LOUIS CLARK VANUXEM FOUNDATION

ROMANCE

TWO LECTURES BY

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

M. A. , PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THEUNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, FELLOW OFMERTON COLLEGE

LECTURES DELIVERED AT PRINCETONUNIVERSITY, MAY 4TH AND 6TH, 1915

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESSPRINCETON

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORDOXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1916

Copyright, 1916, byPRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published October, 1916

THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE

The period of English political history which falls between Pitt'sacceptance of office as prime minister, in 1783, and the passing of theReform Bill, in 1832, is a period rich in character and event. The sameperiod of fifty years is one of the most crowded epochs of our nationalliterature. In 1783 William Blake produced his _Poetical Sketches_, andGeorge Crabbe published _The Village_. In 1832 Scott died, not manymonths after the death of Goethe. Between these two dates a greatcompany of English writers produced a literature of immense bulk, and ofalmost endless diversity of character. Yet one dominant strain in thatliterature has commonly been allowed to give a name to the whole period, and it is often called the Age of the Romantic Revival. 

We do not name other notable periods of our literature in this fashion. The name itself contains a theory, and so marks the rise of a newphilosophical and aesthetic criticism. It attempts to describe as wellas to name, and attaches significance not to kings, or great authors, butto the kind of writing which flourished conspicuously in that age. Aless ambitious and much more secure name would have been the Age ofGeorge III; but this name has seldom been used, perhaps because thewriters of his time who reverenced King George III were not very many innumber. The danger of basing a name on a theory of literature is thatthe theory may very easily be superseded, or may prove to be inadequate, and then the name, having become immutable by the force of custom, isleft standing, a monument of ancient error. The terminology of thesciences, which pretends to be exact and colourless, is always beingreduced to emptiness by the progress of knowledge. The thing that struckthe first observer is proved to be less important than he thought it. Scientific names, for all their air of learned universality, are merelyfossilized impressions, stereotyped portraits of a single aspect. Thedecorous obscurity of the ancient languages is used to conceal an immensediversity of principle. Mammal, amphibian, coleoptera, dicotyledon, cryptogam, --all these terms, which, if they were translated into thelanguage of a peasant, would be seen to record very simple observations, yet do lend a kind of formal majesty to ignorance. 

So it is with the vocabulary of literary criticism: the first use of aname, because the name was coined by someone who felt the need of it, isoften striking and instructive; the impression is fresh and new. Thenthe freshness wears off it, and the name becomes an outworn print, alabel that serves only to recall the memory of past travel. What wascreated for the needs of thought becomes a thrifty device, useful only tosave thinking. The best way to restore the habit of thinking is to doaway with the names. The word Romantic loses almost all its meaning andvalue when it is used to characterize whole periods of our literature. Landor and Crabbe belong to a Romantic era of poetry; Steele and Sternewrote prose in an age which set before itself the Classic ideal. Yetthere is hardly any distinctively Classical beauty in English verse whichcannot be exemplified from the poetry of Landor and Crabbe; and there arenot very many characteristics of Romantic prose which find noillustration in the writings of Steele and Sterne. Nevertheless, thevery name of romance has wielded such a power in human affairs, and hasso habitually impressed the human imagination, that time is not misspentin exhibiting its historical bearings. These great vague words, inventedto facilitate reference to whole centuries of human history--Middle Ages, Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, Revival of Romance--are very ofteninvoked as if they were something ultimate, as if the names themselveswere a sufficient explanation of all that they include. So an imperfectterminology is used to gain esteem for an artificial and rigid conceptionof things which were as fluid as life itself. The Renaissance, forinstance, in its strict original meaning, is the name for that renewedstudy of the classical literatures which manifested itself throughout thechief countries of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. InItaly, where the movement had its origin, no single conspicuous event canbe used to date it. The traditions inherited from Greece and Rome hadnever lost their authority; but with the increase of wealth and leisurein the city republics they were renewed and strengthened. From beingremnants and memories they became live models; Latin poetry was revived, and Italian poetry was disciplined by the ancient masters. But theRenaissance, when it reached the shores of England, so far from givingnew life to the literature it found there, at first degraded it. Itkilled the splendid prose school of Malory and Berners, and prose did notrun clear again for a century. It bewildered and confused the minds ofpoets, and blending itself with the national tradition, produced the richlawlessness of the English sixteenth century. It was a strong tributaryto the stream of our national literature; but the popular usage, whichassigns all that is good in the English literature of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries to a mysterious event called the Renaissance, ismerely absurd. Modern scholars, if they are forced to find a beginningfor modern literature, would prefer to date it from the wonderfuloutburst of vernacular poetry in the latter part of the twelfth century, and, if they must name a birthplace, would claim attention for the Courtof King Henry II. 

In some of its aspects, the Romantic revival may be exhibited as anatural consequence of the Renaissance. Classical scholarship at firstscorned the vernacular literatures, and did all its work of criticism andimitation in the Latin tongue. By degrees the lesson was widened, andapplied to the modern languages. Study; imitation in Latin; extension ofclassical usages and principles to modern literature, --these were theregular stages in the progress of the classical influence. When thepoets of France and England, to name no others, had learned as much asthey were able and willing to learn from the masters of Greece and Rome, the work of the Renaissance was done. By the middle of the eighteenthcentury there was no notable kind of Greek or Latinliterature--historical, philosophical, poetical; epic, elegy, ode, satire--which had not worthy disciples and rivals in the literatures ofFrance and England. Nothing remained to do but to go further afield andseek for new masters. These might easily have been found among the poetsand prophets of the East, and not a few notable writers of the time beganto forage in that direction. But the East was too remote and strange, and its languages were too little known, for this attempt to be carriedfar; the imitation of Chinese and Persian models was practised chiefly byway of fantasy and joke. The study of the neglected and forgotten matterof mediaeval times, on the other hand, was undertaken by seriousscholars. The progress of the mediaeval influence reproduced veryexactly the successive phases of the Classical Renaissance. At firstthere was study; and books like Sainte Palaye's _Memoirs of AncientChivalry_, and Paul Henri Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, enjoyed aEuropean reputation. Then followed the period of forgery and imitation, the age of Ossian and Chatterton, Horace Walpole and Bishop Percy. Lastly, the poets enrolled themselves in the new school, and an originalliterature, suggested by the old, was created by Sir Walter Scott, Coleridge, and Keats. It was the temper of the antiquary and thesceptic, in the age of Gibbon and Hume, that begot the Romantic Revival;and the rebellion of the younger age against the spirit of the eighteenthcentury was the rebellion of a child against its parents. 

It is not needful, nor indeed is it possible, to define Romance. In themathematical sciences definitions are all-important, because with themthe definition is the thing. When a mathematician asks you to describe acircle, he asks you to create one. But the man who asks you to describea monkey is less exacting; he will be content if you mention some of thefeatures that seem to you to distinguish a monkey from other animals. Such a description must needs be based on personal impressions and ideas;some features must be chosen as being more significant than the rest. Inthe history of literature there are only two really significantthings--men, and books. To study the ascertained facts concerning menand books is to study biography and bibliography, two sciences whichbetween them supply the only competent and modest part of the history ofliterature. To discern the significance of men and books, to classifyand explain them, is another matter. We have not, and we never shallhave, a calculus sufficient for human life even at its weakest andpoorest. Let him who conceives high hopes from the progress of knowledgeand the pertinacity of thought tame and subdue his pride by considering, for a moment, the game of chess. That game is played with thirty-twopieces, of six different kinds, on a board of sixty-four squares. Eachkind of piece has one allotted mode of action, which is further crampedby severe limitations of space. The conditions imposed upon the game arestrict, uniform, and mechanical. Yet those who have made of chess a life-long study are ready to confess their complete ignorance of thefundamental merits of particular moves; one game does not resembleanother; and from the most commonplace of developments there may springup, on the sudden, wild romantic possibilities and situations that arelike miracles. If these surprising flowers of fancy grow on the chess-board, how shall we set a limit to the possibilities of human life, whichis chess, with variety and uncertainty many million times increased? Itis prudent, therefore, to say little of the laws which govern the courseof human history, to avoid, except for pastime, the discussion oftendencies and movements, and to speak chiefly of men and books. If anauthor can be exhibited as the effect of certain causes (and I do notdeny that some authors can plausibly be so exhibited) he loses his virtueas an author. He thought of himself as a cause, a surprising intruderupon the routine of the world, an original creator. I think that he isright, and that the profitable study of a man is the study which regardshim as an oddity, not a quiddity. 

A general statement of the law that governs literary history may perhapsbe borrowed from the most unreasonable of the arts--the art of dress. Oneof the powerful rulers of men, and therefore of books, is Fashion, andthe fluctuations of literary fashion make up a great part of literaryhistory. If the history of a single fashion in dress could ever bewritten, it would illuminate the literary problem. The motives at workare the same; thoughtful wearers of clothes, like thoughtful authors, areall trying to do something new, within the limits assigned by practicalutility and social sympathy. Each desires to express himself and yet inthat very act to win the admiration and liking of his fellows. The greatobject is to wear the weeds of humanity with a difference. Some authors, it is true, like timid or lazy dressers, desire only to conform to usage. But these, as M. Brunetiere remarks in one of his historical essays, areprecisely the authors who do not count. An author who respects himselfis not content if his work is mistaken for another's, even if that otherbe one of the gods of his idolatry. He would rather write his ownsignature across faulty work than sink into a copyist of merit. Thiseternal temper of self-assertion, this spirit of invention, thisdetermination to add something or alter something, is no doubt theprinciple of life. It questions accepted standards, and makes ofreaction from the reigning fashion a permanent force in literature. Theyoung want something to do; they will not be loyal subjects in a kingdomwhere no land remains to be taken up, nor will they allow the praise ofthe dead to be the last word in criticism. Why should they paraphraseold verdicts?

