Fielding were
strong agencies in this direction; and they were followed in the next
age by the even more intense appeal of the great romantic poets to
those thoughts and feelings that lie too deep for tears.

The classic school shunned as vulgar all exhibitions of enthusiasm and
strong emotion, such as the love of Juliet and the jealousy of
Othello; but the romanticists, knowing that the feelings had as much
value and power as the intellect, encouraged their expression.
Sometimes this tendency was carried to an extreme, both in fiction and
in the sentimental drama; but it was necessary for romanticism to call
attention to the fact that great literature cannot neglect the world
of feeling.

Early Romantic Influences.--The reader and imitators of the great
romantic poet, Edmund Spenser, were growing in number. Previous to
1750, there was only one eighteenth-century edition of Spenser's works
published in England. In 1758 three editions of the _Faerie Queene_
appeared and charmed readers with the romantic enchantment of bowers,
streams, dark forests, and adventures of heroic knights.

James Thomson (1700-1748), a Scotch poet, used the characteristic
Spenserian form and subject matter for his romantic poem, _The Castle
of Indolence_ (1748). He placed his castle in "Spenser land":--

"A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky."

The influence of Shakespeare increased. In 1741 the great actor David
Garrick captivated London by his presentation of Shakespeare's plays.

Milton's poetry, especially his _Il Penseroso_, with its individual
expression of melancholy, its studious spirit, "commercing with the
skies and bringing all Heaven before the eyes," left a strong impress
on the romantic spirit of the age. The subject matter of his _Paradise
Lost_ satisfied the romantic requirement for strangeness and strong
feeling. In the form of his verse, James Thomson shows the influence
of Milton as well as of Spencer. Thomson's greatest achievement is
_The Seasons_ (1730), a romantic poem, written in Miltonic blank
verse. He takes us where--

"The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy groves
Put forth their buds."

He was one of the earliest poets to place Nature in the foreground, to
make her the chief actor. He reverses what had been the usual poetic
attitude and makes his lovers, shepherds, a