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INDIANA UNIVERSITY STUDIES 



3^011 choose to call it — naturalism, if you like), to romanticism? 

 And, similarly, does not our analysis of this new movement show 

 its relation to romanticism? Does it not, moreover, disclose the 

 round of thought through which the romantic mind typically 

 moves? — emotional egotism begetting the necessity for self-expres- 

 sion, discovering in turn its sympathetic subject-matter, its milieu 

 in the wilder or hidden aspects of nature — mountain grandeur, or a 

 hill farm, as the case may be— and once more discovering there its 

 justification, or at least the symbols for readjustment of the society 

 from which it is partially alienated. I believe that this represents 

 fairly well the typical round of romantic thought in the age of 

 which we are speaking. If applied there to the various forms of 

 poetical romanticism, one may see in the light of its anah^sis the 

 interrelations of what is most typical in each, in Rousseau, Goethe, 

 Wordsworth, Byron, for example, to say nothing of a dozen others 

 who are interpreters of nature in this period of great poetry. 



This round of thought, which I hold to be comparatively analyt- 

 ical of the Romantic Movement, is illustrated both in AVordsworth 's 

 incidental poems and in his more conscious description of his own 

 mind in ' The Prelude. ' Most of his poetry was written in accord- 

 ance with some theory of his function as a poet, or was evolved out 

 of some theory of the function of poetry. Which is probably a 

 reason why Wordsworth himself did not often distinguish between 

 the good and the bad, all his verse seeming to him but the lights 

 and shades of a vast composite picture. But in ' The Prelude ' 

 more than in the incidental poems, one feels that he contemplates 

 nature through the veil of theory, and that while this is in itself 

 stimulating and interpretative, it does not afford so simple a view 

 of the Avorkings of his mind as can be had elsewhere. Hence we 

 shall make our approach to 'The Prelude' and to the view which it 

 gives of his romantic mind, through less self-conscious evidences. 



The round of thought, as I have called it, corresponds in most 

 cases, and especially in Wordsworth's, to the actual growth of the 

 poet's mind. It represents the attempt of the peculiarly sensitive 

 and emotional mind to adjust itself, through a series of experiments 

 or reactions, to the conditions Avhich the world imposes. The at- 

 tempt rarely succeeds ; and I hear some one reminding me that it 

 could not be a romantic attempt and succeed, since the romantic 

 attitude precludes any final adjustment with society. This is true, 

 but it does not mean that the romanticist is a social failure. While 

 he rarely develops his consciousness for social relations in a way 

 to make the longings of his soul concordant with conventional pos- 



