There orthodox classicism still held sway; the manner and metre of Pope or Thomson ruled the roost of singing fowl.  In the main it had done its work, and the bulk of fresh things conceived in it were dull and imitative, even though occasionally, as in the poems of Johnson himself and of Goldsmith, an author arose who was able to infuse sincerity and emotion into a now moribund convention.  The classic manner—­now more that of Thomson than of Pope—­persisted till it overlapped romanticism; Cowper and Crabbe each owe a doubtful allegiance, leaning by their formal metre and level monotony of thought to the one and by their realism to the other.  In the meantime its popularity and its assured position were beginning to be assailed in the coteries by the work of two new poets.

The output of Thomas Gray and William Collins is small; you might almost read the complete poetical works of either in an evening.  But for all that they mark a period; they are the first definite break with the classic convention which had been triumphant for upwards of seventy years when their prime came.  It is a break, however, in style rather than in essentials, and a reader who seeks in them the inspiriting freshness which came later with Wordsworth and Coleridge will be disappointed.  Their carefully drawn still wine tastes insipidly after the “beaded bubbles winking at the brim” of romance.  They are fastidious and academic; they lack the authentic fire; their poetry is “made” poetry like Tennyson’s and Matthew Arnold’s.  On their comparative merits a deal of critical ink has been spilt, Arnold’s characterisation of Gray is well known—­“he never spoke out.”  Sterility fell upon him because he lived in an age of prose just as it fell upon Arnold himself because he lived too much immersed in business and routine.  But in what he wrote he had the genuine poetic gift—­the gift of insight and feeling.  Against this, Swinburne with characteristic vehemence raised the standard of Collins, the latchet of whose shoe Gray, as a lyric poet, was not worthy to unloose.  “The muse gave birth to Collins, she did but give suck to Gray.”  It is more to our point to observe that neither, though their work abounds in felicities and in touches of a genuine poetic sense, was fitted to raise the standard of revolt.  Revolution is for another and braver kind of genius than theirs.  Romanticism had to wait for Burns and Blake.

In every country at any one time there are in all probability not one but several literatures flourishing.  The main stream flowing through the publishers and booksellers, conned by critics and coteries, recognized as the national literature, is commonly only the largest of several channels of thought.  There are besides the national literature local literatures—­books, that is, are published which enjoy popularity and critical esteem in their own county or parish and are utterly unknown outside; there may even be (indeed, there are in several parts of the country) distinct