because in a theme so unpromising we find some fresh and fragrant verses, and many of these are distinctly Romantic in tendency. It may be remarked that Armstroug wrote several clever imitations of Spenser and Shakespeare.

Joseph Warton, older than his brother by some six years, published in 1746 a volume of odes, several of which displayed a mind already well on the way towards complete Romanticism. Two call for special notice the "Ode to Fancy", which incorporated many glamorous images; and "The Enthusiast", which, written in 1740, published six years later, and, like the "Ode to Fancy", republished in Dodsley's "Collection of Poems" in 1748, possessed great intrinsic merit and still greater extrinsic significance as a landmark on the course of Romantic literature. Of the latter poem, Mr. Gosse, whom few would accuse of exaggeration, has justly said: "Here, for the first time, we find unwaveringly emphasised... what was entirely new in literature, the essence of romantic hysteria. "The Enthusiast" is the earliest expression of complete revolt against the classical attitude".

Apart from Young, Blair, and the Wartons, worked a man whose successful career, at first view romantic, was based on industry and honesty; one who from a valet became an author (mediocre, it is true) and a publisher (most talented, it is certain); one whose fame in literature rests securely on the excellent work he did as a publishing editor: Robert Dodsley (born 1703), by his "Select Collection of Old Plays" and his "Collection of Poems by Several Hands", helped considerably towards the happy issue of the new movement in poetry. He purchased the old plays, numbering about seven hundred, that had belonged to the famous Harleian Collection, and he had access to the library of Sir Clement Dormer. Thus well provided, he set before the public, early in 1743, the following · plan: "As all our old plays, except Shakespeare's, Jonson's and Beaumont and Fletcher's, are become exceedingly scarce and extravagantly dear, I propose, if I can procure 200 subscribers, to select from such of our Dramatic Writers, as are of any considerable Repute, about Forty or Fifty Plays. I shall take only one or two of the best from each Author, as a Specimen of their Manner, and to show the Humour of their Times. There are also many single plays well worth preserving; such as the Gorboduc of Lord Buckhurst, the Marriage Night of Lord

:

Faulkland, and some others". The "Old Plays" appeared in twelve volumes in 1744-5 and sold very well; a second edition was issued in 1780. Thus, by his editorial activity, Dodsley threw open to all the store-house of Elizabethan drama, some of which had a Romantic influence, for it is not for nothing that the Elizabethan has been called the First Romantic Period, But he did not rest on his laurels he soon began on an anthology of poetry. Proclaiming his scheme to his friends, amongst whom were numerous poets and versifiers, he succeeded in getting it well discussed and eagerly expected. "A Collection of Poems by Several Hands" was published thus : the first three volumes in 1748, the fourth in 1755, the fifth and sixth in 1758. It proved so popular that vols. I-III reached their second edition during the year of first publication, their third in 1752, their fourth in 1755, and their fifth in 1758, in which year vol. IV went to a second edition; in 1760 a collected edition appeared, and of this another issue was calledfor only three years later. These facts are important, for, though we cannot prove that the success of the "Collection of Poems" was due the pieces that afterwards came to be recognised as expressing the Romantic ferment, yet it is safe to assume that, as these pieces constituted nearly all the very good material in the whole series, they had a considerable share in that success. A list of the good, or at any rate the notable, things will show that the Romantic element was by no means negligible in this anthology, many items of which had been previously published:

Volume I. Poetry by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Green's poem "The Spleen"; Johnson's "London"; Dyer's "Grongar Hill" and "Ruins of Rome"; Shenstone's "Schoolmistress"; Collins' "Ode to a Lady on the Death of Col. Charles Ross", "How sleep the brave", and the "Ode to Evening".

Volume II. Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College","Ode to Spring", and "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat"; Seward's "Female Right to Literature".

Volume III. Thomson's "Hymn on Solitude" and several other pieces; Joseph Warton's "Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature" and "Ode to Fancy"; Mason's "Ode to a WaterNymph".

Volume IV. Gray's "Elegy" and the "Hymn to Adver

sity"; Collins' "Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer"; Johnson's "Vanity of Human Wishes"; Thomas Warton's "Pleasures of Melancholy"; Jago's poems, "The Goldfinches" and "The Blackbirds"; Shenstone's "Ode to Memory", "Pastoral Ballad", and other poems.

Volume V. Shenstone's "Nancy of the Vale" and numerous other pieces; Jago's "Verses to William Shenstone"; a poem by Fielding.

Volume VI. Several pieces by Akenside; five from Shenstone's pen; Gray's "Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake" and "Ruin seize thee, ruthless King".

Collins and Gray figure prominently in that list; both had published poetry a year before the first volumes of the "Collection" appeared. Collins was the earlier in the field in 1742 he brought out his "Persian Eclogues" (otherwise, “Oriental Eclogues"), which, written in the heroic couplet and conventional in treatment, gave little promise of that freedom, power and romanticism which his "Odes", published December 1746, revealed to literature. But the "Odes" met with an ill receplion, and Collins, extremely depressed, wrote hardly anything more. Dodsley, however, thought highly of his poetry and republished four of his pieces in the anthology; people came gradually to recognise the merit of the poet, though it was not till the Nineteenth Century that Collins had any great influence as a Romantic. His influence in the Eighteenth Century may be illustrated by the fact that Goldsmith borrowed three phrases from him.

