Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/280

250 will find that the generations after Shakespeare are Two centuries. not over-imaginative until you approach the nineteenth century. From Jonson to the Georgian school there is no general efflux of visionary power. The lofty Milton and a few minor lights—Dryden, Collins, Chatterton—shine at intervals between. Precisely the most unimaginative period is that covered by Volume III. and entitled "From Addison to Blake." We have tender feeling and true in Goldsmith and Gray. There is no passion, no illumination, until you reach Burns and his immediate successors. Then imagination leaped again to life, springing chiefly from subjective emotion, as among the Elizabethans it sprang from young adventure, from discovery and renown of arms, above all from the objective study of the types and conduct of mankind. If another century shall add a third imaginative lustre to the poetry of our tongue,—enkindled, perchance, by the flame of a more splendid order of discovery, even now so exalting,—it will have done its equal share.

The Mercury and Iris of this heavenly power are Comparison, etc. comparison and association, whose light wings flash unceasingly. Look at Wordsworth's similes. He took from nature her primitive The elemental bards. symbolism. Consider his elemental quality: I use the word as did the ancients in their large, untutored view of things,—as Prospero uses it, ere laying down his staff:—