appealed to the human heart as the
classic elegance of Dryden and Pope could never do.

4. Romanticism was marked by intense human sympathy, and by a consequent
understanding of the human heart. Not to intellect or to science does the
heart unlock its treasures, but rather to the touch of a sympathetic
nature; and things that are hidden from the wise and prudent are revealed
unto children. Pope had no appreciable humanity; Swift's work is a
frightful satire; Addison delighted polite society, but had no message for
plain people; while even Johnson, with all his kindness, had no feeling for
men in the mass, but supported Sir Robert Walpole in his policy of letting
evils alone until forced by a revolution to take notice of humanity's
appeal. With the romantic revival all this was changed. While Howard was
working heroically for prison reform, and Wilberforce for the liberation of
the slaves, Gray wrote his "short and simple annals of the poor," and
Goldsmith his _Deserted Village_, and Cowper sang,

My ear is pained,
My soul is sick with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man.[201]

This sympathy for the poor, and this cry against oppression, grew stronger
and stronger till it culminated in "Bobby" Burns, who, more than any other
writer in any language, is the poet of the unlettered human heart.

5. The romantic movement was the expression of individual genius rather
than of established rules. In consequence, the literature of the revival is
as varied as the characters and moods of the different writers. When we
read Pope, for instance, we have a general impression of sameness, as if
all his polished poems were made in the same machine; but in the work of
the best romanticists there is endless variety. To read them is like
passing through a new village, meeting a score of different human types,
and finding in each one something to love or to remember. Nature and the
heart of man are as new as if we had never studied them. Hence, in reading
the romanticists, who went to these sources for their material, we are
seldom wearied but often surprised; and the surprise is like that of the
sunrise, or the sea, which always offers some new beauty and stirs us
deeply, as if we had never seen it before.

6. The romantic movement, while it followed its own genius, was not
altogether unguided. Strict