h lapse of time, from the classical art
of the preceding century. With Rousseau came an outburst of the
personal element in literature, an overflow of sensibility, an
enfranchisement of the passions, and of imagination as connected with
the passions; his eloquence has in it the lyrical note. The romantic
movement was an assertion of freedom for the imagination, and an
assertion of the rights of individuality. Love, wonder, hope,
measureless desire, strange fears, infinite sadness, the sentiment
of nature, aspiration towards God, were born anew. Imagination,
claiming authority, refused to submit to the rules of classic art.
Why should the several literary species be impounded each in its
separate paddock? Let them mingle at the pleasure of the artist's
genius; let the epic and the drama catch what they can of the lyric
cry; let tragedy and comedy meet and mix. Why remain in servitude
to the models of Greece and Rome? Let all epochs and every clime
contribute to the enrichment of art. The primitive age was above all
others the age of poetry. The great Christian centuries were the
centuries of miracle and marvel, of spiritual exaltation and
transcendent passion. Honour, therefore, to our mediaeval
forefathers! It is the part of reason to trust the imagination in
the imaginative sphere. Through what is most personal and intimate
we reach the truths of the universal heart of man. An image may at
the same time be a symbol; behind a historical tableau may lie a
philosophical idea.

At first the romantic movement was Christian and monarchical. Its
assertion of freedom, its claims on behalf of the _ego_, its licence
of the imagination, were in reality revolutionary. The intellect is
more aristocratic than the passions. The great spectacle of modern
democracy deploying its forces is more moving than any pallid ideals
of the past; it has the grandeur and breadth of the large phenomena
of nature; it is wide as a sunrise; its advance is as the onset of
the sea, and has like rumours of victory and defeat. The romantic
movement, with no infidelity to its central principle, became modern
and democratic.

Foreign life and literatures lent their aid to the romantic movement
in France--the passion and mystery of the East; the struggle for
freedom in Greece; the old ballads of Spain; the mists, the solitudes,
the young heroes, the pallid female forms of Ossian; the feudal
splendours of Scott; the melancholy Harold; the mysterious Manfre