0:00:01 > 0:00:06I'm going to take you on a journey into the human imagination.
0:00:08 > 0:00:14Back to a time when the values and ideas and dreams of the modern world were born.
0:00:18 > 0:00:25200 years ago, monarchy was falling to the power of people's revolutions.
0:00:25 > 0:00:30Industry and commerce were becoming the driving forces of existence,
0:00:30 > 0:00:34and advances in science were changing
0:00:34 > 0:00:38the way life itself was understood.
0:00:38 > 0:00:45Artists all over the world were inspired by these times of dramatic change.
0:00:45 > 0:00:48In Britain, a group of poets and novelists pioneered
0:00:48 > 0:00:54an alternative way of living and of looking at the world.
0:00:54 > 0:00:57Among them were William Blake,
0:00:57 > 0:01:01Samuel Taylor Coleridge
0:01:01 > 0:01:05and William Wordsworth.
0:01:05 > 0:01:10The enduring power of their writing haunts us to this day
0:01:10 > 0:01:15and inspires us still with dreams of liberty.
0:01:57 > 0:02:02On the morning of the 21st of January, 1793,
0:02:02 > 0:02:06a large crowd filled this square in the heart of Paris.
0:02:09 > 0:02:14In the centre of the square was erected a contraption
0:02:14 > 0:02:17known simply as "the machine".
0:02:17 > 0:02:22It was invented by Joseph Guillotine.
0:02:23 > 0:02:26At around ten o'clock that morning,
0:02:26 > 0:02:29a man lowered his head into "the machine".
0:02:29 > 0:02:35The executioner, Charles Henri Sancon, pulled the rope.
0:02:39 > 0:02:46The blade sliced down but lodged itself in the fat neck of the victim.
0:02:48 > 0:02:52Sancon hoisted the blade for a second attempt.
0:02:59 > 0:03:02This time, the head was severed from the victim's body.
0:03:02 > 0:03:07It tumbled into the basket in front of "the machine".
0:03:07 > 0:03:11A guard picked it out and showed it to the crowd.
0:03:11 > 0:03:17It was the head of Louis XVI - the King of France.
0:03:28 > 0:03:31This is a story of revolution,
0:03:31 > 0:03:35of bloodshed and political upheaval.
0:03:35 > 0:03:40It inspired a radical change in the way we perceive the world,
0:03:40 > 0:03:43and the greatest outpouring of creativity
0:03:43 > 0:03:46in the history of the English language.
0:04:12 > 0:04:18The story begins some 40 years before the killing of the king.
0:04:18 > 0:04:21In a world based upon the twin principles
0:04:21 > 0:04:24of authority and hierarchy.
0:04:26 > 0:04:31Only nobility and clergy had personal liberties -
0:04:31 > 0:04:35all others had no rights, only duties.
0:04:35 > 0:04:40At the heart of this old order was Paris.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44The Paris police force was the largest in Europe,
0:04:44 > 0:04:49with one member for every 545 Parisians.
0:04:49 > 0:04:55Those undesirable to the state would simply disappear.
0:05:03 > 0:05:10In 1742, two young men met in this city and became great friends.
0:05:14 > 0:05:18They would sit at the cafes of the Left Bank to play chess.
0:05:24 > 0:05:30Here they had ideas that became the seeds of the Romantic Revolution.
0:05:46 > 0:05:53The names of these two men were Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
0:05:53 > 0:05:57They were philosophers with very different beliefs,
0:05:57 > 0:06:01but they were united against the existing order.
0:06:01 > 0:06:06Diderot was convinced that the future would be built on reason.
0:06:07 > 0:06:12And the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing
0:06:12 > 0:06:18in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct.
0:06:18 > 0:06:22Man is born to think
0:06:22 > 0:06:23for himself.
0:06:29 > 0:06:32But Rousseau championed feeling over thought.
0:06:32 > 0:06:36He was freely emotional - plunging himself
0:06:36 > 0:06:42into moods of the deepest dejection and the most serene happiness.
0:06:42 > 0:06:44He cried openly and often.
0:06:44 > 0:06:48To feel is to exist,
0:06:48 > 0:06:50and our feelings come most incontestably
0:06:50 > 0:06:52before our thoughts.
0:06:52 > 0:07:00Both these men believed the system of control in France to be inhuman.
0:07:04 > 0:07:08Both were preaching freedom, and liberty for the individual.
0:07:10 > 0:07:13They were playing a dangerous game.
0:07:16 > 0:07:24On the 24th of July 1749, Diderot was woken at 7:30 in the morning
0:07:24 > 0:07:27by a loud knocking on the door of his apartment
0:07:27 > 0:07:29in the Rue de Lestrapade.
0:07:29 > 0:07:35This set off a chain of events that would lead to the greatest revolution in human history.
0:07:37 > 0:07:42The visitors were the police.
0:07:42 > 0:07:46Diderot's crime was that he was thinking differently -
0:07:46 > 0:07:53imagining a new world, different from that of the established order.
0:07:53 > 0:07:56He was being arrested for writing a book.
0:08:03 > 0:08:08It was a great encyclopaedia of all useful knowledge,
0:08:08 > 0:08:12dedicated to the ideas of progress and of science.
0:08:12 > 0:08:17He was making a map of human understanding.
