Module 

2: Influences on the English Romantics

European Romanticism Sensibility

The period 1780 to 1840 was marked by two clear strands of thought, often believed to be in conflict
with each other: the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The enlightenment as we now know, focused on
empiricism, logical behavior, logical thought, logical processes, on rationality and intellect, on
mathematical precision and scientific acumen. Romanticism on the other hand, focused on imagination,
the supernatural, the imaginative, the unreal. The two strands here were productively linked in the
English Romantics and in the European Romantics as well. Whether it was the emphasis on sensibility
and sense or whether it was the emphasis on the primitive and the modern that you see the tension
being manifest as, it produced interesting literature, interesting non-fictional tracts as well. During the
long 18th century, starting roughly in the middle of the 17th, there were large scale changes in attitudes
towards privacy, nature, subjectivity, language, imagination, humanity in general and the self. A keener
interest in the self generated a literature with a fascination for psychologisms and psychological analysis.
Many of you may recall that Wordsworth’s famous, The Prelude, published over several revisions,
revised versions during his lifetime was actually the study of what he called the rise of a poet’s mind, the
making of a poet’s mind, the crafting of poetic consciousness. These texts of the time were full of self-
conscious narrators. The preferred genre was a memoir. It used the lyric mode extensively as well
because they believed it was the best form to document any consciousness of the self. Friedrich
Schiller’s On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, published in 1798, two years before the Lyrical Ballads,
proposed that all modern poetry must be self-conscious, aware of itself as lacking the integrity and
oneness with nature. Wordsworth wrote very self-conscious poetry where he was aware of the
observing self, I am the one who sees. So much of what romanticism sought to do emerged from ideas
forged within the sensibility movement. (Refer Slide Time: 2:39) Notably we think in terms of David
Hume and Adam Smith’s man of sympathy or moral sentiments. We think of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Voltaire and Diderot’s noble savage, Henry Mackenzie’s man of feeling, Laurence Sterne's sentimental
traveller and Goethe’s Werther. All of these share the essential attributes of the hero of sensibility and
that is a subject of our lesson today, sensibility. The prominent thinkers and antecedents of the thought
are David Hume, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, Henry Mackenzie, Laurence Sterne and
Goethe. What is the hero of sensibility like? He has unspoiled natural virtue; he has an unusually keen
perception. And perception is not just observation but the analytical ability accompanying observation
and a deep capacity to feel. This is a foundation for sensibility. Immanuel Kant, the famous philosopher
(1724 to 1804) proposed individualism and human ability for benevolence and sympathy, thereby
rejecting the emphasis on rationality and reason. Sensibility could help produce an ethical response
towards other humans. This emphasis on sentiment, on sensibility and passion also saw artifices less
significant than primitivism. So, the free flow of emotions and feelings, what Wordsworth would
famously call – and we have looked at this before in our earlier lessons – a spontaneous overflow of
powerful emotions was more valuable than logical mental processes. (Refer Slide Time: 4:14) This is
from William Blake’s famous poem ‘London’: I wonder thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the
charter’d Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. Pay
attention to Blake’s lines here. What is Blake doing? Blake is positing an observer. But this observer is
recording human emotions. In every face I meet, what do I see? What do I encounter? Marks of
weakness, marks of woe. This is the rise of sensibility. Blake is, as you know, a preromantic; he
anticipates much of what the Romantics will do. (Refer Slide Time: 4:57) Rousseau’s espousal of the
“noble savage”, and primitivism weighed in on the side of instincts and passion as opposed to reason
and calculated rational thought, which was the highlight of the enlightenment. This meant, further, a
marked preference for nature rather than culture, where culture was the human artifice and nature was
deemed to be pure and uncontaminated. Now this is a binary that will persist down the ages - that there
is something like pure, good, uncontaminated nature and then there is culture which is human, artificial,
artifice and therefore not quite on the same scale. (Refer Slide Time: 5:35) This means Romanticism
drew upon developments in the Age of Sensibility where there was a distrust of Reason. It was
accompanied by the elevations of passions as a guide to moral behavior. It was part of the great
humanitarian movement as well. There was a heightened faith in humanity and humanitarianism. As the
mayor of London at one point declared, we live in an age when humanity is in fashion. Also visible is an
increasing emphasis on the faculties of empathy and imagination. The Age of Sensibility helped the
romantics forge a clear emphasis on empathy, sympathy, imagination and passion, and thereby
automatically turn the face away from logic, reason and rationality. (Refer Slide Time: 6:27) Tom Paine
writes in Rights of Man, When despotism has established itself for ages in a country, as in France, it is
not in the person of the king alone that it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in
nominal authority. But it is not so in practice and in fact. It has its standard everywhere. Every office and
