^' ^oV^ ^^0^ - .^^'■''^^^ -S^' /% ^ .^'\ ^^n^ A" - '^^ -ov* ■^^^< ,4 0«v • M sP-n*., ,"1°^ O'' "^^/*^-'\/''.. % "oV » .^ t^ '^0' ,"1°^ jp-nK ^* A HISTORY OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY A HISTORY OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BY HENRY A. BEERS Author of ^'' A Suburban Pastorai^^' '' TheWays 0/ Vu.'e.'^tc. " Was unsterblich im Gesang soil leben Muss im Leben untergehen."— Schiller NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1899 f f^A 2(K>;U) Copyright, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. : J COPIES r^^ECEiVci:^ ,:i 'JF €Q, ,y V ,,'''OVTiCfc. •<.y M^> E MERSHON COMPANY Hit AHWAY, N. J. 2^7 PREFACE. Historians of French and German literature are accustomed to set off a period, or a division of their subject, and entitle it ** Romanticism " or *'the Romantic School," Writers of English literary history, while recognizing the importance of Eng- land's share in this great movement in European letters, have not generally accorded it a place by itself in the arrangement of their subject-matter, but have treated it cursively, as a tendency present in the work off individual authors; and have maintained a simple chronological division of eras into the ** Georgian," the ** Victorian," etc. The reason of this is perhaps to be found in the fact that, although Romanticism be- gan earlier in England than on the Continent and lent quite as much as it borrowed in the international exchange of literary commodities^ the native move- ment was more gradual and scattered. It never reached so compact a shape, or came so definitely to a head, as in Germany and France. There never was precisely a ** romantic school" or an all-pervading romantic fashion in England. There is, therefore, nothing in English correspond- ing to Heine's fascinating sketch **Die Romantische Schule," or to Theophile Gautier's almost equally fascinating and far more sympathetic **Histoire du iv T^reface. Romantismc." If we can imagine a composite person- ality of Byron and De Quincey, putting on record his half affectionate and half satirical reminiscences of the 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 mis- chievous 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 in- advertently 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 arrange- ment of topics in my lectures. En revanche I have had the advantage of availing myself of his inde- pendent researches on points which 1 have touched but slightly; and particularly of his very full treat- ment of the Spenserian imitations. I hadat 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 'Preface. v 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, i8g8. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Subject Defined, i II, The Augustans, 24 III. The Spenserians, 62 IV. The Landscape Poets, 102 V. The Miltonic Group, 146 VI. The School of Warton 186 VII. The Gothic Revival 221 VIII. Percy and the Ballads, 265 IX. Ossian, 306 X. Thomas Chatterton, 339 XI. The German Tributary, 374 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM. CHAPTER I. ^be Subject 2)ef[ncD. To attempt at the outset a rigid definition of the word romanticism would be to anticipate the substance of this volume. To furnish an answer to the question — What is, or was, romanticism? or, at least, What is, or was, English romanticism? — is one of my main pur- poses herein, and the reader will be invited to examine a good many literary documents, and to do a certain amount of thinking, before he can form for himself any full and clear notion of the thing. Even then he will hardly find himself prepared to give a dictionary definition of romanticism. There are words which connote so much, which take up into themselves so much of the history of the human mind, that any com- pendious explanation of their meaning — any definition which is not, at the same time, a rather extended description — must serve little other end than to sup- ply a convenient mark of identification. How can we define in a sentence words like renaissance, philistine, sentimentalism, transcendental, Bohemia, preraphael- ite, impressionist, realistic? Definitio est negatio. It \ 2 eA History of English %omanticism. may be possible to hit upon a form of words which will mark romanticism off from everything else — tell in a clause what it is /io^; but to add a positive content to the definition — to tell what romanticism /V, will require a very different and more gradual process.* Nevertheless a rough, working definition may be use- ful to start with. Romanticism, then, in the sense in which I shall commonly employ the word, means the reproduction in modern art or literature of the life and thought of the Middle Ages. Some other elements will have to be added to this definition, and some modifications of it will suggest themselves from time to time. It is provisional, tentative, elastic, but will serve our turn till we are ready to substitute a better. It is the definition which Heine gives in his brilliant little book on the Romantic School in Germany, f ** All the poetry of the Middle Ages," he adds, *' has a certain definite character, through which it differs from the poetry of the Greeks and Romans. In refer- ence to this difference, the former is called Romantic, the latter Classic. These names, however, are mis- * Les definitions ne se posent pas a priori, si ce n'est peutetre en mathematiques. En histoire, c'est de I'etude patiente de la realite qu'elles se degagent insensiblement. Si M. Deschanel ne nous a pas donne du romantisme la definition que nous reclamions tout ^ I'heure, c'est, d vrai dire, que son enseignement a pour objet de preparer cette definition meme. Nous la trouverons oil elle doit etre, a la fin du cours et non pas i debut. — F. Brunetikre: *' Classiques et Romantiques, Etudes Critiques" Tome III. p. 296. f Was war aber die romantische Schule in Deutschland? Sie war nichts anders als die Wiedererweckung der Poesie des Mittelalters, wie sie sich in dessen Liedern, Bild- und Bauwerken, in Kunst und Leben, manifestiert hatte.— ZPiV romantische Schule {Cotta edition)^ p. 158. The Subject ^Defined. 3 leading, and have hitherto caused the most vexatious confusion." * Some of the sources of this confusion will be con- sidered presently. Meanwhile the passage recalls the fact that romantic^ when used as a term in literary nomenclature, is not an independent, but a referential word. It implies its opposite, the classic; and the ingenuity of critics has been taxed to its uttermost to explain and develop the numerous points of con- trast. To forma thorough conception of the romantic, therefore, we must also form some conception of the classic. Now there is an obvious unlikeness between the thought and art of the nations of pagan antiquity and the thought and art of the peoples of Christian, feudal Europe. Everyone will agree to call the Parthenon, the ** Diana "of the Louvre, the "CEdipus" of Sophocles, the orations of Demosthenes classical; and to call the cathedral of Chartres, the walls of Nuremberg — die Perle des Miitelalters — the ''Legenda Aurea " of Jacobus de Voragine, the *' Tristan und Isolde " of Gottfried of Strasburg, and the illuminations in a Catholic missal of the thirteenth century romantic. The same unlikeness is found between modern works conceived in the spirit, or executed in direct imitation, of ancient and mediaeval art respectively. It is easy to decide that Flaxman's outline drawings in illustration of Homer are classic; that Alfieri's tragedies, Goethe's '* Iphigenie auf Tauris " Landor's ** Hellenics," Gibson's statues, David's paintings, and the church of the Madeleine in Paris are classical, at least in intention and in the models which they follow; while Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris," Scott's * " The Romantic School " (Fleishman's translation), p. 13. 