ritten word. The romantic revival
numbers Napoleon amongst its leaders as well as Byron, Wellington, Pitt
and Wilberforce, as well as Keats and Wordsworth. Only the literary
manifestations of the time concern us here, but it is important to
remember that the passion for simplification and for a return to nature
as a refuge from the artificial complexities of society, which inspired
the _Lyrical Ballads_, inspired no less the course of the Revolution in
France, and later, the destruction by Napoleon of the smaller feudal
states of Germany, which made possible German nationality and a national
spirit.

In this romantic revival, however, the revolution in form and style
matters more than in most. The classicism of the previous age had been
so fixed and immutable; it had been enthroned in high places, enjoyed
the esteem of society, arrogated to itself the acceptance which good
breeding and good manners demanded. Dryden had been a Court poet,
careful to change his allegiance with the changing monarchy. Pope had
been the equal and intimate of the great people of his day, and his
followers, if they did not enjoy the equality, enjoyed at any rate the
patronage of many noble lords. The effect of this was to give the
prestige of social usage to the verse in which they wrote and the
language they used. "There was," said Dr. Johnson, "before the time of
Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words at once refined from the
grossness of domestic use, and free from the harshness of terms
appropriated to particular arts. Words too familiar or too remote to
defeat the purpose of a poet." This poetic diction, refined from the
grossness of domestic use, was the standard poetic speech of the
eighteenth century. The heroic couplet in which it was cast was the
standard metre. So that the first object of the revolt of the romantics
was the purely literary object of getting rid of the vice of an unreal
and artificial manner of writing. They desired simplicity of style.

When the _Lyrical Ballads_ of Wordsworth and Coleridge were published in
1798, the preface which Wordsworth wrote as their manifesto hardly
touched at all on the poetic imagination or the attitude of the poet to
life and nature. The only question is that of diction. "The majority of
the following poems," he writes, "are to be considered as experiments.
They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language
of conversation in the middle and lower classes of s