160 Second Romantic Period of English Literature. 



These four poets are different not only in degree, they are also 

 different in kind. Crabbe is conventional, Cowper literary, Blake 

 transcendental, Burns spontaneous and passionate. Yet they 

 were one in their protest against rhetoric ; one in their determina- 

 tion to be natural and sincere. Crabbe, it must be admitted, 

 stuck to the couplet, stuck pretty constantly to the shut couplet. 

 But, says Leslie Stephen, the force and fidelity of his descriptions 

 of the scenery of his native place and of the characteristics of 

 the rural population give abiding interest to his work. 



From about the middle of the Elizabethan period poetical 

 observation had ceased to be just. Justness had given place to 

 extravagant conceits, and there had been endless copying and re- 

 copying of traditional conventionalities. To Cowper belongs the 

 peculiar honour of leading poetry back to nature; from the 

 formal garden to woodland scenery, as Southey so aptly puts it, 

 Cowper brought back the eye to the object: brought the object 

 to the eye. He is possessed by a joy in natural objects; he de- 

 lights in natural description, and attempts a more vi\id and a 

 wider delineation of human character than the century had 

 hitherto known. Linked with his joy in nature there is a sense 

 of the brotherhood of man, the common Fatherhood of God. 



I have already referred to Blake's muddling with the 

 prophets. These writings of his I have not read. They are 

 said to be tinctured with Swedenborgianism — whatever that may 

 mean — and to be dominated by the perverse influence of Ossian. 

 But his place as a lyrist is with the Immortals. I have but to 

 mention his "Mad Song," his "Memory hither come," his "My 

 silks and fine array." No such singing had been heard in Eng- 

 land since Herrick : none like it in delicate aerial mystery was to 

 be heard until poetic ears should be startled and charmed by the 

 wizard-song of "The lovely lady Christabel." 



If there is one date connected with literature which all 

 Scotchmen know — should know at any rate — it is 1786 — the date 

 of the Kilmarnock Burns. Before that year Burns was unknown 

 — a simple Ayrshire peasant. He died in 1796. And to-day? 

 All Scottish verse from the time of Dunbar until to-day, I 

 have somewhere read, presupposes Burns : it all expands towards 

 him or dwindles from him. Burns' great gift to literature lay in 

 his power of simple obser\-ation of common things and in his 



