nd the perfection of that "literature of
melancholy" which largely occupied English poets for more than a century.
Two other well-known poems of this second period are the Pindaric odes,
"The Progress of Poesy" and "The Bard." The first is strongly suggestive of
Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," but shows Milton's influence in a greater
melody and variety of expression. "The Bard" is, in every way, more
romantic and original. An old minstrel, the last of the Welsh singers,
halts King Edward and his army in a wild mountain pass, and with fine
poetic frenzy prophesies the terror and desolation which must ever follow
the tyrant. From its first line, "Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!" to the
end, when the old bard plunges from his lofty crag and disappears in the
river's flood, the poem thrills with the fire of an ancient and noble race
of men. It breaks absolutely with the classical school and proclaims a
literary declaration of independence.

In the third period Gray turns momentarily from his Welsh material and
reveals a new field of romantic interest in two Norse poems, "The Fatal
Sisters" and "The Descent of Odin" (1761). Gray translated his material
from the Latin, and though these two poems lack much of the elemental
strength and grandeur of the Norse sagas, they are remarkable for calling
attention to the unused wealth of literary material that was hidden in
Northern mythologv. To Gray and to Percy (who published his _Northern
Antiquities_ in 1770) is due in large measure the profound interest in the
old Norse sagas which has continued to our own day.

Taken together, Gray's works form a most interesting commentary on the
varied life of the eighteenth century. He was a scholar, familiar with all
the intellectual interests of his age, and his work has much of the
precision and polish of the classical school; but he shares also the
reawakened interest in nature, in common man, and in mediaeval culture, and
his work is generally romantic both in style and in spirit. The same
conflict between the classic and romantic schools, and the triumph of
Romanticism, is shown clearly in the most versatile of Gray's
contemporaries, Oliver Goldsmith.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774)

Because _The Deserted Village_ is one of the most familiar poems in our
language, Goldsmith is generally given a high place among the poets of the
romantic dawn. But the _Village_, when we read it carefully, turns out to
be a rimed essay in the style of Pop