[17] Cp. “Essay on Criticism,” I, ll. 130-140.
[18] John Dennis, of course, at the beginning of the century, is to be found pleading that “passion is the chief thing in poetry,” (“The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry,” 1701); but it is to be feared that he is only, so to speak, ringing the changes on the Rules.
[19] “A Parallel of Poetry and Painting,” ed. Ker, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 147.
[20] “A Parallel of Poetry and Painting,” Ker, op cit., Vol. II, p. 148. “Operum Colores is the very word which Horace uses to signify words and elegant expressions.” etc.
[21] Lessing’s “Laokoon,” which appeared in 1766, may in this, as in other connexions, be regarded as the first great Romantic manifesto. The limitations of poetry and the plastic arts were analysed, and the fundamental conditions to which each art must adhere, if it is to accomplish its utmost, were definitely and clearly laid down.
[22] “Polymetis” (1747), p. 311.
[23] “Biographia Literaria,” Chap. XXII.
[24] Ibid., Chap. IV.
[25] Vide especially Babbitt, “The New Laocoon, An Essay on the Confusion of the Arts” (1910), to which these paragraphs are indebted; and for a valuable survey of the relations of English poetry with painting and with music, see “English Poetry in Its Relation to Painting and the other Arts,” by Laurence Binyon (London, 1919), especially pp. 15-19.
[26] Vide “Elizabethan Critical Essays,” ed. Gregory Smith, Vol. I, Intro. (Oxford, 1904).