penalties. [25] 'Life of Charlotte Brontë,' chap, xxvii. After his portrait-painting at Bradford, he never again resided there, and it was about the period of his leaving that place that he began to see the artistic career he had chosen was a mistake, and he determined to give it up as a profession. Moreover, other influences, as we shall see, had been, and were still, at work upon him which caused him to turn once more to literature. From the period of his acquaintance with the drawing-masters, he had become associated with the literary as well as the artistic circles of the neighbourhood; and he anticipated the literary future of his sisters. CHAPTER XII. LITERARY INFLUENCES AND ASPIRATIONS. New Inspiration of Poetry--Wordsworth--Southey, Scott, and Byron --Southey to Charlotte Brontë--Hartley Coleridge--His Worthies of Yorkshire--Poets of the West-Riding--Alaric A. Watts--Branwell's Literary Abilities. In the early part of the present century, the spirit of poetry began to make itself felt in quarters where previously it had never been known. The pedantic affectation of the Della Cruscan school gave place, in the works of a passionate lover of Nature like Wordsworth, to a fresher and purer inspiration, that delighted in familiar themes of domestic and rural beauty, which were often both humble and obscure. It was Wordsworth, indeed, who 'developed the theory of poetry,'--as Branwell Brontë well knew--that has worked a greater change in literature than has, perhaps, been known since the period of the Renaissance. In his endeavour to solve the difficulty of 'fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation,' Wordsworth had prepared the way for a natural outburst of poetic feeling, occupied with familiar and simple topics. The writers of the so-called 'Lake School' of poets, and especially Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, were, in fact, the leaders of the new movement; and, speedily, responsive to the free note of genius uncurbed, there arose from many an unknown place in England the sweet sound of poetic voices not heard before. At the same time, the touch of romanticism, which was imparted by Scott and Byron, had a great influence on many of the younger poets of the new school. It is evident, to anyone who has studied the local literature of that time, that the works produced under such inspiration were often of great and permanent merit. Southey, writing to Charlotte Brontë in 1837, indeed says, 'Many volumes of poems are now published every year without attracting public attention, any one of which, if it had appeared half-a-century ago, would have obtained a high reputation for its author.'