Excerpt from The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 2
Poetry is an age in flower; and the poetry of the nineteenth century has been a more gorgeous and more tropical flower, because warmer suns have shone on it, warmer winds blown on it, and larger rains watered its roots. Indeed, it is almost a wonder that the first half, at least, and the middle of the eighteenth century, produced so much and such good poetry. That age was, on the whole, a stagnant and uninteresting one. There was nothing very deeply to rouse the passions and imaginations of men. There was, indeed, the usual amount of political squabbles; but when a Bolingbroke was the most eloquent and admired of parliamentary orators, what moral grandeur could be expected? There was a Jacobite faction, perpetually undermining and sometimes breaking out into Open rebellion; but their enthusiasm, save in Scotland, was mingled with no poetical elements, although there cer tainly it produced many exquisite strains of ballad poetry.
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