Chapter VIII: The Age of Romanticism, 1780-1837 (3)

Acting on insistent medical advice, Keats sailed for Italy in September, 1820, accompanied by a stanch friend, the artist Joseph Severn. On this voyage, Keats wrote a sonnet which proved to be his swan song:--

"Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores."

While he lay on his sick bed in Rome, he said: "I feel the flowers growing over me." In February, 1821, he died, at the age of twenty-five years and four months. On the modest stone which marks his grave in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, there was placed at his request: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." His most appropriate epitaph is Shelley's _Adonais_.

Poems.--In 1817 he published his first poems in a thin volume, which did not attract much attention, although it contained two excellent sonnets: _On First Looking into Chapman's Homer_ and _On the Grasshopper and Cricket_, which begins with the famous line:--

"The poetry of earth is never dead."

We may also find in this volume such lines of promise as:--

"Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown
The reading of an ever changing tale."

A year later, his long poem, _Endymion_, appeared. The inner purpose of this poetic romance is to show the search of the soul for absolute Beauty. The first five lines are a beautiful exposition of his poetic creed. _Endymion_, however, suffers from immaturity, shown in boyish sentimentality, in a confusion of details, and in an overabundance of ornament. This poem met with a torrent of abuse. One critic even questioned whether Keats was the real name of the author, adding, "we almost doubt whether any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody." Keats showed himself a better critic than the reviewers. It is unusual for a poet to recognize almost at once the blemishes in his own work. He acknowledged that a certain critic--

"...is perfectly right in regard to the 'slipshod' _Endymion_...
it is as good as I had the power to make it by myself. I have
written independently, _without judgement_, I may write
independently and _with judgement_ hereafter."

The quickness of his development is one of the most amazing facts in literary history. He was twenty-three when _Endymion_ was published, but in the next eighteen months he had almost finished his life's work. In that brief time, he perfected his art and wrote poems that rank among the greatest of their kind, and that have influenced the work of many succeeding poets, such as Tennyson, Lowell, and Swinburne.

Nearly all his greatest poems were written in 1819 and published in his 1820 volume. _The Eve of St. Agnes_ (January, 1819) and the _Ode to a Nightingale_ (May, 1819) are perhaps his two most popular poems; but his other masterpieces are sufficiently great to make choice among them largely a matter of individual preference.

_The Eve of St. Agnes_ is an almost flawless narrative poem, romantic in its conception and artistic in its execution. Porphyro, a young lover, gains entrance to a hostile castle on the eve of St. Agnes to see if he cannot win his heroine, Madeline, on that enchanted evening. The interest in the story, the mastery of poetic language, the wealth and variety of the imagery, the atmosphere of medieval days, combine to make this poem unusually attractive. The following lines appeal to the senses of sight, odor, sound, and temperature,[25] as well as to romantic human feeling and love of the beautiful:--

"...like a throbbing star
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose;
Into her dream he melted, as the rose
Blendeth its odor with the violet,--
Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows
Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window panes; St. Agnes' moon hath set."

The fact that Keats could write the _Ode to a Nightingale_ in three hours is proof of genius. This poem pleases lovers of music, of artistic expression, of nature, of romance, and of human pathos. Such lines as these show that the strength and beauty of his verse are not entirely dependent on images of sense:--

"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath."

The _Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Ode on Melancholy, Lamia_, and _Isabella_,--all show the unusual charm of Keats. He manifests the greatest strength in his unfinished fragment _Hyperion_, "the Götterdämmerung of the early Grecian gods." The opening lines reveal the artistic perfection of form and the effectiveness of the sensory images with which he frames the scene:--

"Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud."

General Characteristics.--Keats is the poetic apostle of the beautiful. He specially emphasizes the beautiful in the world of the senses; but his definition of beauty grew to include more than mere physical sensations from attractive objects. In his _Ode to a Grecian Urn_, he says that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," and he calls to the Grecian pipes to play--

"Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone."

Those poets who thought that they could equal Keats by piling up a medley of sense images have been doomed to disappointment. The transforming power of his imagination is more remarkable than the wealth of his sensations.

