File:The Maclise portrait-gallery of "illustrious literary characters", with memoirs biographical, critical, bibliographical and anecdotal, illustrative of the literature of the former half of the present (14741416186).jpg

Identifier: macliseportraitg00macl (find matches)
Title: The Maclise portrait-gallery of "illustrious literary characters", with memoirs biographical, critical, bibliographical & anecdotal, illustrative of the literature of the former half of the present century
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Maclise, Daniel, 1806-1870 Bates, William, d. 1884
Subjects: Authors Authors, English Journalists
Publisher: London : Chatto and Windus
Contributing Library: The Centre for 19th Century French Studies - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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^ which has now entered upon itslatter quarter. In Xh^frst great era of our national poetry, after Minot,Chaucer, and Gower, we have Spenser, Shakespeare, and Sir PhilipSidney. Then )\Iilton, and Donne, and Cowley, and—for we may includethese, too, among poets—Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Bacon, and Sir ThomasBrowne. This literature was, what literature ever has been and ever willbe, the reflex of the age—its habits and modes of thought—of which it isthe offspring, and we tind it, accordingly, natural, impetuous, unrestrained,heroic and tender. Civilization now became diftused ; pohsh and refine-ment of manners followed ; and nature shrank back before the approachof art and luxury. The second er?i now comes on, with Dryden, Pope,and Swift as its presiding genii. Tumultuous passion, eftervescentemotion, the grandeur of humanity, and the sublimity of nature, are nolonger the themes of the poet. It was rather with those artificial and
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^^i/^f-(^-^^,r^^<k/^y^ AUTHOR OS THK EXCUB.SIO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 139 conventional materials so happily summarized by Cowper, that he sought—and with consummate ability, too,—to co-ordinate in his polishedverse :— Roses for the cheeks, And lilies for the brows of faded age ; Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald ; Heaven, earth, and ocean, plundered of their sweets ; Nectareous essences, Olympian dews, Sermons, and City feasts, and favourite airs ; Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits ; And Katerfelto, with his hair on end At his own wonders, wondering for his bread. * Here, too, the poetry of the age was representative of its character,—artificial, imitative, licentious and frivolous. Nature herself was prunedinto regtilarity ; the lawn shaven, the tree clipped, and the garden cut upin geometrical parterres. But Dryden had manly energy, and transcen-dant ability : Pope was a poet of a thousand years ;—and theirinfluence extended to the commencement of the pres

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