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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/35394-8.txt b/35394-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3605f6f --- /dev/null +++ b/35394-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7949 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bridling of Pegasus, by Alfred Austin + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Bridling of Pegasus + Prose Papers on Poetry + +Author: Alfred Austin + +Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35394] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS + + + + + THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS + + PROSE PAPERS ON POETRY + + + BY ALFRED AUSTIN + + POET LAUREATE + + + _Essay Index Reprint Series_ + + BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC. + FREEPORT, NEW YORK + (_Originally published by Macmillan and Co._) + + + + + First published 1910 + Reprinted 1967 + + Reprinted from a copy in the collections of + The New York Public Library + Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations + + + + +When Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus, set forth to kill the Chimera, +Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, gave him a golden bridle with which to curb +and guide his winged steed. Hence the title of this volume, "The Bridling +of Pegasus." + + + + +TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR ALFRED C. LYALL, K.C.B. + + +MY DEAR LYALL, + +I should think you must have observed, in the course of your reading, that +even in the most accredited organs of opinion, principles of literary +criticism, either explicitly stated or tacitly assumed, are often utterly +ignored, in the notice of some work or other in the self-same number. The +result can only be to create confusion in the public mind. + +In this volume, consisting of papers written at various times during the +last thirty years, no such contradiction will, I think, be found. Whether +they be deemed sound or otherwise, they are at least coherent; the canons +of criticism underlying them being that no verse which is unmusical or +obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may +possess; that Imagination in Poetry, as distinguished from mere Fancy, is +the transfiguring of the Real, or actual, into the Ideal, by what Prospero +calls his "so potent art"; and, if these conditions are complied with, +that the greatness of the poem depends on the greatness of the theme. + +To no one so much as to you am I indebted for criticism of the frankest +kind. That alone would lead me to ask you to accept the dedication of +these pages. But I find a yet further and stronger impulse to do so, in +the long and uninterrupted friendship that has subsisted between us, and +to which I attach so much value. + + Believe me always, + Yours most sincerely, + ALFRED AUSTIN. + + SWINFORD OLD MANOR, + _January 1910_. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + THE ESSENTIALS OF GREAT POETRY 1 + + THE FEMININE NOTE IN ENGLISH POETRY 28 + + MILTON AND DANTE: A COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST 60 + + BYRON AND WORDSWORTH 78 + + DANTE'S REALISTIC TREATMENT OF THE IDEAL 139 + + DANTE'S POETIC CONCEPTION OF WOMAN 156 + + POETRY AND PESSIMISM 170 + + A VINDICATION OF TENNYSON 197 + + ON THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO POLITICS 218 + + A CONVERSATION WITH SHAKESPEARE IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS 241 + + + + +THE ESSENTIALS OF GREAT POETRY + + +The decay of authority is one of the most marked features of our time. +Religion, politics, art, manners, speech, even morality, considered in its +widest sense, have all felt the waning of traditional authority, and the +substitution for it of individual opinion and taste, and of the wavering +and contradictory utterances of publications ostensibly occupied with +criticism and supposed to be pronouncing serious judgments. By authority I +do not mean the delivery of dogmatic decisions, analogous to those issued +by a legal tribunal from which there is no appeal, that have to be +accepted and obeyed, but the existence of a body of opinion of long +standing, arrived at after due investigation and experience during many +generations, and reposing on fixed principles or fundamentals of thought. +This it is that is being dethroned in our day, and is being supplanted by +a babel of clashing, irreconcilable utterances, often proceeding from the +same quarters, even the same mouths. + +In no department of thought has this been more conspicuous than in that of +literature, especially the higher class of literature; and it is most +patent in the prevailing estimate of that branch of literature to which +lip-homage is still paid as the highest of all, viz. poetry. Chaucer, +Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, have not been openly dethroned; but it would +require some boldness to deny that even their due recognition has been +indirectly questioned by a considerable amount of neglect, as compared +with the interest shown alike by readers and reviewers in poets and poetry +of lesser stature. Are we to conclude from this that there is no standard, +that there exist no permanent canons by which the relative greatness of +poets and poetry can be estimated with reasonable conclusiveness? It is +the purpose of this essay to show that such there are. + +The expression of individual opinion upon a subject so wide, no matter who +the individual might be, would obviously be worthless; and I have no wish +to do what has been done too often in our time, to substitute personal +taste or bias for canons of criticism that have stood the test of time, +and whereon the relative position of poets, great, less great, and +comparatively inferior, has reposed. The inductive method was employed +long before it was explicitly proclaimed as distinct from and more +trustworthy than the merely deductive; and it is such method that will, if +indirectly, be employed in this paper. Finally, I shall carefully abstain +from the rhetorical enthusiasm or invective that clouds the judgment of +writers and readers alike, and invariably degenerates into personal +dogmatism, together with intolerance of those who think otherwise. After +indicating, to the best of my ability, the laws of thought and the canons +of criticism on which should repose the estimate of the poetic hierarchy, +I will then ask the reader to observe if the conclusions leave the +recognised Masters of Song--Homer, Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, +Lucretius, Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron--unassailed +and unshaken in their poetic supremacy. + +There must perforce be certain qualities common to all poetry, whether the +greatest, the less great, or the comparatively inferior, and whether +descriptive, lyrical, idyllic, reflective, epic, or dramatic; and, so long +as there existed any authority or body of generally accepted opinion on +the subject, these were at least two such qualities, viz. melodiousness, +whether sweet or sonorous, and lucidity or clearness of expression, to be +apprehended, without laborious investigation, by highly cultured and +simple readers alike. Melodiousness is a quality so essential to, and so +inseparable from, all verse that is poetry, that it often, by its mere +presence, endows with the character of poetry verse of a very rudimentary +kind, verse that just crosses the border between prosaic and poetic verse, +and would otherwise be denied admission to the territory of the Muses. +Some of the enthusiasts to whom allusion has been made have, I am assured, +declared of certain compositions of our time, "This would be poetry, even +if it meant nothing at all"--a dictum calculated, like others enunciated +in our days, to harden the plain man in his disdain of poetry altogether. +It would not be difficult to quote melodious verse published in our time +of which it is no exaggeration to say that the words in it are used rather +as musical notes than as words signifying anything. In all likelihood such +compositions, and the widespread liking for them, arise partly from the +prevailing preference for music over the other arts, and in part from the +mental indolence that usually accompanies emotion in all but the highest +minds. Nevertheless it cannot be too much insisted on that music, or +melodiousness, either sweet or sonorous, is absolutely indispensable to +poetry; and where it is absent, poetry is absent, even though thought and +wide speculation be conspicuous in it. As Horace put it long ago in his +_Art of Poetry_, + + Non satis est pulchra esse poemata: dulcia sunto. + +Almost as essential to poetry, and equally as regards poetry of the +loftiest and poetry of the lowliest kind, is lucidity, or clearness of +expression. No poet of much account is ever obscure, unless the text +happens to be corrupt. When essays and even volumes are issued, since +deemed indispensable for the understanding of a writer labelled as a poet, +one may be quite sure that, however deep a thinker, he is not a poet of +the first order, and not a poet at all in the passages that require such +explanation. When one hears a well-authenticated story to the effect that +a great scholar said of an English paraphrase of a well-known Greek poem, +that he thought he had succeeded in gathering its meaning with the help of +the original, one ought to know what to think of the work. Yet, though +much of its author's verse is of that non-lucid character, it is +habitually saluted by many critics as great poetry. With all respect, I +venture to affirm that in such circumstances the designation must be a +misnomer. I remember a poem being read to me, in perfect good faith, by +its author, a man of great mental distinction and no little imagination, +of which, though I listened with the closest attention, not only did I not +understand one word, but I had not the faintest idea, as the colloquial +phrase is, what it was about. When it was published, I asked three ardent +admirers of the author to explain to me its meaning. They failed entirely +to do so. The saying, concerning the orator, _clarescit urendo_, is even +yet more applicable to the poet. He brightens as he burns. Yet, of recent +times, verse fuliginous, clouded, and enshrouded in obscurity, has been +hailed in many quarters, not only as poetry, but poetry of an +exceptionally superior sort. + +If it be urged that Dante, and even Shakespeare, do not always yield up +their meaning to the reader at once, the allegation must be traversed +absolutely. The immediate apprehension of the meaning of the _Vita Nuova_ +and the _Divina Commedia_ presupposes an intimate acquaintance with the +various dialects of the Italian language existing in Dante's time, and +likewise with the erudition he scatters so profusely, if allusively, +throughout his verse. But to the Italian readers of Dante, even +superficially acquainted with those dialects, and adequate masters of the +theology and the astronomy of Dante's time, those poems present no +difficulty. Of Shakespeare, the greatest of all the poets in our language, +let it be granted that he is not unoften one of the most careless and even +most slovenly; but rarely is he so to the obscuring of his meaning, and +never save casually, and in some brief passage. Yet let it not be inferred +that I am of opinion that the full meaning of the greatest passages in the +greatest poems is to be seized all at once, or by the average reader at +all. That is "deeper than ever plummet sounded," though Tennyson's +"indolent reviewer" apparently imagines that he at once fathoms the more +intellectual poetry of his time. There can be but few readers, and +possibly none but poets themselves, or persons who, to quote Tennyson +again, "have the great poetic heart," who master the full significance of +_Hamlet_ or of the tersely told story of Francesca da Rimini. But the +whole world at once understood the more obvious tenor of both, and is not +puzzled by either. There is a sliding scale of understanding, as there is +a sliding scale of inspiration. "We needs must love the highest when we +see it"; but "when we see it" is an important qualification in the +statement. + +I do not know that there are any qualities save melodiousness, sweet or +sonorous, and lucidity, that are absolutely essential to whatever is to be +regarded as poetry. In order to preclude misapprehension, let it be added +that, while both are essential to poetry, they will not, by themselves, go +far towards endowing verse with the poetic character. As an example of +this, let me cite verse which is not unmelodious, though not specially +remarkable for melodiousness, and not obscure, yet is not poetry, and +hardly on the border of it: + + I have a boy of five years old; + His face is fair and fresh to see; + His limbs are cast in beauty's mould, + And dearly he loves me. + + One morn we strolled on our dry walk, + Our quiet home all full in view, + And held such intermitted talk + As we are wont to do. + + My thoughts on former pleasures ran; + I thought of Kilve's delightful shore, + Our pleasant home when spring began, + A long, long year before. + + A day it was when I could bear + Some fond regrets to entertain; + With so much happiness to spare, + I could not feel a pain. + +This blameless, correct, harmonious, and thoroughly lucid verse is by a +poet who has written poetry of the noblest quality, no less a poet than +Wordsworth. Yet he sorely tries his readers by page after page no more +poetical than the foregoing; and he offered, on the first appearance of +every volume of his, ample matter for such critics as would rather be +sweepingly censorious than discriminating, to depreciate and even to +ridicule him. His reverent admirers, who comprise all true lovers of +poetry, are acquainted with, and probably possess, a copy of Matthew +Arnold's Selection, entitled _Poems of Wordsworth_--a small volume which +that gifted Wordsworthian, who knew and acknowledged with his usual sense +of humour how many unpoetical "sermons," as he called them, Wordsworth had +written, deliberately considered to contain all the real poetry he has +left us. If I may refer for a moment to my own copy of it, this is scored +with brief observations in pencil, the upshot of which is that the small +fraction of his work, which Matthew Arnold too liberally wished to be +regarded as _digna Phoebi_, would have again to be materially reduced by +a dispassionate criticism. + +The most generous critic, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, +let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or +utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the +appellation of poetry. But on a very thin thread of meaning poetry, or a +very fair imitation of it, may be hung by the aid of musical sound. +Without going so far as Arnold again, who once wrote to me that Shelley's +"My soul is an enchanted boat" seemed to him "mere musical verbiage," that +poem might serve as an instance of verse which, in spite of tenuity of +meaning, becomes poetry by sheer magic of exquisite music. + + My soul is an enchanted boat, + Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float + Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; + And thine doth like an angel sit + Beside a helm conducting it, + Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing + It seems to float ever, for ever, + Upon that many-winding river, + Between mountains, woods, abysses. + A paradise of wildernesses! + Till, like one in slumber bound, + Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, + Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound. + +There is a magic of sound in the verse so enchanting to a reader that he +may be pardoned for failing to observe at once that it is mainly musical +fancy. Many may remember a line of Tennyson: + + Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong. + +And are we not compelled to feel, on second thoughts, if we have any +capacity for discrimination, that here we have poetry of little meaning, +though the verse is exquisitely melodious? This is, I conclude, what +Arnold meant when he designated it, with a little exaggeration, "musical +verbiage." + +I have been obliged to linger somewhat on the threshold of my subject in +order to emphasise the essential importance and inseparable quality of +metrical melodiousness and lucidity in poetry, in order that, in whatever +follows in this paper, these indispensable conditions may not be lost +sight of; and also because of late each of them has been ousted from +consideration by those who have striven, and still strive, to induce +literary opinion to accept not only as poetry, but as great poetry, what +is conspicuously lacking in both. That I shall have the assent, however, +of the weight of authority on this point, and likewise that of the +ordinary unaffected lover of poetry, I can scarcely doubt; the more so, as +the conclusions thus far reached leave undisturbed upon their seats those +mighty ones, of all tongues and all nations, whose universally recognised +greatness has received the seal and sanction of many generations. + +What may be called the first principles of poetry having thus been +propounded, without any necessity for reaffirming them in the +investigation of other conclusions yet to be reached, I may move on to +what I imagine will be less familiar and perhaps more original in the +search for "The Essentials of Great Poetry." If we carefully observe the +gradual development of mental power in human beings, irrespectively of any +reference to poetry, but as applied to general objects of human interest, +we shall find that the advance from elementary to supreme expansion of +mental power is in the following order of succession, each preceding +element in mental development being retained on the appearance of its +successor: (1) Perception, vague at first, as in the newly born, gradually +becoming more definite, along with desires of an analogous kind; (2) +Sentiment, also vague at first, but by degrees becoming more definite, +until it attaches itself to one or more objects exclusively; (3) Thought +or Reflection, somewhat hazy in its inception, and often remaining in that +condition to the last; (4) Action, which is attended and assisted by the +three preceding qualities of Perception, Sentiment, and Thought or +Reflection. In other words, human beings perceive before they feel, +perceive and feel before they think, perceive, feel, and think before they +act, or at least before they act reasonably, though it may be but +imperfectly, and though the later or higher stages may in many cases +scarcely be reached at all. + +Now let us see if, in poetry, the same order or succession in development +and expansion does not exist. Never forgetting the essential qualities of +melody and lucidity, do we not find that mere descriptive verse, which +depends on perception or observation, is the humblest and most elementary +form of poetry; that descriptive verse, when suffused with sentiment, +gains in value and charm; that if, to the foregoing, thought or reflection +be superadded, there is a conspicuous rise in dignity, majesty, and +relative excellence; and finally, that the employment of these in +narrative action, whether epic or dramatic, carries us on to a stage of +supreme excellence which can rarely be predicated of any poetry in which +action is absent? If this be so, we have to the successive development of +observation, feeling, thought, and action, an exact analogy or counterpart +in (1) Descriptive Poetry; (2) Lyrical Poetry; (3) Reflective Poetry; (4) +Epic or Dramatic Poetry; in each of which, melody and lucidity being +always present, there is an advance in poetic value over the preceding +stage, without the preceding one being eliminated from its progress. + +Once again let us have recourse to illustration, which, when fairly +chosen, is probably the most effective method for securing assent. +Wordsworth presents us with an ample supply of illustrations in three out +of the four different kinds of poetry; and therefore to him let us have +recourse. In reading the first stanza of _The Pet Lamb_, and two or three +stanzas that follow, we have descriptive verse which may be regarded as +very elementary poetry, but to which it would seem to many to be +hypercritical to refuse that designation. It is too well known to need +citation. The opening lines of _The Leech-Gatherer_ display the same +elementary descriptive character. + + There was a roaring in the wind all night; + The rain came heavily and fell in floods; + But now the sun is rising calm and bright; + The birds are singing in the distant woods; + Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; + The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; + And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters. + + All things that love the Sun are out of doors; + The sky rejoices in the morning's birth; + The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the moors + The Hare is running races in her mirth; + And with her feet she from the plashy earth + Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun, + Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run. + + I was a traveller then upon the moor; + I saw the Hare that raced about with joy; + I heard the woods and distant waters roar; + Or heard them not, as happy as a boy: + The pleasant season did my heart employ; + My old remembrances went from me wholly, + And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy. + +I perceive that, in my copy of the volume of Selections made by Matthew +Arnold from the poems of Wordsworth, already alluded to, I have written at +the end of _Margaret_, "If this be poetry, surely many people may say they +have written poetry all their lives without knowing it." But as Matthew +Arnold's critical opinions will carry more weight than mine, and he has +included _Margaret_ in his Selection, let me quote a dozen lines or so +from its opening passage: + + 'Twas Summer, and the Sun had mounted high: + Southward the landscape indistinctly glared + Through a pale steam; but all the northern downs, + In clearest air ascending, showed far off + A surface dappled o'er with shadows flung + From brooding clouds; shadows that lay in spots + Determined and unmoved, with steady beams + Of bright and pleasant sunshine interposed; + Pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss + Extends his careless limbs along the front + Of some huge cave, whose rocky ceiling casts + A twilight of its own, an ample shade, + Where the Wren warbles. + +But there is, it must not be overlooked, merely Descriptive Poetry of a +much higher kind than the foregoing, though Wordsworth may not be the best +source from which to draw it. Perhaps its highest possibilities are to be +found in Byron, and conspicuously in the third and fourth cantos of +_Childe Harold_. Many of the passages of the kind that one remembers there +are, however, either too much suffused with the poet's personal feeling, +or too closely connected with great incidents in history and the fall of +empires, to be quite pertinent examples. A minor but sufficient example +taken from _Childe Harold_ may suffice for illustration: + + It is the hush of night, and all between + Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, + Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen, + Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear + Precipitously steep; and drawing near, + There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, + Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear + Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, + Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more. + +Far finer instances of poetry essentially descriptive in the same poem may +be referred to, _e.g._ Canto IV., stanza xcix., beginning "There is a +stern round tower of other days"; stanza cvii., beginning with "Cypress +and ivy, weed and wallflower grown"; stanza clxxiii., descriptive of Lake +Nemi; and even--for it also is strictly descriptive--stanza cxl., opening +with the well-known line "I see before me the gladiator lie." + +It could not be allowed that any of these, considered separately, +satisfies the conditions or essentials of great poetry, though, in company +with others, they contribute to that character in a very great poem +indeed. Moreover, they serve to show that even mere Descriptive Poetry, +which I have spoken of as the "lowest" or most elementary kind of poetry, +may rise to striking elevation of merit, and has its counterpart in the +sliding scale of observation in various individuals. + +Let us now take a step, and a long one, in the scale of importance +attained by the various kinds of poetry, and consider the classics of +Lyrical Poetry. Here extensive quotation will be less necessary, partly by +reason of the wide ground Lyrical Poetry covers, and partly because of its +relative popularity in our time, and the familiarity of so many readers +with its most enchanting specimens. There is ample room for personal taste +and individual idiosyncrasy within the vast boundaries of this fruitful +field. Many persons are sadly wanting in observation; and to only a +minority can real, serious thought be ascribed. But we all feel, we all +have visitations of sentiment; and therefore to all of us is Lyrical +Poetry more or less welcome. + +The causes, personal and social, that have given to Lyrical Poetry in our +time almost exclusive favour in public taste will be dealt with presently. +It will distract less from our main purpose to confine ourselves for the +present to the recognition of the fact, and to seek to show how very +various are the degrees of eminence in Lyrical Poetry. The lyrical note is +so natural to poets and poetry that we may expect to find it in the verse +of all poets, though in a minor degree in didactic verse; while in some +poets it almost monopolises their utterance. Though perhaps not obvious to +many ears to-day, it lurks in no little of Pope's _Epistle of Eloisa to +Abelard_, and is unmistakably present in his _Ode on St. Cecilia's Day_. +If I am asked if the lyrical note is to be found in Chaucer, the reply +must be that, though Chaucer has left nothing which the modern reader +would recognise as lyrical, what is called his iambic or five-foot metre +is far more anapæstic and lyrical than is the case with any subsequent +poet, except Shakespeare. There is a lilt in it equivalent to the lyrical +note, which those who read as Chaucer wrote recognise at once. One has +only to read the opening lines of the Prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_ +to perceive this. Not quite to the same extent perhaps as in Chaucer, but +withal very noticeably to the ear, the lyrical note is frequently to be +caught in Spenser, even where he is not obviously offering the reader +Lyrical Poetry; as, for instance, in this stanza in the first canto of the +_Fairy Queen_, beginning: + + A little lowly hermitage it was, + Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side. + +This is not Lyrical Poetry proper, as now understood. But Spenser has left +us in his _Epithalamion_ a lyrical poem with which only one other English +lyric can be placed in competition for the first place. It is too long for +more than one brief excerpt to be cited here: + + Wake now, my love, awake! for it is time; + The rosy Morne long since left Tithones bed, + All ready to her silver coche to clyme; + And Phoebus gins to shew his glorious hed. + Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies + And carroll of loves praise. + The merry Larke hir mattins sings aloft; + The Thrush replyes; the Mavis descant playes; + The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft; + So goodly all agree, with sweet consent, + To this dayes meriment, + Ah! my deere love, why doe ye sleepe thus long, + When meeter were that ye should now awake, + T' awayt the comming of your joyous make, + And hearken to the birds love-learned song, + The deawy leaves among? + For they of joy and pleasance to you sing + That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. + +One is sorry to think that this long, lovely, and varied lyric is less +known than it ought to be to the modern readers of Lyrical Poetry. I can +only say to them, "Make haste to read it." + +In Shakespeare's plays the lyrical note is so often to be heard in the +blank verse that the poet's natural aptitude and inclination for singing +were amply exercised there; and he gives most voice to it in such plays as +_As You Like It_ and _Romeo and Juliet_. But it recurs again and again +throughout his dramas. Such lines as: + + All over-canopied with lush woodbine, + + How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank, + + Under the shade of melancholy boughs, + +are illustrations of what I am pointing out. + +Without dwelling on the excellent lyrics written in the reigns of Charles +I. and Charles II., and confining ourselves to the _di majores_ of poetry, +we may pass on to Milton, whose _Allegro_ and _Penseroso_ as likewise the +lyrics in _Comus_, are too familiar to every one to be more than mentioned +as evidence of the persistence, in the past as in the present, of the +warbling impulse in all poets. Heard but fitfully during the greater part +of the eighteenth century, yet most arrestingly in Gray, Collins, and +Burns, Lyrical Poetry from the last onward without intermission, to our +own time, in Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson, is +almost the only poetry that has in recent days been much listened to, or +much written and talked about. This circumstance is far from being +conclusive as to whether, during the same period, poems higher and +greater than mere Lyrical Poetry have or have not been produced. But it is +absolutely certain that, if produced, they have been, so far, more or less +ignored; and that, if the same poets have written such and Lyrical Poetry +as well, they will have been considered and estimated by the latter only. + +But the domain of feeling and emotion in which Lyrical Poetry has room to +display its power and versatility is so extensive that lyrics are very +various in their themes and in the treatment of them. Love, religion, +patriotism, cosmopolitan benevolence, being, as I have shown in _The Human +Tragedy_, the most elevated and most permanent sources of human sentiment +and emotion, there will necessarily be in Lyrical Poetry, even considered +by itself, and apart from all the other forms of poetry, a scale of +relative elevation and importance. + +The love of individuals for each other, whether domestic, romantic, or +sexual, is much more common than any of the other three, being practically +universal; and it has given birth to so many well-known lyrics that it is +unnecessary to cite any of them here. Some of them are very beautiful; but +none of them, by reason of the comparative narrowness of their theme, +satisfies the essentials of great poetry. Not even Tennyson's _Maud_, +which is perhaps the most ambitious and the best known of long poems +dedicated mainly to the subject, though it contains lovely passages, +approaches greatness. + +Though what is understood as religious sentiment comes next to the love of +individuals for each other in the extent of its influence, it has produced +much verse, but, it must be allowed, little poetry, the reason probably +being that the religious sentiment of the few who are endowed with the +gift of writing poetry differs from that of the average "religious" +person. Nor can the fact be overlooked that there is a certain character +of reserve in Protestantism which has operated since the Reformation +against the growth of religious Lyrical Poetry. For that we must go either +to pre-Reformation days, or to the poetry of those who, like George +Herbert and the poetic kin of his time, clung to the Roman Catholic creed +after the modification of belief and ritual in the Anglican Church; or to +the poets in our own time trained in the Roman Catholic faith, and to that +extent, and on that ground, debarred from wide popularity among a +Protestant people. The De Veres, Faber, Coventry Patmore, and Newman, the +last notably in his _Dream of Gerontius_, may be named as instances of +what has been done in recent times in the sphere of religious poetry. +Scott's lovely "Ave Maria" in _The Lady of the Lake_, and Byron's stanza +beginning: + + Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer, + +are briefer specimens of what may be, and has been contributed in later +times to religious poetry; much smaller in bulk and volume than poetry +dedicated to the love of individuals for each other, but higher in the +rising scale of greatness, because of the greater dignity of its theme. + +Patriotic Lyrical Poetry need not detain us long. Most patriotic verse, +however spirited, is verse only, nothing or little more, though exceptions +could be cited, such as Drayton's _Agincourt_, Tennyson's _Relief of +Lucknow_, and _The Ballad of the "Revenge."_ But if in patriotic Lyrical +Poetry we include, as I think we should, poetry in the English tongue, but +not concerning England or the British Empire, I may name Byron's "Isles +of Greece" in _Don Juan_, which I had in my mind when I observed that +there is in our language only one lyrical poem that can compete for the +first place in Lyrical Poetry with Spenser's _Epithalamion_. + +3. Reflective Poetry. Over Reflective Poetry, in itself a stage of advance +beyond Descriptive Poetry and Lyrical Poetry in themselves, we need not +linger long, for the reason that, though Reflective Poetry is ample in +quantity, it is, outside the Drama, very limited in quality, most of it +being of so prosaic a character as not only not to be ranked above average +Lyrical Poetry, but far below it. Wordsworth furnishes us, for the purpose +of illustration, with both kinds, the higher and the lower Reflective +Poetry. As regards the latter, I would rather let Matthew Arnold, than +whom there is no warmer admirer of Wordsworth, be the spokesman: + + _The Excursion_ abounds with Philosophy [I prefer to call it Thought + or Reflection]; and therefore _The Excursion_ is to the Wordsworthian + what it never can be to the disinterested lover of poetry, a + satisfactory work. "Duty exists," says Wordsworth in _The Excursion_; + and then he proceeds thus: + + ... Immutably survive, + For our support, the measures and the forms + Which an abstract Intelligence supplies, + Whose kingdom is where time and space are not. + + And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that here is a sweet + union of philosophy and poetry. But the disinterested lover of poetry + will feel that the lines carry us really not a step farther than the + proposition which they would interpret; that they are a tissue of + elevated but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry. + +Merely observing that I wholly agree with the foregoing estimate, I pass +to the higher Reflective Poetry, of which Wordsworth has given us such +splendid but comparatively brief instances. The _Lines composed a few +miles above Tintern Abbey_, _Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a Picture of +Peele Castle_, his best Sonnets, the _Character of the Happy Warrior_, +the _Ode to Duty_, and, finally, the _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_ +seem to me to place Wordsworth above all other English Poets in the domain +of exclusively Reflective Poetry. I do not forget much noble Reflective +Poetry in _Childe Harold_; but it is too much blent with other elements, +and into it the active quality enters too strongly, for its more +reflective features to be separated from them. Moreover, it generally +falls far short of the intellectual note so strongly marked in +Wordsworth's best Reflective Poetry, into which, be it added, both the +descriptive and the lyrical notes, in accordance with the general law I am +seeking to expound in this paper, enter very largely, if, of course, +subordinately. It will be obvious, however, to any dispassionate lover of +poetry, that a merely reflective poem of any great length cannot well be +entitled to the designation of a great poem. Had such been possible, +Wordsworth would have bequeathed it to us. _The Excursion_ is the answer; +which, notwithstanding a certain number of fine passages, is, for the most +part, what Matthew Arnold says of it, "doctrine such as we hear in church, +religious and philosophical doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves +passages of such doctrine, and brings them forward as proofs of his poet's +excellence." + +If the reader has followed me so far, with more or less assent, he will be +prepared not only to allow, but of himself to feel, that there must be yet +another kind or order of poetry, in which the greatest poems are to be +found, poems that are neither exclusively nor mainly either descriptive, +lyrical, or reflective, but into which all three elements enter +subordinately, though none of them gives it its distinctive and supreme +character. + +4. Epic and Dramatic Poetry. That supreme kind of poetry is Epic and +Dramatic Poetry, though there may be very poor Epics, and Dramas in which +true poetry is scarcely to be observed, just as we have seen that there is +very inferior Descriptive, Lyrical, and Reflective Poetry. All that is +asserted is that great epic and dramatic poems must be greater than the +greatest poetry of the preceding kinds by reason of their wider range and +(as a rule) the higher majesty of their theme, and of their including +every other kind of poetry. + +It will perhaps have been noticed that Epic and Dramatic Poetry are here +placed in conjunction, not separately; and their being thus conjoined +needs a word of explanation. Though there is a radical distinction between +the two, this provisional union of them has been adopted in order to +afford an opportunity of pointing out what I think is generally +ignored--that poems which are essentially epical, or merely narrative, may +be written in dialogue or dramatic form, and so mislead incautious readers +into inferring that they are offered as dramas, in the acting sense of the +term. It is because, while remaining substantially epical or narrative in +character they may contain, here and there, dramatic situations, dramatic +rhetoric, and dramatic converse. The _Iliad_ is a conspicuous example of +this; the movement in the earlier portion of it being full of debate and +defiance among its characters, and these dramatic elements recurring, if +less frequently, throughout the entire work. To many persons the episodes +in the narrative of the _Divina Commedia_ that give rise to converse, +whether tender, terrible, or pathetic, are the most delightful portions of +it. What is it that makes the first six books of _Paradise Lost_ so much +more telling than the later ones? Surely it is the magnificence of the +speeches emanating from the mouths of the chief characters. _Childe +Harold_ is ostensibly only descriptive, reflective, and narrative; but the +personality and supposed wrongs of Byron himself, so frequently +introduced, confer on it, beyond these characters, certain features of the +drama and of dramatic action. Moreover, the magnificent ruins bequeathed +to the seven-hilled city by the fall of the Roman Empire enter so largely +into the fourth canto that this includes in it every species of verse, +from the descriptive to the dramatic. To cite a much smaller example, I +once said to Tennyson, "Do you not think that, had one met in a tragedy +with the couplet from Pope (_Ep. to the Sat._ ii. 205)-- + + _F._ You're strangely proud ... + + _P._ Yes, I am proud: I must be proud to see + Men not afraid of God, afraid of _me_ + +--one would be right in regarding it as very fine, dramatically?" and he +replied, "Yes, certainly." I recall the circumstance because it is an +extreme illustration of the momentary intrusion of one style into another. + +By slow but successive stages we have reached conclusions that may be thus +briefly stated. (1) The essentials of great poetry are not to be found in +poetry exclusively descriptive. (2) They are rarely to be met with in +poetry that is lyrical, and then only when reflection of a high order, as +in Wordsworth's _Intimations of Immortality_, or what is equivalent to +action operating on a great theme, as in Byron's _Isles of Greece_, +largely and conspicuously enters into these. (3) That they are to be met +with in Reflective Poetry of the very highest character, but never +throughout an exclusively reflective poem of any length. (4) That they are +chiefly to be sought for and most frequently found in either epic or +dramatic poetry where description, emotion, thought, and action all +co-operate to produce the result; that result being, to adduce supreme +examples, the _Iliad_, _Paradise Lost_, the _Divina Commedia_, the third +and fourth cantos of _Childe Harold_, _Hamlet_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_. + +Many years ago, in a couple of papers published in the _Contemporary +Review_ on "New and Old Canons of Poetic Criticism," I propounded, as the +most satisfactory definition of poetry generally, that it is "the +transfiguration, in musical verse, of the Real into the Ideal"; and I have +more than once advocated the definition. The definition applies to poetry +of all kinds. But, while this is so, the transfiguration must operate on a +great theme greatly treated, either lyrically, reflectively, epically, or +dramatically, in order to produce great poetry. + +I fancy I hear some people saying, "Quite so; who ever denied or doubted +it?" The answer must be that, for some time past, it has been tacitly, and +often explicitly, denied by critics and readers alike; reviewers to-day +criticising poetry in utter disregard and contravention of any such +canons, and readers in their conversation and practice following suit, +apparently without any knowledge or suspicion that such canons exist. Had +it been otherwise, an inquiry into the essentials of great poetry would +have been unnecessary. + +The permanent passions of mankind--love, religion, patriotism, +humanitarianism, hate, revenge, ambition; the conflict between free will +and fate; the rise and fall of empires--these are all great themes, and, +if greatly treated, and in accordance with the essentials applicable to +all poetry, may produce poetry of the loftiest kind; the underlying reason +being what, as usual, has been better and more convincingly stated by +Shakespeare than by any one else: + + We [actors on the stage] are not all alone unhappy: + This wide and universal theatre + Presents more woeful pageants than the scene + Wherein we play. + +For the great treatment of great themes in Epic, and yet more in Dramatic, +Poetry, think of what is required! Not mere fancy, not mere emotion, but a +wide and lofty imagination, a full and flexible style, a copious and ready +vocabulary, an ear for verbal melody and all its cadences, profound +knowledge of men, women, and things in general, a congenital and +cultivated sense of form--the foundation of beauty and majesty alike, in +all art; an experience of all the passions, yet the attainment to a +certain majestic freedom from servitude to these; the descriptive, +lyrical, and reflective capacity; abundance and variety of illustration; a +strong apprehension and grasp of the Real, with the impulse and power to +transfigure it into the Ideal, so that the Ideal shall seem to the reader +to be the Real; in a word, "blood and judgment," as Shakespeare says, "so +commingled." These are the qualifications of the writers that have +stirred, and still stir, in its worthier portion, the admiration, +reverence, and gratitude of mankind. + +Even this does not exhaust the requisite endowments of those who aspire to +write great poetry. Their sympathy with all that is demands from them a +fund of practical good sense, too often lacking in merely lyrical +poets--a circumstance that may render their work less attractive to the +average person, and even make it seem to such to be wanting in genius +altogether. Sane they must essentially be; and their native sanity must +have been fortified by some share in practical affairs, while their +robustness of mind must have received aid from the open air. They will be +found to be neither extravagant optimists nor extravagant pessimists, but +wise teachers and indulgent moralists; neither teaching nor preaching +overmuch in their verse, but unintentionally and almost unconsciously +communicating their wisdom to others by radiation. Dante always speaks of +Virgil as "Il Saggio." Tennyson puts it well where he says of the poet, +"He saw through good, through ill; He saw through his own soul." +Architecture, sculpture, music, the kindred of his own art, must be +appreciated by him; and nothing that affects mankind is alien to him. + +I should like to say, incidentally, and I hope I may do so without giving +offence, that I have sometimes thought that, in an age much given to +theorising and to considering itself more "scientific" than perhaps it +really is, the diminution of practical wisdom, somewhat conspicuous of +late in politics and legislation, is due in no small measure to the +neglect of the higher poetry, in favour, where concern for poetry survives +at all, of brief snatches of lyrical emotion. Hence legislation by emotion +and haste. + +If we ask ourselves, as it is but natural to do, what are the chief causes +that have brought about this change in public taste and sentiment, I +believe they will be found to be mainly as follow. (1) The decay of +authority already mentioned. (2) The perpetual reading of novels of every +kind, many of them of a pernicious nature, but nearly all of them +calculated to indispose readers to care for any poetry save of an +emotional lyrical character. (3) The increase--be it said with all due +chivalry--of feminine influence and activity alike in society and +literature; women, generally speaking, showing but a moderate interest in +great issues in public life, and finding their satisfaction, so far as +reading is concerned, in prose romances, newspapers, and short lyrics. (4) +The febrile quality of contemporaneous existence; the ephemeral +excitements of the passing hour; and the wholesale surrender to the +transient as contrasted with the permanent, great poetry concerning itself +only with this last--a circumstance that makes the _Odyssey_, for +instance, as fresh to-day as though it had been published for the first +time last autumn; whereas the life of most prose romances, like the lady's +scanty attire, _commence à peine, et finit tout de suite_. + +I hope no one will imagine--for they would be mistaken in doing so--that +these pages have been prompted by a disposition to depreciate the age in +which we are living, and just as little to manifest disdain of it, though +one need not conceal the opinion, in respect of the lower literary taste +so widely prevalent, that, as Shakespeare says, "it is not and it cannot +be for good." My object has been something very different from this. It +has been to recall canons of poetry and standards of literary excellence +which I believe can never be destroyed though for a time they may be +obscured, and which have of late been too much ignored. That such neglect +will in the very faintest degree prevent those whose instinct it is to +say, with Virgil, "paulo majora canamus," from following their vocation, +without a thought of readers or reviewers, I do not suppose. It is good +for poets, and indeed for others, not to be too quickly appreciated. It is +dangerous for them, and sometimes fatal, to be praised prematurely. + +The great stumbling-block of literary criticism, alike for the +professional critic and the unprofessional reader, is the tacit assumption +that the opinions, preferences, and estimates of to-day are not merely +passing opinions, preferences, and estimates, but will be permanent ones; +opinions, preferences, and estimates for all future time. There is no +foundation, save self-complacency, for such a surmise. What solid reason +is there to suppose that the present age is any more infallible in its +literary judgments than preceding ages? On the contrary, its infallibility +is all the less probable because of the precipitation with which its +opinions are arrived at. Yet past ages have been proved over and over +again, in course of time, to be wrong in their estimate of contemporaneous +poetry, in consequence of their mistaking the passing for the permanent. +The consequence in our time of this error has been that one has seen the +passing away of several works loudly declared on their appearance to be +immortal. The only chance a critic has of being right in his judgments is +to measure contemporary literature by standards and canons upon which +rests the fame of the great poets and writers of the past, and, tried by +which, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron have been assigned +their enduring rank in the poetic hierarchy. "Blessings be with them," +says Wordsworth (Sonnet xxv.): + + Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, + Who gave us nobler lives and nobler cares, + The Poets who on earth have made us heirs + Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays. + +It is only the great poets, the poets in whom we can recognise the +essentials of greatness, who can do that for us. They are not rebels, as +are too many lyrical poets, but reconcilers; and they offer to external +things and current ideas both receptivity and resistance, being not merely +of an age, but for all time. It is their thoughts and the verse in which +their thoughts are embodied that are enduringly memorable. For great +poetry, as Wordsworth teaches us in a single line, is not mere emotion, +not mere subtle or sensuous singing, but + + Reason in her most exalted mood. + +A still greater authority than Wordsworth, no other than Milton, has +immortalised in verse the principles for which I have ventured to contend +in prose. In _Paradise Regained_ (iv. 255-266) he says: + + There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power + Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit + By voice or hand, and various-measured verse, + Æolian charms and Dorian lyrick odes, + And his who gave them breath but higher sung, + Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called, + Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own; + Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught + In Chorus or Iambick, teachers best + Of moral prudence, with delight receiv'd, + In brief sententious precepts, while they treat + Of fate, and chance, and change in human life, + High actions and high passions best describing. + + + + +THE FEMININE NOTE IN ENGLISH POETRY + + +Women, to whom a barbarous description, willingly accepted by themselves, +has been applied, have recently been much in the public eye, and still +more in the public prints. But I should not class them under the +designation of feminine; and, though they may have invaded prose fiction, +they have not been, and I think they never will be, met with in Poetry. +They are noisy, but numerically weak. Eve listening to the Tempter, then +bewailing her weakness; Ruth amid the alien corn; Magdalen and her box of +spikenard; Helen of Troy following evil-hearted Paris; Beatrice in heaven; +Una and the milk-white lamb; Rosalind and Celia in _As You Like It_; the +Lily Maid of Astolat in the _Idylls of the King_--these are women of whom, +or, at least, of the sentiments and sympathies of whom, as manifested in +English poetry, I wish to speak. The most progressive age one can possibly +conceive will never succeed in leaving human nature behind, and I have not +the smallest doubt that women will continue to be womanly to the end of +time. + +What, then, is feminine as contrasted with masculine? what is womanly as +compared with manly, whether in literature or in life? Men and women have +many qualities in common, and resemble more than they differ from each +other. But while, speaking generally, the man's main occupations lie +abroad, the woman's main occupation is at home. He has to deal with public +and collective interests; she has to do with private and individual +interests. We need not go so far as to say, with Kingsley, that man must +work and woman must weep; but at least he has to fight and to struggle, +she has to solace and to heal. Ambition, sometimes high, sometimes low, +but still ambition--ambition and success are the main motives and purpose +of his life. Her noblest ambition is to foster domestic happiness, to +bring comfort to the afflicted, and to move with unostentatious but +salutary step over the vast territory of human affection. While man busies +himself with the world of politics, with the world of commerce, with the +rise and fall of empires, with the fortunes and fate of humanity, woman +tends the hearth, visits the sick, consoles the suffering--in a word, in +all she does, fulfils the sacred offices of love. + +Now the highest literature--and Poetry is confessedly the highest +literature--is a transfiguring reflex of life; and in its magic mirror we +perforce see reflected all the thoughts, feelings, interests, passions, +and events of human existence. In English poetry, therefore, we shall +expect to hear both the masculine note and the feminine note; and in what +proportions we hear them will be incidentally indicated in the course of +my remarks. But it is the Feminine Note in which we are at present +specially interested, and if I am asked to define briefly what I mean by +this Feminine Note, I should say that I mean the private or domestic note, +the compassionate note or note of pity, and the sentimental note or note +of romantic love. + +Now I am well aware there are numbers of people who look on poetry as +something essentially and necessarily feminine, and who will say, "What do +you mean by speaking of the Feminine Note in English poetry? Surely it has +no other note, poetry being an effeminate business altogether, with which +men, real robust men, need not concern themselves." The people who hold +this opinion can have but a very limited acquaintance with English poetry, +and a yet more limited familiarity with the poetry of other ages and other +nations that has come down to us. As a matter of fact, though the feminine +note has rarely, if ever, been wholly absent from poetry, it is only of +late years comparatively that it has become a very audible note. I should +be carried too far away from my subject if I attempted to demonstrate the +accuracy of this assertion by a survey, however rapid, of all the +best-known poetry in languages, dead and living, of other times and other +peoples. But to cite one or two familiar examples, is the feminine note, I +may ask, the predominant, or even a frequent, note in the _Iliad_? The +poem opens, it is true, with a dispute among the Argive chiefs, and mainly +between Agamemnon and Achilles, concerning two young women. But how +quickly Chryseis and Bryseis fall into the background, and in place of any +further reference to them, we have a tempest of manly voices, the clang of +arms, the recriminations of the Gods up in Olympus, and the cataloguing of +the Grecian ships! Lest perhaps tender interest should be absent overmuch, +just when Paris is being worsted in his duel with Menelaus for the +determination of the siege, Venus carries him off under cover of a cloud, +and brings Helen to his side. Then follows a scene in which the fair cause +of strife and slaughter stands distracted between her passion for Paris, +her shame at his defeat and flight, and her recollection of the brave +Argive Chief she once called her lord. But more fighting promptly +supervenes, and, save in such a passing episode as the lovely leave-taking +of Hector and Andromache, the poem moves on through a magnificent medley +of fighting, plotting, and speech-making. Even in that exceptionally +tender episode what are the farewell words of Hector to his wife, "Go to +your house and see to your own duties, the loom and the distaff, and bid +your handmaidens perform their tasks. But for war shall _man_ provide." It +is over the dead body of Patroclus that Achilles weeps; and whatever tears +are shed in the _Iliad_ are shed by heroes for heroes. Life, as +represented in that poem, is a life in which woman plays a shadowy and +insignificant part, and wherein domestic sentiments are subordinated to +the rivalries of the Gods and the clash of chariot-wheels. + +This subordinating of woman to man, of individual aims and private +feelings to great aims and public issues, is equally present in the great +Latin poem, the _Æneid_. "Arms and the Man, I sing," says Virgil at once, +and in the very first line of his poem; and though in one book out of the +twelve of which it consists he sings of the woman likewise, it is but to +leave her to her fate and to liberate Æneas from her seductions. Virgil is +rightly esteemed the most tender and refined writer of antiquity. Yet to +the modern reader, accustomed to the feminine note in poetry, there is +something amazingly callous, almost cruel, in the lines with which, while +the funeral pyre of Dido is still smoking, he tells us how Æneas, without +a moment's hesitation, makes for the open sea, and sails away from +Carthage. But then the main business of Æneas was not to soothe or satisfy +the Carthaginian queen, but to build the city and found the Empire of +Rome. "Spirits," says Shakespeare, "are not finely touched save to fine +issues"; and it never would have occurred to Virgil to allow the hero of +the _Æneid_ to be diverted from his masculine purpose by anything so +secondary as the love, or even the self-immolation, of a woman. + +Let us, however, overleap the intervening centuries, and betake ourselves +to the poetry of our own land and our own language. Chaucer, the first +great English poet, was, like all writers of supreme genius, a prolific +and voluminous writer, and we have thousands of verses of his besides the +Prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_. But it is by this latter work that he +is best known; and it is pre-eminently and adequately representative, both +of his own genius and of the temper of the times in which he lived. You +will have to hunt very diligently through his description of the Knight, +the Squire, the Yeoman, the Prioress, the Monk, the Merchant, the Sergeant +of the Law, the Franklin, the Miller, the Manciple, and the rest of his +jovial company, in order to find anything approaching the feminine note. +He says little about what any of them thought, and absolutely nothing +concerning what they felt, but confines himself to descriptions of their +personal appearance, of their conduct and their character, in a word, of +their external presentation of themselves. The Knight who wore a doublet +all stained by his coat of mail, was well mounted, and had ridden far, no +man farther. The Squire, or page, had curly locks, and had borne himself +well in Flanders and Picardy. The Yeoman bore a weighty bow, handled his +arrows and tackle in admirable fashion, and was dressed in a coat of +green. The Monk was fat and in good case, and loved a roast swan more than +any other dish. The Friar, we are told, had made many a marriage at his +own cost, and would get a farthing out of a poor widow, though she had +only one shoe left. The Franklin had a white beard and a high complexion, +kept a capital table, and blew up his cook loudly if the sauces were not +to his liking. The Wife of Bath had married five husbands, not to speak of +other company in her youth; and the Sumpnor loved garlic, onions, and +leeks, had a fiery face, and doated on strong wine. There is nothing very +feminine in all this, is there? The one sole touch of tenderness that I +can remember, and it is very elementary and introduced quite casually, is +that in which we are told that the Prioress is so full of pity that she +would weep if she saw a mouse caught in a trap. One can easily surmise +what sort of tales would proceed from such downright, hearty, unromantic +personages; and, save where any of them recite well-known stories from +ancient poets, their own narratives are as buxom, burly, and as +unsentimental as themselves. If princes and princesses, fine lords and +ladies, be the heroes and heroines of the Tale, a certain amount of +conventional pity is extended to their woes. But if the personages of the +story be, as they for the most part are, common folk, and such as the +story-tellers themselves would be likely to know, their misfortunes and +mishaps are used merely as a theme for mirth and merciless banter. The +humour displayed is excellent, but it is not the humour of _charity_. It +is not compassionate, and it is not feminine. The feminine note is not +absent from Chaucer's Tales, but it is generally a subordinate note, a +rare note, a note scarcely heard in his great concert of masculine +voices. + +Passing from the pages of Chaucer to those of Spenser is like passing from +some cheery tavern where the ale is good and the jokes are excellent, but +a trifle coarse, and the company diverting but a little mixed, to the +banqueting-hall of some stately palace, where the wines and meats are of +the choicest, where all the guests are of high degree, the women all fair, +the men all courtly, and where fine manners and dignified speech leave no +place for loud lewd laughter or even for homely familiarity. Surely in one +who is such a poet, and such a gentleman, and in every respect, to quote a +line of his own "a very perfect gentle knight," we shall come across, ever +and anon at least, the feminine note. And indeed we do. The first three +stanzas of the _Fairy Queen_ are dedicated to the description of the +Knight that was pricking on the plain. But listen to the fourth: + + A lovely lady rode him fair beside, + Upon a lowly ass more white than snow; + Yet she much whiter; but the same did hide + Under a veil that wimpled was full low, + And over all a black stole did she throw; + As one that inly mourned, so was she sad, + And heavy sate upon her palfrey slow. + Seemëd at heart some hidden care she had. + And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she lad. + So pure and innocent as that same lamb + She was, in life and every virtuous lore. + She by descent from royal lineage came. + +Her name, as doubtless you well know, was Una, and, when by foul +enchantment she is severed a while from her true knight, harken with what +a truly feminine note Spenser bewails her misfortune: + + Nought is there under heaven's wide hollowness + Did recover more dear compassion of the mind + Than beauty brought to unworthy wretchedness + Through envy's snare, or fortune's freaks unkind. + I, whether lately through her brightness blind, + Or through allegiance, and fast fealty + Which I do owe unto all womankind, + Feel my heart prest with so great agony, + When such I see, that all for pity I could die. + +Spenser cannot endure the thought of beauty in distress. So at once he +brings upon the scene a ramping lion, which, in the ordinary course of +things would have put a speedy end to her woes. But not so Spenser's lion: + + Instead thereof he kissed her weary feet, + And licked her lily hands with fawning tongue, + As he her wrongëd innocence did weet. + O how can beauty master the most strong. + +And thus he goes on: + + The lion would not leave her desolate, + But with her went along, as a strong guard + Of her chaste person, and a faithful mate + Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard: + Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward, + And when she waked, he waited diligent + With humble service to her will prepared. + +This allegiance and fast fealty which Spenser declares he owes unto all +womankind is the attitude, not only of all true knights and all true +gentlemen, but likewise, I trust, of all true poets. But do not suppose on +that account that Spenser is a feminine poet. He is very much the reverse. +It would be impossible for a poet to be more masculine than he. + + Upon a great adventure he was bound, + +he says at once of his hero, and describes how the knight's heart groaned +to prove his prowess in battle brave. Spenser has the feminine note, but +in subordination to the masculine note; and if I were asked to name some +one quality by which you may know whether a poet be of the very highest +rank, I should be disposed to say, "See if in his poetry you meet with the +feminine note and the masculine note, and if the first be duly +subordinated to the second." + +I wish it were possible, within the limit I have here assigned myself, to +apply this test and pursue this enquiry at length in regard to +Shakespeare, in regard to Milton, and likewise in regard to Dryden and +Pope. But of this I am sure that the wider and deeper the survey the more +clear would be the conclusion that in Shakespeare, as we might have +expected, the masculine note and the feminine note are heard in perfect +harmony, but by far the larger volume of sound proceeds from the former. + +When, then, was it that the feminine note, the domestic or personal note, +the compassionate note or note of pity, the purely sentimental note, was +first heard in English poetry as a note asserting equality with the +masculine note, and tending to assert itself as the dominant note? + +One of the most beautiful and best-known poems in the English language is +Gray's _Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_; and in the following +stanzas which many of you will recognise as belonging to it, do we not +seem to overhear something like the note of which we are in search?-- + + Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade, + Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, + Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, + The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. + + The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, + The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, + The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, + No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. + + For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, + Or busy housewife ply her ev'ning care: + No children run to lisp their sire's return, + Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. + +Here our sympathy is asked, not for kings and princesses, not for great +lords and fine ladies, not for the rise and fall of empires, but for the +rude forefathers of the hamlet, for the busy housewife, for the +hard-working peasant and his children, for homely joys and the annals of +the poor. But Gray does not maintain this note beyond the five stanzas I +have just quoted. He quickly again lapses into the traditional, the +classic, the purely masculine note: + + The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Pow'r, + And all that Beauty, all that Wealth e'er gave, + Await alike th' inevitable hour, + The paths of glory lead but to the grave. + + Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, + If Mem'ry o'er their tombs no trophies raise, + Where through the long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault, + The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. + + Can storied urn, or animated bust, + Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? + Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, + Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death? + +The stanzas that follow are splendid stanzas, but they are the stately and +sonorous verse of a detached and moralising mind, not the pathetic verse +of a sympathising heart. We have to wait another twenty years before we +come upon a poem of consequence in which the feminine note is not only +present, but paramount. In the year 1770, nearly a century and a half +ago, appeared Goldsmith's poem, _The Deserted Village_, and in it I catch, +for the first time, as the prevailing and predominant note, the note of +feminine compassion, the note of humble happiness and humble grief. In +Goldsmith's verse we hear nothing of great folks except to be told how +small and insignificant are the ills which they can cause or cure. + + Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; + A breath can make them, as a breath hath made; + But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, + When once destroyed, can never be supplied. + +Goldsmith's themes in _The Deserted Village_ are avowedly: + + The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, + The never-failing brook, the busy mill, + The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill, + The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, + For talking age and whispering lovers made. + +We seem to have travelled centuries away from the _Troilus and Cressida_, +or the _Palamon and Arcite_ of Chaucer, from the Red Cross Knight and Una, +from the Britomart, the Florimel, the Calidore, the Gloriana of Spenser, +from the kingly ambitions and princely passions of Shakespeare, from the +throes and denunciations of _Paradise Lost_, and equally from the +coffee-house epigrams and savage satire of Pope. We have at last got among +ordinary people, among humble folk, people of our own flesh and blood, +with simple joys and simple sorrows. What could be more unlike the poetry +we have so far been surveying than these lines from _The Deserted +Village_?-- + + Sweet was the sound when oft at evening's close + Up yonder hill the village murmur rose, + There, as I passed, with careless steps and slow, + The mingling notes came softened from below. + The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, + The sober herd that lowed to meet their young, + The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, + The playful children just let loose from school. + +Which of you does not remember the description in the same poem of the +Village Clergyman? the man who was to all his country dear, etc. Some of +you, I daresay, know it by heart. Nothing is too lowly, some would say, +nothing too mean, for Goldsmith's tender Muse. He loves to dwell on the +splendour of the humble parlour, on the whitewashed wall, the sanded +floor, the varnished clock, the chest of drawers, and the chimney-piece +with its row of broken teacups. Truly it is a feminine Muse which can make +poetry, and, in my opinion, very charming poetry, out of broken teacups. + +The feminine note once struck, the note of personal tenderness, of +domestic interest, of compassion for the homely, the suffering, or the +secluded was never again to be absent from English poetry; and Cowper +continued, without a break, the still sad music of humanity first clearly +uttered by Goldsmith. What is the name of Cowper's principal and most +ambitious poem? As you know, it is called _The Task_; and what are the +respective titles of the six books into which it is divided? They are: +_The Sofa_, _The Time-Piece_, _The Garden_, _The Winter Evening_, _The +Winter Morning Walk_, _The Winter Walk at Noon_. Other poems of a kindred +character are entitled _Hope_, _Charity_, _Conversation_, _Retirement_. +Open what page you will of Cowper's verse, and you will be pretty sure to +find him either denouncing things which women, good women, at least, find +abhorrent, such as the slave-trade, gin-drinking, gambling, profligacy, +profane language, or dwelling on occupations which are dear to them. + + O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, + +he exclaims-- + + Some boundless contiguity of shade, + Where rumour of oppression and deceit + Of unsuccessful or successful war, + Might never reach me more! My ear is pained, + My soul is sick with every day's report + Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. + There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, + It does not feel for man. + +These are the opening lines of the _Time-Piece_, and they sound what may +be called the note of feminine indignation; a note which is reverted to by +him again and again. + +More placidly but still in the same spirit, he exclaims: + + Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast, + Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, + And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn + Throws up a steaming column, and the cups + That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, + So let us welcome peaceful evening in. + +Farther on, he describes how-- + + 'Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat + To peep at such a world, to see the stir + Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd. + Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease + The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced + To some secure and more than mortal height, + That liberates and exempts me from them all. + +Again, invoking evening, he says: + + Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm + Or make me so. Composure is thy gift: + And whether I devote the gentle hours of evening + To books, to music, or the poet's toil, + To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit, + Or turning silken threads round ivory reels, + When they command whom man was born to please. + +Could there well be a more feminine picture than that? All the politics, +commerce, passions, conflicts of the world are shut out by Mrs. Unwin's +comfortable curtains, and, with her and Lady Austen for sympathising +companions, the poet fills his time, with perfect satisfaction, by holding +their skeins of wool, and meditating such homely lines as these: + + For I, contented with a humble theme, + Have poured my stream of panegyric down + The vale of nature where it creeps and winds + Among her lovely works, with a secure + And unambitious ease reflecting clear + If not the virtues, yet the worth of brutes. + And I am recompensed, and deem the toils + Of poetry not lost, if verse of mine + May stand between an animal and woe, + And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge. + +Cowper was never married, nor ever, as far as I know, in love, though Lady +Austen, to her and his misfortune, for a time seemed to fancy he was; and +in his verse therefore we do not meet with the note of amatory sentiment. +But what love is there in this world more beautiful, more touching, more +truly romantic, than the love of a mother for her son, and of a son for +his mother? And where has it been more charmingly expressed than in +Cowper's lines on the receipt of his mother's picture? After that +beautiful outburst-- + + O that those lips had language! Life has passed + With me but roughly since I heard thee last + +--he proceeds to recall the home, the scenes, the tender incidents of his +childhood, but, most of all, the fond care bestowed on him by his mother: + + Thy nightly visits to my chamber made + That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid, + Thy fragrant waters on my cheek bestowed + By thy own hand, till fresh they were and glowed, + All this, and more endearing still than all, + Thy constant flow of love that knew no fall, + Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and breaks + That humour interposed too often makes; + All this still legible in memory's page, + And still to be so to my latest age, + Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay + Such honour to thee as my numbers may, + Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, + Not scorned in Heaven, though little noticed here. + +The lines are not in what is called the highest vein of poetry. They have +not the bluff masculinity of Chaucer. They lack the magic of Spenser. They +do not purify the passions through terror as is done by _Lear_ or +_Macbeth_, and they are much inferior in majesty to the + + Cherubic trumpets blowing martial sound + +of Milton. But they come straight from the heart, and go straight to the +heart. They are thoroughly human, what we all have felt, or are much to be +pitied if we have not felt. They are instinct with the holiest form of +domestic piety. They are feminine in the best sense, and have all the +feminine power to attract, to chasten, and to subdue. + +As far as character and conduct are concerned, there could not well be two +poets more unlike than Cowper and Burns; and their poetry is as unlike as +their temperament. I fear Burns indulged in most of the vices against +which Cowper inveighs; and not unoften he glorified them in verse. Upon +that theme do not ask me to dwell this evening. All it is necessary to +point out here is, that in Burns, as in Cowper, and as in Goldsmith, we +have the compassionate note, the note of pity for suffering, of sympathy +with the lowly; in a word, we again have the feminine note. In _The +Cotter's Saturday Night_ Burns paints a picture, as complete as it is +simple, of humble life. We have the cotter returning home through the +chill November blast with the weary beasts; the collecting of his spades, +his mattocks, and his hoes; the arrival at his cottage; the expectant wee +things running out to meet him; the ingle-nook blinking bonnily; the +cheerful supper of wholesome porridge; the reading of a passage from the +Bible, the evening hymn, and the family prayer before retiring to rest. +There is a line in _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ which might be taken as +the text on which most of Burns's poems are written: + + The cottage leaves the palace far behind. + +All his sympathies are with cottages and cottagers, whether he be +expressly describing their existence, writing _A Man's a Man for a' that_, +_The Birks of Aberfeldy_, _Auld Lang Syne_, or addressing lines to a mouse +whose nest he has turned up with his plough. All are written in a spirit +of compassion for suffering, of sympathy with the lowly, of admiration for +honest poverty. They are fundamentally tender, and, though expressed in +manly fashion enough, fundamentally feminine, the poetry of a man who +lived habitually under the influence of women. + +I think it will be allowed that I have given no grudging admiration to the +feminine note in English poetry, and in so far as it is a note of sympathy +with the more humble and less fortunate ones of the earth. But, in verse, +kindly and compassionate sentiment is not everything. Indeed, it is +nothing at all unless it be expressed in such a manner, the manner +suffused with charm of style, that it is thereby raised to the dignity of +true poetry. There are many excellent persons who accept as poetry any +sentiment, or any opinion expressed in metre with which they happen to +agree. But neither sound opinion nor wholesome sentiment suffices to +produce that exceedingly delicate and subtle thing which alone is rightly +termed poetry, and, in abandoning lofty themes, and descending to humbler +ones, writers of verse unquestionably expose themselves to the danger not +only of not rising above the level of their subject, but even of sinking +below it. The Romans had a proverb that you cannot carve a Mercury out of +every piece of wood, meaning thereby that by reason of Mercury not being a +standing or reposing figure, but a figure flying through the air, and +therefore with limbs and wings extended, the material out of which he is +made has to be both considerable in size and excellent in quality. What is +true of Mercury is truer still of Apollo. You cannot make poetry out of +every subject; and your only chance of making poetry out of any subject is +to do so by treating the subject either nobly, or with charm. Realism, +unadulterated Realism, which is a dangerous experiment in prose, is a +sheer impossibility in poetry; for in poetry what is offered us, and what +delights us, is not realistic but ideal representation. No doubt the very +music of verse is part of the means whereby this ideal representation is +effected; but it will not of itself suffice, as may easily be proved by +reciting mere nonsense verses in which the rhythm or music may be +faultless. I could quote page after page from Cowper, which is verse only, +and not poetry, because it is nothing more than the bare statement of a +fact set forth in lines consisting of so many feet. Here, for instance, is +a specimen. It comes in his poem on _The Sofa_: + + Joint-stools were then created, on three legs, + Upborne they stood: three legs upholding firm + A mossy slab, in fashion square or round. + At length a generation more refined + Improved the simple plan, made three legs four, + Gave them a twisted form vermicular + And o'er the seat with plenteous wadding stuffed + Induced a splendid cover, green and blue, + Yellow and red, of tapestry richly wrought, + And woven close, or needlework sublime. + +Perhaps you think this is a parody of Cowper. But I can assure you it is +nothing of the kind. It was written by the poet himself; and in his +abounding pages you will find hundreds of verses of this realistic and +pedestrian character. But not Cowper alone, one much greater than Cowper, +one who rose over and over again to the very heaven of poesy, Wordsworth +himself, has likewise left hundreds, aye, thousands of verses, little +better than the passage I have just read from Cowper, through the mistaken +notion that kindly feeling, compassion for the poor and the patient, and +sound moral sentiments, when expressed in verse, must result in poetry. +There is no one here whose admiration of Wordsworth at his best can be +greater than mine, but, in order to show you how the feminine note in +poetry, the note of sympathy with the weak, the obscure, and the +unfortunate, can even in the voice of a great master of poetry, lapse into +verse utterly destitute of the soul and spirit of poetry, I will ask you +to allow me to read you a portion of _Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman_: + + And he is lean and he is sick; + His body, dwindled and awry, + Rests upon ankles swoln and thick; + His legs are thin and dry. + One prop he has, and only one, + His Wife, an aged woman, + Lives with him, near the waterfall, + Upon the village Common. + + Oft, working by her husband's side, + Ruth does what Simon cannot do; + For she, with scanty cause for pride, + Is stouter of the two. + And though you with your utmost skill + From labour could not wean them, + Alas! 'tis very little--all + Which they can do between them. + + O Reader! had you in your mind + Such stores as silent thought can bring, + O gentle Reader! you would find + A tale in everything. + What more I have to say is short, + And you must kindly take it: + It is no tale; but, should you _think_, + Perhaps a tale you'll make it. + +Is not that sorry stuff, regarded as poetry? Wordsworth here had the +assistance of the music, not only of verse, but of rhyme; and with what a +result! It is the feminine note of pity in its dotage, whereby we see +that it is not enough to have a warm heart, to have tender feelings, to be +full of sympathy for the suffering, and then to express them in verse. In +the prose of conversation and of everyday life, kindly feeling is all well +enough. But the Heavenly Muse will not place herself at our disposal so +readily and cheaply. She is a very difficult lady, is the Heavenly Muse, +not easily won, and never allowing you, if you want to remain in her good +graces, to approach her, that is to say, in dressing gown and slippers. +She is the noblest and most gracious lady in the world, and the best, the +most refined, the most elevating of companions. Therefore you must come +into her presence and win her favour, not with free-and-easy gait and in +slovenly attire, but arrayed in your very best, and with courtly and +deferential mien. When poets wrote of gods and goddesses, of mighty +sieges, and of the foundation and fall of empires; when their theme was +the madness of princes, and the tragic fate of kings, when their hero was +Lucifer, Son of the Morning, nay, even when they discoursed of free will +and fate, or of the drawing-room intrigues of persons to whom powder, +patches, billets-doux were the chief things in existence, there was no +need to remind them that their style must be as lofty, as dignified, as +refined, or as finished as their subject. No doubt, they sometimes waxed +stilted and fell into excess, whether in rhetoric or in conceits, but they +never forgot themselves so far as to be slovenly or familiar. Stella, you +know, said Swift could write beautifully about a broomstick. Possibly he +could; but note the concession, that if a man writes, at least if he would +write poetry, he must write _beautifully_. Both Cowper and Wordsworth set +the example of writing verse that is not beautiful, though indeed Young +in his _Night Thoughts_, and Thomson in _The Seasons_, had already done +something of the same kind. But they have not the authority of Cowper, +much less the authority of Wordsworth. Let who will be the authority for +it, prosaic utterance in verse, realism in rhyme, no matter what the +subject, is an incongruity that cannot be too severely condemned. A very +large proportion of the verse of Crabbe, once so popular, but now, I +fancy, but little read, is of little value, by reason of the presence of +this defect. Yet while I indicate, and venture to reprove, the feebleness +into which the feminine note in English poetry has too often declined and +deteriorated, never let us forget that it has contributed lovely and +immortal poetry to the language, poetry to be found in Wordsworth, poetry +such as melts us almost to tears in Hood's _Song of the Shirt_, or in Mrs. +Barrett Browning's _The Cry of the Children_. Horace, who was a great +critic as well as a great poet, said long ago that it is extremely +difficult to express oneself concerning ordinary everyday facts and +feelings in a becoming and agreeable manner; and to do this in verse +demands supreme genius. As a set-off to the example of feebleness I just +now cited in Wordsworth, listen how, when the mood of inspiration is on +him, he can see a Highland girl reaping in a field--surely an ordinary +everyday sight--and threw around her the heavenly halo of the divinest +poetry: + + Behold her, single in the field, + Yon solitary Highland Lass! + Reaping and singing by herself; + Stop here, or gently pass! + Alone she cuts, and binds the grain, + And sings a melancholy strain; + O listen! for the Vale profound + Is overflowing with the sound. + + No Nightingale did ever chaunt + So sweetly to reposing bands + Of Travellers in some shady haunt, + Among Arabian sands: + A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard + In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, + Breaking the silence of the seas + Among the farthest Hebrides. + + Will no one tell me what she sings? + Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow + For old, unhappy, far-off things, + And battles long ago: + Or is it some more humble lay, + Familiar matter of to-day? + Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, + That has been, and may be again? + + Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang + As if her song could have no ending; + I saw her singing at her work, + And o'er the sickle bending;-- + I listened till I had my fill, + And when I mounted up the hill, + The music in my heart I bore, + Long after it was heard no more. + +But there is another manifestation of the feminine note in English poetry, +distinct from, though doubtless akin to, the one we have been considering; +a note which likewise was not heard in it till about a hundred years ago, +but which has been heard very frequently since, and which seems at times +to threaten to become its dominant and all-prevailing note, or at any rate +the only one that is keenly listened to. Instead of the note of interest +in and pity for others, it has become the note of interest in and pity +either for oneself, or for one's other self; a note so strongly personal +and suggestive as to become egotistic and entirely self-regarding. This +is the amatory or erotic note, which I think you will all recognise when I +give it that designation; the note which appears to consider the love of +the sexes as the only important thing in life, and certainly the only +thing worth writing or singing about. More than two thousand years ago, a +Greek poet wrote a lyric beginning, "I would fain sing of the heroes of +the House of Atreus, I would fain chant the glories of the line of Cadmus; +but my lyre refuses to sound any note save that of love." In these days +the poet who expressed that sentiment and acted on it would have a great +many listeners; and no doubt Anacreon, too, had his audience in ancient +Greece. But he was not ranked by them side by side with their great poets +who _did_ take the tragic story of the House of Atreus for their theme. It +can only be when feminine influence is supreme in society and in +literature, and when the feminine note in poetry has become, or threatens +to become, paramount, that the sentiment and practice of Anacreon is +viewed with approbation and favour. Byron has said in a well-known +passage: + + For love is of man's life a thing apart; + 'Tis woman's whole existence. + +If I know anything about women, that is a gross exaggeration, unless in +the term love be included love of parents, love of brothers and sisters, +love of children, in a word, every form and manifestation of affection. +Still it is not necessary to deny--indeed if it be true it is necessary to +admit--that love, in the narrower if more intense signification of the +word, does play a larger part in the lives, or at any rate in the +imagination, of most women than it does in the lives and the imagination +of most men; and it is not to be denied that practically all women, and a +fair sprinkling of men, now take an almost exclusive interest in the +amatory note in poetry. Nor let any one say that this was always so, and +that poetry and poets have from time immemorial occupied themselves mainly +with the passion of love. Indeed they have not done so. It would be to +show an utter ignorance of the genius of Homer, of the great Greek +dramatists, of Virgil, of Dante, of Spenser, of Shakespeare, of Milton, +and of the temper of the times in which they lived, to say that they could +sound only notes of love. They sounded these sometimes, but seldom and +rarely, in comparison with their other and more masculine notes, and +always in due subordination to these. I will not go so far as to say that +they thought, with Napoleon, that love is the occupation of the idle, and +the idleness of the occupied, but they knew that however absorbing for a +season the passion of love as described by many poets and by nearly all +modern novelists may be, it _is_ a thing apart; and, as such, they dealt +with it. They did not ignore its existence, or even its importance, but +they did not exaggerate its existence and its importance, relatively to +other interests, other occupations, other duties in life. It was because +of the high fealty and allegiance which Spenser declared he owed to all +womankind that he did not represent women as perpetually sighing or being +sighed for by men. It was because Shakespeare had such absolute +familiarity, not with this or that part of life, but with the whole of it, +that even in _Romeo and Juliet_, in _Othello_, in _Measure for Measure_, +and again in _As You Like It_, he represented the passion of love at work +and in operation along with other sentiments and other passions; and, in +the greater portion of his dramas either does not introduce it at all, or +assigns to it a quite subordinate place. In _Romeo and Juliet_ the brave +Mercutio, the Tybalt "deaf to peace," the garrulous nurse, the true +apothecary, the comfortable Friar, as Juliet calls him, all these and +more, have their exits and their entrances, and all, in turn, demand our +attention. _Romeo and Juliet_ is a love-drama indeed; but even in _Romeo +and Juliet_, though love occupies the foremost place and plays the leading +part, it stands in relation to other passions and other characters, and +moves onward to its doom surrounded and accompanied by a medley of other +circumstances and occurrences; just as true love, even the most +engrossing, does in real life. The same just apprehension of life, the +same observance of accurate proportion between the action of love and the +action of other passions and other interests, may be observed in +_Othello_. Othello is not represented merely as a man who is consumed and +maddened by jealousy, but as a citizen and a soldier, encompassed by +friends and enemies, and brought into contact, not with Desdemona and Iago +alone, but with the Duke of Venice, with valiant Cassio, with witty +Montano, with Brabantio, with Gratiano, in a word with people and things +in general. + +Neither would it be any more to the purpose to object that Herrick, that +Suckling, that Lovelace, and other poets of the seventeenth century wrote +love-lyrics by the score, with many of which I have no doubt you are +acquainted, and some of which are very beautiful. For these, for the most +part, were amatory exercises, not real breathing and burning love-poems; +dainty works of art sometimes, but not sicklied o'er with the pale cast of +amatory passion. They were seventeenth-century reminiscences of the +conventional love-lyrics of the Troubadours of Provence, when there +existed an imaginary court of Love and a host of imaginary lovers. +Indeed, if I were asked what was the truest and most succinct note uttered +by their English imitators, I think I should have to say that I seem to +catch it most distinctly in the lines of Suckling beginning: + + Why so pale and wan, fond lover? + Prithee, why so pale? + +--and ending with: + + If of herself she will not love, + Nothing can make her: + The devil take her! + +But we catch a very different amatory note, and that of the most personal +and earnest kind, when the voice of Burns, and then the voice of Byron, +were heard in English poetry. In Byron the note is almost always +passionate. In Burns it is sometimes sentimental, sometimes jovial, +sometimes humorous, sometimes frankly and offensively coarse. Many readers +cannot do full justice to the North-Country dialect in the following +lines, but the most Southern of accents could not quite spoil their simple +beauty: + + The westlin wind blaws loud an' shrill; + The night's baith mirk and rainy, O; + But I'll get my plaid, an' out I'll steal, + An' owre the hills to Nannie, O. + + Her face is fair, her heart is true, + As spotless as she's bonnie, O: + The op'ning gowan, wat wi' dew, + Nae purer is than Nannie, O. + +That is one amatory, one feminine note in Burns. Here is another: + + There's nought but care on every han', + In every hour that passes, O; + What signifies the life o' man, + An' 'twere na for the lasses, O. + + Auld Nature swears the lovely dears + Her noblest work she classes, O: + Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, + An' then she made the lasses, O. + +I have no fault to find with these lines. They express a profound and +enduring truth; and, if they do so with some little exaggeration, they do +it half humorously, and so protect themselves against criticism. But I +really think--I hope you will not deem me unchivalrous in saying so--we +have, during the present century, heard too much, both in poetry and in +prose romance, as we are now hearing too much in newspapers and magazines, +of "the lasses, O." Not that we can hear too much of them in their +relation to each other, to men, and to life. The "too much" I indicate is +the too much of romantic love, that leaves no place for other emotions and +other passions equally worthy, or relegates these to an inferior position +and to a narrower territory. I should say that there is rather too much of +the sentimental note in Byron, in Shelley, in Keats, just as I should say +that there is not too much of it in Wordsworth or in Scott. To say this is +not to decry Byron, Shelley, and Keats--what lover of poetry would dream +of decrying such splendid poets as they?--but only to indicate a certain +tendency against which I cannot help feeling it is well to be on our +guard. The tendency of the times is to encourage writers, whether in prose +or verse, to deal with this particular theme and to deal with it too +frequently and too pertinaciously. Moreover, there is always a danger that +a subject, in itself so delicate, should not be quite delicately +handled, and indeed that it should be treated with indelicacy and +grossness. That, too, unfortunately, has happened in verse; and when +that happens, then I think the Heavenly Muse veils her face and weeps. It +must have been through some dread of poetry thus dishonouring itself that +Plato in his ideal Republic proposed that poets should be crowned with +laurel, and then banished from the city. For my part, I would willingly +see such poets banished from the city, but not crowned with laurel. No +doubt Plato's notion that poets should chant nothing but hymns to the Gods +and praises of virtue is a little narrow and exacting, but if they are to +sing songs worthy of themselves, and of mankind, they must be on the side +of virtue and of the Gods. Hark with what perfect delicacy a masculine +poet like Scott can deal with a feminine theme: + + What though no rule of courtly grace + To measured mood had trained her pace, + A foot more light, a step more true + Ne'er from the heath-flower dashed the dew. + Ev'n the light harebell raised its head, + Elastic from her airy tread. + What though upon her speech there hung + The accents of the mountain tongue? + Those solemn sounds, so soft, so clear, + The listener held his breath to hear. + +That is how manly poets write and think of women. But they do not dwell +over much on the theme; they do not harp on it; and when you turn the +page, you read in a totally different key: + + The fisherman forsook the strand, + The swarthy smith took dirk and brand; + With changëd cheer the mower blythe + Left in the half-cut swathe the scythe. + The herds without a keeper strayed, + The plough was in mid-furrow stayed. + The falconer tossed his hawk away, + The hunter left the stag at bay. + Prompt at the signal of alarms, + Each son of Albion rushed to arms. + So swept the tumult and affray + Along the margin of Achray. + +Does it not remind you of the passage I quoted from Homer, where Hector +says to Andromache, "Go! to your house, and see to your loom and distaff, +but for war men will provide"? Scott, like Homer, observed the due +proportion between love and life, giving love ample room, but not +allotting it excessive space. If again one wants to hear how delicately, +how worthily, how manfully, poets can write of love and of women, what can +one do better than recall this perfect lyric of Wordsworth's?