0:08:17 > 0:08:21The encyclopaedia had more than 70,000 articles
0:08:21 > 0:08:24and nearly 3,000 diagrams,
0:08:24 > 0:08:27illustrating every conceivable subject,
0:08:27 > 0:08:30from asparagus to the zodiac.
0:08:30 > 0:08:37In this manifesto of pure reason, there was no place for God.
0:08:38 > 0:08:40Man will never be free
0:08:40 > 0:08:45until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
0:08:48 > 0:08:54Diderot believed that civilisation had usurped the place of God.
0:08:57 > 0:09:01With the power of science and classification,
0:09:01 > 0:09:07everything in the world could be explained and understood.
0:09:07 > 0:09:12His words were tantamount to heresy and high treason.
0:09:28 > 0:09:33The old structure of Europe relied on the existence of a God.
0:09:33 > 0:09:37Everyone's place in society was divinely ordained.
0:09:37 > 0:09:40But if God did not exist, what then?
0:09:40 > 0:09:45Every concept of order and of authority would be thrown into doubt.
0:09:45 > 0:09:49These were incendiary ideas.
0:09:49 > 0:09:53For the authorities, Diderot's books were the work of the devil
0:09:53 > 0:09:55and he would pay dearly.
0:10:00 > 0:10:06He was imprisoned in the notorious dungeons of the Chateau of Varsenne.
0:10:06 > 0:10:09His encyclopaedia was banned.
0:10:09 > 0:10:13Yet he was not the only one in chains.
0:10:18 > 0:10:26One day in October 1749, as Rousseau walked to visit his friend in his cell,
0:10:26 > 0:10:32he had a revelation that every human being lives their life in a prison.
0:10:36 > 0:10:39ROUSSEAU: 'Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains.'
0:10:44 > 0:10:48All at once I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand lights,
0:10:48 > 0:10:52a crowd of splendid ideas presented themselves to me.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57Civilised man is born and dies a slave.
0:10:57 > 0:11:00The infant is bound in swaddling clothes,
0:11:00 > 0:11:03a corpse is nailed down in a coffin.
0:11:04 > 0:11:08All his life, Man is imprisoned by our institutions.
0:11:08 > 0:11:12Life is not breath but action,
0:11:12 > 0:11:15The use of our senses, our minds,
0:11:15 > 0:11:18every part of ourselves.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37Rousseau had experienced a vision that would become the single most
0:11:37 > 0:11:41important inspiration of the English romantic poets.
0:11:41 > 0:11:45He had seen that emotion could unlock the prison
0:11:45 > 0:11:46of civilised society.
0:11:46 > 0:11:52For him, the key to freedom lay in individual will and feeling.
0:11:56 > 0:12:02Rousseau believed that Man in his natural state is essentially good,
0:12:02 > 0:12:08that science is wicked, that civilisation is harmful
0:12:08 > 0:12:11and that all cultures are corrupt.
0:12:11 > 0:12:15Nature never deceives us, it is we who deceive ourselves.
0:12:15 > 0:12:17Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
0:12:18 > 0:12:24Man confuses and confounds time, place and natural conditions.
0:12:24 > 0:12:29The more we are massed together, the more corrupt we become.
0:12:31 > 0:12:37Rousseau was calling for the end of civilisation itself.
0:12:40 > 0:12:45It would not be long before he was forced out of France.
0:12:46 > 0:12:54The old regimes of Europe would never accept the revolutionary ideas of Diderot and Rousseau -
0:12:54 > 0:13:00only a new generation could put them into practice in a new world.
0:13:21 > 0:13:25That "new world" already existed.
0:13:25 > 0:13:30Thousands of ships had carried immigrants to its shores.
0:13:34 > 0:13:36It was called America.
0:14:03 > 0:14:07America was an experiment in living.
0:14:07 > 0:14:10Religious radicals and political refugees
0:14:10 > 0:14:14had come here to create their own communities in the wilderness.
0:14:14 > 0:14:16These disaffected Europeans
0:14:16 > 0:14:21had embraced ideas of self-government and of liberty.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28On November the 30th 1774,
0:14:28 > 0:14:33a young English idealist arrived in America
0:14:33 > 0:14:36after a series of misfortunes in his old country,
0:14:36 > 0:14:41including bankruptcy and the death of his first wife.
0:14:45 > 0:14:48Once here, he became a journalist.
0:14:50 > 0:14:53His name was Thomas Paine.
0:14:57 > 0:15:00This New World had been the asylum for the persecuted lovers
0:15:00 > 0:15:04of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.
0:15:04 > 0:15:08They fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother,
0:15:08 > 0:15:11but from the cruelty of the monster.
0:15:11 > 0:15:12And it is so far true of England
0:15:12 > 0:15:16that the same tyranny which drove the first immigrants from home
0:15:16 > 0:15:18pursues their descendants still.
0:15:21 > 0:15:27Paine was one of many new Americans who reacted strongly and violently
0:15:27 > 0:15:32to the imposition of taxes upon them by their English rulers.
0:15:44 > 0:15:51Inspired by the ideals of Diderot and Rousseau, Paine wrote a pamphlet entitled Common Sense.
0:15:51 > 0:15:53He attacked the idea of monarchy
0:15:53 > 0:15:57and praised the notion of a new civil society.
0:15:57 > 0:16:01His was the fuel that would fire the American Revolution.
0:16:06 > 0:16:08Where, say some,
0:16:08 > 0:16:10is the king of America?
