" and became associated with Wordsworth, making a brotherhood which is famed in English literature as the Lake School of Poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in despair over debt, actually enlisted in the army, but friends bought him out ; and then, being unable to take orders at Cambridge because he had become a Unitarian, he decided to join "Citizen Southey. Expelled from school for a jest against the master's faith in flogging, Robert Southey distinguished himself at Oxford for his warm zeal for the cause of the French Revolution, overthrow of tyrannies, and the establishment of human society on a right basis. Coleridge joined him in full sympathy with his ideas. Southey published his revolutionary dramatic poem, "Wat Tyler" in 1794, and then joined Coleridge in his writing of the Fall of Robespierre." The two ardent democrats, with other kindred spirits, agreeing that it was impossible to expect a speedy reform of the social system in Europe considering the state of things, soon decided it would be better to go to the New World, and there add another to the many Utopian experiments by establishing a community wherein all should be equal and all good. A good-natured uncle of Southey stepped in at the right moment, and the young revolutionaries got no further with their scheme than to invent a name for their proposed colony-Pantisocracy, from three Greek words meaning "all-equal-government "-and to marry sisters. Time, the wise old teacher, reconciled the three genuises of the Lakes more or less to the existing order of things. Still the influence of the early effusions of these and other poets who were swayed by the events in the mighty dramatic upheaval on the other side of the Channel, was sufficient to attract the active attention of no less a statesman than George Canning. A periodical called the Anti-Jacobin appeared in 1797 to resist and to ridicule the democratic notions inspired by the French revolutionary clubs led by Robespierre, who, with Danton and Marat, organised the Reign of Terror. The satirical sheet, which was edited by William Gifford-perhaps the greatest critic of his day had a frequent contributor in Canning, who indulged in piquant parodies and pungent prose. It is at the end of one of the former that we find those pertinent lines :-- But of all plagues, good Heav'n, thy wrath can send, The Anti-Jacobin lasted only a few months. Its publication was discontinued at the direct instance of William Pitt, the leader of the Tories, who suffered the apprehension, says one of the group of brilliant writers to the Anti-Jacobin, that the satirical spirit to which so much of the AntiJacobin was due might, in the long run, prove a less manageable and discriminating ally than a party leader would desire." Nineteenth Century Spirits in Revolt. The consuming passion for freedom never burned in the bosom of any poet more than in that of Byron, who expressed that passion not only by the pen but by the sword too, for he actually became a member of the Italian democratic revolutionary society known as the "Carbonari," and, on the failure of the Italian Revolution of 1821, he went and threw himself with burning zeal into the Greek Revolution. Money, time, talent, and personal service he gave to the cause of Greek Independence, and he was actually appointed the Commander-in-Chief of an expedition, but died in the course of the campaign. Byron, an Englishman, is a national hero of Greece, as witness the solemn celebration both there and in our own country on the occasion of his centenary. The long romance of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" reveals most of his political thought. One quotation from his works must suffice; and it is from his "Ode from the French " :-- But the heart and the mind, And the voice of mankind, Shall arise in communion And who shall resist that proud union? Man may die-the soul's renewed. Percy Bysshe Shelley was of them all the greatest spirit in revolt, both in thought and deed, which is all the more surprising considering that he was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Shelley. First of all he was expelled from University College, Oxford, for having circulated a tract on "The Necessity of Atheism"; and then his conduct in distributing revolutionary publications at Lynmouth caused him to be reported to the Government. All this and more happened, besides his writing poetry of such quality as to rank him with the highest poets of the land, within his short life of thirty years-he was born in 1792 and drowned off the coast of Italy in 1822. It was the creed of Shelley that human nature is capable of being made perfect; that kings and priests, by their own selfish purposes, have hindered the arrival of the Golden Age, which would come most assuredly if only the goodness of the human heart were left to work out its own salvation. 66 The three of his greatest poems are all expressions of revolution "The Revolt of Islam," Queen Mab," and "Prometheus Unbound." "The Masque of Anarchy" was inspired by the terrible massacre of Peterloo. It was not thought safe to print it at the time, for the Tories were in government. "Queen Mab" is the best known of the longer poems. It is an amazing achievement, for it was written when Shelley was but eighteen years of age. The old world and its ways are scorned with passion, and a new world presented in beautiful phrase. We read : Nature rejects the monarch, not the man ; Shelley's republicanism is rampant throughout : Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower In "The Revolt of Islam " there is a hymn of the nations who have liberated themselves by revolt. It declares fear to be the cause of man's misery, proclaims the beauty of equality, and announces the advent of peace, love, freedom, and universal brotherhood :— A hundred nations swear that there shall be Pity and peace and love among the good and free! Who can read his "Song-To the Men of England" without falling into its rousing grip:— Men of England, wherefore plough The seed ye sow another reaps; The wealth ye find another keeps ; With plough and spade and hoe and loom, The new note of democracy sounded by the early poets of the nineteenth century found vigorous utterance in many voices through the reigns of Victoria and Edward VII. One genius there was who carried on the traditions of ShelleyAlgernon Charles Swinburne, whose "Songs before Sunrise " rival his predecessor's in hate of churches and states, priests and kings. His "Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic" (1870) is a masterpiece of passionate outburst for freedom. THE CHAPTER VI. Political Poets.-II. THE CALL TO ACTION. HE United States of America has produced a wonderfully live school of political poets, the like of which no other country boasts. But, of course, the circumstances surrounding the birth of this, the world's greatest republic, were unique. There was first the severance from the mother country of England; then the settling down to make a constitution for a new country, and to make a new nation out of the human odds and ends that had come from the nations of the earth to people the land; and, finally, the dread civil war over the mighty question of the emancipation of the slaves. It is not surprising, therefore, that Columbia's poets are characteristically democratic, and in a much more vigorous way than are the poets of our own native land. They get down to the heart and mind of the mass of the people. There is the true ring of the democracy of the New World running throughout them all, as voiced by Ralph Waldo Emerson-a minor in poetry but a major in prose—in his Boston Hymn " : 66 God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings Call the people together, The young men and the sires, In church, and state, and school. |