The sway of Fashion often bears hardest on a good author just dead, whenthe generation that discovered him and acclaimed him begins to pass away. Then it is not what he did that attracts the notice of the younger sort, but what he left undone. Tennyson is discovered to be no great thinker. Pope, who, when his star was in the ascendant, was "Mr. Pope, the newPoet, " has to submit to examination by the Headmaster of Winchester, whodecides that he is not a poet, except in an inferior sense. Shakespeareis dragged to the bar by Thomas Rymer, who demonstrates, with what degreeof critical ability is still disputed, but certainly in clear andvigorous English, that Shakespeare has no capacity for tragic writing. Dante is banished, by the critics of the Renaissance, into the Gothicdarkness. So the pendulum of fashion swings to and fro, compelled, evenin the shortest of its variable oscillations, to revisit the greatestwriters, who are nearest to the centre of rest. Wit and sense, which areraised by one age into the very essentials of good poetry, are denied thename of poetry by the next; sentiment, the virtue of one age, is theexploded vice of another; and Romance comes in and goes out with secularregularity. 

The meaning of Romance will never come home to him who seeks for it inmodern controversies. The name Romance is itself a memorial of theconquest of Europe by the Romans. They imposed their language on halfEurope, and profoundly influenced the other half. The dialectical, provincial Latin, of various kinds, spoken by the conquered peoples, became the Romance speech; and Romance literature was the new literaturewhich grew up among these peoples from the ninth century onwards, --orfrom an earlier time, if the fringe of Celtic peoples, who kept theirlanguage but felt the full influence of Christianity, be taken into theaccount. The chief thing to be noted concerning Romance literature isthat it was a Christian literature, finding its background andinspiration in the ideas to which the Christian Church gave currency. While Rome spread her conquests over Europe, at the very heart of herempire Christianity took root, and by slow process transformed thatempire. During the Middle Ages the Bishops of Rome sat in the seat ofthe Roman Emperors. This startling change possessed Gibbon'simagination, and is the theme of his great work. But the whole ofGibbon's history was anticipated and condensed by Hobbes in a singlesentence--"If a man considers the original of this great ecclesiasticaldominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than theghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the gravethereof. For so did the Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins ofthat heathen power. "

Here, then, is the answer to a question which at once suggests itself. How do we get this famous opposition between the older Latin literatureand the literature of those countries which had inherited or accepted theLatin tradition? Why did not the Romans hand over their literature andteach it, as they handed over and taught their law? They did teach it intheir schools; grammar and rhetoric, two of the chief subjects of aliberal education, were purely literary studies, based on the work of theliterary masters of Rome. Never was there an education so completelyliterary as the organized education of Rome and of her provinces. Howcame it that there was any breach between the old and the new?

A question of this kind, involving centuries of history, does not admitof a perfectly simple answer. It may be very reasonably maintained thatin Rome education killed literature. A carefully organized, universalsystem of education, which takes for its material the work of great poetsand orators, is certain to breed a whole army of slaves. The teachers, employed by the machine to expound ideas not their own, soon erectsystems of pedantic dogma, under which the living part of literature isburied. The experience of ancient Rome is being repeated in the Englandof to-day. The officials responsible for education, whatever they mayuneasily pretend, are forced by the necessities of their work toencourage uniformity, and national education becomes a warehouse ofsecond-hand goods, presided over by men who cheerfully explain the mindof Burke or of Shakespeare, adjusting the place of each, and balancingfaults against merits. But Roman education throughout the Empire hadfurther difficulties to encounter. To understand these it must beremembered what Latin literature was. The Latins, when we first discernthem in the dim light of the past, were a small, strenuous, politicalpeople, with a passion for government and war. They first subdued Italy, and no very serious culture-problem resulted from that conquest. TheEtruscans certainly contributed much to Latin civilization, but theirseparate history is lost. No one knows what the Etruscans thought. TheRomans do not seem to have cared. They welded Italy together, andthereafter came into contact with the older, richer civilizations of theMediterranean shores. The chief of these, in its influence, was theGreek civilization, as it had developed in that famous group of free citystates, fostered by the sun and air, and addicted to life. In Athens, atthe time of her glory, life was not a habit, but an experiment. Even theconservative Romans were infected. They fell under the sway of Greekthought. When a practical man of business becomes intimate with anartist, he is never the same man again. The thought of thatdisinterested mode of life haunts his dreams. So Rome, though she hadpaid little regard to the other ancient peoples with whom she had hadtraffic and war, put herself to school to the Greeks. She accepted theGreek pantheon, renamed the Greek gods and goddesses, and translated andadopted Greek culture. The real Roman religion was a religion of thehomestead, simple, pious, domestic, but they now added foreign ornaments. So also with literature; their own native literature was scanty andpractical--laws and rustic proverbs--but they set themselves to produce anew literature, modelled on the Greek. Virgil followed Homer; Plautuscopied Menander; and Roman literature took on that secondary andreminiscent character which it never lost. It was a literature ofculture, not of creed. This people had so practical a genius that theycould put the world in harness; for the decoration of the world they werewilling to depend on foreign loans. 

In so far as Latin literature was founded on the Greek, that is, in sofar as it was a derivative and imitative literature, it was not very fitfor missionary purposes. One people can give to another only what is itsown. The Greek gods were useless for export. An example may be takenfrom the English rule in India. We can give to the peoples of India ourown representative institutions. We can give them our own authors, Shakespeare, Burke, Macaulay. But we cannot give them Homer and Virgil, who nevertheless continue to play an appreciable part in training theEnglish mind; and we can hardly give them Milton, whose subtlest beautiesdepend on the niceties of the Latin speech. The trial for Latinliterature came when obscurely, in the purlieus and kennels of Rome, likea hidden fermentation, Christianity arose. The earliest Christians werefor the most part illiterate; but when at last Christianity reached thehigh places of the government, and controlled the Empire, a problem ofenormous difficulty presented itself for solution. The whole elaborateeducational system of the Romans was founded on the older literature andthe older creeds. All education, law, and culture were pagan. How couldthe Christians be educated; and how, unless they were educated, couldthey appeal to the minds of educated men? So began a long struggle, which continued for many centuries, and swayed this way and that. WasChristianity to be founded barely on the Gospel precepts and on a way oflife, or was it to seek to subdue the world by yielding to it? This, thereligious problem, is the chief educational problem in recorded history. There were the usual parties; and the fiercest, on both sides, counselledno surrender. Tertullian, careful for the purity of the new religion, held it an unlawful thing for Christians to become teachers in the Romanschools. Later, in the reign of Julian the Apostate, an edict forbadeChristians to teach in the schools, but this time for another reason, lest they should draw away the youth from the older faith. In the endthe result was a practical compromise, arranged by certain ecclesiasticalpoliticians, themselves lovers of letters, between the old world and thenew. It was agreed, in effect, that the schools should teach humaneletters and mythology, leaving it to the Church to teach divine doctrineand the conduct of life. All later history bears the marks of thiscompromise. Here was the beginning of that distinction and apportionmentbetween the secular and the sacred which is so much more conspicuous inChristian communities than ever it has been among the followers of otherreligions. Here also was the beginning of that strange mixture, familiarto all students of literature, whereby the Bible and Virgil are quoted asequal authorities, Plato is set over against St. Paul, the Sibyl confirmsthe words of David, and, when a youth of promise, destined for theChurch, is drowned, St. Peter and a river-god are the chief mourners athis poetic obsequies. This mixture is not a fantasy of the Renaissance;it has been part and parcel, from the earliest times, of the tradition ofthe Christian church. 

History is larger than morality; and a wise man will not attempt to passjudgment on those who found themselves in so unparalleled a position. Anew religion, claiming an authority not of this world, prevailed in thisworld, and was confronted with all the resources of civilization, inextricably entangled with the ancient pagan faiths. What was to bedone? The Gospel precepts seemed to admit of no transaction. "They thatsay such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, ifthey had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, theymight have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire abetter country, that is an heavenly. " The material prosperity and socialorder which Law and Politics take such pains to preserve and increase areno part of their care. They are strangers and pilgrims in the countrywhere they pitch their tent for a night. How dare they spend time oncherishing the painted veil called Life, when their desires are fixed onwhat it conceals? When Tacitus called the Christian religion "a deadlysuperstition, " he spoke as a true Roman, a member of the race of Empire-builders. His subtle political instinct scented danger from those wholooked with coldness on the business and desire of this world. TheChristian faith, which presents no social difficulties while it isprofessed here and there by a lonely saint or seer, is another thing whenit becomes the formal creed of a nation. The Christians themselves knewthat to cut themselves off from the country of their birth would havebeen a fatal choice, so far as this world is concerned. Their ultimatedecision was to accept Roman civilization and Roman culture, and to addChristianity to it. 

