ABSTRACT
For reasons of practicality, this chapter concentrates on Southey and Coleridge, who were keenly interested in the manifestations of Catholicism in both its European and Irish versions and who recognised its relevance to contemporary Britain and, especially, to England. Catholicism is usually more or less invisible, or severely marginalised, even in the most recent accounts of Romanticism and the Romantic period. Robert Ryan's survey may well be, as it claims, the first book to examine the literature of the Romantic period as a conscious attempt to influence the religious life of society'. Some indication of the depth of anxiety provoked by the record of European Catholicism can be provided by a brief look at two further cases. In a speech on Roman Catholic Claims, delivered to the House of Lords on 21 April 1812, Byron suggested that this college had been founded in the interests of a cynical selfishness.
