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HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

APPROPRIATION

FOR DUPLICATE BOOKS

July 5, 1927

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XIV

SOUTHEY AND LANDOR

I. Robert Southey: career; affinities with other poets. Eclogues,

ballads, short pieces

II. Southey plan and ambition of his long poems: Thalaba and its

metre; Curse of Kehama; Madoc ; Roderick

III. Southey's prose: discussion of his style; its achromatic'

quality; The Doctor. Rough classification of his works. Books of

travel, essays, Colloquies on Society. Works on Spanish and Portuguese

subjects; Peninsular War, History of Brazil. Biographies: the Nelson

and the Wesley; Life of Cowper. Character of his conservatism; posi-

tion in letters.

IV. W. S. Landor; his 'solitariness'; divisions of his career, 1795-

1824, 1825-46, 1847-64.

V. Landor: Poems of 1795; Gebir and Gebirus; manner and source

and excellences; 'arrestedness' of imagery; plastic effects. Poems,

1802 .

VI. 'Dramatic scenes,' or plays: Count Julian, Andrea of Hungary,

etc.; Siege of Ancona.

VII. Short lyrics, epigrams, elegies; poems to friends and to old age.

Economy of passion; classical manner, affinities with Jonson

VIII. The Hellenics: usage of the term; those translated from the

Latin compared with the others; analogies with sculpture. Increase of

naturalness; imaginative quality

IX. Imaginary Conversations: variety, range, length, possible models.

Grouping under six kinds :-(1) Heroic action and passion depicted;

conversations of Greeks and Romans, and modern subjects of like kind.

(2) Brutal and ferocious scenes. (3) Idyllic, gracious, and playful scenes.

(4) Humorous and ironic

X. Imaginary Conversations :-non-artistic, or non-dramatic: (5) polit-

ical and constitutional, or ethical, disquisitions in dialogue. (6) Con-

versations of 'literary men,' and criticisms

XI. Longer prose works, or protracted 'imaginary conversations':

Pericles and Aspasia, Pentameron, Citation, etc., of W. Shakespeare

XII. Robert Eyres Landor: Count Arezzi, etc.; prose romances

CHAPTER XV

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

.

15

20

I. The Confession in literature, secular and religious; meeting of the

two currents in Wordsworth

II. Chief successive publications in verse. Alterations of text. Late

survival of Wordsworth's genius

VOL. II.

a 2

III. Traits of his mental history, as told in The Prelude, etc. Visita-

tions of mystical experience; nature and humanity; connection with

pantheism

IV. Crisis in his faith; political hopes, disappointment, recovery.

Malady of analysis, how corrected

V. Early poems: An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches (1793).

Other pieces.

VI. Wordsworth a great inventor of forms. Lyrical Ballads (1798,

etc.). Their relation to ethical ideas; variety of pace; skill of

narrative. Longer tales in blank verse; Michael, The Brothers, etc.

VII. Peculiar attitude to evil and calamity; connection of this with

the creed of Wordsworth, and with his reminiscent temper

VIII. Long philosophic poems: unexecuted plan.

laid out; The Excursion; The Recluse.

The Prelude, how

71

IX. Lyra Heroica: Brougham Castle and The White Doe of Rylstone;

The Happy Warrior; Ode to Duty. Ode on the Intimations of Immor-

tality, etc.

X. Wordsworth and the Sonnet. Earlier groups of Sonnets, 1802,

1803, 1806, 1810. Premeditated series: The River Duddon, Ecclesias-

tical Sketches, On the Punishment of Death. Miltonic inspiration;

variation from Milton's metrical structures. An example analysed

XI. Character of Wordsworth's blank verse.

:

XII. Style its hardness, strength, purity, and naturalness. Redemp-

tion of metaphysical style in verse; use of playful blank verse.

XIII. Problem of poetic diction. New sphere for poetry; consequent

remoulding of language. Division of labour in Lyrical Ballads.

'real language of men,' how defined? Does it refer to vocabulary only?

Criticism by Coleridge. Summary of controversy

The

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XIV. Prose of Wordsworth: critical writings, Essay on Epitaphs, etc.

Political and descriptive prose .

92

XV. Wordsworth's 'healing power'; witnesses adduced. The poetry

of happiness. Value of his consolations. Treatment of poetic ideas.

Influence on later English poets

CHAPTER XVI

THE COLERIDGES

I. S. T. Coleridge: phases of his career: (a) till 1797; experimental

poetry, Unitarian tenets, and idealistic bent. (b) 1797-1802, period of

poetic genius and production; drift towards political conservatism; visit

to Germany. (c) 1803-17, confused and indistinct period, but beginning

of literary lectures and criticism. The Friend, Statesman's Manual,

etc., and Biographia Literaria. (d) 1817-34, partial recovery of poetic

power; Lay Sermons, etc.; position as talker and intellectual rallying.

point.

II. Vein of gentleness and simplicity; the dream-faculty, and strain

of melancholy; the 'subtle-souled psychologist'

III. Early verse. Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan, Love,

Dejection

IV. Later verse: Garden of Boccaccio. Dramas: Osorio (Remorse);

Zapolya; translation of Wallenstein.

Poetic prose

V. Coleridge's prose; disgressiveness; incompleteness of his books.

93

100

103

106

116

Psychological cast of his reflections. His criticism, its creative quality.

