Eighteenth Century both announced and formed an integral part of the Romantic movement, for what have we more Romantic than much of Collins, "Ossian", Chatterton, and Blake? What more Romantic than certain poems and passages in Ramsay, the Wartons, Beattie, and the youthful Crabbe? The Romantic literature of 1798-1830 represented only the crest and not the whole of the "New Movement", though, if once we except Chatterton, Blake, and Burns, the best of the Romantic poetry was written by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, ⚫ and Shelley, but that is no sufficient reason why we should underestimate the pioneers and early masters of that move

ment.

II. A Chronological Survey of Eighteenth-Century
Romantic Poetry before 1798.

English Romantic poetry of the Century began in 1713 with the Countess of Winchelsea, not because of any pre-eminent force in her "Miscellany Poems" but simply because in that work she offered the earliest clear and artistically-noteworthy manifestation of the spirit and matter that afterwards completely changed the general character of English poetry. Truth to say, the greater part of her verse, which had only a moderate reception, belonged to the Cowley and the Pope Schools; it is almost solely owing to the "Nocturnal Reverie” that she forms part of the Romantic movement; nevertheless she has, by that fine poem, an indubitable right to her position and deserves honour for her pioneer-work.

Though the new element in the Countess of Winchelsea's poetry excited either no or very little comment, yet we wonder that Pope's "Elegy on the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" and "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard", both published in 1717, did not cause a great stir Pope had become one of the four or five most prominent literary men of the day, and public attention must have been fixed on these two poems. These pieces were romantic, the "Elegy" slightly, and the "Epistle" considerably, but, though they must have caused uneasiness in the minds of the "Classics", they yet offered so much rhetoric and conventional technique that critics probably dismissed them with "Prodigious fair though something odd". "The Epistle of Eloisa

to Abelard" contained, both quantitatively and qualitatively, much more of Romanticism than did the "Elegy", and intrinsically the "Epistle" was effective and, in parts, powerful. But what gave its importance to this poem was less its intrinsic qualities than its significance as representing a partial revolt from the conventional poetry of the day, an almost involuntary impulse towards freedom felt by the poet that was fast becoming the acknowledged chief of the "classical" literature.

While the Countess of Winchelsea and Alexander Pope contributed between them only a few poems worthy of record in the Annals of Romanticism, Allan Ramsay, much impressed with James Watson's "Choice Collection... of Scottish Poems" (1706-1711), delved into old Scottish song and unearthed some quaint, some inspiring, some truly lyrical poetry. This he brought out in 1719 as "Scots Songs", to which he added original pieces. Two years later, he published the first collection of his own verse; in 1724 he edited "The Tea-Table Miscellany" and "Ever Green", and he inserted in both some of his best poems, and in the latter Lady Wardlaw's fine ballad, "Hardyknute"; in the following year, he crowned his career as an original poet with "The Gentle Shepherd". In this, his most ambitious and most successful production, Ramsay made the dry bones of the conventional pastoral to live with the breath of his spontaneity and the beauty of his outlook on life. There, more than in the "Nocturnal Reverie", we find an exquisite conception of Nature and a deep regard for her; there we find, more naturally expressed than in Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard", a romantic treatment of love; there, indeed, we meet, for the first time in any important poetical work in the Eighteenth Century, with that admirable fusion-common to all the best Scottish lyrical writers-of Nature and love. "The Gentle Shepherd" was pervaded with this lyric charm and with a freshness, simplicity and naturalness most welcome in an age of didactic, epigrammatic and society-burdened poetry; some of his songs deserve to rank just a very little below Burn's greatest pieces; and in his editorial work aimed, as we may see in the Preface to "Ever Green", at giving to a sophisticated world "that natural strength of thought and simplicity if style our forefathers practised". So significant is this preface, which bears the date of 1724, that it calls for a longer quotation. "I have observed that readers of the best and most exquisite

refinement frequently complain of our modern writings, as filled with affected delicacies and studied refinements, which they would gladly exchange for that natural strength of thought and simplicity of style our forefathers practised: To such, I hope, the following "Collection of Poems" will not be displeasing. When these good old bards wrote, we had not yet made use of... foreign embroidery in our writings. Their poetry is the product of their own country, not pilfered and spoiled in the transportation from abroad their images are native, and their landscapes domestic; copied from those fields and meadows we every day behold. ...The manners and customs then in vogue... will have all the air and charm of novelty. ...Besides, the numbers..., as they are not now commonly practised, will appear new and amusing". That Preface forms one of the most valuable documents on the early tendency towards Romanticism, and no doubt it helped to strengthen that tendency. Ramsay merited praise for reviving the native dialect in Scottish poetry and much more for being the restorer of genuine lyricism into English poetry: adequate expression of personal emotion; a delightful treatment, now subjective and now objective, of the passion of love; a heartfelt cult for nature; representation of love-episodes in beautiful nature-settings; and an easy, artistic technique.

