ng critic, as in 1820, is
impelled to pronounce a verdict on his genius and character. The present
times are, in many respects, an aftermath of the first quarter of the
century, which was an era of revolt, of doubt, of storm. There succeeded
an era of exhaustion, of quiescence, of reflection. The first years of the
third quarter saw a revival of turbulence and agitation; and, more than
our fathers, we are inclined to sympathize with our grandfathers. Macaulay
has popularized the story of the change of literary dynasty which in our
island marked the close of the last, and the first two decades of the
present, hundred years.

The corresponding artistic revolt on the continent was closely connected
with changes in the political world. The originators of the romantic
literature in Italy, for the most part, died in Spielberg or in exile. The
same revolution which levelled the Bastille, and converted Versailles and
the Trianon--the classic school in stone and terrace--into a moral
Herculaneum and Pompeii, drove the models of the so-called Augustan ages
into a museum of antiquarians. In our own country, the movement initiated
by Chatterton, Cowper, and Burns, was carried out by two classes of great
writers. They agreed in opposing freedom to formality; in substituting for
the old, new aims and methods; in preferring a grain of mother wit to a
peck of clerisy. They broke with the old school, as Protestantism broke
with the old Church; but, like the sects, they separated again.
Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, while refusing to acknowledge the
literary precedents of the past, submitted themselves to a self-imposed
law. The partialities of their maturity were towards things settled and
regulated; their favourite virtues, endurance and humility; their
conformity to established institutions was the basis of a new
Conservatism. The others were the Radicals of the movement: they
practically acknowledged no law but their own inspiration. Dissatisfied
with the existing order, their sympathies were with strong will and
passion and defiant independence. These found their master-types in
Shelley and in Byron.

A reaction is always an extreme. Lollards, Puritans, Covenanters, were in
some respects nauseous antidotes to ecclesiastical corruption. The ruins
of the Scotch cathedrals and of the French nobility are warnings at once
against the excess that provokes and the excess that avenges. The revolt
against the _ancien regime_ in letter