0:16:11 > 0:16:14I'll tell you, friend,
0:16:14 > 0:16:19he reigns above and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Britain.
0:16:19 > 0:16:20In America,
0:16:20 > 0:16:22the law is king.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33The publication of Common Sense
0:16:33 > 0:16:40led to the American Declaration of Independence in 1776.
0:16:41 > 0:16:47This land was on its way to becoming a nation of the free.
0:16:51 > 0:16:54For the first time the people had advanced the cause of a nation
0:16:54 > 0:16:56without a king,
0:16:56 > 0:17:00without an aristocracy, without a national church.
0:17:00 > 0:17:02All men are created equal.
0:17:02 > 0:17:05All men have an equal right to life,
0:17:05 > 0:17:08liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
0:17:08 > 0:17:11This was the beginning of modern democracy,
0:17:11 > 0:17:15and it was the clarion call for revolution in Europe.
0:17:19 > 0:17:25News of the American Revolution exhilarated the young radicals of Britain.
0:17:27 > 0:17:31But new ideas of liberty would do more than
0:17:31 > 0:17:33undermine respect for the king
0:17:33 > 0:17:36and the existing political order.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40They would also bring about an entirely new way
0:17:40 > 0:17:42of looking at the world.
0:17:42 > 0:17:46The Romantic Revolution was underway.
0:17:53 > 0:17:56At the forefront of this revolution
0:17:56 > 0:17:59was a Londoner named William Blake.
0:18:02 > 0:18:08He saw the events in America as a great prophecy of a future world.
0:18:12 > 0:18:16Red rose the clouds from the Atlantic in vast wheels of blood
0:18:17 > 0:18:23The king of England looking westwards trembles at the vision
0:18:23 > 0:18:29Let the slave grinding in the mill run out into the fields
0:18:29 > 0:18:34Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright air
0:18:34 > 0:18:36For empire is no more.
0:18:46 > 0:18:53In 1779 at the age of 21, Blake was being instructed
0:18:53 > 0:18:58by the greatest British artist of the period, Sir Joshua Reynolds.
0:18:59 > 0:19:05Reynolds was what we now describe as the ultimate establishment figure -
0:19:05 > 0:19:08rich, respected and eminent.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12He believed in an ideal art based upon study
0:19:12 > 0:19:17and the classical principles of order, unity,
0:19:17 > 0:19:20harmony and rationality.
0:19:22 > 0:19:25Blake believed the opposite,
0:19:25 > 0:19:29that the imagination was the force that made great art.
0:19:32 > 0:19:34He rebelled against his teacher.
0:19:43 > 0:19:47This man was hired to depress art.
0:19:52 > 0:19:54I say taste and genius
0:19:54 > 0:19:57are not teachable or acquirable
0:19:57 > 0:19:59and are born with us.
0:20:00 > 0:20:02Reynolds says the contrary.
0:20:07 > 0:20:10Such artists as Reynolds
0:20:10 > 0:20:16are at all times hired by the Satans for the depression of art.
0:20:20 > 0:20:23A pretence to art.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29To destroy art!
0:20:31 > 0:20:34Blake was an instinctive libertarian
0:20:34 > 0:20:39who sought freedom from the system that enslaved him.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47He eventually abandoned the teachings of Reynolds
0:20:47 > 0:20:50and became an independent artist.
0:20:52 > 0:20:57He poured his radical visionary ideas into poetry,
0:20:57 > 0:20:59drawing and engravings.
0:21:04 > 0:21:08In 1780, Blake completed a design for a print
0:21:08 > 0:21:12that he entitled Albion Rose.
0:21:14 > 0:21:18It is a young man with his arms outstretched
0:21:18 > 0:21:20in a gesture of liberation.
0:21:24 > 0:21:29There is such a look of energy and exultation upon his face
0:21:29 > 0:21:32that some people believe it is must be a self-portrait.
0:21:34 > 0:21:37Blake lived in Poland Street
0:21:37 > 0:21:41with his wife Katherine and his younger brother, Robert.
0:21:41 > 0:21:48All three united in a life of constant financial struggle.
0:21:48 > 0:21:51Their home was at number 28,
0:21:51 > 0:21:53now home to a hairdressing salon.
0:22:02 > 0:22:04Blake had very few readers
0:22:04 > 0:22:09and was obliged to publish his own work himself.
0:22:09 > 0:22:12But it remains as a great document
0:22:12 > 0:22:18of the revolutionary anger of a new generation in an oppressive city.
0:22:21 > 0:22:24I wander through each chartered street
0:22:25 > 0:22:28Near where the chartered Thames does flow
0:22:30 > 0:22:33Marking every face I meet
0:22:33 > 0:22:37Marks of weakness, marks of woe
0:22:38 > 0:22:45In every cry of every man In every infant's cry of fear
0:22:45 > 0:22:47In every voice
0:22:47 > 0:22:50In every ban
0:22:50 > 0:22:54The mind-forged manacles I hear.
0:22:58 > 0:23:02"The mind-forged manacles" that Blake perceived
0:23:02 > 0:23:05were the prisons of custom and of habit.
0:23:05 > 0:23:10No-one could escape from the dreary round of duty and obedience
0:23:10 > 0:23:14demanded by the old order of society.
0:23:14 > 0:23:19The will and imagination of each person were locked away.
