the temper of the classical writer is one of self-possession. . .  On the one hand there is calm, on the other hand enthusiasm.  The virtues of the one style are strength of grasp, with clearness and justice of presentment; the virtues of the other style are glow of the spirit, with magic and richness of suggestion.”  Mr. Colvin then goes on to enforce and illustrate this contrast between the “accurate and firm definition of things” in classical writers and the “thrilling vagueness and uncertainty,” the tremulous, coruscating, vibrating or colored light—­the “halo”—­with which the romantic writer invests his theme.  “The romantic manner, . . . with its thrilling uncertainties and its rich suggestions, may be more attractive than the classic manner, with its composed and measured preciseness of statement. . .  But on the other hand the romantic manner lends itself, as the true classical does not, to inferior work.  Second-rate conceptions excitedly and approximately put into words derive from it an illusive attraction which may make them for a time, and with all but the coolest judges, pass as first-rate.  Whereas about true classical writing there can be no illusion.  It presents to us conceptions calmly realized in words that exactly define them, conceptions depending for their attraction, not on their halo, but on themselves.”

As examples of these contrasting styles, Mr. Colvin puts side by side passages from “The Ancient Mariner” and Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” with passages, treating similar themes, from Landor’s “Gebir” and “Imaginary Conversations.”  The contrast might be even more clearly established by a study of such a piece as Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” where the romantic form is applied to classical content; or by a comparison of Tennyson’s “Ulysses” and “The Lotus Eaters,” in which Homeric subjects are treated respectively in the classic and the romantic manner.

Alfred de Musset, himself in early life a prominent figure among the French romanticists, wrote some capital satire upon the baffling and contradictory definitions of the word romantisme that were current in the third and fourth decades of this century.[18] Two worthy provincials write from the little town of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre to the editor of the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” appealing to him to tell them what romanticism means.  For two years Dupuis and his friend Cotonet had supposed that the term applied only to the theater, and signified the disregard of the unities.  “Shakspere, for example makes people travel from Rome to London, and from Athens to Alexandria in a quarter of an hour.  His heroes live ten or twenty years between two acts.  His heroines, angels of virtue during a whole scene, have only to pass into the coulisses, to reappear as wives, adulteresses, widows, and grandmothers.  There, we said to ourselves, is the romantic.  Contrariwise, Sophocles makes Oedipus sit on a rock, even at the cost of great personal inconvenience, from the very beginning of his tragedy.  All the characters come there to find him, one after the other.  Perhaps he stands up occasionally, though I doubt it; unless, it may be, out of respect for Theseus, who, during the entire play, obligingly walks on the high-way, coming in or going out continually. . .  There, we said to ourselves, is the classic.”