-- + + Three years she grew in sun and shower, + Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower + On earth was never sown; + This Child I to myself will take; + She shall be mine, and I will make + A Lady of my own. + + "Myself will to my darling be + Both law and impulse: and with me + The Girl, in rock and plain, + In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, + Shall feel an overseeing power + To kindle or restrain. + + "She shall be sportive as the Fawn + That wild with glee across the lawn + Or up the mountain springs; + And hers shall be the breathing balm, + And hers the silence and the calm + Of mute insensate things. + + "The floating Clouds their state shall lend + To her; for her the willow bend; + Nor shall she fail to see + Even in the motions of the Storm + Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form + By silent sympathy. + + "The Stars of midnight shall be dear + To her; and she shall lean her ear + In many a secret place + Where Rivulets dance their wayward round, + And beauty born of murmuring sound + Shall pass into her face. + + "And vital feelings of delight + Shall rear her form to stately height, + Her virgin bosom swell; + Such thoughts to Lucy I will give + While she and I together live + Here in this happy Dell." + + Thus Nature spake--The work was done-- + How soon my Lucy's race was run! + She died, and left to me + This heath, this calm and quiet scene; + The memory of what has been, + And never more will be. + +Neither should I like it to be supposed that I think Byron could not write +on this same theme in the noblest manner. He did so frequently; he would +not have been the great poet he is if he had not done so. Listen to this, +for example: + + She walks in beauty, like the night + Of cloudless climes and starry skies, + And all that's best of dark and light + Meet in her aspect and her eyes. + Thus mellowed to that tender light + Which Heaven to gaudy day denies. + + One shade the more, one ray the less, + Had half impaired the nameless grace + Which waves in every raven tress, + Or softly lightens o'er her face, + Where thoughts serenely sweet express + How pure, how dear, their dwelling place. + + And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, + So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, + The smiles that win, the tints that glow, + But tell of days in goodness spent, + A mind at peace with all below, + A heart whose love is innocent. + +Women are honoured and exalted when they are sung of in that manner. They +are neither honoured nor exalted, they are dishonoured and degraded, when +they are represented, either in prose or verse, as consuming their days in +morbid longings and sentimental regrets, and men are represented as having +nothing to do save to stimulate or satisfy such feelings. What is written +in prose is not here my theme. I am writing of poets and poetry, and of +the readers of poetry. Novelists and novel-readers are a different and +separate subject. But I may say in passing that poetry and the readers of +poetry have suffered somewhat during the present generation from novels +and novel-readers. A newer and narrower standard of human interest has +been set up; and while the great bulk of readers have turned from poetry +to prose romances, writers of verse have too frequently tried to compete +with novelists, by treating love as the central interest and the main +business of life. Homer did not think it such, neither did Virgil, nor +Dante, nor Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare, nor Milton, and let us +not think so. I urge every one, every now and again at least, to lay down +the novel and open the poem: but let it be a poem that will enlarge one's +conception of life, that will help one to think loftily, and to feel +nobly, will teach us that there is something more important to ourselves +even than _ourselves_, something more important and deserving of attention +than one's own small griefs and own petty woes, the vast and varied +drama of History, the boundless realm of the human imagination, and the +tragic interests and pathetic struggles of mankind. We need not close our +ear to the feminine note, but should not listen to it over much. The +masculine note is necessarily dominant in life; and the note that is +dominant in life should be dominant in literature, and, most of all, in +poetry. + + + + +MILTON AND DANTE: A COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST + + +No celebrations in our time have been more serious, more scholarly, or +more impressive, than the various gatherings, held during the year lately +come to end, in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of the +birth of Milton. The earliest was held, with peculiar appropriateness, at +Christ College, Cambridge, in the month of June. In the hall of the +college was given a dinner, presided over by the Master, who had gathered +round him men holding high positions alike at Cambridge and Oxford, and +poets, scholars, artists, historians, and essayists of true distinction. +On this occasion an admirable eulogium of Milton was pronounced by Mr. +Mackail. The dinner was succeeded by a representation of _Comus_ in the +theatre of the town, by the students of the University, with all the charm +that usually accompanies the efforts of competent amateurs. With the +advent of the exact date of the tercentenary the celebrations were many in +number and interesting in variety, in which the members of the British +Academy took a prominent part. On December 9 a musical celebration was +held in the afternoon in the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, at which the +Bishop of Ripon delivered an eloquent sermon; and at the same hour the +writer of this paper gave a private lecture before the Dante Society, from +the notes of which this article is expanded. In the evening he had the +honour of attending and responding to the toast of Poetry, proposed by the +Italian ambassador, at the banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London at +the Mansion House, to the largest and most impressive gathering of men of +eminence in letters, the arts, the drama, the law, and the Legislature, +that has ever met in that spacious hall of traditionally magnificent +hospitality. A week later a performance of _Samson Agonistes_ was given in +the Burlington Theatre before a large and representative audience. The +more serious section of the daily press, moreover, allotted much space to +reports of the celebrations in honour of Milton, the _Times_ maintaining +in this respect its best traditions. + +No one, therefore, can say that the birth, the poetry and prose, the +character and the career and the influence of Milton have not been +solemnly celebrated by his countrymen. But it is necessary to add, in the +interests of truth, that the celebrations were essentially and exclusively +scholarly, and were hardly, if at all, shared in by the nation at large. +The intellectual sympathies of the educated were warmly touched, but the +heart of the British people was not reached. + +Now let us turn--for the subject of this paper is not Milton alone, but +Milton and Dante--to the sexcentenary of the birth of Dante in the city of +Florence, the month and year of his birth having been May 1265. I had been +spending the winter in the City of Flowers, and I could not leave it, in +order to journey northward, till after the Dante Commemoration had been +held. I shall never forget it. From dawn to dusk the entire Florentine +people held joyous festival; and, with the coming of night, not only the +entire city, its palaces, its bridges, its Duomo, its Palazzo Vecchio, +that noblest symbol of civic liberty, but indeed all its thoroughfares and +the banks of its river broke into lovely light produced by millions of +little cressets filled with olive oil, and every villa round was similarly +illuminated. The pavement of the famous square of the Uffizi Palace was +boarded over; and overhead was spread a canvas covering dyed with the +three Italian national colours. Thither thronged hundreds of peasant men +and women, who danced and made merry till the early hours of the morning. +At the Pagliano Theatre were given _tableaux vivants_ representing the +most famous episodes in the _Divina Commedia_, Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi +reciting the corresponding passages from that immortal poem. + +What a comparison, what a contrast it suggests between the solemn, +serious, but limited honour done by us to Milton, and the exultant, +universal, national honour paid by his countrymen to Dante! I should add +that eight thousand Italian municipalities sent a deputation carrying +their local pennons to the square of Santa Croce, where a statue of Dante +was unveiled, amid thunderous applause, to popular gaze. + +Now let us turn to a more personal contrast between the two poets. To many +persons, probably to most in these days, the most interesting feature in +the life of a poet is his relation to the sex that is commonly assumed, +perhaps not quite correctly, to be the more romantic of the two. In +comparing Dante and Milton in that respect one is struck at once by the +fact that, while with Dante are not only associated, but inseparably +interwoven, the name and person of Beatrice, so that the two seem in our +minds but one, knit by a spiritual love stronger even than any bond +sanctioned by domestic law for happiness and social stability, Milton had +no Beatrice. It would be idle to contend that the absence of such love has +not detracted, and will not continue to detract, from the interest felt in +Milton and his poetry, not perhaps by scholars, but by the world at large, +and the average lover of poetry and poets. For just as women can do much, +to use a phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, towards "making a poet out +of a man," so can they do even more, either by spiritual influence or by +consummate self-sacrifice, to widen the field and deepen the intensity of +his fame. No poet ever enjoyed this advantage so conspicuously as Dante. +It will perhaps be said that this was effected more by himself than by +her. Let us not be too sure of that. In Italy, far more than in northern +climes, first avowals of love are made by the eyes rather than by the +tongue, by tell-tale looks more than by explicit words. What says +Shakespeare, who knew men and women equally well? + + A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon + Than love that would seem hid. Love's night is noon. + +Dante's own account of his first meeting with Beatrice confirms this +surmise. This is what he himself says, after Beatrice, as Boccaccio +relates, "very winning, very graceful, in aspect very beautiful," had +turned her gaze on Dante from time to time at their first meeting. "At +that moment the spirit of life which abides in the most secret chamber of +the heart began to tremble, and tremulously it spake these words, 'Behold +a god stronger than I, who cometh to lord it over me.'" These may perhaps +seem strange words in which to record the first meeting of a boy of nine +with a girl of eight. But, over and above the fact that they are the +record, written several years later, of the feeling aroused by that first +meeting, allowance must be made for the proverbial precocity of genius, +and also for that of southern over northern temperaments. Its genuineness +is confirmed by the whole sequel, as testified by the _Vita Nuova_ and the +_Divina Commedia_; the presiding presence of Beatrice in both having long +before been anticipated by the words, "If it shall please Him, by whom all +things live, to spare my life for some years longer, I hope to say that of +her which never yet hath been said of any lady." How completely that hope +was attained is to be seen in the closing canto of the _Purgatorio_ and in +the whole of the _Paradiso_. + +The life and poetry of Milton contain nothing (if exception be made of his +beautiful and lofty sonnet, written in the very spirit of the _Divina +Commedia_, on his second wife, "Methought I saw my late espousèd Saint") +to compare with Dante's love, at once real and ideal, masculine yet +mystical, for Beatrice. The language used by Eve in addressing Adam, in +_Paradise Lost_-- + + My author and disposer, what thou bidst + Unargued I obey, so God ordains. + God is thy law, thou mine-- + +and the very choice of a subject the dominating incident of which is +described by the well-known words, "The woman did give me, and I did eat," +would almost seem to indicate that Milton's conception of woman, and his +attitude towards her, were such as can be attributed to no other poet. It +is the attitude of unqualified masculine domination. Again, in _Samson +Agonistes_ the very centre and pith of the poem is the incorrigible +frailty and inferiority of women--a thesis that would be extraordinary, +even if true, for a poet. Samson starts with a reproval of himself for +weakly revealing the secret of his strength to the persistent subtlety of +a woman, "that species monster, my accomplished snare," as he calls +Dalila, since "yoked her bond-slave by foul effeminacy"--a servitude he +stigmatises as "ignominious and infamous," whereby he is "shamed, +dishonoured, quelled." When Dalila, profoundly penitent for what she has +done, thereby incurring his displeasure, prostrates herself before him, +and sues for pardon, he spurns her from him with the words, + + Out, out, hyæna! these are thy wonted arts, + +and goes on to say they are the arts of every woman, "to deceive, betray," +and then to "feign remorse." With abject humility she confesses that +curiosity to learn all secrets, and then to publish them, are "common +female faults incident to all our sex." This only causes him to insult and +spurn her yet more fiercely; and he declares that God sent her to "debase +him"--one of those theological peculiarities which apparently made God an +accomplice with "this viper," for which the non-Calvinistic Christian +finds it difficult to account. + +Nor can it be said that Milton is here, like Shakespeare, speaking only +dramatically and objectively. The Chorus in _Samson Agonistes_ is of his +opinion, declaring that the man is favoured of heaven who discovers "one +virtuous woman, rarely found"; and that is why + + God's universal law + Gave to the man despotic power + Over his female in due awe, + Nor from that right to part, an hour, + Smiles she or lour. + +After delivering itself of these opinions, the Chorus suddenly exclaims, +"I see a storm," which, in the circumstances, is perhaps scarcely +wonderful. + +What a different note is this from that struck by Dante, when he speaks of +"that blessed Beatrice, who now dwells in heaven with the angels, and on +earth in my heart, and with whom my soul is still in love." Far from +thinking that severe command on the part of the one and unquestioning +submission on the part of the other form the proper relation of lover and +maiden, husband and wife, Dante avers that + + Amor e cor gentil son' una cosa, + +that love and a gracious gentle heart are one and the same thing; and in +the _Paradiso_, shortly before the close of the poem, he exclaims: + + O Beatrice! dolce guida e cara. + +It may perhaps be thought that one might be more lenient towards Milton's +foibles, especially at such a time as the present, in contrasting his +attitude towards woman with that of Dante. But in Milton there was so much +that was noble, so pathetic, and even so attractive, that he can well +afford to have the truth told concerning him; and to omit his view of the +most important of all personal relations in life, as depicted for and +bequeathed to us in his poetry, would be to leave an obvious gap of the +utmost import in comparing and contrasting him with Dante. + +But now let us ask, in order to redress the balance, what has Dante to +show, in kind, against _Il Penseroso_, _L'Allegro_, _Lycidas_, and +_Comus_? I put the prose works of both poets aside; and there remains on +the side of Dante only the self-same Dante from first to last, the Dante +of the _Vita Nuova_ and the _Divina Commedia_. Milton, as a poet, had, on +the contrary, a brilliant, an attractive, and a poetically productive +youth. If Dante ever was young in the same sense, he has left no trace of +it in his poetry. Save for Beatrice, there is an austerity even in the +most tender passages of his verse. He seems never to relax in his gravity, +I had almost said in his severity. His very love for Florence is +expressed, for the most part, in harsh upbraiding. An unrelenting awe +dominates his poetry. For Virgil he entertains a humble far-off reverence. +There is no poet of whom it can be so truly said that he remained +unchanged from first to last, and presents to us only one aspect +throughout his works. In reading the English poet one finds oneself in the +presence of two Miltons, not unlike each other in the splendid quality of +the verse, but profoundly differing in tone, temperament, and outlook on +life. In the author of _L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, _Lycidas_, and +_Comus_ there is a youthful buoyancy, an all-pervading cheerful +seriousness worthy of one complacently but justly confident of his powers, +in no degree at war with the world, but on amicable terms with it, and +regarding life on the whole, and on its human side, as a thing to +sympathise with and enjoy. Hear the young Milton's invitation to vernal +exultation and joy: + + But come, thou goddess fair and free, + In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, + And, by men, heart-easing Mirth, + Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, + With two sister Graces more, + To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore; + Or whether (as some sages sing) + The frolic wind that breathes the spring, + Zephyr, with Aurora playing, + As he met her once a-Maying; + There, on beds of violets blue, + And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew, + Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair, + So buxom, blithe, and debonnair. + +What is there in Dante to compare with that? There is much by way of +contrast, but no note anywhere in his verse so generous, so exhilarating, +so thoroughly human. And this is how Milton, in the April of his days, +continues: + + Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee + Jest, and youthful jollity, + Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, + Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles, + Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, + And love to live in dimple sleek; + Sport that wrinkled Care derides, + And Laughter holding both his sides. + Come and trip it, as you go, + On the light fantastic toe; + And in thy right hand lead with thee + The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty; + And, if I give thee honour due, + Mirth, admit me of thy crew, + To live with her, and live with thee, + In unreprovëd pleasures free. + +And what, in the yet happy and in no degree morose Milton, are the +"unreproved pleasures"? They are: + + To hear the lark begin his flight, + And, singing, startle the dull night, + From his watch-tower in the skies, + Till the dappled dawn doth rise; + Then to come, in spite of sorrow, + And at my window bid good-morrow, + Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, + Or the twisted eglantine; + While the cock, with lively din, + Scatters the rear of darkness thin, + And to the stack, or the barn-door, + Stoutly struts his dames before: + Oft listening how the hounds and horn + Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, + From the side of some hoar hill, + Through the high wood echoing shrill. + +Where is the stern Puritan Milton in these cheerful, generous verses? +Where the detester and active enemy of the Cavaliers in the lines that +follow, dwelling proudly on the + + Towers and battlements ... + Bosom'd high in tufted trees, + +the homes of the hereditary gentlemen of England? And think of the lines +"Then to the spicy nut-brown ale," down to "The first cock his matin +rings." They are almost Shakespearean in their sympathy with mirth and +laughter, their enjoyment of harmless practical jokes, their boundless +indulgence to human nature. And what is the conclusion of the poem? + + These delights if thou canst give, + Mirth, with thee I mean to live. + +There exists in no language a more lyrical outburst inspired by the +hey-day of life, and lavishly radiating rustic joy. They are as jocund as +a gipsy rondeau of Haydn, as gracious as the tapestries of Fragonard, as +tender as the Amorini of Albani, and as serenely cheerful as the matchless +melodies of Mozart. You may read every line, whether in verse or prose, +that Dante ever wrote, and you will come across no such spring-like note +as this. Frequently he is tearful, tender, pathetic, and paternally +compassionate, but nowhere does he express the faintest sympathy with +"Laughter holding both its sides." + +Gradually, however, there stole over the younger Milton a great, a grave +change. His domestic experiences with his first wife could not have +ministered to his happiness or content; experiences partly caused by the +somewhat worldly ideals and desires of his spouse, but still more, +perhaps, by his theory that what the husband bids it is the duty of the +wife "unargued to obey." + +Meanwhile the promptings of his muse slackening for a long interval--an +experience that has happened in the lives of other poets--he turned to +prose, and to the controversial side of prose. Being of a dogmatic +temperament, he quickly became involved in the acerbities of political, +theological, and ethical polemics. For a time he employed his +uncompromising pen on what seemed to be the winning side. But the aims of +the ruling party in the Commonwealth were not then, any more than they are +now, in harmony with the main character and ideals of the English people; +and Milton found himself not only in the camp of the vanquished, but +indicated by his previous actions as an object for Anglican and Royalist +retaliation. The buoyant elasticity of youth had subsided in him; even the +generous vigour of early manhood had vanished; and he found himself, in +advanced middle life, disappointed and disheartened. The natural austerity +of his character and principles deepened with his new situation and +changed outlook. He had fallen, as he thought, on evil days and evil +tongues; and, scandalised by the sensual levity of the King's Court and +favourites, he pondered with almost exultant and vindictive retrospect on +Adam and Eve's first disobedience and its fruits, and devoted his severe +genius and magnificent diction to justifying the ways of God to man. + +The Milton of these later years was bowed down by many family vexations, +some of them due, no doubt, to his own exacting character and ideas. He +was baffled and beaten in the political field where he had been so doughty +a combatant, and for a time a triumphant one, and was finally deprived of +all hope of regaining his pristine position; and last, and saddest of all, +there fell on him total blindness, which, after his magnificent apostrophe +to _Holy Light, Offspring of Heaven first-born_, he touchingly laments in +the well-known but never too often to be recited passage in the third book +of _Paradise Lost_: + + I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, + Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down + The dark descent, and up to reascend, + Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe, + And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou + Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain + To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; + So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs, + Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more + Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt + Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, + Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief + Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, + That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow, + Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget + Those other two equall'd with me in fate, + So were I equall'd with them in renown, + Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, + And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old. + Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move + Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird + Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid + Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year + Seasons return, but not to me returns + Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, + Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; + But cloud instead, and ever-during dark + Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men + Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair + Presented with a universal blank + Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased, + And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. + So much the rather, thou celestial light, + Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers + Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence + Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell + Of things invisible to mortal sight. + +Could there be poetry of the personal kind more free from reprehensible +egotism, more dignified, more majestic, and at the same time more pathetic +than that? Let us recur to it, and read it, when we are tempted to judge +Milton harshly for any less admirable, less lovable characteristics, from +which no mortal can be wholly free; and the verdict must be, "Everything +is forgiven him, because he suffered much, and expressed those sufferings +in his verse, the truest exponent of his deepest feelings, with +magnanimous and magnificent serenity." Nor let it ever be lost sight of +that, though in the political and theological domain he was anything but +free from fanaticism and bitter partisanship, he uniformly fought for +liberty of speech and printing--liberty, of all our possessions the most +precious, and for the safety and stability of the State the most +indispensable condition. To what extent, in the part Dante played in the +local politics of Florence, which led to his exile, he too was fighting +for liberty, in the sense in which I have just expressed it, it is not +possible for a dispassionate person to hold a confident opinion. In all +probability liberty, as we understand the word, was struggled for and +understood neither by him nor by those who drove him into exile. But, like +Milton, he bore his ostracism with manly dignity, consoling himself and +enriching posterity with a splendid poem, and only craving for safe +shelter and peace, as he said at the monastery gate: _Son' uno che implora +pace_. + +In comparing Milton and Dante one might justly be reproached for an +obvious omission if one did not refer, however briefly, to the intense +love of both for music. Very recently Mr. W. H. Hadow, than whom no one +writes with more knowledge or sympathy of music, lectured before the Royal +Society of Literature on Milton's love and knowledge of it. Music, he +truly said, was Milton's most intimate of delights; and he referred to +what Johnson relates of the poet's constantly playing on the organ. In the +second canto of the _Purgatorio_ Dante recognises the musician Casella, +hails him as "Casella mio," and begs him who on earth had soothed Dante's +soul with music to do the same for him now. Casella obeys, and Dante says +it was done so sweetly that he can hear him still; words that recall +Wordsworth's lovely couplet: + + The music in my heart I bore + Long after it was heard no more. + +To my great surprise an eminent man of letters, who is also a poet, said +to me recently that the present writer was one of the few writers of verse +he knew who loved music, and who continually asked for music, more music, +adding that poets, as a rule, did not care for it. I was amazed, and cited +Shakespeare and Milton as a matter of course, and many a lesser poet, +against so untenable a thesis, concluding with the opening lines of +_Twelfth Night_: + + If music be the food of love, play on. + Give me excess of it. + +Surely music is not only the food of love, but of poetry as well; and do +not "music and sweet poetry agree"? + +Another point of similarity between Milton and Dante is their total lack +of humour, so strange in two great poets, and one of them an Englishman. +Chaucer is continually on the edge of boisterous laughter. Spenser seems +constantly on the verge of a well-bred smile. Shakespeare, to use his own +language, asks to be allowed with mirth and laughter to play the fool, +though the most gravely thoughtful and awfully tragic of all poets. The +author of _Childe Harold_ is likewise the author of _The Vision of +Judgment_ and _Don Juan_. Scott is one of the greatest of British +humorists. But on the face of neither Dante nor Milton do we find the +trace of a smile either coming or gone. + +The Rev. Lonsdale Ragg, in his searching and erudite work, _Dante and his +Italy_, maintains the opposite view at p. 190 _sqq._ But I, at least, find +him on this head unconvincing. None of the passages in Dante to which he +refers would satisfy the definition of humour as employed by Sterne, +Steele, Addison, or Charles Lamb, and cited by Thackeray in his delightful +papers on _The English Humorists_. Dante is scornful, satirical, +merciless; humorous he never is. Nor is Milton. They meet on the common +ground of uncompromising seriousness. + +Another parallel I will presume to draw between Dante and Milton is one of +supreme importance; but I can do so only briefly. No man, in my humble +opinion, has the full requisites of a poet of the highest order unless at +some period or another of his life he has been associated by practice and +direct experience with other men in matters of public interest. Milton and +Dante alike had that experience. So had Chaucer, so had Spenser, so had +Shakespeare, so had Byron. They were men of the world, and did not, as +Matthew Arnold said of Wordsworth, "avert their gaze from half of human +fate." I am aware that the opposite view is assumed in much criticism +to-day; and the highest rank is claimed for poetic recluses who write only +of individual joys, sorrows, and emotions, their own mostly, and manifest +a complete want of concern in the wide issues of mankind. That was not a +standard of criticism till our own time; nor will it, I believe, be the +standard of future ages. Dante and Milton both satisfy the older standard, +the older and the more abiding one. + +No comparison of Dante with Milton would be complete that omitted +consideration of the respective themes of their chief works, their two +great epic poems, the _Divina Commedia_ and _Paradise Lost_. I am disposed +to think, though others may think differently, that Dante has in this +respect a signal advantage over Milton. If any one is curious to see how a +man of great parts, but in some respects of rather insular views, can fail +to understand the theme of the _Divina Commedia_, and Dante's treatment of +it, he has only to turn, as Mr. Courthope did in his address to the +British Academy, to Macaulay's essay on Milton, where Dante is written of +as though he were nothing but a great Realist. Many years ago I suggested +as a definition of poetry, and have more than once urged the suggestion, +that it is "the harmonious transfiguration of the Real into the Ideal by +the aid of elevating imagination," so that, when the poet has performed +that operation, his readers accept the ideal representation as real, that +surest test of the greatness of a poet, provided his theme itself be +great. The _Divina Commedia_ stands that test triumphantly; and the result +is that Dante makes credible, even to non-believers while they read the +poem, the central conception and beliefs of medieval Christianity, which +are still those of Roman Catholic Christianity. Hence they remain real +facts for the transfiguring idealism of poets to deal with. + +Can the same be said of _Paradise Lost_? What is "real" does not depend on +the arbitrary choice of any one, but on the _communis sensus_, the general +assent of those to whom the treatment of the assumed "real" is addressed. +Is that any longer so in the case of _Paradise Lost_? Are the personality +of the devil, the insurrection of Lucifer and the rebel angels, and their +condemnation to eternal punishment, with power to tempt mortals to do that +which will lead to their sharing that punishment, now believed in by any +large number of Christian Englishmen or English-speaking Christians, or is +it ever likely again to be so believed in? I must leave the question to be +answered by every one for himself. But on the answer to it, it is obvious, +the realistic basis of _Paradise Lost_ depends. If the reply be negative, +then what remains is the magnificence of the imagery and the sonority of +the diction. To extol the one over the other in these respects would +indeed be invidious. It is enough to place them side by side to manifest +their equality. If Milton writes: + + Him the Almighty Power + Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky + With hideous ruin and combustion down + To bottomless perdition, there to dwell + In adamantine chains and penal fire, + Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms; + +Dante writes: + + Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, + Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira, + Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle, + Facevan un tumulto, il qual s'aggira + Sempre in quell' aria senza tempo tinta, + Come l'arena quando il turbo spira. + +Withal, it would show imperfect impartiality if one failed to allow that +there is more variety in the _Divina Commedia_ than in _Paradise Lost_. +Milton never halts in his majestic journey to soothe us with such an +episode as that of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, or closes it +with so celestial a strain as that describing the interview of Dante with +Beatrice in Heaven. + +No third poet in any nation or tongue could be named that equals Dante and +Milton in erudition, or in the use they made of it in their poetry. The +present writer is himself too lacking in erudition to presume to expatiate +on that theme. Others have done it admirably, and with due competency. But +on this ground, common to them both, I reluctantly part with them. To each +alike may be assigned the words of Ovid, _Os sublime dedit_, and equally +it may be said of both, that, in the splendid phrase of Lucretius, they +passed beyond the _flammantia moenia mundi_. Finally, each could truly +say of himself, in the words of Dante, + + Minerva spira e conducemi Apollo. + +"The Goddess of Wisdom inspires me, and the God of Song is my conductor +and my guide." + + + + +BYRON AND WORDSWORTH + + +The present age can hardly be reproached either with an absence of +admirers or with a lack of self-complacency. Even its most fervid +flatterers, however, ever and anon admit that it exhibits a few trifling +defects; and among these is sometimes named a diminution of popular +interest in poetic literature. Some have attributed this decline to one +cause, some to another; but the fact can hardly be disputed. The Heavenly +Muse is suffering a partial eclipse. The gross and material substance of +the earth has somehow got between her and the Soul, that source and centre +of her gentle light; and some enthusiasts aver that with the progress of +Science and the production at will of its precise and steadfast lights, +fitful luminaries of night may henceforth be dispensed with. But spiritual +eclipses, though not to be predicted with the accuracy with which physical +eclipses are foretold, and though unfortunately they endure for longer +periods, are equally transitory; and the nineteenth century was scarcely +original, nor will its successor prove to be correct, in fancying that the +garish and obedient flame of material philosophy will prove a satisfactory +substitute for the precious, if precarious illumination of the Spirit. + +Among the causes that have contributed to divert popular affection and +popular sympathy from poetical literature, there are three that deserve to +be specially indicated. The first of these is the multiplication of prose +romances, which, though so much lower in literary value and in artistic +character than poetry, and so much less elevating in their tendency, are +better fitted to stimulate the vulgar imagination, and minister more +freely to the common craving for excitement. The second cause is the +reaction that has settled upon mankind from the fervid hopes inspired by +the propagation of those theories and the propounding of those promises +which the historian associates with the French Revolution. All saner minds +have long since discovered that happiness is to be procured neither for +the individual nor for the community by mere political changes; and the +discovery has been distinctly hostile to literary enthusiasm. Finally, +many poets, and nearly all the critics of poetry, in our time, seem +determined to alienate ordinary human beings from contact with the Muse. +The world is easily persuaded that it is an ignoramus; and the vast +majority of people, after being told, year after year, that what they do +not understand is poetry, and what they do not care one straw about is the +proper theme and the highest expression of song, end by concluding that +poetry has become a mystery beyond their intelligence, a sort of +freemasonry from whose symbols they are jealously excluded. Unable to +appreciate what the critics tell them are the noblest productions of +genius, they modestly infer that between genius and themselves there is no +method of communication; and incapable of reading with pleasure the poetry +they are assured ought to fill them with rapture, they desist from reading +poetry altogether. They have not the self-confidence to choose their own +poets and select their own poetry; and indeed in these days, the only +chance any writer has of being read is that he should first be greatly +talked about. Thus, what between the poets who are talked about by +so-called experts, and thus made notorious, but whom ordinary folks find +unreadable, and the poets, if there be any such, whom ordinary folks would +read with pleasure if they knew of their existence, but of whom they have +scarcely heard, poetry has become "caviare to the general," who content +themselves with the coarser flavour of the novel, and the more easily +digested pabulum of the newspaper. + +But if poetry is now comparatively little read, no one can deny that it is +much written about; and many persons would perhaps see in the second of +these facts a reason for doubting the reality of the first. But the +contradiction is only apparent. Poetry is the subject at present of much +prose criticism, prose exposition, and prose controversy; but the +controversialists are largely the poets themselves, or those who aspire to +the title. The subject is treated by them with much earnestness, indeed +with some little heat; and it is easy to perceive that the main object of +most of the disputants is to establish the superiority of the poet whom +the critic himself most admires, and possibly whom he himself most +resembles. The controversy rages around those poets alone who are claimed +by the nineteenth century, and practically, these are five in number; +Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth. Each of these has his +votaries, his disciples, his passionate advocates. The public look on, a +little bewildered; for who is to decide when doctors disagree? Few, if +any, of the disputants lay down explicit canons respecting poetry, which +may enable a competent bystander to play the part of umpire even to his +own satisfaction; and he is left, like the controversialists themselves, +to abide by his own personal tastes, and to estimate poets and poetry +according to his individual fancy. + +It was therefore with no slight satisfaction one heard that one of our +poets, who is likewise a critic, but who brings to his criticisms +moderation of language and measure of statement, was about to appraise the +English poets who have written in this century, but who have for many +years joined the Immortals. To Mr. Matthew Arnold, if to any one amongst +us, may be applied the passage from Wordsworth, to be found in the +"Supplementary Essay" published in 1815: + + Whither then shall we turn for that union of qualifications which + must necessarily exist before the decisions of a critic can be of + absolute value? For a mind at once poetical and philosophical; for a + critic whose affections are as free and kindly as the spirit of + society, and whose understanding is severe as that of dispassionate + government? Where are we to look for that initiatory composure of + mind which no selfishness can disturb; for a natural sensibility that + has been tutored into correctness, without losing anything of its + quickness; and for active faculties, capable of answering the demands + which an author of original imagination shall make upon them, + associated with a judgment that cannot be duped into admiration by + aught that is unworthy of it? Among those, and those only, who, never + having suffered their youthful love of poetry to remit much of its + force, have applied to the consideration of the laws of this art the + best power of their understandings. + +To Mr. Arnold, if to any, we say, this enumeration of the qualities +indispensable to a trustworthy critic of poetry, may be applied; and if +the conclusions at which he bids us to arrive should not turn out to be +such as we can wholly accept, at least we shall have the satisfaction of +feeling that we dissent from one who has not invited our attention in +vain, and who perhaps, by the avowals he incidentally makes in the course +of his argument, has enabled us to hold with all the more confidence +certain opinions which we will endeavour to establish by independent +reasons of our own. + +Here, with sufficient brevity for the present, is the conclusion of Mr. +Arnold on the vexed question of the primacy among English poets, no longer +living, of the last century: + + I place Wordsworth's poetry above Byron's, on the whole, although in + some points he was greatly Byron's inferior. But these two, + Wordsworth and Byron, stand, it seems to me, first and pre-eminent in + actual performance, a glorious pair, among the English poets of this + century. Keats had probably, indeed, a more consummate poetic gift + than either of them; but he died having produced too little and being + as yet too immature to rival them. I for my part can never ever think + of equalling with them any other of their contemporaries; either + Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium; or + Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his + luminous wings in vain. Wordsworth and Byron stand out by themselves. + When the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to recount her + poetic glories in the century which has just then ended, the first + names with her will be these. + +We do not propose to traverse the entire field of controversy here lightly +indicated; our purpose being to confine ourselves to a consideration of +Mr. Arnold's particular conclusion, that Wordsworth's poetry should be +placed above Byron's. But before passing to that duty, we may say, +parenthetically, that though we agree with Mr. Arnold that Shelley's +poetry often exhibits a lamentable "want of sound subject-matter," the +claims of the "beautiful and ineffectual angel" are here somewhat +summarily dismissed; and that when Mr. Arnold says further that he "doubts +whether Shelley's delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far +more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of time +better, and finally come to stand higher than his poetry," he makes us +lift our eyes in sheer amazement, and somewhat more than doubt whether +this will not prove to be among the utterly falsified prophecies of very +able critics. + +Holding the opinion he does concerning Wordsworth and Byron, Mr. Arnold +has published a selection from the works of both, in distinct and separate +volumes, and he believes that he has thereby rendered an equal service to +each. "Alone," he writes, "among our poets of the earlier part of this +century, Byron and Wordsworth not only furnish material enough for a +volume of this kind, but also, it seems to me, they both of them gain +considerably by being thus exhibited." We, on the contrary, submit that if +the comparison is to end here, and is to be confined to the results +produced by Mr. Arnold's method, a more unjust and inadequate method, as +far as Byron is concerned, could not possibly be resorted to. Wordsworth +gains considerably, but Byron loses considerably, to employ Mr. Arnold's +language, by being thus exhibited. No doubt, Mr. Arnold means to be just. +He always means to be just. But in the very description he gives of the +contents of these two volumes on their respective title-pages, does he not +betray a sort of unconscious consciousness that he is dealing with two +very different poets, and with two poets whose works are very different? +If this be not so, how comes it that he calls one volume _"Poems" of +Wordsworth_, and the other _"Poetry" of Byron_? The distinction is a +genuine one. Indeed, it is something more than genuine; it was inevitable, +and Mr. Arnold was obliged to make it, if the title of each volume was to +describe its contents correctly. The best poems of Wordsworth are short, +most of them remarkably short; and therefore, in a volume of selections +from his works, they can without difficulty be presented in their +integrity. The best poems of Byron, like the best poems of Æschylus, of +Virgil, of Dante, of Shakespeare, of Milton, are of considerable length; +and if selections from Byron are to be made, his best poems must be +mutilated for the purpose. Mr. Arnold has mutilated them accordingly. +Thus, while intending to treat Wordsworth and Byron in precisely the same +manner, he has treated them, and by the very conditions of the case could +not help treating them, in an entirely different manner. + +That Mr. Arnold has not been altogether insensible to this objection--and, +indeed, with his calm and dispassionate penetration, he was not likely to +be--is apparent not only in the different description he gives of the +contents of the two volumes, on their respective title-pages, but from +certain observations in his prefatory essay upon Byron. When he says that +"there are portions of Byron's poetry which are far higher in worth, and +far more free from fault than others," or that "Byron cannot but be a +gainer by having attention concentrated upon what is vivid, powerful, +effective, in his work, and withdrawn from what is not so," he is, we +would suggest, stating nothing more than a truism, or what is equally true +of every poet. He is only beating the air, and hesitating to close with +the real difficulty with which he feels himself confronted. But when he +proceeds to urge that "Byron has not a great artist's profound and patient +skill in combining an action or in developing a character,--a skill which +we must watch and follow if we are to do justice to it," he shows that he +feels it to be necessary to offer a defence for applying to Byron a +treatment from which Byron may possibly suffer. We confess, with all our +admiration for Mr. Arnold--and it is as deep as it is sincere--we have +never been able to resist the suspicion that he is _tant soit peu_ a +sophist; and surely it is sophistry, in the course of an attempt to show +that Byron and Wordsworth each equally gain by the "selection" method of +treatment, to urge, with that air of tranquil and well-bred triumph of +which Mr. Arnold is so consummate a master, that "to take passages from +work produced as Byron's was, is a very different thing from taking +passages out of the _Oedipus_ or the _Tempest_ and deprives the poetry +far less of its advantage"? For the question is not whether Sophocles, +Shakespeare, and Byron may be treated ostensibly in the same manner by an +editor of selections, without injustice being done to any of them, but +whether Wordsworth and Byron can. That is the question; and it is not +answered, but avoided, by altering the terms of the proposition. + +What, therefore, really remains of this plea of Mr. Arnold's, this excuse +for mutilating Byron's poems and presenting them in fragments, is the +allegation that Byron is not, _above and before all things_, a great, +patient, and systematic artist. That much may be granted; and no competent +critic would deny it. But more cannot be granted than is strictly true; +and candour equally demands that it should be admitted that though Byron +was not long-suffering and far-reaching enough in the conception of his +poems, nor careful and self-critical enough in their execution, he +possessed at least enough of the instinct and the scope of the artist to +produce works that cohere with themselves, and that have a unity of design +sufficiently definite to mark it as something distinct from the mere +succession of executed detail. Will Mr. Arnold seriously pretend that a +more "vivid, powerful, and effective" impression is not created upon the +mind by a perusal of the whole of _Manfred_, than by a perusal of portions +of it, or of one or two dissociated Acts? Mr. Arnold turns Byron's own +modest confessions against himself, and lays stress upon the avowal that +the _Giaour_ is "a string of passages." But if any one were, after due +reflection, to maintain, that more justice is done to Byron by reading +some of its passages than by reading the whole of the poem, we confess we +should be obliged to entertain some doubt as to his own instincts as an +artist. For, where men like Byron are concerned, it is peculiarly true +that the divinity of the Muse shapes their ends, rough-hew these how they +may. Of every one of Byron's tales--the _Siege of Corinth_, _The Bride of +Abydos_, _Parisina_--this is equally true. It has more than once been +observed that _Childe Harold_ suffers from the fact that a period of eight +years elapsed between the composition of the first and second cantos, and +the composition of the third and fourth; and as far as style is concerned, +the contrast is very striking, two of the cantos being for the most part +almost as feeble, and two of them as forcible, as anything deserving the +name of poetry well can be. Nevertheless, there would be no difficulty in +showing, and we think no reader of poetry endowed with a fair amount of +artistic sense would require to be shown, that a certain oneness of +purpose and unity of drift presides over and accompanies the entire poem, +in a word that it is substantially homogeneous; and if any one, after +reading through the third and fourth cantos at a stretch, as we recently +did, were to tell us that he thought a few extracts from each give an +adequate conception of the two, and that reading portions is in effect +equivalent to reading the whole, we should have reached that limit of +controversy which is expressed by a silence that is not assent. It is true +that Mr. Arnold has been fairly lavish in his extracts from _Childe +Harold_; yet out of the 300 stanzas which compose the third and fourth +cantos, his selection contains only 114, or little more than a third. But +it is not only by the curtailment of the quantity, but by the treatment +applied to what is selected, that injury is done to _Childe Harold_. The +passages quoted are scattered at intervals through the volume, so that all +consecutiveness and coherence are lost. The majestic march of the poem is +utterly broken. The subtle argument that lurks in the order of every +poem--whether it be the _lucidus ordo_ of a speech, or an order less +obvious and patent--is completely destroyed. The strain neither begins nor +ends, neither rises nor falls, neither pauses nor progresses. The statue +is shivered to pieces, and we are offered a collection of chips, mixed up +with fragments from other marbles that have been treated with equal +ruthlessness. Here there is a hand, here a portion of a foot, here a +section of the features, here a bit of the torso. They still are +magnificent, and full of suggestiveness. But are they equal and equivalent +to the entire statue? Are they as good as the whole of the original work? +With surprising paradox Mr. Arnold assures us they are considerably +better. + +This singular conclusion is attained, it seems to us, by the excessive +assertion, or at least by the exaggerated application, of a theory in +which there is, unquestionably, a solid element of truth. We have said +that Byron is not an austere and consistent artist. But that is not to +affirm that he is not an artist at all; whereas, in thus treating his +productions fragmentarily, Mr. Arnold acts as though such an assertion +were true. Byron, says Mr. Arnold, is not "architectural." But is he not? +There is architecture, and architecture; the severe and systematic +architecture of the Greeks, and the more free, irregular, unmethodical +architecture which we know as Gothic. In the conception, and what in +technical parlance is called the composition, of his works, Byron is +assuredly no Greek. The exquisite oneness of design characteristic of +Athenian genius he certainly did not borrow from the land and the race no +one has so splendidly extolled. But if we turn to some of the noblest +productions of Gothic architecture, what do we find? We find Cathedrals of +unquestioned beauty and of universal fame, produced, it would +superficially seem, almost haphazard; without design, without plan, even +without architect. In our own land we may see Minsters that, begun in the +eleventh, were not finished till the fifteenth century. Like _Childe +Harold_, they bear the evident marks of different ages, and of different +styles; and like _Don Juan_, they show that they were commenced without +their parent knowing where or how they were to end. Nay, like it again, +some of them remain unfinished to this day. But will any one affirm that +their integrity, as they stand, is nothing to them, and nothing to us? +Because no great master-conception presided over their origin and their +execution, will no injury be done to them by taking them to pieces, and +saying, "Here is a lovely apse; here you see a beautiful flying buttress; +here contemplate an exquisite rood-screen; here you have an admirable bit +of the choir, and there a glorious specimen of the roof"? + +Nor can it be urged that this illustration does violence to the process +Mr. Arnold has adopted. On the contrary, the analogy is not strong enough; +for _Manfred_, _The Corsair_, _Cain_, _Childe Harold_ itself, were +conceived and executed, not less, but far more homogeneously, than the +edifices with which we have compared them, and if it would be unjust and +inadequate to treat Gothic cathedrals after this fashion, it is still more +unjust and inadequate to treat Byron's poems after this fashion. More +glaring still becomes the injustice, and more utter the inadequacy, when +we remember in whose company he is so treated. Mr. Arnold does not break +Wordsworth's poems to pieces and present us with the fragments; for there +is no necessity to do so. The long ones Mr. Arnold cheerfully throws over, +confessing that _The Excursion_ "can never be a satisfactory work to the +disinterested lover of poetry," and even that Jeffrey was not wrong when +he said of it, "This will never do." To adhere to our metaphor, it is a +large comfortless Meeting-house; and so is the _Recluse_. The best of +Wordsworth's poems, as we have said, and as Mr. Arnold says, are his short +ones. There are charming English cottages, or, if it be preferred--for we +have no intention of decrying them, we admire them vastly--exquisite +little wayside chapels; and they fit conveniently into the space, without +being tampered with, which Mr. Arnold has provided for them. But the best +of Byron's poems are the long ones; are vast Gothic edifices that soar +high into the air and cover a vast amount of ground, and therefore cannot +be compressed into the same compass. We have seen how Mr. Arnold gets over +the difficulty. He pulls them down, places bits and sections of them side +by side with the untouched cottages and still complete oratories of +Wordsworth, and asks us to compare the two. We are far from saying that, +even under these conditions, the comparison ends to Byron's disadvantage. +But it surely must be evident to every one that the conditions are not +equal, and therefore, however fair were the intentions of the editor, that +they are not really just. We should be sorry if any one supposed we +consider Mr. Swinburne as sound a critic as Mr. Arnold. But, upon this +particular question, Mr. Swinburne has propounded a conclusion against +which, we submit, Mr. Arnold contends in vain. "The greatest of Byron's +works was his whole work taken together." Nothing could be more terse or +more true; and if Mr. Swinburne would be content always to form his +judgments thus calmly and comprehensively, and to express them with this +brevity and directness, he would soon come to exercise an authority which +is at present refused by many to his literary verdicts. + +But though, if the comparison instituted between Byron and Wordsworth by +Mr. Arnold were to be confined within the conditions he has imposed on +both alike, great injustice would be done to Byron, it may well be doubted +if the plan adopted by Mr. Arnold will really tend to Byron's +disadvantage. On the contrary we suspect that, with the best will in the +world to do all he can for Wordsworth, Mr. Arnold has done him rather an +ill turn. For the whole, or anything approaching to the whole, of the best +of Byron, is not to be found in the volume of selections edited by Mr. +Arnold; and everybody will feel that Byron is a far greater poet than he +could possibly be made to appear by any such method. But all the best +poetry of Wordsworth is in the volume Mr. Arnold dedicates to him; and we +entertain little doubt that there is no dispassionate critic who would not +be obliged to allow that a considerable portion, indeed we fear the +greater portion of it, is not poetry at all. The process Mr. Arnold has +applied to Wordsworth, will have to be applied over again, and with +greater rigour. He has rejected as "not satisfactory work to the +disinterested lover of poetry," an immense quantity of what Wordsworth +conceived to be such. Another editor will have to reject a considerable +proportion of what Mr. Arnold has too indulgently included. His selection +will have to be selected from afresh; and thus, with doubtful +friendliness, he has pointed and prepared the way for some entirely +dispassionate critic who will leave of Wordsworth only what, to "the +disinterested lover of poetry," is worth leaving; and this unfortunately, +though of a high and delightful quality, will prove to be comparatively +little. In a word, to do Byron anything like justice, we require several +volumes of the size of that Mr. Arnold devotes to him; we require, in +fact, most of what he wrote. To do Wordsworth justice, we require a volume +less than half the size of what Mr. Arnold gives us; we require, in fact, +to suppress at least three-fourths of what he wrote. + +But, again, we can raise no question, and propound no conclusion which Mr. +Arnold, with his penetrating sense and acute susceptibility, has not +himself more or less discerned. After observing, "we must be on our guard +against Wordsworthians," he thus writes, in a vein of delicate humour: + + I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians: and if we are to get + Wordsworth recognised by the public and by the world, we must + recommend him not in the spirit of a clique, but in the spirit of + disinterested lovers of poetry. But I am a Wordsworthian myself. I + can read with pleasure and edification _Peter Bell_, and the whole + series of _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, and the addresses to Mr. + Wilkinson's spade, and even the _Thanksgiving Ode_; everything of + Wordsworth, I think, except _Vaudracour and Julia_. It is not for + nothing that one has been brought up in the veneration of a man so + truly worthy of homage; that one has seen and heard him, lived in his + neighbourhood, and been familiar with his country. + +Alas! even the best of us are mortal; and we accept this graceful passage +as Mr. Arnold's confession that he, too, is a Wordsworthian against whom +we must be on our guard. An extremist of a school he could not now be; but +"it is not for nothing," as he says, that he was trained in it. "Once a +priest," says an Italian proverb, "always a priest"; and, we fear, once a +Wordsworthian, always a Wordsworthian. It is no reproach; but "we must be +on our guard." For our part, we are tolerably familiar with Wordsworth's +country, but, beyond that, we are under no such spell as Mr. Arnold +confesses to above. We entertain profound veneration and homage for +Wordsworth, but it is the result, not so much of early teaching--the most +difficult of all lessons to unlearn--as of independent admiration and +sympathy inspired in riper years. We, too, can read _Peter Bell_ and the +_Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, but with more edification than pleasure; and we +have read, afresh, every word of what Mr. Arnold has included in his +_Poems of Wordsworth_, only to reach the conclusion we have already +stated, that from many, only too many of them, the spirit, the essence, +the indefinable something, of poetry is absent. + +We should be sorry to be thought guilty of dogmatism, and there is always +peril in generalisations. Let us therefore descend to particulars, as far +as space will permit, and analyse the contents of Mr. Arnold's _Poems of +Wordsworth_. The volume consists of 317 pages; of which 20 are dedicated +to "Poems of Ballad Form," 92 to "Narrative Poems," 56 to "Lyrical Poems," +34 to "Poems akin to the Antique and Odes," 32 to "Sonnets," and 83 to +"Reflective and Elegiac Poems." + +In the first division, _We are Seven_, _Lucy Gray_, and _The Reverie of +Poor Susan_, are the only poems that can be pronounced wholly +satisfactory, and that give real pleasure. _Anecdote for Fathers_ and +_Alice Fell_ would be just as well away, for they would raise the +reputation of no poet, save it be with those against whom "we must be on +our guard." The poems, _The Childless Father_, _Power of Music_, and +_Star-Gazers_, are redeemed only by their moral; and perhaps of _Power of +Music_, even this cannot be said. + + An Orpheus! an Orpheus!--yes, Faith may grow bold, + And take to herself all the wonders of old;-- + Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same + In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name. + + His station is there;--and he works on the crowd, + He sways them with harmony merry and loud; + He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim-- + Was aught ever heard like his Fiddle and him? + + What an eager assembly! what an empire is this! + The weary have life, and the hungry have bliss; + The mourner is cheered, and the anxious have rest; + And the guilt-burthened soul is no longer opprest. + +Then follow eight stanzas, in which the baker, the apprentice, the +newsman, the lamplighter, the porter, the lass with her barrow, the +cripple, the mother, and others, are described as stopping to listen, in +language similar to that of the three stanzas we have quoted; the only +slight improvement upon it being such lines as "She sees the Musician, +'tis all that she sees," until we reach the conclusion: + + Now, coaches and chariots! roar on like a stream; + Here are twenty souls happy as souls in a dream: + They are deaf to your murmurs, they care not for you, + Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue. + +The more ardent admirers of Wordsworth are in the habit of assuming that +those persons who approach their favourite poet with a more hesitating +homage, fail to appreciate the beauty of simplicity, and fancy that a +composition is not poetical because it lacks what is called elevation of +language and the "grand style." We can assure them, in all sincerity, that +far from that being the basis of our inability to admire all that they +admire, we admire Wordsworth most, and we admire him immensely, when he is +as simple as it is possible to be. We have just cited a poem, which we +scarcely think deserves that name. But, side by side with it, in Mr. +Arnold's volume, is a much shorter composition, on precisely the same +theme, which is, if possible, still more simple in treatment, but which is +true poetry, if true poetry was ever written. It is called _The Reverie of +Poor Susan_: + + At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, + Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years: + Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard + In the silence of morning the song of the Bird. + + 'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees + A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; + Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, + And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. + + Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, + Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; + And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, + The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. + + She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade, + The mist and the river, the hill and the shade: + The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, + And the colours have all passed away from her eyes. + +After reading _The Reverie of Poor Susan_, we may pay Wordsworth's Muse +the compliment that was paid by the Latin poet to the woman who was +_simplex munditiis_. Its neat simplicity is in great measure the secret of +its success; but it is not mean in its simplicity. Neither, as in the +other poems we have contrasted with it, have we to wait till the end of +the poem for the moral and the meaning. The moral is interwoven and +interfused with it, and every line breathes the soul and essence of the +entire composition. But nearly all these "Poems of Ballad Form" are +didactic; and does not Mr. Arnold tell us, in his preface, "Some kinds of +poetry are in themselves lower kinds than others; the ballad kind is a +lower kind; the didactic kind, still more, is a lower kind"? Of the twenty +pages of these poems of lower kind, we are strongly disposed to think that +the "disinterested lover of poetry" would discard twelve, and retain only +eight, and that Wordsworth, to use Mr. Arnold's phrase, would "stand +higher" if this were done. + +But even this proportion between retention and rejection cannot well be +maintained by the disinterested lover of poetry as he advances through the +volume. The "Narrative Poems" occupy nearly a third of it, and in this +section the amount of real poetry is meagre indeed. We had no conception +how many short poems Wordsworth had written, unredeemed by "the gleam, the +light that never was, on sea or land," till we read this collection +consecutively; and we read it in the open air, in a beautiful country, on +the loveliest day of a lovely May. But nothing could possibly attune the +heart of the disinterested lover of poetry to such verses as these: + + When Ruth was left half desolate, + Her father took another mate; + And Ruth, not seven years old, + A slighted child, at her own will + Went wandering over dale and hill, + In thoughtless freedom, bold. + + There came a Youth from Georgia's shore-- + A military casque he wore, + With splendid feathers drest; + He brought them from the Cherokees; + The feathers nodded in the breeze, + And made a gallant crest. + + "Belovèd Ruth!" No more he said. + The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed + A solitary tear: + She thought again--and did agree + With him to sail across the sea, + And drive the flying deer. + + "And now, as fitting is and right, + We in the Church our faith will plight, + A husband and a wife." + Even so they did; and I may say + That to sweet Ruth that happy day + Was more than human life. + +Not only is it impossible, we think, for the disinterested lover of poetry +to read this either with pleasure or with edification, but it is not easy +for him to read it without an ever-broadening smile. As a rule, the verse +to be met with in our less fastidious Magazines is not of a very high +order. But we doubt if the editor of any one of them would consent to +insert the foregoing stanzas, or those that follow, with their, "But as +you have before been told," "Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared, They +for the voyage were prepared," "God help thee, Ruth! Such pains she had, +That she in half a year was mad," and such like specimens of unartistic +and naive childishness. Surely, if there be any one who thinks this +poetry, it must be Mr. Arnold's friend, the British Philistine? If +Murdstone and Quinion could be converted and ever took to reading poetry, +would not this be the sort of verse that would delight them? And would +they not do so by reason of that "stunted sense of beauty," and that +"defective type" of intellect with which Mr. Arnold justly reproaches the +English middle-class? + +Did these poems stand alone, in their prosaic puerility, we might be +surprised that Mr. Arnold had reproduced them; but we should have been +content to conclude that, like Homer, both poet and editor had been +nodding. But we turn page after page of these "Narrative Poems" to be +astonished by what we encounter. The next poem to _Ruth_ is _Simon Lee: +The Old Huntsman, with an Incident in which he was Concerned_: + + Few months of life has he in store, + As he to you will tell, + For still, the more he works, the more + Do his weak ankles swell. + My gentle Reader, I perceive + How patiently you've waited, + And now I fear that you'll expect + Some tale will be related. + + O Reader! had you in your mind + Such stores as silent thought can bring, + O gentle Reader! you would find + A tale in everything. + What more I have to say is short, + And you must kindly take it: + It is no tale; but, should you _think_, + Perhaps a tale you'll make it. + +Simon is grubbing the stump of a tree, but was unequal to the task. The +poet takes the mattock from his hand, and with a blow severs the root, "At +which the poor Old Man so long, And vainly had endeavoured." Thankful +tears come into his eyes, whereupon the poet remarks: + + I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds + With coldness still returning; + Alas! the gratitude of men + Hath oftener left me mourning. + +The sentiment is nice and pretty, but is it poetry, or, even if it were, +could it make poetry of the doggerel--for surely there really is no other +name for it--that precedes it? And do Wordsworthians against whom Mr. +Arnold tells us we ought to be on our guard, or Wordsworthians who fancy +that we need not be on our guard against _them_, suppose that moralising +correctly and piously in verse about every "incident" in which somebody +happens to be "concerned," renders the narrative a "tale,"--much more, +makes poetry of it? We are far from saying that Wordsworth might not, in a +happier mood, have written poetry upon this particular incident. But we do +say, with some confidence, that he has unfortunately not done so; that the +incident, narrated in the manner in which he has narrated it, cannot of +itself be accepted as poetry--which, as Mr. Arnold well knows, is the +extreme Wordsworthian theory, as advocated by Wordsworth himself in pages +upon pages of controversial prose; and that we are greatly astonished Mr. +Arnold should indirectly lend it countenance, by reprinting and stamping +with his precious approval, such infelicitous triviality as the above. We +cannot shrink from saying this, through an unworthy dread lest we should +be confounded with "the tenth-rate critics and compilers to whom it is +still permissible to speak of Wordsworth's poetry, not only with +ignorance, but with impertinence." Mr. Arnold has himself shown that he +does not hesitate to speak in pretty strong terms of those portions of +Wordsworth's verse which he does not regard as poetry. He describes them +as "abstract verbiage"; he acknowledges that they are so inferior, it +seems wonderful how Wordsworth should have produced them; and in a passage +delightfully humorous he imagines a long passage of Wordsworth being +declaimed at a Social Science Congress to an admiring audience of men with +bald heads and women in spectacles, "and in the soul of any poor child of +nature who may have wandered in thither, an unutterable sense of +lamentation, mourning, and woe." + +All that we ask, therefore, is to be allowed the same amount of liberty +which Mr. Arnold himself has exercised, and to be permitted to do what he +has done. We, too, would fain disengage what is valuable in Wordsworth's +poetry from what is worthless. We, too, would fain "exhibit his best work, +and clear away obstructions from around it." But we contend, and we +willingly leave the decision to disinterested lovers of poetry, that such +poems as _Ruth_ and _Simon Lee_ are not only not Wordsworth's best work, +but not good work at all; on the contrary are part of the obstruction from +which it should be cleared. + +The next two poems in the "Narrative" section refer to the fidelity of +dogs, and a single stanza will suffice to show that they are of much the +same calibre as the two that precede them: + + But hear a wonder for whose sake + This lamentable tale I tell! + A lasting monument of words + This wonder merits well. + The Dog, which still was hovering nigh, + Repeating the same timid cry, + This Dog, had been through three months' space + A dweller in that savage place. + +Next in order comes _Hart-Leap Well_, which consists of two parts. In the +first we come across such lines and phrases as "Joy sparkled in the +prancing courser's eyes," "A rout that made the echoes roar," "Soon did +the Knight perform what he had said, And far and wide thereof the fame did +ring," "But there is matter for a second rhyme, And I to this would add +another tale," which are simply a distress to the disinterested reader of +poetry. In the second part, the poet warms up, and ends with a passage +which is very beautiful: + + Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well; + Small difference lies between thy creed and mine: + This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell; + His death was mourned by sympathy divine. + + The Being, that is in the clouds and air, + That is in the green leaves among the groves, + Maintains a deep and reverential care + For the unoffending creatures whom he loves. + + The Pleasure-house is dust:--behind, before, + This is no common waste, no common gloom; + But Nature, in due course of time, once more + Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom. + + She leaves these objects to a slow decay, + That what we are, and have been, may be known; + But, at the coming of the milder day, + These monuments shall all be overgrown! + + One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, + Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals; + Never to blend our pleasure or our pride + With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. + +Of course, this is poetry, and very good poetry; and it is, justly, one of +the favourite passages of ardent admirers of Wordsworth. But we can +scarcely refrain from saying that, good as it is, there exists something +of precisely the same kind, and, as it happens, in precisely the same +metre, which is considerably better. Surely, no one will have any +difficulty in naming it. It is Gray's famous _Elegy_. Yet we remember how +indignant the "Wordsworthians against whom we ought to be on our guard" +were with the _Quarterly Review_, because there appeared in it a paper in +which Wordsworth and Gray were compared. To mention them in the same +breath was sacrilege! We do not wish to affirm that the disinterested +lover of poetry believes Gray ever to have scaled the heights where +Wordsworth's wing sometimes floats almost without effort. But it cannot be +uninteresting to mark that, in what we may call the middle notes, +Wordsworth is distinctly inferior to Gray, though ever and anon his voice +gets entirely beyond Gray's compass. + +It would be impossible, with any regard for space, to quote from, or even +to name, every poem reproduced by Mr. Arnold, which in our opinion would +have been better suppressed. But if we seem to have established our +contention so far, we think the reader may rely upon it that he would more +or less concur in what else might be said on this score. _The Force of +Prayer_, _The Affliction of Margaret_, _The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian +Woman_, are little if any less trivial than the poems already condemned; +while in _The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_, we read six pages +equally poor and unpoetical, suddenly to come upon such a quatrain as the +following: + + Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; + His daily teachers had been woods and rills, + The silence that is in the starry sky, + The sleep that is among the lonely hills. + +The last two lines it would be impossible to praise too highly. Only the +silence of profound reverence can do them justice. They are touches like +these, touches like "the harvest of a quiet eye," that give to Wordsworth +his holy predominance, and whatever predominance, after fair examination, +must be adjudged him. But how few they are! Perhaps it is in the nature of +things that they should be so. But being so few and far between, they +cannot fill up the blank that intervenes. They are indeed "Angels' +visits." But even poetry has to do mainly with human guests, and a poet +must be judged, as Mr. Arnold truly affirms, by "the ample body of +powerful work" he leaves behind. We cannot assume that much of +Wordsworth's poetry is not unutterably bad, because some of it is +unutterably beautiful. The utmost we can do is to grant, concerning him, +what he himself said so finely of a young girl: + + If thou appear'st untouched by solemn thought, + Thy nature is not therefore less divine: + Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, + And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, + God being with thee when we know it not. + +It is possible that like the "dear child, dear girl," he lay in Abraham's +bosom "all the year," but he communicates the fact, he impresses us with +the fact, but seldom. As a rule, he seems to be outside the Temple +altogether. Hence these magnificent bursts of poetical depth and +sublimity, which, be it said, are peculiar to Wordsworth, are mere short +passages, and there are not many of them. But if they suffice, after a +complete survey of the works of both poets, to place Wordsworth above +Byron, we shall be obliged to conclude that they suffice to place him +above every poet that ever lived. That such a theory of poetry, such a +canon of criticism is untenable, unless we are to cast every hitherto +accepted theory of poetry and every former canon of criticism to the +winds, we trust, in due course, to be able to establish. + +We are aware that _The Brothers_ is a favourite composition with +thoroughgoing Wordsworthians. But as we have been told to be on our guard +against them, we need not hesitate to say that it seems to us to consist +of very ordinary verse, and the piece itself to be devoid of any real +poetical temperament, though it fills sixteen pages in Mr. Arnold's +collection. Sixteen more are occupied by _Margaret_, upon which we are +unable to pronounce a different or a modified verdict. Both abound in such +passages as the following: + + He left his house: two wretched days had past, + And on the third, as wistfully she raised + Her head from off her pillow, to look forth, + Like one in trouble, for returning light, + Within her chamber-casement she espied + A folded paper, lying as if placed + To meet her waking eyes. This tremblingly + She opened--found no writing, but beheld + Pieces of money carefully enclosed, + Silver and gold. "I shuddered at the sight," + Said Margaret, "for I knew it was his hand + Which placed it there: and ere that day was ended, + That long and anxious day! I learned from one + Sent hither by my husband to impart + The heavy news,--that he had joined a Troop + Of soldiers, going to a distant land. + He left me thus--he could not gather heart + To take a farewell of me; for he feared + That I should follow with my Babes, and sink + Beneath the misery of that wandering life." + +If this be poetry, then poetry is very easily written, and what has +hitherto been supposed to be the highest, the most difficult, and the +rarest, of the arts, presents no more difficulty to the person who knows +how to write at all than the simplest, baldest, and most unartistic prose. +What, for instance, is this?-- + + At length the expected letter from the kinsman came, with kind + assurances that he would do his utmost for the welfare of the boy; to + which requests were added that forthwith he might be sent to him. Ten + times or more the letter was read over. Isabel went forth to show it + to the neighbours round; nor was there at that time on English land a + prouder heart than Luke's. When Isabel had to her house returned, the + old man said, "He shall depart to-morrow." To this word the housewife + answered, talking much of things which, if at such short notice he + should go, would surely be forgotten. But at length she gave consent, + and Michael was at ease. + +Is this prose or verse? We have printed it as prose. Wordsworth wrote it +as verse, and Mr. Arnold has reproduced it as poetry. Had all Wordsworth's +compositions been of this calibre, and a painfully large number of them +are, well might John Stuart Mill affirm that any man of good abilities +might become as good a poet as Wordsworth by giving his mind to it, and we +will add that a man of good abilities could hardly employ them worse. Yet +this passage, and fourteen pages of verse not one whit better than it, are +to be met with in _Michael_, one of the narrative poems Mr. Arnold, with +special emphasis, begs us to admire. "The right sort of verse," he says, +"to choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true and most +characteristic form of expression, is a line like this from _Michael_: + + And never lifted up a single stone. + +There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style, +strictly so called; yet it is expressive of the highest and most +expressive kind." Of course, in order to properly appreciate it, we must +know the context, which fortunately is easily compressed. Michael and his +son Luke were to build a sheepfold; but, as told in the passage we have +printed, Luke is sent to a kinsman, who will advance him in life. Before +he goes, Michael takes him to lay the first stone of the sheepfold. The +lad then leaves home, falls into dissolute courses, and at last hides +himself beyond the seas. After that, it is narrated of Michael: + + And to that hollow dell from time to time + Did he repair, to build the Fold of which + His flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet + The pity which was then in every heart + For the Old Man--and 'tis believed by all + That many and many a day he thither went, + And never lifted up a single stone. + +We have asked several disinterested lovers of poetry, some of them ardent +admirers of Wordsworth, what they think of this; and we are bound to say +that most of them failed to see anything in it whatsoever. That is not our +case. We feel the force of the situation, and the apt simplicity of the +concluding line. Yet repeat it, dwell on it, and surrender ourselves to it +as we will, we fail to persuade ourselves that it merits the lofty eulogy +pronounced on it by Mr. Arnold. It is with hesitation that we presume, on +such a point, and where the issue is so direct, to place our opinion in +seeming competition with his; but we can only leave the decision to the +_communis sensus_ of disinterested lovers of poetry. But nothing--not even +Mr. Arnold's authority--could satisfy us that this line suffices to lend +the wings of poetry to fourteen closely printed pages of such pedestrian +verse as that of which _Michael_ for the most part consists. + +The only other poem in the "Narrative" section of the volume is _The +Leech-Gatherer_; and it, besides containing many lines of admirable +poetry, is itself a coherently beautiful poem. But when, resuming our +analysis, we enquire how much poetry there is in the 112 pages, or in more +than the third portion of the volume we have as yet examined, what do we +find? Exactly 20, and only 20, which we honestly believe the disinterested +lover of poetry, the critic to whom Mr. Arnold makes appeal, would +recognise as strictly deserving that description. We can seriously assert +that this is the amount we should save from the wreck, if we were editing +a selection from Wordsworth, were disengaging his good work from his bad, +and were seeking to obtain for him readers who care nothing whatever about +him personally, and who only wish ever and anon to steep themselves in the +atmosphere of native and sterling poetry. We are well aware that, from +another and a more extended point of view, Wordsworth never wrote a line, +in verse or in prose, which is not worth preserving, and worth reading. +But that is not at present the question. We are dealing with the critical +contention of a great and influential critic, that "what strikes me with +admiration, what establishes in my opinion Wordsworth's superiority"--to +Byron, be it understood, and to every English poet since Milton--"is the +great and ample body of powerful work which remains to him, even after all +his inferior work has been cleared away." This it is which renders it +necessary to clear away the inferior work, in order that we may see if the +body of "powerful" work that remains be really "ample" or not. + +The "Lyrical Poems" contain the best, the most characteristic, and the +most valuable of the compositions of Wordsworth. For our part, we should +have excluded _To a Sky-Lark_, at page 126--not the beautiful one with the +same title at page 142--_Stray Pleasures_, the two poems _At the Grave of +Burns_, _Yarrow Visited_, _Yarrow Revisited_, in spite of their vogue with +Wordsworthians _quand même_, _To May_, and _The Primrose of the Rock_. +There would then be left 33 pages containing the best poems _of their +kind_ anywhere to be found, and of inestimable value to the disinterested +lover of poetry. The fervid lover of poetry knows them by heart, and +carries them with him through life. Is it necessary to give their names? +_She was a Phantom of Delight_, _The Solitary Reaper_, _Three Years She +Grew_, _To the Cuckoo_, _I Wandered lonely as a Cloud_--these, and their +companions, to be found about the middle of Mr. Arnold's volume, are among +the most precious, and will remain among the enduring possessions of +mankind. Nor is it only that they fill the mind with elevating thoughts +and swell the heart with sacred sentiments. They make one regard, with a +peculiar affection, the poet who wrote them. But we must not allow this +literary love to warp literary judgment. No such feeling is awakened for +their authors by _Childe Harold_ or _Hamlet_. But to conclude that +Wordsworth is, therefore, a greater poet than Byron or Shakespeare, would +be as illegitimate in the one instance as in the other. It would be to +imitate the filial and uxorious fondness of the late Mr. Carlyle, who +gravely tells us that his father had a larger intellect than Burns, and +that his amiable, long-suffering wife wrote letters of greater value and +insight than the works of George Sand and George Eliot, and "all the pack +of scribbling women from the beginning of time." To love Wordsworth is +pardonable; nay, it is inevitable to those who are intimate with his +tenderest work. But the critic must disengage his judgment from his +affections, if he is not to mislead the persons he aspires to instruct, +and to injure the art of whose dignity he is bound to be jealous. + +Briefly, then, and pursuing to the end the "disinterested-lover-of-poetry" +method recommended to us by Mr. Arnold, and of which we think we have +already given illustrations to enable any one to decide for himself +whether we pursue it with equity and candour, we reach the conclusion +that, of the 317 pages composing Mr. Arnold's collection, only 103, on a +liberal estimate, contain what is worth preserving as poetry; or at least, +if there be any dispute as to whether it is poetry, there can be none, +outside the specially Wordsworthian circle, as to its being very inferior +poetry indeed, and in no degree calculated to confer, extend, or uphold +any man's reputation as a poet. That it is admirable in sentiment and +laudable in moral purpose, may at once be granted. But the purest of +sentiments and the loftiest of purposes do not constitute poetry, even +when apparelled in verse. Indeed we may say of them what Mr. Arnold +himself says of those portions of Wordsworth's writings which he discards, +that they are "doctrine such as we hear in church, religious and +philosophical doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves passages of +such doctrine, and brings them forward in proof of his poet's excellence. +But however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here presented, more of +the characters of _poetic_ truth, the kind of truth we require from a +poet." + +It may possibly seem an ungracious part to dwell upon the inferior +portions of Wordsworth work, and to play the _rôle_ of Devil's Advocate in +the case of one who is assured beforehand of the honours of canonisation. +But it should be remembered that this invidious task has been imposed upon +us by Mr. Arnold, who has asserted, and challenged contradiction to the +assertion, that in Wordsworth is to be found "an ampler body of powerful +work," which constitutes his superiority over every English poet since +Milton. It is he who has rendered it necessary, in justice to other poets, +to enquire with accuracy, what _is_ the amount of powerful work to be +found in Wordsworth; and this cannot be done without careful and judicial +scrutiny. Our object is the same as Mr. Arnold's; not to decry Wordsworth, +but to ascertain his proper place in relation to other poets. If we seem +to have spoken of him harshly, then so must Mr. Arnold; the only +difference between us being that he thinks a certain proportion of +Wordsworth's verse poor stuff, while we view a yet larger portion of it in +that light. Nor is it the example of Mr. Arnold alone that can be cited in +exoneration of perfect outspokenness. M. Scherer is a distinguished French +critic, whom Mr. Arnold quotes, and M. Scherer has in turn introduced Mr. +Arnold's _Selections_ from Wordsworth to the French public in the pages of +the _Temps_. He is a warm admirer of Wordsworth, and, as Mr. Arnold tells +us, an excessive depreciator of Byron. From him, therefore, we may, with +all the less scruple, cite the following avowals: + + The simplicity of Wordsworth's subjects and manner too often + degenerates into triviality, the simplicity of his style into + poverty. He abuses his love for puerile anecdotes, makes us a present + of stories about dogs, and of recitals of what a little girl has said + to her sheep. He not only parades enthusiasm for flowers and birds, + but predilection for beggars, cripples, and idiots. The lower a + person is in the scale of being, the more he strives to awaken our + sympathy in his favour. There are no details so minute, so + insignificant, that he does not take a special pleasure in remarking + them. Is he narrating a walk he takes in summer, he will speak of + "the host of insects gathering round his face, and which are ever + with him as he paces along." + + The habit of seeking and finding lessons in the smallest incidents of + his walks becomes a didactic mania. He extracts moralities from every + object, he preaches sermons at every turn. Often, too, this preaching + vein is far from being poetical. One sometimes seems to be listening + to the psalm-singing of a Conventicle. This, for example, resembles a + hymn of Watts. + + The poetry of Wordsworth, with the tendency it always had towards the + prosaic, often lapses into it altogether. + +This, we submit, is only another way of saying what we have ventured to +say, and what Mr. Arnold himself has said. May we not reasonably conclude +that M. Scherer would reject at least all that we have rejected? But, in +any case, that there is substantial agreement between us and him, so far, +is evident. + +What, then, is the "ample body of powerful work" that is left of +Wordsworth after the eliminating process has been applied to it by the +disinterested lover of poetry? Between three and four thousand lines; +rather more than the amount of matter in the third and fourth cantos of +_Childe Harold_, rather less than the amount of matter in _Hamlet_. The +quantity therefore, the "body" of work left, is not very large. Still we +should not contest that it was "ample" enough to establish the superiority +of Wordsworth over Byron, if it happened to be sufficiently "powerful" for +the purpose. Though quantity must count for something, even in the +comparison of poet with poet, since quantity implies copiousness, and +usually implies versatility, quality counts for much more, if the +difference in quality be marked, and suffices to abolish the consideration +of quantity altogether, if the superiority in respect of quality be +sufficiently great. If, for example, the four thousand lines, or +thereabouts, of poetry Wordsworth has written, had been embodied, say, in +a _Hamlet_, then work so powerful would have been ample to establish his +superiority not only over every English poet since Milton, but over every +poet since the one who has left us, so to speak, several _Hamlets_. + +For what is it that renders _Hamlet_ so great and so powerful? Is it +single lines of beautiful poetry? Is it detached passages of profound and +elevated thought presented in poetic guise? These go for much, more +especially when we consider them in connection with that of which they are +the drapery. But what would they be, and what should we think of them, +detached from the conception of the drama itself, without the plot, +action, and progress of the piece, without the invention and unfolding of +its characters, without its varied and forcible situations, without its +wit, its irony, its humour? What should we think of _Hamlet_ if divested +of the panorama of moving human passions, of its merciless tragedy, and, +finally, of its utter absence of moral so complete, that moralists have +been for a hundred years wrangling what the moral is? These are the +qualities, and these alone, which make great poetry and great poets. + +What has Wordsworth of all these? The answer, if candid and disinterested, +must be, Absolutely nothing. He has written no epic, no drama, no poem of +any kind in which so much as an attempt is made to deal with the clashing +of the various passions that "stir this mortal frame." Of Action he is +utterly devoid. Of Invention, he seems absolutely unconscious. He has no +wit; he has no humour. He has conceived no character, he has portrayed no +character. If he can be said to deal with situations at all, they are of +the simplest and most elementary kind, and he does not in any sense create +them. He finds them at his door. No one blames him for making use of them, +where he makes use of them well; but this is a very different thing from +the invention shown in _Macbeth_ or _The Tempest_, or even in _Cain_, in +_Manfred_, and in _The Siege of Corinth_. Sardanapalus is not a Lear, nor +is Myrra a Cordelia. But, as exhibitions and portraitures of human +character and human passion in poetry they are as much beyond _Lucy Gray_, +or _Michael_, or the little Child in _We are Seven_, as Lear and Cordelia +are beyond them in turn. + +Upon this point let us again hear M. Scherer: + + We must expect from Wordsworth neither the knowledge of the human + heart which worldly experience gives, nor that interior drama of the + passions which a man can describe well only on condition of having + been their victim, nor those general views upon history and society + which are formed partly by study, partly by the practice of public + affairs. Our poet is as much a stranger to the disquietudes of + thought as to those of ambition, to the sufferings of love and of + hate as to that resignation at which one arrives when one has + discerned how very small are the great affairs of this world. He has + nothing of that sublime melancholy, of those fervid questionings, of + those audacious revolts, in which poetry delighted fifty years ago. + Still less has he that mocking scepticism, that raillery now gay now + bitter, which succeeded the songs of despair. He will never be of + those who trouble souls as Byron does, who arm them with irony like + Heine, or who calm them, like Goethe, by the virtue of true + understanding. Wordsworth is simply a Solitary who has long gazed + upon Nature and much analysed his own feelings. Scarcely should we + dare to call him a philosopher, so wanting in him is the reasoning + and speculative element. Even the title of thinker only half becomes + him. He is a contemplative. + +It is true that, at the end of his review of Wordsworth, and without any +previous admonition that he is going to do so, M. Scherer says, in one +brief sentence, "Wordsworth seems to me to come after Milton, notably +below him in my opinion, but withal the first after him"; thus endorsing +the judgment of Mr. Arnold. But, unlike Mr. Arnold, he makes no attempt to +establish or justify this view, but throws it out, as an _obiter dictum_, +after writing a long essay, every argument and every phrase of which tend +towards a diametrically opposite conclusion. So thoroughly is this the +case, that we can honestly say we agree with every word in his essay, with +the exception of the one brief sentence we have just cited. + +But in the longer and more detailed passage quoted above, is not +everything conceded for which we are contending? According to M. Scherer, +Wordsworth has knowledge neither of the human heart nor of the interior +drama of the passions. He has no broad views of history and society. He is +a stranger to love, hatred, ambition, and the disquietudes they cause, as +well as to the disquietudes caused by deep thought; and not having passed +through these, he has necessarily not "come out upon the other side," and +is equally a stranger to the tranquillity of complete knowledge and +complete experience. He is not a philosopher; he is hardly a thinker. He +is a contemplative solitary, who has consorted much with woods, lakes, and +mountains, and has dwelt much upon the sensations they excite in himself. +Verily, this is a sorry equipment for a great poet. Is it an exaggeration +to say that, if all this be true, Wordsworth is destitute of most of the +qualities which in a great poet have hitherto been deemed indispensable? +If, in spite of these remarkable deficiencies, he really be the greatest +English poet since Milton, we shall be forced to conclude that English +poets since Milton have been far less powerful, of far lower calibre, and +of far less value, than has generally been supposed. + +What then is the precise value, the real calibre, the particular kind of +power, of that "ampler body of powerful work" which Wordsworth has given +us? We have seen it is not an epic, nor a drama, nor one great +comprehensive poem of any kind. It consists of lyrics, ballads, sonnets, +and odes; of many of which it would not be just or critical to say more +than that they are very sweet and charming, several of which must be +pronounced exquisite, and a few, very few, of which may be designated +sublime. We own we share the general opinion that the greatest composition +of Wordsworth is the _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_. We are surprised +and disappointed to find Mr. Arnold speaking rather coldly of it; and M. +Scherer likewise refers to it in a depreciatory tone, though he gives +different reasons for his conclusion. M. Scherer thinks it "sounds a +little false," and adds that he "cannot help seeing in it a theme adopted +with reference to the poetic developments of which Wordsworth was +susceptible, rather than a very serious belief of the author." We confess +we think the judgment harsh, and the reasons given for it insufficient, +if not indeed irrelevant. The objection Mr. Arnold entertains for it is +that "it has not the character of poetic truth of the best kind; it has no +real solidity. The instinct of delight in Nature and her beauty had no +doubt extraordinary strength in Wordsworth himself as a child. But to say +that universally this instinct is mighty in childhood, and tends to die +away afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful." + +Now, with all deference to Mr. Arnold, which is due to him in a special +manner when he is expounding Wordsworth, Wordsworth does not say this. In +the first place, Wordsworth, after describing the comparative and +temporary diminution of this instinct, describes its revival and +transfiguration in another guise. But what is far more important to note +is, Wordsworth does _not_ say the instinct is universal. He is writing as +a poet, not as a psychologist; and though he treats of an objective infant +for a time, and uses the pronoun "_our_ infancy," he in reality is +describing his own experience, and letting it take its chance of being the +experience of a certain number of other people. What, we may well ask, can +a poet do more than this, when he gets into the higher range, the upper +atmosphere of poetry? When Shakespeare talks of "the shade of melancholy +boughs," he does not mean that everybody feels them to be melancholy. That +is the privilege--the melancholy privilege, if any one wills it so--of the +higher natures. That what Wordsworth describes in his splendid _Ode_ not +only was true of himself, but is true likewise of all great poetic +spirits, we entertain no doubt; and it will become true of an +ever-increasing number of persons, if mankind is to make progress in the +intimate and integral union of intellectual and poetic sentiment. In our +opinion, the highest note of Wordsworth is struck in this Ode, and +maintained through a composition of considerable length and of +argumentative unity of purpose. It is struck by him elsewhere--indeed in +the lines on Hartley Coleridge, we have a distinct overture, so to speak, +to the Ode; but nowhere is it sustained for so long, or with such oneness, +definiteness, and largeness of aim. There is, perhaps, no finer poem, of +equal length, in any language. We could well understand any one +maintaining that there exists no other so fine. + +But, if this Ode be struck out of the account, what remains to represent +an "ample body of powerful work"? For, after all, in criticism, if we +criticise at all, we must use words with some definite meaning. Perhaps +Mr. Arnold would tell us that it is not the business of true Culture to be +too definite; and we should heartily agree with him. One of the things +that makes prose so inferior to poetry is its inaccurate precision. But it +is Mr. Arnold himself who, on this occasion, compels us to be precise. He +has elected to compare Wordsworth with every poet since Milton, and, in +doing so, he has been obliged to use language which, to be of any use, +must be more or less definite. What is meant by "ample"? Still more, what +is meant by "powerful"? Does he mean that Wordsworth's "Lyrical Poems," +which we think to be the best of Wordsworth's compositions after the Ode, +and which he thinks the best, before the Ode, are "powerful"? Let us quote +perhaps the best of them, already quoted elsewhere, but that can never be +read too often: + + Behold her, single in the field, + Yon solitary Highland Lass! + Reaping and singing by herself; + Stop here, or gently pass! + Alone she cuts, and binds the grain, + And sings a melancholy strain; + O listen! for the Vale profound + Is overflowing with the sound. + + No Nightingale did ever chaunt + So sweetly to reposing bands + Of Travellers in some shady haunt, + Among Arabian sands: + A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard + In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, + Breaking the silence of the seas + Among the farthest Hebrides. + + Will no one tell me what she sings? + Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow + For old, unhappy, far-off things, + And battles long ago: + Or is it some more humble lay, + Familiar matter of to-day? + Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, + That has been, and may be again? + + Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang + As if her song could have no ending; + I saw her singing at her work, + And o'er the sickle bending;-- + I listened till I had my fill, + And when I mounted up the hill, + The music in my heart I bore, + Long after it was heard no more. + +This is exquisite; and of the sort of exquisiteness that leads one, in +private, and in uncritical colloquies, to fall, as the phrase runs, into +ecstasies. But can it, with any regard to accuracy of speech, be described +as "powerful" work? We submit that it cannot. _Lear_ is powerful. The +first six books of _Paradise Lost_ are powerful. The first four cantos of +_Don Juan_ are powerful. The _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_ is +powerful. But unless we are to lose ourselves in a labyrinth of critical +confusion, we must no more allege or allow that _The Solitary Reaper_ is +powerful, than we can affirm that _Where the Bee Sucks_ is powerful, that +Milton's sonnet, _To the Nightingale_ is powerful, or that Byron's _She +Walks in Beauty like the Night_ is powerful. They are all very beautiful; +but that is another matter, and it will not do to confound totally +different things. + +How many lyrics, as perfect as the one we have quoted, has Wordsworth +written? We can count but nine; and the most liberal computation could not +extend them beyond twelve. To these would have to be added perhaps twice +as many, very inferior to these, but still very beautiful, a certain +number, but a very limited number, of first-rate sonnets, the Odes we have +referred to, and detached lines and passages from other poems, notably the +passage in the poem _On Revisiting Tintern Abbey_. The result would be +about a third of the amount we ourselves should altogether extract from +Wordsworth, and of which alone it could justly be said that some of it was +powerful, and all of it was very beautiful work. + +This is what, we venture to assert, remains, after rigid scrutiny, of "the +ampler body of powerful work" which Wordsworth has given us. These are the +compositions which, according to Mr. Arnold, "in real poetical achievement +... in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring +freshness," establish Wordsworth's superiority. + +Now can this claim possibly be allowed, unless, as we have said, all +previous canons of criticism, and all previous estimates of poetry are to +be cast to the winds? If it is to be allowed, then Æschylus, Euripides, +Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, must come down from their +pedestals, and be regarded by us with very different eyes from those with +which we have hitherto scanned them. For what are the marks, what the +qualities, which have distinguished these poets above their fellows, and +by reason of which the world has extolled their genius? It is not merely +for poetic diction, for tenderness of sentiment, for elevation of feeling, +for apt simile, appropriate metaphor, illuminating imagery, and the play +of fancy as exhibited in subordinate detail, that we estimate them as we +do. Neither is it, as we have already pointed out, but as we must repeat, +for detached passages of sublimity, nor yet for short poems of exquisite +beauty, that they have been assigned the rank they occupy. They occupy +that rank by reason of their great conceptions, by reason of their +capacity to project long and comparatively complex poems dedicated to a +lofty theme, and to conduct these through all their intricate windings +from first to last, by employing all the arts, all the expedients, all the +resources of Imagination, chief among which are Action, Invention, and +Situation. To these, of course, must be added copious, elastic, and +dignified language, melody, pathos, and just imagery; for, without these, +a man is not a poet at all. These are the very instruments of his craft, +the very credentials of his profession; and if he has these, no one will +challenge his right to be called a poet. But, unless the higher qualities, +the greater credentials are also his, he must be content with an inferior +place, no matter how many beautiful or sublime things he may have said, +and no matter how excellent the doctrines he may have taught. He has +failed to show his mastery over the great materials, his familiarity with +the great purposes, of his art. Wordsworth projected two long poems, _The +Prelude_ and _The Excursion_; and, practically, these two are one. They +are of portentous length; and that is their only claim to be considered +great. They have no Action, no Situation, no Invention, no Characters. +They consist of pages upon pages, nay, of books upon books, of +interminable talk, in which in reality Wordsworth himself is the only +talker. Little of the talk is poetry. Much of it is, as Mr. Arnold says, +"abstract verbiage." But we need not pursue the theme. Mr. Arnold candidly +confesses that when Jeffrey said of _The Excursion_, "this will never do," +he was quite right. + +Unquestionably, he was right; and he would still have been right, even had +_The Excursion_ contained a far greater number of passages of true poetry +than it does. It will be an evil day for poetry, and for the readers of +poetry, if it ever comes to be allowed that the sole or the main function +of poetry is to _talk about_ things, and that a man can get himself +accepted as a great poet by pursuing this course. Unfortunately, it was +Wordsworth's theory that he could. It would be fatal if critics became of +the same opinion. It is their bounden duty, on the contrary, to protest +against such a theory. Wordsworth sets it down, in black and white, both +in prose and verse, over and over again: + + O Reader! had you in your mind + Such stores as silent thought can bring, + O gentle Reader! you will find + A tale in everything. + What more I have to say is short, + And you must kindly take it: + It is no tale; but, should you think, + Perhaps a tale you'll make it. + +Here is the theory full-blown. The poet is not to tell the tale, the +reader is to make it one, by thinking; and if he only thinks enough, he +will find a tale in everything! Could anything be more grotesque, or more +utterly opposed to any sane canon of the function of an author, and his +relation to his readers? It is the business of the poet to tell the tale, +and thereby to set the reader thinking; an altogether different process +from the one here suggested. "Wordsworthians against whom we must be upon +our guard," often cite the following stanza with admiration: + + The moving accident is not my trade; + To freeze the blood I have no ready arts: + 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, + To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts! + +Have they forgotten the "moving accidents by flood and field," or do they +not know whose trade it was to unfold a tale that + + Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood? + +Piping a simple song for thinking hearts, is all very well. But it will +not do to say, or to suggest, or to allow it to be inferred, that doing +this makes a man as great a poet as doing what Wordsworth did not and +plainly could not do. In the last book of _The Excursion_, he says: + + Life, death, eternity! momentous themes + Are they--and might demand a seraph's tongue, + Were they not equal to their own support; + And therefore no incompetence of mine + Could do them wrong.... + Ye wished for art and circumstance, that make + The individual known and understood; + And such as my best judgment could select + From what the place afforded, could be given. + +But _no_ subject is equal to its own support, where the poet is concerned, +however it may be with the preacher and the moralist. The poet himself +must support it. We _do_ wish for act and circumstance, in poetry; and +when Wordsworth tells us that he has, in _The Excursion_, given us the +best of these he can, we can only answer that this best is not enough, but +wholly insufficient and inadequate. + +That Mr. Arnold would deny all this, if put to him plainly, we do not +believe. It is all the more to be regretted that he should have expressed +himself in such a manner as to encourage others in forming judgments and +holding opinions which imply affirmation to the contrary. When he quotes +from Wordsworth the following lines, + + Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope, + And melancholy fear subdued by faith, + Of blessëd consolation, in distress, + Of moral strength and intellectual power, + Of joy in widest commonalty spread, + +and adds that "here we have a poet intent on the best and master thing," +and wishes us to infer Wordsworth's superiority from that fact, does he +not perceive that he is not only misleading his readers, but flagrantly +contradicting what he himself avers in the selfsame essay? Being "intent" +on these subjects is not enough. A further question remains to be +answered; viz. how has the poet dealt with them? Nowhere has Wordsworth +dealt with them so completely, so ambitiously, so exhaustively, as in _The +Excursion_. Yet what does Mr. Arnold say of it? He says that _The +Excursion_ can never be a satisfactory work to the disinterested lover of +poetry, and that much of it is "a tissue of elevated but abstract +verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry." It is plain, therefore, +that being "intent" even on "the best and master thing" does not suffice. +The passage Mr. Arnold quotes, leaving the incautious reader to infer that +it _does_ suffice, is merely the + + Life, death, eternity! momentous themes, + +and their being "equal to their own support" over again. Wordsworth is +perpetually telling us that his subject is Man, and wishes us to infer +that, the subject being great, what is written on it must be great. +Unfortunately, Man, with him, is like Love with the Scotch girl; it is Man +"in the abstract." Shakespeare also treats of Man; but he treats of him +_in men_, and Wordsworth does not. In fact, he communes. As M. Scherer +says, he is a Solitary, a Contemplative. In a word, he is essentially, and +before all things a subjective poet, and reader after reader has +complained, and critic after critic has confessed, that to be subjective, +not objective, to reflect instead of to act, to think rather than to +narrate, is the bane of modern poetry, and the conclusive mark of the +inferiority of so large a proportion of it. + +Yet, this notwithstanding, Mr. Arnold tells us that Wordsworth "deals with +that in which life really consists"; and, not content with this, he +actually goes on to declare that "Wordsworth deals with more of life than +they do";--"they" being every English poet since Milton, and indeed every +poet of every tongue since Milton, with the exception of Goethe! We can +only say that such an assertion is astounding; the most startling paradox, +indeed, we ever encountered in a criticism by a critic of authority. To +argue upon it against Mr. Arnold is, happily, superfluous; for Mr. Arnold +has anticipated and categorically answered his own paradox. Let him open +his own poems; let him turn to _Stanzas In Memory Of Obermann_, and let +him read on until he comes to the following couplet: + + But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken, + From half of human fate. + +Has he forgotten the passage? or would he now expunge it? Mr. Arnold the +poet, and Mr. Arnold the critic, are evidently at issue. But we think no +one will experience much difficulty in deciding which of two has "hit the +nail on the head," and whether it be sound criticism to affirm that +Wordsworth deals with that in which life really consists, or sound +criticism to affirm that with one half of life he does not deal at all. At +any rate, these rival criticisms are not to be reconciled, and Mr. Arnold +must elect between the two. + +What is the first and broad conclusion to be drawn from all that has been +said? It is this: that Wordsworth, as a poet, has treated great subjects +with marked and striking inadequacy, and smaller subjects with marked and +striking success. Now we submit that no man deserves to be called or +considered a great poet who has not treated some great subject in a great +manner. This is the mark, this is the test, of a great poet; and if we +once surrender this distinction, this standard, we soon lose ourselves in +hopeless critical confusion and entanglement. But no great subject _can_ +be greatly or adequately treated in poetry, save objectively, and with the +help of action, passion, incident, of all the expedients, in fact, we have +enumerated. It never can be treated adequately or greatly by merely +writing _about_ it. This is all that Wordsworth has done with his great +subjects, with "truth, grandeur, beauty, love," and the rest of them; and +therefore, as far as great subjects are concerned, he has failed, and +failed conspicuously. Where he has succeeded, and succeeded conspicuously, +succeeded admirably, succeeded perfectly, is in smaller subjects, such as +_The Solitary Reaper_, _The Cuckoo_, _Three Years She Grew_, and their +companions. This is to have done much; but it is not to have left behind +"an ample body of powerful work." Much less is it to have left behind an +"ampler" body of powerful work than every English poet since Milton, Byron +included. + +For what is the "ample body of powerful work" that Byron has left? If +Byron had failed as completely as Wordsworth in the treatment of his +larger themes, in a word, of his great subjects, then, in spite of much +fine lyrical work in Byron, the palm would have to be adjudged to +Wordsworth. But what critic of authority, who means to retain it, will +come forward and assert that Byron has failed in the treatment of his +larger themes, of his great subjects? Is _Childe Harold_ a failure? Is +_Manfred_ a failure? Is _Cain_ a failure? Is _Don Juan_ a failure? We, +like Mr. Arnold, can honestly say that though we "felt the expiring wave +of Byron's mighty influence," we now "regard him, and have long regarded +him, without illusion"; in fact, with just as little illusion as we regard +Wordsworth, which is perhaps more than Mr. Arnold can yet say. We are +unable to assert, with Scott, that, in _Cain_, "Byron has matched Milton +on his own ground." It would have been very wonderful if he had, as +wonderful as if Virgil had matched Homer on Homer's own ground. "Sero +venientibus ossa"; or, as some one put it during the controversy between +the respective merits of the Ancients and the Moderns, "The Ancients have +stolen all our best ideas." Besides, though Byron has not matched Milton +on the ground Milton occupied first and pretty nigh exhausted, Byron has +done many other things that Milton has not done. We are equally unable to +say that Byron, "as various in composition as Shakespeare himself, has +embraced every topic in human life"; though we strongly incline to think +that a dispassionate and exhaustive survey would show him to be more +various in composition, and to have embraced a greater number of topics +appertaining to human life, than any poet, English or foreign, ancient or +modern, except Shakespeare.