Gerard de Nerval got it from his father, who had 
 been an army surgeon. One of the neophytes, in his ex- 
 citement, even demanded that it be filled with sea water 
 instead of wine, in emulation of the hero of Victor Hugo's 
 novel, "Han d'Islande," who "drank the water of the 
 seas in the skull of the dead." Another cap2it tnortuum 
 stood on Hugo's mantelpiece in place of a clock.f " If it 
 did not tell the hour, at least it made us think of the ir- 
 reparable flight of time. It was the verse of Horace trans- 
 lated into romantic symbolism." There was a decided 
 flavour of Bohemianism about the French romantic school, 
 and the spirit of the lives which many of them led may 
 best be studied in Murger's classic, " La Vie de Boheme." \ 
 As another special feature of French romanticism, we 
 may note the important part taken by the theatre in the 
 history of the movement. The stage was the citadel of 
 classical prejudice, and it was about it that the fiercest 
 battles were fought. The climacteric year was 1830, in 
 which year Victor Hugo's tragedy, " Hernani, or Castil- 
 ian Honour," was put on at the Theatre Frangais on Feb- 
 ruary 25th, and ran for thirty nights. The representation 
 was a fight between the classics and the romantics, and 
 
 *Gautier, 92. 
 
 f Rue Jean-Gougon, where the cenacle met often. 
 X Nerval banged himself at Paris, in January, 1855, in the 
 rue de la Vielle Lanterne. 
 
The 'T^omantic [Movement in France. 197 
 
 there was almost a mob in the theatre. The dramatic 
 censorship under Charles X., though strict, was used in 
 the interest of political rather than aesthetic orthodoxy. 
 But it is said that some of the older Academicians actu- 
 ally applied to the king to forbid the acting of " Her- 
 nani." Gautier has given a mock-heroic description of 
 this famous literary battle quorum pars magna Juit. He 
 had received from his college friend, Gerard de Nerval 
 — who had been charged with the duty of drumming up 
 recruits for the Hugonic claque — six tickets to be dis- 
 tributed only to tried friends of the cause — sure men and 
 true. The tickets themselves were little squares of red 
 paper, stamped in the corner with a mysterious counter- 
 sign — the Spanish v^'oxd hierro, iron, not only symbolizing 
 the hero of the drama, but hinting that the ticket-holder 
 was to bear himself in the approaching fray frankly, 
 bravely, and faithfully like the sword. The proud recip- 
 ient of these tokens of confidence gave two of them to a 
 couple of artists — ferocious romantics, who would gladly 
 have eaten an Academician, if necessary; two he gave to 
 a brace of young poets who secretly practised la ri?ne 
 riche,Ie mot propre^ and la metaphore exacte : the other two 
 he reserved for his cousin and himself. The general at- 
 titude of the audience on the first nights was hostile, 
 " two systems, two parties, two armies, two civilizations 
 even — it is not saying too much — confronted one an- 
 other, . . . and it was not hard to -see that yonder young 
 man with long hair found the smoothly shaved gentle- 
 man opposite a disastrous idiot; and that he would not 
 long be at pains to conceal his opinion of him." The 
 classical part of the audience resented the touches of 
 Spanish local colour in the play, the mixture of pleas- 
 
198 c^ History of English T^omanticism. 
 
 Entries and familiar speeches with the tragic dialogue, 
 and of heroism and savagery in the character of Hernani; 
 and they made all manner of fun of the species of pun 
 — de ta suite, j' en siiis — which terminated the first act, 
 "Certain lines were captured and recaptured, like dis- 
 puted redoubts, by each army with equal obstinacy. On 
 one day the romantics would carry a passage, which the 
 enemy would retake the next day, and from which it be- 
 came necessary to dislodge them. What uproar, what 
 cries, cat-calls, hisses, hurricanes of bravos, thunders of 
 applause! The heads of parties blackguarded each other 
 like Homer's heroes before they came to blows. , . . For 
 this generation ' Hernani' was what the 'Cid' was for the 
 contemporaries of Corneille. All that was young, brave, 
 amorous, poetic, caught the inspiration of it. Those fine 
 exaggerations, heroic, Castilian; that superb Spanish 
 emphasis; that language so proud and high even in its 
 familiarity ; those images of a dazzling strangeness, threw 
 us into an ecstasy and intoxicated us with their heady 
 poetry." The victory in the end was with the new school. 
 Musset, writing in 1838, says that the tragedies of Cor- 
 neille and Racine had disappeared from the French stage 
 for ten years. 
 
 Another triumphant battlefield — a veritable Jete ro- 
 mantique — was the first representation in 183 1 of Alex- 
 andre Dumas' " Anthony." " It was an agitation, a 
 tumult, an effervescence. . . . The house was actually 
 delirious; it applauded, sobbed, wept, shouted. A cer- 
 tain famous green coat was torn from the author's back 
 and rent into shreds by his too ardent admirers, who 
 wanted pieces of it for memorabilia." * 
 *Gautier, 167. 
 
The Romantic [Movement in France. 199 
 
 The English reader who hears of the stubborn resist- 
 ance offered to the performance of ' Hernani ' will natu- 
 rally suppose that there must have been something about 
 it contrary to public policy — some immorality, or some 
 political references, at least, offensive to the government; 
 and he will have a difficulty in understanding that the 
 trouble was all about affairs purely literary. " Hernani " 
 was fought because it violated the unities of place and 
 time; because its hero was a Spanish bandit; because in 
 the dialogue a spade was called a spade, and in the verse 
 the lines overlap. The French are often charged with 
 frivolity in matters of conduct, but to the discussion of 
 matters of art they bring a most serious conscience. The 
 scene in "Hernani" shifts from Saragossa to the castle 
 of Don Ruy Gomez de Silva in the mountains of Arra- 
 gon, and to the tomb of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 The time of the action, though not precisely indicated, 
 covers at least a number of months. The dialogue is, in 
 many parts, nervous, simple, direct, abrupt; in others 
 running into long tirades and soliloquies, rich with all the 
 poetic resources of the greatest poet who has ever used the 
 French tongue. The spirit of the drama, as well as its 
 form, is romantic. The point of honour is pushed to a 
 fantastic excess; all the characters display the most deli- 
 cate chivalry, the noblest magnanimity, the loftiest Castil- 
 ian pride. Don Ruy Gomez allows the King to carry off 
 his bride, rather than yield up the outlaw who has taken 
 refuge in his castle; and that although he has just 
 caught this same outlaw paying court to this same 
 bride, whose accepted lover he is. Hernani, not to be 
 outdone in generosity, offers his life to his enemy and 
 preserver, giving him his horn and promising to come to 
 
200 <tA History of English l^manticism. 
 
 meet his death at its summons. There is the same fault 
 here which is felt in Hugo's novels. Motives are exag- 
 gerated, the dramatis persoiice strut. They are rather 
 over-dramatic in their poses — melodramatic, in fact — 
 and do unlikely things. But this fault is the fault of a 
 great nature, grandeur exalted into grandiosity, till the 
 heroes of these plays, " Hernani," "Marion Delorme," 
 " Le Roi d'Amuse," loom and stalk across the scene like 
 epic demigods of more than mortal stature and mortal 
 passions. But Hugo was not only a great dramatist and 
 a great poet, but a most clever playwright. " Hernani " 
 is full of effective stage devices, crises in the action 
 which make an audience hold its breath or shudder; 
 moments of intense suspense like that in the third act, 
 where the old hidalgo pauses before his own portrait, 
 behind which the outlaw is hidden ; or that in the fifth, 
 where Hernani hears at first, faint and far away, the blast 
 of the fatal horn that summons him to leave his bride at 
 the altar and go to his death. The young romantics of 
 the day all got *' Hernani " by heart and used to rehearse 
 it at their assemblies, each taking a part; and the famous 
 trumpet, the cor cf Hernani^ became a symbol and a rally- 
 ing call. 
 
 No such scene would have been possible in an Eng- 
 lish playhouse as that which attended the first represen- 
 tation of " Hernani " at the Theatre Frangais. For not 
 only is an English audience comparatively indifferent to 
 rules of art and canons of taste, but the unities had never 
 prevailed in practice in England, though constantly rec- 
 ommended in theory. The French had no Shakspere, 
 and the English no Academy. We may construct an 
 imaginary parallel to such a scene if we will suppose 
 
The T^mantic iMovement hi France. 201 
 
 that all reputable English tragedies from 1600 down to 
 1830 had been something upon the model of Addison's 
 " Cato " and Johnson's " Irene " ; or better still upon the 
 model of Dryden's heroic plays in rimed couplets; and 
 that then a drama like "Romeo and Juliet" had been 
 produced upon the boards of Drury Lane, and a warm 
 spurt of romantic poetry suddenly injected into the icy 
 current of classic declamation. 
 
 Having considered the chief points in which the 
 French romantic movement differed from the similar 
 movements in England and Germany, let us now glance 
 at the history of its beginnings, and at the work of a 
 few of its typical figures. The presentation of " Her- 
 nani " in 1830 was by no means the first overt act of 
 the new school. Discussion had been going on for 
 years in the press. De Stendhal says that the classi- 
 cists had on their side two-thirds of the Academic Fran- 
 ^aise, and all of the French journalists; that their lead- 
 ing organ, however, was the very \n^\xQnX.i2.\ Joiifnal des 
 Debuts and its editor, M. Dussant, the general-in-chief 
 of the classical party. The romanticists, however, were 
 not without organs of their own ; among which are espe- 
 cially mentioned Le Conservateur Liiteraire, begun in 
 1819, Le Globe in 1824, and the Annales Romantiques 
 in 1823, the last being "practically a kind of annual of 
 the Muse Fran^aise (1823-24), which had pretty nearly 
 the same contributors." All of these journals were 
 Bourboniste, except Le Globe, which was liberal in poli- 
 tics.* The Academy denounced the new literary doc- 
 
 * The romanticism of the Globe was of a more conservative 
 stripe than that of the Muse Frani^aise, which was the organ 
 of the group of young poets who surrounded Hugo. The 
 motto of the latter was /idii nova progenies caelo demittitur 
 
202 t-A History of English Romanticism. 
 
 trine as a heresy and its followers as a sect, but it made 
 
 head so rapidly that as early as 1829, a year before 
 
 " Hernani " was acted, a " Histoire du Romantisme en 
 
 France " appeared, written by a certain M. de Toreinx.* 
 
 It agrees with other authorities in dating the beginning 
 
 of the movement from Chateaubriand's " Le Genie du 
 
 Christianisme " (1802). " Chateaubriand," says Gautier, 
 
 " may be regarded as the grandfather, or, if you prefer it, 
 
 the sachem of romanticism in France. In the ' Genius 
 
 of Christianity' he restored the Gothic cathedral; in the 
 
 ' Natchez ' he reopened the sublimity of nature, which 
 
 had been closed; in ' Rene ' he invented melancholy and 
 
 modern passion." 
 
 Sprung from an ancient Breton family, Chateaubriand 
 
 came to America in 1790 with the somewhat singular and 
 
 very French idea of travelling overland to the northwest 
 
 passage. He was diverted from this enterprise, however, 
 
 alio. The Globe defined romanticism as Protestantism in let- 
 ters. The critical battle was on as early as 1824. On April 
 24, in that year, Auger, director of the Academy, read at the 
 annual session of the Institute a discourse on romanticism, 
 which he denounced as a literary schism. The prospectus of 
 the Globe, an important document on the romantic side, dates 
 from the same year. The Constitutiojuiel, the most narrowly 
 classical of the opposing journals, described romanticism as an 
 epidemic malady. To the year 1825, when the Cenacle had 
 its headquarters at Victor Hugo's house, belong, among oth- 
 ers, the following manifestoes on both sides of the controversy : 
 "Les Classiques Venges," De la Touche ; " Le Temple du 
 Romantisme," Morel; "Le Classique et le Romantique " (a 
 satirical comedy in the classical interest) , Baour-Lormian. 
 Cyprien Desmarais' " Essais sur les classiques et les roman- 
 tiques " had appeared at Paris in 1823. At Rouen was printed 
 in 1826 "Du Classique et du Romantique," a collection of pa- 
 pers read at the Rouen Academy during the year, rather 
 favorable, on the whole, to the new movement. 
 
 * This is now a somewhat rare book ; I have never seen a 
 copy of it ; but it was reviewed in T/ie Saturday Review (vol, 
 Ixv. , p. 369). 
 
The l{pmantic iMovement in France. 203 
 
 fell in with an Indian tribe and wandered about with 
 them in the wilderness. He did not discover the north- 
 west passage, but, according to Lowell, he invented the 
 forest primeval. Chateaubriand gave the first full utter- 
 ance to that romantic note which sounds so loudly in 
 Byron's verse; the restless dissatisfaction with life as 
 it is, the longing for something undefined and unattain- 
 able, the love for solitude and the desert, the " passion 
 incapable of being converted into action " — in short, the 
 pialadie dii siecle — since become familiar in " Childe Har- 
 old " and in Senancour's ^'Obermann." In one of the 
 chapters* of "Le Genie du Christianisme" he gives an 
 analysis of this modern melancholy, this Byronic satiety 
 and discontent, which he says was unknown to the an- 
 cients. "The farther nations advance in civilization, the 
 more this unsettled state of the passions predominates; 
 for then our imagination is rich, abundant, and full of 
 wonders; but our existence is poor, insipid, and destitute 
 of charms. With a full heart we dwell in an empty 
 world." " Penetrate into those forests of America coeval 
 with the world; what profound silence pervades these 
 retreats when the winds are husht ! What unknown voices 
 when they begin to rise! Stand still and everything is 
 mute; take but a step and all nature sighs. Night ap- 
 proaches, the shades thicken ; you hear herds of wild 
 beasts passing in the dark; the ground murmurs under 
 your feet; the pealing thunder rebellows in the deserts; 
 the forest bows, the trees fall, an unknown river rolls 
 before you. The moon at length bursts forth in the east; 
 as you proceed at the foot of the trees, she seems to move 
 before you on their tops and solemnly to accompany your 
 * Part ii., Book iii., chap ix. 
 
2 04 <^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 steps. The wanderer seats himself on the trunk of an oak 
 to await the return of day; he looks alternately at the 
 nocturnal luminary, the darkness, and the river; he feels 
 restless, agitated, and in expectation of something ex- 
 traordinary; a pleasure never felt before, an unusual fear, 
 cause his heart to throb, as if he were about to be ad- 
 mitted to some secret of the Divinity; he is alone in the 
 depth of the forests, but the mind of man is equal to the 
 expanse of nature, and all the solitudes of the earth are 
 not too vast for the contemplations of his heart. There 
 is in man an instinctive melancholy, which makes him 
 harmonise with the scenery of nature. Who has not 
 spent whole hours seated on the bank of a river, contem- 
 plating its passing waves? Who has not found pleasure 
 on the seashore in viewing the distant rock whitened by 
 the billows? How much are the ancients to be pitied, 
 who discovered in the ocean naught but the palace of 
 Neptune and the cavern of Proteus; it was hard that they 
 should perceive only the adventures of the Tritons and 
 the Nereids in the immensity of the seas, which seems to 
 give an indistinct measure of the greatness of our souls, 
 and which excites a vague desire to quit this life, that 
 we may embrace all nature and taste the fulness of joy 
 in the presence of its Author." * 
 
 The outbreak of the Revolution recalled Chateaubriand 
 to France. He joined the army of the emigrees at Cob- 
 lentz, was wounded at the siege of Thionville, and es- 
 caped into England where he lived (1793-1800) until the 
 time of the Consulate, when he made his peace with 
 Napoleon and returned to France. He had been a free- 
 thinker, but was converted to Christianity by a dying 
 * Part ii. , Book iv. , chap. i. 
 
The l^omanttc ^Movement in France. 205 
 
 message from his mother who was thrown into prison by 
 the revolutionists. "I wept," said Chateaubriand, "and 
 I believed." "Le Genie du Christianisme" was an ex- 
 pression of that reactionary feeling which drove numbers 
 of Frenchmen back into the Church, after the blas- 
 phemies and horrors of the Revolution. It came out 
 just when Napoleon was negotiating his Co?icordat with 
 the Pope, and was trying to enlist the religious and con- 
 servative classes in support of his government; and it 
 reinforced his purposes so powerfully that he appointed 
 the author, in spite of his legitimism, to several diplo- 
 matic posts. "Le Genie du Christianisme" is indeed a 
 plea for Christianity on aesthetic grounds — an attempt, 
 as has been sneeringly said, to recommend Christianity 
 by making it look pretty. Chateaubriand was not a close 
 reasoner; his knowledge was superficial and inaccurate; 
 his character was weakened by vanity and shallowness. 
 He was a sentimentalist and a rhetorician, but one of 
 the most brilliant of rhetoricians; while his sentiment, 
 though not always deep or lasting, was for the nonce 
 sufficiently sincere. He had in particular a remarkable 
 talent for pictorial description ; and his book, translated 
 into many tongues, enjoyed an extraordinary vogue. The 
 English version, made in 1815, was entitled "The Beau- 
 ties of Christianity." For Chateaubriand undertook to 
 show that the Christian religion had influenced favorably 
 literature and the fine arts; that it was more poetical 
 than any other system of belief and worship. He com- 
 pared Homer and Vergil with Dante, Tasso, Milton, and 
 other modern poets, and awarded the palm to the latter 
 in the treatment of the elementary relations and stock 
 characters, such as husband and wife, father and child, 
 
2o6 ft/f History of English l^manticism. 
 
 the priest, the soldier, the lover, etc. ; preferring Pope's 
 Eloisa, e.g:, to Vergil's Dido, and " Paul and Virginia" 
 to the idyls of Theocritus. He pronounced the Chris- 
 tian mythology — angels, devils, saints, miracles — su- 
 perior to the pagan; and Dante's Hell much more 
 impressive to the imagination than Tartarus. He dwelt 
 eloquently upon the beauty and affecting significance of 
 Gothic church architecture, of Catholic ritual and sym- 
 bolism, the dress of the clergy, the crucifix, the organ, the 
 church bell, the observances of Christian festivals, the 
 monastic life, the orders of chivalry, the countr)' church- 
 yards where the dead were buried, and even upon the 
 superstitions which the last century had laughed to scorn; 
 such as the belief in ghosts, the adoration of relics, vows 
 to saints and pilgrimages to holy places. In his chap- 
 ter on "The Influence of Christianity upon Music," he 
 says that the " Christian religion is essentially melodious 
 for this single reason, that she delights in solitude"; the 
 forests are her ancient abode, and her musician " ought 
 to be acquainted with the melancholy notes of the waters 
 and the trees; he ought to have studied the sound of the 
 winds in cloisters, and those murmurs that pervade the 
 Gothic temple, the grass of the cemetery, and the vaults 
 of death." He repeats the ancient fable that the design- 
 ers of the cathedrals were applying forest scenery to 
 architecture: "Those ceilings sculptured into foliage of 
 different kinds, those buttresses which prop the walls and 
 terminate abruptly like the broken trunks of trees, the 
 coolness of the vaults, the darkness of the sanctuary, the 
 dim twilight of the aisles, the chapels resembling grottoes, 
 the secret passages, the low doorways, in a word every- 
 thing in a Gothic church reminds you of the labyrinths 
 
The Romantic {Movement in France. 207 
 
 of a wood, everything excites a feeling of religious awe, 
 of mystery, and of the Divinity." The birds perch upon 
 the steeples and towers as if they were trees, and " the 
 Christian architect, not content with building forests, has 
 been desirous to retain their murmurs, and by means of 
 the organ and of bells, he has attached to the Gothic 
 temple the very winds and the thunders that roll in the 
 recesses of the woods. Past ages, conjured up by these 
 religious sounds, raise their venerable voices from the 
 bosom of the stones and sigh in every corner of the vast 
 cathedral. The sanctuary re-echoes like the cavern of 
 the ancient Sibyl; loud-tongued bells swing over your 
 head; while the vaults of death under your feet are pro- 
 foundly silent." He praises the ideals of chivalry; 
 gives a sympathetic picture of the training and career of 
 a knight-errant, and asks: "Is there then nothing worthy 
 of admiration in the times of a Roland, a Godfrey, a 
 Coucey, and a Joinville; in the times of the Moors and 
 the Saracens; . . . when the strains of the Troubadours 
 were mingled with the clash of arms, dances with relig- 
 ious ceremonies, and banquets and tournaments with 
 sieges and battles? " Chateaubriand says that the finest 
 Gothic ruins are to be found in the English lake country, 
 on the Scotch mountains, and in the Orkney Islands; 
 and that they are more impressive than classic ruins 
 because in the latter the arches are parallel with the 
 curves of the sky, while in the Gothic or pointed archi- 
 tecture the arches "form a contrast with the circular 
 arches of the sky and the curvatures of the horizon. 
 The Gothic being, moreover, entirely composed of voids, 
 the more readily admits of the decoration of herbage and 
 flowers than the fulness of the Grecian orders. The 
 
2o8 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 clustered columns, the domes carved into foliage, or 
 scooped out in the form of a fruit-basket, offered so many 
 receptacles into which the winds carry, with the dust, the 
 seeds of vegetables. The house-leek fixes itself in the 
 mortar; the mosses cover rugged masses with their elas- 
 tic coating ; the thistle projects its brown burrs from the 
 embrasure of a window; and the ivy creeping along the 
 northern cloisters falls in festoons over the arches." 
 
 All this is romantic enough ; we have the note of Catho- 
 lic medisevalism and the note of Ossianic melancholy 
 combined; and this some years before "The Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel," and when Byron was a boy of fourteen and 
 still reading his Ossian.* But we are precluded from 
 classifying Chateaubriand among full-fledged roman- 
 ticists. His literary taste was by no means emancipated 
 from eighteenth-century standards. In speaking of Mil- 
 ton, e.g., he says that if he had only been born in France 
 in the reign of Louis XIV., and had " combined with 
 the native grandeur of his genius the taste of Racine and 
 Boileau," the " Paradise Lost " might have equalled the 
 "Iliad." 
 
 Chateaubriand never called himself a romantic. It is 
 agreed upon all hands that the expressions romantisme 
 and Utteratiire romajitique were first invented or imported 
 by Madame de Stael in her "L'Allemagne" (1813), 
 "pour exprimer I'affranchissement des vieilles formes 
 litteraires." f Some ten years later, or by 1823, when 
 Stendhal published his" Racine et Shakspere," the issue 
 between the schools had been joined and the question 
 
 *For Chateaubriand and Ossian see vol. i., pp. 332-33. He 
 made translations from Ossian, Gray, and Milton, 
 f "Victor Hugo," par Paul Boudois, p. 32. 
 
The l^pmantic (Movement in France. 209 
 
 quite thoroughly agitated in the Parisian journals. 
 Stendhal announced himself as an adherent of the new, 
 but his temper was decidedly cool and unromantic. I 
 have quoted his epigrammatic definition of romanticism.* 
 
 In this brochure Stendhal announces that France is on 
 the eve of a literary revolution and that the last hour of 
 classicism has struck, although as yet the classicists are 
 in possession of the theatres, and of all the salaried lit- 
 erary positions under government; and all the newspapers 
 of all shades of political opinion are shut to the roman- 
 ticists. A company of English actors who attempted to 
 give some of Shakspere's plays at the Porte-Saint-Martin 
 in 1822 were mobbed. "The hisses and cat-calls began 
 before the performance, of which it was impossible to 
 hear a single word. As soon as the actors appeared they 
 were pelted with apples and eggs, and from time to time 
 the audience called out to them to talk French, and 
 shouted, ''A has Shakspere ! c'est im aide de camp du 
 due de WeHington.' " It will be remembered that in our 
 own day the first representations of Wagner's operas at 
 Paris were interrupted with similar cries: "Pas de 
 Wagner /" " A has les Allemands /" etc. 
 
 In 1827 Kemble's company visited Paris and gave, in 
 English, " Hamlet," " Romeo and Juliet," " Othello," and 
 "The Merchant of Venice." Dumas went to see them 
 and described the impression made upon him by Shak- 
 spere, in language identical with that which Goethe used 
 about himself. f He was like a man born blind and sud- 
 denly restored to sight. Dumas' " Henry III." (1829), 
 a drame in the manner of Shakspere's historical plays, 
 
 *Vol. 1., p. 10. 
 
 f See vol. i. , p. 379. 
 
2 lo <i/J History of English Romanticism. 
 
 though in prose, was the immediate result of this new 
 vision. English actors were in Paris again in 1828 and 
 1829; and in 1835 Macready presented "Hamlet," 
 "Othello," and "Henry IV," with great success. Pre- 
 vious to these performances, the only opportunities that 
 the French public had to judge of Shakspere's dramas as 
 acting plays were afforded by the wretched adaptations 
 of Ducis and other stage carpenters. Ducis had read 
 Shakspere only in Letourneur's very inadequate transla- 
 tion (revised by Guizot in 182 1). His "Hamlet" was 
 played in 1769; "Macbeth," 1784; " King John," 1791; 
 "Othello" (turned into a comedy), 1792. Mercier's 
 " Timon " was given in 1 794 ; and Dejaure's " Imogenes " 
 — an "arrangement" of "Cymbeline" — in 1796. The 
 romanticists labored to put their countrymen in posses- 
 sion of better versions of Shakspere. Alfred de Vigny 
 rendered " Othello " (1827), and Emile Deschamps, " Ro- 
 meo and Juliet" and "Macbeth." 
 
 Stendhal interviewed a director of one of the French 
 theatres and tried to persuade him that there would be 
 money in it for any house which would have the courage 
 to give a season of romantic tragedy. But the director, 
 who seemed to be a liberal-minded man, assured him that 
 until some stage manager could be found rich enough to 
 buy up the dramatic criticism of the Cotistitutionnel and 
 two or three other newspapers, the law students and med- 
 ical students, who were under the influence of those jour- 
 nals, would never suffer the play to get as far as the third 
 act. "If it were otherwise," he said, "don't you suppose 
 that we would have tried Schiller's 'William Tell'? The 
 police would have cut out a quarter of it; one of our 
 adapters another quarter ; and what was left would reach 
 
The l^manttc {Movemejit in France. 211 
 
 a hundred representations, provided it could once secure 
 three." 
 
 To this the author replied that the immense majority 
 of young society people had been converted to romanti- 
 cism by the eloquence of M. Cousin. 
 
 " Sir," said the director, '' your young society people 
 don't go into the parterre to engage in fisticuffs [Jaire le 
 coup de poing], and at the theatre, as in politics, we de- 
 spise philosophers who don't fight." Stendhal adds that 
 the editors of influential journals found their interest 
 in this state of things, since many of them had pieces of 
 their own on the stage, written of course in alexandrine 
 verse and on the classic model ; and what would become 
 of these masterpieces if Talma should ever get permission 
 to play in a prose translation of " Macbeth," abridged, 
 say, one-third? "I said one day to one of these gentle- 
 men, 28,000,000 men, i.e., 18,000,000 in England and 
 10,000,000 in America, admire ' Macbeth ' and applaud it 
 a hundred times a year. ' The English,' he answered me 
 with great coolness, ' cannot have real eloquence or poetry 
 truly admirable; the nature of their language, which is 
 not derived from the Latin, makes it quite impossible.'" 
 A great part of " Racine et Shakspere " is occupied with 
 a refutation of the doctrine of the unities of time and 
 place, and with a discussion of the real nature of dra- 
 matic illusion, on which their necessity was supposed to 
 rest. Stendhal maintains that the illusion is really 
 stronger in Shakspere's tragedies than in Racine's. It 
 is not essential here to reproduce his argument, which is 
 the same that is familiar to us in Lessing and in Cole- 
 ridge, though he was an able controversialist, and his logic 
 and irony give a freshness to the treatment of this hack- 
 
212 z/l History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 neyed theme which makes his little treatise well worth 
 the reading. To illustrate the nature of real stzge illu- 
 sion, he says that last year (August, 1822) a soldier in a 
 Baltimore theatre, seeing Othello about to kill Desde- 
 mona, cried out, "It shall never be said that a damned 
 nigger killed a white woman in my presence," and at the 
 same moment fired his gun and broke an arm of the actor 
 who was playing Othello. ^^ £A dien, this soldier had 
 ilhision : he believed that the action which was passing 
 on the stage was true." 
 
 Stendhal proposes the following as a definition of ro- 
 mantic tragedy : " It is written in prose ; the succession 
 of events which it presents to the eyes of the spectators 
 lasts several months, and they happen in different places." 
 He complains that the French comedies are not funny, 
 do not make any one laugh; and that the French tragic 
 dialogue is epic rather than dramatic. He advises his 
 readers to go and see Kean in " Richard " and " Othello " ; 
 and says that since reading Schlegel and Dennis (!) 
 he has a great contempt for the French critics. He ap- 
 peals to the usages of the German and English stage in 
 disregarding the rules of Aristotle, and cites the great 
 popularity of Walter Scott's romances, which, he says, 
 are nothing more than romantic tragedies with long de- 
 scriptions interspersed, to support his plea for a new 
 kind of French prose-tragedy; for which he recommends 
 subjects taken from national history, and especially from 
 the mediseval chroniclers like Froissart. Nevertheless, 
 he does not advise the direct imitation of Shakspere. 
 He blames Schiller for copying Shakspere, and eulogizes 
 Werner's " Luther " as nearer to the masterpieces of 
 Shakspere than Schiller's tragedies are. He wants the 
 
The l^mantu (Movement in France. 213 
 
 new French drama to resemble Shakspere only in dealing 
 freely with modern conditions, as the latter did with the 
 conditions of his time, without having the fear of Racine 
 or any other authority before its eyes. 
 
 In 1824 the Academy, which was slowly constructing 
 its famous dictionary of the French language, happened 
 to arrive at the new word romanticism which needed defin- 
 ing. This was the signal for a heated debate in that ven- 
 erable body, and the director, M. Auger, was commis- 
 sioned to prepare a manifesto against the new literary 
 sect, to be read at the meeting of the Institute on the 
 24th of April next. It was in response to this manifesto 
 that Stendhal wrote the second part of his " Racine et 
 Shakspere" (1825), attached to which is a short essay en- 
 titled " Qu'est ce que le Romanticisme ? " * addressed to the 
 Italian public, and intended to explain to them the literary 
 situation in France, and to enlist their sympathies on the 
 romantic side. " Shakspere," he says, " the hero of roman- 
 tic poetry, as opposed to Racine, the god of the classicists, 
 wrote for strong souls ; for English hearts which were what 
 Italian hearts were about 1500, emerging from that sub- 
 lime Middle Age qiiesti tempi delta virtu sco?iosciutta.'^ 
 Racine, on the contrary, wrote for a slavish and effem- 
 inate court. The author disclaims any wish to impose 
 Shakspere on the Italians. The day will come, he hopes, 
 when they will have a national tragedy of their own ; but 
 to have that, they will do better to follow in the footprints 
 of Shakspere than, like Alfieri, in the footprints of Ra- 
 cine. In spite of the pedants, he predicts that Germany 
 and England will carry it over France; Shakspere, Schil- 
 
 * The use of this form instead of rotnantisme is perhaps 
 worth noticing. 
 
214 <v^ History of English l^manficism. 
 
 ler, and Lord Byron will carry it over Racine and Boileau. 
 He says that English poetry since the French Revolution 
 has become more enthusiastic, more serious, more pas- 
 sionate. It needed other subjects than those required by 
 the witty and frivolous eighteenth century, and sought 
 its heroes in the rude, primitive, inventive ages, or even 
 among savages and barbarians. It had to have recourse 
 to time or countries when it was permitted to the higher 
 classes of society to have passions. The Greek and Latin 
 classics could give no help; since most of them belonged 
 to an epoch as artificial, and as far removed from the 
 naive presentation of the passions, as the eighteenth cen- 
 tury itself. The court of Augustus was no more natural 
 than that of Louis XIV. Accordingly the most suc- 
 cessful poets in England, during the past twenty years, 
 have not only sought deeper emotions than those of the 
 eighteenth century, but have treated subjects which would 
 have been scornfully rejected by the age of bel esprit. 
 The anti-romantics can't cheat us much longer. *' Where, 
 among the works of our Italian pedants, are the books 
 that go through seven editions in two months, like the 
 romantic poems that are coming out in London at the 
 present moment? Compare, e.g., the success of Moore's 
 *Lalla Rookh,' which appeared in June, 1817, and the 
 eleventh edition of which I have before me, with the suc- 
 cess of the ' Camille ' of the highly classical Mr. Botta ! ' " 
 In 1822, a year before the appearance of Stendhal's 
 " Racine et Shakspere," Victor Hugo had published his 
 "Odes et Poesies Diverses," and a second collection fol- 
 lowed in 1824. In the prefaces to these two volumes he 
 protests against the use of the terms classic and romantic, 
 as mots de guerre and vague words which every one defines 
 
The l^omaniic ^Movement in France. 215 
 
 in accordance with his own prejudices. If romanticism 
 means anything, he says, it means the literature of the 
 nineteenth century; and all the anathemas launched at 
 the heads of contemporary writers reduce themselves to 
 the following method of argument. "We condemn the 
 literature of the nineteenth century because it is roman- 
 tic. And why is it romantic? Because it is the litera- 
 ture of the nineteenth century." As to the false taste 
 which disfigured the eighteenth-century imitations of 
 Racine and Boileau, he would prefer to distinguish that 
 by the name scholastic, a style which is to the truly 
 classic what superstition and fanaticism are to religion. 
 The intention of these youthful poems of Hugo was partly 
 literary and partly political and religious : " The history 
 of mankind affords no poetry," he says, " except when 
 judged from the vantage-ground of monarchical ideas 
 and religious beliefs. . . . He has thought that ... in 
 substituting for the outworn and false colours of pagan 
 mythology the new and truthful colours of the Christian 
 theogony, one could inject into the ode something of the 
 interest of the drama, and could make it speak, besides, 
 that austere, consoling, and religious language which is 
 needed by an old society that issues still trembling from 
 the saturnalia of atheism and anarchy. . . . The litera- 
 ture of the present, the actual literature, is the expression, 
 by way of anticipation, of that religious and monarchical 
 society which will issue, doubtless, from the midst of so 
 many ancient debris, of so many recent ruins. ... If 
 the literature of the great age of Louis XIV. had invoked 
 Christianity in place of worshipping heathen gods . . . 
 the triumph of the sophistical doctrines of the last cen- 
 tury would have been much more difficult, perhaps even 
 
2i6 z/J History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 impossible. . . . But France had not that good fortune ; 
 its national poets were almost all pagan poets; and our 
 literature was rather the expression of an idolatrous and 
 democratic, than of a monarchical and Christian society." 
 The prevailing note, accordingly, in these early odes is 
 that of the Bourbon Restoration of 1815-30, and of the 
 Catholic reaction against the sceptical ^daircissemetit of 
 the eighteenth century. The subjects are such as these : 
 " The Poet in the Times of Revolution " ; " La Vendue " ; 
 "The Maidens of Verdun," which chants the martyrdom 
 of three young royalist sisters who were put to death for 
 sending money and supplies to the emigrds ; " Quibiron," 
 where a royalist detachment which had capitulated under 
 promise of being treated like prisoners of war, were shot 
 down in squads by the Convention soldiery; "Louis 
 XVII."; "The Replacement of the Statue of Henry 
 IV." ; " The Death of the Duke of Berry " ; " The Birth 
 of the Duke of Bourdeaux " and his " Baptism " ; " The 
 Funeral of Louis XVIII." ; " The Consecration of Charles 
 X."; "The Death of Mile, de Sombreuil," the royalist 
 heroine who saved her father's life by drinking a cupful 
 of human blood in the days of the Terror; and "La 
 Bande Noire," which denounces with great bitterness the 
 violation of the tombs of the kings of France by the 
 regicides, and pleads for the preservation of the ruins of 
 feudal times: 
 
 "O murs ! 6 creneaux ! 6 tourelles ! 
 Remparts, fosses aux ponts mouvants ! 
 Lourds faisceaux de colonnes freles ! 
 Fiers chateaux ! modestes couvents ! 
 Cloitres poudreux, salles antiques, 
 Ou gemissaient les saints cantiques, 
 Ou riaient les banquets joyeux ! 
 Lieux ou le cceur met ses chimeres ! 
 
The l^pmatittc {Movement in France. 2 1 7 
 
 feglises ou priaient nos meres 
 Tours ou combattaient nos aieux ! " 
 
 In these two ode collections, though the Catholic and 
 legitimist inspiration is everywhere apparent, there is 
 nothing revolutionary in the language or verse forms. 
 But in the "Odes et Ballades" of 1826, "the romantic 
 challenge," says Saintsbury, " is definitely thrown down. 
 The subjects are taken by preference from times and 
 countries which the classical tradition had regarded as 
 barbarous. The metres and rhythm are studioiisly 
 broken, varied, and irregular; the language has the ut- 
 most possible glow of colour, as opposed to the cold cor- 
 rectness of classical poetry, the completest disdain of 
 conventional periphrasis, the boldest reliance on exotic 
 terms and daring neologisms." This description applies 
 more particularly to the Ballades, many of which, such 
 as " La Ronde du Sabbat," " La Le'gende de la Nonne," 
 " La Chasse du Burgrave," and " Le Pas d'Armes du Roi 
 Jean " are mediaeval studies in which the lawless grotes- 
 querie of Gothic art runs riot. " The author, in compos- 
 ing them," says the preface, " has tried to give some idea 
 of what the poems of the first troubadours of the Middle 
 Ages might have been ; those Christian rhapsodists who 
 had nothing in the world but their swords and their gui- 
 tars, and went from castle to castle paying for their en- 
 tertainment with their songs," To show that liberty in 
 art does not mean disorder, the author draws an elaborate 
 contrast between the garden of Versailles and a primitive 
 forest, in a passage which will remind the reader of sim- 
 ilar comparisons in the writings of Shenstone, Walpole, 
 and other English romanticists of the eighteenth century. 
 There is as much order, he asserts, in the forest as in the 
 
2i8 t/^ History of English T^omanticism. 
 
 garden, but it is a live order, not a dead regularity. 
 " Choose then," he exclaims, " between the masterpiece 
 of gardening and the work of nature; between that which 
 is beautiful by convention and that which is beautiful 
 without rule; between an artificial literature and an orig- 
 inal poetry. ... In two words — and we shall not object 
 to have judgment passed in accordance with this observa- 
 tion on the two kinds of literature that are called classic 
 and romantic, — regularity is the taste of mediocrity, order 
 is the taste of genius. ... It will be objected to us that 
 the virgin forest hides in its magnificent solitudes a thou- 
 sand dangerous animals, while the marshy basins of the 
 French garden conceal at most a few harmless creatures. 
 That is doubtless a misfortune; but, taking it all in all, 
 we like a crocodile better than a frog; we prefer a bar- 
 barism of Shakspere to an insipidity of Campistron." 
 But above all things — such is the doctrine of this preface 
 — do not imitate anybody — not Shakspere any more than 
 Racine. " He who imitates a romantic poet becomes 
 thereby a classic, and just because he imitates." In 1823 
 Hugo had published anonymously his first prose romance, 
 " Han d'Islande," the story of a Norwegian bandit. He 
 got up the local colour for this by a careful study of the 
 Edda and the Sagas, that " poesie sauvage " which was 
 the admiration of the new school and the horror of the 
 old. But it was in the preface to "Cromwell," published 
 in 1827, that Hugo issued the full and, as it were, offi- 
 cial manifesto of romanticism. The play itself is hardly 
 actable. It is modelled, in a sense, upon the historical 
 plays of Shakspere, but its Cromwell is a very melodra- 
 matic person, and its Puritans and Cavaliers strike the 
 English reader with the same sense of absurdity produced 
 
The '^mantic ^Movement in France. 219 
 
 by the pictures of English society in "L'Homme qui 
 Rit." But of the famous preface Gautier says: "The 
 Bible among Protestants, the Koran among Mahometans 
 are not the object of a deeper veneration. It was, in- 
 deed, for us the book of books, the book which contained 
 the pure dofctrine." It consisted in great part of a tri- 
 umphant attack upon the unities, and upon the verse and 
 style which classic usage had consecrated to French trag- 
 edy. I need not repeat the argument here. It is already 
 familiar, and some sentences * from this portion of the 
 essay I have quoted elsewhere. 
 
 The preface also contained a plea for another peculiar- 
 ity of the romantic drama, its mixture, viz., of tragedy 
 and comedy. According to Hugo, this is the character- 
 istic trait, the fundamental difference, which separates 
 modern from ancient art, romantic from classical litera- 
 ture. Antique art, he says, rejected everything which 
 was not purely beautiful, but the Christian and modern 
 spirit feels that there are many things in creation besides 
 that which is, humanly speaking, beautiful ; and that 
 everything which is in nature is — or has the right to be 
 — in art. It includes in its picture of life the ugly, the 
 misshapen, the monstrous. Hence results a new type, 
 the grotesque, and a new literary form, romantic comedy. 
 He proceeds to illustrate this thesis with his usual wealth 
 of imaginative detail and pictorial language. The Mid- 
 dle Ages, more than any other period, are rich in in- 
 stances of that intimate blending of the comic and the 
 horrible which we call the grotesque; the witches' Sab- 
 bath, the hoofed and horned devil, the hideous figures of 
 Dante's hell; the Scaramouches, Crispins, Harlequins 
 *See vol. i., pp. 19-20. 
 
2 20 <iA History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 of Italian farce; "grimacing silhouettes of man, quite 
 unknown to grave antiquity "; and " all those local drag- 
 ons of our legends, the gargoyle of Rouen, the Taras of 
 Tarascon, etc. . . . The contact of deformity has given 
 to the modern sublime something purer, grander, more 
 sublime, in short, than the antique beauty. ... Is it not 
 because the modern imagination knows how to set prowl- 
 ing hideously about our churchyards, the vampires, the 
 ogres, the erl-kings, the psylles, the ghouls, the brucolaques, 
 the aspioles, that it is able to give its fays that bodiless 
 form, that purity of essence which the pagan nymphs ap- 
 proach so little? The antique Venus is beautiful, admir- 
 able, no doubt; but what has spread over the figures of 
 Jean Goujon that graceful, strange, airy elegance? What 
 has given them that unfamiliar character of life and 
 grandeur, unless it be the neighbourhood of the rude and 
 strong carvings of the Middle Ages? . . . The grotesque 
 imprints its character especially upon that wonderful 
 architecture which in the Middle Ages takes the place of 
 all the arts. It attaches its marks to the fronts of the 
 cathedrals; enframes its hells and purgatories under the 
 portal arches, and sets them aflame upon the windows; 
 unrolls its monsters, dogs, demons around the capitals, 
 along the friezes, on the eaves." We find this same bi- 
 zarre note in the mediaeval laws, social usages, church 
 institutions, and popular legends, in the court fools, in 
 the heraldic emblems, the religious processions, the story 
 of " Beauty and the Beast." It explains the origin of the 
 Shaksperian drama, the high-water mark of modern art. 
 
 Shakspere does not seem to me an artist of the gro- 
 tesque. He is by turns the greatest of tragic and the 
 greatest of comic artists, and his tragedy and comedy lie 
 
The 'T^mantic ^Movement in France. 221 
 
 close together, as in life, but without that union of the 
 terrible and the ludicrous in the same figure, and that 
 element of deformity which is the essence of the proper 
 grotesque. He has created, however, one specimen of 
 true grotesque, the monster Caliban. Caliban is a comic 
 figure, but not purely comic; there is something savage, 
 uncouth, and frightful about him. He has the dignity 
 and the poetry which all rude, primitive beings have: 
 which the things of nature, rocks and trees and wild 
 beasts have. It is significant, therefore, that Robert 
 Browning should have been attracted to Caliban. Brown- 
 ing had little comic power, little real humour; in him the 
 grotesque is an imperfect form of the comic. The same 
 criticism applies to Hugo. He gave a capital example 
 of the grotesque in the four fools in the third act of 
 " Cromwell " and in Triboulet, the Shaksperian jester of 
 "Le Roi s'Amuse." Their songs and dialogues are bi- 
 zarre and fantastic in the highest degree, but they are 
 not funny; they do not make us laugh like the clowns 
 of Shakspere — they are not comic, but merely queer. 
 Hugo's defective sense of humour is shown in the way 
 in which he frequently takes that one step which, Napo- 
 leon said, separates the sublime from the ridiculous — 
 exaggerating character and motive till the heroic passes 
 into melodrama and melodrama into absurdity. This 
 fault is felt in his great prose romance " Notre-Dame de 
 Paris" (183 1), a picture of mediaeval Paris, in which the 
 humpback Quasimodo affords an exact illustration or 
 what the author meant by the grotesque; another of the 
 same kind is furnished by the hero of his liter romance 
 "L'Homme qui Rit." 
 
 Gautier has left a number of sketches, wri'-en in a vein 
 
2 22 <iA History of English '^Romanticism. 
 
 lovingly humorous, of some of the eccentrics — the curi- 
 osit'es romantiques — whose oddities are perhaps even more 
 instructive as to the many directions which the movement 
 took, than the more ordered enthusiasm of the less ex- 
 treme votaries. There was the architect Jule Vabre, e.g.^ 
 whose specialty was Shakspere. Shakspere " was his 
 god, his idol, his passion, a wonder to which he could 
 never grow accustomed." Vabre's life-project was a 
 French translation of his idol, which should be absolutely 
 true to the text, reproducing the exact turn and move- 
 ment of the phrase, following the alternations of prose, 
 rime, and blank verse in the original, and shunning 
 neither its euphemistic subtleties nor its barbaric rough- 
 nesses. To fit himself for this task, he went to London 
 and lived there, striving to submit himself to the atmos- 
 phere and the milieu, and learning to think in English; 
 and there Gautier encountered him about 1843, in a tav- 
 ern at High-Holborn, drinking stout and eating rosbij 
 and speaking French with an English accent. Gautier 
 told him that all he had to do now, to translate Shak- 
 spere, was to learn French. "I am going to work at it," 
 he answered, more struck with the wisdom than the wit 
 of the suggestion. A few years later Vabre turned up in 
 France with a project for a sort of international seminary. 
 " He wanted to explain ' Hernani ' to the English and 
 ' Macbeth ' to the French. It made him tired to see the 
 English learning French in ' Telemaque,' and the French 
 learning English in the ' Vicar of Wakefield.' " Poor 
 Vabre's great Shakspere translation never materialised; 
 but Frangois-Victor Hugo, the second son of the great 
 romancer, carried out many of Vabre's principles of trans- 
 lation in his version of Shakspere. 
 
The 'T^pmantic [Movement in France. 223 
 
 Another curious figure was the water-colour painter, 
 Celestin Nanteuil, who suggested to Gautier the hero of 
 an early piece of his own, written to accompany an en- 
 graving in an English keepsake, representing the Square 
 of St. Sebald at Nuremberg. This hero, Elias Wildman- 
 stadius, or I'Homme Moyen-age, was " in a sort, the 
 Gothic genius of that Gothic town " — a retardataire or 
 man born out of his own time — who should have been 
 born in 1460, in the days of Albrecht Diirer. Celestin 
 Nanteuil " had the air of one of those tall angels carry- 
 ing a censer or playing on the sambucque, who inhabit 
 the gable ends of cathedrals; and he seemed to have 
 come down into the city among the busy townsfolk, still 
 wearing his nimbus plate behind his head in place of a 
 hat, and without having the least suspicion that it is not 
 perfectly natural to wear one's aureole in the street." 
 He is described as resembling in figure "the spindling 
 columns of the church naves of the fifteenth century. . . . 
 The azure of the frescoes of Fiesole had furnished the 
 blue of his eyes; his hairs, of the blond of an aureole, 
 seemed painted one by one, with the gold of the illumi- 
 nators of the Middle Ages. . . . One would have said, 
 that from the height of his Gothic pinnacle Celestin 
 Nanteuil overlooked the actual town, hovering above the 
 sea of roofs, regarding the eddying blue smoke, perceiving 
 the city squares like a checkerboard, the streets like the 
 notches of a saw in a stone bench, the passers-by like 
 mice; but all that confusedly athwart the haze, while 
 from his airy observatory he saw, close at hand and in all 
 their detail, the rose windows, the bell towers bristling 
 with crosses, the kings, patriarchs, prophets, saints, angels 
 of all the orders, the whole monstrous army of demons 
 
224 £^ History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 or chimeras, nailed, scaled, tushed, hideously winged; 
 guivres^ taresques, gargoyles, asses' heads, apes' muzzles, 
 all the strange bestiary of the Middle Age." Nanteuil 
 furnished illustrations for the books of the French ro- 
 manticists. " Hugo's * Notre-Dame de Paris ' was the 
 object of his most fervent admiration, and he drew from 
 it subjects for a large number of designs and aquarelles." 
 Gautier mentions, as among his rarest vignettes, the 
 frontispiece of " Albertus," recalling Rembrandt's man- 
 ner; and his view of the Palazzo of San Marc in Royer's 
 "Venezia la bella." Gautier says that one might apply 
 to Nanteuil's aquarelles what Joseph Delorme* said of 
 Hugo's ballads, that they were Gothic window paintings. 
 " The essential thing in these short fantasies is the car- 
 riage, the shape, the clerical, monastic, royal, seignorial 
 <zw>^z£/ar^/z^j-i' of the figures and their high colouring. . . . 
 Celestin had made his own the angular anatomy of coats- 
 of-arms, the extravagant contours of the mantles, the chi- 
 merical or monstrous figures of heraldry, the branchings 
 of the emblazoned skirts, the lofty attitude of the feudal 
 baron, the modest air of the chatelaine, the sanctimonious 
 physiognomy of the big Carthusian Carmelite, the furtive 
 mien of the young page with parti-coloured pantaloons. 
 . . . He excelled also in setting the persons of poem, 
 drama, or romance in ornamented frames like the Gothic 
 shrines with triple colonettes, arches, canopied and 
 bracketed niches, with statuettes, figurines, emblematic 
 animals, male and female saints on a background of gold. 
 He entered so deeply into the sentiment of the old Gothic 
 imagery that he could make a Lady of the Pillar in a 
 brocade dalmatica, a Mater Dolorosa with the seven 
 *Sainte-Beuve's "Confessions de Joseph Delorme," 1829. 
 
The l^omanttc (Movement in France. 225 
 
 swords in her breast, a St. Christopher with the child 
 Jesus on his shoulder and leaning on a palm tree, worthy 
 to serve as types to the Byzantine painters of Epinal. . . . 
 Nothing resembled less the clock face and troubadour 
 Middle Age which flourished about 1825. It is one of 
 the main services of the romantic school to have thor- 
 oughly disembarrassed art from this." Gautier describes 
 also a manuscript piece of Nerval, for which he furnished 
 a prologue, and which was an imitation of one of the 
 Diableries^ or popular farces of the Middle Ages, in which 
 the devil was introduced. It contained a piece within 
 the piece, in the fashion of an old mystery play, with 
 scenery consisting of the mouth of hell, painted red and 
 surmounted by a blue paradise starred with gold. An 
 angel came down to play at dice with the devil for souls. 
 In his excess of zeal, the angel cheated and the devil 
 grew angry and called him a "big booby, a celestial 
 fowl," and threatened to pull his feathers out ("Le Prince 
 des Sots"). 
 
 In France, as in England and Germany, the romantic 
 revival promoted and accompanied works of erudition like 
 Raynouard's researches in Provengal and old French 
 philology and the poetry of the troubadours (1816); 
 Creuze de Lesser's " Chevaliers de la Table Ronde " ; 
 Marchangy's *' La Gaule Poetique." History took new 
 impulse from that sens dii passe ^\\ic\i romanticism did so 
 much to awaken. Augustin Thierry's obligations to Scott 
 have already been noticed. It was the war chant of the 
 Prankish warriors in Chateaubriand's " Les Martyrs " — 
 
 " Pharamond ! Pharamond ! nous avons combattu avec 
 r6pee " — 
 
 which first excited his historical imagination and started 
 
2 26 ft/^ History of English %omanticism. 
 
 him upon the studies which issued in the " Rdcits Mero- 
 vingiens " and the " Conquete d'Angleterre." Barante's 
 "Dues de Bourgogne" (1814-28) confessedly owes much 
 of its inception to Scott. Michaud's " History of the 
 Crusades" (181 1-22) and the "History of France" 
 (1833-67) by that most romantic of historians, Michelet, 
 may also be credited to the romantic movement. The 
 end of the movement, as a definite period in the history 
 of French literature, is commonly dated from the failure 
 upon the stage of Victor Hugo's " Les Burgraves " in 
 1843. The immediate influence of the French romantic 
 school upon English poetry or prose was slight. Like 
 the German school, it came too late. The first genera- 
 tion of English romantics was drawing to its close. Scott 
 died two years after " Hernani " stormed the French the- 
 atre. Two years later still died Coleridge, long since 
 fallen silent — as a poet — and always deaf to Gallic 
 charming. We shall find the first impress of French 
 romance among younger men and in the latter half cen- 
 tury. 
 
