So wide is the connotation of the word Romanticism, we may make up almost any conceivable definition and be sure we have respectable authority in agreement with the view we have taken. The fault to be found with the current definitions is that they stress the source, at the expense, of the character of that influence which transformed "the age of prose and reason" into the "Renascence of Wonder." The influence to be stressed in the use I shall wish to make of the word Romanticism is protest against the settled, conservative, classical order of things. Secondarily, it will be remembered that the source of much of the literary material used by the protestants is to be found in the remote past--remote whether in time or in charge of mental attitude. In order to be able to throw a clearly defined portrait of Irwin Russell on the canvas of Southern literature, it will be necessary rapidly to review the main outlines of this Romantic movement in the development of English thought a period which may be shown to be the prototype of our own after-the-war literary life. We shall not go into details. First we should recall to mind the main literary currents of English thinking from the time of Dryden to the end of the dictatorship of the great Cham himself. It will be readily remembered that fashion in literature had changed soon after Shakespeare's death and his native wood-notes wild were forgot for a time. The age of prose and reason followed. Self-consciousness was a characteristic note of the Augustan, the eighteenth century literature. Narrowness of imagination, and faithfulness in copying made up the main classical elements in many an English poet under the regime of Formalism.