of thought and of action, the days of Edward III, of Elizabeth, of the Commonwealth, and of Victoria.

Grouping of the literature. It is best to think of the literature of the entire nineteenth century as falling into three groups, from 1798 to 1837, from 1837 to 1890, and from 1890 on. The year 1837 is an excellent date at which to close the consideration of the literature of the early years of the century, not because Victoria came to the throne at that time, but because, though Wordsworth lived on until 1850, nearly all the writers who accomplished much of anything within the first third of the century were either dead or by 1837 had ceased writing anything of permanent value. Even Macaulay and Dickens had by 1837 barely gotten under way with their work, only the Essays on Milton, Machiavelli, and Johnson of Macaulay's important works having been published before 1840, and only the Sketches by Boz and a part of the Pickwick Papers having appeared before 1837 from the pen of Dickens.

It will be convenient, as well as give proper distinction to the works of the period from 1798 to 1837, to separate them into two large groups, the first to contain the poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, and the novels of Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott, and the second to contain all the other works important enough to consider here. We shall call the groups: (1) The Greater Poets and Novelists, and (2) The Lesser Writers of the Period.

II. THE GREATER POETS AND NOVELISTS

I. Poets

The

Romantic Revival."

When we open the pages of the great poets of this immensely rich period, pages palpitating with the sensitiveness of imagination to all that the human

mind and heart had experienced, was experiencing, and longed to experience for the first time, we are face to face with the products of one of the most extraordinary movements in the history of man. This was the movement which is now in a hackneyed sort of way called the "revival of romance." was hardly a revival or a renewal; it was, rather, a strong accentuation of what had never ceased to be a powerful human motive, namely, a curiosity about and wonder at and love for things that are strange.

This curiosity and wonder and love for the strange took all sorts of forms. In Keats there was a deep interest in the things that suggested the life of the old Greeks, as his Ode on a Grecian Urn so marvelously shows. In Sir Walter Scott there was profound attraction for things that had been important in the life of the medieval people, as his Lay of the Last Minstrel so fascinatingly reveals. In Coleridge there was an intense love for things that are supernatural, or that cannot be explained according to the laws of nature with which we are acquainted. This is illustrated by his Ancient Mariner. In Shelley there was the deepest desire for an understanding of the profoundly spiritual elements in the life of man and the universe, as is clearly evident in that poem of his which is beyond the range of praise, Prometheus Unbound. In Byron there was the endeavor, not only to express all of his own personal emotions, but the endeavor forcefully to communicate those emotions to others, and thereby to "exploit " himself upon the world, that is to say, selfishly to make all the world serve him and his desires,

so well illustrated in his dramas of Manfred and Cain. Then, in Wordsworth there was the turning back to Nature, as the mother of us all, as sympathetic with us, full of solace for us, full of the most interesting and helpful information for us, and full of deepest meaning to the mind that would see and

reflect, all of which is shown in what many think to be the greatest of all brief poems, the Ode on Intimations of Immortality.

All of these, then, were elements of this so-called "Romantic Revival." Interest in the beautiful and vital elements of life of the past, not the medieval past alone, but "classic" as well (for Keats was as much interested in Attic marble as Scott in Gothic aisle); interest in the so-called supernatural; interest in the truly spiritual; interest in all of one's own personal equipment; interest in the all-inclusive life of Mother Nature, these were romantic interests.

Romanticism did furnish an escape from the commonplace; but it was just as much intensely interested in the commonplace, because it found new meanings in the commonplace. Anything new, or new to the individual in such way as to arouse high enthusiasm or newly expressive feeling of any sort, was romantic." It still is, if one must have a name for it. Romanticism in that age was as much speculative as it was feelingful, however. Wordsworth and Shelley are the best evidence of that. Then, further, romanticism must not be thought of as opposed always to realism; "its peculiar quality lies in this, that in apparently detaching us from the real world, it seems to restore us to reality at a higher point." Its highest function was not so much to rekindle the soul of the past," as it was to reveal a soul where no eye had yet discerned it.” Zest for discovery of all sorts was the deeply ingrained quality of the romantic movement at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, as it had been in the Elizabethan days, and in all of the renaissance period, — out of which last-named period, in fact, we have not yet passed. Innovation of any sort is "romantic" to-day, as it always has been.

To discover the value and significance of neglected things

was one of the greatest missions of the "romantic age." It is sometimes thought that it is the business of the artist to better nature. The romanticists considered it their duty to understand nature, not to better her, not to improve upon her. It is true that all romanticism is based upon some sort of desire, whether earthly or transcendent; but it works itself out in its details from a foundation of reality, and it works itself up towards the discovery of the true or the real meaning of what has hitherto been un-understood in full or not understood at all. It bases itself, it builds itself, upon reality. However highly romantic the vision may be, the result always is something like this, that

Another England there I saw,

Another London with its tower,
Another Thames and other hills,

And another pleasant Surrey bower!

But it is these things with a difference. The philosophy of Locke and Hume had reduced all our experience to mere succession of sensations. The romanticists found in these sensations a suggestion of something more that lay behind sensation, behind time and place and circumstance. Often from the most ordinary experiences (and this was particularly true of Wordsworth and of Burns) the inlook into the deepest things could be found. Often places and things seemed to cry aloud that they have within them immemorial and unknown mysteries and meanings. Even in science, as well as in poetry, while every step away from mystery seems bright, clear, and immysterious, yet the end of it all is a deeper mystery. What is electricity? What is this life that has so long followed a process of " lution"? What is mind? Whither are we tending? Science carries us to these questions, and then faces things as romantic as any poetic dreamer has ever faced.

evo

In the last chapter, we defined romance as that kind of writing which represents the mysterious or marvelous in either real or fancied life.

Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats were romantic poets. No one questions that in some of their poems they were sovereign minstrels, too. There is no controversy about the magnetic melody, the splendid beauty of a goodly share of what Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats wrote in verse. There is difference of opinion about much that was written by Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron. In fact, we have some slight hesitation in including Scott among the great poets of the time, however unexcelled he may have been as a great romantic novelist. Some would have as much hesitation about Byron. But none but the unimaginative or he who seeks the highly sensational has doubt about Wordsworth when reading some of his poems. All of these men are great in the permanent effect they have created; some chiefly in the ever-renewed effect of the direct reading of their own works, others chiefly for the effect produced through other writers.

Coleridge. We have spoken of the Lyrical Ballads published by Coleridge and Wordsworth in 1798. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was among these. Four other great poems Coleridge wrote. One was a translation of Wallenstein from the German poet Schiller. The translation is a better poem than the original. The three other great poems were Kubla Khan, Love, and Christabel. These three and the Ancient Mariner are all dreams.

A word about the everywhere-known Ancient Mariner. Lowell has called attention to Coleridge's sense for the value of diction, or choice of words, when he chose The Ancient Mariner as a title, instead of "The Elderly Seaman," just as Wordsworth did when he chose as a title to one of his poems Intimations of Immortality instead of "Hints of Deathless