156 Second Romantic Period of English Literature. 



merit otherwise cannot be called great. Still, it is usual to attri- 

 bute to the " Minstrel ' ' a certain amount of influence over suc- 

 ceeding poets. Professor Saintsbury sums it up thus : — " It exactly 

 reflected the vague and ill-instructed craving of the age — an infant 

 crying in the night — for the dismissal of artificial poetry, and for a 

 return to nature and at the same time to the romantic style." 

 But greater than the "Minstrel " and of an earlier date even is 

 The Castle of Indolence by James Thomson. The poem, as 

 every schoolboy knows, is allegorical. The diction is pro- 

 fessedly archaic: the long-drawn sleepy melody of the stanza, 

 the music born of murmuring sound — its ^-fColian-harp music — 

 could not fail to produce a most beneficent influence on the ears 

 and mind of a generation made half deaf and half nervous by the 

 sharp scratch and rasp of the couplet. The first of the two cantos 

 into which the poem is divided contains the Speech of Indolence, 

 the picture of the Castle, the mirror of Vanity, and the sketches 

 of the guests. The second canto, which is of smaller poetic 

 moment, deals with the feats of the Knights of Art and Industry. 

 Let me read you a stanza or two : — 



"The Castle " was published in 1746, two years before the 

 poet's death. Exactly twenty years earlier had appeared 

 "Winter," the best of his poems on the Seasons. Thomson's 

 influence as a poet of nature powerfully aff'ected Wordsworth. 

 " The Seasons " was the first poetry known to the boy Tennyson, 

 and gave him an impulse to that minute observation of nature so 

 characteristic a note of the poetry of the late Laureate. Distinc- 

 tion of subject, individuality of verse, and vigour of imagination 

 have combined to confer upon Thomson an enduring popularity. 



Consider the period 1760 to 1765. 



In 1760 Macpherson published his Fragments of Ancient 

 Poetry: in 1762 his Fingal, and in 1763 his Temora. In 1764 

 Chatterton gave to the world the Rowley MSS., and in 1765 

 Bishop Percy published his Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The 

 impetus given to the movement by the works just named was in 

 its own dav tremendous : and we shall hardly be guilty of hyper- 

 bole if we describe as incalculable the influence exercised upon 

 literature by these writings for the next thirty years. 



Ossian at once leaped into European fame. Not even 

 Shakespeare held such a place in Continental letters as did Ossian 