 In France itself the movement passed on into other 
 phases. Many early adherents of Hugo's cenacle and 
 entourage fell away from their allegiance and, like Sainte- 
 Beuve and Musset, took up a critical or even antagonis- 
 tic attitude. Musset's " Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet " * 
 turns the whole romantic contention into mockery. Yet 
 no work more fantastically and gracefully romantic, more 
 Shaksperian in quality, was produced by any member of 
 the school than Musset produced in such dramas as 
 " Fantasio " and " Lorenzaccio." 
 
 *See vol. i., pp. 18-23. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DiflfuseD IRomanticism In tbc Xitcrature ot tbe mine* 
 tecntb Centurg. 
 
 Most of the poetry of the century that has just closed 
 has been romantic in the wider or looser acceptation of 
 the term. N Emotional stress, sensitiveness to the pictur- 
 esque, love of natural scenery, interest in distant times 
 and places, curiosity of the wonderful and mysterious, 
 subjectivity, lyricism, intrusion of the ego, impatience of 
 the limits of the genres, eager experiment with new forms 
 of art — these and the like marks of the romantic spirit are 
 as common in the verse literature of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury as they are rare in that of the eighteenth. The same 
 is true of imaginative prose, particularly during the first 
 half of the century, the late Georgian and early Victorian 
 period. In contrast with Addison, Swift, and Goldsmith, 
 De Quincey, Carlyle, and Ruskin are romanticists. In 
 contrast with Hume, Macaulay is romantic, concrete, pic- 
 torial. The critical work of Hazlitt and Lamb was in 
 line with Coleridge's, They praised the pre-Augustan 
 writers, the Elizabethan dramatists, the seventeenth-cen- 
 tury humorists and moralists, the Sidneian amourists 
 and fanciful sonneteers, at the expense of their classical 
 successors. 
 
 But in the narrower sense of the word — the sense which 
 controls in these inquiries — the great romantic generation 
 
2 28 c// History of English ^{omanticism. 
 
 ended virtually with the death of Scott in 1832. Cole- 
 ridge followed in 1834, Wordsworth in 1850. Both had 
 long since ceased to contribute anything of value to im- 
 aginative literature. Byron, Shelley, and Keats had died 
 some years before Coleridge ; Leigh Hunt survived until 
 1859. The mediaevalism of Coleridge, Scott, and Keats 
 lived on in dispersed fashion till it condensed itself a 
 second time, and with redoubled intensity, in the work 
 of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which belongs to the 
 last half of the century. The direct line of descent was 
 from Keats to Rossetti ; and the Pre-Raphaelites bear 
 very much such a relation to the elder group, as the ro- 
 mantic school proper in Germany bears to Burger and 
 Herder, and to Goethe and Schiller in their younger 
 days. That is to say, their mediaevalism was more con- 
 centrated, more exclusive, and more final. 
 
 We have come to a point in the chronology of our sub- 
 ject where the material is so abundant that we must nar- 
 row the field of study to creative work, and to work which 
 is romantic in the strictest meaning. Henceforth we 
 may leave out of account all works of mere erudition as 
 such; all those helps which the scholarship of the cen- 
 tury has furnished to a knowledge of the Middle Ages: 
 histories, collections, translations, reprints of old texts, 
 critical editions, Middle English lexicons and grammars, 
 studies of special subjects, such as popular myths or 
 miracle plays or the Arthurian legends, and the like. 
 Numerous and valuable as these publications have been, 
 they concern us only indirectly. They have swelled the 
 material available for the student; they have not neces- 
 sarily stimulated the imagination of the poet; which 
 sometimes — as in the case of Chatterton and of Keats — 
 
THffused l^omanticism in the (N^ineteenth Century. 229 
 
 goes off at a touch and carries but a light charge of 
 learning. In literary history it is the beginnings that 
 count. Child's great ballad collection is, beyond com- 
 parison, more important from the scholar's point of view 
 than Percy's "Reliques." But in the history of roman- 
 ticism it is of less importance, because it came a century 
 later. Mallet's " Histoire de Dannemarc " has been long 
 since superseded, and the means now accessible in Eng- 
 lish for a study of Norse mythology are infinitely greater 
 than when Gray read and Percy translated the " North- 
 ern Antiquities." But it is not the history of the revival 
 of the knowledge of mediaeval life that we are following 
 here; it is rather the history of that part of our modern 
 creative literature which has been kindled by contact — 
 perhaps a very slight and casual contact — with the trans- 
 mitted image of mediaeval life. 
 
 Nor need we concern ourselves further with literary 
 criticism or the history of opinion. This was worth 
 considering in the infancy of the movement, when War- 
 ton began to question the supremacy of Pope; when 
 Hurd asserted the fitness for the poet's uses of the Gothic 
 fictions and the institution of chivalry; and when Percy 
 ventured to hope that cultivated readers would find some- 
 thing deserving attention in old English minstrelsy. It 
 was still worth considering a half-century later, when 
 Coleridge explained away the dramatic unities, and 
 Byron once more took up the lost cause of Pope. But 
 by 1832 the literary revolution was complete. Romance 
 was in no further need of vindication, when all Scott's 
 library of prose and verse stood back of her, and 
 
 " High-piled books in charactery 
 Held, like rich garners, the full-ripened grain." 
 
230 i^ History of English %omanticism. 
 
 As to Scott's best invention, the historical romance, I 
 shall not pursue its fortunes to the end. The formula 
 once constituted, its application was easy, whether the 
 period chosen was the Middle Ages or any old period 
 B.C. or A.D. Here and there an individual stands forth 
 from the class, either for its excellent conformity with 
 the Waverley type or for its originality in deviation. Of 
 the former kind is Charles Reade's " The Cloister and 
 the Hearth" (1861); and of the latter Mr. Maurice 
 Hewlett's '' The Forest Lovers" (1898). The title page 
 of Reade's novel describes the book as " a matter-of-fact 
 romance." It is as well documented as any of Scott's, 
 and reposes especially upon the " Colloquies " of Eras- 
 mus, the betrothal of whose parents, with their subse- 
 quent separation by the monastic vow of celibacy, is the 
 subject of the story. This is somewhat romanticised, 
 but keeps a firm grip upon historical realities. The 
 period of the action is the fifteenth century, yet the work 
 is as far as possible from being a chivalry tale, like the 
 diaphanous fictions of Fouque. " In that rude age," 
 writes the novelist, " body prevailing over mind, all sen- 
 timents took material forms. Man repented with scourges, 
 prayed by bead, bribed the saints with wax tapers, put 
 fish into the body to sanctify the soul, sojourned in cold 
 water for empire over the emotions, and thanked God for 
 returning health in i cwt., 2 stone, 7 lbs., 3 oz., i dwt. 
 of bread and cheese." There is no lack in " The Clois- 
 ter and the Hearth " of stirring incident and bold adven- 
 ture; encounters with bears and with bandits, sieges, 
 witch trials, gallows hung with thieves, archery with long 
 bow and arbalest — everywhere fighting enough, as in 
 Scott; and, also as in Scott, behind the private drama of 
 
IDiffused 'Romanticism in the V^ineteenth Century. 23 1 
 
 true love, intrigue, persecution, the broad picture of so- 
 ciety. It is no idealised version of the Middle Ages. 
 The ugly, sordid side of mediaeval life is turned outwards; 
 its dirt, discomfort, ignorance, absurdity, brutality, un- 
 reason and insecurity are rendered with crass realism. 
 The burgher is more in evidence than the chevalier. 
 Less after the manner of the Waverley novels, and more 
 after that of " Hypatia," " Romola," and " Fathers and 
 Sons," it depicts the intellectual unrest of the time, the 
 conflicting ideals of the old and new generations. The 
 printing-press is being set up, and the hero finds his art 
 of calligraphy, learned in the scriptorium, no longer in 
 request. The Pope and many of the higher clergy are 
 infected with the religious scepticism and humanitarian 
 enthusiasm of the Renaissance. The child Erasmus is 
 the new birth of reason, destined to make war on monkery 
 and superstition and thereby avenge his parents' wrongs. 
 Of quite another fashion of mediaevalism is Mr. Hewlett's 
 story — sheer romance. The wonderful wood of Mor- 
 graunt, with its charcoal burners and wayside shrines, 
 black meres frowned over by skeleton castles, and gentle 
 hinds milked by the heroine to get food for her wounded 
 lover, is of no time or country, but almost as unreal as 
 Spenser's fairy forest. Through its wild ways Isoult la 
 Desirous and Prosper le Gai go adventuring like Una 
 and her Red Cross knight, or Enid and Geraint. Or, 
 again, Isoult in her page's dress, and forsaken by her 
 wedded lord, is like Viola or Imogen or Rosalind, or 
 Constance in " Marmion," or any lady of old romance. 
 Or sometimes again she is like a wood spirit, or an ele- 
 mental creature such as was Undine. The invented 
 place names. High March, Wanmeeting, Market Basing, 
 
232 <iA History of English '^Romanticism. 
 
 etc.j with their transparent air of actuality, sound an echo 
 from William Morris' prose romances, like "The House 
 of theWolfings" and "The Sundering Flood." As in 
 the las. named, and in Thomas Hardy's " Return of the 
 Native," the reader's imagination is assisted by a map of 
 the Morgraunt forest and the river Wan. Mr. Hewlett 
 has evidently profited, too, by recent romances of various 
 schools: by " Prince Otto," ^.^., and "The Prisoner of 
 Zenda," and possibly by others. His Middle Ages are 
 not the Middle Ages of history, but of poetic convention ; 
 a world where anything may happen and where the facts 
 of any precise social state are attenuated into " atmos- 
 phere " for the use of the imagination. " The Forest 
 Lovers " is nearer to " Christabel " or " La Belle Dame 
 sans Merci " than to " Ivanhoe " : is, indeed, a prose poem, 
 though not quite an allegory like " Sintram and his 
 Companions." 
 
 Among Scott's contemporaries, Byron and Shelley, 
 profoundly romantic in temper, were not retrospective in 
 their habit of mind; and the Middle Ages, in particular, 
 had little to say to them. Scott stood for the past; Byron 
 — a man of his time, a modern man — for the present; 
 Shelley — a visionary, with a system of philosophical per- 
 fectionism — for the future. Memory, Mnemosyne, mother 
 of the muses, was the nurse of Scott's genius. Byron 
 lived intensely in the world which he affected to despise. 
 Shelley prophesied, with eyes fixed upon the coming age. 
 We have found, in Byron's contributions to the Pope 
 controversy, one expression of his instinctive sympathy 
 with the classical and contempt for the Gothic. Shelley, 
 too, was a Hellenist; and to both, in their angry break 
 with authority and their worship of liberty, the naked 
 
T)iffused l^omantuism in the tP^ineteenth Century. 233 
 
 freedom, the clear light, the noble and harmonious forms 
 of the antique were as attractive as the twilight of the 
 "ages of faith," with their mysticism, asceticism, and 
 grotesque superstitions, were repulsive. Remote as their 
 own feverish and exuberant poetry was from the unexcited 
 manner of classical work, the latter was the ideal towards 
 which they more and more inclined. The points at which 
 these two poets touch our history, then, are few. Byron, 
 to be sure, cast " Childe Harold " into Spenserian verse, 
 and gave it a ballad title.* In the first canto there are 
 a few archaisms; words like/^r<f, shent, and losel occur, 
 together with Gothic properties, such as the "eremite's 
 sad cell " and " Paynim shores " and Newstead's " mon- 
 astic dome." The ballad "Adieu, adieu my native 
 shore," was suggested by "Lord Maxwell's Good-Night" 
 in the " Border Minstrelsy," and introduces some roman- 
 tic appurtenances: the harp, the falcon, and the little 
 foot-page. But this kind of falsetto, in the tradition of 
 the last-century Spenserians, evidently hampered the 
 poet; so he shook himself free from imitation after the 
 opening stanzas, and spoke in his natural voice.f " Lara " 
 is a tale of feudal days, with a due proportion of knights, 
 dames, vassals, and pages; and an ancestral hall with 
 gloomy vaults and portrait galleries, where 
 
 " — the moonbeam shone 
 Through the dim lattice o'er the floor of stone, 
 
 *"It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation 
 'Childe,' as ' Childe Waters,' 'Childe Childers,' etc., is used 
 as more consonant with the old structure of versification which 
 I have adopted." — Preface to "Childe Harold." Byron ap- 
 peals to a letter of Beattie relating to "The Minstrel," to jus- 
 tify his choice of the stanza. 
 
 f See vol. i., p. 98. 
 
234 ^ History of English 'T^omanticism. 
 
 And the high fretted roof and saints that there 
 O'er Gothic windows knelt in pictured prayer. . . . 
 The waving banner and the clapping door, 
 The rustling tapestry and the echoing floor ; 
 The long dim shadows of surrounding trees, 
 The flapping bats, the night-song of the breeze, 
 Aught they behold or hear their thought appalls, 
 As evening saddens o'er the dark grey walls." 
 
 But these things are unimportant in Byron — mere com- 
 monplaces of description inherited from Scott and Lewis 
 and Mrs. Radcliffe. Neither is it of importance that 
 "Parisina" is a tale of the year 1405, and has an echo 
 in it of convent bells and the death chant of friars ; nor 
 that the first scene of " Manfred " passes in a " Gothic 
 gallery," and includes an incantation of spirits upon the 
 model of " Faust " ; nor that " Marino Faliero " and " The 
 Two Foscari " are founded on incidents of Venetian his- 
 tory which happened in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies respectively; nor yet that Byron translated the 
 Spanish ballad " Woe is me Alhama " and a passage 
 from Pulci's " Morgante Maggiore." * Similarly Shel- 
 ley's experimental versions of the " Prolog im Himmel," 
 and " Walpurgisnacht " in " Faust," and of scenes from 
 Calderon's " Magico Prodigioso " are felt to be without 
 special significance in comparison with the body of his 
 writings. "Faust" impressed him, as it did Byron, and 
 he urged Coleridge to translate it, speaking of the current 
 English versions as wretched misrepresentations of the 
 original. But in all of Shelley's poetry the scenery, 
 architecture, and imagery in general are sometimes Ital- 
 ian, sometimes Asiatic, often wholly fantastic, but never 
 mediaeval. Their splendour is a classic splendour, and 
 
 ♦For Byron's and Shelley's dealings with Dante, vi'cie 
 supra, pp. 99-102. 
 
^Diffused l^omanttcism in the Nineteenth Century. 235 
 
 not what Milton contemptuously calls " a Hunnish and 
 Norwegian stateliness," His favourite names are Greek : 
 Cythna, lanthe, and the like. The ruined cathedral in 
 " Queen Mab " — a poem only in its title romantic — is 
 coupled with the ruined dungeon, in whose courts the 
 children play; both alike "works of faith and slavery," 
 symbols of the priestcraft and kingcraft which Shelley 
 hated, now made harmless by the reign of Reason and 
 Love in a regenerated universe. How different is the 
 feeling which the empty cathedral inspires in Lowell; 
 once thronged with worshippers, now pathetically lonely 
 — a cliff, far inland, from which the sea of faith has for- 
 ever withdrawn ! At the time when " Queen Mab " was 
 written, Coleridge, Southey, and Landor's " Gebir " were 
 Shelley's favourite reading. "He was a lover of the 
 wonderful and wild in literature," says Mrs. Shelley, in 
 her notes on the poem ; " but had not fostered these tastes 
 at their genuine sources — the romances and chivalry of 
 the Middle Ages — but in the perusal of such German 
 works as were current in those days.* . . . Our earlier 
 English poetry was almost unknown to him." 
 
 "Queen Mab" begins with a close imitation of the 
 opening lines of Southey's "Thalaba the Destroyer." 
 The third member of the Lake School is a standing illus- 
 tration of Mr. Colvin's contention that the distinction 
 between classic and romantic is less in subject than in 
 treatment. Southey regarded himself as, equally with 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, an innovator and a rebel 
 against poetic conventions. His big Oriental epics, 
 " Thalaba " and " The Curse of Kehama," are written in 
 
 ♦For the type of prose romance essayed by Shelley, see 
 vol. i., p. 403. 
 
236 <i/l History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 verse purposely irregular, but so inferior in effect to the 
 irregular verse of Coleridge and Scott as to prove that 
 irregularity, as such, is only tolerable when controlled by 
 the subtly varying lyric impulse — not when it is adopted 
 as a literary method, Southey's worth as a man, his in- 
 defatigable industry, his scholarship, and his excellent 
 work in prose make him an imposing figure in our litera- 
 ture. But his poetical reputation has faded more rapidly 
 than that of his greater contemporaries. He ranged 
 widely in search of subjects and experimented boldly in 
 forms of verse; but his poems are seldom inspired; they 
 are manufactures rather than creations, and to-day 
 Southey, the poet, represents nothing in particular. 
 
 But, like Taylor of Norwich, Southey, by his studies in 
 foreign literature, added much to the romantic material 
 constantly accumulating in the English tongue. In his 
 two visits to the Peninsula he made acquaintance with 
 Spanish and Portuguese ; and afterwards by his transla- 
 tions and otherwise, helped his countrymen to a knowl- 
 edge of the old legendary poetry of Spain, the country 
 above all others of chivalry and romance. Mention has 
 already been made of his versions of " Amadis of Gaul," 
 "Palmerinof England," and the "Chronicle of the Cid." 
 The last named was not a translation from any single 
 source, but was put together from the " Poem of the Cid," 
 which the translator considered to be " unquestionably 
 the oldest poem in the language " and probably by a 
 writer contemporary with the great Campeador himself ; 
 from the prose " Chronicle " assigned to the thirteenth 
 century; and from the ballads, which Southey thought 
 mainly worthless, i.e., from the historical point of view. 
 
 Southey's long blank verse poems on mediaeval sub- 
 
^Diffused l^omanficism in the V^ineUenth Century. 237 
 
 jects, partly historical, partly legendary, "Joan of Arc" 
 (1795), "Madoc" (1805), and " Roderick, the Last of the 
 Goths" (1814), like his friend Landor's "Gebir," are 
 examples of romantic themes with classical or, at least, 
 unromantic handling. The last of them was the same in 
 subject, indeed, with Landor's drama, " Count Julian." 
 I have spoken of " Thalaba " and " The Curse of Ke- 
 hama " as epics; but Southey rejected " the degraded title 
 of epic " and scouted the rules of Aristotle. Neverthe- 
 less, the best qualities of these blank verse narratives 
 are of the classic-epic kind. The story is not badly told; 
 the measure is correct if not distinguished ; and the style 
 is simple, clear, and in pure taste. But the spell of 
 romance, the witchery of Coleridge and Keats is absent; 
 and so are the glow and movement of Scott. 
 
 Southey got up his history and local colour conscien- 
 tiously, and his notes present a formidable array of au- 
 thorities. While engaged upon "Madoc," he went to 
 Wales to verify the scenery and even came near to leas- 
 ing a cottage and taking up his residence there. " The 
 manners of the poem," he asserted, "will be found his- 
 torically true." The hero of " Madoc " was a legendary 
 Welsh prince of the twelfth century who led a colony to 
 America. The motif of the poem is therefore nearly the 
 same as in William Morris's " Earthly Paradise," and it 
 is curious to compare the two. In Southey's hands the 
 blank verse, which in the last century had been almost 
 an ear-mark of the romanticising schools, is far more 
 classical than the heroic couplet which Morris writes. 
 In the Welsh portion of " Madoc " the historical back- 
 ground is carefully studied from Giraldus Cambrensis, 
 Evans' "Specimens," the "Triads of Bardism," the 
 
238 <iA History of English Romanticism. 
 
 "Cambrian Biography," and similar sources; and in the 
 Aztec portion, from old Spanish chronicles of the con- 
 quest of Mexico and the journals of modern travellers 
 in America. In "The Earthly Paradise" nothing is 
 historical except the encounter with Edward III.'s fleet 
 in the channel. Over all, the dreamlike vagueness and 
 strangeness of romance. Yet the imaginative impression 
 is more distinct; not an impression of reality, but as of a 
 soft, bright miniature painting in an old manuscript. 
 
 In common with his literary associates, Southey was 
 prompted by Percy's " Reliques " to try his hand at the 
 legendary ballad and at longer metrical tales like "All 
 for Love" and "The Pilgrim to Compostella." Most of 
 these pieces date from the last years of the century. One 
 of them, " St. Patrick's Purgatory," was inserted by Lewis 
 in his " Tales of Wonder." Another of the most popu- 
 lar, and a capital specimen of grotesque, "The Old 
 Woman of Berkeley," was upon a theme which was also 
 undertaken by Taylor of Norwich and Dr. Sayers of the 
 same city, when Southey was on a visit to the former in 
 1798. The story, told by Olaus Magnus as well as by 
 William of Malmesbury, was of a witch whose body was 
 carried off by the devil, though her coffin had been sprin- 
 kled with holy water and bound with a triple chain. For 
 material Southey drew upon Spanish chronicles, French 
 Jabliaux^ the " Acta Sanctorum," Matthew of Westminster, 
 and many other sources. His ballads do not compare 
 well with those of Scott and Coleridge. They abound 
 in the supernatural — miracles of saints, sorceries, and 
 apparitions; but the matter-of-fact narrative, common- 
 place diction, and jog-trot verse are singularly out of 
 keeping with the subject matter. The most wildly ro- 
 
T>iffused %omanticism in the C^Qineteenth Century. 239 
 
 mantic situations become tamely unromantic under 
 Southey's handling. Though in better taste than Lewis' 
 grisly compositions, yet, as in Lewis, the want of " high 
 seriousness '' or any finer imagination in these legendary 
 tales makes them turn constantly towards the comic; so 
 that Southey was scandalised to learn that Mr. Payne 
 Collier had taken his "Old Woman of Berkeley" for a 
 "mock ballad" or parody. He affected especially a 
 stanza which he credited to Lewis' invention : 
 
 "Behind a wide column, half breathless with fear 
 
 She crept to conceal herself there ; 
 That instant the moon o'er a dark cloud shone clear, 
 And she saw in the moonlight two ruffians appear. 
 
 And between them a corpse did they bear." * 
 
 Southey employs no archaisms, no refrains, nor any of 
 the stylistic marks of ancient minstrelsy. His ballads 
 have the metrical roughness and plain speech of the old 
 popular ballads, but none of their frequent, peculiar beau- 
 ties of thought and phrase. 
 
 Spain, no less than Germany and Italy, was laid under 
 contribution by the English romantics. Southey's work 
 in this direction was followed by such things as Lock- 
 hart's "Spanish Ballads" (1824), Irving's "Alhambra," 
 and Bryant's and Longfellow's translations from Spanish 
 lyrical poetry. But these exotics did not stimulate orig- 
 inal creative activity in England in equal degree with the 
 German and Italian transplantings. They were im- 
 ported, not appropriated. Of all European countries 
 Spain had remained the most Catholic and mediaeval. 
 Her eight centuries of struggle against the Moors had 
 given her a rich treasure of legendary song and story. 
 
 *"Mary, the Maid of the Inn." 
 
240 iA History of English l^manticism. 
 
 She had a body of popular ballad poetry larger than 
 either England's or Germany's.* But Spain had no 
 modern literature to mediate between the old and newj 
 nothing at all corresponding with the schools of romance 
 in Germany, from Herder to Schlegel, which effected a 
 revival of the Teutonic Middle Age and impressed it 
 upon contemporary England and France. Neither could 
 the Spanish Middle Age itself show any such supreme 
 master as Dante, whose direct influence on English poetry 
 has waxed with the century. There was a time when, for 
 the greater part of a century, England and Spain were in 
 rather close contact, but it was mainly a hostile contact, 
 and its tangential points were the ill-starred marriage of 
 Philip and Mary, the Great Armada of 1588, and the 
 abortive " Spanish Marriage '* negotiations of James I.'s 
 reign. Readers of our Elizabethan literature, however, 
 cannot fail to remark a knowledge of, and interest in, 
 Spanish affairs now quite strange to English writers. 
 The dialogue of the old drama is full of Spanish phrases 
 of convenience like bezo los manos^paucas palabras, etc., 
 which were evidently quite as well understood by the 
 audience as was later the colloquial French — savoir 
 /aire, coup de grace, etc. — which began to come in with 
 Dryden, and has been coming ever since. The comedy 
 Spaniard, like Don Armado in "Love's Labour's Lost," 
 was a familiar figure on the English boards. Middleton 
 took the double plot of his "Spanish Gipsy" from two 
 novels of Cervantes; and his "Game of Chess," a politi- 
 cal allegorical play, aimed against Spanish intrigues, 
 made a popular hit and was stopped, after a then unex- 
 
 *Duran's great collection, begun in 1828, embraces nearly 
 two thousand pieces. 
 
T)iffused %oinantictsm in the zJ^ineteenth Century. 241 
 
 ampled run, in consequence of the remonstrances of Gon- 
 domar, the Spanish ambassador. Somewhat later the 
 Restoration stage borrowed situations from the Spanish 
 love-intrigue comedy, not so much directly as by way of 
 Moliere, Thomas Corneille, and other French playwrights ; 
 and the duenna and the gracioso became stock figures in 
 English performances. The direct influence of Calderon 
 and Lope de Vega upon our native theatre was infinites- 
 imal. The Spanish national drama, like the English, was 
 self-developed and unaffected by classical rules. Like 
 the English, it was romantic in spirit, but was more 
 religious in subject and more lyrical in form. The land 
 of romance produced likewise the greatest of all satires 
 upon romance. " Don Quixote," of course, was early 
 translated and imitated^in England; and the picaro ro- 
 mances had an important influence upon the evolution of 
 English fiction in De Foe and Smollett; not only di- 
 rectly through books like "The Spanish Rogue," but by 
 way of Le Sage,* But upon the whole, the relation between 
 English and Spanish literature had been one of distant 
 respect rather than of intimacy. There was never any 
 such inrush of foreign domination from this quarter as 
 from Italy in the sixteenth century, or from France in the 
 thirteenth, fourteenth, and latter half of the seventeenth. 
 The unequalled wealth of Spanish literature in popular 
 ballads is partially explained by the facility with which 
 such things were composed. The Spanish ballad, or 
 romance^ was a stanza {redondilla, roundel) of four eight- 
 
 * It is hardly necessary to mention early English transla- 
 tions of " Palmerin of England " (1616) and " Amadis de Gaul " 
 (1580), or to point out the influence of Montemayor's "Diana 
 Enamorada " upon Sidney, Shakspere, and English pastoral 
 romance in general. 
 
242 zA History of English Romanticism. 
 
 syllable lines with a prevailing trachaic movement — just 
 the metre, in short, of " Locksley Hall." Only the sec- 
 ond and fourth lines rimed, and the rime was merely 
 assonant or vowel rime. Given the subject and the 
 lyrical impulse, and verses of this sort could be produced 
 to order and in infinite number by poets of the humblest 
 capacity. The subjects were furnished mainly by Span- 
 ish history and legend, the exploits of national heroes 
 like the Cid (Ruy Diaz de Bivar), the seven Princes of 
 Lara, Don Fernan Gonzalez, and Bernaldo del Carpio, the 
 leader in the Spanish versions of the great fight by Fon- 
 
 tarabbia 
 
 "When Rowland brave and Olivier, 
 And every paladin and peer 
 On Roncesvalles died." 
 
 Southey thought the Spanish ballads much inferior to 
 the English and Scotch, a judgment to which students of 
 Spanish poetry will perhaps hardly agree.* The Span- 
 ish ballads, like the British, are partly historical and 
 legendary, partly entirely romantic or fictitious. They 
 record not only the age-long wars against the Saracen, 
 
 *"The English and Scotch ballads, with which they may 
 most naturally be compared, belong to a ruder state of soci- 
 ety, where a personal violence and coarseness prevailed 
 which did not, indeed, prevent the poetry it produced from 
 being full of energy, and sometimes of tenderness ; but which 
 necessarily had less dignity and elevation than belong to the 
 character, if not the condition, of a people who, like the Span- 
 ish, were for centuries engaged in a contest ennobled by a 
 sense of religion and loyalty — a contest which could not fail 
 sometimes to raise the minds and thoughts of those engaged 
 in it far above such an atmosphere as settled round the bloody 
 feuds of rival barons or the gross maraudings of a border 
 warfare. The truth of this will at once be felt, if we compare 
 the striking series of ballads on Robin Hood with those on the 
 Cid and Bernardo de Carpio ; or if we compare the deep trag- 
 edy of Edom O' Gordon with that of the Conde Alarcos ; or. 
 
'Diffused 'T{ofnanticism in the V^ineteenth Century. 243 
 
 the common enemy, but the internecine feuds of the Span- 
 ish Christian kingdoms, the quarrels between the kings 
 and their vassals, and many a dark tale of domestic 
 treachery or violence. In these respects their resem- 
 blance to the English and Scotch border ballads is obvi- 
 ous; and it has been pointed out that they sprang from 
 similar conditions, a frontier war for national independ- 
 ence, maintained for centuries against a stubborn foe. 
 The traditions concerning Wallace and the Bruce have 
 some analogy with the chronicles of the Cid; but as to 
 the border fights celebrated in Scott's " Minstrelsy," they 
 were between peoples of the same race, tongue, and 
 faith ; and were but petty squabbles in comparison ^vOith 
 that epic crusade in which the remnants of the old Gothic 
 conquerors slowly made head against, and finally over- 
 threw and expelled, an Oriental religion, a foreign blood, 
 and a civilisation in many respects more brilliant than 
 anything which Europe could show. The contrast be- 
 tween Castile and Granada is more picturesque than the 
 difference between Lothian and Northumberland. The 
 Spanish ballads have the advantage, then, of being con- 
 nected with imposing passages of history. In spirit they 
 are intensely national. Three motives animate them all: 
 loyalty to the king, devotion to the cross, and the pun- 
 donor : that sensitive personal honour — the "Castilian 
 pride " of " Hernani," — which sometimes ran into fantas- 
 
 what would be better than either, if we should sit down to the 
 ' Romancero General, ' with its poetical confusion of Moorish 
 splendours and Christian loyalty, just when we have come 
 fresh from Percy's ' Reliques ' or Scott's ' Minstrelsy ' " (" His- 
 tory of Spanish Literature," George Ticknor, vol. i., p. 141, 
 third American ed., 1866). The "Romancero General" was 
 the great collection of some thousand ballads and lyrics pub- 
 lished in 1602-14. 
 
244 <^ History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 tic excess. A rude chivalry occasionally softens the feroc- 
 ity of feudal manners in Northern ballad-poetry, as in the 
 speech of Percy over the dead Douglas in " Chevy Chase." 
 But in the Spanish romances the knightly feeling is all- 
 pervading. The warriors are hidalgos, gentlemen of a 
 lofty courtesy ; the Moorish chieftains are not "heathen 
 hounds," but chivalrous adversaries, to be treated, in de- 
 feat, with a certain generosity. This refinement and 
 magnanimity are akin to that ideality of temper which 
 makes Don Quixote at once so noble and so ridiculous, 
 and which is quite remote from the sincere realism of 
 the British minstrelsy. In style the Spanish ballads 
 are simple, forcible, and direct, but somewhat monot- 
 onous in their facility. The English and Scotch have 
 a wider range of subject; the best of them have a con- 
 densed energy of expression and a depth of tragic feeling 
 which is more potent than the melancholy grace of the 
 Spanish. Women take a more active part in the former, 
 the Christians of the Peninsula having caught from their 
 Saracen foes a prejudice in favour of womanly seclusion 
 and retirement. There is also a wilder imagination in 
 Northern balladry; a much larger element of the mytho- 
 logical and supernatural. Ghosts, demons, fairies, en- 
 chanters are rare in the Spanish poems. Where the 
 marvellous enters into them at all, it is mostly in the 
 shape of saintly miracles. St. James of Compostella 
 appears on horseback among the Christian hosts battling 
 with the Moors, or even in the army of the Conquista- 
 dores in Mexico — an incident which Macaulay likens to 
 the apparition of the "great twin Brethren" in the Roman 
 battle of Lake Regillus. The mediaeval Spaniards were 
 possibly to the full as superstitious as their Scottish con- 
 
^Diffused Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century. 245 
 
 temporaries, but their superstitions were the legends of 
 the Catholic Church, not the inherited folklore of Gothic 
 and Celtic heathendom. I will venture to suggest, as 
 one reason of this difference, the absence of forests in 
 Spain. The shadowy recesses of northern Europe were 
 the natural haunts of mystery and unearthly terrors. The 
 old Teutonic forest, the Schwarzwald and the Hartz, were 
 peopled by the popular imagination with were-wolves, 
 spectre huntsmen, wood spirits, and all those nameless 
 creatures which Tieck has revived in his " Mahrchen " 
 and Hauptmann in the Rautendelein of his " Versunkene 
 Glocke." The treeless plateaus of Spain, and her stony, 
 denuded sierras, all bare and bright under the hot south- 
 ern sky, offered no more shelter to such beings of the 
 mind than they did to the genial life of Robin Hood and 
 his merry men "all under the greenwood tree." And 
 this mention of the bold archer of Sherwood recalls one 
 other difference — the last that need here be touched upon 
 — between the ballads of Spain and of England. Both 
 constitute a body of popular poetry, i.e., of folk poetry. 
 They recount the doings of the upper classes, princes, 
 nobles, knights, and ladies, as seen from the angle of ob- 
 servation of humble minstrels of low degree. But the 
 people count for much more in the English poems. The 
 Spanish are more aristocratic, more public, less domestic, 
 and many of them composed, it is thought, by lordly 
 makers. This is perhaps, in part, a difference in na- 
 tional character; and, in part, a difference in the condi- 
 tions under which the social institutions of the two coun- 
 tries were evolved. 
 
 Spain collected her ballads early in numerous song- 
 books — cancioneros, romanceros — the first of which, the 
 
 ^. 
 
246 tt/^ History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 "Cancionero" of 15 10, is "the oldest collection of 
 popular poetry, properly so-called, that is to be found in 
 any European literature." * But modern Spain had gone 
 through her classic period, like England and Germany. 
 She had submitted to the critical canons of Boileau, and 
 was in leading-strings to France till the end of the 
 eighteenth century. Spain, too, had her romantic move- 
 ment, and incidentally her ballad revival, but it came 
 later than in England and Germany, later even than in 
 France. Historians of Spanish literature inform us that 
 the earliest entry of French romanticism into Spain took 
 place in Martinez de la Rosa's two dramas, "The Con- 
 spiracy of Venice" (1834) and " Aben-Humeya," first 
 written in French and played at Paris in 1830; and that 
 the representation of Duke de Rivas' play, " Don Alvaro " 
 (1835), was " an event in the history of the modern Span- 
 ish drama corresponding to the production of ' Hernani ' 
 at the Theatre Frangais " in 1830.! Both of these authors 
 had lived in France and had there made acquaintance 
 with the works of Chateaubriand, Byron, and Walter 
 Scott. Spain came in time to have her own Byron and 
 her own Scott; the former in Jose de Espronceda, author 
 of " The Student of Salamanca," who resided for a time 
 in London; the latter in Jose Zorrilla, whose "Granada," 
 "Legends of the Cid," etc., "were popular for the same 
 reason that * Marmion ' and ' The Lady of the Lake ' were 
 popular; for their revival of national legends in a form 
 both simple and picturesque " I Scott himself is reported 
 
 *"The Ancient Ballads of Spain." R. Ford, in Edinburgh 
 Review, No. 146. 
 
 t"A History of Spanish Literature." By James Fitz- 
 Maurice Kelly, New York, 1898, pp. 366-67. 
 
 Xlbid., pp. 368-73. 
 
diffused l^manticism in the ihQineteentb Century. 247 
 
 to have said that if he had come across in his younger 
 days Perez de Hita's old historical romance, "The Civil 
 Wars of Granada" (1595), "he would have chosen Spain 
 as the scene of a Waverley novel." * 
 
 But when Lockhart, in 1824, set himself to 
 
 " — relate 
 In high-born words the worth of many a knight 
 From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate " — 
 
 her ballad poetry had fallen into disfavour at home, and 
 " no Spanish Percy, or Ellis, or Ritson," he complains, 
 "has arisen to perform what no one but a Spaniard can 
 entertain the smallest hope of achieving." f Meanwhile, 
 however, the German romantic school had laid eager 
 hands upon the old romantic literature of Spain. A. 
 W. Schlegel (1803) and Gries had made translations from 
 Calderon in assonant verse ; and Friedrich Schlegel — 
 who exalted the Spanish dramatist above Shakspere, 
 much to Heine's disgust — had written, also in asonante, 
 his dramatic poem "Conde Alarcos" (1802), founded on 
 the well-known ballad. Brentano and others of the ro- 
 mantics went so far as to practise assonance in their orig- 
 inal as well as translated work. Jacob Grimm (18 15) 
 and, Depping (1817) edited selections from the " Ro- 
 mancero " which Lockhart made use of in his " Ancient 
 Spanish Ballads." With equal delight the French ro- 
 manticists — Hugo and Musset in particular — seized upon 
 the treasures of the " Romancero " ; but this was some- 
 what later. 
 
 Lockhart's " Spanish Ballads," which were bold and 
 
 ♦Kelly, p. 270. 
 
 f The collection of Sanchez (1779) is described as an imita- 
 tion of the " Reliques " (Edinburgh Review, No. 146). 
 
248 zA History of English '^Romanticism. 
 
 spirited paraphrases rather than close versions of the 
 originals, enjoyed a great success, and have been repeat- 
 edly reprinted. Ticknor pronounced them undoubtedly 
 a work of genius, as much so as any book of the sort in 
 any literature with which he was acquainted.* In the 
 very same year Sir John Bowring published his "An- 
 cient Poetry and Romance of Spain." Hookham Frere, 
 that most accomplished of translators, also gave speci- 
 mens from the " Romancero." Of late years versions in 
 increasing numbers of Spanish poetry of all kinds, an- 
 cient and modern, by Ormsby, Gibson, and others too 
 numerous to name, have made the literature of the coun- 
 try largely accessible to English readers. But to Lock- 
 hart belongs the credit of having established for the 
 English public the convention of romantic Spain — the 
 Spain of lattice and guitar, of mantilla and Castanet, arti- 
 cles now long at home in the property room of romance, 
 along with the gondola of Venice, the " clock-face " trou- 
 badour, and the castle on the Rhine. The Spanish brand 
 of mediaevalism would seem, for a number of years, to 
 have substituted itself in England for the German ; and 
 doubtless a search through the annuals and gift books and 
 fashionable fiction and minor poetry generally, of the 
 years from 1825 to 1840, would disclose a decided Cas- 
 tilian colouring. To such effect, at least, is the testi- 
 mony of the Edinburgh reviewer — from whom I have 
 several times quoted— reviewing in January, 1841, the 
 new and sumptuously illustrated edition of " Ancient 
 Spanish Ballads." " Mr. Lockhart's success," he writes, 
 "rendered the subject fashionable; we have, however, no 
 
 *He preferred, however, Sir Edmund Head's rendering of 
 the ballad "Lady Alda's Dream" to Lockhart's version. 
 
THffused l^omanticism in the i^ineteenth Century. 249 
 
 space to bestow on the minor fry who dabbled in these 
 , . . fountains. Those who remember their number may 
 possibly deprecate our re-opening the floodgates of the 
 happily subsided inundation." 
 
 The popular ballad, indeed, is, next after the historical 
 romance, the literary form to which the romantic move- 
 ment has given, in the highest degree, a renewal of pros- 
 perous life. Every one has written ballads, and the 
 " burden " has become a burden even as the grasshopper 
 is such. The very parodists have taken the matter in 
 hand. The only Calverley made excellent sport of the 
 particular variety cultivated by Jean Ingelow. And Sir 
 Frederick Pollock, as though actuated by Lowell's hint, 
 about " a declaration of love under the forms of a declara- 
 tion in trover," cast the law reports into ballad phrase in 
 his "Leading Cases Done into English " (1876): 
 
 "It was Thomas Newman and five his feres 
 (Three more would have made them nine) , 
 And they entered into John Vaux's house, 
 That had the Queen's Head to sign. 
 The birds on the bough sing loud and sing low, 
 What trespass shall be ab itiitio. " 
 
 Of course the great majority of these poems in the bal- 
 lad form, whether lyric or narrative, or a mixture of both, 
 are in no sense romantic. They are like Wordsworth's 
 "Lyrical Ballads," idyllic; songs of the affections, of 
 nature, sentiment, of war, the sea, the hunting field, rus- 
 tic life, and a hundred other moods and topics. Neither 
 are the historical or legendary ballads, deriving from 
 Percy and reinforced by Scott, prevailingly romantic in 
 the sense of being mediaeval. They are such as Macau- 
 lay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," in which — with ample 
 acknowledgment in his introduction both to Scott and 
 
250 c^ History of English l^manticism. 
 
 to the "Reliques" — he applies the form of the English 
 minstrel ballad to an imaginative re-creation of the lost 
 popular poetry of early Rome. Or they continue Scott's 
 Jacobite tradition, like " Aytoun's Lays of the Scottish 
 Cavaliers," Browning's "Cavalier Tunes," Thornbury's 
 "Songs of the Cavaliers and Roundheads" (1857), and 
 a few of Motherwell's ditties. These last named, except 
 Browning, were all Scotchmen and staunch Tories; as 
 were likewise Lockhart and Hogg; and, for obvious rea- 
 sons, it is in Scotland that the simpler fashion of ballad 
 writing, whether in dialect or standard English, and more 
 especially as employed upon martial subjects, has flour- 
 ished longest. Artifice and ballad preciosity have been 
 cultivated more sedulously in the south, with a learned 
 use of the repetend, archaism of style, and imitation of 
 the quaint mediaeval habit of mind. 
 
 Of the group most immediately connected with Scott 
 and who assisted him, more or less, in his " Minstrelsy " 
 collection, may be mentioned the eccentric John Leyden, 
 immensely learned in Border antiquities and poetry; and 
 James Hogg, the " Ettrick Shepherd." The latter was a 
 peasant bard, an actual shepherd and afterward a sheep 
 farmer, a self-taught man with little schooling, who 
 aspired to become a second Burns, and composed much of 
 his poetry while lying out on the hills, wrapped in his 
 plaid and tending his flocks like any Corydon or Thyrsis. 
 He was a singular mixture of genius and vanity, at once 
 the admiration and the butt of the Blackwood's wits, who 
 made him the mouthpiece of humour and eloquence which 
 were not his, but Christopher North's. The puzzled shep- 
 herd hardly knew how to take it; he was a little gratified 
 and a good deal nettled. But the flamboyant figure of him 
 
'Diffused Romanticism in the z^Qineteenth Century. 2 5 1 
 
 in the Nodes will probably do as much as his own verses 
 to keep his memory alive with posterity. Nevertheless, 
 Hogg is one of the best of modern Scotch ballad poets. 
 Having read the first two volumes of the " Border Min- 
 strelsy," he was dissatisfied with some of the modern bal- 
 lad imitations therein and sent his criticisms to Scott, 
 They were sound criticisms, for Hogg had an intimate 
 knowledge of popular poetry and a quick perception of 
 what was genuine and what was spurious in such compo- 
 sitions. Sir Walter called him in aid of his third vol- 
 ume and found his services of value. 
 
 As a Border minstrel, Hogg ranks next to Scott — is, 
 in fact, a sort of inferior Scott. His range was narrower, 
 but he was just as thoroughly saturated with the legend- 
 ary lore of the countryside, and in some respects he stood 
 closer to the spirit of that peasant life in which popular 
 poetry has its source. As a ballad poet, indeed, he is 
 not always Scott's inferior, though even his ballads are 
 apt to be too long and without the finish and the instinct 
 for selection which marks the true artist. When he es- 
 sayed metrical romances in numerous cantos, his defi- 
 ciencies in art became too fatally evident. Scott, in his 
 longer poems, is often profuse and unequal, but always 
 on a much higher level than Hogg. The latter had no 
 skill in conducting to the end a fable of some complex- 
 ity, involving a number of varied characters and a really 
 dramatic action. " Mador of the Moor," e.g., is a mani- 
 fest and not very successful imitation of " The Lady of 
 the Lake " ; and it requires a strong appetite for the ro- 
 mantic to sustain a reader through the six parts of " Queen 
 Hynde" and the four parts of "The Pilgrims of the 
 Sun." By general consent, the best of Hogg's more am- 
 
252 e/f History of English 'T^omanticism. 
 
 bitious poems is " The Queen's Wake," and the best thing 
 in it is "Kilmeny." "The Queen's Wake" (1813) com- 
 bines, in its narrative plan, the framework of " The Lay 
 of the Last Minstrel " with the song competition in its 
 sixth canto. Mary Stuart, on landing in Scotland, holds 
 a Christmas wake at Holyrood, where seventeen bards 
 contend before her for the prize of song. The lays are 
 in many different moods and measures, but all enclosed 
 in a setting of octosyllabic couplets, closely modelled 
 upon Scott; and the whole ends with a tribute to the 
 great minstrel who had waked once more the long silent 
 Harp of the North. The thirteenth bard's song — " Kil- 
 meny" — is of the type of traditionary tale familiar in 
 "Tam Lin" and "Thomas of Ercildoune," and tells how 
 a maiden was spirited away to fairyland, where she saw 
 a prophetic vision of her country's future (including the 
 Napoleonic wars) and returned after a seven years' ab- 
 sence. 
 
 "Late, late in a gloamin' when all was still, 
 When the fringe was red on the westlin hill, 
 The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane. 
 The reek o' the cot hung o'er the plain. 
 Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane ; 
 When the ingle lowed wi' an eiry leme. 
 Late, late in the gloamin' Kilmeny came hame." 
 
 The Ettrick Shepherd's peculiar province was not so 
 much the romance of national history as the field of Scot- 
 tish fairy lore and popular superstition. It was he, rather 
 than Walter Scott, who carried out the suggestions long 
 since made to his countryman, John Home, in Collins' 
 "Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands." His 
 poems are full of bogles, kelpies, brownies, warlocks, and 
 all manner of " grammarie." " The Witch of Fife " in 
 
T>iffused %omanttcism in the Nineteenth Century. 253 
 
 "The Queen's Wake," a spirited bit of grotesque, is re- 
 peatedly quoted as authority upon the ways of Scotch 
 witches in the notes to Croker's " Fairy Legends and 
 Traditions of the South of Ireland." Similar themes 
 engaged the poet in his prose tales. Some of these were 
 mere modern ghost stories, or stories of murder, robbery, 
 death warnings, etc. Others, like " The Heart of Eil- 
 don," dealt with ancient legends of the supernatural. 
 Still others, like "The Brownie of Bodsbeck: a Tale of 
 the Covenanters," were historical novels of the Stuart 
 times. Here Hogg was on Scott's own ground and did 
 not shine by comparison. He complained, indeed, that 
 in the last-mentioned tale, he had been accused of copy- 
 ing " Old Mortality " ; but asserted that he had written 
 his book the first and had been compelled by the appear- 
 ance of Sir Walter's, to go over his own manuscript and 
 substitute another name for Balfour of Burley, his origi- 
 nal hero. Nanny's songs, in "The Brownie of Bods- 
 beck," are among Hogg's best ballads. Others are scat- 
 tered through his various collections — " The Mountain 
 Bard," "The Forest Minstrel," "Poetical Tales and Bal- 
 lads," etc. 
 
 Another Scotch balladist was William Motherwell, 
 one of the most competent of ballad scholars and editors, 
 whose " Minstrelsy : Ancient and Modern," was issued 
 at Glasgow in 1827, and led to a correspondence between 
 the collector and Sir Walter Scott.* In 1836 Mother- 
 well was associated with Hogg in editing Burns' works. 
 His original ballads are few in number, and their faults 
 and merits are of quite an opposite nature from his col- 
 laborator's. The shepherd was a man of the people, and 
 * Scott and Motherwell never met in person. 
 
254 <^ History of English l^pinanticisin. 
 
 lived, so far as any modern can, among the very condi- 
 tions which produced the minstrel songs. He inherited 
 the popular beliefs. His great-grandmother on one side 
 was a notorious witch; his grandfather on the other side 
 had "spoken with the fairies." His poetry, such as it 
 is, is fluent and spontaneous. Motherwell's, on the con- 
 trary, is the work of a ballad fancier, a student learned 
 in lyric, reproducing old modes with conscientious art. 
 His balladry is more condensed and skilful than Hogg's, 
 but seems to come hard to him. It is literary poetry 
 trying to be Volkspoesie, and not quite succeeding. Many 
 of the pieces in the southern English, such as " Halbert 
 the Grim," "The Troubadour's Lament," "The Crusad- 
 er's Farewell," "The Warthman's Wail," "The Demon 
 Lady," "The Witches' Joys," and "Lady Margaret," 
 have an echo of Elizabethan music, or the songs of Love- 
 lace, or, now and then, the verse of Coleridge or Byron. 
 "True Love's Dirge," e.g., borrows a burden from Shak- 
 spere — "Heigho! the Wind and Rain." Others, like 
 "Lord Archibald: A Ballad," and " Elfinland Wud: An 
 Imitation of the Ancient Scottish Romantic Ballad," are 
 in archaic Scotch dialect with careful ballad phrasing. 
 Hogg employs the broad Scotch, but it is mostly the ver- 
 nacular of his own time. A short passage from " The 
 Witch of Fife " and one from " Elfin Wud " will illustrate 
 two very different types of ballad manner: 
 
 " He set ane reid-pipe till his muthe 
 And he playit se bonnileye, 
 Till the gray curlew and the black-cock flew 
 To listen his melodye. 
 
 " It rang se sweit through the grim Lomraond, 
 That the nycht-winde lowner blew : 
 
Tfiffused l^manticism in the U^ineteenth Century. 255 
 
 And it soupit alang the Loch Leven, 
 And wakenit the white sea-mew. 
 
 "It rang se sweit through the grim Lommond, 
 Se sweitly but and se shill, 
 That the wezilis laup out of their mouldy holis, 
 And dancit on the mydnycht hill." 
 
 "Around her slepis the quhyte muneschyne, 
 (Meik is mayden undir kell) , 
 Hir lips bin lyke the blude reid wyne ; 
 (The rois of flouris hes sweitest smell) . 
 
 "It was al bricht quhare that ladie stude, 
 
 (Far my luve fure ower the sea) . 
 
 Bot dern is the lave of Elfinland wud, 
 
 (The Knicht pruvit false that ance luvit me). 
 
 "The ladle's handis were quhyte als milk, 
 (Ringis my luve wore mair nor ane) . 
 Hir skin was safter nor the silk ; 
 
 (Lilly bricht schinis my luve's halse bane)." 
 
 Upon the whole, the most noteworthy of Motherwell's 
 original additions to the stores of romantic verse were 
 his poems on subjects from Norse legend and mythology, 
 and particularly the three spirited pieces that stand first 
 in his collection (1832)— "The Battle-Flag of Sigurd," 
 "The Wooing Song of Jarl Egill Skallagrim," and "The 
 Sword Chant of Thorstein Randi." These stand midway 
 between Gray's " Descent of Odin " and the later work 
 of Longfellow, William Morris and others. Since Gray, 
 little or nothing of the kind had been attempted ; and 
 Motherwell gave perhaps the first expression in English 
 song of the Berserkir rage and the Viking passion for 
 battle and sea roving. 
 
 During the nineteenth century English romance re- 
 ceived new increments of heroic legend and fairy lore 
 from the Gaelic of Ireland. It was not until 1867 that 
 Matthew Arnold, in his essay " On the Study of Celtic 
 
256 <iA History of English l^omanttcism. 
 
 Literature," pleading for a chair of Celtic at Oxford, be- 
 spoke the attention of the English public to those ele- 
 ments in the national literature which come from the 
 Celtic strain in its blood. Arnold knew very little Cel- 
 tic, and his essay abounds in those airy generalisations 
 which are so irritating to more plodding critics. His 
 theory, e.g., that English poetry owes its sense for colour 
 to the Celts, when taken up and stated nakedly by fol- 
 lowing writers, seems too absolute in its ascription of 
 colour-blindness to the Teutonic races. Still, Arnold 
 probably defined fairly enough the distinctive traits of 
 the Celtic genius. He attributes to a Celtic source much 
 of the turn of English poetry for style, much of its turn 
 for melancholy, and nearly all its turn for "natural 
 magic." " The forest solitude, the bubbling spring, the 
 wild flowers, are everywhere in romance. They have a 
 mysterious life and grace there; they are Nature's own 
 children, and utter her secret in a way which makes them 
 something quite different from the woods, waters, and 
 plants of Greek and Latin poetry. Now, of this delicate 
 magic, Celtic romance is so pre-eminent a mistress that 
 it seems impossible to believe the power did not come 
 into romance from the Celts." 
 