His mastery in choosing, adapting, and sometimes even creating, apt poetic words or phrases, is one of his special charms. Matthew Arnold says: "No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats." Some of his descriptive adjectives and phrases, such as the "deep-damasked wings" of the tiger-moth, have been called "miniature poems." In the eighty lines of the _Ode to a Nightingale_, we may note the "_full-throated ease_" of the nightingale's song, the vintage cooled in the "_deep-delved_ earth," the "_beaded bubbles winking_ at the brim" of the beaker "_full of the warm South_," "the coming musk-rose, full of _dewy wine_," the sad Ruth "amid the _alien_ corn," and the "_faery lands forlorn_."

A contemporary critic accused Keats of "spawning" new words, of converting verbs into nouns, of forming new verbs, and of making strange use of adjectives and adverbs. Some contemporaries might object to his "_torchèd_ mines," "_flawblown_ sleet," "_liegeless_ air," or even to the "_calm-throated_" thrush of the immortals. Modern lovers of poetry, however, think that he displayed additional proof of genius by enriching the vocabulary of poetry more than any other writer since Milton.

Keats was not, like Byron and Shelley, a reformer. He drew his first inspiration from Grecian mythology and the romantic world of Spenser, not from the French Revolution or the social unrest of his own day. It is, however, a mistake to say that he was untouched by the new human impulses. There is modern feeling in the following lines which introduce us to the two cruel brothers in _Isabella_:--

"...for them many a weary hand did swelt
In torchèd mines and noisy factories.
* * * * *
For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gushed blood; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark
Lay full of darts."

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Matthew Arnold wrote of Keats: "He is with Shakespeare." Andrew Bradley, a twentieth century professor of poetry in the University of Oxford, says: "Keats was of Shakespeare's tribe." These eminent critics do not mean that Keats had the breadth, the humor, the moral appeal of Shakespeare, but they do find in Keats much of the youthful Shakespeare's lyrical power, mastery of expression, and intense love of the beautiful in life. When Keats said: "If a sparrow comes before my window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel," he showed another Shakespearean quality in his power to enter into the life of other creatures. At first he wrote of the beautiful things that appealed to his senses or his fancies, but when he came to ask himself the question:--

"And can I ever bid these joys farewell?"

he answered:--

"Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,
Where I may find the agonies, the strife
Of human hearts."[26]

In _Isabella_, the _Ode to a Nightingale, Lamia_, and _Hyperion_, he was beginning to paint these "agonies" and "the strife"; but death swiftly ended further progress on this road. Before he passed away, however, he left some things that have an Elizabethan appeal. Among such, we may mention his welcome to "easeful death," his artistic setting of a puzzling truth:--

"...Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips,
Bidding adieu,"

his line to which the young world still responds:--

"Forever wilt thou love and she be fair,"

and especially the musical call of his own young life, "yearning like a God in pain."

THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 1785-1859

Life.-Thomas de Quincey was born in Manchester in 1785. Being a precocious child, he became a remarkable student at the age of eight. When he was only eleven, his Latin verses were the envy of the older boys at the Bath school, which he was then attending. At the age of fifteen, he was so thoroughly versed in Greek that his professor said of him to a friend: "That boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one." De Quincey was sent in this year to the Manchester grammar school; but his mind was in advance of the instruction offered there, and he unceremoniously left the school on his seventeenth birthday.

For a time he tramped through Wales, living on an allowance of a guinea a week. Hungering for books, he suddenly posted to London. As he feared that his family would force him to return to school, he did not let them know his whereabouts. He therefore received no money from them, and was forced to wander hungry, sick, and destitute, through the streets of the metropolis, with its outcasts and waifs. He describes this part of his life in a very entertaining manner in his _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_.

When his family found him, a year later, they prevailed on him to go to Oxford; and, for the next four years, he lived the life of a recluse at college.

In 1808 he took the cottage at Grasmere that Wordsworth had quitted, and enjoyed the society of the three Lake poets. Here De Quincey married and lived his happiest years.

The latter part of his life was clouded by his indulgence in opium, which he had first taken while at college to relieve acute neuralgia. At one time he was in the habit of taking an almost incredible amount of laudanum. Owing to a business failure, his money was lost. It then became necessary for him to throw off the influence of the narcotic sufficiently to earn a livelihood, In 1821 he began to write. From that time until his death, in 1859, his life was devoted mainly to literature.