Then followed an age-long attempt to Christianize Latin literature, tosupply believers with a new poetry, written in polished and accomplishedverse, and inspired by Christian doctrine. Of those who attempted thistask, Prudentius is perhaps the greatest name. The attempt could neverhave been very successful; those who write in Latin verse must submit tobe judged, not by the truth of their teaching, but by the formal beautiesof their prosody, and the wealth of their allusive learning. EvenMilton, zealot though he be, is esteemed for his manner rather than forhis matter. But the experiment was cut short by the barbarian invasions. When the Empire was invaded, St. Jerome and St. Augustine, Prudentius andSymmachus, Claudian and Paulinus of Nola, were all alive. These men, invarying degrees, had compounded and blended the two elements, the paganand the Christian. The two have been compounded ever since. The famoussevententh century controversy concerning the fitness of sacred subjectsfor poetic treatment is but a repetition and an echo of that older andmore vital difference. The two strains could never be perfectlyreconciled, so that a certain impurity and confusion was bequeathed tomodern European literature, not least to English literature. Ours is agreat and various literature, but its rarest virtue is simplicity. Ourbest ballads and lyrics are filled with the matter of faith, but as oftenas we try the larger kinds of poetry, we inevitably pass over intoreminiscence, learning, criticism, --in a word, culture. 

The barbarians seized, or were granted, land; and settled down undertheir chiefs. They accepted Christianity, and made it into a warlikereligion. They learned and "corrupted" the Latin language. In theirdialects they had access neither to the literature of ancient Rome, norto the imitative scholarly Christian literature, poetry and homily, whichcompeted with it. Latin continued to be the language of religion andlaw. It was full of terms and allusions which meant nothing to them. They knew something of government, --not of the old republic, but of theirown men and estates. They believed wholly and simply in Christianity, especially the miraculous part of it. To them (as to all whom it hasmost profoundly influenced) it was not a philosophy, but a history ofmarvellous events. When, by the operation of society, their dialect hadformed itself, a new literature, unlike anything that had flourished inancient Rome, grew up among them. This was Romance, the great literaryform of the Middle Ages. It was a sincere literature, expressive oftheir pride in arms and their simple religious faith. The early songsand ballads, chanted in the Romance speech, have all perished. From alater time there have come down to us the _Chansons de Geste_, narrativepoems composed by the professional caste of poets to celebrate the deedsand adventures of the knights who fought the battles of Charlemagneagainst the Saracen invader. 

The note of this Romance literature is that it was actual, modern, realistic, at a time when classical literature had become a remoteconvention of bookish culture. It was sung in the banqueting-hall, whileLatin poetry was read in the cells of monks. It flourished enormously, and extended itself to all the matter of history and legend, to KingArthur, Theseus, Alexander, ancient heroes and warriors who were broughtalive again in the likeness of knights and emperors. Its triumph was socomplete, that its decadence followed swiftly. Like the creatures thatlive in the blood of man, literary forms and species commonly die oftheir own excess. Romances were multiplied, and imitated; professionalpoets, not content with marvels that had now become familiar, sought fora new sensation in extravagant language and incident. The tales becamemore and more sophisticated, elaborate, grotesque, and unreal, until, inthe fourteenth century, a stout townsman, who ticketed bales in a custom-house, and was the best English poet of his time, found them ridiculous. In _Sir Thopas_ Chaucer parodies the popular literature of his day. SirThopas is a great reader of romances; he models himself on the heroeswhose deeds possess his imagination, and scours the English countryside, seeking in vain for the fulfilment of his dreams of prowess. 

So Romance declined; and by the end of the seventeenth century thefashion is completely reversed; the pendulum has swung back; now it isthe literature inspired by the old classical models that is real, andhandles actual human interests, while Romantic literature has becomeremote, fictitious, artificial. This does not mean that the men of thelater seventeenth century believed in the gods and Achilles, but not inthe saints and Arthur. It means that classical literature was found bestto imitate for its form. The greater classical writers had described thelife of man, as they saw it, in direct and simple language, carefullyordered by art. After a long apprenticeship of translation andimitation, modern writers adopted the old forms, and filled them withmodern matter. The old mythology, when it was kept, was usedallegorically and allusively. Common-sense, pointedly expressed, withsome traditional ornament and fable, became the matter of poetry. 

A rough summary of this kind is enough to show how large a question isinvolved in the history of Romance. All literary history is a longrecord of the struggle between those two rival teachers of man--books, and the experience of life. Good books describe the world, and teachwhole generations to interpret the world. Because they throw light onthe life of man, they enjoy a vast esteem, and are set up in a positionof authority. Then they generate other books; and literature, recedingfurther and further from the source of truth, becomes bookish andconventional, until those who have been taught to see nature through thespectacles of books grow uneasy, and throw away the distorting glasses, to look at nature afresh with the naked eye. They also write books, itmay be, and attract a crowd of imitators, who produce a literature noless servile than the literature it supplants. 

This movement of the sincere and independent human mind is found in thegreat writers of all periods, and is called the Return to Nature. It isseen in Pope no less than in Wordsworth; in _The Rape of the Lock_ noless than in _Peter Bell_. Indeed the whole history of the mock-heroic, and the work of Tassoni, Boileau, and Pope, the three chief masters inthat kind, was a reassertion of sincerity and nature against the stiltedconventions of the late literary epic. The _Iliad_ is the story of aquarrel. What do men really quarrel about? Is there any moredistinctive mark of human quarrels than the eternal triviality of theimmediate cause? The insulting removal of a memorial emblem from anItalian city; the shifting of a reading-desk from one position to anotherin a French church; the playful theft of a lock of hair by an amorousyoung English nobleman--these were enough, in point of fact, to set wholecommunities by the ears, and these are the events celebrated in _The Rapeof the Bucket_, _The Rape of the Lectern_, _The Rape of the Lock_. Howfoolish it is to suppose that nature and truth are to be found in oneschool of poetry to the exclusion of another! The eternal virtues ofliterature are sincerity, clarity, breadth, force, and subtlety. Theyare to be found, in diverse combinations, now here and now there. Whilethe late Latin Christian poets were bound over to Latin models--toelegant reminiscences of a faded mythology and the tricks of aprofessional rhetoric--there arose a new school, intent on makingliterature real and modern. These were the Romance poets. If theypictured Theseus as a duke, and Jason as a wandering knight, it wasbecause they thought of them as live men, and took means to make themlive for the reader or listener. The realism of the early literature ofthe Middle Ages is perhaps best seen in old Irish. The monk bewails thelawlessness of his wandering thoughts, which run after dreams of beautyand pleasure during the hour of divine service. The hermit in the wooddescribes, with loving minuteness, the contents of his larder. Never wasthere a fresher or more spontaneous poetry than the poetry of this earlyChristian people. But it is not in the direct line of descent, for itwas written in the Celtic speech of a people who did not achieve thegovernment of Europe. The French romances inherited the throne, andpassed through all the stages of elaboration and decadence. They too, intheir turn, became a professional rhetoric, false and tedious. When theyceased to be a true picture of life, they continued in esteem as a schoolof manners and deportment for the fantastic gallantry of a court. Yetthrough them all their Christian origin shines. Their very themes bearwitness to the teaching of Christian asceticism and Christian idealism. The quest of a lady never seen; the temptations that present themselvesto a wandering knight under the disguise of beauty and ease;--these, andmany other familiar romantic plots borrow their inspiration from the samesource. Not a few of the old fairy stories, preserved in folk-lore, arefull of religious meaning--they are the Christian literature of the DarkAges. Nor is it hard to discern the Christian origins of later Romanticpoetry. Pope's morality has little enough of the religious character:

 Know then this truth (enough for Man to know), Virtue alone is Happiness below. 

But Coleridge, when he moralizes, speaks the language of Christianity:

 He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all. 

The like contrast holds between Dryden and Shelley. It is perhaps hardlyfair to take an example from Dryden's poems on religion; they arerational arguments on difficult topics, after this fashion:

 In doubtful questions 'tis the safest way To learn what unsuspected ancients say; For 'tis not likely we should higher soar In search of heaven than all the church before. 

When Dryden writes in his most fervent and magnificent style, he writeslike this:

 I will not rake the Dunghill of thy Crimes, For who would read thy Life that reads thy rhymes? But of King _David's_ Foes be this the Doom, May all be like the Young-man _Absalom_; And for my Foes may this their Blessing be, To talk like _Doeg_ and to write like Thee. 

Nor is it fair to bring Shelley's lame satires into comparison with thesesplendors. When Shelley is inspired by his demon, this is how he writes:

 To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory. 

Some of the great poets of the Romantic Revival took mediaeval literaturefor their model, but they did more than that. They returned to the cultof wild nature; they reintroduced the supernatural, which is a part ofthe nature of man; they described seas, and deserts, and mountains, andthe emotions of the soul in loneliness. But so soon as it passed out ofthe hands of the greater poets, this revived Romance became as bookish asdecadent Classicism, and ran into every kind of sentimental extravagance. Indeed revived Romance also became a school of manners, and by making afashion and a code of rare emotions, debased the descriptive parts of thelanguage. A description by any professional reporter of any Royalwedding is further from the truth to-day than it was in the eighteenthcentury. The average writer is looser and more unprincipled. 

