550 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



To appreciate the characteristics of the Victorian poets we 

 must go back to a ]pre- Victorian period. The eighteenth -cen- 

 tury poetry is on the whole vapid and insincere, tainted by an 

 artificial classicism and conventionality. Nothing in English 

 literature is more remarkable than the sudden and vigorous 

 onslaught on this artificiality and insincerity which begins 

 with the closing years of the eighteenth century. There 

 came a return to nature and simplicity ; the romantic era 

 dawned once more, and what classic influence was still found 

 was of the spirit and not of the letter. Then came the Lake 

 school, with its great leader, Wordsworth, the contemplative 

 interpreter of the poetry of nature, from whom none of her 

 secrets were hidden ; and the mysticism and melody of Cole- 

 ridge ; Scott, with his delight in mediaeval chivalry, and that 

 heroic verse that rings like the blare of a trumpet ; the sen- 

 suous and romantic beauties of Keats ; the ethereal raptures 

 of Shelley; the fervid passion of Byron. By 1837 this brilliant 

 band of poets had disappeared. Byron had perished of fever 

 in Greece ; Shelley was drowned in Italy ; Keats was dead — 

 not, certainly, " killed by the Quarterly," according to the not- 

 yet-exploded legend, but carried off by consumption; Scott 

 had overtasked to his death even his magnificent powers; 

 Coleridge, the wreck of his former self, had lived his last few 

 years in an opium dream, and was already dead in 1834. 

 Wordsworth, and Wordsworth alone, remained of a band of 

 poets second in English literature to the Elizabethans only. 

 But Wordsworth's work was done, though even then he had 

 not attained full recognition. The poetry of the time had 

 died away into magazine verse, which was called Byronic, and 

 which, while reflecting his faults and weaknesses, omitted the 

 passion and strength which had raised Byron himself to fame. 



The kings of verse were dead. Was there any to succeed 

 them ? 



In 1827 there had appeared a slight volume of verse en- 

 titled " Poems by Two Brothers," graceful and pretty in their 

 way, if somewhat imitative. Very few of the poems contained 

 therein are to be found in any collection of Tennyson's poems 

 — for one of those brothers was Alfred Tennyson, at the age 

 of eighteen — nor did they attract much notice. Soon, in 1830, 

 appeared another volume " Poems, Chiefly Lyrical." Accus- 

 tomed as we now are to nobler and grander music from the 

 same lyre, such poems as "The Merman" and "The Owl," 

 " Claribel " and " Lilian," may be read by us now without any 

 great enthusiasm. They are evidently over-elaborate, too full 

 of effort, and not devoid of affectation — the poems of a young 

 man gifted with an eye for richness of colour and harmony 

 of detail, but not yet skilled to give adequate expression to 

 that which he saw clearly enough. And yet, slight as they 



