to their contemporaries have cast them into limbo, whence they are only resurrected to explain influences that affected the work of later and better known poets.

V. THE PURITAN REFORMATION

The conflict between king and Parliament which developed to a crisis in the reign of Charles separated the English into two great parties, often popularly called the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. With the king stood the Cavaliers, the nobles and courtiers, gay, brave, happygo-lucky gentlemen: with the Parliament stood the Puritans and the defenders of civil liberty, an austerely sincere minority too commonly misunderstood because of the excesses of a smal party of fanatics.

(a) CAVALIER POETRY

The political division of the nation was reflected in the literature. Many of the Cavaliers were poets, not men who adopted literature as a profession, but who looked upon the knack of hitting off verses as the proper acquirement of a gentleman. Many of the verses were coarse and vulgar, many were artificial and worthless, but a few were graceful and sincere. Lovelace, Cleveland, and Sir William Davenant were Cavaliers who actually suffered for their king; Suckling, Carew, Vaughan, and Herrick sympathized with the king, although it did not fall to their lot to bear martyrdom for him.

The greatest of these Cavalier poets is Herrick. A clergyman by profession, he was in spirit a true Cavalier, gay, witty, and worldly. He was, indeed, by nature a pagan, preaching in his poems a pagan creed and loving nature with a pagan love. In his little Devonshire vicarage, far from the political turmoil of London, he wrought his delicate lyrics. He lost his churchly living at the success of the Puritans, of course, but regained it at the Restoration, and on the whole suffered little from his sympathy for the King. He was a poet of exquisite fancy and skilled artistry. As a lyrist, describing the rural scenes and customs in England or addressing a dainty love-poem to an imaginary (or real) Julia, he has few superiors in English. He is always the artist, careful of his craftsmanship, sure of his results. He has left us a larger and better amount of verse than any other of the Cavaliers.

(b) PURITAN POETRY

Of the Puritans, Marvell, Wither, and Milton stand out above all others. In a way Milton, greatest of these, has come to express both by his life and work our conception of the Puritan characteristics. His inflexible and lofty purpose, his earnestness, zeal, self-sacrifice, integrity, and rigid morality, combined with a marked austerity of manner and a narrowness of view in certain ways, are what we denote vaguely by the term "puritanical" to-day. In his poetry he is peculiarly the poet of sublimity. His subject bespeaks his nature, "Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart." The Miltonic line is a peal of deep organ music. In his greatest poem he bears us at once without seeming effort to heights from which we can discern God, Man, and Satan. Our world with its struggling millions fades into its proper perspective, and the great essential, the justification of the ways of God to men, becomes to us, as it was to the poet, foremost. In his lesser poems as in his greatest the same dignity and sustained power carry his theme at once to a height beyond that of the ordinary poet. Even in his early Hymn on The Nativity we find the same intense and concentrated aspiration that carried him later to Paradise Lost. He never wrote an ignoble line.

VI. THE RESTORATION

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 was accompanied by a violent reaction from the austerities of the Puritan rule. The worthless and licentious king infected all the society of his day, and for a time the pursuit of pleasure was the most serious business of the time. Charles modeled his court after the court of France, centering in it the fashionable idleness of the time. He encouraged in literature the tastes which he fostered in his court, so that for the most part the Restoration drama is licentious and the Restoration poetry is trifling. Buckingham, Rochester, Sedley, Buckhurst, Sackville, important court poets in their time, are to-day, so far as literature is concerned, names almost forgotten.