0:23:19 > 0:23:23Life itself had become a prison.
0:23:24 > 0:23:29ROUSSEAU: 'Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains.'
0:23:40 > 0:23:43Blake, like Rousseau and Paine before him,
0:23:43 > 0:23:49saw human beings as shackled and chained in their daily lives.
0:23:50 > 0:23:56It was an idea that was slowly spreading through the radicals of Europe.
0:23:57 > 0:24:00These radicals, derided and exiled,
0:24:00 > 0:24:06often found themselves in Blake's neighbourhood of Soho in London,
0:24:06 > 0:24:11a shadow area considered exotic and disreputable.
0:24:11 > 0:24:15A haven for the freethinkers of Europe.
0:24:18 > 0:24:24One French radical came to Soho in November 1783.
0:24:24 > 0:24:26He lived off Newman Passage.
0:24:29 > 0:24:32His name was Jacques-Pierre Brissot.
0:24:37 > 0:24:42Here he could safely publish French anti-monarchist propaganda
0:24:42 > 0:24:46for distribution in his native country.
0:24:48 > 0:24:54Brissot wrote a radical journal called Universal Correspondence.
0:24:54 > 0:24:59In it he attacked the inherent decadence and corruption
0:24:59 > 0:25:01of the old regime in Paris.
0:25:01 > 0:25:07He was calling for bloodshed, he was calling for revolution in his own country.
0:25:09 > 0:25:13If blood must be shed in order to be free...
0:25:14 > 0:25:17..then let it be the blood of tyrants,
0:25:17 > 0:25:20those who have the arrogance to tell us
0:25:20 > 0:25:23that they are our masters.
0:25:23 > 0:25:27When you think that one tenth of the nation
0:25:27 > 0:25:31oppresses all the others for five sous a day!
0:25:33 > 0:25:35There is nothing left to say.
0:25:42 > 0:25:46Brissot and other radical journalists firmly believed
0:25:46 > 0:25:51that they would bring down the French state with their words.
0:26:08 > 0:26:13On the 19th of May, 1784, Brissot returned to Paris
0:26:13 > 0:26:17to raise more funding for his London printing press.
0:26:27 > 0:26:31He arrived back in France full of hope.
0:26:33 > 0:26:38But soon after his arrival in Paris, he was arrested.
0:26:41 > 0:26:44He was thrown into the Bastille Prison,
0:26:44 > 0:26:49charged with the publication of libels against the French queen.
0:26:53 > 0:26:57Brissot remained in the Bastille for two months,
0:26:57 > 0:26:59but just outside its walls,
0:26:59 > 0:27:01the radical press of France
0:27:01 > 0:27:06was becoming ever more daring and ever more popular.
0:27:06 > 0:27:08It was these revolutionary words
0:27:08 > 0:27:13that would inspire the French people to seek their liberty.
0:27:16 > 0:27:20"The people is the foundation of the state.
0:27:21 > 0:27:23"The people is everything.
0:27:25 > 0:27:30"It is in the hands of the people that national power resides."
0:27:34 > 0:27:40The main focus of attack was the corrupt and secretive old regime,
0:27:40 > 0:27:42with the royal family at its head.
0:27:42 > 0:27:46King Louis XVI and his Austrian wife, Marie Antoinette,
0:27:46 > 0:27:51or, as the literature referred to her, "the Austrian bitch".
0:27:56 > 0:28:01Salacious pornographic prints represented Marie Antoinette
0:28:01 > 0:28:04in a series of sexual liaisons
0:28:04 > 0:28:08with the King's brother and various court officials.
0:28:08 > 0:28:12The people hated those in power.
0:28:12 > 0:28:15Change had to come.
0:28:37 > 0:28:41On the morning of the 14th of July 1789,
0:28:41 > 0:28:45thousands of Parisians gathered on the city's streets.
0:28:47 > 0:28:53They were fearful that the king's armies were marching upon the city
0:28:53 > 0:28:55to impose martial law.
0:28:57 > 0:29:02It was a day that would change the course of world history.
0:29:02 > 0:29:07A day that would redefine the possibilities of human nature.
0:29:10 > 0:29:15Every people's revolution of the last 200 years
0:29:15 > 0:29:17owes its debt to this day.
0:29:19 > 0:29:22It will never be forgotten.
0:29:36 > 0:29:41On what is now a roundabout stood the Bastille,
0:29:41 > 0:29:46a 14th-century fortress with walls 80 feet in height.
0:29:46 > 0:29:49It was the mob's destination.
0:29:50 > 0:29:54The Bastille was more than a fortress.
0:29:54 > 0:29:59Here people were imprisoned in solitary confinement without trial.
0:29:59 > 0:30:02Rumours of torture abounded.
0:30:02 > 0:30:06It represented all the inhumanity of the state
0:30:06 > 0:30:10which the revolutionaries were fighting to overthrow.
0:30:31 > 0:30:35ROUSSEAU: 'Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains.'
0:30:49 > 0:30:52The governor of the prison had no choice
0:30:52 > 0:30:55in the face of such overwhelming force.
0:30:55 > 0:30:59He opened the gates and the crowd surged in.
0:30:59 > 0:31:02The Bastille was taken.
0:31:02 > 0:31:05PEOPLE CHEER
0:31:17 > 0:31:21The governor was killed and beheaded.