The word Romance supplies no very valuable instrument of criticism evenin regard to the great writers of the early nineteenth century. Wordsworth, like Defoe, drew straight from the life. Those who will maycall him a Romantic. He told of adventures--the adventures of the mind. He did not write of Bacchus, Venus, and Apollo; neither did he concernhimself with Merlin, Tristram, and the Lady of the Lake. He shunned whatis derived from other books. His theme is man, nature, and human life. Scott, in rich and careless fashion, dealt in every kind of material thatcame his way. He described his own country and his own people withloving care, and he loved also the melodrama of historical fiction andsupernatural legend. "His romance and antiquarianism, " says Ruskin, "hisknighthood and monkery, are all false, and he knows them to be false. "Certainly, _The Heart of Midlothian_ and _The Antiquary_ are better than_Ivanhoe_. Scott's love for the knighthood and monkery was real, but itwas playful. His heart was with Fielding. 

There is nothing inconsistent in the best of the traditions of the twoparties. The Classical school taught simplicity, directness, and modestyof speech. They are right: it is the way to tell a ghost story. TheRomantic school taught a wider imaginative outlook and a more curiousanalysis of the human mind. They also are right: it is the way toinvestigate a case in the police courts. Both were cumbered, at times, with the dead things that they found in the books they loved. Allliterature, except the strongest and purest, is cumbered with uselessmatter--the conventional epithet, the grandiose phrase, the outwornclassical quotation, the self-conscious apology, the time-honored joke. But there are only two schools of literature--the good, and the bad. Asfor national legend, its growth is the same in all ages. The Greeks toldtales of Achilles, the Romans of Aeneas, the French of Charlemagne, theBritish of Arthur. It is a part of the same process, and an expressionof the same humanity. 

I have tried to show that the Renaissance bears the same relation toclassical literature as the Revival of Romance bears to mediaevalliterature, and that the whole history of the literature of Europe is anoscillation between Christian and Pagan ideals during that long andwavering process whereby Christianity was partially established as thecreed and way of life of a group of diverse nations. The historicalmeaning of the word Romance is exact and easy to define. But in commonusage the word means something much vaguer than this. It is a note, anatmosphere, a kind of feeling that is awakened not only by literature butby the behavior of men and the disposition of material objects. JohnEvelyn, the diarist, enjoys the reputation of having been the first tospeak of a "romantic site, "--a phrase which leads the way to immeasurablepossibilities in the application of the word. Accuracy in the definitionof this larger meaning is unattainable; and would certainly be false, forthe word has taken its meaning from centuries of usage by inaccuratethinkers. A whole cluster of feelings, impressions, and desires, dimlyrecognized as cognate, has grown around the word, which has now been acentre of critical discussion and controversy for the better part of acentury. Heine, in his dissertation on the Romantic School, takes theChristianity of the Middle Ages as his starting-point, and relateseverything to that. Perhaps he makes too much of allegory and symbolism, which have always been dear to the church, but are not conspicuous inearly Romance. Yet no one can go far astray who keeps in touch, as Heinedoes, with the facts of history. Goethe, impatient of the wistfulintensities of youth, said that the Classical is health, and the Romanticdisease. Much has been made, by many critics, of the statue and thepicture, as types of ancient and modern art, the one complete in itself, the other suggesting more than it portrays. Mr. Walter Pater, borrowinga hint from a sentence of Bacon, finds the essence of Romance in theaddition of strangeness to beauty, of curiosity to desire. It would beeasy to multiply these epigrammatic statements, which are all notobscurely related to the fundamental changes wrought on the world byChristian ideas. No single formula can hope to describe and distinguishtwo eras, or define two tempers of mind. If I had to choose a singlecharacteristic of Romance as the most noteworthy, I think I should chooseDistance, and should call Romance the magic of Distance. What is themost romantic line in Virgil? Surely it is the line which describes theghosts, staying for waftage on the banks of the river, and stretching outtheir hands in passionate desire to the further shore:

 Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore. 

Scott expounds the harmonizing power of distance in his _Journal_, wherehe describes the funeral of his friend Laidlaw's infant:

 I saw the poor child's funeral from a distance. Ah, that Distance! What a magician for conjuring up scenes of joy or sorrow, smoothing all asperities, reconciling all incongruities, veiling all absurdness, softening every coarseness, doubling every effect by the influence of the imagination. A Scottish wedding should be seen at a distance; the gay band of the dancers just distinguished amid the elderly group of the spectators, --the glass held high, and the distant cheers as it is swallowed, should be only a sketch, not a finished Dutch picture, when it becomes brutal and boorish. Scotch psalmody, too, should be heard from a distance. The grunt and the snuffle, and the whine and the scream, should be all blended in that deep and distant sound, which rising and falling like the Eolian harp, may have some title to be called the praise of our Maker. Even so the distant funeral: the few mourners on horseback with their plaids wrapped around them--the father heading the procession as they enter the river, and pointing out the ford by which his darling is to be carried on the last long road--not one of the subordinate figures in discord with the general tone of the incident--seeming just accessories, and no more--this _is_ affecting. 

The same idea is the subject of T. E. Brown's poem, _The Schooner_:

 Just mark that schooner westward far at sea-- 'Tis but an hour ago When she was lying hoggish at the quay, And men ran to and fro, And tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed and swore, And ever and anon, with crapulous glee, Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore. * * * * * And now, behold! a shadow of repose Upon a line of gray, She sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose-- She sleeps, and dreams away, Soft blended in a unity of rest All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes, 'Neath the broad benediction of the West. 

Shelley finds the suggestion of distance in beautiful music:

 Though the sound overpowers, Sing again, with thy sweet voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one. 

Wordsworth hears it in the song of the Highland Girl:

 Will no one tell me what she sings?-- Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago. 

These quotations are enough to show what a width of view is given tomodern Romantic poetry. Man is, in one sense, more truly seen in a widesetting of the mountains and the sea than close at hand in the street. But the romantic effect of distance may delude and conceal as well asglorify and liberate. The weakness of the modern Romantic poet is thathe must keep himself aloof from life, that he may see it. He rejects theauthority, and many of the pleasures, along with the duties, of society. He looks out from his window on the men fighting in the plain, and seesthem transfigured under the rays of the setting sun. He enjoys thebattle, but not as the fighters enjoy it. He nurses himself in all theluxury of philosophic sensation. He does not help to bury the child, orto navigate the schooner, or to discover the Fortunate Islands. Thebusiness of every poet, it may be said, is vision, not action. But theepic poet holds his reader fast by strong moral bonds of sympathy withthe actors in the poem. "I should have liked to do that" is what thereader says to himself. He is asked to think and feel as a man, not as agod. 

The weakness of revived Romance found the most searching of its criticsin Tennyson, who was fascinated, when he was shaping his own poeticcareer, by the picture and the past, yet could not feel satisfied withthe purely aesthetic attitude of art to life. In poem after poem hereturns to the question, Is poetry an escape from life? Must it lull thesoul in a selfish security? The struggle that went on in his mind hasleft its mark on _The Lady of Shalott_, _The Palace of Art_, _TheVoyage_, _The Vision of Sin_, _The Lotos-Eaters_, and others of hispoems. The Lady of Shalott lives secluded in her bower, where she weavesa magic web with gay colors. She has heard that a curse will fall on herif she looks out on the world and down to the city of Camelot. She seesthe outer world only in a mirror, and

 In her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights

--villages, market-girls, knights riding two and two, funerals, or pairsof lovers wandering by. At last she grows half-sick of seeing the worldonly in shadows and reflections. Then a sudden vivid experience breaksup this life of dream. Sir Lancelot rides past, in shining armor, singing as he rides. She leaves her magic web and mirror, and looks uponthe real world. 

 Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; "The curse is come upon me, " cried The Lady of Shalott. 

She goes into the world, and there she meets her death. The poem is notan allegory, but there is no mistaking the thought that generated it. Themirror and the web are the emblems of Romantic art. The feelings whichstir the heart to action, which spring to meet the occasion or theobject, are contrasted, in the poem, with the more pensive feelings whichare excited by the sight of the object in a mirror, and the suggestionsof color and design which are to be transferred to the embroidery. Themirror is a true and subtle symbol. When Shakespeare treated the sameproblem, he made King Richard II, the most romantically minded of all hiskings, call for a mirror. The thing that it is easiest for a man to seein a mirror is himself; egotism in its many forms, self-pity, self-cultivation, self-esteem, dogs Romanticism like its shadow. Thedesire to be the spectator of your own life, to see yourself in all kindsof heroic and pathetic attitudes, is the motive-power of Romantic poetryin many of its later developments. Yet life must be arrested andfalsified before the desire can be fulfilled. No one has ever seenhimself in a mirror as he is seen by others. He cannot catch himselflooking away, self-forgetful, intent on something outward; yet only whenhe is in these attitudes does his true character show itself in his face. Nor, if he could so see himself, would he be a witness of the truth. Thesensation of drowning, or of leading an assault in war, is very unlikethe sentiment which is aroused in the spectator of either of theseadventures. Romanticism, in its decline, confuses the sentiment with thesensation, and covets the enjoyment of life on the easy terms of a by-stander. 

