Footnote 197:  Many of the writers show a mingling of the classic and the romantic tendencies.  Thus Goldsmith followed Johnson and opposed the romanticists; but his Deserted Village is romantic in spirit, though its classic couplets are almost as mechanical as Pope’s.  So Burke’s orations are “elegantly classic” in style, but are illumined by bursts of emotion and romantic feeling.

Footnote 198:  A much more interesting work is Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, which was written in answer to Burke’s essay, and which had enormous influence in England and America.

Footnote 199:  In the same year, 1775, in which Burke’s magnificent “Conciliation” oration was delivered, Patrick Henry made a remarkable little speech before a gathering of delegates in Virginia.  Both men were pleading the same cause of justice, and were actuated by the same high ideals.  A very interesting contrast, however, may be drawn between the methods and the effects of Henry’s speech and of Burke’s more brilliant oration.  Burke makes us wonder at his learning, his brilliancy, his eloquence; but he does not move us to action.  Patrick Henry calls us, and we spring to follow him.  That suggests the essential difference between the two orators.

Footnote 200:  The romantic revival is marked by renewed interest in mediaeval ideals and literature; and to this interest is due the success of Walpole’s romance, The Castle of Otranto, and of Chatterton’s forgeries known as the Rowley Papers.

Footnote 201:  From The Task, Book II.

Footnote 202:  See, for instance, Phelps, Beginnings of the Romantic
Movement, for a list of Spenserian imitators from 1700 to 1775.

Footnote 203:  Such is Goldsmith’s version of a somewhat suspicious adventure, whose details are unknown.

Footnote 204:  Goldsmith’s idea, which was borrowed from Walpole, reappears in the pseudo Letters from a Chinese Official, which recently attracted considerable attention.

Footnote 205:  Fitz-Greene Halleck’s poem “To a Rose from near Alloway Kirk” (1822) is a good appreciation of Burns and his poetry.  It might be well to read this poem before the sad story of Burns’s life.

Footnote 206:  Introduction, Songs of Innocence.

Footnote 207:  Swinburne’s William Blake.

Footnote 208:  There are several omissions from the text in this fragment from Fingal.

Footnote 209:  Several fragments of Gaelic poetry, attributed to Ossian or Oisin, are now known to have existed at that time in the Highlands.  Macpherson used these as a basis for his epic, but most of the details were furnished by his own imagination.  The alleged text of “Ossian” was published in 1807, some eleven years after Macpherson’s death.  It only added another mystery to the forgery; for, while it embodied a few old and probably genuine fragments, the bulk of it seems to be Macpherson’s work translated back into Gaelic.