[1] Equally unable are we to accept the dictum +of Goethe, which Mr. Arnold vainly endeavours to explain away, by trying +to prove that Goethe did not mean what he certainly said, viz. that Byron +"is in the main greater than any other English poet." + +Therefore, as we say, we look upon Byron without any illusion, and without +any wish to extol him above his real rank, by calling on his behalf even +such witnesses as Scott and Goethe. We look at his works with the same +detachment and dispassionateness as we look at the Parthenon or on the +Venus of Milo. But, so looking on them, looking on them not through any +pet theories of our own, not with any moral, theological, or sectarian +bias, but simply with the same "dispassionate-lover-of-poetry" eyes with +which we look on _Antigone_, the _Æneid_, the _Fairy Queen_, or _Faust_, +we find ourselves unable to resist the conclusion, that, like them, +_Childe Harold_, _Manfred_, _Cain_, and _Don Juan_ are great poems, are +great themes, greatly treated. This is not to say that they are perfect, +that they are in every way satisfactory. Is the _Fairy Queen_ perfectly +satisfactory? Is the _Æneid_ perfectly satisfactory? No critic has ever +found them so. Is the _Iliad_ perfectly satisfactory? It would be very odd +if it were, seeing that, as no one but Mr. Gladstone any longer doubts, it +is the work, not of one poet, but of several poets. But when all has been +urged against them that can be urged by the most judicial criticism, they +remain great subjects greatly executed. In the same manner, so do Byron's +greater poems. Roughly and broadly speaking, they _are_ satisfactory; +whereas in no sense can _The Prelude_ and _The Excursion_ be said to be +satisfactory. On the contrary, they are entirely unsatisfactory. In a +word, of Byron's larger works, it may be said that they will "do"; of +Wordsworth's, on the contrary, as Jeffrey said, and as Mr. Arnold himself +allows, they "won't." That is the distinction; and it is an immense one. + +Byron is not Shakespeare; for he lags considerably behind Shakespeare in +Invention, Action, and Character, by dint of which, and in conjunction +with which, the highest faculties of the poet are displayed. But a poet +may lag considerably behind Shakespeare, and yet exhibit these in a +conspicuous degree. It is in Character, no doubt, that Byron is more +particularly weak, as compared with Shakespeare, though he is by no means +so weak, in himself, and as compared with others, as people have come to +assume, by hearing the point so superficially iterated. It is not that +Byron cannot depict character; but he does not depict a sufficient number +of characters. They are not numerous and various enough. When M. Scherer +says that "Byron has treated hardly any subject but one--himself," he is +repeating the parrot-cry of very shallow people, and is doing little +justice to his own powers as a critic. Indeed, had Shakespeare never +lived, it is probable that it would never have occurred to any one to urge +against Byron his deficiencies in this respect. It is because he is so +great a poet, because he is so great in other respects, and because some +critics have therefore inadvertently attempted to place him on a level +with Shakespeare, that his inferiority in this particular suggested itself +to those holding a juster view. Once suggested, it was harped upon, +exaggerated, and, we may fairly say, has now been done to death. We +presume, however, that no one would suggest that, even in the poetic +presentation of Character, Byron, however inferior to certain other +writers, is not immeasurably superior to Wordsworth, who never even +attempted to portray Character. + +When we turn from the consideration of the power shown by Byron in the +presentation of Character, to his power shown in Action, Invention, and +Situation, the account becomes a very different one. In brisk and rapid +narrative, in striking incident, in prompt and perpetual +movement--qualities in which not only is Wordsworth deficient, but of +which he is absolutely devoid--Byron exhibits his true greatness as a +poet. Even in the _Tales_, in _The Giaour_, _The Bride of Abydos_, _The +Corsair_, _The Siege of Corinth_, _The Prisoner of Chillon_, which it has +of late been the fashion, we had almost said the affectation, to +depreciate, there is a stir, a "go," a swift and swirling torrent of +action, a current of animation, a full and foaming stream of narrative, a +tumult and conflict of incident, which will never cease to be regarded as +among the best, the highest, and the most indispensable elements of +poetry, until we are all laid up in lavender, until we all take to moping +and brooding over our own feelings, until we all confine ourselves to +"smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought"; until we all +become content + + To sit without emotion, hope, or aim, + In the loved presence of the cottage-fire. + And listen to the flapping of the flame, + Or kettle whispering its faint undersong. + +Even if one confined oneself merely to Byron's _Tales_, the assertion that +Wordsworth "deals with more of life" than Byron, would be startling. Love, +hatred, revenge, ambition, the rivalry of creeds, travel, fighting, +fighting by land and fighting by sea, almost every passion, and every form +of adventure, these are the "life" they deal with; and we submit that it +is to deal with a considerable portion of it; with far more of life at any +rate than Wordsworth deals with in the whole of his poems. Listen to his +own confession: + + And thus from day to day my little boat + Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably. + +Now turn to Byron: + + O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, + Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free, + Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam, + Survey our empire, and behold our home. + These are our realms, no limit to their sway! + +That is precisely the difference. The horizon of Byron is so much larger. +Far from it being true that Wordsworth deals with more of life than Byron +does, the precise opposite is the truth, that Byron deals with far more of +life than Wordsworth does, if by life we mean the life of men, of men of +action, of men of the world, and not the life, as M. Scherer says, of +Solitaries, Contemplatives, and Recluses. + +If we turn to Byron's Dramas, to _Sardanapalus_, to _The Two Foscari_, to +_The Doge of Venice_, no doubt we crave for yet more action, more +incident, more situation, than Byron gives us. But we do so because +Shakespeare has accustomed us to crave for more; and the craving has been +intensified by the sensational character of modern novels and modern +stage-plays. Nevertheless these are present, in no small amount, in the +plays we have named; and whether people choose to consider the amount +great or small, surely it is immeasurably greater than the amount of +action, invention, and situation Wordsworth exhibits in any and every +poem, of any and every kind, he ever wrote. + +We have more than once mentioned _Childe Harold_, but we must refer to it +once more and finally, in support and illustration of what we have been +urging. The persons who are of opinion that Byron never treated any +subject but himself, will perhaps likewise be of opinion that, in _Childe +Harold_, Byron treats only of himself, and that it is a purely +contemplative and subjective poem. A more superficial opinion could not +well be held. In form contemplative, it is in substance a poem full of +action, situation, and incident; in a word, it is a poem essentially and +notably objective. It is the only poem, ostensibly contemplative, of which +this can be said; and it assumes this complexion and character by dint of +Byron's own character, which was above all things active, and could not be +content without action. In _Childe Harold_, Byron summons dead men and +dead nations from their sepulchres, and makes them live and act again. He +revivifies Athens, he resuscitates Rome. He makes Cicero breathe and burn; +he makes the fallen columns and shattered pillars of the Forum as eloquent +as Tully. Petrarch once more waters the tree that bears his lady's name. +The mountains find a tongue. Jura answers from her misty shroud. The +lightning becomes a word. Rousseau tortures himself afresh; Gibbon afresh +saps solemn creeds with solemn sneer; afresh Egeria visits Numa in the +silence of the night, his breast to hers replying. Lake Leman woos, and +kisses away the cries of the Rhone, as they awake. Then she reproves like +a sister's voice. The boats upon the lake are wings to waft us from +distraction. The stars become the poetry of Heaven. Waterloo is fought +before our very eyes. The defiles fatal to Roman rashness are again +crowded with Numidian horse, and Hannibal and Thrasymene flash before our +eyes. A soul is infused into the dead; a spirit is instilled into the +mountains. The torrents talk; the sepulchres act. Movement never ceases, +and the situation is perpetually shifting. Its incidents are almost the +whole of History. In it we have--what M. Scherer justly says Wordsworth +has not--the knowledge of the human heart which worldly experience gives, +the interior drama of the passions which a man can describe well only on +condition of having been their victim, and those general views upon +History and society which are formed partly by study, partly by the +practice of affairs. All this, too, we have, in the third and fourth +cantos--for the first and second are very inferior--presented, in +language, imagery, and music, of the noblest and most elevated kind; till, +swelling, as an organ swells, before it closes, the poem concludes with +that magnificent address to the Ocean, which rounds it off and completes +it, even as the physical ocean rounds off and completes the physical +earth. In no other poem that was ever written are Nature and man--not Man +in the abstract, but men as they act, strive, feel, and suffer--so +thoroughly interfused and interwoven; and they are interwoven and +interfused as they are interwoven and interfused in actual life, not by +men contemplating and talking, but by men doing and acting, in a word, by +living. And if the reference be to men in general and life in general, and +not to a particular sort of man living a particular sort of life away from +other men, then we make bold to say, though in doing so we contradict Mr. +Arnold roundly, that in _Childe Harold_ alone there is "an ampler body of +powerful work," and that _Childe Harold_ alone "deals with more of life," +than all Wordsworth's poems, not even selected from, but taken in their +integrity, without the diminution of a single passage or the omission of a +single line. + +At this point, Mr. Arnold steps in with a notable plea. It may be that +much of what Wordsworth has written is trivial, and that still more of it +is abstract verbiage, or doctrine we hear in church, perfectly true, but +wanting in the sort of truth we require, poetic truth. It may also be that +Wordsworth has written no one great poem, and that the poem he fancied to +be great will not do, and can never be satisfactory to the disinterested +lover of poetry. It may furthermore be the case that in Wordsworth's poems +we have to lament a deficiency, if not indeed a total absence of Action, +Invention, Situation, and Character, and that he is only a Contemplative, +a Recluse, a Solitary, analysing the sensations produced upon himself by +dwelling upon mountains, woods, and waters. All this may be so. But, says +Mr. Arnold, "Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life," the greatness of a +poet depends upon his criticism of life, and Wordsworth's criticism of +life is more complete, more powerful, and more sound, than that of any +English poet since Milton, indeed than that of any poet since Milton, with +the one exception of Goethe. + +The great and the justly acquired authority of Mr. Arnold must not deter +us from saying that to no canon of criticism upon poetry with which we are +acquainted do so many objections present themselves. We suspect Mr. Arnold +himself has discerned some of these since he first propounded it; for +while in his Prefatory Essay upon Wordsworth he urges it with absolute +confidence, in his Prefatory Essay on Byron he does so more hesitatingly, +and exhibits more anxiety to explain it. But does he not explain it away, +when he says, "We are not brought much on our way, I admit, towards an +adequate definition of poetry as distinguished from prose by that truth"? +Upon this point M. Scherer, an admirer, like ourselves, of both Wordsworth +and Mr. Arnold, has some just observations: + + Wordsworth seems to Mr. Arnold to have the qualities of poetic + greatness, and Mr. Arnold accordingly defines these qualities. The + great poet, in his opinion, is the one that expresses the most noble + and the most profound idea, upon the nature of man, the one who has a + philosophy of life, and who impresses it powerfully on the subjects + which he treats. The definition, it will be perceived, is a little + vague. + +Mr. Arnold, we all know, is rather partial to vagueness, being of opinion +that it is of the essence of Culture to be more or less vague, and that +without a certain amount of vagueness there can be no sweetness and no +light. We should be sorry to seem to say anything against those delightful +characteristics, lest we should be supposed to be without them; and we +hereby declare ourselves all in favour of our "consciousness playing +about our stock notions," even if those stock notions be sweetness and +light themselves, with their accompanying charm of vagueness. But though, +in all seriousness, what Swift calls sweetness and light are invaluable +qualities, despite the partial vagueness they entail, yet when two poets +are compared, and a definition of the main business and main essence of +poetry is offered, in order that by it the relative greatness of the two +may be tested, it is just as well that the definition should not be too +vague, should be at any rate precise enough to afford the test desired. +But what is the use of it if it does not "bring us much on our way"? + +Unfortunately, Mr. Arnold's theory of poetry being a criticism of life not +only does not help us along our road, it tends to take us off our road. We +regret we have not left ourselves space to deal with his theory at length, +and can only hope we may have an opportunity of returning to it. But lest +Mr. Arnold should be tempted to raise it to the dignity of a "stock +notion," and to bestow upon it the privilege of that faithful iteration +which is bestowed upon "culture," "sweetness and light," "Barbarians, +Philistines, and Populace," which have a good deal more to say for +themselves, we think it well to point out to him that, by averring poetry +to be "a criticism of life," he is giving a handle to the Philistines of +criticism, and to the enemies of sweetness and light, which they may turn +against him in a notable manner. + +For _whose_ "criticism of life"? Does he not perceive that he is enabling +people to maintain, which unfortunately they are already only too disposed +to do, that this poet is a great poet because they consider his criticism +of life to be right and true, and that other poet to be not a great poet, +or a much smaller poet, because they consider his criticism of life to be +wrong and false? Why, this is the very pest and bane of English criticism +upon poetry, and upon art generally; the criticism which in reality +resolves itself into "I agree with this; I like that." This is the +criticism of sheer and unadulterated Philistinism, against which Mr. +Arnold has been waging such excellent and needed war for several years. +Nor, in spite of much vagueness, will it be possible for Mr. Arnold to +escape from this consequence of his dictum that poetry is a criticism of +life. For at last, after much that seems to us like beating about the +bush, he goes straight to the point, and makes the fatal confession in +plain words. + + As compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at many points less + lucid, though far less a master of style, far less of an artist, + gains so much by his criticism of life being, in certain matters of + profound importance, healthful and true, whereas Leopardi's pessimism + is not, that the value of Wordsworth's poetry, on the whole, stands + higher for us, I think, than that of Leopardi's, as it stands higher + for us, I think, than that of any modern poetry except Goethe's. + +Higher, because it is more healthful! That any critic, not an abject +Philistine, should say such a thing, amazes us beyond words. Surely Mr. +Arnold is aware that there are persons whose opinion on that subject +carries much weight, who consider that Goethe's criticism of life is +neither healthful nor true, but on the contrary false or mischievous, yet +who do not on that account deny to Goethe the title of a great poet. Is +Mr. Arnold really serious when he asserts that, other things being equal, +one poet is less great than another poet because the first is a pessimist, +and the other is an optimist? If he is, let us have two more volumes of +Selections; one containing all the best optimist poetry, and the other +containing all the best pessimist poetry, that was ever written. Which +collection would be the more true, we do not undertake to know, and, as +critics and disinterested lovers of poetry, we do not care. But we +entertain no doubt whatever which Selection would contain the finest +poetry. It would not be the optimist one. Some of the finest poetry ever +written upon life is to be found surely in the Old Testament. What might +be taken as its motto? "Vanity of Vanities. All is Vanity." As far as this +life, and any criticism of it are concerned, it is a very Gospel of +Pessimism. + +Is the conclusion then that a pessimistic criticism of life necessarily +makes a poet greater than another poet who criticises it from an +optimistic point of view? Not in the least. The consideration--we do not +say to the positive philosopher, to the historian, to the moralist, +but--to the disinterested lover of poetry, is simply irrelevant. + +But there is an attitude towards life which does give a poet the chance at +least of being greater than either a poet who criticises life as a +pessimist, or than a poet who criticises it as an optimist. That attitude +is one neither of pessimism nor of optimism; indeed, not a criticism of +life at all, or at least not such a criticism of life as to leave it open +to any one to declare that it is healthful and true, or that it is +insalubrious and false. Will Mr. Arnold tell us what is Shakespeare's +criticism of life? Is it pessimistic or optimistic? We are almost alarmed +at asking the question; for who knows that, in doing so, we may not be +sowing the seeds of a controversy as long and as interminable as the +controversy respecting the moral purpose, the criticism of life in +_Hamlet_? Once started, the controversy will go on for ever, precisely +because there is no way of ending it. What constitutes, not the +superiority, but the comparative inferiority, of Byron and Wordsworth +alike, is their excessive criticism of life. They criticise life overmuch. +It is the foible of each of them. What constitutes the superiority of +Shakespeare is, that he does not so much criticise life, as present it. He +holds the mirror up to nature, and is content to do so, showing it with +all its beautiful and all its ugly features, and with perfect +dispassionateness. Hence his unequalled greatness. + +We regret we have not space to set this forth more at length. But Mr. +Arnold will scarcely misunderstand us; and we would venture to ask him to +ponder these objections, and to let his consciousness play freely about +them. If he does so, we have little doubt that the theory about poetry +being a criticism of life, with its appalling consequences to the critic, +to the disinterested lover of poetry, to the adherent of culture, to the +friend of sweetness and light, and in fact to every one but the Philistine +with his stock ideas, will silently be dropped. + +But if Mr. Arnold sees insuperable objections to this course, and the +canon about poetry being a criticism of life is to be added to that list +of delightful formulæ, which, during the last decade, have shed so much +light on our condition, then we can only once more appeal from Mr. Arnold +to Mr. Arnold, and ask how it is that Wordsworth can be considered to have +criticised life, and to "deal with that in which life really consists," if +it be true, as Mr. Arnold tells us it is true, that + + Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken + From half of human fate. + +How, we shall still have to ask, can a poet be said to have criticised +life of whom such an ardent admirer as M. Scherer can observe, "As for +cities, Wordsworth seeks to ignore them. He takes them for a discordant +note which it is only just and right to drown and get rid of in the +general harmony of creation." + +But we must end; and we submit that we have established our case. +Wordsworth can be made to figure as the greatest poet since Milton, only +by canons of criticism that would make him not only a greater poet than +Milton, but a greater poet than any poet that preceded Milton. If this be +so, let us know it. But if not, it is vain work, trying to extol him, as a +poet, above Byron. Mr. Arnold has done Byron injustice by making +selections from his works, and asserting that selections are better than +the whole of the works from which they are selected. You might as well +select from a mountain. What should we think of the process that said, +"Here is an edelweiss, here some heather, here a lump of quartz, here a +bit of ice from a glacier, here some water from a torrent, here some +pine-cones, here some eggs from an eagle's nest; and now you know all +about Mont Blanc"? Byron is no more to be known in that fashion than the +Matterhorn is. You must make acquaintances with pastoral valleys, with +yawning precipices, with roaring cataracts, with tinkling cattle-bells, +with the rumble of avalanches, with the growl of thunder, with the zigzag +lightning, with storm, and mists, and sudden burst of tenderest sunshine, +with these, with more, in fact with all, if Alp or Byron is to be really +known. But Mr. Arnold has rendered Byron one service at least. When he +says that Byron and Wordsworth stand first and pre-eminent among the +English poets of this century, he relieves Byron of danger of rivalry. + + + + +DANTE'S REALISTIC TREATMENT OF THE IDEAL + +READ AT THE TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE DANTE SOCIETY ON JUNE 13, +1900. + + +To discourse of Dante, concerning whom, ever since Boccaccio lectured on +the _Divina Commedia_ in the _Duomo_ of Florence, more than five hundred +years ago, there has been an unbroken procession of loving commentators, +must always be a difficult undertaking; and the difficulty is increased +when the audience addressed, as I believe is the case this evening, is +composed, for the most part, of serious students of the austere +Florentine. The only claim I can have on your attention is that I am, in +that respect at least, in a more or less degree, one of yourselves. It is +now close on forty years since, in Rome, as Rome then was, one repaired, +day after day, to the Baths of Caracalla--not, as now, denuded of the +sylvan growth of successive centuries, but cloaked, from shattered base to +ruined summit, in tangled greenery--and in the silent sunshine of an +Imperial Past surrendered oneself to + + quella fonte + Che spande di parlar sì largo fiume, + +that unfailing stream of spacious speech which Dante, you remember, +ascribes to Virgil, which Dante equally shares with him, and to each +alike of whom one can sincerely say: + + Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore, + Che m'han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. + +But love and study of Dante will not of themselves suffice to make +discourse concerning him interesting or adequate; and I am deeply +impressed with the disadvantages under which I labour this evening. But my +task has been made even exceptionally perilous, since it has been preceded +by the entrancing influence of music, and music that borrowed an added +charm from the melodious words of the poet himself. May it not be with you +as it was with him when the musician Casella--"Casella mio"--acceded to +his request in the Purgatorial Realm, and sang to him, he says, + + sì dolcemente, + Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona-- + +sang to him so sweetly that the sweetness of it still sounded in his ears; +words that strangely recall the couplet in Wordsworth, though I scarcely +think Wordsworth was a Dante scholar: + + The music in my heart I bore + Long after it was heard no more. + +Many of you remember, I am sure, the entire passage in the second canto of +the _Purgatorio_. But, since there may be some who have forgotten it--and +the best passages in the _Divina Commedia_ can never be recalled too +often--and since, moreover, it will serve as a fitting introduction to the +theme on which I propose for a brief while to descant this evening, let me +recall it to your remembrance. Companioned by Virgil, and newly arrived +on the shores of Purgatory, Dante perceives a barque approaching, so swift +and light that it causes no ripple on the water, driven and steered only +by the wings of an Angel of the Lord, and carrying a hundred disembodied +spirits, singing "_In exitu Israel de Ægypto_." As they disembark, one of +them recognises Dante, and stretches out his arms to embrace the Poet. The +passage is too beautiful to be shorn of its loveliness either by +curtailment or by mere translation: + + Io vidi uno di lor trarresi avante + Per abbracciarmi con sì grande affetto, + Che mosse me a far lo somigliante. + O ombre vane, fuor che nell' aspetto! + Tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi, + E tante mi tornai con esse al petto. + + Among them was there one who forward pressed, + So keen to fold me to his heart, that I + Instinctively was moved to do the like. + O shades intangible, save in your seeming! + Toward him did I thrice outstretch my arms, + And thrice they fell back empty to my side.[2] + +Words that will recall to many of you the lines in the second book of the +_Æneid_, where Æneas describes to Dido how the phantom of his perished +wife appeared to him as he was seeking for her through the flames and +smoke of Troy, and how in vain he strove to fold her in one farewell +embrace. + + Ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum, + Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago. + +Similarly, the incorporeal figure in the _Divine Comedy_ bids Dante desist +from the attempt to embrace him, since it is useless; and then Dante +discerns it is that of Casella, who used oftentimes in Florence to sing +to him, and now assures the poet that, as he loved him upon earth, so here +he loves him still. Encouraged by the tender words, Dante calls him +"Casella mio," and addresses to him the following request: + + Se nuova legge non ti toglie + Memoria o uso all' amoroso canto, + Che mi solea quetar tutte mie voglie, + Di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto + L'anima mia, che con la sua persona + Venendo qui, è affannata tanto. + + If by new dispensation not deprived + Of the remembrance of belovëd song + Wherewith you used to soothe my restlessness, + I pray you now a little while assuage + My spirit, which, since burdened with the body + In journeying here, is wearied utterly. + +Quickly comes the melodious response: + + "Amor che nella mente mi ragiona," + Cominciò egli allor sì dolcemente, + Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona. + Lo mio Maestro, ed io, e quella gente + Ch'eran con lui, parevan sì contenti, + Com'a nessun toccasse altro la mente. + + "Love that holds high discourse within mind," + With such sweet tenderness he thus began + That still the sweetness lingers in my ear. + Virgil, and I, and that uncarnal group + That with him were, so captivated seemed, + That in our hearts was room for naught beside. + +Not so, however, the guide of the spirits newly arrived in Purgatory. +Seeing them "_fissi ed attenti alle sue note_," enthralled by Casella's +singing, he begins to rate them soundly as "_spiriti lenti_," lazy, +loitering spirits, asks them what they mean by thus halting on the way, +and bids them hasten to the spot where they will be gradually purged of +their earthly offences, and be admitted to the face of God. The canto +closes with the following exquisite lines: + + Come quando, cogliendo biada o loglio, + Gli colombi adunati alla pastura, + Queti, senza mostrar l'usato orgoglio, + Se cosa appare ond' elli abbian paura, + Subitamente lasciano star l'esca, + Perchè assaliti son da maggior cura; + Così vid'io quella masnada fresca + Lasciar il canto, e fuggir ver la costa, + Com'uom che va, nè sa dove riesca. + + As when a flight of doves, in quest of food, + Have settled on a field of wheat or tares, + And there still feed in silent quietude, + If by some apparition that they dread + A sudden scared, forthway desert the meal, + Since by more strong anxiety assailed, + So saw I that new-landed company + Forsake the song and seek the mountain side, + Like one who flees, but flies he knows not whither. + +Now, if we consider this episode in its integrity, do we not find +ourselves, from first to last, essentially in the region of the Ideal? +Whether you believe in the existence of a local habitation named +Purgatory, or you do not, none of us, not even Dante himself, has seen it, +save with the mind's eye. It was said of his austere countenance by his +contemporaries that it was the face of the man who had seen Hell. But the +phrase, after all, was figurative, and not even the divine poet had, with +the bodily vision, seen what Virgil, in one of the most pathetic of his +lines, calls the further ashore. Moreover, for awhile, and in what may be +termed the exordium of the episode, Dante surrenders himself wholly to +this Ideal, and treats it idealistically. First he discerns only two +wings of pure white light, which, when he has grown more accustomed to +their brightness, he perceives to be the Angel of the Lord, the steersman +of the purgatorial bark: + + Vedi che sdegna gli argomenti umani, + Sì che remo non vuol, nè altro velo + Che l'ale sue, tra liti sì lontani + + * * * * * + + Trattando l'aere con l'eterne penne-- + +lines that for ethereal beauty, are, I think unmatched; and I will not +presume to render them into verse. But what they say is that the Angel had +no need of mortal expedients, of sail, or oar, or anything beside, save +his own wings, that fanned the air with their eternal breath. The barque, +thus driven and thus steered, is equally unsubstantial and ideal, for it +makes no ripple in the wave through which it glides. But at length--not, +you may be quite sure, of purpose prepense, but guided by that unerring +instinct which is the great poet's supreme gift--Dante gradually passes +from idealistic to realistic treatment of the episode, thereby compelling +you, by what Shakespeare, in _The Tempest_, through the mouth of Prospero, +calls "my so potent art," to believe implicitly in its occurrence, even if +your incapacity to linger too long in the rarefied atmosphere of the Ideal +has begun to render you incredulous concerning it. For all at once he +introduces Casella, Florence, his own past cares and labours there, the +weariness of the spirit that comes over all of us, even from our very +spiritual efforts, and the soothing power of tender music. Then, with a +passing touch of happy egotism, which has such a charm for us in poets +that are dead, but which, I am told, is resented, though perhaps not by +the gracious or the wise, in living ones, Dante enforces our belief by +representing Casella as forthwith chanting a line of the poet's own that +occurs in a _Canzone_ of the _Convito_: + + Amor che nella mente mi ragiona. + + Love that holds high discourse within my mind. + +For a moment we seem to be again transported into the pure realm of the +Ideal, as not Dante and Virgil alone, but the souls just landed on the +shores of Purgatory, are described as being so enthralled by the +song--_tutti fissi ed attenti_--that they can think of and heed nothing +else. But quickly comes another realistic touch in the reproof to the +spellbound spirits not there to loiter listening to the strain, but to +hurry forward to their destined bourne. Finally, as if to confirm the +impression of absolute reality, while not removing us from the world, or +withdrawing from us the charm, of the Ideal, the poet ends with the +exquisite but familiar simile of the startled doves already recited to +you. + +What is the impression left, what the result produced, by the entire +canto? Surely it is that the poet's imagination, operating through the +poet's realistic treatment of the Ideal, and his idealistic treatment of +the Real, has taken us all captive, so that we feel nothing of the +_Incredulus odi_ disposition, the unwillingness to believe, and the mental +antipathy engendered by that unwillingness, so tersely and so truly +described by Horace, but yield credence wholly and absolutely to the +existence of a place called Purgatory, with its circles, its denizens, its +hopes, its aspirations, and purifying power. But, read where you will in +the pages of the _Divina Commedia_, you will find this is one of the main +causes of its permanent hold on the attention of the world. Its theology +may to many seem open to question, to some obsolete and out of date; its +astronomy necessarily labours under the disadvantage of having been prior +to the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, not to speak of the +great astronomers of later date, including our own times; and its +erudition, weighty and wonderful as it is, can occasionally be shown by +more recent and more advantageously circumstanced scholarship to be faulty +and inaccurate. But so long as these are presented to us nimbused by the +wizard light that fuses the Real and the Ideal, we believe while we read +and listen, and that is enough. The very first line of the _Divina +Commedia_, so familiar to every one, though it is to introduce us to the +horrors of the _Inferno_, is so realistic, so within the range of the +experience of all who have reached the meridian of life or even looked on +that period in others, that we are at once predisposed to yield our +imagination passively to what follows. But I must allow that the passage +which does immediately follow, and which discourses of the panther, the +lion, and the wolf, is so symbolic, and has lent itself to so many +suggestions and interpretations, that, had the poem generally been +conceived and composed in that fashion, it would not only have fallen +short of immortality, it would long since have been buried in the pool of +Lethe, which is the predestined resting-place of all untempered and +unredeemed symbolism in verse. I smile, and I have no doubt you will smile +also, when I say that I, too, have my own interpretation of the inner +meaning of those three menacing beasts. But be assured I have not the +smallest intention of communicating it to you. I gladly pass on, gladly +and quickly, as Dante himself passes on, to a more welcome and less +disputable apparition, who answers, when questioned as to who and what he +is, that man he is not, but man he was; that his parents were of Lombardy, +and all his folk of Mantuan stock; that he lived in the age of the great +Cæsar and the fortunate Augustus; that he was a poet--_Poeta fui_--sang of +the just and right-minded son of Anchises, the pious Æneas, who came to +Italy and founded a greater city even than Troy, when proud Ilium was +levelled to the dust. In the presence of Virgil we forget the embarrassing +symbolism of the preceding passage, and believe once more; and, when Dante +addresses him in lines of affectionate awe, that you all know by heart, +and with repeating which all lovers of poets and poetry console themselves +when the prosaic world passes on the other side, every doubt, every +misgiving, every lingering remnant of incredulity is dismissed, and we are +prepared, nay, we are eager, to take the triple journey, along two-thirds +of which Virgil tells Dante he has been sent by the _Imperador che lassù +regna_, the Ruler of the Universe, to conduct him. Prepared we are, nay, +eager, I say, to hear the _disperate strida_ of the _spiriti dolenti_, the +wailings of despair of the eternally lost, and the yearning sighs of those +_che son contenti nel fuoco_, who are resigned to purgatorial pain, and +scarce suffer from it, since they are buoyed up by the hope of finally +joining the _beate genti_, and, along with the blessed, seeing the face of +God. + + Allor si mosse, ed io gli tenni dietro, + +says Dante in the closing line of this, the First Canto of the _Divina +Commedia_. + + Then moved he on, and I paced after him. + +Could you have a more realistic touch? So realistic, so real is it, in the +Realm of the Ideal, that, just as Dante followed Virgil, so we follow +both, humble and unquestioning believers in whatever may be told us. + +I am not unaware that, in an age in which the approval of inflexibly +avenging justice consequent on wrongdoing is less marked and less frequent +than sentimental compassion for the wrongdoer, the punishments inflicted +in the _Inferno_ for the infraction of the Divine Law, as Dante understood +it, are found repellent by many persons, and agreeable to few. I grant +that they are appalling in their sternness; nor was Dante himself +unconscious of this, for he does describe Minos as "scowling horribly" as +the souls of the damned came before him for judgment, and for +discriminating consignment to their allotted circle of torture. Always +terse, and therefore all the more terrible, he nevertheless exhausts the +vocabulary of torment in describing the _doloroso ospizio_, the dolorous +home from which they will never return. As Milton speaks of the "darkness +visible" of Hell, so Dante, before him, writes of it as _loco d'ogni luce +muto_, a place silent of light, but that wails and moans like a +tempestuous sea, battered and buffeted by jarring winds, finally +designated + + La bufera infernal, che mai non resta. + + The infernal hurricane that ceases never. + +Of those who are whirled about by it, _di qua, di là, di giù, di su_, +hither and thither, upward and downward, he writes the awful line: + + Nulla speranza li conforta mai, + Non che di posa, ma di minor pena. + + They have no hope of consolation ever, + Or even mitigation of their woe. + +I could not bring myself, and I am sure you would not wish me to cite more +minutely, the magnificently merciless phrases--all of them thoroughly +realistic touches concerning ideal torment--wherewith Dante here makes his +_terza rima_ an instrument or organ on which to sound the very diapason of +the damned; and, did he dwell overlong on those deep, distressing octaves +of endless suffering, without passing by easy and natural gradations into +the pathetic minor, he would end by alienating all but the austerer +natures. But he is too great an artist, too human, too congenitally and +rootedly a poet, to make that mistake. I am sure you all know in which +canto of the _Inferno_ occur the terrific phrases I have been citing, and +need no telling that they are immediately followed by the most tender and +tearful passage in the wide range of poetic literature. While even yet the +sound of _la bufera infernal_ seems howling in our ears, suddenly it all +subsides, and we hear instead a musically plaintive voice saying: + + Siede la terra, dove nata fui, + Sulla marina dove il Po discende, + Per aver pace co' seguaci sui. + + The land where I was born sits by the sea, + Unto whose shore a restless river rolls, + To be at peace with all its followers. + +Then comes the love-story of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, told +in such exquisite accents, so veiled in music, so transfigured by verse, +that even the sternest moralist, I imagine, can hardly bring himself to +call it illicit. I confess I think it the loveliest single passage in +poetry ever written; yes, lovelier even than anything in Shakespeare, for +it has all Shakespeare's genius, and more than Shakespeare's art; and I +compassionate the man or woman who, having had the gift of birth, goes +down to the grave without having read it. There is no such other +love-story, no such other example of the _lacrymæ rerum_, the deep abiding +tearfulness of things. Nothing should be taken from, nothing can be added +to it. To me it seems sacred, like the Ark of the Covenant, that no one +must presume to touch; and I own I tremble as I presume, here and there, +to attempt, unavailingly, to translate it. It was my good fortune to be in +Florence in the month of May 1865, when the City of Flowers, the City of +Dante, which then seemed peopled with nightingales and roses, was +celebrating the six-hundredth anniversary of the birth of her exiled poet; +and those of us who loved him assembled in the Pagliano Theatre to hear +Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi repeat, to the accompaniment of living +pictures, the best-known passages of the _Divina Commedia_. One of those +supreme elocutionists, who still lives, recited the story of Paolo and +Francesca; and from her gifted voice we heard of the _tempo de' dolci +sospiri_ and _i dubbiosi aesiri_, the season of sweet sighs and hesitating +desires, the _disiato riso_, the longed-for smile, the trembling kiss, the +closing of the volume, and then the final lines of the canto: + + Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse, + L'altro piangeva sì, che di pietade + Io venni men così com'io morisse: + E caddi, come corpo morto cade. + + While the one told to us this dolorous tale, + The other wept so bitterly, that I + Out of sheer pity felt as like to die; + And down I fell, even as a dead body falls. + +This unmatched tale of tender transgression and vainly penitential tears +almost reconciles us to the more abstract description of punishment that +precedes it, and the detailed account of pitiless penalty that follows +it, in succeeding cantos; and the absolute fusion of the ideal and the +real in the woeful story imparts to it a verisimilitude irresistible even +by the most unimaginative and incredulous. Rimini, Ravenna, Malatesta, are +names so familiar to us all that any story concerning them would have to +be to the last degree improbable to move our incredulity. But who is it +that is not prepared to believe in the sorrows of a love-tale? + + Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, + Could ever hear by tale or history, + The course of true love never did run smooth. + +It is the greatest of all masters of the human heart, the greatest and +wisest teacher concerning human life, who tells us that; and Dante, who in +this respect is to be almost as much trusted as Shakespeare himself, makes +Francesca, with her truly feminine temperament, say: + + Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, + Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, + Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona. + + Love that compels all who are loved to love, + Entangled both in such abiding charm, + That, as you see, he still deserts me not. + +As we hear those words, it is no longer Rimini, Ravenna, Malatesta, Paolo, +Francesca, that arrest our attention and rivet it by their reality. We are +enthralled by the ideal realism, or realistic idealism, call it which you +will, of the larger and wider world we all inhabit, of this vast and +universal theatre, of whose stage Love remains to-day, as it was +yesterday, and will remain for ever, the central figure, the dominant +protagonist. + +So far we have seen, by illustrations purposely taken from passages in the +_Inferno_ and the _Purgatorio_ familiar to all serious readers of the +_Divine Comedy_, how Dante, by realistic touches, makes us believe in the +ideal, and how, by never for long quitting the region of the Ideal, he +reconciles us to the most accurate and merciless realism. But there is a +third Realm to which he is admitted, and whither he transports us, the +_Paradiso_. Some prosaically precise person would, perhaps, say that the +thirtieth canto of the _Purgatorio_ is not a portion of the _Paradiso_. +But you know better, for in it Beatrice appears to her poet-lover: + + Sotto verde manto, + Vestita di color di fiamma viva, + + In mantle green, and girt with living light, + +while angelic messengers and ministers from Heaven round her scatter +lilies that never fade; and when Dante, overcome by the celestial vision, +turns to Virgil with the same instinctive feeling of trust + + Col quale il fantolin corre alla mamma, + Quando ha paura + +--trust such as is shown by a little child hurrying to its mother when +afraid, and exclaims, translating a line of Virgil's own: + + Conosco i segni dell' antica fiamma, + + O how I know, and feel, and recognise + The indications of my youthful love;-- + +he finds that Virgil, _dolcissimo padre_, his gentle parent and guide, has +left him, and he stands alone in the presence of Beatrice, and hears her +voice saying: + + Non pianger anco, non pianger ancora; + Chè pianger ti convien per altra spada. + + Weep not as yet, Dante, weep not as yet, + Though weep you shortly shall, and for good cause. + +Tearless, and with downcast eyes, he listens to her just reproaches, +trying not even to see the reflection of himself in the water of the +translucent fountain at his side:-- + + Tanta vergogna mi gravò la fronte. + + So strong the shame that weighed my forehead down. + +And so he turns aside his glance to the untransparent sward, till comes +the line, awful in its reproving simplicity: + + Guardami ben: ben son, ben son Beatrice! + + Look at me well! Yes, I am Beatrice! + +Then full and fast flow the tears, like melting snows of Apennine under +Slavonian blast. + +But there is yet worse to come, yet harder to bear, when, not even +addressing him, but turning from him to her heavenly escort, she speaks of +him as "_Questi_," "this man," and tells them, in his hearing, how much +his love for her might have done for him, had he still lived the _vita +nuova_, the pure fresh life with which love had inspired him while she was +yet on earth. But when she was withdrawn from him to Heaven, when she was +of flesh disrobed and became pure spirit, and so was more deserving of +love than before. + + Questi si tolse a me, e diessi altrui. + + This man from me withdrew himself, and gave + Himself to others. + +What think you of that as a realistic treatment of the Ideal? If there be +any among my audience, members of the sex commonly supposed to be the +wiser, who but partly feel and imperfectly apprehend it, then let them ask +any woman they will what she thinks of it, and she will answer, "It is +supreme, it is unapproachable." + +After such an illustration of the power of Dante over one of the main +secrets of fascination in great poetry, it is unnecessary to go in search +of more. With illustrating my theme of this evening I have done, and it +only remains to add a few words of repetition and enforcement of what has +been already indicated, lest perchance, if they were omitted, my meaning +and purpose should be misapprehended or overlooked. Did you happen to +observe that, a little while back, I used the phrase, "the ideal realism, +or realistic idealism, call it which you will"? But now, before +concluding, let me say, what has been in my mind all along, and has been +there for many years, that great poetry consists of the combination of +ideal Realism, realistic Idealism, and Idealism pure and simple. Upon that +point much might be said, and perhaps some day I may venture to say it. In +all ages the disposition of the more prosaic minds--by which term I do not +mean minds belonging to persons devoid of feeling, or even of sentiment, +but persons destitute of the poetic sense, or of what Poetry essentially +is--has been to incline, in works of fiction whether in prose or verse, to +Realism pure and simple; and the present Age, thanks to the invention of +photography and the dissemination of novels that seek to describe persons +and things such as they are or are supposed to be, has a peculiar and +exceptional leaning in that direction. The direction is a dangerous one, +for the last stage of Realism pure and simple in prose fiction is the +exhibition of demoralised man and degraded woman. In poetry, thank Heaven, +that operation is impossible. No doubt, it is possible in verse just as it +is possible in prose, and perhaps even more so; and there are persons who +will tell you that it is Poetry. But it is not, and never can be made +such. Poetry is either the idealised Real, the realistic Ideal, or the +Ideal pure and simple. In other words, as I long since endeavoured to +show, Poetry is Transfiguration. Attempts are made in these days, as we +all well know, to get you to accept Realism pure and simple as the newest +and most inspired utterance of the Heavenly Maid. But they will not be +successful. In that great hall of the Vatican, whither throng pilgrims +from every quarter of the world, and to whose walls Raphael has bequeathed +the ripest and richest fruits of his lucid, elevated, and elevating +genius, is a presentation of the Muse. She is seated on a throne of +majestic marble. Her feet are planted on the clouds, but her laurelled +head and outstretched wings are high in the Empyrean, and round her maiden +throat is a circlet enamelled with the unageing stars. With one hand she +cherishes the lyre, with the other she grasps the Book of Wisdom; and her +attendants are, not the sycophants of passing popularity, but the eternal +angels of God, upholding a scroll wherein are inscribed the words _Numine +afflatur_. She sings only when inspired. That is the Muse for me. Surely +it is the Muse for you. At any rate, it was the Muse of Dante; the Muse +that inspired the _Divina Commedia_ through his love for Beatrice. As an +old English song has it, "'Tis love that makes the world go round," a +homely truth that Dante idealised and transfigured in the last line of his +immortal poem: + + L'Amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stelle. + + Love, + That lights the sun and makes the planets sing; + +love of Love, love of Beauty, love of Virtue, love of Country, love of +Mankind; or, as one might put it in this age of physical discovery: + + Electric love illuminates the world. + + + + +DANTE'S POETIC CONCEPTION OF WOMAN + + +The imaginative estimate or ideal conception of Woman by the Poets has +always been deemed exceptionally interesting, especially by women +themselves, for, as a rule, it is agreeable; and, even if the presentation +be sometimes a little overcharged with glowing colour, all of us, men and +women alike, are not otherwise than pleased with descriptions that portray +us, not exactly as we are, but as we should like to be. Withal, a +portrait, to obtain recognition, must have in it some resemblance to the +original; and, speaking in the most prosaic manner, one need not hesitate +to affirm that any representation of women, at least of womanly women, +that was not attractive would be a travesty of the fact. + +Alike in the _Vita Nuova_ and the _Divina Commedia_, Beatrice Portinari +figures so largely, and Dante's love for her from childhood in her tenth +till her death in her twenty-sixth year is so striking that most persons +think of the great Florentine Poet in association with no other women, +their characters, their occupations, temptations, weaknesses, virtues, and +everyday duties. Yet no man could be a Poet such as Dante who confined his +ken to so limited a field of observation and feeling, and to whom the +whole range of feminine emotion and action was not familiar; and, in the +exposition of that theme, I would invite attention to that wider range and +scope of interest, though from it Beatrice will not be forgotten. Let us +turn, first of all, to the fifteenth canto of the _Paradiso_, where +Cacciaguida, the Poet's ancestor, describes, while Beatrice looks on with +assenting smile, the simplicity of Florentine manners in former times, +alike in men and women, but in women especially--times dear to Dante, +since they immediately preceded those in which he himself lived. + + Fiorenza, + +says Cacciaguida, calling the city by its original name, + + Fiorenza, dentro della cerchia antica, + Si stava in pace, sobria e pudica. + Non avea catenella, non corona, + Non donne contigiate, non cintura, + Che fosse a veder più che la persona. + + Florence, within her ancient boundaries + Was chaste, and sober, and in peace abode. + No golden bracelets and no head-tires then, + Transparent garments, rich embroideries, + That caught the eye more than the wearer's self. + +He goes on to say that the Florentine ladies of that day left their mirror +without any artificial colouring on their cheeks. Mothers themselves +tended the cradle, and maidens and matrons drew off the thread from the +distaff, while listening to old tales of Troy, Fiesole, and Rome. It is +Dante's own description of the manners and customs of the days when he was +a child. + +Some, perhaps, will ask, "Surely there is nothing very poetic in the +foregoing description of woman?" If so, one must reply, indeed there is, +and only the acceptance of the idea of Poetry prevailing amongst us of +late years, which is essentially false, because so narrow and so exclusive +of the simplest poetry at one end of the scale, and of the highest poetry +at the other, could make any one doubt that a really poetic and +imaginative conception of woman must include the dedication, though not +the entire dedication, of herself to domestic duty and tenderness. + +Is there nothing poetic in Wordsworth's picture of a girl turning her +wheel beside an English fire? + +Is there nothing poetic in Byron's description?-- + + A mind at peace with all below, + A heart whose hopes are innocent. + +Or in Coventry Patmore's?-- + + So wise in all she ought to know, + So ignorant in all beside. + +Is there, I venture to ask, nothing poetic, nothing romantic in the +description of a young girl who blends with cultivated sensibility to +Literature and Art homely tasks thus described?-- + + ... She brims the pail, + Straining the udders with her dainty palms, + Sweet as the milk they drain. She skims the cream, + And, with her sleeves rolled up and round white arms, + Makes the churn sing like boulder-baffled stream. + A wimple on her head, and kirtled short, + She hangs the snow-white linen in the wind, + A heavenly earthliness. + +In the whole range of poetic literature there is no more celebrated +passage than the essentially domestic picture, in the Sixth Book of the +_Iliad_, of Hector, Andromache, and their baby boy, where the Trojan hero, +before sallying forth to battle afresh, stretches out his arms to clasp +the little Astyanax. It might be pedantic to recite the passage in the +original. But here is an excellent translation of it by Mr. Walter Leaf: + + So spake glorious Hector, and stretched out his arms to his boy. But + the child shrank back to the bosom of his fair-girdled nurse, + dismayed at his dear father's aspect, and in dread at the horse-hair + crest that he beheld nodding fiercely from the helmet's top. Then his + dear father laughed aloud, and his lady-mother; and forthwith + glorious Hector took the helmet from his head and laid it, all + gleaming, upon the ground; then kissed he his dear son, and dandled + him in his arms. + +Surely everybody feels the poetic, the romantic character of the incident, +founded on the loves of the household and the hearth. Turn to Chaucer, to +Milton, to Shakespeare, to any great Poet, and you will find that, like +Dante, they included simple duties in their poetic conception of woman. +Only in an age sicklied o'er with lackadaisical or sensuous sentimentality +could it be otherwise. + +But a poet's ideals of what women should be, and often are, is shown not +only by what he extols, but by what he condemns, and, in this respect, +Dante, poet-like, is sparing and reserved. Most--indeed, nearly all--of +the persons whom he indicates by name as being eternally punished in the +Circles of the Inferno are men; partly, perhaps, because Dante, who, it +must be owned, would have been loved by Doctor Johnson as a good hater, +had political and other scores of the kind to settle with those he +describes as having a perpetual lease in the lower regions, but in part, +also, because he could not bring himself to write harshly of any woman he +had known. But to a few notorious female rebels against what he deemed +womanly character and conduct, and who had lived many hundred years before +his day, he is pitilessly severe. It would be difficult to quote lines +from any Poet more so than those in which he describes Semiramis as among +those whom + + Nulla speranza gli conforta mai. + +She has not even hope to fall back on as a mitigation of her endless +torments. Of her offences against his ideal of woman he says: + + A vizio di lussuria fu si rotta, + Che libito fe lecito in sua legge, + Per torre il biasmo in che era condotta. + +She was so steeped in wickedness that she promulgated laws permitting +others to act as she herself did, in order to annul the stigma that would +otherwise have been attached to her. He is a little hard and unjust to +Dido, whom Virgil treats with such exquisite tenderness, in naming her +along with "lustful Cleopatra" in the same passage. To Helen he is more +indulgent, in words at least, content with saying that she was the guilty +cause of dire events, "_per cui tanto reo tempo si volse_"; but she does +not escape endless expiation. Some of my readers will remember how much +more damning of her conduct is Virgil in the Sixth Book of the _Æneid_, +where Priam represents her as giving the signal to the Greeks to enter +Troy, and having concealed his sword, that he may fall a helpless victim +to the vengeance of Paris, whom the fair wanton wished to propitiate in +the hour of her lord's triumph. + +But what is Dante's attitude towards Francesca da Rimini, in the most +beautiful passage, it seems to me, in the whole range of narrative Poetry? +Many, I am sure, know it by heart, and have thereby fortified themselves +against the modern less-refined treatment of it even by men aspiring to be +regarded as poets. Often as one has repeated it to oneself, one has never +felt that Dante had for Francesca any harsher feeling than sympathetic +compassion. He casts around her the halo of the purest sentiment; he +brings music of matchless verbal sweetness to the description of the hour, +the place, the circumstances of her disinterested and unselfish +surrender. The very lines in which he leads up to her pathetic story, +lines in which his feeling concerning frail and hapless love seems to be +purposely expressed in general and wide-embracing language, are in +themselves significant to those who observe their meaning. He says that +when he heard Virgil name the numerous knights and fair dames who were +suffering from having subordinated prudence to impulse, he only felt +troubled for them and bewildered. + + Pietà mi vinse, e fu quasi smarrito. + +The first thing he notices in Francesca and her lover is their buoyancy in +the air, as though they were the finest and most tenuous of spirits; and +when he says to Virgil that he would fain have speech with them, the reply +is that he has only to appeal to them by the love that still moves them, +and they will draw nigh to him. Then follows that lovely simile of doves +floating to call, and Francesca's recognition of Dante with the words: + + O animal grazioso e benigno! + +who is sure to have pity on her hapless doom. When Francesca pauses in her +narrative, and Dante bows his head for sorrow, Virgil shows what is his +own feeling by the brief question addressed to Dante, "What think you?" +Dante replies in a voice broken by emotion: + + ... O lasso, + Quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio + Menò costoro al doloroso passo! + +and, turning to Francesca, he says that her fate fills his eyes with tears +and his heart with anguish. Encouraged by the poet's sympathy, she tells +him what happened, "_al tempo de' dolci sospiri_," in the season of sweet +sighs, in itself a preliminary and melodious appeal for indulgence, and +that he must be patient with her if she tells her tale, sobbing as she +speaks. Torn between sweet remembrance and regret, she cannot refrain from +recalling + + ... il disiato riso + Esser baciato da cotanto amante, + +or intimating with supreme delicacy what ensued in the final line of her +narrative: + + Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante. + +The story she had been reading with Paolo Malatesta of Lancelot and +Guinevere fell from their hands, and that day they read no further on. And +Dante? All he says is that he felt like to die for grief, and fell to the +ground even as a dead body falls. From the first line to the last he +utters no word of blame or reproach. He would not have been a poet had he +done so. + +Let us now turn from the fifth book of the _Inferno_ to the third of the +_Paradiso_, that we may add to our knowledge of Dante's poetic conception +of Woman. He there beholds Piccarda Donati, whom he had known in her +lifetime on earth, but at first does not recognise, because, as she +herself says with heavenly humility, she is now much fairer to look on +than she was then. Withal, she adds, she occupies only an inferior place +in Heaven, because she was forced, and sorely against her own will, to +violate her vow of virginity. She begins her story by saying simply: + + Io fui nel mondo vergine sorella, + +that she was a nun dedicated to God, and goes on to tell how she was +violently torn from her cloister by her brother, Forese Donati, and his +accomplices, to further family ambition, and compelled to submit to the +marriage rite. Dante, feeling, as it seems to me, that this did not +detract from her merit, asks her if she is contented with the relatively +inferior position in Paradise she says she is assigned among celestial +denizens. I trust many readers know her reply, for it is one of the +noblest and most beautiful passages in the whole of the _Divina Commedia_. +Like all fine passages in Poetry, adequate rendering of it in another +tongue is not attainable. But the best translation of it with which I am +acquainted is that of C. B. Cayley--no Cary, mark you--in _terza rima_, +and of which I remember I availed myself when, many years ago, I was +beginning to learn Italian, and read Dante for the first time among the +then leafy-covered ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. Here is Piccarda's +reply: + + Our will, O brother mine, is kept at rest + By power of heavenly love, which makes us will, + For nought else thirsting, only things possessed. + If we should crave to be exalted still + More highly, then our will would not agree + With His, who gives to us the place we fill. + For 'tis of our own will the very ground, + That in the will of God we govern ours. + +Then comes that supremely beautiful line, not to be surpassed by any line +even in Dante: + + In la sua voluntade è nostra pace. + + Our peace is in submission to His will. + +Is it fanciful to think that in that line also Dante has betrayed and +bequeathed to us, perhaps unconsciously, his main conception of Woman, as +a gentle and adoring creature, who finds her greatest happiness in +subordinating her will to those who are deserving of the trust she reposes +in them? + +But Piccarda does not end the dialogue with her own story. She tells Dante +that the great Costanza, as she calls her, who married the German Henry +the Fifth, was also torn from a convent where she had taken the veil, and +forced into Royal nuptials. But when she was thus compelled to violate her +vows, + + Contra suo grado e contra buona usanza, + Non fu dal vel del cuor giammai disciolta. + + She wore the vestal's veil within her heart. + +And, as if to indicate that the conduct of each was condoned by the Virgin +of Virgins, Dante concludes by saying: + + ... _Ave + Maria_, cantando; e cantando vanio, + + She faded from our sight, singing _Ave Maria_, + +and once again he concentrated his gaze on Beatrice, Beatrice whom he +regarded as his highest poetic conception of Woman. Fully to grasp what +that was, we must descend from Heaven to earth and recall the origin and +growth of his adoration of her, as described in the _Vita Nuova_. + +To some commentators on Dante, the narrative to be read there has +suggested difficulties when, in reality, there are none, leading them to +urge that a child of nine years of age could not feel what is therein +described, and that, therefore, it is purely symbolic, and was written not +about any human creature, but indicated Philosophy, or the desire for +spiritual enlightenment and the search for heavenly wisdom, which was +Dante's overpowering impulse almost from the cradle. The answer to such an +interpretation of the passage is that it betrays an utter ignorance of the +emotional precocity of the poetic temperament, and of the vague but +intense hold Love can acquire over Poets from their earliest years. + +Of the reality underlying the idealism of the _Vita Nuova_, we therefore +need have no doubt whatever. Dante's Beatrice was Beatrice Portinari, a +Florentine maid first, a Florentine bride later, whose people lived in the +Corso, near the Canto de' Pazzi. + +All that follows in the narrative of the _Vita Nuova_ may be relied on +just as implicitly; how, when she was eighteen years of age, he met her +again walking in the streets of Florence between two noble ladies older +than herself, and graciously, as Dante says, returned his salute; how, +with the naïf shyness of a youth consumed with love, he tried to dissemble +it by pretending to be enamoured of another damsel, which only made +Beatrice look away when she met him; and how he contrived to convey to her +indirectly, through a poem he wrote, that she had misjudged him; how, +thereon, she looked on him graciously once more; and how, alas! in her +twenty-fifth year, she was summoned from this world to the world above. +Then the _Vita Nuova_ draws mournfully to a close, ending with these +significant words:-- + + After I had written this sonnet, there appeared to me a wonderful + vision, in which I saw things that made me determine to write no more + of this dear Saint until I should be able to write of her more + worthily; and, of a surety, she knows that I study to attain unto + this end with all my powers. So, if it shall please Him by Whom all + things live, to spare my life for some more years, I hope to say that + of her which never yet hath been said of any lady; and then may it + please Him, who is the Father of all good, to suffer my soul to see + the glory of its mistress, the sainted Beatrice, who now, abiding in + glory, looketh upon the face of Him who is blessed for ever and ever. + +For the fulfilment of that determination we must return to the _Divina +Commedia_, written in the fullness of the Poet's powers. But there are +three lines in the _Vita Nuova_ about the death of Beatrice that have +haunted me ever since I first read them, and whose beauty, I am sure, all +will feel: + + Non la ci tolse qualità di gelo, + Nè di color, siccome l'altro fece, + Ma sola fu sua gran benignitade: + +lines very difficult to translate, but the meaning of which is that she +died neither from chill nor from fever, which carries off other mortals, +but only of her great benignness, or excess of goodness, which rendered +earth an unfitting dwelling-place for her, and Paradise her only true +home. + +It is not necessary to comment here on the First Canto of the _Divina +Commedia_. That, one has done already before the Dante Society, and it is +not requisite for one's present theme. But in Canto the Second we meet +with the Beatrice of the _Vita Nuova_. She it is that sends Virgil, who +dwells in the neutral territory of Limbo, to the Poet, saying: + + Io son Beatrice, che ti faccio andare: + Amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare. + +And not only does she say that she is animated by love, which has caused +her, now in Heaven, to feel so compassionately towards him, but also +because he loved her so while she was on earth, and continued to do so +after she had quitted it, with a fidelity that has lifted him above the +crowd of ordinary mortals, and made of him a Poet. Here, let it be said in +passing, we get another indication of Dante's poetic conception of Woman, +which is, among other qualities, to co-operate in the making and fostering +of Poets, a mission in which they have never been wanting. Where, indeed, +is the Poet who could not say of some woman, and, if he be fortunate, of +more than one, what, in the Twenty-second Canto of the _Purgatorio_, Dante +makes Statius say to Virgil, "_Per te poeta fui_," "It was through you +that I became a Poet." + +Throughout the remaining Cantos of the _Inferno_, Beatrice naturally is +never mentioned, nor yet in the _Purgatorio_, till we reach Canto the +Thirtieth, wherein occurs perhaps the most painful scene in the +awe-inspiring poem. In it she descends from Heaven, an apparition of +celestial light, compared by the Poet to the dazzling dawn of a glorious +day. Smitten with fear, he turns for help to Virgil, but Virgil has left +him. "Weep not," says Beatrice to him, "that Virgil is no longer by your +side; you will need all your tears when you hear me." Then begins her +terrible arraignment: + + Guardaci ben: ben sem, ben sem Beatrice. + + Look on me well! Yes, I am Beatrice. + +Confused, Dante gazes upon the ground, and then glances at a fountain hard +by; but, seeing his own image trembling in the water, he lowers his eyes +to the green sward encircling it, and fixes them there, while she upbraids +him for his deviation from absolute fidelity to her memory, and his +disregard of her heavenly endeavours still to help and purify him. +Boccaccio says that Dante was a man of strong passions, and possibly, +indeed probably, he was. But Beatrice seems to reproach him with only one +transgression, and, if one is to say what one thinks, she has always +appeared to me a little hard on him. Nor does she rest content till she +has compelled him to confess his fault. He does so, and then she tells him +to lay aside his grief, and think no more of it, for he is forgiven. +Perhaps, in mitigation of the feeling that her severity was in excess of +the cause, one ought to remember, since it is peculiarly pertinent to my +theme, that we are in the above harrowing scene presented with the +crowning characteristic of Dante's poetic conception of Woman, that, be +the offence against her what it may, she forgets and forgives. + +It might be interesting on some other occasion to inquire how far Dante's +poetic conception of Woman is shared by Poets generally, and by the +greater Poets of our own land in particular. Meanwhile one may affirm that +the inquiry would serve to show that it is in substance the same, though +no other Poet, in whatsoever tongue, has extolled and glorified a woman as +Dante did Beatrice. But Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, +Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, could all be shown, by apposite +illustration, to leave on the mind a conception of woman as a being +tender, devoted, faithful, helpful, "sweet, and serviceable," as Tennyson +says of Elaine, quick to respond to affection, sensitive to beauty in +Nature and Arts, sympathising companion alike of the hearth and of man's +struggle with life--in a word, a creature of whom it is true to say, as, +indeed, Byron _has_ said, that "Love is her whole existence," meaning by +Love not what is too frequently in these days falsely presented to us in +novels as such, but Love through all the harmonious scale of loving, +maternal, filial, conjugal, romantic, religious, and universal. + +Read then the Poets. They have a nobler conception of woman and of life +than the novelists. Their unobtrusive but conspicuous teaching harmonises +with the conduct of the best women, and has its deep foundation in a +belief in the beneficent potency of Love, from the most elementary up to +an apprehension of the meaning of the last line of the _Divina Commedia_: + + L'amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stelle. + + Love that keeps the sun in its course, and journeys with the planets in + their orbit. + + + + +POETRY AND PESSIMISM + + +The term Pessimism has in these later days been so intimately associated +with the philosophical theories of a well-known German writer, that I can +well excuse those who ask, What may be the connection between Pessimism +and Poetry? There are few matters of human interest that may not become +suitable themes for poetic treatment; but I scarcely think Metaphysics is +among them. It is not, therefore, to Schopenhauer's theory of the World +conceived as Will and Idea, that I invite your attention. The Pessimism +with which we are concerned is much older than Metaphysics, is as old as +the human heart, and is never likely to become obsolete. It is the +Pessimism of which the simplest, the least cultured, and the most +unsophisticated of us may become the victims, and which expresses the +feeling that, on the whole, life is rather a bad business, that it is not +worth having, and that it is a thing which, in the language used by the +Duke in _Measure for Measure_, in order to console Claudio, none but fools +would keep. + +Now, as all forms of feeling, and most forms of thought, are reflected in +the magic mirror of Poetry, it is only natural that gloomy views of +existence, of the individual life, and of the world's destiny should from +time to time find expression in the poet's verse. There is quite enough +pain in the experience of the individual, quite enough vicissitude in the +history of nations, quite enough doubt and perplexity in the functions and +mission of mankind, for even the most cheerful and masculine Song to +change sometimes into the pathetic minor. What I would ask you to consider +with me is if there be not a danger lest poetry should remain for long in +this minor key, and if the Poet does not find ample justification and +warrant--nay, should he be a true and comprehensive interpreter of life, +of + + All moods, all passions, all delights, + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + +if he does not find himself compelled, in reply to the question, "What of +the night?" to answer, "The stars are still shining." + +No survey of the attitude of Poetry towards Pessimism would be +satisfactory that confined itself to one particular age; and I shall ask +you, therefore, to attend to the utterances of poets in other generations +than our own. But, since our own age necessarily interests us the most, +let us at least _begin_ with IT. + +I should be surprised to find any one doubting that during the last few +years a wave of disillusion, of doubt, misgiving, and despondency has +passed over the world. We are no longer so confident as we were in the +abstract wisdom and practical working of our Institutions; we no longer +express ourselves with such certainty concerning the social and moral +advantages of our material discoveries; we entertain growing anxiety as to +the future of our Commerce; many persons have questioned the very +foundations of religious belief, and numbers have taken refuge from +conflicting creeds in avowed Agnosticism, or the confession that we know +and can know absolutely nothing concerning what it had long been assumed +it most behoves us to know. One by one, all the fondly cherished theories +of life, society and Empire; our belief in Free Trade as the evangelist of +peace, the solution of economic difficulties and struggles, and the sure +foundation of national greatness; all the sources of our satisfaction with +ourselves, our confidence in our capacity to reconcile the rivalry of +capital and labour, to repress drunkenness, to abolish pauperism, to form +a fraternal confederation with our Colonies, and to be the example to the +whole world of wealth, wisdom, and virtue, are one by one deserting us. We +no longer believe that Great Exhibitions will disarm the inherent ferocity +of mankind, that a judicious administration of the Poor Law will gradually +empty our workhouses, or that an elastic law of Divorce will correct the +aberrations of human passion and solve all the problems of the hearth. The +boastfulness, the sanguine expectations, the confident prophecies of olden +times are exchanged for hesitating speculations and despondent whispers. +We no longer seem to know whither we are marching, and many appear to +think that we are marching to perdition. We have curtailed the authority +of kings; we have narrowed the political competence of aristocracies; we +have widened the suffrage, till we can hardly widen it any further; we +have introduced the ballot, abolished bribery and corruption, and called +into play a more active municipal life; we have multiplied our railways, +and the pace of our travel has been greatly accelerated. Telegraph and +telephone traverse the land. Surgical operations of the most difficult and +dangerous character are performed successfully by the aid of anæsthetics, +without pain to the patient. We have forced from heaven more light than +ever Prometheus did; with the result that we transcend him likewise in our +pain. No one would assert that we are happier, more cheerful, more full of +hope, than our predecessors, or that we confront the Future with greater +confidence. All our Progress, so far, has ended in Pessimism more or less +pronounced; by some expressed more absolutely, by some with more +moderation; but felt by all, permeating every utterance, and infiltrating +into every stratum of thought. + +Now let us see to what extent these gloomy views have found expression in +poetry, and, first of all, in the writings of not only the most widely +read but the most sensitive and receptive poet of our time, Alfred +Tennyson. Tennyson came of age in 1830, or just on the eve of the first +Reform Bill, when a great Party in the State, which was to enjoy almost a +monopoly of power for the next thirty years, firmly believed, and was +followed by a majority of the nation in believing, that we had only to +legislate in a generous and what was called a liberal sense, to bring +about the Millennium within a reasonable period. They had every possible +opportunity of putting their belief into practice, and they did so with +generous ardour. Now in that year 1830 there appeared what was practically +Tennyson's first volume; and save in the instance of the short poem +beginning + + You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease, + Within this region I subsist, + +and the somewhat longer but still comparatively brief one, opening with + + Love thou thy land, with love far-brought + From out the storied Past, + +there is no reference in it to the political or social condition of the +English people. The bulk of the poems had evidently been composed, so to +speak, in the lofty vacuum created by the poet and the artist for himself, +save where, in the lines, + + Vex not thou the Poet's mind + With thy shallow wit: + Vex not thou the poet's mind, + For thou canst not fathom it, + +he seemed to be giving the great body of his countrymen notice that they +had nothing in common with him, or he with them. And, in the two +exceptions I have named, what is his attitude? You all remember the lines: + + But pamper not a hasty time, + Nor feed with vague imaginings + The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings + That every sophister can lime. + +And so he goes on, through stanzas with which, I am sure, you are +thoroughly familiar, ending with the often-quoted couplet: + + Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed + Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay. + +It would be difficult to find, in verse, a more terse or accurate +embodiment of what, in no Party sense, we may call the Conservative mind, +the Conservative way of looking at things, or a more striking instance of +contemporaneous verse reflecting what had recently been the average public +temper of the moment. The England of the years that immediately preceded +1830 was an England wearied with the strain and stress of the great war +and the mighty agitations of the early part of the century, and now, +craving for repose, was in politics more or less stationary. Therefore in +this earliest volume, of one of the most sensitive and receptive of +writers, we encounter only quiet panegyrics of + + A land of settled government, + A land of just and old renown, + Where Freedom slowly broadens down + From precedent to precedent. + + Where Faction seldom gathers head, + But, by degrees to fulness wrought, + The strength of some diffusive thought + Hath time and space to work and spread. + +Here we have none of the rebellious political protests of Byron, none of +the iconoclastic fervour of Shelley, none even of the philosophic yearning +of Wordsworth. It was a Conservative, a self-satisfied England, and the +youthful Tennyson accordingly was perfectly well satisfied with it, +evidently having as yet no cognizance of the fact that Radicalism was +already more than muling and pewking in the arms of its Whig nurse, and +that Reforms were about to be carried neither "slowly," nor by "still +degrees," nor in accordance with any known "precedent." + +Tennyson's next volume was not published till 1842. During the twelve +years that had elapsed since the appearance of its predecessor, a mighty +change had come not only over the dream, but over the practice, of the +English People. It was an England in which the stationary or conservative +tone of thought of which I spoke was, if not extinct, discredited and +suppressed, and the fortunes of the Realm were moulded by the generous and +hopeful theories of Liberalism. Tennyson meanwhile had been subjected to +the influences of what he called the wondrous Mother Age; and harken how +now--it scarcely sounds like the same voice--the eulogist of the "storied +Past," the deprecator of "crude imaginings" and of a "hasty time," +confronts the dominant spirit and rising impulses of the new generation: + + For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, + Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; + + Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, + Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; + + Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, + With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm; + + Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd + In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. + + There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, + And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. + +Did Optimism ever find a clearer, more enthusiastic, or more confident +voice than that? I have sometimes thought that when the Historian comes to +write, in distant times, of the rise, progress, and decline of Liberalism +in England, he will cite that passage as the melodious compendium of its +creed. You all know where the passage comes; for you have, I am sure, the +first _Locksley Hall_ by heart. + +But there is another _Locksley Hall_, the _Locksley Hall_ which the Author +himself calls _Locksley Hall Sixty Years After_, published as recently as +1886. You are acquainted with it, no doubt; but I should be surprised to +find any one quite so familiar with it as with its predecessor. It is not +so attractive, so fascinating, so saturated with beauty. But for my +purpose it is eminently instructive, and I will ask you to listen to some +of its rolling couplets. + + Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end? + Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend. + + Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past, + Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last. + + Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise: + When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, spoken lies? + + Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn, + Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, "Ye are equals, equal-born." + + Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat. + Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat. + + Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom + Larger than the Lion,--Demos end in working its own doom. + + Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game; + Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name. + + Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all; + Step by step we rose to greatness,--thro' the tonguesters we may fall. + +Was there ever such a contrast as between these two _Locksley Halls_? The +same poet, the same theme, the same metre, but how different the voice, +the tone, the tendency, the conclusion! All the Liberalism, all the +enthusiasm, the hope, the confidence, of former years have vanished, and +in their place we have reactionary despondency. It is as though the same +hand that wrote the Christening Ode to Liberalism, had composed a dirge to +be chanted over its grave. + +The genius of Tennyson needs no fresh panegyric. It is but yesterday he +died, in the fullness of his Fame; and that his works will be read so long +as the English language remains a living tongue, I cannot doubt. But if, +while his claim to the very highest place as an artist must ever remain +uncontested, doubts should be expressed concerning his equality with the +very greatest poets, those who express that doubt will, I imagine, base +their challenge on the excessive receptivity, and consequent lack of +serenity of his mind. In the first _Locksley Hall_ the poet is an +Optimist. In the second _Locksley Hall_ he is a Pessimist. And why? +Because, when the first was written, the prevailing tone of the age was +optimistic; and, when the second was composed, the prevailing tone of the +time had become pessimistic. + +It will scarcely be doubted, therefore, that there does exist a real and a +very grave danger lest Poetry should, in these perplexing and despondent +days, not only be closely associated with Pessimism, but should become for +the most part its voice and echo. I am precluded from presenting to you +illustrations of this danger from the works of living writers of verse. +But in truth, the malady of which I am speaking--for malady, in my +opinion, it is--began to manifest itself long before the present +generation, long before Tennyson wrote, and when indeed he was yet a child +in the cradle. The main original source of Modern Pessimism is the French +movement known as the Revolution, which, by exciting extravagant hopes as +to the happy results to be secured from the emancipation of the +individual, at first generated a fretful impatience at the apparently slow +fulfilment of the dream, and finally aroused a sceptical and reactionary +despondency at the only too plain and patent demonstration that the dream +was not going to be fulfilled at all. It is this blending of wild hopes +and extravagant impatience that inspired and informed the poetry of +Shelley, that produced _Queen Mab_, _The Revolt of Islam_, and _Prometheus +Unbound_. In Byron it was impatience blent with disillusion that dictated +_Childe Harold_, _Manfred_, and _Cain_, and finally culminated in the +mockery of _Don Juan_. Keats, while ostensibly holding aloof from the +political and social issues of his time, succumbed and ministered to the +disease, even if unconsciously and unintentionally, more even than either +Byron or Shelley; for _they_ went on fighting against, while _he_ +passively submitted, to it. Keats found nothing in his