English Metrists; Being a Sketch of English Prosodical Criticism from Elizabethan Times to the Present Day

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1921. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV THE NEW VERSE 1800-1850 Chronological divisions are seldom exact, and the revival of English poetry by no means waited for the dawn of a new Century. If in Gray and Thomson and Collins and Cowper novelty showed itself rather by substance than by form, yet Burns with his bold simplicity and Blake with his pure though singularly artless melody had definitely set aside Augustan canons of "correctness ." Delight in old ballads, ever since the publication of Percy's Reliques, told against artificial elegance; and Macpherson's Ossian, here as well as on the Continent of Europe, produced an impression hardly credible by us. Besides, the very men who should inspire the new Century were already at work during the closing years of the old. Walter Scott was "making himself" in his Liddesdale excursions; Wordsworth and Coleridge, Southey and Landor, were thinking and writing and publishing. Their impressionable years of youth and early manhood, with all these writers, belong to the Eighteenth Century. The first edition of Lyrical Ballads was published in 1798, the second--with Wordsworth's weighty Preface--in 1800. No work that Coleridge did in the new Century equals what he did in the old. For practical purposes, however, the new departure may be regarded as beginning with the new Century, which was well under way before the general public became aware of any change. Prosody always lags behind poetry, so not for many years shall we find the new methods recognised in books on metre. However we may rank these writers otherwise, Coleridge was the most potent as regards form. Christabel was not published till 1816; but its First Part was written in 1797, its Second in 1800, and both were freely read and handed round in manuscript. From them Scott avowedly t...