334 HISTORY OF LITERATURE 



ler, and Goethe. Also to be considered is the effect of the impetus 

 given to historical and comparative research by Winckelmann's Ge- 

 schichte der Kunst des Altertums, 1764, by Stuart's Antiquities of Athens 

 (two years earlier), and by other works on the archaeology, literature, 

 and art of the northern as well as the southern nationalities of 

 Europe. Nor should the return wave of romantic interest from Ger- 

 many be ignored. The outward movement proceeded from the early 

 work of the Wartons, 1740-60, from the revival of Shakespearian 

 scholarship, Gray's interest in northern literature, Macpherson's 

 Ossian, 1762, Percy's Religues of Ancient English Poetry, 1765. The 

 movement returned from Germany in Burger's Lenore, in the works 

 of Herder, Jean Paul, Wieland, and, later, of the Schlegels, Tieck, 

 and the Romantiker. That the English romantic revival owes any- 

 thing to Bodrn.er (1721) and the German critics of the Swiss school 

 is not probable, for they had no disciples in England; indeed, they 

 themselves drew their inspiration largely from English poetry. Nor 

 did it begin with Rousseau (whose influence shows itself as early 

 as with Goldsmith), for Rousseau's Nouvelle Helolse did not appear 

 till 1760. It would appear not unlikely that most of this romantic 

 inspiration later carried by France and Germany into sentimental- 

 ism issued in England from Thomson, 1739, Samuel Richardson, 

 1740, and Lillo (George Barnwell, 1731); in France from Marivaux 

 and Pre*vost, 1731, but that both schools had in turn derived it 

 from the sentimental comedy of Sir Richard Steele (The Funeral, 

 1702, The Lying Lover, 1703, The Conscious Lovers, 1722), and of 

 Addison (The Drummer, 1715). The creative literature of the cen- 

 tury must, therefore, evidently, be regarded as a background to 

 poetic theory. The numerous editions of older authors, collections 

 of early poetry and drama, histories of types and periods of art, 

 biographies of authors, translations of and commentaries upon the 

 ancients, such as Tyrwhitt's and Pye's editions of Aristotle's Poetics, 

 the effect of all these, also, upon critical theory and practice, 

 cannot be ignored though here but mentioned. 



Under Johnson criticism had learned to set itself an object and to 

 move toward it. The followers of the Wartons had, on the other side, 

 attempted to deepen the study of theory and to widen the course of 

 method. They had revived the poetic tests of nature, passion, and 

 imagination, and had put into practice the elementary principles of 

 historical method, genetic and comparative. 



2. The second stage in this modern development of English 

 poetics, criticism, literary history, is clearly attained by the opening 

 of the nineteenth century. So far as theory is concerned, the dom- 

 inant movement of the period, the romantic, had been gaining 

 momentum ever since 1739; it had reached its culmination as a 

 movement of revolt in 1798; as a movement of positive and practical 



