find a perfect balance of the opposing | nomenon to be explained? What was it
principles. Many incidental expressions that made a poet like Pope reject on crit-
throughout his plays, and notably his his- ical grounds the principle of romance,
tories, prove his sympathies to have been and men of such robust genius as Field-
monarchical, and his religious faith Catho-ing and Johnson encounter anything like
lic, in the broad sense of the word; while enthusiastic sentiment with dislike and
in all his judgments of men and manners contempt? It will not do to say that this
he speaks like a typical Englishman of the | kind of spirit was in the air, that the eigh
age of Elizabeth. These "Gothic and teenth century was an age of prose and
Monkish foundations," however, are only reason, not of poetry; for that is merely
the ground on which, just as Scott did restating the difficulty in other words, be-
after him, he took his stand to let his im- sides overlooking the fact that the present
agination build with more facility ideal century has been an epoch far more scien-
structures out of the materials supplied to tific and critical even than the eighteenth,
it by his all-embracing observation. He and yet the present century has witnessed
does not, like Chaucer, write as the repre- an extraordinary revival of romance.
sentative of a particular order of society;
he does not, like Spenser, inculcate any
special ideal; he views nature as she ap-
pears in the strongest light of reason,
common sense, and imagination; in a
word, we feel in his genius, as in that of
no other poet, the spirit of humanity.

Milton's work, too, shows a like har-
monious blending of opposites; but in
him the centre of gravity has travelled far
to the side of realism. His subject-matter |
is Catholic and romantic; witness, the
whole theme of "Paradise Lost," and
those numerous allusions to the books of
chivalry, survivals of his ideas when it
was in his mind to take King Arthur as
the hero of an epic poem. Who can for-
get the comparison of the mustering of
the fallen angels with

The explanation of the phenomenon that I have offered in the foregoing papers, is that men of letters, after the Restoration, found themselves confronted by an imaginative problem exactly analogous to the political difficulties that perplexed the statesman. Just as Somers and his allies perceived the decline of the feudal system as a motive power in the constitution of society, and sought to establish a new order with the least possible sacrifice of ancient principle, so Dryden, Addison, and Pope, finding that romance, the ideal reflection of the feudal spirit, was no longer a fitting form for the expression of the ideas of the age, modelled their style exclusively on forms derived from the Renaissance.

I have called this movement Conserva tive because it was, in the first place, a movement in behalf of order. The last half of the seventeenth century was a period of political and imaginative anarchy. When government by prerogative passed from the Tudors to the Stuarts, the end of government by prerogative was evidently at hand. Similarly, no one can study the poetry of the merely fashionable writers of the seventeenth century without seeing that the spirit of old romance had ceased to be a living influence on the imagination. Whether you turn to the rants of the romantic drama under Charles II. and James II., or to the witty conceits of the poets of gallantry, like Suckling and Rochester, or to the ghosts of chivalric sentiment in the love-poems of Cow

Now it is a fact which I think will be acknowledged by every careful student of English literature, that the two opposing principles which, even as late as the pro-ley and Waller, everywhere you find a duction of Paradise Lost," appear in harmonious fusion, are, from Milton's time up to our own, seen in perpetual antagonism. During the eighteenth century realism completely overpowers romance; in the present century Romanticism has shown a constantly increasing hostility to reality. How is this remarkable phe

vapid idealism based on hollowness and unreality. The question for the creative genius of the new age was whether some natural ideal could not be constituted between this lifeless formalism and realism of the loathsome kind that throve so rankly in the comedies of Etherege and his contemporaries. The answer was pro

vided by the poets in the characters of | he merely signified, by an epigrammatic Achitophel and Zimri; of Atticus and phrase, his view of the kind of developSporus and Atossa; in "The Vanity of ment which the language appeared to him Human Wishes;" in "The Traveller; " to be still capable of receiving at the hisin "The Village," and "The Borough;" toric stage in which he found it. and by the writers of fiction in the person of Sir Roger de Coverley, and all that splendid series of pictures representing contemporary life and manners from "Tom Jones" down to "Vanity Fair." Throughout this series the spirit of the Renaissance speaks as clearly in the new order of society as it did in Chaucer under the feudal system.

Again, the imaginative movement after the Restoration and in the eighteenth century may be justly called Conservative, because it aimed at preserving the principle of literary continuity. When Carlyle, in his anger with the shams and conventionalities of English life, calls out in "Sartor Resartus" for "old sick society to be burned," and when in an analogous spirit, in order to emphasize his own individuality and genuineness, he imports into the language all kinds of Teutonic monstrosities, we see that we are face to face with literary Radicalism. The Conservative reformers of the eighteenth century never strained after individualism of this kind. Though they felt that a great part of the old religious and military framework of society was gone forever, they sought to establish the new social ideals on historic foundations, and to preserve whatever was noble in the life of the past. Everybody will acknowledge the truth of this observation as applied to Addison. But it is applicable even to Dryden, at least in his views as to the development of language. The idea of inheritance, which is so prominent in all the political speculations of Burke, is constantly cropping up in Dryden's literary criticism. Here, for instance, is a passage strongly illustrative of the poetical Conservatism of which I am speaking.

