It is the
glory of Romanticism to have opened 'magic casements' not only on 'the
foam of perilous seas' in the West, but also on
the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the Sun, that now
From ancient melody had ceased.
[Footnote: Blake, _Poetical Sketches_, 1783.]
Romanticism, as a freshening up of all the sources of life, a general
rejuvenescence of the soul, a ubiquitous visiting of the spirit of
delight and wonder, could not confine itself to the fields of
mediaeval romance. Even the records of the Greek and Roman thought
assumed a new beauty; the classical sense was let free from its
antiquarian trammels, and the perennial fanes resounded to the songs
of a more impassioned worship.
The change, however, took some time. And it must be admitted that in
England, especially, the Romantic movement was slow to go back to
classical themes. Winckelmann and Goethe, and Chenier--the last,
indeed, practically all unknown to his contemporaries--had long
rediscovered Antiquity, and felt its pulse anew, and praised its
enduring power, when English poetry had little, if anything, to show
in answer to the plaintive invocation of Blake to the Ancient Muses.
The first generation of English Romantics either shunned the subject
altogether, or simply echoed Blake's isolated lines in isolated
passages as regretful and almost as despondent.
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