ain signs except those of
restless seeking. Here, on the contrary, with no greater advantage of
looking back, we can see the old fruit dropping off and the new forming,
in a dozen different kinds and a hundred different ways. Extravagance on
one side always provokes extravagance on the other; and because the
impatient revolt of Coleridge and some others of the actual leaders into
the Promised Land chose to present the eighteenth century as a mere
wilderness in respect of poetry, enjoyment of nature, and so forth,
there have been of late years critics who maintained that the poetical
decadence of that century is all a delusion; in other words (it may be
supposed) that Akenside and Mason are the poetical equals of Herrick and
Donne. The _via media_, as almost always, is here also the _via
veritatis_. The poets of the eighteenth century were poets; but the
poetical stream did not, as a rule, run very high or strong in their
channels, and they were tempted to make up for the sluggishness and
shallowness of the water by playing rather artificial and rococo tricks
with the banks. The fiction of the eighteenth century was, at its
greatest, equal to the greatest ever seen; but it was as yet advancing
with uncertain steps, and had not nearly explored its own domain. The
history of the eighteenth century had returned to the true sense of
history, and was endeavouring to be accurate; but it only once
attained--it is true that with Gibbon it probably attained once for
all--a perfect combination of diligence and range, of matter and of
style.

In all these respects the list might, if it were proper, be extended to
much greater length. The twenty years from 1780 to 1800 show us in the
most fascinating manner the turn of the tide, not as yet coming in three
feet abreast, rather creeping up by tortuous channels and chance
depressions, but rising and forcing a way wherever it could. In the
poets, major and minor, of the period, omitting, and even not wholly
omitting, Burns and Blake--who are of no time intrinsically, but who, as
it happens, belong accidentally to this time as exponents, the one of
the refreshing influence of dialect and freedom from literary
convention, the other of the refreshing influence of sympathy with old
models and mystical dreaming--all the restlessness of the approaching
crisis is seen. Nothing in literature is more interesting than to watch
the effect of the half-unconscious aims and desires of Cowper and
Cra