ny young lady that
needs it; his abstinence--a fearful legacy--to the aldermen of Bristol at
their annual feast! to a friend, a mourning ring--"provided he pays for it
himself"--with the motto, "Alas, poor Chatterton!" Fittest ending to his
biography--"Alas, poor Chatterton!"

And yet it is evident that the crazy Bristol boy and the astute Scotchman
were alike the creatures of the age and the peculiar circumstances in
which they lived. No other age of English history could have produced
them. In an earlier period, they would have found no curiosity in the
people to warrant their attempts; and in a later time, the increase in
antiquarian studies would have made these efforts too easy of detection.

CHAPTER XXXII.

POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL.

The Transition Period. James Thomson. The Seasons. The Castle of
Indolence. Mark Akenside. Pleasures of the Imagination. Thomas Gray.
The Elegy. The Bard. William Cowper. The Task. Translation of Homer.
Other Writers.

THE TRANSITION PERIOD.

The poetical standards of Dryden and Pope, as poetic examples and
arbiters, exercised tyrannical sway to the middle of the eighteenth
century, and continued to be felt, with relaxing influence, however, to a
much later period. Poetry became impatient of too close a captivity to
technical rules in rhythm and in subjects, and began once again to seek
its inspiration from the worlds of nature and of feeling. While seeking
this change, it passed through what has been properly called the period of
transition,--a period the writers of which are distinctly marked as
belonging neither to the artificial classicism of Pope, nor to the simple
naturalism of Wordsworth and the Lake school; partaking, indeed, in some
degree of the former, and preparing the way for the latter.

The excited condition of public feeling during the earlier period,
incident to the accession of the house of Hanover and the last struggles
of the Jacobites, had given a political character to every author, and a
political significance to almost every literary work. At the close of this
abnormal condition of things, the poets of the transition school began
their labors; untrammelled by the court and the town, they invoked the
muse in green fields and by babbling brooks; from materialistic
philosophy in verse they appealed through the senses to the hearts of men;
and appreciation and popularity rewarded and encouraged them.

JAMES THOMSON.--The