Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/494

 490 Bailey ously and systematically refined to suit the prevailing taste. The reviewer finds that again a hardly sufficient presentation of the facts, unless a very great deal is to be read into the phrase "partly though the rapid weakening of classical tradition." The new taste is indeed a "significant mark of the romantic reaction" (p. 95) but it does not stand as the first of its series. The salient fact is that much of what goes under the name of Romanticism is neither more nor less than Neoplatonism. That Neoplatonic ideas had been at work for some time in England we have seen. The seventeenth century had its mysticism not only among poets and statesmen and scientists but in general among the many mystically-minded men and women whom that turbu- lent period produced. The reflection in literature of the preve- lant thinking and feeling was a reaction against the intellectual view of poetry, a turning toward the heart rather than the head as a measurer of beauty and life, toward the imagination rather J;fcan the intellect as the source of art. This we find already expressed in Thompson and Young. Even Milton's theme, the original state of mankind, directly anticipates the later interest of Addison and the early romanticists in primitive peoples and their songs and in the old English ballads. It is an amusing touch that, for the purposes of this volume, the roman- tic movement has to end with the wave of book collecting enthusiasm, at its height in the early years of the nineteenth century, which was one of the indirect results of the interest in things medieval. Chapter V, on nineteenth century book clubs and general publishing societies and Chapter VI, on philological text societies, take up half of the text space of the book and repre- sent a very careful compilation and historical account of the co-operating scholarship of the last century, a veritable mine of information treating a few at least of the important figures in such fashion as to cause them to stand out (unless propinquity, as measured by centuries, leads the reviewer into grave error) with some of the warmth of personality lacking to the earlier chapters. An adequate review of these excellent chapters, including also chapter VII, would partake too much of the nature of extended lists to find a place in this brief review. Dr. Steeves is of the opinion that "scarcely a noted scholar of the nineteenth century can wholly separate his success from that of the societies with which he has been connected." That gives a clue to the usefulness of this volume, fortunately of thoroughly late-nineteenth century make-up in regard to that greatest of all lacks of earlier publications, a good index. The seventh and last chapter deals with American societies and clubs, but very briefly because the history and bibliography of American societies (except the purely philosophical) wa*s