passages well in the Romantic line of development. Nor must we forget "Admiral Hosier's Ghost", issued ten years later; this ballad had a tremendous vogue. But the Glover of the later poems was a very different man from the Glover of the paean to Newton, as we see by the "efforts of endurance" made a little before and for a long time after "Admiral Hosier's Ghost", a poem that, by the way, "starred" in the period of lull delimited by the years 1731-1741.

The volumes most significant for Romantic poetry between the publication of "The Seasons" complete as one work and the appearance of the first instalment of "Night Thoughts" were the "Poetical Works of Allan Ramsay" in 1731, Somerville's "Chase" in 1735, and "The Muses' Library" edited by.Oldys in 1737 : the first contained some good songs and lyrics not previously offered to the public, the second constituted clean, vigorous narrative, and the third brought to light some interesting early work. Somerville's "Chase" owed much to Thomson, but its author wrote on an original subject. The didactic parts have little interest, save for sportsmen; but the "many descriptions and digressions in the Georgic manner", which the poet feared would be "tedious", redeem the work, for they move briskly and vigorously, clearly and graphically. We find several appreciative descriptions of Nature, which receives a moral interpretation, and note with pleasure the manly blank verse, which, though a little rough at times, is free and ably-handled. By the beginning of the fourth decade, Thomson had practically given up writing Nature-poetry; Ramsay was to compose little more, and that little consisted mainly of "Epistles" of an occasional character; Pope had passed the age when he might have broken out again in the manner of the "Elegy" and the "Eloisa to Abelard"; Glover had turned most of his attention to emulating the efforts of that immortal fiasco, Sir Richard Blackmore; Dyer had lost his "first fine careless rapture"; and the men who were to make their mark in poetry in the seventeen-forties, Young, Blair, the Wartons, · Collins and Gray, were during the thirties producing poor stuft in other genres (or feeling their way), or were still at college. Nor had any great novels appeared during that period to stimulate men's intellects and emotions.

But soon after the recrudescence of the novel, or the beginning of the domestic novel, in "Pamela", which heralded

so many masterpieces, there came a second period of poetic impetus, which we may define as lasting during the years 17421751.

"Robinson Crusoe" and "Gulliver's Travels" had brought into English literature much that was new, yet they exercised very little influence on the poetry partly because they were isolated works (Defoe's novel, first part, 1719-1720, and Swift's satire-novel, 1726), arriving some years before the novel secured a firm hold on English literature; partly because they were closely related to the times-and almost solely to their own times; partly because "Robinson Crusoe" owed most of its contemporary success to its theme and that theme could hardly be effectively imitated so as to produce the illusion of an original work, while, to be well-informed, "Gulliver's Travels" stood pre-eminently for satire and to the general reader for a strange story, which, like Defoe's novel, could scarcely father a powerful imitation. Both these works-and more especially the earlier were, indeed, imitated frequently, but has any of these imitations (except "The Swiss Family Robinson"-a foreign production) obtained great success? Certainly none has had any notable literary merit. But in 1740 Richardson set the ball rolling with "Pamela"; Fielding and Smollett soon followed. By 1753 there had been formed a body of novel-literature large and important enough to compel the attention of the English reading public (not to mention the educated people on the Continent), and by 1771 the masterpieces of Johnson, Sterne, and Goldsmith, along with Mackenzie's best production, had joined the already famous works of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, thus consolidating the strong position of the novel in our literature. These books, as well as enchanting the general mass of readers, possessed sufficient merit to interest the educated and literary section of society they were vigorously or convincingly (some both vigorously and convincingly) written they treated a great variety of themes, provided food for the imagination and matter for thought; they analysed character and developed situation beyond what was artistic in drama or desirable in poetry; they whetted curiosity and aroused all sorts of emotions. By exercising the mind and evoking emotion, by presenting diversity of art and of morality, these novels made for liberty in literature. People became tired of the classical conventions when they saw that certain writers had dealt,

and so all writters might henceforth deal, with a larger world, more vivid emotions, more natural thoughts, and a wider sphere of action. Richardson delved into the human heart and instituted at the same time both the domestic and the psychological novel; Fielding combined adventure and characterisation and invested the whole with his own rich, tolerant personality; Smollett furthered the picturesque. But it is supererogatory to continue analysing the early novel when Mr. Harold Williams has so ably summarised it, as follows:

"Defoe was a master of narrative art, but he was scarcely anything more; and it was impossible that a bare recital of incident and sensational adventure should continue to satisfy the imaginative demands of a society which, after its emergence from the Middle Ages, was settling into the ordered round of industrial, scientific, and cultured life. In a stable and unchanging form of society, in which sensational movements and episodes are infrequent, the interest of even the most commonplace mind tends to centre in reflection upon and discussion of the amenities and incongruities of social and domestic life. The great popularity of Richardson receives a natural explanation if we bear these facts in mind; he evolved a "new species of writing", with a clear knowledge that something new was wanted. The scene of his novels is almost purely domestic ; while Fielding, to pass over all other points of difference, chooses a wider stage of action; and characterisation, though it yields in point of veracity and comprehension to that of Richardson, is not so obviously his only business. He carries his narrative farther afield, and incident and adventure come more naturally from him; he is more sensitive to the value of dramatic situation than the home-keeping little printer. Smollett vacillates between two tendencies-the romance of sensational adventure and the novel of manners, and shows spirited workmanship in both forms".

