rightly praised his ability to face the worst with terrible calm – as in ‘A slumber did
my spirit seal’, which attains moral grandeur in eight uneffusive lines.
Of the chiefLyrical Ballads, only the poem which opened the first edition is a
ballad, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere. (In the second edition, its
spelling was modernized and it lost its pole position.) Likewise, Wordsworth’s Lines
Written Some Miles above Tintern Abbey,Michael,Nutting and ‘There was a boy, ye
knew him well’ are not lyrics. But the jointly authored volume claims in its hybrid
title that the finer qualities of song-like lyrics, such as ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’,
can inhere in rough ‘folk’-verse tales. The experimental poems partially succeed, or
fail interestingly. More significant are the anecdotes from everyday life, such as ‘We
are Seven’ and ‘Simon Lee’, which successfully mix genres and offer unresolved view-
points. Less experimental is the central Lines Written Some Miles above Tintern
Abbey, which follows Cowper’s conversational mode, though what it adds to it is
significantly new.
THE ROMANTIC POETS 231Events 1789–1824
1789 French Revolution. The Third Estate becomes the National Assembly
1791 Louis XVI accepts a new Constitution
1792 France is declared a Republic. Royalists massacred
1793 Reign of Terror in France. France and Britain at war
1794 Pitt suspends the law of habeas corpus, curbs the press. Robespierre guillotined
1796 French invasion of Ireland fails
1797 Naval mutinies are suppressed. Naval victories
1798 The French intervene in the Low Countries, Austria, Italy, Egypt. Rebellion against
British rule in Ireland. Nelson wins Battle of the Nile
1799 Combinations Act forbids trade unions
1800 Ireland is united to England. Irish MPs come to Westminster
1803 Irish rebellion is suppressed
1804 Napoleon is crowned Emperor
1805 Nelson defeats the French fleet at Trafalgar
1807 Abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire
1808 Britain opposes France in the Peninsular War in Spain
1809 Napoleon conquers the Papal States, and occupies Vienna
1811 George III is insane. The Prince of Wales becomes Regent (to 1820). Luddites break
machines in the Midlands
1812 The French army invading Russia is destroyed by winter
1813 Wellington victorious in Spain
1814 The Allies invade France. Napoleon abdicates
1815 Napoleon returns; he is defeated by Wellington at Waterloo
1816–17 Riots
1818 Parliamentary motion for universal suffrage is defeated
1819 ‘Peterloo Massacre’: eleven radicals killed at a mass meeting in Manchester
1820 George III dies. George IV reigns (to 1830)
1821 Failure of the Cato Street Conspiracy, a plot to murder the Cabinet
1822 The Greeks revolt against Turkish rule
1823 Prime Minister Peel begins legal reforms
1824 Combinations Act of 1799 repealed