These faults and failings of late Romance are far enough removed from thesimple heroism of the death of Roland in the pass of Roncesvalles. LaterRomance is known everywhere by its derivative, secondary, consciouslyliterary character. Yet it draws sometimes from the original source ofinspiration, and attains, by devious ways, to poetic glories not inferiorto the old. 

IMITATION AND FORGERY

Romance is a perennial form of modern literature, and has passed throughmany phases. No period has been without it, though the esteem in whichit is held has varied a good deal from age to age. English literature isstrong in romance; there is something in the English temper which makesscepticism ungrateful to it, and disposes it to treat even dreamsseriously. Chaucer, who laughed at the romantic writers of his day, yetgave a new lease of life to Romance in _Troilus and Cressida_ and _TheKnightes Tale_. Many of the poets of the seventeenth century choseromantic themes for their most serious work; if Davenant and Chamberlayneand others had been as successful as they were ambitious, they would haveanticipated the Revival of Romance. Even in the age of Pope, the oldromance subjects were still popular, though they were celebrated in bookswhich have long been forgotten. Everyone who has studied the Troy legendof the Middle Ages knows how great a share in the popularization of thelegend belongs to the Sicilian lawyer, Guido delle Colonne, whosummarized, in the dull style of a Latin chronicle, and withoutacknowledgment, the brilliant _Roman de Troie_ which the French poet, Benoit de Sainte-More had written for Queen Eleanor of England. Guide'smatter-of-fact compilation had an enormous vogue; Chaucer, Lydgate, andShakespeare treated it as an authority; and Caxton translated it intoEnglish prose. Through all the changes of fashion Caxton's versioncontinued in esteem; it was repeatedly revised and reissued; and, in thevery age of Pope, found what was doubtless a large public under the title_The Destruction of Troy_, _In Three Books . . . With many Admirable Actsof Chivalry and Martial Prowess_, _effected by Valiant Knights_, _in theDefence and Love of distressed Ladies. The Thirteenth Edition_, _Corrected and much Amended_. London, _Printed for Eben. Tracey_, _atthe Three Bibles on London-Bridge_. _1708_. In the underworld ofliterature Romance never died out. The Revival of Romance took itsspecial character from a gradual and powerful reaction against Dryden andPope and all those masters of Classical method who, during half acentury, had legislated for English poetry. It began very early in theeighteenth century, long before the death of Pope. No sooner did adynasty of moralists and satirists claim possession of the high places, and speak in the name of English literature, than all the other interestsand kinds, which survived among the people, began to range themselves inopposition, and to assert their right to be heard. The supremacy ofDryden and Pope was the most despotic rule that English poetry has everknown, and the revolt was strong in proportion. Satire and morality veryeasily becomes tedious, especially when they are in close alliance. Despotism may be tempered by epigrams, and so become tolerable, but it isimportant that the epigrams should not be made by the despot. Outsidethe charmed circle of his friendships, Pope was ready enough to use hiswit against any pretender. 

The change began gradually, and in very innocent fashion. Poetry hadbeen taught to be scholarly, self-conscious, experimental; and it showedits skill in half-playful imitations of the older English masters. Popehimself imitated Chaucer and Spenser in burlesque fashion. John Philips, in _The Splendid Shilling_, used Milton's heightened style to describethe distresses of an impecunious poet. William Shenstone in _The School-mistress_, parodied Spenser, yet the parody is in no way hostile, andbetrays an almost sentimental admiration. Spenser, like Milton, neverlost credit as a master, though his fame was obscured a little during thereign of Dryden. His style, it must be remembered, was archaic in hisown time; it could not grow old, for it had never been young. Addison, in _An Account of the Greatest English Poets_, says that Spenser's verse

 Can charm an understanding age no more; The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, While the dull moral lies too plain below. 

But the _Account_ is a merely juvenile work; its dogma is not the swordof judgment, but the shield of ignorance. "The character he gives ofSpenser, " said Pope, "is false; and I have heard him say that he neverread Spenser till fifteen years after he wrote it. " As for Pope himself, among the English poets Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were his childhood'sfavorites, in that order; and the year before his death he said toSpence--"I don't know how it is; there is something in Spenser thatpleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth. Iread the Faerie Queene, when I was about twelve, with infinite delight;and I think it gave me as much when I read it over, about a year or twoago. "

The lyrical Milton and the romantic Spenser found disciples among poetsin the early half of the eighteenth century. Two of these disciples maybe mentioned, both born about the year 1700, only twelve years later thanPope. John Dyer, the son of a solicitor in Wales, was bred to the law, but gave it up to study painting under Jonathan Richardson. His earlierand better poems were written while he wandered about South Wales inpursuit of his art. _Grongar Hill_, the most notable of them, waspublished in 1726. Love of the country is what inspires his verses, which have a very winning simplicity, only touched here and there by theconventions deemed proper for poetry:

 Grass and flowers Quiet treads, On the meads and mountain-heads, Along with Pleasure, close ally'd, Ever by each other's side; And often, by the murmuring rill, Hears the thrush, while all is still, Within the groves of Grongar Hill. 

The truth of his observation endeared him to Wordsworth; and his moral, when he finds a moral, is without violence:

 How close and small the hedges lie! What streaks of meadows cross the eye! A step methinks may pass the stream, So little distant dangers seem; So we mistake the Future's face, Ey'd thro' Hope's deluding glass; As yon summits soft and fair, Clad in colours of the air, Which, to those who journey near, Barren, and brown, and rough appear, Still we tread tir'd the same coarse way, The present's still a cloudy day. 

It takes a good poet to strike a clear note, with no indecision, in theopening lines of his poem, as Dyer does in _The Country Walk_:

 I am resolv'd, this charming day, In the open fields to stray; And have no roof above my head But that whereon the Gods do tread. 

His landscapes are delicately etched, and are loved for their own sake:

 And there behold a bloomy mead, A silver stream, a willow shade, Beneath the shade a fisher stand, Who, with the angle in his hand, Swings the nibbling fry to land. 

It would be absurd to speak solemnly of Dyer's debt to Milton; he is anoriginal poet; but the writer of the lines quoted above can never havebeen blind to the beauties of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_. His twoarts brought him little material prosperity; in 1740 he took orders inthe Church of England, and in his later years did harm to his fame by along industrial poem called _The Fleece_, which has on it none of the dewthat glistens on his youthful verses. 

James Thomson, who won a great reputation in his own age, was the son ofa parish minister in Scotland. He was educated in Edinburgh, and came toLondon to seek his fortune. All Thomson's work shows the new tendenciesin poetry struggling with the accepted fashions. His language in _TheSeasons_ is habitually rhetorical and stilted, yet there is hardly a pagewithout its vignettes of truth and beauty. When he forgets what he haslearned in the Rhetoric class, and falls back on his own memories andlikings, the poet in him reappears. In _The Castle of Indolence_, published just before his death in 1748, he imitates Spenser. One stanzaof this poem is more famous than all the rest; it is pure and highromance:

 As when a shepherd of the Hebrid-Isles, Placed far amid the melancholy main, (Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles, Or that aerial beings sometimes deign To stand embodied to our senses plain), Sees on the naked hill, or valley low, The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain, A vast assembly moving to and fro; Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show. 

Many who are familiar with this simile have never been at the pains toremember, or enquire, what it illustrates. Indeed its appearance in thepoem is almost startling, as if it were there for no purpose but toprophesy of the coming glories of English poetry. The visitors to theCastle of Indolence are met at the gate by the porter, who supplies themwith dressing-gowns and slippers, wherein to take their ease. They thenstroll off to various parts of the spacious grounds, and theirdisappearance is the occasion for this wonderful verse. Thomson cared nomore than his readers for the application of the figure; what possessedhim was his memory of the magic twilight on the west coast of Scotland. 

Pope and Prior were metropolitan poets; it is worth noting that Dyerbelonged to Wales, and Thomson to Scotland. It is even more significantthat Dyer was by profession a painter, and that Thomson's poems wereinfluenced by memories of the fashionable school of landscape painting. The development of Romantic poetry in the eighteenth century isinseparably associated with pictorial art, and especially with the riseof landscape painting. Two great masters of the seventeenth century, Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain, are more important than all the rest. We have here to do not with the absolute merits of painting, nor with itstechnical beauties and subtleties, but with its effect on the popularimagination, which in this matter does not much differ from the poeticimagination. The landscapes of Salvator Rosa and Claude were madefamiliar to an enormous public by the process of engraving, and poetryfollowed where painting led. There are exquisite landscapes in thebackgrounds of the great Italian masters; Leonardo, Titian, and others;but now the background became the picture, and the groups of figures werereduced to serve as incidents in a wider scheme. Exactly the samechange, the same shift of the centre of interest, may be seen inThomson's poetry compared with Spenser's. No doubt it would be difficultto balance the creditor and debtor account as between poetry andpainting; the earlier pictorial landscapes borrowed some hints from theolder romances; but in England, at least, landscapes of wild rocks, andcalm lakes, and feudal castles lit up by the glow of the setting sun werefamiliar before the reaction in poetry set in. Romance, in its moderndevelopment, is largely a question of background. A romantic love-affairmight be defined as a love-affair in other than domestic surroundings. Who can use the word "romantic" with more authority than Coleridge? In_Kubla Khan_, a poem which some would choose as the high-water mark ofEnglish romantic poetry, he gets his effect from the description of alandscape combining the extremes of beauty and terror:

 But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, * * * * * It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Romance demands scenery; and it should never be forgotten that the age ofPope, the age of symmetry and correctness in poetry, was an age when thetaste for wild scenery in painting and in gardening was at its height. Ifthe house was set in order, the garden broke into a wilderness. Addisonin the _Spectator_ (No. 414) praises the new art of landscape gardening:

 There is generally in nature something more grand and august, than what we meet with in the curiosities of art. When, therefore, we see this imitated in any measure, it gives us a nobler and more exalted kind of pleasure, than what we receive from the nicer and more accurate productions of art. On this account our _English_ gardens are not so entertaining to the fancy as those in _France_ and _Italy_, where we see a larger extent of ground covered over with an agreeable mixture of garden and forest, which represent everywhere an artificial wildness, much more charming than that neatness and elegancy which we meet with in those of our own country. 

