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the program. Hello there must have been something extraordinary about the early

19th century when six of the greatest poets in the English language were all writing.

William Blake was there and Wordsworth and Coleridge had established themselves as the main players in British poetry

when the youthful trio of Byron, Shelley and Keats erupted, if not straight

onto the public stage, then at least on to the literary scene. The great clinical of the age was

William Hazlitt, whose romantic Maxim was,

happy are they who live in the dream of their existence

and see all things in the light of their own minds,

who walk by faith and hope, to whom the guiding star

of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not yet entered, the world has no hand on them.

How fitting an epitaph is that for the three great poets who all die tragically young. What were the ideals that drove them?

And how did their unconventional lifestyles infect the poetry they left behind?

With me to discuss the later romatics of Jonathan Bates, Professor of English literature at the University of Warwick.

Jennifer Wallace, Director of Studies in English at Peter House College Cambridge

...