The Lexington intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1901-1949, 1902-02-01
Our Poctical
Legacy
PROF. EDWARD owDEN. MA. LID.
Dean Of St Ratdck'sc College. Dublin.

tnCCS WTHTT dHU OOETIo r""bS
dsible and tangible-these were an unshaped poetry bequeathed to
chosen inhentors of the generation which was young a hundred years
ago. WHAT THEY RECEIVED AS A MIST WAS TRANS
FORMED INTO A STREAM, AND THE STREAM BKOAD-
ENED TO A SWIFT N ABOUNDING RIVER.
The term Romantic Revival is somewhat misleading, or at
best indicates only a part of the fact. There had been in the
eighteenth century a naturaistc movement, OF which Fielding IN
prose, at an earlier date, and Crabbe in verse, at a later date, may
stand as representatives. Wordsworth was also a naturalist; he
studied the appearance of the external world and the lives OF his
fellows in the spirit of veracious research; but the naturalist was at
The same time an ideaEst; he recognized what is spiritual as a part,
and the most vital part, Of the fact. For him the invisible flowed
In through the visible hence. austere as he may sometimes seem,
he is the least ascehc of poets; and he it was who interpreted most
profoundly the revolutionary principle of equality, for the gross, e~-
4ernal distinctions of high and low, of great and small disappear
when what is humble or what is diminutlve becomes an inlet tor
spiritual light. What he attained, not without effort; he held in calm
end indefeasihls possession. His poetry is in the truest sense a
= Prophesying; butthe prophet does not rend his garments; his mood
is ehr of serenity encloinga heart of joygwhich has all the quicken
ing power of passion without its trouble or its vnssitude.
The romantic repival, might have lost itself in extravaganza, or
hnguished in4the debility of a hectic disease, had it not entered into.
alliance with the historical spirit, and gained vgor and sanity from
that alliance. In Glide Harold the awakened interest in the life
ofthe past is an inspiring influence in "Rodenck, the Last Of the
Goths,D a chapter OF Spanish history is lifted from prose to narrative
verse of grave dignity; but it was Scott, above all others, who effected
The union of the romantic and the historical imagination His re-
suscitaton ofthe past was wholly free from doctrnaire theory, from
He panid mist OF sentiment, from curiosiies to aesthetics, from
pseudo-medicval rehgosny; HIS SYMPATHY WAS WITH AC-
TION, AND THE PASSIONS WHICH ENGENDER ACTIONS
ne lived strenuously in the present, and therefore the past for him
was a reality and not a dream.
The eighteenth century had not only turned with reverted gaze
IN its great historical school, of which Gibbon was the master, and
IN its Ossianc, Scandinavian and ballad revivals to the forgotten
ages and primitive civilizations; it leaned forward also and gazed
with wild-eyed hopes into the future. But the bright dawn OF the
French Revolution had been followed by the Terror, and at last lib
erty and equality we're realized in the form of a military despohsm,
and fraternity in tina. Of the deadly strife Of nations.
The boundess desires, the vast aspirations excited by the Revo-
lutionary movement lived in the spirit Of Byron; but he saw around
him a world of ruins, ruined faiths, ruined hopes, and, in England
The gathering forces Of reaction. Byron sang generously Of free
dom; but for him freedom meant little more than the casting aNzs
Of restraint by nations and by the individual; he thought hardly Ar
all Of the freedom in obedience to a higher law. A vast energy. a
commanding egoism were deployed amid fallen ideals and dsuad
ned creeds; and the end was a cynnsm redeemed from baseness IL
GhesbHerness of its gayety, a cynnism for which the time was pzrTly
responsible, and partly the man. When Byron died the sense that
great power was lost to the world came upon his contemporaries all
fe more impressiveiy because the power was centered in a single
mind, a single will, and did not live on as an inspiring influence Of
mpersonal wisdom and Of love.