Addison would have hesitated to apply this doctrine to poetry; indeed theorthodoxy of that age favored the highest possible contrast between theorderly works of man, and the garden, which it chose to treat as theoutpost of rebellious nature. Pope was a gardener as well as a poet, andhis gardening was extravagantly romantic. He describes his ideal gardenin the _Epistle to the Earl of Burlington_:

 Let not each beauty everywhere be spy'd, Where half the skill is decently to hide. He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds, Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds. Consult the genius of the place in all; That tells the waters or to rise, or fall; Or helps th' ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale, Or scoops in circling theatres the vale; Calls in the country, catches opening glades, Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades; Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines; Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs. 

Pope carried out these ideas as well as he could in his garden atTwickenham, where he attempted to compress every variety of scenic effectwithin the space of five acres, so that it became a kind of melodramaticpeep-show. The professional landscape-gardeners worked on a largerscale; the two chief of them perhaps were Bridgeman, who invented thehaha for the purpose of concealing the bounds; and William Kent, Pope'sassociate and contemporary, who disarranged old gardens, and designedillustrations for Spenser's _Faerie Queene_. Kent was an architect andbad painter, much favored by George I. Lord Chesterfield compares him toApelles, who alone was permitted to paint the portrait of Alexander:

 Equal your varied wonders! save This difference we see, One would no other painter have-- No other would have thee. 

From 1716 onward he was much employed by the Earl of Burlington. Hehelped to lay out Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, with a fresh and surprisingview at every turn; the wandering visitor was introduced, among otherdelights, to the Hermitage, the Temple of Venus, the Egyptian pyramid, St. Augustine's cave (artfully constructed of roots and moss), the SaxonTemple, the Temple of Bacchus, and Dido's cave. The craze for romanticgardening, with its illusions of distance, and its ruins and groves, persisted throughout the eighteenth century. Shenstone's garden at TheLeasowes enjoyed a higher reputation even than his poetry, and it is wellknown how he strained his slender means in the effort to outshine hisneighbors. "In time, " says Johnson, "his expenses brought clamours abouthim that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and hisgroves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and fairies. "

The chief of Kent's successors was Launcelot Brown, commonly called"Capability Brown" from his habit of murmuring to himself, as he gazed ona tract of land submitted for his diagnosis--"It has capabilities; it hascapabilities. " He laid out Kew and Blenheim. Gazing one day on one ofhis own made rivers, he exclaimed, with an artist's rapture, --"Thames!Thames! Thou wilt never forgive me. " He certainly imposed himself uponhis own time, and, so far, was a great man. "Mr. Brown, " said RichardOwen Cambridge, "I very earnestly wish that I may die before you. " "Whyso?" said Brown with some surprise. "Because, " said he, "I should liketo see Heaven before you had improved it. " Among the romantic writerswho were bitten by the mania for picturesque improvement were HoraceWalpole and even Sir Walter Scott. Everyone knows how Walpole boughtfrom Mrs. Chevenix, the toy-shop woman, a little house called "Chopp'dStraw Hall" which he converted into the baronial splendors of StrawberryHill; and how Scott transmitted a mean Tweedside farm, called ClartyHole, into the less pretentious glories of Abbotsford. 

After the practice came the theory. The painters and landscape-gardenerswere followed by a school of philosophers, who expounded Taste and thelaws of the Picturesque. Some extracts from the work of one of these, Thomas Whately, whose _Observations on Modern Gardening_ appeared in1770, will show to what excesses the whole nonsensical business had beencarried. "In wild and romantic scenes, " says Whately, "may be introduceda ruined stone bridge, of which some arches may be still standing, andthe loss of those which are fallen may be supplied by a few planks, witha rail, thrown over the vacancy. It is a picturesque object: it suitsthe situation; and the antiquity of the passage, the care taken to keepit still open, though the original building is decayed, the apparentnecessity which thence results for a communication, give it an imposingair of reality. " The context of this passages shows that the bridgeleads nowhither. On the management of rocks Whately is a connoisseur. "Their most distinguished characters, " he says, "are _dignity_, _terror_, and _fancy_: the expressions of all are constantly wild; and sometimes arocky scene is only wild, without pretensions to any particularcharacter. " But ruins are what he likes best, and he recommends thatthey shall be constructed on the model of Tintern Abbey. They must beobvious ruins, much dilapidated, or the visitors will examine them tooclosely. "An appendage evidently more modern than the principalstructure will sometimes corroborate the effect; the shed of a cottageramidst the remains of a temple, is a contrast both to the former and thepresent state of the building. " It seems almost impossible that thisshould have been offered as serious advice; but it was the admired usageof the time. Whately's book was a recognized authority, and ran throughseveral editions. He is also known as a Shakespeare critic, of noparticular mark. 

A more influential writer than Whately was William Gilpin, an industriousclergyman and schoolmaster, who spent his holidays wandering andsketching in the most approved parts of England, Wales and Scotland. Hisbooks on the Picturesque were long held in esteem. The earliest of themwas entitled _Observations on the River Wye and several parts of SouthWales . . . Relative chiefly to picturesque beauty_ (1782). Others, which followed in steady succession, rendered a like service to the Lakedistrict, the Highlands of Scotland, the New Forest, and the Isle ofWight. Those books taught the aesthetic appreciation of wild nature to awhole generation. It is a testimony to their influence that for a timethey enslaved the youth of Wordsworth. In _The Prelude_ he tells how, inearly life, he misunderstood the teaching of Nature, not frominsensibility, but from the presumption which applied to the impassionedlife of Nature the "rules of mimic art. " He calls this habit "a stronginfection of the age, " and tells how he too, for a time, was wont tocompare scene with scene, and to pamper himself "with meagre novelties ofcolour and proportion. " In another passage he speaks of similarmelodramatic errors, from conformity to book-notions, in his early studyof poetry. 

 The dignities of plain occurrence then Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point, Where no sufficient pleasure could be found. 

But imaginative power, and the humility which had been his in childhood, returned to him--

 I shook the habit off Entirely and for ever. 

Yet in one curious respect Gilpin's amateur teaching did leave its markon the history of English poetry. When Wordsworth and Coleridge chosethe Wye and Tintern Abbey for their walking tour, they were probablydetermined in that direction by the fame of the scenery; and when theyand Southey settled in the Lake district, it may be surmised that theyfelt other and stronger attractions than those that came fromWordsworth's early associations with the place. The Wye, Tintern Abbey, the English Lakes, the Scottish Highlands--these were the favored placesof the apostles of the picturesque, and have now become memorial placesin our poetic history. 

All these gardeners and aesthetic critics who busied themselves with wildnature were aiming at an ideal which had been expressed in many paintedlandscapes, and had been held up as the top of admiration by one of thegreatest English poets. The influence of Milton on the new landscapeinterest must be held to be not less than the influence of hiscontemporaries, Salvator Rosa and Claude. His descriptions of Paradisedid more than any painting to alter the whole practice of gardening. Theyare often appealed to, even by the technical gardeners. In garden-loreMilton was a convinced Romantic. He has two descriptions of the Gardenof Eden; the slighter of the two occurs on the occasion of Raphael'sentry, and merely resumes the earlier and fuller account:

 Their glittering tents they passed, and now is come Into the blissful field, through Groves of Myrrhe, And flowering Odours, Cassia, Nard, and Balme; A Wilderness of Sweets; for Nature here Wantoned as in her prime and plaid at will Her Virgin Fancies, pouring forth more sweet, Wilde above rule or art; enormous bliss. 

Coleridge has some remarks, in his _Table Talk_, on Milton's disregard ofpainting. There are only two pictures, he says, in Milton; Adam bendingover the sleeping Eve, and the entrance of Dalilah, like a ship underfull sail. Certainly the above lines are no picture; but they are moreexciting than any clear delineation could be; they are full of scent, andair, and the emotions of ease and bliss. The other passage has more ofarchitectural quality in it, and describes what first met Satan's gaze, when he entered the Garden and sat, perched like a cormorant, upon theTree of Life. 

