There are an awful lot of studies of Romanticism, and the ways in which it differed from and remained similar to what came before. Many are more comprehensive and more scholarly than The Enchafed Flood. But none, I would venture to say, are remotely as entertaining.

The Enchafed Flood does not pretend to be Abrams' The Mirror and the Lamp, for instance. It has no delusions of thoroughness. Instead, it selects two images - the Sea and the Desert (despite the title's focus on only one of them) - and demonstrates some of the different ways writers have employed them, and how the Romantics took these images and pushed them into entirely new directions.

Along with these images is a related discussion of some different ways to perceive heroism (because one needs a hero to go off to sea). Again, not the most thorough introduction to Romantic heroism, but thorough enough, and Auden makes apparent the distinction between Romantic ideals and pre-Romantic ideals.

What's best about The Enchafed Flood is how entertaining it is. The world of scholarship and ideas is often treated as an "important" and rarefied one; it is rarely treated as a joyous one. But in Auden's hands, it is. Anytime Baudelaire is put side by side with The Hunting of the Snark, you're in for a snarkily good time.

Some minor quibbles: translations from the French would have been nice. And Auden does know how to go off on a tangent.

Still, even though Auden is not a scholarly writer (in the sense that he is not filled with the latest jargon), he is an eminently intelligent writer, and a penetrating one at that. His insights are always thought-provoking, even when he's at his most provocative. Overall, this is not only an excellent treatise on Romanticism as a movement, but also the single best introduction to Romanticism I've ever read. ( )