Works.--Nearly all De Quincey's writings were contributed to magazines. His first and greatest contribution was _The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, published in the _London Magazine_. These _Confessions_ are most remarkable for the brilliant and elaborate style in which the author's early life and his opium dreams are related. His splendid, yet melancholy, dreams are the most famous in the language.

De Quincey's wide reading, especially of history, supplied the material for many of them. In these dreams he saw the court ladies of the "unhappy times of Charles I.," witnessed Marius pass by with his Roman legions, "ran into pagodas" in China, where he "was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms," and "was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids" in Egypt.

His dreams were affected also by the throngs of people whom he had watched in London. He was haunted by "the tyranny of the human face." He says:--

"Faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands,
by myriads, by generations, by centuries: my agitation was infinite,
my mind tossed, and surged with the ocean."

Sound also played a large part in the dreams. Music, heart-breaking lamentations, and pitiful echoes recurred frequently in the most magnificent of these nightly pageants. One of the most distressing features of the dreams was their vastness. The dreamer lived for centuries in one night, and space "swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity."

To present with such force and reality these grotesque and weird fancies, these vague horrors, and these deep oppressions required a powerful imaginative grasp of the intangible, and a masterly command of language.

In no other work does De Quincey reach the eminence attained in the _Confessions_, although his scholarly acquirements enabled him to treat philosophical, critical, and historical subjects with wonderful grace and ease. His biographer, Masson, says, "De Quincey's sixteen volumes of magazine articles are full of brain from beginning to end." The wide range of his erudition is shown by the fact that he could write such fine literary criticisms as _On Wordsworth's Poetry_ and _On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth_, such clear, strong, and vivid descriptions of historical events and characters as _The Caesars, Joan of Arc_, and _The Revolt of the Tartars_, and such acute essays on unfamiliar topics as _The Toilette of a Hebrew Lady, The Casuistry of Roman Meals_, and _The Spanish Military Nun_.

He had a contemplative, analytic mind which enjoyed knotty metaphysical problems and questions far removed from daily life, such as the first principles of political economy, and of German philosophy. While he was a clear thinker in such fields, he added little that was new to English thought.

The works which rank next to _The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_ are all largely autobiographical, and reveal charming glimpses of this dreamy, learned sage. Those works are _Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths), The English Mail Coach_, and _Autobiographic Sketches_. None of them contains any striking or unusual experience of the author. Their power rests upon their marvelous style. _Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow_ in _Suspiria de Profundis_ and the _Dream Fugue_ in the _Mail Coach_ are among the most musical, the most poetic, and the most imaginative of the author's productions.

General Characteristics.--De Quincey's essays show versatility, scholarly exactness, and great imaginative power. His fame, however, rests in a large degree upon his style. One of its most prominent characteristics is, precision. There are but few English essayists who can compare with him in scrupulous precision of expression. He qualifies and elaborates a simple statement until its exact meaning becomes plainly manifest. His vocabulary is extraordinary. In any of the multifarious subjects treated by him, the right word seems always at hand.

Two characteristics, which are very striking in all his works, are harmony and stateliness. His language is so full of rich harmonies that it challenges comparison with poetry. His long, periodic sentences move with a quiet dignity, adapted to the treatment of lofty themes.

De Quincey's work possesses also a light, ironic humor, which is happiest in parody. The essay upon _Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts_ is the best example of his humor. This selection is one of the most whimsical:--

"For, if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he come,
to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to
drinking and Sabbath breaking, and from that to incivility and
procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know
where you are to stop."

De Quincey's gravest fault is digression. He frequently leaves his main theme and follows some line of thought that has been suggested to his well-stored mind. These digressions are often very long, and sometimes one leads to another, until several subjects receive treatment in a single paper. De Quincey, however, always returns to the subject in hand and defines very sharply the point of digression and of return. Another of his faults is an indulgence in involved sentences, which weaken the vigor and simplicity of the style.

Despite these faults, De Quincey is a great master of language. He deserves study for the three most striking characteristics of his style,--precision, stateliness, and harmony.

SUMMARY

The tide of reaction, which had for same time been gathering force, swept triumphantly over England in this age of Romanticism.

