Wordsworth differed from him—, of Byron in his long narrative poems. Nevertheless his place in pre-1798 Romanticism was very small and has importance solely in relation to his later development.

More significant was the early work of Coleridge, who from the beginning gave evidence of his strong Romantic sympathies. Some of his best things were written before 1798; several slight volumes, which did not include all the finest of his youthful pieces, appeared before that date. "Religious Musings", composed in 1794, was an effusive, hyperbolical poem, containing some magnificent verses and illustrating that rapt manner which distinguished all Coleridge's greatest poetry. His supreme achievement of the period before the "Lyrical Ballads" came, however, with the production in 1796 or 1797 of "Osorio", which was acted in 1813 as "Remorse": this was a tragedy romantic in all senses of the word; it equalled in extravagance and surpassed in power the later "Zapolya", though it fell short of the standard afterwards attained by Shelley in "The Cenci". "Osorio", indeed, might be requisitioned, along with the lyrics of Burns and Blake and the mediaevalism of Macpherson and Chatterton, to support the assertion that Wordsworth and Coleridge in and after the "Lyrical Ballads", Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, though they added much to the glory of English Romanticism, marked a difference more in kind than in degree from the Eighteenth-century Romantic poets. "Osorio", besides, had many aspects, and its dramatic, narrative and lyrical qualities were very high.

Only two other writers composing most of their verse after the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads" need be mentioned in any detail in a summary of pre-1798 Romanticism (for Landor's small 1795 volume attracted very little attention and contained nothing of outstanding merit, and Southey's "Joan of Arc" in 1796 had little value, while Samuel Rogers was essentially a belated "Classic"): these were Joanna Baillie and Charles Lamb. The poetess, chiefly remembered for her "Plays of the Passions", made her first bow to the public in 1790 with "Fugitive Verses". In this volume, varying from descriptive poems to ballads, she displayed a distinct tendency to revolt against the "classical" poetry with which she had obviously been familiar. Much of her work clearly derived from Thomson: she was praised in a contemporary review for her "true unsophisti

cated representations of nature". She also composed several ballads just as clearly influenced by the "Reliques" and tinged with Gothicism. Born as early as 1762, she was influenced late by the more definitely Romantic of Eighteenth-century English writers, and offered the interesting spectacle of new themes superimposed on old prejudices.

Charles Lamb was in his pre-1798 verse far more Romantic than Joanna Baillie. He reproduced more purely the tone, atmosphere and manner of Bowles' "Fourteen Sonnets" than any other writer has done. In 1796 appeared four of his pieces in Coleridge's "Poems on Various Subjects", and a year later he had a moderate share in another volume published by Coleridge. His sonnets reflected unmistakably the new spirit în literature, but they lacked any great force. A sunny day, a dainty caprice, a quiet scene, a gentle damsel made for Lamb a thing of sheer delight, which he expressed with all the airy glamour and delicate romance so characteristic of him. Not only were the majority of his pre-1798 poems wholly or largely Romantic in theme, sentiment, and technique, but they had a special feature that became almost an essential of Nineteenthcentury Romanticism-the intimate revelation of the writer's personality.

Thus ends with Lamb, quaint and strikingly original in prose, at first imitative and later original in verse, the roll of English Romantic poets of the Eighteenth Century. The beginnings of the new movement (in many ways a revival of Elizabethan romanticism) had been tentative but varied that increasing variety connoted a growing dissatisfaction with "classical" themes, sentiments, outlook, and technique. The Countess of Winchelsea and Alexander Pope hinted, as Romantics in a quantitatively un-important quota of their verse, the future position of the lyric, which was to be firmly established by Collins, strengthened by Gray, and set on a pinnacle by Blake and Burns. Ramsay breathed into his poetry and his treatment of landscape a fresh and charming spontaneity, while Thomson instituted the moral interpretation of Nature, later to be handled more realistically and with a fuller appreciation of the personal element by Crabbe. More subjective was the poetry of Young, Blair and the Wartons. Collins and Gray liberated the ode from its pedant-shackles and successfully practised measures either new or revived inspiration made their best verses to

glow with a Romantic ardour. Then came the "mediaeval" vogue, confirmed in Macpherson and Percy and furthered, in directions that, indicated by those two, were yet orignal in English poetry, by Beattie and, above all, by Chatterton. Scottish poetry bourgeoned afresh in Fergusson and Burns, the latter justly famous for the attention that he paid to the subjective element and for the lambent flame with which he fired the lyric. An independent, detached figure, Blake wrote lyrics utterly different from those of Burns (whom, by the way, he preceded), and quite as individual, while he fused art and nature-nature human and exterior-in a manner unique in our literature. And during the years 1790-1797, in addition to much. excellent work by earlier men, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Landor and Byron were feeling their way and producing their youthful poems, while Shelley and Keats were still mere infants -later to become boys as "wonderful" as Chatterton.

Pioneers and early masters, all those poets who published before the "Lyrical Ballads" the whole or large proportion of their Romantic verse, set afoot and established the movement that was destined to render glorious the first phase of Nineteenthcentury literature in England.