4 e/^ History of English %omanticism. ** Ivanhoe," Fouqu^'s "DerZauberring," and Rossetti's painting, *'The Girlhood of Mary," are no less cer- tainly romantic in their inspiration. But critics have given a wider extension than this to the terms classic and romantic. They have dis- cerned, or imagined, certain qualities, attitudes of mind, ways of thinking and feeling, traits of style which distinguish classic from romantic art; and they have applied the words accordingly to work which is not necessarily either antique or mediaeval in subject. Thus it is assumed, for example, that the productions of Greek and Roman genius were characterized by clearness, simplicity, restraint, unity of design, sub- ordination of the part to the whole; and therefore modern works which make this impression of noble plainness and severity, of harmony in construction, , economy of means and clear, definite outline, are often spoken of as classical, quite irrespective of the historical period which they have to do with. In this sense, it is usual to say that Wordsworth's ** Michael " is classical, or that Goethe's ** Hermann und Doro- thea" is classical; though Wordsworth may be cele- brating the virtues of a Westmoreland shepherd, and Goethe telling the story of two rustic lovers on the German border at the time of the Napoleonic wars. On the other hand, it is asserted that the work of mediaeval poets and artists is marked by an excess of sentiment, by over-lavish decoration, a strong sense of color and a feeble sense of form, an attention to detail, at the cost of the main impression, and a con- sequent tendency to run into the exaggerated, the fantastic, and the grotesque. It is not uncommon, The Subject T>efined. 5 therefore, to find poets like Byron and Shelley classi- fied as romanticists, by virtue of their possession of these, or similar, characteristics, although no one could be more remote from mediaeval habits of thought than the author of ''Don Juan" or the author of **The Fevolt of Islam." But the extension of these opposing terms to the work of writers who have so little in common with either the antique or the mediaeval as Wordsworth, on the one hand, and Byron, on the other, does not stop here. It is one of the embarrassments of the literary historian that nearly every word which he uses has two meanings, a critical and a popular meaning. In common speech, classic has come to signify almost anything that is good. If we look in our dictionaries we find it defined somewhat in this way: " Conform- ing to the best authority in literature and art; pure; chaste; refined; originally and chiefly used of the best Greek and Roman writers, but also applied to the best modern authors, or their works." ** Classic, //. A work of acknowledged excellence and authority." In this sense of the word, ** Robinson Crusoe" is a classic; the ''Pilgrim's Progress" is a classic; every piece of literature which is customarily recommended as a safe pattern for young writers to form their style upon is a classic* Contrariwise the word romantic^ as popularly emr ployed, expresses a shade of disapprobation. The * Un classique est tout artiste k I'ecole de qui nous pouvous nous mettre sans craindre que ses legons ou ses exemples nous fourvoient. Ou encore, c'est celui qui poss6de . . . des qualitesdont I'imitation, si elle ne peut pas faire de bien, ne peut pas non plus faire de mal. — F. Brunetih-e, ** Etudes Critiques," Tome III. p. 300. / 6 cA History of English Romanticism, dictionaries make it a synonym for sentimental^ /and- fulj wildj extravagant^ chimerical^ all evident derivatives from their more critical definition, ** pertaining or appropriate to the style of the Christian and popular literature of the Middle Ages, as opposed to the clas- sical antique." The etymology of romance is familiar. The various dialects which sprang from the corrup- tion of the Latin were called by the common name of ro?nans. The name was then applied to any piece of literature composed in this vernacular instead of in the ancient classical Latin. And as the favorite kind of writing in Provenfal, Old French, and Spanish was the tale of chivalrous adventure, that was called par excel- lence^ a roman, romans, or rojna?tce. The adjective ro- mantic is much later, implying, as it does, a certain degree of critical attention to the species of fiction which it describes in order to a generalizing of its peculiarities. It first came into general use in the latter half of the seventeenth century ^nd the early years of the eighteenth; and naturally, in a period which considered itself classical, was marked from birth with that shade of disapproval which has been noticed in popular usage. The feature that struck the critics most in the romances of the Middle Ages, and in that very different variety of romance which was cultivated during the sev- enteenth century — the prolix, sentimental fictions of La Calprenede, Scuderi, Gomberville, and d'Urfe — was the fantastic improbability of their adventures. Hence the common acceptation of the word roma?itic in such phrases as *'a romantic notion," **a romantic elope- ^ ment," "an act of romantic generosity." The appli- ' cation of the adjective to scenery was somewhat The Subject Tie fined, 7 later;* and the abstract romanticisin was, of course, very much later; as the literary movement, or the revolution in taste, which it entitles, was not enough developed to call for a name until the opening of the nineteenth century. Indeed it was never so compact, conscious, and definite a movement in England as in Germany and France; and its baptism doubtless came from abroad, from the polemical literature which attended the career of the German romanticismus and the French romantisme. While accepting provisionally Heine's definition, it will be useful to examine some of the wider meanings that have been attached to the words classic and romantic^ and some of the analyses that have been attempted of the qualities that make one work of art classical and another romantic. Walter Pater took them to indicate opposite tendencies or elements which are present in varying proportions in all good art. It is the essential function of classical art and literature, he thought, to take care of the qualities of measure, purity, temperance. **What is classical comes to us out of the cool and quiet of other times, as a measure of what a long experience has shown us will, at least, never displease us. And in the classical literature of Greece and Rome, as in the classics of the last cen- tury, the essentially classical element is that quality of order in beauty which they possess, indeed, in a pre- eminent degree." f *' The charm, then, of what is * Mr. Perry thinks that one of the first instances of the use of the word romantic is by the diarist Evelyn in 1654 : " There is also, on