The time was preeminently poetic. The Elizabethan age alone excels it in the glory of its poetry. The principal subjects of verse in the age of Romanticism were nature and man. Nature became the embodiment of an intelligent, sympathetic, spiritual force. Cowper, Burns, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats constitute a group of poets who gave to English literature a new poetry of nature. The majority of these were also poets of man, of a more ideal humanity. The common man became an object of regard. Burns sings of the Scotch peasant. Wordsworth pictures the life of shepherds and dalesmen. Byron's lines ring with a cry of liberty for all, and Shelley immortalizes the dreams of a universal brotherhood of man. Keats, the poet of the beautiful, passed away before he heard clearly the message of "the still sad music of humanity." While the prose does not take such high rank as the poetry, there are some writers who will not soon be forgotten. Scott will be remembered as the great master of the historical novel, Jane Austen as the skillful realistic interpreter of everyday life, De Quincey for the brilliancy of his style and the vigor of his imagination in presenting his opium dreams, and Lamb for his exquisite humor. In philosophical prose, Mill, Bentham, and Malthus made important contributions to moral, social, and political philosophy, while Coleridge opposed their utilitarian and materialistic tendencies, and codified the principles of criticism from a romantic point of view. REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY HISTORICAL Gardiner[27], Green, Walker, or Cheney. For the social side, see Traill, V., VI., and Cheney's _Industrial and Social History of England_. LITERARY _The Cambridge History of English Literature_, Vols. XI., XII. Courthope's _A History of English Poetry_, Vol. VI. Elton's _A Survey of English Literature from 1780-1830_, 2 vols. Herford's _The Age of Wordsworth_. Brandes's _Naturalism in England_ (Vol. IV. of _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature_.) _The Revolution in English Poetry and Fiction_ (Chap. XXII. of Vol. X. of _Cambridge Modern History_.) Hancock's _The French Revolution and the English Poets_. Scudder's _Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets_. Symons's _The Romantic Movement in English Poetry_. Reynolds's _The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth_. Mackie's _Nature Knowledge in Modern Poetry_. Brookes's _Studies in Poetry_ (Blake, Scott, Shelley, Keats). Symons's _William Blake_. Payne's _The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century_ (Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth). Stephen's _Hours in a Library_, 3 vols. (Scott, De Quincey, Cowper, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge). Dowden's _Studies in Literature_, 1879-1877. Bradley's _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_ (Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats). Lowell's _Among my Books, Second Series_ (Wordsworth, Keats). Ainger's _Life of Lamb_. (E.M.L.) Lucas's _Life of Charles Lamb_.