 In 1825 T. Crofton Croker published the first volume 
 of his delightful " Fairy Legends and Traditions of the 
 South of Ireland." It was immediately translated into 
 German by the Grimm brothers, and was received with 
 enthusiasm by Walter Scott, who was introduced to the 
 author in London in 1826, and a complimentary letter 
 from whom was printed in the preface to the second 
 edition. 
 
 Croker's book opened a new world of romance, and 
 
^Diffused l^manticism in the zN^ineteenth Century. 257 
 
 introduced the English reader to novel varieties of elf 
 creatures, with outlandish Gaelic names; the Shefro; the 
 Boggart; the Phooka, or horse-fiend; the Banshee, a fa- 
 miliar spirit which moans outside the door when a deatk 
 impends; the Cluricaune,* or cellar goblin; the Fir 
 Darrig (Red Man); the Dullahan, or Headless Horse- 
 man. There are stories of changelings, haunted castles, 
 buried treasure, the " death coach," the fairy piper, en- 
 chanted lakes which cover sunken cities, and similar 
 matters not unfamiliar in the folk-lore of other lands, but 
 all with an odd twist to them and set against a back- 
 ground of the manners and customs of modern Irish 
 peasantry. The Celtic melancholy is not much in evi- 
 dence in this collection. The wild Celtic fancy is pres- 
 ent, but in combination with Irish gaiety and light- 
 heartedness. It was the day of the comedy Irishman — • 
 Lover's and Lever's Irishman — Handy Andy, Rory 
 O'More, Widow Machree and the like. It took the fam- 
 ine of '49 and the strenuous work of the Young Ireland 
 Party which gathered about the Nation in 1848, to dis- 
 place this traditional figure in favour of a more earnest 
 and tragical national type. But a single quotation will 
 illustrate the natural magic of which Arnold speaks: 
 "The Merrow (mermaid) put the comb in her pocket, 
 and then bent down her head and whispered some words 
 to the water that was close to the foot of the rock. Dick 
 
 * Mr. Churton Collins thinks that the lines in " Guinevere " — 
 
 " Down in the cellars merry bloated things 
 Shouldered the spigot, straddling on the butts 
 While the wine ran " — 
 
 was suggested by Croker's description of the Cluricaune. 
 (" Illustrations of Tennyson " (1891), p. 152.) 
 
258 n/l History of English '^Romanticism. 
 
 saw the murmur of the words upon the top of the sea, 
 going out towards the wide ocean, just like a breath of 
 wind rippling along, and, says he, in the greatest won- 
 der, ' Is it speaking you are, my darling, to the salt 
 water? ' 
 
 "'It's nothing else,' says she, quite carelessly; 'I'm 
 just sending word home to my father not to be waiting 
 breakfast for me.' " Except for its lack of " high seri- 
 ousness," this is the imagination that makes myths. 
 
 Catholic Ireland still cherishes popular beliefs which 
 in England, and even in Scotland, have long been merely 
 antiquarian curiosities. In her poetry the fairies are 
 never very far away. 
 
 "Up the airy mountain, 
 Down the rushy glen 
 We daren't go a-hunting 
 For fear of little men. " * 
 
 Irish critics, to be sure, tell us that Allingham's fairies 
 are English fairies, and that he had no Gaelic, though he 
 knew and loved his Irish countryside. He was a Prot- 
 estant and a loyalist, and lived in close association with 
 the English Pre-Raphaelites — with Rossetti especially, 
 who made the illustration for "The Maids of Elfin- 
 Mere" in Allingham's volume "The Music Master" 
 (1855). The Irish fairies, it is said, are beings of a 
 darker and more malignant breed than Shakspere's 
 elves. Yet in Allingham's poem they stole little Brid- 
 get and kept her seven years, till she died of sorrow and 
 lies asleep on the lake bottom: even as in Ferguson's 
 weird ballad, " The Fairy Thorn," the good people carry 
 off fair Anna Grace from the midst of her three compan- 
 *"The Fairies." William Allingham. 
 
T)iffused %omanticism in the (Nineteenth Century. 259 
 
 ions, who " pined away and died within the year and 
 day." 
 
 To the latter half of the century belongs the so-called 
 Celtic revival, which connects itself with the Nationalist 
 movement in politics and is partly literary and partly pa- 
 triotic. It may be doubted whether, for practical pur- 
 poses, the Gaelic will ever come again into general use. 
 But the concerted endeavour by a whole nation to win 
 back its ancient, wellnigh forgotten speech is a most in- 
 teresting social phenomenon. At all events, both by 
 direct translations of the Gaelic hero epics and by origi- 
 nal work in which the Gaelic spirit is transfused through 
 English ballad and other verse forms, a lost kingdom of 
 romance has been recovered and a bright green thread 
 of Celtic poetry runs through the British anthology of the 
 century. The names of the pioneers and leading contrib- 
 utors to this movement are significant of the varied strains 
 of blood which compose Irish nationality. James Clar- 
 ence Mangan was a Celt of the Celts; Joseph Sheridan 
 Le Fanu and Aubrey de Vere were of Norman-Irish 
 stock, and the former was the son of a dean of the Es- 
 tablished Church, and himself the editor of a Tory news- 
 paper; Sir Samuel Ferguson was an Ulster Protestant of 
 Scotch descent; Dr. George Sigerson is of Norse blood; 
 Whitley Stokes, the eminent Celtic scholar, and Dr. John 
 Todhunter, author of "Three Bardic Tales" (1896), bear 
 Anglo-Saxon surnames; the latter is the son of Quaker 
 parents and was educated at English Quaker schools. 
 
 Mangan's paraphrases from the Gaelic, "Poets and 
 Poetry of Munster," appeared posthumously in 1850. 
 They include a number of lyrics, wildly and mournfully 
 beautiful, inspired by the sorrows of Ireland : " Dark 
 
2 6o c/l History of English Romanticism. 
 
 Rosaleen," "Lament for the Princes of Tir-Owen and 
 Tir-Connell," "O'Hussey's Ode to the Maguire," etc. 
 The ballad form was not practised by the ancient Gaelic 
 epic poets. In choosing it as the vehicle for their ren- 
 derings from vernacular narrative poetry, the modern 
 Irish poets have departed widely from the English and 
 Scottish model, employing a variety of metres and not 
 seeking to conform their diction to the manner of the 
 ballads in the " Reliques " or the " Border Minstrelsy." 
 Ferguson's "Lays of the Western Gael" (1865) is a 
 series of historical ballads, original in effect, though 
 based upon old Gaelic chronicles. "Congal" (1872) is 
 an epic, founded on an ancient bardic tale, and written 
 in Chapman's "fourteener" and reminding the reader 
 frequently of Chapman's large, vigorous manner, his 
 compound epithets and spacious Homeric similes. The 
 same epic breadth of manner was applied to the treat- 
 ment of other hero legends, " Conary," " Deirdre," etc., 
 in a subsequent volume (1880). " Deirdre," the finest 
 of all the old Irish stories, was also handled independ- 
 ently by the late Dr. R. D. Joyce in the verse and man- 
 ner of William Morris' " Earthly Paradise." * Among 
 other recent workers in this field are Aubrey de Vere, a 
 volume of selections from whose poetry appeared at New 
 York in 1894, edited by Prof. G. E. Woodberry: George 
 Sigerson, whose "Bards of the Gael and the Gall," a 
 
 *See vol. i., p. 314. Dr. Joyce was for some years a resi- 
 dent of Boston, where his "Ballads of Irish Chivalry" were 
 published in 1872. His "Deirdre" received high praise from 
 J. R. Lowell. Tennyson's "Voyage of Maeldune " (1880) 
 probably had its source in Dr. P. W. Jo3^ce's "Old Celtic 
 Romances" (1879) (Collins' "Illustrations of Tennyson," p. 
 163). Swinburne pronounced Ferguson's " Welshmen of Ti- 
 rawley " one of the best of modern ballads. 
 
T>iffused ^{omanticism in the Nineteenth Century. 261 
 
 volume of translations from the Irish in the original me- 
 tres, was issued in 1897; Whitley Stokes, an accom- 
 plished translator, and the joint editor (with Windisch) 
 of the " Irische Texte " ; John Todhunter, author of " The 
 Banshee and Other Poems" (1888) and "Three Bardic 
 Tales" (1896); Alfred Perceval Graves, author of "Irish 
 Folk Songs" (1897), and many other volumes of national 
 lyrics; and William Larminie — "West Irish Folk Tales 
 and Romances" (1893), etc. 
 
 The Celtism of this Gaelic renascence is of a much 
 purer and more genuine character than the Celtism of 
 Macpherson's " Ossian." Yet with all its superiority in 
 artistic results, it is improbable that it will make any 
 such impression on Europe or England as Macpherson 
 made. " Ossian " was the first revelation to the world 
 of the Celtic spirit: sophisticated, rhetorical, yet still the 
 first; and it is not likely that its success will be repeated. 
 In.the very latest school of Irish verse, represented by 
 such names as Lionel Johnson, J. B, Yeats, George W. 
 Russell, Nora Hopper, the mystical spirit which inhab- 
 its the "Celtic twilight" turns into modern symbolism, 
 so that some of their poems on legendary subjects bear 
 a curious resemblance to the contemporary work of Mae- 
 terlinck: to such things as "Aglivaine et Salysette" or 
 " Les Sept Princesses." * 
 
 The narrative ballad is hardly one of the forms of high 
 
 * For a survey of this department of romantic literature the 
 reader is referred to "A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the Eng- 
 lish Tongue." Edited by Stopford A. Brooke and T. W. Rol- 
 leston (New York, 1900). There are a quite astonishing 
 beauty and force in many of the pieces in this collection, 
 though some of the editors' claims seem excessive; as, e.g., 
 that Mr. Yeats is "the first of living writers in the English 
 language." 
 
262 c// History of English Romanticism. 
 
 art, like the epic, the tragedy, the Pindaric ode. It is 
 simple and not complex like the sonnet: not of the aris- 
 tocracy of verse, but popular — not to say plebeian — in its 
 associations. It is easy to write and, in its commonest 
 metrical shape of eights and sixes, apt to run into sing- 
 song. Its limitations, even in the hands of an artist like 
 Coleridge or Rossetti, are obvious. It belongs to "mi- 
 nor poetry." The ballad revival has not been an unmixed 
 blessing and is responsible for much slip-shod work. If 
 Dr. Johnson could come back from the shades and look 
 over our recent verse, one of his first comments would 
 probably be: "Sir, you have too many ballads." Be it 
 understood that the romantic ballad only is here in ques- 
 tion, in which the poet of a literary age seeks to catch 
 and reproduce the tone of a childlike, unself-conscious 
 time, so that his art has almost inevitably something ar- 
 tificial or imitative. Here and there one stands out from 
 the mass by its skill or luck in overcoming the difficulty. 
 There is Hawker's " Song of the Western Men," which 
 Macaulay and others quoted as historical, though only 
 the refrain was old : 
 
 "And shall Trelawney die? 
 Here's twenty thousand Cornish men 
 Will know the reason why ! " * 
 
 There is Sydney Dobell's " Keith of Ravelston," f which 
 
 * Robert Stephen Hawker was vicar of Morwenstow, near 
 "wild Tintagil by the Cornish Sea," where Tennyson visited 
 him in 1848. Hawker himself made contributions to Arthu- 
 rian poetry, " Queen Gwynnevar' s Round " and " The Quest of 
 the Sangreal " (1864) . He was converted to the Roman Cath- 
 olic faith on his death-bed. 
 
 t Given in Palgrave's "Golden Treasury, " second series. 
 Rossetti wrote of Dobell's ballad in 1868: "I have always 
 regarded that poem as being one of the finest, of its length, in 
 any modern poet ; ranking with Keats' ' La Belle Dame sans 
 
'Diffused '^tnanticism in the [Nineteenth Century. 263 
 
 haunts the memory with the insistent iteration of its re- 
 frain : — 
 
 "The murmur of the mourning ghost 
 That keeps the shadowy kine ; 
 Oh, Keith of Ravelston, 
 The sorrows of thy line ! " 
 
 And again there is Robert Buchanan's " Ballad of Judas 
 Iscariot " which Mr. Stedman compares for " weird im- 
 pressiveness and power " with " The Ancient Mariner." 
 The mediaeval feeling is most successfully captured in 
 this poem. It recalls the old " Debate between the Body 
 and Soul," and still more the touches of divine compas- 
 sion which soften the rigours of Catholic theology in the 
 legends of the saints. It strikes the keynote, too, of that 
 most modern ballad mode which employs the narrative 
 only to emphasize some thought of universal application. 
 There is salvation for all, is the thought, even for the 
 blackest soul of the world, the soul that betrayed its 
 Maker.* Such, though after a fashion more subtly intel- 
 lectual, is the doctrinal use to which this popular form is 
 put by one of the latest English ballad makers, Mr. John 
 Davidson. Read, e.g., his " Ballad of a Nun," f the story 
 of which was told in several shapes by the Spanish poet 
 Alfonso the Learned (1226-84). A runaway nun returns 
 
 Merci ' and the other masterpieces of the condensed and 
 hinted order so dear to imaginative minds." The use of the 
 family name Keith in Rossetti's "Rose Mary" was a coinci- 
 dence. His poem was published (1854) some years before 
 Dobell's. He thought of substituting some other name for 
 Keith, but could find none to suit him, and so retained it. 
 
 * Cf. Matthew Arnold's "St. Brandan," suggested by a 
 passage in the old Irish "Voyage of Bran." The traitor Ju- 
 das is allowed to come up from hell and cool himself on an 
 iceberg every Christmas night because he had once given his 
 cloak to a leper in the streets of Joppa. 
 
 f "Ballads and Songs," London, 1895. 
 
264 <^ History of English %ofnanticism. 
 
 in penitence to her convent, and is met at the gate by the 
 Virgin Mary, who has taken her likeness and kept her 
 place for her during the years of her absence. Or read 
 "A New Ballad of Tannhauser," * which contradicts 
 " the idea of the inherent impurity of nature " by an in- 
 terpretation of the legend in a sense quite the reverse of 
 Wagner's. Tannhauser's dead staff blossoms not as a 
 sign of forgiveness, but to show him that "there was no 
 need to be forgiven." The modern balladist attacks the 
 ascetic Middle Age with a shaft from its own quiver. 
 
 But it is time to turn from minor poets to acknowledged 
 masters; and above all to the greatest of modern English 
 artists in verse, the representative poet of the Victorian 
 era. Is Tennyson to be classed with the romantics? His 
 workmanship, when most truly characteristic, is romantic 
 in the sense of being pictorial and ornate, rather than 
 classically simple or severe. He assimilated the rich 
 manner of Keats, whose influence is perceptible in his 
 early poems. His art, like Keats', is eclectic and rem- 
 iniscent, choosing for its exercise with equal impartial- 
 ity whatever was most beautiful in the world of Grecian 
 fable or the world of mediseval legend. But unlike 
 Keats, he lived to add new strings to his lyre; he went 
 on to sing of modern life and thought, of present-day 
 problems in science and philosophy, of contemporary 
 politics, the doubt, unrest, passion, and faith of his own 
 century. To find work of Tennyson's that is romantic 
 throughout, in subject, form, and spirit alike, we must 
 look among his earlier collections (1830, 1832, 1842). 
 For this was a phase which he passed beyond, as Millais 
 outgrew his youthful Pre-Raphaelitism, or as Goethe 
 *"New Ballads," London, 1897. 
 
diffused l^manticism in the V^Hneteenth Century. 265 
 
 left behind him his "Gotz" and "Werther" period and 
 widened out into larger utterance. Mr. Stedman speaks 
 of the " Gothic feeling " in " The Lady of Shalott," and 
 in ballads like "Oriana" and ''The Sisters," describing 
 them as "work that in its kind is fully up to the best of 
 those Pre-Raphaelites who, by some arrest of develop- 
 ment, stop precisely where Tennyson made his second 
 step forward, and censure him for having gone beyond 
 them." * This estimate may be accepted so far as it 
 concerns " The Lady of Shalott," which is known to have 
 worked strongly upon Rossetti's imagination; but surely 
 "The Sisters" and "Oriana" do not rank with the best 
 Pre-Raphaelite work. The former is little better than a 
 failure; and the latter, which provokes a comparison, not 
 to Tennyson's advantage, with the fine old ballad, " Helen 
 of Kirkconnell," is a weak thing. The name Oriana has 
 romantic associations — it is that of the heroine of "Ama- 
 dis de Gaul " — but the damnable iteration of it as a 
 ballad burden is irritating, Medisval motifs are rather 
 slightly handled in "The Golden Supper" (from the 
 "Decameron," 4th novel, loth day); "The Beggar 
 Maid " (from the ballad of " King Cophetua and the 
 Beggar Maid " in the " Reliques ") ; and more adequately 
 in " Godiva," a blank-verse rendering of the local legend 
 of Coventry, in which an attempt is made to preserve 
 something of the antique roughness under the smooth 
 Vergilian elegance of Tennyson's diction. "The Day 
 Dream " was a recasting of one of Perrault's fairy tales, 
 " The Sleeping Beauty," under which title a portion of 
 it had appeared in the "Poems Chiefly Lyrical " of 1830. 
 
 ♦"Victorian Poets." By E. C. Stedman. New York, 1886 
 (tenth ed.), p. 155. 
 
366 i/l History of English '^Romanticism. 
 
 Tennyson has written many greater poems than this, but 
 few in which the special string of romance vibrates more 
 purely. The tableau of the spellbound palace, with all 
 its activities suspended, gave opportunity for the display 
 of his unexampled pictorial power in scenes of still life; 
 and the legend itself supplied that charmed isolation 
 from the sphere of reality which we noticed as so impor- 
 tant a part of the romantic poet's stock-in-trade in " Chris- 
 tabel " and " The Eve of St. Agnes "— 
 
 "The hall-door shuts again and all is still." 
 
 Poems like " The Day Dream " and " The Princess " 
 make it evident that Scott and Coleridge and Keats had 
 so given back the Middle Ages to the imagination that 
 any future poet, seeking free play in a realm unhampered 
 by actual conditions — "apart from place, withholding 
 time " — was apt to turn naturally, if not inevitably, to 
 the feudal times. The action of " The Day Dream " 
 proceeds no-where and no-when. The garden — if we 
 cross-examine it — is a Renaissance garden : 
 
 "Soft lustre bathes the range of urns 
 On every slanting terrace-lawn : 
 The fountain to its place returns, 
 Deep in the garden lake withdrawn." 
 
 The furnishings of the palace are a mixture of mediaeval 
 and Louis Quatorze — clocks, peacocks, parrots, golden 
 mantle pegs: — ■ 
 
 "Till all the hundred summers pass, 
 
 The beams that through the oriel shine 
 Make prisms in every carven glass 
 And beaker brimm'd with noble wine." 
 
 But the impression, as a whole, is of the Middle Age of 
 
TXffused 'Romanticism in the zhQineteenth Century. 267 
 
 poetic convention, if not of history; the enchanted date- 
 less era of romance and fairy legend. 
 
 *' St. Agnes " and *' Sir Galahad," its masculine coun- 
 terpart, sound the old Catholic notes of saintly virginity 
 and mystical, religious rapture, the Goitesmhme of me- 
 dieeval hymnody. Not since Southwell's " Burning Babe " 
 and Crashaw's " Saint Theresa " had any English poet 
 given such expression to those fervid devotional moods 
 which Sir Thomas Browne describes as " Christian anni- 
 hilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction, transforma- 
 tion, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God and in- 
 gression into the divine shadow." This vein, we have 
 noticed, is wanting in Scott. On the other hand, it may 
 be noticed in passing, Tennyson's attitude towards nature 
 is less exclusively romantic — in the narrow sense — than 
 Scott's. He, too, is conscious of the historic associa- 
 tions of place. In Tennyson, as in Scott, — 
 
 "The splendour falls on castle walls 
 And snowy summits old in story " * — 
 
 but, in general, his treatment of landscape, in its human 
 
 relations, is subtler and more intimate. 
 
 " St. Agnes " and " Sir Galahad " are monologues, but 
 
 lyric and not dramatic in Browning's manner. There is 
 
 a dramatic falsity, indeed, in making Sir Galahad say of 
 
 himself — 
 
 "My strength is as the strength of ten 
 Because my heart is pure," 
 
 and the poem would be better in the third person. " St. 
 Simeon Stylites" is a dramatic monologue more upon 
 
 *This famous lyric, one of the " inserted " songs in "The 
 Princess, " was inspired by the note of a bugle on the Lakes 
 of Killarney. 
 
268 e// History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 Browning's model, i.e., a piece of apologetics and self- 
 analysis. But in this province Tennyson is greatly 
 Browning's inferior. 
 
 "The Princess" (1847) ^^ representative of that 
 " splendid composite of imagery," and that application 
 of modern ideas to legendary material, or to invented 
 material arbitrarily placed in an archaic setting, which 
 are characteristic of this artist. The poem's sub-title is 
 "A Medley," because it is 
 
 " — made to suit with time and place, 
 A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 
 A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 
 A feudal knight in silken masquerade, 
 And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments. " 
 
 The problem is a modern one — the New Woman. No 
 precise historic period is indicated. The female univer- 
 sity is full of classic lore and art, but withal there are 
 courts of feudal kings, with barons, knights, and squires, 
 and shock of armoured champions in the lists. 
 
 But the special service of Tennyson to romantic poetry 
 lay in his being the first to give a worthy form to the 
 great Arthurian saga; and the modern masterpiece of that 
 poetry, all things considered, is his " Idylls of the 
 King." Not so perfect and unique a thing as " The 
 Ancient Mariner"; less freshly spontaneous, less stir- 
 ringly alive than "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," Ten- 
 nyson's Arthuriad has so much wider a range than Cole- 
 ridge's ballad, and is sustained at so much higher a level 
 than Scott's romance, that it outweighs them both in 
 importance. The Arthurian cycle of legends, emerging 
 from Welsh and Breton mythology; seized upon by 
 French romancers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
 
Tfiffused Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century. 269 
 
 who made of Arthur the pattern king, of Lancelot the 
 pattern knight, and of the Table Round the ideal insti- 
 tute of chivalry; gathering about itself accretions like 
 the Grail Quest and the Tristram story; passing by trans- 
 lation into many tongues, but retaining always its scene 
 in Great or Lesser Britain, the lands of its origin, fur- 
 nished the modern English romancer with a groundwork 
 of national, though not Anglo-Saxon epic stuff, which cor- 
 responds more nearly with the Charlemagne epos in 
 France, and the Nibelung hero Saga in Germany, than 
 anything else which our literature possesses. And a 
 national possession, in a sense, it had always remained. 
 The story in outline and in some of its main episodes 
 was familiar. Arthur, Lancelot, Guinivere, Merlin, 
 Modred, Iseult, Gawaine, were well-known figures, like 
 Robin Hood or Guy of Warwick, in Shakspere's time as 
 in Chaucer's. But the epos, as a whole, had never found 
 its poet. Spenser had evaporated Arthur into allegory. 
 Milton had dallied with the theme and put it by.* The 
 Elizabethan drama, which went so far afield in search of 
 the moving accident, had strangely missed its chance 
 here, bringing the Round Table heroes upon its stage 
 only in masque and pageant (Justice Shallow " was Sir 
 Dagonet in Arthur's show "), or in some such perform- 
 ance as the rude old Seneca tragedy of "The Misfortunes 
 of Arthur." In 1695 Sir Richard Blackmore published 
 
 *See vol. i., pp. 146-47. Dryden, like Milton, had designs 
 upon Arthur. See introduction to the first canto of "Mar- 
 
 mion 
 
 " — Dryden, in immortal strain, 
 Had raised the Table Round again, 
 But that a ribald king and court 
 Bade him toil on, to make them sport." 
 
270 (v^ History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 his " Prince Arthur," an epic in ten books and in rimed 
 couplets, enlarged in 1697 into "King Arthur" in twelve 
 books. Blackmore professed to take Vergil as his model. 
 A single passage from his poem will show how much 
 chance the old chivalry tale had in the hands of a minor 
 poet of King William's reign. Arthur and his company 
 have landed on the shores of Albion, where 
 
 "Rich wine of Burgundy and choice champagne 
 Relieve the toil they suffered on the main ; 
 But what more cheered them than their meats and wine, 
 Was wise instruction and discourse divine 
 From Godlike Arthur's mouth." 
 
 There is no need, in taking a summary view of Tenny- 
 son's " Idylls," to go into the question of sources, or to 
 inquire whether Arthur was a historical chief of North 
 Wales, or whether he signified the Great Bear (Arcturus) 
 in Celtic mythology, and his Round Table the circle de- 
 scribed by that constellation about the pole star.* Ten- 
 nyson went no farther back for his authority than Sir 
 Thomas Malory's " Morte Darthur," printed by Caxton 
 in 1485, a compilation principally from old French 
 Round Table romances. This was the final mediaeval 
 shape of the story in English. It is somewhat wander- 
 ing and prolix as to method, but written in delightful 
 prose. The story of " Enid," however (under its various 
 titles and arrangements in successive editions), he took 
 from Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the Welsh 
 " Mabinogion " (1838-49). 
 
 * For a discussion of these and similar matters and a bibli- 
 ography of Arthurian literature, the reader should consult Dr. 
 H. Oskar Sommer's scholarly reprint and critical edition of 
 "Le Morte Darthur. By Syr Thomas Malory, " three vols., 
 London, 1889-91. 
 
THffused l^omanticism in the Nineteenth Century. 2 7 1 
 
 Before deciding upon the heroic blank verse and a 
 loosely epic form, as most fitting for his purpose, Tenny- 
 son had retold passages of Arthurian romance in the 
 ballad manner and in various shapes of riming stanza. 
 The first of these was "The Lady of Shalott" (1832), 
 identical in subject with the later idyll of " Lancelot 
 and Elaine," but fanciful and even allegorical in treat- 
 ment. Shalott is from Ascalot, a variant of Astolat, in 
 the old metrical romance — not Malory's — of the " Morte 
 Arthur." The fairy lady, who sees all passing sights in 
 her mirror and weaves them into her magic web, has been 
 interpreted as a symbol of art, which has to do properly 
 only with the reflection of life. When the figure of Lan- 
 celot is cast upon the glass, a personal emotion is brought 
 into her life which is fatal to her art. She is "sick of 
 shadows," and looks through her window at the substance. 
 Then her mirror cracks from side to side and the curse 
 is come upon her. Other experiments of the same kind 
 were " Sir Galahad " and " Sir Lancelot and Queen Gui- 
 nivere" (both in 1842). The beauty of all these ballad 
 beginnings is such that one is hardly reconciled to the 
 loss of so much romantic music, even by the noble blank 
 verse and the ampler narrative method which the poet 
 finally adopted. They stand related to the "Idylls" 
 very much as Morris' " Defence of Guenevere " stands to 
 his "Earthly Paradise." 
 
 Thoroughly romantic in content, the " Idylls of the 
 King " are classical in form. They may be compared to 
 Tasso's "Gierusalemme Liberata," in which the imper- 
 fectly classical manner of the Renaissance is applied to 
 a Gothic subject, the history of the Crusades. The first 
 specimen given was the "Morte d'Arthur" of 1842, set 
 
272 <t/l History of English Romanticism. 
 
 in a framework entitled "The Epic," in which "the poet, 
 Everard Hall," reads to his friends a fragment from his 
 epic, " King Arthur," in twelve books. All the rest he 
 has burned. For — 
 
 "Why take the style of those heroic times? 
 For nature brings not back the Mastodon, 
 Nor we those times ; and why should any man 
 Remodel models? these twelve books of mine 
 Were faint Homeric echoes." 
 
 The " fragment " is thus put forward tentatively and 
 with apologies — apologies which were little needed; for 
 the "Morte d'Arthur," afterwards embedded in "The 
 Passing of Arthur," remains probably the best, and cer- 
 tainly the most Homeric passage in the " Idylls." Ten- 
 nyson's own quality was more Vergilian than Homeric, 
 but the models which he here remodels were the Ho- 
 meric epics. He chose for his measure not the Spense- 
 rian stanza, nor the ottava r'mia of Tasso, nor the octosyl- 
 lables of Scott and the chivalry romances, but the heroic 
 blank verse which Milton had fixed as the vehicle of Eng- 
 lish classical epic. He adopts Homer's narrative prac- 
 tices : the formulated repetitions of phrase, the pictorial 
 comparisons, the conventional epithets (in moderation), 
 and his gnomic habit — 
 
 "O purblind race of miserable men," etc. 
 
 The original four idylls were published in 1859.* 
 Thenceforth the series grew by successive additions and 
 rearrangements up to the completed "Idylls" of 1888, 
 twelve in number — besides prologue and epilogue — ac- 
 
 * Two of them, however, had been printed privately in 1857 
 under the title of " Enid and Nimue " : the true and the false. 
 "Nimue " was the first form of Vivien. 
 
'Diffused l^omanttctsm in the U^ineteentb Century. 273 
 
 cording to the plan foreshadowed in " The Epic." The 
 story of Arthur had thus occupied Tennyson for over a 
 half century. Though modestly entitled "Idylls," by 
 reason of the episodic treatment, the poem when finished 
 was, in fact, an epic; but an epic that lacked the formal 
 unity of the ".-^neid" and the "Paradise Lost," or even 
 of the " Iliad." It resembled the Homeric heroic poems 
 more than the literary epics of Vergil and Milton, in 
 being not the result of a single act of construction, but 
 a growth from the gradual fitting together of materials 
 selected from a vast body of legend. This legendary 
 matter he reduced to an epic unity. The adventures in 
 Malory's romance are of very uneven value, and it 
 abounds in inconsistencies and repetitions. He also re- 
 distributed the ethical balance. Lancelot is the real 
 hero of the old " Morte Darthur," and Guinivere— the 
 Helen of romance — goes almost uncensured, Malory's 
 Arthur is by no means " the blameless king " of Tenny- 
 son, who makes of him a nineteenth-century ideal of 
 royal knighthood, and finally an allegorical type of Soul 
 at war with Sense. The downfall of the Round Table, 
 that order of spiritual knight-errantry through which the 
 king hopes to regenerate society, happens through the 
 failure of his knights to rise to his own high level of 
 character; in a degree, also, because the emprise is di- 
 verted from attainable practical aims to the fantastic 
 quest of the Holy Grail. The sin of Lancelot and the 
 Queen, drawing after it the treachery of Modred, brings 
 on the tragic catastrophe. This conception is latent in 
 Malory, but it is central in Tennyson; and everywhere 
 he subtilises, refines, elevates, and, in short, modernises 
 the Motivirimg in the old story. Does he thereby also 
 
274 «^ History of English ^om antic ism. 
 
 weaken it? Censure and praise have been freely be- 
 stowed upon Tennyson's dealings with Malory. Thus it 
 is complained that his Arthur is a prig, a curate, who 
 preaches to his queen and lectures his court, and whose 
 virtue is too conscious; that the harlot Vivien is a poor 
 substitute for the damsel of the lake who puts Merlin to 
 sleep under a great rock in the land of Benwick; that the 
 gracious figure of Gawain suffers degradation from the 
 application of an effeminate moral standard to his shin- 
 ing exploits in love and war; that modern convenances 
 are imposed upon a society in which they do not belong 
 and whose joyous, robust naivete is hurt by them.* 
 
 The allegorical method tried in " The Lady of Sha- 
 lott," but abandoned in the earlier " Idlyls," creeps in 
 again in the later; particularly in "Gareth and Lynette" 
 (1872), in the elaborate symbolism of the gates of Came- 
 lot, and in the guardians of the river passes, whom 
 Gareth successively overcomes, and who seem to repre- 
 sent the temptations incident to the different ages of 
 man. The whole poem, indeed, has been interpreted in 
 a parabolic sense, Merlin standing for the intellect, the 
 Lady of the Lake for religion, etc. Allegory was a fa- 
 vourite mediaeval mode, and the Grail legend contains an 
 element of mysticism which invites an emblematic treat- 
 ment. But the attraction of this fashion for minds of a 
 
 * Matthew Arnold writes in one of his letters: "I have a 
 strong sense of the irrationality of that period [the Middle 
 Ages] and of the utter folly of those who take it seriously and 
 play at restoring it ; still it has poetically the greatest charm 
 and refreshment possible for me. The fault I find with Ten- 
 nyson, in his 'Idylls of the King,' is that the peculiar charm 
 of the Middle Age he does not give in them. There is some- 
 thing magical about it, and I will do something with it before 
 I have done," 
 
T)iffused %omanticism in the O^ineteenth Century. 275 
 
 Platonic cast is dangerous to art: the temptation to find 
 a meaning in human life more esoteric than any afforded 
 by the literal life itself. A delicate balance must be 
 kept between that presentation of the concrete which 
 makes it significant by making it representative and typi- 
 cal, and that other presentation which dissolves the in- 
 dividual into the general, by making it a mere abstrac- 
 tion. Were it not for Dante and Hawthorne and the second 
 part of " Faust," one would incline to say that no crea- 
 tive genius of the first order indulges in allegory. Homer 
 is never allegorical except in the episode of Circe; 
 Shakspere never, with the doubtful exception of "The 
 Tempest." The allegory in the "Idylls of the King" is 
 not of the obvious kind employed in the " Faery Queene " ; 
 but Tennyson, no less than Spenser, appeared to feel that 
 the simple retelling of an old chivalry tale, without im- 
 parting to it some deeper meaning, was no work for a 
 modern poet. 
 
 Tennyson has made the Arthur Saga, as a whole, pe- 
 culiarly his own. But others of the Victorian poets 
 have handled detached portions of it. William Mor- 
 ris' "Defence of Guenevere" (1858) anticipated the 
 first group of " Idylls." Swinburne's " Tristram of 
 Lyonesse" (1882) dealt at full length, and in a very dif- 
 ferent spirit, with an epicyclic legend which Tennyson 
 touched incidentally in "The Last Tournament." Mat- 
 thew Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult" was a third manip- 
 ulation of the legend, partly in dramatic, partly in narra- 
 tive form, and in changing metres. It follows another 
 version of Tristram's death, and the story of Vivian and 
 Merlin which Iseult of Brittany tells her children is 
 quite distinct from the one in the " Idylls." Iseult of 
 
 m 
 
276 e/^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 Brittany — not Iseult of Cornwall — is the heroine of 
 Arnold's poem. Thomas Westwood's " Quest of the 
 Sancgreall " is still one more contribution to Arthurian 
 poetry of which a mere mention must here suffice. 
 
 For our review threatens to become a catalogue. To 
 such a degree had mediaevalism become the fashion, that 
 nearly every Georgian and Victorian poet of any preten- 
 sions tried his hand at it. Robert Browning was not 
 romantic in Scott's way, nor in Tennyson's. His busi- 
 ness was with the soul. The picturesqueness of the ex- 
 ternal conditions in which soul was placed was a matter 
 of indifference. To-day was as good as yesterday. Now 
 and then occurs a title with romantic implications — 
 " Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," e.g.^ bor- 
 rowed from a ballad snatch sung by the Fool in "Lear" 
 (Roland is Roland of the " Chanson "). But the poem 
 proves to be a weird study in landscape symbolism and 
 the history of some dark emprise, the real nature of 
 which is altogether undiscoverable. " Count Gismond," 
 again, is the story of a combat in the lists at Aix in 
 Provence, in which a knight vindicates a lady's honour 
 with his lance, and slays her traducer at her feet. But 
 this is a dramatic monologue like any other, and only 
 accidentally mediaeval. "The Heretic's Tragedy: A 
 Middle Age Interlude," is mediaeval without being ro- 
 mantic. It recounts the burning, at Paris, a.d. 1314, of 
 Jacques du Bourg-Molay, Grand Master of the Templars; 
 and purports to be a sort of canticle, with solo and 
 chorus, composed two centuries after the event by a 
 Flemish canon of Ypres, to be sung at hocktide and fes- 
 tivals. The childishness and devout buffoonery of an 
 old miracle play are imitated here, as in Swinburne's 
 
^Diffused 'Romanticism in the U^ineteenth Century. 277 
 
 "Masque of Queen Bersabe," This piece and "Holy 
 Cross Day" are dramatic, or monodramatic, grotesques; 
 and in their apprehension of this trait of the mediaeval 
 mind are on a par with Hugo's " Pas d'armes du Roi 
 Jean" and "La Chasse du Burgrave." But Browning's 
 mousings in the Middle Ages after queer freaks of con- 
 science or passion were occasional. If any historical 
 period, more than another, had special interest for him, 
 it was the period of the Italian Renaissance. Yet Ruskin 
 said: "Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he 
 writes of the Middle Ages." 
 
 Among Mrs. Browning's poems, which, it needs hardly 
 be said, are not prevailingly "Gothic," there are three 
 interesting experiments in ballad romance: "The Ro- 
 maunt of the Page," " The Lay of the Brown Rosary," 
 and " The Rime of the Duchess May." In all of these 
 she avails herself of the mediaeval atmosphere, simply to 
 play variations on her favourite theme, the devotedness of 
 woman's love. The motive is the same as in poems of 
 modern life like "Bertha in the Lane" and "Aurora 
 Leigh." The vehemence of this nobly gifted woman, 
 her nervous and sometimes almost hysterical emotional- 
 ism, are not without a disagreeable quality. With greater 
 range and fervour, she had not the artistic poise of the 
 Pre-Raphaelite poetess, Christina Rossetti. In these 
 romances, as elsewhere, she is sometimes shrill and often 
 mannerised. " The Romaunt of the Page " is the tale of 
 a lady who attends her knight to the Holy Land, dis- 
 guised as a page, and without his knowledge. She saves 
 his life several times, and finally at the cost of her own. 
 A prophetic accompaniment or burden comes in ever and 
 anon in the distant chant of nuns over the dead abbess. 
 
278 t/J History of English Romanticism. 
 
 "Beati ! beati mortui. " 
 " The Lay of the Brown Rosary " is a charming but un- 
 even piece, in four parts and a variety of measures, about 
 a girl who, while awaiting her lover's return from the 
 war, learns in a dream that she must die, and purchases 
 seven years of life from the ghost of a wicked nun whose 
 body has been immured in an old convent wall. The 
 spirit gives the bride a brown rosary which she wears 
 under her dress, but her kiss kills the bridegroom at the 
 altar. The most spirited and well-sustained of these 
 ballad poems is "The Rime of the Duchess May," in 
 which the heroine rides off the battlements with her hus- 
 band, " Toll slowly," runs the refrain. Mrs. Browning 
 employs some archaisms, such as chapelle, chambere, ladle. 
 The stories are seemingly of her own invention, and have 
 not quite the genuine accent of folk-song. 
 
 Even Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hood, representa- 
 tives in their separate spheres of anti-romantic tenden- 
 cies, made occasional forays into the Middle Ages. But 
 who thinks of such things as "The Plea of the Midsum- 
 mer Fairies " or " The Two Peacocks of Bedfont " when 
 Hood is mentioned; and not rather of "The Bridge of 
 Sighs " and " The Song of the Shirt " ? Or who, in spite 
 of " Balder Dead " and " Tristram and Iseult," would 
 classify Arnold's clean-cut, reserved, delicately intellec- 
 tual work as romantic? Hood was an artist of the terri- 
 ble as well as of the comic; witness his "Last Man," 
 " Haunted House," and " Dream of Eugene Aram." If 
 he could have welded the two moods into a more intimate 
 union, and applied them to legendary material, he might 
 have been a great artist in mediaeval grotesque — a spe- 
 cies of Gothic Hoffman perhaps. As it is, his one ro- 
 
T) iff used %omantidsm in the V^ineteenth Century. 279 
 
 mantic success is the charming lyric "Fair Ines." His 
 longer poems in this kind, in modifications of ottava 
 ri?na or Spenserian stanza, show Keats' influence very 
 clearly. The imagery is profuse, but too distinct and 
 without the xovl^^.\-iX.\c chiaroscuro. "The Water Lady" is 
 a manifest imitation of "La Belle Dame sans Merci," 
 and employs the same somewhat unusual stanza form. 
 Hood — incorrigible punster — who had his jest at every- 
 thing, jested at romance. He wrote ballad parodies — 
 "The Knight and the Dragon," etc. — and an ironical 
 " Lament for the Decline of Chivalry " : 
 
 "Well hast thou cried, departed Burke, 
 All chivalrous romantic work 
 
 Is ended now and past ! 
 That iron age — which some have thought 
 Of mettle rather overwrought — 
 Is now all overcast." 
 
 And finally, "The Saint's Tragedy" (1848) of Charles 
 Kingsley affords a case in which mediaeval biography is 
 made the pretext for an assault upon mediseval ideas. It 
 is a iendenz drama in five acts, founded upon the " Life 
 of St. Elizabeth of Hungary," as narrated by her contem- 
 porary, Dietrich the Thuringian. Its militant Protes- 
 tantism is such as might be predicted from Kingsley's 
 well-known resentment of the Romanist attitude towards 
 marriage and celibacy; from his regard for freedom of 
 thought; and from that distrust and contempt of Popish 
 priestcraft which involved him in his controversy with 
 Newman. "The Middle Age," says the Introduction, 
 "was, in the gross, a coarse, barbarous, and profligate 
 age. ... It was, in fact, the very ferocity and foulness 
 of the time which, by a natural revulsion, called forth at 
 
28o ey/ History of English '^{omanticism. 
 
 the same time the Apostolic holiness and the Manichean 
 asceticism of the mediaeval saints. ... So rough and 
 common a life-picture of the Middle Age will, I am 
 afraid, whether faithful or not, be far from acceptable to 
 those who take their notions of that period principally 
 from such exquisite dreams as the fictions of Fouque, 
 and of certain moderns whose graceful minds . . . are, 
 on account of their very sweetness and simplicity, singu- 
 larly unfitted to convey any true likeness of the coarse 
 and stormy Middle Age. . , . But really, time enough 
 has been lost in ignorant abuse of that period, and time 
 enough also, lately, in blind adoration of it. When 
 shall we learn to see it as it was ? " 
 
 Polemic in its purpose and anti-Catholic in temper, 
 "The Saint's Tragedy " then seeks to dispel the glamour 
 which romance had thrown over mediiEval life. Kings- 
 ley's Middle Age is not the holy Middle Age of the Ger- 
 man " throne-and-altar '" men ; nor yet the picturesque 
 Middle Age of Walter Scott. It is the cruel, ignorant, 
 fanatical Middle Age of " The Amber Witch " and " The 
 Succube." But Kingsley was too much of a poet not to 
 feel those '" last enchantments " which whispered to 
 Arnold from Oxford towers, maugre his " strong sense of 
 the irrationality of that period." The saintly, as well 
 as the human side, of Elizabeth's character is portrayed 
 with sympathy, though poetically the best thing in the 
 drama are the songs of the Crusaders. 
 
 Kingsley, in effect, was always good at a ballad. His 
 finest work in this kind is modern, "The Last Bucca- 
 neer," "The Sands of Dee," "The Three Fishers," and 
 the like. But there are the same fire and swing in many 
 of his romantic ballads on historical or legendary sub- 
 
T>iffused 'Romanticism in the U^ineteenth Century. 28 1 
 
 jects, such as "The Swan-Neck," "The Red King," 
 "Ballad of Earl Haldan's Daughter," "The Song of the 
 Little Baltung," and a dozen more. Without the imag- 
 inative witchery of Coleridge, Keats, and Rossetti, in 
 the ballad of action Kingsley ranks very close to Scott, 
 The same manly delight in outdoor life and bold adven- 
 ture, love of the old Teutonic freedom and strong feeling 
 of English nationality inspire his historical romances, 
 only one of which, however, "Hereward the Wake" 
 (1866), has to do with the period of the Middle Ages. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 Zbe presKapbaeUtee. 
 
 In the latter half of the century the Italian Middle 
 Age and Dante, its great exemplar, found new interpre- 
 ters in the Rossetti family; a family well fitted by its 
 mixture of bloods and its hereditary aptitudes, literary 
 and artistic, to mediate between the English genius and 
 whatever seemed to it alien or repellant in Dante's 
 system of thought. The father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a 
 political refugee, who held the professorship of Italian 
 in King's College, London, from 183 1 to 1845, and was 
 the author of a commentary on Dante which carried the 
 politico-allegorical theory of the "Divine Comedy" to 
 somewhat fantastic lengths. The mother was half Eng- 
 lish and half Italian, a sister of Byron's travelling com- 
 panion, Dr. Polidori. Of the four children of the mar- 
 riage, Dante Gabriel and Christina became poets of 
 distinction. The eldest sister, Maria Francesca, a relig- 
 ious devotee who spent her last years as a member of a 
 Protestant sisterhood, was the author of that unpretentious 
 but helpful piece of Dante literature, " A Shadow of 
 Dante." The younger brother, William Michael, is well 
 known as a biographer, litterateur, and art critic, as an 
 editor of Shelley and of the works of Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti. 
 
 Other arts besides the literary art had partaken in the 
 
The Tre-'T{aphaelites. 283 
 
 romantic movement. The eighteenth century had seen 
 the introduction of the new, or English, school of land- 
 scape gardening; and the premature beginnings of the 
 Gothic revival in architecture, which reached a success- 
 ful issue some century later.* Painting in France had 
 been romanticised in the thirties pari passu with poetry 
 and drama; and in Germany, Overbeck and Cornelius 
 had founded a school of sacred art which corresponds, in 
 its mediaeval spirit, to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 
 In England painting was the last of the arts to catch the 
 new inspiration. When the change came, it evinced that 
 same blending of naturalism and Gothicism which de- 
 fined the incipient romantic movement of the previous 
 century. Painting, like landscape gardening, returned 
 to nature; like architecture, it went back to the past. 
 Like these, and like literature itself, it broke away from 
 a tradition which was academic, if not precisely classic 
 in the way in which David was classic. 
 
 In 1848 the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was estab- 
 lished by three young painters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
 John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt. The 
 name expresses their admiration of the early Italian — 
 and notably the early Florentine — religious painters, like 
 Giotto, Ghiberti, Bellini, and Fra Angelica. In the work 
 of these men they found a sweetness, depth, and sincerity 
 of devotional feeling, a self-forgetfulness and humble 
 adherence to truth, which were absent from the sophis- 
 ticated art of Raphael and his successors. Even the 
 imperfect command of technique in these "primitives" 
 had a charm. The stiffness and awkwardness of their 
 
 *See vol. i., chaps, iv. and vii., "The Landscape Poets" 
 and "The Gothic Revival." 
 
284 <i/J History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 figure painting, their defects of drawing, perspective, and 
 light and shade, their lack of anatomical science were like 
 the lispingsof childhood or the artlessness of an old bal- 
 lad. The immediate occasion of the founding of the 
 Brotherhood was a book of engravings which Hunt and 
 Rossetti saw at Millais' house, from the frescoes by Goz- 
 zoli, Orcagna, and others in the Campo Santo, at Pisa ; the 
 same frescoes, it will be remembered, which so strongly im- 
 pressed Leigh Hunt and Keats. Holman Hunt — though 
 apparently not his associates — had also read with eager ap- 
 proval the first volume of Ruskin's " Modern Painters," in 
 which the young artists of England are advised to "goto 
 nature in all singleness of heart . . . rejecting nothing, 
 selecting nothing," Pre-Raphaelitism was a practical, 
 as " Modern Painters " was a theoretical, protest against 
 the academic traditions which kept young artists making 
 school copies of Raphael, instructed them that a third of 
 the canvas should be occupied with a principal shadow, 
 and that no two people's heads in the picture should be 
 turned the same way, and asked, "Where are you going 
 to put your brown tree ? " 
 
 ^ The three original members of the group associated 
 with themselves four others : Thomas Woolner, the sculp- 
 tor; James Collinson, a painter; F. G. Stephens, who 
 began as an artist and ended as an art critic; and Ros- 
 setti's brother William, who was the literary man of the 
 movement. Woolner was likewise a poet, and contrib- 
 uted to The Germ * his two striking pieces, " My Beau- 
 
 *This was the organ of the Pre-Raphaelites, started in 
 1850. Only four numbers were issued (January, February, 
 March, April) , and in the third and fourth the title was 
 changed to ^r/ and Poetry. The contents included, among 
 other things, poems by Dante Gabriel and Christina Ros- 
 
7be Tre-%aphaelites. 285 
 
 tiful Lady" and "Of My Lady in Death." Among other 
 artists not formally enrolled in the Brotherhood, but who 
 worked more or less in the spirit and principles of Pre- 
 Raphaelitism, were Ford Madox Brown, an older man, in 
 whose studio Rossetti had, at his own request, been ad- 
 mitted as a student; Walter Deverell, who took Collin- 
 son's place when the latter resigned his membership in 
 order to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood; and 
 Arthur Hughes.* 
 
 iLBut the main importance of the Pre-Raphaelite move- 
 ment to romantic literature resides in the poetry of Ros- 
 setti, and in the inspiration which this communicated to 
 younger men, like Morris and Swinburne, and through 
 them to other and still younger followers. The history 
 of English painting is no part of our subject, but Ros- 
 setti's painting and his poetry so exactly reflect each 
 other, that some definition or brief description of Pre- 
 Raphaelitism seems here to be called for, ill qualified as 
 I feel myself to give any authoritative account of the 
 matter, f 
 
 setti. One of the former's twelve contributions was "The 
 Blessed Damozel." The 0.xford and Cambridge Magazine, 
 which ran through the year 1856 and was edited by William 
 Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, was also a Pre-Raphaelite 
 journal and received many contributions from Rossetti. 
 
 *The foreign strain in the English Pre-Raphaelites and in 
 the painters and poets w'ho descend from them is worth not- 
 ing. Rossetti was three-fourths Italian. Millais' parents 
 were Channel Islanders — from Jersey — and he had two mother 
 tongues, English and French. Burne-Jones is of Welsh blood, 
 and Alma Tadema of Frisian birth. Among Neo-Pre-Ra- 
 phaelite poets, the names of Theophile Marzials and Arthur 
 O'Shaughnessy speak for themselves. 
 
 f Let the reader consult the large and rapidly increasing 
 literature on the English Pre-Raphaelites. I do not profess 
 to be a very competent guide here, but I have found the fol- 
 lowing works all in some degree enlightening. "Autobio- 
 
286 iA History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 •. 
 
 And first as to methods : the Pre-Raphaelites rejected 
 the academic system whereby the canvas was prepared 
 by rubbing in bitumen, and the colours were laid upon a 
 background of brown, grey, or neutral tints. Instead of 
 this, they spread their colours directly upon the white, 
 unprepared canvas, securing transparency by juxtaposi- 
 tion rather than by overlaying. They painted their pic- 
 tures bit by bit, as in frescoes or mosaic work, finishing 
 each portion as they went along, until no part of the can- 
 vas was left blank. The Pre-Raphaelite theory was 
 sternly realistic. They were not to copy from the antique, 
 but from nature. For landscape background, they were 
 to take their easels out of doors. In figure painting they 
 were to work, if possible, from a living model and not 
 from a lay figure. A model once selected, it was to be 
 painted as it was in each particular, and without imagi- 
 native deviation. " Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape back- 
 ground," wrote Ruskin, "is painted, to the last touch, in 
 the open air from the thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite 
 figure, however studied in expression, is a true portrait 
 
 graphical Notes of William Bell Scott," two vols., New 
 York, 1892. "English Contemporary Art." Translated from 
 the French of R. de la Sizeranne, Westminster, 1898. "D. 
 G. Rossetti as Designer and Writer." W. M. Rossetti, Lon- 
 don, 1889. "The Rossettis." E. L. Gary, New York, 1900. 
 "Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement." Esther 
 Wood, New York, 1894. "Pre-Raphaelitism." J. Ruskin, 
 New York, i860. "The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood." Hol- 
 raan Hunt in Conietnporary Review, vol. xlix. (three articles). 
 "Encyclopaedia Britannica, " article " Rossetti, " by Theodore 
 Watts. Of course the standard lives and memoirs by William 
 Rossetti, Hall Caine. William Sharp, and Joseph Knight, as 
 well as Rossetti's "Family Letters," "Letters to William Al- 
 lingham," etc., afford criticisms of the movement from various 
 points of view. Lists of Rossetti's paintings and drawings are 
 given by several of these authorities, with photographs or 
 engravings of his most famous masterpieces. 
 
