\n| <\/p>\n
\n
\nSketch of the Progress of Poetry <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n
\n
\nfrom Thomson to Wordsworth <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nThe Age of transition from the poetry of Pope to that of Wordsworth begins
\nstrictly speaking with Thomson. This transition was not an orderly and
\nconsistent development, but consisted of different groups of poets or sometimes
\neven single poets each of whom made a departure in some particular direction
\nwhich was not followed up by his or their successors. The poetry of the time has
\nthe appearance of a number of loose and disconnected threads abruptly broken off
\nin the middle. It was only in the period from 1798 to 1830 that these threads
\nwere gathered together and a definite, consistent tendency imparted to poetry.
\nIt was an age of tentatives and for the most part of failures. Meanwhile the
\nmain current of verse up till 1798 followed the direction given it by Pope only
\nslightly modified by the greater and more original writers.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThese different groups of writers may be thus divided. (1) The school of natural
\ndescription & elegiac moralising, consisting of Thomson, Dyer, Green, Young and
\nother inferior writers. (2) The school of Miltonic Hellenists, begun by Warton
\n&consisting besides of Gray, Collins, Akenside and a number of followers. (3)
\nThe school of Johnson, Goldsmith & Churchill, who continued the
\neighteenth-century style tho’ some of them tried to infuse it with emotion,
\ndirectness and greater simplicity. To this school belong the minor writers who
\nformed the main current of verse during the time; of whom Erasmus Darwin
\n&Gifford are the only notable ones. (4) The school of country life and the
\nsimpler feelings, consisting of Cowper and Crabbe.(5) The school of romantic
\npoets & restorers of mediaevalism, consisting of Chatterton, Macpherson and
\nPercy. (6) The Scotch lyric poets of whom Ferguson and Burns are the head. (7)
\nWilliam Blake standing by himself as a romantic, mystical& lyric poet. Besides
\nthese there are two writers who cannot
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 134<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nbe classed, Smart & Beattie. Last come the first nineteenth
\ncentury poets, who published their earliest work in 1798\u00ad1800,
\nWordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Landor & Campbell. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nSchool of Natural Description<\/i>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first to break away from Pope were Thomson & Dyer. The original departures made by their school were as follows.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n(1) In subject-matter an almost exclusive devotion of their poetry to the description of natural objects and natural scenery. In
\ndealing with human emotion or human life they are generally even more incapable than the Pope school.1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThere<\/span> is beside a
\ntendency to force poetry to the service of the most unpoetical subjects, Armstrong writing in verse of the Art of Medicine,
\nDyer of Agriculture & Thomson of jail reform. On the other hand Satire is less practised or even abandoned. (2) In language,
\nthe discarding of the idea of wit as the basis of poetry; there is no straining for wit and cleverness, but its place is taken by a
\npseudo-Miltonic eloquence or an attempt at Miltonic imaginativeness. The influence of Milton is paramount in these writers.
\n(3) In metre an almost entire abandonment of the heroic couplet and the return to old metres, especially blank verse, the
\nSpenserian stanza & the octosyllabic couplet as used by the later Elizabethans. The main influences of this school on future
\npoetry are (1st<\/sup>) the habit of describing Nature for its own sake (2) the Thomsonian form of blank verse which was afterwards
\nadopted by Cowper & Wordsworth and improved by Shelley (3) the use of the Spenserian stanza in narrative poetry (4) the sense
\nfor antiquity & for the picturesque as regards ruins (5) the habit of moralising on subjects of general human interest as opposed
\nto those which concern towns & highly civilized society only. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1 The following sentence was written on the opposite page of the manuscript. Its exact<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\nplace of insertion was not marked:<\/i><\/p>\n An attempt is made to reintroduce emotion and a more general appeal to all humanity,
\nin the form of elegiac moralizing on the subjects of death & decay, as shown in Dyer’s Ruins of Rome & Young’s Night Thoughts.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\nPage \u2013 135<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n The Thomsonian school however broke off suddenly about the middle of the century & was replaced by the school of Gray. <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nSchool of Gray<\/i>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nThere are considerable differences between Gray, Collins and
\nAkenside, who are the chief representatives of the school, but they all resemble each other in certain main tendencies. The general aim of all seems to have been to return to the Miltonic style of writing while preserving the regularity and correctness of the
\neighteenth-century style.
\nThey attempted in other words to substitute the true classical style of writing for the
\npseudo-classical.
