In our own country, the movement initiated
by Chatterton, Cowper, and Burns, was carried out by two classes of great
writers. They agreed in opposing freedom to formality; in substituting for
the old, new aims and methods; in preferring a grain of mother wit to a
peck of clerisy. They broke with the old school, as Protestantism broke
with the old Church; but, like the sects, they separated again.
Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, while refusing to acknowledge the
literary precedents of the past, submitted themselves to a self-imposed
law. The partialities of their maturity were towards things settled and
regulated; their favourite virtues, endurance and humility; their
conformity to established institutions was the basis of a new
Conservatism. The others were the Radicals of the movement: they
practically acknowledged no law but their own inspiration. Dissatisfied
with the existing order, their sympathies were with strong will and
passion and defiant independence. These found their master-types in
Shelley and in Byron.
A reaction is always an extreme. Lollards, Puritans, Covenanters, were in
some respects nauseous antidotes to ecclesiastical corruption.
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