Poets and Problems Author:George Willis Cooke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n. TENNYSON. English literature divides itself into well- defined periods. The age of Elizabeth cannot be mistaken for that of any other, and its great lea... more »ding features have not since been repeated, Not less marked was the eighteenth century, a time of skepticism in philosophy, classicism in literature, courtly formality in social life, and Deism in religion. Reaction from that period, under the influence of Methodism, the French revolution, German idealism, and the growth of naturalism, led to the great literary era of the first half of the nineteenth century. That era exhibited a love of the romantic, as seen in Walter Scott; of the natural world as the dwelling- place of the Divine, as seen in Wordsworth; of faith in a new social era for mankind, as seen in Shelley. Throughout the revolutionary period was exhibited a remarkable faith in the regeneratingpower of ideas. Men expected to see a new world rise out of the old order of formal and stagnant life. In all directions burst forth an eager desire for fresh and spontaneous thought, and for a natural expression of the human faculties. Freedom in political and social life was not more clearly demanded than in literature and art. The human mind burst its bonds, and soared away into an atmosphere of pure inspiration. It seemed to have gained a new access of power, to have found itself capable of higher things than it had before dared undertake. The classical habit of mind of the era of Pope and Johnson was now discarded. The new law of literary composition was that of the old saying, " Look in thy heart and write." Sentiment, passion, sympathy, aspiration, were now free, and spoke themselves out with abandon and joy. Burns singing of rustic life and of a humanity knowing no distinctions but those which pertain to man a...« less