department has its despotism, founded upon custom and usage. What were formerly called revolutions,
were little more than a change of persons, or an alteration of local circumstances. What we now see in
the world, from the revolutions of America and France, are a renovation of the natural order of things, a
system of principles as universal as truth and the existence of man - and this is a crucial part - and
combining moral with political happiness and national prosperity. Tom Paine in a text which is as driven
by political ideas is making a connection which is something that impacts upon the English Romantics
between the moral and the political. We continue thinking about this via other authors as well. (Refer
Slide Time: 7:34) English Romanticism drew upon particular developments in theories of poetry,
imagination and psychology circulating in Europe. German writers and thinkers, J W Goethe (1749-1832)
and Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) were, from the 1770s, advocating the idea of poetic genius and the
value of imagination. Nature was being regarded as almost divine, as quasi-divine, and a great deal of
value was placed on spontaneity of feeling and organicism. Prototypes for the Romantic hero were
found in creations like Goethe's Faust and Werther (In Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther
respectively). Werther, we are told, was a household name in England at some point in time. The age is
marked by the movement away from neoclassical symmetry and order embodied in Augustan writers
such as Dryden and Pope towards a new interest in asymmetry and irregularity. (Refer Slide Time: 8:28)
The critic, Inger Brodey lists 6 features of the age of sensibility that then spills over into Romanticism.
Something I found useful and I hope you will too. 1. Ethical thought that stressed the significance of
feeling over reason for moral behavior, resulting in a new psychology that stressed the ethical, didactic,
and emotional effect of the faculty of sight 2. Scientific theories that stress the biological bases of
emotion and sympathy 3. An emphasis on the importance of independence from authority, whether
construed in political, cultural, religious or aesthetic terms 4. A consistent preference for rural simplicity
over urbanity 5. Intense concern over the possibility of human intimacy and effective or affective
communication. 6. A deep ambivalence about the desirability for order and system. In other words,
feeling takes the place of reason as a supreme faculty. Whereas, Enlightenment on neoclassical thought
required vision for the perception of a rational, eternal order, sensibility tends towards affect—
especially the possibility of sympathy towards visions of suffering. (Refer Slide Time: 9:31) This is Anna
Laetitia Barbauld’s “The Rights of Woman”: Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right! Woman! Too long
degraded, scorned, opprest; O born to rule in partial Law’s despite, Resume thy native empire over the
breast! ………. Go, gird thyself with grace; collect thy store Of bright artillery glancing from afar; Soft
melting tones thy thundering cannon’s roar, Blushes and fears thy magazine of war. The tone is
sentimental, and sounds almost like a rant, like anger. It is meant to draw upon the passions of the
speaker but appeal to the passions of the listener as well. Here is Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of
the Rights of Woman (1792): (Refer Slide Time: 10:23) For if it be allowed that women were destined by
Providence to acquire human virtues, and by the exercise of their understandings, that stability of
character which is the firmest ground to rest our future hopes upon, they must be permitted to turn to
the fountain of light and not forced to shape their course by the twinkling of a mere satellite. Now if you
can pay attention to what these poems, these excerpts have highlighted, it is a question of sentiment. It
is the appeal to you to pay attention to the suffering other, to pay attention to the crowds there who are
suffering, to pay attention to the abandoned mothers, the helpless children. Sentiment which the
Romantics would be particularly fond of, began to mean a synthesis of reason and emotion, especially in
moral philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith. Sentiment, therefore, denoted intellectualized
emotion or emotionalized thought, sounds like an oxymoronic construction: intellectualized emotion or
emotionalized thought. This age was also characterized, as I have already mentioned before, by a pre-
occupation with bodily mechanisms of emotion and experience. The growing emphasis on nature or
natural simplicity, the ordinary and everyday rustic life and also kindness to animals, these are part of
what everybody tried to do. (Refer Slide Time: 11:37) Language’s referential powers, the possibility of
objectivity for the human mind, and the possibility of translation all spurred debates. They sought a
language for sentiment, for affection and passions rather than a language of reason and rationality. It
was the flow of passions that language needed to capture. But it also meant that the authors were torn
between the demand for intense self-consciousness and the awareness of the dangers of solipsism,
between the self and society. Wordsworth is a good example of this tension. What do I mean by this? It
means very simply you could be conscious of yourself but you run the risk of being conscious only of
yourself. It means the intense attention to oneself might result in a retreat from society itself. And this is
a tension you see in all of Wordsworth. Why is this a problem? It is a problem because Wordsworth as
he put it in the preface to the “Lyrical Ballads”, is a man speaking to men. He needs to listen to, and talk
to, other people. But Wordsworth’s poetry is constantly looking at himself. Let me give you an instance.
