His object was the object attained by Shakespeare in some of his supremest moments; the bare intolerable force of the speeches after the murder of Macbeth, or of King Lear's "Do not laugh at me, For as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia." Here, then, was one avenue of revolt from the tyranny of artificiality, the getting back of common speech into poetry.

But there was another, earlier and more potent in its effect.

The eighteenth century, weary of its own good sense and sanity, turned to the Middle Ages for picturesqueness and relief.

Romance of course, had not been dead in all these years, when Pope and Addison made wit and good sense the fashionable temper for writing.

There was a strong romantic tradition in the eighteenth century, though it does not give its character to the writing of the time.