0:31:21 > 0:31:24His head was placed upon a pike.
0:31:30 > 0:31:36After the 14th of July 1789, Europe was never the same.
0:31:36 > 0:31:40Human beings were never the same.
0:31:40 > 0:31:44Diderot's and Rousseau's revolutionary ideas
0:31:44 > 0:31:46were coming of age.
0:31:46 > 0:31:51The individual would define the future.
0:32:00 > 0:32:06As the sun came up in London the day after the storming of the Bastille,
0:32:06 > 0:32:08everything seemed possible.
0:32:08 > 0:32:13The French people had unlocked the prison of their history.
0:32:13 > 0:32:17Now it was time for the British to do the same.
0:32:21 > 0:32:26Revolutionary slogans began to appear all over the country.
0:32:28 > 0:32:32Radicals such as the London Revolutionary Society
0:32:32 > 0:32:34met in inns and coffee houses.
0:32:37 > 0:32:40Out of this revolutionary fervour
0:32:40 > 0:32:46would emerge a great Romantic whose writing would have a profound effect
0:32:46 > 0:32:50upon literature and upon our perception of human life.
0:33:00 > 0:33:03His name was William Wordsworth.
0:33:03 > 0:33:06It was a time when Europe was rejoiced
0:33:06 > 0:33:11And France standing on the top of golden hours
0:33:11 > 0:33:14And human nature seeming born again
0:33:14 > 0:33:18Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
0:33:18 > 0:33:22But to be young was very heaven.
0:33:27 > 0:33:29For Wordsworth, the revolution
0:33:29 > 0:33:33seemed one of the greatest events in history,
0:33:33 > 0:33:37promising the future freedom of the human race.
0:33:39 > 0:33:41It was this spirit
0:33:41 > 0:33:46that drew him to France to be near the true forces of liberty.
0:33:48 > 0:33:54His experiences of revolution would mark him for life
0:33:54 > 0:33:57and would transform his art.
0:33:57 > 0:33:59I stare...
0:33:59 > 0:34:04and listen with a stranger's ears to hawkers and haranguers
0:34:04 > 0:34:07And hissing factionalists with ardent eyes
0:34:07 > 0:34:09In knots or prayers or singles
0:34:09 > 0:34:13And like swans and builders and subverters
0:34:13 > 0:34:17Every face that hope or repression could put on
0:34:19 > 0:34:24I saw the revolutionary power tossed like a ship at anchor
0:34:24 > 0:34:26Rocked by storms.
0:34:28 > 0:34:33Wordsworth was alive to the new possibilities of life.
0:34:46 > 0:34:52He fell deeply in love with a young French woman named Annette Vallon.
0:35:01 > 0:35:04Oh, happy time and youthful lovers
0:35:05 > 0:35:09Thus my story began
0:35:09 > 0:35:12Oh, barmy time
0:35:12 > 0:35:14Love not in a lady's brow
0:35:14 > 0:35:17Is fairer than the fairest star of heaven.
0:35:23 > 0:35:29Annette gave birth to a baby girl - a child for a new age.
0:35:29 > 0:35:34The future was Wordsworth's to fashion as he liked,
0:35:34 > 0:35:38together with Annette and their daughter Carolene.
0:35:42 > 0:35:47But the revolution was careering out of control.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55As debates raged in Paris
0:35:55 > 0:35:59about how French society should be reorganised,
0:35:59 > 0:36:04there was fear of a foreign invasion and talk
0:36:04 > 0:36:09of French royalists masquerading as revolutionary sympathisers.
0:36:17 > 0:36:22This fear erupted into an outbreak of butchery and bloodshed
0:36:22 > 0:36:25that threatened the very possibilities of liberty.
0:36:25 > 0:36:33Priests and nuns were viciously slaughtered for refusing to agree to a Republican oath.
0:36:33 > 0:36:36For Wordsworth, the savage violence
0:36:36 > 0:36:40would destroy all hope for a new world.
0:37:03 > 0:37:08The Jacobeans, the revolutionary group in control of Paris,
0:37:08 > 0:37:10killed the king.
0:37:14 > 0:37:16THUNDER RUMBLES
0:37:20 > 0:37:24This was the beginning of the great terror.
0:37:28 > 0:37:30RAIN FALLS HEAVILY
0:37:30 > 0:37:36They instituted a regime in which any of the king's supporters
0:37:36 > 0:37:38would be summarily executed,
0:37:38 > 0:37:40by guillotine.
0:37:43 > 0:37:47And the best it seemed a place of fear
0:37:47 > 0:37:50Defenseses above where tigers roam.
0:38:06 > 0:38:11Slowly the Jacobeans' rule reached a state of paranoia.
0:38:11 > 0:38:16Anyone who disagreed with them on any matter would die.
0:38:30 > 0:38:32In ever increasing numbers,
0:38:32 > 0:38:38the citizens of Paris were tried for crimes against the revolution.
0:38:49 > 0:38:54From the conciergery prison, hundreds wrote their last letters.
0:38:54 > 0:38:58Philippe Rigaud wrote to his wife.
0:39:01 > 0:39:06RIGAUD: 'In a few moments, dear wife, I shall appear before my god.
0:39:06 > 0:39:10'My pen is trembling in my hand and my tears cover the paper.
0:39:10 > 0:39:15'I'm sending you the only thing that still belongs to me.
