The Precursors of the Romantic Revival/Early Romantics

The eighteenth century is usually known as the century of "prose and reason." Nevertheless, the
romantic tendencies lay dormant during that century. In the later years of this century many new influences
were at work on English sensibility. Those eighteenth-century poets who possessed romantic sensibility and
yet at the same time faithfulness to neo-classicism are called transitional poets or the precursors of the
Romantic Revival. These poets believe in what Victor Hugo describes as "liberalism in literature." Some
of the important transitional poets include James Thomson, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray, William
Collins, and William Blake.
James Thomson is a typical transitional poet, though he chronologically belongs to the first half of
the eighteenth century. He was Pope’s contemporary, and yet he broke away from the traditions of his
school to explore "fresh woods and pastures new." His Seasons is important for accurate and sympathetic
descriptions of natural scenes. The poem is in blank verse written obviously after the manner of Milton', but
sometimes it seems to be over-strained. Thomson's Liberty is an exceptionally long poem. His Castle of
Indolence is in Spenserian stanzas, and it captures much of the luxuriant, imaginative colour of the
Elizabethan poet.
Oliver Goldsmith’s important poems, The Traveller and The Deserted Village are in heroic couplets.
The first poem is, didactic and is concerned with the description and criticism of the places and people in
Europe that Goldsmith had visited as a tramp. The second poem is rich in natural descriptions and is vibrant
with a peculiar note of sentiment and melancholy which foreshadows nineteenth-century romantics.
Thomas Gray was one of the most learned men of the Europe of his day. His first attempts, The
Alliance of Education and Government and the ode On a Distant Prospect of Eton College were classical in
spirit, and the first mentioned, even in its use of the heroic couplet. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
is Gray's finest poem which earned him critical appreciation. Gray's next poems, The Progress of Poesy and
The Bard, present a new conception of the poet not as a clever versifier but a genuinely inspired and
prophetic genius. His last poems like The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin are romantic fragments. We
William Collins’s work is as thin in bulk as Gray's. It does not extend to much more than 1500 lines.
He combines in himself the neoclassic and romantic elements, though he is not without a specific manner
which is all his own. His Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands foreshadows the world in which
Coleridge delighted. He is chiefly known for his odes. Referring to Collins, Swinburne maintains that in
"purity of music" and "clarity of style" there is "no parallel in English verse from the death of
Marvell to the birth of William Blake."
Blake was an out and out rebel against all the social, political, and literary conventions of the
eighteenth century. His glorification of childhood and feeling for nature make him akin to the romantic
poets. He is best known for his three thin volumes-Poetical Sketches (1783), Songs of Innocence (1789), and
Songs of Experience (1794) which contain some of the most orient gems of English lyricism. Blake’s Songs
of Innocence and Experience (1794) juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of childhood against an adult
world of corruption and repression. Blake’s ‘Innocence’ and ‘Experience’ are the two aspects of human
consciousness that echo the biblical states of Paradisal Bliss and the Fall respectively. Blake’s ‘innocence’ is
associated with ‘angel infancy’ (Vaughan’s “The Retreat”), the lamb and the flowers. On the contrary,
‘experience’ is associated with religious and social corruption, the tiger and other Urizenic forces. Though
contrary, these two states are complementary as well. Mark Schorer has brilliantly described the
indispensability of the two states: ‘The juxtaposition of lamb and tiger points not merely to the
opposition of innocence and experience, but to the resolution of the paradox they present.’
The features of transitional poetry can be summarized in the word “sublime”, which was set against
classic harmony, balance, and regularity in form. The transitional poets paved the way for Romantic revival
in the 19th century England.