the fire of his idealistic faith. Hence the modern reader, seeing him in that night of poetry chanting his strange songs beneath the morning star of a new poetic day, inevitably thinks of Blake's own verses in The Gates of Paradise: Thou art still, The Son of Morn in weary Night's decline, L'ENVOI BATHEASTON VILLA-THE LICHFIELD CIRCLE-THE DELLA CRUSCANS-" LYRICAL BALLADS For each age is a dream that is dying, A. W. E. O'SHAUGHNESSY, Ode. Before WITH the work of Cowper and of Blake, our study of eighteenth-century lyric reaches its close. With these poets, the twilight of transition broadens into the clear light of the new romantic day. the death of Cowper, and long before the death of Blake, new voices were calling the age, more clearly and insistently, to new lands of song. New conceptions of life, new ideals of art were moulding a new literature which was to be far from compliance with Augustan canons. What the earliest heralds of revolt, Collins, Gray, the Wartons and their fellows, had seen as in a glass darkly, these new poets of romance were to see face to face. The year 1786 saw the issue at Kilmarnock of Burns's poems. In the Preface (despite an exaggerated compliment to Shenstone) the poet clearly states a new poetic ideal: Unacquainted with the necessary requisites for commencing Poet by rule, he sings the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him, in his and their native language.' " Such is Burns's own account of his work. From a cold universality poetry was to become the expression of individual emotion. "To transcribe the various feelings, the loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears in his own breast; these were his motives for courting the Muses, and in these he found Poetry to be its own reward.” 1 Meanwhile the century was witnessing the birth of those who were to be the poetic leaders of the next generation. In 1770 Wordsworth was born. The years 1771 and 1772 saw the birth of Scott and Coleridge respectively; in 1774 Southey; in 1775 Lamb and Landor. The next stage in romance we may here date from the birth of Byron in 1788, followed by that of Shelley in 1792 and of Keats in 1795. Meanwhile the earliest writings of the earlier group were already appearing. Before the close of the century several editions of Southey's poems had appeared. Coleridge and Lamb had also published their verses before the advent of the new century. In 1795 Landor published his poems. The volume reveals little of Landor's later lyric gift, and shows little break with tradition, but now and again something of the new note in lyric is heard, as when, in stanzas written on a Sunday morning in May, he sings (except for the first line) in a vein of simple language remote from the Augustan style: O peaceful day of pious leisure, O what will mark you as you run! Will gloomy clouds, or golden sun? But it was in Lyrical Ballads, which appeared in 1798, that the voice of the new age found its clearest expression. In it we find the new spirit, not indeed free from all vestiges of the old, but clearly recognisable, self-conscious, shaping a definite end. But the dethroned gods of Augustanism were not immediately destroyed. Romantic traits, as we have seen, were seldom if ever completely absent from our literature; nevertheless, Augustanism was 1 Quotations are from Preface to Poems of 1786, reproduced in Poetical Works of Burns, ed. W. S. Douglas, 2 vols., Kilmarnock, 1876. a thing too real, too widespread, to be overthrown in a night1; and amidst the new light of the romantic day, in odd nooks and corners, amongst poetasters, and imitators, and foolish sentimentalists, a debased Augustanism, the wreckage of the old order, changed and weakened but still recognisable, lingered even in the last years of the century. It retained much of the form of authentic Augustan verse, but in the place of Augustan stoicism it frequently presents an amazingly feeble sentimentality. The new wine is mixed with a very large quantity of water, and then poured into the old bottles. The retreats to which these worshippers of an abandoned faith fled were Bath, Lichfield, and Florence. I Oft have ye seen her, in her classic bow'rs To her gay dome, that decks the breezy vale, At Bath, despite the laughter and contempt of their more enlightened contemporaries, a circle was formed more conspicuous for social eminence than for literary talent. The leader of this group was Anne Lady Miller, who in her villa at Batheaston provided the necessary mise en scène for this poetic pantomime. If these people did nothing more useful, 1 For the reason of the long delay in the fall of the classical " poetry v. the excellent account in L'Évolution Psychologique et la Littérature en Angleterre, par Louis Cazamian, Paris, 1920, a work which unfortunately the present writer discovered too late to use here. 2 Anna Seward; To the Memory of Lady Miller (Poetical Works, 1810, II, 152). they at least provided the gossiping Walpole with material for a letter to the Countess of Ailesbury on January 15, 1775: "You must know, Madam, that near Bath is erected a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels, a myrtle tree, a weeping-willow, and a view of the Avon, which has been new christened Helicon. Ten years ago, there lived a Madam Riggs, an old rough humourist who passed for nothing, married to a Captain Miller, full of good-natured officiousness. These good folk were friends of Miss Rich, who carried me to dine with them at Bath-Easton, now Pindus. They caught a little of what was then called taste, built and planted and begot children, till the whole caravan was forced to go abroad to retrieve. Alas! Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scudéri, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. The Captain's fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virtu, and that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced bouts-rimés as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman vase dressed with pink ribbons and myrtles receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival; six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle, with--I don't know what. You may think this is fiction or exaggeration. Be dumb, unbelievers! The collection is printed, published-Yes on my faith! There are bouts rimés on a buttered muffin, made by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland; receipts to make them by Corydon the venerable, alias George Pitt; others very pretty, by Lord Palmerston; some by Lord Carlisle; many by Mrs. Miller herself, that have no fault but wanting metre; and immortality promised to |