own time worth +sympathising with or singing about, and so took refuge in mythological and +classical themes, or in the expression of states of feeling in which he +grows half in love with easeful death, in which more than ever it seems +sweet to die and to cease upon the midnight with no pain, and to the high +requiem of the nightingale to become a sod that does not hear. + +Now it is an instructive circumstance that, in recent years, a distinct +and decided preference has been manifested both by the majority of critics +and by the reading public for the poetry of Keats even over the poetry of +the other two writers I have named in connection with him. In Byron, +notwithstanding his rebellious tendency, notwithstanding the gloom that +often overshadows his verse, notwithstanding his being one of the +exponents of those exaggerated hopes and that exaggerated despondency of +which I have spoken, there was a considerable fund of common sense and a +good deal of manliness. He was a man of the world and could not help being +so, in spite of his attitude of hostility to it. Moreover, in many of his +poems, action plays a conspicuous part, and the general passions, +interests, and politics of mankind are dealt with by him in a more or less +practical spirit, and as though they concerned him likewise. Shelley, too, +not unoften condescended to deal with the political, social, and religious +polemics of his time, though he always did so in a passionate and utterly +impracticable temper, and would necessarily leave on the mind of the +reader, the conviction that everything in the world is amiss, and that +the only possible remedy is the abolition of everything that had hitherto +been regarded as an indispensable part of the foundation of human society. +But Keats does not trouble himself about any of these things. He gives +them the go-by, he ignores them, and only asks to be allowed to leave the +world unseen, and with the nightingale, to fade away into the forest dim. + + Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget + What thou among the leaves hast never known, + The weariness, the fever, and the fret + Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; + Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, + Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; + Where but to think is to be full of sorrow + And leaden-eyed despairs; + Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, + Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. + +This is the voice, I say, which, during the last few years, has been +preferred even to Shelley's, and very much preferred to Byron's. And why? +You will perhaps say that Keats's workmanship is fascinatingly beautiful. +In the passage I have cited, and in the entire poem from which it is +taken, that unquestionably is so. But I trust I shall not give offence if +I say that the number of my countrymen and countrywomen who lay stress on +the artistic manner, whether in verse or prose, in which an opinion is +expressed, compared with the number of those who value poetry or prose +chiefly because it expresses the opinions they value and the sentiments +they cherish, is very small. No, Keats is preferred because Keats turns +aside from the world at large, and thinks and writes only of individual +feeling. Hence he has been more welcomed by recent critics, and by recent +readers of poetry. Indeed, certain critics have laboured to erect it into +a dogma, indeed into an absolute literary and critical canon, that a poet +who wishes to attain true distinction must turn his back on politics, on +people, on society, on his country, on patriotism, on everything in fact +save books--his own thoughts, his own feelings, and his own art. Because +Byron did not do so they have dubbed him a Philistine; and because Pope +did precisely the reverse, and the reverse, no doubt, overmuch, they +assert that he was not a poet at all. + +It is not necessary to dwell on the fatuousness of such criticism, more +especially as one discerns welcome signs of a disposition on the part of +the reading public to turn away from these guides, and a disposition even +on the part of the guides themselves in some degree to reconsider and +revise their unfortunate utterances. But I have alluded to the doctrine in +question, in order to show you to what lengths Pessimism, which is only a +compendious expression of dissatisfaction with things in general, in other +words with life, with society, and with mankind, can go, and how it has +culminated in such disdain of them by poets, that they brush them aside as +subjects unworthy of the Muse. Surely Pessimism in Poetry can no farther +go, than to assume, without question, that man, life, society, patriotism +are not worth a song? + +I should not wonder if some will have been saying to themselves, "But what +about Wordsworth; Wordsworth, who was the contemporary, and at least the +equal, alike in genius and in influence, of the three poets just named?" I +have not forgotten Wordsworth. Wordsworth was of too pious a temperament, +using the word pious in its very largest signification, to be a Pessimist; +for true piety and Pessimism are irreconcilable. Nevertheless Wordsworth, +as a poet, likewise experienced, and experienced acutely, the influence of +the French Revolution. Upon this point there can be no difference of +opinion; for he himself left it on record in a well-known passage. +Everybody knows with what different eyes Wordsworth finally looked on the +French Revolution; how utterly he broke with its tenets, its promises, its +offspring; taking refuge from his disappointment. + +But something akin to despondency, if too permeated with sacred +resignation wholly to deserve that description, may be discovered in the +attitude henceforward assumed by Wordsworth, as a poet, towards the world, +society, and mankind. Not only did he write a long poem, _The Recluse_, +but he himself was a recluse, and the whole of _The Excursion_ is the +composition of a recluse. Matthew Arnold, always a high authority on +Wordsworth, has said: + + But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken + From half of human fate. + +Indeed they did; turning instead to the silence that is in the sky, to the +sleep that is in the hills, to the mountains, the flowers, and the poet's +own solitary _meditations_. He declared that he would rather be a Pagan +suckled in a creed outworn than one of those Christian worldlings, of +which society seemed to him mainly to consist. This is not necessarily +Pessimism. But it goes perilously near to it; and the boundary line would +have been crossed, but that Wordsworth's prayer was answered, in which he +petitioned that his days might be linked each to each by natural piety. + +Of Matthew Arnold himself, as a poet, I am able to speak; for though he +was not long ago one's contemporary, he is no longer one of ourselves. In +Matthew Arnold it has always seemed to me, the poet and the man, his +reason and his imagination, were not quite one. They were harnessed +together rather than incorporated one with the other; and, many years +before he died, if I may press the comparison a little farther, the poet, +the imaginative part of him became lame and halt, and he conveyed his mind +in the humbler one-horse vehicle of prose. The poetic impulse in him was +not strong enough to carry him along permanently against the prosaic +opposition of life. Nevertheless, he was a poet who wrote some very +beautiful poetry; and he exercised a powerful influence, both as a poet +and as a prose-writer, on the thoughts and sentiments of his time. Now, +what do we find him saying? Listen! + + Wandering between two worlds, one dead, + The other powerless to be born, + With nowhere yet to rest my head, + Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. + Their faith, My tears, the world deride, + I come to shed them at your side. + + There yet perhaps may dawn an age, + More fortunate alas! than we, + Which without hardness will be sage, + And gay without frivolity. + Sons of the world, oh haste those years! + But, till they rise, allow our tears. + +Hark to the words he puts into the mouth of Empedocles: + + And yet what days were those, Parmenides! + Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought + Nor outward things were closed and dead to us; + But we received the shock of mighty thoughts + On simple minds with a pure natural joy. + + * * * * * + + We had not lost our balance then, nor grown + Thought's slaves, and dead to every natural joy. + +In another poem he declares: + + Achilles ponders in his tent: + The Kings of modern thought are dumb; + Silent they are, though not content, + And wait to see the future come. + + * * * * * + + Our fathers watered with their tears + The sea of time whereon we sail; + Their voices were in all men's ears + Who passed within their puissant hail. + Still the same ocean round us raves, + But we stand mute and watch the waves. + +Last and worst of all, and in utter despondency and pessimism he cries: + + Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead, + Your social order, too! + Where tarries He, the Power who said, + _See_, I make all things new? + ... The past is out of date, + The future not yet born; + And who can be alone elate, + While the world lies forlorn? + +Can Pessimism in Poetry go farther than that? Many will perhaps think it +cannot; but, unfortunately, it can. It is only from poets who are dead, if +dead but recently, that one can draw one's illustrations; otherwise I +could suggest you should read to yourselves volume upon volume of verse, +the one long weary burden of which is the misery of being alive. I daresay +you will not be sorry that one is precluded from introducing these +melancholy minstrels. But the spirit that imbues and pervades them is +compendiously and conveniently expressed in a composition that I _can_ +read to you, and which I select because it seems to express, in reasonably +small compass, the indictment which our metrical pessimists labour to +bring against existence. + +I have confined my survey entirely to poets of our own land, and have said +nothing to you of Giacomo Leopardi, the celebrated Italian Pessimistic +Poet; nothing of Heine, whose beautiful but too often cynical lyrics must +be known to you either in the original German, or in one or other of the +various English versions, into which they have been rendered; nothing of +the long procession of railers, sometimes bestial, nearly always +repulsive, in French verse, beginning with Baudelaire, and coming down to +the _petits crevés_ of poetry who are not ashamed to be known by the name +of _décadens_, and who certainly deserve it, for if they possess nothing +else, they possess to perfection the art of sinking. One would naturally +expect to find in the country where occurred the French Revolution, the +most violent forms of the malady which, as I have said, is mainly +attributable to it; and surely it is a strong confirmation of the truth of +that theory that it is in France poetic pessimism has in our day had its +most outrageous and most voluminous expression. + +I hope no one supposes that I am, even incidentally, intending to +pronounce a sweeping and unqualified condemnation of the great movement +known in history as the French Revolution. That would indeed be to be as +narrow as the narrowest pessimist could possibly show himself. The French +Revolution, as is probably the case with every great political, religious, +or social movement, was in its action partly beneficial, partly +detrimental. It abolished many monstrous abuses, it propounded afresh some +long-neglected or violated truths; and it gave a vigorous impulse to human +hope. But it was perhaps the most violent of all the great movements +recorded in human annals. Accordingly, it destroyed over much, and it +promised over much. In all probability, action and reaction are as nicely +balanced in the intellectual and moral world as in the physical, and +exaggerated hopes must have their equivalent in correlated and co-equal +disappointment. I sometimes think that the nineteenth century now closed +will be regarded in the fullness of time as a colossal egotist, that began +by thinking somewhat too highly of itself, its prospects, its capacity, +its performances, and ended by thinking somewhat too meanly of what I have +called things in general, or those permanent conditions of man, life, and +society, which no amount of Revolutions, French or otherwise, will avail +to get rid of. + +In truth, if I were asked to say briefly what Pessimism is, I should say +it is disappointed Egotism; and the description will hold good, whether we +apply it to an individual, to a community, or to an age. + +For nothing is more remarkable in the writings of pessimistic poets than +the attention they devote, and that they ask us to devote, to their own +feelings. Far be it from me to deny that some very lovely and very +valuable verse has been written by poets concerning their personal joys, +sorrows, hopes, longings, and disappointments. But then it is verse which +describes the joys, sorrows, hopes, longings, and disappointments common +to the whole human race, and which every sensitive nature experiences at +some time or another, in the course of chequered life, and which are +peculiar to no particular age or generation, but the pathetic possession +of all men, and all epochs. The verse to which I allude with less +commendation, is the verse in which the writer seems to be occupied, and +asking us to occupy ourselves, with exceptional states of suffering which +appertain to him alone, or to him and the little esoteric circle of +superior martyrs to which he belongs, and to some special period of +history in which their lot is cast. The sorrows we entertain in common +with others never lead to pessimism, they lead to pity, sympathy, pathos, +to pious resignation, to courageous hope. I wish these privileged invalids +would take to heart those noble lines of Wordsworth: + + So once it would have been--'tis so no more-- + I have submitted to a new control-- + A power is gone which nothing can restore, + A deep distress hath humanized my soul! + +I sometimes think these doleful bards have never had a really deep +distress, that their very woe is fanciful, and that like the young +gentleman in France of whom Arthur speaks in _King John_, they are as sad +as night, only for wantonness. But far from being rebuked by critics for +their sea-green melancholy, they have been hailed as true masters of song +for scarcely any better reason than that they declare themselves to be +utterly miserable, and life to be equally so. Indeed by some critics it +has been raised into a literary canon, not only that all Poetry, to be of +much account, must be written in the pathetic minor, but that the poets +themselves, if we are to recognise them as endowed with true genius and +real sacred fire, must be unhappy from the cradle to the grave. If they +can die young, if they can go mad, or commit suicide, so much the better. +Their credentials as great poets are then firmly established. Even a +pathetic phrase has been invented to describe the natural and inevitable +condition of such sacred persons, a phrase that must be well known to +you--the Sorrows of Genius. + +Therefore, in the really sacred name of Genius, of Literature, of Poetry, +I protest against this pitiable, this mawkish, unmanly, unwholesome, and +utterly untrue estimate both of poetry and poets. No first-rate poet ever +went mad, or ever committed suicide, though one or two, no doubt, have +happened to die comparatively young. It is utterly dishonouring to poets, +it is utterly discrediting to men of genius, to represent them as feeble, +whining, helpless, love-sick, life-sick invalids, galvanised from time to +time into activity by a sort of metrical hysteria. Because Shelley has +truly said that + + Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought + +--and because in _Julian and Maddalo_ he has represented Byron as saying +that men + + ... learn in suffering what they teach in song + +--are we to conclude that sadness and suffering are the only things in +life, the only things in it deserving of the poet's music? No one will +ever be a poet of much consequence who has not suffered, for, as Goethe +finely says, he who never ate his bread in sorrow, knows not the Heavenly +Powers. But, if our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest +thought, they are not necessarily our strongest or our greatest songs; and +if we accept the assertion that men learn in suffering what they teach in +song, do not let us forget the "learning" spoken of in the line. The poet, +no doubt, has to learn by suffering, but having learnt, he has then, in my +opinion, to help others not to be miserable, but to be happy. + +I cannot here allude to well-known poets of other ages and other nations, +avowedly great and permanent benefactors of mankind, all of whom alike +were completely free from this malady of universal discontent. But let me +at least take a cursory survey of our native poets; for, after all, to us +English men and English women, what English poets have felt and said +concerns us most and interests us most deeply. Let us see what is their +attitude to external nature, to man, woman, life, society, and the general +dispensation of existence. + +You know how our modern pessimists cannot see a tree, a flower, or a +mountain, but straightway they drop into what I may call a falling +sickness, and all the beauty of the woods, fields, and sky merely suggests +to them a picturesque background for their own superior sighs and sorrows. +How differently Chaucer looks upon the panorama of this fair earth of +ours! He is a great student, as men in the early days of the Renaissance +were, and he tells us that he hath such delight in reading books, and has +in his heart for them such reverence, that there is no game which can tear +him away from them. But, when the month of May comes, and the birds sing, +and the flowers begin to shoot, then, he adds, "Farewell my book and my +devotion!" He wanders forth and beholds the eye of the daisy; and this +blissful sight, as he calls it, softeneth all his sorrow. Elsewhere he +describes how he cannot lie in bed for the glad beams of the sun that pour +in through the window. He rushes out, and is delighted with everything. +The welkin is fair, the air blue and light, it is neither too hot nor too +cold, and not a cloud is anywhere to be seen. This disposition of content +with and joy in external Nature, Chaucer displays equally when he consorts +with his kind. It is very noticeable, though I am not aware if it has been +pointed out before, how he portrays all the various pilgrims and +personages in the famous _Prologue to the Canterbury Tales_ as of cheerful +and generally jovial spirits. There is not a melancholy person, not a +pessimist, in the whole company. He describes himself as talking and +having fellowship with every one of them, and we may therefore conclude he +also was pretty cheerful and genial himself. Even of his "perfect gentle +knight," whom he evidently intended to describe as the pink of chivalry, +he says: + + And though that he was worthy, he was wise. + +And there never was, and never will be, wisdom without cheerfulness. As +for the young Squire, the lover and lusty bachelor, that accompanied the +Knight, Chaucer says of him, in a couplet that has always struck me as +possessing a peculiar charm: + + Singing he was or fluting all the day, + He was as merry as the month of May. + +He says of him, though he could sit a horse well, he could also write +songs; and we can easily surmise what the songs were like. Chaucer's Nun +or Prioress is delineated by him as full pleasant and amiable of port, and +as even taking trouble to feign the cheerful air of a lady of the Court. +When the Monk rides abroad, men could hear his bridle jingling in a +whistling wind as clear and loud as the chapel bell. Do not the words stir +one's blood to cheerfulness, and sound like a very carillon of joy? Of the +Friar it is recorded that certainly he had a merry note, and well could he +sing and play upon the harp, and that while he sang and played, his eyes +twinkled in his head, like stars in the frosty night. The business of the +Clerk of Oxenford was by his speech to sow abroad moral virtue; but +Chaucer adds, "And gladly would he learn--" mark that word "gladly" "--and +gladly teach." The Franklin, a country gentleman, he declares, was wont to +live in delight, for he was Epicurus' own son. The Shipman draws many a +draught of wine from Bordeaux; well can the wife of Bath laugh and jest; +the Miller is a regular joker and buffoon; a better fellow you cannot +find, he avers, than the Sumpnor; and the Pardoner, for very jollity, goes +bareheaded, singing full merrily and loud. As for the Landlord of the +"Tabard," he is described as making great cheer, being a right merry man. +He declares there is no comfort nor mirth in riding to Canterbury, even on +pilgrimage, as dumb as a stone, and that they may smite off his head if he +does not succeed in making them merry; and it all ends by Chaucer +declaring that every wight was blithe and glad. Indeed, these are such a +cheery, such a jovial set, that the only sorrow we can feel in connection +with them is regret that we, too, were not of that delightful company. + +I wonder if it has occurred to you, while reading these brief and cursory +extracts from Chaucer, to say to yourselves, "How English it all is!" If +not, may I say it for you? I am free to confess that I am one of those who +think--and I hope there are some in this room who share my opinion--that +the epithet English is an epithet to be proud of, an adjective of praise, +a mark of commendation, and connotes, as the logician would say, +everything that is manly, brave, wholesome, and sane. These latter-day +melancholy moping minstrels are not English at all, they are feeble copies +of foreign originals. Between them and Chaucer there is absolute +alienation. About them there is nothing jolly or jovial, and there is not +one good fellow among them. + +Let us turn to the next great name according to chronological order in +English Poetry; let us glance, if but rapidly, at the pages of Spenser. +You could not well have two poets of more different dispositions than +Chaucer and Spenser. One seems to hear Chaucer's own bridle jingling in a +whistling wind, to see his own eyes twinkling in his head like stars in +the frosty night, and one thinks of him, too, as singing or fluting all +the day long and being as merry as the month of May. In the gaze, on the +brow, and in the pages of Spenser, there abides a lofty dignity, as of a +high-born stately gentleman, deferential to all, but familiar with none. +Indeed he resembles his own Gentle Knight in the opening lines of the +_Fairy Queen_, the description of whom I have always thought is none other +than the portraiture of himself. If ever a poet had high seriousness it is +Spenser. He never condescends to indulge in the broad jests dear to +Chaucer, frequent in Shakespeare, common in Byron. Yet between him and +Chaucer, between him and every great poet, there is this similarity, that +he looks on life with a cheerful mind. It is a grave cheerfulness, but +cheerfulness all the same; and, in truth, cheerful gravity, and high +seriousness are one and the same thing. + + Full jolly Knight he seemed, and fair did sit, + As one for Knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit! + +he says in the very first stanza of his noble poem. "Jolly," no doubt, +does not mean quite the same thing with Spenser as it does with Chaucer. +There is the difference in signification, we may say, that there is, in +character, between the Landlord of the "Tabard" and the Gentle Knight. But +never does the latter lapse into melancholy, much less into Pessimism. He +is too active, on too great adventure bound, and too impressed with its +solemn importance, for that. Spenser himself significantly expresses the +fear that his Gentle Knight + + Of his cheer did seem too solemn sad, + +as though he wished to let us know that even solemn sadness is a fault. +But he soon enables us to discern that appearance is misleading, and +reflects in reality only a noble, lofty, and serene temper, and that +desire to win the worship and favour of the Fairy Queen, which he tells +us, "of all earthly things, the Knight most did crave." As soon as Spenser +has described the lovely lady that rode the Knight beside, he says: + + And forth they pass, with _pleasure_ forward led. + +And again + + Led with _delight_, they thus beguile the way. + +There is no buffoonery, as in the _Canterbury Tales_, but a wise equable +serenity that contemplates man and woman, beauty, temptation, danger, +sorrow, struggle, honour, this world and the next, with a Knightly +equanimity that nothing can disturb. But why should I dwell on the point, +when Spenser himself has written one line which I may call his confession +of faith on the subject?-- + + The noblest mind the best contentment has. + +What a noble line! the noblest, I think, in all literature. Let us commit +it to heart, repeat it morning, noon, and night, and it will cast out for +us all the devils, aye, all the swine of Pessimism. What does this grave, +this serious, this dignified English poet say of the Muses themselves?-- + + The Sisters Nine, which dwell on Parnass' height, + Do make them music for their more delight! + +That is Spenser's conception of the mission of poetry, and of the function +of the poet--to make them music for their more delight--I acknowledge it +is mine. I earnestly trust it is that of many. + +There is no passion of the human heart, no speculation of the human mind, +to which Shakespeare has not, in some passage or another, given expressive +utterance; and since in life there is much sorrow, no little suffering, +and ample sadness, chapter and verse can readily be found in his universal +pages for any mood or any state of feeling. But what is the one, broad, +final impression we receive of the gaze with which Shakespeare looked on +life? A complete answer to that question would furnish matter for a long +paper. But one brief passage must here suffice. In the most terrible and +tragic of all his tragedies, _King Lear_, and in the most terrible and +tragic of all its appalling incidents, the following brief colloquy takes +place between Edgar and his now sightless father: + + Away, old man; give me thy hand; away! + King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en: + Give me thy hand, come on. + No farther, sir, + +replies Gloster in despair, + + No farther, sir! A man may rot even here. + +What is Edgar's answer?-- + + What! In ill thoughts again? Men must endure + Their going hence, even as their coming hither, + Ripeness is all: come on! + +If, at such a moment, and in the very darkest hour of disaster, +Shakespeare puts such language into the mouth of Edgar, is it wonderful +that he should, in less gloomy moments, take so cheerful a view of life, +that Milton can only describe his utterances by calling them "woodnotes +wild"? + +And Milton himself? Milton almost as grave as Spenser and certainly more +austere. Yet I do not think that Pessimism, that the advocates of +universal suicide, since life is not worth living, will be able to get +much help or sanction for their doleful gospel from the poet who wrote +_Paradise Lost_ expressly to + + ... assert Eternal Providence + And justify the ways of God to man. + +Milton has given us, in two of the loveliest lyrics in the language, his +conception of Melancholy and of Joy. Of his _L'Allegro_ I need not speak. +But in _Il Penseroso_, if anywhere in Milton, we must look for some +utterance akin to the desolation and the despair of modern pessimistic +poets. We may look, but assuredly we shall not find it. + + Then let the pealing organ blow, + To the full-voicëd choir below. + +In protesting, therefore, against Pessimism in Poetry, I am only returning +to the oldest, soundest, and noblest traditions in English Literature, and +in the English character. I trust no one supposes I am denying or that I +am insensible to the existence of pain, woe, sadness, loss, even anguish +and acute suffering, as integral and inevitable elements in life; and if +poetry did not take note of these, and give to them pathetic and adequate +expression, poetry would not be, as it is, coextensive with life, would +not be the Paraclete or Comforter, with the gift of tongues. In poetry the +note of sorrow will be, and must be, occasionally, and indeed frequently +struck; it should not be the dominant key, much less the only key in which +the poet tunes his song. There is much in our modern civilisation that is +very unbeautiful, nay, that is downright ugly, whether we look on it with +the eye of the artist or with the vision of the moralist. Moreover, I +perceive--who could fail to perceive?--that we have in these days some +very dark and difficult social problems to solve. Then let the poet come +to our assistance by accompanying us with musical encouragement. For, +remember, the poet has to make harmony, not out of language only, but out +of life as well. I was once looking at a violin, a very lovely violin, a +Stradivarius of great value and exquisite tone, and I asked the lady to +whom it belonged of what wood the various parts of the instrument was +composed. She told me, with much loving detail; but, she said, "I ought to +add that I have been told no violin can be made of supreme quality unless +the wood be taken from that side of the tree which faces south." It is the +same with the Poet. If he is to give us the sweetest, the most sonorous, +and the truest notes, his nature must have a bias towards the sunny side. + + + + +A VINDICATION OF TENNYSON + +[This paper appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ a quarter of a century ago, +in reply to one that had been published in the same periodical in the +previous month.] + + +In the days of Chivalry, whose spirit, I trust, still lingers with us, +though its forms may have passed away, the prelude to a peaceful +tournament, or _joute de plaisance_, was the salutation of each other by +the combatants. In the pages which follow an effort will be made in some +degree to dislodge Mr. Swinburne from that seat of critical judgment which +he occupies with such gallant confidence, with such waving of plume and +such clashing of shield. But before the lists are opened, let me salute, +with something more than ceremonial courtesy, the exquisite lyrical genius +of the poet, and the solid accomplishments of the scholar. That premised, +I will, without further preliminary, betake me to my task. + +In the latest number of one of the ablest of monthly reviews, Mr. +Swinburne, enlarging on a passage, rather cursory and incidental than +definitive or judicial, inserted by M. Taine at the close of his brilliant +survey of English poetry, institutes a comparison between Mr. Tennyson and +Alfred de Musset. With Mr. Swinburne's opening remark every one must +agree. It is distinctive of this age, he says, that the greatest of the +great writers who were born about the opening of the century, are still +working with splendid persistence. It was affirmed by Menander that those +the gods love die young. Is it because the gods themselves are dead, that +the heavenly favourites are nowadays permitted to exceed even the +scriptural span of life? Be this as it may, to Mr. Tennyson, with peculiar +aptness, may be addressed the lines of Wordsworth, inspired by a very +different personage: + + Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, + Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nigh, + A melancholy slave; + But an old age serene and bright, + And lovely as a Lapland night, + Shall lead thee to thy grave. + +More appropriate still perhaps, for the moment, would be an excerpt from +Alfred de Musset himself, whom the gods loved not well enough either to +cut off in the flower of his youth, or to leave hanging till he had +achieved maturity. Mr. Swinburne, no doubt, knows the lines by heart: + + Mais comment fais-tu donc, vieux maître + Pour renaître? + Car tes vers, en dépit du temps, + Ont vingt ans. + + Si jamais ta tête qui penche + Devient blanche, + Ce sera comme l'amandier, + Cher Nodier: + + Ce qui le blanchit n'est pas l'âge, + Ni l'orage; + C'est la fraîche rosée en pleurs + Dans les fleurs. + +To this survival of power in Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Swinburne pays homage after +his fashion. Who could possibly withhold it? _The "Revenge,"_ _The Battle +of Lucknow_, and most of all _Rizpah_, show that, even as in the days of +_Locksley Hall_, ancient founts of inspiration well through Mr. Tennyson's +fancy yet; serving to remind us that Nature rejoices in the occasional +violation of her own laws, that roses are not altogether unknown in +November, and that even when the snowdrop whitens the ground, the lark +will sometimes carol up to heaven. + +To the wedded strength and sadness in _Rizpah_ Mr. Swinburne offers ample +testimony, and this is how he does it: + + Nothing more piteous, more passionate, more adorable for intensity of + beauty, was ever before this wrought by human cunning into the + likeness of such words, as words are powerless to praise. Any + possible commentary on a poem of this rank must needs be as weak and + worthless as the priceless thing which evoked it is beautiful and + strong. + +I confess I am disposed to feel that this is so. But Mr. Swinburne, +disregarding his candid avowal of what is worthless, proceeds with the +commentary: + + But one which should attempt by selection or indication to underline, + as it were, and to denote the chiefest among its manifold beauties + and glories, would be also as long and as wordy as the poem is short + and reticent. Once or twice in reading it a man may feel, and may + know himself to be none the unmanlier for feeling, as though the very + heart in him cried out for agony of pity, and hardly the flesh could + endure the burden and the strain of it, the burning bitterness of so + keen and divine a draught. A woman might weep it away and be "all + right" again--but a man born of woman can hardly be expected to bear + the pity of it. + +There is more to the same effect; indeed two whole pages, in the course of +which we are assured that "never assuredly has any poor penman of the +humblest order been more inwardly conscious of such impotence in words to +sustain the weight of their intention than am I at this moment of my +inability to cast into any shape of articulate speech, the impression and +the emotion produced by the first reading of Tennyson's _Rizpah_"; that +"the poet never lived on earth whose glory would not be heightened by the +attribution of this poem to his hand"; that any one who hesitated to +affirm as much must be "either cancerous with malevolence or paralytic +with stupidity"; that now at least "there must be an end for ever on all +hands to the once debatable question whether the author can properly be +called in the strictest sense a great poet"; and, finally, that "there +must be an end for ever, and a day beyond at least, of a question which +once was even more hotly debatable than this, the long-contested question +of poetic precedence between Alfred Tennyson and Alfred de Musset." + +To all who, like myself, admire _Rizpah_ vastly, and who never doubted +that Mr. Tennyson was a larger poet than Alfred de Musset, the above is, +in a sense, consolatory. But I confess that, even when first perusing it, +and not having yet reached what follows, the note of panegyric struck me +as strained, not to say forced, and I had an uncomfortable sort of feeling +that somebody would have to pay the expense of this prodigal eulogium. To +borrow a line Mr. Swinburne himself quotes: + + Cette promotion me laisse un peu rêveur. + +Even when Mr. Swinburne praises, and no one praises more liberally, I do +not know how it strikes other people, but he always gives me the idea that +he is directing his panegyric _at_ somebody who is not being panegyrised; +in other words, that he is, to say the least, as much bent upon scarifying +some one who is not mentioned, as on complimenting the person who is. Even +in the passage just reproduced, with the chant over the glories of Mr. +Tennyson, is mingled a gibe at "wandering apes" and "casual mules." This, +I say, put me upon my guard. "Is it conceivable," I said to myself, "that +_Rizpah_, fine, forcible, and effective as it is, should cause all this +difference in a man's estimate of Mr. Tennyson as a poet? Is it possible +that any Englishman at least, should have had to wait till this time of +day to discover that 'any comparison of claims between the two men must be +unprofitable in itself, as well as unfair to the memory of the lesser +poet'?" Finally, and to speak my whole mind with perfect candour, it +struck me that, splendid of its kind as _Rizpah_ undoubtedly is, there is +surely some exaggeration in saying, "If this be not great work, no great +work was ever, or will ever be done in verse by any human hand"; and that +Mr. Tennyson himself has not unfrequently done work fully as good as it, +and, _me judice_, even better. + +One had not to read much farther to discern that these misgivings were +well founded. Somebody indeed had to pay for all the lavish praise of +_Rizpah_, and it was the author of _Rizpah_ himself. I felt sure I should +come to the other side of the shield, the obverse hollows of all this +embossed, and, if I may be permitted to say so, somewhat turgid +appreciation; and come to it I did. + + There are whole poems of Mr. Tennyson's first period which are no + more properly to be called metrical than the more shapeless and + monstrous parts of Walt Whitman, which are lineally derived as to + their form--if form that can be called where form is none--from the + vilest example set by Cowley, when English verse was first infected + and convulsed by the detestable duncery of sham Pindarics. At times, + of course, his song was then as sweet as ever it has sounded since; + but he never could make sure of singing right for more than a few + minutes or stanzas. The strenuous drill through which since then he + has felt it necessary to put himself, has done all that hard labour + can do to rectify this congenital complaint: by dint of stocks and + backboard he has taught himself a more graceful carriage.... It may + be the highest imaginable sign of poetic power or native inspiration + that a man should be able to grind a beauty out of a deformity or + carve a defect into a perfection; but whatever may be the comparative + worth of this peculiar faculty, no poet surely ever had it in a + higher degree or cultivated it with more patient and strenuous + industry than Mr. Tennyson. Idler men, or men less qualified, and + disposed to expend such length of time and energy of patience on the + composition and modification, the rearrangement and recision and + re-issue, of a single verse or copy of verses, can only look on at + such a course of labour with amused or admiring astonishment, and a + certain doubt whether the linnets, to whose method of singing Mr. + Tennyson compares his own, do really go through the training of such + a musical gymnasium before they come forth qualified to sing. + +Everybody has heard of the operation described by Pope as "damning with +faint praise." But damning with exaggerated praise is a new invention, and +it is employed in Mr. Swinburne's paper, doubtless unintentionally, but +with striking effect. As we shall see directly, it is not only on what Mr. +Swinburne calls "the crowning question of metre," that Mr. Tennyson is +assigned a comparatively inferior place, but he is arraigned for his low +estimate of women, for his sympathy with princes, and for various other +crimes and misdemeanours. To say of _Rizpah_, "never since the beginning +of all poetry were the twin passions of terror and pity more divinely +done into deathless words, or set to more perfect and profound +magnificence of music," seems a poor set-off to the reproaches just cited, +and still more to those that have yet to be set forth. There is no fear +that any one--and Mr. Tennyson himself, I should think, least of all--will +place _Rizpah_ quite in the same category with _Oedipus_ or _Lear_. But +there is perhaps some little danger lest the inadvertent should believe, +on Mr. Swinburne's authority, that Mr. Tennyson hits and maintains the +right note only after the same sad drudgery and pain by dint of which we +are told--with about equal accuracy--poor Malibran was taught to sing. It +is said that women of not very generous temperament will go out of their +way to insist that a beautiful slattern dresses admirably, in order to be +in a position plausibly to challenge her beauty. I am sure Mr. Swinburne +is not purposely ungenerous; but in first extolling Mr. Tennyson to the +skies for his poem of _Rizpah_, and then decrying him almost below the +ground for his defective ear, for his base estimate of women, and for his +adulation of princes, he reminds me of the fable of the eagle who bore the +tortoise aloft into heaven, and then let it fall to earth, in the hope of +smashing its shell, and dining off the contents. If I remember rightly, +the shell did not break after all, and the bird had to flap away as hungry +as ever. In any case, after reading first the extravagant laudation, and +then the yet more extreme obloquy contained in Mr. Swinburne's paper, I +think everybody will agree that, to quote a line with which doubtless he +is familiar, Mr. Tennyson deserved: + + Ni cet excès d'honneur ni cette indignité. + +What is the full measure of "_cette indignité_" will be seen by and by. +But before passing to the other reproaches addressed by Mr. Swinburne to +the Laureate, I should like to be allowed to say something about this +question of singing, of ear, of what Mr. Swinburne calls "the crowning +question of metre." It is not the first time Mr. Swinburne has assumed +that he possesses infallible authority upon this point. Now he must +forgive me for remarking that though musicalness is unquestionably the +most noticeable mark, and the most delightful quality, of his own verse, +it is, for the most part, music of a particular kind. It is of the florid +order, rather than of the stately; it is lyrical and Lydian, well +calculated to soothe or to carry along, and sometimes enjoying the Lethean +faculty of making those who read it forget to ask what it means, or indeed +if it means anything very substantial. I will not say that Mr. Swinburne +has adopted the principle, "Take care of the sound, and the sense will +take care of itself." But he not unfrequently reminds one of this facile +theory, and some of his imitators have adopted it without reserve. I +cannot say whether the story is accurate; but I remember being told that, +on hearing a poem of Mr. Swinburne's read aloud, Mr. Tennyson quietly +quoted a line of his own from _The Lotos-Eaters_: + + Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong. + +I should be as unfair to Mr. Swinburne as Mr. Swinburne is to Mr. +Tennyson, if I hinted that he has not done much work to which the above +verse is altogether inapplicable. But he is at once the poet, the prophet, +and the critic of what I may call, _par excellence_, the Lyrical School; +and his idea of singing, his standard of ear, his touchstone of "the +crowning question of metre," is associated with the great triumphs of +lyricism pure and simple. + +Now I trust I am not insensible to the exquisite melody, the delicious +dactyls of Shelley, of De Musset, and, I will add, of Mr. Swinburne +himself. But the Lyricists pure and simple--and certainly, as far as verse +is concerned, De Musset never became anything else--are, after all, the +_flentes in limine primo_. They are children, or at most they are boys. +Every poet, no doubt, should pass through that preliminary stage; but he +should not stay there. There should come a time when the puerile voice +changes, and henceforward is recognised as masculine. It should acquire a +passionate composure, and like the spirit that informs it, should be, not +only spacious as the air, not only soaring and circumambient as the sky, +but deep and sonorous as the sea. De Musset, as Mr. Swinburne half allows, +never underwent this solemn transformation; and it is perhaps, on that +very account, that all of us find him, within limits, so irresistibly +attractive. He is the poet of the transitional period between boyhood and +manhood. + + Mes premiers vers sont d'un enfant, + Les seconds, d'un adolescent. + +He never got beyond the sweet sick springtime of the soul, when it +searches for what it is never to find, when it strains towards what it +never can clutch, when the "flowers appear on the earth, the time of the +singing of the birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our +land; the fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the +tender grape give a good smell," and the whole want and utterance of the +heart is embodied in the cry, "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come +away!" He who has not "_passé par là_" will never be much of a poet; but +he who does not pass beyond it, will never be a great one. Yet this +season of the "Song of Songs" is the eternal quest of the young, the +eternal regret of the old. Nothing can superannuate its charm, nothing can +quench its fascination. At the climax of his strength and his fame, Byron +could not help exclaiming, "The days of our youth are the days of our +glory," and M. Taine was doubtless under the spell of this periodically +recurring sentiment, this irresistible return, ever and anon, to one's +first love, when, for a brief moment, flinging sober criticism and just +judgment to the winds, he asked if it is not pardonable to prefer the +author of _Les Nuits_ to the author of the _Idylls_. + +Just one word more about "singing." Speaking of the earlier poems of De +Musset, Mr. Swinburne observes: "Of all thin and shallow criticisms, none +ever was shallower or thinner than that which would describe these +firstlings of Musset's genius as mere Byronic echoes." True enough. But, +he goes on to say, "in that case they would be tuneless as their original, +whereas they are the notes of a singer who cannot but sing." + +This is not the first time we have been treated to this opinion. Once +before Mr. Swinburne has spoken of Byron as a singer who could not sing. I +ventured to reply, at the time, that he was a singer who could not or +would not shriek. It is necessary to repeat the protest. No doubt Byron +shows, as a rule, rather volume of voice than flexibility; and from a +determination not to resemble excellent models, but to strike out a line +for himself--a passion for pseudo-originality, from which lesser poets +that could be named, since his time, have likewise suffered--his blank +verse is generally detestable. But Shelley did not find out that Byron +could not sing; neither did Scott, nor Goethe, nor Lamartine, nor +Pushkin, nor Leopardi, nor De Musset himself. He speaks of the "chant" of +Byron as that of "_un cygne_," and compares the echo of his song to "_le +torrent dans la verte vallée_." Mr. Swinburne's discovery is strictly his +own, and I should advise him not to press it. Indeed it would not be +difficult to dispose of it by the method of reasoning familiarly known as +a _reductio ad absurdum_. Mr. Swinburne affirms that the question of metre +is the crowning question, in other words, that the greatest poets are the +most musical, and most people would be disposed to agree with the dictum, +if the question what music is were first satisfactorily settled. But Mr. +Swinburne will have it that Byron cannot sing, whereas it is quite certain +that Mr. Swinburne can. Therefore Mr. Swinburne is a greater poet than +Byron: which, everybody will allow, is absurd. Q.E.D. + +I daresay larks do not find much music in the thunder. But they have the +sense to be silent when they hear the roll of that untrembling diapason +that makes all things tremble. + +To speak the plain truth, we are threatened, just at present, with too +much of what Mr. Swinburne means by "singing." Does he not remember the +following passage in the Fourth Book of _Paradise Regained_?-- + + There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power + Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit + By voice or hand, and various-measured verse, + Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes, + And his who gave them birth, _but higher sung_, + Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called. + +Milton goes on to speak of "the lofty grave tragedians" who employed +"chorus or iambic," + + High actions and high passions best describing. + +Sheer lyricism just now is overmuch the mode. It is all very nice and +pleasant in its way, and within bounds, but one can have too much of a +good thing, and one does not want poetry to become _vox et præterea +nihil_. It is a fashion, doubtless, that will pass. If it does not, I fear +people will begin to say of poetry what some one said of operatic music, +_Ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit on le chante_, and we shall +require a Wagner in literature to denounce the meaningless _fioriture_ of +musical bards bent on recalling the most irrelevant flourishes of +Donizetti. Mr. Tennyson never does, and has never done, that. + +The assertion that Mr. Tennyson was born with an inaptitude for musical +verse, though I conceive it to be very wide of the mark, I can at least +understand. It is made intelligible by remembering the limits Mr. +Swinburne assigns to music, and the characteristic preference he exhibits, +in his own writings, for certain forms of it. But when we are told that +"among all poems of serious pretensions in that line ... this latest epic +of King Arthur took the very lowest view of virtue, set up the very +poorest and most pitiful standard of duty, or of heroism for woman or for +man," I own I feel as much perplexity as surprise. Perhaps the solution of +the riddle might be got at by again resorting to the process just +employed, and by inquiring what is Mr. Swinburne's own standard of duty or +heroism for woman or for man, and informing ourselves through a diligent +reperusal of his poems, and of those writers whose productions he has the +loudest extolled, what it is he and they consider men and women ought +mainly to feel, and what it is they ought mainly to occupy themselves +with. But such a course might be invidious. Happily, moreover, it is +unnecessary. It is enough to bring Mr. Tennyson's men and women into +court, to let men and women be the jury, and to read over to them the +following indictment: + + I cannot say that Mr. Tennyson's life-long tone about women and their + shortcomings has ever commended itself to my poor mind as the note of + a very pure or high one. There is always a latent, if not a patent + propensity in many of his very lovers, to scold and whine after a + fashion which makes even Alfred de Musset seem by comparison a model + or a type of manliness. His Enids and Edith Aylmers are much below + the ideal mark of Wordsworth, who has never, I believe, been + considered a specially great master in that kind; but his "little + Letties" were apparently made mean and thin of nature to match their + pitifully poor-spirited suitors! It cannot respectfully be supposed + that Mr. Tennyson is unaware of the paltry currishness and + mean-spirited malice displayed in verse too dainty for such base uses + by the plaintively spiteful manikins with the thinnest whey of sour + milk in their poor fretful veins, whom he brings forward to vent upon + some fickle or too discerning mistress the vain and languid venom of + their contemptible contempt. + +What does it mean? Several years ago I ventured to express the opinion +that Mr. Tennyson's was rather a feminine than a masculine Muse, +borrowing, naturally enough, its idiosyncrasy from the period when it was +most susceptible to surrounding influences. One or two persons of far +higher critical authority than I can pretend to, told me I had struck a +true note, and to the opinion then advanced, I am still disposed in +substance to adhere. But I seize this opportunity to say that I have long +perceived that the opinion was advanced with exaggeration, and somewhat +unbecomingly; that the essay in which it appeared has for a considerable +time been out of print, and will never with the author's consent be +republished; and finally that it would never have appeared at all but for +a circumstance which it would be disagreeable, because egotistical, to +explain explicitly, but which perhaps many will at once understand, if I +quote the following lines of De Musset to Sainte-Beuve: + + Ami, tu l'as bien dit: ... + + * * * * * + + "Il existe, en un mot, chez les trois quarts des hommes, + Un poëte mort jeune à qui l'homme survit," + Tu l'as bien dit, ami, mais tu l'as trop bien dit. + Tu ne prenais pas garde, en traçant ta pensée + + * * * * * + + que tu blasphémais ... + ... Je te rends à ta Muse offensée, + Et souviens-toi qu'en nous il existe souvent + Un poète endormi toujours jeune et vivant. + +But it is precisely because there is so much of the feminine quality in +Mr. Tennyson's Muse, that his Muse is beloved of women, and is attractive +to all men to whom women are attractive. How often has it happened to one +to ask "What shall I read?" and to get for answer "Tennyson." And though +one might be almost angry because neither Shakespeare, nor Milton, nor +Byron, nor Wordsworth, could get a hearing, so it was, and _femme le veut +Dieu le veut_. He is the poet of their predilection; and if it were true +that his women are not "very pure or high," it would seem to follow that +the women in flesh and blood who love to read of them, are themselves not +very high or pure. Is not that another _reductio ad absurdum_? I confess I +never knew them ask any one to read _Vivien_. They prefer _Elaine_, and +_Guinevere_. Yet _Vivien_ is a masterpiece, and that "harlot," as Mr. +Tennyson very properly does not shrink from calling her, is the consummate +poetic type of women with very little poetry about them. But the +blameless love of Elaine, and the pardonable passion of Guinevere, are, to +say the least of it, equally emblematic; and I confess I should find +myself so different in blood, in language, in race, in instinct, in +everything, from the man who told me that he found the one mean and low, +or the other poor, pitiful and base, that, as I have declared, I should +not understand him. + +On two points, I imagine, most men, on consideration, would agree with Mr. +Swinburne. _The Idylls of the King_, _are_ Idylls of the King, and not an +epic poem, nor indeed _one_ poem of any kind. I am not aware that Mr. +Tennyson has ever said or suggested the contrary; and no man is +responsible for the extravagances of his less discreet or too generous +admirers. I suspect Mr. Tennyson would consider the terms Mr. Swinburne +himself applies to _Rizpah_ as a trifle uncritical. The other point of +agreement they would have with Mr. Swinburne is that King Arthur, in the +_Idylls_, is not an adequate and satisfactory hero. But heroes from time +immemorial have had a knack of breaking in the hands of their creator. The +"pius Æneas" is not worthy of his vicissitudes, his mission, and his fate, +or of the splendid verse in which his name is forever embalmed. Milton +assuredly did not intend to make Lucifer his hero; but the ruined +Archangel dwarfs into insignificance all other personages in _Paradise +Lost_, human, divine, or infernal. From _Childe Harold_, Childe Harold all +but disappears; and I suspect it is only by aid of the drama that a writer +is able to say successfully, "Behold a man!" + +I think Mr. Swinburne will perceive that, though my lights may be less +than his, I am sincerely anxious to get at the truth, and that my object +is neither to provoke nor to propitiate, neither to extol nor to decry. +But what can I or any one say, in sufficient moderation, respecting the +following passage?-- + + "But," says the Laureate, "it is not Malory's King Arthur, nor yet + Geoffrey's King Arthur, that I have desired to reproduce: on the + contrary, it is 'scarcely other than' Prince Albert" ... who, if + neither a wholly gigantic nor altogether a divine personage, was, at + least, one would imagine, a human figure.... This fact, it would + seem, was revealed to Mr. Tennyson himself, of all men on earth, by + some freak of the same humorous or malicious fairy who disclosed to + him the not less amusing truth, and induced him to publish it, with a + face of unmoved gravity, to the nation and the world, that whenever + he said King Arthur he meant Prince Albert. No satirist could have + ventured on either stroke of sarcasm.... Not as yet had the blameless + Albert, at the bidding of his Merlin Palmerston, led forth--we will + not say his Guinevere--to clasp the thievish hand of a then uncrowned + assassin. + +I said, a little while back, that I would not accuse Mr. Swinburne of +intentional want of generosity. Yet I am compelled to aver that a more +ungenerous passage than the above I never read; and it would seem still +more ungenerous were it to be quoted from more freely. Mr. Swinburne has +not the excuse that might be pleaded by a critic who was stupid. He is a +poet, and he knows what fine, delicate, subtle analogies are as well as +any one. There _is_ a striking resemblance between the nobler qualities of +Mr. Tennyson's "ideal knight" and those of the late Prince Consort, and it +was a true and fresh stroke of poetry to associate them as Mr. Tennyson +has done. But is it true, or fair, or "manly," to assert that the poet +wished the one to be entirely identified with the other, much more that +when he mentions the one he means the other? I fear some people will +conclude that the above unmagnanimous passage was dictated by Mr. +Swinburne's hatred of princes; and less indulgent persons will add, by +his want of love for Mr. Tennyson. + +Now, to my thinking, the most loathsome of all characters is a sycophant. +Perhaps I am more comprehensive in my contempt for that tribe even than +Mr. Swinburne himself; for I hold in equal disdain the flatterers of +princes and the flatterers of the people. The folly, the feebleness, and +the fury of kings is to be matched only by the feebleness, the folly, and +the fury of crowds. Sensible men entertain a careful distrust of each, and +devise and maintain every possible barrier against the selfish vagaries of +both alike. It is the rare distinction of Prince Albert that he imposed +upon himself those checks which most men require to have imposed upon them +by others, and against which, whether proceeding from within or from +without, princes usually rebel. When we are shown a _demos_ as wise, as +patriotic, as conscientious, and as capable of self-abnegation, as Prince +Albert, the time will have come for an honest man to chant its virtues, +and we shall be able to look forward to the future of our race with more +hopeful feelings than are at present possible to a sane philanthropy. + +Sycophants, therefore, can dance attendance on the Many as easily and as +mischievously as on the One; and of all the unmeasured adulators of the +multitude I know no one to compare with the poet before whom Mr. Swinburne +is perpetually prostrating himself, and before whom he bows and bobs and +genuflects an almost countless number of times in the course of the paper +on which I am commenting--to wit, M. Victor Hugo. + +I have no wish to assail any man of letters, be his foibles what they may. +But when Mr. Swinburne girds at both De Musset and Mr. Tennyson for having +written civilly of princes, and observes that "poeticules love +princelings as naturally as poets abhor tyrants," it is perhaps pertinent +to ask him if he is aware that the first verses of M. Victor Hugo were +passionately Royalist; that the refrain of one of his early poems is +"_Vive le Roi! Vive la France!_" that he celebrated the Duc d'Angoulême as +"the greatest of warriors"; that he mourned the death of Louis XVIII. with +loyal pathos; that he wrote a tragedy whose last line was "_Quand on haït +les tyrans, on doit aimer les rois_"; that the first patron of the author +of _Odes et Poésies Diverses_ was a king, who gave M. Victor Hugo a +pension of a thousand francs out of his privy purse, which was afterwards +doubled, and which I believe was not resigned till the year 1832, or when +M. Victor Hugo was thirty years of age; and that though he for a time +seemed disposed to declare himself a Republican, he sought for and +obtained a seat in the House of Peers from Louis Philippe as recently as +1845. Far be it from me to attempt to turn these facts against the +reputation of M. Victor Hugo. I entertain no doubt they are capable of a +perfectly satisfactory explanation. But let us not have two weights and +two measures; and before Mr. Swinburne takes to throwing stones against +those who incur his displeasure, let him look carefully round to see if +some of those who excite his admiration are not living in a house with a +good many glass windows. + +Against M. Victor Hugo as a man I have necessarily no word to utter. But +Mr. Swinburne compels one to say something about him as a poet. In this +paper upon Mr. Tennyson and De Musset alone, we come upon the following +phrases, all of them applied to M. Victor Hugo: "The mightiest master of +the nineteenth century"; "One far greater than Byron or Lamartine"; "The +greatest living poet"; "The godlike hand of Victor Hugo"; "Only Victor +Hugo himself can make words thunder and lighten like these." There is +more, I think, of the same kind; but it perhaps suffices to mention these, +for previous experience has made us familiar with the assumption that +underlies them. + +It would be as presumptuous in me to make the world a present of my +opinion as to who is the greatest of modern poets, as I conceive it is in +Mr. Swinburne to be perpetually pursuing that course. I will therefore +content myself with saying that to attribute that distinction to M. Hugo +seems to me simply ludicrous, unless clatter be the same thing as fame, +and confident copiousness is to be accepted as a conclusive credential of +superiority; that in the opinion of Sainte-Beuve, De Musset was far more +of a poet than M. Victor Hugo; and that, with the exception of Mr. +Swinburne himself, all English critics, with whom I am acquainted, +entertain no sort of doubt that Mr. Tennyson is a more considerable poet +than both De Musset and M. Victor Hugo put together with a large margin to +spare. In any case, does Mr. Swinburne think that, by "damnable iteration" +about the "great master," he will alter the fact, or convert any human +being to a creed in the propagation of which he seems unaccountably +zealous? If he does, I recommend to his perusal the following brief +observation of Sainte-Beuve, which he will find in a "Causerie" upon +George Sand: + + Ceux qui cherchent à imposer aux autres une foi qu'ils ne sont pas + bien sûrs d'avoir eux-mêmes, s'échauffent en parlant, affirment sur + tous les tons, et se font prophètes afin de tâcher d'être croyants. + +I have said that the zeal of Mr. Swinburne in perpetually asseverating the +unapproachable superiority of M. Victor Hugo is unaccountable. Perhaps, +however, it is to be accounted for by reading between the lines of the +following passage: + + "As lyric poet and as republican leader, the master poet of the world + has equally deserved to attain this obloquy, to incur this tribute + from a journal"--the reference, I believe, is to the _Figaro_ of + Paris--"to which the principles of republican faith, a writer to whom + the pretensions of lyric poetry are naturally and equally abhorrent + and contemptible: nor could any law of nature or any result of chance + be more equitably satisfactory than one which should gratify the + wish--or the three wishes--that all who do not love the one should + hate the other: that all such men should be even as M. Zola: and that + all such writers as M. Zola, should be haters and scorners alike of + republican principles and of lyric song." + +With every desire not to be intolerant, and to inform oneself of what is +going on in this world, I think one may be pardoned for being unable to +read M. Zola. I should as soon think of doing things I will not even name, +as of reading _L'Assommoir_; and I fancy most Englishmen, whether +Monarchists or Republicans, whether lyrists or the most prosaic folk in +the world, entertain the same repugnance. But what, in the name of all +that is fair, and manly, and magnanimous, have political opinions got to +do with literary merit? Politics and literature are distinct, and though, +as abundant experience has shown, one and the same man may make his mark +in both, they are separate spheres of the same brain, and a man may be a +good poet and a bad politician, or a bad poet and a good politician, or +either good or bad in each capacity alike. Once you care one straw what +are the political opinions of a poet, there is an end of you as a critic. +Royalist, Republican, Communist, Deist, Pantheist,--what care I which of +these a poet is, so he is a poet? As a fact, I fancy the greater sort of +poets usually wear their creeds rather loosely; and if we find a poet, in +his character of poet, a perpetually passionate advocate, misgivings as to +his permanent fame may reasonably be entertained. Still no absolute rule +can be applied to these irregular planets. One likes a poet to love his +country, on the same principle which Cicero says made Ulysses love Ithaca, +"not because it was broad, but because it was his own." Mr. Tennyson loves +his country warmly, and for this Mr. Swinburne rebukes him with indulging +in the "beardless bluster of the Tory member, not of a provincial deputy, +but of a provincial schoolboy." This is perhaps the most inapt of all the +inapt observations in his amazing piece of criticism. + +I might say more, but I feel I have said enough, I hope, not too much of a +paper which, it seems to me, would be not unjustly described, in Mr. +Swinburne's own words, as "pseudo-poetic rhapsody in hermaphroditic +prose," and concerning which a person whose authority all would recognise +were I to mention him, observed to me, "This is the _Carmagnole_ of +criticism." But, before concluding, I should like, if Mr. Swinburne will +not think me presuming, to remind him, in all friendliness, that he, no +more than I, is any longer in the consulship of Plancus; that some of us +would have been thankful to have had our youthful follies treated as +leniently as his have been; and that the least return he can make for the +indulgence that has been extended to him in consideration of his genius, +is to remember the lines of the really "great master,"--not M. Victor +Hugo, but Shakespeare: + + ... Reverence, + That angel of the world, doth make distinction + Of place 'tween high and low. + + + + +ON THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO POLITICS + + +It occasionally happens to men of letters, at political gatherings, to be +asked to respond to the toast of Literature; so one may fairly conclude +that, in the opinion of many persons, there is between literature and +politics a close and familiar relation. I have long believed that there +is; and observation of the opinions of others has led me to inquire +whether the relation be one of amity or of antagonism. I propose to +endeavour, even though it be by reflections that may appear deliberative +rather than dogmatic, to elucidate a question that is not devoid of +interest. + +Mr. Trevelyan has recorded a saying of Macaulay to this effect, that a man +who, endowed with equal capacity for achieving distinction in literature +and in politics, selects a political career, gives proof of insanity. Most +men of letters, I fancy, would endorse that sentiment. But the decisions +which men have to make in this world are not, as a rule, presented to them +with the definiteness that gives artistic charm, as well as moral meaning, +to a well-known masterpiece in the Palazzo Borghese. Between Sacred and +Profane Love, between the love of literature and the pursuit of politics, +the line is not, in practice, drawn so hard and fast as in the beautiful +apologue immortalised by Titian. Loves that are altogether sacred and in +no degree profane, are not, I imagine, frequently offered to any one; and +though loves wholly profane and in no measure sacred, are, perhaps, not so +uncommon, they are not likely in that absolutely coarse form to exercise +enduring attraction over the finer spirits. It is the curious and +inextricable amalgam of the two that constitutes the embarrassment. +Literature entirely divorced from politics is a thing by no means so +easily attained, or so disinterestedly sought after, as it is sometimes +assumed to be; and though, with much Parliamentary and extra-Parliamentary +oratory before our minds, we should hesitate to affirm that politics are +not occasionally cultivated with a fine disregard for literature, yet the +literary flavour that is still present in the speeches of some Party +Politicians, suffices to show that literature and politics are in practice +not so much distinct territories as border-lands whose boundaries are not +easily defined, but that continually run into, overlap, and are frequently +confounded with, each other. + +But is it to be desired, even should it appear to be possible, to restrict +literature and politics each to its own particular sphere, and forbid +either to trespass upon the territory of the other? Would they be gainers +by this absolute severance? I am disposed to think that both would be +losers; and the loss, I fancy, would fall more heavily upon literature +even than upon politics. Dickens is said to have expressed his regret +that, as he worded it, a man like Disraeli should have thrown himself away +by becoming a politician. The observation, perhaps, smacks a little of the +too narrow estimate of life with which that man of genius may not unjustly +be reproached. But few people, if any, would think of denying that Lord +Beaconsfield might have won more enduring distinction in the Republic of +Letters than can be accurately placed to his account, had he dedicated +himself with less ardour--or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, +with less tenacity--to party politics. Like most persons of a +contemplative disposition, he read sparingly, and found in the pages of +others not so much what they themselves put there, as a provocation and +stimulus to fresh thoughts of his own. "See what my gracious Sovereign +sent me as a present at Christmas," he said to me one day. It was a copy +of the edition de luxe of _Romola_; and in it was written, in the +beautiful flowing hand of the Queen, "To the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G., +from his affectionate and grateful friend, Victoria." "But," he added, "I +cannot read it." I ventured to recommend him not to make that confession +to everybody, for it would not raise their estimate of his literary +acumen. "Well," he said, "it's no use. I can't." No doubt _Romola_ not +unoften smells overmuch of the lamp, and in all probability will not +permanently occupy the position assigned to it with characteristic +over-confidence by contemporaneous enthusiasm. But, if a man can read +novels at all, and if he demands from the novelist something more than the +mere craft of the story-teller, surely _Romola_ ought to give him +pleasure; and I suspect it would have pleased him, had he permitted his +taste as a man of letters the same amount of expansion he afforded to his +tendencies as a practical politician. At the same time, I could well +understand a person arguing, though I could hardly agree with him, that he +was not designed by nature to be a more complete and finished man of +letters than he actually became, and that his keen interest in politics, +and the knowledge of political and social life he in consequence acquired, +contribute to his written works their principal charm and their most +valuable ingredients. I suspect the truth to be, that he was compounded in +such equal proportions of the man of meditation and the man of action, +that under no circumstances would he have been content to be merely a man +of letters, or merely a politician, and that he fulfilled his nature by +being alternately one and the other. That a man should attain to supreme +eminence in literature by pursuing such a course, is out of the question. +The wonder is that, having achieved even such literary distinction as he +did, he should have attained to such supreme eminence as a statesman. + +If, therefore, Lord Beaconsfield might have been a more distinguished man +of letters, had he not been so keen a politician, the proper conclusion +would seem to be that literature in his case suffered hurt, not from +politics, but from an excess of politics. It would not be easy to name a +character more utterly unlike his than Wordsworth--a man of letters pure +and simple, if we are ever to find one. True it is that Wordsworth in +extreme youth wrote some political verse, that he loved his country with +ardour, and that the word England had for him great and stimulating +associations; but, as a rule, he lived remote from human ken, divorced +from human business, amid the silence of the starry sky and the sleep of +the everlasting hills. What was the result? I admire the best and highest +poetry of Wordsworth with a fervour and an enthusiasm not exceeded by +those who will, perhaps, forgive me for calling them his more fanatical +worshippers. But I must continue to think that Wordsworth would have given +himself the chance of being a yet greater poet than he was, had he--I do +not say quitted his lakes, and hills, and streams; heaven forbid!--but had +he consorted at times more freely and fully with his fellow-men, had he +been not a poet only, but something in addition to a poet; had he led a +rather more mixed life; had he done, in fact, what we know was done by the +great Athenian dramatists, by Virgil, by Dante, by Chaucer, Spenser, +Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, and even by Shelley. Politics do not +necessarily mean party politics, though in this country, at this moment, +the one runs dangerously near to implying the other. Politics mean, or +ought to mean, the practical concerns of the many, of the state, of the +Empire, or of mankind at large, as contradistinguished from the mere +personal or class interests. But with those wider concerns Wordsworth +would have little or nothing to do, except in the most abstract way; and +the consequence is that his poetry is the poetry of the individual, and +nearly always of the same individual, and is lacking in the element of +variety, especially in the greatest element of all, viz. action, in which +is necessarily included the portrayal of passion and character. + +Would not the proper conclusion, therefore--a conclusion not overstrained +and if not stated with excessive dogmatism--seem to be, that literature, +though demanding precedence in the affections, and exacting the chief +attention of one who professes really to love it, is not a jealous +mistress, but, on the contrary, is only too well pleased to see even its +most attached votaries combine with their one supreme passion a number of +minor interests and even minor affections. A very sagacious person has +said, "Action may not bring happiness; but there is no happiness without +action." I am not sure that that is quite true, for Epictetus, and even +Epicurus, would have something to say on the other side. But I entertain +little doubt that it is strictly true to affirm that the highest literary +eminence is not attainable by persons who stand aloof, and have always +stood aloof, from the field of action; that mere contemplation, no matter +how lofty, how profound, or how persistent, will not make a man a supreme +poet or a supreme artist of any kind; and that the doctrine of "art for +art's sake," if applied in a perverse signification, must end by narrowing +and finally debasing what it is intended to elevate. Action helps thought, +and thought helps action. By action thought is rendered more masculine, +attains to greater breadth, and acquires a certain nobleness and dignity. +Thanks to thought, action may become more definite, more precise, more +fruitful. But that is on the assumption that each exerts itself in due +times and seasons, and leaves to the other abundant opportunities and +ample latitude. When we are bidden to observe that + + the native hue of resolution + Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, + +we well understand that thought has been excessive, that action has not +had fair play, and that the brain has paralysed the hand. + +No one can read the _Iliad_ without feeling that the writer, or writers, +of the stirring debates with which it is thronged had consorted with, and +was intimately familiar with public life. Many years ago, addressing an +assembling of Cambridge undergraduates at a political meeting, and seeking +to justify the toast of literature they had given me as a text, I +ventured, with a certain levity congenial to my young but classical +audience, to ask if the _Iliad_ is not a political poem, for is it not +full of discussions as animated as any of our own Parliamentary ones, in +which Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, to say nothing of Thersites, +successively take part; and are not these succeeded, as in our own case, +by deliberations in an Upper House, where Juno, Venus, Vulcan, and even +Jove himself, participate in the oratorical debate? The first and last +note of the _Æneid_, indeed the one text of the great poem of Virgil, is +_Romanam condere gentem_, to show how was established, and to intimate how +might be extended, the Empire of Rome. Virgil, the most tender, the most +finished, the most literary of poets, took the warmest interest in the +politics of his country, or he would never have got much beyond the range +of his Pastorals and Bucolics. The first word in the first ode of Horace +is the name of an Augustan minister, quickly to be followed by the ode, +_Jam satis terris_, with its patriotic allusions to national pride and +military honour. Most people, I imagine, associate Dante with the period +of his exile, forgetting why he was exiled. He had to thank the interest +he displayed in the politics of his native city for that prolonged +banishment; and so keen a politician was this great contemplative bard, +that in the same poem in which Beatrice reproves him in heaven, Dante +represents his political enemies as gnashing their teeth in hell. That was +when he had become the man of letters pure and simple. But, in the hey-day +of his fortunes, and long after he had first seen and become enamoured of +Beatrice, and had written the _Vita Nuova_, he had taken so active a part +and become so influential a personage in the public affairs of Florence, +that, when invited to go on a difficult embassy, he exclaimed, "If I go, +who will stay? Yet, if I stay, who will go?" It was no backsliding, +therefore, no hesitation, that made Dante a public character for a moment, +quickly to repent his infidelity to the Muse. To the last, it is +abundantly evident that he would fain have combined in his career the poet +and the politician. Yet the first words addressed by Virgil to Dante, when +they met _nel gran diserto_, and Dante asked him whether he was _ombra od +uomo certo_, seem almost to imply that Virgil meant to reprove the +intruder upon the _selva oscura_ with condescending to mix in the turmoil +of public life, instead of confining himself to literature and philosophy. +These are the words, which students of the _Divina Commedia_ will scarcely +require to have cited for them: + + Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto + Figliuol d'Anchise, che venne da Troia, + Poichè il superbo Ilion fu combusto. + Ma tu perchè ritorni a tanta noia? + Perchè non sali il dilettoso monte, + Ch'è principio e cagion di tutta gioia? + + I was a poet, and I sang of that just son of Anchises, who came from + Troy after proud Ilion was laid in ashes. But you--why do you return + to worries of that sort! Why do you not ascend the delectable + mountain, which is the principle and cause of all true happiness? + +We must bear in mind, however, that the words are not the real words of +Virgil, but words put into his mouth by Dante at a period when Dante +himself was weary and sick to death of _tanta noia_, the annoyances and +mortifications of political life, and had cast longing eyes upon the +_dilettoso monte_. What real man of letters that ever ventured into the +arid and somewhat vulgar domain of Party-politics has not felt the same +feeling of revulsion, the same longing for the water-brooks? But, years +after Dante wrote that passage, he strove, petitioned, and conspired to be +allowed to return to Florence and its perpetual civic strife, and envied, +as Byron makes him say, in _The Prophecy of Dante_: + + ... Every dove its nest and wings, + Which waft it where the Apennine look down + On Arno, till it perches, it may be, + Within my all inexorable town. + +If the Crusades were not politics, we should have to narrow the meaning of +the word very considerably; and if the Crusades were political, another +Italian poet must be added to the list of those who have not disdained to +draw inspiration from public affairs, Torquato Tasso, the author of +_Gerusalemme Liberata_. And what are the first two lines of the _Orlando +Furioso_?-- + + Le donne, i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori, + Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese, io canto. + +_L'audaci imprese!_ The loves of fair ladies were not enough for Ariosto, +but with them he needs must blend the clash of arms and mighty enterprise. +Both these poets were, in the phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, +"unscrupulously epic," and fused the red-hot lava of their time in the +mould of their enduring verse. No one should need to be reminded that +Chaucer was the friend of statesmen and the colleague of ambassadors. In +him we find the two salient characteristics of all the best English +poetry--a close observation and tender love of external nature, and a keen +interest in the characters and doings of men; and, for this reason, he has +often been hailed as the precursor of Shakespeare. The lofty symbolism of +Spenser, and the unvarying elevation and dignity of his style, seem to +place him rather remote from the common herd, and to make him, in a sense, +a little less human than some might wish him to be. But in his writings he +holds himself aloof from the vulgar no more than Dante does; and like +Dante, he was a man of the world, and participated in the art of +government and the administration of public affairs. The "poet of the +poets" combined literature with politics. + +The days of Burleigh were hardly days when the son of a provincial +wool-stapler was likely to be much heard of in the domain of politics. But +the historical plays of Shakespeare traverse a space of more than two +hundred years, or from King John to Henry VIII., and could not have been +written by one who did not combine with his unmatched poetic gifts a +lively interest in the politics of his country. Shakespeare is the idol of +us all, the only reproach I have ever heard addressed to him being that he +was rather too aristocratic in his sympathies, and too Conservative in the +non-Party sense, in his views; foibles which perhaps ought not to surprise +us in one who had so intimate a knowledge of human nature, and so shrewd +an appreciation of its strong and weak points. Nor was it an injury, but a +distinct gain, to the prince of dramatic poets, that he should have been +compelled to concern himself with the practical affairs of life, and to +busy himself actively with the management of a theatre. The lament about +his nature being subdued to what it worked in, may be taken as an +ebullition of momentary weakness, even in that robust and manly +temperament. Shakespeare was compounded of too many and too large elements +to have been a poet only; and "art for art's sake," wrongly interpreted, +could never have found lodgment in his wide sympathies, his capacious +understanding, and his versatile imagination. + +If Conservatism may, in a non-party sense, claim Shakespeare as an +authority in its favour, in Milton, on the other hand, I suppose +Liberalism again in a non-party sense would recognise a support. At any +rate, Cromwell's secretary was a keen politician, and even a passionate +partisan. I have always thought the allusion made by Walter Scott to him +in his Life of Dryden hasty and unfair. "Waller was awed into silence," he +says, "by the rigour of the puritanic spirit; and even the muse of Milton +was scared from him by the clamour of religious and political controversy, +and only returned, like a sincere friend, to cheer the adversity of one +who had neglected her during his career of worldly importance." A more +recent writer seems to echo the same charge. "In 1641," he says, "Milton +stepped into the lists of controversy as a prose writer, beginning the +series of works which, far more than his poetry, gave him his conspicuous +public standing during his lifetime, and have doubtless bereaved the world +of many an immortal verse which it would otherwise have to treasure." That +Milton's controversial writings gave him more conspicuous public standing +in his lifetime than his poetry is indisputable, and not to be wondered +at. A man's contemporaries would naturally rather have him useful than +ornamental, provided he be useful on their side; and while persons whose +opinions were furthered by his political writings were, as might have been +expected, more interested in these than in poems from which they reaped no +advantage, those people, on the other hand, to whom his political writings +were obnoxious, felt themselves, as might also have been expected, but +little disposed to extol, or even to read, his poetry. It may, perhaps, be +taken as an absolute rule that a man of letters who takes a conspicuous +interest in contemporary politics thereby debars himself to a considerable +extent from literary popularity in his lifetime; a matter of little +moment, however, since to every reflective mind contemporary popularity is +no pledge of enduring fame, while contemporary neglect is not necessarily +an omen of eternal oblivion. But it is quite another thing to affirm that +men of letters who, like Milton, participate freely in the political +controversies of their time "bereave the world of many an immortal verse," +or to insinuate, with Scott, that they desert the Muse for "a career of +worldly importance," and only remember its charms in the season of their +adversity. I think any one who has read _Paradise Lost_ and _Paradise +Regained_ will be of opinion that Milton wrote quite as much verse as was +desirable, whether for our delectation or for his own fame. We see the +appalling result of always writing verse and never doing anything else, in +the portentous bulk bequeathed to us by even so eminent a poet as +Wordsworth, of matter that his idolaters persist in asking the world to +accept as a precious revelation, but which the world persists, and I +cannot doubt will always persist, in regarding as verse that ought to have +gone up the chimney. Matthew Arnold has, in current phrase, "boiled down" +Wordsworth, in order to make him more palatable to general consumption; +and he gives excellent reasons for having done so. + +"In Wordsworth's seven volumes," he says, "the pieces of high merit are +mingled with a mass of pieces very inferior to them: so inferior to them, +that it seems wonderful how the same poet should have produced both. Work +altogether inferior, work quite uninspired, flat and dull, is produced by +him with evident unconsciousness of its defects, and he presents it to us +with the same faith and seriousness as his best work." + +Even in the edition of Wordsworth's poetry Matthew Arnold has given us, +and which contains not a tenth of what Wordsworth published, he has +himself exhibited a little too much "faith and seriousness" respecting +what he has laboured to save from Lethe, and the "boiling down" process +will have to be gone through again by somebody else. The tenth part will +have to undergo the operation applied to the whole, and be itself reduced +to another one-tenth. The corn must be winnowed by a yet finer sieve; all +the chaff and husk must be blown away; and what then remains will be the +_fine fleur_ of poetry indeed. In a word, had Wordsworth, like Milton, +devoted himself, at some season of his life, to public affairs, he would +doubtless have written less verse, and possibly more poetry. Had Milton +abstained altogether from politics, he would possibly have written more +verse, but it is improbable that he would have written more poetry. What +he wrote acquired strength, and even elevation, from his temporary contact +with affairs and his judicious co-operation with the active interests of +the State. "As the giant Antæus," says Heine, "remained invincible in +strength as long as he touched mother earth with his feet, and lost this +power when Hercules lifted him into the air, so also is the poet strong +and mighty as long as he does not abandon the firm ground of reality, but +forfeits his power when he loses himself in the blue ether." No doubt the +poet must have his head in the air, and no ether need be too high or too +rarefied for his imagination to breathe; but without a strong foothold of +the ground he runs the risk of too often lapsing, as Matthew Arnold +affirms Wordsworth constantly lapsed, into "abstract verbiage," or of +falling into intolerable puerilities. + +Nor is it just to assert that Milton neglected the Muse during his career +of worldly importance. It would be as fair to say the same of Dante, +between whom and Milton, in point of genius as well as in vicissitudes of +life, there is a striking similarity. Dante wrote the _Vita Nuova_ at a +comparatively early age, just as Milton wrote _L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, +_Comus_, and _Lycidas_ in the springtime of his life. Then came a pause, +indeed a long silence, for each of them, and it was not till they had +reached the meridian of intellectual life that they betook themselves each +to his _magnum opus_, Dante to the _Divina Commedia_, Milton to _Paradise +Lost_. Any one observant of the habit of our best English song-birds must +be aware that after singing, with a rapturous lyrical carelessness, +through the vernal months, they become silent during the heat of summer. +Then in early autumn they sing again, with more measure, more continence, +let us say with more self-criticism and fastidiousness; and though the +note may not be so boisterous, it is more mellow and mature. + +No doubt Dante and Milton did not take this course, of deliberate purpose; +with them, too, it was an instinct; but may we not suspect that poets +would give themselves a better chance of writing works that posterity will +not willingly let die, by observing a "close time," a season of summer +silence between the April of the soul when sing they must, and the advent +of the early autumn days, with auburn tints, meditative haze, and grave +tranquil retrospects. Who shall say when the fruits of harvest-time begin +to ripen? But this clearly one may affirm, that but for the summer months, +when they seem almost to be stationary in colour, they would never ripen +at all. We know, I think, as a fact, that Milton commenced writing +_Paradise Lost_ some years before the restoration of the Monarchy, but no +one can tell how much earlier still it was really commenced. Milton +himself could not have told. The children of the Muse are conceived long +before they quicken; and even a lyric, apparently born in a moment, was +often begotten in the darkness and the silence of the days gone by. Works +as colossal as the _Divine Comedy_ and _Paradise Lost_ have deep and +distant foundations, and the noblest passages of human verse are the +unpremeditated outpourings of men who are habitually plunged in +meditation. The least serious reflection upon the subject, if coupled with +any insight into the methods and operations of imaginative genius, will +satisfy anybody that in the very midst of his political controversies and +ecclesiastical polemics Milton was in reality already composing _Paradise +Lost_. Dante never returned to Florence after he was exiled, and it was in +banishment that he wrote the _Divina Commedia_. Yet the "Sasso di Dante," +the stone on which he used to sit, gazing intently at the Duomo and at +Giotto's Campanile, is one of the sacred sights of the profane Tuscan +city, and his townsmen had already learnt to speak of him as "One who had +seen Hell." What enabled him to see it so clearly was his familiarity with +the ways of men and the uncelestial politics of Florence. It was through +Beatrice and the passion of Love--_Amor, che il ciel governi_--that he +gained access to Paradise, and a knowledge of those things of which he +says: + + ... che ridire + Nè sa nè può qual di lassù discende. + +But the sadness of Purgatory, and the horrors of Hell, these he learned +from the wrangles of Guelph and Ghibelline, of these he obtained mastery +by being, in A.D. 1300, Priore of the fairest, but most mercurial of +cities. We have the authority of Shakespeare, who ought to have been well +informed on that subject, that the lover and the poet are of imagination +all compact, and the brisk air of public policy is the best corrective for +the disease of narrow intensity to which both alike are peculiarly +subject. + +There would be no difficulty, I think, in showing that all the greater men +of letters of the eighteenth century were largely indebted for the +literary success they attained to the vivid interest they displayed in +public affairs. To mention Dryden, Swift, Pope, Addison is to conjure up +before the mind chapter upon chapter of English political history. Pope +says: + + Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory; + +and not without some reason, for, like his friend Swift, he cared more for +his own career than for either Party in the State. But no one can read the +valuable notes appended by Mr. Courthorpe to his edition of the great +satirist, without seeing how alive Pope was to the _quidquid agunt +homines_ of his generation. As for Swift, he was for a time, as the writer +of an admirable paper upon him in the _Quarterly Review_ asserts, the +political dictator of Ireland. When Gibbon betook himself to the task of +writing that monumental work which, I find, many persons to-day declare to +be unreadable, but which, I suspect, will be read when the most popular +books of this generation are forgotten, he wisely retired to the studious +quietude of Lausanne. But he narrates how the description of the tactics +of Roman legions and the victories of Roman Proconsuls was rendered more +facile and familiar to him by his previous experience as a Captain of +Yeomanry at home, while even his brief tenure of a seat in the British +Parliament enabled him to grasp with more alacrity and precision the +legislative conduct of the Conscript Fathers. + +In the nineteenth century which, despite its many privileges--not the +least of which, perhaps, was that of being able to express a very high +opinion of itself, without at the time being contradicted--enjoyed no +immunity from the general laws of human nature, I think the proposition +still holds good that men of letters who aspire to high distinction do +well not to disdain altogether the politics of their time. I have already +referred to Wordsworth, and ventured to suggest that he suffered in some +degree, as a poet, from being nothing but a poet. Byron presents a marked +contrast in this respect; and I am still of opinion, which I am comforted +to find is shared by most persons who are men of the world, and by men of +letters who are something more than men of letters, that Byron is, on the +whole, the most considerable English poet since Milton. Art for Art's sake +is a creed that has been embraced by too many critics of our time. Do we +not find in this circumstance an explanation of their tendency to extol +the quietistic and solitary poets, and, on the other hand, to depreciate +the poets who deal with action and the more complex features of life? It +is the business of poets to deal with the relation of the individual to +himself, to the silent uniform forces of nature, and to other individuals, +singly and collectively: in other words, to be dramatic or epic, as well +as lyrical or idyllic. All poets of the first rank are both; yet the +quietistic and purely introspective critics assign a place, and a prior +place as a rule, in the front rank, to poets who are only second. I cannot +think that conclusions reposing on such demonstrably unsound canons of +criticism will permanently hold their ground. Byron contrived to crowd +into a very short life a vast amount both of poetry and of public +activity; acting upon his own recorded opinion that a man was sent into +the world to do something more than to write poetry. A writer who, I +fancy, belongs to the school, now happily becoming obsolete, whose verdict +was that Byron's poetry, though good enough for Scott, Shelley, and +Goethe, is only "the apotheosis of common-place," has recently expressed +the opinion that "Byron would not have gone to Greece if he had not become +tired of the Contessa Guiccioli." As far as she is concerned, I can only +say, as one who knew her, and has many letters written by her on the +subject of Byron, that if at any time she ever became indifferent to him, +her affection for him experienced a marvellous revival. As for the +suggestion that he went to Greece because he was tired of his companion, +it surely was not necessary for a man to go to Greece to get rid of a +woman of whom he was tired, and certainly Byron was not the man to +consider the "world well lost" for a woman. But the letters he wrote to +his "companion" from Greece attest that his affection for her was still +not slight. In any case there is no necessity to cast about one for any +reason to explain Byron's going to Greece, beyond the exceedingly simple +one that he was a man of action as well as a poet. Had he lived, instead +of dying, for Greece, I cannot doubt that English poetry would have reaped +a yet more glorious harvest from him, thanks to his incidental experiences +as a soldier and a statesman. + +The theme is one that easily lends itself to illustration; but enough +perhaps has been said to justify the conclusion that it is for the best +and highest interests of literature that those who love it before all +other things, and cherish it beyond all other considerations, should +nevertheless take a large and liberal view of what constitutes life, and +should include in the excursions of their experience and in the survey of +their contemplation what are called politics, or the business and +interests of the State. I do not propose that they should be vestrymen, +though I cannot forget that Shakespeare did not disdain to concern himself +in the local business of Stratford-upon-Avon. For men of letters to be +willing to interest themselves in politics, politics generally, must be +interesting. The issues raised must be issues of moment and dignity, +issues affecting the greatness of an Empire, the stability of a State, or +the general welfare of humanity. In a country like our own, where Party +Government prevails, it is not easy, indeed it is impossible, for a man of +letters to interest himself in politics without inclining, through +sympathy and conviction, to one Party in the State rather than to the +other; and there are occasions, no doubt, when Party issues are synonymous +with the greatness of the Empire, the stability of the State, and the +welfare of mankind. But a wise man of letters will do well to stand more +or less aloof from all smaller issues, and to avoid, as degrading to the +character and lowering to the imagination, Party wrangles that are mere +Party wrangles and nothing more. + +There have been seasons in the history of the human race, melancholy +seasons for the human mind, the "evil days" spoken of by Milton, when men +of letters could not, with any self-respect, mix in politics. How much +more highly we should think of Seneca if that literary Stoic had not been +a minister of Nero. There was no room for a self-respecting man of letters +in French politics during the reign of Napoleon I., none during the +earlier years of the reign of Napoleon III., unless he happened to be a +sincere admirer of a corrupt and brilliant despotism. There are +despotisms that are corrupt, or what is equally bad, vulgar and servile, +without being brilliant; and I am not alone in entertaining the fear lest +unadulterated Democracy--that is to say, the passions, interests, and +power of a homogeneous majority, acting without any regard to the passions +and interests that exist outside of it, and purged of all respect for +intellect that does not provide it with specious reasons and feed it with +constant adulation--should inflict upon us a despotism under which, again, +there will be no room in the domain of politics for men of letters who +respect themselves. It is not the business of a man of letters to take his +politics either from a Monarch or a Mob, or to push his fortunes--slightly +to alter a celebrated phrase--by those services which demagogues render to +crowds. If the love and pursuit of literature do not make a man more +independent in character, more disinterested in his reasonings, more +elevated in his views, they will not have done for him what I should have +expected from them. That politicians pure and simple are becoming less +imbued with the literary spirit is, I think, certain, and it is to be +regretted, because polite Politics are almost as much to be desired as +polite Literature, and should be little less imbued with the Horatian +sentiment, _Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros_. Many