From the Restoration period (1660) to end of the neo-classical age (1798), English literature aimed to achieve the like form and content of classical literature. So, it was a literature of criticism. Satire, wit, and reasoning, were the media of expressions. To the neo-classical writers, the contents of the literature were men and his social and political problems. This literature was entirely an artificial literature. But, from the heart of the restoration period, there came out a reaction, and some writers rejecting the trend of the age, fired the unextinguished imagination of the people and stimulated their interest to nature. Those who first did this, were, James Macpherson through his “Ossian” in 1660 and James Thomson through his “Seasons” (1726-1730) and Bishop Percy through his “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry” (1765.) There were other poets as Thomas Gray, Edward Young, William Collins, George Crabbe, William Cowper, Robert Burns and William Blake who prepared the genuine background for the revival of romanticism in English literature. And hence, they are called the fore-runners or the precursors of Romanticism. They did not propagate any romantic theory of poetry as Wordsworth did in 1798, with his ‘Lyrical Ballads’, but they clearly introduced almost all the romantic elements in their poetic works.
Rousseau's call to return to nature , the enthusiasm of the French Revolution ,Blake ,and Burn's contributions , and then the publication of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads , produced a new vista in literature .
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