0:39:15 > 0:39:17'It is a tuft of my hair.
0:39:17 > 0:39:19'When you look at it,
0:39:19 > 0:39:22'think sometimes of one who loved you well.
0:39:22 > 0:39:25'My heart is full, I cannot say more.
0:39:25 > 0:39:29'Farewell, yes, farewell.'
0:39:33 > 0:39:38The next morning Rigaud was put in a cart called a tumbrel
0:39:38 > 0:39:44and hauled through jeering crowds along the Rue Saint Honore
0:39:44 > 0:39:45to the guillotine.
0:39:56 > 0:39:59Many of those who went to the guillotine
0:39:59 > 0:40:01were great supporters of liberty.
0:40:01 > 0:40:03In the panic and paranoia,
0:40:03 > 0:40:07the revolution was devouring its own children.
0:40:07 > 0:40:12The corpses piled up and the stench became unendurable.
0:40:12 > 0:40:16It represented the decay of hope.
0:40:17 > 0:40:22The headless bodies were loaded back into carts, leaving bloodstained
0:40:22 > 0:40:27trails across the city, to be dumped in stinking pits.
0:40:29 > 0:40:37In the suburb of Pickpus, surrounded by modern flats and office blocks,
0:40:37 > 0:40:40lies a small patch of the past.
0:40:40 > 0:40:45In two huge mass graves under these gardens,
0:40:45 > 0:40:51lie the remains of 1,306 victims of the guillotine.
0:40:53 > 0:41:00Among them are a young chambermaid named Louise Cecile Covoran.
0:41:00 > 0:41:03Charles Adet, a wine merchant.
0:41:03 > 0:41:08Martin Ayome, an apprentice hairdresser.
0:41:08 > 0:41:12Louis Bordeaux, a surgeon.
0:41:12 > 0:41:16And a dressmaker called Marie Chaplin.
0:41:30 > 0:41:34In the midst of the terror, France was a dangerous place for Britons,
0:41:34 > 0:41:38and Britain a dangerous place for the French.
0:41:38 > 0:41:42William Wordsworth found himself heading home,
0:41:42 > 0:41:44forced to leave his great love Annette
0:41:44 > 0:41:47and their little daughter behind.
0:41:47 > 0:41:51His revolutionary faith had been shaken.
0:41:51 > 0:41:56Wordsworth was learning a hard but salutary lesson.
0:41:56 > 0:42:01One man's idea of liberty is another man's idea of tyranny.
0:42:03 > 0:42:09Most melancholy at that time were my day thoughts
0:42:09 > 0:42:12My dreams were miserable
0:42:12 > 0:42:15Through months, through years
0:42:15 > 0:42:19Long after the last beat of those atrocities
0:42:19 > 0:42:23I speak the truth as if to thee alone in private talk
0:42:23 > 0:42:29I had scarcely one night of quiet sleep
0:42:29 > 0:42:32Such ghastly visions had I of despair...
0:42:34 > 0:42:39..of tyranny and implements of death.
0:42:54 > 0:42:56Annette wrote to Wordsworth,
0:42:56 > 0:43:01but the revolutionary authorities seized her letters.
0:43:01 > 0:43:05ANNETTE: 'Come, my love, my husband,
0:43:05 > 0:43:09'and receive the tender embraces of your wife,
0:43:09 > 0:43:11'of your daughter.
0:43:11 > 0:43:16'She grows more like you every day - I seem to be holding you in my arms.
0:43:16 > 0:43:19'Her little heart often beats against my own
0:43:19 > 0:43:22'and I seem to feel her father's.'
0:43:24 > 0:43:29These words never reached Wordsworth.
0:43:29 > 0:43:31He became a wanderer,
0:43:31 > 0:43:35looking for a new direction in which to pursue his vision.
0:43:39 > 0:43:44To wander without destination, to seek out new territories,
0:43:44 > 0:43:46was itself a revolutionary act.
0:43:46 > 0:43:50For Wordsworth, the wild uncharted landscape
0:43:50 > 0:43:54was a place of contemplation and of healing,
0:43:54 > 0:43:57where he could be most natural and most himself.
0:44:10 > 0:44:15But it was his encounters with the people in the landscape
0:44:15 > 0:44:18that restored his faith in human nature.
0:44:18 > 0:44:19I began to enquire
0:44:19 > 0:44:23To watch and question those I met
0:44:23 > 0:44:25And held familiar talk with them
0:44:25 > 0:44:28The lonely roads were schools to me
0:44:28 > 0:44:33In which I daily read with most delight, the passions of mankind.
0:44:36 > 0:44:41Wordsworth began to write poems about his encounters with the downtrodden -
0:44:41 > 0:44:48the same kind of people to whom the revolution in France had given a voice.
0:44:51 > 0:44:55But it was another chance meeting with a man in Bristol
0:44:55 > 0:45:02one August evening in 1795 that changed the course of his life.
0:45:09 > 0:45:13Above the corn market, this man gave rousing lectures
0:45:13 > 0:45:20on revolutionary politics, in rooms that are now vacant council offices.
0:45:20 > 0:45:25His name was Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
0:45:25 > 0:45:30The example of France is indeed a warning to Britain.
0:45:30 > 0:45:34A nation wading to its rights through blood,
0:45:34 > 0:45:41and marking the track of freedom by devastation.