the side of this horrid alp, a very romantic seat." — English Literature in the Eighteenth Century^ by Thomas Sergeant Perry ^ p. 148, note. \ " Romanticism,'* Macmillan's Magazine, Vol. XXXV. 8 c// History of English Romanticism. classical in art or literature is that of the well-known tale, to which we can nevertheless listen over and over again, because it is told so well. To the absolute beauty of its form is added the accidental, tranquil charm of familiarity." On the other hand, he defines the romantic charac- ter in art as consisting in '* the addition of strangeness to beauty" — a definition which recalls Bacon's saying, *' There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." **The desire of beauty," continues Pater, ''being a fixed element in every artistic organization, it is the addition of curi- osity to this desire of beauty that constitutes the romantic temper." This critic, then, would not con- fine the terms classic and classicism to the literature of Greece and Rome and to modern works conceived in the same spirit, although he acknowledges that there are certain ages of the world in which the classical tra- dition predominates, /. ourbon Restoration in France (say 1815-30); and ■Hhe later Middle Age; so that the mediaeval ,)oetry, centering in Dante, is often opposed to Crreek or Roman poetry, as romantic to classical poetry." In Pater's use of the terms, then, classic and ro- mantic do not describe particular literatures, or par- ticular periods in literary history, so much as certain counterbalancing qualities and tendencies which run through the literatures of all times and countries. There were romantic writings among the Greeks and Romans; there were classical writings in the Middle Ages; nay, there are classical and romantic traits in the same author. If there is any poet who may safely be described as a classic, it is Sophocles; and yet Pater declares that the " Philoctetes " of Sophocles, if issued to-day, would be called romantic. And he points out — what indeed has been often pointed out — that the lo cA History of English Romanticism, '* Odyssey "* is more romantic than the '* Iliad:" is, in fact, rather a romance than a hero-epic. The adven- tures of the wandering Ulysses, the visit to the land of the lotus-eaters, the encounter with the Laestry- gonians, the experiences in the cave of Polyphemus, if allowance be made for the difference in sentiments and manners, remind the reader constantly of the mediaeval romans d'aventure. Pater quotes De Stendhal's say- ing that all good art was romantic in its day. " Romanticism," says De Stendhal, **is the art of pre- senting to the nations the literary works which, in the actual state of their habits and beliefs, are capable of giving them the greatest possible pleasure: classicism, on the contrary, presents them with what gave the greatest possible pleasure to their great grand- fathers " — a definition which is epigrammatic, if not convincing.! De Stendhal (Henri Beyle) was a pioneer and a special pleader in the cause of French romanticism, and, in his use of the terms, romanticism * The Odyssey has been explained throughout in an allegorical sense. The episode of Circe, at least, lends itself obviously to such interpretation, Circe's cup has become a metaphor for sensual intoxication, transforming men into beasts; Milton, in "Comus," regards himself as Homer's continuator, enforcing a lesson of temperance in Puritan times hardly more consciously than the old Ionian Greek in times which have no other record than his poem. f" Racine et Shakespeare, Etudes en Romantisme" (1823), p. 32, ed. of Michel Levy Freres, 1854. Such v^'ould also seem to be the view maintained by M. Emile Deschanel, whose book " Le Romantisme des Classiques" (Paris, 1883) is reviewed by M. Brunetiere in an article already several times quoted. " Tons les classiques," according to M. Deschanel — at least, so says his reviewer — " ont jadis commence par etre des romantiques." And again : '* Un romantique serait tout simplement un classique en route pour parvenir ; et, reciproquement, un classique ne serait de plus qu'un romantique arrive." [ The Subject Tfefined. ii stands for progress, liberty, originality, and the spirit of the future; classicism, for conservatism, authority, imitation, the spirit of the past. According to him, every good piece of romantic art is a classic in the making. Decried by the classicists of to-day, for its failure to observe traditions, it will be used by the classicists of the future as a pattern to which new artists must conform. It may be worth while to round out the concep- tion of the term by considering a few other defini- tions of romafitic which have been proposed. Dr. F. H. Hedge, in an article in the Atlantic Monthly"^ for March, 1886, inquired, ^'What do we mean by romantic? " Goethe, he says, characterized the differ- ence between classic and romantic **as equivalent to [that between] healthy and morbid. Schiller proposed 'naive and sentimental. 'f The greater part [of the German critics] regarded it as identical with the differ- ence between ancient and modern, which was partly true, but explained nothing. None of the definitions given could be accepted as quite satisfactory. "J Dr. Hedge himself finds the origin of romantic feel- ing in wonder and the sense of mystery. **The essence of romance," he writes, ** is mystery"; and he enforces the point by noting the application of the word to scenery. " The woody dell, the leafy glen, the forest path which leads, one knows not whither, are romantic: the public highway is not." *'The * " Classic and Romantic," Vol. LVII. f See Schiller's " Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung." X Le mot de romantisme, apres cinquante ans et plus de discussions passionnees, ne laisse pas d'etre encore aujourd'hui bien vague et bien flottant. — Brunetiere, ibid. 12 cA History of English %omanticism. winding secret t)rook ... is romantic, as compared with the broad river." ** Moonlight is romantic, as contrasted with daylight." Dr. Hedge attributes this fondness for the mysterious to 'Uhe influence of the Christian religion, which deepened immensely the mystery of life, suggesting something beyond and behind the world of sense." This charm of wonder or mystery is perhaps only another name for that " strangeness added to beauty " which Pater takes to be the distinguishing feature of romantic art. Later in the same article, Dr. Hedge asserts that *' the essence of romanticism is aspira- tion." Much might be said in defense of this positionr It has often been pointed out, e. g., that a Gothic cathedral expresses aspiration, and a Greek temple satisfied completeness. Indeed if we agree that, in a general way, the classic is equivalent to the antique, and the romantic to the mediseval, it will be strange if we do not discover many differences between the tv/o that can hardly be covered by any single phrase. Dr. Hedge himself enumerates several qualities of roman- tic art which it would be difficult to bring under his essential and defining category of wonder or aspira- tion. Thus he announces that ''the peculiarity of the classic style is reserve, self-suppression of the writer"; while ''the romantic is self-reflecting." "Clear, unimpassioned, impartial presentation of the sub- ject ... is the prominent feature of the