Very different from the Scottish poet, Parnell, in many ways a "classic", produced poetry that, published posthumously at the end of 1721, not only heralded the melancholy muse of Young and Blair but also shared with the verses of the Countess of Winchelsea and Allan Ramsay part of the glory of being the earliest noteworthy examples of fresh and spontaneous Nature poetry in the Eighteenth Century. We must, of course, in an historical view of a period, reckon influence primarily on the basis of the publication-date of the originator's work and the composition-date of the disciple's production : Parnell stands the test and emerges as a figure to whom scant justice has been rendered. It was in December 1721 that, in Pope's selection, nearly all the best of his poetry appeared for the first time. Several of the songs breathed true love of nature and freshness in the treatment of emotions, while the "NightPiece on Death" contained lines forestalling by over twenty years the gloomy poetry written by Young, Blair, and Thomas Warton; none of the lugubrious poets, in fact, surpassed Par

nell in mournful power. In "A Fairy Tale, in the Ancient English Style", he wrote an original ballad, mediaeval in subject and in phrase, some thirty years before the Wartons gave any serious attention to the themes of the Middle Ages, and nearly fifty years before Percy popularised the old ballads, for the author of the "Night-Piece" died in 1718. In short, as Ramsay (who is, for Romanticism, far more important than the Countess of Winchelsea and Pope) announced the poetic revolt on its lyrical side, so Parnell instituted it in its elegiac and mournful aspect.

Possessing the seriousness that characterised Parnell, James Thomson published in 1726 the first of the famous "Seasons", which he completed four years later. Thomson has often been described as the first notable Nature-poet of the Eighteenth Century; Ramsay preceded him in the field. If, however, we say that Thomson was the earliest to sing of Nature at length, and with the definite purpose of exhibiting her strength and beauty, well and good! That he did, and did imposingly. But the special trait that made him an innovator was his moral description and interpretation of Nature; and in this he was followed by Dyer, Goldsmith, Crabbe, and Cowper. Certain poets took for imitation only his descriptions: they produced some of the most tiring verse of the century, without attaining to artistic effect or heralding to any considerable extent the Romantic movement; men like Armstrong and Somerville were undoubtedly followers of Thomson, but their poetry lacked inspiration and at times ran the catalogue-method to extinction. Thomson himself not only delighted in Nature from the aesthetic point of view, but also saw in her an austere moral grandeur and a mighty force; he invested her with dignity and read into her a profound religious teaching. In "Spring" he proclaimed that imagination cannot create nor words describe anything to equal the scenes and life of Nature as we perceive them

Behold! yon breathing prospect bids the muse
Throw all her beauty forth. But who can paint

Like Nature? Can Imagination boast,
Amid its grey creation, hues like hers ?

It was generally held by the Eighteenth-Century poets (nor has their opinion since been seriously disputed) that Thomson was an accredited describer of nature; the moral significance

of his work was not thoroughly realised and adequately treated till well on in the Nineteenth Century. John Scott, in the course of an address to the Muse, cried :

Descriptive Muse! whose hand along the stream

Of ancient Thames, through Richmond's shady groves, And Sheen's fair valleys, once thy Thomson led ;

that view of his genius does Thomson little injustice, for his influence on the Romantic movement concerned more the descriptive and emotional treatment, than the moral import, of nature. But he did more than give Nature her rightful place in poetry; by composing the "Seasons" (which the public and critics alike welcomed) in blank verse, he aided English poetry to break away from the trammels of Popean versification : in this too he had many followers, though several that shared his philosophy of Nature (e.g. Goldsmith) recurred to heroic couplets.

Though in his later work Dyer seemed to be much influenced by Thomson, yet in "Grongar Hill", published in its original form very soon after "Winter", he showed great personal talent. The two had in common the moral view of nature; Dyer, however, handled the theme of "Grongar Hill" with a lightness and an approach to the best lyrical manner that the other could not-at any rate did not try to obtain. It is mainly owing to this poem that Dyer owes his position as one of the early exponents of Romanticism, for "The Ruins of Rome" and "The Fleece", though they contained lines that would do credit to the most Romantic poets, laboured under the handicap of having their "new spirit" passages hemmed round with a mass of "classical" or semi-"classical" verses and so failed to receive the attention they deserved for their intrinsic merit; probably the only poems written by Dyer that had any revolutionary influence in the Eighteenth Century were "Grongar Hill" and "The Country Walk".

After Ramsay, Thomson and Dyer, we must, while we admit his marked inferiority to those poets, mention Glover. Not for his long poems! They are even more completely forgotten than "The Fleece". But for his poem "On Sir Isaac Newton", which has some powerful lines. This piece, published in 1728, was written in blank verse (probably fathered by Thomson) and, though in the main "classical", presented several