ideas, a change was taking place in English poetry, but not in the
direction of earnest emotion. The instrument of verse had reached an
extraordinary smoothness, and no instance of its capability could be
more interesting than the poetry of Shenstone, with his perfect
utterance of things essentially not worth saying. In the most important
writers of that very exhausted moment, technical skill seems the only
quality calling for remark, and when we have said all that sympathy can
say for Whitehead and Akenside, the truth remains that the one is vapid,
the other empty. The Wartons saw that more liberty of imagination was
wanted, and that the Muse was not born to skim the meadows, in short low
flights, like a wagtail. They used expressions which reveal their
ambition. The poet was to be "bold, without confine," and "imagination's
chartered libertine"; like a sort of Alastor, he was

"in venturous bark to ride
Down turbulent Delight's tempestuous tide."

These are aspirations somewhat absurdly expressed, but the aim of them
is undeniable and noteworthy.

A passion for solitude always precedes the romantic obsession, and in
examining the claim of the Wartons to be pioneers, we naturally look for
this element. We find it abundantly in their early verses. When Thomas
was only seventeen--the precocity of the brothers was remarkable--he
wrote a "Pleasures of Melancholy," in which he expresses his wish to
retire to "solemn glooms, congenial to the soul." In the early odes of
his brother Joseph we find still more clearly indicated the intention to
withdraw from the world, in order to indulge the susceptibilities of the
spirit in solitary reflection. A curious air of foreshadowing the
theories of Rousseau, to which I have already referred, produces an