language" as Dr. Johnson called her, yields little that is
lyrical; and the verses of Mrs. Mary Robinson, the Prince
of Wales's "Perdita", who styled herself "the English
Sappho," yield, of their kind, too much. Another poetess,
Anna Lætitia Barbauld, in a long life of literary diligence,
reached deserved repute for a single beautiful poem, be-
ginning, "Life! we've been long together"; though that,
too, came later. With Blake, Chatterton, and Burns in
mind, and likewise with the respectable unlyrical people
noticed above, it might almost be said that the lyric by
1795 had fallen into the hands of women and children,
ploughmen and mad folk. But the day was at hand,
and the lyric was shortly to come to its own. In this very
year, 1795, Walter Savage Landor issued the first of his
volumes of poetry; in the next, Coleridge appeared for the
first time as an author in company with Charles Lamb;
while 1798 is the ever memorable year of the publication
by Wordsworth and Coleridge of Lyrical Ballads. But
all of this belongs to the next chapter.

-148-