Second Romantic Period of English Literature. 159 



sion to make a public avowal of my own." Now the significant 

 fact so far as the Second Romantic Period is concerned is that 

 ballads belong to the childhood of literature, and are thus the 

 very antithesis of the fashionable classicism of the poetry of the 

 18th century. 



Mention should be made in passing of the part played in the 

 Romantic Revival by the writers who helped to liberalise criti- 

 cism. In his Letters on Chivalrj- and Romance, published in 

 1762, Hurd recognised that there is a Romantic unity possible, 

 and that unity quite distinct from the Aristotelian unity. Twelve 

 years later began to appear the great History of English Poetry 

 by Thomas Warton. This book shows an intimate acquaintance 

 with our older literature, and a genuine love of it. His brother 

 Joseph was also a heretic in matters poetical. Indeed it is 

 hardly too much to call them heresiarchs: for by their united 

 efforts they did much to beat out the cry of the orthodox, " There 

 is no poet-god but Pope and Sam of Lichfield is his prophet." 

 There were heroes before Agamemnon, and there were poets 

 before Dryden : this is the message of the enlightened literary 

 critics of the period such as Hurd and the Wartons. 



To return to the poets. 



In the later decades of the century, and while the day of the 

 Lyrical Ballads is still not yet, I select four who rode Pegasus 

 as his hoofs drummed up the dawn — Crabbe, Cowper, Blake, and 

 Burns. Professor Saintsbury calls them " poets of the transi- 

 tion." I follow the learned Professor in making brief passing 

 allusion to the strangeness of their poetical career. 



Crabbe began well, but lapsed into a period of unexplained 

 silence of nearly a quarter of a century, to burst out with greater 

 power and skill than ever. 



Who does not know Mrs Browning's 



Oh poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing. 



The life-tragedy of the gentle Cowper is known to you all. 

 Blake was a poet and an artist, but he thought he was a prophet, 

 and a great part of his literary life was taken up with his 

 Prophetic books — dictated, he said, at the bidding of Spirits who 

 visited him. Of Burns there needs not that I speak in this 

 place. He died among vou : he lies buried in vour midst. 