Now, whatever judgment we may be inclined to pass on the poetry of the present century, I think it will be generally acknowledged that, in all essential points, its spirit is radically opposed to the spirit of eighteenth-century verse. The latter reflects the taste of a national aristocracy, and is colored throughout by the political genius of the men who effected the Revolution of 1688; the former has a thousand points of contact and sympathy with the democratic movement culminating in the French Revolution, which roused such vehement antipathy in the mind of a typical Englishman like Burke. The literary movement in the eighteenth century was a constructive movement in behalf of social order in the sphere of imagination; the movement of the nineteenth century was a practical assertion of the unfettered liberties of the individual imagination. And while the eighteenth century employed the classical forms familiar to the Renaissance to embody its positive and direct judgments on life and manners, the nineteenth century has striven to express the vague and unsatisfied cravings of imagination, by reviving forms of romance peculiar to the language in the earlier stages of society. For all these reasons I have transferred from politics the term usually opposed to the word Conservative, and have called the imaginative revolution of this century the Liberal movement in English literature.

We are in the habit of thinking of this great change in taste as the work of a few men of genius, who arbitrarily turned the imagination into new channels; but the closer we look into the question, the more clearly we see that there was an influence "in the air," and the general causes which Milton was the poetical son of Spenser and were at work in society disclose themMr. Waller of Fairfax, for we have our lineal selves as plainly as those which operated descents and classes as well as other families. after the Restoration. The ruling force of Spenser more than once insinuates that the the eighteenth century, as has been said, soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, was aristocracy, an aristocracy which preand that he was begotten by him two hundred served the social order produced spontayears after his decease. Milton has acknowl-neously under the feudal régime, while it edged to me that Spenser was his original, and discarded the outward forms which exmany besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that he derived the harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Bulloigne, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax.

pressed the Catholic and chivalric expressions of life. Dryden and Addison, and Pope and Fielding and Johnson, are the faithful representatives of their age; their style exhibits many of the essential qualities of the elder writers whose language they inherit; vigor, distinctness of out

general results of the movement and its probable influence on the future of English poetry.

The vein of medieval romance was ex

line, unerring observation of nature, bril-
liant wit, with an added finish and accu-
racy of expression; but it lacks certain
other qualities which the work of those
predecessors also possessed, pathos, en-hausted in the seventeenth century; the
thusiasm, emotion, mystery, in a word inspiration of the classical school failed
romance. Moreover, we find that as the at the end of the eighteenth century; have
aristocratic régime of the eighteenth cen. we grounds for thinking that the poetry of
tury becomes settled, and its action regu- the nineteenth century is fed from more
lar and mechanical, individual impulse and enduring fountains? Mr. Arnold has no
vitality declines; forms and conventions misgivings on the subject:
gradually predominate. So, too, in liter-
ature. Comparing the work of Darwin and
The future of poetry [says he] is immense,
Hayley and Pye- or even poems of merit because in poetry, when it is worthy of its high
like "The Pleasures of Memory
destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find
"" and
"The Pleasures of Hope"-with work creed which is not shaken, not an accredited
an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a
like "Absalom and Achitophel" or the dogma which is not shown to be questionable,
"Epistle to Arbuthnot" or "The Travel-not a received tradition which does not threaten
ler," we feel how feeble has become the to dissolve. Our religion has materialized
impulse of the once abundant fountains of itself in the fact, in the supposed fact, and now
the classical school, and that the poets the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea
who drink from them are in the same ex-is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of
Poetry attaches its emotions
hausted case as the last representatives divine illusion.
of mediævalism in the seventeenth cen-
to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strong-
est part of our religion to-day is its uncon-
tury.
scious poetry.

Contrarily, one sees the germs of the new Romantic school far back in the lit erature of the eighteenth century. They are visible in what I have called the school of the dilettanti, in the poetry of men of genius like Gray and Collins, where the imagination appears brooding fondly over the images of bygone times. The active spirit of democracy glows in the provincial poetry of Burns. Rousseau's spirit of philosophic melancholy transforms itself in England into the religious melancholy of Cowper. But all these external impulses are at present qualified and checked by that prevailing sense of form which distinguishes the style of the poets of the eighteenth century.