It was inevitable that poets, actual or potential, should, with their sensitiveness to "atmosphere" and influence, lose no time in taking possession of this new material and transmuting it, by the magic of their verse, to something rarer and finer. They did not, at first, realise fully its possibilities: they felt diffident as to how such and such an emotion, situation or scene would fit into poetry of the best kind. Nevertheless, the large amount of good verse written during the years 1742-1751 corres

ponds rather closely with the appearance of "Pamela", "Joseph Andrews", "Clarissa Harlowe", "Tom Jones" and "Roderick Random". Indeed, when we come to consider the matter, we recognise that it would be remarkable if the novel, by reason of its qualities and of its obvious or intriguing possibilities, had failed, not quite to revolutionise English poetry,-for the germs of Romanticism had sent forth shoots long before the appearance of Richardson's first story-, but to hasten and to strengthen the revolt implied in the work of Ramsay, Thomson, and lesser men. Yet this aspect of "the beginnings of the English Romantic movement" has been passed-over. This neglect appears all the more strange when we realise that Crabbe was influenced by Fielding and Richardson, that Walpole's "Castle of Otranto" began the "Gothic" element in English poetry, and that the Orientalism of Landor, of Southey, Byron, Moore and Shelley, belonged to a movement fathered of course by Sir William Jones' translations from Eastern literatures, yet assisted by Beckford's "Vathek".

Several years before the efflorescence of the novel came a great religious upheaval, which, accompanying it, in some ways strengthened that efflorescence. The Methodist movement became a Church in 1739, but it operated as a powerful leaven for many years aftewards. People had begun to recognise that they were creatures of emotion, not instruments of reason they wanted an ardent and living faith, not a dead-cold philosophy. In just the some way, they grew tired of the dicta of reason in literature, and longed for the vivid and emotional; and writers surely felt some revolutionary impulse from the religious movement profoundly stirring the multitudes; all the more because Methodism was very personal, and, when it turned to poetry, it expressed itself mainly in hymns, a genre approximating to the lyric.

Parnell's gloom, moreover, was taken up and diversified in three poems-Young's "Night Thoughts", published 1742-4, Blair's "Grave" in 1743, and, four years later, Thomas Warton's "Pleasures of Melancholy". The lengthy "Night Thoughts" (running to nearly ten thousand lines) was imitated in prose by Hervey, who in 1746-7 brought out the "Meditations among the Tombs"; both these works had an immense sale in Great Britain, and remained favourites-for family reading-until the end of the century; both Young and Her

vey became famous in France, where, like Byron, they enjoyed, and still enjoy, a reputation far beyond that to which they have any just title. The conception and the execution of Young's poem are classical, but occasional passages and the motive of personal grief ring true in the Romantic key. Though after the half-century the "Night Thoughts" influenced English poetry only a little in the direction indicated by the growing revolt against established themes and forms, yet this poem appealed greatly to the French Romantics.

Quite independently of Young, Blair published in 1743 "The Grave", which, far less ambitious and (containing as it does under eight hundred lines) far shorter than the "Night Thoughts", possessed much more of unity and artistry than characterised the longer work. Not so conventional as the "Thoughts", it resembled more the "Night-Piece" of Parnell, at the same time differing from it considerably in theme.

Plainly deriving from Young and Blair, Thomas Warton managed to invest his "Pleasures of Melancholy" (the only poem in which he did owe much to these two) with a far more Romantic atmosphere, a far more lyrical outlook, though with not quite so powerful a diction. In the "Melancholy" he made his bow to the public as one of "The Mournful Group", but soon after, on reaching adult years, he struck out for himself and wrote some original lyrics and sonnets.

In 1744 there had appeared two works that concern Romanticism Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination" (in January) and Armstrong's "Art of Presserving Health"; the former is a good deal more important (for our theme) than the latter. Written in blank verse of considerable power and freedom, "The Pleasures of Imagination", like Somerville's "Chase", charms by its descriptive passages the purely didactic parts are fewer than most critics have implied, and the whole poem has, contrary to the assertions of many writers, a pervading quiet warmth that now and again burst into a glowing flame. Sincerity and reverence for not only God but Nature underlie all the descriptive as well as the preceptive passages. The "Odes" are stiff and "classical", nor do most them ring genuine; and the " Hymn to the Naiads" forms one of Akenside's best, but least Romantic poems.

A few months after Akenside's greatest work came Armstrong's "Art of Preserving Health", which has its significance,