.THE CHANGING CONCEPTS OF.
ROMANTICISM

Thesis for tho Degree of M. A.
MICHIGAN STATE COLLEGE

Henry H. Brown
1949

 

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THE CHESS NS CDECEPTJ OF ROELNTIJISM

BY

A THESIS

Submitted to the Graduate School of Michigan State
College of Agriculture and Applied Science in
partial fulfillment of the requirement-
for the degree

Master of Arte

Department of English

1949

PREFACE

It is not the purpose of this study to be an exhaustive examination
of the question of Romanticism. That problem is too immense. As one
writer has noted, there are over eleven thousand books on the subject.
Any attempt to consider that amount of critical material is out of the
question.

Neither is this paper intended to answer the question, ”what is
Romanticism!“ Of the more than eleven thousand books on the subject,
there are probably more than eleven thousand answers to the question,
each of them different. There is some agreement among critics that no
one solution is adequate. Therefore, such an attempt in this paper
would be futile labor.

The purmose of this study,ithen, is to indicate how the critical
concepts of the leaning of Runanticism have changed in the period from
1800 to the present time. It is, in a sense, a short history of the
critical reaction to the Romanticism of the early nineteenth century.

The plan of the work is chronolOgical. Each author is considered
according to the time when his critical concepts appeared in publication.
It is believed that this method will best indicate the changes through
which criticism of the Romantic period has gone.

Each author is considered in three more or less distinct steps.
First, his definition of Romanticism is explained. Second, his supporting
arguments are considered. And third, the connection between his critical

concepts and the social and economic environment of his time is indicated.

INTRODUCTION

The history of Romanticism is long and varied. Since 1800, when
the period of its fullest expression began, it has been adored and
vilified, but it has never been ignored. This, I think is proof
enough that it occupies an important place in literary history. As
such, then, it is worthy of serious study.

Attempts to define Romanticism are legion, but there never has
been a definition sufficiently inclusive to be adequate. The chances
are that there never will be, for Romanticism and the Romantic Period
exhibit a heterOgeniety unsurpassed by any other period in English
literary history. But this inability to define is no evidence of its
unreality. It is, in fact, a definite force in literature and is,
therefore, a valid subject for a study such as this.

The criticism of this phenomon of the early nineteenth century
has gone through a number of interesting and important changes. The
nature of these changes will be considered in this paper, and an

attempt will be made to trace the pattern which these changes have made.

is are here concerned with the critical concepts of a period in
literary history which has long been cabled the Romantic Period, and
which has been understood to have occupied, roughly, the first half of
the nineteenth century. During this period, in which there deve10ped a
new era of poetry, there also deveIOped a new era of criticism. There
was, in the poetic practices and theories of Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Keats and Shelley, a certain common attitude and this attitude has
boon, and is, called Romantic. Therefore, if this attitude is Romantic,
then the concepts and ideas which these critics expressed may be rightly
termed their understanding of homanticism. It will be best, then, to
Open this study with an attempt to discover what ideas the critics of
age were trying to develop, and what they thought about them.

There were three important problems with which the Romantics
concerned themselves. The first was the question of the nature of poetry,
which the age felt it was taking up and answering in important and
partially new ways. The ascend was the problem of Shakespeare and the
prOper method of evaluating his works. The third, which may be regarded
as equivalent to the question of Romanticism itself, was that of the
right to eschew the rules of the preceding age and the deveIOpment of
a new and liberal doctrine of the legitimate in literary art.

The critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries held that
poetry was either embellished imitation or embellished fiction. The aim
of the post was the betterment of reality and nature. In contrast, the
Romantic poets and critics thought of poetry primarily as a means of
communicating emotion by representing the subjective reaction to facts,
and secondarily, as a means of interpreting experiences in a new way,

through an intuitive power which ordinary men did not possess.

This idea was worked out in the new doctrine of the imagination
set forth by Wordsworth and Coleridge, and later by Shelley and Leigh
Hunt. The preceding era had regarded the imagination as a recalling
faculty like the memory, or as a creative process. The Romantics went
further. For them the imagination was a process which, through objects
and sensations, produced a realization of things beyond the realm of
sense. Thus, the function of the post was to perceive and interpret the
inner nature of these matters. They felt that poetry was truthful to a
greater degree than prose or science, and they found its superiority
to consist of the power of individual intensity sffiiflsight and feeling.

To illustrate these points of view, let us note some specific
passages from the works of these author-critics.

wordsworth said of the aim of his poetry:

The principal object, then, prcposed in these poems was to

choose incidents and situations from common life, and relate

or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a

selection of language really used by men, and at the same

time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination,

whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in

‘3 annual aSPOC‘bs s s s1

He continues:

Another circumstance must be mentioned which distinguishes

these poems from the pepular poetry of the day; it is.this,

that the feeling deveIOped therein gives importance to the

action and situation, and not the action and situation to

the feeling. 2

...the subject is indeed important! For the human mind is

1 William Wordsworth, "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1800,“

Wordsworth's Prefaces and Essays on Poetry, ed. A.J. George, Boston,
0.0. Heath, 1892, p. 5-&.

2 ibid., 1). 6e

is capable of being excited without the application of gross
and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint per-
ception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and
who does not further know that one being is elevated above
another in proportion as he possesses this capability.5

0f the qualities making up a post he said:

Among the qualities there enumerated as principally conducing

to form a poet, is implied nothing differeing in kind from

other men, but only in degree. The sum of what was said is,

that the poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by a ,
greater promptness to think and feel without immediate external
excitement, and a greater power in expressing such thoughts

and feelings as are produced in him in that manner.h

Defining poetry he said:

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in
tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of
reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion,
kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation,
is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the
mind.5

Uordsworth's definition of imagination is important:

Imagination, in the sense of the word as giving title to a
class of the following poems, has no reference to images that
are merely faithful cepy, existing in the mind, of absent
external objects; but it is a word of higher import, denoting
Operations of the mind upon those objects, and processes of
creation or of composition governed by certain fixed laws.6

He continues,

...but the imagination also shapes and creates; and how! By
innumerable processes; and in none does it more delight then
in that of consolidating number into unity, and dissolving
and separating unity into nunberqaltsrations proceeding fru,
and governed by, a sublime consciousness of the soul in her
own.mighufl and almost divine powern.7

Oclsridgs said of imagination:

The imagination, then, I consider as either primary or secondary.

5 Ibid..pe 6’70

‘ Ibid',ps 20s

5 Ibid.,ps 26s

6 ailliam Wordsworth, "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1815,' Ibid,,
’e h6‘h7s

7 Ibid,,p. 51.

The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and
prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in
the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite
I AM. The secondary imagination I consider as an echo of the
former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as
identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and
differing only in degree and in the mode of its Operation.

It dissolves,diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate: or
where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all
events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially
vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed
and dOId e8

His definition of poetry:

My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest
use of the word, have been in part anticipated in the preceding
disquisition on the fancy and imagination. What is poetry? is
so nearly the same question with, What is a post? that the
answer to the one is involved in the solution of the other.

For it is the distinction resulting from the poetic genius
itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts, and
emotions of the poet's own mind.9

Of the post he said:

The poet, described in the ideal perfection, brings the whole
soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its
faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and
dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends
and (as it were) fuses each into each, by that synthetic and
magical power to which we have exelusively apprepriated the
name of imagination.10

Haslitt'e definition of poetry is lengthy, much qualified:

The best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it

is the natural impression of any object or event, by its vividnsss
exciting and involuntary movement of imagination and passion,

and producing, by sylpathy, a certain.mcdulation of the voice,

or sounds, expressing it.ll

Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It

8 Samuel T. Coleridge, ”Biographia Literaria,‘ Chapt. XIII,‘232
Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. W.G.T. Shedd, New York,
Harper and Brothers, 1854,?01.III, p. 365-564.

9 Ib___i__d,,0hapt. m. p. 575-571:

10 Ibid..po ,7k.

11 ailliam Hazlitt, “On Poetry In General,' The Complete Works of
William Hazlitt, ed.P P.P. Howe, London, J.I .Dent, 1950, Vol. V, p. l.

relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the
human mind. It comes home to the bosOms and businesses of men:
for nothing but what so comes home to them in the most general
and intelligible shape can be a subject for poetry. Poetry is
the universal language which the heart holds with nature and
1t!61f.12

Poetry, then, is an imitation of nature, but the imagination

and the passions are a part of man's nature. We shape things
according to our wishes and fancies, without poetry: but

poetry is the most emphatical language that can be found for
those creations of the mind which ecstasy is most cunning in.
Neither a mere delineation of natural feelings, however distinct
or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of poetry,
without the heightenings of the imagination.l§

It does not define the limits of sense, or analyze the distinctions
of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the imagination
beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object or
feeling.14

Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination and
the passions, of dancy and will. Nothing, therdfore, can be more
absurd than the outcry which has been sometimes raieod by frigid
and pedantic critics, for reducing the language of poetry to
the standard of common sense and reason; for the end and use

of poetry, 'both at the first and now, was and is to hold the
mirror up to nature,' (Hamlet, III,ii, 2h) seen through the
medium of passion and imagination, not divested of that medium
by means of literal truth or abstract reason.15

It is the undefined and uncommon that gives birth and scape to
the imagination; we can only fancy what we do not know.16

Byron took.an adverse view of imagination and invention:

It is the fashion of the day to lay great stress upon what they
call 'imagination' and 'inventicn', the two commonest of
qualities: an Irish peasant with a little whiskey in his head
will imagine and invent more than would furnish forth a modern
pOOIe17

shellsy's.definition of imagination and reason:
According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental

l2 Ibid,,p. 2.

15 Ibid.,pe 5e

1“ Ibide

15 Ib—Tdo,po 80

16 Ibid.,Pe 9e

17 Lord Byron, ”Letter to John Murray, Esq., On the Rev. U.L. Bowles‘s
Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pepe,' as quoted‘byHR.M. Alden,
Oritical Essays of the Early Nineteenth Oentggy, New York, Scribner's,
1921. Fe 269.

action which are called reason and imagination, the former

may be considered as mind contemplating the relations borne

by one thought to another, however produced, and the latter

as mind acting upon these thoughts so as to color than with

its own light, and composing from them as from elements, other
thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its
own integrity. The one is...the principle of synthesis, and
has for its object those forms which are common to universal
nature and existence itself; the other is...the principle of
analysis, and its action regards the relations of things simply
as relations; considering thoughts not in their integral unity,
but as the algebraic representations which conduct to certain
general results. Reason is the enumeration of quantities
already known; imagination is the perception of the value of
those quantities, both separately and as a whole. Reason respects
the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.
Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the
body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.l8

0f poetry Shelley said:

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be the expression
of the imagination; and poetry is connate with the origin of man.19

He considers imagination the instrument of moral good:

The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own
nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful
which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A.nan,
to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively;
he must put himself in the place of another and of many others;
the pains and the pleasures of his species must become his own.
The great instrument of moral good is the imagination: and

poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry
enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing

it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of
attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts,
and which fonn new intervals and interstices whose void forever
craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the
organ of the moral nature of man, in the ease manner as exercise
strengthens a limb.20

Poetry compared to logic:

Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic,
that it is not subject to the control of the active powers of

18 Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Defence of Poetry,' The Complete agggg
of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Reger Ingpen and W.E. Peck, New York,
Scribner's, 1950, Vol. VII, p. 109.

19 Ibid.

20 lbid,,p. 118.

of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence have no
necessary connection with the consciousness or will.21

Hunt's definition of poetry:

Poetry, strictly and artistically so called,-that is to

say, considered not merely as poetic feeling, which is more

or less shared by all the world, but as the Operation of

that feeling, such as we see it in the poet's book,~-is the
utterance of a passion for truth, beauty, and power, embodying
and illustrating its conceptions by imagination and fancy,

and modulating its language on the principle of variety in
uniforuity.22

Poetry employs imagination:

And.

It embodies and illustrates its impressions by imagination,
or images of objects of which it treats, and other images
brought in to throw light on those objects, in order that it
may enjoy and impart the feeling of their truth in its utmost
convictions and affluence.25

Poetry is imaginative passion. The quickest and subtlest test
of the possession of its essence is in expression; the variety
of things to be eXpressed shows the amount of its resources;

and the continuity of the song completes the evidence of its
strength and greatness. He who has thought, feeling, eXpression,
imagination, action, character, and continuity, all in the
largest amount and highest degree, is the greatest poet.24

Poetry begins where matter of fact or science ceases to be
merely such, and to exhibit a further truth, that is to say,
the connection it has with the world of emotion, and its
power to produce imaginative pleasure.25

Imagination defined by Hunt:

There are different kinds and degrees of imagination, some of
than necessary to the formation of every true poet, and all of
them possessed by the greatest. Perhaps they may be enumerated
as follows: First, that which presents to the mind any object
or circumstance in everyday life, as when we imagine a man
holding a sword, or looking out of a window; Second, that which
presents real, but not every-day circumstances, as King Alfred

21 Ibld..p. 158.

‘22 Leigh Hunt, “An Answer to the Question, What Is Poetry?,'

igagination and Fancy, London, Smith, Elder and 00., 1844, p. 1.

25 Ibidwp. 2.
2h lbid,,p. 5.
25 Ibid,,p. A.

tending the loaves, or Sir Philip Sidney giving up the water

to the dying soldier; Third, that which combines character and
events imitated from real life with imitative realities of its

own invention, as the probable parts of the histories of Prism

and Macbeth, or what may be called natural fiction as distinguished
from supernatural; Fourth, that which conjures up things and
events not to be found in nature, as Homer‘s gods and Shakespeare's
witches, enchanted horses and spears, arioato's hippogriff, etc.;
Fifth, that which, in order to illustrate or aggravate one image,
introduces another: sometimes in simile..., sometimes in
metaphor...) Sixth, that which reverses this process, and makes

a variety of circumstances take color from one, like nature

seen with jaundiced or glad eyes, or under the influence of

storm or sunshine....26

Imagination indeed, purely so called, is all feeling; the feeling

of the subtlest and most affecting analogies; the perception of

sympathies in the nature of things, or in their papular

attributes.27

The term imagination is too cbnfined; often too material. It

presents too invariable the idea of a solid body-of 'images'

in the sense of the plastercast cry about the streets.28

There also develOped in this period a new doctrine of Shakespeare
criticism. Like the new doctrine of poetry, this new criticism may be
better understood by comparing it with that of the preceding age.
Critics in the eighteenth cenfiiay found a paradox in Shakespeare's
admitted greatness because he violated the accepted rules of dramatic
composition. Thus, he was regarded as an exception, a child of nature
who was either ignorant of, or exempt from, the rules of art. This idea
is connected with the view of imagination as something centending with
reason for mastery. when reason and imagination were in prcper equilibrium
a real work of art resulted. In the nineteenth century the converse
theory was held. Imagination was thought superior to reason and thus,

Shakespeare's work was not paradoxical, but in accordance with more

profound laws of composition naturally understood by genius.

26 Ibid.,pe 7'80

27 Eflvspo 29'50-
28 bignp. 51.

 

H

Coleridge eXpounded thie doctrine, taking for the baeie of hie
viewe the idea that the lava of Shakespeare'e art were organic and not
fonmal like thoee made by men. The principlee of for: which an organiln
repreeente are determined by ite inner nature. Likewiee, if a work of
art ie organic, the lave by which it ie develOpcd will be found in ite
nature. Therefore, it ie nicer to attempt to underetand theee lave
than to obeerve the violation of other lave. Thie attitude nae held by
Coleridge and moet of hie contemporariee, and it became the orthodox
view of the nineteenth century.

There are however, two pointe of fallibility in thie view. Art ie
never epontaneoue, but ie modified both by the author'e intent and by
the tendenciee of hie time and place. The Ro-antiee however, could not
conceive of these fallaciee. Thue, there grew up a doctrine of Shakee-
peare'e perfection or infallibility.

A corollary to thie attitude wae the view of Shakeepeare'e charactere
ae having independent existence which led to diecueeing then ae actual
pereone. Thie method dominated the nineteenth century and it ie eeeent-
ially the eane ae we uee today. It did not dominate hovever, to the ex-
clueion or all other'nethode of critical approach. Coleridge developed
a new method, that of viewing Bhakeepeere'e work in ite hietorioal lett-
ing, which we aleo make uee of today.

Now, let ue examine eome paeeagee from the work of the Romantic
oritice concerning thie subject.

