of Napoleon, the great stars--Byron, Shelley, Keats, and later the mature
Landor--rose in the hemisphere, they had all imbibed from the Romantic
school a warmer form of thought and feeling, and a number of productive
impulses; though, Euphorion-like, they still regarded the antique as
their parent. They expressed much appreciation of the Romantic school,
but their hearts were with Aeschylus and Pindar. They contended for
national character, but only took pleasure in planting it on classic
soil. Byron's enthusiasm for Pope was not only caprice; nor was it mere
chance that Byron should have died in Greece, and Shelley and Keats in
Italy. Compared with what we may call these classical members of the
Romantic school, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott . . . may be said to
have taken nothing, whether in the form of translation or imitation, from
classical literature; while they drew endless inspiration from the Middle
Ages. In their eyes Pope was only a lucid, able, and clever journeyman.
It is therefore fair to consider them, and them alone, as exponents of
the Romantic school." [5]

As to Byron and Shelley this criticism may do; as to Chatterton and Keats
it is misleading. Wordsworth more romantic than Chatterton! More
romantic than Keats, because the latter often, and Wordsworth seldom,
treats subjects from the antique! On the contrary, if "the name is
graven on the workmanship," "Michael" and "The Brothers" are as classical
as "Hyperion" or "Laodamia" or "The Hamadryad"; "bald as the bare
mountain-tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur." Bagehot
expressly singles Wordsworth out as an example of pure or classic art, as
distinguished from the ornate art of such poets as Keats and Tennyson.
And Mr. Colvin hesitates to classify him with Landor only because of his
"suggestive and adumbrative manner"--not, indeed, he acknowledges, a
romantic manner, and yet "quite distinct from the classical"; i.e.,
because of the transcendental character of a portion of his poetry. But