years ago I heard a +prominent politician in the House of Commons reproach Disraeli, then +Leader of the House, with servility to the Crown, for no other reason that +I could see than that, in explaining certain communications that had +passed between the Queen and the Prime Minister, he had made use of the +customary mode of speaking of the Sovereign. The imperturbability of +Disraeli in debate under the strongest provocation was notoriously one of +the secrets of his authority and influence. But it was plain on that +occasion, when he rose to reply, that he had been irritated by the charge. +But how did he rebut it? "The right honourable gentleman," he said, "has +been pleased to accuse me of servility to the Crown. Well, Sir, I appeal +to gentlemen on both sides of the House, for they _are_ gentlemen on both +sides of the House----" There was a sudden outburst of cheering. He did +not finish the sentence, but turned away to another matter. Could there +have been a more crushing yet a more parliamentary and well-bred rebuke? +Mr. Gladstone did not possess the same quiet power of reproval. But his +courtesy was uniformly faultless, even when he most indulged in indignant +invective. It is told of Guizot, that, when President of the Council in +France, on being interrupted by his opponents with unseemly clamour, he +observed, "I do not think, gentlemen, the solution of the controversy will +be assisted by shouting; and such clamour, however loud, will never reach +the height of my disdain." One does not ask politicians to disarm; but +they must use the rapier, not the tomahawk; and it is Literature, and +Literature only, that can adequately teach them how to employ with ample +effect the seemly weapons of debate. If politicians and even Monarchs are +wise, they will respect Literature. After all, Literature has always the +last word. "A hundred years hence," said a French poet to a rather saucy +beauty, "you will be just as beautiful as I choose to say you were"; and +the verses in which he said this have survived. Politicians whom +Literature ignores are in the same position. If Literature ignores them +they will be forgotten. If Literature condemns them they will stand +condemned. But Literature, in turn, should be fair-minded and sincere, +not disingenuous, not a partisan. It wields, in the long run, enormous +power, and therefore has corresponding responsibilities. If the public +taste in any direction, in politics, in letters, or any of the other Arts +grows debased, and current critical opinion follows the debasement, +Literature can only stand apart, or loftily reprehend them. Of all +influences, Literature is the most patient, the most persistent, and the +most enduring. Unfairness cannot long injure, malevolence cannot +permanently damage or depreciate it; for, as I have said, Literature, +lofty self-respecting Literature, always has the last word, the final +hearing, political partisanship having no power over the final estimation +in which it is held. At the beginning of the nineteenth century current +Tory criticism strove to belittle men of letters who happened to be +Liberals; and, since Toryism was then in the ascendant, it for a time, but +only for a time, partially succeeded. In our day, and for some few years +past, the influence of Liberalism has been visibly uppermost in current +criticism, which has in turn done scant justice to men of letters +suspected of holding different views. To the latter, as to the great +Liberal poets and other men of letters in the earlier days of the +nineteenth century, such patent partisanship can do no lasting injury. +Perhaps men of letters might themselves raise the standard of +dispassionate criticism were they always fair to each other, and not, as I +fear sometimes happens, be ungenerous to contemporaries, who for one +reason or another are not much favoured by them. There is a curious +passage in the 11th Canto of the _Purgatorio_ of the _Divina Commedia_, +where Dante recognises a certain Oderesi, and compliments him on the +talent he showed when on earth as an illuminator or miniature painter. +Oderesi replies that Franco Bolognese was his superior in that art, but +that from jealousy he had failed to allow as much, and adds + + Di tal superbia qui si paga il fio: + +meaning thereby that he was now undergoing punishment for his unworthy +jealousy on earth. + +Even those to whom an Inferno or Purgatorio is a sheer fiction may be +reminded that Time's final court of appeal, when it readjusts balances +falsely weighted in days gone by, will not fail to stigmatise those who +once belittled what, had they been more candid, they would have better +appreciated. + + + + +A CONVERSATION WITH SHAKESPEARE IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS + + +I am aware that, in these days, when realism is all the rage and true +imagination at a discount, people will ask how, not being either an Æneas +or a Dante, I came to be admitted to an actual sight of the Elysian +Fields, and will not be fobbed off by any fanciful explanation such as +used to satisfy the more unsophisticated reader of former times. I +therefore hasten to satisfy their exacting curiosity by saying that I +happen to have done a good turn of late to the Pagan gods--not forgetting +the goddesses, whom one should always have on one's side, since they hold +the keys of the position equally on earth, in the air, and +underground--and they made their acknowledgments to me by letting me know +that I might have my choice of an interview with any one, but only one, of +the personages among those who are now disporting themselves in the other +world. At first, I was rather tempted to name Eve, in order that I might +get an intelligible account from the most trustworthy source of the Tree +of Knowledge and the Tree of Good and Evil. But I thought she perhaps +would know as little about them as myself; so I thought I would ask for an +interview, with either Helen of Troy or with Cleopatra, when it suddenly +struck me that I should probably find both one and the other not very +unlike women I had already come across here in this upper world. So, +anxious to know whether or not there ever was a real flesh-and-blood +Shakespeare, and explaining that, if there was not, I had not the smallest +desire to have a talk with my Lord Verulam, I said, "Let me have a +colloquy with Shakespeare, the wisest, sweetest, wittiest, +largest-hearted, biggest-brained of human beings"; and, almost before I +had finished the sentence, I found myself in the Elysian Fields. + +At first, I forgot what I was there for at all, in my amazement at the +place itself. Though I am a tolerably close observer of external Nature, I +could not for the life of me surmise what season of the year I was in, and +finally perceived that I was in all the four seasons at one and the same +time. Primroses and bluebells were to be seen side by side with roses and +irises, with meadowsweet and traveller's joy, grass ready for the scythe +not far from swaying wheat and heavily-burred hop-garden; while, well +within view, I could see slopes of virgin snow, and folks making ready to +go tobogganing on them. It was just the same with bird-life. Stormcock, +nightingale, cuckoo, corncrake, woodpecker, robin redbreast, were all +singing together, yet there was no discord in the concert. + +"You want to see me, I am told," I heard some one say behind me, and, +turning, I at once perceived that it was Shakespeare, not from the +striking resemblance to any of the portraits or busts, Droeshout, Chandos, +Stratford-on-Avon, or other effigy, but by his seeming to be compounded of +them all, with something superadded that I could recall in none of them. +Similarly, he did not seem to be of any particular age, either of youth, +early manhood, middle life, or yet elderly, but compounded of all the +years, at once young and engaging, in the grand climacteric, and withal +full of mellow wisdom. His eye glowed with fine frenzy, withal was tender +and melting as that of a boy-lover. I could not fail to observe this +extraordinary combination of ages and qualities; yet they did not strike +me as in any way incongruous, any more than I had found incongruity in all +the seasons being contemporaneous, and blossom and fruit subsisting +together. I had expected to be rather embarrassed and somewhat overawed on +first coming across this king of men; but his manner was so simple, so +frank and friendly, that he put me at my ease at once, and I ventured to +inquire if, in the Elysian Fields, they had any knowledge of what was +going on in the world they had once inhabited. + +"Ample knowledge," he replied, "though we are not troubled with +newspapers, nor yet tormented by telegrams or telephones, but confine our +regard to what interests us." + +"Have you happened to notice," I asked, "that _A Winter's Tale_ has +recently been produced at His Majesty's Theatre?" + +"Yes, and all the more because that indefatigable manager and +all-embracing actor, Mr. Tree, has not taken a part in it. He would have +rendered Autolycus very suitably." + +"Perhaps," I went on, since I now felt on a footing of the most friendly +familiarity with one I had hitherto always thought of at a respectful +distance, "perhaps you have observed some of the criticisms on the play." + +"To tell the truth," he replied, "I have not. There were few such things +in my time, save by the audience; and my recollection of what few there +were does not dispose me to read fresh ones. But, if they have said +anything instructive or amusing, I shall be most happy to hear it." + +"I am afraid," I said, "they are more amusing than instructive." + +"Then let me have them by all means. The only thing one is sometimes +tempted to find fault with in the Elysian Fields is that its denizens are +a trifle too serious for me; being just as much inclined as ever to say, +when I find myself in the company of my fellow-creatures, 'With mirth and +laughter let me play the fool.'" + +Thus encouraged, I said that one critic had pronounced the play to be dull +as drama, and inferior as poetry; Autolycus to be a bore, yet by no means +the only tiresome feature in the play; the plot to be a succession of gaps +and puerilities; and that another observed what a pity it was you had made +Leontes a lunatic, a raving maniac, and a nuisance. As I recounted these +opinions, I could see no sign of annoyance on the face of the playwright, +but only a philosophic smile illumining his tranquil features. + +"I seem," he said, "to have heard that some time ago some one commented on +the meanness of the fable and the extravagant conduct of it, and declared +that the comedy caused no mirth, and the serious portion no concernment. I +daresay there is truth in the first part of the criticism, but, in regard +to the second, I seem to remember that, at the Globe, there was a good +deal of mirth at the lighter scenes, and no small attention at the grave +ones. But perhaps audiences in my day were different from audiences in +yours. I am by no means sure that I wrote the whole of the play; indeed I +am pretty certain I did not. My chief share in it was the love-scene +between Florizel and Perdita." + +"Which I have always thought very beautiful, and the very opposite of +'inferior as poetry.'" + +"Very good of you to say so; for I much enjoyed writing it. For the rest, +I suspect that a change has come over audiences, and still more over those +people whom you call critics. From what I have heard, they appear not to +confine themselves to appraising what is offered them, but want authors to +offer them something quite different, which is scarcely reasonable. +Moreover, they impute to an author motives he did not entertain, and ends +he did not have in view. For instance, I am supposed by them to have been +a rather successful delineator of character; overlooking the fact that I +over and over again cast character to the winds, in favour of the +situation, to which one surrendered oneself only too willingly, because in +doing so one was enabled to indulge one's humour and temperament more +freely and fully." + +"Am I right," I asked, "in thinking that your humour and temperament lay +chiefly in a keen enjoyment of rural nature, the delineation of love +between men and women, and philosophic reflections on the various passions +of human beings?" + +"You put it rather flatteringly," he said. "But I will not deny that what +you say concerning one's disposition is true. The external world is so +beautiful, loving and being loved are so delightful, and human beings are +so interesting, that it is a writer's own defect if he does not make them +appear beautiful, delightful, and interesting to others, no matter in what +form he presents them. If he has what you call the way with him, he will +make you accept as true almost any story, so long as he is telling it, no +matter what you may think of it afterwards. As a famous poet and critic +said long ago, _Incredulus odi_. Men naturally turn away from what seems +incredible. But what seems somewhat incredible when only read, appears +credible enough when acted, if acted well; and Ellen Terry was so +attractive and winning in her treatment of Polixenes, that the conjugal +jealousy of Leontes becomes, at least, almost intelligible." + +"That was exactly what I myself felt the other day, when I went to see the +performance," I said. "But I observe you quote Horace, though many persons +have maintained that you had little Latin, if any." + +"Rather a mistake that, arising, I imagine, from their not knowing what +Grammar Schools were like in my time, when we were taught something more +than the rudiments of Latin, with the assistance of prompt corporal +chastisement if we showed a disinclination to master them. Nowadays, I +see, the birch, the ferule, and the cane, have fallen into disfavour, with +the result that many English boys, at schools supposed to be very superior +in the education they provide, refuse to learn anything except cricket and +rowing; two excellent accomplishments, but not quite covering the whole +ground of a liberal education." + +"May I inquire," I said, "if you, among others, had a liberal application +of the cane?" + +"My fair share," he said, "but not for refusing to learn, since I enjoyed +being taught, and, still more, teaching myself; and a very little +learning, though some people have said it is a dangerous thing, goes a +long way if you only know how to turn it to account. My thrashings, which +were richly deserved, were given for being behindhand of a morning because +I had loitered with some rustic sight or sound that arrested me, and +suchlike irregularities of conduct. But what was taught us was taught +thoroughly, and I have sometimes thought that men deemed poets may be +taught and learn too much, as, for instance, my good friend Ben Jonson, +who has been justly compared to a heavy galleon, though a very well +trimmed and steered one, but which perhaps would sometimes have benefited +by a portion of its dead weight being cast overboard. Still he was a rare +poet all the same." + +"Who is that, may I ask, with the pointed beard, that has just been joking +with a rubicund friar whom I no longer see, and then more gravely with a +seemly and tender-looking young woman, also vanished 'into air, into thin +air,' while he now stoops to gather daisies from the grass? I seem to know +his face." + +"That is a delightful fellow, perhaps of all my companions here the most +congenial; the morning star of English song, Geoffrey Chaucer. _He_ could, +and did, delineate character consistently if you like. I think it is his +cheerful, kindly sense of humour that recommends him so strongly to me. +But a nearer contemporary of mine in the other world whom you see there, +wearing an aspect of stately distinction, essentially what English folk +call a perfect gentleman, likewise enters much into the study of my +imagination. See! Now he turns his face towards you." + +"Surely it is Edmund Spenser, is it not?" + +"Yes, the Poet's poet. His verse is at once so natural and so noble, as to +be irresistible. I often repeat to myself two exquisitely musical and +briefly descriptive lines of his: + + A little lowly Hermitage it was, + Down in a dale, hard by a forest side. + +No amount of elaboration and detail would enable one to see the Hermitage +better, or indeed, as well; and the lyrical freedom of the ostensibly +iambic verse gives to it an irresistible charm." + +"And, over and over again, if I may say so, gives to the blank verse of +your dramas the same magical quality that a more stately treatment of it +can never confer. But where is Milton?" + +"One sees him but seldom," he replied; "and when Chaucer and I do catch +sight of him, we behave rather like truant schoolboys, and put on a grave +face, especially if he finds us in one of our lighter moods. We are all +rather in awe of him, for he never stoops to playfulness; and Chaucer, who +is rather irreverent sometimes, says he is so uniformly sublime as now and +then to be ridiculous. But, in our hearts, we greatly revere him. To tell +the truth, I think he prefers Wordsworth's company to ours; and we find +more congenial society from time to time in--look! that handsome youth, +who carries his head with unconscious pride, and even here seems +half-discontented. The best is never good enough for him, and he cannot be +deluded even by his own illusions, poor fellow!" + +"It's Byron," I said, "is it not?" + +"Yes, there is no mistaking him; part man, part god, part devil. I believe +there was some doubt about admitting him here, lest he should rouse even +the Elysian Fields to mutiny, and a question whether he should not have an +enclosure all to himself. But he is a man of the world, and knows how to +behave himself when he chooses; and, when one of his misanthropic moods +comes over him, he wanders about scowling and muttering like a gathering +thunderstorm. I am told he breaks bounds sometimes to go in search of +Sappho. There would be a pair of them, would there not? What an +explosive power there was in him! for in the mind, as in your melanite, +force packs small." + +"And Shelley? Where is Shelley?" + +"Where the bee sucks, I suspect; for he is the very Ariel of our company; +ever, even here, in search of the unattainable! But he is a great +favourite with all of us, he is so lovable." + +"And the poet who has delighted my own generation," I inquired. "Surely he +is among you." + +"Not yet," he replied; "though I have not the least doubt he will be, in +due course. No one is admitted here until he has been dead for fifty +years; Time, the door-keeper and guardian of Eternity, being more +deliberate than the janitors of Westminster Abbey, who, you must allow, +make some rather ludicrous blunders in admitting, on the very morrow of +their decease, at the importunity of friends and associates, persons for +whom, half a century later, no one will dream of claiming any special +posthumous distinction." + +"I fear that is so," I confessed. "We have been rather fussy and feverish +of late, and attribute to notoriety an enduring power it does not +possess." + +"Just so. Notoriety is one thing, Fame quite another. Will not the result +be that men who may without presumption entertain a humble hope that, as +our lofty friend Milton puts it, Posterity will not willingly let die all +that they may have done or written, will feel a distaste for these +precipitate distinctions, and even take precautions against them. We +notice that something of the same kind is taking place among you in regard +to what you call titular honours, since they have become so common, and +are lavished on such undistinguished persons, as to be no longer valued by +the truly distinguished." + +"That is so," I said; "but it is inevitable in these days, and probably +useful to the State, satisfying a number of small ambitions." + +"I understand," he replied; and I thought to myself, of course he does, he +who understood everything. "In these days it is more important to satisfy +the many," he went on, "than to content the few, and persons of real +distinction must always be few; and, after all, if these are wise as well +as distinguished, they must be content with anything that ministers to the +welfare of the community at large." + +It was so interesting to me to hear this great dramatist and supreme poet +talking wisdom in this familiar manner, like any ordinary being, that I +made the most of my opportunity, and asked him if he thought what he had +just said served to explain the magnificent manner in which his plays are +presented to modern audiences, and if he approved of such presentation. + +"I should approve," he replied, "if there were no danger of the mounting +of the piece diverting the attention of the audience from the play itself, +and if it did not appear necessary to modern stage-managers to cut out +whatever does not easily lend itself to spectacular devices. I quite +understand their motive; for, having been in my time not only an actor, +but part proprietor, and part stage-manager of theatres, I do not forget +that they must take into consideration the material results of their +enterprise. But my colleagues and I contrived to make a fair livelihood +out of our theatres without any large outlay on the scenery or the +dresses. Apparently, your modern audiences would yawn at, and not +understand, speeches that not only the courtiers of Elizabeth, but the +citizens of Blackfriars and the Chepe, listened to with rapt and +straining ears. We observe that you pique yourselves upon what you call +the progress you have made during the last three hundred years, and some +of us are rather amused at the self-complacent claim; and, though you +travel much faster, live much more luxuriously, and blow each other to +pieces more successfully than we did, it may be doubted if men's minds +have made much advance, or if their intellectual qualities are not, +notwithstanding the increase of what you deem education, poorer and more +stinted than when the bulk of the nation read less, but reflected more." + +"In one respect," I ventured to say, "you can hardly withhold your +sympathy from the claim of our having made progress. We no longer regard +actors as vagabonds." + +"I am not quite so sure of that," he said, with a significant smile. +"Myself an actor as well as an author, my utterances in the second +capacity respecting the former are not particularly flattering; and the +fuss you have of late made over actors and actresses, as over millionaires +and transatlantic heiresses, is perhaps evidence less of admiration than +of self-interest, and an appetite for diversion." + +"But," I observed, "an actor was recently buried, with the customary +honours, in Westminster Abbey." + +"But did everybody approve of it? Milton took care to inform me that many +did not; but my withers remained unwrung, and I playfully replied that I +was rather disposed to think that special form of posthumous +acknowledgment might not unsuitably be reserved for actors and +politicians--the author of _Paradise Lost_ was, every now and then, an +active politician, was he not?--since the two have much in common, both +appealing to their audiences by voice, intonation, gesticulation, and +pursuit of popularity, and enjoying a wide but ephemeral notoriety." + +I remembered the passage in _Henry the Sixth_ where he says that he hates +"the loud applause and _aves_ vehement" of the many, and of his little +esteem for those who "affect" such, and I followed up that silent +recollection by saying: + +"And, after all, Milton, Pope, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, lie far away from +that edifice; also, I might add, one greater than any of them--yourself." + +"Dear old Stratford-on-Avon!" he said, as though he were musing rather +than addressing himself to me. "I am well content to be sepulchred there. +How I loved it! How I love it still! And how much I owed to it! My works, +such as they are, have in your ingenious age been attributed to one much +more nobly born, more highly educated, more deeply read, more erudite, +than I. They who started, and those who have accepted, that theory, little +understand that no such man could have written them. Whatever may be their +merit or demerit, their author could only be one who, born in a modest +condition, began by having the closest touch with frank unaffected human +nature, and for whom life and society expanded by degrees, until, though +still preferring the life removed, he could tell sad stories of the death +of kings, find books in the running brooks, and good in everything." + +As he slowly uttered these familiar majestic words, he faded from my +sight; and all that was left was an enduring recollection of that +privileged interview. + + + + +Footnotes: + +[1] In estimating Byron, people too often forget that the same poet wrote +_Manfred_ and _Beppo_, _Childe Harold_ and _Don Juan_. It is the variety, +in other words the extent, of Byron's genius, that constitutes his +greatness. + +[2] The renderings into English verse from Dante are by the author of the +paper. + + + + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. + +The misprint "Wordworth" was corrected to "Wordsworth" (page 181). + +Hyphenation inconsistencies have been retained from the original. + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Bridling of Pegasus, by Alfred Austin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS *** + +***** This file should be named 35394-8.txt or 35394-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/9/35394/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Bridling of Pegasus + Prose Papers on Poetry + +Author: Alfred Austin + +Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35394] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h1>THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS</h1> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE BRIDLING OF<br /> +PEGASUS</span><br /> +<span class="big">PROSE PAPERS ON POETRY</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="big">BY</span><br /> +<span class="huge">ALFRED AUSTIN</span><br /> +POET LAUREATE</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>Essay Index Reprint Series</i></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC.<br /> +FREEPORT, NEW YORK<br /><br /> +(<i>Originally published by Macmillan and Co.</i>)</p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center">First published 1910<br /> +Reprinted 1967<br /> +<br /> +Reprinted from a copy in the collections of<br /> +The New York Public Library<br /> +Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p class="note">When Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus, set forth to kill the Chimera, +Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, gave him a golden bridle with which to curb +and guide his winged steed. Hence the title of this volume, “The Bridling +of Pegasus.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="big">TO<br /> +THE RIGHT HONOURABLE</span><br /> +<span class="huge">SIR ALFRED C. LYALL, K.C.B.</span></p> + +<p><br /><span class="smcap">My dear Lyall</span>,</p> + +<p>I should think you must have observed, in the course of your reading, that +even in the most accredited organs of opinion, principles of literary +criticism, either explicitly stated or tacitly assumed, are often utterly +ignored, in the notice of some work or other in the self-same number. The +result can only be to create confusion in the public mind.</p> + +<p>In this volume, consisting of papers written at various times during the +last thirty years, no such contradiction will, I think, be found. Whether +they be deemed sound or otherwise, they are at least coherent; the canons +of criticism underlying them being that no verse which is unmusical or +obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may +possess; that Imagination in Poetry, as distinguished from mere Fancy, is +the transfiguring of the Real, or actual, into the Ideal, by what Prospero +calls his “so potent art”; and, if these conditions are complied with, +that the greatness of the poem depends on the greatness of the theme.</p> + +<p>To no one so much as to you am I indebted for criticism of the frankest +kind. That alone would lead me to ask you to accept the dedication of +these pages. But I find a yet further and stronger impulse to do so, in +the long and uninterrupted friendship that has subsisted between us, and +to which I attach so much value.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 10em;">Believe me always,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Yours most sincerely,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><span class="smcap">Alfred Austin</span>.</span></p> + +<p><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Swinford Old Manor</span>,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>January 1910</i>.</span></p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td> </td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Essentials of Great Poetry</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Feminine Note in English Poetry</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Milton and Dante: A Comparison and a Contrast</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Byron and Wordsworth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Dante’s Realistic Treatment of the Ideal</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Dante’s Poetic Conception of Woman</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Poetry and Pessimism</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_170">170</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Vindication of Tennyson</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">On the Relation of Literature to Politics</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Conversation with Shakespeare in the Elysian Fields</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE ESSENTIALS OF GREAT POETRY</h2> + +<p>The decay of authority is one of the most marked features of our time. +Religion, politics, art, manners, speech, even morality, considered in its +widest sense, have all felt the waning of traditional authority, and the +substitution for it of individual opinion and taste, and of the wavering +and contradictory utterances of publications ostensibly occupied with +criticism and supposed to be pronouncing serious judgments. By authority I +do not mean the delivery of dogmatic decisions, analogous to those issued +by a legal tribunal from which there is no appeal, that have to be +accepted and obeyed, but the existence of a body of opinion of long +standing, arrived at after due investigation and experience during many +generations, and reposing on fixed principles or fundamentals of thought. +This it is that is being dethroned in our day, and is being supplanted by +a babel of clashing, irreconcilable utterances, often proceeding from the +same quarters, even the same mouths.</p> + +<p>In no department of thought has this been more conspicuous than in that of +literature, especially the higher class of literature; and it is most +patent in the prevailing estimate of that branch of literature to which +lip-homage is still paid as the highest of all, viz. poetry. Chaucer, +Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, have not been openly dethroned; but it would +require some boldness to deny that even their due recognition has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> +indirectly questioned by a considerable amount of neglect, as compared +with the interest shown alike by readers and reviewers in poets and poetry +of lesser stature. Are we to conclude from this that there is no standard, +that there exist no permanent canons by which the relative greatness of +poets and poetry can be estimated with reasonable conclusiveness? It is +the purpose of this essay to show that such there are.</p> + +<p>The expression of individual opinion upon a subject so wide, no matter who +the individual might be, would obviously be worthless; and I have no wish +to do what has been done too often in our time, to substitute personal +taste or bias for canons of criticism that have stood the test of time, +and whereon the relative position of poets, great, less great, and +comparatively inferior, has reposed. The inductive method was employed +long before it was explicitly proclaimed as distinct from and more +trustworthy than the merely deductive; and it is such method that will, if +indirectly, be employed in this paper. Finally, I shall carefully abstain +from the rhetorical enthusiasm or invective that clouds the judgment of +writers and readers alike, and invariably degenerates into personal +dogmatism, together with intolerance of those who think otherwise. After +indicating, to the best of my ability, the laws of thought and the canons +of criticism on which should repose the estimate of the poetic hierarchy, +I will then ask the reader to observe if the conclusions leave the +recognised Masters of Song—Homer, Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, +Lucretius, Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—unassailed +and unshaken in their poetic supremacy.</p> + +<p>There must perforce be certain qualities common to all poetry, whether the +greatest, the less great, or the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> comparatively inferior, and whether +descriptive, lyrical, idyllic, reflective, epic, or dramatic; and, so long +as there existed any authority or body of generally accepted opinion on +the subject, these were at least two such qualities, viz. melodiousness, +whether sweet or sonorous, and lucidity or clearness of expression, to be +apprehended, without laborious investigation, by highly cultured and +simple readers alike. Melodiousness is a quality so essential to, and so +inseparable from, all verse that is poetry, that it often, by its mere +presence, endows with the character of poetry verse of a very rudimentary +kind, verse that just crosses the border between prosaic and poetic verse, +and would otherwise be denied admission to the territory of the Muses. +Some of the enthusiasts to whom allusion has been made have, I am assured, +declared of certain compositions of our time, “This would be poetry, even +if it meant nothing at all”—a dictum calculated, like others enunciated +in our days, to harden the plain man in his disdain of poetry altogether. +It would not be difficult to quote melodious verse published in our time +of which it is no exaggeration to say that the words in it are used rather +as musical notes than as words signifying anything. In all likelihood such +compositions, and the widespread liking for them, arise partly from the +prevailing preference for music over the other arts, and in part from the +mental indolence that usually accompanies emotion in all but the highest +minds. Nevertheless it cannot be too much insisted on that music, or +melodiousness, either sweet or sonorous, is absolutely indispensable to +poetry; and where it is absent, poetry is absent, even though thought and +wide speculation be conspicuous in it. As Horace put it long ago in his +<i>Art of Poetry</i>,</p> + +<p class="poem">Non satis est pulchra esse poemata: dulcia sunto.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>Almost as essential to poetry, and equally as regards poetry of the +loftiest and poetry of the lowliest kind, is lucidity, or clearness of +expression. No poet of much account is ever obscure, unless the text +happens to be corrupt. When essays and even volumes are issued, since +deemed indispensable for the understanding of a writer labelled as a poet, +one may be quite sure that, however deep a thinker, he is not a poet of +the first order, and not a poet at all in the passages that require such +explanation. When one hears a well-authenticated story to the effect that +a great scholar said of an English paraphrase of a well-known Greek poem, +that he thought he had succeeded in gathering its meaning with the help of +the original, one ought to know what to think of the work. Yet, though +much of its author’s verse is of that non-lucid character, it is +habitually saluted by many critics as great poetry. With all respect, I +venture to affirm that in such circumstances the designation must be a +misnomer. I remember a poem being read to me, in perfect good faith, by +its author, a man of great mental distinction and no little imagination, +of which, though I listened with the closest attention, not only did I not +understand one word, but I had not the faintest idea, as the colloquial +phrase is, what it was about. When it was published, I asked three ardent +admirers of the author to explain to me its meaning. They failed entirely +to do so. The saying, concerning the orator, <i>clarescit urendo</i>, is even +yet more applicable to the poet. He brightens as he burns. Yet, of recent +times, verse fuliginous, clouded, and enshrouded in obscurity, has been +hailed in many quarters, not only as poetry, but poetry of an +exceptionally superior sort.</p> + +<p>If it be urged that Dante, and even Shakespeare,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> do not always yield up +their meaning to the reader at once, the allegation must be traversed +absolutely. The immediate apprehension of the meaning of the <i>Vita Nuova</i> +and the <i>Divina Commedia</i> presupposes an intimate acquaintance with the +various dialects of the Italian language existing in Dante’s time, and +likewise with the erudition he scatters so profusely, if allusively, +throughout his verse. But to the Italian readers of Dante, even +superficially acquainted with those dialects, and adequate masters of the +theology and the astronomy of Dante’s time, those poems present no +difficulty. Of Shakespeare, the greatest of all the poets in our language, +let it be granted that he is not unoften one of the most careless and even +most slovenly; but rarely is he so to the obscuring of his meaning, and +never save casually, and in some brief passage. Yet let it not be inferred +that I am of opinion that the full meaning of the greatest passages in the +greatest poems is to be seized all at once, or by the average reader at +all. That is “deeper than ever plummet sounded,” though Tennyson’s +“indolent reviewer” apparently imagines that he at once fathoms the more +intellectual poetry of his time. There can be but few readers, and +possibly none but poets themselves, or persons who, to quote Tennyson +again, “have the great poetic heart,” who master the full significance of +<i>Hamlet</i> or of the tersely told story of Francesca da Rimini. But the +whole world at once understood the more obvious tenor of both, and is not +puzzled by either. There is a sliding scale of understanding, as there is +a sliding scale of inspiration. “We needs must love the highest when we +see it”; but “when we see it” is an important qualification in the +statement.</p> + +<p>I do not know that there are any qualities save<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> melodiousness, sweet or +sonorous, and lucidity, that are absolutely essential to whatever is to be +regarded as poetry. In order to preclude misapprehension, let it be added +that, while both are essential to poetry, they will not, by themselves, go +far towards endowing verse with the poetic character. As an example of +this, let me cite verse which is not unmelodious, though not specially +remarkable for melodiousness, and not obscure, yet is not poetry, and +hardly on the border of it:</p> + +<p class="poem">I have a boy of five years old;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His face is fair and fresh to see;</span><br /> +His limbs are cast in beauty’s mould,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And dearly he loves me.</span><br /> +<br /> +One morn we strolled on our dry walk,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our quiet home all full in view,</span><br /> +And held such intermitted talk<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As we are wont to do.</span><br /> +<br /> +My thoughts on former pleasures ran;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I thought of Kilve’s delightful shore,</span><br /> +Our pleasant home when spring began,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A long, long year before.</span><br /> +<br /> +A day it was when I could bear<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Some fond regrets to entertain;</span><br /> +With so much happiness to spare,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I could not feel a pain.</span></p> + +<p>This blameless, correct, harmonious, and thoroughly lucid verse is by a +poet who has written poetry of the noblest quality, no less a poet than +Wordsworth. Yet he sorely tries his readers by page after page no more +poetical than the foregoing; and he offered, on the first appearance of +every volume of his, ample matter for such critics as would rather be +sweepingly censorious than discriminating, to depreciate and even to +ridicule him. His reverent admirers, who comprise all true<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> lovers of +poetry, are acquainted with, and probably possess, a copy of Matthew +Arnold’s Selection, entitled <i>Poems of Wordsworth</i>—a small volume which +that gifted Wordsworthian, who knew and acknowledged with his usual sense +of humour how many unpoetical “sermons,” as he called them, Wordsworth had +written, deliberately considered to contain all the real poetry he has +left us. If I may refer for a moment to my own copy of it, this is scored +with brief observations in pencil, the upshot of which is that the small +fraction of his work, which Matthew Arnold too liberally wished to be +regarded as <i>digna Phœbi</i>, would have again to be materially reduced by +a dispassionate criticism.</p> + +<p>The most generous critic, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, +let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or +utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the +appellation of poetry. But on a very thin thread of meaning poetry, or a +very fair imitation of it, may be hung by the aid of musical sound. +Without going so far as Arnold again, who once wrote to me that Shelley’s +“My soul is an enchanted boat” seemed to him “mere musical verbiage,” that +poem might serve as an instance of verse which, in spite of tenuity of +meaning, becomes poetry by sheer magic of exquisite music.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">My soul is an enchanted boat,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float</span><br /> +Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And thine doth like an angel sit</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Beside a helm conducting it,</span><br /> +Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">It seems to float ever, for ever,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Upon that many-winding river,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Between mountains, woods, abysses.</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">A paradise of wildernesses!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Till, like one in slumber bound,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound.</span></p> + +<p>There is a magic of sound in the verse so enchanting to a reader that he +may be pardoned for failing to observe at once that it is mainly musical +fancy. Many may remember a line of Tennyson:</p> + +<p class="poem">Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong.</p> + +<p>And are we not compelled to feel, on second thoughts, if we have any +capacity for discrimination, that here we have poetry of little meaning, +though the verse is exquisitely melodious? This is, I conclude, what +Arnold meant when he designated it, with a little exaggeration, “musical +verbiage.”</p> + +<p>I have been obliged to linger somewhat on the threshold of my subject in +order to emphasise the essential importance and inseparable quality of +metrical melodiousness and lucidity in poetry, in order that, in whatever +follows in this paper, these indispensable conditions may not be lost +sight of; and also because of late each of them has been ousted from +consideration by those who have striven, and still strive, to induce +literary opinion to accept not only as poetry, but as great poetry, what +is conspicuously lacking in both. That I shall have the assent, however, +of the weight of authority on this point, and likewise that of the +ordinary unaffected lover of poetry, I can scarcely doubt; the more so, as +the conclusions thus far reached leave undisturbed upon their seats those +mighty ones, of all tongues and all nations, whose universally recognised +greatness has received the seal and sanction of many generations.</p> + +<p>What may be called the first principles of poetry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> having thus been +propounded, without any necessity for reaffirming them in the +investigation of other conclusions yet to be reached, I may move on to +what I imagine will be less familiar and perhaps more original in the +search for “The Essentials of Great Poetry.” If we carefully observe the +gradual development of mental power in human beings, irrespectively of any +reference to poetry, but as applied to general objects of human interest, +we shall find that the advance from elementary to supreme expansion of +mental power is in the following order of succession, each preceding +element in mental development being retained on the appearance of its +successor: (1) Perception, vague at first, as in the newly born, gradually +becoming more definite, along with desires of an analogous kind; (2) +Sentiment, also vague at first, but by degrees becoming more definite, +until it attaches itself to one or more objects exclusively; (3) Thought +or Reflection, somewhat hazy in its inception, and often remaining in that +condition to the last; (4) Action, which is attended and assisted by the +three preceding qualities of Perception, Sentiment, and Thought or +Reflection. In other words, human beings perceive before they feel, +perceive and feel before they think, perceive, feel, and think before they +act, or at least before they act reasonably, though it may be but +imperfectly, and though the later or higher stages may in many cases +scarcely be reached at all.</p> + +<p>Now let us see if, in poetry, the same order or succession in development +and expansion does not exist. Never forgetting the essential qualities of +melody and lucidity, do we not find that mere descriptive verse, which +depends on perception or observation, is the humblest and most elementary +form of poetry; that descriptive verse, when suffused with sentiment,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> +gains in value and charm; that if, to the foregoing, thought or reflection +be superadded, there is a conspicuous rise in dignity, majesty, and +relative excellence; and finally, that the employment of these in +narrative action, whether epic or dramatic, carries us on to a stage of +supreme excellence which can rarely be predicated of any poetry in which +action is absent? If this be so, we have to the successive development of +observation, feeling, thought, and action, an exact analogy or counterpart +in (1) Descriptive Poetry; (2) Lyrical Poetry; (3) Reflective Poetry; (4) +Epic or Dramatic Poetry; in each of which, melody and lucidity being +always present, there is an advance in poetic value over the preceding +stage, without the preceding one being eliminated from its progress.</p> + +<p>Once again let us have recourse to illustration, which, when fairly +chosen, is probably the most effective method for securing assent. +Wordsworth presents us with an ample supply of illustrations in three out +of the four different kinds of poetry; and therefore to him let us have +recourse. In reading the first stanza of <i>The Pet Lamb</i>, and two or three +stanzas that follow, we have descriptive verse which may be regarded as +very elementary poetry, but to which it would seem to many to be +hypercritical to refuse that designation. It is too well known to need +citation. The opening lines of <i>The Leech-Gatherer</i> display the same +elementary descriptive character.</p> + +<p class="poem">There was a roaring in the wind all night;<br /> +The rain came heavily and fell in floods;<br /> +But now the sun is rising calm and bright;<br /> +The birds are singing in the distant woods;<br /> +Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;<br /> +The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;<br /> +And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span><br /> +All things that love the Sun are out of doors;<br /> +The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth;<br /> +The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the moors<br /> +The Hare is running races in her mirth;<br /> +And with her feet she from the plashy earth<br /> +Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,<br /> +Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.<br /> +<br /> +I was a traveller then upon the moor;<br /> +I saw the Hare that raced about with joy;<br /> +I heard the woods and distant waters roar;<br /> +Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:<br /> +The pleasant season did my heart employ;<br /> +My old remembrances went from me wholly,<br /> +And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.</p> + +<p>I perceive that, in my copy of the volume of Selections made by Matthew +Arnold from the poems of Wordsworth, already alluded to, I have written at +the end of <i>Margaret</i>, “If this be poetry, surely many people may say they +have written poetry all their lives without knowing it.” But as Matthew +Arnold’s critical opinions will carry more weight than mine, and he has +included <i>Margaret</i> in his Selection, let me quote a dozen lines or so +from its opening passage:</p> + +<p class="poem">’Twas Summer, and the Sun had mounted high:<br /> +Southward the landscape indistinctly glared<br /> +Through a pale steam; but all the northern downs,<br /> +In clearest air ascending, showed far off<br /> +A surface dappled o’er with shadows flung<br /> +From brooding clouds; shadows that lay in spots<br /> +Determined and unmoved, with steady beams<br /> +Of bright and pleasant sunshine interposed;<br /> +Pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss<br /> +Extends his careless limbs along the front<br /> +Of some huge cave, whose rocky ceiling casts<br /> +A twilight of its own, an ample shade,<br /> +Where the Wren warbles.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>But there is, it must not be overlooked, merely Descriptive Poetry of a +much higher kind than the foregoing, though Wordsworth may not be the best +source from which to draw it. Perhaps its highest possibilities are to be +found in Byron, and conspicuously in the third and fourth cantos of +<i>Childe Harold</i>. Many of the passages of the kind that one remembers there +are, however, either too much suffused with the poet’s personal feeling, +or too closely connected with great incidents in history and the fall of +empires, to be quite pertinent examples. A minor but sufficient example +taken from <i>Childe Harold</i> may suffice for illustration:</p> + +<p class="poem">It is the hush of night, and all between<br /> +Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,<br /> +Mellow’d and mingling, yet distinctly seen,<br /> +Save darken’d Jura, whose capt heights appear<br /> +Precipitously steep; and drawing near,<br /> +There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,<br /> +Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear<br /> +Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,<br /> +Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more.</p> + +<p>Far finer instances of poetry essentially descriptive in the same poem may +be referred to, <i>e.g.</i> Canto IV., stanza xcix., beginning “There is a +stern round tower of other days”; stanza cvii., beginning with “Cypress +and ivy, weed and wallflower grown”; stanza clxxiii., descriptive of Lake +Nemi; and even—for it also is strictly descriptive—stanza cxl., opening +with the well-known line “I see before me the gladiator lie.”</p> + +<p>It could not be allowed that any of these, considered separately, +satisfies the conditions or essentials of great poetry, though, in company +with others, they contribute to that character in a very great poem +indeed. Moreover, they serve to show that even mere Descriptive Poetry, +which I have spoken of as the “lowest” or most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> elementary kind of poetry, +may rise to striking elevation of merit, and has its counterpart in the +sliding scale of observation in various individuals.</p> + +<p>Let us now take a step, and a long one, in the scale of importance +attained by the various kinds of poetry, and consider the classics of +Lyrical Poetry. Here extensive quotation will be less necessary, partly by +reason of the wide ground Lyrical Poetry covers, and partly because of its +relative popularity in our time, and the familiarity of so many readers +with its most enchanting specimens. There is ample room for personal taste +and individual idiosyncrasy within the vast boundaries of this fruitful +field. Many persons are sadly wanting in observation; and to only a +minority can real, serious thought be ascribed. But we all feel, we all +have visitations of sentiment; and therefore to all of us is Lyrical +Poetry more or less welcome.</p> + +<p>The causes, personal and social, that have given to Lyrical Poetry in our +time almost exclusive favour in public taste will be dealt with presently. +It will distract less from our main purpose to confine ourselves for the +present to the recognition of the fact, and to seek to show how very +various are the degrees of eminence in Lyrical Poetry. The lyrical note is +so natural to poets and poetry that we may expect to find it in the verse +of all poets, though in a minor degree in didactic verse; while in some +poets it almost monopolises their utterance. Though perhaps not obvious to +many ears to-day, it lurks in no little of Pope’s <i>Epistle of Eloisa to +Abelard</i>, and is unmistakably present in his <i>Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day</i>. +If I am asked if the lyrical note is to be found in Chaucer, the reply +must be that, though Chaucer has left nothing which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> the modern reader +would recognise as lyrical, what is called his iambic or five-foot metre +is far more anapæstic and lyrical than is the case with any subsequent +poet, except Shakespeare. There is a lilt in it equivalent to the lyrical +note, which those who read as Chaucer wrote recognise at once. One has +only to read the opening lines of the Prologue to the <i>Canterbury Tales</i> +to perceive this. Not quite to the same extent perhaps as in Chaucer, but +withal very noticeably to the ear, the lyrical note is frequently to be +caught in Spenser, even where he is not obviously offering the reader +Lyrical Poetry; as, for instance, in this stanza in the first canto of the +<i>Fairy Queen</i>, beginning:</p> + +<p class="poem">A little lowly hermitage it was,<br /> +Down in a dale, hard by a forest’s side.</p> + +<p>This is not Lyrical Poetry proper, as now understood. But Spenser has left +us in his <i>Epithalamion</i> a lyrical poem with which only one other English +lyric can be placed in competition for the first place. It is too long for +more than one brief excerpt to be cited here:</p> + +<p class="poem">Wake now, my love, awake! for it is time;<br /> +The rosy Morne long since left Tithones bed,<br /> +All ready to her silver coche to clyme;<br /> +And Phœbus gins to shew his glorious hed.<br /> +Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies<br /> +And carroll of loves praise.<br /> +The merry Larke hir mattins sings aloft;<br /> +The Thrush replyes; the Mavis descant playes;<br /> +The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft;<br /> +So goodly all agree, with sweet consent,<br /> +To this dayes meriment,<br /> +Ah! my deere love, why doe ye sleepe thus long,<br /> +When meeter were that ye should now awake,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>T’ awayt the comming of your joyous make,<br /> +And hearken to the birds love-learned song,<br /> +The deawy leaves among?<br /> +For they of joy and pleasance to you sing<br /> +That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring.</p> + +<p>One is sorry to think that this long, lovely, and varied lyric is less +known than it ought to be to the modern readers of Lyrical Poetry. I can +only say to them, “Make haste to read it.”</p> + +<p>In Shakespeare’s plays the lyrical note is so often to be heard in the +blank verse that the poet’s natural aptitude and inclination for singing +were amply exercised there; and he gives most voice to it in such plays as +<i>As You Like It</i> and <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>. But it recurs again and again +throughout his dramas. Such lines as:</p> + +<p class="poem">All over-canopied with lush woodbine,<br /><br /> +How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank,<br /><br /> +Under the shade of melancholy boughs,</p> + +<p>are illustrations of what I am pointing out.</p> + +<p>Without dwelling on the excellent lyrics written in the reigns of Charles +I. and Charles II., and confining ourselves to the <i>di majores</i> of poetry, +we may pass on to Milton, whose <i>Allegro</i> and <i>Penseroso</i> as likewise the +lyrics in <i>Comus</i>, are too familiar to every one to be more than mentioned +as evidence of the persistence, in the past as in the present, of the +warbling impulse in all poets. Heard but fitfully during the greater part +of the eighteenth century, yet most arrestingly in Gray, Collins, and +Burns, Lyrical Poetry from the last onward without intermission, to our +own time, in Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson, is +almost the only poetry that has in recent days been much listened to, or +much written and talked about. This circumstance is far from being +conclusive as to whether,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> during the same period, poems higher and +greater than mere Lyrical Poetry have or have not been produced. But it is +absolutely certain that, if produced, they have been, so far, more or less +ignored; and that, if the same poets have written such and Lyrical Poetry +as well, they will have been considered and estimated by the latter only.</p> + +<p>But the domain of feeling and emotion in which Lyrical Poetry has room to +display its power and versatility is so extensive that lyrics are very +various in their themes and in the treatment of them. Love, religion, +patriotism, cosmopolitan benevolence, being, as I have shown in <i>The Human +Tragedy</i>, the most elevated and most permanent sources of human sentiment +and emotion, there will necessarily be in Lyrical Poetry, even considered +by itself, and apart from all the other forms of poetry, a scale of +relative elevation and importance.</p> + +<p>The love of individuals for each other, whether domestic, romantic, or +sexual, is much more common than any of the other three, being practically +universal; and it has given birth to so many well-known lyrics that it is +unnecessary to cite any of them here. Some of them are very beautiful; but +none of them, by reason of the comparative narrowness of their theme, +satisfies the essentials of great poetry. Not even Tennyson’s <i>Maud</i>, +which is perhaps the most ambitious and the best known of long poems +dedicated mainly to the subject, though it contains lovely passages, +approaches greatness.</p> + +<p>Though what is understood as religious sentiment comes next to the love of +individuals for each other in the extent of its influence, it has produced +much verse, but, it must be allowed, little poetry, the reason<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> probably +being that the religious sentiment of the few who are endowed with the +gift of writing poetry differs from that of the average “religious” +person. Nor can the fact be overlooked that there is a certain character +of reserve in Protestantism which has operated since the Reformation +against the growth of religious Lyrical Poetry. For that we must go either +to pre-Reformation days, or to the poetry of those who, like George +Herbert and the poetic kin of his time, clung to the Roman Catholic creed +after the modification of belief and ritual in the Anglican Church; or to +the poets in our own time trained in the Roman Catholic faith, and to that +extent, and on that ground, debarred from wide popularity among a +Protestant people. The De Veres, Faber, Coventry Patmore, and Newman, the +last notably in his <i>Dream of Gerontius</i>, may be named as instances of +what has been done in recent times in the sphere of religious poetry. +Scott’s lovely “Ave Maria” in <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>, and Byron’s stanza +beginning:</p> + +<p class="poem">Ave Maria! ’tis the hour of prayer,</p> + +<p>are briefer specimens of what may be, and has been contributed in later +times to religious poetry; much smaller in bulk and volume than poetry +dedicated to the love of individuals for each other, but higher in the +rising scale of greatness, because of the greater dignity of its theme.</p> + +<p>Patriotic Lyrical Poetry need not detain us long. Most patriotic verse, +however spirited, is verse only, nothing or little more, though exceptions +could be cited, such as Drayton’s <i>Agincourt</i>, Tennyson’s <i>Relief of +Lucknow</i>, and <i>The Ballad of the “Revenge.”</i> But if in patriotic Lyrical +Poetry we include, as I think we should, poetry in the English tongue, but +not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> concerning England or the British Empire, I may name Byron’s “Isles +of Greece” in <i>Don Juan</i>, which I had in my mind when I observed that +there is in our language only one lyrical poem that can compete for the +first place in Lyrical Poetry with Spenser’s <i>Epithalamion</i>.</p> + +<p>3. Reflective Poetry. Over Reflective Poetry, in itself a stage of advance +beyond Descriptive Poetry and Lyrical Poetry in themselves, we need not +linger long, for the reason that, though Reflective Poetry is ample in +quantity, it is, outside the Drama, very limited in quality, most of it +being of so prosaic a character as not only not to be ranked above average +Lyrical Poetry, but far below it. Wordsworth furnishes us, for the purpose +of illustration, with both kinds, the higher and the lower Reflective +Poetry. As regards the latter, I would rather let Matthew Arnold, than +whom there is no warmer admirer of Wordsworth, be the spokesman:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The Excursion</i> abounds with Philosophy [I prefer to call it Thought +or Reflection]; and therefore <i>The Excursion</i> is to the Wordsworthian +what it never can be to the disinterested lover of poetry, a +satisfactory work. “Duty exists,” says Wordsworth in <i>The Excursion</i>; +and then he proceeds thus:</p> + +<p class="poem">... Immutably survive,<br /> +For our support, the measures and the forms<br /> +Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,<br /> +Whose kingdom is where time and space are not.</p> + +<p>And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that here is a sweet +union of philosophy and poetry. But the disinterested lover of poetry +will feel that the lines carry us really not a step farther than the +proposition which they would interpret; that they are a tissue of +elevated but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry.</p></div> + +<p>Merely observing that I wholly agree with the foregoing estimate, I pass +to the higher Reflective Poetry,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> of which Wordsworth has given us such +splendid but comparatively brief instances. The <i>Lines composed a few +miles above Tintern Abbey</i>, <i>Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a Picture of Peele +Castle</i>, his best Sonnets, the <i>Character of the Happy Warrior</i>, the <i>Ode +to Duty</i>, and, finally, the <i>Ode on Intimations of Immortality</i> seem to me +to place Wordsworth above all other English Poets in the domain of +exclusively Reflective Poetry. I do not forget much noble Reflective +Poetry in <i>Childe Harold</i>; but it is too much blent with other elements, +and into it the active quality enters too strongly, for its more +reflective features to be separated from them. Moreover, it generally +falls far short of the intellectual note so strongly marked in +Wordsworth’s best Reflective Poetry, into which, be it added, both the +descriptive and the lyrical notes, in accordance with the general law I am +seeking to expound in this paper, enter very largely, if, of course, +subordinately. It will be obvious, however, to any dispassionate lover of +poetry, that a merely reflective poem of any great length cannot well be +entitled to the designation of a great poem. Had such been possible, +Wordsworth would have bequeathed it to us. <i>The Excursion</i> is the answer; +which, notwithstanding a certain number of fine passages, is, for the most +part, what Matthew Arnold says of it, “doctrine such as we hear in church, +religious and philosophical doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves +passages of such doctrine, and brings them forward as proofs of his poet’s +excellence.”</p> + +<p>If the reader has followed me so far, with more or less assent, he will be +prepared not only to allow, but of himself to feel, that there must be yet +another kind or order of poetry, in which the greatest poems are to be +found, poems that are neither exclusively nor mainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> either descriptive, +lyrical, or reflective, but into which all three elements enter +subordinately, though none of them gives it its distinctive and supreme +character.</p> + +<p>4. Epic and Dramatic Poetry. That supreme kind of poetry is Epic and +Dramatic Poetry, though there may be very poor Epics, and Dramas in which +true poetry is scarcely to be observed, just as we have seen that there is +very inferior Descriptive, Lyrical, and Reflective Poetry. All that is +asserted is that great epic and dramatic poems must be greater than the +greatest poetry of the preceding kinds by reason of their wider range and +(as a rule) the higher majesty of their theme, and of their including +every other kind of poetry.</p> + +<p>It will perhaps have been noticed that Epic and Dramatic Poetry are here +placed in conjunction, not separately; and their being thus conjoined +needs a word of explanation. Though there is a radical distinction between +the two, this provisional union of them has been adopted in order to +afford an opportunity of pointing out what I think is generally +ignored—that poems which are essentially epical, or merely narrative, may +be written in dialogue or dramatic form, and so mislead incautious readers +into inferring that they are offered as dramas, in the acting sense of the +term. It is because, while remaining substantially epical or narrative in +character they may contain, here and there, dramatic situations, dramatic +rhetoric, and dramatic converse. The <i>Iliad</i> is a conspicuous example of +this; the movement in the earlier portion of it being full of debate and +defiance among its characters, and these dramatic elements recurring, if +less frequently, throughout the entire work. To many persons the episodes +in the narrative of the <i>Divina Commedia</i> that give rise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> to converse, +whether tender, terrible, or pathetic, are the most delightful portions of +it. What is it that makes the first six books of <i>Paradise Lost</i> so much +more telling than the later ones? Surely it is the magnificence of the +speeches emanating from the mouths of the chief characters. <i>Childe +Harold</i> is ostensibly only descriptive, reflective, and narrative; but the +personality and supposed wrongs of Byron himself, so frequently +introduced, confer on it, beyond these characters, certain features of the +drama and of dramatic action. Moreover, the magnificent ruins bequeathed +to the seven-hilled city by the fall of the Roman Empire enter so largely +into the fourth canto that this includes in it every species of verse, +from the descriptive to the dramatic. To cite a much smaller example, I +once said to Tennyson, “Do you not think that, had one met in a tragedy +with the couplet from Pope (<i>Ep. to the Sat.</i> ii. 205)—</p> + +<p class="poem"><i>F.</i> You’re strangely proud ...<br /> +<br /> +<i>P.</i> Yes, I am proud: I must be proud to see<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">Men not afraid of God, afraid of <i>me</i></span></p> + +<p>—one would be right in regarding it as very fine, dramatically?” and he +replied, “Yes, certainly.” I recall the circumstance because it is an +extreme illustration of the momentary intrusion of one style into another.</p> + +<p>By slow but successive stages we have reached conclusions that may be thus +briefly stated. (1) The essentials of great poetry are not to be found in +poetry exclusively descriptive. (2) They are rarely to be met with in +poetry that is lyrical, and then only when reflection of a high order, as +in Wordsworth’s <i>Intimations of Immortality</i>, or what is equivalent to +action operating on a great theme, as in Byron’s <i>Isles of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> Greece</i>, +largely and conspicuously enters into these. (3) That they are to be met +with in Reflective Poetry of the very highest character, but never +throughout an exclusively reflective poem of any length. (4) That they are +chiefly to be sought for and most frequently found in either epic or +dramatic poetry where description, emotion, thought, and action all +co-operate to produce the result; that result being, to adduce supreme +examples, the <i>Iliad</i>, <i>Paradise Lost</i>, the <i>Divina Commedia</i>, the third +and fourth cantos of <i>Childe Harold</i>, <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>King Lear</i>, <i>Macbeth</i>.</p> + +<p>Many years ago, in a couple of papers published in the <i>Contemporary +Review</i> on “New and Old Canons of Poetic Criticism,” I propounded, as the +most satisfactory definition of poetry generally, that it is “the +transfiguration, in musical verse, of the Real into the Ideal”; and I have +more than once advocated the definition. The definition applies to poetry +of all kinds. But, while this is so, the transfiguration must operate on a +great theme greatly treated, either lyrically, reflectively, epically, or +dramatically, in order to produce great poetry.</p> + +<p>I fancy I hear some people saying, “Quite so; who ever denied or doubted +it?” The answer must be that, for some time past, it has been tacitly, and +often explicitly, denied by critics and readers alike; reviewers to-day +criticising poetry in utter disregard and contravention of any such +canons, and readers in their conversation and practice following suit, +apparently without any knowledge or suspicion that such canons exist. Had +it been otherwise, an inquiry into the essentials of great poetry would +have been unnecessary.</p> + +<p>The permanent passions of mankind—love, religion, patriotism, +humanitarianism, hate, revenge, ambition;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> the conflict between free will +and fate; the rise and fall of empires—these are all great themes, and, +if greatly treated, and in accordance with the essentials applicable to +all poetry, may produce poetry of the loftiest kind; the underlying reason +being what, as usual, has been better and more convincingly stated by +Shakespeare than by any one else:</p> + +<p class="poem">We [actors on the stage] are not all alone unhappy:<br /> +This wide and universal theatre<br /> +Presents more woeful pageants than the scene<br /> +Wherein we play.</p> + +<p>For the great treatment of great themes in Epic, and yet more in Dramatic, +Poetry, think of what is required! Not mere fancy, not mere emotion, but a +wide and lofty imagination, a full and flexible style, a copious and ready +vocabulary, an ear for verbal melody and all its cadences, profound +knowledge of men, women, and things in general, a congenital and +cultivated sense of form—the foundation of beauty and majesty alike, in +all art; an experience of all the passions, yet the attainment to a +certain majestic freedom from servitude to these; the descriptive, +lyrical, and reflective capacity; abundance and variety of illustration; a +strong apprehension and grasp of the Real, with the impulse and power to +transfigure it into the Ideal, so that the Ideal shall seem to the reader +to be the Real; in a word, “blood and judgment,” as Shakespeare says, “so +commingled.” These are the qualifications of the writers that have +stirred, and still stir, in its worthier portion, the admiration, +reverence, and gratitude of mankind.</p> + +<p>Even this does not exhaust the requisite endowments of those who aspire to +write great poetry. Their sympathy with all that is demands from them a +fund of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> practical good sense, too often lacking in merely lyrical +poets—a circumstance that may render their work less attractive to the +average person, and even make it seem to such to be wanting in genius +altogether. Sane they must essentially be; and their native sanity must +have been fortified by some share in practical affairs, while their +robustness of mind must have received aid from the open air. They will be +found to be neither extravagant optimists nor extravagant pessimists, but +wise teachers and indulgent moralists; neither teaching nor preaching +overmuch in their verse, but unintentionally and almost unconsciously +communicating their wisdom to others by radiation. Dante always speaks of +Virgil as “Il Saggio.” Tennyson puts it well where he says of the poet, +“He saw through good, through ill; He saw through his own soul.” +Architecture, sculpture, music, the kindred of his own art, must be +appreciated by him; and nothing that affects mankind is alien to him.</p> + +<p>I should like to say, incidentally, and I hope I may do so without giving +offence, that I have sometimes thought that, in an age much given to +theorising and to considering itself more “scientific” than perhaps it +really is, the diminution of practical wisdom, somewhat conspicuous of +late in politics and legislation, is due in no small measure to the +neglect of the higher poetry, in favour, where concern for poetry survives +at all, of brief snatches of lyrical emotion. Hence legislation by emotion +and haste.</p> + +<p>If we ask ourselves, as it is but natural to do, what are the chief causes +that have brought about this change in public taste and sentiment, I +believe they will be found to be mainly as follow. (1) The decay of +authority already mentioned. (2) The perpetual reading of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> novels of every +kind, many of them of a pernicious nature, but nearly all of them +calculated to indispose readers to care for any poetry save of an +emotional lyrical character. (3) The increase—be it said with all due +chivalry—of feminine influence and activity alike in society and +literature; women, generally speaking, showing but a moderate interest in +great issues in public life, and finding their satisfaction, so far as +reading is concerned, in prose romances, newspapers, and short lyrics. (4) +The febrile quality of contemporaneous existence; the ephemeral +excitements of the passing hour; and the wholesale surrender to the +transient as contrasted with the permanent, great poetry concerning itself +only with this last—a circumstance that makes the <i>Odyssey</i>, for +instance, as fresh to-day as though it had been published for the first +time last autumn; whereas the life of most prose romances, like the lady’s +scanty attire, <i>commence à peine, et finit tout de suite</i>.</p> + +<p>I hope no one will imagine—for they would be mistaken in doing so—that +these pages have been prompted by a disposition to depreciate the age in +which we are living, and just as little to manifest disdain of it, though +one need not conceal the opinion, in respect of the lower literary taste +so widely prevalent, that, as Shakespeare says, “it is not and it cannot +be for good.” My object has been something very different from this. It +has been to recall canons of poetry and standards of literary excellence +which I believe can never be destroyed though for a time they may be +obscured, and which have of late been too much ignored. That such neglect +will in the very faintest degree prevent those whose instinct it is to +say, with Virgil, “paulo majora canamus,” from following their vocation, +without a thought of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> readers or reviewers, I do not suppose. It is good +for poets, and indeed for others, not to be too quickly appreciated. It is +dangerous for them, and sometimes fatal, to be praised prematurely.</p> + +<p>The great stumbling-block of literary criticism, alike for the +professional critic and the unprofessional reader, is the tacit assumption +that the opinions, preferences, and estimates of to-day are not merely +passing opinions, preferences, and estimates, but will be permanent ones; +opinions, preferences, and estimates for all future time. There is no +foundation, save self-complacency, for such a surmise. What solid reason +is there to suppose that the present age is any more infallible in its +literary judgments than preceding ages? On the contrary, its infallibility +is all the less probable because of the precipitation with which its +opinions are arrived at. Yet past ages have been proved over and over +again, in course of time, to be wrong in their estimate of contemporaneous +poetry, in consequence of their mistaking the passing for the permanent. +The consequence in our time of this error has been that one has seen the +passing away of several works loudly declared on their appearance to be +immortal. The only chance a critic has of being right in his judgments is +to measure contemporary literature by standards and canons upon which +rests the fame of the great poets and writers of the past, and, tried by +which, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron have been assigned +their enduring rank in the poetic hierarchy. “Blessings be with them,” +says Wordsworth (Sonnet xxv.):</p> + +<p class="poem">Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,<br /> +Who gave us nobler lives and nobler cares,<br /> +The Poets who on earth have made us heirs<br /> +Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>It is only the great poets, the poets in whom we can recognise the +essentials of greatness, who can do that for us. They are not rebels, as +are too many lyrical poets, but reconcilers; and they offer to external +things and current ideas both receptivity and resistance, being not merely +of an age, but for all time. It is their thoughts and the verse in which +their thoughts are embodied that are enduringly memorable. For great +poetry, as Wordsworth teaches us in a single line, is not mere emotion, +not mere subtle or sensuous singing, but</p> + +<p class="poem">Reason in her most exalted mood.</p> + +<p>A still greater authority than Wordsworth, no other than Milton, has +immortalised in verse the principles for which I have ventured to contend +in prose. In <i>Paradise Regained</i> (iv. 255-266) he says:</p> + +<p class="poem">There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power<br /> +Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit<br /> +By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,<br /> +Æolian charms and Dorian lyrick odes,<br /> +And his who gave them breath but higher sung,<br /> +Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,<br /> +Whose poem Phœbus challenged for his own;<br /> +Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught<br /> +In Chorus or Iambick, teachers best<br /> +Of moral prudence, with delight receiv’d,<br /> +In brief sententious precepts, while they treat<br /> +Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,<br /> +High actions and high passions best describing.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE FEMININE NOTE IN ENGLISH POETRY</h2> + +<p>Women, to whom a barbarous description, willingly accepted by themselves, +has been applied, have recently been much in the public eye, and still +more in the public prints. But I should not class them under the +designation of feminine; and, though they may have invaded prose fiction, +they have not been, and I think they never will be, met with in Poetry. +They are noisy, but numerically weak. Eve listening to the Tempter, then +bewailing her weakness; Ruth amid the alien corn; Magdalen and her box of +spikenard; Helen of Troy following evil-hearted Paris; Beatrice in heaven; +Una and the milk-white lamb; Rosalind and Celia in <i>As You Like It</i>; the +Lily Maid of Astolat in the <i>Idylls of the King</i>—these are women of whom, +or, at least, of the sentiments and sympathies of whom, as manifested in +English poetry, I wish to speak. The most progressive age one can possibly +conceive will never succeed in leaving human nature behind, and I have not +the smallest doubt that women will continue to be womanly to the end of +time.</p> + +<p>What, then, is feminine as contrasted with masculine? what is womanly as +compared with manly, whether in literature or in life? Men and women<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> have +many qualities in common, and resemble more than they differ from each +other. But while, speaking generally, the man’s main occupations lie +abroad, the woman’s main occupation is at home. He has to deal with public +and collective interests; she has to do with private and individual +interests. We need not go so far as to say, with Kingsley, that man must +work and woman must weep; but at least he has to fight and to struggle, +she has to solace and to heal. Ambition, sometimes high, sometimes low, +but still ambition—ambition and success are the main motives and purpose +of his life. Her noblest ambition is to foster domestic happiness, to +bring comfort to the afflicted, and to move with unostentatious but +salutary step over the vast territory of human affection. While man busies +himself with the world of politics, with the world of commerce, with the +rise and fall of empires, with the fortunes and fate of humanity, woman +tends the hearth, visits the sick, consoles the suffering—in a word, in +all she does, fulfils the sacred offices of love.</p> + +<p>Now the highest literature—and Poetry is confessedly the highest +literature—is a transfiguring reflex of life; and in its magic mirror we +perforce see reflected all the thoughts, feelings, interests, passions, +and events of human existence. In English poetry, therefore, we shall +expect to hear both the masculine note and the feminine note; and in what +proportions we hear them will be incidentally indicated in the course of +my remarks. But it is the Feminine Note in which we are at present +specially interested, and if I am asked to define briefly what I mean by +this Feminine Note, I should say that I mean the private or domestic note, +the compassionate note or note of pity, and the sentimental note or note +of romantic love.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>Now I am well aware there are numbers of people who look on poetry as +something essentially and necessarily feminine, and who will say, “What do +you mean by speaking of the Feminine Note in English poetry? Surely it has +no other note, poetry being an effeminate business altogether, with which +men, real robust men, need not concern themselves.” The people who hold +this opinion can have but a very limited acquaintance with English poetry, +and a yet more limited familiarity with the poetry of other ages and other +nations that has come down to us. As a matter of fact, though the feminine +note has rarely, if ever, been wholly absent from poetry, it is only of +late years comparatively that it has become a very audible note. I should +be carried too far away from my subject if I attempted to demonstrate the +accuracy of this assertion by a survey, however rapid, of all the +best-known poetry in languages, dead and living, of other times and other +peoples. But to cite one or two familiar examples, is the feminine note, I +may ask, the predominant, or even a frequent, note in the <i>Iliad</i>? The +poem opens, it is true, with a dispute among the Argive chiefs, and mainly +between Agamemnon and Achilles, concerning two young women. But how +quickly Chryseis and Bryseis fall into the background, and in place of any +further reference to them, we have a tempest of manly voices, the clang of +arms, the recriminations of the Gods up in Olympus, and the cataloguing of +the Grecian ships! Lest perhaps tender interest should be absent overmuch, +just when Paris is being worsted in his duel with Menelaus for the +determination of the siege, Venus carries him off under cover of a cloud, +and brings Helen to his side. Then follows a scene in which the fair cause +of strife and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> slaughter stands distracted between her passion for Paris, +her shame at his defeat and flight, and her recollection of the brave +Argive Chief she once called her lord. But more fighting promptly +supervenes, and, save in such a passing episode as the lovely leave-taking +of Hector and Andromache, the poem moves on through a magnificent medley +of fighting, plotting, and speech-making. Even in that exceptionally +tender episode what are the farewell words of Hector to his wife, “Go to +your house and see to your own duties, the loom and the distaff, and bid +your handmaidens perform their tasks. But for war shall <i>man</i> provide.” It +is over the dead body of Patroclus that Achilles weeps; and whatever tears +are shed in the <i>Iliad</i> are shed by heroes for heroes. Life, as +represented in that poem, is a life in which woman plays a shadowy and +insignificant part, and wherein domestic sentiments are subordinated to +the rivalries of the Gods and the clash of chariot-wheels.</p> + +<p>This subordinating of woman to man, of individual aims and private +feelings to great aims and public issues, is equally present in the great +Latin poem, the <i>Æneid</i>. “Arms and the Man, I sing,” says Virgil at once, +and in the very first line of his poem; and though in one book out of the +twelve of which it consists he sings of the woman likewise, it is but to +leave her to her fate and to liberate Æneas from her seductions. Virgil is +rightly esteemed the most tender and refined writer of antiquity. Yet to +the modern reader, accustomed to the feminine note in poetry, there is +something amazingly callous, almost cruel, in the lines with which, while +the funeral pyre of Dido is still smoking, he tells us how Æneas, without +a moment’s hesitation, makes for the open sea, and sails<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> away from +Carthage. But then the main business of Æneas was not to soothe or satisfy +the Carthaginian queen, but to build the city and found the Empire of +Rome. “Spirits,” says Shakespeare, “are not finely touched save to fine +issues”; and it never would have occurred to Virgil to allow the hero of +the <i>Æneid</i> to be diverted from his masculine purpose by anything so +secondary as the love, or even the self-immolation, of a woman.</p> + +<p>Let us, however, overleap the intervening centuries, and betake ourselves +to the poetry of our own land and our own language. Chaucer, the first +great English poet, was, like all writers of supreme genius, a prolific +and voluminous writer, and we have thousands of verses of his besides the +Prologue to the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>. But it is by this latter work that he +is best known; and it is pre-eminently and adequately representative, both +of his own genius and of the temper of the times in which he lived. You +will have to hunt very diligently through his description of the Knight, +the Squire, the Yeoman, the Prioress, the Monk, the Merchant, the Sergeant +of the Law, the Franklin, the Miller, the Manciple, and the rest of his +jovial company, in order to find anything approaching the feminine note. +He says little about what any of them thought, and absolutely nothing +concerning what they felt, but confines himself to descriptions of their +personal appearance, of their conduct and their character, in a word, of +their external presentation of themselves. The Knight who wore a doublet +all stained by his coat of mail, was well mounted, and had ridden far, no +man farther. The Squire, or page, had curly locks, and had borne himself +well in Flanders and Picardy. The Yeoman bore a weighty bow, handled his +arrows and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> tackle in admirable fashion, and was dressed in a coat of +green. The Monk was fat and in good case, and loved a roast swan more than +any other dish. The Friar, we are told, had made many a marriage at his +own cost, and would get a farthing out of a poor widow, though she had +only one shoe left. The Franklin had a white beard and a high complexion, +kept a capital table, and blew up his cook loudly if the sauces were not +to his liking. The Wife of Bath had married five husbands, not to speak of +other company in her youth; and the Sumpnor loved garlic, onions, and +leeks, had a fiery face, and doated on strong wine. There is nothing very +feminine in all this, is there? The one sole touch of tenderness that I +can remember, and it is very elementary and introduced quite casually, is +that in which we are told that the Prioress is so full of pity that she +would weep if she saw a mouse caught in a trap. One can easily surmise +what sort of tales would proceed from such downright, hearty, unromantic +personages; and, save where any of them recite well-known stories from +ancient poets, their own narratives are as buxom, burly, and as +unsentimental as themselves. If princes and princesses, fine lords and +ladies, be the heroes and heroines of the Tale, a certain amount of +conventional pity is extended to their woes. But if the personages of the +story be, as they for the most part are, common folk, and such as the +story-tellers themselves would be likely to know, their misfortunes and +mishaps are used merely as a theme for mirth and merciless banter. The +humour displayed is excellent, but it is not the humour of <i>charity</i>. It +is not compassionate, and it is not feminine. The feminine note is not +absent from Chaucer’s Tales, but it is generally a subordinate note, a +rare note,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> a note scarcely heard in his great concert of masculine +voices.</p> + +<p>Passing from the pages of Chaucer to those of Spenser is like passing from +some cheery tavern where the ale is good and the jokes are excellent, but +a trifle coarse, and the company diverting but a little mixed, to the +banqueting-hall of some stately palace, where the wines and meats are of +the choicest, where all the guests are of high degree, the women all fair, +the men all courtly, and where fine manners and dignified speech leave no +place for loud lewd laughter or even for homely familiarity. Surely in one +who is such a poet, and such a gentleman, and in every respect, to quote a +line of his own “a very perfect gentle knight,” we shall come across, ever +and anon at least, the feminine note. And indeed we do. The first three +stanzas of the <i>Fairy Queen</i> are dedicated to the description of the +Knight that was pricking on the plain. But listen to the fourth:</p> + +<p class="poem">A lovely lady rode him fair beside,<br /> +Upon a lowly ass more white than snow;<br /> +Yet she much whiter; but the same did hide<br /> +Under a veil that wimpled was full low,<br /> +And over all a black stole did she throw;<br /> +As one that inly mourned, so was she sad,<br /> +And heavy sate upon her palfrey slow.<br /> +Seemëd at heart some hidden care she had.<br /> +And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she lad.<br /> +So pure and innocent as that same lamb<br /> +She was, in life and every virtuous lore.<br /> +She by descent from royal lineage came.</p> + +<p>Her name, as doubtless you well know, was Una, and, when by foul +enchantment she is severed a while from her true knight, harken with what +a truly feminine note Spenser bewails her misfortune:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> +Nought is there under heaven’s wide hollowness<br /> +Did recover more dear compassion of the mind<br /> +Than beauty brought to unworthy wretchedness<br /> +Through envy’s snare, or fortune’s freaks unkind.<br /> +I, whether lately through her brightness blind,<br /> +Or through allegiance, and fast fealty<br /> +Which I do owe unto all womankind,<br /> +Feel my heart prest with so great agony,<br /> +When such I see, that all for pity I could die.</p> + +<p>Spenser cannot endure the thought of beauty in distress. So at once he +brings upon the scene a ramping lion, which, in the ordinary course of +things would have put a speedy end to her woes. But not so Spenser’s lion:</p> + +<p class="poem">Instead thereof he kissed her weary feet,<br /> +And licked her lily hands with fawning tongue,<br /> +As he her wrongëd innocence did weet.<br /> +O how can beauty master the most strong.</p> + +<p>And thus he goes on:</p> + +<p class="poem">The lion would not leave her desolate,<br /> +But with her went along, as a strong guard<br /> +Of her chaste person, and a faithful mate<br /> +Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard:<br /> +Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward,<br /> +And when she waked, he waited diligent<br /> +With humble service to her will prepared.</p> + +<p>This allegiance and fast fealty which Spenser declares he owes unto all +womankind is the attitude, not only of all true knights and all true +gentlemen, but likewise, I trust, of all true poets. But do not suppose on +that account that Spenser is a feminine poet. He is very much the reverse. +It would be impossible for a poet to be more masculine than he.</p> + +<p class="poem">Upon a great adventure he was bound,</p> + +<p>he says at once of his hero, and describes how the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> knight’s heart groaned +to prove his prowess in battle brave. Spenser has the feminine note, but +in subordination to the masculine note; and if I were asked to name some +one quality by which you may know whether a poet be of the very highest +rank, I should be disposed to say, “See if in his poetry you meet with the +feminine note and the masculine note, and if the first be duly +subordinated to the second.”</p> + +<p>I wish it were possible, within the limit I have here assigned myself, to +apply this test and pursue this enquiry at length in regard to +Shakespeare, in regard to Milton, and likewise in regard to Dryden and +Pope. But of this I am sure that the wider and deeper the survey the more +clear would be the conclusion that in Shakespeare, as we might have +expected, the masculine note and the feminine note are heard in perfect +harmony, but by far the larger volume of sound proceeds from the former.</p> + +<p>When, then, was it that the feminine note, the domestic or personal note, +the compassionate note or note of pity, the purely sentimental note, was +first heard in English poetry as a note asserting equality with the +masculine note, and tending to assert itself as the dominant note?</p> + +<p>One of the most beautiful and best-known poems in the English language is +Gray’s <i>Elegy written in a Country Churchyard</i>; and in the following +stanzas which many of you will recognise as belonging to it, do we not +seem to overhear something like the note of which we are in search?—</p> + +<p class="poem">Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree’s shade,<br /> +Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,<br /> +Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,<br /> +The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span><br /> +The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,<br /> +The swallow twitt’ring from the straw-built shed,<br /> +The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,<br /> +No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.<br /> +<br /> +For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,<br /> +Or busy housewife ply her ev’ning care:<br /> +No children run to lisp their sire’s return,<br /> +Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.</p> + +<p>Here our sympathy is asked, not for kings and princesses, not for great +lords and fine ladies, not for the rise and fall of empires, but for the +rude forefathers of the hamlet, for the busy housewife, for the +hard-working peasant and his children, for homely joys and the annals of +the poor. But Gray does not maintain this note beyond the five stanzas I +have just quoted. He quickly again lapses into the traditional, the +classic, the purely masculine note:</p> + +<p class="poem">The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Pow’r,<br /> +And all that Beauty, all that Wealth e’er gave,<br /> +Await alike th’ inevitable hour,<br /> +The paths of glory lead but to the grave.<br /> +<br /> +Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,<br /> +If Mem’ry o’er their tombs no trophies raise,<br /> +Where through the long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault,<br /> +The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.<br /> +<br /> +Can storied urn, or animated bust,<br /> +Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?<br /> +Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,<br /> +Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?</p> + +<p>The stanzas that follow are splendid stanzas, but they are the stately and +sonorous verse of a detached and moralising mind, not the pathetic verse +of a sympathising heart. We have to wait another twenty years before we +come upon a poem of consequence in which the feminine note is not only +present, but paramount.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> In the year 1770, nearly a century and a half +ago, appeared Goldsmith’s poem, <i>The Deserted Village</i>, and in it I catch, +for the first time, as the prevailing and predominant note, the note of +feminine compassion, the note of humble happiness and humble grief. In +Goldsmith’s verse we hear nothing of great folks except to be told how +small and insignificant are the ills which they can cause or cure.</p> + +<p class="poem">Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;<br /> +A breath can make them, as a breath hath made;<br /> +But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,<br /> +When once destroyed, can never be supplied.</p> + +<p>Goldsmith’s themes in <i>The Deserted Village</i> are avowedly:</p> + +<p class="poem">The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,<br /> +The never-failing brook, the busy mill,<br /> +The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill,<br /> +The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,<br /> +For talking age and whispering lovers made.</p> + +<p>We seem to have travelled centuries away from the <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, +or the <i>Palamon and Arcite</i> of Chaucer, from the Red Cross Knight and Una, +from the Britomart, the Florimel, the Calidore, the Gloriana of Spenser, +from the kingly ambitions and princely passions of Shakespeare, from the +throes and denunciations of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and equally from the +coffee-house epigrams and savage satire of Pope. We have at last got among +ordinary people, among humble folk, people of our own flesh and blood, +with simple joys and simple sorrows. What could be more unlike the poetry +we have so far been surveying than these lines from <i>The Deserted +Village</i>?—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> +Sweet was the sound when oft at evening’s close<br /> +Up yonder hill the village murmur rose,<br /> +There, as I passed, with careless steps and slow,<br /> +The mingling notes came softened from below.<br /> +The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,<br /> +The sober herd that lowed to meet their young,<br /> +The noisy geese that gabbled o’er the pool,<br /> +The playful children just let loose from school.</p> + +<p>Which of you does not remember the description in the same poem of the +Village Clergyman? the man who was to all his country dear, etc. Some of +you, I daresay, know it by heart. Nothing is too lowly, some would say, +nothing too mean, for Goldsmith’s tender Muse. He loves to dwell on the +splendour of the humble parlour, on the whitewashed wall, the sanded +floor, the varnished clock, the chest of drawers, and the chimney-piece +with its row of broken teacups. Truly it is a feminine Muse which can make +poetry, and, in my opinion, very charming poetry, out of broken teacups.</p> + +<p>The feminine note once struck, the note of personal tenderness, of +domestic interest, of compassion for the homely, the suffering, or the +secluded was never again to be absent from English poetry; and Cowper +continued, without a break, the still sad music of humanity first clearly +uttered by Goldsmith. What is the name of Cowper’s principal and most +ambitious poem? As you know, it is called <i>The Task</i>; and what are the +respective titles of the six books into which it is divided? They are: +<i>The Sofa</i>, <i>The Time-Piece</i>, <i>The Garden</i>, <i>The Winter Evening</i>, <i>The +Winter Morning Walk</i>, <i>The Winter Walk at Noon</i>. Other poems of a kindred +character are entitled <i>Hope</i>, <i>Charity</i>, <i>Conversation</i>, <i>Retirement</i>. +Open what page you will of Cowper’s verse, and you will be pretty sure to +find him either<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> denouncing things which women, good women, at least, find +abhorrent, such as the slave-trade, gin-drinking, gambling, profligacy, +profane language, or dwelling on occupations which are dear to them.