The Tre-%apbaelttes. 287 
 
 of some living person. Every minute accessory is 
 painted in the same manner." * In this fashion their 
 earliest works were executed. In Rossetti's "Girlhood 
 of Mary Virgin," exhibited in 1849, the figure of St. 
 Anne is a portrait of the artist's mother; the Virgin, of 
 his sister Christina; and Joseph, of a man-of-all-work 
 employed in the family. In Millais' "Lorenzo and Isa- 
 bella" — a subject from Keats — Isabella's brother, her 
 lover, and one of the guests, are portraits of Deverell, 
 Stephens, and the two Rossettis. But this severity of 
 realism was not long maintained. It was a discipline, 
 not a final method. Even in Rossetti's second painting, 
 " Ecce Ancilla Domini," the faces of the Virgin and the 
 angel Gabriel are blendings of several models; although, 
 in its freedom from convention, its austere simplicity, 
 and endeavour to see the fact as it happened, the piece 
 is in the purest Pre-Raphaelite spirit. Ruskin insisted 
 that, while composition was necessarily an affair of the 
 imagination, the figures and accessories of a picture 
 should be copies from the life. In the early days of the 
 Brotherhood there was an ostentatious conscientiousness 
 in observing this rule. We hear a great deal in Ros- 
 setti's correspondence about the brick wall at Chiswick 
 which he copied into his picture " Found," and about his 
 anxious search for a white calf for the countryman's cart 
 in the same composition. But all the Pre-Raphaelites 
 painted from the lay figure as well as from the living 
 model, and Rossetti, in particular, relied quite as much 
 on memory and imagination as upon the object before 
 him. W. B. Scott thinks that his most charming works 
 
 *" Lectures on Architecture and Painting." Delivered at 
 Edinburgh in 1853. Lecture iv., "Pre-Raphaelitism." 
 
288 <iA History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 were the small water-colours on Arthurian subjects, 
 "done entirely without nature and a good deal in the 
 spirit of illuminated manuscripts, with very indifferent 
 drawing and perspective nowhere." As for Millais, he 
 soon departed from rigidly Pre-Raphaelite principles, and 
 became the most successful and popular of British artists 
 in genre. In natural talent and cleverness of execution 
 he was the most brilliant of the three; in imaginative 
 intensity and originality he was Rossetti's inferior — as 
 in patience and religious earnestness he was inferior to 
 Hunt. It was Hunt who stuck most faithfully to the 
 programme of Pre-Raphaelitism. He spent laborious 
 years in the East in order to secure the exactest local 
 truth of scenery and costume for his Biblical pieces: 
 " Christ in the Shadow of Death," " Christ in the Tem- 
 ple," and " The Scapegoat." While executing the last- 
 named, he pitched his tent on the shores of the Dead Sea 
 and painted the desert landscape and the actual goat from 
 a model tied down on the edge of the sea. Hunt's 
 " Light of the World " was one of the masterpieces of the 
 school, and as it is typical in many ways, may repay de- 
 scription. Ruskin pronounced it "the most perfect in- 
 stance of expressional purpose with technical power which 
 the world has yet produced." 
 
 In this tall, narrow canvas the figure of Christ occupies 
 nearly half the space. He holds a lantern in his hand 
 and knocks at a cottage door. The face — said to be a 
 portrait of Venables, curate of St. Paul's, Oxford — is 
 quite unlike the type which Raphael has made traditional. 
 It is masculine — even rugged — seamed with lines of care, 
 and filled with an expression of yearning. There is 
 anxiety and almost timidity in his pose as he listens for 
 
The 'Pre-%aphaelites. 289 
 
 an answer to his knock. The nails and bolts of the door 
 are rusted; it is overgrown with ivy and the tall stalks 
 and flat umbels of fennel. The sill is choked with net- 
 tles and other weeds, emblems all of the long sleep of 
 the world which Christ comes to break. The full moon 
 makes a halo behind his head and shines through the 
 low boughs of an orchard, whose apples strew the dark 
 grass in the foreground, sown with spots of light from the 
 star-shaped perforations in the lantern-cover. They are 
 the apples of Eden, emblems of the Fall. Everything, 
 in fact, is symbolical. Christ's seamless white robe, 
 with its single heavy fold, typifies the Church (catholic; 
 the jewelled clasps of the priestly mantle, one square and 
 one oval, are the Old and New Testaments. The golden 
 crown is enwoven with one of thorns, from which new 
 leaves are sprouting. The richly embroidered mantle 
 hem has its meaning, and so have the figures on the lan- 
 tern. To get the light in this picture right. Hunt painted 
 out of doors in an orchard every moonlight night for 
 three months from nine o'clock till five. While working 
 in his studio, he darkened one end of the room, put a 
 lantern in the hand of his lay-figure and painted this 
 interior through the hole in a curtain. On moonlight 
 nights he let the moon shine in through the window to 
 mix with the lantern light. It was a principle with the 
 Brotherhood that detail, though not introduced for its 
 own sake, should be painted with truth to nature. Hunt, 
 especially, took infinite pains to secure minute exactness 
 in his detail, Ruskin wrote in enthusiastic praise of 
 the colours of the gems on the mantle clasp in " The 
 Light of the World," and said that all the Academy 
 critics and painters together could not have executed one 
 
290 ii/1 History of English Romanticism. 
 
 of the nettle leaves at the bottom of the picture. The 
 lizards in the foreground of Millais' " Ferdinand Lured 
 by Ariel" (exhibited in 1850) were studied from life; 
 and Scott makes merry over the shavings on the floor of 
 the carpenter shop in the same artist's " Christ in the 
 House of his Parents," a composition which was fero- 
 ciously ridiculed by Dickens in " Household Words." 
 
 The symbolism which is so pronounced a feature in 
 " The Light of the World " is common to all the Pre- 
 Raphaelite art. It is a mediaeval note, and Rossetti 
 learned it from Dante. Symbolism runs through the 
 " Divine Comedy " in such touches as the rush, emblem 
 of humility, with which Vergil girds Dante for his jour- 
 ney through Purgatory; the constellation of four stars — 
 
 "Non viste mai fuor ch' alia prima gente " — 
 
 typifying the cardinal virtues ; the three different coloured 
 steps to the door of Purgatory; * and thickening into the 
 elaborate apocalyptic allegory of the griffin and the car 
 of the church, the eagle and the mystic tree in the last 
 cantos of the " Purgatorio." In Hunt's "Christ in the 
 Shadow of Death," the young carpenter's son is stretch- 
 ing his arms after work, and his shadow, thrown upon 
 the wall, is a prophecy of the crucifixion. In Millais' 
 "Christ in the House of his Parents," the boy has 
 wounded the palm of his hand upon a nail, another 
 foretokening of the crucifixion. In Rossetti's "Girlhood 
 of Mary Virgin," Joseph is training a vine along a piece 
 of trellis in the shape of the cross; Mary is copying in 
 embroidery a three-flowered white lily plant, growing in 
 a flower-pot which stands upon a pile of books lettered 
 
 *CJ. Milton -. " Each stair mysteriously was meant " (" P. L."). 
 
The Tre-'T{aphaelites. 291 
 
 with the names of the cardinal virtues. The quaint 
 little child angel who tends the plant is a portrait of a 
 young sister of Thomas Woolner. Similarly, in *' Ecce 
 Ancilla Domini, ' the lily of the annunciation which 
 Gabriel holds is repeated in the piece of needlework 
 stretched upon the 'broidery frame at the foot of Mary's 
 bed. In " Beata Beatrix " the white poppy brought by 
 the dove is the symbol at once of chastity and of death ; 
 and the shadow upon the sun-dial marks the hour of 
 Beatrice's beatification. Again, in " Dante's Dream," 
 poppies strew the floor, emblems of sleep and death ; an 
 expiring lamp symbolises the extinction of life; and a 
 white cloud borne away by angels is Beatrice's departing 
 soul. Love stands by the couch in fiame-coloured robes, 
 fastened at the shoulder with the scallop shell which is 
 the badge of pilgrimage. In Millais" " Lorenzo and Isa- . 
 bella " the salt-box is overturned upon the table, signify- 
 ing that peace is broken between Isabella's brothers and 
 their table companion. Doves are everywhere in Ros- 
 setti's pictures, embodiments of the Holy Ghost and the 
 ministries of the spirit. Rossetti labelled his early man- 
 uscript poems "Poems of the Art Catholic"; and the 
 Pre-Raphaelite heresy was connected by unfriendly critics 
 with the Anglo-Catholic or Tractarian movement at Ox- 
 ford. William Sharp, in speaking of "that splendid 
 outburst of Romanticism in which Coleridge was the first 
 and most potent participant," and of the lapse or ebb 
 that followed the death of Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and 
 Keats, resumes : " At last a time came when a thrill of 
 expectation, of new desire, of hope, passed through the 
 higher lives of the nation; and what followed thereafter 
 were the Oxford movement in the Church of England, 
 
292 ^ History of English %omanticism. 
 
 the Pre-Raphaelite movement in art, and the far-reaching 
 Gothic revival. Different as these movements were in 
 their primary aims, and still more differing in the indi- 
 vidual representations of interpreters, they were in reality 
 closely interwoven, one being the outcome of the other. 
 The study of medieval art, which was fraught with such 
 important results, was the outcome of the widespread 
 ecclesiastical revival, which in its turn was the outcome 
 of the Tractarian movement in Oxford. The influence 
 of Pugin was potent in strengthening the new impulse, 
 and to him succeeded Ruskin with 'Modern Painters' 
 and Newman with the ' Tracts for the Times.' Primar- 
 ily the Pre-Raphaelite movement had its impulse in the 
 Oxford religious revival; and however strange it may 
 seem to say that such men as Holman Hunt and Rossetti 
 . . . followed directly in the footsteps of Newman and 
 Pusey and Keble, it is indubitably so." * Ruskin, too, 
 cautioned his young friends that " if their sympathies 
 with the early artists lead them into mediaevalism or Ro- 
 manism, they will of course come to nothing. But I be- 
 lieve there is no danger of this, at least for the strongest 
 among them. There may be some weak ones whom the 
 Tractarian heresies may touch ; but if so, they will drop 
 off like decayed branches from a strong stem." f One 
 of these weak ones who dropped off was James Collinson, 
 a man of an ascetic and mystical piety — like Werner or 
 Brentano. He painted, among other things, "The Re- 
 nunciation of St. Elizabeth " from Kingsley's "Saint's 
 Tragedy." " The picture," writes Scott, " resembled the 
 
 *" Dante Gabriel Rossetti: a record and a study," Lon- 
 don, 1882, pp. 40-41. 
 f "Pre-Raphaelitism," p. 23, note. 
 
The 'Pre-'T(apbaelites. 293 
 
 feckless dilettanteism of the converts who were then 
 dropping out of their places in Oxford and Cambridge 
 into Mariolatry and Jesuitism, In fact, this James Col- 
 linson actually did become Romanist, wanted to be a 
 priest, painted no more, but entered a seminary, where 
 they set him to clean the boots as an apprenticeship in hu- 
 mility and obedience. They did not want him as a priest ; 
 they were already getting tired of that species of convert; 
 so he left, turned to painting again, and disappeared." * 
 
 M. de la Sizeranne is rather scornful of these metaphys- 
 ical definitions of Pre-Raphaelitism ; " for to characterise 
 a Pre-Raphaelite picture by saying that it was inspired 
 by the Oxford movement, is like attempting to explain 
 the mechanism of a lock by describing the political opin- 
 ions of the locksmith." f He himself proposes, as the 
 distinguishing characteristics of Pre-Raphaelite art, orig- 
 inality of gesture and vividness of colouring. This is 
 the professional point of view; but the student of litera- 
 ture is less concerned with such technical aspects of the 
 subject than with those spiritual aspects which connect the 
 work of the Pre-Raphaelites with the great mediaeval or 
 romantic revival. 
 
 When Ruskin came to the rescue of the P.-R. B. in 
 185 1, in those letters to the Times, afterwards reprinted 
 in pamphlet form under the title " Pre-Raphaelitism," 
 he recognised the propriety of the name, and the real 
 affinity between the new school and the early Italian 
 schools of sacred art. Mediaeval art, he asserted, J was 
 
 *" Autobiographical Notes of William Bell Scott," vol. i. ,p. 
 281. 
 f " English Contemporary Art, " p. 58. 
 } " Lectures on Architecture and Painting," 1S53. 
 
294 -^ History of English 'T{omanticism. 
 
 religious and truthful ; modern art is profane and insin- 
 cere. " In mediaeval art, thought is the first thing, exe- 
 cution is the second; in modern art, execution is the 
 first thing and thought is the second. And again, in 
 mediaeval art, truth is first, beauty second; in modern 
 art, beauty is first, truth second." Ruskin denied that 
 the Pre-Raphaelites were unimaginative, though he al- 
 lowed that they had a disgust for popular forms of grace 
 and prettiness. And he pointed out a danger in the fact 
 that their principles confined them to foreground work, 
 and called for laborious finish on a small scale. In 
 " Modern Painters " he complained that the Pre-Raphael- 
 ites should waste a whole summer in painting a bit of 
 oak hedge or a bed of weeds by a duck pond, which caught 
 their fancy perhaps by reminding them of a stanza in 
 Tennyson. Nettles and mushrooms, he said, were good 
 to make nettle soup and fish sauce ; but it was too bad 
 that the nobler aspects of nature, such as the banks of 
 the castled Rhine, should be left to the frontispieces 
 in the Annuals. Ruskin, furthermore, denied that the 
 drawing of the Pre-Raphaelites was bad or their perspec- 
 tive false; or that they imitated \h& errors oi the early 
 Florentine painters, whom they greatly excelled in tech- 
 nical accomplishment. Meanwhile be it remarked that 
 the originality of gesture in Pre-Raphaelite figure paint- 
 ing, which M. de la Sizeranne notices, was only one 
 more manifestation of the romantic desire for individu- 
 ality and concreteness as against the generalising aca- 
 demicism of the eighteenth century.* 
 
 As poets, the Pre-Raphaelites derive from Keats rather 
 than from Scott, in their exclusive devotion to beauty, to 
 *See vol. i., p. 44. 
 
The Tre-l^phaeliies. 295 
 
 art for art's sake; in their single absorption in the pas- 
 sion of love; and in their attraction towards the more 
 esoteric side of mediaeval life, rather than towards its 
 broad, public, and military aspects.* 
 
 Rossetti's position in the romantic literature of the 
 last half of the ninetenth century is something like Cole- 
 ridge's in the first half. Unlike Coleridge, he was the 
 leader of a school, the master of a definite group of art- 
 ists and poets. His actual performance, too, far exceeds 
 
 *"The return of this school was to a mediaevalism different 
 from the tentative and scrappy medisevalism of Percy, from 
 the genial but slightly superficial medisevalism of Scott, and 
 even from the more exact but narrow and distinctly conven- 
 tional mediaevalism of Tennyson. . . . Moreover, though it 
 may seem whimsical or extravagant to say so, these poets 
 added to the very charm of mediaeval literature, which they 
 thus revived, a subtle something which differentiates it from 
 — which, to our perhaps blind sight, seems to be wanting in 
 — mediaeval literature itself. It is constantly complained (and 
 some of those who cannot go all the way with the complainants 
 can see what they mean) that the graceful and labyrinthine 
 stories, the sweet snatches of song, the quaint drama and leg- 
 end of the Middle Ages lack — to us — life ; that they are shad- 
 owy, unreal, tapestry on the wall, not alive even as hving 
 pageants are. By the strong touch of modernness which 
 these poets and the best of their followers introduced into 
 their work, they have given the vivification required " (Saints- 
 bury, " Literature of the Nineteenth Century, " p. 439) . Pre- 
 Raphaelitism "is a direct and legitimate development of the 
 great romantic revival in England. . . . Even Tennyson, 
 much more Scott and Coleridge and their generation, had 
 entered only very partially into the treasures of mediaeval 
 literature, and were hardly at all acquainted with those of 
 mediaeval art. Conybeare, Kemble, Thorpe, Madden were 
 only in Tennyson's own time reviving the study of Old and 
 Middle English. Early French and Early Italian were but 
 just being opened up. Above all, the O.xford Movement di- 
 rected attention to mediaeval architecture, literature, thought, 
 as had never been the case before in England, and as has 
 never been the case at all in any other country" ("A Short 
 History of English Literature," by G. Saintsbury, London, 
 1898, p. 779). 
 
296 i/1 History of English %omanticism. 
 
 Coleridge's in amount, if not in value. But like Cole- 
 ridge, he was a seminal mind, a mind rich in original 
 suggestions, which inspired and influenced younger men 
 to carry out its ideas, often with a fluency of utterance 
 and a technical dexterity both in art and letters which 
 the master himself did not possess. Holman Hunt, 
 Millais, and Burne-Jones among painters, Morris and 
 Swinburne among poets, were disciples of Rossetti who 
 in some ways outdid him in execution. His pictures 
 were rarely exhibited, and no collection of his poems was 
 published till 1870, Meanwhile, however, many of these 
 had circulated in manuscript, and " secured a celebrity 
 akin in kind and almost equal in extent to that enjoyed 
 by Coleridge's ' Christabel ' during the many years pre- 
 . ceding 1816 in which it lay in manuscript. Like Cole- 
 ridge's poem in another important particular, certain of 
 Rossetti's ballads, while still unknown to the public, so 
 far influenced contemporary poetry that when they did 
 at length appear, they had all the seeming to the unini- 
 tiated of work imitated from contemporary models, in- 
 stead of being, as in fact they were, the primary source 
 of inspiration for writers whose names were earlier estab- 
 lished." * William Morris, e.g., had printed four vol- 
 umes of verse in advance of Rossetti ; and the earliest 
 of these, " The Defence of Guenevere," which contains 
 his most intensely Pre-Raphaelite work and that most 
 evidently done in the spirit of Rossetti's teachings, saw 
 the light (1858) twelve years before Rossetti's own. 
 Swinburne, too, had published three volumes of poetry 
 before 1870, including the "Poems and Ballads" of 
 
 ♦"Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti," by T. Hall 
 Caine, London, 1S82, p. 41. 
 
The Tre-%aphaelites. 297 
 
 1866, in which Rossetti's influence is plainly manifest; 
 and he had already secured a wide fame at a time when 
 the elder poet's reputation was still esoteric and mainly 
 confined to the chiacle. William M. Rossetti, in describ- 
 ing the literary influences which moulded his brother's 
 tastes, tells us that " in the long run he perhaps enjoyed 
 and revered Coleridge beyond any other modern poet 
 whatsoever." * 
 
 It is worth while to trace these literary influences t 
 with some detail, since they serve to link the nec- 
 romantic poetry of our own time to the product of that 
 older generation which had passed away before Ros- 
 setti came of age. It is interesting to find then, that at 
 the age of fifteen (1843) he taught himself enough Ger- 
 man to enable him to translate Burger's " Lenore," as 
 Walter Scott had done a half-century before. This devil 
 of a poem so haunts our history that it has become as 
 familiar a spirit as Mrs. Radcliffe's bugaboo appari- 
 tions, and our flesh refuses any longer to creep at it. It 
 is quite one of the family. It would seem, indeed, as if 
 Burger's ballad was set as a school copy for every young 
 romanticist in turn to try his 'prentice hand upon. 
 Fortunately, Rossetti's translation has perished, as has 
 also his version — some hundred lines — of the earlier por- 
 tion of the " Nibelungenlied." But a translation which 
 he made about the same time of the old Swabian poet, 
 Hartmann von Aue's " Der Arme Heinrich " (Henry the 
 Leper) is preserved, and was first published in 1886. 
 This poem, it will be remembered, was the basis of 
 Longfellow's "Golden Legend" (185 1). Rossetti did 
 
 ♦"The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti." Ed- 
 ited by W. M. Rossetti, two vols., London, i886. 
 
298 <iA History of English ^{omanticism . 
 
 not keep up his German, and in later years he never had 
 much liking for Scandinavian or Teutonic literature. 
 He was a Latin, and he made it his special task to inter- 
 pret to modern Protestant England whatever struck him 
 as most spiritually intense and characteristic in the 
 Latin Catholic Middle Age. The only Italian poet 
 whom he "earnestly loved" was Dante. He did not 
 greatly care for Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, and Tasso 
 — the Renaissance poets — though in boyhood he had 
 taken delight in Ariosto, just as he had in Scott and 
 Byron. But that was a stage through which he passed ; 
 none of these had any ultimate share in Rossetti's cul- 
 ture. At fifteen he wrote a ballad entitled " Sir Hugh 
 the Heron," founded on a tale of Allan Cunningham, 
 but taking its name and motto from the lines in " Mar- 
 
 mion " — 
 
 "Sir Hugh the Heron bold. 
 Baron of Twisell and of Ford, 
 And Captain of the Hold." 
 
 A few copies of this were printed for family circula- 
 tion by his fond grandfather, G, Polidori. Among 
 French writers he had no modern favourites beyond 
 Hugo, Musset, and Dumas. But like all the neo-roman- 
 ticists, he was strongly attracted by Francois Villon, that 
 strange Parisian poet, thief, and murderer of the fifteenth 
 century. He made three translations from Villon, the 
 best known of which is the famous " Ballad of Dead 
 Ladies " with its felicitous rendering of the refrain — 
 
 "But where are the snows of yester year? " 
 (Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?) 
 
 There are at least three good English verse renderings 
 of this ballad of Villon; one by Andrew Lang; one by 
 
The Tre-%apbaelites. 299 
 
 John Payne, and doubtless innumerable others, unknown 
 to me or forgotten. In fact, every on^ translates it now- 
 adays, as every one used to translate Burger's ballad. 
 It is the " Lenore " of the neo-romanticists. Rossetti 
 was a most accomplished translator, and his version of 
 Dante's "Vita Nuova" and of the "Early Italian Poets" 
 (1861) — reissued as " Dante and His Circle" (1874) — is 
 a notable example of his skill. There are two other 
 specimens of old French minstrelsy, and two songs from 
 Victor Hugo's " Burgraves " among his miscellaneous 
 translations; and William Sharp testifies that Rossetti 
 at one time thought of doing for the early poetry of 
 France what he had already done for that of Italy, but 
 never found the leisure for it.* Rossetti had no knowl- 
 edge of Greek, and " the only classical poet," says his 
 brother, " whom he took to in any degree worth speaking 
 of was Homer, the ' Odyssey ' considerably more than 
 the ' Iliad.' " This, I presume, he knew only in transla- 
 tion, but the preference is significant, since, as we have v 
 seen, the " Odyssey " is the most romantic of epics. 
 Among English poets, he preferred Keats to Shelley, as 
 might have been expected. Shelley was a visionary and 
 Keats was an artist; Shelley often abstract, Keats always 
 concrete. Shelley had a philosophy, or thought he had; 
 Keats had none, neither had Rossetti, It is quite com- 
 prehensible that the sensuous element in Keats would 
 attract a born colourist like Rossetti beyond anything 
 in the English poetry of that generation; and I need not 
 repeat that the latest Gothic or romantic schools have all 
 been taking Keats' direction rather than Scott's, or even 
 than Coleridge's. Rossetti's work, I should say, e.g., 
 * " Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A Record and a Study," p. 305. 
 
300 cA History of English Romanticism. 
 
 in such a piece as " The Bride's Prelude," is a good deal 
 more like "Isabella" and "The Eve of St. Agnes" than 
 it is like "The Ancient Mariner" or "Christabel" or 
 "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." Rossetti got little 
 from Milton and Dryden, or even from Chaucer and 
 Spenser. Wordsworth he valued hardly at all. In the 
 last two or three years of his life he came to have an 
 exaggerated admiration for Chatterton. Rossetti's taste, 
 like his temperament, was tinctured with morbidness. 
 He sought the intense, the individual, the symbolic, the 
 mystical. These qualities he found in a supreme degree 
 in Dante. Probably it was only his austere artistic con- 
 science which saved him from the fantastic — the merely 
 peculiar or odd — and kept him from going astray after 
 false gods like Poe and Baudelaire. Chaucer was a 
 mediaeval poet and Spenser certainly a romantic one, but 
 their work was too broad, too general in its appeal, too 
 healthy, one might almost say, to come home to Ros- 
 setti.* William Rossetti testifies that " any writing 
 
 * He wrote to Allingham in 1855, apropos of the latter's 
 poem "The Music Master" : "I'm not sure that it is not too 
 noble or too resolutely healthy. ... I must confess to a need 
 in narrative dramatic poetry ... of something rather 'excit- 
 ing, ' and indeed, I believe, something of the 'romantic ' ele- 
 ment, to rouse my mind to anything like the moods produced 
 by personal emotion in my own life. That sentence is shock- 
 ingly ill worded, but Keats' narratives would be of the kind I 
 mean." Theodore Watts ("Encyclopaedia Britannica, " arti- 
 cle "Rossetti ") says that "the purely romantic temper was 
 with Rossetti a more permanent and even a more natural tem- 
 per than with any other nineteenth-century poet, even includ- 
 ing the author of ' Christabel ' himself. " He thinks that all the 
 French romanticists together do not equal the romantic feel- 
 ing in a single picture of Rossetti's ; and he somewhat capri- 
 ciously defines the idea at the core of romanticism as that of 
 the evil forces of nature assailing man through his sense of 
 beauty. Analysis run mad ! As to Poe, Rossetti certainly 
 
The Tre-%aphaelites. 301 
 
 about devils, spectres, or the supernatural generally . . . 
 had always a fascination for him." Sharp remarks that 
 work more opposite than Rossetti's to the Greek spirit 
 can hardly be imagined, " The former [the Greek spirit] 
 looked to light, clearness, form in painting, sculpture, 
 architecture; to intellectual conciseness and definiteness 
 in poetry; the latter [Rossetti] looked mainly to diffused 
 colour, gradated to almost indefinite shades in his art, 
 finding the harmonies thereof more akin than severity of 
 outline and clearness of form ; while in his poetry the 
 Gothic love of the supernatural, the Gothic delight in 
 sensuous images, the Gothic instinct of indefiniteness 
 and elaboration, carried to an extreme, prevailed. . . . 
 He would take more pleasure in a design by . , , Wil- 
 liam Blake . . . than in the more strictly artistic draw- 
 ing of some revered classicist; more enjoyment in the 
 weird or dramatic Scottish ballad than in Pindaric or 
 Horatian ode ; and he would certainly rather have had 
 Shakspere than ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides put 
 together." 
 
 Rossetti's office in the later and further development 
 of romantic art was threefold : First, to revive and ex- 
 press, both in painting and poetry, the religious spirit of 
 the early Florentine schools; secondly, to give a more 
 intimate interpretation of Dante to the English public, 
 and especially of Dante's life and personality and of his 
 
 preferred him to Wordsworth. Hall Caine testifies that he 
 used to repeat "Ulalume" and "The Raven" from memory; 
 and that the latter suggested his "Blessed Damozel." "I 
 saw that Poe had done the utmost it was possible to do with 
 the grief of the lover on earth, and so I determined to reverse 
 the conditions, and give utterance to the yearning of the loved 
 one in heaven" ("Recollections," p. 284). 
 
302 cA History of English T^omanticism. 
 
 minor poetry, like the "Vita Nuova," which had not yet 
 been translated; thirdly, to afford new illustrations of 
 mediaeval life and thought, partly by treating legendary 
 matter in the popular ballad form, and partly by treating 
 romantic matter of his own invention with the rich colour 
 and sensuous imagery which belonged to his pictorial 
 art. 
 
 " Perhaps," writes Mr. Caine,* " Catholicism is itself 
 essentially mediagval, and perhaps a man cannot possibly 
 be a * mediaeval artist, heart and soul,' without partaking 
 of a strong religious feeling that is primarily Catholic — 
 so much were the religion and art of the Middle Ages 
 knit each to each, . . . Rossetti's attitude towards spirit- 
 ual things was exactly the reverse of what we call Protes- 
 tant. . , . He constantly impressed me during the last 
 days of his life with the conviction that he was by relig- 
 ious bias of nature a monk of the Middle Ages." All 
 this is true in a way, yet Rossetti strikes one as being 
 Catholic, without being religious; as mediaeval rather 
 than Christian. He was agnostic in his belief and not 
 devout in his practice; so that the wish that he suddenly 
 expressed in his last illness, to confess himself to a 
 priest, affected his friends as a singular caprice. It was 
 the romantic quality in the Italian sacred art of the Mid- 
 dle Ages that attracted him; and it attracted him as a 
 poet and painter, not as a devotee. There was little in 
 Rossetti of the mystical and ascetic piety of Novalis or 
 Zacharias Werner; nor of the steady religious devotion 
 of his friend Holman Hunt, or his own sister Christina. 
 
 Rossetti, by the way, was never in Italy, though he made 
 several visits to France and Belgium. A glance at the 
 *" Recollections," p. 140. 
 
The Tre-l^aphaelites. 303 
 
 list of his designs — extending to some four hundred 
 titles — in oil, water-colour, crayon, pen and ink, etc., 
 will show how impartially his interest was distributed 
 over the threefold province mentioned above. There 
 are sacred pieces like " Mary Magdalen at the Door of 
 Simon the Pharisee," " St. Cecily," a " Head of Christ," 
 a "Triptych for Llandaflf Cathedral"; Dante subjects 
 such as " Paolo and Francesca," " Beata Beatrix," " La 
 Donna della Finestra," "Giotto Painting the Portrait 
 of Dante " ; and, in greater number, compositions of a 
 purely romantic nature — " Fair Rosamond," " La Belle 
 Dame sans Merci," "The Chapel before the Lists," 
 "Michael Scott's Wooing," "Meeting of Sir Tristram 
 and Yseult," "Lady Lilith," "The Damozel of the 
 Sanct Grail," " Death of Breuse sans Pitie," and the like. 
 It will be noticed that some of these subjects are taken 
 from the Round Table romances. Tennyson was partly 
 responsible for the newly awakened interest in the 
 Arthurian legend, but the purely romantic manner which 
 he had abandoned in advancing from " Sir Galahad " and 
 "The Lady of Shalott" to the " Morte d' Arthur " of 1842 
 and the first "Idylls" of 1859, continued to characterise 
 the work of the Pre-Raphaelites both in poetry and in 
 painting. Malory's " Morte Darthur " was one of Ros- 
 setti's favourite books, and he preferred it to Tennyson, 
 as containing "the ze^^/r<f element in its perfection. . . . 
 Tennyson Aas it certainly here and there in imagery, but 
 there is no great success in the part it plays through his 
 ' Idylls.' " * The five wood-engravings from designs fur- 
 nished by Rossetti for the Moxon Tennyson quarto of 
 1857 include three Arthurian subjects: "The Lady of 
 *Caine's "Recollections," p. 266. 
 
304 <iA History of English %omanticism. 
 
 Shalott," "King Arthur Sleeping in Avalon," and "Sir 
 Galahad Praying in the Wood-Chapel." " Interwoven 
 as were the Romantic revival and the esthetic move- 
 ment," writes Mr. Sharp, " it could hardly have been 
 otherwise but that the young painter-poet should be 
 strongly attracted to that Arthurian epoch, the legendary 
 glamour of which has since made itself so widely felt in 
 the Arthurian idyls of the laureate, . . . Mr. Ruskin 
 speaks, in his lecture on ' The Relation of Art to Relig- 
 ion ' delivered in Oxford, of our indebtedness to Ros- 
 setti as the painter to whose genius we owe the revival 
 of interest in the cycle of early English legend." 
 
 It was in 1857 that Rossetti, whose acquaintance had 
 been recently sought by three young Oxford scholars, 
 Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and Algernon 
 Charles Swinburne, volunteered to surround the gallery of 
 the new Union Club House at Oxford with life-size fres- 
 coes from the " Morte Darthur." * He was assisted in 
 this work by a number of enthusiastic disciples. Burne- 
 Jones had already done some cartoons in colour for 
 stained glass, and Morris had painted a subject from the 
 "Morte Darthur," to wit: "Sir Tristram after his Ill- 
 ness, in the Garden of King Mark's Palace, recognised 
 by the Dog he had given to Iseult." Rossetti's con- 
 tribution to the Oxford decorations was " Sir Lancelot 
 before the Shrine of the Sangreal." Morris' was " Sir 
 Palomides' Jealousy of Sir Tristram and Iseult," an inci- 
 
 * Burne-Jones had been attracted by Rossetti's illustration 
 of Allingham's poem, "The Maids of Elfinmere," and had 
 obtained an introduction to him at London in 1856. It was 
 by Rossetti's persuasion that he gave up the church for the 
 career of an artist. Rossetti and Swinburne some years later 
 (1862) became housemates for a time at Chelsea ; and Rossetti 
 and Morris for a number of years, off and on, at Kelmscott. 
 
The Tre-I^phaelites. 305 
 
 dent which he also treated in his poetry. Burne-Jones, 
 Valentine Prinsep, J, H. Pollen, and Arthur Hughes 
 likewise contributed. Scott says that these paintings 
 were interesting as designs; that they were "poems more 
 than pictures, being large illuminations and treated in a 
 mediaeval manner." But he adds that not one of the 
 band knew anything about wall painting. They laid 
 their water-colours, not on a plastered surface, but on a 
 rough brick wall, merely whitewashed. They used no 
 adhesive medium, and in a few months the colours peeled 
 off and the whole series became invisible. 
 
 A co-partnership in subjects, a duplication of treat- 
 ment, or interchange between the arts of poetry and A 
 painting characterise Pre-Raphaelite work. For exam- 
 ple, Morris' poems, " The Blue Closet " and " The Tune 
 of Seven Towers " were inspired by the similarly entitled 
 designs of Rossetti. They are interpretations in lan- 
 guage of pictorial suggestions — " word-paintings " in a 
 truer meaning than that much-abused piece of critical 
 slang commonly bears. In one of these compositions — a 
 water-colour, a study in colour and music symbolism- — 
 four damozels in black and purple, white and green, 
 scarlet and white, and crimson, are singing or playing 
 on a lute and clavichord in a blue-tiled room ; while in 
 front of them a red lily grows up through the floor. To 
 this interior Morris' " stunning picture " — as his friend 
 called it — adds an obscurely hinted love story : the bur- 
 den of a bell booming a death-knell in the tower over- 
 head; the sound of wind and sea; and the Christmas 
 snows outside. Conversely Rossetti's painting, " Arthur's 
 Tomb," was suggested by Morris' so-named poem in his 
 1858 volume. 
 
3o6 tA History of English Romanticism. 
 
 Or, again, compare Morris' poem, "Sir Galahad: A 
 Christmas Mystery," with the following description of 
 Rossetti's aquarelle, " How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors, and 
 Sir Percival were fed with the Sane Grael; but Sir Per- 
 cival's sister died by the way " : " On the right is painted 
 the altar, and in front of it the damsel of the Sane Grael 
 giving the cup to Sir Galahad, who stoops forward to 
 take it over the dead body of Sir Percival's sister, who 
 lies calm and rigid in her green robe and red mantle, and 
 near whose feet grows from the ground an aureoled lily; 
 while, with his left hand, the saintly knight leads for- 
 ward his two companions, him who has lost his sister, and 
 the good Sir Bors. Behind the white-robed damsel at 
 the altar, a dove, bearing the sacred casket, poises on 
 outspread pinions; and immediately beyond the fence 
 enclosing the sacred space, stands a row of nimbused 
 angels, clothed in white and with crossed scarlet or flame- 
 coloured wings." * 
 
 Rossetti's powerful ballad, "The King's Tragedy," 
 was suggested by the mural paintings (encaustic) with 
 which William Bell Scott decorated the circular staircase 
 of Penkill Castle in 1865-68. These were a series of 
 scenes from "The Kinges Quair" once attributed to 
 James I. of Scotland. The photogravure reproduction, 
 from a painting by Arthur Hughes of a section of the 
 Penkill Castle staircase, represents the king looking 
 from the window of his prison in Windsor Castle at Lady 
 Jane Beaufort walking with her handmaidens in a very 
 Pre-Raphaelite garden. At the left of the picture, Cupid 
 aims an arrow at the royal lover. Rossetti, Hunt, and 
 Millais were all great lovers of Keats. Hunt says that 
 * Sharp's "Dante Gabriel Rossetti," p. 190. 
 
The Tre-I^aphaelites. 307 
 
 his " Escape of Madeline and Prospero " was the first 
 subject from Keats ever painted, and was highly ac- 
 claimed by Rossetti. At the formation of the P.-R B. in 
 1848, it was agreed that the first work of the Brotherhood 
 should be in illustration of "Isabella," and a series of 
 eight subjects was selected from the poem. Millais ex- 
 ecuted at once his "Lorenzo and Isabella," but Hunt's 
 "Isabella and the Pot of Basil" was not finished till 
 1867, and Rossetti's part of the programme was never 
 carried out. Rossetti's " La Belle Dame sans Merci," 
 Mr. J. M, Strudwick's " Madness of Isabella," Arthur 
 Hughes' triptych of "The Eve of St, Agnes," and Mil- 
 lais' great painting, " St. Agnes' Eve," were other tributes 
 of Pre-Raphaelite art to the young master of romantic 
 verse. 
 
 Whether this interpenetration of poetry and painting 
 is of advantage to either, may admit of question. Emer- 
 son said to Scott : " We [Americans] scarcely take to the 
 Rossetti poetry; it does not come home to us; it is 
 exotic." The sonnets of " The House of Life " have 
 appeared to many readers obscure and artificial, the work- 
 ing out in language of conceptions more easily expressi- 
 ble by some other art; expressed here, at all events, 
 through imagery drawn from a special and even techni- 
 cal range of associations. Such readers are apt to imag- 
 ine that Rossetti sufifers from a hesitation between poetry 
 and painting; as Sidney Lanier is thought by some to 
 have been injured artistically by halting midway between 
 music and verse. The method proper to one art intrudes 
 into the other; everything that the artist does has the air 
 of an experiment; he paints poems and writes pictures. 
 
 A department of Rossetti's verse consists of sonnets 
 
3o8 <i/f History of English l{omanticism. 
 
 written for pictures; pictures by Botticelli, Mantegna, 
 Giorgione, Burne-Jones, and others, and in many cases 
 by himself, and giving thus a double rendering of the 
 same invention. But even when not so occasioned, his 
 poems nearly always suggest pictures. Their figures 
 seem to have stepped down from some fifteenth-century 
 altar piece bringing their aureoles and golden back- 
 grounds with them. This is to be pictorial in a very dif- 
 ferent sense from that in which Tennyson is said to be 
 a pictorial poet. Hall Caine informs us that Rossetti 
 " was no great lover of landscape beauty." His scenery 
 does not, like Wordsworth's or Tennyson's, carry an im- 
 pression of life, of the real outdoors. ' Nature with Ros- 
 setti has been passed through the medium of another art 
 before it comes into his poetry; it is a doubly distilled 
 nature. It is nature as we have it in the *' Roman de la 
 Rose," or the backgrounds of old Florentine painters: 
 flowery pleasances and orchard closes, gardens with trel- 
 lises and singing conduits, where ladies are playing at 
 the palm play. In his most popular poem, " The Blessed 
 Damozel " — a theme which he both painted and sang — 
 the feeling is exquisitely and veraciously human. The 
 maiden is " homesick in heaven," and yearns back tow- 
 ards the earth and her lover left behind. Even so, with 
 her symbolic stars and lilies, she is so like the stiff, 
 sweet angels of Fra Angelico or Perugino, that one al- 
 most doubts when the poet says 
 
 " — hei" bosom must have made 
 The bar she leaned on warm. " 
 
 The imagery of the poem is right out of the picture world : 
 
 "The clear ranged, unnumbered heads 
 Bowed with their aureoles." 
 
The Tre-I^phaelites. 309 
 
 The imaginations are Dantesque : 
 
 "And the souls, mounting up to God, 
 Went by her like thin flames." 
 
 "The light thrilled towards her, filled 
 With angels in strong, level flight." 
 
 Even in " Jenny," one of the few poems of Rossetti that 
 deal with modern life, mediaeval art will creep in. 
 
 "Fair shines the gilded aureole 
 In which our highest painters place 
 Some living woman's simjile face. 
 And the stilled features thus descried, 
 As Jenny's long throat droops aside — 
 The shadows where the cheeks are thin 
 And pure wide curve from ear to chin — 
 With Raffael's, Leonardo's hand 
 To show them to men's souls might stand." 
 
 The type of womanly beauty here described is character- 
 istic; it is the type familiar to all in "Pandora," "Pros- 
 erpine," "La Ghirlandata," "The Day Dream," "Our 
 Lady of Pity," and the other life-size, half-length figure 
 paintings in oil which were the masterpieces of his ma- 
 turer style. The languid pose, the tragic eyes with their 
 mystic, brooding intensity in contrast with the full curves 
 of the lips and throat, give that union of sensuousness 
 and spirituality which is a constant trait of Rossetti's 
 poetry. The Pre-Raphaelites were accused of exagge- 
 rating the height of their figures. In Burne-Jones, whose 
 figures are eight and a half heads high, the exaggeration 
 is deliberate. In Morris' and Swinburne's early poems 
 all the lines of the female face and figure are long — the 
 hand, the foot, the throat, the "curve from chin to ear," 
 and above all, the hair.* The hair in these paintings of 
 
 *See especially Morris' poem "Rapunzel" in "The De- 
 fence of Guenevere. " 
 
3IO (t/^ History of English T{omanticism. 
 
 Rossetti seems a romantic exaggeration, too; immense, 
 crinkly waves of it spreading off to left and right. Wil- 
 liam Morris' beautiful wife is said to have been his model 
 in the pieces above named. 
 
 The first collection of original poems by Rossetti was 
 published in 1870. The manuscripts had been buried 
 with his wife in 1862. When he finally consented to 
 their publication, the coffin had to be exhumed and the 
 manuscripts removed. In 1881 a new edition was issued 
 with changes and additions; and in the same year the 
 volume of "Ballads and Sonnets" was published, includ- 
 ing the sonnet sequence of "The House of Life." Of 
 the poems in these two collections which treat directly 
 of Dante the most important is " Dante at Verona," a 
 noble and sustained piece in eighty-five stanzas, slightly 
 pragmatic in manner, in which are enwoven the legend- 
 ary and historical incidents of Dante's exile related by 
 the early biographers, together with many personal allu- 
 sions from the " Divine Comedy." But Dante is no- 
 where very far off either in Rossetti 's painting or in his 
 poetry. In particular, the history of Dante's passion for 
 Beatrice, as told in the "Vita Nuova," in which the figure 
 of the girl is gradually transfigured and idealised by 
 death into the type of heavenly love, made an enduring 
 impression upon Rossetti's imagination. Shelley, in his 
 " Epipsychidion," had appealed to this great love story, 
 so characteristic at once of the mediaeval mysticism and 
 of the Platonic spirit of the early Renaissance. But 
 Rossetti was the first to give a thoroughly sympathetic 
 interpretation of it to English readers. It became asso- 
 ciated most intimately with his own love and loss. We 
 see it in a picture like " Beata Beatrix," and a poem like 
 
The Tre-'T^phaelites. 311 
 
 "The Portrait," written many years before his wife's 
 death, but subsequently retouched. Who can read the 
 following stanza without thinking of Beatrice and the 
 "Paradiso"? 
 
 " Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears 
 The beating heart of Love's own breast, — 
 Where round the secret of all spheres 
 All angels lay their wings to rest, — 
 How shall my soul stand rapt and awed, 
 When, by the new birth borne abroad 
 Throughout the music of the suns, 
 It enters in her soul at once 
 And knows th*e silence there for God ! " 
 
 Rossetti's ballads and ballad-romances, all intensely 
 mediaeval in spirit, fall, as regards their manner, into 
 two very different classes. Pieces like "The Blessed 
 Damozel," " The Bride's Prelude," " Rose Mary," and 
 "The Staff and Scrip" (from a story in the "Gesta 
 Romanorum ") are art poems, rich, condensed, laden with 
 ornament, pictorial. Every attitude of every figure is a 
 pose; landscapes and interiors are painted with minute 
 Pre-Raphaelite finish. "The Bride's Prelude" — a frag- 
 ment — opens with the bride's confession to her sister, in 
 the 'tiring-room sumptuous with gold and jewels and bro- 
 cade, where the air is heavy with musk and myrrh, and 
 sultry with the noon. In the pauses of her tale stray 
 lute notes creep in at the casement, with noises from the 
 tennis court and the splash of a hound swimming in the 
 moat. In " Rose Mary," which employs the superstition -4. 
 in the old lapidaries as to the prophetic powers of the 
 beryl-stone, the colouring and imagery are equally opu- 
 lent, and, in passages. Oriental. 
 
 On the other hand, "Stratton Water," "Sister Helen," 
 "The White Ship," and "The King's Tragedy " are imi- 
 
312 t// History of English l^pmantictsm. 
 
 tations of popular poetry, done with a simulated rough- 
 ness and simplicity. The first of these adopts a common 
 ballad motive, a lover's desertion of his sweetheart 
 through the contrivances of his wicked kinsfolk • 
 
 "And many's the good gift, Lord Sands, 
 You've promised oft to me ; 
 But the gift of yours I keep to-day 
 Is the babe in my body." . . . 
 
 "Look down, look down, my false mother, 
 That bade me not to grieve : 
 You'll look up when our marriage fires 
 Are lit to-morrow eve. " 
 
 " Sister Helen " is a ballad in dialogue with a subtly 
 varying repetend, and introduces the popular belief that 
 a witch could kill a man slowly by melting a wax figure. 
 Twice Rossetti essayed the historical ballad. "The 
 White Ship" tells of the drowning of the son and daugh- 
 ter of Henry I. with their whole ship's company, except 
 one survivor, Berold, the butcher of Rouen, who relates 
 the catastrophe. The subject of " The King's Tragedy " 
 is the murder of James I. by Robert Graeme and his men 
 in the Charterhouse of Perth. The teller of the tale is 
 Catherine Douglas, known in Scottish tradition as Kate 
 Barlass, who had thrust her arm through the staple, in 
 place of a bar, to hold the door against the assassins. 
 A few stanzas of " The Kinges Quair " are fitted into the 
 poem by shortening the lines two syllables each, to ac- 
 commodate them to the ballad metre. It is generally 
 agreed that this was a mistake, as was also the introduc- 
 tion of the " Beryl Songs " between the narrative parts of 
 " Rose Mary." These ballads of Rossetti compare well 
 with other modern imitations of popular poetry. "Sister 
 Helen," <r.^., has much greater dramatic force than Ten- 
 
7he Vre-liaphaelites. 313 
 
 nyson's " Oriana " or " The Sisters." Yet they impress 
 one, upon the whole, as less characteristic than the poet's 
 Italianate pieces; as tours de Jorce carefully pitched in 
 the key of minstrel song, but falsetto in effect. Com- 
 pared with such things as " Cadyow Castle" or "Jack 
 o' Hazeldean," they are felt to be the work of an art 
 poet, resolute to divest himself of fine language and 
 scrupulously observant of ballad convention in phrase 
 and accent — details of which Scott was often heedless — 
 but devoid of that hearty, natural sympathy with the con- 
 ditions of life from which popular poetry sprang, and 
 wanting the lyrical pulse that beats in the ballad verse 
 of Scott, Kingsley, and Hogg. In " The King's Trag- 
 edy " Rossetti was poaching on Scott's own preserves, 
 the territory of national history and legend. If we can 
 guess how Scott would have handled the same story, we 
 shall have an object lesson in two contrasted kinds of 
 romanticism. Scott could not have bettered the grim 
 ferocity of the murder scene, nor have equalled, perhaps, 
 the tragic shadow of doom which is thrown over Ros- 
 setti's poem by the triple warning of the weird woman. 
 But the sense of the historic environment, the sense of 
 the actual in places and persons, would have been stronger 
 in his version. Graeme's retreat would have been the 
 Perthshire Highlands, and not vaguely "the land of the 
 wild Scots." And if scenery had been used, it would 
 not have been such as this — a Pre-Raphaelite back- 
 ground : 
 
 " That eve was clenched for a boding storm, 
 
 'Neath a toilsome moon half seen ; 
 The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high ; 
 And where there was a line of the sky, 
 
 Wild wings loomed dark between." 
 
314 ^ History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 The historical sense was weak in Rossetti. It is not 
 easy to imagine him composing a Waverley novel. The 
 life of the community, as distinct from the life of the in- 
 dividual, had little interest for him. The mellifluous 
 names of his heroines, Aloyse, Rose Mary, Blanchelys, 
 are pure romance. In his intense concentration upon 
 the aesthetic aspects of every subject, Rossetti seemed, to 
 those who came in contact with him, singularly borne. 
 He was indifferent to politics, society, speculative 
 thought, and the discoveries of modern science — to con- 
 temporary matters in general.* It is to this narrow ebs- 
 theticism that Mr. Courthope refers when, in comparing 
 Coleridge and Keats with Rossetti and Swinburne, he 
 finds in the latter an " extraordinary skill in the imita- 
 tion of antique forms," but " less liberty of imagina- 
 tion." f The contrast is most striking in the case of Cole- 
 ridge, whose intellectual interests had so wide a range. 
 Rossetti cared only for Coleridge's verse; William Mor- 
 ris spoke with contempt of everything that he had written 
 except two or three of his poems; | and Swinburne re- 
 
 *"I can't say," wrote William Morris, "how it was that 
 Rossetti took no interest in politics ; but so it was : of course 
 he was quite Italian in his general turn of thought ; though I 
 think he took less interest in Italian politics than in English. 
 . . . The truth is, he cared for nothing but individual and per- 
 sonal matters ; chiefly of course in relation to art and litera- 
 ture." 
 
 f "The Liberal Movement in English Literature." by W. J. 
 Courthope, London, 1885, p. 230. 
 
 % " Keats was a great poet who sometimes nodded. . . . 
 Coleridge was a muddle-brained metaphysician who, by some 
 strange freak of fortune, turned out a few real poems amongst 
 the dreary flood of inanity which was his wont. ... I have 
 been through the poems, and find that the only ones which 
 have any interest for me are: (i) 'Ancient Mariner'; (2) 
 ' Christabel ' ; (3) ' Kubla Khan ' ; and (4) the poem called 
 'Love ' " (Mackail's "Life of Morris," vol. ii., p. 310). 
 
The 'Pre-raphaelites. 315 
 
 gretted that he had lost himself in the mazes of theology 
 and philosophy, instead of devoting himself wholly to 
 creative work. Keats, it is true, was exclusively pre- 
 occupied with the beautiful; but he was more eclectic 
 than Rossetti — perhaps also than Morris, though hardly 
 than Swinburne. The world of classic fable, the world 
 of outward nature were as dear to his imagination as the 
 country of romance. Rossetti was not university bred, 
 and, as we have seen, forgot his Greek early. Morris, 
 like Swinburne, was an Oxford man; yet we hear him 
 saying that he "loathes all classical art and literature."* 
 In " The Life and Death of Jason " and " The Earthly 
 Paradise " he treats classical and mediaeval subjects im- 
 partially, but treats them both alike in mediaeval fashion; 
 as Chaucer does, in "The Knightes Tale."t As for 
 Rossetti, he is never classical. He makes Pre-Raphael- 
 ite ballads out of the tale of Troy divine and the Rab- 
 binical legends of Adam's first wife, Lilith; ballads with, 
 quaint burdens — 
 
 " (O Troy's down. 
 Tall Troy's on fire)"; 
 
 " (Sing Eden Bower ! 
 Alas the hour !) " 
 
 and whose very titles have an Old English familiarity — 
 " Eden Bower," " Troy Town," as who says " London 
 Bridge," " Edinboro' Town," etc. Swinburne has given 
 the rationale of this type of art in his description of a 
 Bacchus and Ariadne by Lippino Lippi (" Old Masters 
 
 *"The Life of William Morris," byW. J. Mackail, London, 
 1899, vol. ii., p. 171. 
 
 f For the Chaucerian manipulation of classical subjects by 
 Pre-Raphaelite artists see " Edward Burne- Jones, " by Mal- 
 colm Bell, London, 1899. 
 
