Second Romantic Period of English Literature. 155 



Aristotelian rules, monotony of versification and conventional 

 diction. The Spring of Poetry was returning, and the branches 

 were putting forth the new buds of Thomson and Gray, and 

 Collins and Macpherson, and Percy and Chatterton, and Blake 

 and Burns : anon Summer would be here with the splendid flower 

 of Coleridge and Wordsworth and Shelley and Keats. 



With the awakened love of the past came a feeling after 

 the poetic forms of a bye-gone time. Gray and Collins in their 

 Odes used a wide variety of stanza-form. And by the middle of 

 the century the reappearance of the Spenserian Stanza as a 

 popular form is to be looked on as an important indication of the 

 change of literary taste. So popular indeed did these Spenserian 

 inmitations threaten to become that the great cham of litera- 

 ture became alarmed, and as the champion of Orthodoxy strode 

 into the arena. In the " Rambler " of May r4, 1757, he writes: 

 — " The imitation of Spenser by the influence of some men of 

 learning and genius seems likely to gain upon the age. His style 

 was in his own time allowed to be vicious. His stanza is at once 

 difficult and unpleasing : tiresome to the ear by its monotony, and 

 to the attention by its length. The style of Spenser might by 

 long labour be justly copied ; but life is .surely given us for higher 

 purposes than to gather what our ancestors have thrown away, 

 and to learn what is of no value, but because it has been for- 

 gotten." 



These words of Johnson show how serious an aspect matters 

 poetical were assuming. Rem ad triarios, as the old Romans 

 would have said. You remember what Addison had written 

 sometime earlier : — 



Old Spenser next warmed with poetic rage. 

 In ancient tales amused a barbarous age. 

 But now the mystic tale that pleased of yore 

 Can charm an understanding age no more. 



Complacent Joseph must have been of Scottish strain, I think. 

 He had no need to pray " Lord gi'e us a guid conceit of our- 

 selves." 



Beattie's "Minstrel " may be cited as one example of this 

 harking back to Spenser. Beattie certainly had considerable com- 

 mand over the Spenserian metre, though his poetical achieve- 