Men rebelled against the aristocracy, the narrow conventions of society, the authority of the church and of the government, against the supremacy of cold classicism in literature, against confining intellectual activity to tangible commonplace things, and against the repression of imagination and of the soul's aspirations. The two principal forces behind these changes were the Romantic movement, which culminated in changed literary ideals, and the spirit of the French Revolution, which emphasized the close kinship of all ranks of humanity.

The time was preeminently poetic. The Elizabethan age alone excels it in the glory of its poetry. The principal subjects of verse in the age of Romanticism were nature and man. Nature became the embodiment of an intelligent, sympathetic, spiritual force. Cowper, Burns, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats constitute a group of poets who gave to English literature a new poetry of nature. The majority of these were also poets of man, of a more ideal humanity. The common man became an object of regard. Burns sings of the Scotch peasant. Wordsworth pictures the life of shepherds and dalesmen. Byron's lines ring with a cry of liberty for all, and Shelley immortalizes the dreams of a universal brotherhood of man. Keats, the poet of the beautiful, passed away before he heard clearly the message of "the still sad music of humanity."

While the prose does not take such high rank as the poetry, there are some writers who will not soon be forgotten. Scott will be remembered as the great master of the historical novel, Jane Austen as the skillful realistic interpreter of everyday life, De Quincey for the brilliancy of his style and the vigor of his imagination in presenting his opium dreams, and Lamb for his exquisite humor. In philosophical prose, Mill, Bentham, and Malthus made important contributions to moral, social, and political philosophy, while Coleridge opposed their utilitarian and materialistic tendencies, and codified the principles of criticism from a romantic point of view.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

HISTORICAL

Gardiner[27], Green, Walker, or Cheney. For the social side, see Traill, V., VI., and Cheney's _Industrial and Social History of England_.

LITERARY

_The Cambridge History of English Literature_, Vols. XI., XII.

Courthope's _A History of English Poetry_, Vol. VI.

Elton's _A Survey of English Literature from 1780-1830_, 2 vols.

Herford's _The Age of Wordsworth_.

Brandes's _Naturalism in England_ (Vol. IV. of _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature_.)

_The Revolution in English Poetry and Fiction_ (Chap. XXII. of Vol. X. of _Cambridge Modern History_.)

Hancock's _The French Revolution and the English Poets_.

Scudder's _Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets_.

Symons's _The Romantic Movement in English Poetry_.

Reynolds's _The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth_.

Mackie's _Nature Knowledge in Modern Poetry_.

Brookes's _Studies in Poetry_ (Blake, Scott, Shelley, Keats).

Symons's _William Blake_.

Payne's _The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century_ (Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth).

Stephen's _Hours in a Library_, 3 vols. (Scott, De Quincey, Cowper, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge).

Dowden's _Studies in Literature_, 1879-1877.

Bradley's _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_ (Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats).

Lowell's _Among my Books, Second Series_ (Wordsworth, Keats).

Ainger's _Life of Lamb_. (E.M.L.)

Lucas's _Life of Charles Lamb_.

Goldwin Smith's _Life of Cowper_. (E.M.L.)

Wright's _Life of Cowper_.

Shairp's _Robert Burns_. (E.M.L.)

Carlyle's _Essay on Burns_.

Lockhart's _Life of Scott_., Hutton's _Life of Scott_. (E.M.L.)

Yonge's _Life of Scott_. (G.W.)

Goldwin Smith's _Life of Jane Austen_. (G.W.)

Helm's _Jane Austen and her Country House Comedy_.

Mitton's _Jane Austen and her Times_.

Adams's _The Story of Jane Austen's Life_.

Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_, 3 vols., Myers's _Life of Wordsworth_ (E.M.L.), Raleigh's _Wordsworth_.

Robertson's _Wordsworth and the English Lake Country_.

Traill's _Life of Coleridge_ (E.M.L.), Caine's _Life of Coleridge_ (G.W.), Garnett's _Coleridge_.

Sneath's _Wordsworth, Poet of Nature and Poet of Man_.

Mayne's _The New Life of Byron_, 2 vols, Nichol's _Life of Byron_ (E.M.L.), Noel's _Life of Byron_. (G.W.)

Trelawney's _Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron_.

Dowden's _Life of Shelley_, 2 vols., Symonds's _Life of Shelley_ (E.M.L.), Sharp's _Life of Shelley_ (G.W.). Francis Thompson's _Shelley_.

