Though battle call me from thy arms Let not my pretty Susan mourn; Love turns aside the balls that round me fly, Lest precious tears should drop from Susan's eye. This is ingenious—and unreal. There is not a bit of human feeling in it. Compare with it the following from Burns: The trumpets sound, the banners fly, The glittering spears are ranked ready; The battle closes thick and bloody; Wad make me langer wish to tarry; It's leaving thee, my bonnie Mary! This gives the heart of the thing, what the man who went really felt in his soul as he sailed. Clear Detail Carlyle dwells upon Burns's "clearness of sight." Burns differed from the writers of the classic school in his definiteness. He uses the word that pictures. Probably he does not do this from principle. He feels so intensely that we too see each detail flashing out in the white lightning of his passion. In the passage above see the picturing vividness in "the banners fly," "the glittering spears." There are no impossible cannonballs wandering about to be deflected by classical Cupids. The poet, like Chaucer's Arcite, is in deadly earnest and has no mind for "play." The student should study Burns in selections. Much in the complete works is not worth study. The long poems most worth reading are the Cotter's Saturday Night, Tam o' Shanter, and a few others (see List of Authors, page 559). To these should be added the greater part of the Songs, in which lies the very best of Burns's work songs that are sung wherever English is spoken. We must never forget, however, that Burns is not an English poet, that he represents a Scotland that was much Even in the "Lowlands" are scenes like this. There are bare heather-covered hills, below which lie woods and the flowering "banks and braes" that Burns sang of. Lochs (lakes) and streams add to the beauty. farther from England than is the Scotland of to-day. His language is not a "vulgar" dialect, but is what was once the language of the Scottish court, a northern sister of the English. Burns influenced English poetry. Men were on the alert for something that would satisfy their need, and Burns showed, by what he did in His Influence the Scottish tongue, what English poetry might do, how sweetness and directness and human feeling could be put into words. Incidentally, he drew attention to other poets of his land who could teach the secret of unaffected song. In the Golden Treasury, besides the work of Burns, there are such lyrics as Auld Robin Gray (No. 194), The Sailor's Wife (No. 194), The Land of the Leal (No. 198) the wonderful Lament for Flodden, (No. 162) the Flowers of the Forest (No. 162). Burns is the best of a group of Scottish singers. It is not only in literature that the new tendencies are to be seen. They are seen also in painting. Formal New Tenden- portraiture was giving place to portraits that cies in Art showed the soul, -portraits like Reynolds's Johnson (page 330). There came a new interest in historical subjects, at first treated "classically" but later warming with human passion. We find a growing interest in landscape. Gainsborough, noted chiefly for his portraits, painted some landscapes that remind us of the poetry of Thomson. Later, at the beginning of the new century, we find Constable entering perfectly into the spirit of English country scenes. His Hay-Wain (see opposite page) has something of the directness, the poetical simplicity of Wordsworth. Following him, up to the present day, one finds a succession of painters of landscape. What one should note in their work is not merely their loving study and accurate depiction of facts of cloud and wave and leaf, but their attempt to convey, through their pictures of natural scenes, the moods that these scenes aroused in them. One of the most talked of painters of the early nineteenth century was Turner. His drawing of a cliff in a storm (page 491) is, it is true, sensational, altering the facts to fit the feeling. Yet in its poetry, its delight in THE HAY-WAIN, BY CONSTABLE Showing the new interest in natural scenery and rustic life. The artist sees nature accurately and sympathetically. what one might call the excitement of nature, it belongs with Blake and Coleridge. It could not have been painted in the "classical" age. It marks the rise of a new romanticism. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW In what respects does Cowper surpass Thomson? Give some idea of his personal character. What traits attract you? What did Crabbe write? Do you like the extract from Blake? For what qualities? How does Blake's personality account for his freedom from the restrictions of his day? How do Burns's surroundings account for his freedom? What was Burns's personal temperament? Show that it peculiarly fitted him for the writing of songs. What is meant by his sincerity, by his clearness of sight? Mention other Scotch poets who wrote with simplicity and direct ness. Stories of the CHAPTER XII LATER FICTION TO 1800 EVEN in the days of Johnson we find stories that depict the unusual and supernatural. After the novels of Richardson and Fielding, these stories could never depart so far from reality as did the romances of the centuries before. They had one foot upon the ground of fact. With the enthusiasm for Ossian and the printing of the Reliques, we find a growing interest in what is called the "Gothic," the architecture and life of medieval days. Old castles were visited, old churches were (usually to their hurt) "restored," and people took new interest in the men that built these castles and churches, though they knew amazingly little about them. |