Romantic literature in English nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self". George Crabbe (1754–1832) was an English poet who, during the Romantic period, wrote "closely observed, realistic portraits of rural life [...] in the heroic couplets of the Augustan age". Lord Byron who was an admirer of Crabbe's poetry, described him as "nature's sternest painter, yet the best". Modern critic Frank Whitehead has said that "Crabbe, in his verse tales in particular, is an important–indeed, a major–poet whose work has been and still is seriously undervalued." Crabbe's works include "The Village" (1783), "Poems" (1807), "The Borough" (1810), and his
Romantic literature in English Southey (1774–1843) and journalist Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859). However, at the time Walter Scott (1771–1832) was the most famous poet. Scott achieved immediate success with his long narrative poem "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" in 1805, followed by the full epic poem "Marmion" in 1808. Both were set in the distant Scottish past. The early Romantic poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is marked by the first romantic manifesto in English literature, the "Preface" to "Lyrical Ballads" (1798). In it Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one