Clutton-Brock's _Shelley: The Man and the Poet_.

Hogg's _Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley_(contemporary).

Angeli's _Shelley and his Friends in Italy_.

Colvin's _Life of Keats_ (E.M.L.), Rossetti's _Life of Keats_ (G.W.), Hancock's _John Keats_.

Miller's _Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley, and Keats_.

Arnold's _Essays in Criticism, Second Series_ (Keats).

H. Buxton Forman's _Complete Works of John Keats_ (includes the _Letters_, the best edition).

Masson's _Life of De Quincey_. (E.M.L.)

Minto's _Manual of English Prose Literature_ (De Quincey).

SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Blake.--Some of his best poems are given in Ward, IV., 601-608; Bronson, III., 385-403; Manly, I., 301-304; _Oxford_, 558-566; _Century_, 485-489, and in the volume in _The Canterbury Poets_.

Point out in Blake's verse (_a_) the new feeling for nature, (_b_) evidences of wide sympathies, (_c_) mystical tendencies, and (_d_) compare his verses relating to children and nature with Wordsworth's poems on the same subjects.

Cowper.--Read the opening stanzas of Cowper's _Conversation_ and note the strong influence of Pope in the cleverly turned but artificial couplets. Compare this poem with the one _On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture_ or with _The Task_, Book IV., lines 1-41 and 267-332, Cassell's _National Library, Canterbury Poets_, or _Temple Classics_ and point out the marked differences in subject matter and style. What forward movement in literature is indicated by the change in Cowper's manner? _John Gilpin_ should be read for its fresh, beguiling humor.

For selections, see Bronson,[28] III., 310-329; Ward, III., 422-485; _Century_, 470-479; Manly, I., 285-294.

Burns.--Read _The Cotter's Saturday Night, For a' That and a' That, To a Mouse, Highland Mary, To Mary in Heaven, Farewell to Nancy, I Love My Jean, A Red, Red Rose_. The teacher should read to the class parts of _Tam o' Shanter_.

The _Globe_ edition contains the complete poems of Burns with Glossary. Inexpensive editions may be found in Cassell's _National Library, Everyman's Library_, and _Canterbury Poets_. For selections, see Bronson, III., 338-385; Ward. III., 512-571; _Century_, 490-502; Manly, I., 309-326; _Oxford_, 492-506.

In what ways do the first three poems mentioned above show Burns's sympathy with democracy? Quote some of Burns's fine descriptions of nature and describe the manner in which he treats nature. How does he rank as a writer of love songs? What qualities in his poems have touched so many hearts? Compare his poetry with that of Dryden, Pope, and Shakespeare.

Scott.--Read _The Lady of the Lake_, Canto III., stanzas iii.-xxv., or _Marmion_, Canto VI., stanzas xiii.-xxvii. (American Book Company's _Eclectic English Classics_, Cassell's _National Library_, or _Everyman's Library_.) Read in Craik, V., "The Gypsy's Curse" (_Guy Mannering_), pp. 14-17, "The Death of Madge Wildfire" (_Heart of Middlothian_), pp. 30-35, and "The Grand Master of the Templars" (_Ivanhoe_), pp. 37-42. The student should put on his list for reading at his leisure: _Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, and The Talisman_.

In what kind of poetry does Scott excel? Quote some of his spirited heroes, and point out their chief excellences. How does his poetry differ from that of Burns? In the history of fiction, does Scott rank as an imitator or a creator? As a writer of fiction, in what do his strength and his weakness consist? Has he those qualities that will cause him to be popular a century hence? What can be said of his style?

Jane Austen.--In Craik, V., or Manly. II, read the selections from _Pride and Prejudice_. The student at his leisure should read all this novel.

What world does she describe in her fiction? What are her chief qualities? How does she differ from Scott? Why is she called a "realist"?

Wordsworth.--Read _I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, The Solitary Reaper, To the Cuckoo, Lines Written in Early Spring, Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower, To my Sister, She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways, She Was a Phantom of Delight, Alice Fell, Lucy Gray, We Are Seven, Intimations of Immortality from Recollection of Early Childhood, Ode to Duty, Hart-Leap Well, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Michael_ and the sonnets: "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free," "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour," and "The world is too much with us, late and soon." Some students will also wish to read _The Prelude_ (_Temple Classics_ or A.J. George's edition), which describes the growth of Wordsworth's mind.