Coleridge held that Shakeepeare wae faultily underetood:

Shakeepeare appeare, from hie Venue and Adonie and Rape of

Lucrece alone apart from all hie great uorke. to have poeeeeeed

all the conditione of the true poet. Let me now proceed to

destroy, ae far ae may be in my pceer, the papular notion that
he wee a great dramatiet by more inetinct, that he grew immortal

10

in.hie own deepite, and eank below man of eeeond- or third-rate
power when he attempted ought beeide the drama-oeven ae beee
conetruct their celle and manufacture their honey to admirable
perfection, but would in vain attempt to bulid a neat. Now thie
mode of reconciling a compelled eenee of inferiority with a
feeling of pride began in a few pedante, who, having read that
Sophoclee wae the great model of tragedy, and Arietotle the
infallible dictator of ite rulee, and finding that Lear, Hamlet,
Othello, and other maeterpiecee were neither in imitation of
Saphoclee nor in obedience to Arietotle, and not having (with

one or two exceptioneo the courage to affirm that the delight
which their country reoeivedfrom.generation to gneeration, in
defiance of the alteratione of oircumetaneee and habite, wae
wholly groundleee, took upon them, as a happy medium and refuge
to talk of Shakespeare ae a eort of beautiful lueue naturae, a
delightful monater,-wild, indeed, and without taste or judgement,
but, like the inepired idiote eo much venerated in the Eaet,
uttering, amid the etrangeet folliee, the eublimeet truthe. In
nine placee out of ten in which I find hie awful name mentiOIId.
it ie with eame epithet of 'wild,‘ 'irregular,' 'pure child of
nature,' etc. If all thie be true, we muet eubmit to it; though
to a thinking mind it cannot but be painful to find any excellence,
more human, thrown out of all human analogy, and thereby leaving
no neither rulee for imitation, nor motivee to imitate; but if
falae, it ie a dangeroue faleehood, for it afforde a refuge to
eecret aelf-conceit,-enablee a vain man at once to eecape hie
reader‘e indignation by general ewollen panegyrice, and merely

by hie ipee dixit to treat ae contemptible what he hae not
intellect enough to comprehend, or eoul to feel, without aeeigning
any reason, or referring hie opinion to any demonetrative
principle: thue leaving Shakeepeare ae a eort of Grand Llama,
adored indeed, and hie very excremente prised ae reliee, but with
no authority or r031 influence.29

Leeurcdly that criticism of Shakeepeare will alone be genial
which ie reverential. The Engliehman who without reverenceo-a
proud and affectionate reverence-can utter the name of iillilm
Shakespeare, etande diequalified for the office of critic.50

Shakeepeare'e work ie organic:

Let me, then, once more eubmit thie queetion to minde emancipated
alike from national, or party, or eectarian prejudice: Are the
playe of Shakeepeare worke of rude uncultivated geniue, in which
the eplendor of the parte compeneatee--if aught can compeneate-d
for the barbaroue ehapeleeenese and irregularity of the whole!
Or ie the form.equally admirable with the matter, and the judge-
ment of the great poet not leee deeerving our wonder than hie

29 S.T. Coleridge, “Shakespeare'e Judgement Equal to Hie Ceniue,’
The Cemplete iorke of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. I.C.T. Shedd, New York,
Harper and Brothere, 1684, Vol. IV, p. 50-51.

m Ibid.’ p O 52.

ll

genius? Or, again, to repeat the question in other words, Is
Shakespeare a great dramatic post on account only of those
beauties and excellences which he possesses in common with the
ancients, but with diminished claims to our love and honor to

the full extent of hie differences from them? Or are these very
differences additional proofs of poetic wisdom, at once results
and symbols of living power as contracted with lifeless mechanism
o-of free and rival originality as codyfladistinguished from
servile imitation or (more accurately) a blind cepying of effects
instead of a true imitation of the essential principles? Imagine
not that I am about to cppose genius to rules. No! the comparative
value of these rules is the very cause to be tried. The spirit

of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity
circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with
beauty. It must embody in order to reveal itself; but a living
body is of necessity an organized one; and what is organization
but the connection of parts in and for a whole, so that.each

part is at once and and means? This is no discovery of criticism;
it is a necessity of the human mind: and all nations have felt
and obeyed it, in the invention of meter and measured sounds as
the vehicle and invotucrum of poetry, itself a fellow-growth from
the same life, even as the bark is to the tree.5l

De Quincey compared Shakespeare's works to those of nature:

0 mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply
and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena
ef'nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers,
like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which
are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties,
and in the perfect faith that in them there can be notoo much
or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that, the farther
we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of
design and eelfbsupporting arrangement where the careless eye
had seen nothing but accident.32

And Lamb said:

It is common for peeple to talk of Shakespeare's plays being.gg
natural; that everybody can understand him. They are natural
indeed, they are grounded deep in nature, so deep that the depth
of thee lies out of the reach of most of us.55

The third question of importance upon which the Romantics expressed
their views in criticism was that of correctness and freedom in poetry.

51 Ibid., p. 55-54.

52 Thomas De Quincsy, "On Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.“ 2!}:
Collected Writings of Thomas De guinggy, Vol. 1, p. 595.594.

55 Charles Lamb, "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare,"zhg_ggllggggd
works of Charles Lamb, 9. 552.

12

wherever romantic dyadsnciee are found in criticism, there will also
be found either indifference or hostility to the formal restrictions
which other sources had placed upon the author. for example, if the
preceding age insists upon observing the unities in the drama, the
Romantic,‘ill insist upon their independence of such rules. however,
the early nineteenth century was not much concerned with these problems,
first, becaurse the eighteenthéentury had not provided any very imposing
authority, and second, because the chief battleground of such problems,
the drama, did not command very much interest during the period. Never-
theless, some instances of anti-classical radicalism appeared, and it
is of these that we shall take notice.

DeQuineey outlines the function of literature:

In that Brent social organ which, collectively, we call literature,
there may be distinguished two separate offices, that may blend
and often do so, but capable, severally, of a severe insulation,
and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There is, first,
the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of
power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of

the second is to move; the first is a rudder, the second an ear

or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding;
the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher under-
standing cr reason, but always through affections of pleasure

and sympathy. Remotely, it may travel towards an object seated

in what Lord Bacon calls--'dry lights' but proximately it does

and must operate—oelse it desses to be a humid light which clothes
itself in the mists and glittering iris of human passions, dedyfles
and genial emotions.)h

Of the worth of literature be said:

Were it not that human sensibilities are ventilated and continually
called out into exercise by the great phenomena of infdgfiy, or

of real life as it moves through chance and change, or of literature
as it recombines these elements in the mimicries of poetry,

romance, etc., it is certain that, like any animal power or
muscular energy falling to disuse, all such sensibilities would

5% Thomas DeQuincey, "The Poetry of Pope," The Collected Writings
0; Thomas Deguincey, ed. David Masson, London, A.C. Black, 1897, Vol. XI.
P0 $550

1)

gradually droOp and dwindls. It is the relation to these great
moral capacities of man that the literature of power, as contra-
distinguished from that of knowledge, lives and has its field

of action. It is concerned with what is highest in man; for the
scripture! speak not of the understanding, but of the under‘
standing heart, '-making the heart, i.e., the great intuitive
(or non-discursive) organ, to be the highest state of capacity
for the infinite. Tragedy, romance, fairy tale, or epopee, all
alike restore to man's mind the ideals of justice, of hepe, of
truth, of mercy, or rotributions, which else (left to the support
of daily life in its realities) would languish for want of
sufficient illustration.3§

Lord Maoauley outlined the difference between eighteenth and nineteenth
century poetry:

Hherein especially does the poetry of our times differ from that
of the last century? Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would
answer that the poetry of the last century was correct, but cold
and mechanical, and that the poetry of our time, though wild and
irregular, presented far more vivid images and excited the
passions far more strongly than that of Parnell, of Addison, or
of Pepe. In the same manner we constantly hear it said that the
poets of the age of Elizabeth had far more genius, but far less
correctness, than those of the age of Anne. It seems to be taken
for granted that there is some incompatibility, some antithesis,
between correctness and creative power. We rather suspect that
this notion arises merely from an abuse of words, and that it
has been the parent of many of the fallacies which perplex the
science of criticism.56

what is meant by correctness in Poetry? If by correctness be
meant the conforming to rules which have their foundation in
truth and in the principles of human.nature, then correctness
is only another name for excell once. If by correctness be mdgfit
the conforming to rules purely arbitrary, correctness may be
another name for dulnese and abeurdity.57

a writer who describes visible objects falsely, and violates

the prcpriety of character, a writer who makes mountains 'nod
their drowsy heads' at night, or a dying man take leave of the
world with a rant like that of liaximin, may be said, in the high
and just sense of the phrase, to write incorrectly. He viblates
the first great law of his art. His imitation is altOgether one
like the thing imitated. The four poets who are most eminently
free from incorrectness of this description are Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare, and Milton, They are therefore, in one sense, and

5, Ibid,,p. 56.‘

56 Lord Macaulay, I"l'hs Doctrine of Correctness,“ Miscellaneous
Uorksiof Lord Macaulay, ed. Lady Trevellyan, New York, Harper and
Brothers, 1880, Vol. I, p. 468-469.

14

that the best sense, the most correct poete.58

At last, when poetry had fallen into such utter decay that Mr.

Hayley was thought a great post, it began to appear that the

excess of the evil was about to work the cure. Men became tired

of an insipid conformity to a standard which derived no authority

from nature or reason. A shallow criticism had taught them to

ascribe a superstitious value to the spurious correctness of

poetasters. A deeper criticism brought them back to the true

correctness of the first great masters. The eternal laws of

poetry regained their power, and the temporary fashions which

had superseded those laws went after the wig of Lovelace and

the hOOp of Clarissg.§9

These, then, are the answers which the Romantics gave to the
questions mentioned earlier. They are, I think, representative of the
Romantic viewpoint. There are, it will be noticed, certain common
attitudes regarding imagination, the nature of poetry, Shakespeare and
correctness in poetry running throughout the passages quoted. The one
or two passages disagreeing with the common attitude can be eXplained
as exceptions. Byron, for example, was a reactioLary who delighted in
antagnoizing the other Romantics by expressing his aversion to certain
new ideas. 0n the whole, wagers justified, I think, in accepting the
attitudes expressed as the viewpoints current in the early nineteenth
“ht“ s

Now the Romantic Period is generally agreed by critics to have
ended approximately in 1830 with the ascendency of the young Tennyson.
There develOped, in this period after 1850, a new theory of poetry and
criticism which looked askance at the tenets of Romanticism and sometimes
even assailed its dominance. However, the most serious threat to Romanticism
did not deve10p until around 1859. This was the year that Darwin published
his‘inggg of the Specigg, and it was the many misinterpretations of

56 Ibid,
,9 QLdeeP- h77e

15

Dlrwin'e theories that raised the threat to Romanticien.

Hie theory of evolution, ae misrepresented by ite adherente and
lieunderetood by ite Opponents, wae purported to prove that the proceeeee
of nature indicated no purpoeiveneee. "All that happened wae by chance;
there was no directive tendency, no foreight, nothing like moral
governance or an ultimate tendency towards righteousness."ho Thie false
idea that Darwin had refuted the theory of design in the univeree ie the
heel! of the conviction, which in still current today, of the nelning-
leeeneee of human life. And, of couree, thie feeling etruch at the heeie
of the Romantic beliefe. With the trumph of thie naterialietie philonPhy,
there could be no compromise with Romantic dreane about the beauty of
nature and the moral value of the world.

Thie attack hy Darwinien abated towarde the laet decade of the nine-
teenth century. A new View of science and philceOphy began.to re-eeteblieh
the reputation of Romanticism. One of the first writere to attempt to
widen the boundariee of Romanticism wae Halter Pater. ln.hie hook,
Aggreciatione, he examined the queetion and cane to en intereeting and
novel conclueion.

The worde 'claaeical' and “romantic“ have been used eanetimee too
vaguely and ecuetimee too abeclutely hy eritice. thought Pater, yet they
do define two real tendenciee in the hietory of literature. They have
been.ueed to indicate greater cppceition between the tendenciee than
flatuelly exiete. But in the creative minde of all generatione thie
oppoeition does not exiet and the true teethetie critic neee the divieien
only to delineate the peculiaritiee or the objecte which concern hie.

Claeeiciel hee often been need, in e echolaetic eenee, to denote

#0 Ernest Bernbaun, guide Through the Romantic Movement, New York, Ronald
Preee, 19‘9. p. 505.

16

what ie old and accustomed at the expense of the new by critice who
value the old for the conventional authority that grows up about it.
In a like manner, Romanticism hae been ueed, vaguely, to denote
cppceition to eighteenth century literary traditions and a return to
the Middle Ages. In Germany it has been used to describe a certain
eehocl of writere, and in France it wae need to denote the appearance
of epecial artietie qualitiee in a certain period. 'But,' Pater main-
taine. Ithe romantic epirit ie, in reality, an ever-preeent, an enduring
principle. in the artietic temperament; and the qualitiee of thought and
etyle which that, and other eimilar ueee of the word 'romantic' really
indicate, are indeed but eynptome of a very continuoue and widely working
influence.'h1

To Pater, claaeical literature wae that which poeeeeeed abeolute
beauty’of artietie form and to which was added the accidental, tranquil
chann of faciliarity. He quotee Btendhal ae saying, ’Romanticiem ie the
art of prceenting to the poe0p1e the literary worke which, in the actual
etlte of their habite and beliefe, are capable of giving than the greeteet
peeeible pleaeure: claeeicien en the contrary. cf pro-eating thee wifih
that which gave the greateet poeeihle pleneure to their grandfathere.'
rm: adde to the quelitiee or defining; the love of mic which 1- in
everyone. Thue, the claeeic ie that which time has ehown will at leeet
never diepleaee ue. “And,“ eaye Pater, ”in the elaeaical literature of
Greece and Rome, ea in the claeeice of the laet century, the eeeentially
claeeical elenent ie that quality of order and beauty, which they pceeeee,
indeed, in a pre-eninent degree, and which impreeeee ecne ninde to the
exelueion of everything else in then.'k5

hl irater Pater, Appreciaticne. London, Mae-illan, 1890. p. 255.

 

17

In the same vein is Peter's well-known and oftenrquoted definition
of Romanticism. “It is,“ he says, "the addition of strangeness to beauty,
that constitutes the Romantic character in art."hh He understood the
desire for beauty to be an element in every artistic organization. Only
when curiosity was added to this desire did the phenomenon of Romanticis-
result.

These two elements, curiosity and desire for beauty, generate two
tendencies in literature. a predcninance of curiosity results in the
grotesque. A successful union of strangeness and beauty results in ih
exquisite beauty, and the romantic spirit refuses to have beauty without
strangeness.

To deveIOp these elements the romantic spirit turned to the middle
Ages for inspiration. ”In the overcharged atmosphere of the Middle Ages,"
says Pater, "there are unworked sources of romantic effect, of a strange
beauty, to be won, by strong imagination, out or things unlikely or
remote.“45

In general, the romantic spirit may be said to be the product of
eertain eras, even though its elements, curiosity and love of beauty,
may be traced in all good art. 0u£:breaks of this spirit come when
curiosity is emphasised in man's approach to art, or when men exhibit
a deep intellectual thirst for excite-ent after a long ennui or in
reaction to enternal, practical things. Among other art, early nineteenth
century poetry is a case in point. Taking his eue from atendhal, Pater
argues that all good art was romantic in its day. The novelty of for.

and.motive, which characterizes Romanticiae, is necessary in literature

#4 lbid.
45 Ibid,,p. 261.

15

'te hold and stinulate interest. This is what great writers have always
understood. Their greet aim has always been to keep up with this ever—
changing spirit and still to retein the flavor of what was well done in
the past. Thus, those who follow this principle eventually become classical
and approach nearer to perfection.

Romanticism, then, is a spirit which is evident at all times, in
varying degrees and which is always partly a matter of individual
temperament. There are born classicists and born romanticists. The born
Classicist starts with form, ignores all that will not fit into it, and
aspires only to be like the old masters. 0n the other hand, the born
Romanticists start with original, untried matter. This they strip of its
nonsessentials until it adjusts itself in a clear, orderly, prcportionate
form, which form, in its turn, becomes classical.

Classicism, then, is order in beauty, Romanticism the addition of
strangeness to beauty. For Pater these two tendencies are always present
and recognizable in all art.

”Any attempt to make a definition of Romanticism that will be at
once specific and adequate is sure to result in failure,"6 according
to Mr. Phelps. He offers as a reason for this statement the fact that
the word "Romanticism” is used critically in vdry different ways.

In his book, Mr. Phelps examines a number of definitions of the
word as to mood, subject matter and method. He concludes that all
definitions have three things in common, subjectivity, love of the
picturesque, and a reactionary spirit. By the first he means that the
aspiration and vague longing of a writer will be evident in his work;
by the second, that element of strangeness added to beauty which may

46 William Lyon Phelps, The Beginnings of the English Romantic
Movement, Boston, Ginn and 00., 1895, p. l.

19

which lay appear as a fondness for moonlit waters or ivy~covered towers,
or as a passion for the unnatural and the horrible. by the third he
means that the Romantic movement in any country will be reactionary to-
wards what has immediately preceded it.

In the light of these three elements, it is easy to see why the
Romantic movement took its inspiration from the hiddls Ages. The nedicvsl
period contained what the Romantic spirit yearned for. ”Its religion,
military and social life, and all forms of.nsdicval art can hardly be
better characterised than by thc word picturesque, and souls weary of
torn and finish, or deed perfection, of faultily faultless monotony,
nsturslly sought the Opposite of all this in the literature and thought
of the Middle Ages.'47 The Classical Augustans neglected this period
and the Romantics began an attempt to rcvivfy and brighten this forgotten
Medieval life. nevertheless, under the fmfinal, critical and prosaic
crust of the eighteenth century, the fire of Romanticism was glowing.

The period from 1798 to lBjO, which Mr. G.H. Hsrford has labelled
'Ths Age of 's'é’ordsworth,'I was one immensely rich in achievement. Politically
and socially events were taking place which greatly affected the latter
half of the century. but perhaps the event which is most remembered is
that which Mr. herford generally terms the 'Revivsl of Romance." The age
witnessed the dcchOpment of pectic genius to a degree before unknown
Ind the most original and commanding figure of the age was aillism
sordsworth.