0:45:41 > 0:45:47French freedom is a beacon which, while it guides to equality,
0:45:47 > 0:45:51should show us the dangers that throng the road.
0:45:55 > 0:45:59Together Wordsworth and Coleridge would salvage the ideals
0:45:59 > 0:46:04of Romanticism from the chaos of the French Revolution.
0:46:06 > 0:46:10Wordsworth was staying at number seven Great George Street
0:46:10 > 0:46:12in the centre of Bristol.
0:46:13 > 0:46:19He read to Coleridge one of his poems entitled The Female Vagrant.
0:46:29 > 0:46:31It was the story of a woman
0:46:31 > 0:46:35who on the death of her husband and children
0:46:35 > 0:46:38becomes a vagrant and an outcast.
0:46:40 > 0:46:45The pains and plagues that on our heads came down
0:46:45 > 0:46:49Disease and famine, agony and fear
0:46:49 > 0:46:56In wood or wilderness In camp or town
0:46:56 > 0:46:58It would thy brain unsettle
0:46:58 > 0:47:02Even to hear all perished
0:47:02 > 0:47:05All...
0:47:05 > 0:47:08In one remorseless year
0:47:09 > 0:47:13She ceased, and weeping turned away
0:47:13 > 0:47:16As if because her tale was at an end
0:47:16 > 0:47:20She wept because she had no more to say
0:47:20 > 0:47:25Of that perpetual wait which of her spirit lay.
0:47:30 > 0:47:33A bond between Wordsworth and Coleridge was forged
0:47:33 > 0:47:35that would last a lifetime.
0:47:40 > 0:47:43They wanted to change the world
0:47:43 > 0:47:47by diverting their revolutionary zeal into poetry.
0:47:49 > 0:47:53They moved to the Quantock Hills in Somerset.
0:47:53 > 0:47:58Coleridge and his family settled in the village of Nether Stowy.
0:47:58 > 0:48:04Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy rented a nearby house -
0:48:04 > 0:48:07the now-neglected Alfoxton.
0:48:09 > 0:48:13But this house is one of the most important places
0:48:13 > 0:48:16in the history of English literature.
0:48:18 > 0:48:21It is here that Coleridge and Wordsworth
0:48:21 > 0:48:24would collaborate on a collection of poems
0:48:24 > 0:48:27that would define the Romantic age.
0:48:49 > 0:48:52As the two men wrote,
0:48:52 > 0:48:57the whole country was gripped by fear and paranoia.
0:48:57 > 0:49:03Fear that the revolution that had struck France would engulf Britain next.
0:49:04 > 0:49:10A government agent named James Walsh was sent to spy on them.
0:49:10 > 0:49:13He interviewed several locals
0:49:13 > 0:49:17regarding the strange new people at Alfoxton.
0:49:21 > 0:49:24WALSH: 'Charles Mogg says that he was at Alfoxton.
0:49:24 > 0:49:29'Thomas Jones informed Mogg that some French people had got in possession of the mansion house.
0:49:29 > 0:49:32'Christopher Tricky told Mogg that the French people
0:49:32 > 0:49:34'had taken the plan of all the places
0:49:34 > 0:49:36'around that part of the country.
0:49:36 > 0:49:38'The French people inquired of Tricky
0:49:38 > 0:49:40'whether the brook was navigable to the sea.
0:49:40 > 0:49:44'As Mr Mogg is by no means the most intelligent man in the world,
0:49:44 > 0:49:49'I thought it my duty to send you the whole of his story the way he related it.
0:49:49 > 0:49:51'I shall await your further orders.'
0:49:57 > 0:50:02The locals told Walsh that the Wordsworths had visitors late at night.
0:50:02 > 0:50:05They were frequently on the Heights in darkness.
0:50:07 > 0:50:12They kept a portfolio in which they made notes.
0:50:12 > 0:50:17They were continually writing things down on pieces of paper.
0:50:18 > 0:50:22They said that their work was "almost finished".
0:50:33 > 0:50:36There was no evidence to arrest Wordsworth and Coleridge,
0:50:36 > 0:50:41but although their actions were not political in any obvious sense,
0:50:41 > 0:50:45their words began a revolution no less profound.
0:50:45 > 0:50:50They had almost finished a volume that would have more lasting effects
0:50:50 > 0:50:53than a thousand political manifestos.
0:50:53 > 0:50:58It was the book for a new age, it was called The Lyrical Ballads.
0:51:07 > 0:51:11Taking its name from the popular forms of song and verse,
0:51:11 > 0:51:17The Lyrical Ballads was a collection of intimate accounts of rustic lives
0:51:17 > 0:51:19told in simple language.
0:51:19 > 0:51:24It is a pure expression of Romantic ideals.
0:51:24 > 0:51:27When it was published in 1798,
0:51:27 > 0:51:31Wordsworth and Coleridge withheld their names from it.
0:51:31 > 0:51:35They were proclaiming a new poetic faith
0:51:35 > 0:51:41which they believed to be beyond individual authorship.
0:51:43 > 0:51:47A neighbouring farmer who had been forced to sell off his animals
0:51:47 > 0:51:49to feed his family
0:51:49 > 0:51:55became the subject of one poem called The Last Of The Flock.