 The crisped Brooks With mazie error under pendant shades Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed Flours worthy of Paradise which not nice Art In Beds and curious Knots, but Nature boon Poured forth profuse on Hill and Dale and Plaine Both where the morning sun first warmly smote The open field, and where the unpierc't shade Imbround the noontide Bowers: Thus was this place, A happy rural seat of various view: Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gumms and Balme, Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rinde Hung amiable, _Hesperian_ Fables true, If true, here onely, and of delicious taste: Betwixt the Lawns, or level Downs, and Flocks Grasing the tender herb, were interpos'd, Or palmie hilloc, or the flourie lap Of some irriguous Valley spread her store, Flours of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose: Another side, umbrageous Grots and Caves Of coole recess, o'er which the mantling Vine Layes forth her purple Grape, and gently creeps Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall Down the slope hills, disperst, or in a Lake, That to the fringed Bank with Myrtle crown'd, Her chrystall mirror holds, unite their streams. The Birds their quire apply; aires, vernal aires, Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune The trembling leaves, while Universal _Pan_ Knit with the _Graces_ and the _Hours_ in dance Led on th' Eternal Spring. 

Here is all the variety of hill and valley, wood and lawn, rock andmeadow, waterfall and lake, rose and vine, which the landscape artistsalso loved to depict, and which, together with ruined temples andcastles, unknown in Paradise, became the cherished ideal of landscapegardening. By the influence of _Paradise Lost_ upon the gardeners, noless than by the influence of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ upon thepoets, Milton may claim to be regarded as one of the forefathers of theRomantic Revival. There is no need to distinguish carefully betweenpoetry and painting in discussing their contributions to Romance. Agreat outcry was raised, in the last age, against literary criticism ofpictures. But in this question we are concerned with this effect ofpictures on the normal imagination, which is literary, which cares forstory, and suggested action, and the whole chain of memories and desiresthat a picture may set in motion. Do not most of those who look at aromantic landscape imagine themselves wandering among the scenes that areportrayed? And are not men prone to admire in Nature what they have beentaught by Art to notice? The landscape art of the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries taught them to imagine themselves in lonely scenes, among old ruins or frowning rocks, by the light of sunrise or sunset, cast on gleaming lakes. These were the theatre of Romance; and theemotions awakened by scenes like these played an enormous part in theRevival. It was thus that poets were educated to find that exaltation inthe terrors of mountainous regions which Gray expressed when he said:"Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant withreligion and poetry. "

The weaker side of modern Romance, the play-acting and pretence that hasalways accompanied it, may be seen in the gardening mania. It was notenough to be a country gentleman; the position must be improved by theadded elegances of a hermit's cell and an Egyptian pyramid. It is likechildren's play; the day is long, the affairs of our elders are tedious, we are tired of a life in which there is no danger and no hunger; let uspretend that we are monks, or ancient Romans. The mature imaginationinterprets the facts; this kind of imagination escapes from the factsinto a world of make-believe, where the tyranny and cause and effect isno longer felt. It is not a hard word to call it childish; theimagination of these early Romantics had a child's weakness and a child'sdelightful confidence and zest. 

The same play activity expressed itself in literature, where an orgy ofimitation ushered in the real movement. The antiquarian beginnings ofRomantic poetry may be well illustrated by the life and works of ThomasWarton. He passed his life as a resident Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and devoted his leisure, which was considerable, to the study ofEnglish poetry and Gothic architecture. He was not yet thirty when, in1757, he was elected Professor of Poetry, a post which he held for tenyears. During this time he planned a complete History of English Poetry, a task which Pope and Gray in turn had contemplated and abandoned. Thehistorical interest which is so conspicuous in early Romanticism owed nota little, it may be remarked in passing, to the initiative of Pope, whomust therefore be given a place in any full genealogy of the Romanticfamily. Warton's _History_, so far as it was completed, was publishedbetween 1774 and 1781, when he relaxed his efforts, and took up lessertasks. In 1785 he was made Poet Laureate on the strength of his earlypoems and later scholarship. He died in 1790. 

Warton's poems are a curious study. Spenser and Milton are his masters, and he is a docile pupil. His poetry is all derivative, and might bebest described as imitation poetry. Christopher North said of him that"the gods had made him poetical, but not a poet, " a saying which containsthe whole truth. He puts together a mosaic of phrases borrowed from histeachers, and frames them in a sentimental setting of his own. Here aresome passages from _The Pleasures of Melancholy_, which, though he wroteit at the age of seventeen, does not differ in method or inspiration fromthe rest of his poetical work:

 Beneath yon ruin'd abbey's moss-grown piles Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve, Where thro' some western window the pale moon Pours her long-levell'd rule of streaming light; While sullen sacred silence reigns around, Save the lone screech-owl's note, who builds his bow'r Amid the mould'ring caverns dark and damp, Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green Invests some wasted tow'r. . . . Then, when the sullen shades of ev'ning close, Where thro' the room a blindly-glimm'ring gleam The dying embers scatter, far remote From Mirth's mad shouts, that thro' th' illumin'd roof Resound with festive echo, let me sit, Blest with the lowly cricket's drowsy dirge. . . . O come then, Melancholy, queen of thought! O come with saintly look, and steadfast step, From forth thy cave embower'd with mournful yew, Where ever to the curfeu's solemn sound List'ning thou sitt'st, and with thy cypress bind Thy votary's hair, and seal him for thy son. 

Melancholy seems not to have answered these advances. In later lifeWarton was a short, squat, red-faced man, fond of ale, and a cheerfultalker, with a thick utterance, so that he gobbled like a turkey-cock. Some of his verses are cheerful. This is from the _Ode on the Approachof Summer_:

 Haste thee, Nymph! and hand in hand With thee lead a buxom band; Bring fantastic-footed Joy, With Sport, that yellow-tressed boy: Leisure, that through the balmy sky Chases a crimson butterfly. Bring Health, that loves in early dawn To meet the milk-maid on the lawn; Bring Pleasure, rural nymph, and Peace, Meek, cottage-loving shepherdess!

It is all like this, fluent and unnecessary. Perhaps no verses inEnglish were ever made so exactly in the approved fashion of modern Latinverses. Warton writes pleasantly, his cento of reminiscences is skilful, and his own epithets are sometimes happy, yet nothing comes of it. Hiswork suggests the doubt whether any modern Latin verse, even the best, would deceive an intelligent citizen of ancient Rome. 

The strange thing about the Romantic Revival is that an epidemic of thissort of imitation at last produced real poetry and real romance. Theindustrious simulation of the emotions begot the emotions simulated. Isthere not a story told of a young officer who, having dressed himself ina sheet to frighten his fellows, was embarrassed by the company of a realghost, bent on the same errand; and retired from the enterprise, leavingit wholly to the professional? That, at any rate, is very much whathappened to the Romantic impersonators. 

Another parallel may perhaps be found in the power of vulgarity toadvance civilization. Take, for instance, the question of manners. Politeness is a codification of the impulses of a heart that is moved bygood will and consideration for others. If the impulses are not there, the politeness is so far unreal and insincere--a cheap varnish. Yet itis insisted on by society, and enforced by fear and fashion. If theforms are taught, the soul of them may be, and sometimes is, breathed inlater. So this imitative and timid artifice, this conformity to opinionsthe ground and meaning of which is not fully understood, becomes a greatengine of social progress. Imitation and forgery, which are a kind ofliterary vulgarity, were the school of Romanticism in its nonage. Someof the greater poets who passed this way went on to express thingssubtler and more profound than had found a voice in the poetry that theyimitated. 

The long debate on the so-called poems of Ossian is now ended. They areknown to be a not very skilful forgery by James Macpherson. Yet theirimportance in literary history remains undiminished, and the life ofMacpherson has a curious kind of pathos. He was the creature and victimof the Romantic movement, and was led, by almost insensible degrees, intosupplying fraudulent evidence for the favorite Romantic theory that atruer and deeper vein of poetry is to be found among primitive peoples. Collins's _Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland_and Gray's _Bard_ show the literary world prepared to put itself toschool to Celtic tradition. Macpherson supplied it with a body of poetrywhich exactly fulfilled its expectations. The crucial date in hishistory is his meeting in 1759 with John Home, the author of the oncefamous tragedy of _Douglas_. In the summer of that year Home wasdrinking the waters at Moffat, and among the visitors assembled therefound Thomas Graham, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, then a boy of ten, and histutor, James Macpherson, a young Highlander, shy and ambitious, who hadbeen educated at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and had dabbled in verse. Home, full of the literary gossip of the hour, seized upon the opportunity toquestion Macpherson concerning the poems that were rumored to havesurvived among the Gaelic-speaking population of Scotland. In the lightof what we now know it is not difficult to understand the genesis of thisgreat European fraud. Macpherson was proud of his race, which he hadcelebrated in an heroic poem called _The Highlander_. He had interestedhimself in Gaelic poetry, though his knowledge of the tongue was notgood, and he had by him some fragments of genuine Gaelic poems. He wasflattered by Home's appeal to him, and, feeling perhaps that the few andslight genuine poems which he could produce would hardly warrant themagnificence of his allusions to Gaelic literature, he forged a tale inpoetic prose, called _The Death of Oscar_, and presented it to Home as atranslation from the Gaelic. The poem was much admired, and Macpherson, unable now to retrace his steps without declaring himself a cheat, soonproduced others from the same source. These were submitted to theliterary society of Edinburgh, with the great Dr. Blair at its head, andwere pronounced to be the wonder of the world. From this point onward, during a long and melancholy life, poor Macpherson was enslaved to thefraud which had its beginning in the shyness and vanity of his owncharacter. He was bound now to forge or to fail; and no doubt theconsciousness that it was his own work which called forth such rapturousapplause supported him in his labors and justified him to his ownconscience. A subscription was easily raised in Edinburgh to enable himto travel and collect the remains of Celtic poetry. For a few months heperambulated the western highlands and islands, and returned to Edinburghbringing with him _Fingal_, a complete epic poem in six books. This wasfollowed by _Temora_, in eight books, also attributed to the great Gaelicbard Ossian; and the new Celtic fashion was established. 

