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

cours
et non pas à début.--_F. Brunetière: "Classiques et Romantiques,
Études Critiques," _Tome III, p. 296.
[2] Was war aber dis romantische Schule in Deutschland? Sie war
nichts anders als die Wiedererweckung der Poesie des Mittelalters, wie
sie sich in dessen Liedern, Bild- und Bauwerken, in Kunst und Leben,
manifestiert hatte.--_Die romanticsche Schule (Cotta edition)_, p. 158.
[3] "The Romantic School" (Fleishman's translation), p. 13.
[4] Un classique est tout artiste à l'ecole de qui nous pouvons nous
mettre sans craindre que ses leçons 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 Faïrie 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