Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/148

118 as Arnold says, he was still "beating in the void his luminous wings in vain."

But the nineteenth century, complex through its Our modern and characteristic poetry of self-expression. interfusion of peoples and literatures, and with all history behind it, has developed the typical poetry of self-expression, and withal a new interpretation of life and landscape through the impressionism of its artists and poets. All this began with the so-called romantic movement.

Kingsley, in his "Hypatia," brings the pagan The Romantic Movement. Goths of the North, fair-haired worshippers of Odin, giants in their barbaric strength, to Christian Alexandria, where they loom above the Greek, the Roman, and the Jew. In time they overran and to some extent blended with the outer world. It is strange how little they affected its art and letters. Not until after the solvent force of Christianity had done its work could the Northern heart and imagination suffuse the stream of classicism with the warm yet beclouded quality of their own tide. Passion and understanding, as Menzel has declared, represent the antique; the romantic—the word being Latin, the quality German—is all depth and tenderness. To comprehend the modern movement,—vague, emotional, transcendental,—which really began in Germany, read Heine on "The Romantic School," of which he himself, younger than Arnim and Goethe, was a luxuriant offshoot.