372 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN 



canons of taste which had prevailed in the last century. 

 Wordsworth denounced conventional poetic diction ; it 

 savoured, of literary treason to profess a particular partiality 

 for Pope ; fancy was preferred to sense, exuberance of 

 imagery to chastened style, audacity of invention to logic 

 and correctness. 



This return to Elizabethanism has marked the whole course 

 of Victorian poetry. But times are changed, and we ourselves 

 are changed in them. The men of this century have never 

 recaptured * the first fine careless rapture ' of the sixteenth 

 century. What were dreams then, have become sober expect- 

 ations. Instead of El Dorado we have conquered California, 

 the gold-fields of Australia, the diamond mines, of South 

 Africa. Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries 

 North America was won and lost ; East India was gained by 

 heroism and adventure worthy of a Drake and Ealeigh ; and 

 now the crown of that vast empire on the forehead of our 

 Queen weighs heavy with the sense of serious responsibilities. 

 The English race is no longer adolescent ; we cannot model 

 our national genius like a beautiful young hero rejoicing in 

 his naked strength and scattering armies by, his shout : the 

 sculptor who did so would forget the years which have 

 ploughed wrinkles on that hero's forehead, the steam-engines 

 which are his chariot, the ironclad navies which waft him over 

 ocean, the electricity which plays like lightning in his eyes. 

 Victorian poets cannot be spontaneous in the same sense as 

 our ancestors were. Like lago, they are nothing if not 

 critical. Science has imposed on them her burden of analysis, 

 and though science reveals horizons far beyond the dreams of 

 Bacon, it fills the soul with something well-nigh kin to hope- 

 lessness. Man shrinks before the Universe. We have lived 

 through so much ; we have seen so many futile philosophies 

 rise like mushrooms and perish ; we have tried so many 

 political experiments, and listened to so many demagogues of 

 various complexions, that a world-fatigue has penetrated deep 

 into our spirit. The masterpiece of the century is Goethe's 

 Faust, and its hero suffers from the Welt-schmerz. A simple 

 faith in God and the Bible yields to critical inquiry, compara- 