3i6 o^ History of English l^pmanticisin. 
 
 at Florence "), "an older legend translated and trans- 
 formed into mediaeval shape. More than any others, 
 these painters of the early Florentine school reproduce 
 in their own art the style of thought and work familiar 
 to a student of Chaucer and his fellows or pupils. 
 Nymphs have faded into fairies, and gods subsided into 
 men. A curious realism has grown up out of that very 
 ignorance and perversion which seemed as if it could not 
 but falsify whatever thing it touched upon. This study 
 of Fillippino's has all the singular charm of the romantic 
 school. . . . The clear form has gone, the old beauty 
 dropped out of sight . . . but the mediaeval or romantic 
 form has an incommunicable charm of its own. . . . Be- 
 fore Chaucer could give us a Pandarus or a Cressida, all 
 knowledge and memory of the son of Lycaon and the 
 daughter of Chryses must have died out, the whole poem 
 collapsed into romance; but far as these maybe removed 
 from the true tale and the true city of Troy, they are not 
 phantoms." 
 
 But of all this group, the one most thoroughly steeped 
 in mediaevalism — to repeat his own description of him- 
 self — was William Morris. He was the English equiva- 
 lent of Gd.\xt\ex's homme moyeti dge ; and it was his en- 
 deavour, in letters and art, to pick up and continue the 
 mediaeval tradition, interrupted by four hundred years of 
 modern civilisation. The sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries did not attract him ; and as for the eighteenth, 
 it simply did not exist for him.* The ugliness of mod- 
 
 *"The slough of despond which we call the eighteenth cen- 
 tury" ("Hopes and Fears for Art," p. 211). "The English 
 language, which under the hands of sycophantic verse-makers 
 had been reduced to a miserable jargon . . . flowed clear, 
 pure, and simple along with the music of Blake and Coleridge. 
 
The Vre-'^phaelites. 317 
 
 em life, with its factories and railroads, its unpicturesque 
 poverty and selfish commercialism, was hateful to him as 
 it was to Ruskin — his teacher. He loved to imagine the 
 face of England as it was in the time of Chaucer — his 
 master; to 
 
 "Forget six counties overhung with smoke. 
 Forget the snorting steam and piston smoke, . . . 
 And dream of London, small and white and clean. 
 The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green." 
 
 The socialistic Utopia depicted in his " News from No- 
 where" (1890) is a regenerated Middle Age, without 
 feudalism, monarchy, and the mediaeval Church, but also 
 without densely populated cities, with handicrafts sub- 
 stituted for manufactures, and with mediaeval architecture, 
 house decoration, and costume. None of Morris' books 
 deals with modern life, but all of them with an imagi- 
 nary future or an almost equally imaginary past. This 
 same " News from Nowhere " contains a passage of dia- 
 logue in justification of retrospective romance. "'How 
 is it that though we are so interested with our life for the 
 most part, yet when people take to writing poems or 
 painting pictures they seldom deal with our modern life, 
 or if they do, take good care to make their poems or pic- 
 tures unlike that life? Are we not good enough to paint 
 ourselves.''' . . . ' It always was so, and I suppose al- 
 ways will be,' said he, ' however, it may be explained. 
 It is true that in the nineteenth century, when there was 
 so little art and so much talk about it, there was a theory 
 that art and imaginative literature ought to deal with 
 
 Take those names, the earliest in date among ourselves, as a 
 type of the change that has happened in literature since the 
 time of George II." {ibid., p. 82). 
 
3i8 <iA History of English 'T^manticism. 
 
 contemporary life; but they never did so; for, if there 
 was any pretence of it, the author always took care . . . 
 to disguise, or exaggerate, or idealise, and in some way 
 or another make it strange ; so that, for all the verisimil- 
 itude there was, he might just as well have dealt with the 
 times of the Pharaohs.' " * 
 
 The difference between the mediaeval ism of Rossetti 
 and of Morris illustrates, in an interesting way, the varied 
 results produced by the operation of similar influences 
 on contrasted temperaments. The comparison which 
 Morris' biographer makes between him and Burne-Jones 
 holds true as between Morris and Rossetti : " They re- 
 ceived or re-incarnated the Middle Ages through the 
 eyes and brain, in the one case of a Norman, in the other 
 of a Florentine." Morris was twice a Norman, in his 
 love for the romancers and Gothic builders of northern 
 France; and in his enthusiasm for the Icelandic sagas. 
 His visits to Italy left him cold, and he confessed to a 
 strong preference for the art of the North. " With the 
 later work of Southern Europe I am quite out of sym- 
 pathy. In spite of its magnificent power and energy, I feel 
 it as an enemy; and this much more in Italy, where there 
 is such a mass of it, than elsewhere. Yes, and even in 
 these magnificent and wonderful towns I long rather for 
 the heap of gray stones with a gray roof that we call a 
 house north-away." Rossetti's Italian subtlety and mys- 
 ticism are replaced in Morris by an English homeliness 
 — a materialism which is Teutonic and not Latin or 
 Celtic, and one surface indication of which is the scru- 
 pulously Saxon vocabulary of his poems and prose ro- 
 mances. " His earliest enthusiasms," said Burne-Jones, 
 *Page 113. 
 
The Tre-l^phaelites. 319 
 
 "were his latest. The thirteenth century was his ideal 
 period always " — the century which produced the lovely 
 French romances which he translated and the great 
 French cathedrals which he admired above all other 
 architecture on earth. But this admiration was aesthetic 
 rather than religious. The Catholic note, so resonant in 
 Rossetti's poetry, is hardly audible in Morris, at least 
 after his early Oxford days. The influence of Newman 
 still lingered at Oxford in the fifties, though the Trac- 
 tarian movement had spent its force and a reaction had 
 set in. Morris came up to the university an Anglo- 
 Catholic, and like his fellow-student and life-long frien^J, 
 Burne-Jones, had been destined to holy orders. We find 
 them both, as undergraduates, eagerly reading the " Acta 
 Sanctorum," the "Tracts for the Times," and Kenelm 
 Digby's " Mores Catholici," and projecting a kind of 
 monastic community, where celibacy should be practised 
 and sacred art cultivated. Btit later impressions soon 
 crowded out this early religious fervour. Churchly ascet- 
 icism and the mediaeval "praise of virginity" made no 
 part of Morris' social ideal. The body counted for much 
 with him. In " News from Nowhere," marriage even is 
 so far from being a sacrament, that it is merely a free 
 arrangement terminable at the will of either party. 
 Morris had a passionate love of earth and a regard for 
 the natural instincts. He complains that Swinburne's 
 poetry is "founded on literature, not on nature." His 
 religion is a reversion to the old Teutonic pagan earth- 
 worship, and he had the pagan dread of "quick-coming 
 death." His paradise is an " Eartlily Paradise " ; it is 
 in search of earthly immortality that his voyagers set sail. 
 " Of heaven or hell," says his prelude, " I have no power 
 
320 <i/l History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 to sing " ; and the great mediaeval singer of heaven and 
 hell who meant so much to Rossetti, appealed hardly 
 more to Morris than to Walter Scott. 
 
 Moreover, Morris' work in verse was the precise equiv- 
 alent of his work as a decorative artist, who cared little 
 for easel pictures, and regarded painting as one method 
 out of many for covering wall spaces or other surfaces.* 
 His poetry is mainly narrative, but whether epical or 
 lyrical in form, is always less lyric in essence than Ros- 
 setti's. In its objective spirit and even distribution of 
 emphasis, it contrasts with Rossetti's expressional in- 
 tensity very much as Morris' wall-paper and tapestry de- 
 signs contrast with paintings like " Beata Beatrix " and 
 " Proserpina." Morris — as an artist — cared more for 
 places and things than for people; and his interest was 
 in the work of art itself, not in the personality of the 
 artist. 
 
 Quite unlike as was Morris to Scott in temper and 
 mental endowment, his position in the romantic litera- 
 ture of the second half-century answers very closely to 
 Scott's in the first. His work resembled Scott's in vol- 
 ume, and in its easiness for the general reader. For the 
 second time he made the Middle Ages po/>u/ar. There 
 was nothing esoteric in his art, as in Rossetti's. It was 
 
 *"Sir Edward Burne-Jones told me that Morris would have 
 liked the faces in his pictures less highly finished, and less 
 charged with the concentrated meaning or emotion of the 
 painting . . . and he thought that the dramatic and emo- 
 tional interest of a picture ought to be diffused throughout it 
 as equally as possible. Such, too, was his own practice in the 
 cognate art of poetry ; and this is one reason why his poetry 
 affords so few memorable single lines, and lends itself so little 
 to quotation" (Mackail's "Life of William Morris," vol. ii., 
 p. 272). 
 
The Tre-%aphaelites. 321 
 
 English and came home to Englishmen. His poetry, 
 like his decorative work, was meant for the people, and 
 " understanded of the people." Moreover, like Scott, he 
 was an accomplished raconteur, and a story well told is 
 always sure of an audience. His first volume, "The 
 Defence of Guenevere " (1858), dedicated to Rossetti 
 and inspired by him, had little popular success. But 
 when, like Millais, he abandoned the narrowly Pre- 
 Raphaelite manner and broadened out, in "The Life 
 and Death of Jason " (1867) and " The Earthly Paradise " 
 (1868-70), into a fashion of narrative less caviare to the 
 general, the public response was such as met Millais. 
 
 Morris' share in the Pre-Raphaelite movement was in 
 the special field of decorative art. His enthusiasm for 
 Gothic architecture had been aroused at Oxford by a 
 reading of Ruskin's chapter on " The Nature of Gothic " 
 in "The Stones of Venice." In 1856, acting upon this 
 impulse, he articled himself to the Oxford architect G. 
 E. Street, and began work in his office. He did not 
 persevere in the practice of the profession, and never 
 built a house. But he became and remained a connois- 
 seur of Gothic architecture and an active member of the 
 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. His 
 numerous visits to Amiens, Chartres, Reims, Soissons, 
 and Rouen were so many pilgrimages to the shrines of 
 mediaeval art. Indeed, he always regarded the various 
 branches of house decoration as contributory to the mas- 
 ter art, architecture. 
 
 A little later, under the dominating and somewhat 
 overbearing persuasions of Rossetti, he tried his hand at 
 painting, but never succeeded well in drawing the human 
 face and figure. The figure designs for his stained 
 
322 ^ History of English l^pmanticism. 
 
 glass, tapestries, etc., were usually made by Burne-Jones, 
 Morris furnishing floriated patterns and the like. In 
 1861 was formed the firm of Morris & Company, which 
 revolutionised English household decoration. Rossetti 
 and Burne-Jones were among the partners in this con- 
 cern, which undertook to supply the public with high art 
 work in wall painting, paper hangings, embroidery, car- 
 pets, tapestries, printed cottons, stamped leather, carved 
 furniture, tiles, metals, jewelry, etc. In particular, Mor- 
 ris revived the mediaeval arts of glass-staining, illumi- 
 nation, or miniature painting, and tapestry-weaving with 
 the high-warp loom. Though he chose to describe him- 
 self as a " dreamer of dreams born out of my due time," 
 and " the idle singer of an empty day," he was a tireless 
 practical workman of astonishing cleverness and versa- 
 tility. He taught himself to dye and weave. When, in 
 the last decade of the century, he set up the famous 
 Kelmscott Press, devoted to artistic printing and book- 
 making, he studied the processes of type-casting and 
 paper manufacture, and actually made a number of sheets 
 of paper with his own hands. It was his favourite idea 
 that the division of labour in modern manufactures had 
 degraded the workman by making him a mere machine; 
 that the divorce between the art of the designer and the 
 art of the handicraftsman was fatal to both. To him the 
 Middle Ages meant, not the ages of faith, or of chivalry, 
 or of bold and free adventure, but of popular art — of 
 " The Lesser Arts " ; when every artisan was an artist of 
 the beautiful and took pleasure in the thing which his 
 hand shaped; when not only the cathedral and the cas- 
 tle, but the townsman's dwelling-house and the labourer's 
 cottage was a thing of beauty. He believed that in 
 
The Tre-I^phaelites. 323 
 
 those times there was, as there should be again, an art 
 by the people and for the people. It was the democratic 
 and not the aristocratic elements of mediaeval life that 
 he praised. "From the first dawn of history till quite 
 modern times, art, which nature meant to solace all, ful- 
 filled its purpose; all men shared in it; that was what 
 made life romantic, as people call it, in those days; that 
 and not robber-barons and inaccessible kings with their 
 hierarchy of serving-nobles and other such rubbish." * 
 One more passage will serve to set in sharp contrast the 
 romanticism of Scott and the romanticism of Ruskin and 
 Morris. "With that literature in which romance, that is 
 to say humanity, was re-born, there sprang up also a feel- 
 ing for the romance of external nature, which is surely 
 strong in us now, joined with a longing to know some- 
 thing real of the lives of those who have gone before us; 
 of these feelings united you will find the broadest ex- 
 pression in the pages of Walter Scott; it is curious, as 
 showing how sometimes one art will lag behind another 
 in a revival, that the man who wrote the exquisite and 
 wholly unfettered naturalism of * The Heart of Midlo- 
 thian,' for instance, thought himself continually bound to 
 seem to feel ashamed of, and to excuse himself for, his 
 love of Gothic architecture; he felt that it was romantic, 
 and he knew that it gave him pleasure, but somehow he 
 had not found out that it was art, having been taught in 
 many ways that nothing could be art that was not done 
 by a named man under academical rules." f 
 
 It is worth while to glance at Morris' culture-history 
 and note the organic filaments which connect the later 
 
 *" Hopes and Fears for Art," p. 79. 
 \Jdid., p. 83. 
 
324 e// History of English T^pmanticism. 
 
 with the earlier romanticism. He had read the Waverley 
 novels as a child, and had even snatched a fearful joy 
 from Clara Reeve's "Old English Baron."* He knew 
 his Tennyson before he went up to Oxford, but reserved 
 an unqualified admiration only for such things as 
 " Oriana " and " The Lady of Shalott." He was greatly 
 excited by the woodcut engraving of Diirer's "Knight, 
 Death and the Devil " in an English translation of 
 Fouque's " Sintram." f Rossetti was first made known 
 to him by Ruskin's Edinburgh lectures of 1854 and by 
 the illustration to Allingham's -" Maids of Elfin Mere," 
 over which Morris and Burne-Jones " pored continually." 
 Morris devoured greedily all manner of mediaeval chroni- 
 cles and romances, French and English; but he read 
 little in Elizabethan and later authors. He disliked 
 Milton and Wordsworth, and held Keats to be the fore- 
 most of modern English poets. He took no interest in 
 mythology, or Welsh poetry or Celtic literature gener- 
 ally, with the exception of the " Morte Darthur," which, 
 Rossetti assured him, was second only to the Bible. The 
 Border ballads had been his delight since childhood. 
 An edition of these; a selection of English mediaeval 
 lyrics; and a "Morte Darthur," with a hundred illustra- 
 tions from designs by Burne-Jones, were among the un- 
 fulfilled purposes of the Kelmscott Press. 
 
 Morris' first volume, " The Defence of Guenevere and 
 Other Poems," was put forth in 1858 (reprint in 1875) ; 
 " a book," says Saintsbury, " almost as much the herald 
 of the second school of Victorian poetry as Tennyson's 
 early work was of the first." J " Many of the poems," 
 
 *See vol. i., pp. 241-43. f Vz'de supra, p. 152. 
 
 X"A Short History of English Literature," p. 783. 
 
The Tre-I^phaelites. 325 
 
 wrote William Bell Scott, "represent the mediaeval spirit 
 in a new way, not by a sentimental, nineteenth-century- 
 revival mediasvalism, but they give a poetical sense of a 
 barbaric age strongly and sharply real." * These last 
 words point at Tennyson, The first four pieces in the 
 volume are on Arthurian subjects, but are wholly differ- 
 ent in style and conception even from such poems as 
 " The Lady of Shalott " and " Sir Lancelot and Queen 
 Guinevere." They are more mannerised, more in the 
 spirit of Pre-Raphaelite art, than anything in Morris' 
 later work. If the name-poem is put beside Tennyson's 
 idyl " Guinevere " ; or "Sir Galahad, a Christmas Mys- 
 tery," beside Tennyson's " Sir Galahad," the difference 
 is striking. In place of the refined ethics and senti- 
 ment, and purely modern spiritual ideals which find a 
 somewhat rhetorical expression in Tennyson, Morris en- 
 deavours to render the genuine Catholic mediaeval ma- 
 terialistic religious temper as it appears in Malory; 
 where unquestioning belief, devotion, childish supersti- 
 tion, and the fear of hell coexist with fleshly love and 
 hate — a passion of sin and a passion of repentance. 
 Guenevere's "defence" is, at bottom, the same as 
 Phryne's : 
 
 " See through my long throat how the words go up 
 In ripples to my mouth ; how in my hand 
 The shadow lies like wine within a cup 
 Of marvellously colour' d gold." 
 
 " Dost thou reck 
 That I am beautiful. Lord, even as you 
 And your dear mother? " f 
 
 Morris criticised Tennyson's Galahad, as "rather a 
 
 *" Recollections of Rossetti," vol. ii., p. 42. 
 f "King Arthur's Tomb." 
 
326 cy^ History of English '^manticism. 
 
 mild youth." His own Galahad is not the rapt seer of 
 the vision beatific, but a more flesh-and-blood character, 
 who sometimes has cold fits in which he doubts whether 
 the quest is not a fool's errand; and whether even Sir 
 Palomydes in his unrequited love, and Sir Lancelot in 
 his guilty love, do not take greater comfort than he. 
 
 Other poems in the book were inspired by Froissart's 
 " Chronicle " or other histories of the English wars in 
 France: " Sir Peter Harpdon's End," " Concerning Gef- 
 fray Teste Noire," "The Eve of Crecy," etc.* Still 
 others, and these not the least fascinating, were things of 
 pure invention, lays of " a country lit with lunar rainbows 
 and ringing with fairy song." f These have been thought 
 to owe something to Edgar Poe; but they much more 
 nearly resemble the work of the latest symbolistic 
 schools. When reading such poems as " Rapunzel," 
 "Golden Wings," and "The Tune of Seven Towers," 
 one is frequently reminded of " Serres Chaudes" or " Pel- 
 Idas et Mdlisande"; and is at no loss to understand why 
 Morris excepted Maeterlinck from his general indiffer- 
 ence to contemporary writers — Maeterlinck, like himself, 
 a student of Rossetti. There is no other collection of 
 English poems so saturated with Pre- Raphael itism. The 
 flowers are all orchids, strange in shape, violent in col- 
 ouring. Rapunzel, e.g., is like one of Maeterlinck's 
 spellbound princesses. She stands at the top of her 
 tower, letting down her hair to the ground, and her lover 
 climbs up to her by it as by a golden stair. Here is 
 again the singular Pre-Raphaelite and symbolistic scen- 
 
 *One of these, "The Haystack in the Floods," has a tragic 
 power unexcelled by any later work of Morris, 
 f Saintsbury, p. 785. 
 
The Tre-^apbaelites. 327 
 
 ery, with its images from art and not from nature. Tall 
 damozels in white and scarlet walk in garths of lily and 
 sunflower, or under apple boughs, and feed the swans in 
 the moat. 
 
 "Moreover, she held scarlet lilies, such 
 As Maiden Margaret bears upon the light 
 Of the great church walls."* 
 
 " Lord, give Mary a dear kiss. 
 
 And let gold Michael, who look'd down. 
 When I was there, on Rouen town, 
 From the spire, bring me that kiss 
 On a lily!"t 
 
 The language is as artfully quaint as the imaginations 
 are fantastic : 
 
 " Between the trees a large moon, the wind lows 
 Not loud, but as a cow begins to low." X 
 
 "Pale in the green sky were the stars, I ween, 
 Because the moon shone like a star she shed 
 When she dwelt up in heaven a while ago. 
 And ruled all things but God."§ 
 
 " Quiet groans 
 That swell out the little bones 
 Of my bosom." | 
 
 "I sit on a purple bed. 
 Outside, the wall is red, 
 Thereby the apple hangs, 
 And the wasp, caught by the fangs, 
 Dies in the autumn night. 
 And the bat flits till light. 
 And the love-crazed knight 
 Kisses the long, wet grass. "T 
 
 A number of these pieces are dramatic in form, mono- 
 logues or dialogues, sometimes in the manner of the 
 
 * " King Arthur' s Tomb. " f " Rapunzel. " 
 
 X " King Arthur's Tomb." § Idtd. 
 
 jl" Rapunzel." T| "Golden Wings." 
 
328 <iA History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 medieval mystery plays.* Others are ballads, not of the 
 popular variety, but after Rossetti's fashion, employing 
 burdens, English or French : 
 
 "Two red roses across the moon " ; 
 
 " Hah ! hah ! la belle jaune giroflee " ; 
 
 "Ah ! qu'elle est belle La Marguerite" ; etc. 
 
 The only poem in the collection which imitates the style 
 of the old minstrel ballad is " Welland Water." The 
 name-poem is in ferza rima; the longest, " Sir Peter 
 Harpdon's End," in blank verse; "Golden Wings," in 
 the " In Memoriam " stanza. 
 
 When Morris again came before the public as a poet, 
 his style had undergone a change akin to that which 
 transformed the Pre-Raphaelite painter into the decora- 
 tive artist. The skeins of vivid romantic colour had run 
 out into large-pattern tapestries. There was nothing 
 eccentric or knotty about " The Life and Death of Jason " 
 and " The Earthly Paradise." On the contrary, nothing 
 so facile, pellucid, pleasant to read had appeared in 
 modern literature — a poetic lubberland, a "clear, un- 
 wrinkled song." The reader was carried along with no 
 effort and little thought on the long swell of the verse, 
 his ear lulled by the musical lapse of the rime, his e3'e 
 soothed — not excited — by ever-unrolling panoramas of 
 an enchanted country " east of the sun and west of the 
 moon." Morris wrote with incredible ease and rapidity. 
 It was a maxim with him, as with Ruskin, that all good 
 work is done easily and with pleasure to the workman; 
 and certainly that seems true of him which Lowell said 
 of Chaucer — that he never " puckered his brow over an 
 
 * See "Sir Galahad," "The Chapel in Lyoness, ""A Good 
 Knight in Prison." 
 
7he Vre-l^phaelites. 329 
 
 unmanageable verse." Chaucer was his avowed master,* 
 and perhaps no English narrative poet has come so near 
 to Chaucer. Like Chaucer, and unlike Scott, he did not 
 invent stories, but told the old stories over again with a 
 new charm. His poetry, as such, is commonly better 
 than Scott's; lacking the fire and nervous energy of Scott 
 in his great passages, but sustained at a higher artistic 
 level. He had the copious vein of the mediaeval chron- 
 iclers and romancers, without their tiresome prolixity 
 and with finer resources of invention. He had none of 
 Chaucer's humour, realism, or skill in character sketch- 
 ing. In its final impression his poetry resembles Spenser's 
 more than Chaucer's. Like Spenser's, it grows monot- 
 onous — without quite growing languid — from the steady 
 flow of the metre and the exhaustless profusion of the 
 imagery. The reader becomes, somewhat ungratefully, 
 surfeited with beauty, and seeks relief in poetry more 
 passionate or intellectual. Chaucer and, in a degree, 
 Walter Scott, have a way of making old things seem near 
 to us. In Spenser and Morris, though bright and clear 
 in all imagined details, they stand at an infinite remove, 
 in a world apart — 
 
 " — a little isle of bliss 
 Midmost the beating of the steely sea " 
 
 which typifies the weary problems and turmoil of con- 
 temporary life. 
 
 "Jason " was a poem of epic dimensions, on the win- 
 ning of the Golden Fleece; "The Earthly Paradise," a 
 series of twenty-four narrative poems set in a framework 
 of the poet's own. Certain gentlemen of Norway, in the 
 
 *See "Jason," Book xvii., 5-24, and the Envoi to "The 
 Earthly Paradise." 
 
33° <^ History of English l^manticism. 
 
 reign of Edward III. of England, set out — like St. Bran- 
 dan — on a voyage in search of a land that is free from 
 death. They cross the Western ocean, and after long 
 years of wandering, come, disappointed of their hope, to 
 a city founded centuries since by exiles from ancient 
 Greece. There being hospitably received, hosts and 
 guests interchange tales in every month of the year; a 
 classical story alternating with a mediaeval one, till the 
 double sum of twelve is complete. Among the wanderers 
 are a Breton and a Suabian, so that the mediaeval tales 
 have a wide range. There are Norse stories like " The 
 Lovers of Gudrun " ; French Charlemagne romances, 
 like "Ogier the Dane"; and late German legends of the 
 fourteenth century, like "The Hill of Venus," besides 
 miscellaneous travelled fictions of the Middle Age.* 
 But the Hellenic legends are reduced to a common term 
 with the romance material, so that the reader is not very 
 sensible of a difference. Many of them are selected for 
 their marvellous character, and abound in dragons, mon- 
 sters, transformations, and enchantments: "The Golden 
 Apples," "Bellerophon," "Cupid and Psyche," "The 
 Story of Perseus," etc. Even " Jason " is treated as a 
 romance. Of its seventeen books, all but the last are 
 devoted to the exploits and wanderings of the Argonauts. 
 
 *Some of Morris' sources were William of Malmesbury, 
 "Mandeville's Travels," the "Gesta Romanorum, " and the 
 '"Golden Legend." "The Man Born to be King" was derived 
 from "The Tale of King Constans, the Emperor" in a volume 
 of French romances ("Nouvelles frangaises en prose du 
 xiii.ieme Siecle, " Paris, 1856) of which he afterwards (1896) 
 made a prose translation. The collection included also "The 
 Friendship of Amis and Amile " ; " King Floras and the Fair 
 Jehane"; and "The History of Over Sea"; besides "Aucas- 
 sin and Nicolete, " which Morris left out because it had been 
 already rendered into English by Andrew Lang. 
 
The Tre-I^apbaelites. 331 
 
 Medea is not the wronged, vengeful queen of the Greek 
 tragic poets, so much as she is the Colchian sorceress 
 who effects her lover's victory and escape. Her roman- 
 tic, outweighs her dramatic character. Sea voyages, em- 
 prizes, and wild adventures, like those of his own wan- 
 derers in " The Earthly Paradise," were dearer to Morris' 
 imagination than conflicts of the will; the voffro? or 
 home-coming of Ulysses, e.g. He preferred the " Odys- 
 sey" to the "Iliad," and translated it in 1887 into the 
 thirteen-syllabled line of the "Nibelungenlied." * Of 
 the Greek tales in " The Earthly Paradise," " The Love 
 of Alcestis " has, perhaps, the most dramatic quality. 
 
 Like Chaucer and like Rossetti,f Morris mediaevalised 
 classic fable. " Troy," says his biographer, " is to his 
 imagination a town exactly like Bruges or Chartres; 
 spired and gabled, red-roofed, filled (like the city of King 
 yEetes in ' The Life and Death of Jason ') with towers 
 and swinging bells. The Trojan princes go out, like 
 knights in Froissart, to tilt at the barriers." | The dis- 
 tinction between classical and romantic treatment is well 
 illustrated by a comparison of Theocritus' idyl " Hylas," 
 with the same episode in "Jason." " Soon was he 'ware 
 of a spring," says the Syracusan poet, " in a hollow land, 
 and the rushes grew thickly round it, and dark swallow- 
 wort, and green maiden-hair, and blooming parsley and 
 deer-grass spreading through the marshy land. In the 
 midst of the water the nymphs were arraying their 
 dances, the sleepless nymphs, dread goddesses of the 
 country people, Eunice, and Malis, and Nycheia, with 
 
 *His Vergil's "^neid, " in the old fourteeuer of Chapman, 
 was published in 1876. 
 f Vzcie supra, p. 315. ifMackail, i., p. 168. 
 
332 e^ History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 her April eyes. And now the boy was holding out the 
 wide-mouthed pitcher to the water, intent on dipping it; 
 but the nymphs all clung to his hand, for love of the 
 Argive lad had fluttered the soft hearts of all of them. 
 Then down he sank into the black water." * In " Jason," 
 where the episode occupies some two hundred and 
 seventy lines, one of the nymphs meets the boy in the 
 wood, disguised in furs like a northern princess, and 
 lulls him to sleep by the stream side with a Pre-Raphael- 
 ite song : 
 
 "I know a little garden close 
 Set thick with lily and red rose " ; 
 
 the loveliest of all the lyrical passages in Morris' narra- 
 tive poems except possibly the favourite two-part song in 
 " Ogier the Dane " : 
 
 "In the white-flower'd hawthorne brake, 
 Love, be merry for my sake : 
 Twine the blossoms in my hair, 
 Kiss me where I am most fair — 
 Kiss me, love ! for who knoweth 
 What thing cometh after death?" 
 
 This is the strain which recurs in all Morris' poetry with 
 the insistence of a burden, and lends its melancholy to 
 every season of " the rich year slipping by." 
 
 Three kinds of verse are employed in " The Earthly 
 Paradise": the octosyllabic couplet; the rime royal, 
 which was so much a favourite with Chaucer; and the 
 heroic couplet, handled in the free, "enjambed" fashion 
 of Hunt and Keats. 
 
 " Love is Enough," in the form of a fifteenth-century 
 morality play, and treating a subject from the " Mabino- 
 
 * Lang's translation. 
 
The Tre-^aphaelites. 333 
 
 gion," appeared in 1873. Mackail praises its delicate 
 mechanism in the use of " receding planes of action " 
 (Love is prologue and chorus, and there is a musical 
 accompaniment); but the dramatic form only emphasises 
 the essentially undramatic quality of the author's genius. 
 What is the matter with Morris' poetry? For something 
 is the matter with it. Beauty is there in abundance, a 
 rich profusion of imagery. The narrative moves with- 
 out a hitch. Passion is not absent, passionate love 
 and regret; but it speaks a sleepy language, and the 
 final impression is dream-like. I believe that the singu- 
 lar lack which one feels in reading these poems comes 
 from Morris' dislike of rhetoric and moralising, the two 
 main nerves of eighteenth-century verse. Left to them- 
 selves, these make sad work of poetry ; yet poetry includes 
 eloquence, and life includes morality. The poetry of 
 Morris is sensuous, as upon the whole poetry should be; 
 but in his resolute abstention from the generalizing habit 
 of the previous century, the balance is lost between the 
 general and the concrete, which all really great poetry 
 preserves. Byron declaims and Wordsworth moralises, 
 both of them perhaps too much ; yet in the end to the 
 advantage of their poetry, which is full of truths, or of 
 thoughts conceived as true, surcharged with emotion and 
 uttered with passionate conviction. One looks in vain 
 in Morris' pages for such things as 
 
 " There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away " ; 
 
 '^^ " — the good die first. 
 
 And thej' whose hearts are dry as summer dust, 
 
 Burn to the socket." 
 
 .Such coin of universal currency is rare in Morris, as 
 has once before been said. Not that quotability is an 
 
334 <^ History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 absolute test of poetic value; for then Pope would rank 
 higher than Spenser or Shelley. But its absence in 
 Morris is significant in more than one way. 
 
 While " The Earthly Paradise " was in course of com- 
 position, a new intellectual influence came into Morris' 
 life, the influence of the Icelandic sagas. Much had 
 been done to make Old Norse literature accessible to 
 English readers since the days when Gray put forth his 
 Runic scraps and Percy translated Mallet.* Walter 
 Scott, e.^., had given an abstract of the "Eyrbyggja 
 Saga." Amos Cottle had published at Bristol in 1797 a 
 metrical version of the mythological portion of the 
 " Elder Edda " (" Icelandic Poetry, or the Edda of Sae- 
 mund"), with an introductory verse epistle by Southey. 
 Sir George Dasent's translation of the "Younger Edda" 
 appeared in 1842; Laing's "Heimskringla" in 1844; 
 Dasent's " Burnt Nial " in 186 1 ; his " Gisli the Outlaw," 
 and Head's "Saga of Viga-Glum " in 1866. William 
 and Mary Howitt's " Literature and Romance of Northern 
 Europe" appeared in 1852. Morris had made the ac- 
 quaintance of Thorpe's "Northern Mythology" (1851) 
 and "Yuletide Stories" (1853) at Oxford; two of the 
 tales in " The Earthly Paradise " were suggested by them : 
 "The Land East of the Sun" and "The Fostering of 
 Aslaug." These, however, he had dealt with independ- 
 ently and in an ultra-romantic spirit. But in 1869 he 
 took up the study of Icelandic under the tuition of Mr. 
 Erick Magnusson; in collaboration with whom he is- 
 sued a number of translations.! " The Lovers of Gud- 
 run" in "The Earthly Paradise" was taken from the 
 
 * See vol. i. , pp. 190-92. 
 
 f The " Grettis Saga " (1869) : the " Vblsunga Saga " (1870) ; 
 "Three Northern Love Stories" (1875). 
 
The Tre-%apbaelites. 335 
 
 "Laxdaela Saga," and is in marked contrast with the 
 other poems in the collection. There is no romantic 
 glamour about it. It is a grim, domestic tragedy, mov- 
 ing among the homeliest surroundings. Save for the 
 lawlessness of a primitive state of society which gave 
 free play to the workings of the passions, the story might 
 have passed in Yorkshire or New England. A book like 
 " Wuthering Heights," or " Pembroke," occasionally ex- 
 hibits the same obstinate Berserkir rage of the tough old 
 Teutonic stock, operating under modern conditions. For 
 the men and women of the sagas are hard as iron; their 
 pride is ferocious, their courage and sense of duty inflex- 
 ible, their hatred is as enduring as their love. The 
 memory of a slight or an injury is nursed for a lifetime, 
 and when the hour of vengeance strikes, no compunction, 
 not even the commonest human instincts — such as mother 
 love — can avert the blow. Signy in the "Volsunga 
 Saga " is implacable as fate. To avenge the slaughter 
 of the Volsungs is with her an obsession, a fixed idea. 
 When incest seems the only pathway to her purpose, she 
 takes that path without a moment's hesitation. The con- 
 temptuous indifference with which she hands over her 
 own little innocent children to death is more terrible 
 than the readiness of the fierce Medea to sacrifice her 
 young brothers to Jason's safety; more terrible by far 
 than the matricide of Orestes. 
 
 The colossal mythology of the North had impressed 
 Gray's imagination a century before. Carlyle in his 
 " Hero Worship " (1840) had given it the preference over 
 the Greek, as an expression of race character and imag- 
 ination. In the preface to his translation of the "Vol- 
 sunga Saga," Morris declared his surprise that no ver- 
 
$S^ zA History of English '^{omanticism. 
 
 sion of the story yet existed in English, He said that it 
 was one of the great stories of the world, and that to all 
 men of Germanic blood it ought to be what the tale of 
 Troy had been to the whole Hellenic race. In 1876 he 
 cast it into a poem, " Sigurd the Volsung," in four books 
 in riming lines of six iambic or anapaestic feet. "The 
 Lovers of Gudrun " drew its material from one of that 
 class of sagas which rest upon historical facts. The 
 family vendetta which it narrates, in the Iceland of the 
 eleventh century, is hardly more fabulous — hardly less 
 realistic — than any modern blood feud in the Tennessee 
 mountains. The passions and dramatic situations are 
 much the same in both. The " Volsunga Saga " belongs 
 not to romantic literature, strictly speaking, but to the 
 old cycle of hero epics, to that earlier Middle Age which 
 preceded Christian chivalry. It is the Scandinavian 
 version of the story of the Niblungs, which Wagner's 
 music-dramas have rendered in another art. But in 
 common with romance, it abounds in superhuman wonders. 
 It is full of Eddaic poetry and mythology. Sigmund and 
 Sinfiotli change themselves into were wolves, like the peo- 
 ple in "William of Palermo": Sigurd slays Fafnir, the 
 dragon who guards the hoard, and his brother Regni, the 
 last of the Dwarf-kin; Grimhild bewitches Sigurd with 
 a cup of evil drink; Sigmund draws from the hall pillar 
 the miraculous sword of Odin, and its shards are after- 
 wards smithed by Regni for the killing of the monster. 
 
 Morris was so powerfully drawn to the Old Norse lit- 
 erature that he made two visits to Iceland, to verify the 
 local references in the sagas and to acquaint himself with 
 the strange Icelandic landscapes whose savage sublimity 
 is reflected in the Icelandic writings, " Sigurd the Vol- 
 
The Tre-I^apbaelites. 337 
 
 sung" is probably the most important contribution of 
 Norse literature to English poetry; but it met with no 
 such general acceptance as "The Earthly Paradise." 
 The spirit which created the Northern mythology and 
 composed the sagas is not extinct in the English descend- 
 ants of Frisians and Danes, There is something of it in 
 the minstrel ballads; but it has been so softened by 
 modem life and tempered with foreign culture elements, 
 that these old tales in their aboriginal, barbaric stern- 
 ness repel. It is hard for any blossom of modern poetry 
 to root itself in the scoriae of Hecla. 
 
 An indirect result of Morris' Icelandic studies was his 
 translation of Beowulf (1897), not a success; another was 
 the remarkable series of prose poems or romances, which 
 he put forth in the last ten years of his life.* There is 
 nothing else quite like these. They are written in a pe- 
 culiar archaic English which the author shaped for him- 
 self out of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century models, 
 like the " Morte Darthur " and the English translation of 
 the " Gesta Romanorum," but with an anxious preference 
 for the Saxon and Danish elements of the vocabulary. 
 It is a dialect in which a market town is called a 
 " cheaping-stead," a popular assembly a "folk-mote," 
 foresters are " wood-abiders," sailors are " ship-carles," 
 a family is a "kindred," poetry is " song-craft," t and 
 
 * These, in order of publication, were "The House of the 
 Wolfings" (1889) ; "The Roots of the Mountains" (1890) ; 
 "The Story of the Glittering Plain (1891) ; "The Wood Be- 
 yond the World" (1894) ; "The Well at the World's End" 
 (1896) ; "The Water of the Wondrous Isles" (1897) ; and 
 " The Sundering Flood " (1898). 
 
 f Morris became so intolerant of French vocables that he 
 detested and would "fain " have eschewed the very word lit- 
 erature. 
 
S2^ <v^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 any kind of enclosure is a "garth." The prose is fre- 
 quently interchanged with verse, not by way of lyrical 
 outbursts, but as a variation in the narrative method, 
 after the manner of the Old French cantejabks^ such as 
 " Aucassin et Nicolete " ; but more exactly after the man- 
 ner of the sagas, in which the azoic rock of Eddaic poetry 
 crops out ever and anon under the prose strata. This 
 Saxonism of style is in marked contrast with Scott, who 
 employs without question the highly latinised English 
 which his age had inherited from the last. Nor are 
 Morris' romances historical in the manner of the Waver- 
 ley novels. The first two of the series, however, are his- 
 torical in the sense that they endeavour to reproduce 
 in exact detail the picture of an extinct society. Time 
 and place are not precisely indicated, but the scene is 
 somewhere in the old German forest, and the period is 
 early in the Christian era, during the obscure wanderings 
 and settlements of the Gothic tribes. " The House of 
 the Wolfings " concerns the life of such a community, 
 which has made a series of clearings in " Mirkwood " on 
 a stream tributary to the Rhine. The folk of Midmark 
 live very much as Tacitus describes the ancient Germans 
 as living. Each kindred dwells in a great common hall, 
 like the hall of the Niblungs or the Volsungs, or of 
 King Hrothgar in "Beowulf." Their herding and agri- 
 culture are described, their implements and costumes, 
 feasts in hall, songs, rites of worship, public meetings, 
 and finally their warfare when they go forth against the 
 invading Romans. In " The Roots of the Mountains " 
 the tribe of the Wolf has been driven into the woods and 
 mountains by the vanguard of the Hunnish migrations. 
 In time they make head against these, drive them back, 
 
The Tre-%aphaelites. 339 
 
 and retake their fertile valley. In each case there is a 
 love story and, as in Scott, the private fortunes of the 
 hero and heroine are enwoven with the ongoings of pub- 
 lic events. But it is the general life of the tribe that is of 
 importance, and there is little individual characterisation. 
 There is a class of thralls in " The House of the Wolf- 
 ings," but no single member of the class is particular- 
 ised, like Garth, the thrall of Cedric, in " Ivanhoe." 
 
 The later numbers of the series have no semblance of 
 actuality. The last of all, indeed, "The Sundering 
 Flood," is a war story which attains an air of geograph- 
 ical precision by means of a map — like the plan of Egdon 
 Heath in " The Return of the Native " — but the region 
 and its inhabitants are alike fabulous. Romances such 
 as "The Water of the Wondrous Isles" and "The Wood 
 beyond the World " (the names are not the least imagi- 
 native feature of these curious books) are simply a new 
 kind of fairy tales. Unsubstantial as Duessa or Armida 
 or Circe or Morgan le Fay are the witch-queen of the Wood 
 beyond the World and the sorceress of the enchanted Isle 
 of Increase Unsought. The white Castle of the Quest, 
 with its three champions and their ladies, Aurea, Atra, 
 and Viridis ; the yellow dwarfs, the magic boat, the wicked 
 Red Knight, and his den, the Red Hold; the rings and 
 spells and charms and garments of invisibility are like 
 the wilder parts of Malory or the Arabian Nights. 
 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne was an early adherent of 
 the Pre-Raphaelite school, although such of his work 
 as is specifically Gothic is to be found mainly in the 
 first series of "Poems and Ballads" (1866);* a volume 
 
 * This collection is made up of Swinburne's earliest work, 
 but is antedated in point of publication by "The Queen 
 
340 «^ History of English %omanticism. 
 
 which corresponds to Morris' first fruits, " The Defence 
 of Guenevere." If Morris is prevailingly a Goth — a 
 heathen Norseman or Saxon — Swinburne is, upon the 
 whole, a Greek pagan. Rossetti and Morris inherit from 
 Keats, but Swinburne much more from Shelley, whom 
 he resembles in his Hellenic spirit,, as well as in his 
 lyric fervour, his shrill radicalism — political and relig- 
 ious — and his unchastened imagination. Probably the 
 cunningest of English metrical artists, his art is more 
 closely affiliated with music than with painting. Not 
 that there is any paucity of imagery in his poetry; the 
 imagery is superabundant, crowded, but it is blurred by 
 an iridescent spray of melodious verbiage. The confu- 
 sion of mind which his work often produces does not 
 arise from romantic vagueness, from the dreamlike and 
 mysterious impression left by a ballad of Coleridge's or 
 a story of Tieck's ; but rather, as in Shelley's case, from 
 the dizzy splendour and excitement of the diction. His 
 verse, like Shelley's, is full of foam and flame, and the 
 result upon the reader is to bewilder and exhaust. He 
 does not describe in pictures, like Rossetti and Morris, 
 but by metaphors, comparisons, and hyperboles. Take 
 the following very typical passage — the portrait of Iseult 
 in "Tristram of Lyonesse" (1882): 
 
 "The very veil of her bright flesh was made 
 As of light woven and moonbeam-colored shade 
 More fine than moonbeams ; white her eyelids shone 
 As snow sun-stricken that endures the sun. 
 And through their curled and coloured clouds of deep, 
 Luminous lashes, thick as dreams in sleep, 
 
 Mother, and Rosamond " (1861) dedicated to Rossetti ; apd 
 "Atalanta in Calydon " (1865). "Poems and Ballads" was 
 inscribed to Burne-Jones. 
 
The Tre-'T{aphaeUtes. 341 
 
 Shone, as the sea's depth swallowing up the sky's, 
 
 The springs of unimaginable eyes. 
 
 As the wave's subtler emerald is pierced through 
 
 With the utmost heaven's inextricable blue, 
 
 And both are woven and molten in one sleight 
 
 Of amorous colour and implicated light 
 
 Under the golden guard and gaze of noon, 
 
 So glowed their aweless amorous plenilune, 
 
 Azure and gold and ardent grey, made strange 
 
 With fiery difference and deep interchange 
 
 Inexplicable of glories multiform ; 
 
 Now, as the sullen sapphire swells towards storm 
 
 Foamless, their bitter beauty grew acold. 
 
 And now afire with ardour of fine gold. 
 
 Her flower-soft lips were meek and passionate, 
 
 For love upon them like a shadow sate 
 
 Patient, a foreseen vision of sweet things, 
 
 A dream with eyes fast shut and plumeless wings 
 
 That knew not what man's love or life should be, 
 
 Nor had it sight nor heart to hope or see 
 
 What thing should come ; but, childlike satisfied. 
 
 Watched out its virgin vigil in soft pride 
 
 And unkissed expectation ; and the glad 
 
 Clear cheeks and throat and tender temples had 
 
 Such maiden heat as if a rose's blood 
 
 Beat in the live heart of a lily-bud." 
 
 What distinct image of the woman portrayed does one 
 carry away from all this squandered wealth of words and 
 tropes? Compare the entire poem with one of Tenny- 
 son's Arthurian " Idyls," or even with Matthew Arnold's 
 not over-prosperous " Tristram and Iseult,"' or with any 
 of the stories in "The Earthly Paradise," and it will be 
 seen how far short it falls of being good verse narrative 
 — with its excesses of language and retarded movement. 
 Wordsworth said finely of Shakspere that he could not 
 have written an epic : " he would have perished from a 
 plethora of thought." It is not so much plethora of 
 thought as lavishness of style which clogs the wheels in 
 Swinburne. Too often his tale is 
 
342 nA History of English Romanticism. 
 
 "Like a tale of the little meaning, 
 Though the words are strong. " 
 
 But his narrative method has analogies, not only with 
 things like Shelley's " Laon and Cythna," but with Eliz- 
 abethan poems such as Marlowe and Chapman's " Hero 
 and Leander," If not so conceited as these, it is equally 
 encumbered with sticky sweets which keep the story from 
 getting forward. 
 
 The symbolism which characterises a great deal of 
 Pre-Raphaelite art is not conspicuous in Swinburne, 
 whose spirit is not mystical. But two marks of the Pre- 
 Raphaelite — and, indeed, of the romantic manner gen- 
 erally — are obtrusively present in his early work. One 
 of these is the fondness for microscopic detail at the 
 expense of the obvious, natural outlines of the subject. 
 Thus of Proserpine at Enna, in the piece entitled "At 
 Eleusis," 
 
 " — she lying down, red flowers 
 Made their sharp little shadows on her sides." 
 
 " Endymion " is, perhaps, partly responsible for this 
 exaggeration of the picturesque; and in Swinburne, as 
 in Keats, the habit is due to an excessive impressibility 
 by all forms of sensuous beauty. It is a sign of riches, 
 but of riches which smother their possessor. It is im- 
 possible to fancy Chaucer or Goethe, or any large, healthy 
 mind dealing thus by its theme. Or, indeed, contrast 
 the whole passage from " At Eleusis " with the mention 
 of the rape of Proserpine in the " Winter's Tale " and 
 in "Paradise Lost." 
 
 Another Pre-Raphaelite trait is that over-intensity of 
 spirit and sense which was not quite wholesome in Ros- 
 setti, but which manifested itself in Swinburne in a 
 
The Tre-^apbaelites. 343 
 
 morbid eroticism. The first series of " Poems and Bal- 
 lads" was reprinted in America as "Laus Veneris." 
 The name-poem was a version of the Tannhauser legend, 
 a powerful but sultry study of animal passion, and it set 
 the key of the whole volume. It is hardly necessary to 
 say of the singer of the wonderful choruses in " Atalanta " 
 and the equally wonderful hexameters of " Hesperia," 
 that his imagination has turned most persistently to the 
 antique, and that a very small share of his work is to be 
 brought under any narrowly romantic formula. But there 
 are a few noteworthy experiments in mediaevalism in- 
 cluded among these early lyrics. " A Christmas Carol " 
 is a ballad of burdens, suggested by a drawing of Ros- 
 setti's, and full of the Pre-Raphaelite colour. The in- 
 evitable damsels, or bower maidens, are combing out the 
 queen's hair with golden combs, while she sings a song 
 of God's mother; how she, too, had three women for her 
 bed-chamber — 
 
 "The first two were the two Maries, 
 The third was Magdalen, " * 
 
 who "was the likest God"; and how Joseph, who, like- 
 wise had three workmen, Peter, Paul, and John, said to 
 the Virgin in regular ballad style: 
 
 "If your child be none other man's. 
 But if it be very mine, 
 The bedstead shall be gold two spans, 
 The bedfoot silver fine." 
 
 *" Where the lady Mary is, 
 
 With her five handmaidens whose names 
 Are five sweet symphonies, 
 
 Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, 
 Margaret and Rosalys." 
 
 — "The Blessed Damozel." 
 
344 <^ History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 "The Masque of Queen Bersabe" is a miracle play, 
 and imitates the rough tidivet^ of the old Scriptural drama, 
 with its grotesque stage directions and innocent an- 
 achronisms. Nathan recommends King David to hear a 
 mass. All the dramatis perso?ice swear by Godis rood, by 
 Paulis head, and Peter's soul, except " Secundus Miles " 
 {^Paganus guidam), a bad man — a species of Vice — who 
 swears by Satan and Mahound, and is finally carried off 
 by the comic devil : 
 
 " S. M. I rede you in the devil's name, 
 
 Ye come not here to make men game ; 
 By Termagaunt that maketh grame, 
 I shall to-bete thine head. 
 Hie Diabolus capiat eum. " * 
 
 Similarly " St. Dorothy " reproduces the childlike faith 
 and simplicity of the old martyrologies.f Theophilus ad- 
 dresses the Emperor Gabaluswith "Beau Sire, Dieu vous 
 aide." The wicked Gabalus himself, though a heathen, 
 curses by St. Luke and by God's blood and bones, and 
 quotes Scripture. Theophilus first catches sight of 
 Dorothy through a latticed window, holding a green and 
 red psalter among a troop of maidens who play upon 
 short-stringed lutes. The temple of Venus where he does 
 his devotions is a " church " with stained-glass windows. 
 Heaven is a walled pleasance, like the Garden of De- 
 light in the " Roman de la Rose," 
 
 "Thick with companies 
 Of fair-clothed men that play on shawms and lutes." 
 
 Swinburne has also essayed the minstrel ballad in vari- 
 ous forms. There were some half-dozen pieces of the 
 
 * Cf. Browning's "The Heretic's Tragedy," supra, p. 276. 
 f This was the subject of Massinger's "Virgin Martyr." 
 
The Tre-'^phaelites. 345 
 
 sort in the " Laus Veneris " volume, of which several, 
 like "The King's Daughter " and "The Sea-Swallows," 
 were imitations of Rossetti's and Morris' imitations, ar- 
 tistically overwrought with elaborate Pre-Raphaelite re- 
 frains; others, like "May Janet" and "The Bloody 
 Son," are closer to popular models. The third series of 
 "Poems and Ballads" (1889) contains nine of these in 
 the Scotch dialect, two of them Jacobite songs. That 
 Swinburne has a fine instinct in such matters and holds 
 the true theory of ballad imitation is evident from his 
 review of Rossetti's and Morris' work in the same kind.* 
 "The highest form of ballad requires, from a poet," he 
 writes, " at once narrative power, lyrical and dramatic, 
 . , , It must condense the large, loose fluency of roman- 
 tic tale-telling into tight and intense brevity. , . , There 
 can be no pause in a ballad, and no excess; nothing that 
 flags, nothing that overflows." He pronounces " Sister 
 Helen" the greatest ballad in modern English; but he 
 thinks that " Stratton Water," which is less independent 
 in composition, and copies the formal as well as the es- 
 sential characteristics of popular poetry, is " a study after 
 the old manner too close to be no closer. It is not 
 meant for a perfect and absolute piece of work in the old 
 Border fashion, , , , and yet it is so far a copy that it 
 seems hardly well to have gone so far and no farther. 
 On this ground Mr. Morris has a firmer tread than the 
 great artist by the light of whose genius and kindly guid- 
 ance he put forth the first fruits of his work, as I did 
 afterwards. In his first book, the ballad of ' Welland 
 River,' the Christmas carol in ' The Land East of the 
 Sun and West of the Moon,' etc., ... are examples of 
 *" Essays and Studies," pp. 85-88. 
 
346 (vf History of English l^pmanticism. 
 
 flawless work in the pure early manner. Any less abso- 
 lute and decisive revival of mediaeval form . . . rouses 
 some sense of failure by excess or default of resem- 
 blance." 
 
