s. It is time to turn to
poetry.

There orthodox classicism still held sway; the manner and metre of Pope
or Thomson ruled the roost of singing fowl. In the main it had done its
work, and the bulk of fresh things conceived in it were dull and
imitative, even though occasionally, as in the poems of Johnson himself
and of Goldsmith, an author arose who was able to infuse sincerity and
emotion into a now moribund convention. The classic manner--now more
that of Thomson than of Pope--persisted till it overlapped romanticism;
Cowper and Crabbe each owe a doubtful allegiance, leaning by their
formal metre and level monotony of thought to the one and by their
realism to the other. In the meantime its popularity and its assured
position were beginning to be assailed in the coteries by the work of
two new poets.

The output of Thomas Gray and William Collins is small; you might almost
read the complete poetical works of either in an evening. But for all
that they mark a period; they are the first definite break with the
classic convention which had been triumphant for upwards of seventy
years when their prime came. It is a break, however, in style rather
than in essentials, and a reader who seeks in them the inspiriting
freshness which came later with Wordsworth and Coleridge will be
disappointed. Their carefully drawn still wine tastes insipidly after
the "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" of romance. They are fastidious
and academic; they lack the authentic fire; their poetry is "made"
poetry like Tennyson's and Matthew Arnold's. On their comparative merits
a deal of critical ink has been spilt, Arnold's characterisation of Gray
is well known--"he never spoke out." Sterility fell upon him because he
lived in an age of prose just as it fell upon Arnold himself because he
lived too much immersed in business and routine. But in what he wrote he
had the genuine poetic gift--the gift of insight and feeling. Against
this, Swinburne with characteristic vehemence raised the standard of
Collins, the latchet of whose shoe Gray, as a lyric poet, was not worthy
to unloose. "The muse gave birth to Collins, she did but give suck to
Gray." It is more to our point to observe that neither, though their
work abounds in felicities and in touches of a genuine poetic sense, was
fitted to raise the standard of revolt. Revolution is for another and
braver kind of genius than theirs. Romanticism had to wait for Burns and
Blake.

In every countr