of the first half of the eighteenth century which had other sides in the
idealism of Berkeley, in the Methodist and Evangelical revival led by
Wesley and Whitefield, and in the sentimentalism which manifested itself
in the writings of Richardson and Sterne. Corresponding to these on the
Continent were German pietism, the transcendental philosophy of Kant and
his continuators, and the emotional excesses of works like Rousseau's
"Nouvelle Héloise" and Goethe's "Sorrows of Werther."

Romanticism was something more, then, than a new literary mode; a taste
cultivated by dilettante virtuosos, like Horace Walpole, college recluses
like Gray, and antiquarian scholars like Joseph and Thomas Warton. It
was the effort of the poetic imagination to create for itself a richer
environment; but it was also, in its deeper significance, a reaching out
of the human spirit after a more ideal type of religion and ethics than
it could find in the official churchmanship and the formal morality of
the time. Mr. Leslie Stephen[3] points out the connection between the
three currents of tendency known as sentimentalism, romanticism, and
naturalism. He explains, to be sure, that the first English
sentimentalists, such as Richardson and Sterne, were anything but
romantic. "A more modern sentimentalist would probably express his
feelings[4] by describing some past state of society. He would paint
some ideal society in mediaeval times and revive the holy monk and the
humble nun for our edification." He attributes the subsequent interest
in the Middle Ages to the progress made in historical inquiries during
the last half of the eighteenth century, and to the consequent growth of
antiquarianism. "Men like Malone and Stevens were beginning those
painful researches which have accumulated a whole literature upon the
scanty records of our early dramatists. Gray, the most learned of poets,
had vaguely designed a history of English poetry, and the design was
executed with great industry by Thomas Warton. His brother Joseph