classic style. The modern writer gives you not so much the things themselves as his impression of them." Here then is the familiar critical distinction between the objective and subjective methods — Schiller's naiv tind sentimentalisch — applied as a criterion of classic and ■wii^ 'Ill r 05^7 K 7 P 5' 12 ^ History of English %omanticism. winding secret brook ... is romantic, as compared with the broad river." ** Moonlight is romantic, as contrasted with daylight." Dr. Hedge attributes this fondness for the mysterious to **the influence of the Christian religion, which deepened immensely the mystery of life, suggesting something beyond and behind the world of sense." This charm of wonder or mystery is perhaps only another name for that ** strangeness added to beauty " which Pater takes to be the distinguishing feature of romantic art. Later in the same article, Dr. Hedge asserts that ** the essence of romanticism is aspira- tion." Much might be said in defense of this j^c-^'--- It has often been pointed out, e. g., that a cathedral expresses aspiration, and a Greek temple satisfied completeness. Indeed if we agree that, in a general way, the classic is equivalent to the antique, and the romantic to the mediaeval, it will be strange if we do not discover many differences between the two that can hardly be covered by any single phrase. Dr. Hedge himself enumerates several qualities of roman- tic art which it would be difficult to bring under his essential and defining category of wonder or aspira- tion. Thus he announces that "the peculiarity of the classic style is reserve, self-suppression of the writer"; while "the romantic is self-reflecting." "Clear, unimpassioned, impartial presentation of the sub- ject ... is the prominent feature of the classic style. The modern writer gives you not so much the things themselves as his impression of them." Here then is the familiar critical distinction between the objective and subjective methods— Schiller's naiv und sentimentalisch—2.^^\\^d. as a criterion of classic and rhe Subject "Defined, romantic style. This contrast the essayist develops at some length, dwelling upon **the cold reserve and colorless simplicity of the classic style, where the medium is lost in the object"; and '*on the other hand, the inwardness, the sentimental intensity, the subjective coloring of the romantic style." A further distinguishing mark of the romantic spirit, mentioned by Dr. Hedge in common with many other critics, is the indefiniteness or incompleteness of its creations. This is a consequence, of course, of its sense of mystery and aspiration. Schopenhauer said that music was the characteristic modern art, because of its subjective, indefinite character. Pur- suing this line of thought. Dr. Hedge affirms that " romantic relates to classic somewhat as music relates to plastic art. . . It [music] presents no finished ideal, but suggests ideals beyond the capacity of can- vas or stone. Plastic art acts on the intellect, music on the feelings; the one affects us by what it presents, the other by what it suggests. This, it seems to me, is essentially the difference between classic and ro- mantic poetry "; and he names Homer and Milton as examples of the former, and Scott and Shelley of the latter school. Here then we have a third criterion proposed for determining the essential differentia of romantic art. First it was mystery, then aspiration; now it is the appeal to the emotions by the method of suggestion. And yet there is, perhaps, no inconsistency on the critic's part in this continual shifting of his ground. He is apparently presenting different facets of the same truth; he means one thing by this mystery, aspiration, indefiniteness, incompleteness, emotional suggestive- efined, 15 duce their highest effects: shadow and color rather n contour. On the Greek heroic stage there were ew figures, two or three at most, grouped like :uary and thrown out in bold relief at the apex of scene: in Greek architecture a few clean, simple :s: in Greek poetry clear conceptions easily express- : in language and mostly describable in sensuous "he modern theater is crowded with figures and Drs, and the distance recedes in the middle of scene. This love of perspective is repeated in hedral aisles,* the love of color in cathedral win- vs, and obscurity hovers in the shadows of the lit. In our poetry, in our religion these twilight ughts prevail. We seek no completeness here. at is beyond, what is inexpressible attracts us. nee the greater spirituality of romantic literature, deeper emotion, its more passionate tenderness. : hence likewise its sentimentality, its melancholy I, in particular, the morbid fascination which the ught of death has had for the Gothic mind. The ssic nations concentrated their attention on life and It, and spent few thoughts upon darkness and the lb. Death was to them neither sacred nor beauti- Their decent rites of sepulture" or cremation m designed to hide its deformities rather than to long its reminders. The presence of the corpse ) pollution. No Greek could have conceived such 00k as the **Hydriotaphia" or the *' Anatomy of lancholy." * Far to the west the long, long vale withdrawn, Where twilight loves to linger for a while. —Beattie's *' Minstrel." > tA History of English 'T{pmanticisin. It is observable that Dr. Hedge is at one with Pater in desiring some more philosophical statement of tht difference between classic and romantic than tb common one which makes it simply the differenc between the antique and the mediaeval. He says. ** It must not be supposed that ancient and classic, oj one side, and modern and romantic, on the other, ar^ inseparably one; so that nothing approaching tl romantic shall be found in any Greek or Romai author, nor any classic page in the literature a modern Europe. . . The literary line of demarca tion is not identical with the chronological one. And just as Pater says that the Odyssey is mon romantic than the Iliad, so Dr. Hedge says that **thi story of Cupid and Psyche,* in the ' Golden Ass ' d Apuleius, is as much a romance as any composition a the seventeenth or eighteenth century." Mediaevail ism he regards as merely an accident of romance Scott, as most romantic in his tnemes, but Byron, i his mood. So, too, Mr. Sidney Colvin f denies that " a predile tion for classic subjects . . . can make a writer th; which we understand by the word classical as disti] guished from that which we understand by the woij romantic. The distinction lies deeper, and is a dil ♦The modernness of this "latest bom of the myths" resid partly in its spiritual, almost Christian conception of love, partly its allegorical theme, the soul's attainment of immortality throuj love. The Catholic idea of penance is suggested, too, in Psyche ' ■ ; labors long." This apologue has been a favorite "* platonizing poets, like Spenser and Milton. See " The Fae| Queene," book iii. canto vi. stanza 1., and " Comus," lines ioo2-|| t " Selections from Walter Savage Landor," Preface, p. vii. The Subject T>efined. 17 nction much less of subject than of treatment. . . 1 classical writing every idea is called up to the mind ; nakedly as possible, and at the same time as dis- nctly; it is exhibited in white light, and left to pro- jce its effect by its own unaided power.