These poems had an immense success. Everyone knows how they influencedthe youth of Goethe, and captured the imagination of Napoleon. It isless surprising that they enraptured the poet Gray, and were approved bythe professor Blair, for they were exactly modelled on the practice andtheory of these two critics. All the fashionable doctrine of that ageconcerning the history of poetry was borne out by these works. Poetry, so it was held, is to be found in its perfection only in primitivesociety, before it is overlaid by the complexities of moderncivilization. Its most perfect, and therefore its earliest, form, is theepic; and Dr. Blair must have been delighted to find that the laws of theepic, which he so often explained to his class in Edinburgh University, were minutely observed by the oldest of Scottish bards. He died withoutsuspecting that the inspiration of the Ossianic poems had come partlyfrom himself. 

The belief that Celtic literature is essentially and eternallymelancholy, --a belief which persisted down to the time of Matthew Arnold, also drew its strength from the poems of Ossian. Here again theoryshowed the way to practice. The melancholy of the Ossianic poems is notthe melancholy of the Celt, but a melancholy compounded of many simples, and extracted from works that were held in high esteem in the eighteenthcentury--Young's _Night Thoughts_, Blair's _Grave_, Gray's _Bard_, andthe soliloquies of Milton's Satan. 

Macpherson was soon challenged, and his whole life was passed in a brawlof controversy. Two famous men dismissed him contemptuously. Dr. Johnson, who knew what honesty means among scholars, treated him as animpudent impostor. Wordsworth, who knew what simplicity means in poetry, declared that all the imagery of the poems is false and spurious. Butthe whole question early became a national quarrel, and the honor ofScotland was involved in it. There are signs that Macpherson wouldgladly have escaped from the storm he had raised. Aided by his earlyliterary success, he became a prosperous man, held a well-paid post atcourt, entered Parliament, and was pensioned by the government. Stillthe controversy persisted. He had found it easy to take up a haughtyattitude towards those hostile critics who had doubted his good faith andhad asked him to produce his Gaelic originals. But now the demand forthe originals came from his champions and friends, who desired to placethe fame of Scotland's oldest and greatest poet on a sure foundation. Hewriggled on the hook, and more than once timidly hinted that the poemsowed not a little to the poetic genius of the translator. But this half-hearted attempt to rob the great Ossian of a part of his fame stirred theCaledonian enthusiasts to a frenzy of indignation. At last, when he wasno longer able to restrain his supporters, the wretched Macpherson foundno escape but one. In middle age, some twenty years after his firstappearance on the poetic horizon, he sat down, with a heavy heart and animperfect knowledge of the Gaelic tongue, to forge the originals. In1807, eleven years after his death, these were at last published. Theprogress of genuine Celtic scholarship during the succeeding century didthe rest; and the old blind bard rejoined the mists and vapors which werethe inspiration of his Muse. {78} The poems of Ossian are only one, though perhaps the most signal, instance of the forgeries which prevailedlike an epidemic at the time of the Romantic Revival. Some of these, like Ireland's Shakespeare forgeries, were little better thancold-blooded mercenary frauds. Others, like Chatterton's Rowley Poemsand Horace Walpole's _Castle of Otranto_, are full of the zest anddelight of play-acting. Even Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_, though it isfree from the reproach of forgery, is touched by the same spirit. Thesevere morality of scholarship had not yet been applied to mediaeval ormodern matter. Scholars are the trustees of poets; but where this trustis undertaken by men who are poets themselves, there is usually a gooddeal of gaiety and exuberance in its performance. 

I have now traced some of the neglected sources of revived Romance, andhave shown how in this movement, more notably, perhaps, than in any othergreat movement in literature, it was not the supply which created thedemand, but the demand which created the supply. The Romantic change waswrought, not by the energy of lonely pioneers, but by a shift in publictaste. Readers of poetry knew what it was they wanted, even before theyknew whether it existed. Writers were soon at hand to prove that it hadexisted in the past, and could still be made. The weakness of vaguedesire is felt everywhere in the origins of the change. Out of theweakness came strength; the tinsel Gothic castle of Walpole was enlargedto house the magnanimous soul of Scott; the Sorrows of Werther gave birthto _Faust_. 

The weakness of the Romantic movement, its love of mere sensation andsentiment, is well exhibited in its effect upon the sane and strong mindof Keats. He was a pupil of the Romantics; and poetry, as he firstconceived of it, seemed to open to him boundless fields of passiveenjoyment. His early work shows the struggle between the delicious swoonof reverie and the growing pains of thought. His verse, in itsbeginnings, was crowded with "luxuries, bright, milky, soft, and rosy. "He was a boy at the time of England's greatest naval glory, but he thinksmore of Robin Hood than of Nelson. If Robin Hood could revisit theforest, says Keats, He would swear, for all his oaks Fallen beneath the dockyard strokes, Have rotted on the briny seas. 

His use of a word like "rich, " as Mr. Robert Bridges has remarked, isalmost inhuman in its luxurious detachment from the human situation. 

 Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain. Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave. 

By his work in this kind Keats became the parent and founder of theAesthetic School of poetry, which is more than half in love with easefuldeath, and seeks nothing so ardently as rest and escape from the world. The epilogue to the Aesthetic movement was written by William Morrisbefore ever he broke out from those enchanted bowers:

 So with this earthly paradise it is, If ye will read aright, and pardon me Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss Midmost the beating of the steely sea, Where tossed about all hearts of men must be, Whose ravening monsters mighty men must slay, Not the poor singer of an empty day. 

Yet there is another side to the work of Keats, more wonderful in itsbroken promise than all the soft perfections of his tender Muse. He grewtired of imitation and ease. Weakness may exclude the world byforgetting it; only strength can conquer the world. What if this law bealso the law of beauty? The thought inspires his last great attempt, thefragment of _Hyperion_. Men have their dynasties and revolutions; butthe immortals also, whom men worship, must change to live. 

 So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty. 

And this power cannot be won by those who shirk the challenge of uglyfacts. 

 O folly! for to bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty. 

As if to enforce his thought by repetition, Keats made an allegoricalframework for his revised version of the poem. There he exhibits himselfas wandering among the delights of the garden of this life, and indulginghimself to the point of drunkenness. Awaked from his swoon, he findshimself at the steps of the temple of fame. He is told he must climb ordie. After an agony of struggle he mounts to the top, and has speechthere with a veiled figure, who tells him that this temple is all thathas been spared in the war between the rival houses of the Gods. When heasks why he has been saved from death, the veiled figure makes reply:

 "None can usurp this height, " return'd that shade, "But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest. " * * * * * "Are there not thousands in the world, " said I, Encourag'd by the sooth voice of the shade, "Who love their fellows even to the death, Who feel the giant agony of the world, And more, like slaves to poor humanity, Labour for mortal good? I sure should see Other men here, but I am here alone. " "Those whom thou spakest of are no visionaries, " Rejoined that voice; "they are no dreamers weak; They seek no wonder but the human face, No music but a happy-noted voice: They come not here, they have no thought to come; And thou art here, for thou art less than they. What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe, To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing, A fever of thyself: think of the earth; What bliss, even in hope, is there for thee? What haven? every creature hath its home, Every sole man hath days of joy and pain, Whether his labours be sublime or low-- The pain alone, the joy alone, distinct: Only the dreamer venoms all his days, Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve. "

In this, which is almost his last deliberate utterance, Keats expresseshis sense of the futility of romance, and seems to condemn poetry itself. A condemnation of the expression of profound thought in beautiful formswould come very ill from Keats, but this much he surely had learned, thatpoetry, the real high poetry, cannot be made out of dreams. The worst ofdreams is that you cannot discipline them. Their tragedy is night-mare;their comedy is nonsense. Only what can stand severe discipline, andemerge the purer and stronger for it, is fit to endure. For all its sinsof flatness and prosiness the Classical School has always taughtdiscipline. No doubt it has sometimes trusted too absolutely todiscipline, and has given us too much of the foot-rule and the tuning-fork. But one discipline, at least, poetry cannot afford to neglect--thediscipline of facts and life. The poetry that can face this ordeal andsurvive it is rare. Some poets are tempted to avoid the experience andsave the dream. Others, who were poets in their youth, undergo theexperience and are beaten by it. But the poetry which can bear all nakedtruth and still keep its singing voice is the only immortal poetry. 

Footnotes:

{78} For some of the facts in this account of Ossian I am indebted toMr. J. S. Smart's fascinating book, _James Macpherson_, _an Episode inLiterature_ (David Nutt, 1905).