THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



with the pale cast of thought/ Those of the poets who, 

 like Keats, celebrate the joys of the moment, for the 

 most part regard these joys as a palliation only, a brief 

 respite and escape from the prevailing melancholy. They 

 glut their sorrows ' on a morning rose, or on the rainbow 

 of the salt sand-wave.' It is the distinction of Words- 

 worth that he alone among the greater poets did not 

 renounce or blaspheme the age and the world, but 

 found in it room enough for hope and faith and lasting 

 Diseases of joy. But the poetry of the aere, taken as a whole, is 



thought. \/ rr J c 1 -11 • • 1 



disairectea — out or sympathy with the mam motives that 

 stir men to action, and liable to all the diseases generated 

 by abstract thought. The worst of these, which attack 

 only weak constitutions, producing kinks in the brain, 

 and making men the fevered and querulous slaves of 

 ideas they are not strong enough to master, may be dis- 

 covered in not a few of the later followers and adherents 

 of the Romantic movement. It was the misfortune of 

 the age that, struggling in the meshes of thought, it 

 found no sufficient opportunity for clear, united, whole- 

 Godwm and hearted, and decisive action. Some of its poets were 

 ardent students of Godwin's Political Justice^ a book alert 

 and blind, full of vaporous casuistry, giving ample 

 exercise to the logical faculty, and absolutely ignoring 

 those passions, desires and powers, which are the breath 

 of human life. The Elizabethan poets were happier 

 in their teachers — they had Hakluyt's Voyages, 



When all is said, the chief influence of Hakluyt and 

 his noble company must not be looked for in literature. 

 Literature is only one expression of the imaginative 



The value of Jif^ Qf ^ people, and not the most important. It is 

 deeds. , ^ ^ i j- • i i r 



true that poetry can never be diviaed rrom action 



ii8 



