ly speaking, there is no new movement either in
history or in literature; each grows out of some good thing which has
preceded it, and looks back with reverence to past masters. Spenser,
Shakespeare, and Milton were the inspiration of the romantic revival; and
we can hardly read a poem of the early romanticists without finding a
suggestion of the influence of one of these great leaders.[202]

There are various other characteristics of Romanticism, but these six--the
protest against the bondage of rules, the return to nature and the human
heart, the interest in old sagas and mediaeval romances as suggestive of a
heroic age, the sympathy for the toilers of the world, the emphasis upon
individual genius, and the return to Milton and the Elizabethans, instead
of to Pope and Dryden, for literary models--are the most noticeable and
the most interesting. Remembering them, we shall better appreciate the work
of the following writers who, in varying degree, illustrate the revival of
romantic poetry in the eighteenth century.

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771)

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day;
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea;
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

So begins "the best known poem in the English language," a poem full of the
gentle melancholy which marks all early romantic poetry. It should be read
entire, as a perfect model of its kind. Not even Milton's "Il Penseroso,"
which it strongly suggests, excels it in beauty and suggestiveness.

LIFE OF GRAY. The author of the famous "Elegy" is the most scholarly and
well-balanced of all the early romantic poets. In his youth he was a
weakling, the only one of twelve children who survived infancy; and his
unhappy childhood, the tyranny of his father, and the separation from his
loved mother, gave to his whole life the stamp of melancholy which is
noticeable in all his poems. At the famous Eton school and again at
Cambridge, he seems to have followed his own scholarly tastes rather than
the curriculum, and was shocked, like Gibbon, at the general idleness and
aimlessness of university life. One happy result of his school life was his
friendship for Horace Walpole, who took him abroad for a three year