The 'Rsvivsl of Romance" has been known by many names, most of which
denote certain phsscs of Romanticism rather than romanticism in general.

For example, "The return to nature," applies to the elements of romanticism

4? Ibié. 9- $-

set forth by Rousseau. The phrase, "The renuscence of wonder,“ describes
e View of roocntic poetry which includee Chatterton, Blake, Coleridge,
end Keats, but excludes the work of Scott. And also the French term
lyrieme cannot be used to describe the hetergencous fiomanticinm of England.

What then, is Romanticism? according to Fr. Herford it is, primarily,
'the extraordinary deveIOpmont of imaginative sensibility." The world
of eenee and thought takes on a new pqeyncy of response and appeal to
man. “Glory of lake and mountain, grace of childhood, dignity of the
unteught peasant, zonder of teary, mystery of the Gothic aisle, radiance
of Attic marbles,“ 9 are all marks of the movement. These sources of
inspiration have one thing in common, they are all strange. They are
eeye of escape from the cocmonplace and the routine. But the romance
which is the source of poetry is more than strange. It has the power of
apparently detaching one from the world of reality and at the name time
of restoring one to reality at a higher point. "To rekindle the soul of
the past, or to reveal a soul where no eye had yet diecerned it; to call
up n Helen or Ieolde, or to invest lake and mountain with 'the light
that never wee on see or ehore;' to make the natural appear supernatural,
ee Wordsworth and Coleridge put it, or the supernatural natural,—-were
but different avenues to the world of Romance.'§oThe Romantic reaction
to thie world of imagination wan different from that of the preceding
age. The eighteenth century reduced reality to sense impressions. The
Romantics rejected thie eolution, and instead formed their own ideals
which resulted in revolt, reaction, intervention in affairs, or seclusion
from them, but not ever in corplete unconcern.

48 Charlee H. “errord, The Age of Eordsworth, London, Geo. Bell,

18”, p. Xi'e
1&9 Ibid. 90 Ibidup. xiv-xv.

21

Hence the essence of Romanticisn is to be found in its speculative
elements. Its posts are teachers, prcphets, reformers, philosOphic
reactionaries, or innovators in religion, criticism or history. They
eschewed the didactic poen.and yet their poetry often implies a criticism
of life. For this reason some mention of the history of romantic ideas
is pertinent to an account of romantic art.

Two great movements of EurOpean thought provided the sources of
Romantic thought: the revolutionary naturalism of Rousseau, and the
transcendental movement in Germany from Kant to Hegel. Rouseeau's con?
tribution was his Humanism which eXpresaed the dignity and worth of man
as man, and the power of natural scenery to respond to his needs..§gg§g
is the picture of a mind arriving at all it needs to know by itself.‘$§g
.gggial Contract advances the equal and inalienable rights of man as the
basis of political thought, and the New Heloise expresses the revealing
power of love.

With increased richness and subtlety, these marks of Rousseau's
Humanism were carried on by Romantic poets. Blake, Wordsworth, and
Coleridge idealized childhood. Shelley's heroes were inspired by freedom
and passion, and with a finer insight, the Romantics also developed the
harmonies between man and external nature which Rousseau had perceived.

There were three limitations in Rousseau's thinking. He was un-
conscious cf any organic unity in the state. fie was also unconscious of
the same thing in history. Finally, his religious faith took the (can of
sublime deiem, failing to see God as antthing but the articifier of the
world.

Romanticism was able to overcome these three difficulties. 'by an

advance to points of view which reconciled both civilisation and nature

51
as elements in a single ideal.‘ In each country, England, France and

Germany, this change was effected in a different, but in each it had one
common characteristic. This can be described as the emerging prevalence

of conceptions derived from organic life over those derived from mechanics.
“The hmdamental presumption about the nature of things, upon which the
current reflection of an age is always based, began to be derived not

from aggregates of mutually attracted atoms, but from totalities of parts
each involved in and involving the whole, and sharing in a continuous
evolution towards an implicit end."52

In England this change to organic modes of thinking resulted in a
supremacy of the individual imagination. The English Romantic poets lived
close to the glory of the natural world, and they thought of their
imagination as divining nature, not as correcting her.

Still another change in the Ramantic feeling for art took place
during the period from 1798 to 1850. At the time of the Lyrical Ballade
the Romantics looked upon art as a form of artifice. By the time of
Tennyson's first poems, Romanticism regarded art and nature as two related
domains of nearly equal attraction.

Thus, Romanticism seems part and parcel of Rousseau's revolutionary
individualism. But Romanticism in society and politics was not dominantly
revolutionary. Instead, it varied from revofitto reaction. Many young ~
revolutionaries such as Wordsworth and loleridge became arch-conservatives.
In society, thought changed from a feeling for the cosmopolitan.humantiy
cf the revolution to a passionate desire for Nationalism. Thus, the
organic conception of life resulted in a Romantic realism, and this realism
took.three forms, political, historical, and religious.

52 Ibidnp. xviii.

25

In politics, Romantic realise produced an organic conception of
state characterized by a change in the ideal of law. Formerly, law had
been associated with force. Now it became associated with reason.
Wordsworth, in “Ode to Duty,“ espressed his disavowal of the illusory
freedom of unrestraint.

The nationalism engendered by Romantic realism was characterised
by the Romantic revival of history. The idea of a national past influenced
the conception of the continuity of history, which, in turn, evoked such
interest in historical writing. In England Scott founded the historical
novel, using his historical imagination to portray the past as yet alive.
England also helped to rs-discover Greece. Though the Hellenic revival
began many years before, it was only during the 'Age of wordsworthythat
Greek art began to be understood and that Greek poetry became a vital
part of English poetry.

National sentiment was also the source of the “Renascence of wonder.”
The first to espress this new feeling was Burke who believed the body
politic invested with a certain mysterious religious awe. This swe was
an OXpreacion of his organic conception of the controlling force of the
universe; A revival of the faculty of awe and a sensibility to it entered
into Romanticism, and colored the poetry. is the revival of the past
reanimated history, so the revival of awe respiritualised religion. This
cysticism led to a study of early religious imagination in myth and
resulted in the poetry of the mysterious such as I'The Ancient Mariner'
and 'Christabel.'

But this sensibility to mystery produced a subtle and profound state
0f mind which had nothing to do with the historical aspect of Romanticism.

‘It distinguishes the transformed Rousseauism of Wordsworth and Shelley

2h

fro-Lthe simpler naturalism of Rousseau himself. Rousseau found clear
and incisive pictures of nature at work. To Hordsworth, nature was
mysterious and unfathowable, and Rousseau's mechanical deism gave way
to the animate and wonderful universe of Wordsworth and Shelley.

Romanticism does not possess any common characteristics of style,
but it has certain dominant traints in which some critics find the ground
of difference between Remantic and Classic. A distinction which had little
eurrency in England. Er. Rerford maintains that 'a style is Romantic in
proportion as it presents its objects not simply and directly, but through
a glamour of imagery and emotion which, according to the quality of the
poet, obscures or reveals.“ 'The Romantic poet sees all things in the
light of their larger relations, transcends distinctions, expresses by
figure and metaphor.'I

The chief ability of English Romanticism lay in its intimate and
subtle interpretations of both the world of external nature and the world
of wonder and romance. For lordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats,
nature provided an unlimited source of lovely imaginings, and “all are
masters of that region in which imagination brings us nearer to the heart
of reality by apparently deserting it.I

At the same time, English Romantic poets had certain limitations.
IThey lacked vision for the world of man save under certain broad and
simple aspects,-the patriot, the peasant, the visionary, the child.
They lacked understanding of the past, save at certain points on which
the spirit of liberty had laid a fiery finger.‘ These limitations are
marks of the era, an era in which a glimmer of understanding of the world

55 MM?- xxvii.

5‘! 3391.". xxviii.

55 Mb, Pe xniiie
% _Ib1.de, Pe XXiXe

 

25

of man arose, but which left its fruition to the next generation.

Thus, Hr. Herford finds the characteristics of Romanticism chiefly
in the thought or feeling of the author. According to hr. Phelps' criteria
it is doomed to failure because it is too specific. Likewise the next
definition which we will examine. Nevertheless, it is important because
it pepresents a once current and papular view.

Hr. H.A. Beers prefers to narrow his concept of Romanticism to the
dictionary definition: “pertaining to the style of the Christian and
papular literature of the Middle Ages.'?7rather than analyze it into its
elements. He thought of Cowper as a naturalist, Shelley as an idealist,
and Wordsworth as a transcendental realist. The name Ramanticist he
reserves for writdrs like Scott, Coleridge and Keats.

'Before Scott,“ he says, 'no genius of the highest order had lent
itself‘hoslly or mainly to retrospection.' Thus, Scott became the
center and the culmination of English Romanticism. 'All Romanticists are
resurrectioniata,’ according to Mr. Bears, and Scott was the most
important of them all. He w:ns the first to papularise romance, and he
was one of the first to go back to the medieval past and revivify the
feudal society.

One of the important things to notice about Scott is his education
which prepared him for his career. He was literally steeped in the history,
legends and ballad poetry of the Scottish border. The tales told him in
his childhood were the ballads of Mediveal England. He read Oasian and

Spenser and Percy's Religues. When he could use the Edinburgh library,

57 Henry A. Beers, A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth
Oentu , New York, Henry Holt, 1918, p. vi.

% Ibidg, pe 2e

59 Ibid.

26

he passed up love stories and domestic tales in favor of adventure and
romantic stories. He read books like the Castle of Otranto and made up
tales of battles and legends of the maraculous and martial. all this
made up his education in romance. To it he added an interest in military
history and the medieval antiquities present in London and Rome. 60

“The key to Scott's Romanticism is his intense local feeling,“
according to Mr. Bears. In Scott, it was a passion and it suppyaya the
stimulus which set his imagination to work. It was the source of all his
reverence for antiquity and his absorption in the past. The only deep
feeling in his poetry is that of patriotism. Significant of this is his
treatment of landscapes. He had the Romantic's love of natural beauty,
but it was complete only when he could connect it with some local legend.
Scott liked to base his stories on historical fact or at least upon
legend. Even in one of his fantasies he lays the scene near his own home.
Coleridge, Beers believed, was Just the opposite. When his I‘moonlit,
vapory enchantments touched the ground, the contact precipitated the
whole solution."61

The precise nature of Scott's Romanticism is further illustrated
by a comparison of some of his poems with some of Wordsworth's which
touch upon common ground. ‘Helvellyn' by Scott and "Fiderlity' by
Wordsworth tell the story of a young man who was lost and perished in
the Cumberland mountains. He was found three months later, his faithful
dog by his side. Now Scott loved dogs in particular, while wordsworth
had a love of animal creation inéeneral. Yet, in drawing the thought of
the poem, Hordsworth centers on the mysterious divineness of instinct,

while Scott reflects that nature had given the man a more stately funeral

61 Ibid,,p. lO.

27

than the church could. "A comparison,“ says Beers, "dragged in seemingly
for the sake of a stanzaful of his (Scott's) favorite Gothic imagery.I

Another comparison is afforded by the “White Doe of Rylstone.“ It
is based on a ballad which recounts a tale of an insurrection against
Elizabeth. All the elements are present for a display of feudal pomp and
Scott would have dwelt upon this. But Wordsworth, true to the rule of
his preface, treats all this action as subordinate to the real purpose
of his poem, the study of the discipline of sorrow, of ruin, and of
bereavement.

The essential characteristic of Scott's Romanticism may be said to
be this, that ”the most romantic scene was not romantic enough for Scott
till his imagination had peepled it with the life of a vanished age.'65

Another important Romantic of the nineteenth century was Coleridge.
According to hr. Beers, his contributions to Romantic poetry are few and
make up only a small part of his immense influence on his sun and the
following generations.

Coleridge's romantic impulses failed him in 1800, but his german
biOgrapher has treated him under this special aspect. Alcis Brandi did
not like the term IILake School" commonly given to Wordsworth, Coleridge
and Southey. He prcposed to call them the IIRomantic School.‘ His reasons
for so designating them demonstrate his belief in the definition of
Romanticism as the antithesis of Classicism. He attributed to the school
an aversion to monotony, and dogmatic rules, a desire to avoid rationalism
end unbending uniformity, and a wish to be individual and to develcp the
inner life. Thus, for Brandi, the term 'romantic' implied a breaking

away from the Classical path. This is what he thought the Lekers did.

62 Ibid,,p.. 12.
65 Ibid.,po 210

Their immediate predecessors, Cowper, Burns and Chatterton, adhered to
Classical tradition. So did their immediate successors, Byron, heats and
Shelley, who, though they imbibed a warm form of thousht and feeling from
the Romantic school, still regarded the antique as their parent. These
poet's he regarded as the Classical monbsrs of the "Romantic School.“
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Scott he regarded as having taken nothing from
Olsesical literature, but instead as having drawn all their inspiration
from the Middle Ages.

Mr. Beers disagrees with these distinctions. For Byron and Shelley
he admits, grudgingly, that the criticism might suffice. For Chatterton
and Keats he thought it was misleading. The criticism of dordsworth he
found wholly unsuitable. He thought ”Michael“ and ”The Brothers" were
no classical ac “Hyperion” or 'Lsodsmia.’ ”But,“ he says, "whatever may
be true of the other members of the group, Coleridge at hie best was a
romantic poet. ‘Ohristabel' end 'The Ancient Mariner', creations so
exquieitely sprung from the contact of modern imagination with medieval
beliefs, are enough in themeelvee to justifly the whole romantic novement."64

One of the chief influences effecting the early writings of Coleridge
wee the work of one Reverend Killian Lisle Bowlee. By Coleridge'e own
admission, Bowles' work led him away from a too exclusive devotion to
metaphysics. But Bowles ie perhaps most important for being the central
figure around which the POpe controversy revolved. Thie was actually the
bettle between Classic and Romantic. Bowles edited e book of Pepe’e works
in which he included an essay on Pepe's poetical character. Pepe, he
leintsined, was a poet of the second order, inferior in nature description

and lyrical poetry, and a poet of artificial manners and didactic marine,

6h Ibid.'Pe we

29

rather than of passions. Bowles felt that images drawn from nature excelled
those drawn from art and that the passions of the heart which belonged to
nature were better suited to a higher species of poetry than those derived
from manners. The admirers of Pepe joined issue with Bowles, maintaining
that subject matter was nothing in poetry, but that execution was all,
that the classes of poetry were all equal in rank and that poets should

be ranked according to their excellence as artists. The controversy re-
volved around these arguments, but despite the fact that he had a host
against him, Bowlesh views prevailed. Hie antagonists included Disraeli,
Gifford, Byron, and uillian Roscoe, but they were pleading a lost cause.
Pape's poetry failed to satisfy the heart and the imagination because of
his imperfect sense of hsauty and his deficiency in the highest qualities
of the poet's soul. Or,!as Coleridge maintained, Pepe's poetry contained
not poetic thoughts, but thoughts translated into the language of poetry.

This controversy, which resulted in the prevalence of Bowles‘ views,
thends to point up the fact that a change in taste had taken place, that
the aesthetic revolt begun in the 1750's had succeeded by 1800.

Mr. Beers believes that “The Ancient Mariner“ represents the highp
water mark of Romantic poetry. It is a narrative ballad which tells its
story in the homely diction of old popular minstrelsy. The poem contains
the mystery, indefiniteness and strangeness which are characteristic of
Romantic art. The moral theme, penance, and the dramatic effects are
taken from Catholicism. The bridal seene and the wedding guest are taken
from old balladry. Likewise, the indefiniteness of place and time belong
to ballad poetry also. Thus, the poem contains all the marks of Romantic
poetry, according to Mr. Beard standards.

hr. Beeri' discussion of the two parts of 'Cristsbel“ serves to

8‘

illustrate further his corception of Romantic poetry. "Christabel" is
distinctly medieval and contains many Gothic eleneuts, a fetdal baron,

e moated Castle, and a sorceress. In it, Coleridge displays his art in
the use of the supernaturrl and deveIOps a romantic tale created in a
fairyland. The second part of the poem falls down however. Instead of
leaving the setting in the fairyland of the first part, Coleridge changes
it to familiar Lake Country localities. By doing so he loses what are,
for Mr. hears, the remantic qualities of the poem.

Keats and Leigh Hunt also display phases of early nineteenth century
Romanticism which are worth noting. According to Mr. Beers, Keats is the
poet of romantic emotion, contrasted to Scott as the poet of romantic
action. History and the pomp and grandeur of the Middle Ages mattered
little to Keats. He caught after beauty and his sensitive imagination
thrilled at every touch. He delighted in the romantic scenes of the
“Faerie Queens." The heroes of his poems never do anything and his poems
are often visions of loveliness rather than pieces of action.

Hunt‘s Romanticism took two forms. The first was his rebellion
against eighteenth century tradition and his assertion of impulses
against rule. The second was his return to the medieval for inspiration.
Hunt probably did more than any post of his time to pepularize Italian
romances, and especially did he popularize the works of Boats.

Er. Beers, then, distinguishes two characteristics of Romanticism,

s return to the iiddle Ages and a rebellion against rules. This concept,

of course, is also inadequate since it disregards certain other, admittedly,
romantic qualities. It does, however, represent a phase of Romantic
criticism which has been given serious thought.

