A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century | Page 9

classique est tout artiste à l'ecole de qui nous pouvons nous mettre sans craindre que ses le?ons on ses exemples nous fourvoient. Ou encore, c'est celui qui possède . . . des qualités dont l'imitation, si elle ne peut pas faire de bien, ne peut pas non plus faire de mal.--_F. Brunetière, "études Critiques,"_ Tome III, p. 300.
[5] Mr. Perry thinks that one of the first instances of the use of the word _romantic _is by the diarist Evelyn in 1654: "There is also, on the side of this horrid alp, a very romantic seat."--_English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, by Thomas Sergeant Perry, _p. 148, note.
[6] "Romanticism," _Macmillan's Magazine_, Vol. XXXV.
[7] The Odyssey has been explained throughout in an allegorical sense. The episode of Circe, at least, lends itself obviously to such interpretation. Circe's cup has become a metaphor for sensual intoxication, transforming men into beasts; Milton, in "Comus," regards himself as Homer's continuator, enforcing a lesson of temperance in Puritan times hardly more consciously than the old Ionian Greek in times which have no other record than his poem.
[8] "Racine et Shakespeare, études en Romantisme" (1823), p. 32, ed. of Michel Lévy Frères, 1954. Such would also seem to be the view maintained by M. émile Deschanel, whose book "Le Romantisme des Classiques" (Paris, 1883) is reviewed by M. Brunetière in an article already several times quoted. "Tous les classiques," according to M. Deschanel--at least, so says his reviewer--"ont jadis commencé par être des romantiques." And again: "Un romantique seraut tout simplement un classique en route pour parvenir; et, réciproquement, un classique ne serait de plus qu'un romantique arrivé."
[9] "Classic and Romantic," Vol. LVII.
[10] See Schiller's "Ueber naive and sentimentalische Dichtung."
[11] Le mot de romantisme, après cinquante ans et plus de discussions passionnées, ne laisse pas d'être encore aujourd'hui bien vague et bien flottant.--_Brunetière, ibid._
[12] Ce qui constitue proprement un classique, c'est l'équilibre en lui de toutes les facultés qui concourent à la perfection de l'oeuvre d'art.--_Brunetière, ibid._
[13] "Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Litteratur."
[14] Far to the west the long, long vale withdrawn, Where twilight loves to linger for a while. --_Beattie's "Minstrel."_
[15] The modernness of this "latest born of the myths" resides partly in its spiritual, almost Christian conception of love, partly in its allegorical theme, the soul's attainment of immortality through love. The Catholic idea of penance is suggested, too, in Psyche's "wandering labors long." This apologue has been a favorite with platonizing poets, like Spenser and Milton. See "The Fa?rie Queene," book iii. canto vi. stanza 1., and "Comus," lines 1002-11
[16] "Selections from Walter Savage Landor," Preface, p. vii.
[17] See also Walter Bagehot's essay on "Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art," "Literary Studies, Works" (Hartford, 1889), Vol I. p. 200.
[18] Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet (1836), "Oeuvres Complètes" (Charpentier edition, 1881), Tome IX. p. 194.
[19] Preface to Victor Hugo's "Cromwell," dated October, 1827. The play was printed, but not acted, in 1828.
[20] In modern times romanticism, typifying a permanent tendency of the human mind, has been placed in opposition to what is called realism. . . [But] there is, as it appears to us, but one fundamental note which all romanticism . . . has in common, and that is a deep disgust with the world as it is and a desire to depict in literature something that is claimed to be nobler and better.--_Essays on German Literature, by H. H. Boyesen_, pp. 358 and 356.

CHAPTER II.
The Augustans
The Romantic Movement in England was a part of the general European reaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century. This began somewhat earlier in England than in Germany, and very much earlier than in France, where literacy conservatism went strangely hand in hand with political radicalism. In England the reaction was at first gradual, timid, and unconscious. It did not reach importance until the seventh decade of the century, and culminated only in the early years of the nineteenth century. The medieval revival was only an incident--though a leading incident--of this movement; but it is the side of it with which the present work will mainly deal. Thus I shall have a great deal to say about Scott; very little about Byron, intensely romantic as he was in many meanings of the word. This will not preclude me from glancing occasionally at other elements besides medievalism which enter into the concept of the term "romantic."
Reverting then to our tentative definition--Heine's definition--of romanticism, as the reproduction in modern art and literature of the life of the Middle Ages, it should be explained that the expression, "Middle Ages," is to be taken here in a liberal sense. Contributions to romantic literature such as Macpherson's "Ossian," Collins' "Ode on the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands," and Gray's translations form the Welsh and the Norse, relate to periods which antedate that era