2

' H alf lost in nigh t':

envisioning London or,
Romantic poetry's Capital
snapshots
This then, is the obscure, city
hardly - to-be~thollght- of
Geoffrey Fletcher

INTRODUCTION

If William Blake offers us a strangely familiar, modern London,

then the texts of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Percy Bysshe Shelley,
and Lord Byron offer us also a peculiarly recognisable London .
Theirs is a London - and a language with which to describe
London - partly separated if not wholly divorced from ea rlier
writers, and, once again, distinctly modern. The discourse of the
city to be found in the Romantic poe ts considered in this chap-
ter invites us to return to the figure of London repeatedly, because
the image with which we are presented is so strikingly compre-
hensible, even though what is not available is an uncomplicated
image of the city. From Shakespeare and 10nson to Johnson, Field-
ing, and Richardson, we encounter a London which the writers
in question feel can be depicted, given a common image to be
shared by writer, reader and audience alike. Despite i ts
crowdedness, its busy-ness (a nd its business), there seems 10 be
the belief tha t the entire scene can be shown.
This London is a 'Rabelaisian' or carnivalesque capital city, a
city at once chaotic, sprawling, excessive, bustling and grotesque.
Bu t it is still a city wi th a smile (albeit on occasions a vicious
one), a city engendered from drink, eructation and the eruptions

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