 Swinburne's own ballads are clever and learned experi- 
 ments, but he does not practise the brevity which he 
 recommends; some of them, such as "The Bloody Son," 
 "The Weary Wedding," and "The Bride's Tragedy," 
 otherwise most impressive, would be more so if they were 
 shorter or less wordy. Though his genius is more lyrical 
 than dramatic, the fascination which the dramatic method 
 has had for him from the first is as evident in his bal- 
 lads as in his series of verse dramas, which begins with 
 " The Queen Mother," and includes the enormous " Mary 
 Stuart " trilogy. Several of these are mediaeval in sub- 
 ject; the "Rosamond" of his earliest volume — Fair 
 Rosamond of the Woodstock Maze — the other " Rosa- 
 mund, Queen of the Goths" (1899) in which the period 
 of the action is 573 a.d. ; and "Locrine" (1888), the 
 hero of which is that mythic king of Britain whose story 
 had been once before dramatised for the Elizabethan 
 stage; and whose dailghler»JlSabrina fair," goddess of 
 the Severn, figures in " Comus ." But these are no other- 
 wise romantic than " Chastelard " or " The Queen 
 Mother." The dramatic diction is fashioned after the 
 Elizabethans, of whom Swinburne has been an enthusi- 
 astic student and expositor, finding an attraction even in 
 the morbid horrors of Webster, Ford, and Tourneur.* 
 
 Once more the poet touched the Round-Table romances 
 
 *See "A Study of Ben Jonson " ; "John Ford" (in "Essays 
 and Studies ") ; and the introductions to " Chapman " and 
 "Middleton " in the Mermaid Series. 
 
The 'Pre-'T^aphaelites. 347 
 
 in "The Tale of Balen " (1896), written in the stanza of 
 "The Lady of Shalott," and in a style simpler and more 
 direct than " Tristram of Lyonesse." The story is the 
 same as Tennyson's "Balin and Balan," published with 
 "Tiresias and Other Poems" in 1885, as an introduction 
 to "Merlin and Vivien." Here the advantage is in 
 every point with the younger poet. Tennyson's version 
 is one of the weakest spots in the " Idylls." His hero is 
 a rough Northumberland warrior who looks with admira- 
 tion upon the courtly graces of Lancelot, and borrows a 
 cognisance from Guinevere to wear upon his shield, in 
 hope that it may help him to keep his temper. But hav- 
 ing once more lost control of this, he throws himself 
 upon the ground 
 
 "Moaning ' My violences, my violences !' " — 
 
 a bathetic descent not unexampled elsewhere in Tennyson. 
 This episode of the old " Morte Darthur " has fine 
 tragic possibilities. It is the tale of two brothers who 
 meet in single combat, with visors down, and slay each 
 other unrecognised. It has some resemblance, therefore, 
 to the plan of " Sohrab and Rustum," but it cannot be 
 said that either poet avails himself of the opportunity for 
 a truly dramatic presentation of his theme. Tennyson, 
 as we have seen, aimed to give epic unity to the wander- 
 ing and repetitious narrative of Malory, by selecting and 
 arranging his material with reference to one leading con- 
 ception ; the effort of the king to establish a higher social 
 state through an order of Christian knighthood, and his 
 failure through the gradual corruption of the Round 
 Table. He subdues the history of Balin to this purpose, 
 just as he does the history of Tristram which he relates 
 
348 <v^ History of English l^manticism. 
 
 incidentally only, and not for its own sake, in "The Last 
 Tournament." Balin's simple faith in the ideal chivalry 
 of Arthur's court is rudely dispelled when he hears from 
 Vivien, and sees for himself, that the two chief objects of 
 his reverence, Lancelot and the queen, are guilty lovers 
 and false to their lord; and in his bitter disappointment, 
 he casts his life away in the first adventure that offers. 
 Moreover, in consonance with his main design, Tenny- 
 son seeks, so far as may be, to discard whatever in 
 Malory is merely accidental or irrational ; whatever is 
 stuff of romance rather than of epic or drama — whose 
 theatre is the human will. To such elements of the 
 wonderful as he is obliged to retain he gives, where pos- 
 sible, an allegorical or spiritual significance. There are 
 very strange things in the story of Balin, such as the in- 
 visible knight Garlon, a "darkling manslayer"; and the 
 chamber in the castle of King Pellam, where the body of 
 Joseph of Arimathea lies in state, and where there are a 
 portion of the blood of Christ and the spear with which 
 his heart was pierced; with which spear Sir Balin smites 
 King Pellam, whereupon the castle falls and the two ad- 
 versaries lie among its ruins three days in a deathlike 
 trance. All this wild magic — ^which Tennyson touches 
 lightly — Swinburne gives at full length ; following Malory 
 closely through his digressions and the roving adventures 
 — most of which Tennyson suppresses entirely — by which 
 he conducts his hero to his end. This is the true roman- 
 tic method. 
 
 As Rossetti for the Italian and Morris for the Scandi- 
 navian, Swinburne stands for the spirit of French roman- 
 ticism. At the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 France, the inventor of "Gothic" architecture and chiv- 
 
The 7^re-%aphaelites. 349 
 
 airy romance, whose literature was the most influential 
 of mediaeval Europe, still represented everything that is 
 most anti-mediaeval and anti-romantic. Gerard de Nerval 
 thought that the native genius of France had been buried 
 under two ages of imported classicism ; and that Per- 
 rault, who wrote the fairy tales, was the only really orig- 
 inal mind in the French literature of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. M. Brunetiere, on the contrary, holds that the true 
 expression of the national genius is to be found in the 
 writers of Louis XIV. 's time — that France is instinctively 
 and naturally classical. However this may be, in the 
 history of the modern return to the past, French roman- 
 ticism was the latest to awake. Somewhat of the chron- 
 icles, fabliaux, and romances of old France had dribbled 
 into England in translations;* but Swinburne was per- 
 haps the first thoroughpaced disciple of the French ro- 
 mantic school. Victor Hugo is the god of his idolatry, 
 and he has chanted his praise in prose and verse, in 
 "ode and elegy and sonnet. "f Gautier and Baudelaire 
 have also shared his devotion.]; The French songs in 
 "Rosamond" and " Chastelard " are full of romantic 
 spirit. "Laus Veneris" follows a version of the tale 
 given in Maistre Antoine Gaget's "Livre des grandes 
 merveilles d'amour" (1530), in which the Venusberg is 
 called "le mont Horsel"; and "The Leper," a very 
 
 * Vtde supra, pp. 90, 109, 330, and vol. i., pp. 221-22, 301. 
 
 f See especially "A Study of Victor Hugo" (1886) ; the ar- 
 ticles on "L'Homme qui Rit " and "L'Annee Terrible" in 
 "Essays and Studies" C1875) ; and on Hugo's posthumous 
 writings in " Studies in Prose and Poetry" (1886) ; "To Vic- 
 tor Hugo" in "Poems and Ballads" (first series) ; Ibid, (sec- 
 ond series) ; "Victor Hugo in 1877," Ibid. 
 
 tSee "Ave atque Vale" and the memorial verses in Eng- 
 lish, French, and Latin on Gautier's death in "Poems and 
 Ballads " (second series) . 
 
35° '^ History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 characteristic piece in the same collection, is founded 
 on a passage in the "Grandes Chroniques de France" 
 (1505). Swinburne introduced or revived in English 
 verse a number of old French stanza forms, such as the 
 ballade, the sestina, the rondel, which have since grown 
 familiar in the hands of Dobson, Lang, Gosse, and 
 others. In the second series of '* Poems and Ballads " 
 (1878) he gave translations of ten of the ballads of that 
 musical old blackguard 
 
 "Villon, our sad, bad, glad, mad brother's name."* 
 
 The range of Swinburne's intellectual interests has 
 been wider than that of Rossetti and Morris. He is a 
 classical scholar, who writes easily in Latin and Greek. 
 Ancient mythology and modern politics divide his atten- 
 tion with the romantic literatures of many times and 
 countries. Rossetti made but one or two essays in prose 
 criticism, and Morris viewed the reviewer's art with con- 
 tempt. But Swinburne has contributed freely to critical 
 literature, an advocate of the principles of romantic art 
 in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as Cole- 
 ridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt had been in the first. The man- 
 ner of his criticism is not at all judicial. His prose is 
 as lyrical as his verse, and his praise and blame both in 
 excess — dithyrambic laudation or affluent billingsgate. 
 In particular, he works the adjective "divine" so hard 
 that it loses meaning. Yet stripped of its excited super- 
 latives, and reduced to the cool temperature of ordinary 
 speech, his critical work is found to be full of insight, 
 and his judgment in matters of poetical technique almost 
 always right. I may close this chapter with a few sen- 
 
 *" A Ballad of Frangois Villon." Vz'iie supra, pp. 298-99. 
 
The Tre-%aphaelites. 351 
 
 tences of his defence of retrospective literature.* "It is 
 but waste of breath for the champions of the other party 
 to bid us break the yoke and cast off the bondage of that 
 past, leave the dead to bury their dead, and turn from 
 the dust and rottenness of old-world themes, epic or 
 romantic, classical or feudal, to face the age wherein we 
 live. ... In vain, for instance, do the first poetess of 
 England and the first poet of America agree to urge upon 
 their fellows or their followers the duty of confronting 
 and expressing the spirit and the secret of their own time, 
 its meaning, and its need. ... If a poem cast in the 
 mould of classic or feudal times, of Greek drama or medi- 
 aeval romance, be lifeless and worthless, it is not because 
 the subject or the form was ancient, but because the poet 
 was inadequate. . . . For neither epic nor romance of 
 chivalrous quest or classic war is obsolete yet, or ever 
 can be; there is nothing in the past extinct . . . [Life] 
 is omnipresent and eternal, and forsakes neither Athens 
 nor Jerusalem, Camelot nor Troy, Argonaut nor Cru- 
 sader, to dwell, as she does with equal good will, among 
 modem appliances in London and New York." 
 
 *" Essays and Studies," pp. 45-49- 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 tendencies anD "Vieeulte, 
 
 It has been mentioned that romanticism was not purely 
 a matter of aesthetics, without relation to the movement 
 of religious and political thought.* But it has also been 
 pointed out that, as compared with what happened in 
 Germany, English romanticism was almost entirely a lit- 
 erary or artistic, and hardly at all a practical force; that 
 there was no such Zusanimenhang between poetry and 
 life as was asserted by the German romantic school to 
 be one of their leading principles. Walter Scott, e.g.^ 
 liked the Middle Ages because they were picturesque; 
 because their social structure rested on a military basis, 
 permitted great individual freedom of action and even 
 lawlessness, and thus gave chances for bold adventure; 
 and because classes and callings were so sharply differ- 
 entiated — each with its own characteristic manners, dia- 
 lect, dress — that the surface of society presented a rich 
 variety of colour, in contrast with the drab uniformity 
 of modern life. Perhaps to Scott the ideal life was that 
 of a feudal baron, dwelling in a Gothic mansion, sur- 
 rounded by retainers and guests, keeping open house, and 
 going a-hunting; and he tried to realise this ideal — so 
 far as it was possible under modern conditions — at Ab- 
 botsford. He respected rank and pedigree, and liked to 
 
 *See vol. i., pp. 31-32. 
 
 352 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 353 
 
 own land. He was a Tory and, in Presbyterian Scot- 
 land, he was an Episcopalian. But his mediaeval enthu- 
 siasms were checked by all kinds of good sense. He 
 had no wish to restore mediaeval institutions in practice, 
 In spite of the glamour which he threw over feudal life, 
 he knew very well what that life must have been in real- 
 ity : its insecurity from violence and oppression, its bar- 
 barous discomfort; the life of nobles in unplumbed stone 
 castles; the life of burghers in walled towns, without 
 lighting, drainage, or police; the life of countrymen who 
 took their goods to market over miry roads impassable 
 half the year for any wheeled vehicle. As to the Eng- 
 lish poets whom we have passed in review, from Cole- 
 ridge to Swinburne, not one of them joined the Catholic 
 Church; and most of them found romantic literary tastes 
 quite consistent with varying shades of political liberal- 
 ism and theological heterodoxy. 
 
 The Anglo-Catholic Movement. — Still even in Eng- 
 land, the mediaeval revival in art and letters was not 
 altogether without influence on practice and belief in 
 other spheres of thought. Thus the Oxford Tractarians of 
 1833 correspond somewhat to the throne-and-altar party 
 in Germany. At Newcastle in 1845, William Bell Scott 
 visited a painted-glass manufactory where he found his 
 friend, Francis Oliphant — afterwards husband of Marga- 
 ret Oliphant, the novelist — engaged as a designer. He 
 describes Oliphant as no artist by nature, but a man 
 of pietistic feelings who had "thrown himself into the 
 Gothic revival which was, under the Oxford movement, 
 threatening to become a serious antagonist to our present 
 freedom from clerical domination." Scott adds that the 
 master of this glass-making establishment was an un- 
 
354 <^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 cultivated tradesman, who yet had the business shrewd- 
 ness to take advantage of "the clerical and architectural 
 proclivities of the day," and had visited and studied the 
 French cathedrals, " These workshops were a surprise 
 to me. Here was the Scotch Presbyterian working-artist, 
 with a short pipe in his mouth, cursing his fate in having 
 to elaborate continual repetitions of saints and virgins — 
 Peter with a key as large as a spade, and a yellow plate 
 behind his head — yet by constant drill in the groove 
 realising the sentiment of Christian art, and at last able 
 to express the abnegation of self, the limitless sadness 
 and even tenderness, in every line of drapery and every 
 twist of the lay figure." 
 
 Here is one among many testimonies to the influence 
 of the Oxford movement on the fine arts. It would be 
 r easy to call witnesses to prove the reverse — the influence 
 ' of romance upon the Oxford movement. Newman * 
 quotes an article contributed by him to the British Critic 
 for April, 1839, in which he had spoken of Tractarian- 
 ism "as a reaction from the dry and superficial character 
 >^ of the religious teaching and the literature of the last 
 generation, or century. . . . First, I mentioned the liter- 
 ary influence of Walter Scott, who turned men's minds to 
 the direction of the Middle Ages. ' The general need,' I 
 said, ' of something deeper and more attractive than what 
 had offered itself elsewhere may be considered to have 
 led to his popularity; and by means of his popularity he 
 reacted on his readers, stimulating their mental thirst, 
 feeding their hopes, setting before them visions which, 
 when once seen, are not easily forgotten, and silently in- 
 doctrinating them with nobler ideas, which might after- 
 *" Apologia pro Vita Sua," p. 139. 
 
tendencies and %esults. 355 
 
 wards be appealed to as first principles.' " Of Coleridge 
 he spoke, in the same paper, as having laid a philosoph- 
 ical basis for church feelings and opinions; and of 
 Southey and Wordsworth as "two living poets, one of 
 whom in the department of fantastic fiction, the other in 
 that of philosophical meditation, have addressed them- 
 selves to the same high principles and feelings, and car- 
 ried forward their readers in the same direction." New- 
 man, like Ruskin, was fond of Scott's verse as well as of 
 his prose.* 
 
 Professor Gates has well recognised that element in 
 romantic art which affiliates with Catholic tendencies. 
 "Mediaevalism . . . was a distinctive note of the Ro- 
 mantic spirit, and, certainly, Newman was intensely alive 
 to the beauty and the poetic charm of the life of the 
 Middle Ages. One is sometimes tempted to describe 
 him as a great mediaeval ecclesiastic astray in the nine- 
 teenth century and heroically striving to remodel modern 
 life in harmony with his temperamental needs. His im- 
 agination was possessed with the romantic vision of the 
 greatness of the Mediaeval Church — of its splendour and 
 pomp and dignity, and of its power over the hearts and 
 lives of its members ; and the Oxford movement was in 
 its essence an attempt to reconstruct the English Church 
 
 *"It would require the . . . magic pen of Sir Walter to 
 catalogue and to picture . . . that most miserable proces- 
 sion " ("Callista: a Sketch of the Third Century," 1855; 
 chapter, " Christianos ad Leones ") . It is curious to compare 
 this tale of the early martyrs, Newman's solitary essay in 
 historical romance, with "Hypatia." It has the intellectual 
 refinement of everything that came from its author's pen ; and 
 it has strong passages like the one describing the invasion of 
 the locusts. But. upon the whole, Newman was as inferior to 
 Kingsley as a novelist as he was superior to him in the dia- 
 lectics of controversy. 
 
356 c/^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 J in harmony with this romantic ideal. ... As Scott's im- 
 agination was fascinated with the picturesque parapher- 
 nalia of feudalism — with its jousts, and courts of love, and 
 its coats of mail and buff-jerkins — ^so Newman's imagi- 
 nation was captivated by the gorgeous ritual and ceremo- 
 nial, the art and architecture of mediaeval Christianity. 
 . . . Newman sought to revive in the Church a mediae- 
 val faith in its own divine mission and the intense 
 spiritual consciousness of the Middle Ages; he aimed 
 to restore to religion its mystical character, to exalt the 
 sacramental system as the divinely appointed means for 
 the salvation of souls, and to impose once more on men's 
 imaginations the mighty spell of a hierarchical organi- 
 sation, the direct representative of God in the world's 
 affairs. . . . Both he and Scott substantially ruined 
 themselves through their mediaevalism. Scott's luckless 
 attempt was to place his private and family life upon a 
 feudal basis and to give it mediaeval colour and beauty; 
 Newman undertook a much nobler and more heroic but 
 more intrinsically hopeless task — that of re-creating the 
 whole English Church in harmony with mediaeval con- 
 ceptions." * 
 
 All this is most true, and yet it is easy to exaggerate 
 the share which romantic feeling had in the Oxford 
 movement. In his famous apostrophe to Oxford, Mat- 
 thew Arnold personifies the university as a " queen of 
 romance," an " adorable dreamer whose heart has been so 
 romantic," " spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and 
 whispering from her towers the last enchantments of 
 the Middle Age," and " ever calling us nearer to . . . 
 
 *See the entire section "Selections from Newman," by 
 ^^ Lewis PI Gates, New York, 1895. Introduction, pp. xlvi-lix. 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 357 
 
 beauty." Newman himself was a poet, as well as one of 
 the masters of English prose. The movement left an 
 impress upon general literature in books like Keble's 
 "Christian Year" (1827) and "Lyra Innocentium " 
 (1847) ; ^" Newman's two novels, " Callista " and "Loss 
 and Gain" (1848), and his "Verses on Various Occa- 
 sions" (1867); and even found an echo in popular fic- 
 tion. Grey in Hughes' "Tom Brown at Oxford " repre- 
 sents the Puseyite set. Miss Yonge's " Heir of Redcliffe " 
 and Shorthouse's "John Inglesant" are surcharged with 
 High-Church sentiment. Newman said that Keble made 
 the Church of England poetical. " The author of ' The 
 Christian Year ' found the Anglican system all but des- 
 titute of this divine element [poetry]; , . . vestments 
 chucked off, lights quenched, jewels stolen, the pomp 
 and circumstances of worship annihilated; . . . the royal 
 arms for the crucifix; huge ugly boxes of wood, sacred to 
 preachers, frowning on the congregation in place of the 
 mysterious altar; and long cathedral aisles unused, railed 
 off, like the tombs (as they were) of what had been and 
 was not." * Newman praises in " The Christian Year " 
 what he calls its " sacramental system " ; and to the un- 
 sympathetic reader it seems as though Keble saw all 
 outdoors through a stained-glass window. The move- 
 ment had its aesthetic side, and coincided with the revival 
 of church Gothic and with the effort to make church 
 music and ritual richer and more impressive. But, upon 
 the whole, it was more intellectual than aesthetic, an 
 affair of doctrine and church polity rather than of eccle- 
 siology; while the later phase of ritualism into which it 
 has tapered down appears to the profane to be largely a 
 *" Essays Critical and Historical" (1846). 
 
35^ <tA History of English 1{omanticism. 
 
 matter of upholstery, given over to people who concern 
 themselves with the carving of lecterns and the embroid- 
 ery of chasubles and altar cloths ; with Lent lilies, antiph- 
 onal choirs, and what Carlyle calls the " singular old 
 rubrics" of the English Church and the "three surplices 
 at All-Hallowmas," 
 
 Newman was, above all things, a theologian ; a subtle 
 reasoner whose relentless logic led him at last to Rome. 
 " From the age of fifteen," he wrote, " dogma has been 
 the fundamental principle of my religion; I know no 
 other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other 
 sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me 
 a dream and a mockery." Discussions concerning church 
 ceremonies, liturgy, ritual, he put aside with some im- 
 patience. His own tastes were simple to asceticism. 
 Mozley says that Newman and Hurrell Froude induced 
 several of the Oriel fellows to discontinue the use of 
 wine in the common room. " When I came up at 
 Easter, 1825, one of the first standing jokes against the 
 college all over the university was the Oriel tea-pot." * 
 Dean Church testifies to the plainness of the services at 
 St. Mary's.f Aubrey de Vere reports his urging New- 
 man to make an expedition with him among the Wicklow 
 Mountains, and the latter's " answering with a smile that 
 life was full of work more important than the enjoyment 
 of mountains and lakes. . . . The ecclesiastical imagi- 
 nation and the mountain-worshipping imagination are two 
 very different things. Wordsworth's famous ' Tintern 
 Abbey ' describes the river Wye, etc. . . . The one 
 thing which it did not see was the great monastic ruin ; 
 
 *" Reminiscences," Thomas Mozley, Boston, 1882. 
 f "Life and Letters of Dean Church," London, 1894. 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 359 
 
 . . . and now here is this great theologian, who, when 
 within a few miles of Glendalough Lake, will not visit 
 it."* 
 
 There is much gentle satire in " Loss and Gain " at 
 the expense of the Ritualistic set in the university who 
 were attracted principally by the external beauty of the 
 Roman Catholic worship. One of these is Bateman, a 
 solemn bore, who takes great interest in "candlesticks, 
 ciboriums, faldstools, lecterns, ante-pendiums, piscinas, 
 roodlofts, and sedilia " : wears a long cassock which 
 shows absurdly under the tails of his coat; and would 
 tolerate no architecture but Gothic in English churches, 
 and no music but the Gregorian. Bateman is having a 
 chapel restored in pure fourteenth-century style and dedi- 
 cated to the Royal Martyr. He is going to convert the 
 chapel into a chantry, and has bought land about it for 
 a cemetery, which is to be decorated with mediaeval mon- 
 uments in sculpture and painting copied from the frescoes 
 in the Campo Santo at Pisa, of which he has a portfolio 
 full of drawings. "It will be quite sweet," he says, "to 
 hear the vesper-bell tolling over the sullen moor every 
 evening." Then there is White, a weak young aesthete 
 who shocks the company by declaring : " We have no life 
 or poetry in the Church of England; the Catholic Church 
 alone is beautiful. You would see what I mean if you 
 went into a foreign cathedral, or even into one of the 
 Catholic churches in our large towns. The celebrant, 
 deacon and sub-deacon, acolytes with lights, the incense 
 and the chanting all combine to one end, one act of 
 worship." White is much exercised by the question 
 whether a sacristan should wear the short or the long 
 * "Recollections of Aubrey de Vere," London, 1897. 
 
360 c/f History of English ^{omanticism. 
 
 cotta. But he finally marries and settles down into a fat 
 preferment. 
 
 Newman's sensitiveness to the beauty of Catholic re- 
 *'' ligion is acute. " Her very being is poetry," he writes. 
 But equally acute is his sense of the danger under which 
 religion lies from the ministration of the arts, lest they 
 cease to be handmaids, and '* give the law to Religion." 
 Hence he praises, from an ecclesiastical point of view, 
 the service of the arts in their rudimental state — the rude 
 Gothic sculpture, the simple Gregorian chant.* A simi- 
 lar indifference to the merely aesthetic aspects of Cathol- 
 icism is recorded of many of Newman's associates; of 
 Hurrell Froude, e.g., and of Ward. When Pugin came 
 to Oxford in 1840 to superintend some building at Bal- 
 liol, he saw folio copies of St. Buonaventura and Aquinas' 
 " Summa Theologiae " lying on Ward's table, and ex- 
 claimed, " What an extraordinary thing that so glorious 
 a man as Ward should be living in a room without mul- 
 lions to the windows ! " This being reported to Ward, he 
 asked, "What are mullions? I never heard of them." 
 Ward cared nothing about rood-screens and lancet win- 
 dows; Newman and Faber preferred the Palladian archi- 
 tecture to the Gothic.t Pugin, on the other hand, who 
 had been actually converted to the Roman Church through 
 
 *"Ideaof a University" (1852). See also in "Parochial 
 and Plain Sermons " the discourse on "The Danger of Accom- 
 plishments, " and that on "The Gospel Palaces." In the lat- 
 ter he writes, speaking of the cathedrals : " Unhappy they 
 who, while they have eyes to admire, admire them only for 
 their beauty's sake ; . . . who regard them as works of art, 
 not fruits of grace." 
 
 f Cardinal Wiseman had a decided preference for Renais- 
 sance over Gothic, and the churches built under his authority 
 were mostly in Italian styles. 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 361 
 
 his enthusiasm for pointed architecture; and who, when 
 asked to dinner, stipulated for Gothic puddings, for 
 which he enclosed designs, was greatly distressed at the 
 carelessness about such matters which he found at Ox- 
 ford. A certain Dr. Cox was going to pray for the con- 
 version of England, in an old French cope. " What is 
 the use," asked Pugin, " of praying for the Church of 
 England in that cope.' " * 
 
 Of the three or four hundred Anglican clergymen who 
 went over with Newman in 1845, ^^ some years later 
 with Manning, on the decision in the Gorham contro- 
 versy, few were influenced in any assignable degree by 
 poetic motives. "As regards my friend's theory about 
 my imaginative sympathies having led me astray," writes 
 Aubrey de Vere, " I may remark that they had been re- 
 pelled, not attracted, by what I thought an excess of cere- 
 monial in the churches and elsewhere when in Italy. 
 ... It seemed to me too sensuous." f Indeed, at the 
 outset of the movement it was not the mediaeval Church, 
 but the primitive Church, the Church of patristic discipline 
 and doctrine, that appealed to the Tractarians. It was 
 the Anglican Church of the seventeenth century, the 
 Church of Andrewes and Herbert and Ken, to which 
 Keble sought to restore the " beauty of holiness " ; and 
 those of the Oxford party who remained within the estab-/ 
 lishment continued true to this ideal. "The Christian 
 Year" is the genuine descendant of George Herbert's 
 "Temple" (1632). What impressed Newman's imagi- 
 nation in the Roman Catholic Church was not so much the 
 
 *" William George Ward and the Oxford Movement," Lon- 
 don, 1889, pp. 153-55- 
 f " Recollections, " p. 309. 
 
362 e/^ History of English %omanticism. 
 
 romantic beauty of its rites and observances as its im- 
 posing unity and authority. He wanted an authoritative 
 standard in matters of belief, a faith which had been 
 held semper et ubique et ab omnibus. The English Church 
 was an Elizabethan compromise. It was Erastian, a 
 creature of the state, threatened by the Reform Bill of 
 1832, threatened by every liberal wind of opinion. The 
 Thirty-nine Articles meant this to one man and that to an- 
 other, and there was no court of final appeal to say what 
 they meant. Newman was a convert not of his imagina- 
 tion, but of his longing for consistency and his desire to 
 believe. 
 
 There is nothing romantic in either temper or style 
 about Newman's poems, all of which are devotional in 
 subject, and one of which — "The Pillar of the Cloud" 
 ("Lead, Kindly Light") (1833) — is a favourite hymn in 
 most Protestant communions. The most ambitious of 
 these is "The Dream of Gerontius," a sort of mystery 
 play which Sir Henry Taylor used to compare with the 
 " Divine Comedy." Indeed, none but Dante has more 
 poignantly expressed the purgatorial passion, the desire 
 for pain, which makes the spirits in the flames of purifi- 
 cation unwilling to intermit their torments even for a 
 moment. The " happy, suffering soul " of Gerontius lies 
 before the throne of the Crucified and sings : 
 
 "Take me away, and in the lowest deep 
 There let me be. 
 And there in hope the lone night-watches keep 
 Told out for me. " * 
 
 * Frederick William Faber, one of the Oxford men who 
 went over with Newman in 1845, and became Superior of the 
 Orator J' of St. Philip Neri, was a religious poet of some dis- 
 tinction. A collection of his hymns was published in 1862. 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 363 
 
 Some dozen years before the " Tracts for the Times " 
 began to appear at Oxford, a sporadic case of conversion 
 at the sister university offers a closer analogy with the 
 catholicising process among the German romantics. 
 Kenelm Henry Digby, who took his degree at Trinity] 
 College in 18 19, and devoted himself to the study of' 
 mediaeval antiquities and scholastic philosophy, was 
 actually led into the Catholic fold by his enthusiasm for 
 the chivalry romances, as Pugin was by his love of GothiC- 
 architecture. His singular book, "The Broad Stone of 
 Honour," was first published in 1822, and repeatedly 
 afterwards in greatly enlarged form. In its final edition 
 it consists of four books entitled respectively " Godefri- 
 dus," "Tancredus," "Morus" (Sir Thomas More), and 
 "Orlandus," after four representative paladins of Chris- 
 tian chivalry. The title of the whole work was suggested 
 by the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, the "Gibraltar of the 
 Rhine." Like Fouque, Digby was inspired by the ideal 
 of knighthood, but he emphasises not so much the gal- 
 lantry of the knight-errant as his religious character as 
 the champion of Holy Church. The book is, loosely 
 speaking, an English "Genie du Christianisme," less 
 brilliantly rhetorical than Chateaubriand, but more sin- 
 cerely devout. It is poetic and descriptive rather than 
 polemical, though the author constantly expresses his 
 dislike of modern civilisation, and complains with Burke 
 that this is an age of sophists, calculators, and econo- 
 mists. He quotes profusely from German and French 
 reactionaries, like Busching,* Fritz Stolberg, Gorres, 
 Friedrich Schlegel, Lamennais, and Joseph de Maistre; 
 and illustrates his topic at every turn from mediaeval 
 ♦"Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen." 
 
364 <i/J History of English l^otnanticism. 
 
 chronicles, legendaries, romances, and manuals of chiv- 
 alry ; from the lives of Charlemagne, St. Louis, Godfrey 
 of Bouillon, the Chevalier Bayard, St. Anselm, King 
 Rene, etc., and above all, from the " Morte Darthur." He 
 defends the Crusades, the Templars, and the monastic 
 orders against such historians as Muller, Sismondi, and 
 Hume; is very contemptuous of the Protestant conces- 
 sions of Bishop Hurd's " Letters on Chivalry and Ro- 
 mance " ; * and, in short, fights a brave battle against the 
 artillery of "the moderns" vi^ith weapons borrowed from 
 "the armoury of the invincible knights of old." The 
 book is learned, though unsystematic and discursive, but 
 its most interesting feature is its curiously personal note, 
 its pure spirit of honour and Catholic piety. The en- 
 thusiasm of the author extends itself from the institutes 
 of chivalry and the Church to the social and political 
 constitution of the Middle Ages. He is anti-democratic 
 as well as anti-Protestant; upholds monarchy, nobility, 
 the interference of the popes in the affairs of kingdoms, 
 and praises the times when the doctrines of legislation 
 and government all over Europe rested on the founda- 
 tions of the Church. 
 
 A few paragraphs from " The Broad Stone of Honour " 
 will illustrate the author's entrance into the Church 
 through the door of beauty, and his identification of ro- 
 mantic art with " the art Catholic." " It is much to be 
 lamented," he writes, "that the acquaintance of the 
 English reader with the characters and events of the 
 Middle Ages should, for the most part, be derived from 
 the writings of men who were either infidels, or who wrote 
 on every subject connected with religion, with the feel- 
 *See vol. i., pp. 221-26. 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 365 
 
 ings and opinions of Scotch Presbyterian preachers of 
 the last century." * "A distinguishing characteristic of 
 everything belonging to the early and Middle Ages of 
 Christianity is the picturesque. Those who now strug- 
 gle to cultivate the fine arts are obliged to have recourse 
 to the despised, and almost forgotten, houses, towns, and 
 dresses of this period. As soon as men renounced the 
 philosophy of the Church, it was inevitable that their 
 taste, that the form of objects under their control, should 
 change with their religion; for architects had no longer 
 to provide for the love of solitude, of meditation between 
 sombre pillars, of modesty in apartments with the lancet- 
 casement. They were not to study duration and solidity 
 in an age when men were taught to regard the present as 
 their only concern. When nothing but exact knowledge 
 was sought, the undefined sombre arches were to be re- 
 moved to make way for lines which would proclaim their 
 brevity, and for a blaze of light which might correspond 
 with the mind of those who rejected every proposition 
 that led beyond the reach of the senses. ... So com- 
 pletely is it beyond the skill of the painter or the poet 
 to render bearable the productions of the moderns, . . . 
 and so fast are the poor neglected works of Christian 
 antiquity falling to ruin, that it is hard to conceive how 
 the fine arts can be cultivated after another century has 
 elapsed; for when children are taught in infant schools 
 to love accounts from their cradle, and to study political 
 economy before they have heard of the Red Cross Knight 
 or the Wild Hunter, the manner and taste of such an age 
 will smother the sparks of nature." f The Church sum- 
 
 *Vol. ii.. p. 44 (ed. 1846). 
 \lbid., pp. 315-16- 
 
366 z/1 History of English Romanticism. 
 
 moned all natural beauty to the ministry of religion. 
 "Flowers bloomed on the altars; men could behold the 
 blue heaven through those tall, narrow-pointed eastern 
 windows of the Gothic choir as they sat at vespers. . . . 
 The cloud of incense breathed a sweet perfume; the 
 voice of youth was tuned to angelic hymns; and the 
 golden sun of the morning, shining through the coloured 
 pane, cast its purple or its verdant beam on the embroid- 
 ered vestments and marble pavement." * Or read the 
 extended rhapsody which closes the first volume, where, 
 to counteract the attractions of classic lands, the author 
 passes in long review the sites and monuments of ro- 
 mance in England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France. 
 Aubrey de Vere says that nothing had been so " impres- 
 sive, suggestive, and spiritually helpful " to him as New- 
 man's "Lectures on Anglican Difficulties" (1850), "with 
 the exception of the ' Divina Commedia ' and Kenelm 
 Digby's wholly uncontroversial ' Mores Catholici ' " 
 (1831-40). 
 
 The Study of Mediaeval Art. — The correlation of 
 romantic poetry, Catholic worship, and mediaeval art has 
 been indicated in the chapter upon the Pre-Raphaelites, 
 as well as in the foregoing section of the present chapter. 
 But the three departments have other tangential points 
 which should not pass without some further mention. 
 The revival of Gothic architecture which began with 
 Horace Walpole f went on in an unintelligent way through 
 the eighteenth century. One of the queerest monuments 
 of this new taste — a successor on a larger scale to Straw- 
 berry Hill — was Fonthill Abbey, near Salisbury, that 
 
 * Ibid., p. 350. 
 
 f See vol. i., chap, vii., "The Gothic Revival." 
 
Tendencies and 'Results. 367 
 
 prodigious folly to which Beckford, the eccentric author 
 of " Vathek," devoted a great share of his almost fabu- 
 lous wealth. It was begun in 1796, took nearly thirty 
 year> in building, employed at one time four hundred 
 and sixty men, and cost over ^^273, 000. Its most con- 
 spicuous feature was an octagonal tower 278 feet high, so 
 ill constructed that it shortly tumbled down into a heap 
 of ruins.* 
 
 The growing taste for mediaeval architecture was pow- 
 erfully reinforced by the popularity of Water Scott's 
 writings. But Abbotsford is evidence enough of the 
 superficiality of his own knowledge of the art; and dur- 
 ing the first half of the nineteenth century, Gothic design 
 was applied not to churches, but to the more ambitious 
 classes of domestic architecture. The country houses of 
 the nobility and landed gentry were largely built or re- 
 built in what was known as the castellated style, f Mean- 
 while a truer understanding of the principles of pointed 
 architecture was being helped by the publication of 
 archaeological works like Britton's "Cathedral Antiqui- 
 ties" (1814-35), Milner's "Treatise on Ecclesiastical 
 Architecture" (18 11), and Rickman's "Ancient Exam- 
 ples of Gothic Architecture " (18 19). The parts of indi- 
 vidual buildings, such as Westminster Abbey and Lin- 
 
 * A view of Fonthill Abbey, as it appeared in 1822. is given 
 in Fergusson's "History of Modern Architecture," vol. ii., 
 p. 98 (third ed.). 
 
 fFor Scott's influence on Gothic see Eastlake's "Gothic 
 Revival," pp. 112-16. A typical instance of this castellated 
 style in America was the old New York University in Wash- 
 ington Square, built in the thirties. This is the " Chrysalis Col- 
 lege " which Theodore Winthrop ridicules in " Cecil Dreeme " 
 for its "mock-Gothic" pepper-box turrets, and "deciduous 
 plaster." Fan traceries in plaster and window traceries in 
 cast iron were abominations of this period. 
 
368 <iA History of English ^Romanticism. 
 
 coin Cathedral, were carefully studied and illustrated 
 with plans and sections drawn to scale ; and measurement 
 was substituted for guesswork. But the real restorer of 
 ecclesiastical Gothic in England was Augustus Welby 
 Northmore Pugin, an enthusiast, nay, a fanatic, in the 
 cause; whose "Contrasts" (1836) is not only a landmark 
 in the history of the revival of mediaeval art, but a most 
 instructive illustration of the manner in which an aes- 
 thetic admiration of the Middle Ages has sometimes in- 
 volved an acceptance of their religious beliefs and social 
 principles. Three generations of this family are associ- 
 ated with the rise of modern Gothic. The elder Pugin 
 (Augustus Charles) was a French emigre, who came to 
 England during the Revolution, and gained much reputa- 
 tion as an architectural draughtsman, publishing, among 
 other things, " Specimens of Gothic Architecture," in 
 182 1. The son of A. W. N. Pugin, Edward Welby 
 (1834-73), also carried on his father's work as a practi- 
 cal architect and a writer. 
 
 Pugin joined the Roman Catholic Church just about 
 the time when the " Tracts for the Times " began to be 
 issued. His "Contrasts: or a Parallel between the 
 Architecture of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Centuries" 
 is fiercely polemical, and displays all the zeal of a fresh 
 convert. In the preface to the second edition he says 
 that "when this work was first brought out [1836], the 
 very name of Christian art was almost unknown " ; and 
 he affirms, in a footnote, that in the whole of the national 
 museum, " there is not even one room, one she{f, devoted 
 to the exquisite productions of the Middle Ages." The 
 book is a jeremiad over the condition to which the cathe- 
 drals and other remains of English ecclesiastical archi- 
 
Tendencies and l^esults. 369 
 
 tecture had been reduced by the successive spoliations 
 and mutilations in the times of Henry VIII., Edward 
 VI., and Cromwell, and by the "vile" restorations of 
 later days. It maintains the thesis that pointed architec- 
 ture is not only vastly superior artistically, but that it is 
 the only style appropriate to Christian churches; *''in it 
 alone we find the faith of Christianity embodied and its 
 practices illustrated." Pugin denounces alike the Renais- 
 sance and the Reformation, " those two monsters, revived 
 Paganism and Protestantism." There is no chance, he 
 thinks, for a successful revival of Gothic except in a re- 
 turn to Catholic faith. " The mechanical part of Gothic 
 architecture is pretty well understood, but it is the prin- 
 ciples which influenced ancient compositions, and the 
 soul which appears in all the former works, which is so 
 lamentably deficient. . . . 'Tis they alone that can re- 
 store pointed architecture to its former glorious state; 
 without it all that is done will be a tame and heartless 
 copy." He points out the want of sympathy between 
 "these vast edifices" and the Protestant worship, which 
 might as well be carried on in a barn or conventicle or 
 square meeting-house. Hence, the nave has been blocked 
 up with pews, the choir or transept partitioned off to serve 
 as a parish church, roodloft and chancel screen removed, 
 the altar displaced by a table, and the sedilia scattered 
 about in odd corners. The contrast between old and 
 new is strikingly presented, by way of object lessons, in 
 a series of plates, arranged side by side, and devised 
 with a great deal of satirical humour. There is, e.^. , a 
 Catholic town in 1440, rich with its ancient stone bridge, 
 its battlemented wall and city gate, and the spires and 
 towers of St. Marie's Abbey, the Guild Hall, Queen's 
 
370 c/^ History of English 'Romanticism. 
 
 Cross, St. Cuthbert's Church, and the half-timbered, 
 steep-roofed, gabled houses of the burgesses. Over 
 against it is the picture of the same town in 1840, hide- 
 ous with the New Jail, Gas Works, Lunatic Asylum, 
 Wesleyan Chapel, New Town Hall, Iron Works, Quaker 
 Meeting-house, Socialist Hall of Science, and other 
 abominations of a prosperous modern industrial commu- 
 nity. Or there is the beautiful old western doorway of 
 St. Mary Overies, destroyed in 1838. The door stands 
 invitingly open, showing the noble interior with kneeling 
 worshippers scattered here and there over the unob- 
 structed pavement. Opposite is the new door, grimly 
 closed, with a printed notice nailed upon it: "Divine 
 Service on Sundays, Evening lecture." A separate 
 plate exhibits a single compartment of the old door curi- 
 ously carved in oak; and beside it a compartment of the 
 new door in painted deal and plain as a pike-staff. 
 
 But the author is forced to confess that the case is not 
 much better in Catholic countries, where stained win- 
 dows have been displaced by white panes, frescoed ceil- 
 ings covered with a yellow wash, and the "bastard pagan 
 style " introduced among the venerable sanctities of old 
 religion. English travellers return from the Continent 
 disgusted with the tinsel ornament and theatrical trum- 
 peries that they have seen in foreign churches. " I do 
 not think," he concludes, " the architecture of our Eng- 
 lish churches would have fared much better under a 
 Catholic hierarchy. ... It is a most melancholy truth 
 that there does not exist much sympathy of idea between 
 a great portion of the present Catholic body in England 
 and their glorious ancestors. . . . Indeed, such is the 
 total absence of solemnity in a great portion of modern 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 371 
 
 Catholic buildings in England, that I do not hesitate to 
 say that a few crumbling walls and prostrate arches of a 
 religious edifice raised during the days of faith will 
 convey a far stronger religious impression to the mind 
 than the actual service of half the chapels in England." 
 
 In short, Pugin's Catholicism, though doubtless sin- 
 cere, was prompted by his professional feelings. His 
 reverence was given to the mediaeval Church, not to her 
 — aesthetically — degenerate daughter; and it extended to 
 the whole system of life and thought peculiar to the Mid- 
 dle Ages. " Men must learn," he wrote, " that the period 
 hitherto called dark and ignorant far excelled our age in 
 wisdom, that art ceased when it is said to have been re- 
 vived, that superstition was piety, and bigotry faith." In 
 many of his views Pugin anticipates Ruskin. He did 
 not like St. Peter's at Rome, and said: " If those students 
 who journey to Italy to study art would follow the steps 
 of the great Overbeck,* . . . they would indeed derive 
 inestimable benefit. Italian art of the thirteenth, four- 
 teenth, and fifteenth centuries is the beau ideal of Chris- 
 tian purity, and its imitation cannot be too strongly in- 
 culcated; but when it forsook its pure, mystical, and 
 ancient types, to follow those of sensual Paganism, it 
 sunk to a fearful state of degradation." 
 
 As a practising architect Pugin naturally received and 
 executed many commissions for Catholic churches. But 
 the Catholic Church in England did much less, even in 
 proportion to its resources, than the Anglican establish- 
 ment towards promoting the Gothic revival. Eastlake 
 says that Pugin's "strength as an artist lay in the design 
 of ornamental detail " ; and that he helped importantly in 
 * Vi(ig stfpra, p. 153. 
 
372 a^ History of English 'T{omanticism . 
 
 the revival of the mediaeval taste in stained glass, metal 
 work, furniture, carpets, and paper-hangings. Several of 
 his works have to do with various departments of eccle- 
 siology; chancel-screens, roodlofts, church ornaments, 
 symbols and costumes, and the like. But the only one 
 that need here be mentioned is the once very influential 
 " True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture " 
 (1841). This revival of ecclesiastical Gothic fell in with 
 the reform of Anglican ritual, which was one of the fea- 
 tures or sequences of the Oxford movement, and the two 
 tendencies afforded each other mutual support. 
 
 Evidence of a newly awakened interest in mediaeval 
 art is furnished by a number of works of a more syste- 
 matic character which appeared about the middle of the 
 century, dealing not only with architecture, but with the 
 early schools of sculpture and painting. One of these 
 was "Sketches of the History of Christian Art" (3 vols., 
 1847) by Alexander William Crawford Lindsay, twenty- 
 fifth Earl of Crawford. In the preface to the reprint of 
 this book in 1885, Lady Crawford speaks of it as a 
 pioneer in an " early time of unawakened interest." Rus- 
 kin refers to it repeatedly — always with respect — and 
 acknowledges in " Praeterita " that Lord Lindsay knew a 
 great deal more about Italian art than he himself did. 
 The book reviews in detail the works of Christian build- 
 ers, sculptors and painters, both in Italy and north of 
 the Alps, from the time of the Roman catacombs and 
 basilicas down to the Renaissance. It gives likewise a 
 history of Christian mythology, iconography and symbol- 
 ism; all that great body of popular beliefs about angels, 
 devils, saints, martyrs, anchorites, miracles, etc., which 
 Protestant iconoclasm and the pagan spirit of the mique- 
 
Tendencies and '^stilts. 373 
 
 eento had long ago swept into the dust-bin as sheer idol- 
 atry and superstition. Lord Lindsay's treatment of these 
 matters is reverential, though his own Protestantism is 
 proof against their charm. His tone is moderate; he 
 has no quarrel with the Renaissance, and professes re- 
 spect for classical art, which seems to him, however, on 
 a lower spiritual plane than the Christian. He remarks 
 that all mediaeval art was religious; the only concession 
 to the secular being found in the illuminations of some 
 of the chivalry romances. Gothic architecture was the 
 expression of Teutonic genius, which is realistic and 
 stands for the reason, while Italian sacred painting was 
 idealistic and stands for the imagination. In the most 
 perfect art, as in the highest type of religion, reason and 
 imagination are in balance. Hence, the influence of 
 Van Eyck, Memling, and Diirer on Italian painters was 
 wholesome; and the Reformation, the work of the rea- 
 soning Teutonic mind, is not to be condemned. Reason 
 is to blame only when it goes too far and extinguishes 
 imagination.* 
 
 "The sympathies of the North, or of the Teutonic 
 race, are with Death, as those of the Southern, or classic, 
 are with Life. , . . The exquisitely beautiful allegorical 
 tale of ' Sintram and His Companions' by La Motte 
 Fouque, was founded on the ' Knight and Death ' of 
 
 *"A blast from the icy jaws of Reason, the wolf Fenris of 
 the Teutonic mind, swept one and all into the Limbo of ob 
 livion — that sole ante-chamber spared by Protestantism in 
 spoiling Purgatory. Perhaps this was necessary and inevi- 
 table. If we would repair the column, we must cut away the 
 ivy that clings around the shaft, the flowers and brushwood 
 that conceal the base ; but it does not follow that, when the 
 repairs are completed, we should isolate it in a desert, — that 
 the flowers and brushwood should not be allowed to grow up 
 and caress it as before " (vol. ii., p. 380, second ed.). 
 
374 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 Albert Diirer, and I cannot but think that Milton had the 
 ' Melancholy ' in his remembrance while writing * II 
 Penseroso.' " * The author thinks that, whatever may be 
 true of Gothic architecture — an art less national than ec- 
 clesiastical — " sculpture and painting, on the one hand, 
 and the spirit of chivalry on the other, have usually flour- 
 ished in an inverse ratio one to the other, and it is not 
 therefore in England, France, or Spain, but among the 
 free cities of Italy and Germany that we must look for 
 their rise." f I give these conclusions — so opposite to 
 those of Catholic mediaevalists like Digby and Pugin — 
 because they illustrate the temper of Lindsay's book. 
 One more quotation I will venture to add for its agree- 
 ment with Uvedale Price's definition of the picturesque : | 
 "The picturesque in art answers to the romantic in 
 poetry ; both stand opposed to the classic or formal school 
 — both may be defined as the triumph of nature over art, 
 luxuriating in the decay, not of her elemental and ever- 
 lasting beauty, but of the bonds by which she had been 
 enthralled by man. It is only in ruin that a building 
 of pure architecture, whether Greek or Gothic, becomes 
 picturesque." § 
 
 Lord Lindsay's " Sketches " contained no illustrations. 
 Mrs. Jameson's very popular series on " Sacred and 
 Legendary Art" was profusely embellished with wood- 
 cuts and etchings. The first number of the series, "Leg- 
 ends of the Saints and Martyrs," was begun in 1842, but 
 issued only in 1848. " Legends of the Monastic Orders " 
 
 *Vol. ii., p. 364, note; and vide supra, p. 152. 
 
 \ Ibid., p. 289. 
 
 i Vide supra, p. 34. 
 
 %Ibid., p. 286, note. 
 
Tendencies and Results. 375 
 
 followed in 1850; "Legends of the Madonna" in 1852; 
 and the " History of Our Lord " (completed by Lady 
 Eastlake) in i860. Mrs. Jameson had an imperfect 
 knowledge of technique, and her work was descriptive 
 rather than critical. But it probably did more to enlist 
 the interest of the general reader in Christian art than 
 Lord Lindsay's more learned volumes; or possibly even 
 than the brilliant but puzzling rhetoric of Ruskin. 
 
 With Pugin's " Contrasts " began the " Battle of the 
 Styles." This was soon decided in Pugin's favour, so 
 far as ecclesiastical buildings were concerned. Fergus- 
 son, who is hostile to Gothic, admits that wherever cler- 
 ical influence extended, the style came into fashion. The 
 Cambridge Camden Society was founded in 1839 for the 
 study of church architecture and ritual, and issued the 
 first number of its magazine. The Ecclesiologist, in 1841. 
 But the first national triumph for secular Gothic was won 
 when Barry's design for the new houses of Parliament 
 was selected from among ninety-seven competing plans. 
 The corner-stone was laid at Westminster in 1840, and 
 much of the detail, as the work went on, was furnished 
 by Pugin. 
 
 It was not long before the Gothic revival found an ally 
 in the same great writer who had already come forward 
 as the champion of Pre-Raphaelite painting. The mas- 
 terly analysis of " The Nature of Gothic " in " The Stones 
 of Venice" (vol. i., 1851; vols. ii. and iii., 1853), and 
 the eloquence and beauty of a hundred passages through- 
 out the three volumes, fascinated a public which cared 
 little about art, but knew good literature when they saw 
 it. Eastlake testifies that Ruskin had some practical in- 
 fluence on English building. Young artists went to Venice 
 
376 f/i History of English ^{omanticism. 
 
 to study the remains of Italian Gothic, and the results of 
 their studies were seen in the surface treatment of many 
 London facades, especially in the cusped window arches, 
 and in the stripes of coloured bricks which give a zebra- 
 like appearance to the architecture of the period. But, 
 in general, working architects were rather contemptuous 
 of Ruskin's fine-spun theories, which they ridiculed as 
 fantastic, self -contradictory, and super-subtle; rhetoric 
 or metaphysics, in short, and not helpful art criti- 
 cism. 
 
 Ruskin's adhesion to Gothic was without compromise. 
 It was "not only the best, but the only rational archi- 
 tecture." "I plead for the introduction of the Gothic 
 form into our domestic architecture, not merely because 
 it is lovely, but because it is the only form of faithful, 
 strong, enduring, and honourable building, in such ma- 
 terials as come daily to our hands." * On the other 
 hand, Roman architecture is essentially base; the study 
 of classical literature is "pestilent"; and most modern 
 building is the fruit of "the Renaissance poison tree." 
 "If . . . any of my readers should determine ... to 
 set themselves to the revival of a healthy school of archi- 
 tecture in England, and wish to know in few words how 
 this may be done, the answer is clear and simple. First, 
 let us cast out utterly whatever is connected with the 
 Greek, Roman, or Renaissance architecture, in principle 
 or in form. . . . The whole mass of the architecture, 
 founded on Greek and Roman models, which we have 
 been in the habit of building for the last three centuries, 
 is utterly devoid of all life, virtue, honourableness, or 
 power of doing good. It is base, unnatural, unfruitful, 
 
 ♦"Stones of Venice," vol. ii., p. 295 (American ed. 1S60). 
 