In the famous “Tintern Abbey” poem, there is a speaker looking from the Abbey, from the hill down to
the Abbey and at the surrounding areas. What is important is, the speaker is conscious of being an
observing speaker. That is, I watch myself watching, let us put it that way. Wordsworth is not only giving
you an observing person, he is speaking about an observing person who is observing himself watching
the world around. This might for many people sound suspiciously, notoriously close to solipsism and it is
a fairly legitimate charge, that much of what Wordsworth is doing, the “poet of the egotistical sublime”
as famously described, he is concerned not with emotions and not with the world around him. He is
concerned with how his emotions are developing, how he is responding to nature. As I would suggest,
Wordsworth is not so much interested in nature as he is interested in his responses towards nature and
what nature does to him. This is a self-consciousness carried to its logical extremes. (Refer Slide Time:
13:42) There were other influences such as James MacPherson’s The Poems of Ossian, which became
the favorite reading matter for many Romantics, whose fascination with antiquarianism was fueled by
these texts about forgotten Celtic cultures. Forgotten Celtic cultures, ancient worlds, Stonehenge and
others generated an interest in languages and alterative societies and stimulated an interest in the
history of Britain and Ireland. It influenced Romantics such as Robert Burns and William Wordsworth,
seeking a poetic sensibility that showed man rooted in locality and nature. The idea of low and rustic life
developed from this. It also resulted in what Ann Rigney and others have called Romantic Historicism.
Documented brilliantly in James Chandler's book, England 1819, it is the romantic attitude towards
history that James Chandler is documenting for a year. 1819 is the year of the Peterloo Massacre as well.
We have covered: Sensibility which proceeds from the Age of Sensibility, the long 18th century; the
interest in the passions, in sympathy and empathy, in seeking a response to suffering and others; in
developing a consciousness about consciousness – thinking about how I have acquired consciousness
and how I have come to consciousness; and the interest in antiquarianism.
II

Dissent and Revolution

The Romantic Period in literature, traditionally given to nature and sentiment was also interested in
science as we have seen before in our earlier lessons. It was interested the empire, imperial conquest
and the cultural other. But it also was the period of considerable turbulence. The French Revolution
1789, culminating in Napoleon's coup of 1799 was at the opening moments of the English Romantic
Period. The French Revolution and its aftermath had its reverberations in England’s political culture and
in its literature. The English poets, notably Wordsworth and Coleridge, were, at least, initially major
supporters of the revolution. (Wordsworth had a personal connection with France as well. He had
visited France during the revolutionary years, met Annette Vallon and had a daughter by her.)
Wordsworth would describe England in “London 1802” as “a fen/ of waters” and call upon Milton to
return to give the English “manners, virtue, freedom, power!” When Edmund Burke, statesman,
published his “Reflections on the Revolution in France” 1790, he argued that if such a revolution ever
occurred in England it would end Britain’s wonderful traditional institutions and result in anarchy. (Refer
Slide Time: 1:58) The famous poem, “The Mask of Anarchy” (the entire poem can be found at
http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/anarchy.html) is a key text to understanding the political
fervor. Other influential texts included William Godwin’s “Inquiry into Political Justice” (1793) and Mary
Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. As a result of the revolution and the deeply
polarized debates, such as the ones we have just seen, literature and intellectual writings were
consistently political in nature. On the one hand, there is conservative Burke who said, “Oh, my God!
