In 1877 Blake was little appreciated. (I remember only that in our children’s books we had “Tiger, Tiger burning bright”—and it was a strange thing to include in such books a poem which raises the problems of the existence of evil and the nature of God). Hence it will be evident why so keen a student of poetry as Hodgson did not couple Blake with Cowper as a precursor of the Romantic Revival. As a matter of fact Blake had more of the “Romantic” spirit than Cowper, and really preceded him, for the poor verse that Cowper published the year before Blake’s Poetical Sketches need not be considered. While still in his teens Blake wrote (“To the Muses”):
... Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry,
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoyed in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few.
Curiously enough Gray also had in him an element of the Romantic which he suppressed. It is very remarkable that in his Elegy (published 1751) he cut out the following verse:
There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,