clarion-call
of the new poetry, so clearly sounded, so inattentively heard, might
have told all, and did tell some, what this generation was about to do.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Although _The Baviad_ and _The Maeviad_ are well worth reading, it
may be questioned whether they are as amusing as their chief quarry,
_The British Album_, "containing the poems of Della Crusca, Anna
Matilda, Benedict, Cesario, The Bard, etc.," the two little volumes of
which attained their third edition in 1790. "Della Crusca," or Robert
Merry (1755-98), was a gentleman by birth, and of means, with a Harrow
and Oxford training, and some service in the army. Strange to say, there
is testimony of good wits that he was by no means a fool; yet such
drivelling rubbish as he and his coadjutors wrote even the present day
has hardly seen.

[2] I used to think these titles sprouts of the author's brain; but a
correspondent assured me that one or two at least are certainly genuine.
Possibly, therefore all are.

CHAPTER II

THE NEW POETRY

The opening years of the eighth decade of the eighteenth century saw, in
unusually close conjunction, the births of the men who were to be the
chief exponents, and in their turn the chief determining forces, of the
new movement. The three greatest were born, Wordsworth in 1770, Scott in
1771, and Coleridge in 1772; Southey, who partly through accident was to
form a trinity with Wordsworth and Coleridge, and who was perhaps the
most typical instance of a certain new kind of man of letters, followed
in 1774; while Lamb and Hazlitt, the chief romantic pioneers in
criticism, Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, the chief classical reactionaries
therein, were all born within the decade. But the influence of Scott was
for various reasons delayed a little; and critics naturally come after
creators. So that the time-honoured eminence of the "Lake
Poets"--Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey--need not be disturbed.

The day of the birth of William Wordsworth was the 7th of April, the
place Cockermouth. His father was an attorney, and, as Lord Lonsdale's
agent, a man of some means and position; but on his death in 1783 the
eccentric and unamiable character of the then Lord Lonsdale, by delaying
the settlement of accounts, put the family in considerable difficulties.
Wordsworth, however, was thoroughly educated at Hawkshead Grammar School
and St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in
1791. He travelled in Franc