SOURCE: "At Length the Man Perceives It Die Away," in The Romantic Quest, Columbia University Press, 1931, pp. 189-217.

In the following essay, Fairchild traces the passage of the Lake Poets from liberalism and naturalistic Romanticism to conservatism and Burkian Romanticism.

The Lake poets gradually cease to find in nature the guide of all their moral being. This change, sympathetically regarded, is rather tragic. Somewhere in his letters Coleridge tells how he and his children went out one day and shouted "Dr. Dodd!" in order to enjoy the echo. At first 1 failed to understand why the name of a famous forger of Dr. Johnson's time should have been chosen for this purpose; but remembering the childish custom of shouting "Board of Health" in order that the echo may say something that sounds like "Go to Hell," I decided that Coleridge shouted "Dr. Dodd" in order that the echo might...