"A hermit's house beside a stream With forests planted round," are suggestive of the romantic school of Wordsworth and Coleridge, as is also _The Wild Honeysuckle_, which begins as follows:-- "Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, Hid in this silent, dull retreat, Untouched thy honied blossoms blow, Unseen thy little branches greet. "By Nature's self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by." Although Freneau's best poems are few and short, no preceding American poet had equaled them. The following will repay careful reading: _The Wild Honeysuckle_, _The Indian Burying Ground_, and _To a Honey Bee_. He died in 1832, and was buried near his home at Mount Pleasant, Monmouth County, New Jersey. ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD The great prose representatives of the first half of the eighteenth century, Swift, Addison, Steele, and Defoe, had passed away before the middle of the century. The creators of the novel, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding, had done their best work by 1750. The prose writers of the last half of the century were OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774), who published the _Vicar of Wakefield_ in 1766; EDWARD GIBBON (1737-1794), who wrote _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_; EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797), best known to-day for his _Speech on Conciliation with America_; and SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784), whose _Lives of the Poets_ is the best specimen of eighteenth-century classical criticism. The most noteworthy achievement of the century was the victory of romanticism (p. 88) over classicism. Pope's polished satiric and didactic verse, neglecting the primrose by the river's brim, lacking deep feeling, high ideals, and heaven-climbing imagination, had long been the model that inspired cold intellectual poetry. In the latter part of the century, romantic feeling and imagination won their battle and came into their own heritage in literature. ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796) wrote poetry that touched the heart. A classicist like Dr. Johnson preferred the town to the most beautiful country scenes, but WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800) says:-- "God made the country, and man made the town." Romantic poetry culminated in the work of WILLIAM WORDSWORTH and SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, whose _Lyrical Ballads_ (1798) included the wonderful romantic poem of _The Ancient Mariner_, and poems by Wordsworth, which brought to thousands of human souls a new sense of companionship with nature, a new feeling "... that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes," and that all nature is anxious to share its joy with man and to introduce him to a new world. The American poets of this age, save Freneau in a few short lyrics, felt but little of this great impulse; but in the next period we shall see that William Cullen Bryant heard the call and sang:--