* In romantic riting, on the other hand, all objects are exhib- ed, as it were, through a colored and iridescent :mosphere. Roundabout every central idea the ro- lantic writer summons up a cloud of accessory and ibordinate ideas for the sake of enhancing its effect, at the risk of confusing its outlines. The temper, jain, of the romantic writer is one of excitement, hile the temper of the classical writer is one of self- ossession. . . On the one hand there is calm, on the ther hand enthusiasm. The virtues of the one style re strength of grasp, with clearness and justice of resentment; the virtues of the other style are glow of pirit, with magic and richness of suggestion." Mr. lolvin then goes on to enforce and illustrate this con- rast between the •* accurate and firm definition of [iings"inclassicalwriters and the** thrilling vagueness nd uncertainty," the tremulous, coruscating, vibrating r colored light— the '* halo "—with which the roman- ic writer invests his theme. **The romantic man- ,er, . . with its thrilling uncertainties and its rich uggestions, may be more attractive than the classic nanner, with its composed and measured preciseness if statement. . . But on the other hand the roman- ic manner lends itself, as the true classical does not, inferior work. Second-rate conceptions excitedly .nd approximately put into words derive from it an * See also Walter Bagehot's essay on " Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque ^rt." " Literary Studies, Works " (Hartford, 1889), Vol I. p. 200. 7he Subject T>efined. 17 tinction much less of subject than of treatment. . . In classical writing every idea is called up to the mind as nakedly as possible, and at the same time as dis- tinctly; it is exhibited in white light, and left to pro- duce its effect by its own unaided power.^ In romantic writing, on the other hand, all objects are exhib- ited, as it were, through a colored and iridescent atmosphere. Roundabout every central idea the ro- mantic writer summons up a cloud of accessory and subordinate ideas for the sake of enhancing its effect, if at the risk of confusing its outlines. The temper, again, of the romantic writer is one of excitement, while the temper of the classical writer is one of self- possession. . . On the one hand there is calm, on the other hand enthusiasm. The virtues of the one style are strength of grasp, with clearness and justice of presentment; the virtues of the other style are glow of spirit, with magic and richness of suggestion." Mr. Colvin then goes on to enforce and illustrate this con- trast between the ** accurate and firm definition of things" in classical writers and the * * thrilling vagueness and uncertainty," the tremulous, coruscating, vibrating or colored light — the " halo" — with which the roman- tic writer invests his theme. '*The romantic man- ner, . . with its thrilling uncertainties and its rich suggestions, may be more attractive than the classic manner, with its composed and measured preciseness of statement. . . But on the other hand the roman- tic manner lends itself, as the true classical does not, to inferior work. Second-rate conceptions excitedly and approximately put into words derive from it an * See also Walter Bagehot's essay on " Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art," " Literary Studies, Works " (Hartford, 1889), Vol I. p. 200. 1 8 e^ History of English Romanticism. illusive attraction which may make them for a time, and with all but the coolest judges, pass as first-rate. Whereas about true classical writing there can be no illusion. It presents to us conceptions calmly realized in words that exactly define them, conceptions depend- ing for their attraction, not on their halo, but on themselves." As examples of these contrasting styles, Mr. Col- vin puts side by side passages from *'The Ancient Mariner " and Keats' **Ode to a Nightingale," with passages, treating similar themes, from Landor's *' Gebir " and *' Imaginary Conversations." The con- trast might be even more clearly established by a study of such a piece as Keats' *^ Ode on a Grecian Urn," where the romantic form is applied to classical content; or by a comparison of Tennyson's "Ulysses" and '* The Lotus Eaters," in which Homeric subjects are treated respectively in the classic and the romantic manner. Alfred de Musset, himself in early life a prominent figure among the French romanticists, wrote some capital satire upon the bafiling and contradictory defi- nitions of the word romantisme that were current in the third and fourth decades of this century.* Two worthy provincials write from the little town of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre to the editor of the " Revue des Deux Mondes," appealing to him to tell them what romanticism means. For two, years Dupuis and his friend Cotonet had supposed that the term applied only to the theater, and signified the disregard of the unities. *' Shakspere, for example, makes people travel from * Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet (1836), ' ' CEuvres Completes " (Char- pentier edition, 1881), Tome IX. p. 194. The Subject IDe fined. 19 Rome to London, and from Athens to Alexandria in a quarter of an hour. His heroes live ten or twenty years between two acts. His heroines, angels of virtue dur- ing a whole scene, have only to pass into the coulisses^ to reappear as wives, adulteresses, widows, and grand- mothers. There, we said to ourselves, is the roman- tic. Contrariwise, Sophocles makes CEdipus sit on a rock, even at the cost of great personal inconvenience, from the very beginning of his tragedy. All the char- acters come there to find him, one after the other. Perhaps he stands up occasionally, though I doubt it; unless, it may be, out of respect for Theseus, v/ho, during the entire play, obligingly walks on the high- way, coming in or going out continually. . . There, we said to ourselves, is the classic." But about 1828, continues the letter, *'we learned that there were romantic poetry and classical poetry, romantic novels and classical novels, romantic odes and classical odes; nay, a single line, my dear sir, a sole and solitary line of verse might be romantic or classic, according as the humor took it. When we received this intelligence, we could not close our eyes all night. Two years of peaceful conviction had van- ished like a dream. All our ideas were turned topsy- turvy; for if the rules of Aristotle were no longer the line of demarcation which separated the literary camps, where was one to find himself, and what was he to depend upon? How was one to know, in reading a book, which school it belonged to? . . Luckily in the same year there appeared a famous preface, which we devoured straightway.* . . This said very distinctly * Preface to Victor Hugo's ** Cromwell," dated October, 1827. The play was printed, but not acted, in 1828. 