\nBy classical poetry is meant verse which with entire correctness and perfection of form, i.e. of metre and language and a careful
\nobservance of restraint, i.e. to say avoidance of that extravagance & excess which injure the work of Shakespeare and the
\nElizabethans, unites a high imagination and deep emotion. This is the character of Milton’s poetry, which is based upon Greek
\n& Latin models. Pope and his school aimed at correctness & restraint without high imagination and deep emotion; their poetry is therefore not really classical. Gray, Collins and Akenside endeavoured
\nby study of Milton & the Greek writers to recover the true classical style. They
\nwere however all greatly hampered by the traditions of eighteenth-century poetry
\nand none of them quite succeeded. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nBesides this similarity in
\ngeneral aim, there are several particular resemblances. 1st<\/sup> in metre. They all avoided the heroic couplet. Collins’ Persian Eclogues, the work of his youth, & a
\nfew of Gray’s fragments are in this metre, but in their mature & accomplished work it is not represented. Akenside wrote either
\nin blank verse or in lyrical metres. Secondly Gray and Collins are the restorers of the English lyric; since the reign of Charles II
\nno one had written any even decently good lyrics, if a few of Gay’s & Prior’s are excepted, until this school appeared. The
\nonly form of lyric however which the three writers tried were Odes, which is the most stately & the least lyrical of lyrical
\nforms; i.e. the true lyrical stanza is always short & simple so
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 136<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n
\nas to express
\nparticular emotion freely & naturally; the stanza of an Ode is long and
\nelaborate and expresses properly high and broad, not intense emotion. This
\nrestriction to the statelier lyrical forms partly results from the attempt at
\nclassical dignity. But the Augustan tradition of smooth & regular verse has also hampered the writers; the cadences are not managed with
\nsufficient subtlety and the infinitely varied and flexible verse of Shakespeare & Milton has remained beyond their reach. Their
\nverse at its best is on the second plane, not on the first; it shows however a great advance in freedom & variety on that of the
\nAugustans. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n2d<\/sup> in language. The aim of all three is at an elevated style
\n.. of language, a diction more or less Miltonic. Here again none
\nof them are successful. Akenside’s elevation is mainly rhetorical, rarely, at his best, as in the Hymn to the Naiads, it is poetical;
\nthere he almost catches something of the true Miltonic tone; Gray’s is marked by nobleness, strength, much real sublimity, but
\nhe is often betrayed into rhetoric tho’ even then more vigorous than Akenside’s and the Augustan love of epigram and antithesis
\noften spoil his work; Collins’ elevation tho’ free from these faults is usually wanting in power. There is to some extent in Collins
\nand still more in Gray a tendency to what the eighteenth century thought noble language, to the avoidance of simple and common
\nwords & phrases as below the dignity of poetry.2
\n<\/sup><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n3d<\/sup> in subject-matter. It was in this that there was the farthest departure from the eighteenth century. All the poets have
\na tendency to dwell on rural life and rural scenes; all turn away from town life. Both Gray & Collins, so far as they deal with
\nNature, deal with it in a really poetical manner, but unlike the Thomsonian school, they have not described Nature for the
\nsake of describing it but only in connection with the thoughts or feelings suggested by it. The one exception to this is Collins’
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n2 The following sentence was written on the opposite page of the manuscript. Its exact<\/i>
\nplace of insertion was not marked:<\/i>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nOn the other hand their language is mainly imaginative & not
\ndryly intellectual like Augustan language.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 137<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nOde to Evening. There is also an attempt to reintroduce the supernatural into poetry. This is partly done by carrying the
\neighteenth-century habit of personification to an almost ridiculous extreme, but more successfully by dwelling like Milton on
\nthe images of Greek mythology, as in the Hymn to the Naiads, or Gray’s earlier poems, especially the Progress of Poesy; also
\nby dwelling on the ideas of the Celtic romantic fancy, such as ghosts, fairies, spirits as in Gray’s Bard & Collins’ Ode or of
\nNorwegian mythology as in Gray’s translations from the Norse. This impulse towards the supernatural is extremely marked in
\nGray & finds its way even into his humorous poems; & tho’ less prominent in Collins, it was sufficient to offend Johnson, the
\nchief critic of the Pope school, who especially animadverts on it in his life of Collins & his remarks on Gray’s sister Odes. Again
\nthey tried to deal with human emotion but there also they were hampered by the Augustan tradition. They deal with it rather in
\nan abstract than a direct manner; Collins’ Ode on the Passions is the main instance of this abstract handling of emotion which
\nis peculiar to the school. In the same spirit they dealt with high & general feelings, especially the love of Liberty, which inspires
\nCollins’ Ode to Liberty, Gray’s Bard & Progress of Poesy, and much of Akenside’s writing. It is noticeable that Collins was
\na republican, Akenside had republican sympathies and Gray was a pronounced Whig. Over the personal emotions Collins &
\nAkenside had no mastery, & Gray only shows it occasionally as in the Elegy & then only over the most general of all of them,
\nthe love of life and the melancholy feelings attending death.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n(4) In spirit, the school departed from the critical, didactic
\nand satiric tendency of eighteenth-century poetry; so far as their poetry teaches or criticises it is with some exceptions in the
\nindirect, incidental & emotional manner proper to poetry. Even Akenside who wrote on a philosophical theme aimed at teaching
\npoetically, tho’ he did not succeed. Their poetry is inspired not by intellect & reason, but by imagination and feeling. On the
\nother hand it must be noticed that their ideas & sentiments are always obvious & on the surface like those of the Pope school
\nand the feeling that inspires their poetry, tho’ not false, is not
\n<\/span><\/p>\nPage \u2013 138<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nvery deep; Collins & Akenside are extremely cold compared with poets of other periods & Gray is rather enthusiastic or at
\nhis best sublime than impassioned.<\/span>3 <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n(5) It was in the influences which governed their poetry
\nthat this school departed most radically from Pope. They rejected French influence altogether & were little influenced by
\nthe inferior Latin poets; they were above all things Hellenists, lovers & followers of Greek literature; the English poet who
\ninfluenced them most was Milton whom Johnson considers to be rough in his verse & language; Gray even declared the diction
\nof Shakespeare to be the true poetic diction. Besides this they opened new fields of interest. Collins took an interest [in] late
\nmediaeval history & literature & Gray was the first Englishman of eminence who studied the Norse language or interested himself in Welsh literature or was a competent & appreciative critic of Gothic architecture.
