In the eighteenth century poets seem not to have been averse to
placating their enemies by publishing their attendance upon the
appointed means of grace. Among the more conservative poets, this
attitude lasted over into the earlier stages of the romantic movement.
So late a poet as Bowles delighted to stress the "churchman's ardor" of
the poet. [Footnote: See his verse on Southey and Milton.] Southey also
was ready to exhibit his punctilious orthodoxy. Yet poor Southey was the
unwitting cause of the impiety of his brothers for many years, inasmuch
as Byron's _A Vision of Judgment,_ with its irresistible satire on
Southey, sounded the death-knell of the narrowly religious poet.
The vogue which the poet of religious ill-repute enjoyed during the
romantic period was, of course, a very natural phase of "the renaissance
of wonder." The religious "correctness" of the eighteenth century
inevitably went out of fashion, in poetic circles, along with the rest
of its formalism. Poets vied with one another in forming new and daring
conceptions of God.
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