20 ^ History of English %omanticism. that romanticism was nothing else than the alliance of the playful and the serious, of the grotesque and the terrible, of the jocose and the horrible, or in other words, if you prefer, of comedy and tragedy." This definition the anxious inquirers accepted for the space of a year, until it was borne in upon them that Aristophanes — not to speak of other ancients — had mixed tragedy and comedy in his dramas. Once again the friends were plunged in darkness, and their perplexity was deepened when they were taking a walk one evening and overheard a remark made by the niece of the soiis-prefet. This young lady had fallen in love with English ways, as was — somewhat strangely — evidenced by her wearing a green veil, orange-colored gloves, and silver-rimmed spectacles. As she passed the promenaders, she turned to look at a water-mill near the ford, where there were bags of grain, geese, and an ox in harness, and she exclaimed to her governess, '' Voila U7i site romantique.'' This mysterious sentence roused the flagging curi- osity of MM. Dupuis and Cotonet, and they renewed their investigations. A passage in a newspaper led them to believe for a time that romanticism was the imitation of the Germans, with, perhaps, the addition of the English and Spanish. Then they were tempted to fancy that it might be merely a matter of literary form, possibly this vers brise (run-over lines, enjam- bement) that they are making so much noise about. *' From 1830 to 1831 we were persuaded that romanti- cism was the historic style {genre historique) or, if you please, this mania which has lately seized our authors for calling the characters of their novels and melo- dramas Charlemagne, Francis I., or Henry IV., in- 7he Subject 'Defined, 2 1 stead of Amadis, Oronte, or Saint-Albin. . . From 183 1 to the year following we thought it was \h^ genre i7itime, about which there was much talk. But with all the pains that we took we never could discover what the gefire intime was. The ' intimate ' novels are just like the others. They are in two volumes octavo, with a great deal of margin. . . They have yellow covers and they cost fifteen francs." From 1832 to 1833 they conjectured that romanticism might be a system of philosophy and political economy. From 1833 to 1834 they believed that it consisted in not shaving one's self, and in wearing a waistcoat vv'ith wide facings very much starched. At last they bethink themselves of a certain lawyer's clerk, who had first imported these literary disputes into the village, in 1824. To him they expose their difficulties and ask for an answer to the question. What is romanticism? After a long conversation, they receive this final definition. " Romanticism, my dear sir! No, of a surety, it is neither the disregard of the unities, nor the alliance of the comic and \ tragic, nor anything in the world expressible by words. In vain you grasp the butterfly's wing; the dust which gives it its color is left upon your fingers. Romanti- cism is the star that weeps, it is the wind that wails, it is the night that shudders, the bird that flies and the flower that breathes perfume: it is the sudden gush, the ecstasy grown faint, the cistern beneath the palms, rosy hope with her thousand loves, the angel and the pearl, the white robe of the willows. It is the infinite and the starry," etc., etc. Then M. Ducoudray, a magistrate of the depart- ment, gives his theory of romanticism, which he con- \ 22 iA History of English %omanticism. siders to be an effect of the religious and political reaction under the restored Bourbon monarchy of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. '*The mania for ballads, arriving from Germany, met the legitimist poetry one fine day at Ladvocat's bookshop; and the two of them, pickax in hand, went at nightfall to a churchyard, to dig up the Middle Ages." The taste for medisevalism, M. Ducoudray adds, has survived the revolution of 1830, and romanticism has even entered into the service of liberty and progress, where it is a manifest anachronism, '' employing the style of Ronsard to celebrate railroads, and imitating Dante when it chants the praises of Washington and La- fayette." Dupuis was tempted to embrace M. Ducou- dray's explanation, but Cotonet was not satisfied. He shut himself in, for four months, at the end of which he announced his discovery that the true and only dif- ference between the classic and the romantic is that the latter uses a good many adjectives. He illustrates his principle by giving passages from " Paul and Vir- ginia " and the '* Portuguese Letters," written in the romantic style. Thus Musset pricks a critical bubble with the point of his satire; and yet the bubble declines to vanish. There must really be some more substantial difference than this between classic and romantic, for the terms persist and are found useful. It may be true that the romantic temper, being subjective and excited, tends to an excess in adjectives; the adjective being that part of speech which attributes qualities, and is there- fore most freely used by emotional persons. Still it would be possible to cut out all the adjectives, not strictly necessary, from one of Tieck's Mdrchen with- The Subject defined. 23 out in the slightest degree disturbing its romantic character. It remains to add that romanticism is a word which faces in two directions. It is now opposed to realism, as it was once opposed to classicism. As, in one way, its freedom and lawlessness, its love of novelty, experi- ment, ** strangeness added to beauty," contrast with the classical respect for rules, models, formulas, prec- edents, conventions; so, in another way, its discon- tent with things as they are, its idealism, aspiration, mysticism contrast with the realist's conscientious adherence to fact. ** Ivanhoe " is one kind of romance; ** The Marble Faun " is another.* * In modern times romanticism, typifying a permanent tendency of the human mind, has been placed in opposition to what is called realism. . . [But] there is, as it appears to us, but one fundamental note which all romanticism . , . has in common, and that is a deep disgust with the world as it is and a desire to depict in literature something that is claimed to be nobler and better. — Essays on German Liter aiure, by H. H. Boyesen^ pp. 358 and 356. CHAPTER II. ^be Budustana. The Romantic Movement in England was a part of the general European reaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century. This began somewhat earlier in England than in Germany, and very much earlier than in France, where literary conservatism went strangely hand in hand with political radicalism. In England the reaction was at first gradual, timid, and uncon- scious. It did not reach importance until the sev- enth decade of the century, and culminated only in the early years of the nineteenth century. The me- diaeval revival was only an incident — though a leading incident — of this movement ; but it is the side of it with which the present work will mainly deal. Thus I shall have a great deal to say about Scott; very little about Byron, intensely romantic as he was in many meanings of the word. This will not preclude me from glancing occasionally at other elements besides mediaevalism which enter into the concept of the term "romantic." Reverting then to our tentative definition — Heine's definition— of romanticism, as the reproduction in modern art and literature of the life of the Middle Ages, it should be explained that the expression, " Middle Ages," is to be taken here in a liberal sense. Contributions to romantic literature such as Macpher- The <^ugiistans. 