ce its claims in a more
poetical manner.

These newcomers,--Akenside, J.G. Cooper, the Wartons, and Collins,--all
of them very young, appeared between 1744 and 1747; and each rendered
distinct service to their common cause. The least original of the group,
John Gilbert Cooper, versified in _The Power of Harmony_ Shaftesbury's
cosmogony. More independently, Mark Akenside developed out of the same
doctrine of universal harmony the theory of aesthetics that was to guide
the school,--the theory that the true poet is created not by culture and
discipline at all, but owes to the impress of Nature--that beauty which
is goodness--his imagination, his taste, and his moral vision. Though
comparatively ardent and free in manner, Akenside pursued the customary,
didactic method. Less abstract, more nearly an utterance of personal
feeling, was Joseph Warton's _Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature_,
historically a remarkable poem, which, through its expression of the
author's tastes and preferences, indicated briefly some of the most
important touchstones of the sentimentalism (_videlicet_, "romanticism")
of the future. Warton found odious such things as artificial gardens,
commercial interests, social and legal conventions, and a formal
Addisonian style; he yearned for mountainous wilds, unspoiled savages,
solitudes where the voice of Wisdom was heard above the storms, and
poetry that was "wildly warbled." His younger brother Thomas, who wrote
_The Pleasures of Melancholy_, and sonnets showing an interest in
non-classical antiquities, likewise felt the need of new literary gods to
sanction the practices of their school: Pope and Dryden were accordingly
dethroned; Spenser, Shakespeare, and the young Milton, all of whom were
believed to warble wildly, were invoked.

William Collins was the most gifted of this band of enthusiasts. His
general views were theirs: poetry is in his mind associated with wonder
and ecstacy; and it finds its true themes, as the _Ode on Popular
Superstitions_ shows, in the weird legends, the pathetic mischances, and
the blameless manners of a simple-minded folk remote from cities. Unlike
his fellows, Collins had moments of great lyric power, and gave posterity
a few treasured poems. His further distinction is that he desired really
to create that poetical world about which Akenside theorized and for
which the Wartons yearned. Unhappily, however, he too often peopled it
with allegorical figures who move in a hazy