defects, awakened
and startled the literary world, here, in France, and in Germany, by a
panoramic view of that "land of mountain and of flood," which was yet to
attract so many visitors, and to inspire so many bards. The impulse lent
to our prose style by Johnson was followed up by Junius and by Burke,
both of whom shot into the discussions of politics and of passing events
much of the spirit and the power of poetry. Burke especially, even
before the French Revolution effectually roused the world, had given
specimens of fervid prose, combining with matter of fact and the most
compact wisdom, the graces, the spirit, the imagery, and the language of
the highest imagination. Cowper, too, had come, setting religion to
rhythm; and, although "veiling all the lightnings of his song in
sorrow," yet circulating the power of his genius, even more extensively
than the contagion of his grief. Burns, in Scotland, had exhibited his
vein of ardent native genius. And lastly, the French Revolution lifted
up its volcano voice, and said to the world of literature and song, as
well as to the world at large, "_Sleep no more_."

From this date the character of poetry was changed, and began to assume
that antagonistic attitude to the school of Dryden and Pope which we
described in our commencing remarks, and which yet continues. Britain
got engaged in a Titanic warfare, an earthshaking contest--a war of
opinion, not of treaties--of peoples, not of kings; and instead of
"Campaigns," our poets indited Odes to France, to the Departing Year,
hymns to "Carnage, God's Daughter," and "Visions of Don Roderick." Our
religion became more intense and earnest, and this produced, on the one
hand, the fine religious verses of a Montgomery, the poetical prose of a
Foster and a Hall, and the rapt effusions of a Coleridge and Wordsworth;
and, on the other hand, told even on our scepticism, which became more
impassioned too, and wielded against religion a bar of burning iron,
like "Queen Mab," instead of a piece of polished wood, like the "Essay
on Man." Our morality improved, in outward decorum, at least, and the
last remains of the indecency of former times were swept away--to
re-appear, indeed, afterwards partially in "Don Juan." Poetry, too,
after coquetting for a little, not very gracefully, with Science in
Darwin's "Botanic Garden," and "Temple of Nature," aspired to the hand
of Philosophy; and the Lake poets and others not merely found a poetic
worshi