25 son's "Ossian," Collins' '' Ode on the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands," and Gray's translations from the Welsh and the Norse, relate to periods which ante- date that era of Christian chivalry and feudalism, extending roughly from the eleventh century to the fifteenth, to which the term, "Middle Ages," more strictly applies. The same thing is true of the ground- work, at least, of ancient hero-epics like ** Beowulf" and the ** Nibelungen Lied," of the Icelandic " Sagas," and of similar products of old heathen Europe which have come down in the shape of mythologies, popu- lar superstitions, usages, rites, songs, and traditions. These began to fall under the notice of scholars about the middle of the last century and made a deep im- pression upon contemporary letters. Again, the influence of the Middle Age proper pro- longed itself beyond the exact close of the medieval period, which it is customary to date from the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The great romantic poets of Italy, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, wrote in the full flush of the pagan revival and made free use of the Greek and Roman mythologies and the fables of Homer, Vergil, and Ovid; and yet their work is hardly to be described as classical. Nor is the work of their English disciples, Spenser and Sidney; while the en- tire Spanish and English drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (down to 1640, and with an occasional exception, like Ben Jonson) is romantic. Calderon is romantic; Shakspere and Fletcher are romantic. If we agree to regard medieval literature, then, as comprising all the early literature of Europe which drew its inspiration from other than Greek- Latin sources, we shall do no great violence to the 26 ^ History of English %omanticism. usual critical employment of the word. I say ^arfy literature, in order to exclude such writings as are wholly modern, like "Robinson Crusoe," or " Gulliver's Travels," or Fielding's novels, which are neither classic nor romantic, but are the original creation of our own time. With works like these, though they are per- haps the most characteristic output of the eighteenth century, our inquiries are not concerned. It hardly needs to be said that the reproduction, or imitation, of mediaeval life by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romanticists, contains a large ad- mixture of modern thought and feeling. The brilliant pictures of feudal society in the romances of Scott and Fouque give no faithful image of that society, even when they are carefully correct in all ascertain- able historical details.* They give rather the im- pression left upon an alien mind by the quaint, picturesque features of a way of life which seemed neither quaint nor picturesque to the men who lived it, but only to the man who turns to it for relief from the prosaic, or at least familiar, conditions of the * As another notable weakness of the age is its habit of looking back, in a romantic and passionate idleness, to the past ages — not understanding them all the while ... so Scott gives up nearly the half of his intellectual power to a fond yet purposeless dreaming over the past ; and spends half his literary labors in endeavors to revive it, not in reality, but on the stage of fiction : endeavors which were the best of the kind that modernism made, but still suc- cessful only so far as Scott put under the old armor the everlasting human nature which he knew ; and totally unsuccessful so far as con- cerned the painting of the armor itself, which he knew nof, . . . His romance and antiquarianism, his knighthood and monkery, are all false, and he knows them to be false. — Ruskin, " Modern Paint- ers'' Vol. III. p. 279 (First American Edition, i860). The zAugustans. 27 modern world. The offspring of the modern imagina- tion, acting upon medieval material, may be a per- fectly legitimate, though not an original, form of art. It may even have a novel charm of its own, unlike either parent, but like Euphorion, child of Faust by Helen of Troy, a blend of Hellas and the Middle Age. Scott's verse tales are better poetry than the English metrical romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Tennyson has given a more perfect shape to the Arthurian legends than Sir Thomas Malory, their compiler, or Walter Map and Chrestien de Troyes, their possible inventors. But, of course, to study the Middle Age, as it really was, one must go not to Ten- nyson and Scott, but to the ''Chanson de Roland," and the ''Divine Comedy," and the " Romaunt of the Rose," and the chronicles of Villehardouin, Joinville, and Froissart. And the farther such study is carried, the more evident it becomes that " mediaeval " and " romantic " are not synonymous. The Middle Age was not, at all points, romantic: it is the modern romanticist who makes, or finds, it so. He sees its strange, vivid peculiarities under the glamour of distance. Chaucer's temper, for instance, was by no means ro- mantic. That "good sense " which Dryden mentions as his prominent trait; that "low tone" which Lowell praises in him, and which keeps him close to the com- mon ground of experience, pervade his greatest work, the " Canterbury Tales," with an insistent realism. It is true that Chaucer shared the beliefs and influences of his time and was a follower of its literary fashions. In his version of the "Romaunt of the Rose," his imitations of Machault, and his early work in general, 28 e// History of English Romanticism. he used the mediaeval machinery of allegory and dreams. In " Troilus and Cresseide " and the tale of **Palamon and Arcite," he carries romantic love and knightly honor to a higher pitch than his model, Boc- caccio. But the shrewdly practical Pandarus of the former poem — a character almost wholly of Chaucer's creation — is the very embodiment of the anti-roman- tic attitude, and a remarkable anticipation of Sancho Panza; while the "Rime of Sir Thopas " is a dis- tinct burlesque of the fantastic chivalry romances.* Chaucer's pages are picturesque with tournament, hunting parties, baronial feasts, miracles of saints, feats of magic; but they are solid, as well, with the everyday life of fourteenth-century England. They have the naivete a.nd garrulity which are marks of me- diaeval work, but not the quaintness and grotesquerie which are held to be marks of romantic work. Not archaic speech, but a certain mental twist constitutes quaintness. Herbert and Fuller are quaint; Blake is grotesque; Donne and Charles Lamb are willfully quaint, subtle, and paradoxical. But Chaucer is always straight-grained, broad, and natural. Even Dante, the poet of the Catholic Middle Age; Dante, the mystic, the idealist, with his intense spirituality and his passion for symbolism, has been sometimes called classic, by virtue of the powerful construction of his great poem, and his scholastic rigidity of method. " The relation between modern romanticizing litera- * See also the sly hit at popular fiction in the Nonne Prestes Tale: " This story is also trewe, I undertake, As is the book of Launcelot de Lake, ' That women hold in ful gret reverence." The ^ugustans. 