Arizona republican., 1910-09-11
THE FOUR TORCH-BEARERS
English Poetry and the Writers of It
 One Hundred Short Years Ago.

The prospects of English verse were prosperous when the nineteenth century opened. Dispirited and be-
 numbed during the greater part of the eighteenth century. it had shaken off the letters which had been inn posed upon it, and rousing as its energies were awakened had revolted and declared its freedom. It was at tended by four torch bearers, South ey. who was in his twenty sixth year: Coleridge, who was in his twenty eighth year; Scott, who was in his twenty ninth year, and Words worth. who was in his thirtieth year. To these should be added three link boys, who were younger. Campbell being 27, Landor 9 and Moore 21 Behind these, unconscious of their future renown, the imagination sess three bright, eager eyed lads, George Gordon BryOn, who was F, Percy baronet, who was s, nd John Keats, the son of the head servant of livery stable keeper, who was ). Tracing the current of English verse hitherward from the beginning of the century, we find the four torch bear CTS following the paths upon which they had already entered-Southey the path of the epic in "Thalaba," 1901; the Curse of Kehama," 1870. Scott. the path of balladry, which soon broadened into the shining highway of the metrical romance, in the ministrelsy of the Scottish border, 1902. The Lady of the Lake" lS10 Wordsworth. the path of phil osophic meditation and nature wor- ship in The Excursion" 1874, and Coleridge, the path of dramatic fan tasy, in "Christabel" 1906: Re morse" 1913. Of the four, the one who made poetry the business of his life was the least popular. Subver- siYe of the conventional standard of taste. there were puerilties in his poetry which provoked derision, and an originality which was offensive. Such readers as he had, and they Were not many, he made, and made. slowly. What Coleridge might have become ii. like Wordsworth, he could have devoted himself wholly to poet ". we can only conjecture. As it was. he frittered away his time in dreaming and travelling and preach ing With fewer poetic gifts than Coleridge. Southey continued to thrive better for while he composed his epics, which had no sale to speak of. his industry in more remunera- tive fields of literature was unceas- ing.
 Reputation which has been refused to Coleridge and Wordsworth, though a share of it had fallen to the lot of Southey, had been lavished upon Scott as upon a few English poets before The greatest poet of the time in general estimation, he was the most in demand among the pub fishers, for he had the rare art of coining money for them as well as for himself Scott's reign as the monarch of English verse in the nineteenth century was brilliant, but brief, for in it's seventh year his power was shaken by a young lord of A, whose claim to the sovereignty was a poem called Child Harold. He abdicated gracefully. carrying the scepter with which he had ruled over the world of metrical romance into the greater world of historical prose romance, which he discovered. and in which his genius still rules supreme. Nowhere in the history of letters do we find a career like that of Byron. nowhere so powerful a personality as1 his. Possessor of all poetic gifts. ex- cept that instinctive knowledge of mankind which was Shakespeare's, and that reverence for moral great ~i ness which was Milton's-a swift and glorious spirit, an elemental force in English verse. Belonging to the same race of high intelligences, but Of a different order, was Shelley who was of too ethereal a mold for the material England of the Georges. A chartered libertine in his beliefs, the soul of goodness shone through his life and his works. than which there is none more imaginative in English verse. More purely poetic than either was Keats. who without learning, revived the spirit of the Greek pastoral, the Greek tragedy and light and loneliness of the Mid dle Ages in The Eve of St. Agnes. R. H. Stoddard, Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century.