Collins's _Ode to Simplicity_ was
written in the stanza of Milton's _Nativity_, and his exquisite unrimed
_Ode to Evening_ was a study in versification, after Milton's
translation of Horace's _Ode to Pyrrha_, in the original meters.
Shakspere began to be studied more reverently: numerous critical
editions of his plays were issued, and Garrick restored his pure text to
the stage. Collins was an enthusiastic student of Shakspere, and one of
his sweetest poems, the _Dirge in Cymbeline_, was inspired by the
tragedy of _Cymbeline_. The verse of Gray, Collins, and the Warton
brothers abounds in verbal reminiscences of Shakspere; but their genius
was not allied to his, being exclusively lyrical and not at all
dramatic. The Muse of this romantic school was Fancy rather than
Passion. A thoughtful melancholy, a gentle, scholarly pensiveness, the
spirit of Milton's _Il Penseroso_, pervades their poetry. Gray was a
fastidious scholar, who produced very little, but that little of the
finest quality. His famous _Elegy_, expressing a meditative mood in
language of the choicest perfection, is the representative poem of the
second half of the 18th century, as the _Rape of the Lock_ is of the
first. The romanticists were quietists, and their scenery is
characteristic.
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