What happens if revolutions such as the French come to England?” And then there was like Shelley who
said, “Well, we do need some revolution.” The revolution represented for many of the English writers, a
new beginning, a new social order change. (Refer Slide Time: 3:02) Here is a painting by Richard Carlile,
“Painting of the Peterloo Massacre” (can be accessed also through the URL provided). The massacre was
documented and utilized a number of times by the literary scholars of that time. Here is Wordsworth,
erupting in joy at the idea of a revolution, in The Prelude: (Refer Slide Time: 3:30) Oh! pleasant exercise
of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we who were strong in
love! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times, In which the
meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute, took at once The attraction of a country in
romance! When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights, When most intent on making of herself A
prime Enchantress—to assist the work Which then was going forward in her name! Not favoured spots
alone, but the whole earth, The beauty wore of promise, that which sets (As at some moment might not
be unfelt Among the bowers of paradise itself ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . They who had fed their
childhood upon dreams, The playfellows of fancy, who had made All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and
strength Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred Among the grandest objects of the sense, And
dealt with whatsoever they found there As if they had within some lurking right To wield it;—they, too,
who, of gentle mood, Had watched all gentle motions, and to these Had fitted their own thoughts,
schemers more wild, And in the region of their peaceful selves;— . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . Not in Utopia,
subterranean fields, Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the
world Of all of us,—the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all! Wordsworth is
enthusiastic, he is welcoming the revolution and he does not think of it as utopia. Not in utopia, he says,
subterranean fields or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! In other words, Wordsworth is not
speculating on a revolution somewhere out there, somewhere in the distant geographically and
temporarily distant place, he is talking about a revolution here. Look at what he is saying, “in the very
world which is the world of all of us, the place where in the end we find our happiness or not at all.” The
second example is from Coleridge in France: An Ode. (Refer Slide Time: 5:26) When France in wrath her
giant-limbs upreared, And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, Stamped her strong foot and
said she would be free, Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared! There is a sense of ambivalence
that Coleridge is proposing here. It is not just a welcoming interest and passion for the revolution, there
is an anxiety that things may not go as planned, which is why he says, how I hoped and feared. And the
exact opposite, the contrary to what we have just seen from Wordsworth and Coleridge, Edmund Burke
says, on the possible dangers of revolutionary ideas crossing over into England in Reflections in the
Revolutions in France: (Refer Slide Time: 6:11) You will smile here at the consistency of those
democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the
greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them in the depositories of all
power. Kings will be tyrants by policy when subjects are rebels from principle. The next is a rather
extended quotation but a crucial one, It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of
France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly
seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the
elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like the morning star full of life and splendor
and joy. Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that
elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic,
distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace
concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her,
in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords
must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the
age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of
Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and
sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive,
even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense
of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of
principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it
mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by
losing all its grossness. What is Burke doing here? Burke is mourning the loss of a traditional system of
values. He is mourning the collapse of traditional ways of thinking, of hierarchies, of social order. And
look at what he is saying, the chastity of honor has been stained and that ought to have inspired
courage. Throughout the Reflections upon a Revolution in France, Burke is worrying that a similar
situation may arise in England. He is worrying that all those things that were happening will cause a
collapse of the social order. He is saying is the aristocrats will stand to lose their elite status. Their
power, their wealth, and of course their ability to oppress other people. (Refer Slide Time: 8:17) Later
with the Napoleonic wars, which ended with Waterloo in June 1815, debates about the economic and
social costs of extended wars were also reflected in literary texts. Wordsworth’s poems therefore detail
the life of the “discharged soldier” and the fears of invasion became the subject of poems like
Coleridge’s “Fear in Solitude”. (Infact, the invasion theme combined war with disease, as we have seen
in Bewell’s reading of the pathology of English Romantic Literature). And has been already mentioned in
an earlier lesson, Blake’s soldier who now has come back from the war is injured and he hates
monarchy, the palace and that the palace – the institution of monarchy which sent him to war and has
caused this kind of damage and has given him nothing in turn. Coleridge here is speaking about the
possible invasion of England itself. That is, just as Burke is beginning to, in his reflections on the
revolution in France worry that there is imminent revolution in England, Coleridge’s Fears in Solitude is
also saying this: (Refer Slide Time: 9:13) It weighs upon the heart, that he must think What uproar and
what strife may now be stirring This way or that way o’er these silent hills Invasion, and the thunder and
the shout, And all the crash of onset; fear and rage, And undetermined conflict – even now. Even now,
perchance, and in his native isle: Carnage and groans beneath this blessed sun! (Refer Slide Time: 9:36)
Now you see what you can document very easily from what we have said so far, is the two opposing
views about the revolution. Wordsworth and Coleridge initially welcoming of it but Coleridge as we have
just seen in the excerpt from “Fears in Solitude”, the anxiety that this invasion will come to their – what
he calls “native hill, to their quiet highland”. Having looked at some of these poets, let us take a look at
what Tom Paine would say in Rights of Man. Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another;
and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess. When it can be said by any country in the
world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among the, my jails are empty
of prisoners, my streets of beggar, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational
world is my friend because I am not the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, may that
country boast its constitution and government. What are the present governments of Europe, but a
scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, it is a market
where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded
people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced. (Refer Slide Time: 10:35) He is arguing
that England is also ready for a revolution because its government is just the same. Propaganda against
Napolean dominated the periodical press in England, and Wellington’s victory (in the Battle of Waterloo)
was seen as the triumph of good over evil. But it was not always the external invasion and war that
occupied the literary minds of the age. Social inequalities, decreasing employment, food scarcity, all of
these begin to accumulate towards the first decades of the 19th century, in an age of professed
humanitarianism and visible territorial expansion overseas, generated discontent in the working classes.