One man of genius emerged from this welter of poetasters — John Dryden. He had written little before the Restoration, but with the immediate outburst of literature at Charles's return he identified himself with the court party and began his career. At first occupied with panegyrics, as the fine Annus Mirabilis, in 1668 he set himself to the more lucrative writing for the stage, and for fifteen years was England's foremost dramatist. In 1680 he turned to satire, and in Absalom and Achitophel pilloried the Whig leaders of the day. Two years later he wrote a remarkable didactic poem, Religio Laici. After the loss of all prospect of royal favor by the Revolution of 1688, he continued bravely at work with his pen, writing Alexander's Feast for the musicians, translating numerous poems from the Latin, and composing his very unusual Fables. Dryden's range and versatility are remarkable. He is never sublime and seldom seems inspired, but he is a careful artist in his verse and has a capacity for sustained narrative and a rare talent for satire. As a poet he established the heroic couplet as the standard medium for satire, didactic, and descriptive poetry, thus ushering in the work of Pope in the next generation.

VII. THE PSEUDO-CLASSICAL PERIOD

The first half of the eighteenth century, following the death of Dryden in 1700, saw the rapid increase of prose writing and little new development in poetry. The pamphleteer flooded the stalls with political papers; the daily journals and forerunners of the modern magazines interested people by their novelty and their topical hits; Richardson and Fielding with their prose fiction gained a huge audience. Poetry in the meanwhile seemed to the contemporaries to have been established by Dryden in fixed forms and to be incapable of offering new and unexpected sensations. Readers admired art more than force and looked for polish rather than emotion. It was a periwigged era, in art as well as in fashion. Writers themselves called their age the Augustan age, seeing in Pope, Addison, Swift, Johnson, and Burke the likenesses of Horace, Virgil, Cicero, and others who were the glories of Latin letters in the reign of Augustus; but modern critics prefer the term "classic" or "pseudo-classic," to indicate the artificiality as opposed to art, the social veneer, the formality, the adherence to fixed and accepted rules, in the literature of the period. The world of letters ran in well-worn grooves; there was, to contemporaries, an atmosphere of finality about art: civilization seemed to the conventional man to have struggled to its climax, from which no step in advance was conceivable.

The chief English poet of the time, Alexander Pope, expressed in his life and his work the characteristics we have noted. A vain, irritable, precocious cripple, he was, upon the appearance of his Rape of the Lock in 1712, heralded as the first poet of England. That position he maintained until his death thirty-two years later. During his supremacy, genuine inspiration seemed dead in England. The impassioned lyric passages of the Elizabethan and Cavalier poetry, the moral sublimity of Milton, seemed lost. The aim of Pope and his followers was to carry

Dryden's verse form to its nth degree of refinement. In the polish and nice balance of his lines he satisfied his age, but, it must be admitted, sacrificed the natural force and strength inherent in English expression. Although many of his lines and phrases give such an impression of finality of form that they have become axiomatic, his poetry when read as a whole paralyzes our attention by its monotonous swing and balance. We must not, however, condemn Pope too harshly. He was striving for the excellencies which were esteemed by his contemporary poets and he succeeded beyond them all; Blackmore, Garth, Granville, Walsh, Pomfret, Parnell are forgotten names to-day, yet they were all continuing the Dryden verse tradition with Pope. Pope never transcended his own time, never by divine insight and inspiration saw and revealed hidden beauties of form, character, thought, and ideals in his world, but he pictured in his work more perfectly than any of his contemporaries the artificial and superficial qualities of the world in which he moved.

The principles of the classical or pseudo-classical school were those of Goldsmith, but, in curious agreement with the inconsistency of this poet's character, a tenderness and sincerity of sentiment which belong to a new and different order of poetry are embodied within the classical forms in his best poems. By instinct Goldsmith was a romanticist; by training and by association he was a classicist. His Deserted Village is a rhymed essay comparable in style to Pope's Essay on Man. It has been redeemed from the oblivion that has been the lot of so many similar poems by its direct and sincere human sympathy, its simplicity of language and vividness of characterization. We may regret the monotony of the rhymed couplets, but we treasure the picture of Auburn, and the village parson, and the village schoolmaster, and the spirit of ideality in which the whole scene is conceived.

