THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION ON BRITISH ROMANTIC POETS

English Literature III
Vítor Moura

Introduction
The French Revolution marks a turning point in world history and it is often said that it changed politics forever. Therefore, it is no surprise that its importance also reached the main literary movement of that time.
Although not all of the poets were directly influenced by the Revolution, some of them were affected indirectly by the mood that ran across Europe.
In this essay I will show that connection, influence and involvement between those writers and the revolutions; the one that happened in France and the one that could have happened in England.

First Generation Romantic Poets
First of all, it is essential to understand what the French Revolution was and why it happened. Without going into the details, we can say that it started in 1989 in an attempt to overthrow the monarchy in France and replace it with a republic. After a period of three years of tension and indecision, a republic was proclaimed in 1892 and in the following year King Louis XVI was decapitated. This was followed by the dictatorship of Robespierre and the Jacobins, the Directorate, and culminating in Napoleon Bonaparte’s dictatorship.
The Revolution shook Europe all over defying order and everything old; it gave birth to new ideas that inspired European society, from music to philosophy and literature. Meanwhile, on the other side of the English Channel, the empire was being governed by a Monarchy controlled by the House of Lords in a system installed by the Glorious Revolution, which was nothing more than a coup d’état. The Radicals were complaining and there was a constant fear that the same that happened to France, could happen to England.
Revolutions generally gather the support of intellectuals and artists not only locally, but also from the neighbouring countries. Literature, which was always so important throughout history, was no exception. William Blake, was one of its most feverous and courageous supporters. Blake established his attitude of revolt against authority, combining political belief and visionary agitation. He had to print some of his works anonymously and only distribute them among Radicals. Works such as Songs of Liberty and The French Revolution did not receive good reactions among a regime that did not like opposition and aggressively reacted against the friends of the Revolution.
Even though Blake played an important part in the British reaction to the French Revolution, we cannot really say that it played such an important part in his writing because he was already an anarchist and always opposed the monarchy.
The same cannot be said about William Wordsworth that saw the Revolution’s beginning at a rather young age (19) and went to France in 1790 where we stood amazed at what he saw:
“But Europe at that time was thrilled with joy,
France standing on the top of golden hours,
And human nature seeming born again.”
(Wordsworth, The Prelude VI, 339-41)
Further ahead he gives us a fantastic description of what he saw and one of the best depictions of revolution I have ever read:
'Twas in truth an hour
Of universal ferment; mildest men
Were agitated, and commotions, strife
Of passion and opinion, filled the walls
Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds.
The soil of common life was, at that time,
Too hot to tread upon.
(Wordsworth, The Prelude, IX, 161-7)
Being a Romantic, Wordsworth believed in equality and had strong democratic views, which made his expectations for the revolution very high:
Should see the people having a strong hand
In framing their own laws; whence better days
To all mankind.
(Wordsworth, The Prelude, IX, 529-31)
I believe that these extracts give an idea of why The Prelude is considered one of Wordsworth’s greatest works. It celebrates revolution and nature in a way that they cannot be separated. In the same way that nature played an important role in his childhood, his visit to France during the revolution made him experience things that were forever engraved in his mind. He imagined that France could be the role model for future Europe, and democracy, led by good and honourable men, could be the answer for freedom of all men.
However, the Reign Of Terror and the Napoleonic Wars made him change his mind and lose his passion for Revolution. When Wordsworth visited France during the 1802 armed truce he wrote the following comparison to his previous visit:
When faith was pledged to new-born Liberty:
A homeless sound of joy was in the sky:
From hour to hour the antiquated Earth
Beat like the heart of Man: songs, garlands, mirth,
Banners, and happy faces, far and nigh!
And now, sole register that these things were,
Two solitary greetings have I heard,
"Good-morrow, Citizen!" a hollow word,
As if a dead man spake it! Yet despair
Touches me not, though pensive as a bird
Whose vernal coverts winter hath laid bare.
(Composed near Calais, on the road leading to Ardres, August 7,1802, 4-14)
Within a short-year period, Wordsworth passed from a left wing Republican to a conservative defending stability, order and peace in the Kingdom. The same thing happened to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who up until 1797 was in the left supporting the revolution, but soon saw that the turmoil was not going to benefit anyone. And if in 1799 Coleridge wrote to Wordsworth criticising those who abandoned their values just because the Revolution had failed, he later would be succumbing to conservatism and retreating from politics.
This failure of the Revolutionary ideals led them to a refuge from reality and a return to nature, or in Coleridge’s case, turning to the supernatural. I guess the disillusionment of their failed ideals led them to a sadness that became even more present in their writing. Socially, they both became very conservative and respectable middle-class men. Wordsworth was awarded a pension and became a loyal subject to the kingdom, as well as a Tory and a devout Christian.
Coleridge, as he grew older, became more and more ill, tired and addicted to opium; complaining about lack of inspiration, he constantly faced problems with finishing his work. Some poems were even left unfinished.