</p> + +<p class="poem">O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,</p> + +<p>he exclaims—</p> + +<p class="poem">Some boundless contiguity of shade,<br /> +Where rumour of oppression and deceit<br /> +Of unsuccessful or successful war,<br /> +Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,<br /> +My soul is sick with every day’s report<br /> +Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.<br /> +There is no flesh in man’s obdurate heart,<br /> +It does not feel for man.</p> + +<p>These are the opening lines of the <i>Time-Piece</i>, and they sound what may +be called the note of feminine indignation; a note which is reverted to by +him again and again.</p> + +<p>More placidly but still in the same spirit, he exclaims:</p> + +<p class="poem">Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast,<br /> +Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,<br /> +And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn<br /> +Throws up a steaming column, and the cups<br /> +That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,<br /> +So let us welcome peaceful evening in.</p> + +<p>Farther on, he describes how—</p> + +<p class="poem">’Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat<br /> +To peep at such a world, to see the stir<br /> +Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.<br /> +Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease<br /> +The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced<br /> +To some secure and more than mortal height,<br /> +That liberates and exempts me from them all.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>Again, invoking evening, he says:</p> + +<p class="poem">Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm<br /> +Or make me so. Composure is thy gift:<br /> +And whether I devote the gentle hours of evening<br /> +To books, to music, or the poet’s toil,<br /> +To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit,<br /> +Or turning silken threads round ivory reels,<br /> +When they command whom man was born to please.</p> + +<p>Could there well be a more feminine picture than that? All the politics, +commerce, passions, conflicts of the world are shut out by Mrs. Unwin’s +comfortable curtains, and, with her and Lady Austen for sympathising +companions, the poet fills his time, with perfect satisfaction, by holding +their skeins of wool, and meditating such homely lines as these:</p> + +<p class="poem">For I, contented with a humble theme,<br /> +Have poured my stream of panegyric down<br /> +The vale of nature where it creeps and winds<br /> +Among her lovely works, with a secure<br /> +And unambitious ease reflecting clear<br /> +If not the virtues, yet the worth of brutes.<br /> +And I am recompensed, and deem the toils<br /> +Of poetry not lost, if verse of mine<br /> +May stand between an animal and woe,<br /> +And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge.</p> + +<p>Cowper was never married, nor ever, as far as I know, in love, though Lady +Austen, to her and his misfortune, for a time seemed to fancy he was; and +in his verse therefore we do not meet with the note of amatory sentiment. +But what love is there in this world more beautiful, more touching, more +truly romantic, than the love of a mother for her son, and of a son for +his mother? And where has it been more charmingly expressed than in +Cowper’s lines on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> receipt of his mother’s picture? After that +beautiful outburst—</p> + +<p class="poem">O that those lips had language! Life has passed<br /> +With me but roughly since I heard thee last</p> + +<p>—he proceeds to recall the home, the scenes, the tender incidents of his +childhood, but, most of all, the fond care bestowed on him by his mother:</p> + +<p class="poem">Thy nightly visits to my chamber made<br /> +That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid,<br /> +Thy fragrant waters on my cheek bestowed<br /> +By thy own hand, till fresh they were and glowed,<br /> +All this, and more endearing still than all,<br /> +Thy constant flow of love that knew no fall,<br /> +Ne’er roughened by those cataracts and breaks<br /> +That humour interposed too often makes;<br /> +All this still legible in memory’s page,<br /> +And still to be so to my latest age,<br /> +Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay<br /> +Such honour to thee as my numbers may,<br /> +Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere,<br /> +Not scorned in Heaven, though little noticed here.</p> + +<p>The lines are not in what is called the highest vein of poetry. They have +not the bluff masculinity of Chaucer. They lack the magic of Spenser. They +do not purify the passions through terror as is done by <i>Lear</i> or +<i>Macbeth</i>, and they are much inferior in majesty to the</p> + +<p class="poem">Cherubic trumpets blowing martial sound</p> + +<p>of Milton. But they come straight from the heart, and go straight to the +heart. They are thoroughly human, what we all have felt, or are much to be +pitied if we have not felt. They are instinct with the holiest form of +domestic piety. They are feminine in the best sense, and have all the +feminine power to attract, to chasten, and to subdue.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>As far as character and conduct are concerned, there could not well be two +poets more unlike than Cowper and Burns; and their poetry is as unlike as +their temperament. I fear Burns indulged in most of the vices against +which Cowper inveighs; and not unoften he glorified them in verse. Upon +that theme do not ask me to dwell this evening. All it is necessary to +point out here is, that in Burns, as in Cowper, and as in Goldsmith, we +have the compassionate note, the note of pity for suffering, of sympathy +with the lowly; in a word, we again have the feminine note. In <i>The +Cotter’s Saturday Night</i> Burns paints a picture, as complete as it is +simple, of humble life. We have the cotter returning home through the +chill November blast with the weary beasts; the collecting of his spades, +his mattocks, and his hoes; the arrival at his cottage; the expectant wee +things running out to meet him; the ingle-nook blinking bonnily; the +cheerful supper of wholesome porridge; the reading of a passage from the +Bible, the evening hymn, and the family prayer before retiring to rest. +There is a line in <i>The Cotter’s Saturday Night</i> which might be taken as +the text on which most of Burns’s poems are written:</p> + +<p class="poem">The cottage leaves the palace far behind.</p> + +<p>All his sympathies are with cottages and cottagers, whether he be +expressly describing their existence, writing <i>A Man’s a Man for a’ that</i>, +<i>The Birks of Aberfeldy</i>, <i>Auld Lang Syne</i>, or addressing lines to a mouse +whose nest he has turned up with his plough. All are written in a spirit +of compassion for suffering, of sympathy with the lowly, of admiration for +honest poverty. They are fundamentally tender, and, though expressed in +manly fashion enough, fundamentally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> feminine, the poetry of a man who +lived habitually under the influence of women.</p> + +<p>I think it will be allowed that I have given no grudging admiration to the +feminine note in English poetry, and in so far as it is a note of sympathy +with the more humble and less fortunate ones of the earth. But, in verse, +kindly and compassionate sentiment is not everything. Indeed, it is +nothing at all unless it be expressed in such a manner, the manner +suffused with charm of style, that it is thereby raised to the dignity of +true poetry. There are many excellent persons who accept as poetry any +sentiment, or any opinion expressed in metre with which they happen to +agree. But neither sound opinion nor wholesome sentiment suffices to +produce that exceedingly delicate and subtle thing which alone is rightly +termed poetry, and, in abandoning lofty themes, and descending to humbler +ones, writers of verse unquestionably expose themselves to the danger not +only of not rising above the level of their subject, but even of sinking +below it. The Romans had a proverb that you cannot carve a Mercury out of +every piece of wood, meaning thereby that by reason of Mercury not being a +standing or reposing figure, but a figure flying through the air, and +therefore with limbs and wings extended, the material out of which he is +made has to be both considerable in size and excellent in quality. What is +true of Mercury is truer still of Apollo. You cannot make poetry out of +every subject; and your only chance of making poetry out of any subject is +to do so by treating the subject either nobly, or with charm. Realism, +unadulterated Realism, which is a dangerous experiment in prose, is a +sheer impossibility in poetry; for in poetry what is offered us, and what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> +delights us, is not realistic but ideal representation. No doubt the very +music of verse is part of the means whereby this ideal representation is +effected; but it will not of itself suffice, as may easily be proved by +reciting mere nonsense verses in which the rhythm or music may be +faultless. I could quote page after page from Cowper, which is verse only, +and not poetry, because it is nothing more than the bare statement of a +fact set forth in lines consisting of so many feet. Here, for instance, is +a specimen. It comes in his poem on <i>The Sofa</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">Joint-stools were then created, on three legs,<br /> +Upborne they stood: three legs upholding firm<br /> +A mossy slab, in fashion square or round.<br /> +At length a generation more refined<br /> +Improved the simple plan, made three legs four,<br /> +Gave them a twisted form vermicular<br /> +And o’er the seat with plenteous wadding stuffed<br /> +Induced a splendid cover, green and blue,<br /> +Yellow and red, of tapestry richly wrought,<br /> +And woven close, or needlework sublime.</p> + +<p>Perhaps you think this is a parody of Cowper. But I can assure you it is +nothing of the kind. It was written by the poet himself; and in his +abounding pages you will find hundreds of verses of this realistic and +pedestrian character. But not Cowper alone, one much greater than Cowper, +one who rose over and over again to the very heaven of poesy, Wordsworth +himself, has likewise left hundreds, aye, thousands of verses, little +better than the passage I have just read from Cowper, through the mistaken +notion that kindly feeling, compassion for the poor and the patient, and +sound moral sentiments, when expressed in verse, must result in poetry. +There is no one here whose admiration of Wordsworth at his best can be +greater<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> than mine, but, in order to show you how the feminine note in +poetry, the note of sympathy with the weak, the obscure, and the +unfortunate, can even in the voice of a great master of poetry, lapse into +verse utterly destitute of the soul and spirit of poetry, I will ask you +to allow me to read you a portion of <i>Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">And he is lean and he is sick;<br /> +His body, dwindled and awry,<br /> +Rests upon ankles swoln and thick;<br /> +His legs are thin and dry.<br /> +One prop he has, and only one,<br /> +His Wife, an aged woman,<br /> +Lives with him, near the waterfall,<br /> +Upon the village Common.<br /> +<br /> +Oft, working by her husband’s side,<br /> +Ruth does what Simon cannot do;<br /> +For she, with scanty cause for pride,<br /> +Is stouter of the two.<br /> +And though you with your utmost skill<br /> +From labour could not wean them,<br /> +Alas! ’tis very little—all<br /> +Which they can do between them.<br /> +<br /> +O Reader! had you in your mind<br /> +Such stores as silent thought can bring,<br /> +O gentle Reader! you would find<br /> +A tale in everything.<br /> +What more I have to say is short,<br /> +And you must kindly take it:<br /> +It is no tale; but, should you <i>think</i>,<br /> +Perhaps a tale you’ll make it.</p> + +<p>Is not that sorry stuff, regarded as poetry? Wordsworth here had the +assistance of the music, not only of verse, but of rhyme; and with what a +result! It is the feminine note of pity in its dotage, whereby we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> see +that it is not enough to have a warm heart, to have tender feelings, to be +full of sympathy for the suffering, and then to express them in verse. In +the prose of conversation and of everyday life, kindly feeling is all well +enough. But the Heavenly Muse will not place herself at our disposal so +readily and cheaply. She is a very difficult lady, is the Heavenly Muse, +not easily won, and never allowing you, if you want to remain in her good +graces, to approach her, that is to say, in dressing gown and slippers. +She is the noblest and most gracious lady in the world, and the best, the +most refined, the most elevating of companions. Therefore you must come +into her presence and win her favour, not with free-and-easy gait and in +slovenly attire, but arrayed in your very best, and with courtly and +deferential mien. When poets wrote of gods and goddesses, of mighty +sieges, and of the foundation and fall of empires; when their theme was +the madness of princes, and the tragic fate of kings, when their hero was +Lucifer, Son of the Morning, nay, even when they discoursed of free will +and fate, or of the drawing-room intrigues of persons to whom powder, +patches, billets-doux were the chief things in existence, there was no +need to remind them that their style must be as lofty, as dignified, as +refined, or as finished as their subject. No doubt, they sometimes waxed +stilted and fell into excess, whether in rhetoric or in conceits, but they +never forgot themselves so far as to be slovenly or familiar. Stella, you +know, said Swift could write beautifully about a broomstick. Possibly he +could; but note the concession, that if a man writes, at least if he would +write poetry, he must write <i>beautifully</i>. Both Cowper and Wordsworth set +the example of writing verse that is not beautiful, though indeed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> Young +in his <i>Night Thoughts</i>, and Thomson in <i>The Seasons</i>, had already done +something of the same kind. But they have not the authority of Cowper, +much less the authority of Wordsworth. Let who will be the authority for +it, prosaic utterance in verse, realism in rhyme, no matter what the +subject, is an incongruity that cannot be too severely condemned. A very +large proportion of the verse of Crabbe, once so popular, but now, I +fancy, but little read, is of little value, by reason of the presence of +this defect. Yet while I indicate, and venture to reprove, the feebleness +into which the feminine note in English poetry has too often declined and +deteriorated, never let us forget that it has contributed lovely and +immortal poetry to the language, poetry to be found in Wordsworth, poetry +such as melts us almost to tears in Hood’s <i>Song of the Shirt</i>, or in Mrs. +Barrett Browning’s <i>The Cry of the Children</i>. Horace, who was a great +critic as well as a great poet, said long ago that it is extremely +difficult to express oneself concerning ordinary everyday facts and +feelings in a becoming and agreeable manner; and to do this in verse +demands supreme genius. As a set-off to the example of feebleness I just +now cited in Wordsworth, listen how, when the mood of inspiration is on +him, he can see a Highland girl reaping in a field—surely an ordinary +everyday sight—and threw around her the heavenly halo of the divinest +poetry:</p> + +<p class="poem">Behold her, single in the field,<br /> +Yon solitary Highland Lass!<br /> +Reaping and singing by herself;<br /> +Stop here, or gently pass!<br /> +Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,<br /> +And sings a melancholy strain;<br /> +O listen! for the Vale profound<br /> +Is overflowing with the sound.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span><br /> +No Nightingale did ever chaunt<br /> +So sweetly to reposing bands<br /> +Of Travellers in some shady haunt,<br /> +Among Arabian sands:<br /> +A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard<br /> +In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,<br /> +Breaking the silence of the seas<br /> +Among the farthest Hebrides.<br /> +<br /> +Will no one tell me what she sings?<br /> +Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow<br /> +For old, unhappy, far-off things,<br /> +And battles long ago:<br /> +Or is it some more humble lay,<br /> +Familiar matter of to-day?<br /> +Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,<br /> +That has been, and may be again?<br /> +<br /> +Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang<br /> +As if her song could have no ending;<br /> +I saw her singing at her work,<br /> +And o’er the sickle bending;—<br /> +I listened till I had my fill,<br /> +And when I mounted up the hill,<br /> +The music in my heart I bore,<br /> +Long after it was heard no more.</p> + +<p>But there is another manifestation of the feminine note in English poetry, +distinct from, though doubtless akin to, the one we have been considering; +a note which likewise was not heard in it till about a hundred years ago, +but which has been heard very frequently since, and which seems at times +to threaten to become its dominant and all-prevailing note, or at any rate +the only one that is keenly listened to. Instead of the note of interest +in and pity for others, it has become the note of interest in and pity +either for oneself, or for one’s other self; a note so strongly personal +and suggestive as to become egotistic and entirely self-regarding.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> This +is the amatory or erotic note, which I think you will all recognise when I +give it that designation; the note which appears to consider the love of +the sexes as the only important thing in life, and certainly the only +thing worth writing or singing about. More than two thousand years ago, a +Greek poet wrote a lyric beginning, “I would fain sing of the heroes of +the House of Atreus, I would fain chant the glories of the line of Cadmus; +but my lyre refuses to sound any note save that of love.” In these days +the poet who expressed that sentiment and acted on it would have a great +many listeners; and no doubt Anacreon, too, had his audience in ancient +Greece. But he was not ranked by them side by side with their great poets +who <i>did</i> take the tragic story of the House of Atreus for their theme. It +can only be when feminine influence is supreme in society and in +literature, and when the feminine note in poetry has become, or threatens +to become, paramount, that the sentiment and practice of Anacreon is +viewed with approbation and favour. Byron has said in a well-known +passage:</p> + +<p class="poem">For love is of man’s life a thing apart;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">’Tis woman’s whole existence.</span></p> + +<p>If I know anything about women, that is a gross exaggeration, unless in +the term love be included love of parents, love of brothers and sisters, +love of children, in a word, every form and manifestation of affection. +Still it is not necessary to deny—indeed if it be true it is necessary to +admit—that love, in the narrower if more intense signification of the +word, does play a larger part in the lives, or at any rate in the +imagination, of most women than it does in the lives and the imagination +of most men; and it is not to be denied that practically all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> women, and a +fair sprinkling of men, now take an almost exclusive interest in the +amatory note in poetry. Nor let any one say that this was always so, and +that poetry and poets have from time immemorial occupied themselves mainly +with the passion of love. Indeed they have not done so. It would be to +show an utter ignorance of the genius of Homer, of the great Greek +dramatists, of Virgil, of Dante, of Spenser, of Shakespeare, of Milton, +and of the temper of the times in which they lived, to say that they could +sound only notes of love. They sounded these sometimes, but seldom and +rarely, in comparison with their other and more masculine notes, and +always in due subordination to these. I will not go so far as to say that +they thought, with Napoleon, that love is the occupation of the idle, and +the idleness of the occupied, but they knew that however absorbing for a +season the passion of love as described by many poets and by nearly all +modern novelists may be, it <i>is</i> a thing apart; and, as such, they dealt +with it. They did not ignore its existence, or even its importance, but +they did not exaggerate its existence and its importance, relatively to +other interests, other occupations, other duties in life. It was because +of the high fealty and allegiance which Spenser declared he owed to all +womankind that he did not represent women as perpetually sighing or being +sighed for by men. It was because Shakespeare had such absolute +familiarity, not with this or that part of life, but with the whole of it, +that even in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, in <i>Othello</i>, in <i>Measure for Measure</i>, +and again in <i>As You Like It</i>, he represented the passion of love at work +and in operation along with other sentiments and other passions; and, in +the greater portion of his dramas either does not introduce it at all, or +assigns to it a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> quite subordinate place. In <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> the brave +Mercutio, the Tybalt “deaf to peace,” the garrulous nurse, the true +apothecary, the comfortable Friar, as Juliet calls him, all these and +more, have their exits and their entrances, and all, in turn, demand our +attention. <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> is a love-drama indeed; but even in <i>Romeo +and Juliet</i>, though love occupies the foremost place and plays the leading +part, it stands in relation to other passions and other characters, and +moves onward to its doom surrounded and accompanied by a medley of other +circumstances and occurrences; just as true love, even the most +engrossing, does in real life. The same just apprehension of life, the +same observance of accurate proportion between the action of love and the +action of other passions and other interests, may be observed in +<i>Othello</i>. Othello is not represented merely as a man who is consumed and +maddened by jealousy, but as a citizen and a soldier, encompassed by +friends and enemies, and brought into contact, not with Desdemona and Iago +alone, but with the Duke of Venice, with valiant Cassio, with witty +Montano, with Brabantio, with Gratiano, in a word with people and things +in general.</p> + +<p>Neither would it be any more to the purpose to object that Herrick, that +Suckling, that Lovelace, and other poets of the seventeenth century wrote +love-lyrics by the score, with many of which I have no doubt you are +acquainted, and some of which are very beautiful. For these, for the most +part, were amatory exercises, not real breathing and burning love-poems; +dainty works of art sometimes, but not sicklied o’er with the pale cast of +amatory passion. They were seventeenth-century reminiscences of the +conventional love-lyrics of the Troubadours of Provence, when there +existed an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> imaginary court of Love and a host of imaginary lovers. +Indeed, if I were asked what was the truest and most succinct note uttered +by their English imitators, I think I should have to say that I seem to +catch it most distinctly in the lines of Suckling beginning:</p> + +<p class="poem">Why so pale and wan, fond lover?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Prithee, why so pale?</span></p> + +<p>—and ending with:</p> + +<p class="poem">If of herself she will not love,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nothing can make her:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The devil take her!</span></p> + +<p>But we catch a very different amatory note, and that of the most personal +and earnest kind, when the voice of Burns, and then the voice of Byron, +were heard in English poetry. In Byron the note is almost always +passionate. In Burns it is sometimes sentimental, sometimes jovial, +sometimes humorous, sometimes frankly and offensively coarse. Many readers +cannot do full justice to the North-Country dialect in the following +lines, but the most Southern of accents could not quite spoil their simple +beauty:</p> + +<p class="poem">The westlin wind blaws loud an’ shrill;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The night’s baith mirk and rainy, O;</span><br /> +But I’ll get my plaid, an’ out I’ll steal,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An’ owre the hills to Nannie, O.</span><br /> +<br /> +Her face is fair, her heart is true,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As spotless as she’s bonnie, O:</span><br /> +The op’ning gowan, wat wi’ dew,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nae purer is than Nannie, O.</span></p> + +<p>That is one amatory, one feminine note in Burns. Here is another:</p> + +<p class="poem">There’s nought but care on every han’,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In every hour that passes, O;</span><br /> +What signifies the life o’ man,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An’ ’twere na for the lasses, O.</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span><br /> +Auld Nature swears the lovely dears<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her noblest work she classes, O:</span><br /> +Her ’prentice han’ she tried on man,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An’ then she made the lasses, O.</span></p> + +<p>I have no fault to find with these lines. They express a profound and +enduring truth; and, if they do so with some little exaggeration, they do +it half humorously, and so protect themselves against criticism. But I +really think—I hope you will not deem me unchivalrous in saying so—we +have, during the present century, heard too much, both in poetry and in +prose romance, as we are now hearing too much in newspapers and magazines, +of “the lasses, O.” Not that we can hear too much of them in their +relation to each other, to men, and to life. The “too much” I indicate is +the too much of romantic love, that leaves no place for other emotions and +other passions equally worthy, or relegates these to an inferior position +and to a narrower territory. I should say that there is rather too much of +the sentimental note in Byron, in Shelley, in Keats, just as I should say +that there is not too much of it in Wordsworth or in Scott. To say this is +not to decry Byron, Shelley, and Keats—what lover of poetry would dream +of decrying such splendid poets as they?—but only to indicate a certain +tendency against which I cannot help feeling it is well to be on our +guard. The tendency of the times is to encourage writers, whether in prose +or verse, to deal with this particular theme and to deal with it too +frequently and too pertinaciously. Moreover, there is always a danger that +a subject, in itself so delicate, should not be quite delicately +handled, and indeed that it should be treated with indelicacy and +grossness. That, too, unfortunately, has happened in verse; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> when +that happens, then I think the Heavenly Muse veils her face and weeps. It +must have been through some dread of poetry thus dishonouring itself that +Plato in his ideal Republic proposed that poets should be crowned with +laurel, and then banished from the city. For my part, I would willingly +see such poets banished from the city, but not crowned with laurel. No +doubt Plato’s notion that poets should chant nothing but hymns to the Gods +and praises of virtue is a little narrow and exacting, but if they are to +sing songs worthy of themselves, and of mankind, they must be on the side +of virtue and of the Gods. Hark with what perfect delicacy a masculine +poet like Scott can deal with a feminine theme:</p> + +<p class="poem">What though no rule of courtly grace<br /> +To measured mood had trained her pace,<br /> +A foot more light, a step more true<br /> +Ne’er from the heath-flower dashed the dew.<br /> +Ev’n the light harebell raised its head,<br /> +Elastic from her airy tread.<br /> +What though upon her speech there hung<br /> +The accents of the mountain tongue?<br /> +Those solemn sounds, so soft, so clear,<br /> +The listener held his breath to hear.</p> + +<p>That is how manly poets write and think of women. But they do not dwell +over much on the theme; they do not harp on it; and when you turn the +page, you read in a totally different key:</p> + +<p class="poem">The fisherman forsook the strand,<br /> +The swarthy smith took dirk and brand;<br /> +With changëd cheer the mower blythe<br /> +Left in the half-cut swathe the scythe.<br /> +The herds without a keeper strayed,<br /> +The plough was in mid-furrow stayed.<br /> +The falconer tossed his hawk away,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>The hunter left the stag at bay.<br /> +Prompt at the signal of alarms,<br /> +Each son of Albion rushed to arms.<br /> +So swept the tumult and affray<br /> +Along the margin of Achray.</p> + +<p>Does it not remind you of the passage I quoted from Homer, where Hector +says to Andromache, “Go! to your house, and see to your loom and distaff, +but for war men will provide”? Scott, like Homer, observed the due +proportion between love and life, giving love ample room, but not +allotting it excessive space. If again one wants to hear how delicately, +how worthily, how manfully, poets can write of love and of women, what can +one do better than recall this perfect lyric of Wordsworth’s?—</p> + +<p class="poem">Three years she grew in sun and shower,<br /> +Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower<br /> +On earth was never sown;<br /> +This Child I to myself will take;<br /> +She shall be mine, and I will make<br /> +A Lady of my own.<br /> +<br /> +“Myself will to my darling be<br /> +Both law and impulse: and with me<br /> +The Girl, in rock and plain,<br /> +In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,<br /> +Shall feel an overseeing power<br /> +To kindle or restrain.<br /> +<br /> +“She shall be sportive as the Fawn<br /> +That wild with glee across the lawn<br /> +Or up the mountain springs;<br /> +And hers shall be the breathing balm,<br /> +And hers the silence and the calm<br /> +Of mute insensate things.<br /> +<br /> +“The floating Clouds their state shall lend<br /> +To her; for her the willow bend;<br /> +Nor shall she fail to see<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>Even in the motions of the Storm<br /> +Grace that shall mould the Maiden’s form<br /> +By silent sympathy.<br /> +<br /> +“The Stars of midnight shall be dear<br /> +To her; and she shall lean her ear<br /> +In many a secret place<br /> +Where Rivulets dance their wayward round,<br /> +And beauty born of murmuring sound<br /> +Shall pass into her face.<br /> +<br /> +“And vital feelings of delight<br /> +Shall rear her form to stately height,<br /> +Her virgin bosom swell;<br /> +Such thoughts to Lucy I will give<br /> +While she and I together live<br /> +Here in this happy Dell.”<br /> +<br /> +Thus Nature spake—The work was done—<br /> +How soon my Lucy’s race was run!<br /> +She died, and left to me<br /> +This heath, this calm and quiet scene;<br /> +The memory of what has been,<br /> +And never more will be.</p> + +<p>Neither should I like it to be supposed that I think Byron could not write +on this same theme in the noblest manner. He did so frequently; he would +not have been the great poet he is if he had not done so. Listen to this, +for example:</p> + +<p class="poem">She walks in beauty, like the night<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of cloudless climes and starry skies,</span><br /> +And all that’s best of dark and light<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Meet in her aspect and her eyes.</span><br /> +Thus mellowed to that tender light<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.</span><br /> +<br /> +One shade the more, one ray the less,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had half impaired the nameless grace</span><br /> +Which waves in every raven tress,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or softly lightens o’er her face,</span><br /> +Where thoughts serenely sweet express<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How pure, how dear, their dwelling place.</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span><br /> +And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,</span><br /> +The smiles that win, the tints that glow,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But tell of days in goodness spent,</span><br /> +A mind at peace with all below,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A heart whose love is innocent.</span></p> + +<p>Women are honoured and exalted when they are sung of in that manner. They +are neither honoured nor exalted, they are dishonoured and degraded, when +they are represented, either in prose or verse, as consuming their days in +morbid longings and sentimental regrets, and men are represented as having +nothing to do save to stimulate or satisfy such feelings. What is written +in prose is not here my theme. I am writing of poets and poetry, and of +the readers of poetry. Novelists and novel-readers are a different and +separate subject. But I may say in passing that poetry and the readers of +poetry have suffered somewhat during the present generation from novels +and novel-readers. A newer and narrower standard of human interest has +been set up; and while the great bulk of readers have turned from poetry +to prose romances, writers of verse have too frequently tried to compete +with novelists, by treating love as the central interest and the main +business of life. Homer did not think it such, neither did Virgil, nor +Dante, nor Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare, nor Milton, and let us +not think so. I urge every one, every now and again at least, to lay down +the novel and open the poem: but let it be a poem that will enlarge one’s +conception of life, that will help one to think loftily, and to feel +nobly, will teach us that there is something more important to ourselves +even than <i>ourselves</i>, something more important and deserving of attention +than one’s own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> small griefs and own petty woes, the vast and varied +drama of History, the boundless realm of the human imagination, and the +tragic interests and pathetic struggles of mankind. We need not close our +ear to the feminine note, but should not listen to it over much. The +masculine note is necessarily dominant in life; and the note that is +dominant in life should be dominant in literature, and, most of all, in poetry.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> +<h2>MILTON AND DANTE: A COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST</h2> + +<p>No celebrations in our time have been more serious, more scholarly, or +more impressive, than the various gatherings, held during the year lately +come to end, in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of the +birth of Milton. The earliest was held, with peculiar appropriateness, at +Christ College, Cambridge, in the month of June. In the hall of the +college was given a dinner, presided over by the Master, who had gathered +round him men holding high positions alike at Cambridge and Oxford, and +poets, scholars, artists, historians, and essayists of true distinction. +On this occasion an admirable eulogium of Milton was pronounced by Mr. +Mackail. The dinner was succeeded by a representation of <i>Comus</i> in the +theatre of the town, by the students of the University, with all the charm +that usually accompanies the efforts of competent amateurs. With the +advent of the exact date of the tercentenary the celebrations were many in +number and interesting in variety, in which the members of the British +Academy took a prominent part. On December 9 a musical celebration was +held in the afternoon in the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, at which the +Bishop of Ripon delivered an eloquent sermon; and at the same hour the +writer of this paper gave a private lecture before the Dante Society, from +the notes of which this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> article is expanded. In the evening he had the +honour of attending and responding to the toast of Poetry, proposed by the +Italian ambassador, at the banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London at +the Mansion House, to the largest and most impressive gathering of men of +eminence in letters, the arts, the drama, the law, and the Legislature, +that has ever met in that spacious hall of traditionally magnificent +hospitality. A week later a performance of <i>Samson Agonistes</i> was given in +the Burlington Theatre before a large and representative audience. The +more serious section of the daily press, moreover, allotted much space to +reports of the celebrations in honour of Milton, the <i>Times</i> maintaining +in this respect its best traditions.</p> + +<p>No one, therefore, can say that the birth, the poetry and prose, the +character and the career and the influence of Milton have not been +solemnly celebrated by his countrymen. But it is necessary to add, in the +interests of truth, that the celebrations were essentially and exclusively +scholarly, and were hardly, if at all, shared in by the nation at large. +The intellectual sympathies of the educated were warmly touched, but the +heart of the British people was not reached.</p> + +<p>Now let us turn—for the subject of this paper is not Milton alone, but +Milton and Dante—to the sexcentenary of the birth of Dante in the city of +Florence, the month and year of his birth having been May 1265. I had been +spending the winter in the City of Flowers, and I could not leave it, in +order to journey northward, till after the Dante Commemoration had been +held. I shall never forget it. From dawn to dusk the entire Florentine +people held joyous festival; and, with the coming of night, not only the +entire city, its palaces, its bridges, its Duomo, its Palazzo Vecchio,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> +that noblest symbol of civic liberty, but indeed all its thoroughfares and +the banks of its river broke into lovely light produced by millions of +little cressets filled with olive oil, and every villa round was similarly +illuminated. The pavement of the famous square of the Uffizi Palace was +boarded over; and overhead was spread a canvas covering dyed with the +three Italian national colours. Thither thronged hundreds of peasant men +and women, who danced and made merry till the early hours of the morning. +At the Pagliano Theatre were given <i>tableaux vivants</i> representing the +most famous episodes in the <i>Divina Commedia</i>, Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi +reciting the corresponding passages from that immortal poem.</p> + +<p>What a comparison, what a contrast it suggests between the solemn, +serious, but limited honour done by us to Milton, and the exultant, +universal, national honour paid by his countrymen to Dante! I should add +that eight thousand Italian municipalities sent a deputation carrying +their local pennons to the square of Santa Croce, where a statue of Dante +was unveiled, amid thunderous applause, to popular gaze.</p> + +<p>Now let us turn to a more personal contrast between the two poets. To many +persons, probably to most in these days, the most interesting feature in +the life of a poet is his relation to the sex that is commonly assumed, +perhaps not quite correctly, to be the more romantic of the two. In +comparing Dante and Milton in that respect one is struck at once by the +fact that, while with Dante are not only associated, but inseparably +interwoven, the name and person of Beatrice, so that the two seem in our +minds but one, knit by a spiritual love stronger even than any bond +sanctioned by domestic law for happiness and social stability, Milton<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> had +no Beatrice. It would be idle to contend that the absence of such love has +not detracted, and will not continue to detract, from the interest felt in +Milton and his poetry, not perhaps by scholars, but by the world at large, +and the average lover of poetry and poets. For just as women can do much, +to use a phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, towards “making a poet out +of a man,” so can they do even more, either by spiritual influence or by +consummate self-sacrifice, to widen the field and deepen the intensity of +his fame. No poet ever enjoyed this advantage so conspicuously as Dante. +It will perhaps be said that this was effected more by himself than by +her. Let us not be too sure of that. In Italy, far more than in northern +climes, first avowals of love are made by the eyes rather than by the +tongue, by tell-tale looks more than by explicit words. What says +Shakespeare, who knew men and women equally well?</p> + +<p class="poem">A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon<br /> +Than love that would seem hid. Love’s night is noon.</p> + +<p>Dante’s own account of his first meeting with Beatrice confirms this +surmise. This is what he himself says, after Beatrice, as Boccaccio +relates, “very winning, very graceful, in aspect very beautiful,” had +turned her gaze on Dante from time to time at their first meeting. “At +that moment the spirit of life which abides in the most secret chamber of +the heart began to tremble, and tremulously it spake these words, ‘Behold +a god stronger than I, who cometh to lord it over me.’” These may perhaps +seem strange words in which to record the first meeting of a boy of nine +with a girl of eight. But, over and above the fact that they are the +record, written several years later, of the feeling aroused by that first +meeting,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> allowance must be made for the proverbial precocity of genius, +and also for that of southern over northern temperaments. Its genuineness +is confirmed by the whole sequel, as testified by the <i>Vita Nuova</i> and the +<i>Divina Commedia</i>; the presiding presence of Beatrice in both having long +before been anticipated by the words, “If it shall please Him, by whom all +things live, to spare my life for some years longer, I hope to say that of +her which never yet hath been said of any lady.” How completely that hope +was attained is to be seen in the closing canto of the <i>Purgatorio</i> and in +the whole of the <i>Paradiso</i>.</p> + +<p>The life and poetry of Milton contain nothing (if exception be made of his +beautiful and lofty sonnet, written in the very spirit of the <i>Divina +Commedia</i>, on his second wife, “Methought I saw my late espousèd Saint”) +to compare with Dante’s love, at once real and ideal, masculine yet +mystical, for Beatrice. The language used by Eve in addressing Adam, in +<i>Paradise Lost</i>—</p> + +<p class="poem">My author and disposer, what thou bidst<br /> +Unargued I obey, so God ordains.<br /> +God is thy law, thou mine—</p> + +<p>and the very choice of a subject the dominating incident of which is +described by the well-known words, “The woman did give me, and I did eat,” +would almost seem to indicate that Milton’s conception of woman, and his +attitude towards her, were such as can be attributed to no other poet. It +is the attitude of unqualified masculine domination. Again, in <i>Samson +Agonistes</i> the very centre and pith of the poem is the incorrigible +frailty and inferiority of women—a thesis that would be extraordinary, +even if true, for a poet. Samson starts with a reproval of himself for +weakly revealing the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> secret of his strength to the persistent subtlety of +a woman, “that species monster, my accomplished snare,” as he calls +Dalila, since “yoked her bond-slave by foul effeminacy”—a servitude he +stigmatises as “ignominious and infamous,” whereby he is “shamed, +dishonoured, quelled.” When Dalila, profoundly penitent for what she has +done, thereby incurring his displeasure, prostrates herself before him, +and sues for pardon, he spurns her from him with the words,</p> + +<p class="poem">Out, out, hyæna! these are thy wonted arts,</p> + +<p>and goes on to say they are the arts of every woman, “to deceive, betray,” +and then to “feign remorse.” With abject humility she confesses that +curiosity to learn all secrets, and then to publish them, are “common +female faults incident to all our sex.” This only causes him to insult and +spurn her yet more fiercely; and he declares that God sent her to “debase +him”—one of those theological peculiarities which apparently made God an +accomplice with “this viper,” for which the non-Calvinistic Christian +finds it difficult to account.</p> + +<p>Nor can it be said that Milton is here, like Shakespeare, speaking only +dramatically and objectively. The Chorus in <i>Samson Agonistes</i> is of his +opinion, declaring that the man is favoured of heaven who discovers “one +virtuous woman, rarely found”; and that is why</p> + +<p class="poem">God’s universal law<br /> +Gave to the man despotic power<br /> +Over his female in due awe,<br /> +Nor from that right to part, an hour,<br /> +Smiles she or lour.</p> + +<p>After delivering itself of these opinions, the Chorus suddenly exclaims, +“I see a storm,” which, in the circumstances, is perhaps scarcely wonderful.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>What a different note is this from that struck by Dante, when he speaks of +“that blessed Beatrice, who now dwells in heaven with the angels, and on +earth in my heart, and with whom my soul is still in love.” Far from +thinking that severe command on the part of the one and unquestioning +submission on the part of the other form the proper relation of lover and +maiden, husband and wife, Dante avers that</p> + +<p class="poem">Amor e cor gentil son’ una cosa,</p> + +<p>that love and a gracious gentle heart are one and the same thing; and in +the <i>Paradiso</i>, shortly before the close of the poem, he exclaims:</p> + +<p class="poem">O Beatrice! dolce guida e cara.</p> + +<p>It may perhaps be thought that one might be more lenient towards Milton’s +foibles, especially at such a time as the present, in contrasting his +attitude towards woman with that of Dante. But in Milton there was so much +that was noble, so pathetic, and even so attractive, that he can well +afford to have the truth told concerning him; and to omit his view of the +most important of all personal relations in life, as depicted for and +bequeathed to us in his poetry, would be to leave an obvious gap of the +utmost import in comparing and contrasting him with Dante.</p> + +<p>But now let us ask, in order to redress the balance, what has Dante to +show, in kind, against <i>Il Penseroso</i>, <i>L’Allegro</i>, <i>Lycidas</i>, and +<i>Comus</i>? I put the prose works of both poets aside; and there remains on +the side of Dante only the self-same Dante from first to last, the Dante +of the <i>Vita Nuova</i> and the <i>Divina Commedia</i>. Milton, as a poet, had, on +the contrary, a brilliant, an attractive, and a poetically productive +youth. If Dante<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> ever was young in the same sense, he has left no trace of +it in his poetry. Save for Beatrice, there is an austerity even in the +most tender passages of his verse. He seems never to relax in his gravity, +I had almost said in his severity. His very love for Florence is +expressed, for the most part, in harsh upbraiding. An unrelenting awe +dominates his poetry. For Virgil he entertains a humble far-off reverence. +There is no poet of whom it can be so truly said that he remained +unchanged from first to last, and presents to us only one aspect +throughout his works. In reading the English poet one finds oneself in the +presence of two Miltons, not unlike each other in the splendid quality of +the verse, but profoundly differing in tone, temperament, and outlook on +life. In the author of <i>L’Allegro</i>, <i>Il Penseroso</i>, <i>Lycidas</i>, and +<i>Comus</i> there is a youthful buoyancy, an all-pervading cheerful +seriousness worthy of one complacently but justly confident of his powers, +in no degree at war with the world, but on amicable terms with it, and +regarding life on the whole, and on its human side, as a thing to +sympathise with and enjoy. Hear the young Milton’s invitation to vernal +exultation and joy:</p> + +<p class="poem">But come, thou goddess fair and free,<br /> +In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,<br /> +And, by men, heart-easing Mirth,<br /> +Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,<br /> +With two sister Graces more,<br /> +To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;<br /> +Or whether (as some sages sing)<br /> +The frolic wind that breathes the spring,<br /> +Zephyr, with Aurora playing,<br /> +As he met her once a-Maying;<br /> +There, on beds of violets blue,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>And fresh-blown roses wash’d in dew,<br /> +Fill’d her with thee, a daughter fair,<br /> +So buxom, blithe, and debonnair.</p> + +<p>What is there in Dante to compare with that? There is much by way of +contrast, but no note anywhere in his verse so generous, so exhilarating, +so thoroughly human. And this is how Milton, in the April of his days, +continues:</p> + +<p class="poem">Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee<br /> +Jest, and youthful jollity,<br /> +Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,<br /> +Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,<br /> +Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,<br /> +And love to live in dimple sleek;<br /> +Sport that wrinkled Care derides,<br /> +And Laughter holding both his sides.<br /> +Come and trip it, as you go,<br /> +On the light fantastic toe;<br /> +And in thy right hand lead with thee<br /> +The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;<br /> +And, if I give thee honour due,<br /> +Mirth, admit me of thy crew,<br /> +To live with her, and live with thee,<br /> +In unreprovëd pleasures free.</p> + +<p>And what, in the yet happy and in no degree morose Milton, are the +“unreproved pleasures”? They are:</p> + +<p class="poem">To hear the lark begin his flight,<br /> +And, singing, startle the dull night,<br /> +From his watch-tower in the skies,<br /> +Till the dappled dawn doth rise;<br /> +Then to come, in spite of sorrow,<br /> +And at my window bid good-morrow,<br /> +Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,<br /> +Or the twisted eglantine;<br /> +While the cock, with lively din,<br /> +Scatters the rear of darkness thin,<br /> +And to the stack, or the barn-door,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>Stoutly struts his dames before:<br /> +Oft listening how the hounds and horn<br /> +Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,<br /> +From the side of some hoar hill,<br /> +Through the high wood echoing shrill.</p> + +<p>Where is the stern Puritan Milton in these cheerful, generous verses? +Where the detester and active enemy of the Cavaliers in the lines that +follow, dwelling proudly on the</p> + +<p class="poem">Towers and battlements ...<br /> +Bosom’d high in tufted trees,</p> + +<p>the homes of the hereditary gentlemen of England? And think of the lines +“Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,” down to “The first cock his matin +rings.” They are almost Shakespearean in their sympathy with mirth and +laughter, their enjoyment of harmless practical jokes, their boundless +indulgence to human nature. And what is the conclusion of the poem?</p> + +<p class="poem">These delights if thou canst give,<br /> +Mirth, with thee I mean to live.</p> + +<p>There exists in no language a more lyrical outburst inspired by the +hey-day of life, and lavishly radiating rustic joy. They are as jocund as +a gipsy rondeau of Haydn, as gracious as the tapestries of Fragonard, as +tender as the Amorini of Albani, and as serenely cheerful as the matchless +melodies of Mozart. You may read every line, whether in verse or prose, +that Dante ever wrote, and you will come across no such spring-like note +as this. Frequently he is tearful, tender, pathetic, and paternally +compassionate, but nowhere does he express the faintest sympathy with +“Laughter holding both its sides.”</p> + +<p>Gradually, however, there stole over the younger Milton a great, a grave +change. His domestic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> experiences with his first wife could not have +ministered to his happiness or content; experiences partly caused by the +somewhat worldly ideals and desires of his spouse, but still more, +perhaps, by his theory that what the husband bids it is the duty of the +wife “unargued to obey.”</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the promptings of his muse slackening for a long interval—an +experience that has happened in the lives of other poets—he turned to +prose, and to the controversial side of prose. Being of a dogmatic +temperament, he quickly became involved in the acerbities of political, +theological, and ethical polemics. For a time he employed his +uncompromising pen on what seemed to be the winning side. But the aims of +the ruling party in the Commonwealth were not then, any more than they are +now, in harmony with the main character and ideals of the English people; +and Milton found himself not only in the camp of the vanquished, but +indicated by his previous actions as an object for Anglican and Royalist +retaliation. The buoyant elasticity of youth had subsided in him; even the +generous vigour of early manhood had vanished; and he found himself, in +advanced middle life, disappointed and disheartened. The natural austerity +of his character and principles deepened with his new situation and +changed outlook. He had fallen, as he thought, on evil days and evil +tongues; and, scandalised by the sensual levity of the King’s Court and +favourites, he pondered with almost exultant and vindictive retrospect on +Adam and Eve’s first disobedience and its fruits, and devoted his severe +genius and magnificent diction to justifying the ways of God to man.</p> + +<p>The Milton of these later years was bowed down by many family vexations, +some of them due, no doubt,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> to his own exacting character and ideas. He +was baffled and beaten in the political field where he had been so doughty +a combatant, and for a time a triumphant one, and was finally deprived of +all hope of regaining his pristine position; and last, and saddest of all, +there fell on him total blindness, which, after his magnificent apostrophe +to <i>Holy Light, Offspring of Heaven first-born</i>, he touchingly laments in +the well-known but never too often to be recited passage in the third book +of <i>Paradise Lost</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,<br /> +Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down<br /> +The dark descent, and up to reascend,<br /> +Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,<br /> +And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou<br /> +Revisit’st not these eyes, that roll in vain<br /> +To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;<br /> +So thick a drop serene hath quench’d their orbs,<br /> +Or dim suffusion veil’d. Yet not the more<br /> +Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt<br /> +Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,<br /> +Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief<br /> +Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,<br /> +That wash thy hallow’d feet, and warbling flow,<br /> +Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget<br /> +Those other two equall’d with me in fate,<br /> +So were I equall’d with them in renown,<br /> +Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,<br /> +And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.<br /> +Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move<br /> +Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird<br /> +Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid<br /> +Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year<br /> +Seasons return, but not to me returns<br /> +Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,<br /> +Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,<br /> +Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>But cloud instead, and ever-during dark<br /> +Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men<br /> +Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair<br /> +Presented with a universal blank<br /> +Of nature’s works, to me expunged and rased,<br /> +And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.<br /> +So much the rather, thou celestial light,<br /> +Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers<br /> +Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence<br /> +Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell<br /> +Of things invisible to mortal sight.</p> + +<p>Could there be poetry of the personal kind more free from reprehensible +egotism, more dignified, more majestic, and at the same time more pathetic +than that? Let us recur to it, and read it, when we are tempted to judge +Milton harshly for any less admirable, less lovable characteristics, from +which no mortal can be wholly free; and the verdict must be, “Everything +is forgiven him, because he suffered much, and expressed those sufferings +in his verse, the truest exponent of his deepest feelings, with +magnanimous and magnificent serenity.” Nor let it ever be lost sight of +that, though in the political and theological domain he was anything but +free from fanaticism and bitter partisanship, he uniformly fought for +liberty of speech and printing—liberty, of all our possessions the most +precious, and for the safety and stability of the State the most +indispensable condition. To what extent, in the part Dante played in the +local politics of Florence, which led to his exile, he too was fighting +for liberty, in the sense in which I have just expressed it, it is not +possible for a dispassionate person to hold a confident opinion. In all +probability liberty, as we understand the word, was struggled for and +understood neither by him nor by those who drove him into exile. But, like +Milton, he bore his ostracism with manly dignity, consoling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> himself and +enriching posterity with a splendid poem, and only craving for safe +shelter and peace, as he said at the monastery gate: <i>Son’ uno che implora +pace</i>.</p> + +<p>In comparing Milton and Dante one might justly be reproached for an +obvious omission if one did not refer, however briefly, to the intense +love of both for music. Very recently Mr. W. H. Hadow, than whom no one +writes with more knowledge or sympathy of music, lectured before the Royal +Society of Literature on Milton’s love and knowledge of it. Music, he +truly said, was Milton’s most intimate of delights; and he referred to +what Johnson relates of the poet’s constantly playing on the organ. In the +second canto of the <i>Purgatorio</i> Dante recognises the musician Casella, +hails him as “Casella mio,” and begs him who on earth had soothed Dante’s +soul with music to do the same for him now. Casella obeys, and Dante says +it was done so sweetly that he can hear him still; words that recall +Wordsworth’s lovely couplet:</p> + +<p class="poem">The music in my heart I bore<br /> +Long after it was heard no more.</p> + +<p>To my great surprise an eminent man of letters, who is also a poet, said +to me recently that the present writer was one of the few writers of verse +he knew who loved music, and who continually asked for music, more music, +adding that poets, as a rule, did not care for it. I was amazed, and cited +Shakespeare and Milton as a matter of course, and many a lesser poet, +against so untenable a thesis, concluding with the opening lines of +<i>Twelfth Night</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">If music be the food of love, play on.<br /> +Give me excess of it.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>Surely music is not only the food of love, but of poetry as well; and do +not “music and sweet poetry agree”?</p> + +<p>Another point of similarity between Milton and Dante is their total lack +of humour, so strange in two great poets, and one of them an Englishman. +Chaucer is continually on the edge of boisterous laughter. Spenser seems +constantly on the verge of a well-bred smile. Shakespeare, to use his own +language, asks to be allowed with mirth and laughter to play the fool, +though the most gravely thoughtful and awfully tragic of all poets. The +author of <i>Childe Harold</i> is likewise the author of <i>The Vision of +Judgment</i> and <i>Don Juan</i>. Scott is one of the greatest of British humorists. +But on the face of neither Dante nor Milton do we find the trace of a +smile either coming or gone.</p> + +<p>The Rev. Lonsdale Ragg, in his searching and erudite work, <i>Dante and his +Italy</i>, maintains the opposite view at p. 190 <i>sqq.</i> But I, at least, find +him on this head unconvincing. None of the passages in Dante to which he +refers would satisfy the definition of humour as employed by Sterne, +Steele, Addison, or Charles Lamb, and cited by Thackeray in his delightful +papers on <i>The English Humorists</i>. Dante is scornful, satirical, +merciless; humorous he never is. Nor is Milton. They meet on the common +ground of uncompromising seriousness.</p> + +<p>Another parallel I will presume to draw between Dante and Milton is one of +supreme importance; but I can do so only briefly. No man, in my humble +opinion, has the full requisites of a poet of the highest order unless at +some period or another of his life he has been associated by practice and +direct experience with other men in matters of public interest. Milton and +Dante alike had that experience. So had Chaucer,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> so had Spenser, so had +Shakespeare, so had Byron. They were men of the world, and did not, as +Matthew Arnold said of Wordsworth, “avert their gaze from half of human +fate.” I am aware that the opposite view is assumed in much criticism +to-day; and the highest rank is claimed for poetic recluses who write only +of individual joys, sorrows, and emotions, their own mostly, and manifest +a complete want of concern in the wide issues of mankind. That was not a +standard of criticism till our own time; nor will it, I believe, be the +standard of future ages. Dante and Milton both satisfy the older standard, +the older and the more abiding one.</p> + +<p>No comparison of Dante with Milton would be complete that omitted +consideration of the respective themes of their chief works, their two +great epic poems, the <i>Divina Commedia</i> and <i>Paradise Lost</i>. I am disposed +to think, though others may think differently, that Dante has in this +respect a signal advantage over Milton. If any one is curious to see how a +man of great parts, but in some respects of rather insular views, can fail +to understand the theme of the <i>Divina Commedia</i>, and Dante’s treatment of +it, he has only to turn, as Mr. Courthope did in his address to the +British Academy, to Macaulay’s essay on Milton, where Dante is written of +as though he were nothing but a great Realist. Many years ago I suggested +as a definition of poetry, and have more than once urged the suggestion, +that it is “the harmonious transfiguration of the Real into the Ideal by +the aid of elevating imagination,” so that, when the poet has performed +that operation, his readers accept the ideal representation as real, that +surest test of the greatness of a poet, provided his theme itself be +great. The <i>Divina Commedia</i> stands that test triumphantly; and the result +is that Dante<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> makes credible, even to non-believers while they read the +poem, the central conception and beliefs of medieval Christianity, which +are still those of Roman Catholic Christianity. Hence they remain real +facts for the transfiguring idealism of poets to deal with.</p> + +<p>Can the same be said of <i>Paradise Lost</i>? What is “real” does not depend on +the arbitrary choice of any one, but on the <i>communis sensus</i>, the general +assent of those to whom the treatment of the assumed “real” is addressed. +Is that any longer so in the case of <i>Paradise Lost</i>? Are the personality +of the devil, the insurrection of Lucifer and the rebel angels, and their +condemnation to eternal punishment, with power to tempt mortals to do that +which will lead to their sharing that punishment, now believed in by any +large number of Christian Englishmen or English-speaking Christians, or is +it ever likely again to be so believed in? I must leave the question to be +answered by every one for himself. But on the answer to it, it is obvious, +the realistic basis of <i>Paradise Lost</i> depends. If the reply be negative, +then what remains is the magnificence of the imagery and the sonority of +the diction. To extol the one over the other in these respects would +indeed be invidious. It is enough to place them side by side to manifest +their equality. If Milton writes:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">Him the Almighty Power</span><br /> +Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky<br /> +With hideous ruin and combustion down<br /> +To bottomless perdition, there to dwell<br /> +In adamantine chains and penal fire,<br /> +Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms;</p> + +<p>Dante writes:</p> + +<p class="poem">Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>Parole di dolore, accenti d’ira,<br /> +Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle,<br /> +Facevan un tumulto, il qual s’aggira<br /> +Sempre in quell’ aria senza tempo tinta,<br /> +Come l’arena quando il turbo spira.</p> + +<p>Withal, it would show imperfect impartiality if one failed to allow that +there is more variety in the <i>Divina Commedia</i> than in <i>Paradise Lost</i>. +Milton never halts in his majestic journey to soothe us with such an +episode as that of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, or closes it +with so celestial a strain as that describing the interview of Dante with +Beatrice in Heaven.</p> + +<p>No third poet in any nation or tongue could be named that equals Dante and +Milton in erudition, or in the use they made of it in their poetry. The +present writer is himself too lacking in erudition to presume to expatiate +on that theme. Others have done it admirably, and with due competency. But +on this ground, common to them both, I reluctantly part with them. To each +alike may be assigned the words of Ovid, <i>Os sublime dedit</i>, and equally +it may be said of both, that, in the splendid phrase of Lucretius, they +passed beyond the <i>flammantia mœnia mundi</i>. Finally, each could truly +say of himself, in the words of Dante,</p> + +<p class="poem">Minerva spira e conducemi Apollo.</p> + +<p>“The Goddess of Wisdom inspires me, and the God of Song is my conductor +and my guide.”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p> +<h2>BYRON AND WORDSWORTH</h2> + +<p>The present age can hardly be reproached either with an absence of +admirers or with a lack of self-complacency. Even its most fervid +flatterers, however, ever and anon admit that it exhibits a few trifling +defects; and among these is sometimes named a diminution of popular +interest in poetic literature. Some have attributed this decline to one +cause, some to another; but the fact can hardly be disputed. The Heavenly +Muse is suffering a partial eclipse. The gross and material substance of +the earth has somehow got between her and the Soul, that source and centre +of her gentle light; and some enthusiasts aver that with the progress of +Science and the production at will of its precise and steadfast lights, +fitful luminaries of night may henceforth be dispensed with. But spiritual +eclipses, though not to be predicted with the accuracy with which physical +eclipses are foretold, and though unfortunately they endure for longer +periods, are equally transitory; and the nineteenth century was scarcely +original, nor will its successor prove to be correct, in fancying that the +garish and obedient flame of material philosophy will prove a satisfactory +substitute for the precious, if precarious illumination of the Spirit.</p> + +<p>Among the causes that have contributed to divert popular affection and +popular sympathy from poetical literature, there are three that deserve to +be specially<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> indicated. The first of these is the multiplication of prose +romances, which, though so much lower in literary value and in artistic +character than poetry, and so much less elevating in their tendency, are +better fitted to stimulate the vulgar imagination, and minister more +freely to the common craving for excitement. The second cause is the +reaction that has settled upon mankind from the fervid hopes inspired by +the propagation of those theories and the propounding of those promises +which the historian associates with the French Revolution. All saner minds +have long since discovered that happiness is to be procured neither for +the individual nor for the community by mere political changes; and the +discovery has been distinctly hostile to literary enthusiasm. Finally, +many poets, and nearly all the critics of poetry, in our time, seem +determined to alienate ordinary human beings from contact with the Muse. +The world is easily persuaded that it is an ignoramus; and the vast +majority of people, after being told, year after year, that what they do +not understand is poetry, and what they do not care one straw about is the +proper theme and the highest expression of song, end by concluding that +poetry has become a mystery beyond their intelligence, a sort of +freemasonry from whose symbols they are jealously excluded. Unable to +appreciate what the critics tell them are the noblest productions of +genius, they modestly infer that between genius and themselves there is no +method of communication; and incapable of reading with pleasure the poetry +they are assured ought to fill them with rapture, they desist from reading +poetry altogether. They have not the self-confidence to choose their own +poets and select their own poetry; and indeed in these days, the only +chance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> any writer has of being read is that he should first be greatly +talked about. Thus, what between the poets who are talked about by +so-called experts, and thus made notorious, but whom ordinary folks find +unreadable, and the poets, if there be any such, whom ordinary folks would +read with pleasure if they knew of their existence, but of whom they have +scarcely heard, poetry has become “caviare to the general,” who content +themselves with the coarser flavour of the novel, and the more easily +digested pabulum of the newspaper.</p> + +<p>But if poetry is now comparatively little read, no one can deny that it is +much written about; and many persons would perhaps see in the second of +these facts a reason for doubting the reality of the first. But the +contradiction is only apparent. Poetry is the subject at present of much +prose criticism, prose exposition, and prose controversy; but the +controversialists are largely the poets themselves, or those who aspire to +the title. The subject is treated by them with much earnestness, indeed +with some little heat; and it is easy to perceive that the main object of +most of the disputants is to establish the superiority of the poet whom +the critic himself most admires, and possibly whom he himself most +resembles. The controversy rages around those poets alone who are claimed +by the nineteenth century, and practically, these are five in number; +Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth. Each of these has his +votaries, his disciples, his passionate advocates. The public look on, a +little bewildered; for who is to decide when doctors disagree? Few, if +any, of the disputants lay down explicit canons respecting poetry, which +may enable a competent bystander to play the part of umpire even to his +own satisfaction; and he is left, like the controversialists themselves, +to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> abide by his own personal tastes, and to estimate poets and poetry +according to his individual fancy.</p> + +<p>It was therefore with no slight satisfaction one heard that one of our +poets, who is likewise a critic, but who brings to his criticisms +moderation of language and measure of statement, was about to appraise the +English poets who have written in this century, but who have for many +years joined the Immortals. To Mr. Matthew Arnold, if to any one amongst +us, may be applied the passage from Wordsworth, to be found in the +“Supplementary Essay” published in 1815:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Whither then shall we turn for that union of qualifications which +must necessarily exist before the decisions of a critic can be of +absolute value? For a mind at once poetical and philosophical; for a +critic whose affections are as free and kindly as the spirit of +society, and whose understanding is severe as that of dispassionate +government? Where are we to look for that initiatory composure of +mind which no selfishness can disturb; for a natural sensibility that +has been tutored into correctness, without losing anything of its +quickness; and for active faculties, capable of answering the demands +which an author of original imagination shall make upon them, +associated with a judgment that cannot be duped into admiration by +aught that is unworthy of it? Among those, and those only, who, never +having suffered their youthful love of poetry to remit much of its +force, have applied to the consideration of the laws of this art the +best power of their understandings.</p></div> + +<p>To Mr. Arnold, if to any, we say, this enumeration of the qualities +indispensable to a trustworthy critic of poetry, may be applied; and if +the conclusions at which he bids us to arrive should not turn out to be +such as we can wholly accept, at least we shall have the satisfaction of +feeling that we dissent from one who has not invited our attention in +vain, and who perhaps, by the avowals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> he incidentally makes in the course +of his argument, has enabled us to hold with all the more confidence +certain opinions which we will endeavour to establish by independent +reasons of our own.</p> + +<p>Here, with sufficient brevity for the present, is the conclusion of Mr. +Arnold on the vexed question of the primacy among English poets, no longer +living, of the last century:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I place Wordsworth’s poetry above Byron’s, on the whole, although in +some points he was greatly Byron’s inferior. But these two, +Wordsworth and Byron, stand, it seems to me, first and pre-eminent in +actual performance, a glorious pair, among the English poets of this +century. Keats had probably, indeed, a more consummate poetic gift +than either of them; but he died having produced too little and being +as yet too immature to rival them. I for my part can never ever think +of equalling with them any other of their contemporaries; either +Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium; or +Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his +luminous wings in vain. Wordsworth and Byron stand out by themselves. +When the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to recount her +poetic glories in the century which has just then ended, the first +names with her will be these.</p></div> + +<p>We do not propose to traverse the entire field of controversy here lightly +indicated; our purpose being to confine ourselves to a consideration of +Mr. Arnold’s particular conclusion, that Wordsworth’s poetry should be +placed above Byron’s. But before passing to that duty, we may say, +parenthetically, that though we agree with Mr. Arnold that Shelley’s +poetry often exhibits a lamentable “want of sound subject-matter,” the +claims of the “beautiful and ineffectual angel” are here somewhat +summarily dismissed; and that when Mr. Arnold says further that he “doubts +whether Shelley’s delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> to be far +more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of time +better, and finally come to stand higher than his poetry,” he makes us +lift our eyes in sheer amazement, and somewhat more than doubt whether +this will not prove to be among the utterly falsified prophecies of very +able critics.</p> + +<p>Holding the opinion he does concerning Wordsworth and Byron, Mr. Arnold +has published a selection from the works of both, in distinct and separate +volumes, and he believes that he has thereby rendered an equal service to +each. “Alone,” he writes, “among our poets of the earlier part of this +century, Byron and Wordsworth not only furnish material enough for a +volume of this kind, but also, it seems to me, they both of them gain +considerably by being thus exhibited.” We, on the contrary, submit that if +the comparison is to end here, and is to be confined to the results +produced by Mr. Arnold’s method, a more unjust and inadequate method, as +far as Byron is concerned, could not possibly be resorted to. Wordsworth +gains considerably, but Byron loses considerably, to employ Mr. Arnold’s +language, by being thus exhibited. No doubt, Mr. Arnold means to be just. +He always means to be just. But in the very description he gives of the +contents of these two volumes on their respective title-pages, does he not +betray a sort of unconscious consciousness that he is dealing with two +very different poets, and with two poets whose works are very different? +If this be not so, how comes it that he calls one volume <i>“Poems” of +Wordsworth</i>, and the other <i>“Poetry” of Byron</i>? The distinction is a +genuine one. Indeed, it is something more than genuine; it was inevitable, +and Mr. Arnold was obliged to make it, if the title of each volume was to +describe its contents<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> correctly. The best poems of Wordsworth are short, +most of them remarkably short; and therefore, in a volume of selections +from his works, they can without difficulty be presented in their +integrity. The best poems of Byron, like the best poems of Æschylus, of +Virgil, of Dante, of Shakespeare, of Milton, are of considerable length; +and if selections from Byron are to be made, his best poems must be +mutilated for the purpose. Mr. Arnold has mutilated them accordingly. +Thus, while intending to treat Wordsworth and Byron in precisely the same +manner, he has treated them, and by the very conditions of the case could +not help treating them, in an entirely different manner.</p> + +<p>That Mr. Arnold has not been altogether insensible to this objection—and, +indeed, with his calm and dispassionate penetration, he was not likely to +be—is apparent not only in the different description he gives of the +contents of the two volumes, on their respective title-pages, but from +certain observations in his prefatory essay upon Byron. When he says that +“there are portions of Byron’s poetry which are far higher in worth, and +far more free from fault than others,” or that “Byron cannot but be a +gainer by having attention concentrated upon what is vivid, powerful, +effective, in his work, and withdrawn from what is not so,” he is, we +would suggest, stating nothing more than a truism, or what is equally true +of every poet. He is only beating the air, and hesitating to close with +the real difficulty with which he feels himself confronted. But when he +proceeds to urge that “Byron has not a great artist’s profound and patient +skill in combining an action or in developing a character,—a skill which +we must watch and follow if we are to do justice to it,” he shows that he +feels it to be necessary to offer a defence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> for applying to Byron a +treatment from which Byron may possibly suffer. We confess, with all our +admiration for Mr. Arnold—and it is as deep as it is sincere—we have +never been able to resist the suspicion that he is <i>tant soit peu</i> a +sophist; and surely it is sophistry, in the course of an attempt to show +that Byron and Wordsworth each equally gain by the “selection” method of +treatment, to urge, with that air of tranquil and well-bred triumph of +which Mr. Arnold is so consummate a master, that “to take passages from +work produced as Byron’s was, is a very different thing from taking +passages out of the <i>Œdipus</i> or the <i>Tempest</i> and deprives the poetry +far less of its advantage”? For the question is not whether Sophocles, +Shakespeare, and Byron may be treated ostensibly in the same manner by an +editor of selections, without injustice being done to any of them, but +whether Wordsworth and Byron can. That is the question; and it is not +answered, but avoided, by altering the terms of the proposition.</p> + +<p>What, therefore, really remains of this plea of Mr. Arnold’s, this excuse +for mutilating Byron’s poems and presenting them in fragments, is the +allegation that Byron is not, <i>above and before all things</i>, a great, +patient, and systematic artist. That much may be granted; and no competent +critic would deny it. But more cannot be granted than is strictly true; +and candour equally demands that it should be admitted that though Byron +was not long-suffering and far-reaching enough in the conception of his +poems, nor careful and self-critical enough in their execution, he +possessed at least enough of the instinct and the scope of the artist to +produce works that cohere with themselves, and that have a unity of design +sufficiently definite to mark it as something distinct from the mere +succession of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> executed detail. Will Mr. Arnold seriously pretend that a +more “vivid, powerful, and effective” impression is not created upon the +mind by a perusal of the whole of <i>Manfred</i>, than by a perusal of portions +of it, or of one or two dissociated Acts? Mr. Arnold turns Byron’s own +modest confessions against himself, and lays stress upon the avowal that +the <i>Giaour</i> is “a string of passages.” But if any one were, after due +reflection, to maintain, that more justice is done to Byron by reading +some of its passages than by reading the whole of the poem, we confess we +should be obliged to entertain some doubt as to his own instincts as an +artist. For, where men like Byron are concerned, it is peculiarly true +that the divinity of the Muse shapes their ends, rough-hew these how they +may. Of every one of Byron’s tales—the <i>Siege of Corinth</i>, <i>The Bride of +Abydos</i>, <i>Parisina</i>—this is equally true. It has more than once been +observed that <i>Childe Harold</i> suffers from the fact that a period of eight +years elapsed between the composition of the first and second cantos, and +the composition of the third and fourth; and as far as style is concerned, +the contrast is very striking, two of the cantos being for the most part +almost as feeble, and two of them as forcible, as anything deserving the +name of poetry well can be. Nevertheless, there would be no difficulty in +showing, and we think no reader of poetry endowed with a fair amount of +artistic sense would require to be shown, that a certain oneness of +purpose and unity of drift presides over and accompanies the entire poem, +in a word that it is substantially homogeneous; and if any one, after +reading through the third and fourth cantos at a stretch, as we recently +did, were to tell us that he thought a few extracts from each give an +adequate conception of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> the two, and that reading portions is in effect +equivalent to reading the whole, we should have reached that limit of +controversy which is expressed by a silence that is not assent. It is true +that Mr. Arnold has been fairly lavish in his extracts from <i>Childe +Harold</i>; yet out of the 300 stanzas which compose the third and fourth +cantos, his selection contains only 114, or little more than a third. But +it is not only by the curtailment of the quantity, but by the treatment +applied to what is selected, that injury is done to <i>Childe Harold</i>. The +passages quoted are scattered at intervals through the volume, so that all +consecutiveness and coherence are lost. The majestic march of the poem is +utterly broken. The subtle argument that lurks in the order of every +poem—whether it be the <i>lucidus ordo</i> of a speech, or an order less +obvious and patent—is completely destroyed. The strain neither begins nor +ends, neither rises nor falls, neither pauses nor progresses. The statue +is shivered to pieces, and we are offered a collection of chips, mixed up +with fragments from other marbles that have been treated with equal +ruthlessness. Here there is a hand, here a portion of a foot, here a +section of the features, here a bit of the torso. They still are +magnificent, and full of suggestiveness. But are they equal and equivalent +to the entire statue? Are they as good as the whole of the original work? +With surprising paradox Mr. Arnold assures us they are considerably +better.</p> + +<p>This singular conclusion is attained, it seems to us, by the excessive +assertion, or at least by the exaggerated application, of a theory in +which there is, unquestionably, a solid element of truth. We have said +that Byron is not an austere and consistent artist. But that is not to +affirm that he is not an artist at all; whereas, in thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> treating his +productions fragmentarily, Mr. Arnold acts as though such an assertion +were true. Byron, says Mr. Arnold, is not “architectural.” But is he not? +There is architecture, and architecture; the severe and systematic +architecture of the Greeks, and the more free, irregular, unmethodical +architecture which we know as Gothic. In the conception, and what in +technical parlance is called the composition, of his works, Byron is +assuredly no Greek. The exquisite oneness of design characteristic of +Athenian genius he certainly did not borrow from the land and the race no +one has so splendidly extolled. But if we turn to some of the noblest +productions of Gothic architecture, what do we find? We find Cathedrals of +unquestioned beauty and of universal fame, produced, it would +superficially seem, almost haphazard; without design, without plan, even +without architect. In our own land we may see Minsters that, begun in the +eleventh, were not finished till the fifteenth century. Like <i>Childe +Harold</i>, they bear the evident marks of different ages, and of different +styles; and like <i>Don Juan</i>, they show that they were commenced without +their parent knowing where or how they were to end. Nay, like it again, +some of them remain unfinished to this day. But will any one affirm that +their integrity, as they stand, is nothing to them, and nothing to us? +Because no great master-conception presided over their origin and their +execution, will no injury be done to them by taking them to pieces, and +saying, “Here is a lovely apse; here you see a beautiful flying buttress; +here contemplate an exquisite rood-screen; here you have an admirable bit +of the choir, and there a glorious specimen of the roof”?</p> + +<p>Nor can it be urged that this illustration does<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> violence to the process +Mr. Arnold has adopted. On the contrary, the analogy is not strong enough; +for <i>Manfred</i>, <i>The Corsair</i>, <i>Cain</i>, <i>Childe Harold</i> itself, were +conceived and executed, not less, but far more homogeneously, than the +edifices with which we have compared them, and if it would be unjust and +inadequate to treat Gothic cathedrals after this fashion, it is still more +unjust and inadequate to treat Byron’s poems after this fashion. More +glaring still becomes the injustice, and more utter the inadequacy, when +we remember in whose company he is so treated. Mr. Arnold does not break +Wordsworth’s poems to pieces and present us with the fragments; for there +is no necessity to do so. The long ones Mr. Arnold cheerfully throws over, +confessing that <i>The Excursion</i> “can never be a satisfactory work to the +disinterested lover of poetry,” and even that Jeffrey was not wrong when +he said of it, “This will never do.” To adhere to our metaphor, it is a +large comfortless Meeting-house; and so is the <i>Recluse</i>. The best of +Wordsworth’s poems, as we have said, and as Mr. Arnold says, are his short +ones. There are charming English cottages, or, if it be preferred—for we +have no intention of decrying them, we admire them vastly—exquisite +little wayside chapels; and they fit conveniently into the space, without +being tampered with, which Mr. Arnold has provided for them. But the best +of Byron’s poems are the long ones; are vast Gothic edifices that soar +high into the air and cover a vast amount of ground, and therefore cannot +be compressed into the same compass. We have seen how Mr. Arnold gets over +the difficulty. He pulls them down, places bits and sections of them side +by side with the untouched cottages and still complete oratories of +Wordsworth, and asks us to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> compare the two. We are far from saying that, +even under these conditions, the comparison ends to Byron’s disadvantage. +But it surely must be evident to every one that the conditions are not +equal, and therefore, however fair were the intentions of the editor, that +they are not really just. We should be sorry if any one supposed we +consider Mr. Swinburne as sound a critic as Mr. Arnold. But, upon this +particular question, Mr. Swinburne has propounded a conclusion against +which, we submit, Mr. Arnold contends in vain. “The greatest of Byron’s +works was his whole work taken together.” Nothing could be more terse or +more true; and if Mr. Swinburne would be content always to form his +judgments thus calmly and comprehensively, and to express them with this +brevity and directness, he would soon come to exercise an authority which +is at present refused by many to his literary verdicts.</p> + +<p>But though, if the comparison instituted between Byron and Wordsworth by +Mr. Arnold were to be confined within the conditions he has imposed on +both alike, great injustice would be done to Byron, it may well be doubted +if the plan adopted by Mr. Arnold will really tend to Byron’s +disadvantage. On the contrary we suspect that, with the best will in the +world to do all he can for Wordsworth, Mr. Arnold has done him rather an +ill turn. For the whole, or anything approaching to the whole, of the best +of Byron, is not to be found in the volume of selections edited by Mr. +Arnold; and everybody will feel that Byron is a far greater poet than he +could possibly be made to appear by any such method. But all the best +poetry of Wordsworth is in the volume Mr. Arnold dedicates to him; and we +entertain little doubt that there is no dispassionate critic who would not +be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> obliged to allow that a considerable portion, indeed we fear the +greater portion of it, is not poetry at all. The process Mr. Arnold has +applied to Wordsworth, will have to be applied over again, and with +greater rigour. He has rejected as “not satisfactory work to the +disinterested lover of poetry,” an immense quantity of what Wordsworth +conceived to be such. Another editor will have to reject a considerable +proportion of what Mr. Arnold has too indulgently included. His selection +will have to be selected from afresh; and thus, with doubtful +friendliness, he has pointed and prepared the way for some entirely +dispassionate critic who will leave of Wordsworth only what, to “the +disinterested lover of poetry,” is worth leaving; and this unfortunately, +though of a high and delightful quality, will prove to be comparatively +little. In a word, to do Byron anything like justice, we require several +volumes of the size of that Mr. Arnold devotes to him; we require, in +fact, most of what he wrote. To do Wordsworth justice, we require a volume +less than half the size of what Mr. Arnold gives us; we require, in fact, +to suppress at least three-fourths of what he wrote.</p> + +<p>But, again, we can raise no question, and propound no conclusion which Mr. +Arnold, with his penetrating sense and acute susceptibility, has not +himself more or less discerned. After observing, “we must be on our guard +against Wordsworthians,” he thus writes, in a vein of delicate humour:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians: and if we are to get +Wordsworth recognised by the public and by the world, we must +recommend him not in the spirit of a clique, but in the spirit of +disinterested lovers of poetry. But I am a Wordsworthian myself. I +can read with pleasure and edification<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> <i>Peter Bell</i>, and the whole +series of <i>Ecclesiastical Sonnets</i>, and the addresses to Mr. +Wilkinson’s spade, and even the <i>Thanksgiving Ode</i>; everything of +Wordsworth, I think, except <i>Vaudracour and Julia</i>. It is not for +nothing that one has been brought up in the veneration of a man so +truly worthy of homage; that one has seen and heard him, lived in his +neighbourhood, and been familiar with his country.</p></div> + +<p>Alas! even the best of us are mortal; and we accept this graceful passage +as Mr. Arnold’s confession that he, too, is a Wordsworthian against whom +we must be on our guard. An extremist of a school he could not now be; but +“it is not for nothing,” as he says, that he was trained in it. “Once a +priest,” says an Italian proverb, “always a priest”; and, we fear, once a +Wordsworthian, always a Wordsworthian. It is no reproach; but “we must be +on our guard.” For our part, we are tolerably familiar with Wordsworth’s +country, but, beyond that, we are under no such spell as Mr. Arnold +confesses to above. We entertain profound veneration and homage for +Wordsworth, but it is the result, not so much of early teaching—the most +difficult of all lessons to unlearn—as of independent admiration and +sympathy inspired in riper years. We, too, can read <i>Peter Bell</i> and the +<i>Ecclesiastical Sonnets</i>, but with more edification than pleasure; and we +have read, afresh, every word of what Mr. Arnold has included in his +<i>Poems of Wordsworth</i>, only to reach the conclusion we have already +stated, that from many, only too many of them, the spirit, the essence, +the indefinable something, of poetry is absent.</p> + +<p>We should be sorry to be thought guilty of dogmatism, and there is always +peril in generalisations. Let us therefore descend to particulars, as far +as space will permit, and analyse the contents of Mr. Arnold’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> <i>Poems of +Wordsworth</i>. The volume consists of 317 pages; of which 20 are dedicated +to “Poems of Ballad Form,” 92 to “Narrative Poems,” 56 to “Lyrical Poems,” +34 to “Poems akin to the Antique and Odes,” 32 to “Sonnets,” and 83 to +“Reflective and Elegiac Poems.”</p> + +<p>In the first division, <i>We are Seven</i>, <i>Lucy Gray</i>, and <i>The Reverie of +Poor Susan</i>, are the only poems that can be pronounced wholly +satisfactory, and that give real pleasure. <i>Anecdote for Fathers</i> and +<i>Alice Fell</i> would be just as well away, for they would raise the +reputation of no poet, save it be with those against whom “we must be on +our guard.” The poems, <i>The Childless Father</i>, <i>Power of Music</i>, and +<i>Star-Gazers</i>, are redeemed only by their moral; and perhaps of <i>Power of +Music</i>, even this cannot be said.</p> + +<p class="poem">An Orpheus! an Orpheus!—yes, Faith may grow bold,<br /> +And take to herself all the wonders of old;—<br /> +Near the stately Pantheon you’ll meet with the same<br /> +In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.<br /> +<br /> +His station is there;—and he works on the crowd,<br /> +He sways them with harmony merry and loud;<br /> +He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim—<br /> +Was aught ever heard like his Fiddle and him?<br /> +<br /> +What an eager assembly! what an empire is this!<br /> +The weary have life, and the hungry have bliss;<br /> +The mourner is cheered, and the anxious have rest;<br /> +And the guilt-burthened soul is no longer opprest.</p> + +<p>Then follow eight stanzas, in which the baker, the apprentice, the +newsman, the lamplighter, the porter, the lass with her barrow, the +cripple, the mother, and others, are described as stopping to listen, in +language similar to that of the three stanzas we have quoted; the only +slight improvement upon it being such lines as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> “She sees the Musician, +’tis all that she sees,” until we reach the conclusion:</p> + +<p class="poem">Now, coaches and chariots! roar on like a stream;<br /> +Here are twenty souls happy as souls in a dream:<br /> +They are deaf to your murmurs, they care not for you,<br /> +Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue.</p> + +<p>The more ardent admirers of Wordsworth are in the habit of assuming that +those persons who approach their favourite poet with a more hesitating +homage, fail to appreciate the beauty of simplicity, and fancy that a +composition is not poetical because it lacks what is called elevation of +language and the “grand style.” We can assure them, in all sincerity, that +far from that being the basis of our inability to admire all that they +admire, we admire Wordsworth most, and we admire him immensely, when he is +as simple as it is possible to be. We have just cited a poem, which we +scarcely think deserves that name. But, side by side with it, in Mr. +Arnold’s volume, is a much shorter composition, on precisely the same +theme, which is, if possible, still more simple in treatment, but which is +true poetry, if true poetry was ever written. It is called <i>The Reverie of +Poor Susan</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,<br /> +Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:<br /> +Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard<br /> +In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.<br /> +<br /> +’Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees<br /> +A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;<br /> +Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,<br /> +And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.<br /> +<br /> +Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,<br /> +Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;<br /> +And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove’s,<br /> +The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span><br /> +She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade,<br /> +The mist and the river, the hill and the shade:<br /> +The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,<br /> +And the colours have all passed away from her eyes.</p> + +<p>After reading <i>The Reverie of Poor Susan</i>, we may pay Wordsworth’s Muse +the compliment that was paid by the Latin poet to the woman who was +<i>simplex munditiis</i>. Its neat simplicity is in great measure the secret of +its success; but it is not mean in its simplicity. Neither, as in the +other poems we have contrasted with it, have we to wait till the end of +the poem for the moral and the meaning. The moral is interwoven and +interfused with it, and every line breathes the soul and essence of the +entire composition. But nearly all these “Poems of Ballad Form” are +didactic; and does not Mr. Arnold tell us, in his preface, “Some kinds of +poetry are in themselves lower kinds than others; the ballad kind is a +lower kind; the didactic kind, still more, is a lower kind”? Of the twenty +pages of these poems of lower kind, we are strongly disposed to think that +the “disinterested lover of poetry” would discard twelve, and retain only +eight, and that Wordsworth, to use Mr. Arnold’s phrase, would “stand +higher” if this were done.