even any very clear conception of what they
wanted to do. But almost everybody felt that something had to be done,
and was anxious--even childishly anxious--to do something. It by no
means always happens that such anxiety is rewarded or is a good sign;
but it is always a noteworthy one, and in this instance there is no
doubt about either the fact of the reward or its goodness.

The subsequent history of poetry during the century divides itself in an
exceedingly interesting way, which has not perhaps yet been subjected to
full critical comment. There are in it five pretty sharply marked
periods of some ten or fifteen years each, which are distinguished, the
first, third, and fifth, by the appearance in more or less numbers of
poets of very high merit, and of characteristics more or less distinctly
original; the second and fourth by poetic growths, not indeed scanty in
amount and sometimes exquisite in quality, but tentative, fragmentary,
and undecided. It will of course be understood that in this, as in all
literary classifications, mathematical accuracy must not be expected,
and that the lives of many of the poets mentioned necessarily extend
long before and after the periods which their poetical production
specially distinguishes. In fact the life of Wordsworth covers as nearly
as possible the whole five sub-periods mentioned, reckoning from his own
birth-year to that of almost the youngest of the poets, of whom we shall
here take account. And perhaps there are few better ways of realising
the extraordinary eminence of English nineteenth century poetry than by
observing, that during these eighty years there was never a single one
at which more or fewer persons were not in existence, who had produced
or were to produce poetry of the first class. And the more the five-fold
division indicated is examined and analysed the more curious and
interesting will its phenomena appear.

The divisions or batches of birth-years are worth indicating separately:
the first comprises the eighth and ninth decades of the eighteenth
century, from the birth of Scott and the Lakers to that of Shelley, with
Keats as a belated and so to speak posthumous but most genuine child of
it; the second covers about fifteen years from the birth of George
Darley, who was of the same year (1795) with Keats, to the eve of that
of Tennyson; the third goes from 1810 or thereabouts, throwing back to
include the elder Tennysons and Mrs. Browning; the fourth ex