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224 The Romantic period 1789–1832
the government on account of the ‘vulgarity’ of language used by the
petitioners. In the eighteenth century the language of the working
classes was deemed not to conform to the standards of the grammar
as described in the new standardised grammars of Bishop Lowth and
others (see Language note page 182); linguistically ‘inferior’ language
use was seen as a token of inferior thought and also of dubious moral
value. Such ideas about language were used to protect the government
from criticism and to resist movements for political change.
William Cobbett’s solution was to try to ensure that ordinary working
people had access to standard grammar. He wrote his grammar book
in the form of a series of letters to his son, arguing that to learn
standard grammar was both a right of all people and ultimately a way
to extend their rights and liberties. Cobbett considered grammar as an
integral part of the class structure of Britain and the learning of grammar
as an act of class warfare. His views contrast with writers such as
Hardy and Lawrence, who believed that dialects were equally valid,
equally rule-governed systems, that they gave an identity to people
from different social and regional groups, and that losing individual
non-standard modes of language would lead to standardised people.
BLAKE, WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
The Child is father of the Man
(William Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up)
William Blake achieved little fame in his own lifetime but in the
twentieth century he has come to be recognised as a poetic genius.
Blake was also an engraver, and illustrated many of his poems so that
they could be read visually as well as verbally. His life was spent in
rebellion against the rationalism of the eighteenth century and he
rejected, in particular, the formal restrictions of Augustan poetry, writing
in a lyrical visionary style and developing, in the process, an individual
view of the world. A characteristic feature was a tendency to see the
world in terms of opposites. Blake wrote that ‘Without Contraries is
no Progression’ (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) and much of his
poetry illustrates this. The major opposition reflected in his poetry is a