Mountains and lakes, the dignity of the peasant, the
terror of the supernatural, scenes of history, mediaeval architecture
and armour, and mediaeval thought and poetry, the arts and mythology of
Greece--all became springs of poetic inspiration and poetic joy. The
impressions of all these things were unfamiliar and ministered to a
sense of wonder, and by that very fact they were classed as romantic, as
modes of escape from a settled way of life. But they were also in a
sense familiar too. The mountains made their appeal to a deep implanted
feeling in man, to his native sense of his own worth and dignity and
splendour as a part of nature, and his recognition of natural scenery as
necessary, and in its fullest meaning as sufficient for his spiritual
needs. They called him back from the artificiality and complexity of the
cities he had built for himself, and the society he had weaved round
him, to the natural world in which Providence had planted him of old,
and which was full of significance for his soul. The greatest poets of
the romantic revival strove to capture and convey the influence of
nature on the mind, and of the mind on nature interpenetrating one
another. They were none the less artists because they approached nature
in a state of passive receptivity.
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