Tendencies and Results. 377 
 
 unenjoyable, and impious. Pagan in its origin, proud 
 and unholy in its revival, paralysed in its old age." * 
 
 Ruskin loved the religious spirit of the mediaeval 
 builders, Byzantine, Lombard, or Gothic; and the pure 
 and holy faith of the early sacred painters like Fra 
 Angelico, Orcagna, and Perugino. He thought that 
 whatever was greatest even in Raphael, Leonardo, and 
 Michelangelo came from their training in the old relig- 
 ious school, not from the new science of the Renaissance. 
 " Raphael painted best when he knew least." He de- 
 plored the harm to Catholic and Protestant alike of the 
 bitter dissensions of the Reformation. But he sorrow- 
 fully acknowledged the corruption of the ancient Church, 
 and had no respect for modern Romanism. Against the 
 opinion that Gothic architecture was fitted exclusively 
 for ecclesiastical uses, he strongly protested. On the 
 contrary, he advised its reintroduction, especially in 
 domestic building. " Most readers . . . abandon them- 
 selves drowsily to the impression that Gothic is a pecul- 
 iarly ecclesiastical style. . . . The High Church and 
 Romanist parties . . . have willingly promulgated the 
 theory that, because all the good architecture that is now 
 left is expressive of High Church or Romanist doctrines, 
 all good architecture ever has been and must be so — 
 a piece of absurdity. . . . Wherever Christian Church 
 architecture has been good and lovely, it has been merely 
 the perfect development of the common dwelling-house 
 architecture of the period. . . . The churches were not 
 separated by any change of style from the buildings 
 round them, as they are now, but were merely more fin- 
 ished and full examples of a universal style. . . . Be- 
 * Ibid., vol. iii., p. 213. 
 
378 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 cause the Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches, 
 they are not therefore less fit for dwellings. They are in 
 the highest sense fit and good for both, nor were they 
 ever brought to perfection except when they were used 
 for both." * 
 
 The influence of Walter Scott upon Ruskin is note- 
 worthy. As a child he read the Bible on Sundays and 
 the Waverley Novels on week-days, and he could not re- 
 call the time when either had been unknown to him. The 
 freshness of his pleasure in the first sight of the frescoes 
 of the Campo Santo he describes by saying that it was 
 like having three new Scott novels.f Ruskin called 
 himself a "king's man," a "violent illiberal," and a 
 "Tory of the old-fashioned school, the school of Walter 
 Scott." Like Scott, he was proof against the religious 
 temptations of mediaevalism. " Although twelfth-century 
 psalters are lovely and right," he was not converted to 
 Catholic teachings by his admiration for the art of the 
 great ages; and writes, with a touch of contempt, of 
 those who are " piped into a new creed by the squeak of 
 an organ pipe." If Scott was unclassical, Ruskin was 
 anti-classical. The former would learn no Greek; and 
 the latter complained that Oxford taught him all the 
 Latin and Greek that he would learn, but did not teach 
 him that fritillaries grew in Iffley meadow.| Even that 
 fondness for costume which has been made a reproach 
 
 * Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 109-14. 
 
 f See the final instalment of " Praeterita " for an extended 
 eulogy of Scott's verse and prose. 
 
 ^ " I know what white, what purple fritillaries 
 The grassy harvest of the river-fields 
 Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields." 
 
 —Matthew Arnold, "Thyrsis." 
 
tendencies and '^ suits. 379 
 
 against Scott finds justification with Ruskin. "The es- 
 sence of modern romance is simply the return of the 
 heart and fancy to the things in which they naturally 
 take pleasure; and half the influence of the best ro- 
 mances, of ' Ivanhoe,' or * Marmion,' or * The Crusaders,' 
 or ' The Lady of the Lake,' is completely dependent upon 
 the accessories of armour and costume." * Still Ruskin 
 had the critical good sense to rate such as they below the 
 genuine Scotch novels, like "Old Mortality" and "The 
 Heart of Mid-Lothian " ; and he is quite stern towards 
 the melodramatic Byronic ideal of Venice. "The impo- 
 tent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of 
 this century, may indeed gild, but never save the re- 
 mains of those mightier ages to which they are attached 
 like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from 
 the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they 
 stood in their own strength. . . , The Venice of modern 
 fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflor- 
 escence of decay, a stage dream." f For it cannot be too 
 often repeated that the romance is not in the Middle 
 Ages themselves, but in their strangeness to our imagi- 
 nation. The closer one gets to them, the less romantic 
 they appear. 
 
 Medieval Social Ideals. — It is obvious how a fond- 
 ness for the Middle Ages, in a man of Scott's conserva- 
 tive temper, might confirm him in his attachment to high 
 Tory principles and to an aristocratic-feudal ideal of 
 society; or how, in an enthusiastic artist like Pugin, and 
 a gentleman of high-strung chivalric spirit like Sir 
 Kenelm Digby, it might even lead to an adoption of 
 
 ♦"Stones of Venice," vol. iii., p. 211. 
 f Ibid., vol. ii., p. 4. 
 
380 <^ History of English 1{pmaniicism. 
 
 the whole mediaeval religious system. But it is not so 
 easy, at first sight, to understand why the same thing 
 should have conducted Ruskin and William Morris to 
 opinions that were more "advanced" than those of the 
 most advanced Liberal. Orthodox economists looked 
 upon the theories put forward in Ruskin's " Unto this 
 Last" (i860), " Munera Pulveris " (1862-63), and "Fors 
 Clavigera" (1871-84), as the eccentricities of a distin- 
 guished art critic, disporting himself in unfamiliar fields 
 of thought. And when in 1883 the poet of "The Earthly 
 Paradise" joined the Democratic Federation, and subse- 
 quently the Socialist League, and was arrested and fined 
 one shilling and costs for addressing open-air meetings, 
 obstructing public highways, and striking policemen, 
 amusement was mingled with disapproval. What does 
 this dreamer of dreams and charming decorative artist 
 in a London police court? 
 
 But Socialism, though appearing on the face of it the 
 most modern of doctrines, is in a sense reactionary, like 
 Catholicism, or knight-errantry, or Gothic architecture. 
 That is, those who protest against the individualism of 
 the existing social order are wont to contrast it unfavour- 
 ably with the principle of association which is found 
 everywhere in the Middle Ages. No mediaeval man was 
 free or independent; all men were members one of an- 
 other. The feudal system itself was an elaborate network 
 of interdependent rights and obligations, in which ser- 
 vice was given in return for protection. The vassal did 
 homage to his lord — became his homtne or man — and his 
 lord was bound to take care of him. In theory, at least, 
 every serf was entitled to a living. In theory, too, the 
 Church embraced all Christendom. None save Jews 
 
Tendencies and 1{esulfs. 381 
 
 were outside it or could get outside it, except by excom- 
 munication; wliich was the most terrible of penalties, 
 because it cut a man off from all spiritual human fellow- 
 ship. The same principle of co-operation prevailed in 
 mediaeval industry and commerce, organised into guilds 
 of craftsmen and trading corporations, which fixed the 
 prices and quality of goods, the number of apprentices 
 allowed, etc. The manufacturer was not a capitalist, but 
 simply a master workman. Government was paternal 
 and interfered continually with the freedom of contract 
 and the rights of the individual. Here was where Carlyle 
 took issue with modern Liberalism, which proclaims that 
 the best government is that which governs least. Accord- 
 ing to the laissez-Jaire doctrine, he said, the work of a 
 government is not that of a father, but of an active parish 
 constable. The duty of a government is to govern, but 
 this theory makes it its duty to refrain from governing. 
 Not liberty is good for men, but obedience and stern 
 discipline under wise rulers, heroes, and heaven-sent 
 kings. Carlyle took no romantic view of the Middle 
 Ages. He is rather contemptuous of Scott's mediaeval- 
 picturesque,* and his Scotch Calvinism burns fiercely 
 against the would-be restorers of mediaeval religious 
 formularies and the mummeries of "the old Pope of 
 Rome " — a ghastly survival of a dead creed.f He said 
 that Newman had the brain of a good-sized rabbit. But 
 
 * Vide supra, p. 35. 
 
 f "I reckon him the remarkablest Pontiff that has darkened 
 God's daylight. . . . Here is a Supreme Priest who believes 
 God to be — what, in the name of God, does he believe God to 
 be? — and discerns that all worship of God is a scenic phantas- 
 magory of wax-candles, organ-blasts, Gregorian chants, mass- 
 brayings, purple monsignori, etc." ("Past and Present," 
 Book iii., chap. i.). 
 
382 e/^ History of English 1(omanticism. 
 
 in this matter of collectivism versus individualism, 
 Carlyle was with the Middle Ages. " For those were 
 rugged, stalwart ages. . . . Gurth, born thrall of Cedric, 
 it is like, got cuffs as often as pork-parings; but Gurth 
 did belong to Cedric; no human creature then went 
 about connected with nobody; left to go his way into 
 Bastilles or worse, under Laissez-Jaire. . . . That Feudal 
 Aristocracy, I say, was no imaginary one. ... It was a 
 Land Aristocracy; it managed the Governing of this 
 English People, and had the reaping of the Soil of Eng- 
 land in return. . . . Soldiering, Police and Judging, 
 Church-Extension, nay, real Government and Guidance, 
 all this was actually done by the Holders of Land in re- 
 turn for their Land. How much of it is now done by 
 them; done by anybody ? Good Heavens! ^ Laissez Jaire, 
 Do ye nothing, eat your wages and sleep,' is everywhere 
 the passionate half-wise cry of this time." * 
 
 From 1850 onwards, in which year Ruskin made Car- 
 lyle's acquaintance, the former fell under the dominion of 
 these ideas, and began to preach a species of Aristocratic 
 Socialism.! He denounced competition and profit-seek- 
 ing in commerce; the factory system; the capitalistic 
 organisation of industry. His scheme of a regenerated 
 society, however, was by no means so democratic as that 
 imagined by Morris in " News from Nowhere," It was a 
 " new feudalism " with a king at the head of it and a 
 rural nobility of "the great old families," whose relations 
 to their tenantry are not very clearly defined.J Ruskin 
 
 * Ibid., Book iv., chap. i. 
 
 f With Morris, too, when an Oxford undergraduate, " Car- 
 lyle's ' Past and Present, ' " says his biographer, "stood along- 
 side of 'Modern Painters ' as inspired and absolute truth." 
 
 X For a systematic exposition of Ruskin 's social and politi- 
 
Tendencies and 'Results. 383 
 
 took some steps towards putting into practice his plans 
 for a reorganisation of labour under improved conditions. 
 " Fors Clavigera " consisted of a series of letters to work- 
 ingmen, inviting them to join him in establishing a fund 
 for rescuing English country life from the tyranny and 
 defilement of machinery. In pursuance of this project, 
 the St. George's Guild was formed, about 1870, Ruskin 
 devoting to it ^^7,000 of his own money. Trustees were 
 chosen to administer the fund; a building was bought at 
 Walkley, in the suburbs of Sheffield, for use as a mu- 
 seum ; and the money subscribed was employed in pro- 
 moting co-operative experiments in agriculture, manufac- 
 turing, and education. 
 
 In 1848 the widespread misery among the English 
 working class, both agricultural labourers and the opera- 
 tives in cities, broke out in a startling way in the Chart- 
 ist movement. Sympathy with some of the aims of this 
 movement found literary expression in Charles Kings- 
 ley's novels, " Yeast " and " Alton Locke " ; in his widely 
 circulated tract, " Cheap Clothes and Nasty " ; in his let- 
 ters in Politics Jor the People over the signature " Parson 
 Lot " ; in some of his ballads like " The Three Fishers " ; 
 and in the writings of his friends, F. D. Maurice and 
 Thomas Hughes. But the Christian Socialism of these 
 Broad Churchmen was by no means of the mediaeval type. 
 Kingsley was an exponent of " Muscular Christianity." 
 He hated the asceticism and sacerdotalism of the Oxford 
 set, and challenged the Tractarian movement with all 
 his might.* Neither was this Christian Socialism of a 
 
 cal philosophy, the reader should consult "John Ruskin, So- 
 cial Reformer," by J. A. Hobson, London, 1898. 
 * Vide supra, pp. 279, 280. 
 
384 <v^ History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 radical nature, like Morris'. It limited itself to an en- 
 deavour to alleviate distress by an appeal to the good 
 feeling of the upper classes; and by setting on foot trade- 
 unions, co-operative societies, and workingmen's col- 
 leges. Kingsley himself, like Ruskin, believed in a 
 landed gentry; and like both Ruskin and Carlyle, he 
 defended Governor Eyre of Jamaica against the attacks 
 of the radical press.* 
 
 Ruskin and Morris travelled to Socialism by the path- 
 way of art. Carlyle had early begun his complaints 
 against the mechanical spirit of the age, and its too great 
 reliance on machinery in all departments of thought and 
 life.f But Ruskin made war on machinery for different 
 reasons. As a lover of the beautiful, he hated its ugly 
 processes and products. As a student of art, he mourned 
 over the reduction of the handicraftsman to a slave 
 of the machine. Factories had poisoned the English 
 sky with their smoke, and blackened English soil 
 and polluted English rivers with their refuse. The rail- 
 road had spoiled Venice and vulgarised Switzerland. 
 He would like to tear up all the railroads in Wales and 
 most of those in England, and pull down the city of New 
 York. He could not live in America two months — a 
 country without castles. Modern architecture, modern 
 dress, modern manufactures, modern civilisation, were 
 all utterly hideous. Worst of all was the effect on the 
 workman, condemned by competitive commercialism to 
 turn out cheap goods; condemned by division of labour 
 to spend his life in making the eighteenth part of a pin. 
 
 *For a number of years, beginning with 1854, Ruskin 
 taught drawing classes in Maurice's Working Man's College. 
 fSee "Characteristics" and "Signs of the Times." 
 
Tendencies and Results. 385 
 
 Work without art, said Ruskin, is brutalising. To take 
 pleasure in his work, said Morris, is the workman's best 
 inducement to labour and his truest reward. In the 
 Middle Ages every artisan was an artist ; the art of the 
 Middle Ages was popular art. Now that the designer 
 and the handicraftsman are separate persons, the work of 
 the former is unreal, and of the latter merely mechanical. 
 This point of view is eloquently stated in that chapter 
 on "The Nature of Gothic" in "The Stones of Venice," 
 which made so deep an impression on Morris when he 
 was in residence at Oxford.* " It is verily this degra- 
 dation of the operative into a machine which, more than 
 any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the 
 nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive 
 struggling for a freedom of which they cannot explain the 
 nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against 
 wealth and against nobility is not forced from them 
 either by the pressure of famine or the sting of mortified 
 pride. These do much, and have done much in all ages ; 
 but the foundations of society were never yet shaken as 
 they are at this day. It is not that men are ill-fed, but 
 that they have no pleasure in the work by which they 
 make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the 
 only means of pleasure. It is not that men are pained 
 by the scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot endure 
 their own; for they feel that the kind of labour to which 
 they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes 
 them less than men. . . . We have much studied and 
 much perfected, of late, the great civilised invention of 
 the division of labour; only we give it a false name. 
 It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but 
 * Vide supra, p. 321. 
 
386 tA History of English '^Romanticism. 
 
 the men — divided into mere segments of men — broken 
 into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the 
 little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not 
 enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in 
 making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail. . . . 
 And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing 
 cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all, in very 
 deed, for this — that we manufacture everything there ex- 
 cept men. . . . And all the evil to which that cry is urg- 
 ing our myriads can be met only . . . by a right under- 
 standing, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of 
 labour are good for men, raising them, and making them 
 happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or 
 beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degrada- 
 tion of the workman." * 
 
 Morris' contributions to the literature of Socialism in- 
 clude, besides his romance, "News from Nowhere," two 
 volumes of verse, "Poems by the Way" (i89i)and "The 
 Dream of John Ball"; together with "Socialism: Its 
 Growth and Outcome" (1893), an historical sketch of 
 the subject written in collaboration with Mr, E, Belfort 
 Bax. Mackail also describes a satirical interlude, en- 
 titled "The Tables Turned, or Nupkins Awakened," 
 which was acted thrice at Farringden Road in the au- 
 tumn of 1887 — a Socialistic farce in the form of a medi- 
 aeval miracle play — a conjunction quite typical of the 
 playwright's political principles and literary preferences. 
 Morris' ideal society, unlike Ruskin's, included no feudal 
 elements; there was no room in it for kings, or nobles, 
 or great cities, or a centralised government. It was prim- 
 
 *Vol. ii., chap, vi., §§ xv., xvi. Morris reprinted the 
 whole chapter on the Kelmscott Press. 
 
Tendencies and l^esults. 387 
 
 itive Teutonic rather than mediaeval; resembling the 
 communal type described in " The House of the Wolf- 
 ings." There were to be no more classes — no rich or 
 poor. To ordinary Socialists the reform means a fairer 
 distribution of the joint product of capital and labour; 
 higher wages for the workingman, shorter hours, better 
 food and more of it, better clothes, better houses, more 
 amusements — in short, " beer and skittles " in reasonable 
 amount. The Socialism of Ruskin and Morris was an 
 outcome of their aesthetic feeling. They liked to imag- 
 ine the work people of the future as an intelligent and 
 artistic body of handicraftsmen, living in pretty Gothic 
 cottages among gardens of their own, scattered all over 
 England in small rural towns or villages, and joyfully 
 engaged in making sound and beautiful objects of use, 
 tools, furniture, woven goods, etc. To the followers of 
 Mr. Hyndman these motives, if not these aims, must have 
 seemed somewhat unpractical. And in reading "Fors 
 Clavigera," one sometimes has a difficulty in understand- 
 ing just what sort of person Ruskin imagined the British 
 workman to be. 
 
 The Neo-Romanticists. — The literature of each new 
 generation is apt to be partly an imitation of the last, 
 and partly a reaction against it. The impulse first 
 given by Rossetti was communicated, through Mor- 
 ris and Swinburne, to a group of younger poets whom 
 Mr. Stedman distinguishes as " Neo-Romanticists." * 
 The most noteworthy among these are probably Arthur 
 0'Shaughnessy,f John Payne, J and Thdophile Mar- 
 
 *" Victorian Poets," chap, vii., § vi. 
 
 f'An Epic of Women " (1870) ; "Lays of France" (1872) ; 
 
 " Music and Moonlight " (1874); " Songs of a Worker " (i88i). 
 
 }"A Masque of Shadows" (1870): "Intaglios" (1871) ; 
 
388 <iA History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 zials;* though mention (want of space forbids more) 
 should also be made of George Augustus Simcox, whose 
 "Poems and Romances" (1869) are in the Pre-Raphael- 
 ite tradition. The work of each of these has pronounced 
 individuality; yet, as a whole, it reminds one continually 
 now of Rossetti, now of Morris, and again of Swinburne; 
 not infrequently, too, of Keats or Leigh Hunt; but never 
 of the older romanticism, never of Scott nor even of 
 Coleridge or Tennyson. The reminder comes sometimes 
 through a turn of phrase or the trick of the verse ; but more 
 insistently in the choice of subject and the entire attitude 
 of the poet towards art and life, an attitude that may be 
 vaguely described as "aesthetic." Even more distinctly 
 than in Swinburne, English romanticism in these latest 
 representatives is seen to be taking a French direction. 
 They show the influence not only of Hugo and Gautier, 
 but of those more recent schools of " decadents " which 
 exhibit French romanticism in its deliquescent stage; 
 writers like Theodore de Banville and Charles Baude- 
 laire; books like Aloysius Bertrand's "Gaspard de la 
 Nuit." Morbid states of passion; the hectic bloom of 
 fever; heady perfumes of the Orient and the tropics; 
 the bitter-sweet blossom of love; forced fruits of the hot- 
 house {serres chaudes); the iridescence of standing pools; 
 the fungoidal growths of decay; such are some of the 
 hackneyed metaphors which render the impression of 
 this neo-romantic poetry. 
 
 Marzials was born at Brussels, of French parents. 
 His "Gallery of Pigeons" is inscribed to the modern 
 
 "Songs of Life and Death" (1872) ; "Lautrec" (1878) ; "New 
 Poems" (1880). 
 *"A Gallery of Pigeons" (1873), 
 
Tendencies and 'Results. 389 
 
 Provencal poet Aubanel, and introduced by a French 
 sonnet. O'Shaughnessy " was half a Frenchman in his 
 love for, and mastery of, the French language " ; * and 
 on his frequent visits to Paris, made close acquaintance 
 with Victor Hugo and the younger school of French 
 poets, O'Shaughnessy and Payne were intimate friends, 
 and dedicated their first books to each other. In 1870-72 
 they were members of the literary circle that assembled 
 at the house of Ford Madox Brown, and there they met 
 the Rossettis, Morris, Swinburne, and William Bell 
 Scott. O'Shaughnessy emerges most distinctly from the 
 group by reason of his very original and exquisite lyrical 
 gift — a gift not fully recognised till Mr. Palgrave ac- 
 corded him, in the second series of his "Golden Treas- 
 ury" (1897), a greater number of selections than any 
 Victorian poet but Tennyson: a larger space than he 
 gave either to Browning or Rossettior Matthew Arnold. f 
 Comparatively little of O'Shaughnessy's work belongs to 
 the department of mediaeval -romantic. His "Lays of 
 France," five in number, are founded upon the lais of 
 
 ♦"Arthur O'Shaughnessy." By Louise Chandler-Moulton, 
 Cambridge and Chicago, 1894. 
 
 f Swinburne, as a living author, is not represented in the 
 "Treasury." O'Shaughnessy's metrical originality is un- 
 doubted. But one of his finest lyrics, "The Fountain of 
 Tears," has an echo of Baudelaire's American master, Edgar 
 Foe, as well as of Swinburne ; 
 
 "Very peaceful the place is, and solely 
 For piteous lamenting and sighing. 
 And those who come living or dying 
 
 Alike from their hopes and their fears : 
 Full of cypress-like shadows the place is, 
 And statues that cover their faces ; 
 
 But out of the gloom springs the holy 
 
 And beautiful Fountain of Tears." 
 
390 =^ History of English l^manticism. 
 
 Marie de France, the Norman poetess of the thirteenth 
 century whose little fable, " Du coq et du werpil," Chau- 
 cer expanded into his " Nonne Prestes Tale." O'Shaugh- 
 nessy's versions are not so much paraphrases as in- 
 dependent poems, following Marie's stories merely in 
 outline. 
 
 The verse is the eight-syllabled couplet with variations 
 and alternate riming; the style follows the graceful, 
 fluent simplicity of the Old French ; and in its softly 
 articulated, bright-coloured prolixity, the narrative fre- 
 quently suggests " The Earthly Paradise " or " The Story 
 of Rimini." The most remarkable of these pieces is 
 " Chaitivel," in which the body of a bride is carried away 
 by a dead lover, while another dead lover comes back 
 from his grave in Palestine and fights with the bride- 
 groom for possession of her soul. The song which the 
 lady sings to the buried man is true to that strange medi- 
 aeval materialism, the cleaving of "soul's love" to 
 "body's love," the tenderness intense that pierces the 
 " wormy circumstance " of the tomb, and refuses to let 
 the dead be dead, which was noted in Keats' "Isabella": 
 
 "Hath any loved you well, down there, 
 Summer or winter through? 
 Down there, have j'ou found any fair 
 
 Laid in the grave with you? 
 Is death's long kiss a richer kiss 
 Than mine was wont to be — 
 Or have you gone to some far bliss 
 And quite forgotten me?" 
 
 Of similar inspiration, but more pictorially and exter- 
 nally Gotliic, are such tales as "The Building of the 
 Dream" and "Sir Floris" in Payne's volume, "The 
 Masque of Shadows." The former of these, introduced 
 
Tendencies and Results. 391 
 
 by a quotation from Jehan du Mestre, is the history of a 
 certain squire of Poitou, who devotes himself to necro- 
 mancy and discovers a spell in an old Greek manuscript, 
 whereby, having shod his horse with gold and ridden 
 seven days into the west, he comes to the enchanted land 
 of Dame Venus and dwells with her a season. But the 
 bliss is insupportable by a mortal, and he returns to his 
 home and dies. The poem has analogies with "The 
 Earthly Paradise" and the Tannhauser legend. The 
 ancient city of Poitou, where the action begins, is elabo- 
 rately described, with its " lazy grace of old romance " : 
 
 " Fair was the place and old 
 Beyond the memory of man, with roofs 
 
 Tall-peak'd and hung with woofs 
 Of dainty stone-work, jewell'd with the grace 
 
 Of casements, in the face 
 Of the white gables inlaid, in all hues 
 
 Of lovely reds and blues. 
 At every corner of the winding ways 
 
 A carven saint did gaze, 
 With mild sweet eyes, upon the quiet town, 
 
 From niche and shrine of brown ; 
 And many an angel, graven for a charm 
 
 To save the folk from harm 
 Of evil sprites, stood sentinel above 
 
 High pinnacle and roof." 
 
 " Sir Floris " is an allegorical romaunt founded on a pas- 
 sage in "LeViolier des Histoires Provenciaux." The 
 dedication, to the author of " Lohengrin," praises Wolf- 
 ram von Eschenbach, the poet of " Parzival," as " the 
 sweetest of all bards." Sir Floris, obeying a voice heard 
 in sleep, followed a white dove to an enchanted garden, 
 where he slew seven monsters, symbolic of the seven 
 deadly sins; from whose blood sprang up the lily of 
 chastity, the rose of love, the violet of humility, the 
 clematis of content, the marigold of largesse, the mystic 
 
392 <iA History of English l^pmanticism. 
 
 marguerite, and the holy vervain " that purgeth earth's 
 desire." Sir Galahad then carries him in a magic boat 
 to the Orient city of Sarras, where the Grail is enshrined 
 and guarded by a company of virgin knights, Percival, 
 Lohengrin, Titurel, and Bors. Sir Floris sees the sacred 
 chalice — a single emerald — lays his nosegay upon the 
 altar, witnesses the mystery of the eucharist, and is kissed 
 upon the mouth by Christ, This poet is fond of intro- 
 ducing old French words " to make his English sweet upon 
 his tongue " ; accueillade, valiantise, Jaineant, allegresse, 
 gentiles se,Jorte et dure, and occasionally a phrase like dieu 
 vous doint Jelicite. Payne's ballads are less characteris- 
 tic* Perhaps the most successful of them is "The 
 Rime of Redemption" — in "The Masque of Shadows" 
 volume. Sir Loibich's love has died in her sins, and he 
 sits by the fire in bitter repentance. He hears the voice 
 of her spirit outside in the moonlight, and together they 
 ride through the night on a black steed, first to Fairy- 
 land, then to Purgatory, and then to the gate of Heaven. 
 Each of these in turn is offered him, but he rejects them 
 
 all— 
 
 "With thee in hell, I choose to dwell " — 
 
 and thereby works her redemption. The wild night ride 
 has an obvious resemblance to "Lenore": 
 
 "The wind screams past ; they ride so fast. 
 Like troops of souls in pain 
 The snowdrifts spin, but none may win 
 To rest upon the twain." 
 
 Very different from these, and indeed with no pretensions 
 
 *See especially "Sir Erwin's Questing." "The Ballad of 
 May Margaret," "The Westward Sailing," and "The Ballad 
 of the King's Daughter " in "Songs of Life and Death." 
 
Tendencies and %esults. 393 
 
 to the formal peculiarities of popular minstrelsy, is 
 O'Shaughnessy's weird ballad " Bisclaveret," * suggested 
 by the suoerstition concerning were-wolves: 
 
 "The splendid fearful herds that stray 
 By midnight " — 
 "The multitudinous campaign 
 Of hosts not yet made fast in Hell." 
 
 Bisclaveret is the Breton word for loup garou ; and the 
 poem is headed with a caption to this effect from the 
 "Lais "of Marie. The wild, mystical beauty of which 
 the Celtic imagination holds the secret is visible in this 
 lyrist; but it would perhaps be going too far to attribute 
 his interest in the work of Marie de France to a native 
 sympathy with the song spirit of that other great branch 
 of the Celtic race, the ancient Cymry. 
 
 Payne's volume of sonnets, " Intaglios " (a title per- 
 haps prompted by the chiselled workmanship of Gautier's 
 " Emaux et Camees ") bears the clearest marks of Ros- 
 setti's influence — or of the influence of Dante through 
 Rossetti. The inscription poem is to Dante, and the 
 series named "Madonna dei Sogni " is particularly full 
 of the imagery and sentiment of the " Purgatorio " and 
 the " Vita Nuova." Several of the sonnets in the collec- 
 tion are written for pictures, like Rossetti's. Two are 
 on Spenserian subjects, "Eelphoebe" and "The Garden 
 of Adonis"; and one, " Bride-Night " is suggested by 
 Wagner's "Tristram und Isolde." Payne's work as a 
 translator is of importance, and includes versions of the 
 "Decameron," "The Thousand and One Nights," and 
 the poems of Francois Villon, all made for the Villon 
 Society. 
 
 *In "An Epic of Women." 
 
394 -^ History of English '^manticism. 
 
 Jewels and flowers are set thickly enough in the pages 
 of all this school; but it is in Thdophile Marzials' singu- 
 lar, yet very attractive, verses that the luxurious colour 
 in which romance delights, and the decorative features 
 of Pre-Raphaelite art run into the most bizarre excesses. 
 He wantons in dainty affectations of speech and eccen- 
 tricities of phantasy. Here we find again the orchard 
 closes, the pleached pleasances, and all those queer pic- 
 ture paradises, peopled with tall lilied maidens, angels 
 with peacock wings and thin gold hoops above their heads, 
 and court minstrels thrumming lutes, rebecks, and man- 
 dolins — 
 
 "I dreamed I was a virginal — 
 The gilt one of Saint Cecily's." 
 
 The book abounds in nocturnes, arabesques, masquerades, 
 bagatelles, rococo pastorals. The lady in " The Gallery 
 of Pigeons " sits at her broidery frame and works tapes- 
 tries for her walls. At night she sleeps in the northern 
 tower where 
 
 "Above all tracery, carven flower. 
 And grim gurgoil is her bower-window " ; 
 
 and higher up a griffin clings against a cornice, 
 
 "And gnashes and grins in the green moonlight," 
 
 and higher still, the banderolle flutters 
 
 "At the top of the thinnest pinnacle peak." 
 
 In a Pre-Raphaelite heaven the maidens sit in the blessed 
 mother's chamber and spin garments for the souls in 
 Limbo, or press sweet wine for the sacrament, or illu- 
 minate missals with quaint phantasies. Mr. Stedman 
 quotes a few lines which he says have the air of parody: 
 
Tendencies and l^esults. 395 
 
 "They chase them each, below, above, — 
 Half madden'd by their minstrelsy, — 
 
 Thro' garths of crimson gladioles ; 
 And, shimmering soft like damoisels. 
 The angels swarm in glimmering shoals, 
 
 And pin them to their aureoles. 
 And mimick back their ritournels." 
 
 This reads, indeed, hardly less like a travesty than the 
 well-known verses in Punch : 
 
 "Glad lady mine, that glitterest 
 
 In shimmer of summer athwart the lawn ; 
 Canst tell me whether is bitterest, 
 The glamour of eve, or the glimmer of dawn? " 
 
 This stained-glass imagery was so easy to copy that, be- 
 fore long, citoles and damoisels and aureoles and garths 
 and glamours and all the rest of the picturesque furniture 
 grew to be a burden. The artistic movement had invaded 
 dress and upholstery, and Pre-Raphaelitism tapered down 
 into aestheticism, domestic art, and the wearing of sun- 
 flowers. Du Maurier became its satirist; Bunthorn and 
 Postlethwaite presented it to the philistine understanding 
 in a grotesque mixture of caricature and quackery. 
 
 The Reaction. — Literary epochs overlap at the edges, 
 and contrasting literary modes coexist. There was some 
 romantic poetry written in Pope's time ; and in the very 
 heat and fury of romantic predominance, Landor kept a 
 cool chamber apart, where incense was burned to the 
 ancient gods.* But it is the master current which gives 
 
 *"From time to time bright spirits, intolerant of the tradi- 
 tional, try to alter the bournes of time and space in these re- 
 spects, and to make out that the classical, whatever the fail- 
 ings on its part, was always in its heart rather Romantic, and 
 that the Romantic has always, at its best, been just a little 
 classical. . . . But such observations are only of use as guards 
 against a too wooden and matter-of-fact classification ; the 
 
396 <v^ History of English T{omanttcism. 
 
 tinge and direction to lesser confluents; and romanti- 
 cism may be said to have had everything its own way 
 down to the middle of the century. Then reaction set in 
 and the stream of romantic tendency ceased to spread 
 itself over the whole literary territory, but flowed on in 
 the narrower and deeper channels of Pre-Raphaelitism 
 and its allied movements. This reaction expressed itself 
 in different ways, of which it will be sufficient here to 
 mention three: realistic fiction, classical criticism, and 
 the Queen Anne revival. 
 
 The leading literary form of the past fifty years has 
 been the novel of real life. The failure of " Les Bur- 
 graves" in 1843 not more surely signalised the end of 
 French romanticism, than the appearance of " Vanity 
 Fair" in 1848 announced that in England, too, the reign 
 of romance was over. Classicism had given way before 
 romanticism, and now romanticism in turn was yielding 
 to realism. Realism sets itself against that desire of 
 escape from actual conditions into an ideal world, which 
 is a note of the romantic spirit in general ; and conse- 
 quently it refuses to find the past any more interesting 
 than the present, and has no use for the Middle Ages. 
 The temperature, too, had cooled ; not quite down to the 
 Augustan grade, yet to a point considerably below the 
 fever heat registered by the emotional thermometer of 
 the late Georgian era. Byron's contemporaries were 
 shocked by his wickedness and dazzled by his genius. 
 They remonstrated admiringly with him; young ladies 
 wept over his poetry and prayed for the poet's conver- 
 
 great general differences of the periods remain, and can never 
 be removed in imagination without loss and confusion " ("A 
 Short History of English Literature," Saintsbury, p. 724). 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 397 
 
 sion. But young university men of Thackeray's time 
 discovered that Byron was z poseiir ; Thackeray himself 
 describes him as "a big, sulky dandy." "The Sorrows 
 of Werther," which made people cry in the eighteenth 
 century, made Thackeray laugh; and he summed it up 
 in a doggerel ballad : 
 
 " Charlotte was a married woman 
 And a moral man was Werther, 
 And for nothing in creation 
 
 Would do anything to hurt her." 
 
 " Charlotte, having seen his body 
 
 Borne before her on a shutter, 
 Like a well-conducted woman. 
 
 Went on cutting bread and butter." 
 
 Mr. Howells in Venice sneers at Byron's theatrical 
 habit of riding horesback on the Lido in "conspicuous 
 solitude," as recorded in "Julian and Maddalo." He 
 notices the local traditions about Byron — a window from 
 which one of his mistresses was said to have thrown 
 herself into the canal, etc. — and confesses that these 
 matters interest him very little. 
 
 As to the Walter Scott kind of romance, we know what 
 Mr. Howells thinks of it; and have read "Rebecca and 
 Rowena," Thackeray's travesty of "Ivanhoe." Thack- 
 eray took no print from the romantic generation; he 
 passed it over, and went back to Addison, Fielding, 
 Goldsmith, Swift. His masters were the English hu- 
 mourists of the eighteenth century. He planned a lit- 
 erary history of that century, a design which was carried 
 out on other lines by his son-in-law, Leslie Stephen. If 
 he wrote historical novels, their period was that of the 
 Georges, and not of Richard the Lion Heart. It will 
 
39^ t/^ History of English l^omanticism. 
 
 not do, of course, to lay too much stress on Thackeray, 
 whose profession was satire and whose temper purely 
 anti-romantic. But if we turn to the leaders of the mod- 
 ern schools of fiction, we shall find that some of them, 
 like George Eliot and Anthony Trollope, are even more 
 closely realistic than Thackeray — who, says Mr, Howells, 
 is a caricaturist, not a true realist — and of others such as 
 Dickens and Meredith, we shall find that, in whatever 
 way they deviate from realism as strictly understood, it 
 is not in the direction of romance. 
 
 In Matthew Arnold's critical essays we meet with a 
 restatement of classical principles and an application of 
 them to the literature of the last generation. There was 
 something premature, he thinks, about the burst of crea- 
 tive activity in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. 
 Byron was empty of matter, Shelley incoherent, Words- 
 worth wanting in completeness and variety. He finds 
 much to commend in the influence of a literary tribunal 
 like the French Academy, which embodies that ideal of 
 authority so dear to the classical heart. Such an institu- 
 tion acts as a salutary check on the lawlessness, eccen- 
 tricity, self-will, and fantasticality which are the beset- 
 ting intellectual sins of Englishmen. It sets the standard 
 and gives the law. " Work done after men have reached 
 this platform is classical ; and that is the only work which, 
 in the long run, can stand." For want of some such 
 organ of educated opinion, to take care of the qualities of 
 order, balance, measure, propriety, correctness, English 
 men of genius like Ruskin and Carlyle, in their national 
 impatience of prescription and routine, run on into all 
 manner of violence, freak, and extravagance. 
 
 Again, in the preface of the 1853 edition of his poems, 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 399 
 
 Arnold asserts the superiority of the Greek theory of 
 poetry to the modern. "They regarded the whole; we 
 regard the parts. With them the action predominated 
 over the expression of it; with us the expression predom- 
 inates over the action. . . . We have poems which seem 
 to exist merely for the sake of single lines and passages; 
 not for the sake of producing any total impression." 
 
 " Faust" itself, judged as a whole, is defective. Fail- 
 ing a sure guide, in the confusion of the present times, 
 the wisest course for the young writer is to fix his atten- 
 tion upon the best models. But Shakspere is not so safe 
 a model as the ancients. He has not their purity of 
 method, and his gift of expression sometimes leads him 
 astray. "Mr. Hallam, than whom it is impossible to 
 find a saner and more judicious critic, has had the cour- 
 age (for at the present day it needs courage) to remark, 
 how extremely and faultily difficult Shakspere's language 
 often is." Half a century earlier it would have needed 
 courage to question Hallam's remark; but the citation 
 shows how thoroughly Coleridge and Hazlitt and Lamb 
 had shifted the centre of orthodoxy in matters of Shak- 
 sperian criticism. JVow the presumption was against any 
 one who ventured a doubt of Shakspere's impeccability. 
 The romantic victory was complete. " But, I say," pur- 
 sues the essayist, " that in the sincere endeavour to learn 
 and practise . . . what is sound and true in poetical art, 
 I seemed to myself to find the only sure guidance, the 
 only solid footing, among the ancients." All this has 
 a familiar look to one at all read in eighteenth-century 
 criticism; but in 1853 it sounds very much like heresy. 
 
 As an instance of the inferiority of romantic to classi- 
 cal method in narrative poetry, Arnold refers to Keats' 
 
400 <^ History of English Romanticism. 
 
 " Isabella." * " This one short poem contains, perhaps, 
 a greater number of happy single expressions which one 
 could quote than all the extant tragedies of Sophocles. 
 But the action, the story? The action in itself is an ex- 
 cellent one; but so feebly is it conceived by the poet, 
 so loosely constructed, that the effect produced by it, in 
 and for itself, is absolutely null. Let the reader, after 
 he has finished the poem of Keats, turn to the same story 
 in the ' Decameron ' ; he will then feel how pregnant and 
 interesting the same action has become in the hands of a 
 great artist who, above all things, delineates his object; 
 who subordinates expression to that which it is designed 
 to express." 
 
 A sentence or two from Arnold's essay on Heinrich 
 Heine, and we may leave this part of our subject. " Mr. 
 Carlyle attaches, it seems to me, far too much importance 
 to the romantic school of Germany — Tieck, Novalis, Jean 
 Paul Richter. . . . The mystic and romantic school of 
 Germany lost itself in the Middle Ages, was overpowered 
 by their influence, came to ruin by its vain dreams of 
 renewing them. Heine, with a far profounder sense of 
 the mystic and romantic charm of the Middle Age than 
 Gorres, or Brentano, or Arnim ; Heine, the chief romantic 
 poet of Germany, is yet also much more than a romantic 
 poet; he is a great modern poet, he is not conquered by 
 the Middle Age, he has a talisman by which he can feel, 
 along with but above the power of the fascinating Mid- 
 dle Age itself, the power of modern ideas." 
 
 And, finally, the oscillation of the pendulum has 
 brought us back again for a moment to the age of gayety, 
 and to that very Queen Anne spirit against which the 
 * Vide supra, pp. 123-25. 
 
Tendencies and %esults. 401 
 
 serious and sentimental Thomson began the revolt. 
 There is not only at present a renewed appreciation of 
 what was admirable in the verse of Pope and the prose 
 of Swift, but we discover a quaint attractiveness in the 
 artificiality of Augustan manners, dress, and speech. 
 Lace and brocade, powder and patch, Dutch gardens, 
 Reynolds' portraits, Watteau fans, Dresden china, the 
 sedan chair, the spinet, the hoop-skirt, the fa/on rouge — 
 all these have receded so far into the perspective as to 
 acquire picturesqueness. To Scott's generation they 
 seemed eminently modern and prosaic, while buff jerkins 
 and coats of mail were poetically remote. But so the 
 whirligig of time brings in its revenges, and the old- 
 fashioned, as distinguished from the antique, begins to 
 have a romanticness of its own. It is now some quarter 
 century since people took to building Queen Anne cot- 
 tages, and gentlemen at costume parties to treading 
 minuets in small clothes and perukes, with ladies in high- 
 cushioned hair and farthingales. Girl babies in large 
 numbers were baptised Dorothy and Belinda. Book illus- 
 trators like Kate Greenaway, Edwin Abbey, and Hugh 
 Thomson carried the mode into art. The date of the Queen 
 Anne revival in literature and the beginnings of the brk-d- 
 brac school of verse are marked with sufficient precision by 
 the publication of Austin Dobson's " Vignettes in Rhyme " 
 (1873), "Proverbs in Porcelain" (1877), and the other 
 delightful volumes of the same kind that have followed. 
 Mr. Dobson has also published, in prose, lives of Steele, 
 Fielding, Hogarth, and Goldsmith; "Eighteenth-Century 
 Vignettes," and the like. But his particular ancestor 
 among the Queen Anne wits was Matthew Prior, of whose 
 metrical tales, epigrams, and vers de socitte he has made 
 
402 ey/ History of English %omanticism. 
 
 a little book of selections; and whose gallantry, light- 
 ness, and tone of persiflage, just dashed with sentiment, he 
 has reproduced with admirable spirit in his own original 
 work. 
 
 It was upon the question of Pope that romantics and 
 classics first joined issue in the time of Warton, and that 
 the critical battle was fought in the time of Bowles and 
 Byron; the question of his real place in literature, and 
 of his title to the name of poet. Mr. Dobson has a word 
 to say for Pope, and with this our enquiries may fittingly 
 end: 
 
 "Suppose you say your Worst of POPE, declare 
 His Jewels Paste, his Nature a Parterre, 
 His Art but Artifice — I ask once more 
 Where have you seen such artifice before? 
 Where have you seen a Parterre better grac'd, 
 Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste? 
 Where can you show, among your Names of Note, 
 So much to copy and so much to quote? 
 And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse, 
 A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse? " 
 
 "So I, that love the old Augfustan Days 
 Of formal courtesies and formal Phrase ; 
 That like along the finish 'd Line to feel 
 The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel ; 
 That like my Couplet as Compact as Clear ; 
 That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe, 
 Unmix'd with Bathos and unmarr'd by trope, 
 I fling my Cap for Polish— and for POPE ! " * 
 
 But ground once gained in a literary movement is never 
 wholly lost; and a reversion to an earlier type is never 
 complete. The classicism of Matthew Arnold is not at 
 all the classicism of the eighteenth century; Thackeray's 
 realism is not the realism of Fielding. It is what it is, 
 partly just because Walter Scott had written his Wa- 
 *" A Dialogue to the Memory of Mr. Alexander Pope." 
 
Tendencies and Insults. 403 
 
 verley Novels in the mean while. Apart from the works 
 for which it is directly responsible, the romantic move- 
 ment had enriched the blood of the literature, and its re- 
 sults are seen even in writings hostile to the romantic 
 principles. As to the absolute value of the great roman- 
 tic output of the nineteenth century, it may be at once 
 acknowledged that, as " human documents," books which 
 reflect contemporary life have a superior importance to 
 the creations of the modern imagination, playing freely 
 over times and places distant, and attractive through 
 their distance; over ancient Greece or the Orient or the 
 Middle Age. But that a very beautiful and quite legiti- 
 mate product of literary art may spring from this contact 
 of the present with the past, it is hoped that our history 
 may have shown. 
 
 THE END. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Allingham, William. "Irish Songs and Poems." London 
 
 and New York, 1893. 
 Arnim, Ludwig Joachim von. Selections in Koch's "Deutsche 
 
 National Litteratur." Stuttgart, 1891. Vol. cxlvi. 
 Arnim, Ludwig Joachim [and Brentano] . " Des Knaben Wun- 
 
 derhorn." Wiesbaden and Leipzig, 1874-76. 2 vols. 
 Arnold, Matthew. "Essays in Criticism." London, 1895. 
 
 "On the Study of Celtic Literature." London, 1893. 
 
 Poems. London, 1877. 2 vols. 
 
 Austin, Sarah. "Fragments from German Prose Writers." 
 London, 1841. 
 
 Balzac, Hon ore de. " Les Contes Drolatiques. " Paris, 1855. 
 
 Baring-Gould, S. "The Vicar of Morwenstow " [life of R. S. 
 Hawker]. New York, 1879. 
 
 Bell, Malcolm. "Edward Burne-Jones." London, 1899. 
 
 Bertrand, L. "La Fin du Classicisme." Paris, 1897. 
 
 Bowles, W. L. Introduction and Life in "Works of Alexan- 
 der Pope." London, 1806. 10 vols. 
 
 Poetical Works. (Gilfillan'sed.) Edinburgh, 1855. 
 
 2 vols. 
 
 See p. 73 for pamphlets in Pope Controversy. 
 
 Boyd, Henry. "The Divina Comedia." (Trans.) London, 
 
 1802. 3 vols. 
 Boyesen, H. H. "Essays on German Literature." New 
 
 York, 1892. 
 Brandes, Georg M. C. "Die Hauptstromungen der Literatur 
 
 des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts." (Trans.) Berlin, 
 
 1872-76. 4 vols. 
 Brand!, Alois. "Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English 
 
 Romantic School." (Trans.) London, 1887. 
 
 "Thomas of Erceldoune." Berlin, 1880. 
 
 Brentano, Clemens. Selections i n Koch ' s " Deutsche National 
 
 Litteratur." Stuttgart, 1891. Vol, cxlvi. 
 See Arnim. 
 
4o6 'Bibliography. 
 
 Brooke, Stopford A. [and T. W. RollestonJ. "A Treasury of 
 
 Irish Poetry." New York, 1900. 
 Brunetibre, Ferdinand. "A Manual of the History of French 
 
 Literature." (Trans.) New York, 1898. 
 Byron, George Noel Gordon, Lord. Works. London, 1832- 
 
 33. 15 vols. 
 
 Caine, T. Hall. "Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti." 
 London, 1882. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas. " Specimens of the British Poets. " Lon- 
 don, 1841. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas. Works. London, 1869-72. 31 vols. 
 
 Cary, E. L. "The Rossettis." New York, 1894. 
 
 Cary, Henry F. "The Vision of Dante." (Trans.) New 
 York, 1861. 
 
 Chateaubriand, Vicomte F. A. R. de. "The Beauties of 
 Christianity." (Trans.) Philadelphia, 1815. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T. "Anima Poetse." Boston, 1895. 
 
 Works. New York, 1884. 7 vols. 
 
 Collins, J. Churton. " Illustrations of Tennyson. " London, 
 1891. 
 
 Colvin, Sidney. "Keats." (English Men of Letters Series.) 
 New York, 1887. 
 
 Courthope, W. J. " The Liberal Movement in English Liter- 
 ature. " London, 1885. 
 
 Croker, T. Crofton. " Fairy Legends and Traditions of the 
 South of Ireland." London, 1870. 
 
 Cross, W. L. "The Development of the English Novel." 
 New York, 1899. 
 
 Davidson, John. "Ballads and Songs." London, 1895. 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas. Works. New York, 1878. 12 vols. 
 
 Digby, Sir Kenelm H. "The Broad Stone of Honour." Lon- 
 don, 1844-48. 3 vols. 
 
 Dobson, H. Austin. "Poems on Several Occasions." Lon- 
 don, 1895. 2 vols. 
 
 Eastlake, Sir Charles L. "A History of the Gothic Revival." 
 London, 1872. 
 
 Fergusson, James. "History of Architecture." London, 
 1865-76. 4 vols. 
 
 Ford, R. "The Ancient Ballads of Spain." Edinburgh Re- 
 view, January, 1841. 
 
 Fouque, F. H. K., Baron de la Motte. "The Four Seasons: 
 Undine and Other Tales." (Trans.) New York. 1875. 
 
 "The Magic Ring." (Trans.) Edinburgh, 1825. 
 
 "Thiodolf the Icelander." (Trans.) Philadelphia, 
 
 1863. 
 
bibliography. 407 
 
 Gates, Lewis E. "Selections from Newman." New York, 
 1895. 
 
 "Studies and Appreciations." New York, 1890. 
 
 Gautier, Theophile. "Histoiredu Romantisme." Paris, 1884. 
 Gorres, J. J. von. Selections in Koch's "Deutsche National 
 
 Litteratur." Stuttgart, 1891. Vol. cxlvi. 
 Gosse, Edmund. "From Shakespere to Pope." London, 
 
 1885. 
 Grimm, Jakob L. K., and Wilhelm K. "Household Tales." 
 
 (Trans.) London, 1884. 2 vols. 
 
 i^ Heine, Heinrich. "The Romantic School in Germany." 
 
 (Trans.) New York, 1882. 
 C Herford, C. H. " The Age of Wordsworth. " London, 1897. 
 Hettner, H. J. T. "Litteraturgeschichte." Braunschweig, 
 
 1827. 
 Hewlett, Maurice. "The Forest Lovers." New York and 
 
 London, 1898. 
 Hillebrand, Karl. "German Thought." (Trans.) New 
 
 York, 1880. 
 Hobson, J. A. "John Ruskin, Social Reformer." London, 
 
 1898. 
 Hogg, James. Works. London, 1873. 2 vols. 
 Howitt, William and Mary. " Literature and Romance of 
 
 Northern Europe." London, 1852. 2 vols. 
 Hugo, Victor Marie. CEuvres Completes. Paris, 1863. 
 Hunt, J. H. Leigh. Autobiography. London, 1870. 
 
 Poetical Works. London, 1832. 
 
 "Stories from the Italian Poets." New York, 1846. 
 
 "The Seer." Boston, 1865. 2 vols. 
 
 Hunt, W. Holman. "The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Con- 
 temporary Review. Vol. xlix. 
 
 Hntton, R. H. "Essays, Theological and Literary." Lon- 
 don, 1880. 2 vols. 
 
 Jameson, Anna. "Sacred and Legendary Art." London, 
 
 1870. 2 vols. 
 Joyce, R. D. "Deirdrfe. Boston. 1876. 
 Jullien, A. "Le Romantisme et I'Editeur Renduel." Paris, 
 
 1897. 
 
 Keats, John. Poetical Works. (Rossetti's ed.) London, 
 
 1876. 
 Keble, John. "The Christian Year." Philadelphia, 1834. 
 Kelly, J. F. M. "A History of Spanish Literature." New 
 
 York, 1898. 
 Ker, W. P. "Epic and Romance." London, 1897. 
 
4o8 'bibliography. 
 
 Kingsley, Charles. "Hereward. the Last of the English." 
 New York, 1888. 
 
 Poems. London, 1884. 2 vols. 
 
 Kingsley, F. E. G. " Charles Kingsley : His Letters and 
 Memories of his Life." London, 1877. 2 vols. 
 
 Lindsay, A. W. C, Earl of Crawford. "Sketches of the His- 
 tory of Christian Art." London, 1885. 2 vols. 
 
 Lockhart, J. G. "Ancient Spanish Ballads." New York, 
 1842. 
 
 "Life of Scott." Boston and Philadephia, 1837-38. 
 
 7 vols. 
 
 Longfellow, H. W. "Hyperion." Boston, 1875. 
 
 Poetical Works. Boston. 1889. 6 vols. 
 
 "Poets and Poetry of Europe." Philadelphia, 1845. 
 
 "The Divine Comedy of Dante." (Trans.) Bos- 
 ton, 1867. 3 vols. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B. "Milton." Edinburgh Review, August, 
 1825. 
 
 Mackail, W. J. "The Life of William Morris." London, 
 1899. 
 Q-- McLaughlin, E. T. "Studies in Mediaeval Life and Litera- 
 ture." New York and London, 1894. 
 
 Maigron, Louis. "Le Roman Historiquea I'Epoque Roman- 
 tique." Paris, 1898. 
 
 Marziais, Theophile. "The Gallery of Pigeons." London, 
 
 1873. 
 Meinhold, J. W. "Mary Schweidler, the Amber Witch." 
 
 (Trans.) New Y'ork, 1845. 
 Milnes, R. M., Lord Houghton. "Life and Letters of John 
 
 Keats." New York, 1848. 
 Morris, William. "Hopes and Fears for Art." Boston, 1882. 
 