Forbearing any criticism on the characteristic paradox which places the power of religion in poetry, whereas all history shows that poetry springs out of religion, what, let me ask, are the grounds for Mr. Arnold's extraordinary confidence? Holding, as he does, that the metrical compositions of the eighteenth century are undeserving of the name of poetry, and all his sympathies being given to the poetical movement originating with Wordsworth, it is plain that he must look for the supply of the poetical ideas of which he speaks to the Romantic sources in our literature. And yet I should think no one can take a survey of the poetry of this century withThen comes the French Revolution, out being impressed with the large amount and whatever forces are at work in the of what is merely temporary, evanescent, age to carry the individual away from so- particular, in the Romantic ideas embod ciety, or to influence his mind against ex-ied in it. For instance, there was the isting institutions, acquire an enormous romance of what Carlyle calls Wertherism. impetus. Individualism becomes ram- To Byron this was a reality; for the sopant; liberty is everywhere the watch ciety contemporary with Byron it pos word of generous spirits; it is the mark sessed enough of reality to become a of genius to assail all kinds of tradition fashion; but the poet who should now and established order. The spirit of the think of working the mine would hardly age embodies itself in the philosophic iso- make his fortune. There was, again, the lation of Wordsworth; in the rebellion romance of Jacobinism. This was, in of Byron against society; in the utopian- Shelley's time, virgin soil, and, as Mr. ism of Shelley; in the artistic reaction of Swinburne has shown us in his "Songs Coleridge and Keats. I have traced in before Sunrise," it still produces ideas previous papers the various imaginative available for treatment in verse; but any channels into which the rising waters one may see that the thoughts and feelforced their way; it is needless to recapit-ings which filled the mind of the elder ulate here what has been said; and it now only remains to endeavor to estimate the

poet with something like religious belief have changed in the hands of his succes

on behalf of the liberty of the individual | Newton, as well as the Reformation and imagination a protest against the tram- the Revolution of 1688, could not find mels of form and convention which, at adequate expression in those romantic the end of the eighteenth century, were forms which the fashionable poets of the stifling life and nature and simplicity. seventeenth century employed to decorate But owing to the force of circumstances the expiring spirit of medievalism. They it has grown to be a revolt against soci- faced nature boldly, and wrote about it in ety. Forgetful that the source of poetry, metre directly as they felt it; hence their as of the language which is its vehicle, conception, such as it is, is founded on lies not only in themselves, but in the reality; the portraits of Zimri the statesnation to which they belong, our latter- man, and Atticus the man of letters, are, day poets have sought to turn poetry into in their own kind, as ideally true as Chau. the ideal of the individual, instead of cer's good parson and Shakespeare's Hambeing what it once was, the ideal of soci- let. The ideal was, no doubt, too cold, ety. Hence the revival of forms and unemotional, and repressive, nor is it at methods of poetical diction proper to by- all wonderful that the men who lived gone ages. The present direction of the through the fever of the Revolutionary movement is contrary to nature. In its period should have rebounded into Rocraving for unlimited liberty of imagina- manticism. That period was essentially tion our latest school of metrical writing a lyrical one, when poets were moved to is aiming at an unattainable ideal. The write about their own feelings and ideas, author of "Marius the Epicurean -a rather than about things. But now that book full of fine genius and imagination · the atmosphere has sensibly cooled; now himself a Liberal in the region of art, that the poet is beginning to aim again at shows a far truer perception of the nature invention and creation, it is all-important of the problem which the modern poet has to be sure that we have solid and positive to solve. conceptions of nature on which to build our ideal.

Homer had said [so he writes] :

Οἱ δ' ὅτε δὴ λιμένος πολυβενθέος ἐντὸς ἕκοντο, Ιστία μὲν στείλαντο, θέσαν δ' ἐν νηί μελαίνη, Ἐκ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ βαῖνον ἐπὶ ῥηγμίνι θαλάσσης. And how poetic the simple incident seemed told just thus: Homer was always telling things in this manner. And one might think there had been no effort there: that it was but the almost mechanical transcript of a time intrinsically and naturally poetic, in which one could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors have pulled down their boat without making a picture "in the great style," against a sky charged with marvels. Must not an age, itself thus ideal, have counted for more

than half of the whole work?

Undoubtedly it must; in the early ages of society the atmosphere of imagination is universal and its pressure is equal on all sides. In later times, as science and refinement advance, the pressure dimin ishes; but in every age there are certain ideal perceptions of nature which are common to every individual; and he who realizes these most strongly and expresses them in metre most naturally, is the classical poet.

It is this positive ideal spirit, prevailing in the best poetry of the eighteenth century, which all metrical composers of the rising generation might study with advantage. The men of genius in that age felt that the spirit which had produced the philosophy of Bacon, the psychological speculations of Locke, the discoveries of

On the other hand, if we are simply and solely positive, we shall not be able to create at all. The exclusively scientific order which the philosophers who have appropriated the title of positive would impose upon society is more remote from the reality of nature, or, at least of human nature, than the wildest extravagances of the " Arabian Nights." The revolt of the Romantic school against the excessive realism of the eighteenth century, ought to prove that, a fortiori, men will not tolerate an intellectual system from which the mystical and religious element is alto gether excluded.

In an ancient nation like ours, moved by instincts and beliefs of which the origin lies far beyond the reach of analy sis, the progress of imagination keeps pace with the development of society; and just as in the political world it is becoming more and more evident that a union must be effected between the prin ciples of Liberalism and Conservatism, so the best hopes for the future of poetry seem to lie in a reconciliation between the positive and romantic elements of the imagination. There is no essential contradiction between the two principles. Mr. William Morris, indeed, one of those who has done the most to develop the Romantic movement pure and simple, urges as an apology for reviving the external manner of Chaucer that the present