Shortly after the beginning of the twentieth century, a change in

51

the philosoyhy of nature brought about the rehabilitation of homexticicm.
This new philosophy held that science is lin ted in what it can ascertain,
that it cannot reduce nature to the definitely knowsble and predictable,
and hence, those fields of human experience and methods of inquiry which
the Romantics believed in reassumed their former dignity.

One definition written in this period is that of a.A. heilson. It
is interesting because it more or 1:88 establishes a common ground between
those we have considered shove.

Poetry in geuezal, according to Kr. Neilson, exhibits three funde-
mentel qualities, reason, imagination, and sense of fact. By sense of
fact is meant the act of observation and recollection or, more simply,
the working of the memory. Imagination is the process by which facts are
selected, modified, arranged, and heightened in order to bring them into
accordance with a mental conception. Finally, reason denotes the qualities
necessary for the eiept use of the means to artistic effectiveness such
es, the sense of probability, prcportion, fitness, hernony and coherence.
There ore other factors thit enter into the production of poetry, but
these three are considered essential.

The history of poetry exhibits a number of tendencies, the most
notable of which are Romanticism, Classiciem and Realism. In defining
these three tendencies, the practice generally followed in to use thie
division of the faculties used in poetry: Romanticism is defined as the
tendency for isaginstion to predominate over reason and sense of fact;
Classicism es the predominance of reason; and Realism as the predominance
of the sense of fact.

Though these definitions may eppeer too simple and mechanical, it

should be noted that the tfiyee important terms used each contain e central

52

idea, have a number of manifestations, and are almost never found in

isolation. Thus, to speak of a romantic period is to speak only of a
time when the imaginative element in poetry was predominant, not of a
period in which reason and sense of fact had vanished.

Imagination is commonly regarded as the faculty which presents images
of things not actually present to the mind. Mr. Neilson believes that
imagination goes beyond this. Unlike the memory, imagination does not
present a passive recollection, but acts upon the object recollected.
It may also be present in the original perception of the object recalled
by the memory. For example, the botanist, in describing a daisy, would
note only details important to rational classification. The personal
element would enter in only negatively through the rejection of nonp
essential facts. Contracted to this method is that of an imaginative
observer such as Wordsworth.

0ft on the dappled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similes,
Loose types of things through all degrees,
Thoughts of thy raising:
And many a fond and idle name
I give to thee, for praise or blame,
As is the humor of the game,
While I am gazing.
A nun demure of lowly port;
0r sprightly maiden, of Love's court,
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;
A queen in crown of rubies drest
A starveling in a scanty vest;
Are all, as seems to suit thee best,
Thy appellations.65

His active imagination does not allow him to observe the daisy

passively..lran the flower he receives many suggestions and impulses to

his thoughts. Furthermore, while he sees the flower in many guises, they

69 W. Wordsworth, 'To the same Flewer,‘I ll 9-2h, as quoted by Neil-
°°nv P0 54-

55

are not arbitrarily chosen, but each suggests another. while these
stanzas demonstrate how the imagination is present in the perception,
they also demonstrate its presence in the recollection. Some of the
comparisons Wordsworth uses to describe the flower are with resollected
objects. But most of them, such as the nun, the cyclops, a queen
crowned with rubies, are things he had never seen. Thus, the flower
evoked images from the poet's mind which had been stored there by the
working of the imagination on materials supplied by previous perception
and memory, some of which never had any but imaginary existence.
The imagination has another facet which is called the creative.
The perceptive side of the imagination depends on intuition to discover
the hidden meanings and relationships in the ordinary objects of ex-
perience. The creative side reveals these hidden elements as parts of
a new synthesis. This synthesis is spontaneous and intuitive, not the
result of labor. It is a creation, an organism formed within the per-
sonality of the artist. An example of th. growth of this intuitive
power and its use to interpret nature is found in Hordeworth‘s “Lines
Written Above Tintern Abbey." He-
learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
0f something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.66

66 ”Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey,‘ ll 88-102, as quoted by
J.A. Neilson, p. #2.

Imagination manifests itself in poetry in still another way. This
phase appears in the power of imagination to evoke the consciousness of
a certain mood or atmosphere, or ecstasy in the reader. The poetry
which exhibits this side of imagination is characterized by a technical
excellence, but more important is the substance. Such poetry is cone
eerned with the great simple things fundamental in human life such as
fate, death, life, time, and beauty. It is the revelation of the ulti-
mates of life, death, and the universe to the emotions and the intellect,
a sense of contact with the infinite which this poetry brings home to
us. It makes man aware of himself as a part of nature and of his dig-
nity as a spiritual being. It is in these senses that Mr. Neilson uses
the term imagination when he discusses its relation to Romanticism.

Romanticism has been used to describe a large variety of poetic
qualities. Three definitions which have been especially pepular, speak
of Romanticism as a return to nature, as a return to the Middle Ages,
and as a growth of subjectivity. These definitions do not exhaust the
variety of tendencies, but they are representative enough to test the
validity of the formula that Romanticism is a predominance of the im-
agination. These definitions are also incomplete in that they mistake
results and manifestations of Romanticism for the force that lies be-
hind it.

The conception of Romanticism as medievalism is too simple in it-
self. The Middle Ages do not offer a simple set of characteristics,
but instead are as complex as any other age. Thus, the team is any
suitable to describe Romanticism unless it is qualified. There are
many phenomena in the Medieval period which can be used to justify the

definition. The hedieval romances of adventure provide one instance.

55

These works are characterized by their abundant use of the imagination
and the modern reader of the nineteenth century was fascinated by the
remoteness and strangeness of the life represented. The romances con,
tained many supernatural and miraculous elements, but the dominant
strain was that of the devotion to objects of the imagination. And it
was this highly imaginative quality which interested the nineteenth
century Romantics. In the religion of the Middle Ages this element of
imagination is to be found in the preference for the imperfect, inspfiyed
by the dim objects of the spiritual vision.

There was however, a revival of interest in the hedieval which Hr.
Neilson thinks of as psuedo-romanticism. This appeared in the form of
the Gothic novel. This type, which does embody all the paraphanalia of
supernaturalism, lacks an enthusiasm for the true spirit of any phase
of Medieval life. Instead of being imaginative interpretations, they
are merely imitations, using external trappings and failing to compre-
hend the essence of Medieval life. On the other hand lie the Gothic
romances of Sir Walter Scott. He too used externals, but he added to
them the vitality of his own imaginative sympathy. In his personal
life he possessed a sense of chivalry and a pride of ancestry, Medieval
qualities which, highly colored by a vision of the past, found their
way into his work.

Thus, we see that Romantic writers were stirred by medieval ele-
ments which had a high degree of ideal aspiration, or, in other words,
by Medieval conceptions in which imagination predominated. In this
sense certain aspects of Medievalism, when genuinely sympathetic, may

be regarded as a true phase of Romanticism.

The second conception of Romanticism which Er. Neilson discusses
is that of Romanticism as subjectivity. The turmoil in the world and
especially in France in the years preceding the nineteenth century had
a great effect on this phenomenon. Men were weary of the press of ex-
ternal affairs, and they had all but lost their hOpe of security. 30
they turned to the inner world, to seek the solace and satisfaction
which the external world could not give, in the spiritual realm. This
resulted in an increase in the sense of the importance of the indivi-
dual soul. In poetry, this subjectivity moved the center of interest
from society to the individual, and in the individual, to his moods
and emotions. The forms most used to express this was the lyric, of
all forms of poetry, the most purely the outcome of the desire for
self-eXprsasion. Its essence is the outpouring of emotion. In eight-
eenth century England, this form of utterance, particularly the con-
densed lyric, the sonnet, almost entirely died out. The Romantic move-
ment revived the pOpularity of the personal utterance and along with it
the sonnet. This one of Keats' is a good example.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high pildd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
ahen I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloud symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance
And when I feel, fair creature of an hourl
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.67

67 John Keats, 'ihen I Have Fears,“ as quoted by Neilson, p. 64.

Here is an example of a Romantic poet occupied with himself, but
the important thing here is the faith which such poets had that such
intimate matters were imoortant enough to give to the world in splendid
verse. This then, should eXplain the meaning of subjectivity as used
by those who regard it as the essence of Romanticism.

Mr. Neilson does not use subjectivity and Romanticism as equal terms
because he maintains that subjective utterances are not always Romantic.
Subjective literature such as the sentimental, often does make use of
the imagination, but only as a tool, never as its master.

However, Romanticism is always subjective because of the nature of
its dominant factor, imagination. All objects of a poet's interest must
be subject to the working of his personality. Now, a poet's reason, so
far as it is rational, and his facts, so long as they are mere facts,
can belong to anybody, but his imagination is singular. It is histyan.
Thus, it is evident that in a period in which imagination is predominant,
poetry will have a tendency to be selfbconscious and introspective. And
hence, subjectivity takes its place along side an interest in Medieval
life as a phase of the predominance of imagination.

The return to nature, the third quality of\Romanticiss, has had a
long and varied history. The term seems to have as many meanings as the
word "nature” itself. For instance, the new astronomy of Capernious,
the new science of Bacon, the art of Nichelangelo, are examples of the
return to nature. Likewise, eighteenth century nee-classicism was a
return to nature, for in that rationalistic age restraint was natural.
Bothiin the Renaissance and in the age of Pepe, this return to nature
exhibits all the tendencies of a reaction against a prevailing tradition

which limited free eXpression of individual impulses. The term also

became the battle-cry of the "Page of ficrdaworth,‘ but as a common element
uniting all phases of Romanticism, reaction is inadequate since it
appears in all literary movements.

In the nineteenth century, the return to nature had two applications;
one to human nature; one to external nature. The return to human nature
had for its chief element subjectivity. The interest in one‘s own inner
workings has been shown to be closely allied to the activity of the
imagination, and therefore may be regarded as a phase of Romanticism.

On the other hand, the assertion of the rights of emotion is a more com-
plicated matter. To say that this removal of restraint in the nineteenth
century is a mark of Romanticism is not enough. There must be examples
of emotions in which imaginative and romantic elements are discernable.
The democratic attitude is one. When held passionately, this attitude
was often due to some ideal vision of humanity. Both Coleridge and
Wordsworth sympathized with the struggle to vindicate the rights of man,
and this sympathy was evoked in them by imaginative pictures of hardship
and injustice. Another is the new sense of the worthiness of humble
life as a theme of poetry. Hordeworth's aim was to color incidents from
common life with the imagination, to give them the charm of novelty.
This aim was the legitimate purpose of the imaginative artist and he
carried it out to such an extent that his poems of humble life contain
so great a degree of imagination as to be justly called Romantic. How-
ever, some of his poems of rustic life are not predominately imaginative,
indicating that the importance of this as a phase of Romanticism has
been exaggerated.

The return to nature which is exhibited in the worship of the noble

savage is also to be regarded as Romantic. It possessed an imaginative

59

element and it was fiomentic in the sense that it was unreal. And, even
though much of this idealizetion of the savage failed to reach the
heights of great literature, it is, nonetheless, important in the intel-
lectual life of the tire, and because of its predominant imaginative
quality, it is a notable factor in the Romantic revival.

By far the most important sense of the phrase 'the return to nature,“
lies in the increased prominence of scenery in the poetry of the time.
This does not mean, however, that any type of scenery description is en-
titled to the name "Romantic.'| Certain types of scenery must be dis-
sriminated in order to units it with such phases of Romanticism as Red-
ievalism and Subjectivity.

Certain types of landscapes are more stimulating to the imagination
than others. The vaster objects or external nature such as mountains,
clouds, deserts and oceans have this effect. The wilder, the more dis-
tant, the less familiar they are, the more apt are they to arouse s sense
of wonder and mystery, and to stimulate imaginative speculation. In the
presence of such aspects of nature, the imagination causes the soul to
rise above the external world to all that is universal and eternal. No
other aspect of the poetry of this period is so generally regarded as
Romantic.

It should be noted however, that although the imaginative elbment
is the force which unites the Romantic poets, each expresses this ele-
ment in a different manner. In Scott and Coleridge, descriptions of
nature are often impersonal, the effect being transferred from the poet
torsome character in his poems. In Byron, nature is introduced as an
object of contemplation by a soul, usually his own, alienated from

society. To Shelley, the grander aspects of nature were full of s

metaphysical significance. In aordsaorth, description of nature embodies
the action and reaction between nature and spirit, as well as the imagi-
native treatment of detail. Thus, in these ways, the imaginative treat-
ment of nature may be recognized as a Romantic quality, and the return
to nature recognized as an aspect of Romanticism.

These, then, are the three phrases which Hr. Neilson has selected
as the more familiar attempts to define Romanticism. fihile his dis.
cussion has not been exhaustive, in each of the phrases he has found an
element of truth, and in none of then a sufficient breadth of applies.
tion. Yet he has shown, beyond s doubt, that Romantic poetry is char-
acterized by the predominance of imagination over reason and the sense
of fact.

not all criticism of the Romantics in the twentieth century has
been favorable however. Paul Elmer hora is a representative of the
anti-Romantic, Humanist school of criticism. His definition of Romant-
icism states that it is the discovery of the infinite in nature itself
rather than apart from nature. This assumption of an illusion. which
Mr. More and other anti-Romantics take for granted, is the result of the
scientific thinking of the last half of the nineteenth century. These
men believed that science had failed to show that there was any spirit-
ual or idssl purpose in nature. To them the question was one of dualism.
'Is there, a! is there not,‘ asks More, .some element of man's being
superior to instinct and reason. some power that acts as a stay upon the
flowing impulses of nature, without whose authoritative check reason her-
self ngt in the and be swept away in the dissolution of the everlasting

flux?“ The Romanticiste said there was not. The Humaniste Say there is.

68 Paul Elmer More, The Drift of Romanticigg. p. xiii.

41

Mr. More thinks Romanticism was a drift towards disintegration and
disease. He does not, however, mean to imply that he is insensible to
the beauty and the magic commonly connected with Romanticism. He deter-
mined two uses of the word. One he understood to mean certain attri-
butes of all poetry 'when it rises from the common level to the climaxes
of inspiration,'69 which includes wonder Joined with beauty and awe of
the other world. This he called the narrow or absolute sense of the
word, examples of which use can be found in both classical and romantic
poetry. The other use of romantic he termed the Historical, because it
is associated with an historical movement of modern hurOpe. By this
use of the word he means, "the wonder and strangeness that go with the
dissolving tagether of the human soul and nature, the vague revery that
takes the place of insight, the pantheisn that has forgotten the true
surprise of the supernatural.II It is in this sense that he uses the
term in his essays.

The person whom Mr. Fore chose to represent his conception of early
nineteenth century English Romanticism was one William Beckford of Font-
hill. He capriciouely suggests that his reason for choosing Beokford
see because he had been reading e current edition of Beckford'e letters.
The real reason however, seems to be that Beekford'e life and his im-
portant work, Vathek, illustrate better than that of any other author
of the period, the disease and disintegration with which Mr. Kore charges
Romanticism.

Beekford's life was probably as eccentric as any of the period.
Born in 1760 of wealthy parents, he came, at an early age, under the

69 Ibide. Fe 11.
70 Ibid.. p. xii.

#2

influence of women who encouraged his bent for wild brooding and fan-
testic dreaming. He was educated by a clergyman, and at seventeen he
evinced all the symptoms of living in a world of reverie. While abroad
eompleting his education, he wrote some letters to his ates-sister in
which he shows his preoccupation with wild musings on darkness, dark
clouds, night, supernatural shrieke and means. This, Mr. More attributes
to the influence of Ossian, which Rockford was apparently reading at the
time.

once back in England, he continued his wild revolt, vowing to se-

clude himself from the world, and writing his first book, gipgraphical

 

iggeoirs of Extraordinary Painters. In this book he displayed his sense

 

of grotesque humor by attributing certain paintings in his galleries to
such artists as 03 of Basan and Herr Suerewasser of Vienna. In this
union of sentiment and burlesque in the same mind, Mr. were sees the
desire to escape from reality.

After another trip to the continent, Beckford returned to England
in 1781 to celebrate his coming of age in e manner befitting a man in
possession of an enormous fortune. The festivities, which lasted a week,
seem to have influenced the rest of his life. In one of his letters,
Beckford describes the balls, concerts and illuminations which took
place at Fonthill. Over ten thousand peeple attended the celebration,
thousands of lamps and numerous fires on the downs lighted the night,
and rockets and mortars were discharged. The final scene, which Bech-
ford describes, consisted of a temple among tall cake. The fires made
the temple glow and the peOple before it appeared to him devilish by
contrast. These scenes, ending as they do with a touch of diabolism,

combined with his reading of the Arabian Nights to inspire his Vathek.

‘5

The great hall at Fonthill, which Beckford admitted inspired the
Hall of Eblis in.!gth25, did not long content him. For twenty years he
amused hhmself by constructing a new group of buildings which was one
of the wonders of the age. at one time he employed a gang of five hun-
dred men to work around the clock on the humanitarian pretext of creating
work for men in distress. His methods and the result caused much gossip,
and small wonder. Here was a man ready to satisfy his whimsical taste
and disorganised fancy at any eXpenee. The spectacle was like something
out of the Arabian Nights. Mr. More thinks it is likely that these wild
doings at Fonthill entered into Coleridge's vision of Kuble Khan.