All the above poems (excepting _The Prelude_) may be found in the volume _Poems of Wordsworth, chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold_ (_Golden Treasury Series_, 331 pp., $1). Nearly all may also be found in Page's _British Poets of the Nineteenth Century_ (923 pp., $2). For selections, see Bronson, IV., 1-54; Ward, IV., 1-88; _Oxford_ 594-618; _Century_, 503-541; Manly, I., 329-345.

Refer to Wordsworth's "General Characteristics" (pp. 393-396) and select the poems that most emphatically show his special qualities. Which of the above poems seems easiest to write? In which is his genius most apparent? Which best presents his view of nature? Which best stand the test of an indefinite number of readings? In what do his poems of childhood excel?

Coleridge.--Read _The Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan, Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni, Youth and Age_; Bronson, I., 54-93; Ward, IV., 102-154; Page, 66-103; Century, 553-565; Manly, I., 353-364; _Oxford_, 628-656.

How do _The Ancient Mariner_ and _Christabel_ manifest the spirit of Romanticism? What are the chief reasons for the popularity of _The Ancient Mariner_? Would you call this poem didactic? Select stanzas specially remarkable for melody, for beauty, for telling much in few words, for images of nature, for conveying an ethical lesson. What feeling almost unknown in early poetry is common in Coleridge's _The Ancient Mariner_, Wordsworth's _Hart-Leap Well_, Burns's _To a Mouse, On Seeing a Wounded Hare Limp by Me, A Winter Night_, and Cowper's _On a Goldfinch Starved to Death in his Cage_?

The advanced student should read some of Coleridge's prose criticism in his _Biographia Literaria_ (_Everyman's Library_). The parts best worth reading have been selected in George's _Coleridge's Principles of Criticism_ (226 pp., 60 cents) and in Beers's _Selections for the Prose Writings of Coleridge_ (including criticisms of Wordsworth and Shakespeare, 146 pp., 50 cents).

Note how fully Coleridge unfolds in these essays the principles of romantic criticism, which have not been superseded.

Byron.--Read _The Prisoner of Chillon_ (_Selections from Byron, Eclectic English Classics_), _Childe Harold_, Canto III., stanzas xxi-xxv. and cxiii., Canto IV., stanzas lxxviii., and lxxix. "Oh, Snatch'd away in Beauty's Bloom," "There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away," and from _Don Juan_, Canto III., the song inserted between stanzas lxxxvi. and lxxxvii. All these poems will be found in the two volumes of Byron's works in the _Canterbury Poets'_ series.

Selections are given in Bronson, IV., 125-174; Ward, IV., 244-303; Page, 170-272; Oxford, 688-694; _Century_, 586-613; Manly, I., 378-393.

From the stanzas indicated in _Childe Harold_, select, first, the passages which best illustrate the spirit of revolt, and, second, the passages of most poetic beauty. What natural phenomena appeal most to Byron? What qualities make _The Prisoner of Chillon_ a favorite? Why is his poetry often called rhetorical?

Shelley.--Read _Adonais, To a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, To Night, The Cloud, The Sensitive Plant_, and selections from _Alastor_ and _Prometheus Unbound_. Shelley's _Poetical Works_, edited by Edward Dowden (_Globe Poets_), contains all of Shelley's extant poetry. Less expensive editions are in _Canterbury Poets, Temple Classics_, and _Everyman's Library_. Selections are given in Bronson, IV., 182-227; Ward, IV., 348-416; Page, 275-369; _Oxford_, 697-717; _Century_, 614-638; Manly, I., 394-411.

Under what different aspects do _Adonais_ and _Lycidas_ view the life after death? Has Shelley modified Wordsworth's view of the spiritual force in nature? Does Shelley use either the cloud or the skylark for the direct purpose of expressing his own feelings? Why is he sometimes called a metaphysical poet? What is the most striking quality of Shelley's poetic gift?

