1 Highlands of Scotland; it gives a peculiarly English character to the Ode to Simplicity: O sister meek of Truth, To my admiring Youth Thy sober aid and native charms infuse! Though Beauty culled the wreath, Still ask thy hand to range their ordered hues. While Rome could none esteem But virtue's patriot theme, You loved her hills, and led her laureate band: To one distinguished throne ; And turned thy face, and fled her altered land. In the same spirit Gray writes in his Progress of Poesy: Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep, Or where Mæander's amber waves How do your tuneful echoes languish, Murmured deep a solemn sound : Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains; And coward Vice that revels in her chains. When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, They sought, O Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast. So much energy did the free political activity of English society impart to the verse of these two admirable poets. At the same time both of them were alive to the literary inspiration of romance, which was beginning to breathe upon the atmosphere of their age. Collins, the schoolfellow of one of the Wartons, the friend of both, was more particularly moved by lyrical influences in the past which seemed almost to have forsaken his own generation 1 Number v. An ardent admirer of the Greek tragic poets, of Shakespeare, and of Milton, his verse is filled with glowing, though often despondent, aspirations for the recovery of their departed music. Thus, in the noble lines concluding his Ode on the Poetical Character, he says: I view that oak, the fancied glades among, From many a cloud that dropped ethereal dew, Nigh-sphered in heaven, its native strains could hear; From Waller's myrtle shades retreating, With many a vow from Hope's aspiring tongue, Of all the sons of soul, was known ; And Heaven and Fancy, kindred powers, Have now o'erturned the inspiring bowers, Or curtained close such scene from every future view. With Collins the inspiration of the Renaissance naturally shaped itself into Greek forms. His fancy, like that of Shelley, roamed freely through all the varieties of spiritual polytheism. "He loved," says Johnson, rather sarcastically, “fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the mæanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian Gardens." Yet, amidst the profuse abundance of his impersonations, he aimed always at preserving the purity of Grecian outline. As he says in his Ode to Simplicity:Thou who, with hermit heart, Disdainst the wealth of art, 1 And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall; In attic robe arrayed, O chaste, unboastful Nymph, to thee I call! Even in his diction the influence of Greek models is apparent; especially in his frequent practice of accumulating epithets without conjunctions. We have phrases like "wide ambitious base," "rich ambitious head," " blest prophetic loins," "shuddering, meek, submitted thought," "genial loved return," "gradual dusky veil," reminding us of the exquisite choruses in Sophocles' Edipus Coloneus and in The Birds or The Clouds of Aristophanes : Or: Or: ἄγε δὴ φύσιν ἄνδρες ἀμαυρόβιοι, φύλλων γενεᾷ προσόμοιοι, ὀλιγοδρανέες, πλάσματα πηλού, σκιοειδέα φυλ ̓ ἀμενηνά, ἀπτῆνες ἐφημέριοι, ταλαοὶ βροτοί, ἀνέρες εἰκελόνειροι, πρόσσχετε τὸν νοῦν τοῖς ἀθανάτοις ἡμῖν, τοῖς αἰὲν ἐοῦσι, τοῖς αἰθερίοις, τοῖσιν ἀγήρως, τοῖς ἄφθιτα μηδομένοισιν.2 αέναοι Νεφέλαι, ἀρθῶμεν φανεραὶ δροσερὰν φύσιν εὐάγητον ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων κορυφὰς ἐπὶ δενδροκόμους, ἵνα τηλεφανεῖς σκοπιάς ἀφορώμεθα καρπούς τ' ἀρδομέναν ἱερὰν χθόνα καὶ πόντον κελάδοντα βαρυβρομον.3 4 Gray's manner is fundamentally different. In his odes the ethic or elegiac spirit predominates, and is expressed by the union of substantives with carefully chosen single epithets, and by the antithetical turn of the sentence.1 This is according to the Latin genius, of which Gray's own verse compositions in that language show that he was full; who, in his Elegy, for example, does not feel the stately march of Latin verse? Th' applause of listening senates to command, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes, Sophocles, O.C. 675-678. 3 Aristophanes, Nubes, 275-283. 2 Aristophanes, Aves, 685-689. 4 I do not remember in Gray's Pindaric odes any instance of accumulated epithets, save in the first strophe of The Progress of Poesy. There are, of course, several in the Elegy: "ancient solitary reign"; "dull cold ear of death"; purest ray serene"; "dark unfathomed caves"; "mute inglorious Milton " ; "cool sequestered vale of life"; "pleasing anxious being"; longing lingering look.” Their lot forbade; nor circumscribed alone, The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, Perhaps the fact that the English temper is more nearly allied to the Roman than to the Greek, joined to the superiority of Gray in point of workmanship, is sufficient to account for the greater popularity which his poems have always enjoyed among his countrymen compared with those of Collins. The complete assimilation of subject and style in the Elegy, and the masterly treatment of English history in The Bard, are more potent illustrations of the civic tendencies of the Renaissance in England than is the subtle allegory of the Ode to Liberty. I have dwelt at length on the contrasted qualities of Gray and Collins, because they are the two last lyrical poets of England whose art is consciously directed by the genius of the Classical Renaissance. While both of them were by temperament inclined to follow the stream of Romantic tendency, they were so deeply penetrated by Whig traditions, and by the spirit of Greek and Roman literature, that they were able as artists to control the force of their own imaginative emotion. But the tide of Romanticism had now risen to a level at which it could no longer be contained within the old barriers. A large section of cultivated English society had familiarised itself with the doctrines of Montesquieu, some even sympathised with those of Rousseau. Groups of dilettanti, following out the road opened to them by the two Wartons, were in revolt against the didactic fashions of the previous age, and a host of minor poets, who still coloured their diction with conventional idioms imitated from the Latin, were endeavouring to give expression to Gothic sentiments. The Romantic Movement had, in fact, passed into the stage of pure Literary Renaissance, so that it becomes now necessary for our History to give some account of the Revivals (1) of Erse Legend; (2) of Scandinavian Mythology; (3) of Medieval English Metrical Forms. 1. In June 1760 was published a small volume called, Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland and translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language. It was the work of a young man, James Macpherson (born 27th of October 1736, died February 1796), then acting as tutor in the family of Mr. Graham of Balgowan. Macpherson had shown his performance, before its publication, with seeming reluctance, to John Home, author of Douglas, and the latter, delighted with what he took to be a great literary discovery, had laid the translations in 1759 before a council of his learned friends in Edinburgh. Immense enthusiasm was aroused, and on its appearance the book of Fragments received applause from many English critics, including Gray, Walpole, and Shenstone. Urged on by the growing excitement of his Scottish patrons, Macpherson undertook to continue his explorations, with the result that in December 1761 he was able to produce Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem, in Six Books; together with several other Poems, composed by Ossian, the son of Fingal: while, in March 1763, appeared Temora, an ancient Epic Poem, in Eight Books; together with several other Poems, composed by Ossian, the son of Fingal. Both of these epics professed to be translations from the Gaelic. Like the Fragments they were welcomed with rapturous applause in Scotland by Blair and his circle; but in England they were roughly denounced, by Johnson and others, as the fabrications of Macpherson himself. After Macpherson's death this denunciation was continued by Malcolm Laing; the defence of Fingal and Temora being undertaken by Patrick Graham and others; while a committee of the Highland Society, after a long investigation of the whole subject returned an open verdict. The controversy has lingered on into our own times, and Macpherson has found an able and modest champion in Mr. Bailey Saunders, whose conclusion is as follows: |