Beckford'e pleasure dome consisted of galleries, halls and chambers
devoted to every refinement of luxury, and contained a large collection
of rare treasures. The dominant feature of the structure was a tower
three hundred feet high. It was hastily and poorly constructed, and one
day it was blown by the wind. Beekford immediately replaced it with an-
other which was also blown down. 0! it Mr. More says, “The whole thing
is like a chapter in romanticiss written in wood and mortar.'71

Beckford continued his eccentric activity by erecting a twelve foot
wall eight miles long around his park. He explained that it was to keep
the neighbors from riding to hounds across his land, but actually he had
deve10ped e mania for seclusion and he went to great lengths to preserve
it. And Mr. More continues, 'anyone who is fa-ilier with human nature,
and particularly human nature under the warping stress of uncontrolled
auctions, would prcpheey, from the young man's outcry for sympathy fro-
bie complaints of the world's inability to appreciate him, that just
eueh a loveless, lonely old age would be his end.”72

71 Ibide. p. 15. 72 Ibide' Po 17.180

In 1822, due to his shrinking fortune, Beckford was forced to sell
Foothill. 'He retired to Bath where he erected Ponthill in miniature,
with a tower one hundred thirty feet high. There he became a notable
figure, he eccentricities the occasions of endless scandals until his
death in.1844. "He was a man of many accomplishments and a vein of true
genius, one of the great personalities of the age, and in his virtues as
well as his errors a striking type of the romantic enthusiasm that in
his early formative years was springing up all over Europs.'7§

After this short history of a man whom Mr. More took to be a typi-
cal Romantic, he launches into a discussion of the sources of Romanticism
because he believes that it still bears the mark of its sources. He
maintains that the place to begin searching for these sources is the
meeting of Eastern religion.with western philoe0phy under the influence
of the Roman Empire. The first thing to note is the difference in
again; in the Oriental and Occidental mind of infinity and personality.
To the people of the East, that is the Orientals, infinity implied asso-
siation with the divine. Escape fro-thounds, implied by exaggeration,
meant complete independence of the finite. To the peOple of the west,
that is the Greeks, the idea of infinity was repugnant. They sought the
divine in the qualities of restraint, limitation and prcporticn. For
then.infinity was expressed in selfbcomplsteness and central control.

Along with this difference in sentiment towards the infinite, went
a difference in the idea of personality. The West thought of the Ego as

a sharlpy defined, active, emotional entity. To the east, this entity

remained always a name for an ephemeral group of sensations.

75 Ibid.. p. 19.

45

It was the work of the first Christian centuries to merge these
Oriental and Occidental conceptions. Under the Roman Empire the Occi-
dental sense of the Ego and the Oriental sense of infinity as escape
from limitations emerged together. To this alliance Mr. More attributes
the birth “of a sense of an infinite, insatiable personality, that has
brought so much selfbtorment and so much troubled beauty into the reli-
gicn and literature of the modern world.'7h And here he finds the
source of Romanticism.

This alliance took place in Alexandria and in that city new lite-
rary forms and new philosOphies deveIOped. Rec-Platonic: started there
as did the pastoral poem, the tale of idealized love and the romantic
epic, all of which have a distinctly romantic tinge. But these things
are only surface signs of the revolution in sentiment which was taking
place. To understand what was happening in the depths, one must look to
the unorthodox philosOphies which were developing from the amalgamation
of Eastern and Western religious creeds.

One good example is the philosophy develOped by Valentinus of Alex-
andria. To emplain the origin of the world he used a system of Leona,
er mystical powers which dwelt aloft in couples. One of the Aeons,
wisdom, lacking her counterpart, Will, fell into a passion. This passion
was a search for the Father whose greatness she wished to comprehend.
fron.this passion of Wisdom, which is identical with desire without Hill,
sprang the world. irron wisdom's pain came the spiritual elements, from
her fear the psychic, and from her ignorance, matter. In this identi-
fying of the intellect with desire, in its divorce from the will, and

in the vague yearning for the father, and in the birth of the world from

7!» plan. p. 26.

emotion, Mr. More sees the heart of what was to be called Romanticism-
”the infinitely craving personality, the usurpatgmn of emotion over rea-
son, the idealisation of love, the confusion of the sensuous and the
spiritual, the perilous fascination that may go with the confusiona.'75
He likens it to a fever, both malign and beautiful.

Thus was Romanticism introduced into Christianity, and with it,
descended to the nineteenth century. However, before Romanticism att-
ained its full force, the Christian faith and the authority of the
classics had to give way to the tide of naturalian which arose in the
eighteenth century. nevertheless, the spirit of Romanticism prevalent
in the nineteenth century was akin to that Lt work in ancient Alexandria.

This discussion seems to have led pretty far afield from Beckford
and his important work,‘!gthg§. But Mr. More introduced it in order to
explain the Ramantic egotism which supplies the theme of the book.

‘123335, little read today, was pepular in its time. Its theme, like
that of‘figggt, is the insatiable craving for eXperience, and the selfb
torturing egotism which were beginning to appear in European literature.
The story concerns an Eastern prince who possesses all the pleasures
and powers of the world. Dissatisfied with this, he adds five wings to
his palace in order that he may enjoy each of the five senses separately.
he also has a great thirst for knowledge, wishing to know everything.
Thus, he is able to command everything in his earthly paradise but con-
tent. a temptar then enters the story and, in return for a monstrous
crime, offers Vathek possession of the palace of subterranean fire in
which the talismans that control the world are located. After a space

of time, the prince and his prtnesss are led by the tempter to the

7, M's 1’0 5°-

4?

palace. In the Hall of Eblis they come upon the sight of the vast, une
resting multitude which roams about heedlesaly, in furious agony or in
rapt absorption, avoiding one another, and each clasping his right hand
over his heart. They are then led to the throne of the great Soliman,
who also has his right hand over heart. He tells them of his torments
and his doom. Then he raises his hands in supplication to heaven, and
Vathek and his princess are enabled to see through his bosom to his
heart which is enveloped in flames. Horrified, Vathek cries out for
mercy. The tempter replies that there is none, that they are in the
abode of vengeance and despair and that their hearts will be kindled
like those of the other votarics of Eblis. There the story ends. It
is not to be compared with‘ggggt. Beckford's genius was fitful and
seldom under control, and he was no philosophers But, he did symbolise
a great and everlasting truth better than any other mast: his age.
Romanticism has contributed much of beauty and sublimity to the
world. It has been defined as a sense of strangeness and wonder, but
these qualities may be found in all great literature. "Insofar as they
are peculiar to Romanticism and distinguish it from the universal mode
which we call Classic, they will be found to proceed from, or verge
towards, that morbid egotism which is born in the union of an intensely
felt personality with the notion of infinity as an escape from limit-
ations.‘ 6 “If we look below the surface of things,” says Kr. More,
I'and penetrate through many illusions, we shall perceive in Beckford's
vision of the restless throng, moving over with hand pressed upon flam-
ing heart, the essential type and image of the Romantic life and lit-

craturs.‘

76 Ibid., p. 56. 77 gbi .:

This, then is representative of the Humanist conception of Roman-
tic life and literature. That the Humanist viewed Romanticism as a
corruptive agent is evident. Whether or not they were right in their
conceptions will be discussed later.

Now let us examine one of the basic problems in the criticism of
the Romantic Period, that of the antithesis between Romantic and Class-
ic. There are many solutions to the question, all perhaps equally val-
id. This, by Professor Lascelles Abercrombie, takes a fresh and diff-
erent approach to the subject.

Nothing has done more to obscure the meaning of the word than the
common assumption that there is an antithesis between Romanticism and
Classicism. There is actually no antithesis because Classicism is a
different order of things from Romanticism. The latter is an element,
not in the sense of a simple and unanalyzable substance like oxygen,
but rather in the sense or a characteristic state. It is an element
of art which contributes to the whole a characteristic state of things
and which sometimes predominates.

Olassiciam on the other hand, is a mode of combining the elements,
and not an element at all. Using the ancient theory of the humors,
Classicism is the equilibrium of the elements of art. Classicism, then,
has no element, and thus there can be no antithesis between it and
Romanticism. In fact, Romanticism is one of the elements which, in
concert with others, makes up the equilibrium which is Classicism. To
carry out the anaIOgy, Classicism is the health of art. The opposite
of Romanticism is Realism, another of the elements. It is between these
two that the true antithesis exists.

Classicism, as the health of art, would suggest that no dominating

tendency is present. Hence, in the period designated as Classic, there
were Romantic and Realistic tendencies. And likewise, in the Romantic
movement, all the elements are noticeable, but they are over-shadowed
by the one domineering tendency, Romanticism.

Romanticism expresses itself in many ways, but its nature may be
suggested by discovering certain qualities of sen iment, thought or
image, which may be recognized as Romantic.

By far the best known of these is the sentiment for views. The
fashion for views deveIOpcd concurrently with the fashion for Romantic
feeling. Thomas Canpbell eXpressed the sentiment for views in his, “The
Pleasures of Hone."

78
'Tis distance lain: enchantnent to the viewi

a. is warning his readers not to get too close to things for they
are sure to disappoint one. This sentiment for views is used to in-
dicats a theory of living, and likewise, Romanticism may be used for
the same purpose. shat Campbell likes in this sentiment is the actual
distance itself. He finds remoteness peculiarly satisfactory.

There is then, a tendency in Romanticism, as evidenced by Campbell,
away from actuality. It is a tendency of the spirit of the mind to with-
draw from the outer world in order to rely on things within itself. This
leads to the Romantic theory of living which holds that life is most
satisfactory when the mind withdraws from actuality and turns in upon
itself. It is this habit of mind which Hr. Lsscellea Abercronbie calls
Remanticiam.

This view shows Romanticism in a negative sense, a drawing away
from things perceived. To put it in a positive light we must discover

78 Thomas Campbell, 'The Pleasures of flaps,” * e Ab d t , l 7.

what gives Romanticism its confidence in things conceived—-thut inner
exyerience on which it tends to concentrate.

Fairies, like the feeling for views, are not r0$&utic in themselves.
But, they beseee Remsntic beceuse they are an element of inner eXperisnce,
when this inner experience is anphasized over the outer.

Fairies, as such, have a long history of develOpment. In ancient
Irish poetry they had human stature and an air of specious and vivid
reality. Later, in the Elizabethan age, they lost their stature but
retained their reality. Finally, in Romantic poetry they are strange,
shadowy, perplexing and unapproachable. But at the same time the menuge
to suggest a certain probability of existence. There is not much de-
tailed information about than, and yet the reader is expected to believe
in them because the post does so. Thus, "fairies are Romantic when they
are the fairies a Romantic believes in."79

Fairies do not exist because they have been imagined, nor do they
take their reality fro; poetry. Rather, the imagination approaches in
them, "an existence superior to anything the senses can know."80 Thus,
the post turns his belief inward and withdraws from the life of the
senses. And, when he turns to this inner existence, t is because the
images of sense have begun to hint of a reality hidden by the sensual
world; a reality to which only the inner life can resoond. Thus, Reman-
ticism, in the matter of fairies, exhibits a sort of transcendental
quality.

Kr. Absrcronbie maintains that Ramanticism has no peculiar subjects

or t0p1c3. Instead, it is an affair of the temper. To illustrate this

79 Lascellss Abercromtie,Aggmanticism, p. 59.
80 Ibid.

 

51

point we need only examine the ”Return to Nature.“ As a definition for
Romanticism, the term is a misnomer. Nature may be returnci to in many
different ways, and nature itself may be all things to all can. But
let nature be something definite as flora and fauna, or mOuntains and
clouds contrasted with the works of can, and it is no more Romantic than
it in Classic. Such nature is a valid topic for Classicism. However,
the contemplation of such things Can become Romantic in much the same
way as Campbell's regard :6} views and the importance of distance to
then, is Romantic. than nature is Romantic it suggests ”majesty, awe,
Arcadian innocence, idyllic hEppiHCBE, remoteness, loneliness, melancholy
or wildness.‘81 Or, it 12y be Romantic according to the doctrine of
sublimity as Burke understood it. Burke's doctrine emphasizes obscurity
as apposed to clearness, since obscurity fosters enthusiasm which is
freedom of the inner life, stimulated but not bounded by reality. It
is s yearning towards infinity, a desire to know the unknowsble. This
is possible in the sublime since the appearance of things does not ham-
per the mind and the imagination can expand indefinitely. It is not-
ually inner experience substituting itself for indgfiprehsnsible outer
cxgerience.

3r. fibercrombie believes that this doctrine of the sublime ‘espec-
ielly when nature is the tnpic, is an exact type of what Romanticism
always has been.'82 For nature is nowhere more Romantic than in Old
English poetry, and it is Ronantic because it fits Burke's sense of the
sublime~omisty, shadowy, stormy, unseizablc and shapelsss.

Old English poetry suggests the importance of ruins to the Romantic
nature. They have been a part of it from the inception of English

81 Ibldg. p. 1280 82 Ibid.’ p. 130.

52

poetry. Eusing over ruins is akin to the mysterious charm of the moon-
light, or Byron's melancholy pleasure in being alone at the seashore.
”The thing comuon to all these experiences is that they are valued for
their power of stimulating and echoing the life within: in 'nature' the
Romantic poet sees end feels himself beautifully displayedo-hie desires
and aspirations, his joyssnd his griefa.'85 Thus, nature is a symbol
of the nomantic's own life, and inportnnt to him for just that reason.

Mr. hbercroubic believes that nature meant something different to
iordsuorth. In nature be found an infinite being he knew, and not mere-
ly imagined, to be greater tinn his own. And when his imagination acted
upon this infinite being, it was not to create a semblance, but to dis-
coeer its positive existence and to units it with his own spirit. Hie
imagination found its exoansion in the knowlod;o of reality. Thus, for
aordsworth, nature was ”experience perfectly combining sense and spirit.
perfect equipoise of self against tte manifestly more than self.'84
In such a way is Benefiticism an affair of the temper, and as such it
manifests itself in innweerableénys.

The most obvious manifestation of Rm*anticism is egoism, that is,
the inordinate consciousness of eclfbimportanco. Mr. Abercrombie warns
that it is not a for; necessary to Romanticism. There is none of this
egoism.in Lhelley, though he lived alroet wholly in his inner experience.
Byron did too, but his life wss directed innards to food, not only his
self-consciousness, but also his corscicue self—importance. He was a
man of the world and knew well the focts of life, and he could embody
this knowlegde in égtry. But, “the uselth of his knowledge and the

splendor of his objectifying energy have no other purpose than to de-

85 Ibid., p. 130-151. on Ib1d., p. 155.

55

clare his onn inordinate self-importance." dis poetry is certainly
the pageant of this. Ecvsrthclsss, this does not heant thtt his poetry
constitutes an autobiography. hathcr, his egoism is drusutized, as
in hanfred, by projection nst by creation, "for the figure of hanggad
simply collscts and £&éflifiefl its author’s can life and affairs."
Romanticism hos two other forms which can be discussed here. one
is pessiuism, the other is the belief in the possibility of lifo made
perfect on earth. Both of ths=e forms are mutually associotcd and are
also closely cannectsd to egoism. ho antic pessimism tunes its form in
"the utter disvaluation of the apparent world by belief in the reality
8?
of the mere unparposed energy of existencé." The vision of perfect-
ibls life may be expressed in two days. It may be simply a turning
away fro; the actual to dwell in tho iuacinury, or it may take the
practical for; of revolutionary politics. in Shelley and :yron, as in
others, it meant the trmflSIatiOd of the inner convictions into action.
The belief book of it is the flith that not only mflfl'fl des of life,
but Ann hisuglf, is Ciyflhle of improvement. This type of rcvolution
is found in two forms. One is the visionary r3VUlJt10fl illustrated by
Shelley's ”The huvolt of Islam.“ The other is illustrated in Byron's
pla"u by their chncsrn with the res it o: of revolution. BJrou'a theme
is liberty and the cosplatosscrirics necessary to obtain it. but it in
a libvrty which has no value is itself. ROLafltiCiom was able to value
it only as a moans to 5n enl. which end was the rualiZstiou of some
paffsction believed to be in heront in man. nun can sissys envision a
‘better life for himself. Rid of the bonds of law and custom, man can
85 gig... 9. 1:6.

86 Ibid.
87 Ibid., p. 1&9.

be what he can ccuceive. The Resentics, b91i¢Vifié in the inner life,
went one step further and assumed thtt, in liberty, “an will be whet
he can 9. xlines the vigor of revolutionvry liberty in Byron's goetry
as a motive for trabic7action, this frequent concern with setting free
88
men's ideal power fixes s nototle color to the sum of his roeenticism."
Hr. Abercromtie, then, defines ho enticiu: as the untithesis, not
of classicism, but Hf Realism. As he understands it, Romanticism is the
withdrawing from the world of reality to the world of inrer experience
in which hither order of reality is found. Though he does not state it
bluntly, there is soscthing of the onti—Ronsrtic stiitude in Yr. fiber-
crombio's criticism which he suggests by sverrinb thwt Romsnticiso's
most obviOus manifestaticn is-sn inordingte consci'u noes hf self-im-
portance.

