English Poetry in the Eighteenth Century [pp. 30-50]

THE PRINCE TONV RE VIE W.
enced our poetry in this century is a question which I cannot
now discuss. One at least of the most original of English poets,
not accustomed to own obligations to any one, has acknowledged
that it was from Burns he learnt "to build a throne on simple
truth." On all hands, then, we see that before last century
closed fresh trains of thought and sentiment had been laid in
our poetry, which only waited the touch of a new and creative
era to explode into the air the prosaic thought and frigid commonplace which had in the time of Pope usurped the name of
poetry. A new era of thought and impulse was at hand, which
among its many-sided and exuberant tendencies had only this
one common mark, that it was a recoil from everything that had
most pleased the votaries of the so-called classical period. One
inheritance, however, from that period has been retained by the
best of the new poets in their best work-the correctness of
style, the condensation, the polish, the aim at perfect expression,
which "the disciples of the correct school" had taught them.
J. C. SHAIRP.
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