Biog. Lit.; the 'fancy and imagination.' Work upon Shakespeare;

lectures on literary history

VI. General course of Coleridge's philosophical thought; nature of

his 'originality'; doubts cast on it. His missionary prose'; Aids to

Reflection, and Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit; moral psychology, and

estimate of the Bible. Conception of the State and National Church,

their Constitution according to the Idea of each.

VII. Hartley Coleridge: Sonnets, criticisms, prose.

her critical instinct; Phantasmion. Charles Lloyd

CHAPTER XVII

BYRON

PAGE

120

123

Sara Coleridge,

131

I. Byron's reputation, how far well founded. His personality in

his works. Literary phases: (a) lyric and youthful satire; (b) Childe

Harold, cantos i. and ii., and rhymed stories; (c) Childe Harold,

cantos iii. and iv., poems on Italy, and plays; (d) Don Juan, Vision of

Judgment, etc. Songs and lyrics: want of ear; reasoning on emotion.

Hours of Idleness, Hebrew Melodies. Early satires: English Bards and

Scotch Reviewers; other invectives

II. Childe Harold, i. and ii.; Byron's 'doppelgänger'; character of

the 'Childe'; revisions of text; versification. Tales in verse: The

Giaour, Bride of Abydos, Corsair, etc. Siege of Corinth, Parisina,

Prisoner of Chillon. Rapidity of movement; metres; affinities with

other romantic poets

III. Childe Harold, iii. and iv.; changed spirit; confessions, history,

and descriptions interwoven. Cantos iii. and iv., how different. Points

of contact with Wordsworth and with Shelley

:

IV. Italy self-revelation of Byron in The Dream, Darkness, etc.

Byron's private history; its bearing on his literary genius and mode of

expression. Are his utterances dramatic? Various views

V. Plays: speculative verse; Byron's scepticism, its character:

Manfred, Cain, Heaven and Earth. Historical tragedies: Marino

Faliero, etc. The Deformed Transformed

VI. The Italian medley-poem transplanted. Frere's Whistlecraft.

Translation of Pulci. Beppo. The ottava rima and the wits; William

Stewart Rose. Don Juan: its ingredients; cynicism, scepticism, sense

of beauty, insolence, descriptive satire. Revanche on English society.

Ending

VII. Don Juan: Byron's mobility and self-consciousness reflected in

his management of the verse. The Vision of Judgment. The Island;

sources

VIII. Course of Byron's fame; his permanent qualities. His influence

CHAPTER XVIII

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I. Shelley one of the English prophets. Competing impulses of his

genius. Relation to Wordsworth. Early pieces. Queen Mab and

Dæmon of the World.

135

141

153

156

163

II. Alastor; the 'poet,' a projection of Shelley.

poems: Mutability, etc.

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Early shorter

188

III. The Revolt of Islam (Laon and Cythna): incoherences; achieve-

ment of a poetic style. Contrast between Shelley and Blake. Prince

Athanase. Shelley's character, its bearing on his art

IV. Poems, 1817-19; Rosalind and Helen; Julian and Maddalo;

Lines Written among the Euganean Hills; Prometheus Unbound: ruling

ideas; character of Prometheus

V. The Cenci: absence of 'mere poetry'

VI. Lighter poems: Peter Bell the Third, Mask of Anarchy. Poems

1820-1; The Sensitive Plant, Witch of Atlas, Letter to Maria Gisborne,

Epipsychidion; conception of love. Adonais

VII. Hellas, Charles the First.

and workmanship

The Triumph of Life: its theme

190

193

198

201.

VIII. Lyric: varieties of ode; Ode to Naples; the briefer ode: To

the West Wind, To a Skylark; The Cloud, and Arethusa. Briefer

lyrics; their varieties; fragility, and intellectual substance.

lated verse, from Greek, German, and Spanish.

IX. Prose: Progress of style from a barer to a richer kind.

of Shelley's opinions sketched. Argumentative prose

Trans-

X. Conception of art and poetry: Defence of Poetry; Platonism.

Art and ethics

218

XI. Shelley's achievement: structure and composition; style. Com-

munity of style between Shelley and some contemporaries.

of form; character of Shelley's diction.

Varieties

220

CHAPTER XIX

LEIGH HUNT AND JOHN KEATS

I. James Henry Leigh Hunt: Italian reading: Story of Rimini: its

underrated merit. Value of Leigh Hunt's influence on Keats. Other

romantic poems: sonnets. Hunt as a critic; The Reflector, The

Indicator, etc. Later works: A Jar of Honey: Autobiography

II. Keats: identification of himself with Nature; nature and art.

Enjoying temper; the religion of beauty, and of sorrow. Elizabethan

sympathies. The volume of 1817: Calidore, etc.

III. Sleep and Poetry; versecraft; early sonnets, and later ones

IV. Endymion: the story; odes inserted; Keats's declaration for

romance

V. Longer Tales: Isabella, Eve of St. Agnes, Eve of Saint Mark,

Lamia. Varieties and rapid development of poetic mastery. La Belle

Dame sans Merci. Poems of Fancy

VI. Later Odes: To Autumn, On a Grecian Urn, To a Nightingale,

etc. Hyperion; study of Milton; management and balance of blank

The story, why unfinished? The ‘revised' Hyperion; allegoric

significance

VII. The language and coinages of Keats; relation to the whole of

his writing. Gradual perfecting of the expression of poetic pleasure.

Different modes of such expression. Treatment of 'ideas'