and Welsh tradition poetic elements unknown to the worshiper of the classics. Percy's "Reliques," a collection of old English ballads discovered in manuscript and published in 1765, was received with great favor by all except the strictest adherents of Dr. Johnson's school. Men per ceived with delight the poetic beauty of simple, idiomatic narrative song for which no Latin model could be found. There were in reality two schools, one believing in the models of the former generation, the other feeling the need of greater variety of expression and wider range of emotion. Dr. Johnson never approved of Gray's poetry, because it embodied new elements both of form and subject matter. It would be interesting to know how he would have regarded the poetry of Burns, the very antithesis to his own. Cowper and Crabbe are both transition poets; their diction is less artificial than that of the classical school. They treat in a simple and realistic manner that part of life of which they have had personal experience. They express genuine human sympathies. Dr. Johnson, indeed, was a man of kind heart, but of a restricted outlook on the world, even on the world of letters, and Pope was his model. Correctness in art soon degenerated into frigidity and barrenness. Cowper and Crabbe, though adhering largely to the old poetic forms, did something to break up formalism, to bring poetry nearer to nature, and to prepare the way for Coleridge and Wordsworth. QUESTIONS What differences from the academic verse of the last period are noticeable in the poetry of Gray and Collins? What are the usually accepted meanings of the terms "Classic" and "Romantic"? In Burns's poetry what are the relative proportions of satire, humorous verses, and song? Which constitutes his best title to fame ? Taking Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" as a basis, what are the essential peculiarities of his style? What parliamentary speeches of this period have since been ranked as a part of English literature? Is the extraordinary fame of Boswell's "Johnson" due to its uniqueness or its greatness? What did Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" do for the science of political economy? How was it regarded by statesmen and men of business? Analyze Richardson's "Clarissa," showing skillful construction and culmination of tragedy. LITERARY REFERENCES BEERS, GOSSE, PERRY, PHELPS, LANIER, STEPHEN, THACKERAY, as for previous period. 6 v. BOSWELL, J. Life of Samuel Johnson. Ed. by G. B. Hill. FORSYTH, W. Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century. MINTO, W. Literature of the Georgian Era. SANDERS, L. Richard Brinsley Sheridan. (G. W. S.) STEPHEN, L. Samuel Johnson. (E. M. L.) See also the articles on Chatterton, Collins, Cowper, and Thomson in the Dictionary of National Biography. BURNS, ROBERT POEMS. Ed. by W. E. Henley and T. F. Henderson. 4 v. BLACKIE, J. S. Life of Burns. (G. W. S.) SHAIRP, J. C. Burns. (E. M. L.) CHAPTER IX THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD (1800 to 1837) GUIZOT, T. P. G. MARTINEAU, H. Historical References History of England, c. 38–41. History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace. HUGHES, T. S. History of England, v. 5-7. KNIGHT, C. History of England, v. 7–8. IN the first half of the nineteenth century the population of England reached fifteen millions. The great Historical social questions between capital and labor Sketch. began to assume importance. The corn laws or duties on imported grain gave the landowners an unfair advantage, now that the island could no longer produce food enough for its inhabitants. The poverty and distress, resulting partly from the high price of food, partly from the introduction of labor-saving machinery in many important branches of production and the consequent temporary deprivation of employment for large numbers of workers, stirred thinking men profoundly and intensified sympathy with the poor. The repeal of the Corn Laws (1846), the Catholic emancipation (1829), the abolition of slavery, and the reform (1832) which gave representation to the populous cities and took it away from the "rotten boroughs," and extended the right of suffrage to multitudes hitherto disfranchised, are all outcomes of the democratic spirit, and of the recognition of the rights of man. The wars with Napoleon excited the country to a passionate patriotism. The success of the navy aroused national pride and made England sole mistress of the sea. The monopoly of the East India Company was repealed and an immense impulse given to commerce. England came out of the Napoleonic wars with increased colonial possessions in all parts of the world. The sentiment of patriotism, the pride in belonging to an expanding and victorious nation, the growing perception of the brotherhood of men, and the incorporation of the new ideas in legislation after a long and bitter struggle with the evil forces of privilege, resulted in the production of some great literature, of a tone far more full and enthusiastic than that of the last century. New Forms of Litera ture Demanded. But further, we have seen that, irrespective of the disposition to revolt from the past and to express the wild and irregular conception of freedom created by the French Revolution, men had grown tired of the old forms and tone of academic literature. Crabbe and Cowper already had drawn from real life and humble things, and not from plaster casts of the heroic models of a classic civilization. Younger men found that in the verse of Robert Burns there was something more germane to the spirit of the age than in the verse of Pope. It pleased them more and touched them more - there seemed to be in it a more varied and sweeter music and more truth. In 1798 two young men, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, sold for twenty pounds, to a country bookseller named Cottle, a little volume of verses called "Lyrical Ballads." Cottle published them, and, though they had no great success, the very fact that they were published shows that the time had come when a new school of poetry would soon find acceptance. This volume contained the "Ancient Mariner," in which the ballad form was shown to be capable of embodying a new poetic vision, and the "Lines Written near Tintern Abbey," in which is expressed a sense of man's relation to nature as something great, powerful, wild, and yet mystically sympathetic, a conception far removed from the thought of Pope or Johnson and in advance of that of Thomson or the gentle Cowper. The publication of the "Lyrical Ballads" really marks the opening of the new period, but 1800 is taken in order to bring the century date and the period date together. For the reasons suggested in the above paragraphs the period is designated the "period of the Revolution." Wordsworth was born at the village of Cockermouth, on the river Derwent, in Cumberland. His father was an William attorney and law agent for a landed proprietor, Wordsworth, the Earl of Lonsdale. Wordsworth's parents 1770-1850. died in his childhood, and at the age of seventeen he was sent by his uncle to St. John's College, Cambridge. Here he took his degree in 1791, but showed a disinclination to settle down to any profession. In 1791 he crossed to France with the ostensible design of learning the language. He sympathized so enthusiastically with the Revolutionists that he was ready to join them practically, but his relatives stopped his allowance and forced him to return in a year. He had much of the obstinacy of the North Briton, and still refused to take up any regular employment. He published a slight volume of verse called called "An Evening Walk Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches," in which he uses the classic meters, the heroic couplet and the Spenserian stanza, without displaying much originality, though his love of nature is |