1C>4: Second Romantic Period of English Literature. 



muted by the act of reflection. Sadness may become the basis 

 of a higher joy. 



And in the third place Wordsworth is the poet of moral and 

 spiritual consolation. To other poets we turn for amusement, 

 for mental stimulus, for aesthetic culture. Wordsworth speaks 

 directly to the soul. 



Coleridge equally with Wordsworth is Master of verbal 

 music. His phrases charm into ecstasy. The words are so 

 simple yet so perfect is their sequence that the miracle of it seems 

 inevitable. In metre he is an innovator. His "Christabel " 

 revolutionised English prosody. It opened the door to unnum- 

 bered experiments. Scott, for example, heard the poem recited, 

 and seized upon and developed the metre in the " Lay of the 

 Last Minstrel." Byron copied it in the " Siege of Corinth " and 

 in "Parisina." If to "Christabel" he added the "Rime," 

 "Love," and " Kubla Khan," then I have named all that is 

 really great in Coleridge's poetry. Only four poems! but in 

 virtue of them he attains a foremost place in the foremost rank of 

 English poets. You hear in these four poems what one hears 

 scarce a dozen times in all literature — the first note with its end- 

 less echo-promise of a new poetry. The critics might and did 

 storm at Wordsworth and Coleridge and their reforms and experi- 

 ments, but it is a curious fact that since the preface of 1800 no 

 one possessed of true poetic power has attempted to write in the 

 old 18th century way. The revolution was an accomplished fact. 

 Scott did much to fit and popularise the movement. Byron 

 carried onward the tradition, Shelley carried it on: Shelley, 

 splendid and pure in imagery, divinely sweet and magnetically 

 tender in sentiment, the perfect singing-god says Swinburne, 

 whose thoughts and words and deeds all sang together. Keats 

 carried forward the tradition : Keats of the unequalled and un- 

 rivalled Odes, Keats of the wondrous Eves, those unsurpassable 

 studies in colour and clear melody. Browning carried forward 

 the movement : Tennyson carried it forward. Both were lineal 

 descendants by poetic generation of the poets of the Second 

 Romantic Period. Modified it has been in a thousand minor 

 details, yet English poetry to-day remains what Wordsworth and 

 Coleridge made it, 



That Summer under whose indulgent skies 

 Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge they roved. 



