430 ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The latent influence of Coleridge and Keats is noticeable every- 

 where in this new movement. As in the poetry of Keats, the material 

 interest in the poems and pictures of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 

 and their congeners is generally small. The continued repetition 

 of similar motives and the perpetual reiteration of the same frail, 

 hectic, morbid characters would needs have a monotonous and tiring 

 effect, if not counterbalanced by beauty of form, which was therefore 

 elaborately cultivated. 



This instinct for formal beauty in poetry attained its maximum in 

 Swinburne, who, together with Pope and Byron, is perhaps the most 

 marvelous formal genius in English literature. His productions are 

 conspicuous for a wonderful word-melody, and he has not unjustly 

 been termed the musician among English poets, but the value of his 

 creations is lamentably impaired by his irresistible inclination toward 

 sacrificing sense to form. In an epic poem like The Tale of Balen the 

 interest in the story is entirely overshadowed, the discriminating 

 faculty of the intellect is almost lulled asleep by the continuous 

 jingling of melodious words and alliterative or rhymed phrases; the 

 reader does not even get a clear conception of the poetic pictures 

 which form such a prominent feature, for example, in the plastic 

 poetry of Keats. 



And it is similar in painting, with which poetry is indissolubly 

 connected in the work of the pre-Raphaelites. In the pictures of 

 the first pre-Raphaelite painters, there was at all events variety and 

 interest of subject. Burne-Jones is typical for the predominance of 

 form. His figures are to a great extent conventional, monotonous, 

 tiresome, the effect of his pictures being principally due to the 

 beauty of lines and color. In the paintings of Burne-Jones the 

 transition to the decorative is clearly visible; the increased emphasis 

 is laid upon the decorative element, in the natural course of events 

 led to a preference for the industrial arts, which were successfully 

 cultivated both by Burne-Jones and by William Morris, and which, 

 principally through the merit and efforts of the latter, have witnessed 

 ;i ne\v era of their development in the last decades. 



English literature had once before seen a period when the formal 

 element had the sway over poetry; it was in the age of classicism, the 

 age of 1 )ryden and Pope. As in those times, so at the present day, we 

 find closely correlated with it an ascendency of French influence in 

 England \\liich again i.s not restricted to the formal si'le alone. 



From 17'.).~> to 1850 the heroes of German literature had exerted 

 a far-reaching influence on the English world of letters, and Carlyle 

 had been its enthusiastic apostle. According to the natural law of 

 change the taste of the public became gradually satiated, and grew 

 tired of it. Now it happened that while the interest in German litera- 

 ture faded slowly away, and the level of German poetry itself was 