VIII. EARLY ROMANTICISM

The excess of polish and formality in the poetry of Pope and his school induced its own reaction, a reaction not sudden, violent, or universal, but none the less significant. Even within the lifetime of Pope this reaction began and it continued with increasing vigor after his death. The vague dissatisfaction with current poetical standards and models expressed itself at first in the revival of the study of old authors. The love for Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton had never died away entirely, even in the vagaries of literary fashions, and the new lyrists drew inspiration from the works of these poets. Allan Ramsay with his Scotch dialect poems and his pastorals, and James Thomson with his Castle of Indolence and Seasons, hark directly back to Spenser; Collins and Gray are infused with the spirit of Milton, not the Milton of Paradise Lost, but the lyric Milton of the Nativity Ode, of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, of Lycidas; and William Cowper shakes himself at the end entirely free from bondage to the contemporary fashions.

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Of these forerunners of the new movement in poetry, Collins and Gray were greatest, greatest not because of clearer consciousness of the novelty of their work, but because of a truer and finer poetic inspiration. These two poets are always linked together in literary history. They both wrote exquisite odes, they both were followers of Milton, they both are now considered as belonging spiritually and emotionally to the romanticists. Gray has left a larger body of completed work than Collins and his Elegy has achieved a popularity that no poem of Collins has ever approached, yet many critics discern in the work of Collins a finer music, a more vivid imagination, and a truer sense of the ideal form and expression than in that of his contemporary. As lyrists in an age when the lyric was submerged beneath a flood of ethic and didactic couplets, they together carry their poetic tradition from the later Elizabethans to within a generation of Wordsworth.

Very different from the work of Collins and Gray is that of Cowper, and yet the latter is equally opposed to the artistic standards of the school of Pope. Cowper's few famous lyrics (as On Receipt of My Mother's Picture, and The Poplar Field) are marked by a sincerity of feeling and a truth of expression not found among the poets of the pseudo-classical group, and his greatest poem, The Task, is written in an easy, flowing blank verse directly contrary in movement to the poised and monotonous heroic couplets. But Cowper's fame rests upon the loving care with which he drew in The Task, a succession of pictures of the scenes, sounds, and incidents in lowly country life. His is what may be called familiar verse. It is nearest the type and tone of conversation. Nothing in the sights about him is too trivial for passing comment, nothing too lowly for his affectionate interest. As we read his verse, we are present with him in his walk, listening to his gentle and sympathetic descriptions of plowman or postman, or of woods or brooks. Though he had not, it is true, the philosophic fervor and passionate force of Wordsworth at his best, he anticipated the latter poet in the kindly descriptions of humble country life.

Shortly after the half-century mark was passed, new influences of the first importance determined the course of the growing literary movement. The attention of the world of letters was drawn to the great wealth of folklore poetry extant in out-of-the-way corners of the world. Collections, discoveries, translations set literary men afire with a new enthusiasm. Brilliant charlatans took advantage of the excitement to forge rude poems purporting to have been found in old churches, abbeys, and the like. It was the time when Ossian was published, and when the "marvelous boy" Chatterton brought to London his Rowley forgeries. Macpherson in 1760 published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands; two years later he followed this with the epic Fingal, purporting to be a prose translation from the Gaelic of the poet Ossian; three years later the scholarly Percy, later bishop of the Irish Church, contributed a systematic collection of folk-songs and ballads in three volumes, Reliques of Ancient Poetry; containing among many the wonderful Chevy Chase, Nut Brown Mayde, and Battle of Otterburn, and in 1770 Percy widened the interest by introducing to the contemporary English world the fascinating rugged mythology of the old Danish, Norse, and Icelandic peoples.

