he collection and
preservation of old English poetry, before it was too late, by scholars
like Percy, Ritson, Ellis, and others was a pious labor.

But if we inquire what positive additions had been made to the modern
literature of England, the reply is disappointing. No one will maintain
that the Rowley poems, "Caractacus," "The Monk," "The Grave of King
Arthur," "The Friar of Orders Gray," "The Castle of Otranto," and "The
Mysteries of Udolpho" are things of permanent value: or even that "The
Bard," "The Castle of Indolence," and the "Poems of Ossian" take rank
with the work done in the same spirit by Coleridge, Scott, Keats,
Rossetti, and William Morris. The two leading British poets of the _fin
du siecle_, Cowper and Burns, were not among the romanticists. It was
left for the nineteenth century to perform the work of which the
eighteenth only prophesied.

[1] Scherer's "History of German Literature," Conybeare's Translation,
Vol. II, p. 26.

[2] Scherer, Vol. II. pp. 123-24.

[3] See _ante_, pp. 300-301.

[4] See _ante_, pp. 337-38.

[5] "The Beauties of Shakspere. Regularly selected from each Play. With
a general index. Digesting them under proper heads." By the Rev. Wm.
Dodd, 1752.

[6] "Es war nicht blos die Tiefe der Poesie, welche sie zu Shakespeare
zog, es war ebenso sehr das sichere Gefuehl, das hier germanische Art und
Kunst sei."--_Hettner's Geschichte der deutschen Literatur_, 3.3.1. s.
51. "Ist zu sagen, dass die Abwendung von den Franzosen zu den
stammverwandten Englaendern . . . in ihrem geschichtlichen Ursprung und
Wachsthum wesentlich die Auflehnung des erstarkten germanischen
Volksnaturells gegen die erdrueckende Uebermacht der romanischen
Formenwelt war," etc.--_Ibid._ s. 47. See also, ss. 389-95, for a review
of the interpretation of the great Shaksperian roles by German actors
like Schroeder and Fleck.

[7] "Wir hoeren einen Nachklang jener froehlichen Unterhaltungen, in denen
die Freunde sich ganz und gar in Shakepear'schen Wendungen und Wortwitzen
ergingen, in seiner Uebersetzung von Shakespeare's 'Love's Labour's
Lost'"--_Hettner_, s. 244.

[8] See the whole oration (in Hettner, s. 120,) which gives a most vivid
expression of the impact of Shakspere upon the newly aroused mind of
Germany.

[9] "German Literature," Vol. II. pp. 82-83

[10] "Unter allen Menschen des Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts war Geothe wieder
der Erste, weicher die lang verachtete Herrlichkeit der gothisc