II. THE REVIVAL OF ROMANTIC POETRY

The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And God fulfills Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Tennyson's "The Passing of Arthur."

THE MEANING OF ROMANTICISM. While Dryden, Pope, and Johnson were
successively the dictators of English letters, and while, under their
leadership, the heroic couplet became the fashion of poetry, and literature
in general became satiric or critical in spirit, and formal in expression,
a new romantic movement quietly made its appearance. Thomson's _The
Seasons_ (1730) was the first noteworthy poem of the romantic revival; and
the poems and the poets increased steadily in number and importance till,
in the age of Wordsworth and Scott, the spirit of Romanticism dominated our
literature more completely than Classicism had ever done. This romantic
movement--which Victor Hugo calls "liberalism in literature"--is simply the
expression of life as seen by imagination, rather than by prosaic "common
sense," which was the central doctrine of English philosophy in the
eighteenth century. It has six prominent characteristics which distinguish
it from the so-called classic literature which we have just studied:

1. The romantic movement was marked, and is always marked, by a strong
reaction and protest against the bondage of rule and custom, which, in
science and theology, as well as in literature, generally tend to fetter
the free human spirit.

2. Romanticism returned to nature and to plain humanity for its material,
and so is in marked contrast to Classicism, which had confined itself
largely to the clubs and drawing-rooms, and to the social and political
life of London. Thomson's _Seasons_, whatever its defects, was a revelation
of the natural wealth and beauty which, for nearly a century, had been
hardly noticed by the great writers of England.

3. It brought again the dream of a golden age[200] in which the stern
realities of life were forgotten and the ideals of youth were established
as the only permanent realities. "For the dreamer lives forever, but the
toiler dies in a day," expresses, perhaps, only the wild fancy of a modern
poet; but, when we think of it seriously, the dreams and ideals of a people
are cherished possessions long after their stone monuments have crumbled
away and their battles are forgotten. The romantic movement emphasized
these eternal ideals of youth, and