What the work of this unusual decade from 1760 to 1770 did for the romantic movement was to give it definite models and, in a way, recognized standards for a revolt against the accepted formality of contemporary verse. The ballads were simple and rude compared with the faultless style of Pope, but Pope's influence was waning fast. Men turned from the monotonous perfection of his verse to thrill at the direct view of nature and the deep emotion in the old ballads. Sincerity of feeling again became vital to good poetry. The classicists fought to the last, scoffed at the rude verses of a primitive time, but in the end the romanticists carried the day. With the revival of interest in the ancient ballad poetry came also a general revival of interest in things of ancient time. Gothic architecture, once despised, began to be admired; a glamour was cast by the imagination over the past ages obscuring the elements of rudeness, brutality, and vice, and stressing the supposed chivalry, honor, and courage of earlier ages; the element of mystery in the unknown and unknowable excited abnormal interest; Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto was the forerunner of the romances of terror of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis.

And then toward the latter part of the century came the throes of the revolution across the channel, exciting among many in England the keenest interest and sympathy. No cause could be nearer and dearer to the English heart than the cause of liberty for which the French people claimed to be fighting. Coleridge was on fire for the cause, and Wordsworth, who was traveling in France, was only restrained from taking personal leadership in the Girondist party by the

stoppage of his allowances from home. Naturally intelligent people thought and talked of little else for years after 1789.

Thus, then, the romantic movement grew. Begun in the age of Pope by a reaction against his polished form and a reversion to the variety and sincerity of feeling of the Elizabethans, it was deeply influenced by the growth of interest in the folk-songs and ballads, by the revival of a love for the medieval, and by the struggle across the Channel for liberty. It was a movement of rich variety, dominated by no one school of thought or method. The work of one is a return to simplicity of style, with depth of thought and sincerity of emotion, of another is marked by emphasis upon the fantastic, imaginative elements of mediævalism, of another is a modern rendition of ancient folklore, of another is a fanatical adherence to the principles of freedom. Each in his own way feels and interprets the new life in English poetry. The romantic movement is, indeed, as Hugo called it, "liberalism in literature."

During this period, in the north arose a poet who, although by birth and education out of touch with the direct course of the romantic revival, exemplified in his lyrics prominent elements in that movement. It is difficult to account for Robert Burns. Born into a life and environment similar to those of thousands of other Scotch peasant boys, he rose by his native genius to be the foremost literary figure of his time. That his irregular life brought its inevitable result in ostracism and early death cannot affect the beauty and melody of his songs. In these songs, Burns is without peer. Love, humor, satire, pathos, intimate sympathy with nature and with man, all find a place in them. He wrote poetry not by rule, but by instinct. “Unacquainted with the necessary requisites for commencing poetry by rule,” he said in his first preface, "he sings the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him in his and their native language.” He is distinctly the poet of nature, expressing in simple familiar language the emotions common to all men.

IX. ROMANTICISM

The conscious recognition of the new movement in poetry came with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborated to produce this thin volume of poems written in accordance with new and original so far as classical rules went - principles of poetry. Later each of the poets explained in prose, Wordsworth in his Prefaces and Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria, what these new principles were, dwelling upon simplicity of diction, truth to nature, power of the imagination, and universality of subject-matter. Wordsworth's insistence upon universality of subject-matter and simplicity of diction clashed with the beliefs of the fast-vanishing classical school, for it had long been the belief that certain subjects and situations were in themselves peculiarly adapted to poetic treatment in contrast to other subjects, and that the poet's task was merely to give to such subjects and situations their perfect embodiment in expression. Hence came the classical finish and polish, hence the conscious artificiality of much of the work of the classical school.

But after all, important as the new principles were, the romantic movement is not now known by its principles so much as by its product. Wordsworth and Coleridge were true poets, gifted with the divine insight and faculty of expression that reveals to men the unknown beauties of the world in which they live. Wordsworth was from his youth peculiarly sensitive to natural influences; he came to believe all nature to be directly infused with the presence of a living God; and he realized that the truth that lay behind the universal experiences of men, the common passions and labors, hopes and fears, was the only subject of poetic interest. Nature, and man in nature, were, therefore, his poetic material. A poet, he writes, "is a man speaking to men: a