Hence, weakness at home and abroad, mistrust of generals and
admirals, paralysing all bold and clear action, peculations and
corruptions at home, internecine wars between factions inside states,
and between states or groups of states, revolutions followed by
despotism, and final exhaustion and slavery--slavery to a people who
were coming across the western sea, hard-headed, hard-hearted, caring
nothing for art, or science, whose pleasures were coarse and cruel,
but with a certain rough honesty, reverence for country, for law, and
for the ties of a family--men of a somewhat old English type, who had
over and above, like the English, the inspiring belief that they
could conquer the whole world, and who very nearly succeeded in that-
-as we have, to our great blessing, not succeeded--I mean, of course,
the Romans.



THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON {35}



The poets, who forty years ago proclaimed their intention of working
a revolution in English literature, and who have succeeded in their
purpose, recommended especially a more simple and truthful view of
nature. The established canons of poetry were to be discarded as
artificial; as to the matter, the poet was to represent mere nature
as he saw her; as to form, he was to be his own law. Freedom and
nature were to be his watchwords.

No theory could be more in harmony with the spirit of the age, and
the impulse which had been given to it by the burning words of Jean