Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/466

 462 Sherman The primary effort of previous Yale cartographers was to demonstrate the existence of a definable literary stream, rising at certain points in the eighteenth century, gathering force and volume, and pouring a more or less homogeneous flood of tendency into the nineteenth century. Professor Pierce does not go so far as entirely to deny the presence of a central current, but he approaches its alleged channel with analytic rather than synthetic purpose, presents a series of detailed studies rather than a coherent birds'-eye view, till in the end one's preconcep- tion of a kind of literary Father-of- Waters is resolved into a highly diversified landscape watered by an intricate system of lakes and streams of which the connections are not always discernible. Perhaps, Professor Pierce intimates, where the connections are not discernible they do not exist. One may study the so-called romantic generation, as he observes, from at least four different points of view. First, one may study it with reference to the personality of the indi- vidual poets, as Arthur Symons has done. Second, one may study it with reference to the pervading spirit of the age, as those have done who see everything as leading up to or away from the French Revolution. Third, one may study it with special reference to the literary traditions followed by the poets, as Professor Beers has done. Working from any one of these points of view, the student is in a fair way to reach the conclu- sion that there is such a thing as a romantic as distinguished from a classical personality, a romantic as distinguished from a classical Zeitgeist, and a romantic as distinguished from a classical tradition in English literature; and that, in the main, the personalities which give to the period its special character are marked by striking resemblances in their temperaments, ideas, and traditional fealties. One may, however, study the period with special reference to the geographical position, the racial traits, and the general social complexion of the group with which the individual poet is affiliated. This is Professor Pierce's approach, and it leads inevitably to a sense of the heterogeneity of the phenomena a result refreshing to the investigator and disturbing to anyone disposed to rest indolently among facile generalizations. Tfie tract that he surveys extends from the French Revolution to the advent of Tennyson. He begins with a useful distinction between the movement of popular taste and the movement of creative genius. Then with notable emphasis upon "environ- mental" conditions he distinguishes The Eddy Around Bristol, The Scotch Group and the Antiquarian Movement, Poets and Authors of the Lakes, The Popular Supremacy of Scott, The London Society Poets and the Popular Supremacy of Byron, The Scotch Era of Prose, The Eddy Around Leigh Hunt, The Elizabethan Current and The London Magazine,