There was, then, a strength and a truth in all these men; and it was this--that more or less clearly, they all felt that they were standing between two worlds; and the ruins of an older age; upon the threshold of a new one. To Byron's mind, the decay and rottenness of the old was, perhaps, the most palpable; to Shelley's, the possible glory of the new. Wordsworth declared--a little too noisily, we think, as if he had been the first to discover the truth--the dignity and divineness of the most simple human facts and relationships. Coleridge declares that the new can only assume living form by growing organically out of the old institutions. Keats gives a sad and yet a wholesome answer to them both, as, young and passionate, he goes down with Faust "to the Mothers"-- To the rich warm youth of the nations, Childlike in virtue and faith, though childlike in passion and pleasure, Childlike still, still near to the gods, while the sunset of Eden Lingered in rose-red rays on the peaks of Ionian mountains. And there, amid the old classic forms, he cries: "These things, too, are eternal-- A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. These, or things even fairer than they, must have their place in the new world, if it is to be really a home for the human race." So he sings, as best he can, the half-educated and consumptive stable- keeper's son, from his prison-house of London brick, and in one mighty yearn after that beauty from which he is debarred, breaks his young heart, and dies, leaving a name not "writ in water," as he dreamed, but on all fair things, all lovers' hearts, for evermore. Here, then, to return, is the reason why the hearts of the present generation have been influenced so mightily by these men, rather than by those of whom Byron wrote, with perfect sincerity: Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try 'Gainst you the question with posterity. These lines, written in 1818, were meant to apply only to Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey. Whether they be altogether just or unjust is not now the question. It must seem somewhat strange to our young poets that Shelley's name is not among those who are to try the question of immortality against the Lake School; and yet many of his most beautiful poems had been already written. Were, then, "The Revolt of Islam" and "Alastor" not destined, it seems, in Byron's opinion, to live as long as the "Lady of the Lake" and the "Mariners of England?" Perhaps not. At least the omission of Shelley's name is noteworthy. But still more noteworthy are these words of his to Mr. Murray, dated January 23, 1819: "Read Pope--most of you don't--but do . . . and the inevitable consequence would be, that you would burn all that I have ever written, and all your other wretched Claudians of the day (except Scott and Crabbe) into the bargain."