POETRY AND IMAGINATION 



to impoverish words with deeds. Both were fantastic 

 and extravagant, but the morbid literary extravagance 

 which refuses the test of action, and claims to be judged 

 as a thing apart, in a filigree world of its own creation, 

 belongs to ages less full-blooded and vigorous and sane. 



This great background and seminary of action gave The Age of 

 its colour and character to the literature of the Eliza- ^f^j^ff/'''^ 

 bethan age. The later and lesser outburst of Romantic Revived 

 poetry at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century had ^^^^^^^• 

 origins curiously different. As the Voyagers were 

 the begetters of the Elizabethan age, so were the 

 Encyclopaedists of the age of revived Romance. The 

 later movement had its impulse and inspiration from 

 the long labours of critical thought and the hopes 

 of awakening science. The poetry of the Nineteenth 

 Century, unlike the poetry of the Elizabethans, began 

 in reaction and protest. For three generations and 

 more before William Blake struck the note that was 

 to dominate Romantic poetry, the disciples of positive 

 knowledge had been busy at their work of questioning, 

 examining, undermining, condemning, without hesitation 

 or remorse ; and the poets of the new age were the The poetry of 

 rebellious children of the destroyer. Some of them, ^^^^. 

 taking advantage of the conquests of critical knowledge 

 in the domain of history, flung themselves back into the 

 Middle Ages, and attempted to live as pensioners on the 

 faith of a bygone time. Others, fired by the hope 

 of a new happiness to be achieved by experimental 

 science and philanthropy, lived in their dreams of the 

 future, built cloud-castles of wonderful tenuity and 

 beauty, and peopled bubble-worlds with phantoms of 

 men. Almost all the poetry of the age is ' sicklied o'er 



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