</p> + +<p>But even this proportion between retention and rejection cannot well be +maintained by the disinterested lover of poetry as he advances through the +volume. The “Narrative Poems” occupy nearly a third of it, and in this +section the amount of real poetry is meagre indeed. We had no conception +how many short poems Wordsworth had written, unredeemed by “the gleam, the +light that never was, on sea or land,” till we read this collection +consecutively; and we read it in the open air, in a beautiful country, on +the loveliest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> day of a lovely May. But nothing could possibly attune the +heart of the disinterested lover of poetry to such verses as these:</p> + +<p class="poem">When Ruth was left half desolate,<br /> +Her father took another mate;<br /> +And Ruth, not seven years old,<br /> +A slighted child, at her own will<br /> +Went wandering over dale and hill,<br /> +In thoughtless freedom, bold.<br /> +<br /> +There came a Youth from Georgia’s shore—<br /> +A military casque he wore,<br /> +With splendid feathers drest;<br /> +He brought them from the Cherokees;<br /> +The feathers nodded in the breeze,<br /> +And made a gallant crest.<br /> +<br /> +“Belovèd Ruth!” No more he said.<br /> +The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed<br /> +A solitary tear:<br /> +She thought again—and did agree<br /> +With him to sail across the sea,<br /> +And drive the flying deer.<br /> +<br /> +“And now, as fitting is and right,<br /> +We in the Church our faith will plight,<br /> +A husband and a wife.”<br /> +Even so they did; and I may say<br /> +That to sweet Ruth that happy day<br /> +Was more than human life.</p> + +<p>Not only is it impossible, we think, for the disinterested lover of poetry +to read this either with pleasure or with edification, but it is not easy +for him to read it without an ever-broadening smile. As a rule, the verse +to be met with in our less fastidious Magazines is not of a very high +order. But we doubt if the editor of any one of them would consent to +insert the foregoing stanzas, or those that follow, with their, “But as +you have before been told,” “Meanwhile, as thus with him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> it fared, They +for the voyage were prepared,” “God help thee, Ruth! Such pains she had, +That she in half a year was mad,” and such like specimens of unartistic +and naive childishness. Surely, if there be any one who thinks this +poetry, it must be Mr. Arnold’s friend, the British Philistine? If +Murdstone and Quinion could be converted and ever took to reading poetry, +would not this be the sort of verse that would delight them? And would +they not do so by reason of that “stunted sense of beauty,” and that +“defective type” of intellect with which Mr. Arnold justly reproaches the +English middle-class?</p> + +<p>Did these poems stand alone, in their prosaic puerility, we might be +surprised that Mr. Arnold had reproduced them; but we should have been +content to conclude that, like Homer, both poet and editor had been +nodding. But we turn page after page of these “Narrative Poems” to be +astonished by what we encounter. The next poem to <i>Ruth</i> is <i>Simon Lee: +The Old Huntsman, with an Incident in which he was Concerned</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">Few months of life has he in store,<br /> +As he to you will tell,<br /> +For still, the more he works, the more<br /> +Do his weak ankles swell.<br /> +My gentle Reader, I perceive<br /> +How patiently you’ve waited,<br /> +And now I fear that you’ll expect<br /> +Some tale will be related.<br /> +<br /> +O Reader! had you in your mind<br /> +Such stores as silent thought can bring,<br /> +O gentle Reader! you would find<br /> +A tale in everything.<br /> +What more I have to say is short,<br /> +And you must kindly take it:<br /> +It is no tale; but, should you <i>think</i>,<br /> +Perhaps a tale you’ll make it.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>Simon is grubbing the stump of a tree, but was unequal to the task. The +poet takes the mattock from his hand, and with a blow severs the root, “At +which the poor Old Man so long, And vainly had endeavoured.” Thankful +tears come into his eyes, whereupon the poet remarks:</p> + +<p class="poem">I’ve heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds<br /> +With coldness still returning;<br /> +Alas! the gratitude of men<br /> +Hath oftener left me mourning.</p> + +<p>The sentiment is nice and pretty, but is it poetry, or, even if it were, +could it make poetry of the doggerel—for surely there really is no other +name for it—that precedes it? And do Wordsworthians against whom Mr. +Arnold tells us we ought to be on our guard, or Wordsworthians who fancy +that we need not be on our guard against <i>them</i>, suppose that moralising +correctly and piously in verse about every “incident” in which somebody +happens to be “concerned,” renders the narrative a “tale,”—much more, +makes poetry of it? We are far from saying that Wordsworth might not, in a +happier mood, have written poetry upon this particular incident. But we do +say, with some confidence, that he has unfortunately not done so; that the +incident, narrated in the manner in which he has narrated it, cannot of +itself be accepted as poetry—which, as Mr. Arnold well knows, is the +extreme Wordsworthian theory, as advocated by Wordsworth himself in pages +upon pages of controversial prose; and that we are greatly astonished Mr. +Arnold should indirectly lend it countenance, by reprinting and stamping +with his precious approval, such infelicitous triviality as the above. We +cannot shrink from saying this,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> through an unworthy dread lest we should +be confounded with “the tenth-rate critics and compilers to whom it is +still permissible to speak of Wordsworth’s poetry, not only with +ignorance, but with impertinence.” Mr. Arnold has himself shown that he +does not hesitate to speak in pretty strong terms of those portions of +Wordsworth’s verse which he does not regard as poetry. He describes them +as “abstract verbiage”; he acknowledges that they are so inferior, it +seems wonderful how Wordsworth should have produced them; and in a passage +delightfully humorous he imagines a long passage of Wordsworth being +declaimed at a Social Science Congress to an admiring audience of men with +bald heads and women in spectacles, “and in the soul of any poor child of +nature who may have wandered in thither, an unutterable sense of +lamentation, mourning, and woe.”</p> + +<p>All that we ask, therefore, is to be allowed the same amount of liberty +which Mr. Arnold himself has exercised, and to be permitted to do what he +has done. We, too, would fain disengage what is valuable in Wordsworth’s +poetry from what is worthless. We, too, would fain “exhibit his best work, +and clear away obstructions from around it.” But we contend, and we +willingly leave the decision to disinterested lovers of poetry, that such +poems as <i>Ruth</i> and <i>Simon Lee</i> are not only not Wordsworth’s best work, +but not good work at all; on the contrary are part of the obstruction from +which it should be cleared.</p> + +<p>The next two poems in the “Narrative” section refer to the fidelity of +dogs, and a single stanza will suffice to show that they are of much the +same calibre as the two that precede them:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> +But hear a wonder for whose sake<br /> +This lamentable tale I tell!<br /> +A lasting monument of words<br /> +This wonder merits well.<br /> +The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,<br /> +Repeating the same timid cry,<br /> +This Dog, had been through three months’ space<br /> +A dweller in that savage place.</p> + +<p>Next in order comes <i>Hart-Leap Well</i>, which consists of two parts. In the +first we come across such lines and phrases as “Joy sparkled in the +prancing courser’s eyes,” “A rout that made the echoes roar,” “Soon did +the Knight perform what he had said, And far and wide thereof the fame did +ring,” “But there is matter for a second rhyme, And I to this would add +another tale,” which are simply a distress to the disinterested reader of +poetry. In the second part, the poet warms up, and ends with a passage +which is very beautiful:</p> + +<p class="poem">Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well;<br /> +Small difference lies between thy creed and mine:<br /> +This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell;<br /> +His death was mourned by sympathy divine.<br /> +<br /> +The Being, that is in the clouds and air,<br /> +That is in the green leaves among the groves,<br /> +Maintains a deep and reverential care<br /> +For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.<br /> +<br /> +The Pleasure-house is dust:—behind, before,<br /> +This is no common waste, no common gloom;<br /> +But Nature, in due course of time, once more<br /> +Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.<br /> +<br /> +She leaves these objects to a slow decay,<br /> +That what we are, and have been, may be known;<br /> +But, at the coming of the milder day,<br /> +These monuments shall all be overgrown!<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span><br /> +One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,<br /> +Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals;<br /> +Never to blend our pleasure or our pride<br /> +With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.</p> + +<p>Of course, this is poetry, and very good poetry; and it is, justly, one of +the favourite passages of ardent admirers of Wordsworth. But we can +scarcely refrain from saying that, good as it is, there exists something +of precisely the same kind, and, as it happens, in precisely the same +metre, which is considerably better. Surely, no one will have any +difficulty in naming it. It is Gray’s famous <i>Elegy</i>. Yet we remember how +indignant the “Wordsworthians against whom we ought to be on our guard” +were with the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, because there appeared in it a paper in +which Wordsworth and Gray were compared. To mention them in the same +breath was sacrilege! We do not wish to affirm that the disinterested +lover of poetry believes Gray ever to have scaled the heights where +Wordsworth’s wing sometimes floats almost without effort. But it cannot be +uninteresting to mark that, in what we may call the middle notes, +Wordsworth is distinctly inferior to Gray, though ever and anon his voice +gets entirely beyond Gray’s compass.</p> + +<p>It would be impossible, with any regard for space, to quote from, or even +to name, every poem reproduced by Mr. Arnold, which in our opinion would +have been better suppressed. But if we seem to have established our +contention so far, we think the reader may rely upon it that he would more +or less concur in what else might be said on this score. <i>The Force of +Prayer</i>, <i>The Affliction of Margaret</i>, <i>The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian +Woman</i>, are little if any less trivial than the poems already condemned; +while in <i>The Song at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> Feast of Brougham Castle</i>, we read six pages +equally poor and unpoetical, suddenly to come upon such a quatrain as the +following:</p> + +<p class="poem">Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;<br /> +His daily teachers had been woods and rills,<br /> +The silence that is in the starry sky,<br /> +The sleep that is among the lonely hills.</p> + +<p>The last two lines it would be impossible to praise too highly. Only the +silence of profound reverence can do them justice. They are touches like +these, touches like “the harvest of a quiet eye,” that give to Wordsworth +his holy predominance, and whatever predominance, after fair examination, +must be adjudged him. But how few they are! Perhaps it is in the nature of +things that they should be so. But being so few and far between, they +cannot fill up the blank that intervenes. They are indeed “Angels’ +visits.” But even poetry has to do mainly with human guests, and a poet +must be judged, as Mr. Arnold truly affirms, by “the ample body of +powerful work” he leaves behind. We cannot assume that much of +Wordsworth’s poetry is not unutterably bad, because some of it is +unutterably beautiful. The utmost we can do is to grant, concerning him, +what he himself said so finely of a young girl:</p> + +<p class="poem">If thou appear’st untouched by solemn thought,<br /> +Thy nature is not therefore less divine:<br /> +Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year,<br /> +And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,<br /> +God being with thee when we know it not.</p> + +<p>It is possible that like the “dear child, dear girl,” he lay in Abraham’s +bosom “all the year,” but he communicates the fact, he impresses us with +the fact, but seldom. As a rule, he seems to be outside the Temple<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> +altogether. Hence these magnificent bursts of poetical depth and +sublimity, which, be it said, are peculiar to Wordsworth, are mere short +passages, and there are not many of them. But if they suffice, after a +complete survey of the works of both poets, to place Wordsworth above +Byron, we shall be obliged to conclude that they suffice to place him +above every poet that ever lived. That such a theory of poetry, such a +canon of criticism is untenable, unless we are to cast every hitherto +accepted theory of poetry and every former canon of criticism to the +winds, we trust, in due course, to be able to establish.</p> + +<p>We are aware that <i>The Brothers</i> is a favourite composition with +thoroughgoing Wordsworthians. But as we have been told to be on our guard +against them, we need not hesitate to say that it seems to us to consist +of very ordinary verse, and the piece itself to be devoid of any real +poetical temperament, though it fills sixteen pages in Mr. Arnold’s +collection. Sixteen more are occupied by <i>Margaret</i>, upon which we are +unable to pronounce a different or a modified verdict. Both abound in such +passages as the following:</p> + +<p class="poem">He left his house: two wretched days had past,<br /> +And on the third, as wistfully she raised<br /> +Her head from off her pillow, to look forth,<br /> +Like one in trouble, for returning light,<br /> +Within her chamber-casement she espied<br /> +A folded paper, lying as if placed<br /> +To meet her waking eyes. This tremblingly<br /> +She opened—found no writing, but beheld<br /> +Pieces of money carefully enclosed,<br /> +Silver and gold. “I shuddered at the sight,”<br /> +Said Margaret, “for I knew it was his hand<br /> +Which placed it there: and ere that day was ended,<br /> +That long and anxious day! I learned from one<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>Sent hither by my husband to impart<br /> +The heavy news,—that he had joined a Troop<br /> +Of soldiers, going to a distant land.<br /> +He left me thus—he could not gather heart<br /> +To take a farewell of me; for he feared<br /> +That I should follow with my Babes, and sink<br /> +Beneath the misery of that wandering life.”</p> + +<p>If this be poetry, then poetry is very easily written, and what has +hitherto been supposed to be the highest, the most difficult, and the +rarest, of the arts, presents no more difficulty to the person who knows +how to write at all than the simplest, baldest, and most unartistic prose. +What, for instance, is this?—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>At length the expected letter from the kinsman came, with kind +assurances that he would do his utmost for the welfare of the boy; to +which requests were added that forthwith he might be sent to him. Ten +times or more the letter was read over. Isabel went forth to show it +to the neighbours round; nor was there at that time on English land a +prouder heart than Luke’s. When Isabel had to her house returned, the +old man said, “He shall depart to-morrow.” To this word the housewife +answered, talking much of things which, if at such short notice he +should go, would surely be forgotten. But at length she gave consent, +and Michael was at ease.</p></div> + +<p>Is this prose or verse? We have printed it as prose. Wordsworth wrote it +as verse, and Mr. Arnold has reproduced it as poetry. Had all Wordsworth’s +compositions been of this calibre, and a painfully large number of them +are, well might John Stuart Mill affirm that any man of good abilities +might become as good a poet as Wordsworth by giving his mind to it, and we +will add that a man of good abilities could hardly employ them worse. Yet +this passage, and fourteen pages of verse not one whit better than it, are +to be met with in <i>Michael</i>, one of the narrative poems Mr. Arnold, with +special emphasis, begs us to admire. “The right sort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> of verse,” he says, +“to choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true and most +characteristic form of expression, is a line like this from <i>Michael</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">And never lifted up a single stone.</p> + +<p>There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style, +strictly so called; yet it is expressive of the highest and most +expressive kind.” Of course, in order to properly appreciate it, we must +know the context, which fortunately is easily compressed. Michael and his +son Luke were to build a sheepfold; but, as told in the passage we have +printed, Luke is sent to a kinsman, who will advance him in life. Before +he goes, Michael takes him to lay the first stone of the sheepfold. The +lad then leaves home, falls into dissolute courses, and at last hides +himself beyond the seas. After that, it is narrated of Michael:</p> + +<p class="poem">And to that hollow dell from time to time<br /> +Did he repair, to build the Fold of which<br /> +His flock had need. ’Tis not forgotten yet<br /> +The pity which was then in every heart<br /> +For the Old Man—and ’tis believed by all<br /> +That many and many a day he thither went,<br /> +And never lifted up a single stone.</p> + +<p>We have asked several disinterested lovers of poetry, some of them ardent +admirers of Wordsworth, what they think of this; and we are bound to say +that most of them failed to see anything in it whatsoever. That is not our +case. We feel the force of the situation, and the apt simplicity of the +concluding line. Yet repeat it, dwell on it, and surrender ourselves to it +as we will, we fail to persuade ourselves that it merits the lofty eulogy +pronounced on it by Mr. Arnold. It is with hesitation that we presume, on +such a point, and where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> the issue is so direct, to place our opinion in +seeming competition with his; but we can only leave the decision to the +<i>communis sensus</i> of disinterested lovers of poetry. But nothing—not even +Mr. Arnold’s authority—could satisfy us that this line suffices to lend +the wings of poetry to fourteen closely printed pages of such pedestrian +verse as that of which <i>Michael</i> for the most part consists.</p> + +<p>The only other poem in the “Narrative” section of the volume is <i>The +Leech-Gatherer</i>; and it, besides containing many lines of admirable +poetry, is itself a coherently beautiful poem. But when, resuming our +analysis, we enquire how much poetry there is in the 112 pages, or in more +than the third portion of the volume we have as yet examined, what do we +find? Exactly 20, and only 20, which we honestly believe the disinterested +lover of poetry, the critic to whom Mr. Arnold makes appeal, would +recognise as strictly deserving that description. We can seriously assert +that this is the amount we should save from the wreck, if we were editing +a selection from Wordsworth, were disengaging his good work from his bad, +and were seeking to obtain for him readers who care nothing whatever about +him personally, and who only wish ever and anon to steep themselves in the +atmosphere of native and sterling poetry. We are well aware that, from +another and a more extended point of view, Wordsworth never wrote a line, +in verse or in prose, which is not worth preserving, and worth reading. +But that is not at present the question. We are dealing with the critical +contention of a great and influential critic, that “what strikes me with +admiration, what establishes in my opinion Wordsworth’s superiority”—to +Byron, be it understood, and to every English poet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> since Milton—“is the +great and ample body of powerful work which remains to him, even after all +his inferior work has been cleared away.” This it is which renders it +necessary to clear away the inferior work, in order that we may see if the +body of “powerful” work that remains be really “ample” or not.</p> + +<p>The “Lyrical Poems” contain the best, the most characteristic, and the +most valuable of the compositions of Wordsworth. For our part, we should +have excluded <i>To a Sky-Lark</i>, at page 126—not the beautiful one with the +same title at page 142—<i>Stray Pleasures</i>, the two poems <i>At the Grave of +Burns</i>, <i>Yarrow Visited</i>, <i>Yarrow Revisited</i>, in spite of their vogue with +Wordsworthians <i>quand même</i>, <i>To May</i>, and <i>The Primrose of the Rock</i>. +There would then be left 33 pages containing the best poems <i>of their +kind</i> anywhere to be found, and of inestimable value to the disinterested +lover of poetry. The fervid lover of poetry knows them by heart, and +carries them with him through life. Is it necessary to give their names? +<i>She was a Phantom of Delight</i>, <i>The Solitary Reaper</i>, <i>Three Years She +Grew</i>, <i>To the Cuckoo</i>, <i>I Wandered lonely as a Cloud</i>—these, and their +companions, to be found about the middle of Mr. Arnold’s volume, are among +the most precious, and will remain among the enduring possessions of +mankind. Nor is it only that they fill the mind with elevating thoughts +and swell the heart with sacred sentiments. They make one regard, with a +peculiar affection, the poet who wrote them. But we must not allow this +literary love to warp literary judgment. No such feeling is awakened for +their authors by <i>Childe Harold</i> or <i>Hamlet</i>. But to conclude that +Wordsworth is, therefore, a greater poet than Byron or Shakespeare, would +be as illegitimate in the one instance as in the other. It would be to +imitate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> the filial and uxorious fondness of the late Mr. Carlyle, who +gravely tells us that his father had a larger intellect than Burns, and +that his amiable, long-suffering wife wrote letters of greater value and +insight than the works of George Sand and George Eliot, and “all the pack +of scribbling women from the beginning of time.” To love Wordsworth is +pardonable; nay, it is inevitable to those who are intimate with his +tenderest work. But the critic must disengage his judgment from his +affections, if he is not to mislead the persons he aspires to instruct, +and to injure the art of whose dignity he is bound to be jealous.</p> + +<p>Briefly, then, and pursuing to the end the “disinterested-lover-of-poetry” +method recommended to us by Mr. Arnold, and of which we think we have +already given illustrations to enable any one to decide for himself +whether we pursue it with equity and candour, we reach the conclusion +that, of the 317 pages composing Mr. Arnold’s collection, only 103, on a +liberal estimate, contain what is worth preserving as poetry; or at least, +if there be any dispute as to whether it is poetry, there can be none, +outside the specially Wordsworthian circle, as to its being very inferior +poetry indeed, and in no degree calculated to confer, extend, or uphold +any man’s reputation as a poet. That it is admirable in sentiment and +laudable in moral purpose, may at once be granted. But the purest of +sentiments and the loftiest of purposes do not constitute poetry, even +when apparelled in verse. Indeed we may say of them what Mr. Arnold +himself says of those portions of Wordsworth’s writings which he discards, +that they are “doctrine such as we hear in church, religious and +philosophical doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves passages of +such doctrine,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> and brings them forward in proof of his poet’s excellence. +But however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here presented, more of +the characters of <i>poetic</i> truth, the kind of truth we require from a +poet.”</p> + +<p>It may possibly seem an ungracious part to dwell upon the inferior +portions of Wordsworth work, and to play the <i>rôle</i> of Devil’s Advocate in +the case of one who is assured beforehand of the honours of canonisation. +But it should be remembered that this invidious task has been imposed upon +us by Mr. Arnold, who has asserted, and challenged contradiction to the +assertion, that in Wordsworth is to be found “an ampler body of powerful +work,” which constitutes his superiority over every English poet since +Milton. It is he who has rendered it necessary, in justice to other poets, +to enquire with accuracy, what <i>is</i> the amount of powerful work to be +found in Wordsworth; and this cannot be done without careful and judicial +scrutiny. Our object is the same as Mr. Arnold’s; not to decry Wordsworth, +but to ascertain his proper place in relation to other poets. If we seem +to have spoken of him harshly, then so must Mr. Arnold; the only +difference between us being that he thinks a certain proportion of +Wordsworth’s verse poor stuff, while we view a yet larger portion of it in +that light. Nor is it the example of Mr. Arnold alone that can be cited in +exoneration of perfect outspokenness. M. Scherer is a distinguished French +critic, whom Mr. Arnold quotes, and M. Scherer has in turn introduced Mr. +Arnold’s <i>Selections</i> from Wordsworth to the French public in the pages of +the <i>Temps</i>. He is a warm admirer of Wordsworth, and, as Mr. Arnold tells +us, an excessive depreciator of Byron. From him, therefore, we may, with +all the less scruple, cite the following avowals:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>The simplicity of Wordsworth’s subjects and manner too often +degenerates into triviality, the simplicity of his style into +poverty. He abuses his love for puerile anecdotes, makes us a present +of stories about dogs, and of recitals of what a little girl has said +to her sheep. He not only parades enthusiasm for flowers and birds, +but predilection for beggars, cripples, and idiots. The lower a +person is in the scale of being, the more he strives to awaken our +sympathy in his favour. There are no details so minute, so +insignificant, that he does not take a special pleasure in remarking +them. Is he narrating a walk he takes in summer, he will speak of +“the host of insects gathering round his face, and which are ever +with him as he paces along.”</p> + +<p>The habit of seeking and finding lessons in the smallest incidents of +his walks becomes a didactic mania. He extracts moralities from every +object, he preaches sermons at every turn. Often, too, this preaching +vein is far from being poetical. One sometimes seems to be listening +to the psalm-singing of a Conventicle. This, for example, resembles a +hymn of Watts.</p> + +<p>The poetry of Wordsworth, with the tendency it always had towards the +prosaic, often lapses into it altogether.</p></div> + +<p>This, we submit, is only another way of saying what we have ventured to +say, and what Mr. Arnold himself has said. May we not reasonably conclude +that M. Scherer would reject at least all that we have rejected? But, in +any case, that there is substantial agreement between us and him, so far, +is evident.</p> + +<p>What, then, is the “ample body of powerful work” that is left of +Wordsworth after the eliminating process has been applied to it by the +disinterested lover of poetry? Between three and four thousand lines; +rather more than the amount of matter in the third and fourth cantos of +<i>Childe Harold</i>, rather less than the amount of matter in <i>Hamlet</i>. The +quantity therefore, the “body” of work left, is not very large. Still we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> +should not contest that it was “ample” enough to establish the superiority +of Wordsworth over Byron, if it happened to be sufficiently “powerful” for +the purpose. Though quantity must count for something, even in the +comparison of poet with poet, since quantity implies copiousness, and +usually implies versatility, quality counts for much more, if the +difference in quality be marked, and suffices to abolish the consideration +of quantity altogether, if the superiority in respect of quality be +sufficiently great. If, for example, the four thousand lines, or +thereabouts, of poetry Wordsworth has written, had been embodied, say, in +a <i>Hamlet</i>, then work so powerful would have been ample to establish his +superiority not only over every English poet since Milton, but over every +poet since the one who has left us, so to speak, several <i>Hamlets</i>.</p> + +<p>For what is it that renders <i>Hamlet</i> so great and so powerful? Is it +single lines of beautiful poetry? Is it detached passages of profound and +elevated thought presented in poetic guise? These go for much, more +especially when we consider them in connection with that of which they are +the drapery. But what would they be, and what should we think of them, +detached from the conception of the drama itself, without the plot, +action, and progress of the piece, without the invention and unfolding of +its characters, without its varied and forcible situations, without its +wit, its irony, its humour? What should we think of <i>Hamlet</i> if divested +of the panorama of moving human passions, of its merciless tragedy, and, +finally, of its utter absence of moral so complete, that moralists have +been for a hundred years wrangling what the moral is? These are the +qualities, and these alone, which make great poetry and great poets.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>What has Wordsworth of all these? The answer, if candid and disinterested, +must be, Absolutely nothing. He has written no epic, no drama, no poem of +any kind in which so much as an attempt is made to deal with the clashing +of the various passions that “stir this mortal frame.” Of Action he is +utterly devoid. Of Invention, he seems absolutely unconscious. He has no +wit; he has no humour. He has conceived no character, he has portrayed no +character. If he can be said to deal with situations at all, they are of +the simplest and most elementary kind, and he does not in any sense create +them. He finds them at his door. No one blames him for making use of them, +where he makes use of them well; but this is a very different thing from +the invention shown in <i>Macbeth</i> or <i>The Tempest</i>, or even in <i>Cain</i>, in +<i>Manfred</i>, and in <i>The Siege of Corinth</i>. Sardanapalus is not a Lear, nor +is Myrra a Cordelia. But, as exhibitions and portraitures of human +character and human passion in poetry they are as much beyond <i>Lucy Gray</i>, +or <i>Michael</i>, or the little Child in <i>We are Seven</i>, as Lear and Cordelia +are beyond them in turn.</p> + +<p>Upon this point let us again hear M. Scherer:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We must expect from Wordsworth neither the knowledge of the human +heart which worldly experience gives, nor that interior drama of the +passions which a man can describe well only on condition of having +been their victim, nor those general views upon history and society +which are formed partly by study, partly by the practice of public +affairs. Our poet is as much a stranger to the disquietudes of +thought as to those of ambition, to the sufferings of love and of +hate as to that resignation at which one arrives when one has +discerned how very small are the great affairs of this world. He has +nothing of that sublime melancholy, of those fervid questionings, of +those audacious revolts, in which poetry delighted fifty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> years ago. +Still less has he that mocking scepticism, that raillery now gay now +bitter, which succeeded the songs of despair. He will never be of +those who trouble souls as Byron does, who arm them with irony like +Heine, or who calm them, like Goethe, by the virtue of true +understanding. Wordsworth is simply a Solitary who has long gazed +upon Nature and much analysed his own feelings. Scarcely should we +dare to call him a philosopher, so wanting in him is the reasoning +and speculative element. Even the title of thinker only half becomes +him. He is a contemplative.</p></div> + +<p>It is true that, at the end of his review of Wordsworth, and without any +previous admonition that he is going to do so, M. Scherer says, in one +brief sentence, “Wordsworth seems to me to come after Milton, notably below +him in my opinion, but withal the first after him”; thus endorsing the +judgment of Mr. Arnold. But, unlike Mr. Arnold, he makes no attempt to +establish or justify this view, but throws it out, as an <i>obiter dictum</i>, +after writing a long essay, every argument and every phrase of which tend +towards a diametrically opposite conclusion. So thoroughly is this the +case, that we can honestly say we agree with every word in his essay, with +the exception of the one brief sentence we have just cited.</p> + +<p>But in the longer and more detailed passage quoted above, is not +everything conceded for which we are contending? According to M. Scherer, +Wordsworth has knowledge neither of the human heart nor of the interior +drama of the passions. He has no broad views of history and society. He is +a stranger to love, hatred, ambition, and the disquietudes they cause, as +well as to the disquietudes caused by deep thought; and not having passed +through these, he has necessarily not “come out upon the other side,” and +is equally a stranger to the tranquillity of complete knowledge and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> +complete experience. He is not a philosopher; he is hardly a thinker. He +is a contemplative solitary, who has consorted much with woods, lakes, and +mountains, and has dwelt much upon the sensations they excite in himself. +Verily, this is a sorry equipment for a great poet. Is it an exaggeration +to say that, if all this be true, Wordsworth is destitute of most of the +qualities which in a great poet have hitherto been deemed indispensable? +If, in spite of these remarkable deficiencies, he really be the greatest +English poet since Milton, we shall be forced to conclude that English +poets since Milton have been far less powerful, of far lower calibre, and +of far less value, than has generally been supposed.</p> + +<p>What then is the precise value, the real calibre, the particular kind of +power, of that “ampler body of powerful work” which Wordsworth has given +us? We have seen it is not an epic, nor a drama, nor one great +comprehensive poem of any kind. It consists of lyrics, ballads, sonnets, +and odes; of many of which it would not be just or critical to say more +than that they are very sweet and charming, several of which must be +pronounced exquisite, and a few, very few, of which may be designated +sublime. We own we share the general opinion that the greatest composition +of Wordsworth is the <i>Ode on Intimations of Immortality</i>. We are surprised +and disappointed to find Mr. Arnold speaking rather coldly of it; and M. +Scherer likewise refers to it in a depreciatory tone, though he gives +different reasons for his conclusion. M. Scherer thinks it “sounds a +little false,” and adds that he “cannot help seeing in it a theme adopted +with reference to the poetic developments of which Wordsworth was +susceptible, rather than a very serious belief of the author.” We confess +we think the judgment harsh, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> reasons given for it insufficient, +if not indeed irrelevant. The objection Mr. Arnold entertains for it is +that “it has not the character of poetic truth of the best kind; it has no +real solidity. The instinct of delight in Nature and her beauty had no +doubt extraordinary strength in Wordsworth himself as a child. But to say +that universally this instinct is mighty in childhood, and tends to die +away afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful.”</p> + +<p>Now, with all deference to Mr. Arnold, which is due to him in a special +manner when he is expounding Wordsworth, Wordsworth does not say this. In +the first place, Wordsworth, after describing the comparative and +temporary diminution of this instinct, describes its revival and +transfiguration in another guise. But what is far more important to note +is, Wordsworth does <i>not</i> say the instinct is universal. He is writing as +a poet, not as a psychologist; and though he treats of an objective infant +for a time, and uses the pronoun “<i>our</i> infancy,” he in reality is +describing his own experience, and letting it take its chance of being the +experience of a certain number of other people. What, we may well ask, can +a poet do more than this, when he gets into the higher range, the upper +atmosphere of poetry? When Shakespeare talks of “the shade of melancholy +boughs,” he does not mean that everybody feels them to be melancholy. That +is the privilege—the melancholy privilege, if any one wills it so—of the +higher natures. That what Wordsworth describes in his splendid <i>Ode</i> not +only was true of himself, but is true likewise of all great poetic +spirits, we entertain no doubt; and it will become true of an +ever-increasing number of persons, if mankind is to make progress in the +intimate and integral union of intellectual and poetic sentiment. In our +opinion, the highest note of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> Wordsworth is struck in this Ode, and +maintained through a composition of considerable length and of +argumentative unity of purpose. It is struck by him elsewhere—indeed in +the lines on Hartley Coleridge, we have a distinct overture, so to speak, +to the Ode; but nowhere is it sustained for so long, or with such oneness, +definiteness, and largeness of aim. There is, perhaps, no finer poem, of +equal length, in any language. We could well understand any one +maintaining that there exists no other so fine.</p> + +<p>But, if this Ode be struck out of the account, what remains to represent +an “ample body of powerful work”? For, after all, in criticism, if we +criticise at all, we must use words with some definite meaning. Perhaps +Mr. Arnold would tell us that it is not the business of true Culture to be +too definite; and we should heartily agree with him. One of the things +that makes prose so inferior to poetry is its inaccurate precision. But it +is Mr. Arnold himself who, on this occasion, compels us to be precise. He +has elected to compare Wordsworth with every poet since Milton, and, in +doing so, he has been obliged to use language which, to be of any use, +must be more or less definite. What is meant by “ample”? Still more, what +is meant by “powerful”? Does he mean that Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Poems,” +which we think to be the best of Wordsworth’s compositions after the Ode, +and which he thinks the best, before the Ode, are “powerful”? Let us quote +perhaps the best of them, already quoted elsewhere, but that can never be +read too often:</p> + +<p class="poem">Behold her, single in the field,<br /> +Yon solitary Highland Lass!<br /> +Reaping and singing by herself;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>Stop here, or gently pass!<br /> +Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,<br /> +And sings a melancholy strain;<br /> +O listen! for the Vale profound<br /> +Is overflowing with the sound.<br /> +<br /> +No Nightingale did ever chaunt<br /> +So sweetly to reposing bands<br /> +Of Travellers in some shady haunt,<br /> +Among Arabian sands:<br /> +A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard<br /> +In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,<br /> +Breaking the silence of the seas<br /> +Among the farthest Hebrides.<br /> +<br /> +Will no one tell me what she sings?<br /> +Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow<br /> +For old, unhappy, far-off things,<br /> +And battles long ago:<br /> +Or is it some more humble lay,<br /> +Familiar matter of to-day?<br /> +Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,<br /> +That has been, and may be again?<br /> +<br /> +Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang<br /> +As if her song could have no ending;<br /> +I saw her singing at her work,<br /> +And o’er the sickle bending;—<br /> +I listened till I had my fill,<br /> +And when I mounted up the hill,<br /> +The music in my heart I bore,<br /> +Long after it was heard no more.</p> + +<p>This is exquisite; and of the sort of exquisiteness that leads one, in +private, and in uncritical colloquies, to fall, as the phrase runs, into +ecstasies. But can it, with any regard to accuracy of speech, be described +as “powerful” work? We submit that it cannot. <i>Lear</i> is powerful. The +first six books of <i>Paradise Lost</i> are powerful. The first four cantos of +<i>Don Juan</i> are powerful. The <i>Ode on Intimations of Immortality</i> is +powerful. But unless we are to lose ourselves in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> labyrinth of critical +confusion, we must no more allege or allow that <i>The Solitary Reaper</i> is +powerful, than we can affirm that <i>Where the Bee Sucks</i> is powerful, that +Milton’s sonnet, <i>To the Nightingale</i> is powerful, or that Byron’s <i>She +Walks in Beauty like the Night</i> is powerful. They are all very beautiful; +but that is another matter, and it will not do to confound totally +different things.</p> + +<p>How many lyrics, as perfect as the one we have quoted, has Wordsworth +written? We can count but nine; and the most liberal computation could not +extend them beyond twelve. To these would have to be added perhaps twice +as many, very inferior to these, but still very beautiful, a certain +number, but a very limited number, of first-rate sonnets, the Odes we have +referred to, and detached lines and passages from other poems, notably the +passage in the poem <i>On Revisiting Tintern Abbey</i>. The result would be +about a third of the amount we ourselves should altogether extract from +Wordsworth, and of which alone it could justly be said that some of it was +powerful, and all of it was very beautiful work.</p> + +<p>This is what, we venture to assert, remains, after rigid scrutiny, of “the +ampler body of powerful work” which Wordsworth has given us. These are the +compositions which, according to Mr. Arnold, “in real poetical achievement +... in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring +freshness,” establish Wordsworth’s superiority.</p> + +<p>Now can this claim possibly be allowed, unless, as we have said, all +previous canons of criticism, and all previous estimates of poetry are to +be cast to the winds? If it is to be allowed, then Æschylus, Euripides, +Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, must come down from their +pedestals, and be regarded by us with very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> different eyes from those with +which we have hitherto scanned them. For what are the marks, what the +qualities, which have distinguished these poets above their fellows, and +by reason of which the world has extolled their genius? It is not merely +for poetic diction, for tenderness of sentiment, for elevation of feeling, +for apt simile, appropriate metaphor, illuminating imagery, and the play +of fancy as exhibited in subordinate detail, that we estimate them as we +do. Neither is it, as we have already pointed out, but as we must repeat, +for detached passages of sublimity, nor yet for short poems of exquisite +beauty, that they have been assigned the rank they occupy. They occupy +that rank by reason of their great conceptions, by reason of their +capacity to project long and comparatively complex poems dedicated to a +lofty theme, and to conduct these through all their intricate windings +from first to last, by employing all the arts, all the expedients, all the +resources of Imagination, chief among which are Action, Invention, and +Situation. To these, of course, must be added copious, elastic, and +dignified language, melody, pathos, and just imagery; for, without these, +a man is not a poet at all. These are the very instruments of his craft, +the very credentials of his profession; and if he has these, no one will +challenge his right to be called a poet. But, unless the higher qualities, +the greater credentials are also his, he must be content with an inferior +place, no matter how many beautiful or sublime things he may have said, +and no matter how excellent the doctrines he may have taught. He has +failed to show his mastery over the great materials, his familiarity with +the great purposes, of his art. Wordsworth projected two long poems, <i>The +Prelude</i> and <i>The Excursion</i>; and, practically, these two are one.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> They +are of portentous length; and that is their only claim to be considered +great. They have no Action, no Situation, no Invention, no Characters. +They consist of pages upon pages, nay, of books upon books, of +interminable talk, in which in reality Wordsworth himself is the only +talker. Little of the talk is poetry. Much of it is, as Mr. Arnold says, +“abstract verbiage.” But we need not pursue the theme. Mr. Arnold candidly +confesses that when Jeffrey said of <i>The Excursion</i>, “this will never do,” +he was quite right.</p> + +<p>Unquestionably, he was right; and he would still have been right, even had +<i>The Excursion</i> contained a far greater number of passages of true poetry +than it does. It will be an evil day for poetry, and for the readers of +poetry, if it ever comes to be allowed that the sole or the main function +of poetry is to <i>talk about</i> things, and that a man can get himself +accepted as a great poet by pursuing this course. Unfortunately, it was +Wordsworth’s theory that he could. It would be fatal if critics became of +the same opinion. It is their bounden duty, on the contrary, to protest +against such a theory. Wordsworth sets it down, in black and white, both +in prose and verse, over and over again:</p> + +<p class="poem">O Reader! had you in your mind<br /> +Such stores as silent thought can bring,<br /> +O gentle Reader! you will find<br /> +A tale in everything.<br /> +What more I have to say is short,<br /> +And you must kindly take it:<br /> +It is no tale; but, should you think,<br /> +Perhaps a tale you’ll make it.</p> + +<p>Here is the theory full-blown. The poet is not to tell the tale, the +reader is to make it one, by thinking; and if he only thinks enough, he +will find a tale in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> everything! Could anything be more grotesque, or more +utterly opposed to any sane canon of the function of an author, and his +relation to his readers? It is the business of the poet to tell the tale, +and thereby to set the reader thinking; an altogether different process +from the one here suggested. “Wordsworthians against whom we must be upon +our guard,” often cite the following stanza with admiration:</p> + +<p class="poem">The moving accident is not my trade;<br /> +To freeze the blood I have no ready arts:<br /> +’Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,<br /> +To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts!</p> + +<p>Have they forgotten the “moving accidents by flood and field,” or do they +not know whose trade it was to unfold a tale that</p> + +<p class="poem">Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood?</p> + +<p>Piping a simple song for thinking hearts, is all very well. But it will +not do to say, or to suggest, or to allow it to be inferred, that doing +this makes a man as great a poet as doing what Wordsworth did not and +plainly could not do. In the last book of <i>The Excursion</i>, he says:</p> + +<p class="poem">Life, death, eternity! momentous themes<br /> +Are they—and might demand a seraph’s tongue,<br /> +Were they not equal to their own support;<br /> +And therefore no incompetence of mine<br /> +Could do them wrong....<br /> +Ye wished for art and circumstance, that make<br /> +The individual known and understood;<br /> +And such as my best judgment could select<br /> +From what the place afforded, could be given.</p> + +<p>But <i>no</i> subject is equal to its own support, where the poet is concerned, +however it may be with the preacher and the moralist. The poet himself +must support it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> We <i>do</i> wish for act and circumstance, in poetry; and +when Wordsworth tells us that he has, in <i>The Excursion</i>, given us the +best of these he can, we can only answer that this best is not enough, but +wholly insufficient and inadequate.</p> + +<p>That Mr. Arnold would deny all this, if put to him plainly, we do not +believe. It is all the more to be regretted that he should have expressed +himself in such a manner as to encourage others in forming judgments and +holding opinions which imply affirmation to the contrary. When he quotes +from Wordsworth the following lines,</p> + +<p class="poem">Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope,<br /> +And melancholy fear subdued by faith,<br /> +Of blessëd consolation, in distress,<br /> +Of moral strength and intellectual power,<br /> +Of joy in widest commonalty spread,</p> + +<p>and adds that “here we have a poet intent on the best and master thing,” +and wishes us to infer Wordsworth’s superiority from that fact, does he +not perceive that he is not only misleading his readers, but flagrantly +contradicting what he himself avers in the selfsame essay? Being “intent” +on these subjects is not enough. A further question remains to be +answered; viz. how has the poet dealt with them? Nowhere has Wordsworth +dealt with them so completely, so ambitiously, so exhaustively, as in <i>The +Excursion</i>. Yet what does Mr. Arnold say of it? He says that <i>The +Excursion</i> can never be a satisfactory work to the disinterested lover of +poetry, and that much of it is “a tissue of elevated but abstract +verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry.” It is plain, therefore, +that being “intent” even on “the best and master thing” does not suffice.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> +The passage Mr. Arnold quotes, leaving the incautious reader to infer that +it <i>does</i> suffice, is merely the</p> + +<p class="poem">Life, death, eternity! momentous themes,</p> + +<p>and their being “equal to their own support” over again. Wordsworth is +perpetually telling us that his subject is Man, and wishes us to infer +that, the subject being great, what is written on it must be great. +Unfortunately, Man, with him, is like Love with the Scotch girl; it is Man +“in the abstract.” Shakespeare also treats of Man; but he treats of him +<i>in men</i>, and Wordsworth does not. In fact, he communes. As M. Scherer +says, he is a Solitary, a Contemplative. In a word, he is essentially, and +before all things a subjective poet, and reader after reader has +complained, and critic after critic has confessed, that to be subjective, +not objective, to reflect instead of to act, to think rather than to +narrate, is the bane of modern poetry, and the conclusive mark of the +inferiority of so large a proportion of it.</p> + +<p>Yet, this notwithstanding, Mr. Arnold tells us that Wordsworth “deals with +that in which life really consists”; and, not content with this, he +actually goes on to declare that “Wordsworth deals with more of life than +they do”;—“they” being every English poet since Milton, and indeed every +poet of every tongue since Milton, with the exception of Goethe! We can +only say that such an assertion is astounding; the most startling paradox, +indeed, we ever encountered in a criticism by a critic of authority. To +argue upon it against Mr. Arnold is, happily, superfluous; for Mr. Arnold +has anticipated and categorically answered his own paradox. Let him open +his own poems; let<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> him turn to <i>Stanzas In Memory Of Obermann</i>, and let +him read on until he comes to the following couplet:</p> + +<p class="poem">But Wordsworth’s eyes avert their ken,<br /> +From half of human fate.</p> + +<p>Has he forgotten the passage? or would he now expunge it? Mr. Arnold the +poet, and Mr. Arnold the critic, are evidently at issue. But we think no +one will experience much difficulty in deciding which of two has “hit the +nail on the head,” and whether it be sound criticism to affirm that +Wordsworth deals with that in which life really consists, or sound +criticism to affirm that with one half of life he does not deal at all. At +any rate, these rival criticisms are not to be reconciled, and Mr. Arnold +must elect between the two.</p> + +<p>What is the first and broad conclusion to be drawn from all that has been +said? It is this: that Wordsworth, as a poet, has treated great subjects +with marked and striking inadequacy, and smaller subjects with marked and +striking success. Now we submit that no man deserves to be called or +considered a great poet who has not treated some great subject in a great +manner. This is the mark, this is the test, of a great poet; and if we +once surrender this distinction, this standard, we soon lose ourselves in +hopeless critical confusion and entanglement. But no great subject <i>can</i> +be greatly or adequately treated in poetry, save objectively, and with the +help of action, passion, incident, of all the expedients, in fact, we have +enumerated. It never can be treated adequately or greatly by merely +writing <i>about</i> it. This is all that Wordsworth has done with his great +subjects, with “truth, grandeur, beauty, love,” and the rest of them;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> and +therefore, as far as great subjects are concerned, he has failed, and +failed conspicuously. Where he has succeeded, and succeeded conspicuously, +succeeded admirably, succeeded perfectly, is in smaller subjects, such as +<i>The Solitary Reaper</i>, <i>The Cuckoo</i>, <i>Three Years She Grew</i>, and their +companions. This is to have done much; but it is not to have left behind +“an ample body of powerful work.” Much less is it to have left behind an +“ampler” body of powerful work than every English poet since Milton, Byron +included.</p> + +<p>For what is the “ample body of powerful work” that Byron has left? If +Byron had failed as completely as Wordsworth in the treatment of his +larger themes, in a word, of his great subjects, then, in spite of much +fine lyrical work in Byron, the palm would have to be adjudged to +Wordsworth. But what critic of authority, who means to retain it, will +come forward and assert that Byron has failed in the treatment of his +larger themes, of his great subjects? Is <i>Childe Harold</i> a failure? Is +<i>Manfred</i> a failure? Is <i>Cain</i> a failure? Is <i>Don Juan</i> a failure? We, + +like Mr. Arnold, can honestly say that though we “felt the expiring wave +of Byron’s mighty influence,” we now “regard him, and have long regarded +him, without illusion”; in fact, with just as little illusion as we regard +Wordsworth, which is perhaps more than Mr. Arnold can yet say. We are +unable to assert, with Scott, that, in <i>Cain</i>, “Byron has matched Milton +on his own ground.” It would have been very wonderful if he had, as +wonderful as if Virgil had matched Homer on Homer’s own ground. “Sero +venientibus ossa”; or, as some one put it during the controversy between +the respective merits of the Ancients and the Moderns, “The Ancients have +stolen all our best ideas.” Besides, though Byron has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> not matched Milton +on the ground Milton occupied first and pretty nigh exhausted, Byron has +done many other things that Milton has not done. We are equally unable to +say that Byron, “as various in composition as Shakespeare himself, has +embraced every topic in human life”; though we strongly incline to think +that a dispassionate and exhaustive survey would show him to be more +various in composition, and to have embraced a greater number of topics +appertaining to human life, than any poet, English or foreign, ancient or +modern, except Shakespeare.<small><a name="f1.1" id="f1.1" href="#f1">[1]</a></small> Equally unable are we to accept the dictum +of Goethe, which Mr. Arnold vainly endeavours to explain away, by trying +to prove that Goethe did not mean what he certainly said, viz. that Byron +“is in the main greater than any other English poet.”</p> + +<p>Therefore, as we say, we look upon Byron without any illusion, and without +any wish to extol him above his real rank, by calling on his behalf even +such witnesses as Scott and Goethe. We look at his works with the same +detachment and dispassionateness as we look at the Parthenon or on the +Venus of Milo. But, so looking on them, looking on them not through any +pet theories of our own, not with any moral, theological, or sectarian +bias, but simply with the same “dispassionate-lover-of-poetry” eyes with +which we look on <i>Antigone</i>, the <i>Æneid</i>, the <i>Fairy Queen</i>, or <i>Faust</i>, +we find ourselves unable to resist the conclusion, that, like them, +<i>Childe Harold</i>, <i>Manfred</i>, <i>Cain</i>, and <i>Don Juan</i> are great poems, are +great themes, greatly treated. This is not to say that they are perfect, +that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> they are in every way satisfactory. Is the <i>Fairy Queen</i> perfectly +satisfactory? Is the <i>Æneid</i> perfectly satisfactory? No critic has ever +found them so. Is the <i>Iliad</i> perfectly satisfactory? It would be very odd +if it were, seeing that, as no one but Mr. Gladstone any longer doubts, it +is the work, not of one poet, but of several poets. But when all has been +urged against them that can be urged by the most judicial criticism, they +remain great subjects greatly executed. In the same manner, so do Byron’s +greater poems. Roughly and broadly speaking, they <i>are</i> satisfactory; +whereas in no sense can <i>The Prelude</i> and <i>The Excursion</i> be said to be +satisfactory. On the contrary, they are entirely unsatisfactory. In a +word, of Byron’s larger works, it may be said that they will “do”; of +Wordsworth’s, on the contrary, as Jeffrey said, and as Mr. Arnold himself +allows, they “won’t.” That is the distinction; and it is an immense one.</p> + +<p>Byron is not Shakespeare; for he lags considerably behind Shakespeare in +Invention, Action, and Character, by dint of which, and in conjunction +with which, the highest faculties of the poet are displayed. But a poet +may lag considerably behind Shakespeare, and yet exhibit these in a +conspicuous degree. It is in Character, no doubt, that Byron is more +particularly weak, as compared with Shakespeare, though he is by no means +so weak, in himself, and as compared with others, as people have come to +assume, by hearing the point so superficially iterated. It is not that +Byron cannot depict character; but he does not depict a sufficient number +of characters. They are not numerous and various enough. When M. Scherer +says that “Byron has treated hardly any subject but one—himself,” he is +repeating the parrot-cry of very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> shallow people, and is doing little +justice to his own powers as a critic. Indeed, had Shakespeare never +lived, it is probable that it would never have occurred to any one to urge +against Byron his deficiencies in this respect. It is because he is so +great a poet, because he is so great in other respects, and because some +critics have therefore inadvertently attempted to place him on a level +with Shakespeare, that his inferiority in this particular suggested itself +to those holding a juster view. Once suggested, it was harped upon, +exaggerated, and, we may fairly say, has now been done to death. We +presume, however, that no one would suggest that, even in the poetic +presentation of Character, Byron, however inferior to certain other +writers, is not immeasurably superior to Wordsworth, who never even +attempted to portray Character.</p> + +<p>When we turn from the consideration of the power shown by Byron in the +presentation of Character, to his power shown in Action, Invention, and +Situation, the account becomes a very different one. In brisk and rapid +narrative, in striking incident, in prompt and perpetual +movement—qualities in which not only is Wordsworth deficient, but of +which he is absolutely devoid—Byron exhibits his true greatness as a +poet. Even in the <i>Tales</i>, in <i>The Giaour</i>, <i>The Bride of Abydos</i>, <i>The +Corsair</i>, <i>The Siege of Corinth</i>, <i>The Prisoner of Chillon</i>, which it has +of late been the fashion, we had almost said the affectation, to +depreciate, there is a stir, a “go,” a swift and swirling torrent of +action, a current of animation, a full and foaming stream of narrative, a +tumult and conflict of incident, which will never cease to be regarded as +among the best, the highest, and the most indispensable elements of +poetry, until we are all laid up in lavender, until we all take to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> moping +and brooding over our own feelings, until we all confine ourselves to +“smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought”; until we all +become content</p> + +<p class="poem">To sit without emotion, hope, or aim,<br /> +In the loved presence of the cottage-fire.<br /> +And listen to the flapping of the flame,<br /> +Or kettle whispering its faint undersong.</p> + +<p>Even if one confined oneself merely to Byron’s <i>Tales</i>, the assertion that +Wordsworth “deals with more of life” than Byron, would be startling. Love, +hatred, revenge, ambition, the rivalry of creeds, travel, fighting, +fighting by land and fighting by sea, almost every passion, and every form +of adventure, these are the “life” they deal with; and we submit that it +is to deal with a considerable portion of it; with far more of life at any +rate than Wordsworth deals with in the whole of his poems. Listen to his +own confession:</p> + +<p class="poem">And thus from day to day my little boat<br /> +Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably.</p> + +<p>Now turn to Byron:</p> + +<p class="poem">O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,<br /> +Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,<br /> +Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,<br /> +Survey our empire, and behold our home.<br /> +These are our realms, no limit to their sway!</p> + +<p>That is precisely the difference. The horizon of Byron is so much larger. +Far from it being true that Wordsworth deals with more of life than Byron +does, the precise opposite is the truth, that Byron deals with far more of +life than Wordsworth does, if by life we mean the life of men, of men of +action, of men of the world, and not the life, as M. Scherer says, of +Solitaries, Contemplatives, and Recluses.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>If we turn to Byron’s Dramas, to <i>Sardanapalus</i>, to <i>The Two Foscari</i>, to +<i>The Doge of Venice</i>, no doubt we crave for yet more action, more +incident, more situation, than Byron gives us. But we do so because +Shakespeare has accustomed us to crave for more; and the craving has been +intensified by the sensational character of modern novels and modern +stage-plays. Nevertheless these are present, in no small amount, in the +plays we have named; and whether people choose to consider the amount +great or small, surely it is immeasurably greater than the amount of +action, invention, and situation Wordsworth exhibits in any and every +poem, of any and every kind, he ever wrote.</p> + +<p>We have more than once mentioned <i>Childe Harold</i>, but we must refer to it +once more and finally, in support and illustration of what we have been +urging. The persons who are of opinion that Byron never treated any +subject but himself, will perhaps likewise be of opinion that, in <i>Childe +Harold</i>, Byron treats only of himself, and that it is a purely +contemplative and subjective poem. A more superficial opinion could not +well be held. In form contemplative, it is in substance a poem full of +action, situation, and incident; in a word, it is a poem essentially and +notably objective. It is the only poem, ostensibly contemplative, of which +this can be said; and it assumes this complexion and character by dint of +Byron’s own character, which was above all things active, and could not be +content without action. In <i>Childe Harold</i>, Byron summons dead men and +dead nations from their sepulchres, and makes them live and act again. He +revivifies Athens, he resuscitates Rome. He makes Cicero breathe and burn; +he makes the fallen columns and shattered pillars of the Forum as eloquent +as Tully. Petrarch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> once more waters the tree that bears his lady’s name. +The mountains find a tongue. Jura answers from her misty shroud. The +lightning becomes a word. Rousseau tortures himself afresh; Gibbon afresh +saps solemn creeds with solemn sneer; afresh Egeria visits Numa in the +silence of the night, his breast to hers replying. Lake Leman woos, and +kisses away the cries of the Rhone, as they awake. Then she reproves like +a sister’s voice. The boats upon the lake are wings to waft us from +distraction. The stars become the poetry of Heaven. Waterloo is fought +before our very eyes. The defiles fatal to Roman rashness are again +crowded with Numidian horse, and Hannibal and Thrasymene flash before our +eyes. A soul is infused into the dead; a spirit is instilled into the +mountains. The torrents talk; the sepulchres act. Movement never ceases, +and the situation is perpetually shifting. Its incidents are almost the +whole of History. In it we have—what M. Scherer justly says Wordsworth +has not—the knowledge of the human heart which worldly experience gives, +the interior drama of the passions which a man can describe well only on +condition of having been their victim, and those general views upon +History and society which are formed partly by study, partly by the +practice of affairs. All this, too, we have, in the third and fourth +cantos—for the first and second are very inferior—presented, in +language, imagery, and music, of the noblest and most elevated kind; till, +swelling, as an organ swells, before it closes, the poem concludes with +that magnificent address to the Ocean, which rounds it off and completes +it, even as the physical ocean rounds off and completes the physical +earth. In no other poem that was ever written are Nature and man—not Man +in the abstract,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> but men as they act, strive, feel, and suffer—so +thoroughly interfused and interwoven; and they are interwoven and +interfused as they are interwoven and interfused in actual life, not by +men contemplating and talking, but by men doing and acting, in a word, by +living. And if the reference be to men in general and life in general, and +not to a particular sort of man living a particular sort of life away from +other men, then we make bold to say, though in doing so we contradict Mr. +Arnold roundly, that in <i>Childe Harold</i> alone there is “an ampler body of +powerful work,” and that <i>Childe Harold</i> alone “deals with more of life,” +than all Wordsworth’s poems, not even selected from, but taken in their +integrity, without the diminution of a single passage or the omission of a +single line.</p> + +<p>At this point, Mr. Arnold steps in with a notable plea. It may be that +much of what Wordsworth has written is trivial, and that still more of it +is abstract verbiage, or doctrine we hear in church, perfectly true, but +wanting in the sort of truth we require, poetic truth. It may also be that +Wordsworth has written no one great poem, and that the poem he fancied to +be great will not do, and can never be satisfactory to the disinterested +lover of poetry. It may furthermore be the case that in Wordsworth’s poems +we have to lament a deficiency, if not indeed a total absence of Action, +Invention, Situation, and Character, and that he is only a Contemplative, +a Recluse, a Solitary, analysing the sensations produced upon himself by +dwelling upon mountains, woods, and waters. All this may be so. But, says +Mr. Arnold, “Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life,” the greatness of a +poet depends upon his criticism of life, and Wordsworth’s criticism of +life is more complete, more powerful, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> more sound, than that of any +English poet since Milton, indeed than that of any poet since Milton, with +the one exception of Goethe.</p> + +<p>The great and the justly acquired authority of Mr. Arnold must not deter +us from saying that to no canon of criticism upon poetry with which we are +acquainted do so many objections present themselves. We suspect Mr. Arnold +himself has discerned some of these since he first propounded it; for +while in his Prefatory Essay upon Wordsworth he urges it with absolute +confidence, in his Prefatory Essay on Byron he does so more hesitatingly, +and exhibits more anxiety to explain it. But does he not explain it away, +when he says, “We are not brought much on our way, I admit, towards an +adequate definition of poetry as distinguished from prose by that truth”? +Upon this point M. Scherer, an admirer, like ourselves, of both Wordsworth +and Mr. Arnold, has some just observations:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Wordsworth seems to Mr. Arnold to have the qualities of poetic +greatness, and Mr. Arnold accordingly defines these qualities. The +great poet, in his opinion, is the one that expresses the most noble +and the most profound idea, upon the nature of man, the one who has a +philosophy of life, and who impresses it powerfully on the subjects +which he treats. The definition, it will be perceived, is a little +vague.</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Arnold, we all know, is rather partial to vagueness, being of opinion +that it is of the essence of Culture to be more or less vague, and that +without a certain amount of vagueness there can be no sweetness and no +light. We should be sorry to seem to say anything against those delightful +characteristics, lest we should be supposed to be without them; and we +hereby declare ourselves all in favour of our “consciousness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> playing +about our stock notions,” even if those stock notions be sweetness and +light themselves, with their accompanying charm of vagueness. But though, +in all seriousness, what Swift calls sweetness and light are invaluable +qualities, despite the partial vagueness they entail, yet when two poets +are compared, and a definition of the main business and main essence of +poetry is offered, in order that by it the relative greatness of the two +may be tested, it is just as well that the definition should not be too +vague, should be at any rate precise enough to afford the test desired. +But what is the use of it if it does not “bring us much on our way”?</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, Mr. Arnold’s theory of poetry being a criticism of life not +only does not help us along our road, it tends to take us off our road. We +regret we have not left ourselves space to deal with his theory at length, +and can only hope we may have an opportunity of returning to it. But lest +Mr. Arnold should be tempted to raise it to the dignity of a “stock +notion,” and to bestow upon it the privilege of that faithful iteration +which is bestowed upon “culture,” “sweetness and light,” “Barbarians, +Philistines, and Populace,” which have a good deal more to say for +themselves, we think it well to point out to him that, by averring poetry +to be “a criticism of life,” he is giving a handle to the Philistines of +criticism, and to the enemies of sweetness and light, which they may turn +against him in a notable manner.</p> + +<p>For <i>whose</i> “criticism of life”? Does he not perceive that he is enabling +people to maintain, which unfortunately they are already only too disposed +to do, that this poet is a great poet because they consider his criticism +of life to be right and true, and that other poet to be not a great poet, +or a much smaller poet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> because they consider his criticism of life to be +wrong and false? Why, this is the very pest and bane of English criticism +upon poetry, and upon art generally; the criticism which in reality +resolves itself into “I agree with this; I like that.” This is the +criticism of sheer and unadulterated Philistinism, against which Mr. +Arnold has been waging such excellent and needed war for several years. +Nor, in spite of much vagueness, will it be possible for Mr. Arnold to +escape from this consequence of his dictum that poetry is a criticism of +life. For at last, after much that seems to us like beating about the +bush, he goes straight to the point, and makes the fatal confession in +plain words.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>As compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at many points less +lucid, though far less a master of style, far less of an artist, +gains so much by his criticism of life being, in certain matters of +profound importance, healthful and true, whereas Leopardi’s pessimism +is not, that the value of Wordsworth’s poetry, on the whole, stands +higher for us, I think, than that of Leopardi’s, as it stands higher +for us, I think, than that of any modern poetry except Goethe’s.</p></div> + +<p>Higher, because it is more healthful! That any critic, not an abject +Philistine, should say such a thing, amazes us beyond words. Surely Mr. +Arnold is aware that there are persons whose opinion on that subject +carries much weight, who consider that Goethe’s criticism of life is +neither healthful nor true, but on the contrary false or mischievous, yet +who do not on that account deny to Goethe the title of a great poet. Is +Mr. Arnold really serious when he asserts that, other things being equal, +one poet is less great than another poet because the first is a pessimist, +and the other is an optimist? If he is, let us have two more volumes of +Selections; one containing all the best optimist poetry,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> and the other +containing all the best pessimist poetry, that was ever written. Which +collection would be the more true, we do not undertake to know, and, as +critics and disinterested lovers of poetry, we do not care. But we +entertain no doubt whatever which Selection would contain the finest +poetry. It would not be the optimist one. Some of the finest poetry ever +written upon life is to be found surely in the Old Testament. What might +be taken as its motto? “Vanity of Vanities. All is Vanity.” As far as this +life, and any criticism of it are concerned, it is a very Gospel of +Pessimism.</p> + +<p>Is the conclusion then that a pessimistic criticism of life necessarily +makes a poet greater than another poet who criticises it from an +optimistic point of view? Not in the least. The consideration—we do not +say to the positive philosopher, to the historian, to the moralist, +but—to the disinterested lover of poetry, is simply irrelevant.</p> + +<p>But there is an attitude towards life which does give a poet the chance at +least of being greater than either a poet who criticises life as a +pessimist, or than a poet who criticises it as an optimist. That attitude +is one neither of pessimism nor of optimism; indeed, not a criticism of +life at all, or at least not such a criticism of life as to leave it open +to any one to declare that it is healthful and true, or that it is +insalubrious and false. Will Mr. Arnold tell us what is Shakespeare’s +criticism of life? Is it pessimistic or optimistic? We are almost alarmed +at asking the question; for who knows that, in doing so, we may not be +sowing the seeds of a controversy as long and as interminable as the +controversy respecting the moral purpose, the criticism of life in +<i>Hamlet</i>? Once started, the controversy will go on for ever, precisely +because there is no way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> of ending it. What constitutes, not the +superiority, but the comparative inferiority, of Byron and Wordsworth +alike, is their excessive criticism of life. They criticise life overmuch. +It is the foible of each of them. What constitutes the superiority of +Shakespeare is, that he does not so much criticise life, as present it. He +holds the mirror up to nature, and is content to do so, showing it with +all its beautiful and all its ugly features, and with perfect +dispassionateness. Hence his unequalled greatness.</p> + +<p>We regret we have not space to set this forth more at length. But Mr. +Arnold will scarcely misunderstand us; and we would venture to ask him to +ponder these objections, and to let his consciousness play freely about +them. If he does so, we have little doubt that the theory about poetry +being a criticism of life, with its appalling consequences to the critic, +to the disinterested lover of poetry, to the adherent of culture, to the +friend of sweetness and light, and in fact to every one but the Philistine +with his stock ideas, will silently be dropped.</p> + +<p>But if Mr. Arnold sees insuperable objections to this course, and the +canon about poetry being a criticism of life is to be added to that list +of delightful formulæ, which, during the last decade, have shed so much +light on our condition, then we can only once more appeal from Mr. Arnold +to Mr. Arnold, and ask how it is that Wordsworth can be considered to have +criticised life, and to “deal with that in which life really consists,” if +it be true, as Mr. Arnold tells us it is true, that</p> + +<p class="poem">Wordsworth’s eyes avert their ken<br /> +From half of human fate.</p> + +<p>How, we shall still have to ask, can a poet be said to have criticised +life of whom such an ardent admirer as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> M. Scherer can observe, “As for +cities, Wordsworth seeks to ignore them. He takes them for a discordant +note which it is only just and right to drown and get rid of in the +general harmony of creation.”</p> + +<p>But we must end; and we submit that we have established our case. +Wordsworth can be made to figure as the greatest poet since Milton, only +by canons of criticism that would make him not only a greater poet than +Milton, but a greater poet than any poet that preceded Milton. If this be +so, let us know it. But if not, it is vain work, trying to extol him, as a +poet, above Byron. Mr. Arnold has done Byron injustice by making +selections from his works, and asserting that selections are better than +the whole of the works from which they are selected. You might as well +select from a mountain. What should we think of the process that said, +“Here is an edelweiss, here some heather, here a lump of quartz, here a +bit of ice from a glacier, here some water from a torrent, here some +pine-cones, here some eggs from an eagle’s nest; and now you know all +about Mont Blanc”? Byron is no more to be known in that fashion than the +Matterhorn is. You must make acquaintances with pastoral valleys, with +yawning precipices, with roaring cataracts, with tinkling cattle-bells, +with the rumble of avalanches, with the growl of thunder, with the zigzag +lightning, with storm, and mists, and sudden burst of tenderest sunshine, +with these, with more, in fact with all, if Alp or Byron is to be really +known. But Mr. Arnold has rendered Byron one service at least. When he +says that Byron and Wordsworth stand first and pre-eminent among the +English poets of this century, he relieves Byron of danger of rivalry.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p> +<h2>DANTE’S REALISTIC TREATMENT OF THE IDEAL</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Read at the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Dante Society on June 13, 1900.</span></p> + +<p>To discourse of Dante, concerning whom, ever since Boccaccio lectured on +the <i>Divina Commedia</i> in the <i>Duomo</i> of Florence, more than five hundred +years ago, there has been an unbroken procession of loving commentators, +must always be a difficult undertaking; and the difficulty is increased +when the audience addressed, as I believe is the case this evening, is +composed, for the most part, of serious students of the austere +Florentine. The only claim I can have on your attention is that I am, in +that respect at least, in a more or less degree, one of yourselves. It is +now close on forty years since, in Rome, as Rome then was, one repaired, +day after day, to the Baths of Caracalla—not, as now, denuded of the +sylvan growth of successive centuries, but cloaked, from shattered base to +ruined summit, in tangled greenery—and in the silent sunshine of an +Imperial Past surrendered oneself to</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">quella fonte</span><br /> +Che spande di parlar sì largo fiume,</p> + +<p>that unfailing stream of spacious speech which Dante, you remember, +ascribes to Virgil, which Dante equally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> shares with him, and to each +alike of whom one can sincerely say:</p> + +<p class="poem">Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore,<br /> +Che m’han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.</p> + +<p>But love and study of Dante will not of themselves suffice to make +discourse concerning him interesting or adequate; and I am deeply +impressed with the disadvantages under which I labour this evening. But my +task has been made even exceptionally perilous, since it has been preceded +by the entrancing influence of music, and music that borrowed an added +charm from the melodious words of the poet himself. May it not be with you +as it was with him when the musician Casella—“Casella mio”—acceded to +his request in the Purgatorial Realm, and sang to him, he says,</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">sì dolcemente,</span><br /> +Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona—</p> + +<p>sang to him so sweetly that the sweetness of it still sounded in his ears; +words that strangely recall the couplet in Wordsworth, though I scarcely +think Wordsworth was a Dante scholar:</p> + +<p class="poem">The music in my heart I bore<br /> +Long after it was heard no more.</p> + +<p>Many of you remember, I am sure, the entire passage in the second canto of +the <i>Purgatorio</i>. But, since there may be some who have forgotten it—and +the best passages in the <i>Divina Commedia</i> can never be recalled too +often—and since, moreover, it will serve as a fitting introduction to the +theme on which I propose for a brief while to descant this evening, let me +recall it to your remembrance. Companioned by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> Virgil, and newly arrived +on the shores of Purgatory, Dante perceives a barque approaching, so swift +and light that it causes no ripple on the water, driven and steered only +by the wings of an Angel of the Lord, and carrying a hundred disembodied +spirits, singing “<i>In exitu Israel de Ægypto</i>.” As they disembark, one of +them recognises Dante, and stretches out his arms to embrace the Poet. The +passage is too beautiful to be shorn of its loveliness either by +curtailment or by mere translation:</p> + +<p class="poem">Io vidi uno di lor trarresi avante<br /> +Per abbracciarmi con sì grande affetto,<br /> +Che mosse me a far lo somigliante.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O ombre vane, fuor che nell’ aspetto!</span><br /> +Tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi,<br /> +E tante mi tornai con esse al petto.<br /> +<br /> +Among them was there one who forward pressed,<br /> +So keen to fold me to his heart, that I<br /> +Instinctively was moved to do the like.<br /> +O shades intangible, save in your seeming!<br /> +Toward him did I thrice outstretch my arms,<br /> +And thrice they fell back empty to my side.<small><a name="f2.1" id="f2.1" href="#f2">[2]</a></small></p> + +<p>Words that will recall to many of you the lines in the second book of the +<i>Æneid</i>, where Æneas describes to Dido how the phantom of his perished +wife appeared to him as he was seeking for her through the flames and +smoke of Troy, and how in vain he strove to fold her in one farewell +embrace.</p> + +<p class="poem">Ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum,<br /> +Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago.</p> + +<p>Similarly, the incorporeal figure in the <i>Divine Comedy</i> bids Dante desist +from the attempt to embrace him, since it is useless; and then Dante +discerns it is that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> of Casella, who used oftentimes in Florence to sing +to him, and now assures the poet that, as he loved him upon earth, so here +he loves him still. Encouraged by the tender words, Dante calls him +“Casella mio,” and addresses to him the following request:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Se nuova legge non ti toglie</span><br /> +Memoria o uso all’ amoroso canto,<br /> +Che mi solea quetar tutte mie voglie,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto</span><br /> +L’anima mia, che con la sua persona<br /> +Venendo qui, è affannata tanto.<br /> +<br /> +If by new dispensation not deprived<br /> +Of the remembrance of belovëd song<br /> +Wherewith you used to soothe my restlessness,<br /> +I pray you now a little while assuage<br /> +My spirit, which, since burdened with the body<br /> +In journeying here, is wearied utterly.</p> + +<p>Quickly comes the melodious response:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Amor che nella mente mi ragiona,”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cominciò egli allor sì dolcemente,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona.</span><br /> +Lo mio Maestro, ed io, e quella gente<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ch’eran con lui, parevan sì contenti,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Com’a nessun toccasse altro la mente.</span><br /> +<br /> +“Love that holds high discourse within mind,”<br /> +With such sweet tenderness he thus began<br /> +That still the sweetness lingers in my ear.<br /> +Virgil, and I, and that uncarnal group<br /> +That with him were, so captivated seemed,<br /> +That in our hearts was room for naught beside.</p> + +<p>Not so, however, the guide of the spirits newly arrived in Purgatory. +Seeing them “<i>fissi ed attenti alle sue note</i>,” enthralled by Casella’s +singing, he begins to rate them soundly as “<i>spiriti lenti</i>,” lazy, +loitering spirits, asks them what they mean by thus halting on the way,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> +and bids them hasten to the spot where they will be gradually purged of +their earthly offences, and be admitted to the face of God. The canto +closes with the following exquisite lines:</p> + +<p class="poem">Come quando, cogliendo biada o loglio,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gli colombi adunati alla pastura,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Queti, senza mostrar l’usato orgoglio,</span><br /> +Se cosa appare ond’ elli abbian paura,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Subitamente lasciano star l’esca,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Perchè assaliti son da maggior cura;</span><br /> +Così vid’io quella masnada fresca<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lasciar il canto, e fuggir ver la costa,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Com’uom che va, nè sa dove riesca.</span><br /> +<br /> +As when a flight of doves, in quest of food,<br /> +Have settled on a field of wheat or tares,<br /> +And there still feed in silent quietude,<br /> +If by some apparition that they dread<br /> +A sudden scared, forthway desert the meal,<br /> +Since by more strong anxiety assailed,<br /> +So saw I that new-landed company<br /> +Forsake the song and seek the mountain side,<br /> +Like one who flees, but flies he knows not whither.</p> + +<p>Now, if we consider this episode in its integrity, do we not find +ourselves, from first to last, essentially in the region of the Ideal? +Whether you believe in the existence of a local habitation named +Purgatory, or you do not, none of us, not even Dante himself, has seen it, +save with the mind’s eye. It was said of his austere countenance by his +contemporaries that it was the face of the man who had seen Hell. But the +phrase, after all, was figurative, and not even the divine poet had, with +the bodily vision, seen what Virgil, in one of the most pathetic of his +lines, calls the further ashore. Moreover, for awhile, and in what may be +termed the exordium of the episode, Dante surrenders himself wholly to +this Ideal, and treats it idealistically.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> First he discerns only two +wings of pure white light, which, when he has grown more accustomed to +their brightness, he perceives to be the Angel of the Lord, the steersman +of the purgatorial bark:</p> + +<p class="poem">Vedi che sdegna gli argomenti umani,<br /> +Sì che remo non vuol, nè altro velo<br /> +Che l’ale sue, tra liti sì lontani<br /> +<span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><br /> +Trattando l’aere con l’eterne penne—</p> + +<p>lines that for ethereal beauty, are, I think unmatched; and I will not +presume to render them into verse. But what they say is that the Angel had +no need of mortal expedients, of sail, or oar, or anything beside, save +his own wings, that fanned the air with their eternal breath. The barque, +thus driven and thus steered, is equally unsubstantial and ideal, for it +makes no ripple in the wave through which it glides. But at length—not, +you may be quite sure, of purpose prepense, but guided by that unerring +instinct which is the great poet’s supreme gift—Dante gradually passes +from idealistic to realistic treatment of the episode, thereby compelling +you, by what Shakespeare, in <i>The Tempest</i>, through the mouth of Prospero, +calls “my so potent art,” to believe implicitly in its occurrence, even if +your incapacity to linger too long in the rarefied atmosphere of the Ideal +has begun to render you incredulous concerning it. For all at once he +introduces Casella, Florence, his own past cares and labours there, the +weariness of the spirit that comes over all of us, even from our very +spiritual efforts, and the soothing power of tender music. Then, with a +passing touch of happy egotism, which has such a charm for us in poets +that are dead, but which, I am told, is resented, though perhaps not by +the gracious or the wise, in living ones, Dante enforces our belief<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> by +representing Casella as forthwith chanting a line of the poet’s own that +occurs in a <i>Canzone</i> of the <i>Convito</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Amor che nella mente mi ragiona.</span><br /> +<br /> +Love that holds high discourse within my mind.</p> + +<p>For a moment we seem to be again transported into the pure realm of the +Ideal, as not Dante and Virgil alone, but the souls just landed on the +shores of Purgatory, are described as being so enthralled by the +song—<i>tutti fissi ed attenti</i>—that they can think of and heed nothing +else. But quickly comes another realistic touch in the reproof to the +spellbound spirits not there to loiter listening to the strain, but to +hurry forward to their destined bourne. Finally, as if to confirm the +impression of absolute reality, while not removing us from the world, or +withdrawing from us the charm, of the Ideal, the poet ends with the +exquisite but familiar simile of the startled doves already recited to +you.</p> + +<p>What is the impression left, what the result produced, by the entire +canto? Surely it is that the poet’s imagination, operating through the +poet’s realistic treatment of the Ideal, and his idealistic treatment of +the Real, has taken us all captive, so that we feel nothing of the +<i>Incredulus odi</i> disposition, the unwillingness to believe, and the mental +antipathy engendered by that unwillingness, so tersely and so truly +described by Horace, but yield credence wholly and absolutely to the +existence of a place called Purgatory, with its circles, its denizens, its +hopes, its aspirations, and purifying power. But, read where you will in +the pages of the <i>Divina Commedia</i>, you will find this is one of the main +causes of its permanent hold on the attention of the world. Its theology +may to many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> seem open to question, to some obsolete and out of date; its +astronomy necessarily labours under the disadvantage of having been prior +to the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, not to speak of the +great astronomers of later date, including our own times; and its +erudition, weighty and wonderful as it is, can occasionally be shown by +more recent and more advantageously circumstanced scholarship to be faulty +and inaccurate. But so long as these are presented to us nimbused by the +wizard light that fuses the Real and the Ideal, we believe while we read +and listen, and that is enough. The very first line of the <i>Divina +Commedia</i>, so familiar to every one, though it is to introduce us to the +horrors of the <i>Inferno</i>, is so realistic, so within the range of the +experience of all who have reached the meridian of life or even looked on +that period in others, that we are at once predisposed to yield our +imagination passively to what follows. But I must allow that the passage +which does immediately follow, and which discourses of the panther, the +lion, and the wolf, is so symbolic, and has lent itself to so many +suggestions and interpretations, that, had the poem generally been +conceived and composed in that fashion, it would not only have fallen +short of immortality, it would long since have been buried in the pool of +Lethe, which is the predestined resting-place of all untempered and +unredeemed symbolism in verse. I smile, and I have no doubt you will smile +also, when I say that I, too, have my own interpretation of the inner +meaning of those three menacing beasts. But be assured I have not the +smallest intention of communicating it to you. I gladly pass on, gladly +and quickly, as Dante himself passes on, to a more welcome and less +disputable apparition, who answers, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> questioned as to who and what he +is, that man he is not, but man he was; that his parents were of Lombardy, +and all his folk of Mantuan stock; that he lived in the age of the great +Cæsar and the fortunate Augustus; that he was a poet—<i>Poeta fui</i>—sang of +the just and right-minded son of Anchises, the pious Æneas, who came to +Italy and founded a greater city even than Troy, when proud Ilium was +levelled to the dust. In the presence of Virgil we forget the embarrassing +symbolism of the preceding passage, and believe once more; and, when Dante +addresses him in lines of affectionate awe, that you all know by heart, +and with repeating which all lovers of poets and poetry console themselves +when the prosaic world passes on the other side, every doubt, every +misgiving, every lingering remnant of incredulity is dismissed, and we are +prepared, nay, we are eager, to take the triple journey, along two-thirds +of which Virgil tells Dante he has been sent by the <i>Imperador che lassù +regna</i>, the Ruler of the Universe, to conduct him. Prepared we are, nay, +eager, I say, to hear the <i>disperate strida</i> of the <i>spiriti dolenti</i>, the +wailings of despair of the eternally lost, and the yearning sighs of those +<i>che son contenti nel fuoco</i>, who are resigned to purgatorial pain, and +scarce suffer from it, since they are buoyed up by the hope of finally +joining the <i>beate genti</i>, and, along with the blessed, seeing the face of +God.</p> + +<p class="poem">Allor si mosse, ed io gli tenni dietro,</p> + +<p>says Dante in the closing line of this, the First Canto of the <i>Divina +Commedia</i>.</p> + +<p class="poem">Then moved he on, and I paced after him.</p> + +<p>Could you have a more realistic touch? So realistic, so real is it, in the +Realm of the Ideal, that, just as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Dante followed Virgil, so we follow +both, humble and unquestioning believers in whatever may be told us.</p> + +<p>I am not unaware that, in an age in which the approval of inflexibly +avenging justice consequent on wrongdoing is less marked and less frequent +than sentimental compassion for the wrongdoer, the punishments inflicted +in the <i>Inferno</i> for the infraction of the Divine Law, as Dante understood +it, are found repellent by many persons, and agreeable to few. I grant +that they are appalling in their sternness; nor was Dante himself +unconscious of this, for he does describe Minos as “scowling horribly” as +the souls of the damned came before him for judgment, and for +discriminating consignment to their allotted circle of torture. Always +terse, and therefore all the more terrible, he nevertheless exhausts the +vocabulary of torment in describing the <i>doloroso ospizio</i>, the dolorous +home from which they will never return. As Milton speaks of the “darkness +visible” of Hell, so Dante, before him, writes of it as <i>loco d’ogni luce +muto</i>, a place silent of light, but that wails and moans like a +tempestuous sea, battered and buffeted by jarring winds, finally +designated</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">La bufera infernal, che mai non resta.</span><br /> +<br /> +The infernal hurricane that ceases never.</p> + +<p>Of those who are whirled about by it, <i>di qua, di là, di giù, di su</i>, +hither and thither, upward and downward, he writes the awful line:</p> + +<p class="poem">Nulla speranza li conforta mai,<br /> +Non che di posa, ma di minor pena.<br /> +<br /> +They have no hope of consolation ever,<br /> +Or even mitigation of their woe.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>I could not bring myself, and I am sure you would not wish me to cite more +minutely, the magnificently merciless phrases—all of them thoroughly +realistic touches concerning ideal torment—wherewith Dante here makes his +<i>terza rima</i> an instrument or organ on which to sound the very diapason of +the damned; and, did he dwell overlong on those deep, distressing octaves +of endless suffering, without passing by easy and natural gradations into +the pathetic minor, he would end by alienating all but the austerer +natures. But he is too great an artist, too human, too congenitally and +rootedly a poet, to make that mistake. I am sure you all know in which +canto of the <i>Inferno</i> occur the terrific phrases I have been citing, and +need no telling that they are immediately followed by the most tender and +tearful passage in the wide range of poetic literature. While even yet the +sound of <i>la bufera infernal</i> seems howling in our ears, suddenly it all +subsides, and we hear instead a musically plaintive voice saying:</p> + +<p class="poem">Siede la terra, dove nata fui,<br /> +Sulla marina dove il Po discende,<br /> +Per aver pace co’ seguaci sui.<br /> +<br /> +The land where I was born sits by the sea,<br /> +Unto whose shore a restless river rolls,<br /> +To be at peace with all its followers.</p> + +<p>Then comes the love-story of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, told +in such exquisite accents, so veiled in music, so transfigured by verse, +that even the sternest moralist, I imagine, can hardly bring himself to +call it illicit. I confess I think it the loveliest single passage in +poetry ever written; yes, lovelier even than anything in Shakespeare, for +it has all Shakespeare’s genius, and more than Shakespeare’s art; and I +compassionate the man or woman who, having had the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> gift of birth, goes +down to the grave without having read it. There is no such other +love-story, no such other example of the <i>lacrymæ rerum</i>, the deep abiding +tearfulness of things. Nothing should be taken from, nothing can be added +to it. To me it seems sacred, like the Ark of the Covenant, that no one +must presume to touch; and I own I tremble as I presume, here and there, +to attempt, unavailingly, to translate it. It was my good fortune to be in +Florence in the month of May 1865, when the City of Flowers, the City of +Dante, which then seemed peopled with nightingales and roses, was +celebrating the six-hundredth anniversary of the birth of her exiled poet; +and those of us who loved him assembled in the Pagliano Theatre to hear +Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi repeat, to the accompaniment of living +pictures, the best-known passages of the <i>Divina Commedia</i>. One of those +supreme elocutionists, who still lives, recited the story of Paolo and +Francesca; and from her gifted voice we heard of the <i>tempo de’ dolci +sospiri</i> and <i>i dubbiosi aesiri</i>, the season of sweet sighs and hesitating +desires, the <i>disiato riso</i>, the longed-for smile, the trembling kiss, the +closing of the volume, and then the final lines of the canto:</p> + +<p class="poem">Mentre che l’uno spirto questo disse,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">L’altro piangeva sì, che di pietade</span><br /> +Io venni men così com’io morisse:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E caddi, come corpo morto cade.