0:51:55 > 0:51:59In distant countries I have been
0:51:59 > 0:52:02And yet I have not often seen
0:52:02 > 0:52:05A healthy man, a man full grown
0:52:05 > 0:52:08Weep in the public roads alone
0:52:08 > 0:52:13This lusty lamb of all my store is all that is alive
0:52:13 > 0:52:16And now I care not if we die
0:52:16 > 0:52:19And perish all of poverty.
0:52:24 > 0:52:30Wordsworth and Coleridge were relocating dignity in the commonplace,
0:52:30 > 0:52:34restoring grace and significance to ordinary lives
0:52:34 > 0:52:38where saints and heroes walk unannounced and unknown.
0:52:40 > 0:52:44Their writing had the same purpose as the French Revolution -
0:52:44 > 0:52:46to create a democratic world
0:52:46 > 0:52:51in which outcasts had as much right to be heard as anyone else.
0:52:51 > 0:52:55In which women and children also had a voice.
0:52:55 > 0:53:00Theirs was poetry of the individual conscience
0:53:00 > 0:53:03and the individual consciousness.
0:53:03 > 0:53:08People ceased to be subjects and became citizens,
0:53:08 > 0:53:12and the poems invested them with a soul as well.
0:53:12 > 0:53:14Everyone was different,
0:53:14 > 0:53:16everyone was unique.
0:53:18 > 0:53:22The French Revolution had proclaimed the liberty of every citizen,
0:53:22 > 0:53:28even the very poorest, but it had descended into madness.
0:53:28 > 0:53:31By making art out of revolutionary philosophy,
0:53:31 > 0:53:37Wordsworth and Coleridge succeeded where the revolution had failed.
0:53:37 > 0:53:41They gave politics a human face.
0:53:41 > 0:53:46The Lyrical Ballads was a revolution in 23 poems.
0:53:48 > 0:53:54At its heart was a tale of visionary captivating force.
0:53:58 > 0:54:00The Rime of The Ancient Mariner
0:54:00 > 0:54:04has become one of the great poems in the English language.
0:54:13 > 0:54:17During a visit to the harbour town of Watchet,
0:54:17 > 0:54:23Wordsworth conceived the idea of a mariner who shoots an albatross.
0:54:23 > 0:54:26Coleridge began writing out Wordsworth's story
0:54:26 > 0:54:29and soon took over the narrative.
0:54:36 > 0:54:38In The Rime of The Ancient Mariner,
0:54:38 > 0:54:42the voyager who has been touched by madness
0:54:42 > 0:54:45sees into the heart of life and death.
0:54:47 > 0:54:51I pass like night from land to land
0:54:51 > 0:54:55I have strange power of speech
0:54:56 > 0:54:58And know that his face I see
0:54:58 > 0:55:01I know the man that must hear me
0:55:01 > 0:55:04To him my tale I teach.
0:55:14 > 0:55:19In the poem, the ancient mariner's ship is driven off its course
0:55:19 > 0:55:21towards the South Pole.
0:55:23 > 0:55:27The ice was here, the ice was there
0:55:27 > 0:55:30The ice was all around
0:55:30 > 0:55:34It cracked and growled and roared and howled
0:55:34 > 0:55:37A wild and ceaseless sound
0:55:39 > 0:55:42At length would cross an albatross
0:55:42 > 0:55:45Through the fog it came
0:55:45 > 0:55:50As though it were a Christian soul We hailed it in God's name.
0:55:52 > 0:56:00But then the ancient mariner commits an arbitrary and irrational crime.
0:56:00 > 0:56:03- COLERIDGE: - God save the ancient mariner
0:56:03 > 0:56:05From the fiends that plague thee thus
0:56:05 > 0:56:08Why look thou so?
0:56:08 > 0:56:10WORDSWORTH: With my crossbow
0:56:10 > 0:56:13I shot the albatross.
0:56:23 > 0:56:27As a result, the ship is pursued by phantoms
0:56:27 > 0:56:30that destroy the rest of the crew.
0:56:38 > 0:56:39Breezes is blue
0:56:39 > 0:56:43The white foam flew The furrow furrowed free
0:56:43 > 0:56:48We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea.
0:56:51 > 0:56:54The ancient mariner is allowed to survive
0:56:54 > 0:56:57and is compelled to tell his cautionary tale -
0:56:57 > 0:57:02a warning that Man must respect his fellow creatures.
0:57:02 > 0:57:05With this poem, Coleridge had begun a journey
0:57:05 > 0:57:09that would take the Romantics far beyond the domain of politics
0:57:09 > 0:57:11in their search for freedom.
0:57:11 > 0:57:13This new quest for liberty
0:57:13 > 0:57:17would take them into the very heart of the natural world.
0:57:29 > 0:57:31Alone, alone
0:57:31 > 0:57:33All, all alone
0:57:33 > 0:57:37Alone on a white, white sea
0:57:37 > 0:57:42And Christ would take no pity on my soul in agony
0:57:43 > 0:57:47So many men, so beautiful
0:57:47 > 0:57:51And they all dead did lie
0:57:51 > 0:57:55And a million, million slimy things lived on
0:57:57 > 0:57:59And so did I.
0:58:23 > 0:58:26Find out more about some of the poets and poems
0:58:26 > 0:58:29featured in this series with a free booklet
0:58:29 > 0:58:32from The Open University.
0:58:32 > 0:58:39To order, call 0870 900 0311.
0:58:52 > 0:59:00Hear more of the Romantics poetry at bbc.co.uk/romantics