Keats.--Read _The Eve of St. Agnes_, _Ode to a Nightingale_, _Ode on a Grecian Urn_, _To Autumn_, _Hyperion_ (first 134 lines), _La Belle Dame sans Merci_, _Isabella_, and the sonnets: _On First Looking into Chapman's Homer_, _On the Grasshopper and Cricket_, _When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be_, _Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art_. The best edition of the works of Keats is that by Buxton Forman. The _Canterbury Poets_ and _Everyman's Library_ have less expensive editions. All the poems indicated above may be found in Page's _British Poets of the Nineteenth Century_. For selections, see Bronson, IV., 230-265; Ward, IV., 427-464; _Oxford_, 721-744; _Century_, 639-655; Manly, I., 413-425.

By direct reference to the above poems, justify calling Keats "the apostle of the beautiful," in both thought and language. Give examples of his felicitous use of words and phrases. Show by illustrations his mastery in the use of the concrete. To what special senses do his images appeal? Was he at all affected by the new human movement? Why does Arnold say, "Keats is with Shakespeare"? In what respects is he like the Elizabethans?

De Quincey.--Read _Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow_ (Craik, V., 264-270). The first chapters of _The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_ (_Everyman's Library_; _Temple Classics_; _Century_, 683-690; Manly, II., 357-366) are entertaining and will repay reading.

Does his prose show any influence of a romantic and poetic age? Compare his style with that of Addison, Gibbon, and Burke. In what respects does De Quincey succeed, and in what does he fail, as a model for a young writer?

Lamb.--From the _Essays of Elia_ (Cassell's _National Library_; _Everyman's Library_, _Temple Classics_) read any two of these essays: _A Dissertation upon Roast Pig, Old China, Dream Children, New Year's Eve, Poor Relations_. For selections, see Craik, V., 116-126; _Century_, 575-578; Manly, II., 337-345.

In what does Lamb's chief charm consist? Point out resemblances and differences between his _Essays_ and Addison's.

Landor, Hazlitt, and Hunt.--Good selections are given in Craik, V.; Chambers, III.; Manly, II. Inexpensive editions of Landor's _Imaginary Conversations_ and _Pericles and Aspasia_ may be found in the _Camelot Series_. Hazlitt's _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, Lectures on the English Poets, Lectures on the English Comic Writers_, and _Table Talk_ are published in _Everyman's Library_. The _Camelot Series_ and the _Temple Classics_ also contain some of Hazlitt's works. A selection from Leigh Hunt's _Essays_ is published in the _Camelot Series_.

What are the main characteristics of Landor's style? Select a passage which justifies the criticism: "He writes in marble." Give some striking thoughts from his _Imaginary Conversations_. Compare his style and subject matter with Hazlitt's. Show that Hazlitt has the power of presenting in an impressive way the chief characteristics of authors. Select some pleasing passages from Leigh Hunt's _Essays_. Compare him with Addison and Lamb.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER VIII:

[Footnote 1: _Prelude_, Book XI.]

[Footnote 2: gold.]

[Footnote 3: _For a' That and a' That_.]

[Footnote 4: _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_.]

[Footnote 5: _Hart-Leap Well_.]

[Footnote 6: _Intimations of Immortality_.]

[Footnote 7: Wordsworth's _Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey_.]

[Footnote 8: _Retirement_.]

[Footnote 9: _Conversation_.]

[Footnote 10: _I Love My Jean_.]

[Footnote 11: remedy.]

[Footnote 12: _Epistle to John Lapraik_.]

[Footnote 13: _The Vision_.]

[Footnote 14: _Sonnet_: "The world is too much with us."]

[Footnote 15: _Hart Leap Well_.]

[Footnote 16: _A Day-Dream_.]

[Footnote 17: _Biographia Literaria_, Chapter XIV.]

[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., Chapter XXII.]

[Footnote 19: _Manfred_, Act I.]

[Footnote 20: _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto III.]

[Footnote 21: _The Dream_.]

[Footnote 22: _Adonais_, Stanza xlix]

[Footnote 23: _Epipsychidion_.]

[Footnote 24: _Ode to the West Wind_.]

[Footnote 25: For a discussion of the different sensory images of the poets, see the author's _Education of the Central Nervous System_, pages 109-208.]

[Footnote 26: _Sleep and Poetry_.]

[Footnote 27: For full titles, see p. 50.]

[Footnote 28: For full titles, see p. 6.]