29 ture and the real literature of the Middle Ages, is something like that between the literature of the renaissance and the ancient literatures of Greece and Rome. But there is this difference, that, while the renaissance writers fell short of their pattern, the modern schools of romance have outgone their mas- ters — not perhaps in the intellectual — but certainly in the artistic value of their product. Mediaeval literature, wonderful and stimulating as a whole and beautiful here and there in details of execution, affords few models of technical perfection. The civilization which it reflected, though higher in its possibilities than the classic civilizations, had not yet arrived at an equal grade of development, was inferior in intelli- gence and the matured results of long culture. The epithets of Gothic ignorance, rudeness, and barbarism, which the eighteenth-century critics applied so freely to all the issue of the so-called dark ages, were not entirely without justification. Dante is almost the only strictly mediaeval poet in whose work the form seems adequate to the content; for Boccaccio and Petrarca stand already on the sill of the renaissance. In the arts of design the case was partly reversed. If the artists of the renaissance did not equal the Greeks in sculpture and architecture, they probably excelled them in painting. On the other hand, the restorers of Gothic have never quite learned the secret of the mediaeval builders. However, if the analogy is not pushed too far, the romantic revival may be regarded as a faint counterpart of the renaissance. Just as, in the fifteenth century, the fragments of a half-forgotten civilization were pieced together; Greek manuscripts sought out, cleaned, edited, and printed: statues, coins, so c/l History of English ^manticism. vases dug up and ranged in museums: debris cleared away from temples, amphitheaters, basilicas; till gradually the complete image of the antique world grew forth in august beauty, kindling an excitement of mind to which there are few parallels in history; j so, in the eighteenth century, the despised ages of monkery, feudalism, and superstition began to reassert their claims upon the imagination. Ruined castles and abbeys, coats of mail, illuminated missals, manu- script romances, black-letter ballads, old tapestries, and wood carvings acquired a new value. Antiquaries and virtuosos first, and then poets and romancers, reconstructed in turn an image of mediaeval society. True, the later movement was much the weaker of the two. No such fissure yawned between modern times and the Middle Ages as had been opened between the ancient world and the Middle Ages by the ruin of the Roman state and by the barbarian migrations. Nor had ten centuries of rubbish accumulated over the remains of mediaeval culture. In 1700 the Middle Ages were not yet so very remote. The nations and lan- guages of Europe continued in nearly the same limits which had bounded them two centuries before. The progress in the sciences and mechanic arts, the dis- covery and colonizing of America, the invention of printing and gunpowder, and the Protestant refor- mation had indeed drawn deep lines between modern and mediaeval life. Christianity, however, formed a connecting link, though, in Protestant countries, the continuity between the earlier and later forms of the religion had been interrupted. One has but to com- pare the list of the pilgrims whom Chaucer met at the Tabard, with the company that Captain Sentry or The ^ugustans. 3 ^ Peregrine Pickle would be likely to encounter at a suburban inn, to see how the face of English society had changed between 1400 and 1700. What has become of the knight, the prioress, the sumner, the monk, pardoner, squire, alchemist, friar; and where can they or their equivalents be found in all England? ^ The limitations of my subject will oblige me to treat the English romantic movement as a chapter in literary history, even at the risk of seeming to adopt a narrow method. Yet it would be unphilosophical to consider it as a merely esthetic affair, and to lose sight altogether of its deeper springs in the religious and ethical currents of the time. For it was, in part, a return of warmth and color into English letters; and that was only a symptom of the return of warmth and color — that is, of emotion and imagination — into English life and thought: into the Church, into poli- tics, into philosophy. Romanticism, which sought to evoke from the past a beauty that it found wanting in the present, was but one phase of that revolt against the coldness and spiritual deadness of the first half of the eighteenth century which had other sides in the idealism of Berkeley, in the Methodist and Evangel- ical revival led by Wesley and Whitefield, and in the sentimentalism which manifested itself in the writings of Richardson and Sterne. Corresponding to these on the Continent were German pietism, the transcenden- tal philosophy of Kant and his continuators, and the emotional excesses of works like Rousseau's ** Nou- velle Heloise " and Goethe's ''Sorrows of Werther." Romanticism was something more, then, than a new literary mode; a taste cultivated by dilettante 32 as de zlle! " "Theology," says Leslie Stephen, "was, for the ^ most part, almost as deistical as the deists. A hatred for enthusiasm was as strongly impressed upon the whole character of contemporary thought as a hatred of skepticism. . . A good common-sense religion should be taken for granted and no questions asked. , . With Shakspere, or Sir Thomas Browne, or Jeremy Taylor, or Milton, man is contemplated in his relations to the universe; he is in presence of eter- nity and infinity; life is a brief drama; heaven and hell are behind the veil of phenomena; at every step * The cold-hearted, polished Chesterfield is a very representative figure. Johnson, who was really devout, angrily affirmed that his celebrated letters taught ' ' the morality of a whore with the manners of a dancing-master." 7he zAugustans. 41 our friends vanish into the abyss of ever present mys- tery. To all such thoughts the writers of the eight- eenth century seemed to close their eyes as resolutely as possible. . . The absence of any deeper specula- tive ground makes the immediate practical questions of life all the more interesting. We know not what we are, nor whither we are going, nor whence we come; but we can, by the help of common sense, dis- cover a sufficient share of moral maxims for our guid- ance in life. . . Knowledge of human nature, as it actually presented itself in the shifting scene before them, and a vivid appreciation of the importance of the moral law, are the staple of the best literature of the time."* The God of the deists was, in truth, hardly more impersonal than the abstraction worshiped by the orthodox — the ** Great Being " of Addison's essays, the "Great First Cause" of Pope's ** Universal Prayer," invoked indifferently as ''Jehovah, Jove, or Lord." Dryden and Pope were professed Catholics, but there is nothing to distinguish their so-called sacred poetry from that of their Protestant contemporaries. Con- trast the mere polemics of ''The Hind and the Pan- ther" with really Catholic poems like Southwell's " Burning Babe " and Crashaw's " Flaming Heart," or even with Newman's "Dream of Gerontius." In his "Essay on Man," Pope versified, without well un- derstanding, the optimistic deism of Leibnitz, as expounded by Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke. The An- glican Church itself was in a strange condition, when * ** History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century," Vol. II. chap. xii. section iv. See also " Selections from Newman," by Lewis E. Gates, Introduction, pp. xlvii-xlviii. (1895). f 42