Second Generation Romantic Poets
I would like to start this chapter with Shelley’s view on the French Revolution:
"The French Revolution may be considered as one of those manifestations of a general state of feeling among civilized mankind, produced by a defect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in society and the improvement or gradual abolition of political institutions. The year 1788 may be assumed as the epoch of one of the most important crises produced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with that event extended to every bosom. The most generous and amiable natures were those which participated the most extensively in these sympathies. But such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was impossible to realize. If the Revolution had been in every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the demagogues and the reestablishment of successive tyrannies in France was terrible, and felt in the remotest corner of the civilized world. Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under the calamities of a social state, according to the provisions of which one man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for want of bread? Can he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become liberal-minded, forbearing, and independent?
(Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, Author's Preface, p52)
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a “natural born” revolutionary and opposed all that was tradition and old since young age. Being an atheist and an outspoken anti-monarchist led him to be expelled from Oxford in his first year.
Unlike the first generation of poets, Shelley grew up seeing the worst of the revolution and the wars that came from it. Nevertheless, he still seemed to have faith in the success of the revolution and that it was not in vain.
Our works of fiction and poetry have been overshadowed by the same infectious gloom. But mankind appear to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware, methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change.
(Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, Author's Preface, p53)
He knew that although it had failed, the revolution set an historic turn point in world history and those downsides were just the negative consequences of an act that in the future would prove to have been successful. In this extract I interpret this change to be the rise of a democracy with the values of “liberty, equality and fraternity”, the famous slogan of the French Revolution.
It is hard to say that Shelley’s revolutionary spirit was a consequence of the revolution because I believe, from what I read by him, that his spirit was something innate. Nevertheless, it is irrefutable that it affected him and maybe even intensified his feelings of revolt. This revolt is most of the times caused by watching the injustices in the world and those surrounding us. The struggling middle class knew this feeling and that is why he was so famous and appreciated among them and disregarded among the upper class. When studying England in the beginning of the XIX century I came across the poem “Song to the Men of England” and the first stanza represents in perfection why the working classes loved Shelley:
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
(Shelley, Poetical Works, 2009, p. 186)
Besides, he knew how they felt and encouraged them to take action:
With plough and spade and hoe and loom
Trace your grave and build your tomb
And weave your winding-sheet—till fair
England be your Sepulchre.
(Shelley, Poetical Works, 2009, p. 186)

Besides Shelley, another poet of his generation was notorious for his revolutionary attitude. George Gordon Byron, commonly known as Lord Byron, was an atheist and a rebel to all kinds of authority. I believe that the French Revolution was a fuse connected to his mind and the slightest spark of thought ignited the revolutionist inside of him.
Being an outspoken protestor of authority, especially monarchy, led him to be discredited among de bourgeoisie not only for that, but also for his unpatriotic defence of Napoleon Bonaparte. As a member of the House of Lords, even if he was so only for a short period of time, he managed to raise controversy by defending the Luddites. His speech was received with quite some indifference even though it was full of sarcasm and reflected a great defence for the working class attacking capitalism and the unemployment of people that were being substituted by machines.
His support for Napoleon might seem a tad bit ironic, but we cannot forget that at that time, despite being a dictator, he still represented an ideal of the revolution, or at least the last string attached to the French revolutionary cause. Furthermore, this support represented the constant defiance against the British political system.
In one of Byron’s most recognisable poems, “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”, he uses the main character to express his political views. Furthermore, in a deeper analysis we can sense a difference in the depiction of nature used by Byron and the one used by Wordsworth. If in the latter’s poetry we had peace and smoothening images, here nature is most of the times depicted as untamed and wild, defying order and maybe a metaphor for his anarchistic feelings or the turmoil that Europe was experiencing with the Napoleonic Wars.
The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been
In mockery of man’s art; and these withal
A race of faces happy as the scene,
Whose fertile bounties here extend to all,
Still springing o’er thy banks, though empires near them fall.
(George Gordon, 2008, pp. 122, Canto LXI)
Byron ended up fleeing from England and the reasons were left unexplained. While some suppose that the reason was his scandalous sex life, others defend that the main reason was the stir that he was causing with his political ideology.

Conclusion
The French Revolution was one of the most important periods in the history of Europe because it marked the beginning of the end of monarchies around Europe. Though some managed to survive, we know that they are not politically significant nowadays. As we saw on this analysis, the revolution profoundly influenced the British poets of that time; those who were born before the revolution and those who were born with it.

Bibliography
George Gordon, L. B. (2008). Lord Byron - The Major Works (Reissue edition ed.). (J. J. McGann, Ed.) Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks.
Shelley, P. B. (2008). The Complete Poetic Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1 of 2. London: Forgotten Books.
Shelley, P. B. (2009). Poetical Works. BiblioBazaar.
Thompson, E. P. (1999). The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age. New York: New Press.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (2012, 04 03). Romanticism and the French Revolution. Retrieved 06 16, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism_and_the_French_Revolution
Woods, A. (2003, 07 23). British poets and the French Revolution: Part One: England and France at the close of the 18th C. Retrieved 06 15, 2012, from In Defence of Marxism: http://www.marxist.com/british-poets-french-revolution-1.htm
Wordsworth, W. (1888). The Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan and Co.