might be elicited, namely by emphasizing its mystical quality. Thus
under his guidance mysticism, which in the early seventeenth century had
sublimated the religious poetry of the orthodox, returned to sublimate
the poetry of the radicals; and with that achievement the sentimental
movement reached its climax.

Burns died in 1796; Blake, lost in a realm of symbolism, became
unintelligible; and temporarily sentimentalism suffered a reaction. The
French Revolution, with its Reign of Terror, and the rise of a military
autocrat, though supported, even after Great Britain had taken up arms
against Napoleon, by some "friends of humanity" who placed universal
brotherhood above patriotism, seemed to the general public to demonstrate
that the sentimental theories and hopes were untrue to life and led to
results directly contrary to those predicted. Once again, in Canning's
caustic satires of _The Anti-Jacobin_, conservatism raised its voice. But
by this time sentimentalism was too fully developed and widely spread to
be more than checked. Under the new leadership of Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Southey, the movement, chastened and modified by experience, resumed
its progress; and the fame of its new leaders presently dimmed the memory
of those pioneers who in the eighteenth century had undermined the
foundations of orthodoxy, slowly upbuilt a new world of thought,
gradually fashioned a poetic style more suited to their sentiments than
the classical, and thus helped to plunge the modern world into that
struggle which, in life and in literature, rages about us still.

ERNEST BERNBAUM

[Footnote 1: In this edition, the poems of Burns, unlike those of the
other poets, are printed not in the order of their publication but as
nearly as ascertainable in that of their composition.]