e contemporary literary movement, we might have
something nearly equivalent. For Byron, like Heine, was a repentant
romanticist, with "radical notions under his cap," and a critical theory
at odds with his practice; while De Quincey was an early disciple of
Wordsworth and Coleridge,--as Gautier was of Victor Hugo,--and at the
same time a clever and slightly mischievous sketcher of personal traits.

The present volume consists, in substance, of a series of lectures given
in elective courses in Yale College. In revising it for publication I
have striven to rid it of the air of the lecture room, but a few
repetitions and didacticisms of manner may have inadvertently been left
in. Some of the methods and results of these studies have already been
given to the public in "The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement,"
by my present associate and former scholar, Professor William Lyon
Phelps. Professor Phelps' little book (originally a doctorate thesis)
follows, in the main, the selection and arrangement of topics in my
lectures. _En revanche_ I have had the advantage of availing myself of
his independent researches on points which I have touched but slightly;
and particularly of his very full treatment of the Spenserian imitations.

I had at first intended to entitle the book "Chapters toward a History of
English Romanticism, etc."; for, though fairly complete in treatment, it
makes no claim to being exhaustive. By no means every eighteenth-century
writer whose work exhibits romantic motives is here passed in review.
That very singular genius William Blake, _e.g._, in whom the influence of
"Ossian," among other things, is so strongly apparent, I leave untouched;
because his writings--partly by reason of their strange manner of
publication--were without effect upon their generation and do not form a
link in the chain of literary tendency.

If this volume should be favorably received, I hope before very long to
publish a companion study of English romanticism in the nineteenth
century.

H.A.B.

_October, 1898._

CONTENTS

Chapter

I. The Subject Defined

II. The Augustans

III. The Spenserians

IV. The Landscape Poets

V. The Miltonic Group

VI. The School of Warton

VII. The Gothic Revival

VIII. Percy and the Ballads

IX. Ossian

X. Thomas Chatterton

XI. The German Tributary

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH ROMA