Revolution and Romanticism

RICHARD MANT

The Simpliciad 1808

Mant was a bishop of the established church in Ireland, and the funniest of Wordsworth’s parodists. His satire was prompted by Poems in Two Volumes 1807 , and follows Jeffrey’s attack on the Lake Poets in his 1802 review of Thalaba. It is addressed in verse to Wordsworth, Southey and Coleridge, with notes relating his parody and allusion to the originals. His poem is a witty reminder of attitudes in the period, and serves to define the novelty in the minds of many readers of the first phase of Romantic poetry.

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Poets, who fix their visionary sight
On Sparrow’s eggs in prospect of delight,
With fervent welcome greet the glow-worm’s flame,
Put it to bed and bless it by its name;
Hunt waterfalls, that gallop down the hills:
And dance with dancing laughing daffodils;
Or measure muddy ponds from side to side,
And find them three feet long and two feet wide:
Poets with brother donkey in the dell
Of mild equality who fain would dwell
With brother lark or brother robin fly,
Or flutter with half-brother butterfly...
(lines 94-105)

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Poetry of the 1890s