\n<\/span><\/p>\nThe Thomsonian school had a little but only a little influence on that of Gray. The Elegy carries to its highest point
\nof perfection the vein of elegiac moralising started by Young & Dyer, Collins’ Ode to Evening is a study of Nature as faithful but
\nmore sympathetic and imaginative than Thomson’s descriptions; & his Ode on Popular Superstitions recalls several passages in
\nthe Seasons; but this is practically all. <\/span><\/p>\nThe influences of Gray’s school on future poetry consist
\nmainly in (1) the first attempt to handle Nature in a new poetic fashion afterwards perfected by Wordsworth, (2) the reintroduction of the supernatural influencing all subsequent writers but mainly Coleridge, Shelley & Keats, (3) the introduction of
\nHellenism into poetry, carried out by Keats & Shelley & (4) the restoration of the lyric & especially the Ode form, which
\nbecame a favourite one in the early nineteenth century & of the general subjects suited to the Ode form.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3 The following sentence was written on the facing page of the manuscript. Its exact<\/i>
\nplace of insertion was not marked:<\/i>
\n<\/span><\/p>\nIt was perhaps partly as a result of this that none of these poets was able to write much or to write long poems; Akenside’s Pleasures of Imagination is the only exception
\nand that is a failure. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\nPage \u2013 139<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nLater Augustan School<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Gray school exhausted itself almost as quickly as the Thomsonian school. It was followed by a reaction in favour of the eighteenth-century ideal. This movement had been already anticipated by Johnson who wrote contemporaneously with Gray & even with Thomson. It was now taken up by Goldsmith,
\ncarried on by Churchill & culminated in Erasmus Darwin. <\/span><\/p>\n Johnson & Goldsmith returned to the ideals of Pope, they
\nviolently opposed & disparaged Gray, they kept to the use of the heroic couplet & conventional language, to the narrowness
\nof culture and to the exclusion of all that does not square with or proceed from the reason & intellect; their characteristics are
\nbroadly the same as the Pope school’s, but there is a difference which shows that the dryness of this school could no longer
\nsatisfy the mind. In Johnson at least in his Vanity of Wishes there is a far deeper & wider tone of thought & feeling & a far
\ngreater sincerity; tho’ the style is so different, the tone is almost the same as that of Gray’s Elegy; in fact in tone &
\nsubject matter it belongs to the same type of elegiac moralizing as the Elegy & the Night Thoughts. Goldsmith carried this departure
\nin tone from Pope yet farther; he wrote what were professedly didactic poems, but instead of teaching by satirical portraits
\n[and] epigrammatic maxims, he tried to do it by touching the feelings & drawing portraits full of humour rather than wit,
\nof natural truth & pathos rather than cleverness & eloquence. While not touching subjects of general appeal like Johnson &
\nGray, he goes more widely a field than Pope, dealing with foreign countries in the Traveller, with the rural life of an Irish village
\nin the Deserted Village. [There is a sort of natural lyrical power in Goldsmith which is always breaking through the restraints
\nof the mechanical metre & style he chose to adopt.]<\/span><\/span>4<\/span><\/sup>
\nChurchill<\/span> reverted to Pope far more than either Goldsmith or Johnson; he
\nis purely satirical & has neither Goldsmith’s feeling & sweetness nor Johnson’s depth & strength; he is hardly a poet at all, but he
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n4 Sentence bracketed in the manuscript. -Ed<\/i>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 140<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nalso helped the disintegration of the eighteenth-century style by a complete abandonment of Pope’s elaborate & rhetorical art,
\nwhich he attempted to replace by a rude & direct vigour. Lastly Erasmus Darwin took the exact model of Pope’s style, not only
\nthe metre & language but the very construction & balance of his sentences & reduced this & the didactic spirit to absurdity by
\ntrying to invest with poetical pomp of style & imagery a treatise on botany. This school may be considered as an attempt in various directions to make the eighteenth-century style compatible with the new impulses in poetry, the impulses towards sincerity
\non the one hand & sublimity on the other. In the poetry of Darwin this attempt finally breaks down. No poet of eminence
\nexcept Byron afterwards attempted the style. Besides these four writers however there was a crowd of versifiers, of whom only
\nGifford need be named, who went on making feeble copies of Pope right into the nineteenth century.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Page \u2013 141<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sketch of the Progress of Poetry from Thomson to Wordsworth The Age of transition from the poetry of Pope to that of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-early-cultural-writings","wpcat-49-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11854,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2420\/revisions\/11854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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