when English knights have been winning their spurs abroad; and this remark is as true of Wellington's time as of the days of the Black Prince or Raleigh. Nine or ten English writers, who are likely to live for ever, were at work soon after 1800. Scott rose aloft above his brethren; but he was dethroned in his own lifetime (never had such a thing been known in our literature) by a greater bard than himself. Byron had the good taste to tread in the path followed by his Northern rival; both of them in their diction set the simplicity of the early part of the Fourteenth Century above all the gewgaws of certain later ages. Now it was that such words as losel and leech awoke after a long sleep. Bishop Percy, though Dr. Johnson laughed, had already led the English back to old wells, streams purer than any known to Pope. Burns had written in his own dialect verses that were prized by the high and the low alike. Coleridge's great ballad betokened that the public taste was veering round; he also turned the eyes of England to the vast intellectual wealth that was now being poured into the lap of Germany. All the different nations of Europe had come to know each other better. Voltaire had many years earlier told his countrymen that an old Warwickshire barbarian had lived, whose works contained grains of gold overlaid with much rubbish; something might have been made of the man, had he lived at Paris at the right time and formed himself upon Racine, or better still, upon Monsieur Arouet. Somewhat later, Schiller and Manzoni alike felt the English spell.
Ireland as well as her sister came under the new
