334 



DISCOVERY 



we are not sure whether Romanticism in Spain has yet 

 been seen in any other light than as an imitation of the 

 French school coupled with a fervid enthusiasm for 

 Byron. With ourselves, and especially in America, a 

 careful revision of our Romantic age — as in Professou 

 Elton's illuminating volumes, which take ample count 

 of the contemporarj' Continental movements — has 

 gone hand in hand with investigations into the social 

 aspects of the Romantic ideas, and new theories on 

 the lines of M. Lasserre's, which seek the fountain- 

 head, for good or for evil, in he eighteenth century. 

 Recent American critics like Mr. Elmore More and 

 Professor Irving Babbitt— and Americans have per- 

 haps some advantage over us Europeans in being, as 

 it were, at a greater distance from the fray— have 

 gone further, and, like M. Lasserre, emphasised the evil 

 effects of I^omanticism as an undesirable persistence of 

 Rousseauism. Thus one might say, at a first glance, 

 that these various investigations, so far from being 

 steps in the direction of correlation, are centrifugal 

 in their tendencies. 



And yet it seems to us that this critical hterature, 

 even when it is accentuating differences, may help us 

 to discover a common bond, to link up the widely 

 different movements in different lands. For one 

 thing, these new critics have discredited as a common 

 basis of interpretation the older formulas which used 

 to pass muster. Gautier and Heine saw in the revival 

 of the Middle Ages the essential feature of Romanticism ; 

 and, of recent critics, Professor Beer on the whole 

 agrees with them ; in England the phrase " renaissance 

 of wonder" was long a favourite formula to explain 

 the age ; while Brunetiere, taking a more philosophical 

 standpoint, proclaimed the ultimate basis to be the 

 awakening of the ego, the spirit of individualism. We 

 have been studying this recent critical literature with 

 a view, not to learning the distinctive features of each 

 nation's Romanticism, but to discover a formula for 

 the deeper impulse that is clearly common to the 

 whole spiritual upheaval. And the formula we would 

 deduce from these investigations is e.xpresscd neither 

 mediaevalism nor by individualism, but is most 

 conveniently summed up by the word " conciliation." 

 What the romantically' — and we use the word in its 

 specifically technical sense— minded poets and critics 

 in all lands aimed at was a conciliation over wide areas 

 of social and artistic activities. They resolved to be 

 done with the watertight-compartment systems of 

 hterature, with the barriers that might on no account 

 be crossed, the eternally valid laws, be it in life or in 

 poetry ; they introduced into literature a conception 

 of relativity and interdependence. Romanticism in all 

 lands stands for a conciliation of life and poetry : 

 hence its repudiation of a classicism which had become 

 divorced from reality; of th hi toric past with the 



living present : hence the revival of mediaevalism ; for 

 a merging of music in poetry, religion in poetry, 

 philosophy in poetry ; in other words, for a " uni- 

 versalising " of poetry in Friedrich Schlegels phrase. 

 The poetry of the untutored people stands, in the 

 Romantic mind, as high in honour as — perhaps higher 

 than — the polished verse of the schooled poet. The 

 domain of the man of letters is as wide as hfe itself: 

 all problems, all aspects of human life, even those that 

 are dark and repulsive, are open to him. Hence M. 

 Pelissier is right in proclaiming the essentially romantic 

 character of the modern realistic movement in France. 

 Moreover, the spirit of concihation naturally gives every 

 freedom to the individual poet to speak the faith that 

 is in him. Hence the essentially individualistic trend 

 of the movement which Brunetiere emphasised. 



But the vital force was not, it seems to us, indi- 

 vidualism ; individualism is insufficient to explain all, 

 including some of the most significant, phenomena of 

 Romanticism. The catholic quietism of the early 

 Romanticists, no less than their political obscurantism — 

 for was not the Mettemich regime a Romantic creation ? 

 — cannot be explained as a product of unrestrained 

 individualism. The awakening of the little hteratures 

 of Europe to new vigour, the interest in the poetry 

 of dialect — clear products of the Romantic movement — 

 are less to be e.xplained as an assertion of individualistic 

 rights than as an expression of that concihatory spirit 

 which sees in the literature of all peoples one great 

 harmonious whole. Conciliation and universalism in 

 matters spiritual are apt to break down when they 

 have to deal with concrete social and national pro- 

 blems ; here lies the justification — so far as it can 

 be justified — of Professor Babbitt's arraignment of 

 Romanticism, not, we think, in what Romanticism 

 owes to the doctrines of Rousseau. 



Such seem to us the present stage of the Romantic 

 controversy, and the conclusions which we are entitled 

 to draw. We are, however, still far from that fullness 

 of knowledge of the movement in its comparative 

 aspects which would make a historj' of European 

 Romanticism, regarded as a whole, a fruitful under- 

 taking. 



BOOKS RECOMMENDED 

 Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Jiomanticism. Boston, 1919- 

 H. A. Beers, History of English Romanticism. New York, 



1899, 1901. 

 O. Elton, Survey of English Literature, 1 780-1830. London, 



1912. 

 P. Elmore More, The Drift of Romanticism. New York, 1913. 

 F. E. Pierce. Currents and Eddies in the English Romantic 



Generation. New Haven, 1919. 

 P. Lasserre, Le Romantisme franfais. Paris, 1907. 

 De Mornct, Le Romantisme en France au X Vllle siicle. Paru:, 



1912. 

 E. Seillidre, Les Origines romanesques de la morale el de la 



politique romantiques. Paris, 1920. 



[/Concluded on p. 350 



