to Leslie Stephen and to Thomas Hughes, whom he addresses affectionately as "My dear Tom Brown." Toward the close of his life Lowell suffered a great deal; but he bore it all cheerfully, and his letters to his friends are bright and hopeful. He died August 12, 1891, at Elmwood, the home where he had been born and had passed the greater part of his life. His remains lie in the Mt. Auburn Cemetery at Cambridge, not far from those of his friends Longfellow and Holmes. England has honored Lowell by placing in Westminster Abbey his bust and a memorial window. In the centre of this great window is the figure of Sir Launfal; beneath stands an angel bearing the Holy Grail; while in the lowest compartment is represented the story of Sir Launfal and the leper. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT WHEN John Dryden assumed the literary dictatorship of England toward the close of the seventeenth century, there began what has been termed the Classical Age of English literature. Literary history, like all other history for that matter, shows the influence of two forces, the assertion of the individual as opposed to established standards, and the maintenance of a set authority, a law to which all must conform. Sometimes one tendency is stronger in literature, sometimes the other. The age of Elizabeth had been one in which free play had been given to the imagination; it was but natural that there should be a reaction in favor of some definite standards of authority, and such a reaction came in the time of Dryden and his successor, Pope. This Classical Age, then, is marked by the suppression of the individual and the recognition of authority. A great deal of attention was paid to the form of expression; literature became a matter of "what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed"; the heroic couplet reigned as the proper verse form. Interest in literature was confined largely to the Greek and Roman classics; and because this period took these writings as its models, it has gained the name of the Classical Age. The age is characterized by its lack of mystery and of aspiration: all display of anything emotional was rigorously repressed, and interest was centred in the intellectual side of things. Practically the range of literary interests and themes was the very narrow one of the fashionable life of London. A distaste for the wild and grand in Nature prevailed. Mountains and the rugged aspects of the sea were regarded as hostile to man; and the landscape gardening of the age attempted to force Nature to conform to rule and square. The poverty of the times in lyrical verse is especially significant. Naturally the best work of the period was in satire, burlesque, and travesty. But we must not condemn the age too severely; it passed away in due season, but it left with English writers a regard for form that has been of inestimable value to our literature. The Classical Age with its respect for authority finally brought a reaction which for the want of a better name is called the Romantic Movement. This movement arose from the desire of men to escape from the conventional, the formal, the established. It was not confined to literature alone: in the Church we find this tendency manifesting itself in the great religious movement headed by the Wesleys; in politics and philosophy we find it culminating in the assertion of the individual, "All men are created free and equal," and finally in the great French Revolution. Critics generally date the beginning of the Romantic Movement from 1726, when Thomson's "Winter" was published. In this poem we note an increased interest in Nature, which is no longer regarded as hostile toward man. Here, too, we discern the distinguishing mark of all romanticism-a freer play of the imagination, and an increased sympathy with and interest in things appealing to it. This greater sympathy with Nature finds its manifestation in nearly all the poets of the time-Gray, Cowper, Crabbe, and Blake. Another mark of the Romantic Movement is the increased interest in things remote. McPherson, a Scotchman, brought forth the "Ossian," which he declared was a translation of the old Celtic stories, and the volume was received with unbounded enthusiasm. Coleridge alludes to this work in the preface of his first collection of poems, and in this collection gives two verses in imitation of the Ossian. Chatterton, too, the boy poet who passed his own poems as the work of the medieval monk Rowley, did much toward rousing not only Coleridge's interest, but that of the whole land, in the ages past. It would be difficult to prove that the Rowley poems exerted much influence in shaping Coleridge's style; but we catch the strain of The Ancient Mariner in such passages as: "Before him went the council men, In scarlet robes and gold, And tassels spangling in the sun, But it is probably to Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry more than to any one other source that we owe the increased interest in the past. In the Reliques were published for the first time many of the old English ballads; and after this publication interest in English ballad poetry grew rapidly. Wordsworth said that English poetry had been "absolutely redeemed" by them. He adds, "I do not think that there is a writer of verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the Reliques; I know that it is so with my friends; and for myself I am happy on this occasion to make a public avowal of my own.' " 1 We cannot help believing that without Percy's Reliques The Ancient Mariner would have been far different from what it is. Still another characteristic of this movement is a heightened interest in things strange and mysterious. Walpole's 1 Appendix to the Preface to the 2d edition of "Lyrical Ballads." Castle of Otranto is a good illustration; a tale of ghosthaunted castles, secret passages, unnatural deeds, and mysteriously waving helmets. This same tendency finds its best manifestation in the works of a novelist of the last of the century, "Monk" Lewis. The hermit, a solitary figure appealing to the imagination, becomes a common character appearing in much of the poetry and romance of the time. The imagination finds its freer play not alone in the realm of the mysterious, but also in the things of every-day life. Crabbe describes with photographic minuteness the life of the simple village; the conception that all men are brothers, and that the affairs of the humblest were fit subjects for poetry gained ground; and the interest thus excited did much to better the condition of the poor. Nor was this interest confined to mankind alone. All through the century we note protests against cruelty to dumb animals, as in the works of Beattie, who objected strongly to the English field sports. This spirit grew till it found its best expression in Coleridge, who asks, in his Religious Musings: "Are not cattle and plants permeated through and through with the divinity who has created things to form one harmonious whole? Does not the same great heart beat in the lowest as well as in the highest creature?" But it is in The Ancient Mariner that this feeling for animals finds its best expression. The poem is in many respects the perfect flower of the Romantic Movement. It is romantic in its aspiration, and in its symbolism and mysticism, as in its use of mystical numbers, "seven days and seven nights," "nine fathoms," "one of three" guests. More than any other poem, possibly, it exemplifies what we have designated as the distinguishing mark of romanticism-the free play of the imagination and an interest in things appealing to it. Lowell was of the second generation of Romanticists, or perhaps the third. At any rate he was aroused, like other young men of his time, not only by the poetry of Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, but by the literature which had given them ideas, notably the ballad poetry and the Elizabethan drama. It is the former that gives the chief suggestion to "Sir Launfal ” in the matter of form as it had also to "The Ancient Mariner." NOTE.-The student will be interested in examining for himself the literature of the period here discussed. The fourth volume of Ward's "English Poets" contains representative extracts from most of the authors cited. Pope's "Essay on Criticism" and his "Essay on Man" are good illustrations of the work of the Classical Age. Various phases of the Romantic Movement are illustrated in Gray's "Elegy," Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," parts of Cowper's "Task," the first book of Crabbe's "Village," Chatterton's "An Excellent Ballad of Charity," and Blake's "To an Evening Star." THE ANCIENT MARINER The Composition of the Poem BOTH Wordsworth and Coleridge have left us interesting accounts of the genesis of The Ancient Mariner. In the autumn of 1797, Coleridge's wonderful year, the poet, in company with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, started on a tramp through the beautiful Quantock Hills. To meet the expenses of the trip, it was proposed that the two young men conjointly write a poem to be sent to the New Monthly Magazine. From this work they hoped to realize at least five pounds. As the two walked along the hills they planned the poem. Most of the story was Coleridge's; he proposed to base the poem upon the dream of a friend, a certain Mr. Cruikshank, a dream "of a skeleton ship with figures in it." Wordsworth suggested that some crime be committed, bringing with it persecution; and, as he had just been reading Shelvocke's Voyages, with its account of the albatrosses of the region round Cape Horn, proposed that the sailor should be represented as killing one of the birds and then being |