_& 0

Another ghvce of the eubyoct at hsnd is founl in Tr. Fred

w

rick E.
Pierce's criticism. He takes a still diffe"ent approach to the subject

by classifying Romantic tendencies eczoriing to the author's attitude

30 one will deny that the 30 antic «ovomest use & chaos of diver-
gent and often casflioting forces. They were nut all equally good,
neither did they all have all the sass follts. And, even thjfléh in so.e
way each force may be shown to be a reaction absinat the eighteenth
century, it does not sets them sll alike. Emotion, upon which these
forces are based, runs the gamut fro: the highest to the lowest of humKn
OXperisnces, and is always found with sons Cars of intellectual reaction,
which Lakes countless cosbinotioss possible.

88 Ibilo’ i). 35;.

Mr. Pisrco divides Romanticism into four gonoral tendencies which
he calls Papular, 31ploratory, Mystical-Ethical, and purely Aeothotic.

Tho oightoenth century struggle for papular rights was of such a
nature as to inovitablo influonco literature. It yfivo a political voico
to tho middlo and lower classes and it likowiso gavs thoso poOplo a voico
in literature. Boforo tho revolution, authors, critics, and audionco
had all belonged to tho aristocratic class or had boon adapted by it,
and litoraturo rofloctsd tho views of that class. After tho rovolution,
authors, critics and audionco cams from all classoo. Noblsmsn and scho-
lars disregardod ancient tradition and heard tho uttorancos of tho poor.
'Pootry under Quson Anno had interpreted tho sharpened wits and blaob
nood of an upper class; under Georgo III vast tracts of pootry intorp-
rated the lifo of tho humble, in which thought was stunted and fooling
ran riot.'89

This uphoaval lot looso various forces. Among than were the love
of nolodrama and clap-trap, the love of adventure and oxcitsmcnt and
the spirit of-nationalion. This latter gavo riso to a passionato nod-
iovalism which glorifiod the past of such countrios as Ireland and
Scotland. Thors was also tho poaoant's lovo for tho soil which aff-
ootod the poetry of scenory.

Tho chiof product of tho papular tondonoy in litoratura was senti-
ndntaliom. It is raro among poOplo who suffor hdgfiohips or among tho
wordly-wiso who are disillusioned. It is commonly found among wolI-to-
do laborors and psadyqts and part of tho niddlo qfiyss, thoso who livo

a sooludod life. Tho riso of sentimentaliom in litoraturo is duo to

89 Frsdoriok E. Piorco, 'Romanticiom and Othor Ions," gEGP. p. 45#.

theee pe0ple and eepeoially to the growing influence of women, euppoeed
to be more eentimental than men, which wae, at thie tine, unquestionable.

Not all Romantic literature wae aentimcntal, but an enormoue amount
of continental literature wae written during the period. A good deal
of it wae bad, especially that which wae nothing more than a bath of
teare. There was much eelfbdeoeiving hypocricy too, but not all eenti-
nentaliam wae bad. When it wae bad, it was because the perceptione of
truthe were blinded or perverted.

In the eighteenth century, the dominant epirit wae one of common
eenee. The echool of Pape held that the reeourcea of the mind were to
be directed towards such ende ae the etudy of man, hie environment and
nethode of reetraining hie folliee and develOping hie virtues. In eon-
traet to thie, the Romantic period anphaeised another mental activity,
“the explorer'e love of raneacking vaet fields of truth, not for paybt-
ical reeulte, but for the eake of the diecoverer'e joy.'9o Thie was an
attitude comparable to that of the preceding age because it meant eon-
oentrated mental activity. But it differed in that ite mental action
wae accompanied by a deep wave of emotion, the explorer'e delight. It
in thie emotion which ie characterietic of Ronanticiam, and in thie
case it appeare ae the qquow, not the dectreyer of thought.

Thie exploratory tendency in England followed the two channele of
hietory and geography. The two out-tending authore of thie type of
literature were ayron and Scott, who produeed Iflfih antiquarian travel
literature. There were othere euch ae Thonae warton, Gray and Lander
who belong on the liet. However, thie type of literature wae doc-ed

:33) eventual obscurity by the adaance of ecience in the nineteenth

” lbide' Pe “fie

century. There was, as the nineteenth century pragreeaed, an increasing
emphasis on scientific accuracy in investigation, a condition under
which Romantic tendencies could not Operate. Thus, the exploratory
tendency sank into the background or evolved into realiam.

The third group of tegfienciee grew out of the nineteenth century
poetic abeorption of the teachings of Plotinus. A third century phil-
onpher. he developed a philosOphy based on that of Plato. One teach-
ing of hie philonphy was that divine truth could be immediately per-‘
eeived in moments of ecetacy. The medieval mystics took over this con-
ception and it was revived again in the nineteenth century. Poets who
exhibit this mysticism include Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Shelley.
Like the ancient mystics, these men sought the revelation of the presence
of God in the external world. From a religious point of view they were
undergoing the deepest of himan experiences, and.fron the psychological,
they were undergoing the highest of psychic adventures. However, only
the more religious of the poets called the object of this immediate
perception God. Other, more philosOphically inclined, called that.
great monent the intuitive perception of the true values and realities
of life. Authors of this type were usually not sentimentaliete. but I
were original philosophers exploring the recessds of their own souls.

Other teachings of Plotinue are evident among the poets of this
period. His belief that lower forms of eind emanate from higher tones
appears in some of Blake's poene. And. his belief that sex love could
lead to nobler spiritual attitudes runs throughout the poetry of‘Shelley.

Another characteristic of this type of poets is their*noral earl-
estnese. They were convinced that ethical problens were the most im-

portant problans of life and were the noblest subjects for poetry. For

Hordsworth they were the old, conventional, moral standards. Blake
and Shelley, on the other hand, taught revolutionary ones. But no
matter what the standard was, they insisted on the importance of noral
earnestness, and the necessity of some code for a spiritual life.

This type of poetry was never papular. Sons poets did not care
for papularity and others could not bridge the intellectual gap between
'themselves and the public. They seldom attempted to make their thought:
acceptable by putting it into papular form, as the exploratory writers
did. For these reasons this type of poetry grew rare after 1850.

The purely aesthetic tendency, which has for its chief character-
istic, the cult of beauty, appears more strongly defined in the later
Romantics. It was an off-shoot of the mystical-ethical attitude which
transferred-to art the worship which earlier Romantics had reserved for
nature. This cult of beauty is represented by Keats and his contempor-
ary, Shelley.

This type started out all right, but it drifted from its original
intention. That it had richness of style is not questioned, but that
it eventually became a cultured hedonisn is evident. In the first place
it admired the beauty of tangible objects experienced through the senses,
not the beauty of ideas, so dear to Plato. Furthermore, it took an
a-ncral and sensuous attitude towards life. Ethically its greatest _
virtue was the power it had to inspire the artist to work for his ideal,
but always that ideal was the gratification of his own desire. Thus,
the rapture of the senses were allowed to grow out of the activity of
the intellect and the will, and the subject matter became hollow and
empty. However, the fault lay, not in the over-emphasis of beauty, but

in the under-emphasis on the rest of life. These nineteenth century

aesthetcs emphasized the georgeous vision at the eXpense of the divine
and their sense of civic duty.

Each of the tendencies discussed here represent attitudes toward
life, and as such may be found existing together in one writer, especi-
ally if his career was long. Futkermore, each had its own circle or
period in which it predominated. And these four tendencies are what
make up nineteenth century Romanticism. They were not new, but were
revivals of old moods and beliefs which were fundamental in the history
of the race.

This discussion affects old definitions of Romanticism by splitt-
ing them four ways, which shows that they are inadequate to orplain the
deeper workings of the mind. For example, the definition of Romanticism
as the return to nature would break down in this manner: the sentiment—
alist returned to nature because it passively received his outpourings
of woe; the exploratory type of’mind studied nature for accurate detail,
especially details that were interesting because they were foreign; for
the mystic, nature was the revelation of the deity; and for the aesthete,
nature existed only in its beauty of outline and color.

a similar division takes place for the return to the Middle ages.
The sentimentalist fled from relaity to a dream world of castles and
knights. The exploratory author delighted in restoring a past of real-
ities. The mystics revived the mood of the ascetics of the Middle
Ages. And the aesthetes borrowed the richly picturesque from the
Medieval painter and chronicler.

The sense of the infinite played a small part ie'the second and

fourth categories. For the sentimentsliitit is the desire to give way

to unrestrained expression of emotions. Contracted to this, the mystic
felt infinity to be the infinite Opportunity to think, to act and to
improve.

On the basic of his discussion, Yr. Pierce concludes that the two
good tendencies are the mystical-ethical end the eXploretory. The other
two, the sentimentalism and the cult of beauty, in Mr. Pierce's Opinion
constitute the reel danger to literature.

The next definition which we sill consider is that of Mr. Louie
Cazemien. His definition paralleel that of’Mr. Herford, considering
the thought and feeling, rather than subject matter, as the cttributee
of Romanticism. However. Hr. Cazamian's definition is novel because he
divides the Romantic Hovement into two distinct and antithetical periods.

During the first thirty years of the nineteenth century) certain
characteristics of literature, which had been develoPing for e long
period of time. took on s new intensity. EMotionel and imaginative
literature threw of! the restraining bonds of reason. This achievement,
brought about by an inner prOgrose, was nonetheless influenced by the
social and moral environment. Perhaps the most influential force which,
tagether with the industrisl revolution and the religious awakening of
Methodisn and evangelism, effected English thought, sea the French
Revolution.

The new age in literature is customarily dated from the publiosties
of Wordeworth'e and Coleridge‘s txricel Ballads. These men possessed
an erdor of generosity which is the origin of poetic idealsim and the
revolutionary faith which moved them is the IOAIOO of authority for
their doctrines. The spirituel quality of these men, who appear at the

beginning of English Romanticism, helps to point out its nature end the

61

mental forces governing it. ”Raiunticiom can be defined only in terms
of pure psychQIOgy. Any other formula alters or limits arbitrarily its
very essence.'91

fihegative approach will help define the limits of English Roman,
ticimm. It does not consist of the cor'lict between tdo artistic prin-
ciples. Nor is it the clear affirmation of a novel aesthetic creed cs
opposed to orthodox art. English literature had not been codified and
disciplined like that or France. It followed no strict rules, nor had
it been incorporated into manners and upheld by an academy. A new type
of poetic creation was taking shape, with an independent attitude to-
ward the past .

horeoever, it is not the triumph of the self. The poet's person?
ality is important to it because imagination and sensibility are the
essence of individuality. Olassicism stressed the impersonal side or
the mind; the new literature stressed the individual. However, this
is not a cause, it is a consequence.

Furthermore, English Romanticisn.did not consist primarily in a
return to a national tradition. In one sense it did, but those poets
who rssninated the past did so only occasionally and then not merely
for its national quality, but also for the intrinsic values and moral
attributes they saw in it.

Finally, English Romanticism is not the result or foreigh influences.
They are a secondary force in the development of literature from 1798 to
1850. l

91 ilile Legouis and Louis Caesmisn, A Histogy of English Literature,
p. 1026

This, then, is what Romanticism is not. Positively, it is the re-
vivel or a creative impulse long dormant. According to it. Cazamian,
"the Femantic spirit can be defined as an accentuated predominance of
emotiorel life, provoked or directed by the exercise of imaginative
vision, and in it turn stimulating or directing such exercise.'92 The
poetry of the period is characterized by an exeltation of intense
emotion and a display of intense imagery. It is this interpretation
which forms the connecting link between those works customarily called
Romantic.

This definition does not perfectly describe the Romanticisn of 1820.
There are other Romantic ages recoznizsble in English literature, the
Elizabethan for example. dherein lies the difference? Partly in the
immediate happenings and near historical influences. The French Revol-
ution was a é3erful influence on nineteenth century Romanticism. But
the main difference is of a more inner nature. The nineteenth century
Romantics knew and felt that their Romanticism was a revival and not
an innovation. They were under the influence of "a moral life which
had formerly been lived, and which memory could fsin recapture.'9’ They
experienced a feeling of nostalgia in their search for a mood which be-
longed to the post, and this feeling was essential because they were
able to grasp the reality of the mood and not just an image. Through
their use of spiritual will-power and intuition they could revive the
post from its dornflnt state. Thus, the “wonder" of the Romunticists is
...‘the pregreaeive lighting-up of an inner horizon, which extends be-
yond the limits of clear conscioéhess; it is the perception of objects
in the magic garb with which our tired eyes invested them of yore, and

which our tired eyes had forgotten. The obsession of distant eenturiee

92 Ibi‘e. Fe 1028. y 9) Ibide. p. 1029s

63'

is the nyeterioun UttFECLIOLB of strong nodes of feeling of which the
collective memory had preserved e ccande recollection, and which it
naturally associates with remote phac08 of its experience.'94 These
tendencies of h0¢6ht1013i indicate the psycholOgicel attitude of the
writers. Tuet of the general publiqgae souewhat different.

itIn the first place, at the time of the appearance of fiananticiam,
there gee no sudden, general change of thought, nor was the;e a general
exuberance or interest in emotion. Instead, there was an unrest and
lack of balance in society. The eentimentaliem of the eighteenth cent-
try use chOced by a cynical scepticism. The muse was interceted in
industrial and commercial exPaneion, following the emerging etandard of
utilitarianism. Thus, the state or society provides no eXplanation for
Remanticiem. 0n the other hand. it does throw light on the detaile and
internal division: of the movement.

The politics of this period have a definite relation to the oouree
of its literature. There must be recognized two successive generatione
of Romantics. The first coincide: with the revolutionary turmoil which
ended in about 1815. During this time. England was making a national
effort against France. Thie centering of interests stirred e feeling
for national traditions, end the first Romanticiem took the for: of e
reaction against the revolutionary ideal.

The representatives of the first group, wordeworth and Coleridge.
based their poetical reforms on a myeticiem which found ite juttifin

eetion in a national idealism. The elemente of thie idealism include

en interest in the poor which the Lake poets justified by adhering to

”M0. p. lowe

the dootrino of the noble shmplioity and the norsl dignity of a peasant
rsoo sttaohed to the 3011. Thus, they viewed the political turmoil
with {belings of hostility and dsfonos.

In 1815 the situation changed. Hith the passing of the French con-
flict, the Tory reaction had no objsct. A.novement began for more
liddls class roprsssntation in government, and for agrioulturnl and
financial reforms. This internal unrest provided this for attacks on
the oligarohie regime.

It was in suoh s stats of society that the second genoration of
Romantic poets lived and flourished. They rspreasnt a moral revolt.
Refusing to rsoOgnizs the prestige of tradition, they criticized the
fssr of progress provslsnt smong ths people. Thsy inhsrited revolut-
ionery thought and linked it with ideals of libsrty, indspsndsnoe. and
Justice, and with s cult of ths beautiful.

The first gsnsration of poets was in harmony with most of the
people. Thsir Romsntioisn was s sort of‘puritiootion and deepening of
normal existence. Their emotions were emotions common to sll and when
they did stimulate than, it wss only in order to idselise them into
poetry. The eeoond generation was just tho-opposite. The; set up an
opposition between the srtist sud his savironnont. They carried auction
to s point which ssonsd, to the aversgs psroon, on inbslsnos of per-
sonalitv. Thqy raised, agsinst ths sstnhlishod order, s protestation
which appealed to ”the vital foross of the soul against the rule of
interest. and cold colonistion.'95 Thus, Ronsntioisn boon-o ths lit-
oroture of social oonfliot. It sttraoted the young and tho sellous,

but it sloo provoked the average mun.

”LIE-.500 Po 105540».

65

Romanticism did coincide with an intellectual move-eat which had
some suecess, that of philosophical radicalian. But, it failed to meet
the conditions necessary for durability. It exceeded the average powers
or the publie.and thue, being the literature of the few, it n....; he-
hecane really papular. The public could not accept it becauee it ad-
vocated a creed which they were deternined to wipe out. “To be more
widely accepted, it had to wait until a reactionary nova-sat towards
balance had set in againet its and until with the evidence of its decline
there was efflhced the danger with which it had eeemed to threateeaaoo-
iety, a society which above all desired to li‘ve»"96

is come now to consider three acre or less modern instances or
Romantic criticism. The firet, hy Hr. Lawrence Hyde, ic anti-Humanist.
He orplaine the Humaniet point of view, a.vsry important one in the
twentieth century, as it concerns Romanticism, and then dcecnstrates
how he believes it is in error.

The nineteenth century, according tcrflr. Hyde, is characterised
hy its preoccupation with inetitutione, the external conditions of en-
ictence, and the problele of social and political {readout The cry of
the age was for Literalicn, and ite great task.was the emancipation of
humanity from external limitations.

Now, the twentieth century reprocente the fruition or tnic nine-
teenth century aha. The democratic ideal has acre or lees been realiccd.
Woman enjoys equality with man and the individual posaeeeee the freedo-
to trade, worship, express hie convictions and educate his children as

he thinks fit. However, the solution to this nineteenth century proble-

96 11:14.. p. 1055.

has left a greater one in ite stead. Hodern.man is free, but how can
he be prevented from exercising this liberty in a deetructive, waste-
ful and ignoble fashion! The task then, ie to pureuade a free peOple
to inpoce voluntary reetraints on themselves. Everyone ie free to do
as he likes, but this hae only proved to mean a slow but cure vulgar-
iaation of the valuee or life. IEverything tends to be dragged down to
the level on which it is compreheneible or emotionally satiefying to
the man who has neither purified his perceptions, disciplined his will,
nor cultivated his mind.'97

Modern critics in the period cince the first Uorld war have become
acutely aware or this threat to culture. Believing that the basic of
all external forms lies in the integrity of the individual, they have
become intereeted in the peyohological aspecte of the situation rather
than the political or social. Conaequently, they are engaged in ex-
ploring the spiritual foundations of modern civilization.