Along with Collins, one generally treats of Gray. Chiefly owing to, the "Elegy", Gray was far more popular than the other with his contemporaries, but now he has to take second place to the author of the "Evening" ode, both as poet in general and as a Romantic in particular. In fire and beauty, Gray restrained himself too much to produce verse as spontaneous and vivid as much of Collins's, but he must be remembered especially for three things: one of the first, he appreciated scenery for its own sake (see his letters to West), apart from love and apart from moral considerations; in the "Elegy" he interpreted a universal emotion with many individual traits, with exquisite, images and artistry; and in the imitations and adaptations from Norse and Welsh poetry he brought a new element into English verse. He had been greatly influenced

by Henri Mallet's "Introduction à l'histoire de Danemark” (1755), which served to stir Europe to a keen interest in northern mythology and the Eddas.

The Scandinavian, Icelandic and Celtic themes in mass exercised a considerable influence on English literature: Percy translated Mallet's work and published it in 1770 as "Northern Antiquities"; Macpherson laid claim, in the "Fragments of Celtic Poetry" (1760) and in "Ossian", to set forth Erse poetry; Evan Evans issued in 1764 his "Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh": "under such auspices", writes Mr. Seccombe, "wild and picturesque poetry became the rage both in England and in Europe among the advanced school of critics". True; but in England "the rage" operated towards poetry "wild and picturesque" in a general way and not, to any great extent, towards imitation, adaptation, or other direct derivation from "Northern" literature. Take Erse after Macpherson, the Celtic element unmixed with other elements will rarely be found in Eighteenth-century English literature; Macpherson well nigh exhausted this mine, and disgust, resultant from the discovery that he had imposed on the public, rather turnedpeople against this kind of writing; almost the only noteworthy poems distinctly influenced by "Ossian" in our period are Blake's "Fair Eleanor" and "Gwin, King of Norway" (both in the "Poetical Sketches" of 1783), and his "Tiriel", written somewhere about 1789 though not published till late in the Nineteenth Century. And the Scandinavian literature, auspiciously introduced into English poetry by Gray, met with even less success; if we mention Mickle's "May-Day" and Logan's two "Danish" odes (none of these three being of high merit), we practically exhaust Gray's direct influence in this direction. It was not till Motherwell's three "Norse" poems, published in 1832, that the element obtained-after Gray-an adequate expression in English poetry; and it is curious to think that the finest examples of "Scandinavian" verse appeared in England in William Morris almost a hundred years after Gray's "Norse" poems.

Gray, however, possesses a great importance for our literature when he is considered in relation with Collins as an early worker in the Romantic Movement. Colonel Methuen Ward went a little too far when he asserted that "Collins was in reality the founder of a new school in poetry; and, followed

(and indeed accompanied) by Gray, it is not too much to say that these two were the precursors of that splendid outburst of song begun towards the end of the century by Coleridge and Wordsworth with the "Lyrical Ballads" ". That statement ignores the work of Joseph Warton, to which Collins and Gray added little in the way of emotion and treatment, though of course they had greater stylistic ability; it ignores that of Ramsay, Thomson, and Dyer. Both Collins and Gray, however, did bring something new into English poetry they made the ode and the lyric express, with warm emotion and exquisite technique, the nobler sentiments, broad aspects of art and literature, and the aesthetic joys of Nature; they broke away from conventional metres and stanza-forms. Collins was, in all this, more spontaneous and convincing than his contemporary; in the "Ode to Evening", an unrimed lyric, he threw down the glove to the champions of heroic couplets and neat generalisations. We must admit that in the "Oriental Eclogues"-but not at all in the 1746 and later work-Collins retained many of the "classical" tenets, and that Gray, almost throughout his career, harked back every now and again to certain minor characteristics or the Pope-School, as for instance in the personifications that tend to "suffocate" the seventh and eighth stanzas of the "Eton" ode. But, while they did not entirely free themselves from classical defects, both Collins and Gray heralded and embodied in their best poems many of the Romantic qualities possessed so eminently by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, and others.

The second period (1742-1751) of impetus in Romantic poetry included also two works that, published in 1748, have few points of resemblance one with the other: Thomson's "Castle of Indolence" and Hamilton of Bangour's "Poems". The "Castle of Indolence", imitated from Spenser, was almost "classical" in subject and incidents; but the mere fact that it followed its model in word and phrase, made it one of the semi-"romantic" poems. Exactly the the same remarks apply to Shenstone's "Schoolmistress", issued some six years previously. Both poems were quaint and delightful; both proved popular and have retained their popularity with all. (Spenser was later imitated closely by Beattie and Mickle.) A year after "The Schoolmistress", appeared for the first time Shenstone's "Pastoral Ballad", reprinted in 1755 in Dodsley's "Collection of