forgotten. An imitation of Shakspere to any effective purpose must
obviously have take the shape of a play; and neither Gray nor Collins nor
Akenside, nor any of the group, was capable of a play. Inspiration of a
kind, these early romanticists did draw from Shakspere. Verbal
reminiscences of him abound in Gray. Collins was a diligent student of
his works. His "Dirge in Cymbeline" is an exquisite variation on a
Shaksperian theme. In the delirium of his last sickness, he told Warton
that he had found in an Italian novel the long-sought original of the
plot of "The Tempest." It is noteworthy, by the way, that the
romanticists were attracted to the poetic, as distinguished from the
dramatic, aspect of Shakspere's genius; to those of his plays in which
fairy lore and supernatural machinery occur, such as "The Tempest" and "A
Midsummer Night's Dream."

Again, the stage has a history of its own, and, in so far as it was now
making progress of any kind, it was not in the direction of a more poetic
or romantic drama, but rather toward prose tragedy and the sentimental
comedy of domestic life, what the French call _la tragédie bourgeoise_
and _la comédie larmoyante_. In truth the theater was now dying; and
though, in the comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan, it sent up one bright,
expiring gleam, the really dramatic talent of the century had already
sought other channels in the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett.

After all, a good enough reason why the romantic movement did not begin
with imitation of Shakspere is the fact that Shakspere is inimitable. He
has no one manner that can be caught, but a hundred manners; is not the
poet of romance, but of humanity; nor medieval, but perpetually modern
and contemporaneous in his universality. The very familiarity of his
plays, and their continuous performance, although in mangled forms, was a
reason why they could take little part in a literary revival; for what