The nineteenth century regarded man as an animal of exceptional
intelligence which had the power to transfonn the world into a liveahls
place. He was by nature good rather than had, and it bad, it was due
to external conditions. They thought that by modifying his environment
nan could he infinitely perfectihle. This attitude is called Humanit-
arianiem. The oppositc.attituds, held by the nodern critics, ie called
Humanism. This new attitude streases the opposition between nan and
nature. While these critics agree that man is a part or nature, they
believe that he has something within him which is other than natural,
that in him the natural and the other than natural are united. To eup-

port their contention, they cite man's power of exercising free-will

97 Lawrence Hyde, The Prospects of Humaniaa, p. 10.

67

and his power of veto over instinctive desires.

The modern Humanists contend that the dangers implied in the vul-
garization of culture can never be resolved until man has achieved a
disciplined individuality. Thus, man cannot hape to control his envir-
onment until he can control himself, and this control can only be ex-
ercised from a center above the plane of the flux.

Opposed to this attitude of the Classical Humanists is that of the
nee-Romantics. These critics reject humanism on the ground that it re-
sults in an unresolved dualism. They contend that what is needed ”is
a radical synthesis between the discordant elements in our being, as a
result of which the tension between the instincts and the ethical will
is completely overcame."96

The Romantic presents a curious combination of ideas. 0n the one
hand, he is naturalistic in regarding man.as essentially the came as
other forms of life. On the other, he is like the Classical Humaniets
in stressing the necessity of the recreation of the individual.

In addition to these two groups of critics, there is one other
group called the New Humanists. This group includes such critics as
Irving Rabbit, Paul Elmer Kore, T.E. hulne and T.S. Eliot. These nen,
though they hold diverse opinions, have some tenets in common. They
are all in reaction against the cptinian of the nineteenth century.
They all realise that man, though free, is the slave of certain base
inclinations, and they believe that the only solution is the imposition
of an inner discipline. Finally, they are all dissatisfied with exist-

ing standards of values.

” 1b;d.' pe 11c

One striking fact about these critics is that their philosophy is
definitely Humanist rather than religious. Instead of finding a center
for their thinking in the fact of God, they put all their trust in the
native power of man. They believe that man has the power to order his
affairs without consciously looking upward to a supra:human region for
inspiration. consequently, they are forced to make a substitute and
the Humanists have chosen to rely on reason, ethics and art. They be-
lieve that if peeple can 'be'induced to exercise their reason in a pro-
per fashion, to respect the moral law, and to respond to the elevating
influence of art, than we may perhaps one day enjoy the privilege of
living in a harmonious and stable type of society.'99 If not, the
cause will be lost, since there is nothing else upon which we can depend.

This, then, is a sketchy outline of the philosOphy of the Human-
ists. It will, I think, serve to esplain more fully the anti-Romantie
attitude of these critics. we will now examine some of the criticis-
of th... writers as it applies to Romanticism in the nineteenth-century.

Of course, not all of the modern critics are Humanists, and the
views of some of these writers will also be noted. hr. Hyde is a re-
presentative of this group which rejects the tenets of Humanism. He
takes the Humanists to task on the grounds that they erect too sharp .
barrier between the moral and natural elements in men, and because they
are too anti-religious. One representative of the Humanist point of
uni 1. Hr. Irvin; Rabbit, whose book Rousseau and Remanticisn, xx.
dyde uses to illustrate the Humanist philosophy. In this book, Mr.
Rabbit comes out against any novenent away from the egoistie self. He
regards the inner light and the inner check as one and the same thing.

99 Ibide’ p. 15e

69

Mr. Hyde maintains that, while the conscience usually admonishes one to
abstain, it often impels one to go forth. He sees in Mr. Babbit's en-
phasis of the negative side of intuition, s deep-rooted fear of the
emotions. ”He has failed," says hr. Hyde, 'to attain to that deeper
consciousness in which the head and the heart are one. and the result
is that once he leaves the intellectual phase he has no center left from
which to control his experience."100 Therein lies the key to Mr. Babbit's
philosOphy. He refuses to meet the obligation we all face of putting
faith in a wisdom ”which is only to be acquired at the cost of trans-
cending that plane on which the intellectualistic self is supreneJ‘101

Mr. Babbit's attitude towards illusion is illustrative of this
point of view. Illusion he regards as both feminine and romantic.
Spontanicty confuses him because it does not belong to a world of clear
definition. Says Hr. Hyde, 'that which eludes classification and deco
cription and can only be apprehended by the imagination belongs for him
to the realm of illusion."102

The most decisive indication of Mr. Babbit's fear of the emotions
is found in his treatment of the Romantic problem. His analysis of the
weaknesses of the Romantics, the egocism, the naturalistic self-indul-
gence, and the pseudo-idealism is outstanding in the field of criticism.
However, he has failed to understand the deeper significance of the move-
ment.

There are, according to Mr. Hyde, two sides to the Romantic hove-
ment. an one side, the Romantics sought for unity, exhibited a nost-
algia for a mythical Greece or slipped away from life into an idealised

100 m" p. 97. V

101 Ibid.
102 Ibide. p. 98s

Middle Ages. From this point of view, the Romantics seem remarkably
foolish. On the other hand, Romanticism does not always mean this ee-
cape from reality. It may also mean a distorted orpression of the
search for a deeper reality. Being mystically minded and intuitive,
the Romantic is capable of conceiving a unity and beauty of life which
ordinary man cannot. He cherishes an image of what might be, that is,
he perceives the potential which is just as real as that which is mani-
fest.

Being a seer however, makes the Romantic liable to be misunderstood.
He has a tendency to generalize what is only true under certain condi-
tions. “He idealises human beings, maintaining in the face of all evi-
dence that they are perennially what in actuality they are only capable
of being for a season.'105 At the sale time he is unable to bear the
strain of holding in m. mind both the 1am vision and the hang. of
the actual. Thus, he takes flight. But, although he pursues miragee,
it should be remembered that a mirage 'is an illusory picture of some-
thing which is deeply and legitimately desired.“ It is only those
who are capable of realizing the sublime that can attain such emotional
heights.

From Mr. Hyde's point of view, the most important element of the
Romantic attitude is the sense of the unity which underlies the diver-
sity of life. The basic force behind the Romantics is the urge to tren-
scend the limits of personality. The Classic ideal is a world of just-
ice, where every person respects the rights of every other person. But

the Romantic, deeply moved by a sense of the Whole, demands more. "He

10) Ihide. p0 10Ce
104 Ibid.

71

is intuitively aware that in so far as we emphasize the separateneae of
our individualitios at the eXPenee of the unity which they tagether con-
stitute, we cut ourselves off from the deeper levels of being.”105 For
him, the Xhole ie the only true reality, and the individual ie truly
alive when he becomes one with the Jhole. Tlie ie the reason for the
Romantic'e desire to blend his being myoticully with that of his fellow
man.

Now, one of the puzzling aspects of this tendency is the feet that
the manifestation of it bears close resemblance to the manifeetation
of naturalistic eXpeneion on a biolcgicel plane. The distinguishing
difference is to be found in the diction eni this can be recognized only
by one whose consciousness is of the same order as that of the author.
“It needs indeed, an exceptional delicacy of imagination to distinguish,
on occasion, between fruit: of Rouseeauietic phentasy and those of e
responsiveness to the true infinite. Yet the one represents a pathetic
feilure iqédeptationg the other a vision of the highest possibilities
before the race.'106

It is on this point that Mr. Hvde is dissatisfied with Hr..Bebbit's
treatment of the Ronantice. _Thougb he insists on the importance of im-
agination, Mr. Rabbit repeatedly demonstrates his insensitivenees to it.
He ie so concerned with his ideal of control that ”he comes to regard
every movement of exPenaive sympathy, on whatever level, with the most
undieguieed mistrust.I He views every manifestation of the Romantic

impulses ae the instinct to throw off not only the outer and artificial

105 Ibide. P0 1020
106 Ibid.’ p. 102.
10? Ibide' Fe 10).

72

restraints, but all linitrtions. Thus, he puts Browning, Keats, Horde-

worth and Rousseau all on the ears plans because they were concerned

with merging mysticslly into sorething beyond thesselvss, "a procedure

which the Classics] Humsnist can only contemplate with the greatest mis-
-» 108

givings.’

The second of the ltst three definitions which we will consider is
that of F.L. Lucas. In his book, The Decline and Fall of thg_Romsntic
‘ggggl, Kr. Lucas has given us another example of anti-Romantic criticism.

He begins his discussion by examining some of the better known de-
finitions and giving his reaction to them.

Goethe's definition of Romanticism as disease and Classicism as
— health sorely leaves Mr. Lucas with the loose ends of the problem. 'For
after all,” he says, ”is 'The Ancient Mariner' really diseased? Is
.EEEEE not Romantic?'109 Likewise he cannot accept Stendhal's use of
Romanticism as a synonym for up-to-dete, since it leaves the language
poorer, not us any wiser. He does not lugfl‘the definition of Romanticsim
as the Opposite of Classicism because he believes that Classicisn has
more Opposites than one. Nor can he agree with Victor Hugo that Romant-
icism is to be identified with the grotesque, since he can find nothing
grotesque in dordsworth‘s 'Highlsnd Maidl or in Kests' “La Belle Dane
sans fierci.‘ Heine saw Romanticism as e reswakening of the spirit of
the Middle Ages and of Christianity, yet Mr. Lucas finds little that is
{edievsl in Werther, little that is religious in Byron.

Brunetiere viewed the Romantic movement es s blind wave of literary

egotism. "But,“ counters Er. Lucas, 'is 'The Ancient Msrinsr,‘ that

108 bid.
'10? F.L,,Luces, The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal, p. 9.

75

inveluoble extmple, egotistic?--is it not, on the contrary, a sermon
against egotisn7"110 Another definition of the Rowantic revolt sees it
as section Opposed to reason. But, Fr. Lucas cites Scott as a monument
to sanity, honesty and self-control in the nineteenth century, and
Johnson, who could not face the ending of King Lear, as an example of
eighteenth century emotiornliam.

fithsr definitions concern the general etmospheze of semanticism.
Peter's the addition of sugfingenoss to beauty hr. Lucas finds inadequate
because Romanticism often sired at the terrible or the grotesque. hotte-
Dunton's ”The Rennscence of fionder,” in which mystery and aspiration
play a.lsrgd pert, “r. Lucas also finds inadequate since he feels that
there is little mystery and often little aspiration in writers like
Byron and Burns. Professor Abercrcmbic's definition of Recenticism as
the cpoosite of realism Mr. Lucas finds some truth in, but he also be-
lieves thst it tends to exaggerate and omit. Mr. Lucas finds much that
is realistic in the low life of Scott‘s novels and in Keats "rho Eve of
St. Agnes.‘ In fact, the Romantics pursued violent feelings which they
found in crude reality as well as in dreams.

Thus, it is evident that there still is no agreement on the nature
of Romanticism. The first thing that Fr. Lucas attempts is to find the
origin of the two wards, Classic and Romantic. Romantic has its roots
in Latin. There deveIOped, in the Roman Empire, a Lurbarized vernacular
celled lingua Romanicus. Its adverb Romanice has given us the word

romance. This term was first applied to the old French vernacular,

fictitious stories in verse and prOse. _1n the seventeenth century, from

110 Iblde' p. 11.

74

its fictitious meaning, romance cans to mean fable. foday, romantic is
used to indicate the false or the strange and dreamslike. This, then,
is the history of the word Romantic. Classic has had a somewhat diff-
erent deve10pment. In Latin, clasais originally meant a host. Under
the Empire, classicus was used to distinguish a first-class writer from
one of the proletariue. During the Renaissance, when standard Greek
and Latin writers were read in class at school, the idea developed of
classic as meaning any Greek or Rowan writer. Thus, classical means
standard, that is anything which conforms to the standards of classical
antiquity.

Romantic has two usages. First, it is used in a historic sense to
designate a literary movement. Second, it is used to denote a feeling
which we get from such things as “La Belle Dane sans Merci.' or 'The
Ancient Kariner.' In order to discover the nature of the latter, hr.
Lucas employs a bit of free association to determine the qualities which
Romance calls to mind. These he discovers to be 'Remoteness, the sad
delight of desolation, silence and the supernatural, winter and drear-
insss; vamperine love and stolen tryste, the flowering of passion and
the death of beauty: Radcliffe horrors and sadistic cruelty, disillusion,
death, and madness; the Holy Grail and battles on the Border; the love
of the impossible.'111

Mr. Lucas repeats the same experiment with the terms Classicisn and
Classical. The qualities these terms call to mind he finds are, 'Graee,
selfbknowledge, setfbcontrol; the sense of fora. the easy wearing of the
chains of art hidden under flowers, as with some sculptured group that
fills with life and lithenese its straitened prison in the triangle of

111 Ibide. pe 25s

75

a pediment; idealism steadied by an unfaltering sense of reality: the
lamp and midnight-oil, rather than wine--cup."112 This seems to indicate
a simple antithesis between reason and emotion. However, the human mind
is more complex than that. There are psychological differences behind
the association of these two words.

There are three conflicting forces in man, which it is the task of
life to reconcile. First, the instinctive impulses; second, the influp
ences of other human beings by which certain ideals of behavior are
built up in him. 'Thirdly, his intelligence presents him a shadow-show
of what he calls reality.'115 Freud has designated these three forces
which work upon the ego as the 'ld', the 'super—ego', and the 'rsality-
principle'.

These forces act upon the ego in this manner. The instinctive 'Id'
motivates the ego to gain some desired object. If the object is un-
attainable, the reality-principle tells the ego it cannot be obtained.
If it is forbidden, the super ego tells the ego that the act of obtain,
ing is not condoned. Thus, the ego is torn between a triangle of forces.
Of course, it has the power to repress certain impulses that are too
difficult to ...t, but these go on writhing in the unconscious.

It seems, then, that a great deal goes on under the surface of the
consciousness. and these ideals and impulses, held under the conscious-
ness, sees to be released into our dreams. Here they are espressed.in
two ways: first, normally censcious impulses seal to create imaginary

situations which allow the dreamer to go on sleeping; second, the dream

may appear in disguise which may require analysis to reveal the impulse

112 Ibide. Fe 28s
115 Ib§d., p. 29.

76

beneath. Mr. Lucas maintains that the lives of men and their art de-
pend, ‘on how strict and Oppressive, or relaxed and easy going, are
their sense of reality and their sense of the ideal, their conscious-
ness and their conscience.'11a Different periods vary in this, and it
is important because there appears to be something common between all
artistic creation and dreaming. Dreaming formed the setting for much
of Medieval poetry and many other posts down through the ages such as,
Crabbe, Stevenson, Coleridge, Paps and Dryden have exhibited or admitted
the fact that dreams played a great part in their creations. '30 con-
sidered, the differences between Classiciam, Romanticism, and Realism
turn out, I think, to be differences mainly of degree; depending on the
strictness with which, if we may call them so, the reality and the super-
ego control and censor such emanations from the unconscious mind."115
The Realist sacrifices everything to his sense of reality. The Glass-
icist cultivates certain forms of unreality as good taste, but they are
dominated by a social ideal of a civilized class. 0n the other haufix
the Romantic 'has no such qualms of pedantic honesty.'116 For example,
in defiance of Astronomy, some Romantics can hardly admit a night with-
out a moon. The Romantic, then, is a dreamer. He can be vividly real-
istic or sometimes ruled by a social ideal of conduct, but essentially
he is a dreamer who believes in allowing his impulses and ideals full
rein. Romanticism is like intoxication, 'though there are varying de-
grees of it, just as there are day-dreams, night-dreams, nightmares,

117
drinkpdrsams, and drug-dreams.” Mr. Lucas attempts a concise

11h Ibide' Pe ’le
115 Ibide' pe 5’s
116 Ibid.. p. 56.
11? Ibid.

definition of Romanticism in this manner: ”Romantic literature is a
dream-picture of life; providing sustenance and fulfillment for impulses
cramped by society or reality."118

In contrast to the dreamy nature of the Romantics, the Classicists
were wide awake and sober. They believed that things were what they
were and that their consequences could not be changed. They could not
see any reason, therefore, for wishing‘to deceive themselves. To this
the Romantics answered that things as they were left saxmuohko be de-
sired. And so their solution was to take refuge in a dream world.

This began in England with islpols'e Castle of Otrantg and Maepher-
son's‘Qggigg. And, it was carried on by the Romantics of early ninea
teenth century England, Coleridge, Keats, De Quincey, Shelley, and lyren.
iitnsss, for example, 'Kubla Khan', and "The Ancient Kariner', or leats'
'La Belle Dame sans Kersi', or Dg Quineey's opiue reveries, or Byron's
'Dremm'. all of these arose from dreams. IRomanticism, in a word,‘
says Mr. Lucas, “was the Sleeping Beauty dreaming of the Fairy Prince;
unfortunately the fairy Prince is apt to lose his way; and the Sleeping
Beauty may then console herself with other spirits that come,lifig the
Arabian kind, out of bottles, but end all too unremantically in delirium
tremens.'119

The eighteenth century paid heed to two voices, one s:hying, ”That
is not intelligent“, the other, ”That is not oione.‘I "Romanticism,' says

Hr. Lucas, 'seems to‘me, essentially, an attempt to drown these two

voices and liberate the unconscious life from their tyrannical repress-

120
icns.‘ In this sense, Romanticism is revolution and the views of the
118 Ibid.,_p. 55-56. 120 lbid.