III. Groups in Eighteenth-century English Romantic Poetry.

English Romantic poetry up till 1798 fell, like most movements in their beginnings, more or less under certain definite heads, which, so far from being artificial, actually represented the various tributaries that went to make up the full stream of Nineteenth-century Romanticism, though even there several writers clearly continued a specific early section in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" and "Marmion", Scott offered a late treatment of mediaeval themes; Wordsworth continued the moral interpretation of Nature made popular by Thomson.

It is instructive to note the divisions of their subject made by Professors Phelps and Beers in "The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement" (published 1893) and "A History of English Romanticism in the 18th Century" (1899) respectively. Professor Phelps, who carries his work only up to 1765 or thereabouts, says that "Romantic literature will generally be found to show three qualities: Subjectivity, Love of the Pictu

resque, and a Reactionary Spirit"; by the last he means a spirit "reactionary to what has immediately preceded”,—what has been called "the swing of the pendulum", so strongly characterising the Romantic Movement in France. He then proceeds to set down as the main sections of Romanticism up to 1765: "Reaction in Form; Spenserian Revival"; "Influence of Milton -the Literature of Melancholy"; and "Revival of the Past — Gothicism and Chivalry; Ballad Literature and Percy; Northern Mythology, Welsh Poetry, and Ossian". For the period that he surveys, that method of division has much to recommend it, though it lacks singleness, the first section being based on form, the two latter sections on theme; but the critic surmounts this difficulty very neatly, and one remarks it as a defect only when judging the plan of the book apart from the contents,—a practrice that leads one into illogical statements concerning things that are illogical only in appearance. It is perhaps to be regretted that Professor Phelps does not make more of the lyrical writers in mass. (His chapter on Gray is excellent.)

Professor Beers has embarked on a more intricate but less satisfactory arrangement of his material: "The Augustans", "The Spenserians", "The Landscape Poets", "The Miltonic Group", "The School of Warton", The Gothic Revival", "Percy and the Ballads", "Ossian", "Thomas Chatterton", and "The German Tributary". To mediaevalism in its various aspects he thus assigns four chapters, a division out of proportion with the rest of the book; by the Miltonic group he means not writers of epics but poets whose sentiment recalls that expressed in "Il Pen soso"; "The School of Warton"-one cannot help asking which Warton, as Joseph had an influence approximately equal to that of Thomas; in "The Spenserians" he makes a division according to form, while the other groups go according to matter or sentiments; "The German Tributary" concerns either minor writers or the very early work of essentially Nineteenth-century men, and so was almost too slight to merit a chapter, especially as the German element in Eighteenth-century English literature has so much in common whith "The Gothic Revival", treated only four chapters carlier. (This "carping" refers merely to the systems of grouping and in no way detracts from the fact that in the body of their work Professors Phelps and Beers have more than "blazed the trail" and have written a great deal of first-class criticism.)

The following division will be found rather different from that of the two books just considered; this grouping, no doubt, has faults, as all classifications of literature have inevitably, but it may in some ways be more satisfactory :-The Lyrical Writers; the Scottish Poets; the Mournful Group; the Moral Describers of Nature; and the Mediaevalists.

With regard to "the Lyrical Writers" one must take the classification to denote those whose Romantic verse is mainly emotional and subjective. Thomas Warton wrote much supposedly-humorous verse, but, not being Romantic, it does not come under our consideration; the Countess of Winchelsea composed very little poetry that was not "classical", but that little was lyrical, and so it belongs to the group in question; Thomas Warton, again, belongs definitely to "the Mournful Group" in his "Ode to Melancholy" and is, for that poem, put in the chapter dealing with Parnell, Young and Blair, but in the rest of his serious poetry he was-to except a few "occasional" pieces -lyrical, and so he comes also into "the Lyrical Writers".

By "the Scottish Poets", I mean those who, like Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns, wrote partly in the Scottish dialect, and those who composed in English all the poems uncontestedly theirs and at the same time employed the typically Scottish alliance of love and Nature.

"The Moral Describers of Nature" seems preferable to “the Landscape Poets", for it is more definite; the latter term might well include Ramsay, Thomas Warton, and Mickle, who fall more aptly under other heads. By "moral" is meant not "religious" poets but those who extract, illustrate, or imply an ethical judgment.

"The Mournful Group" has been adopted instead of "the Literature of Melancholy", because the latter (Professor Phelps') term seems to lay too much stress on the influence of Milton. That "Il Penseroso" greatly influenced Parnell, no one will deny; but the Miltonic element in Young came not direct from "Il Penseroso" though perhaps through Parnell, but from Milton's epic diction; Blair's "Grave" owed nothing to that poem, while Thomas Warton's "Ode to Melancholy" derived directly from Young and Blair and perhaps a little from Parnell.

"The Mediaevalists" aims at including the pioneers, Percy, Macpherson, as well as their successful followers—more original than imitative-Chatterton and Beattie.