Public institutions came in for polemical attacks. People begin to ask these questions, what are we doing
with all these wars when our own country is suffering? Here is Percy Shelley in his well-known
sensational England in 1819: (Refer Slide Time: 11:03) An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king,-
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, - mud from a muddy spring – Rulers
who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling. Till they drop, blind in
blood, without a blow, - A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,— An army, which liberticide
and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed; A Senate,—Time’s worst statute unrepealed,— Are graves,
from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestous day. (Refer Slide Time: 11:41)
Shelley is attacking English monarchy here, “rulers who can neither see, nor feel, nor know,” its
institutions such as the Church and politics. Shelley’s other poems, such as The Mask of Anarchy, were
equally harsh critiques of the British political culture. Blake’s ‘London’ mounted a savage attack on
monarchy, the church, the commercial/business institutions and marriage, pointing to these as
hypocritical institutions that created and fostered social injustice and poverty. (Refer Slide Time: 12:11)
Wordsworth wrote, Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred Among the grandest objects of the
sense, And dealt with whatsoever they found there As if they had within some lurking right To wield it;
—they, too, who, of gentle mood, Had watched all gentle motions, and to these Had fitted their own
thoughts, schemers more wild, And in the region of their peaceful selves;— Now was it that both found,
the meek and lofty Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire, And stuff at hand, plastic as they could
wish; Were called upon to exercise their skill, Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, Or some secreted
island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us,—the place where in
the end We find our happiness, or not at all! “The French Revolution at its Commencement” These poets
were all extremely anxious, angry, upset at what was going on. But they were equally upset and
unhappy about what was going on in England. Wordsworth, in “The French Revolution at its
Commencement”, which was later incorporated into The Prelude, would express hope and joy and he
would say that perhaps it is time we have another kind of government, a more socially relevant one.
(Refer Slide Time: 12:40) The point you need to understand is that there were other forms of dissent as
well, not just against monarchy but against, say, religious principles. Blake starts this with “The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell” and “The Songs of Innocence & Experience” where he began to speak against
religion. But this is also Percy Shelley’s famous, “The Necessity of Atheism”, which like Blake’s work, was
an interrogation of the religious discourses of the time. The poems reflect the large-scale discontent and
spirit of protest in the period. In terms of actual physical action, there were the food riots in 1794-96
and 1799-1801, the military revolts in 1795, protests against machinery in 1811-12 (the anti-machinery
Luddite movement) and the protests at Peterloo that culminated in the massacres of 1819. In his
‘Human Abstract’ from the Songs of Experience, Blake would make a huge point about our “noble
virtues”. (Refer Slide Time: 13:15) Pity would be no more If we did not make somebody Poor; And Mercy
no more could be If all were as happy as we. And mutual fear brings peace, Till the selfish loves increase;
Then Cruelty knits a snare And spreads his baits with care. . . . . . . . . And it bears the fruit of Deceit
Ruddy and sweet to eat; And the Raven his nest has made In its thickest shade. The Gods of the earth
and sea Sought through nature to find this tree, But their search was all in vain: There grows one in the
Human Brain. But note what has already been said about the binary between nature and culture. What
Blake is doing is to say that it is not only in nature that there is cruelty. The human person, the human
mind or the human emotional component is not just about charity, and mercy and pity. What he is
saying, is something horrific. You cannot show pity unless you keep somebody poor. (Refer Slide Time:
14:13) You cannot show mercy if everybody is equally happy. In other words, what Blake is revealing is a
hypocrisy behind our “virtues”. What he is saying is all our virtues are actually attempts at masking
social inequalities. We have covered the idea of dissent and revolution but also dissent in the form of
what we have just seen in Blake, where he is arguing that let us not think of human, the human
components of emotion or intellect as being all about good and virtue. They are also about social
inequalities. It is this kind of dynamic and this kind of tension about dissent that informs the English
Romantics.