119 Ibide. Pb 42.

writers of the period confirm this. The Romantics believed in inspi-
ration. Ritness wordsworth's definition of poetry quoted previously.
Burns admitted he could not write when he forced himself. Shakespeare
never blotted a line and others like Scott and Byron, steadfastly re-
fused to revise and polish their work. The Classicists sniffed at this
idea. They held firmly to the belief that a man could write if he set
himself to it. In short, the Romantics created in a semiftrance, and
found it hard to combine with this the opposite mood of self—criticism.

These, then, are the qualities which Mr. Lucas attributes to
Romanticism. In the light of these views he finds it pesaible to assem-
ble the diverse theories examined previously into an intelligible whole.

First, Romanticism is not a disease. 'It is intoxicated dreaming."ml
Such autoiintoxication, however, can become unhealthy. Secondly, Roman-
ticism is not a simple rerolt of Emotion and Imagination against Reason.
The revolt against the sense of reality and the sense oféociety can be
either passionate, or imaginative, or both. Thirdly, Romanticism, de-
siring to be free, throws off all rules, and thus becomes literary Pro-
testantism, Liberalimm, or rule of laisses-faigg. Fourthly, the Middle
Ages, by their qualities of mystery and remoteness, were the spiritual
home of Romanticism, but theywsre no essential part. ‘Lastly, Romanti-
cism was only partly opposed to Realiss.' Its true apposition was with
the hackneyed and humdrum present. Snatches of realism are present in
the work of the Romantics, for instance,_in the language which Words-
worth prcposed to use.

Other features of'Rcmanticism arise from its relaxation of censor-
ship over the Unconscious or the Preconscious. First, the symbolims

121 Ibi‘e. Pe “e

79

employed in dreaming had the effect uppnaRomantic literature of enrich?
ing its imagery. The Romantics, weary of the worn metaphors and similes
of the Classicists, produced a whole wealth of new images. Second,
Romantic writers used language in a dreamy way. They gave the language
vague overtones and new associations, wihch seem the antithesis of the
bare, literal meaning on which the eighteenth century concentrated.
Third, the Romantics used a meter designed to be an intoxicant. The aim
of this meter was to drug the reader's sense of reality, heighten his
power of suggestion and leave him in a dreamy trance. Fourth, in the
choice of subject matter, the Romantics favored the remote, since remot-
eness is associated with dreaming, and also because remoteness makes it
easier to dream by avoiding brute fact. It may be the remoteness of
space or of time of of the undiscovered regions of the mind. 'The
Romantics found this terrapincognita of the soul their happy hunting
ground.‘122

'These, then, seem to me the essential effects of the wine of
Romanticism. Xaturally they vary enormously with the strength of the
dose. One glass will quicken a man's intelligence and observation; a
dosen will undermine them. 'Dry light is best;' but too dry a life may
not be-—at least in matters of the imagination. The eighteenth centuny
carried dryness to excess. The Romantic reaction was healthy; but, like
most reaction, it became extravagant and so unhealthy in its turn. The
Romantic writer, squeezing 'Joy's grape' against his palate, grows more
eloquent, mere magical in the music of phrase and imagery, more impress-
ive in the frank intensity of his feeling and imagination, in the atmos-

phere that only passion can create. He can be a bewitshing companion.

122 Iblde. D. 52s

But he loses more and more, as his intoxication increases, the balance,
the prcportion, the control, the power of the world; the quiet sympathy
a writer needs in order to observe and delineate characters other than
his own or shadows of his owno-thst exaggerated ego which in the Roman-
tics often grows as bolated as an ant-queen among‘her crawling subjects;
fertile, but grotesque. gush, for better and for worse, seem to me the
symptoms of Romanticism, this dream-gift of Dionysus, who brings release
for the soul in chains, but for those that follow him too far, new chains
heavier still; who has wrecked life after life, and yet immeasurably en-
riched the world.'123

We cone now to the last of the critics to be considered in this
study. This definition by 3:. Ernest Earnest can be classified as one
of the appreciative criticisms of the Romantic flovsment. I have included
it in order to present a rounded picture of the question being considered.

The use of the term ”Rosantic' to describe a literary novement is
unsatisfactory according to Hr. Earnest. The seventeenth ani eighteenth
century critics used it as.a term of disapproval and even today it
carries with it a sense of the foolish or the false. Even the ter-
Romanticisn, though it has fewer unpleasant connotations, still suffers
tron its association with I'Romantic.“

Definitions of this literary phenomenon are endless and they are
so partly because of the varied nature of the materials commonly called
Remantic. But Kr. Earnest distinguishes two groups in the Rowantic
period which he calls the 'Hiniver Cheevy School” and the 'Intimatione

12‘ ..
School.” The first group which includes such works as "Lochinvar,'

125.22£209 PO 55’5“. '
12h Ernest Earnest, 'Infinity in the Palm of your Rand,' p. 5&5.

81

Evanhoe, “The Bride of Abydoe,‘ and The Castle of Otranto, he no named
because, I

Miniver eighcd for what was not,

And dreamed and rooted from hie labore;

He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,

And Prian'e neighbore.l2§

The type of literature represented by thie echool wee reactionary.
It use the literature of eeccpe and each critice no Irving Rabbit. P.L.
Luooe, and 3.0. Uelle, regard it no the centrel theme of the Romantie
Movement. However, Mr. Earnest believee that the more important Romantic
writere were not trying to eecepe from reality. but ineteed were eeerch-
in; for that very thing. They objected to the preceding ege on the'
grounds that ite poetry wee ertificial end unreal, and that ite veree
etyle and ite intellectual and emotional horizone wore limited. For
example, Coleridge thought that the uritere who preceded Wordeworth .2»
hibited e feleity in poetic etyle. And Hordeworth thought that theee
poete hcd need e language which did not reeemble the reel language need
by men. In fact, the beeie for hie diecueeion on the proper language
for poetry ie the need for greeter occurecy of capreeeion. One cannot
call hie etrivin; for the lenguege ectually need by men is.the eeerch
for e dream eorld. .

To demonetrete that the Romantice were more intereeted in truth
then beeuty, it ie only neoeeeery to quote from the “Preface to the
Lyrical Bellede,‘ often regarded ee the Romantic declaretion of inde-
pendence. “The powere requieite for the production of poetry ere; firet
those of Obeervetion end Deecription, - i.e.. the ability to cbeerve

with accuracy thinge .. they ere in theleeleee, end with fidelity to

125 E.A. Robineon, ’Miniver 0heeey.‘ 11 9-12, ee quoted by Earneet.
p. 5&8

82

describe them unmodified by any passion or feeling existing in the mind
of the doecribar.'126 Professor Lowce in The Road to.anedu has ehcwn
the factual quality of descriptions in 'Thc Ancient Kariner,' and Shelley
constantly searched for a ecientific basic for hie philosophy. Thue. we
can see that some of the chief Romantics were as interested in the cot-
ual as they Here in the wonderful.

Bose critics have also charged that Romanticism.meant disapproval
of contemporary interests. This ie eeeily disproved. Blake was a
friend of Tom Paine, and saved him from hanging for treason; Kente wee
a friend of Leigh Hunt, for a time a political prieoner; Shelley had to
leave Ireland because of hie agitation for liberation there; and Byron
was killed'in c Greek war for independence. Every one wee deeply inter-
ested in political thought, and if they were dreamers they did not uee
their dreams to escape from reality.

The reason for the misunderstanding of the Romentic View of lite.
for the critice' lumping together the Miniver Cheevy and Intimatione
schools when the poete dietinguiehed between them, liee in the temper
of the present age. Thie ere rocOgnizee inductive reeeoning from'ob-
jective data as the only approach to truth while the Romantice used a
different method. They epoke from within, regarding the fact ae part
of themselves and therein Mr. Earnest finds the common element linking
all Romantic poetry. Nhile the reticucliet underetood only the world
of concrete measurement, the Romantic ueed intuition es the approach
to truth. And today, in our more or lose rational world, thie type of
approach ie euepect.

126 d. Wordeworth, “Preface to the Lyrical Ballade,“ Oomplgte iorke
of Willigm hordeworth, p. 878, cc quoted hy Earneet, p. 549.

35

Blake is one of the Romantics who had visions of truth. His world
use thet of imagination end, though not apposed to the intellect, he
thought it saw things as separate entities, while the imagination per-
ceived the unity of the universe. The sense of immediate perception of
truth is found throughout Recentio poetry. One form is the nystic'e
belief thst he has ocmmuned with the divine principle of the universe.
One example is 'Tintern Abbey” where Wordsworth tells of

that serene and blessed mood
In which the affections gently lead.ue on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the notion of the human blood
Almost suspended, we are leid asleep
In body, and become e living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
0f hermony, and the deep power of joy,
he see into the life of things. 12?

Here sordsworth shows that he believed that he had perceived reel-
ity directly. He was looking for a working philOsOphy of life and he
found, or thought he found, tneunderetanding of the unifying principle
of the universe. This was the aim of Romantic literature, and Shelley,
who had sensed this sens unifying principle, thought the purpose of
poetry was to eXpreos it. Thus, rather than being a fashion of the day,
Romanticism was an sttenpt to meet the problems of life.

It is easy to illustrate how the Romantics came upon this concept
of unity. It was, as has been stated, en intuituve rather than I ration-
al eXperience. The intellectuelisetion of the eXperience come afterwards.

But the intuitive expert:ence required certain conditions. Two things
'setm to to essential, a solitude for musing and an aesthetic experience.
Hordeworth found his solitude and eXperience along the river Rye, Coler-

127 William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey,' ll ti-tg, as quoted by
Earnest, p. 55%.

8#

idge on a treaty midnight “when the world was”
...so calm, that it disturbs
And vezee meditation with ite etrenge
And extreme eilentneee. 128

Shelley, who had eeerched ruins for the solution to the riddle of

life, found it
When maging deeply on the lot of life, at the
Sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
Keys of birds end blossoming, .-
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I ehrieked end clasped my hands in eeeteey. 129

Wordsworth had e similar experience when walking home late one
night.

I made no vows, but vows
here then Lsde for me; bend unknown to me
Nae given, that I should be, else einning g3 reatly,
A dedicated spirit. 130

Such experience however, can be exPleined in terms other than those
of mysticism. Keats unperienced such eceteeies, when the imagination
loaned to discover the truth, even thatgh he did not believe in divine
or supernatural visions.

The difference between the Romantic intuition and religious myst-
ioiam lies in two things. First, there is no preparatory ritual in
ueing the intuition, and second, ecstasy is reached by means of In nee-
thetio eXperience, not by ascetic means. Rather than denying or conquer—
ing the body to lire in the spirit, the Romantics found bodily enjoyment
necessary to the full deveIOpment of the intellect and the imagination.

128 Samuel Coleridge, “Frost at Midnight,' 11 8-11, as quoted by
Earnest, p . 556 .

129 Percy Bysehe Shelley, ”Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,“ 11 55-61,

as quoted by Earnest, p. §§6.
150 william Hordeworth. The Prelude. Book IV, 11 534-57.

55

This intuitive approach to reality was important in the great les-
antie posts, but it has been neglected in our age because the aehieve—
nents of rstionalistie soienee have caused no to abandon other approaches
to truth. Also, it may be that our industrial world provides fewer
aesthetie experiences and less solitude than that or the early nineteenth
eentnry.

In concluding his article, Hr. Earnest defines the Romantic teaper
as 'a sense or the mystery of the universe and the perception of its
beauty through intuition or inuninoticmflu1

In conclusion, then, 1» no review the definitions we have examined
and attempt to discover the pattern which they make.

The Romanticists of the early nineteenth eentnry were concerned
with three problems: the nature of poetry, the eethod of evaluating the
works of Shakespeare, and the problea of sorrsetnees in poetry. To the
first they answered that poetry was the means of expressing emotion and
of interpreting experience. It wee, for then, an imitation of nature,
shaped and formed by the nest iepertsnt poetic faculty, the imagination.
The second question they answered by eoneluding that Shakespeareie art
was organie, that the laws governing an organise are inherent, and there-
fore, that Shakespeare was a law unto himself. Finally, hy sorrestnese
in art, the Romantics understood the right to disregard arbitrary rules
and to base their principles in truth and huesn nature.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, there grew up a threat
to Romanticism. Based upon a misunderstanding of Darwin's theories, the

new philosOphy held that the universe showed no evidence of design. It

151 Ernest Earnest, “Infinity in the Palm.of Your Hand,“ p. 559.

was the result of a growing materialistic philosophy and as such, it
eclipsed Romanticiss for a nusber of years.

Hear the end of the nineteenth century there began.an attempt to
rehabilitate the reputation of Romanticism. Pater maintained that Romany
ticisn is strangeness added to beauty and he was one of the first to in-
sist that Romanticism was not the antithesis of classieisa, but really
a principle in artistic temperament which is to be found in all litera-
ture. willian Lyon Phelps follows Peter in this view.

Around the turn of the century, Mr. 0.3. Hsrford dsvsIOped the
concept of Romanticiss as the development of the imaginative sensibility.
This sensibility, acting upon the world of sense and thought, called
forth a new response free man, and hence, the essence of Romanticill is
found, for Mr. fierford, in its speculative elements.

is have, in Mr. H.A. Beere’ definition, a somewhat narrow reaction
to Romanticies. He liaits his concept strictly to the return to the
Middle Ages. And he cites suffieient evidenee to bash.up his assertions,
providing one neglects, as he does, a sonsiderable segment of early nine-
teenth century English poetry.

In the first decade of the twentieth century the reputation of
Romanticism continued to elinb, due to a recognition by ssientiete and
philosOphere that there are certain limitations to the attainments of
scientific sethod. Mr. H.A. Neilson's definition of'Bemantieiel.ae the
predominance of imagination over reason and the sense of fact is a pre-
duct of this period.

There is, however, another development paralleling this favorable
view of’Romantieisn. It is that of the anti-Romantic school of critic-

ise. This school, represented by Paul Elmer More and others, views

37

Romanticism.as the expression of a morbid egotiem, brought about by an
intensely felt personality and the idea of infinity as the escape true
all limitations. They regard it as a corruptive agent, and something
to be avoided at all cost.

hr. Lascelles Abereronbie has taken a different approach to the
subject. He has attempted to show that Romanticism is not the anti-
thesis of Glaesioism, but of Realism. He has demonstrated that Roman-
ticism is a withdrawing from actual life, to an inner world in which
a higher reality is reclined.

Likewise, Mr. P.B. Pierce has chosen a different approach by div-
iding Romanticism into four tendencies, two good and two bad. The two
good he labels the Hystical-Ethical and the Exploratory tendencies.

The two bad he names the Sentimental and the Cult of Beauty. This is
a more or less middle-ground definition, an attempt to understand Ron-
anticiam rather than to criticise it.

The definition of Romanticism by hr. Oazamian.ic an attempt to
understand the phenomenon by engfis of psychology, Considering Romany
ticisn as the predominance of emotional life, Mr. Casamian distinguishes
two generations of Romantics. Both of these generations, he shows, were
products of an emotional reaction to the social and political environ-
ment of the early nineteenth century.

Hr. Lawrence hyde, it has been shown, is an anti-, anti-Romantic.
He castigates the Humaniste for taking what he considers to be a narrow
view of Romanticism. He defines Romanticism as the sense of the unity
which underlies the diversity of life. To the Humanist contention that
Romanticism is escape from reality, he opposes his belief that Romanti-

cism was a search for the Whole which is the only reality.

Mr. F.L. Lucas, an anti-Romantic, defines Romanticism as a re-
laxation of censorship over the unconscious mind. He characterizes
it as auto-intoxication - healthy if kept within bounds, corruptive
and destructive if allowed to get out of hand.

Finally, Mr. Ernest Earnest distinguishes two schools of Romant-
icism. One school he defines as that which produced mainly the liter-
ature of escape. The other he describes as that which employed in!
tuition to perceive reality directly. This letter he understands to
be the true Romanticism.

The pattern, then, which Romantic criticism has taken is this:
First, the Romantics of the early nineteenth century were occupied with
establishing and developing novel, but not new, doctrines of art. With
the rise of materialism, Romanticiam lost favor. By the turn of the
century, progress in knowledge re-established the reputation of Romano .
ticism. This reeestablishlent took the fornnof defining Romanticism
according to thought and feeling, or subject matter,or according to
psychology. Paralleling this favorable development were the unfavorable
tenets of the anti-Romantic Humaniste. And, finally, in the last de-
cade or so, there has been a renewed attempt to re-eetablish the app-
reciation of Romanticism.

What the future holds for Romanticism is hard to predict. Its
reputation is apparently closely tied to the circumstances of the times.
It is evident, however, that at the present there is a fuller and deeper

critical appreciation of Romanticism than ever before.

89

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