A HISTORY OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

by

HENRY A. BEERS

Author of _A Suburban Pastoral_, _The Ways of Vale_, etc.







"Was unsterblich im Gesang soll leben Muss im Leben untergehen."
--Schiller




PREFACE

Historians of French and German literature are accustomed to set off a
period, or a division of their subject, and entitle it "Romanticism" or
"the Romantic School." Writers of English literary history, while
recognizing the importance of England's share in this great movement in
European letters, have not generally accorded it a place by itself in the
arrangement of their subject-matter, but have treated it cursively, as a
tendency present in the work of individual authors; and have maintained a
simple chronological division of eras into the "Georgian,", the