 "Love is Enough." Boston, 1873. 
 
 "News from Nowhere." London, 1891. 
 
 "Old French Romances." (Trans.) New York, 
 
 1896. 
 
 [and E. B. Bax]. "Socialism." London, 1896. 
 
 . "The Defence of Guenevere." London. 1875. 
 
 "The Earthly Paradise." Boston, 1868-71. 3 vols. 
 
 "The Life and Death of Jason." Boston, 1867. 
 
 " The Story of Sigurd the Volsung. " Boston, 1877- 
 
 See p. 337 for list of prose romances. 
 
 Motherwell, William. "Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern." 
 
 Glasgow, 1827. 
 Moulton, L. C. "Arthur O'Shaughnessy." Cambridge and 
 
 ^ Chicago, 1894. 
 Musset, L. C. A. de. CEuvres Completes. Paris, 1881. 
 
bibliography. 409 
 
 Newman, J. H. "Callista." London, 1873. 
 
 "Essaj-s, Critical and Historical." London, 1872. 
 
 2 vols. 
 
 "Loss and Gain." London, 1881. 
 
 "Parochial and Plain Sermons." London, 1873-91. 
 
 8 vols. 
 
 "Verses on Various Occasions." London, 
 
 Novalis (F. L. von Hardenberg). "Henry of Ofterdingen." 
 (Trans.) Cambridge, 1842. 
 
 "Hymns to the Night," etc. (trans, of George Mac- 
 Donald) , in " Rampolli." London and New York, 1897. 
 
 O'Shaughnessy, Arthur. "An Epic of Women." London, 
 1870. 
 
 "Lays of France." London, 1874. 
 
 "Music and Moonlight. " London, 1874. 
 
 Palgrave, F. T. "The Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyri- 
 cal Poems." Cambridge, 1863. Second Series, New 
 York, 1897. 
 
 Parsons, T. W. "The Divine Comedy of Dante." (Trans.) 
 Boston, 1893. 
 
 Pater, Walter. "Appreciations." London, 1889. 
 
 Payne, John. "Intaglios." London, 1884. 
 
 "Lautrec." London, 1878. 
 
 "New Poems." London, 1880. 
 
 "Songs of Life and Death." London, 1884. / 
 
 "The Masque of Shadows." London, 1884. / 
 
 Petit de Julleville, Louis. " Histoire de la Litterature Frany 
 
 gaise. " Paris, 1896-99. 8 vols. / 
 
 Price, Sir Uvedale. "Essays on the Picturesque." Londoi/ 
 
 1 8 10. 3 vols. / 
 Pugin, A. N. W. "Contrasts." Edinburgh. 1898. / 
 "The True Principles of Pointed Architectur/. " 
 
 Edinburgh, 1895. / 
 
 Reade, Charles. "TheCloister and the Hearth." NewV>rk, 
 1894. 2 vols. 
 
 Robertson, J. M. "New Essays toward a Critical Metiod." 
 London, 1897. 
 
 Roscoe, William. Preface to "Works of Alexander ?ope." 
 London, 1824. 10 vols. 
 
 Rossetti, Christina G. "The Goblin Market." London, 
 1865. 
 
 Rossetti, D. G. The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Ros- 
 setti. Edited by William M. Rossetti. Loncjon, 1886. 
 2 vols. / 
 
4 1 o 'Bibliography. 
 
 Rossetti, D. G. Family Letters, with Memoir by W. M. 
 
 Rossetti. Boston, 1895. 
 Rossetti, Maria F. "A Shadow of Dante." Boston, 1872. 
 Rossetti, W. M. " Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and 
 
 Writer." London, 1889. 
 Ruskin, John. "Fors Clavigera." New York, 1871-72. 2 
 
 vols. 
 "Modern Painters." New York, 1857-60. 5 vols. 
 
 "Munera Pulveris." New York, 1872. 
 
 "Praeterita." London, 1899. 3 vols. 
 
 "Pre-Raphaelitism." New York, i860. 
 
 "Stones of Venice." New York, i860. 3 vols. 
 
 "Unto this Last." London, 1862. 
 
 Saintsbury, George. "A Primer of French Literature." Ox- 
 ford, 1880. 
 
 "A Short History of English Literature." Lon- 
 don, 1898. 
 
 Scherer, W. "A History of German Literature." (Trans.) 
 New York, 1886. 2 vols. 
 
 Schlegel, A. W. von. "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Liter- 
 ature." (Trans.) London, 1846. 
 
 Schmidt, Julian. "Geschichte der Deutschen Litteratur." 
 Berlin. 1890. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter. "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." 
 Philadelphia, 1841. 3 vols. 
 
 Journal. New York, 1891. 
 
 Poetical Works. (Dennis' ed.) London, 1892. 5 
 
 vols. 
 
 "The Waverley Novels." (Dryburgh ed.) Edin- 
 burgh, 1892-93. 25 vols. 
 
 "cott, W. B. "Autobiographical Notes." New York, 1892. 
 
 2 vols. 
 S airp, J. C. " Aspects of Poetrj'. " Boston, 1882. 
 SUrp, William. "Dante Gabriel Rossetti." London, 1882. 
 Sh Hey, Percy Bysshe. Poetical Works. (Centenary ed.) 
 
 Boston, 1892. 4 vols. 
 She thouse, J. H. "John Inglesant." New York, 1882. 
 Size anne, R. de la. " English Contemporary Art. " (Trans.) 
 
 Westminster, 1898. 
 Smitl, Charlotte. "Elegiac Sonnets." London, 1800-06. 2 
 
 vols. 
 Southey, Robert. " Chronicle of the Cid." (Trans.) Lowell, 
 
 1846. (ist Am. ed.) 
 
 • Poetical Works. London, 1838. 10 vols. 
 
 Stael-Holstein, Mme. A. L. G. de. "Germany." (Trans.) 
 
 Loadon, 18 14. 3 vols. 
 Stedman, E. C. "Victorian Poets." Boston, 1876. 
 
bibliography. 411 
 
 Stendhal, De (Marie Henri Beyle). "Racine et Shakspere." 
 
 Paris, 1854. 
 Stevenson, R. L. B. " Familiar Studies of Men and Books." 
 
 London, 1882. 
 Swinburne, A. C. "Essays and Studies." London, 1875. 
 
 "Poems and Ballads." London, 1866. Second 
 
 Series. 1878. Third Series, i88g. 
 
 "Studies in Prose and Poetry." New York, 1894. 
 
 "The Tale of Balen." New York, 1896. 
 
 "Tristram of Lyonesse." London, 1882. 
 
 "Victor Hugo." New York, 1886. 
 
 * Tennyson, Alfred. Works. London, 1892. (Globe ed.) 
 Thorpe, Benjamin. "Northern Mythology." London, 1851- 
 52. 3 vols. 
 
 "Yuletide Stories." London, 1875. 
 
 Ticknor, George. "History of Spanish Literature." New 
 York, 1849. 3 vols. 
 < Tieck, J. Ludwig. "Phantasus." Berlin, 1844-45. 2 vols. 
 
 "Tales" (trans.) in the works of Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 2 vols. London, 1869-72. 
 
 Tighe, Mary. "Psyche, with Other Poems." London, 1812. 
 
 Uhland, J. Ludwig. Gedichte. Stuttgart, 1875. 
 
 Vere, Aubrey Thomas de. "Recollections." London, 1897. 
 
 Ward, Wilfrid. "William George Ward and the Oxford 
 
 Movement." London, 1889. 
 Watts, Theodore. "Rossetti." Encyclopcedia Britannica. 
 Wood, Esther. " Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite 
 
 Movement." New York, 1894. 
 '< Wordsworth, William. Poetical Works. (Centenary ed.) 
 
 London, 1870. 6 vols. 
 
 Yonge, Charlotte M. "The Heir of Redcliffe." New York, 
 1871. 2 vols. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbot, The. 42 
 Aben-Humeya, 246 
 Addison, Jos., 95 
 Adonais, 120 
 Age of Wordsworth, The, 12, 
 
 24, 34, 87. 88 
 Ahnung und Gegenwart, 147 
 Alhambra, The, 239 
 Allemagne, L', 139, 141-45, 
 
 192, 208 
 Allingham, Wm,, 258, 300, 
 
 304. 324 
 Alonzo the Brave, 77, 83 
 Alton Locke, 383 
 Amadis of Gaul. 236, 241 
 Amber Witch, The, 42, 280 
 Ancient Mariner, The, 48, 49, 
 
 54. 74-80 
 Ancient Poetry and Romance 
 
 of Spain, 248 
 Ancient Spanish Ballads, 239, 
 
 247-49 
 Anima Poetae, 78 
 Annales Romantiques, 201 
 Anthony, 198 
 
 Antiquary, The, 31, 33, 178 
 Appreciations, 42 
 Ariosto, Lodovico, 91, 104, 
 
 107, 109. 122 
 Arme Heinrich, Der, 297 
 Arnim, Achim von, 134, 138, 
 
 155, 167, 192, 400 
 Arnold, Matthew, 255, 256, 
 
 263, 274-76. 278, 280, 356. 
 
 378, 398-4CO, 402 
 Arthur's Tomb, 305 
 
 Aslauga's Knight, 168 
 Aspects of Poetry, 18 
 At Eleusis, 342 
 Athenaeum. The. 134 
 Aucassin et Nicolete, 330 
 Aue, Hartmann von. 297 
 Aulnoy, Comtesse d', 194 
 Austin, Sarah, 162, 170 
 Ave atque Vale. 349 
 
 Bagehot, Walter, 39 
 Balin and Balan, 347. 348 
 Ballad of a Nun. 263. 264 
 Ballad of Dead Ladies, 298 
 Ballad of Judas Iscariot, 263 
 Ballade a la Lune. 189 
 Ballads and Sonnets (Ros- 
 
 setti), 310 
 Ballads of Irish Chivalry, 260 
 Balzac, Honore de, 42 
 Bande Noire, La, 216 
 Banshee and Other Poems, 
 
 The, 261 
 Banville. Theodore F. de, 388 
 Barante, P. A. P. B.. 226 
 Bards of the Gael and the 
 
 Gall. 260 
 Basso, Andrea de, no 
 Baudelaire, Chas., 388. 389 
 Bax, E. B.. 386 
 Beata Beatrix. 291. 303, 310 
 Beckford, Wm., 367 
 Belle Dame sans Merci, La, 
 
 86. 118, 119, 127, 262, 279, 
 
 303. 307 
 Berlioz, Hector, 180, r8i 
 
414 
 
 Judex. 
 
 Bertrand, A., 175, 388 
 Beyle, Henri. See Stendhal. 
 Biographia Literaria, 48, 55, 
 
 63, 88, 89 
 Bisclaveret. 393 
 Blackmore, Sir Richard, 269, 
 
 270 
 Blake, Wm., 99 
 Blessed Damozel, The, 285, 
 
 301, 308, 311, 343 
 Blue Closet, The, 305 
 Blidthenstaub, 167 
 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 92, 123, 
 
 124 
 Bowles, W. L., 55-73 
 Bowring, Sir Jno., 248 
 Boyd, Henry, 96, 97 
 Boyesen, H. H., 139, 159, 160, 
 
 165 
 Brandl, Alois, 50-55, 75, 77, 
 
 82, 86 
 Brentano, Clemens, 134, 138, 
 
 141, 147, 153. 155. 167, 192, 
 
 247, 400 
 Bridal of Triermain, The, 6, 
 
 13. 14 
 Bride's Prelude, The, 300, 
 
 311 
 Broad Stone of Honour, The, 
 
 363-66 
 Brooke, Stopford A., 261 
 Brown, F. M., 389 
 Brownie of Bodsbeck, The, 
 
 253 
 Browning, Elizabeth B., 277, 
 
 278 
 Browning, Robert, 190, 221, 
 
 276, 277 
 Buchanan, Robert, 263 
 Building of the Dream, The, 
 
 390, 391 
 Biirger, G. A., 83, 133, 144, 
 
 159, 192, 297 
 Burgraves, Les, 226, 299, 396 
 Burke, Edmund, 145 
 Burne-Jones, Edward, 285, 
 
 304, 305, 309, 318-20, 322, 
 
 324. 340 
 
 Byron, Geo. Gordon, Lord, 8, 
 9, 26, 53, 60, 65-73, 81, 84, 
 99-101, ro6, ii6-i8, 171, 192, 
 195, 196, 203. 2§fl-34, 246," 
 
 333. 396-98 
 
 Caine, T. Hall, 279, 296, 301, 
 
 302, 308 
 Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, 
 
 156, 192. 234, 247 
 Calidore, 129 
 Callista, 355, 357 
 Calverley, C. S., 249 
 Campbell, Thomas, 64-67, 71, 
 
 72 
 Cancionero, The, 246 
 Carlyle, Thos., 15, 35, 39, 92, 
 
 103, III, 137, 149, 151, 160, 
 
 162, 164, 168, 171, 335, 381, 
 
 382, 384, 398, 400 
 Cary, Henry F. , 97-99, 102 
 Castle by the Sea, The, 170 
 Castle of Otranto, The, 4, lo 
 Cecil Dreeme, 367 
 Chaitivel, 390 
 Chartier, Alain, 118 
 Chasse du Burgrave, La, 189, 
 
 277 
 Chateaubriand, F. A. de, 90, 
 
 176, 191, 202-08, 225, 246, 363 
 Chatterton, Thos., 52, 54, 86, 
 
 119, 191, 300 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 93, 315-17, 
 
 328, 329 
 Cheap Clothes and Nasty, 383 
 Chevaliers de la Table 
 
 Ronde, Les, 225 
 Childe Harold, 70, 73. 91, 99, 
 
 233 
 Childe Roland, 276 
 Christabel. 14, 27, 49, 53, 54, 
 
 75, 80-85, ^26, 296 
 Christian Year, The, 357, 361 
 Christmas Carol, A, 343 
 Chronicle of the Cid, 236 
 Cinq Mars, 191 
 Civil Wars of Granada, The, 
 
 247 
 
Index. 
 
 415 
 
 Cloister and the Hearth, The, 
 
 230, 231 
 Coleridge. S. T., 9, 12-14, 27, 
 
 48-63, 74-89, 97-99, 119, 126, 
 
 127, 136-38, 158, 159, 168, 
 
 291, 295-97, 314, 355 
 Collins, J. Churton, 257, 260 
 Collinson, Jas., 284, 292, 293 
 Colvin, Sidney, 116. 127 
 Conde Alarcos, 247 
 Congal, 260 
 Conquete d'Angleterre, La, 
 
 39, 226 
 Conservateur Litteraire, Le, 
 
 201 
 Conspiracy of Venice, The, 
 
 246 
 Contes Bizarres, 167 
 Contes Drolatiques, 42 
 Contrasts, 368-71, 375 
 Count Gismond, 276 
 Courthope, W. J., 314 
 Cowper, Wm., 57, 58, 68 
 Croker, T. C, 253, 256, 258 
 Cromwell, 90, 218, 221 
 Cross, W. L., I, 31, 38 
 
 Dante, Alighieri, 40, 90-113, 
 
 122, 282, 290, 298-301, 310, 
 
 311, 362, 393 
 Dante and his Circle, 299, 303 
 Dante at Verona, 310 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
 
 (Sharp), 291, 292, 306 
 Dante's Dream, 291 
 Dark Ladie. The, 49, 86 
 Dark Rosaleen, 259 
 Dasent, Sir Geo., 334 
 Davidson, Jno., 263, 264 
 Day Dream, The, 265-67 
 Death of Mile, de Sombreuil, 
 
 The, 216 
 Decameron, The, 123, 124, 
 
 393. 400 
 Defence of Guenevere, The, 
 
 275, 296. 309, 321, 324-28 
 Defence of Poetry (Shelley) , 
 
 Deirdre, 260 
 
 Dejection : an Ode, 60, 86 
 Delacroix, Eugene, 177, 178 
 De Quincey, Thos. , 38 
 Development of the English 
 
 Novel, The, i, 31, 38 
 Dev6ria, Eugene, 178, 195 
 Dialogue to the Memory of 
 
 Mr. Alexander Pope, 402 
 Dies Iree, 5, 153 
 Digby, Kenelm H., 319, 363- 
 
 66, 379 
 Discourse of the Three Uni- 
 ties. 133 
 Divine Comedy, The, 92-99, 
 
 102, 103, 105, 109, III, 282, 
 
 290, 310, 362, 366 
 Djinns, The, 189 
 Dobell, Sydney, 262, 263 
 Dobson, Austin, 401, 402 
 Don Alvaro, 246 
 Dondey, Theophile, 185, 190 
 Don Quixote, 156, 241 
 Dream of Gerontius, The, 362 
 Dream of John Ball, The, 386 
 Dryden, Jno., 117, 124, 125, 
 
 269 
 Dues de Bourgogne, Les, 226 
 Dumas, Alexandre, 198, 209 
 Diirer, Albrecht, 152, 153, 324, 
 
 373. 374 
 
 Earthly Paradise, The, 237, 
 238. 315, 321, 328-32, 334, 
 380, 390, 391 
 
 Ecclesiologist, The, 375 
 
 Edda, The, 334 
 
 Eden Bower, 315 
 
 EichendorfE, Joseph von, 146 
 
 Eighteenth Century Vig- 
 nettes, 401 
 
 Elfinland Wud, 254, 255 
 
 Elves, The, 163 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 165, 166, 307 
 
 Endymion, 121, 126, 128, 342 
 
 English Bards and Scotch Re- 
 viewers, 26, 60, 63, 69, 70, 
 72 
 
4i6 
 
 Index. 
 
 English Contemporary Art, 
 
 293 
 Enid, 270, 272 
 Epic and Romance, 46, 47 
 Epic of Women, An, 393 
 Epipsychidion, loi, 310 
 Erfindung des Rosenkranzes, 
 
 Die, 153 
 Erl King, The, 192 
 Erskine, Wm., 6, 7, 13 
 Espronceda, Jose de, 246 
 Essay on Epic Poetry (Hay- 
 ley), 95 
 Essays and Studies (Swin- 
 burne), 349, 351 
 Essays on German Literature 
 (Boyesen), 139, 159, 160, 
 
 165 
 Essays on the Picturesque 
 
 (Price) , 34 
 Eve of St. Agnes, The, 85, 
 
 107, 120-22, 125-29, 307 
 Eve of St. John. The, 13, 22, 
 
 23 
 Eve of St. Mark, The, 130, 131 
 
 Faber, F. W., 360, 362 
 
 Faerie Queene, The, 120, 275 
 
 Fairies. The, 258 
 
 Fair Inez, 279 
 
 Fairy Legends of the South 
 
 of Ireland, 253, 256. 258 
 Fairy Thorn, The, 258 
 Familiar Studies of Men and 
 
 Books, 32 
 Fantasio, 226 
 Faust, T78, 191, 192, 238 
 Feast of the Poets, The, 108 
 Ferguson, Sir Samuel, 258-60 
 Fichte, J. G., 137 
 Fin du Classicisme, La, 175 
 Ford, R., 246, 248 
 Forest Lovers, The, 230-32 
 Fors Clavigera, 380, 383, 387 
 Fountain of Tears, The. 389 
 Fouqu6, F. de la M., 36, 139, 
 
 140, 153, 162, 167-69, 324, 
 
 363. 373 
 
 Fourteen Sonnets (Bowles), 
 
 55. 58-61 
 Fragments from German 
 
 Prose Writers, 162 
 Frere, Jno. H., 248 
 From Shakspere to Pope, n6 
 
 Gallery of Pigeons, The, 388. 
 
 394. 395 
 Gareth and Lynette, 274 
 Gaspard de la Nuit, 388 
 Gates, L. E., 129, 355, 356 
 Gaule Poetique, La, 225 
 Gautier, Theophile, 167, 176- 
 
 81, 183-85, 187, 188, 191-93. 
 
 195-98, 202, 219, 221-25, 349. 
 
 388, 393 
 Gebir, 235, 237 
 G6nie du Christianisme, Le. 
 
 90, 176, 202, 203, 205-08, 363 
 Gentle Armour, The, 109, no 
 Germ, The, 284 
 German Novelists (Roscoe), 
 
 167 
 German Poets and Poetry 
 
 (Longfellow) , 167 
 German Romance (Carlyle), 
 
 162 
 Gierusalemme Liberata, 91 
 Girlhood of Mary Virgin. 
 
 The, 287, 290, 291 
 Glenfinlas, 13, 22 
 Globe, Le, 201, 202 
 Goblet, The, 164 
 Goblin Market, The, 82 
 Godiva, 265 
 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 5, 
 
 92, 133, 178, 191, 192 
 Golden Legend, The, 297 
 Golden Treasury, The, 25, 389 
 Golden Wings, 326-28 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 95 
 Gorres, Joseph, 138, 147, 152, 
 
 363, 400 
 Gosse, Edmund, 116 
 Gotz von Berlichingen, 5, 133, 
 
 193 
 Gries, J. D.. 156, 247 
 
Index. 
 
 417 
 
 Grimm, Jakob and Wm., 154, 
 
 162, 247, 256 
 Guest, Lady Charlotte, 270 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 103, 399 
 Han d'Islande, 196, 218 
 Hardiknute, 3 
 Harold the Dauntless, 29 
 Hartleap Well, 19-21, 80 
 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 245 
 Hawker, R. S., 262, 263 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 162-64 
 Hayley, Wm., 95, 96 
 Haystack in the Floods, The, 
 
 326 
 Heart of Midlothian, The, 31, 
 
 33. 379 
 Heine, Heinrich, 35-3S, 139- 
 
 41, 144, 146-49. 152, 154-59. 
 
 161, 170, 400 
 Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 
 
 164-66 
 Heir of Redcliffe, The, 357 
 Helvellyn, 15, 16 
 Henri HI., 209 
 Heretic's Tragedy, The, 276 
 Hereward the Wake, 281 
 Herford, C. H., 12,24, 34. 87, 
 
 88 
 Hernani, 186, 188, 195-200 
 Hero Worship, 103, in, 335 
 Herzensergiessungen eines 
 
 kunstliebenden Klosterbru- 
 
 ders, 152. 153 
 Hewlett, Maurice, 230-32 
 Higginson, T. W., 163 
 Histoire du Romantisme 
 
 (Gautier), 176-81, 183-85, 
 
 187, 188, 191-93, 195-98, 221 
 
 -25 
 Histoire du Romantisme en 
 
 France (Toreinx) , 202 
 History of France (Michelet), 
 
 226 
 History of Literature (Schle- 
 
 gel), 157 
 History of Spanish Litera- 
 ture, A (Kelly), 246, 247 
 
 27 
 
 History of Spanish Litera- 
 ture, A. (Ticknor), 242, 
 243. 248 
 History of the Crusades, 226 
 History of the Swiss Confed- 
 eration, 153 
 Hita, Perez de, 247 
 Hogg, Jas., 250-55 
 Holy Cross Day, 277 
 Homme qui Rit, L', 219, 221 
 Hood, Thos., 278, 279 
 House of Life, The, 307, 310 
 House of the Wolfings, The, 
 
 232, 337-39- 387 
 Howells, W. D., 397, 398 
 Howitt, Chas. and Mary, 334 
 Hughes, Arthur, 305-07 
 Hughes, Thomas., 357, 383 
 Hugo, Francois V., 222 
 Hugo, Victor. Marie, 90, 137, 
 ~~T73; 176, 178-82, 188, 189, 
 194-96, 200, 214-21, 224, 226, 
 247, 277, 298, 299, 349, 388, 
 
 389 
 Hunt, Jas. Leigh, 49. 105-13, 
 
 118, 119, 121-23, 127, 388 
 Hunt, Wm. H., 283, 284, 288- 
 
 90, 292, 302, 306, 307 
 Hurd, Richard, 364 
 Hutton, R. H., 40 
 Hylas, 331 
 
 Hymns to the Night, 164 
 Hypatia, 355 
 
 Hyperion (Keats), 117, 122 
 Hyperion (Longfellow), 172 
 
 Idylls of the King, 268-75, 
 
 303, 347 
 Illustrations of Tennyson, 
 
 257, 260 
 II Penseroso, 374 
 Imitation of Spenser (Keats) , 
 
 120 
 Inferno, 96, 99, 103, 191 
 Intaglios, 393 
 Irving, Washington, 239 
 Isabella, 123-25, 307, 390, 
 
 400 
 
4i8 
 
 Index. 
 
 Ivanhoe, 31, 36, 39, 40, 43, 
 379. 397 
 
 Jameson, Anna, 374, 375 
 Jeffrey, Francis, Lord, 37 
 Jenny, 309 
 John Inglesant, 357 
 Journal des Debats, 201 
 Journal of Speculative Phi- 
 losophy, The, 166 
 Journey into the Blue Dis- 
 tance, 162, 163 
 Joyce, P. W., 260 
 Joyce, R. D., 260 
 
 Keats (Colvin), ir6, 127 
 
 Keats, Jno., 53, 54, 82, 85, 86, 
 107, 113-31, 172, 228, 262, 
 264, 279, 287, 294, 299, 300, 
 306, 307, 314, 315. 342, 388, 
 390, 400 
 
 Keble, Jno., 292, 357, 361 
 
 Keith of Ravelston, 262, 263 
 
 Kelly, J. F., 246, 247 
 
 Ker, W. P., 46. 47 
 
 Kilmeny, 252 
 
 Kinder und Hausmarchen, 
 
 154, 162 
 
 King Arthur's Tomb, 327 
 Kinges Quair, The, 306, 312 
 Kingsley, Chas. , 279-81, 292, 
 
 355, 383. 384 
 King's Tragedy, The, 306, 
 
 311-13 
 Knaben Wunderhorn, Des, 
 
 155. 172 
 
 Knight, Death, and the Devil, 
 
 The, 152. 153, 324, 373 
 Knight's Grave, The, 87 
 Kronenwachter, Die, 167 
 Kubla Khan. 87 
 
 Lady of Shalott, The, 265, 
 
 271. 303. 304 324 
 Lady of the Lake, The, 19, 
 
 29, 251, 379 
 Lament for the Decline of 
 Chivalry, 279 
 
 Lamia, 117, 129 
 
 Landor, W. S., 16, 20, 27, 53, 
 
 54, 117. 235, 237, 395 
 Lang, Andrew, 330 
 Lara, 233 
 
 Laus Veneris, 343, 349 
 Lay of the Brown Rosary. 
 
 The, 277, 278 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
 
 The, 3, 5, II, 25-28, 40, 53, 
 
 85, 252 
 Lays of Ancient Rome, 249 
 Lays of France, 389, 390 
 Lays of the Western Gael, 
 
 260 
 Leading Cases done into 
 
 Equity. 249 
 Legends of the Cid, 246 
 Lenore, 83, 133, 144, 192, 297, 
 
 392 
 Leper, The, 349 
 Lesser, Creuz6 de, 225 
 Letters on Chivalry and Ro- 
 mance, 364 
 Letters on Demonology and 
 
 Witchcraft, 41 
 Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet, 
 
 226 
 Lewis, M. G., 77, 83, 238, 239 
 Liberal Movement in English 
 
 Literature, The, 314 
 Life and Death of Jason, 
 
 The, 315, 321, 328-32 
 Life and Letters of Dean 
 
 Church. The, 358 
 Life of William Morris, The 
 
 (Mackail), 315, 320, 331, 
 
 333, 382 
 Light of the World, The, 288- 
 
 90 
 Lindsay, A. W. C, 372-74 
 Lines on a Bust of Dante, 105 
 Literary Reminiscences (De 
 
 Quincey), 38 
 Literature and Romance of 
 
 Northern Europe, 334 
 Literature of Europe, The 
 
 (Hallam) , 103 
 
Index. 
 
 419 
 
 Locbhart, J. G., 5, 7, 9, 11, 22, 
 
 23. 239, 247, 248 
 Locrine, 346 
 Longfellow, H. W., 105, 109, 
 
 164, 167, 170. 172, 239, 297 
 Lord of the Isles, The, Z9, 
 
 85 
 Lorenzaccio, 226 
 Lorenzo and Isabella, 287, 291 
 Loss and Gain, 357, 359 
 Love, 86, 127 
 Love is Enough, 332, 333 
 Lovers of Gudrun, The, 330, 
 
 334-36 
 Lowell, J. R., 70, 82, 93. 116, 
 
 131, 165, 203, 260 
 Lucinde, 157 
 
 Luck of Edenhall, The, 170 
 Liirlei, Die, 141 
 Lyra Innocentium, 357 
 Lyrical Ballads, 18, 48, 74 
 
 Mabinogion, The, 270, 332 
 Macaulay, T. B., 103, 249 
 Mackail, W. J., 315, 320. 331, 
 
 333. 382 
 McLaughlin, E. T., 43 
 Madoc, 237 
 
 Mador of the Moor, 251 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 326 
 Maidens of Verdun, The, 216 
 Maids of Elfin-Mere, The, 
 
 258, 304. 324 
 Maigron. L., 33, 34, 44-46 
 Mallet, P. H., 107, 229 
 Malory, Sir Thos., 270, 272, 
 
 303. 347. 348 
 Manfred, 234 
 Mangan, J. C., 259, 260 
 Manzoni, Alessandro, 133 
 Marchen (Tieck), 162 
 Marie de France, 390, 393 
 Marienlieder, 148 
 Marino Faliero, 234 
 Marion Delorme, 200 
 Marmion, 6, 15, 23, 29, 40, 90, 
 
 379 
 Martyrs, Les, 225 
 
 Marzials, Th^ophile, 285, 387, 
 
 388, 394, 395 
 Masque of Queen Bersabe, 
 
 The, 277, 344 
 Masque of Shadows, The, 
 
 390, 392 
 Meinhold, J. W., 42, 280 
 Merimee, Prosper, 30, 33 
 Michaud, J. F., 226 
 Michelet, Jules, 226 
 Middle Ages, The (Hallam), 
 
 103 
 Millais, J. E., 283-85, 287, 
 
 288, 290, 291, 307 
 Milton, Jno., 93, 103, 269, 374 
 Minstrelsy, Ancient and Mod- 
 ern (Motherwell), 253 
 Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
 
 Border. 21, 22, 24, 26, 243, 
 
 250, 251 
 Modern Painters, 6, 10, 284, 
 
 292, 294 
 Mores Catholici, 319, 36^ 
 Morgante Maggiore, 234 
 Morris, Wm. , 29, 232, 237, 
 
 275, 285, 296, 304-06, 309, 
 
 314-40, 345, 350, 380, 382, 
 
 384-89 
 Morte Darthur (Malory) , 106, 
 
 270, 273, 303, 304, 324, 347, 
 
 364 
 Morte d' Arthur (Tennyson), 
 
 271, 272 
 
 Motherwell, Wm., 250, 253-55 
 Mozley, T.. 358 
 Miiller, Johannes, 153 
 Munera Pulveris, 380 
 Muse Frangaise, La, 201 
 Music Master, The, 258, 300 
 Musset, Alfred de, 180, 189, 
 
 198, 226, 247 
 Myller, H., 154 
 Mysteries of Udolpho, 83 
 
 Nanteuil, Celestin, 178, 223- 
 
 25 
 Nature of Gothic, The, 321, 
 
 375. 385. 386 
 
420 
 
 Index. 
 
 Nerval. Gerai-d de, 190-92, 
 
 196, 197. 225, 349 
 New Essays toward a Critical 
 
 Method. 122 
 Newman, J. H., 292, 319. 
 
 354-62, 366, 381 
 News from Nowhere. 317. 
 
 319. 382. 386 
 Nibelungeulied.The, 154, 155, 
 
 297 
 Nodier. Chas., 194 
 Northern Antiquities. 107. 229 
 Northern Mythology. 334 
 N6tre Dame de Paris, 178, 
 
 179, 221, 224 
 
 Novalis. 134. 137. 148, 152, 
 164-67, 172, 302, 400 
 
 Ode to a Dead Bodj-, no 
 Ode to a Grecian Urn. 117 
 Ode to the West Wind, 102 
 Odes et Ballades (Hugo), 176, 
 
 180, 189, 217 
 
 Odes et Poesies Diverses 
 
 (Hugo) , 214 
 Odyssey, The, 331 
 Ogier the Dane, 330. 332 
 Old Celtic Romances, 260 
 Old Masters at Florence, 316 
 Old Mortality, 31, 33, 253, 
 
 379 
 
 Old Woman of Berkeley, The, 
 238, 239 
 
 Oliphant, F.. 353 
 
 On First Looking into Chap- 
 man's Homer. 117. 122 
 
 Oriana, 265, 313, 324 
 
 Orientales, Les, 189 
 
 Orlando Furioso, 90, 91, 109 
 
 O'Shaughnessy, Arthur, 387- 
 
 90. 393 
 Ossian. 208, 261 
 
 Palgrave. F. T., 25, 389 
 Palmerin of England, 236, 241 
 Paradiso, 311 
 
 Parochial and Plain Sermons, 
 360 
 
 Parsons, T. W., 105 
 Partenopex of Blois, 90 
 Past and Present, 381, 382 
 Pater, Walter, 42, 79 
 Payne, Jno., 387-93 
 Perrault, Chas., 194, 265, 349 
 Percy, Thos., 3, 54, 57. 74, 
 
 159. 238, 295 
 Petrarca, Francesco, 92 
 Phantasus, 160 
 Pillar of the Cloud, The, 362 
 Poe, Edgar A., 162, 163, 300, 
 
 301, 389 
 Poems and Ballads (Swin- 
 burne), 296, 339, 343. 345, 
 349. 350 
 Poems and Romances (Sim- 
 cox), 388 
 Poems by the Way, 386 
 Poets and Poetry of Munster, 
 
 259 
 Politics for the People, 383 
 Pollock, Sir Frederick, 249 
 Pope, Alexander, 52-54, 56, 
 
 63-73. 115-17. 402 
 Portrait, The, 311 
 Praeterita, 372. 378 
 Preface to Cromwell, 182, 188, 
 
 218-20 
 Pre-Raphaelitism (Ruskin), 
 
 293 
 Price, Sir Uvedale. 34. 374 
 Primer of French Literature, 
 
 A, 183. 184 
 Prince Arthur (Blackmore), 
 
 270 
 Prince des Sots, Le, 225 
 Princess. The, 267, 268 
 Prior, Matthew, 401 
 Prophecy of Dante, The, 100, 
 
 lOI 
 
 Proverbs in Porcelain, 401 
 
 Psyche, 121 
 
 Pugin, A. C, 368 
 
 Pugin, A. "W. N., 360, 361, 
 
 368-72. 375, 379 
 Pugin. E. W.. 368 
 Purgatorio, 362 
 
Index. 
 
 421 
 
 Queen Gwynnevar's Round, 
 
 262 
 Queenhoo Hall, 8, 20, 32 
 Queen Mab, 235 
 Queen's Wake, The, 252, 
 
 253 
 Quentin Durward, 31, 36 
 Quest of the Sancgreall. The 
 
 (Westwood) , 276 
 Quest of the Sangreal, The 
 
 (Hawker), 262 
 Quiberon, 216 
 
 Racine et Shakspere, 38, 1S6, 
 
 208, 211, 213 
 Radcliflfe, Anne, 41, 42, 82, 
 
 193 
 Rapunzel, 309, 326, 327 
 Raven, The, 301 
 Reade, Chas., 230 
 Rebecca and Rowena, 397 
 R6cits Merovingiens, 226 
 Recollections of D. G. Ros- 
 
 setti (Caine), 296, 297, 301, 
 
 302, 308 
 Reliques of Ancient English 
 
 Poetry, 3, 17, 74, 107, 229, 
 
 238, 243, 247 
 Reminiscences (Mozley), 35S 
 Remorse, 86, 89 
 Richter, J. P. F., 169 
 Rime of Redemption, The, 
 
 392 
 Rime of the Duchess May, 
 
 The, 277, 278 
 Rivas, Duke de, 246 
 Robertson, J. M., 122 
 Rogers, Chas., 96 
 Roi s'Amuse, Le, 200, 201 
 Rokeby, 29 
 Romancero General, The, 
 
 243, 247 
 Roman Historique, Le. 33, 
 
 34. 44-46 
 Romantische Schule, Die 
 
 (Heine) , 36, 139-41 
 Romaunt of the Page, The, 
 
 277 
 
 Roots of the Mountains, The, 
 
 337, 338 
 Rosa, Martinez de la, 246 
 Rosamond, 346, 347 
 Rosamund, Queen of the 
 
 Goths, 346 
 Roscoe, Wm., 65, 66 
 Rose, W. S., 90 
 Rose Mary, 263, 311, 312 
 Rossetti, Christina, 82, 2S2, 
 
 284, 302 
 Rossetti, D. G.. 131, 228, 258, 
 
 262, 263, 265, 282-88, 290-92, 
 
 295-315. 318-21, 323, 324, 
 
 340, 343. 345, 350, 387-89. 
 
 393 
 Rossetti, Gabriele, 282 
 Rossetti, Maria F., 282 
 Rossetti, W. M., 282, 284 
 Runenberg, The, 163 
 Ruskin, Jno., 6, 10, 284, 286- 
 
 89, 292-94, 304, 317, 321, 
 
 324, 371, 372, 375-80, 382-87, 
 
 398 
 
 Sacred and Legendary Art, 
 
 374, 375 
 Saint Agnes, 267 
 Saint Brandan, 263 
 Saint Dorothy, 344 
 Saint Patrick's Purgatory, 
 
 238 
 Saintsbury, George, 50, 118, 
 
 183, 184, 295, 324, 326, 395, 
 
 396 
 Saints' Tragedy, The, 279. 
 
 280, 292 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge und 
 
 die Englische Romantik, 
 
 50-55, 75, 77, 82, 86 
 Scherer, Wm., 167, 170 
 Schiller, J. C. F., 210, 212 
 Schlegel, A. W.. 88, 140, 144, 
 
 145, 154. 156-59. 162, 165, 
 
 172, 192, 247 
 Schlegel, F.,99, 134. i35, i37, 
 
 148, 151, 157-59, 172, 247, 
 
 363 
 
422 
 
 Index. 
 
 Sctot, Sir Walter, 1-47, 49, 
 50. 52. 53. 71, 75, 77,85, 87, 
 88, 90, 91, 119, 120, 127, 129, 
 136, 158, 167, 169, 172, 173, 
 178, 180, 192, 212, 226, 232, 
 243, 246, 247, 249-53, 256, 
 267, 295, 313, 320, 321, 323, 
 329, 352-56. 367. 378, 379. 
 397. 402 
 
 Scott, W. B.. 292, 293, 305-07, 
 353. 389 
 
 Selections from Newman, 355, 
 356 
 
 Seward, Anne, 98 
 
 Shairp, J. C, 18 
 
 Shaker Bridal, The, 164 
 
 Shakspere, Wm., 210, 222, 399 
 
 Sharp, Wm., 291, 292, 306 
 
 Shelley, P. B., 8, 25, loi, 102, 
 120, 232-35, 299, 310, 340, 
 398 
 
 Short History of English Lit- 
 erature, A, 50, 118, 295, 324, 
 326. 395. 396 
 
 Shorthouse, J. H.. 357 
 
 Short Studies (Higginson), 
 163 
 
 Sigerson, Jno., 259, 261 
 
 Sigismonda and Guiscardo, 
 124, 125 
 
 Sigurd the Volsung. 336 
 
 Simcox, G. A., 388 
 
 Sintram and his Companions, 
 153, 162, j68, 324, 373 
 
 Sir Floris, 390-92 
 
 Sir Galahad (Morris), 306, 
 325. 328 
 
 Sir Galahad (Tennyson), 
 267, 271, 325 
 
 Sir Lancelot and Queen Gui- 
 nivere, 271, 325 
 
 Sir Tristram, 7 
 
 Sister Helen, 311, 312, 345 
 
 Sisters, The, 265, 313 
 
 Sizeranne, R. de la, 293 
 
 Sketches of Christian Art, 
 
 372-74 
 Sleep and Poetry, 1 14-16 
 
 Sleeping Beauty, The, 265 
 Smith, Charlotte, 55 
 Socialism, 386 
 
 Song at the Feast of Brough- 
 am Castle, 18, 19 
 Song of the Western Men, 262 
 Sonneur do Saint Paul, Le, 
 
 193 
 Sorrows of Werther, The, 397 
 Southey, Robert, 50, 51, 55, 
 
 71. 235-39, 355 
 Specimen of an Induction to 
 
 a Poem, 129 
 Specimens of German Ro- 
 mance, 167 
 Specimens of Gothic Archi- 
 tecture, 368 
 Spenser, Edmund, 3, 4, 93, 
 
 107, 120-22. 269, 275, 329 
 Stael, Mme.de, 134, 139, 141- 
 
 45, 171, 192, 208 
 Staff and Scrip, 311 
 Stedman, E. C., 265, 387 
 Stendhal, De, 36-38, 186, 187, 
 
 201, 208-14 
 Stephen, Leslie. 10. 38, 80 
 Sternbald's Wanderungen, 
 
 152 
 Stevenson, R. L., 32 
 Stokes, Whitley, 259, 261 
 Stolberg, F. L., Count, 149, 
 
 363 
 Stones of Venice, 321, 375-79. 
 
 385. 386 
 Stories from the Italian Poets, 
 
 109-1 I 
 Stor)' of Rimini, The, 105-07, 
 
 119, 121, 122, 390 
 Story of the Brave Casper and 
 
 the Fair Annerl, The, 167 
 Student of Salamanca, The, 
 
 246 
 Studies and Appreciations, 
 
 129 
 Studies in Mediaeval Life and 
 
 Literature, 43 
 Study of Celtic Literature, 
 
 On the, 256 
 
Index. 
 
 423 
 
 Succube, La, 42 
 
 Sundering Flood, The, 232, 
 
 337, 339 
 Swinburne, A. C, 275, 276, 
 296, 304, 309, 314, 315, 319, 
 339-51. 387-89 
 
 Table Talk (Coleridge), 12 
 Tables Turned, The, 386 
 Tale of Balen, The, 347, 348 
 Tale of King Constans, The, 
 
 330 
 Tales of Wonder. 238 
 Talisman, The, 28, 36, 43 
 Tannhauser, 153, 160, 264, 
 
 343, 391 
 Task, The, 58 
 
 Tasso, Torquato, 91, 104, 109 
 Taylor, Edgar, 162 
 Taylor, Wm., 53, 162, 238 
 Templars in Cyprus, The,. 149 
 Tennj'son, Alfred, 257, 260, 
 
 262, 264-75, 295, 303, 324, 
 
 325, 347, 348 
 'I'hackeray, W. M,, 397, 398, 
 
 402 
 Thalaba the Destroyer, 235 
 Theocritus, 331 
 Thierry, Augustin, 39, 225, 
 
 226 
 Thomas the Rhymer, 7 
 Thoreau. H. D., 165 
 Thorpe, Benjamin, 334 
 Thousand and One Nights, 
 
 The, 393 
 Three Bardic Tales, 259 
 Three Fishers, The, 383 
 Thyrsis, 378 
 
 Ticknor, Geo., 242,243, 248 
 Tieck, Ludwig, 42, 134. 137, 
 
 148, 150, 152, 154, 156-65, 
 
 172, 245, 400 
 Tighe, Mary, 121 
 Tintern Abbey, 358 
 Todhunter, Jno., 259, 261 
 Tom Brown at Oxford, 357 
 Tracts for the Times, 292, 
 
 319, 363. 368 
 
 Treasury of Irish Poetry, A, 
 261 
 
 Tristram and Iseult (Arnold) , 
 275. 278, 341 
 
 Tristram of Lyonesse (Swin- 
 burne), 275. 340 
 
 Tristram und Isolde (Wag- 
 ner), 393 
 
 Troy Town, 315 
 
 True Principles of Pointed 
 Architecture, The, 372 
 
 Tune of Seven Towers, The, 
 305, 326 
 
 Two Foscari, The, 234 
 
 Uhland, Ludwig, 140, 154-56, 
 
 170, 171 
 Ulalume, 301 
 Undine, 168 
 Unto this Last, 380 
 
 Vabre, Jule, 222 
 
 Vanity Fair, 396 
 
 Vathek, 367 
 
 Vere, Aubrey de, 259, 260, 
 
 358, 361. 366 
 Verses on Various Occasions 
 
 (Newman), 357 
 Versunkene Glocke, Die, 245 
 Victorian Poets, 265, 387 
 Vignettes in Rhyme, 401 
 Vigny, A. V., Comte de, 188, 
 
 191, 210 
 Villon, Frangois, 298, 299, 
 
 350, 393 
 Vision of Judgment, The, 70 
 Vita Nuova, La, loi, 299, 302, 
 
 310. 393 
 Volksmarchen (Tieck) , 160 
 Volsunga Saga, The, 334, 335 
 Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 92, 94, 
 
 95 
 Vorlesungen iiber drama- 
 
 tische Kunst und Litteratur 
 
 (Schlegel), 88, 158, 162, 192 
 Voss, J. H., 149 
 Voyage of Maeldune, The, 
 
 260 
 
424 
 
 Index. 
 
 Wackenroder, W. H. , 134, 
 
 152, 153. 159 
 Wagner, Richard, 153, 264, 
 
 391. 393 
 Walladmor, 38 
 Walter Scott et la Princesse 
 
 de Cleves, 36 
 Ward. W. G., 360 
 Warton, Joseph, 61, 63, 64, 
 
 71, 73. 157. 158 
 Warton, Thos., 27. 57, 60, 61, 
 
 94, 157, 158 
 Water Lady, The, 279 
 Water of the Wondrous Isles, 
 
 The, 337, 339 
 Watts, Theodore, 300 
 Waverley Novels, The, 30-39, 
 
 324, 378, 379. 403 
 Welland River, 328, 345 
 Welshmen of Tirawley, The, 
 
 260 
 Werner, Zacharias, 148, 149, 
 
 212, 302 
 Westwood, Thos., 276 
 White Doe of Rylstone, The, 
 
 16-18 
 White Ship, The, 311, 312 
 
 William George Ward and 
 
 the Oxford Movement. 361 
 Winthrop, Theodore, 367 
 Wisdom and Languages of 
 
 India, The. 157 
 Wissenschaftslehre (Fichte) , 
 
 137 
 Witch of Fife, The. 252 
 Wood beyond the World, The, 
 
 337. 339 
 
 Woolner, Thos.. 284 
 
 Wordsworth, Wm., 9, 12, 14- 
 20. 48. 50-55, 71, 77. 80 89, 
 119, 300, 333, 355, 358, 398 
 
 Yarrovi? Revisited, 14 
 Yeast, 383 
 Yeats, J. B., 261 
 Yonge, Charlotte M., 357 
 Yuletide Stories, 334 
 
 Zapolya. 89 
 Zauberring, Der, 168 
 Zeitung fiir Einsiedler, 138, 
 
 172 
 Zorrilla, Jos6 de, 246 
 
BY HENRY A. BEERS 
 ENGLISH ROMANTICISM, xix. century 
 
 Gilt top. i2mo. $1.75, net. 
 
 This volume includes chapters on the movement in Germany 
 and in France. i"i«tiiy 
 
 ENGLISH ROMANTICISM, xvili. century 
 
 3d Impression. Gilt top. i2mo. $2. 
 
 This volume includes a chapter on theGerman Tributary. 
 
 The individuality of his style, its humor, its color, its deli- 
 cacy . . wil do qmte as much to continue the author's reputa- 
 tion as his scholarship. The book is the work of a man who has 
 studied hard, but who has also lived. "-A: Y. Commercial aI 
 vertiser. 
 
 "Oneof the most important contributions yet made to literary 
 history by an American s,c\\o\zx.'' —Out look. ^ 
 
 " Remarkably penetrating and scholarly. "—vV: Y Times 
 
 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL 
 
 And Five Other Tales of American Life, and Two Old 
 H-nghsh Legends, ^th Impression. i8mo. 75c. 
 " So devoid of pretension or effort, so freshly 'and frankly 
 written, so quiet in its humor, and with its suggestion of pathos 
 so latent in the emotions it awakens . . . hereafter we shall re 
 member him among the sweetest, tenderest, and gravest of our 
 ^toxy.t^W^x^."— Mail and Express. ^ c^vesi 01 our 
 
 THE WAYS OF YALE 
 
 In the Consulship of Plancus. yik Impression. i8mo 7i:c 
 Humorous Sketches. '•' ' 
 
 "There is only one fault to find, and that is there is not 
 enough of it. "—tV: Y. Times. 
 
 y A felicitous capture of the elusive undergraduate spirit 
 mingled with the uproarious humor which jostles the senti' 
 mental so closely in college life. •'—Springfield Republican 
 
 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1776- 
 
 1876. jd Impression. i6mo. $i. 
 
 Representative selections in prose and verse from over forty 
 authors (now dead), with an introduction and bioeranhical 
 notes by Henry A. Beers. g^ipnicai 
 
 "The introduction is of more than usual interest. It deals 
 especially with colonial poetry, of which it gives a comprehen 
 si\Q s]!.tich." —Boston Transcript. 
 
 COLERIDGE: PROSE EXTRACTS 
 
 Edited by Henry A. Beers. 2d Impression. i6mo. coc net 
 belections, from a paragraph to ten or twenty pages each. 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. ^® ^?^^^^rk'"^^* 
 
DOWDEN'S PURITAN AND ANGLICAN T^T^ 
 
 Studies in Literature. By Edward Dowden. 
 341 pp. 8vo. %2.oo ne(, f ^- 
 
 " He has something to say and says it with clearness. 
 . . . Notably lucid and instructive, . . . Not without the 
 more vivacious quality which comes from a sympathetic 
 handling of personal traits." — A^. Y. Tribune. 
 
 " A notable series of appreciations bound together by a 
 vital unity of subject and interest. . . . The work as a 
 whole is as full of ripe judgment as it is of sound learning; 
 and it is pervaded withal by a vivid personal enthusiasm 
 which makes it delightful reading." — Nation. 
 
 " His new book is important. . . . One may find therein 
 the formative influences of early American literature." — 
 Times Saturday Review. 
 
 " The latest volume has all the unity, clearness, and 
 sympathy of his former admirable Shakespearian studies. 
 . . . As detecting and expounding the deep and vital 
 forces at work behind a literature of a given period, as 
 pointing out salient points of resemblance as well as of 
 difference between these forces, and as giving a moral and 
 showing the tendency of the thought of that period, Prof. 
 Dowden's forte is in freest play." — N. V. Comtnercial. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM DANTE'S DIVINA COM- 
 MEDIA 
 
 Chosen, Translated, and Annotated by Richard 
 James Cross. The original and translation on oppo- 
 site pages. Bound in Florentine style. 225 pp. 
 i6mo. $2.00. 
 "The work has been executed by both translator and 
 publisher with a taste and skill which justify the under- 
 taking. The translations are in prose and adhere very 
 closely to the original. While discarding all the adorn- 
 ments which a metrical version might permit, and depend- 
 ing solely upon the interest and import of Dante's thought, 
 he has at the same time succeeded in keeping much of the 
 spirit of the poem." — Nation. 
 
 "This is a pretty volume to the eye. The translator's 
 sympathy with Dante, his elective taste, and his sense of 
 rhythm in prose make his studies in the interpretation of 
 the great Italian poet interesting and in the main accept- 
 able. Mr. Cross's version is smooth, lucid, and luminous." 
 — Literary World. 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. ^^ ^^^^l^rl''"^"' 
 
 VT '01 
 
 ms k^k 85 
 
 7-V!. 
 
 ^nj/Hf-v^f 
 
-• <<b 
 
 y- 
 
 \» s • ' 
 
 
 
 .'- '^oV^ 
 
 r-i '^^.^ 
 
 C" * 
 
 ^0. 
 
 V-^' 
 
 ^^o^s^' 
 
 .^'% 
 
 
 Ao^ 
 
 •o, '■'^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^'o^. .«=.'■' /A\R/A'o -"♦^.^^ o*.MIii^; ^^..<=.' 
 
 vPC)- 
 
 
 v^^ 
 
 • ^'a c'^ ♦^ 
 
 
 
 V **^L'* <:i 
 
 
 A^ 
 
 i/}h% U A^ ♦'^fe"- ^ C'T ,^^^^^Ao •^^ .^. ^ 
 
 
 
 ^O-b^^ 
 
 ^^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 
 (V'"^/*- °''i/^/M\^* ■^ "^ Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide d 
 
 ^ '^A' ". ^^^4 "^ "^ Treatment Date: Jan. 2009 >5 
 
 '^^ PreservationTechnologies 
 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 
 J 
 
^- .0 
 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 r r * •