</span><br /> +<br /> +While the one told to us this dolorous tale,<br /> +The other wept so bitterly, that I<br /> +Out of sheer pity felt as like to die;<br /> +And down I fell, even as a dead body falls.</p> + +<p>This unmatched tale of tender transgression and vainly penitential tears +almost reconciles us to the more abstract description of punishment that +precedes it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> and the detailed account of pitiless penalty that follows +it, in succeeding cantos; and the absolute fusion of the ideal and the +real in the woeful story imparts to it a verisimilitude irresistible even +by the most unimaginative and incredulous. Rimini, Ravenna, Malatesta, are +names so familiar to us all that any story concerning them would have to +be to the last degree improbable to move our incredulity. But who is it +that is not prepared to believe in the sorrows of a love-tale?</p> + +<p class="poem">Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,<br /> +Could ever hear by tale or history,<br /> +The course of true love never did run smooth.</p> + +<p>It is the greatest of all masters of the human heart, the greatest and +wisest teacher concerning human life, who tells us that; and Dante, who in +this respect is to be almost as much trusted as Shakespeare himself, makes +Francesca, with her truly feminine temperament, say:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,</span><br /> +Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,<br /> +Che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.<br /> +<br /> +Love that compels all who are loved to love,<br /> +Entangled both in such abiding charm,<br /> +That, as you see, he still deserts me not.</p> + +<p>As we hear those words, it is no longer Rimini, Ravenna, Malatesta, Paolo, +Francesca, that arrest our attention and rivet it by their reality. We are +enthralled by the ideal realism, or realistic idealism, call it which you +will, of the larger and wider world we all inhabit, of this vast and +universal theatre, of whose stage Love remains to-day, as it was +yesterday, and will remain for ever, the central figure, the dominant +protagonist.</p> + +<p>So far we have seen, by illustrations purposely taken from passages in the +<i>Inferno</i> and the <i>Purgatorio</i> familiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> to all serious readers of the +<i>Divine Comedy</i>, how Dante, by realistic touches, makes us believe in the +ideal, and how, by never for long quitting the region of the Ideal, he +reconciles us to the most accurate and merciless realism. But there is a +third Realm to which he is admitted, and whither he transports us, the +<i>Paradiso</i>. Some prosaically precise person would, perhaps, say that the +thirtieth canto of the <i>Purgatorio</i> is not a portion of the <i>Paradiso</i>. +But you know better, for in it Beatrice appears to her poet-lover:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Sotto verde manto,</span><br /> +Vestita di color di fiamma viva,<br /> +<br /> +In mantle green, and girt with living light,</p> + +<p>while angelic messengers and ministers from Heaven round her scatter +lilies that never fade; and when Dante, overcome by the celestial vision, +turns to Virgil with the same instinctive feeling of trust</p> + +<p class="poem">Col quale il fantolin corre alla mamma,<br /> +Quando ha paura</p> + +<p>—trust such as is shown by a little child hurrying to its mother when +afraid, and exclaims, translating a line of Virgil’s own:</p> + +<p class="poem">Conosco i segni dell’ antica fiamma,<br /> +<br /> +O how I know, and feel, and recognise<br /> +The indications of my youthful love;—</p> + +<p>he finds that Virgil, <i>dolcissimo padre</i>, his gentle parent and guide, has +left him, and he stands alone in the presence of Beatrice, and hears her +voice saying:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Non pianger anco, non pianger ancora;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Chè pianger ti convien per altra spada.</span><br /> +<br /> +Weep not as yet, Dante, weep not as yet,<br /> +Though weep you shortly shall, and for good cause.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>Tearless, and with downcast eyes, he listens to her just reproaches, +trying not even to see the reflection of himself in the water of the +translucent fountain at his side:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Tanta vergogna mi gravò la fronte.</span><br /> +<br /> +So strong the shame that weighed my forehead down.</p> + +<p>And so he turns aside his glance to the untransparent sward, till comes +the line, awful in its reproving simplicity:</p> + +<p class="poem">Guardami ben: ben son, ben son Beatrice!<br /> +<br /> +Look at me well! Yes, I am Beatrice!</p> + +<p>Then full and fast flow the tears, like melting snows of Apennine under +Slavonian blast.</p> + +<p>But there is yet worse to come, yet harder to bear, when, not even +addressing him, but turning from him to her heavenly escort, she speaks of +him as “<i>Questi</i>,” “this man,” and tells them, in his hearing, how much +his love for her might have done for him, had he still lived the <i>vita +nuova</i>, the pure fresh life with which love had inspired him while she was +yet on earth. But when she was withdrawn from him to Heaven, when she was +of flesh disrobed and became pure spirit, and so was more deserving of +love than before.</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Questi si tolse a me, e diessi altrui.</span><br /> +<br /> +This man from me withdrew himself, and gave<br /> +Himself to others.</p> + +<p>What think you of that as a realistic treatment of the Ideal? If there be +any among my audience, members of the sex commonly supposed to be the +wiser, who but partly feel and imperfectly apprehend it, then let them ask +any woman they will what she thinks of it, and she will answer, “It is +supreme, it is unapproachable.”</p> + +<p>After such an illustration of the power of Dante<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> over one of the main +secrets of fascination in great poetry, it is unnecessary to go in search +of more. With illustrating my theme of this evening I have done, and it +only remains to add a few words of repetition and enforcement of what has +been already indicated, lest perchance, if they were omitted, my meaning +and purpose should be misapprehended or overlooked. Did you happen to +observe that, a little while back, I used the phrase, “the ideal realism, +or realistic idealism, call it which you will”? But now, before +concluding, let me say, what has been in my mind all along, and has been +there for many years, that great poetry consists of the combination of +ideal Realism, realistic Idealism, and Idealism pure and simple. Upon that +point much might be said, and perhaps some day I may venture to say it. In +all ages the disposition of the more prosaic minds—by which term I do not +mean minds belonging to persons devoid of feeling, or even of sentiment, +but persons destitute of the poetic sense, or of what Poetry essentially +is—has been to incline, in works of fiction whether in prose or verse, to +Realism pure and simple; and the present Age, thanks to the invention of +photography and the dissemination of novels that seek to describe persons +and things such as they are or are supposed to be, has a peculiar and +exceptional leaning in that direction. The direction is a dangerous one, +for the last stage of Realism pure and simple in prose fiction is the +exhibition of demoralised man and degraded woman. In poetry, thank Heaven, +that operation is impossible. No doubt, it is possible in verse just as it +is possible in prose, and perhaps even more so; and there are persons who +will tell you that it is Poetry. But it is not, and never can be made +such. Poetry is either the idealised Real, the realistic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> Ideal, or the +Ideal pure and simple. In other words, as I long since endeavoured to +show, Poetry is Transfiguration. Attempts are made in these days, as we +all well know, to get you to accept Realism pure and simple as the newest +and most inspired utterance of the Heavenly Maid. But they will not be +successful. In that great hall of the Vatican, whither throng pilgrims +from every quarter of the world, and to whose walls Raphael has bequeathed +the ripest and richest fruits of his lucid, elevated, and elevating +genius, is a presentation of the Muse. She is seated on a throne of +majestic marble. Her feet are planted on the clouds, but her laurelled +head and outstretched wings are high in the Empyrean, and round her maiden +throat is a circlet enamelled with the unageing stars. With one hand she +cherishes the lyre, with the other she grasps the Book of Wisdom; and her +attendants are, not the sycophants of passing popularity, but the eternal +angels of God, upholding a scroll wherein are inscribed the words <i>Numine +afflatur</i>. She sings only when inspired. That is the Muse for me. Surely +it is the Muse for you. At any rate, it was the Muse of Dante; the Muse +that inspired the <i>Divina Commedia</i> through his love for Beatrice. As an +old English song has it, “’Tis love that makes the world go round,” a +homely truth that Dante idealised and transfigured in the last line of his +immortal poem:</p> + +<p class="poem">L’Amor che muove il Sole e l’altre stelle.<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Love,</span><br /> +That lights the sun and makes the planets sing;</p> + +<p>love of Love, love of Beauty, love of Virtue, love of Country, love of +Mankind; or, as one might put it in this age of physical discovery:</p> + +<p class="poem">Electric love illuminates the world.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> +<h2>DANTE’S POETIC CONCEPTION OF WOMAN</h2> + +<p>The imaginative estimate or ideal conception of Woman by the Poets has +always been deemed exceptionally interesting, especially by women +themselves, for, as a rule, it is agreeable; and, even if the presentation +be sometimes a little overcharged with glowing colour, all of us, men and +women alike, are not otherwise than pleased with descriptions that portray +us, not exactly as we are, but as we should like to be. Withal, a +portrait, to obtain recognition, must have in it some resemblance to the +original; and, speaking in the most prosaic manner, one need not hesitate +to affirm that any representation of women, at least of womanly women, +that was not attractive would be a travesty of the fact.</p> + +<p>Alike in the <i>Vita Nuova</i> and the <i>Divina Commedia</i>, Beatrice Portinari +figures so largely, and Dante’s love for her from childhood in her tenth +till her death in her twenty-sixth year is so striking that most persons +think of the great Florentine Poet in association with no other women, +their characters, their occupations, temptations, weaknesses, virtues, and +everyday duties. Yet no man could be a Poet such as Dante who confined his +ken to so limited a field of observation and feeling, and to whom the +whole range of feminine emotion and action was not familiar; and, in the +exposition of that theme, I would invite attention to that wider range and +scope of interest, though from it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> Beatrice will not be forgotten. Let us +turn, first of all, to the fifteenth canto of the <i>Paradiso</i>, where +Cacciaguida, the Poet’s ancestor, describes, while Beatrice looks on with +assenting smile, the simplicity of Florentine manners in former times, +alike in men and women, but in women especially—times dear to Dante, +since they immediately preceded those in which he himself lived.</p> + +<p class="poem">Fiorenza,</p> + +<p>says Cacciaguida, calling the city by its original name,</p> + +<p class="poem">Fiorenza, dentro della cerchia antica,<br /> +Si stava in pace, sobria e pudica.<br /> +Non avea catenella, non corona,<br /> +Non donne contigiate, non cintura,<br /> +Che fosse a veder più che la persona.<br /> +<br /> +Florence, within her ancient boundaries<br /> +Was chaste, and sober, and in peace abode.<br /> +No golden bracelets and no head-tires then,<br /> +Transparent garments, rich embroideries,<br /> +That caught the eye more than the wearer’s self.</p> + +<p>He goes on to say that the Florentine ladies of that day left their mirror +without any artificial colouring on their cheeks. Mothers themselves +tended the cradle, and maidens and matrons drew off the thread from the +distaff, while listening to old tales of Troy, Fiesole, and Rome. It is +Dante’s own description of the manners and customs of the days when he was +a child.</p> + +<p>Some, perhaps, will ask, “Surely there is nothing very poetic in the +foregoing description of woman?” If so, one must reply, indeed there is, +and only the acceptance of the idea of Poetry prevailing amongst us of +late years, which is essentially false, because so narrow and so exclusive +of the simplest poetry at one end of the scale, and of the highest poetry +at the other, could make any one doubt that a really poetic and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> +imaginative conception of woman must include the dedication, though not +the entire dedication, of herself to domestic duty and tenderness.</p> + +<p>Is there nothing poetic in Wordsworth’s picture of a girl turning her +wheel beside an English fire?</p> + +<p>Is there nothing poetic in Byron’s description?—</p> + +<p class="poem">A mind at peace with all below,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A heart whose hopes are innocent.</span></p> + +<p>Or in Coventry Patmore’s?—</p> + +<p class="poem">So wise in all she ought to know,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So ignorant in all beside.</span></p> + +<p>Is there, I venture to ask, nothing poetic, nothing romantic in the +description of a young girl who blends with cultivated sensibility to +Literature and Art homely tasks thus described?—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">... She brims the pail,</span><br /> +Straining the udders with her dainty palms,<br /> +Sweet as the milk they drain. She skims the cream,<br /> +And, with her sleeves rolled up and round white arms,<br /> +Makes the churn sing like boulder-baffled stream.<br /> +A wimple on her head, and kirtled short,<br /> +She hangs the snow-white linen in the wind,<br /> +A heavenly earthliness.</p> + +<p>In the whole range of poetic literature there is no more celebrated +passage than the essentially domestic picture, in the Sixth Book of the +<i>Iliad</i>, of Hector, Andromache, and their baby boy, where the Trojan hero, +before sallying forth to battle afresh, stretches out his arms to clasp +the little Astyanax. It might be pedantic to recite the passage in the +original. But here is an excellent translation of it by Mr. Walter Leaf:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>So spake glorious Hector, and stretched out his arms to his boy. But +the child shrank back to the bosom of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>fair-girdled nurse, +dismayed at his dear father’s aspect, and in dread at the horse-hair +crest that he beheld nodding fiercely from the helmet’s top. Then his +dear father laughed aloud, and his lady-mother; and forthwith +glorious Hector took the helmet from his head and laid it, all +gleaming, upon the ground; then kissed he his dear son, and dandled +him in his arms.</p></div> + +<p>Surely everybody feels the poetic, the romantic character of the incident, +founded on the loves of the household and the hearth. Turn to Chaucer, to +Milton, to Shakespeare, to any great Poet, and you will find that, like +Dante, they included simple duties in their poetic conception of woman. +Only in an age sicklied o’er with lackadaisical or sensuous sentimentality +could it be otherwise.</p> + +<p>But a poet’s ideals of what women should be, and often are, is shown not +only by what he extols, but by what he condemns, and, in this respect, +Dante, poet-like, is sparing and reserved. Most—indeed, nearly all—of +the persons whom he indicates by name as being eternally punished in the +Circles of the Inferno are men; partly, perhaps, because Dante, who, it +must be owned, would have been loved by Doctor Johnson as a good hater, +had political and other scores of the kind to settle with those he +describes as having a perpetual lease in the lower regions, but in part, +also, because he could not bring himself to write harshly of any woman he +had known. But to a few notorious female rebels against what he deemed +womanly character and conduct, and who had lived many hundred years before +his day, he is pitilessly severe. It would be difficult to quote lines +from any Poet more so than those in which he describes Semiramis as among +those whom</p> + +<p class="poem">Nulla speranza gli conforta mai.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>She has not even hope to fall back on as a mitigation of her endless +torments. Of her offences against his ideal of woman he says:</p> + +<p class="poem">A vizio di lussuria fu si rotta,<br /> +Che libito fe lecito in sua legge,<br /> +Per torre il biasmo in che era condotta.</p> + +<p>She was so steeped in wickedness that she promulgated laws permitting +others to act as she herself did, in order to annul the stigma that would +otherwise have been attached to her. He is a little hard and unjust to +Dido, whom Virgil treats with such exquisite tenderness, in naming her +along with “lustful Cleopatra” in the same passage. To Helen he is more +indulgent, in words at least, content with saying that she was the guilty +cause of dire events, “<i>per cui tanto reo tempo si volse</i>”; but she does +not escape endless expiation. Some of my readers will remember how much +more damning of her conduct is Virgil in the Sixth Book of the <i>Æneid</i>, +where Priam represents her as giving the signal to the Greeks to enter +Troy, and having concealed his sword, that he may fall a helpless victim +to the vengeance of Paris, whom the fair wanton wished to propitiate in +the hour of her lord’s triumph.</p> + +<p>But what is Dante’s attitude towards Francesca da Rimini, in the most +beautiful passage, it seems to me, in the whole range of narrative Poetry? +Many, I am sure, know it by heart, and have thereby fortified themselves +against the modern less-refined treatment of it even by men aspiring to be +regarded as poets. Often as one has repeated it to oneself, one has never +felt that Dante had for Francesca any harsher feeling than sympathetic +compassion. He casts around her the halo of the purest sentiment; he +brings music of matchless verbal sweetness to the description of the hour, +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> place, the circumstances of her disinterested and unselfish +surrender. The very lines in which he leads up to her pathetic story, +lines in which his feeling concerning frail and hapless love seems to be +purposely expressed in general and wide-embracing language, are in +themselves significant to those who observe their meaning. He says that +when he heard Virgil name the numerous knights and fair dames who were +suffering from having subordinated prudence to impulse, he only felt +troubled for them and bewildered.</p> + +<p class="poem">Pietà mi vinse, e fu quasi smarrito.</p> + +<p>The first thing he notices in Francesca and her lover is their buoyancy in +the air, as though they were the finest and most tenuous of spirits; and +when he says to Virgil that he would fain have speech with them, the reply +is that he has only to appeal to them by the love that still moves them, +and they will draw nigh to him. Then follows that lovely simile of doves +floating to call, and Francesca’s recognition of Dante with the words:</p> + +<p class="poem">O animal grazioso e benigno!</p> + +<p>who is sure to have pity on her hapless doom. When Francesca pauses in her +narrative, and Dante bows his head for sorrow, Virgil shows what is his +own feeling by the brief question addressed to Dante, “What think you?” +Dante replies in a voice broken by emotion:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">... O lasso,</span><br /> +Quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio<br /> +Menò costoro al doloroso passo!</p> + +<p>and, turning to Francesca, he says that her fate fills his eyes with tears +and his heart with anguish. Encouraged by the poet’s sympathy, she tells +him what happened, “<i>al tempo de’ dolci sospiri</i>,” in the season of sweet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> +sighs, in itself a preliminary and melodious appeal for indulgence, and +that he must be patient with her if she tells her tale, sobbing as she +speaks. Torn between sweet remembrance and regret, she cannot refrain from +recalling</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">... il disiato riso</span><br /> +Esser baciato da cotanto amante,</p> + +<p>or intimating with supreme delicacy what ensued in the final line of her +narrative:</p> + +<p class="poem">Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.</p> + +<p>The story she had been reading with Paolo Malatesta of Lancelot and +Guinevere fell from their hands, and that day they read no further on. And +Dante? All he says is that he felt like to die for grief, and fell to the +ground even as a dead body falls. From the first line to the last he +utters no word of blame or reproach. He would not have been a poet had he +done so.</p> + +<p>Let us now turn from the fifth book of the <i>Inferno</i> to the third of the +<i>Paradiso</i>, that we may add to our knowledge of Dante’s poetic conception +of Woman. He there beholds Piccarda Donati, whom he had known in her +lifetime on earth, but at first does not recognise, because, as she +herself says with heavenly humility, she is now much fairer to look on +than she was then. Withal, she adds, she occupies only an inferior place +in Heaven, because she was forced, and sorely against her own will, to +violate her vow of virginity. She begins her story by saying simply:</p> + +<p class="poem">Io fui nel mondo vergine sorella,</p> + +<p>that she was a nun dedicated to God, and goes on to tell how she was +violently torn from her cloister by her brother, Forese Donati, and his +accomplices, to further<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> family ambition, and compelled to submit to the +marriage rite. Dante, feeling, as it seems to me, that this did not +detract from her merit, asks her if she is contented with the relatively +inferior position in Paradise she says she is assigned among celestial +denizens. I trust many readers know her reply, for it is one of the +noblest and most beautiful passages in the whole of the <i>Divina Commedia</i>. +Like all fine passages in Poetry, adequate rendering of it in another +tongue is not attainable. But the best translation of it with which I am +acquainted is that of C. B. Cayley—no Cary, mark you—in <i>terza rima</i>, +and of which I remember I availed myself when, many years ago, I was +beginning to learn Italian, and read Dante for the first time among the +then leafy-covered ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. Here is Piccarda’s +reply:</p> + +<p class="poem">Our will, O brother mine, is kept at rest<br /> +By power of heavenly love, which makes us will,<br /> +For nought else thirsting, only things possessed.<br /> +If we should crave to be exalted still<br /> +More highly, then our will would not agree<br /> +With His, who gives to us the place we fill.<br /> +For ’tis of our own will the very ground,<br /> +That in the will of God we govern ours.</p> + +<p>Then comes that supremely beautiful line, not to be surpassed by any line +even in Dante:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">In la sua voluntade è nostra pace.</span><br /> +<br /> +Our peace is in submission to His will.</p> + +<p>Is it fanciful to think that in that line also Dante has betrayed and +bequeathed to us, perhaps unconsciously, his main conception of Woman, as +a gentle and adoring creature, who finds her greatest happiness in +subordinating her will to those who are deserving of the trust she reposes +in them?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>But Piccarda does not end the dialogue with her own story. She tells Dante +that the great Costanza, as she calls her, who married the German Henry +the Fifth, was also torn from a convent where she had taken the veil, and +forced into Royal nuptials. But when she was thus compelled to violate her +vows,</p> + +<p class="poem">Contra suo grado e contra buona usanza,<br /> +Non fu dal vel del cuor giammai disciolta.<br /> +<br /> +She wore the vestal’s veil within her heart.</p> + +<p>And, as if to indicate that the conduct of each was condoned by the Virgin +of Virgins, Dante concludes by saying:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 12.5em;">... <i>Ave</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Maria</i>, cantando; e cantando vanio,</span><br /> +<br /> +She faded from our sight, singing <i>Ave Maria</i>,</p> + +<p>and once again he concentrated his gaze on Beatrice, Beatrice whom he +regarded as his highest poetic conception of Woman. Fully to grasp what +that was, we must descend from Heaven to earth and recall the origin and +growth of his adoration of her, as described in the <i>Vita Nuova</i>.</p> + +<p>To some commentators on Dante, the narrative to be read there has +suggested difficulties when, in reality, there are none, leading them to +urge that a child of nine years of age could not feel what is therein +described, and that, therefore, it is purely symbolic, and was written not +about any human creature, but indicated Philosophy, or the desire for +spiritual enlightenment and the search for heavenly wisdom, which was +Dante’s overpowering impulse almost from the cradle. The answer to such an +interpretation of the passage is that it betrays an utter ignorance of the +emotional precocity of the poetic temperament, and of the vague but +intense hold Love can acquire over Poets from their earliest years.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>Of the reality underlying the idealism of the <i>Vita Nuova</i>, we therefore +need have no doubt whatever. Dante’s Beatrice was Beatrice Portinari, a +Florentine maid first, a Florentine bride later, whose people lived in the +Corso, near the Canto de’ Pazzi.</p> + +<p>All that follows in the narrative of the <i>Vita Nuova</i> may be relied on +just as implicitly; how, when she was eighteen years of age, he met her +again walking in the streets of Florence between two noble ladies older +than herself, and graciously, as Dante says, returned his salute; how, +with the naïf shyness of a youth consumed with love, he tried to dissemble +it by pretending to be enamoured of another damsel, which only made +Beatrice look away when she met him; and how he contrived to convey to her +indirectly, through a poem he wrote, that she had misjudged him; how, +thereon, she looked on him graciously once more; and how, alas! in her +twenty-fifth year, she was summoned from this world to the world above. +Then the <i>Vita Nuova</i> draws mournfully to a close, ending with these +significant words:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>After I had written this sonnet, there appeared to me a wonderful +vision, in which I saw things that made me determine to write no more +of this dear Saint until I should be able to write of her more +worthily; and, of a surety, she knows that I study to attain unto +this end with all my powers. So, if it shall please Him by Whom all +things live, to spare my life for some more years, I hope to say that +of her which never yet hath been said of any lady; and then may it +please Him, who is the Father of all good, to suffer my soul to see +the glory of its mistress, the sainted Beatrice, who now, abiding in +glory, looketh upon the face of Him who is blessed for ever and ever.</p></div> + +<p>For the fulfilment of that determination we must return to the <i>Divina +Commedia</i>, written in the fullness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> of the Poet’s powers. But there are +three lines in the <i>Vita Nuova</i> about the death of Beatrice that have +haunted me ever since I first read them, and whose beauty, I am sure, all +will feel:</p> + +<p class="poem">Non la ci tolse qualità di gelo,<br /> +Nè di color, siccome l’altro fece,<br /> +Ma sola fu sua gran benignitade:</p> + +<p>lines very difficult to translate, but the meaning of which is that she +died neither from chill nor from fever, which carries off other mortals, +but only of her great benignness, or excess of goodness, which rendered +earth an unfitting dwelling-place for her, and Paradise her only true +home.</p> + +<p>It is not necessary to comment here on the First Canto of the <i>Divina +Commedia</i>. That, one has done already before the Dante Society, and it is +not requisite for one’s present theme. But in Canto the Second we meet +with the Beatrice of the <i>Vita Nuova</i>. She it is that sends Virgil, who +dwells in the neutral territory of Limbo, to the Poet, saying:</p> + +<p class="poem">Io son Beatrice, che ti faccio andare:<br /> +Amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare.</p> + +<p>And not only does she say that she is animated by love, which has caused +her, now in Heaven, to feel so compassionately towards him, but also +because he loved her so while she was on earth, and continued to do so +after she had quitted it, with a fidelity that has lifted him above the +crowd of ordinary mortals, and made of him a Poet. Here, let it be said in +passing, we get another indication of Dante’s poetic conception of Woman, +which is, among other qualities, to co-operate in the making and fostering +of Poets, a mission in which they have never been wanting.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> Where, indeed, +is the Poet who could not say of some woman, and, if he be fortunate, of +more than one, what, in the Twenty-second Canto of the <i>Purgatorio</i>, Dante +makes Statius say to Virgil, “<i>Per te poeta fui</i>,” “It was through you +that I became a Poet.”</p> + +<p>Throughout the remaining Cantos of the <i>Inferno</i>, Beatrice naturally is +never mentioned, nor yet in the <i>Purgatorio</i>, till we reach Canto the +Thirtieth, wherein occurs perhaps the most painful scene in the +awe-inspiring poem. In it she descends from Heaven, an apparition of +celestial light, compared by the Poet to the dazzling dawn of a glorious +day. Smitten with fear, he turns for help to Virgil, but Virgil has left +him. “Weep not,” says Beatrice to him, “that Virgil is no longer by your +side; you will need all your tears when you hear me.” Then begins her +terrible arraignment:</p> + +<p class="poem">Guardaci ben: ben sem, ben sem Beatrice.<br /> +<br /> +Look on me well! Yes, I am Beatrice.</p> + +<p>Confused, Dante gazes upon the ground, and then glances at a fountain hard +by; but, seeing his own image trembling in the water, he lowers his eyes +to the green sward encircling it, and fixes them there, while she upbraids +him for his deviation from absolute fidelity to her memory, and his +disregard of her heavenly endeavours still to help and purify him. +Boccaccio says that Dante was a man of strong passions, and possibly, +indeed probably, he was. But Beatrice seems to reproach him with only one +transgression, and, if one is to say what one thinks, she has always +appeared to me a little hard on him. Nor does she rest content till she +has compelled him to confess his fault. He does so, and then she tells him +to lay aside<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> his grief, and think no more of it, for he is forgiven. +Perhaps, in mitigation of the feeling that her severity was in excess of +the cause, one ought to remember, since it is peculiarly pertinent to my +theme, that we are in the above harrowing scene presented with the +crowning characteristic of Dante’s poetic conception of Woman, that, be +the offence against her what it may, she forgets and forgives.</p> + +<p>It might be interesting on some other occasion to inquire how far Dante’s +poetic conception of Woman is shared by Poets generally, and by the +greater Poets of our own land in particular. Meanwhile one may affirm that +the inquiry would serve to show that it is in substance the same, though +no other Poet, in whatsoever tongue, has extolled and glorified a woman as +Dante did Beatrice. But Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, +Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, could all be shown, by apposite +illustration, to leave on the mind a conception of woman as a being +tender, devoted, faithful, helpful, “sweet, and serviceable,” as Tennyson +says of Elaine, quick to respond to affection, sensitive to beauty in +Nature and Arts, sympathising companion alike of the hearth and of man’s +struggle with life—in a word, a creature of whom it is true to say, as, +indeed, Byron <i>has</i> said, that “Love is her whole existence,” meaning by +Love not what is too frequently in these days falsely presented to us in +novels as such, but Love through all the harmonious scale of loving, +maternal, filial, conjugal, romantic, religious, and universal.</p> + +<p>Read then the Poets. They have a nobler conception of woman and of life +than the novelists. Their unobtrusive but conspicuous teaching harmonises +with the conduct of the best women, and has its deep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> foundation in a +belief in the beneficent potency of Love, from the most elementary up to +an apprehension of the meaning of the last line of the <i>Divina Commedia</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">L’amor che muove il Sole e l’altre stelle.<br /> +<br /> +Love that keeps the sun in its course, and journeys with the planets in their orbit.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> +<h2>POETRY AND PESSIMISM</h2> + +<p>The term Pessimism has in these later days been so intimately associated +with the philosophical theories of a well-known German writer, that I can +well excuse those who ask, What may be the connection between Pessimism +and Poetry? There are few matters of human interest that may not become +suitable themes for poetic treatment; but I scarcely think Metaphysics is +among them. It is not, therefore, to Schopenhauer’s theory of the World +conceived as Will and Idea, that I invite your attention. The Pessimism +with which we are concerned is much older than Metaphysics, is as old as +the human heart, and is never likely to become obsolete. It is the +Pessimism of which the simplest, the least cultured, and the most +unsophisticated of us may become the victims, and which expresses the +feeling that, on the whole, life is rather a bad business, that it is not +worth having, and that it is a thing which, in the language used by the +Duke in <i>Measure for Measure</i>, in order to console Claudio, none but fools +would keep.</p> + +<p>Now, as all forms of feeling, and most forms of thought, are reflected in +the magic mirror of Poetry, it is only natural that gloomy views of +existence, of the individual life, and of the world’s destiny should from +time to time find expression in the poet’s verse. There is quite enough +pain in the experience of the individual,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> quite enough vicissitude in the +history of nations, quite enough doubt and perplexity in the functions and +mission of mankind, for even the most cheerful and masculine Song to +change sometimes into the pathetic minor. What I would ask you to consider +with me is if there be not a danger lest poetry should remain for long in +this minor key, and if the Poet does not find ample justification and +warrant—nay, should he be a true and comprehensive interpreter of life, +of</p> + +<p class="poem">All moods, all passions, all delights,<br /> +Whatever stirs this mortal frame,</p> + +<p>if he does not find himself compelled, in reply to the question, “What of +the night?” to answer, “The stars are still shining.”</p> + +<p>No survey of the attitude of Poetry towards Pessimism would be +satisfactory that confined itself to one particular age; and I shall ask +you, therefore, to attend to the utterances of poets in other generations +than our own. But, since our own age necessarily interests us the most, +let us at least <i>begin</i> with <span class="smcap">It</span>.</p> + +<p>I should be surprised to find any one doubting that during the last few +years a wave of disillusion, of doubt, misgiving, and despondency has +passed over the world. We are no longer so confident as we were in the +abstract wisdom and practical working of our Institutions; we no longer +express ourselves with such certainty concerning the social and moral +advantages of our material discoveries; we entertain growing anxiety as to +the future of our Commerce; many persons have questioned the very +foundations of religious belief, and numbers have taken refuge from +conflicting creeds in avowed Agnosticism, or the confession that we know +and can know absolutely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> nothing concerning what it had long been assumed +it most behoves us to know. One by one, all the fondly cherished theories +of life, society and Empire; our belief in Free Trade as the evangelist of +peace, the solution of economic difficulties and struggles, and the sure +foundation of national greatness; all the sources of our satisfaction with +ourselves, our confidence in our capacity to reconcile the rivalry of +capital and labour, to repress drunkenness, to abolish pauperism, to form +a fraternal confederation with our Colonies, and to be the example to the +whole world of wealth, wisdom, and virtue, are one by one deserting us. We +no longer believe that Great Exhibitions will disarm the inherent ferocity +of mankind, that a judicious administration of the Poor Law will gradually +empty our workhouses, or that an elastic law of Divorce will correct the +aberrations of human passion and solve all the problems of the hearth. The +boastfulness, the sanguine expectations, the confident prophecies of olden +times are exchanged for hesitating speculations and despondent whispers. +We no longer seem to know whither we are marching, and many appear to +think that we are marching to perdition. We have curtailed the authority +of kings; we have narrowed the political competence of aristocracies; we +have widened the suffrage, till we can hardly widen it any further; we +have introduced the ballot, abolished bribery and corruption, and called +into play a more active municipal life; we have multiplied our railways, +and the pace of our travel has been greatly accelerated. Telegraph and +telephone traverse the land. Surgical operations of the most difficult and +dangerous character are performed successfully by the aid of anæsthetics, +without pain to the patient. We have forced from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> heaven more light than +ever Prometheus did; with the result that we transcend him likewise in our +pain. No one would assert that we are happier, more cheerful, more full of +hope, than our predecessors, or that we confront the Future with greater +confidence. All our Progress, so far, has ended in Pessimism more or less +pronounced; by some expressed more absolutely, by some with more +moderation; but felt by all, permeating every utterance, and infiltrating +into every stratum of thought.</p> + +<p>Now let us see to what extent these gloomy views have found expression in +poetry, and, first of all, in the writings of not only the most widely +read but the most sensitive and receptive poet of our time, Alfred +Tennyson. Tennyson came of age in 1830, or just on the eve of the first +Reform Bill, when a great Party in the State, which was to enjoy almost a +monopoly of power for the next thirty years, firmly believed, and was +followed by a majority of the nation in believing, that we had only to +legislate in a generous and what was called a liberal sense, to bring +about the Millennium within a reasonable period. They had every possible +opportunity of putting their belief into practice, and they did so with +generous ardour. Now in that year 1830 there appeared what was practically +Tennyson’s first volume; and save in the instance of the short poem +beginning</p> + +<p class="poem">You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Within this region I subsist,</span></p> + +<p>and the somewhat longer but still comparatively brief one, opening with</p> + +<p class="poem">Love thou thy land, with love far-brought<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From out the storied Past,</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>there is no reference in it to the political or social condition of the +English people. The bulk of the poems had evidently been composed, so to +speak, in the lofty vacuum created by the poet and the artist for himself, +save where, in the lines,</p> + +<p class="poem">Vex not thou the Poet’s mind<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With thy shallow wit:</span><br /> +Vex not thou the poet’s mind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For thou canst not fathom it,</span></p> + +<p>he seemed to be giving the great body of his countrymen notice that they +had nothing in common with him, or he with them. And, in the two +exceptions I have named, what is his attitude? You all remember the lines:</p> + +<p class="poem">But pamper not a hasty time,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor feed with vague imaginings</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings</span><br /> +That every sophister can lime.</p> + +<p>And so he goes on, through stanzas with which, I am sure, you are +thoroughly familiar, ending with the often-quoted couplet:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed</span><br /> +Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay.</p> + +<p>It would be difficult to find, in verse, a more terse or accurate +embodiment of what, in no Party sense, we may call the Conservative mind, +the Conservative way of looking at things, or a more striking instance of +contemporaneous verse reflecting what had recently been the average public +temper of the moment. The England of the years that immediately preceded +1830 was an England wearied with the strain and stress of the great war +and the mighty agitations of the early part of the century, and now, +craving for repose, was in politics more or less stationary. Therefore in +this earliest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> volume, of one of the most sensitive and receptive of +writers, we encounter only quiet panegyrics of</p> + +<p class="poem">A land of settled government,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A land of just and old renown,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Where Freedom slowly broadens down</span><br /> +From precedent to precedent.<br /> +<br /> +Where Faction seldom gathers head,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">But, by degrees to fulness wrought,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The strength of some diffusive thought</span><br /> +Hath time and space to work and spread.</p> + +<p>Here we have none of the rebellious political protests of Byron, none of +the iconoclastic fervour of Shelley, none even of the philosophic yearning +of Wordsworth. It was a Conservative, a self-satisfied England, and the +youthful Tennyson accordingly was perfectly well satisfied with it, +evidently having as yet no cognizance of the fact that Radicalism was +already more than muling and pewking in the arms of its Whig nurse, and +that Reforms were about to be carried neither “slowly,” nor by “still +degrees,” nor in accordance with any known “precedent.”</p> + +<p>Tennyson’s next volume was not published till 1842. During the twelve +years that had elapsed since the appearance of its predecessor, a mighty +change had come not only over the dream, but over the practice, of the +English People. It was an England in which the stationary or conservative +tone of thought of which I spoke was, if not extinct, discredited and +suppressed, and the fortunes of the Realm were moulded by the generous and +hopeful theories of Liberalism. Tennyson meanwhile had been subjected to +the influences of what he called the wondrous Mother Age; and harken how +now—it scarcely sounds like the same voice—the eulogist of the “storied +Past,” the deprecator of “crude <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>imaginings” and of a “hasty time,” +confronts the dominant spirit and rising impulses of the new generation:</p> + +<p class="poem">For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,<br /> +Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;<br /> +<br /> +Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,<br /> +Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;<br /> +<br /> +Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,<br /> +With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;<br /> +<br /> +Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d<br /> +In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.<br /> +<br /> +There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,<br /> +And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.</p> + +<p>Did Optimism ever find a clearer, more enthusiastic, or more confident +voice than that? I have sometimes thought that when the Historian comes to +write, in distant times, of the rise, progress, and decline of Liberalism +in England, he will cite that passage as the melodious compendium of its +creed. You all know where the passage comes; for you have, I am sure, the +first <i>Locksley Hall</i> by heart.</p> + +<p>But there is another <i>Locksley Hall</i>, the <i>Locksley Hall</i> which the Author +himself calls <i>Locksley Hall Sixty Years After</i>, published as recently as +1886. You are acquainted with it, no doubt; but I should be surprised to +find any one quite so familiar with it as with its predecessor. It is not +so attractive, so fascinating, so saturated with beauty. But for my +purpose it is eminently instructive, and I will ask you to listen to some +of its rolling couplets.</p> + +<p class="poem">Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>Read the wide world’s annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.<br /> +<br /> +Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,<br /> +Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.<br /> +<br /> +Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:<br /> +When was age so cramm’d with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?<br /> +<br /> +Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,<br /> +Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, “Ye are equals, equal-born.”<br /> +<br /> +Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.<br /> +Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat.<br /> +<br /> +Till the Cat thro’ that mirage of overheated language loom<br /> +Larger than the Lion,—Demos end in working its own doom.<br /> +<br /> +Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game;<br /> +Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name.<br /> +<br /> +Step by step we gain’d a freedom known to Europe, known to all;<br /> +Step by step we rose to greatness,—thro’ the tonguesters we may fall.</p> + +<p>Was there ever such a contrast as between these two <i>Locksley Halls</i>? The +same poet, the same theme, the same metre, but how different the voice, +the tone, the tendency, the conclusion! All the Liberalism, all the +enthusiasm, the hope, the confidence, of former years have vanished, and +in their place we have reactionary despondency. It is as though the same +hand that wrote the Christening Ode to Liberalism, had composed a dirge to +be chanted over its grave.</p> + +<p>The genius of Tennyson needs no fresh panegyric. It is but yesterday he +died, in the fullness of his Fame; and that his works will be read so long +as the English language remains a living tongue, I cannot doubt. But if, +while his claim to the very highest place as an artist must ever remain +uncontested, doubts should be expressed concerning his equality with the +very greatest poets, those who express that doubt will, I imagine,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> base +their challenge on the excessive receptivity, and consequent lack of +serenity of his mind. In the first <i>Locksley Hall</i> the poet is an +Optimist. In the second <i>Locksley Hall</i> he is a Pessimist. And why? +Because, when the first was written, the prevailing tone of the age was +optimistic; and, when the second was composed, the prevailing tone of the +time had become pessimistic.</p> + +<p>It will scarcely be doubted, therefore, that there does exist a real and a +very grave danger lest Poetry should, in these perplexing and despondent +days, not only be closely associated with Pessimism, but should become for +the most part its voice and echo. I am precluded from presenting to you +illustrations of this danger from the works of living writers of verse. +But in truth, the malady of which I am speaking—for malady, in my +opinion, it is—began to manifest itself long before the present +generation, long before Tennyson wrote, and when indeed he was yet a child +in the cradle. The main original source of Modern Pessimism is the French +movement known as the Revolution, which, by exciting extravagant hopes as +to the happy results to be secured from the emancipation of the +individual, at first generated a fretful impatience at the apparently slow +fulfilment of the dream, and finally aroused a sceptical and reactionary +despondency at the only too plain and patent demonstration that the dream +was not going to be fulfilled at all. It is this blending of wild hopes +and extravagant impatience that inspired and informed the poetry of +Shelley, that produced <i>Queen Mab</i>, <i>The Revolt of Islam</i>, and <i>Prometheus +Unbound</i>. In Byron it was impatience blent with disillusion that dictated +<i>Childe Harold</i>, <i>Manfred</i>, and <i>Cain</i>, and finally culminated in the +mockery of <i>Don Juan</i>. Keats, while ostensibly holding aloof from the +political and social<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> issues of his time, succumbed and ministered to the +disease, even if unconsciously and unintentionally, more even than either +Byron or Shelley; for <i>they</i> went on fighting against, while <i>he</i> +passively submitted, to it. Keats found nothing in his own time worth +sympathising with or singing about, and so took refuge in mythological and +classical themes, or in the expression of states of feeling in which he +grows half in love with easeful death, in which more than ever it seems +sweet to die and to cease upon the midnight with no pain, and to the high +requiem of the nightingale to become a sod that does not hear.</p> + +<p>Now it is an instructive circumstance that, in recent years, a distinct +and decided preference has been manifested both by the majority of critics +and by the reading public for the poetry of Keats even over the poetry of +the other two writers I have named in connection with him. In Byron, +notwithstanding his rebellious tendency, notwithstanding the gloom that +often overshadows his verse, notwithstanding his being one of the +exponents of those exaggerated hopes and that exaggerated despondency of +which I have spoken, there was a considerable fund of common sense and a +good deal of manliness. He was a man of the world and could not help being +so, in spite of his attitude of hostility to it. Moreover, in many of his +poems, action plays a conspicuous part, and the general passions, +interests, and politics of mankind are dealt with by him in a more or less +practical spirit, and as though they concerned him likewise. Shelley, too, +not unoften condescended to deal with the political, social, and religious +polemics of his time, though he always did so in a passionate and utterly +impracticable temper, and would necessarily leave on the mind of the +reader,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> the conviction that everything in the world is amiss, and that +the only possible remedy is the abolition of everything that had hitherto +been regarded as an indispensable part of the foundation of human society. +But Keats does not trouble himself about any of these things. He gives +them the go-by, he ignores them, and only asks to be allowed to leave the +world unseen, and with the nightingale, to fade away into the forest dim.</p> + +<p class="poem">Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What thou among the leaves hast never known,</span><br /> +The weariness, the fever, and the fret<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;</span><br /> +Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Where but to think is to be full of sorrow</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">And leaden-eyed despairs;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.</span></p> + +<p>This is the voice, I say, which, during the last few years, has been +preferred even to Shelley’s, and very much preferred to Byron’s. And why? +You will perhaps say that Keats’s workmanship is fascinatingly beautiful. +In the passage I have cited, and in the entire poem from which it is +taken, that unquestionably is so. But I trust I shall not give offence if +I say that the number of my countrymen and countrywomen who lay stress on +the artistic manner, whether in verse or prose, in which an opinion is +expressed, compared with the number of those who value poetry or prose +chiefly because it expresses the opinions they value and the sentiments +they cherish, is very small. No, Keats is preferred because Keats turns +aside from the world at large, and thinks and writes only of individual +feeling. Hence he has been more welcomed by recent critics, and by recent +readers of poetry. Indeed, certain critics<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> have laboured to erect it into +a dogma, indeed into an absolute literary and critical canon, that a poet +who wishes to attain true distinction must turn his back on politics, on +people, on society, on his country, on patriotism, on everything in fact +save books—his own thoughts, his own feelings, and his own art. Because +Byron did not do so they have dubbed him a Philistine; and because Pope +did precisely the reverse, and the reverse, no doubt, overmuch, they +assert that he was not a poet at all.</p> + +<p>It is not necessary to dwell on the fatuousness of such criticism, more +especially as one discerns welcome signs of a disposition on the part of +the reading public to turn away from these guides, and a disposition even +on the part of the guides themselves in some degree to reconsider and +revise their unfortunate utterances. But I have alluded to the doctrine in +question, in order to show you to what lengths Pessimism, which is only a +compendious expression of dissatisfaction with things in general, in other +words with life, with society, and with mankind, can go, and how it has +culminated in such disdain of them by poets, that they brush them aside as +subjects unworthy of the Muse. Surely Pessimism in Poetry can no farther +go, than to assume, without question, that man, life, society, patriotism +are not worth a song?</p> + +<p>I should not wonder if some will have been saying to themselves, “But what +about Wordsworth; <ins class="correction" title="original: Wordworth">Wordsworth</ins>, who was the contemporary, and at least the +equal, alike in genius and in influence, of the three poets just named?” I +have not forgotten Wordsworth. Wordsworth was of too pious a temperament, +using the word pious in its very largest signification, to be a Pessimist; +for true piety and Pessimism are irreconcilable.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> Nevertheless Wordsworth, +as a poet, likewise experienced, and experienced acutely, the influence of +the French Revolution. Upon this point there can be no difference of +opinion; for he himself left it on record in a well-known passage. +Everybody knows with what different eyes Wordsworth finally looked on the +French Revolution; how utterly he broke with its tenets, its promises, its +offspring; taking refuge from his disappointment.</p> + +<p>But something akin to despondency, if too permeated with sacred +resignation wholly to deserve that description, may be discovered in the +attitude henceforward assumed by Wordsworth, as a poet, towards the world, +society, and mankind. Not only did he write a long poem, <i>The Recluse</i>, +but he himself was a recluse, and the whole of <i>The Excursion</i> is the +composition of a recluse. Matthew Arnold, always a high authority on +Wordsworth, has said:</p> + +<p class="poem">But Wordsworth’s eyes avert their ken<br /> +From half of human fate.</p> + +<p>Indeed they did; turning instead to the silence that is in the sky, to the +sleep that is in the hills, to the mountains, the flowers, and the poet’s +own solitary <i>meditations</i>. He declared that he would rather be a Pagan +suckled in a creed outworn than one of those Christian worldlings, of +which society seemed to him mainly to consist. This is not necessarily +Pessimism. But it goes perilously near to it; and the boundary line would +have been crossed, but that Wordsworth’s prayer was answered, in which he +petitioned that his days might be linked each to each by natural piety.</p> + +<p>Of Matthew Arnold himself, as a poet, I am able to speak; for though he +was not long ago one’s contemporary, he is no longer one of ourselves. In +Matthew Arnold it has always seemed to me, the poet and the man,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> his +reason and his imagination, were not quite one. They were harnessed +together rather than incorporated one with the other; and, many years +before he died, if I may press the comparison a little farther, the poet, +the imaginative part of him became lame and halt, and he conveyed his mind +in the humbler one-horse vehicle of prose. The poetic impulse in him was +not strong enough to carry him along permanently against the prosaic +opposition of life. Nevertheless, he was a poet who wrote some very +beautiful poetry; and he exercised a powerful influence, both as a poet +and as a prose-writer, on the thoughts and sentiments of his time. Now, +what do we find him saying? Listen!</p> + +<p class="poem">Wandering between two worlds, one dead,<br /> +The other powerless to be born,<br /> +With nowhere yet to rest my head,<br /> +Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.<br /> +Their faith, My tears, the world deride,<br /> +I come to shed them at your side.<br /> +<br /> +There yet perhaps may dawn an age,<br /> +More fortunate alas! than we,<br /> +Which without hardness will be sage,<br /> +And gay without frivolity.<br /> +Sons of the world, oh haste those years!<br /> +But, till they rise, allow our tears.</p> + +<p>Hark to the words he puts into the mouth of Empedocles:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">And yet what days were those, Parmenides!</span><br /> +Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought<br /> +Nor outward things were closed and dead to us;<br /> +But we received the shock of mighty thoughts<br /> +On simple minds with a pure natural joy.<br /> +<span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><br /> +We had not lost our balance then, nor grown<br /> +Thought’s slaves, and dead to every natural joy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>In another poem he declares:</p> + +<p class="poem">Achilles ponders in his tent:<br /> +The Kings of modern thought are dumb;<br /> +Silent they are, though not content,<br /> +And wait to see the future come.<br /> +<span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><br /> +Our fathers watered with their tears<br /> +The sea of time whereon we sail;<br /> +Their voices were in all men’s ears<br /> +Who passed within their puissant hail.<br /> +Still the same ocean round us raves,<br /> +But we stand mute and watch the waves.</p> + +<p>Last and worst of all, and in utter despondency and pessimism he cries:</p> + +<p class="poem">Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Your social order, too!</span><br /> +Where tarries He, the Power who said,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>See</i>, I make all things new?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">... The past is out of date,</span><br /> +The future not yet born;<br /> +And who can be alone elate,<br /> +While the world lies forlorn?</p> + +<p>Can Pessimism in Poetry go farther than that? Many will perhaps think it +cannot; but, unfortunately, it can. It is only from poets who are dead, if +dead but recently, that one can draw one’s illustrations; otherwise I +could suggest you should read to yourselves volume upon volume of verse, +the one long weary burden of which is the misery of being alive. I daresay +you will not be sorry that one is precluded from introducing these +melancholy minstrels. But the spirit that imbues and pervades them is +compendiously and conveniently expressed in a composition that I <i>can</i> +read to you, and which I select because it seems to express, in reasonably +small compass, the indictment which our metrical pessimists labour to +bring against existence.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>I have confined my survey entirely to poets of our own land, and have said +nothing to you of Giacomo Leopardi, the celebrated Italian Pessimistic +Poet; nothing of Heine, whose beautiful but too often cynical lyrics must +be known to you either in the original German, or in one or other of the +various English versions, into which they have been rendered; nothing of +the long procession of railers, sometimes bestial, nearly always +repulsive, in French verse, beginning with Baudelaire, and coming down to +the <i>petits crevés</i> of poetry who are not ashamed to be known by the name +of <i>décadens</i>, and who certainly deserve it, for if they possess nothing +else, they possess to perfection the art of sinking. One would naturally +expect to find in the country where occurred the French Revolution, the +most violent forms of the malady which, as I have said, is mainly +attributable to it; and surely it is a strong confirmation of the truth of +that theory that it is in France poetic pessimism has in our day had its +most outrageous and most voluminous expression.</p> + +<p>I hope no one supposes that I am, even incidentally, intending to +pronounce a sweeping and unqualified condemnation of the great movement +known in history as the French Revolution. That would indeed be to be as +narrow as the narrowest pessimist could possibly show himself. The French +Revolution, as is probably the case with every great political, religious, +or social movement, was in its action partly beneficial, partly +detrimental. It abolished many monstrous abuses, it propounded afresh some +long-neglected or violated truths; and it gave a vigorous impulse to human +hope. But it was perhaps the most violent of all the great movements +recorded in human annals. Accordingly, it destroyed over much, and it +promised over much.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> In all probability, action and reaction are as nicely +balanced in the intellectual and moral world as in the physical, and +exaggerated hopes must have their equivalent in correlated and co-equal +disappointment. I sometimes think that the nineteenth century now closed +will be regarded in the fullness of time as a colossal egotist, that began +by thinking somewhat too highly of itself, its prospects, its capacity, +its performances, and ended by thinking somewhat too meanly of what I have +called things in general, or those permanent conditions of man, life, and +society, which no amount of Revolutions, French or otherwise, will avail +to get rid of.</p> + +<p>In truth, if I were asked to say briefly what Pessimism is, I should say +it is disappointed Egotism; and the description will hold good, whether we +apply it to an individual, to a community, or to an age.</p> + +<p>For nothing is more remarkable in the writings of pessimistic poets than +the attention they devote, and that they ask us to devote, to their own +feelings. Far be it from me to deny that some very lovely and very +valuable verse has been written by poets concerning their personal joys, +sorrows, hopes, longings, and disappointments. But then it is verse which +describes the joys, sorrows, hopes, longings, and disappointments common +to the whole human race, and which every sensitive nature experiences at +some time or another, in the course of chequered life, and which are +peculiar to no particular age or generation, but the pathetic possession +of all men, and all epochs. The verse to which I allude with less +commendation, is the verse in which the writer seems to be occupied, and +asking us to occupy ourselves, with exceptional states of suffering which +appertain to him alone, or to him and the little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> esoteric circle of +superior martyrs to which he belongs, and to some special period of +history in which their lot is cast. The sorrows we entertain in common +with others never lead to pessimism, they lead to pity, sympathy, pathos, +to pious resignation, to courageous hope. I wish these privileged invalids +would take to heart those noble lines of Wordsworth:</p> + +<p class="poem">So once it would have been—’tis so no more—<br /> +I have submitted to a new control—<br /> +A power is gone which nothing can restore,<br /> +A deep distress hath humanized my soul!</p> + +<p>I sometimes think these doleful bards have never had a really deep +distress, that their very woe is fanciful, and that like the young +gentleman in France of whom Arthur speaks in <i>King John</i>, they are as sad +as night, only for wantonness. But far from being rebuked by critics for +their sea-green melancholy, they have been hailed as true masters of song +for scarcely any better reason than that they declare themselves to be +utterly miserable, and life to be equally so. Indeed by some critics it +has been raised into a literary canon, not only that all Poetry, to be of +much account, must be written in the pathetic minor, but that the poets +themselves, if we are to recognise them as endowed with true genius and +real sacred fire, must be unhappy from the cradle to the grave. If they +can die young, if they can go mad, or commit suicide, so much the better. +Their credentials as great poets are then firmly established. Even a +pathetic phrase has been invented to describe the natural and inevitable +condition of such sacred persons, a phrase that must be well known to +you—the Sorrows of Genius.</p> + +<p>Therefore, in the really sacred name of Genius, of Literature, of Poetry, +I protest against this pitiable,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> this mawkish, unmanly, unwholesome, and +utterly untrue estimate both of poetry and poets. No first-rate poet ever +went mad, or ever committed suicide, though one or two, no doubt, have +happened to die comparatively young. It is utterly dishonouring to poets, +it is utterly discrediting to men of genius, to represent them as feeble, +whining, helpless, love-sick, life-sick invalids, galvanised from time to +time into activity by a sort of metrical hysteria. Because Shelley has +truly said that</p> + +<p class="poem">Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought</p> + +<p>—and because in <i>Julian and Maddalo</i> he has represented Byron as saying that men</p> + +<p class="poem">... learn in suffering what they teach in song</p> + +<p>—are we to conclude that sadness and suffering are the only things in +life, the only things in it deserving of the poet’s music? No one will +ever be a poet of much consequence who has not suffered, for, as Goethe +finely says, he who never ate his bread in sorrow, knows not the Heavenly +Powers. But, if our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest +thought, they are not necessarily our strongest or our greatest songs; and +if we accept the assertion that men learn in suffering what they teach in +song, do not let us forget the “learning” spoken of in the line. The poet, +no doubt, has to learn by suffering, but having learnt, he has then, in my +opinion, to help others not to be miserable, but to be happy.</p> + +<p>I cannot here allude to well-known poets of other ages and other nations, +avowedly great and permanent benefactors of mankind, all of whom alike +were completely free from this malady of universal discontent. But let me +at least take a cursory survey of our native poets; for, after all, to us +English men and English<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> women, what English poets have felt and said +concerns us most and interests us most deeply. Let us see what is their +attitude to external nature, to man, woman, life, society, and the general +dispensation of existence.</p> + +<p>You know how our modern pessimists cannot see a tree, a flower, or a +mountain, but straightway they drop into what I may call a falling +sickness, and all the beauty of the woods, fields, and sky merely suggests +to them a picturesque background for their own superior sighs and sorrows. +How differently Chaucer looks upon the panorama of this fair earth of +ours! He is a great student, as men in the early days of the Renaissance +were, and he tells us that he hath such delight in reading books, and has +in his heart for them such reverence, that there is no game which can tear +him away from them. But, when the month of May comes, and the birds sing, +and the flowers begin to shoot, then, he adds, “Farewell my book and my +devotion!” He wanders forth and beholds the eye of the daisy; and this +blissful sight, as he calls it, softeneth all his sorrow. Elsewhere he +describes how he cannot lie in bed for the glad beams of the sun that pour +in through the window. He rushes out, and is delighted with everything. +The welkin is fair, the air blue and light, it is neither too hot nor too +cold, and not a cloud is anywhere to be seen. This disposition of content +with and joy in external Nature, Chaucer displays equally when he consorts +with his kind. It is very noticeable, though I am not aware if it has been +pointed out before, how he portrays all the various pilgrims and +personages in the famous <i>Prologue to the Canterbury Tales</i> as of cheerful +and generally jovial spirits. There is not a melancholy person, not a +pessimist, in the whole company. He describes himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> as talking and +having fellowship with every one of them, and we may therefore conclude he +also was pretty cheerful and genial himself. Even of his “perfect gentle +knight,” whom he evidently intended to describe as the pink of chivalry, +he says:</p> + +<p class="poem">And though that he was worthy, he was wise.</p> + +<p>And there never was, and never will be, wisdom without cheerfulness. As +for the young Squire, the lover and lusty bachelor, that accompanied the +Knight, Chaucer says of him, in a couplet that has always struck me as +possessing a peculiar charm:</p> + +<p class="poem">Singing he was or fluting all the day,<br /> +He was as merry as the month of May.</p> + +<p>He says of him, though he could sit a horse well, he could also write +songs; and we can easily surmise what the songs were like. Chaucer’s Nun +or Prioress is delineated by him as full pleasant and amiable of port, and +as even taking trouble to feign the cheerful air of a lady of the Court. +When the Monk rides abroad, men could hear his bridle jingling in a +whistling wind as clear and loud as the chapel bell. Do not the words stir +one’s blood to cheerfulness, and sound like a very carillon of joy? Of the +Friar it is recorded that certainly he had a merry note, and well could he +sing and play upon the harp, and that while he sang and played, his eyes +twinkled in his head, like stars in the frosty night. The business of the +Clerk of Oxenford was by his speech to sow abroad moral virtue; but +Chaucer adds, “And gladly would he learn—” mark that word “gladly” “—and +gladly teach.” The Franklin, a country gentleman, he declares, was wont to +live in delight, for he was Epicurus’ own son. The Shipman draws many a +draught of wine from Bordeaux;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> well can the wife of Bath laugh and jest; +the Miller is a regular joker and buffoon; a better fellow you cannot +find, he avers, than the Sumpnor; and the Pardoner, for very jollity, goes +bareheaded, singing full merrily and loud. As for the Landlord of the +“Tabard,” he is described as making great cheer, being a right merry man. +He declares there is no comfort nor mirth in riding to Canterbury, even on +pilgrimage, as dumb as a stone, and that they may smite off his head if he +does not succeed in making them merry; and it all ends by Chaucer +declaring that every wight was blithe and glad. Indeed, these are such a +cheery, such a jovial set, that the only sorrow we can feel in connection +with them is regret that we, too, were not of that delightful company.</p> + +<p>I wonder if it has occurred to you, while reading these brief and cursory +extracts from Chaucer, to say to yourselves, “How English it all is!” If +not, may I say it for you? I am free to confess that I am one of those who +think—and I hope there are some in this room who share my opinion—that +the epithet English is an epithet to be proud of, an adjective of praise, +a mark of commendation, and connotes, as the logician would say, +everything that is manly, brave, wholesome, and sane. These latter-day +melancholy moping minstrels are not English at all, they are feeble copies +of foreign originals. Between them and Chaucer there is absolute +alienation. About them there is nothing jolly or jovial, and there is not +one good fellow among them.</p> + +<p>Let us turn to the next great name according to chronological order in +English Poetry; let us glance, if but rapidly, at the pages of Spenser. +You could not well have two poets of more different dispositions than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> +Chaucer and Spenser. One seems to hear Chaucer’s own bridle jingling in a +whistling wind, to see his own eyes twinkling in his head like stars in +the frosty night, and one thinks of him, too, as singing or fluting all +the day long and being as merry as the month of May. In the gaze, on the +brow, and in the pages of Spenser, there abides a lofty dignity, as of a +high-born stately gentleman, deferential to all, but familiar with none. +Indeed he resembles his own Gentle Knight in the opening lines of the +<i>Fairy Queen</i>, the description of whom I have always thought is none other +than the portraiture of himself. If ever a poet had high seriousness it is +Spenser. He never condescends to indulge in the broad jests dear to +Chaucer, frequent in Shakespeare, common in Byron. Yet between him and +Chaucer, between him and every great poet, there is this similarity, that +he looks on life with a cheerful mind. It is a grave cheerfulness, but +cheerfulness all the same; and, in truth, cheerful gravity, and high +seriousness are one and the same thing.</p> + +<p class="poem">Full jolly Knight he seemed, and fair did sit,<br /> +As one for Knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit!</p> + +<p>he says in the very first stanza of his noble poem. “Jolly,” no doubt, +does not mean quite the same thing with Spenser as it does with Chaucer. +There is the difference in signification, we may say, that there is, in +character, between the Landlord of the “Tabard” and the Gentle Knight. But +never does the latter lapse into melancholy, much less into Pessimism. He +is too active, on too great adventure bound, and too impressed with its +solemn importance, for that. Spenser himself significantly expresses the +fear that his Gentle Knight</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>Of his cheer did seem too solemn sad,</p> + +<p>as though he wished to let us know that even solemn sadness is a fault. +But he soon enables us to discern that appearance is misleading, and +reflects in reality only a noble, lofty, and serene temper, and that +desire to win the worship and favour of the Fairy Queen, which he tells +us, “of all earthly things, the Knight most did crave.” As soon as Spenser +has described the lovely lady that rode the Knight beside, he says:</p> + +<p class="poem">And forth they pass, with <i>pleasure</i> forward led.</p> + +<p>And again</p> + +<p class="poem">Led with <i>delight</i>, they thus beguile the way.</p> + +<p>There is no buffoonery, as in the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, but a wise equable +serenity that contemplates man and woman, beauty, temptation, danger, +sorrow, struggle, honour, this world and the next, with a Knightly +equanimity that nothing can disturb. But why should I dwell on the point, +when Spenser himself has written one line which I may call his confession +of faith on the subject?—</p> + +<p class="poem">The noblest mind the best contentment has.</p> + +<p>What a noble line! the noblest, I think, in all literature. Let us commit +it to heart, repeat it morning, noon, and night, and it will cast out for +us all the devils, aye, all the swine of Pessimism. What does this grave, +this serious, this dignified English poet say of the Muses themselves?—</p> + +<p class="poem">The Sisters Nine, which dwell on Parnass’ height,<br /> +Do make them music for their more delight!</p> + +<p>That is Spenser’s conception of the mission of poetry, and of the function +of the poet—to make them music<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> for their more delight—I acknowledge it +is mine. I earnestly trust it is that of many.</p> + +<p>There is no passion of the human heart, no speculation of the human mind, +to which Shakespeare has not, in some passage or another, given expressive +utterance; and since in life there is much sorrow, no little suffering, +and ample sadness, chapter and verse can readily be found in his universal +pages for any mood or any state of feeling. But what is the one, broad, +final impression we receive of the gaze with which Shakespeare looked on +life? A complete answer to that question would furnish matter for a long +paper. But one brief passage must here suffice. In the most terrible and +tragic of all his tragedies, <i>King Lear</i>, and in the most terrible and +tragic of all its appalling incidents, the following brief colloquy takes +place between Edgar and his now sightless father:</p> + +<p class="poem">Away, old man; give me thy hand; away!<br /> +King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta’en:<br /> +Give me thy hand, come on.<br /> +No farther, sir,</p> + +<p>replies Gloster in despair,</p> + +<p class="poem">No farther, sir! A man may rot even here.</p> + +<p>What is Edgar’s answer?—</p> + +<p class="poem">What! In ill thoughts again? Men must endure<br /> +Their going hence, even as their coming hither,<br /> +Ripeness is all: come on!</p> + +<p>If, at such a moment, and in the very darkest hour of disaster, +Shakespeare puts such language into the mouth of Edgar, is it wonderful +that he should, in less gloomy moments, take so cheerful a view of life, +that Milton can only describe his utterances by calling them “woodnotes wild”?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>And Milton himself? Milton almost as grave as Spenser and certainly more +austere. Yet I do not think that Pessimism, that the advocates of +universal suicide, since life is not worth living, will be able to get +much help or sanction for their doleful gospel from the poet who wrote +<i>Paradise Lost</i> expressly to</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">... assert Eternal Providence</span><br /> +And justify the ways of God to man.</p> + +<p>Milton has given us, in two of the loveliest lyrics in the language, his +conception of Melancholy and of Joy. Of his <i>L’Allegro</i> I need not speak. +But in <i>Il Penseroso</i>, if anywhere in Milton, we must look for some +utterance akin to the desolation and the despair of modern pessimistic +poets. We may look, but assuredly we shall not find it.</p> + +<p class="poem">Then let the pealing organ blow,<br /> +To the full-voicëd choir below.</p> + +<p>In protesting, therefore, against Pessimism in Poetry, I am only returning +to the oldest, soundest, and noblest traditions in English Literature, and +in the English character. I trust no one supposes I am denying or that I +am insensible to the existence of pain, woe, sadness, loss, even anguish +and acute suffering, as integral and inevitable elements in life; and if +poetry did not take note of these, and give to them pathetic and adequate +expression, poetry would not be, as it is, coextensive with life, would +not be the Paraclete or Comforter, with the gift of tongues. In poetry the +note of sorrow will be, and must be, occasionally, and indeed frequently +struck; it should not be the dominant key, much less the only key in which +the poet tunes his song. There is much in our modern civilisation that is +very unbeautiful, nay, that is downright ugly, whether<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> we look on it with +the eye of the artist or with the vision of the moralist. Moreover, I +perceive—who could fail to perceive?—that we have in these days some +very dark and difficult social problems to solve. Then let the poet come +to our assistance by accompanying us with musical encouragement. For, +remember, the poet has to make harmony, not out of language only, but out +of life as well. I was once looking at a violin, a very lovely violin, a +Stradivarius of great value and exquisite tone, and I asked the lady to +whom it belonged of what wood the various parts of the instrument was +composed. She told me, with much loving detail; but, she said, “I ought to +add that I have been told no violin can be made of supreme quality unless +the wood be taken from that side of the tree which faces south.” It is the +same with the Poet. If he is to give us the sweetest, the most sonorous, +and the truest notes, his nature must have a bias towards the sunny side.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> +<h2>A VINDICATION OF TENNYSON</h2> + +<p class="note">[This paper appeared in <i>Macmillan’s Magazine</i> a quarter of a century +ago, in reply to one that had been published in the same periodical in the previous month.]</p> + +<p>In the days of Chivalry, whose spirit, I trust, still lingers with us, +though its forms may have passed away, the prelude to a peaceful +tournament, or <i>joute de plaisance</i>, was the salutation of each other by +the combatants. In the pages which follow an effort will be made in some +degree to dislodge Mr. Swinburne from that seat of critical judgment which +he occupies with such gallant confidence, with such waving of plume and +such clashing of shield. But before the lists are opened, let me salute, +with something more than ceremonial courtesy, the exquisite lyrical genius +of the poet, and the solid accomplishments of the scholar. That premised, +I will, without further preliminary, betake me to my task.</p> + +<p>In the latest number of one of the ablest of monthly reviews, Mr. +Swinburne, enlarging on a passage, rather cursory and incidental than +definitive or judicial, inserted by M. Taine at the close of his brilliant +survey of English poetry, institutes a comparison between Mr. Tennyson and +Alfred de Musset. With Mr. Swinburne’s opening remark every one must +agree. It is distinctive of this age, he says, that the greatest of the +great writers who were born about the opening of the century, are still +working with splendid persistence. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> was affirmed by Menander that those +the gods love die young. Is it because the gods themselves are dead, that +the heavenly favourites are nowadays permitted to exceed even the +scriptural span of life? Be this as it may, to Mr. Tennyson, with peculiar +aptness, may be addressed the lines of Wordsworth, inspired by a very +different personage:</p> + +<p class="poem">Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,<br /> +Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nigh,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A melancholy slave;</span><br /> +But an old age serene and bright,<br /> +And lovely as a Lapland night,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Shall lead thee to thy grave.</span></p> + +<p>More appropriate still perhaps, for the moment, would be an excerpt from +Alfred de Musset himself, whom the gods loved not well enough either to +cut off in the flower of his youth, or to leave hanging till he had +achieved maturity. Mr. Swinburne, no doubt, knows the lines by heart:</p> + +<p class="poem">Mais comment fais-tu donc, vieux maître<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pour renaître?</span><br /> +Car tes vers, en dépit du temps,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ont vingt ans.</span><br /> +<br /> +Si jamais ta tête qui penche<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Devient blanche,</span><br /> +Ce sera comme l’amandier,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cher Nodier:</span><br /> +<br /> +Ce qui le blanchit n’est pas l’âge,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ni l’orage;</span><br /> +C’est la fraîche rosée en pleurs<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dans les fleurs.</span></p> + +<p>To this survival of power in Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Swinburne pays homage after +his fashion. Who could possibly withhold it? <i>The “Revenge,” The Battle +of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> Lucknow</i>, and most of all <i>Rizpah</i>, show that, even as in the days of +<i>Locksley Hall</i>, ancient founts of inspiration well through Mr. Tennyson’s +fancy yet; serving to remind us that Nature rejoices in the occasional +violation of her own laws, that roses are not altogether unknown in +November, and that even when the snowdrop whitens the ground, the lark +will sometimes carol up to heaven.</p> + +<p>To the wedded strength and sadness in <i>Rizpah</i> Mr. Swinburne offers ample +testimony, and this is how he does it:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Nothing more piteous, more passionate, more adorable for intensity of +beauty, was ever before this wrought by human cunning into the +likeness of such words, as words are powerless to praise. Any +possible commentary on a poem of this rank must needs be as weak and +worthless as the priceless thing which evoked it is beautiful and +strong.</p></div> + +<p>I confess I am disposed to feel that this is so. But Mr. Swinburne, +disregarding his candid avowal of what is worthless, proceeds with the +commentary:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>But one which should attempt by selection or indication to underline, +as it were, and to denote the chiefest among its manifold beauties +and glories, would be also as long and as wordy as the poem is short +and reticent. Once or twice in reading it a man may feel, and may +know himself to be none the unmanlier for feeling, as though the very +heart in him cried out for agony of pity, and hardly the flesh could +endure the burden and the strain of it, the burning bitterness of so +keen and divine a draught. A woman might weep it away and be “all +right” again—but a man born of woman can hardly be expected to bear +the pity of it.</p></div> + +<p>There is more to the same effect; indeed two whole pages, in the course of +which we are assured that “never assuredly has any poor penman of the +humblest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> order been more inwardly conscious of such impotence in words to +sustain the weight of their intention than am I at this moment of my +inability to cast into any shape of articulate speech, the impression and +the emotion produced by the first reading of Tennyson’s <i>Rizpah</i>”; that +“the poet never lived on earth whose glory would not be heightened by the +attribution of this poem to his hand”; that any one who hesitated to +affirm as much must be “either cancerous with malevolence or paralytic +with stupidity”; that now at least “there must be an end for ever on all +hands to the once debatable question whether the author can properly be +called in the strictest sense a great poet”; and, finally, that “there +must be an end for ever, and a day beyond at least, of a question which +once was even more hotly debatable than this, the long-contested question +of poetic precedence between Alfred Tennyson and Alfred de Musset.”</p> + +<p>To all who, like myself, admire <i>Rizpah</i> vastly, and who never doubted +that Mr. Tennyson was a larger poet than Alfred de Musset, the above is, +in a sense, consolatory. But I confess that, even when first perusing it, +and not having yet reached what follows, the note of panegyric struck me +as strained, not to say forced, and I had an uncomfortable sort of feeling +that somebody would have to pay the expense of this prodigal eulogium. To +borrow a line Mr. Swinburne himself quotes:</p> + +<p class="poem">Cette promotion me laisse un peu rêveur.</p> + +<p>Even when Mr. Swinburne praises, and no one praises more liberally, I do +not know how it strikes other people, but he always gives me the idea that +he is directing his panegyric <i>at</i> somebody who is not being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> panegyrised; +in other words, that he is, to say the least, as much bent upon scarifying +some one who is not mentioned, as on complimenting the person who is. Even +in the passage just reproduced, with the chant over the glories of Mr. +Tennyson, is mingled a gibe at “wandering apes” and “casual mules.” This, +I say, put me upon my guard. “Is it conceivable,” I said to myself, “that +<i>Rizpah</i>, fine, forcible, and effective as it is, should cause all this +difference in a man’s estimate of Mr. Tennyson as a poet? Is it possible +that any Englishman at least, should have had to wait till this time of +day to discover that ‘any comparison of claims between the two men must be +unprofitable in itself, as well as unfair to the memory of the lesser +poet’?” Finally, and to speak my whole mind with perfect candour, it +struck me that, splendid of its kind as <i>Rizpah</i> undoubtedly is, there is +surely some exaggeration in saying, “If this be not great work, no great +work was ever, or will ever be done in verse by any human hand”; and that +Mr. Tennyson himself has not unfrequently done work fully as good as it, +and, <i>me judice</i>, even better.</p> + +<p>One had not to read much farther to discern that these misgivings were +well founded. Somebody indeed had to pay for all the lavish praise of +<i>Rizpah</i>, and it was the author of <i>Rizpah</i> himself. I felt sure I should +come to the other side of the shield, the obverse hollows of all this +embossed, and, if I may be permitted to say so, somewhat turgid +appreciation; and come to it I did.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>There are whole poems of Mr. Tennyson’s first period which are no +more properly to be called metrical than the more shapeless and +monstrous parts of Walt Whitman, which are lineally derived as to +their form—if form that can be called <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>where form is none—from the +vilest example set by Cowley, when English verse was first infected +and convulsed by the detestable duncery of sham Pindarics. At times, +of course, his song was then as sweet as ever it has sounded since; +but he never could make sure of singing right for more than a few +minutes or stanzas. The strenuous drill through which since then he +has felt it necessary to put himself, has done all that hard labour +can do to rectify this congenital complaint: by dint of stocks and +backboard he has taught himself a more graceful carriage.... It may +be the highest imaginable sign of poetic power or native inspiration +that a man should be able to grind a beauty out of a deformity or +carve a defect into a perfection; but whatever may be the comparative +worth of this peculiar faculty, no poet surely ever had it in a +higher degree or cultivated it with more patient and strenuous +industry than Mr. Tennyson. Idler men, or men less qualified, and +disposed to expend such length of time and energy of patience on the +composition and modification, the rearrangement and recision and +re-issue, of a single verse or copy of verses, can only look on at +such a course of labour with amused or admiring astonishment, and a +certain doubt whether the linnets, to whose method of singing Mr. +Tennyson compares his own, do really go through the training of such +a musical gymnasium before they come forth qualified to sing.</p></div> + +<p>Everybody has heard of the operation described by Pope as “damning with +faint praise.” But damning with exaggerated praise is a new invention, and +it is employed in Mr. Swinburne’s paper, doubtless unintentionally, but +with striking effect. As we shall see directly, it is not only on what Mr. +Swinburne calls “the crowning question of metre,” that Mr. Tennyson is +assigned a comparatively inferior place, but he is arraigned for his low +estimate of women, for his sympathy with princes, and for various other +crimes and misdemeanours. To say of <i>Rizpah</i>, “never since the beginning +of all poetry were the twin passions of terror<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> and pity more divinely +done into deathless words, or set to more perfect and profound +magnificence of music,” seems a poor set-off to the reproaches just cited, +and still more to those that have yet to be set forth. There is no fear +that any one—and Mr. Tennyson himself, I should think, least of all—will +place <i>Rizpah</i> quite in the same category with <i>Œdipus</i> or <i>Lear</i>. But +there is perhaps some little danger lest the inadvertent should believe, +on Mr. Swinburne’s authority, that Mr. Tennyson hits and maintains the +right note only after the same sad drudgery and pain by dint of which we +are told—with about equal accuracy—poor Malibran was taught to sing. It +is said that women of not very generous temperament will go out of their +way to insist that a beautiful slattern dresses admirably, in order to be +in a position plausibly to challenge her beauty. I am sure Mr. Swinburne +is not purposely ungenerous; but in first extolling Mr. Tennyson to the +skies for his poem of <i>Rizpah</i>, and then decrying him almost below the +ground for his defective ear, for his base estimate of women, and for his +adulation of princes, he reminds me of the fable of the eagle who bore the +tortoise aloft into heaven, and then let it fall to earth, in the hope of +smashing its shell, and dining off the contents. If I remember rightly, +the shell did not break after all, and the bird had to flap away as hungry +as ever. In any case, after reading first the extravagant laudation, and +then the yet more extreme obloquy contained in Mr. Swinburne’s paper, I +think everybody will agree that, to quote a line with which doubtless he +is familiar, Mr. Tennyson deserved:</p> + +<p class="poem">Ni cet excès d’honneur ni cette indignité.</p> + +<p>What is the full measure of “<i>cette indignité</i>” will be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> seen by and by. +But before passing to the other reproaches addressed by Mr. Swinburne to +the Laureate, I should like to be allowed to say something about this +question of singing, of ear, of what Mr. Swinburne calls “the crowning +question of metre.” It is not the first time Mr. Swinburne has assumed +that he possesses infallible authority upon this point. Now he must +forgive me for remarking that though musicalness is unquestionably the +most noticeable mark, and the most delightful quality, of his own verse, +it is, for the most part, music of a particular kind. It is of the florid +order, rather than of the stately; it is lyrical and Lydian, well +calculated to soothe or to carry along, and sometimes enjoying the Lethean +faculty of making those who read it forget to ask what it means, or indeed +if it means anything very substantial. I will not say that Mr. Swinburne +has adopted the principle, “Take care of the sound, and the sense will +take care of itself.” But he not unfrequently reminds one of this facile +theory, and some of his imitators have adopted it without reserve. I +cannot say whether the story is accurate; but I remember being told that, +on hearing a poem of Mr. Swinburne’s read aloud, Mr. Tennyson quietly +quoted a line of his own from <i>The Lotos-Eaters</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong.</p> + +<p>I should be as unfair to Mr. Swinburne as Mr. Swinburne is to Mr. +Tennyson, if I hinted that he has not done much work to which the above +verse is altogether inapplicable. But he is at once the poet, the prophet, +and the critic of what I may call, <i>par excellence</i>, the Lyrical School; +and his idea of singing, his standard of ear, his touchstone of “the +crowning question of metre,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> is associated with the great triumphs of +lyricism pure and simple.</p> + +<p>Now I trust I am not insensible to the exquisite melody, the delicious +dactyls of Shelley, of De Musset, and, I will add, of Mr. Swinburne +himself. But the Lyricists pure and simple—and certainly, as far as verse +is concerned, De Musset never became anything else—are, after all, the +<i>flentes in limine primo</i>. They are children, or at most they are boys. +Every poet, no doubt, should pass through that preliminary stage; but he +should not stay there. There should come a time when the puerile voice +changes, and henceforward is recognised as masculine. It should acquire a +passionate composure, and like the spirit that informs it, should be, not +only spacious as the air, not only soaring and circumambient as the sky, +but deep and sonorous as the sea. De Musset, as Mr. Swinburne half allows, +never underwent this solemn transformation; and it is perhaps, on that +very account, that all of us find him, within limits, so irresistibly +attractive. He is the poet of the transitional period between boyhood and +manhood.</p> + +<p class="poem">Mes premiers vers sont d’un enfant,<br /> +Les seconds, d’un adolescent.</p> + +<p>He never got beyond the sweet sick springtime of the soul, when it +searches for what it is never to find, when it strains towards what it +never can clutch, when the “flowers appear on the earth, the time of the +singing of the birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our +land; the fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the +tender grape give a good smell,” and the whole want and utterance of the +heart is embodied in the cry, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come +away!” He who has not “<i>passé par là</i>” will never be much of a poet; but +he who does not pass<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> beyond it, will never be a great one. Yet this +season of the “Song of Songs” is the eternal quest of the young, the +eternal regret of the old. Nothing can superannuate its charm, nothing can +quench its fascination. At the climax of his strength and his fame, Byron +could not help exclaiming, “The days of our youth are the days of our +glory,” and M. Taine was doubtless under the spell of this periodically +recurring sentiment, this irresistible return, ever and anon, to one’s +first love, when, for a brief moment, flinging sober criticism and just +judgment to the winds, he asked if it is not pardonable to prefer the +author of <i>Les Nuits</i> to the author of the <i>Idylls</i>.</p> + +<p>Just one word more about “singing.” Speaking of the earlier poems of De +Musset, Mr. Swinburne observes: “Of all thin and shallow criticisms, none +ever was shallower or thinner than that which would describe these +firstlings of Musset’s genius as mere Byronic echoes.” True enough. But, +he goes on to say, “in that case they would be tuneless as their original, +whereas they are the notes of a singer who cannot but sing.”</p> + +<p>This is not the first time we have been treated to this opinion. Once +before Mr. Swinburne has spoken of Byron as a singer who could not sing. I +ventured to reply, at the time, that he was a singer who could not or +would not shriek. It is necessary to repeat the protest. No doubt Byron +shows, as a rule, rather volume of voice than flexibility; and from a +determination not to resemble excellent models, but to strike out a line +for himself—a passion for pseudo-originality, from which lesser poets +that could be named, since his time, have likewise suffered—his blank +verse is generally detestable. But Shelley did not find out that Byron +could not sing; neither did Scott, nor Goethe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> nor Lamartine, nor +Pushkin, nor Leopardi, nor De Musset himself. He speaks of the “chant” of +Byron as that of “<i>un cygne</i>,” and compares the echo of his song to “<i>le +torrent dans la verte vallée</i>.” Mr. Swinburne’s discovery is strictly his +own, and I should advise him not to press it. Indeed it would not be +difficult to dispose of it by the method of reasoning familiarly known as +a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. Mr. Swinburne affirms that the question of metre +is the crowning question, in other words, that the greatest poets are the +most musical, and most people would be disposed to agree with the dictum, +if the question what music is were first satisfactorily settled. But Mr. +Swinburne will have it that Byron cannot sing, whereas it is quite certain +that Mr. Swinburne can. Therefore Mr. Swinburne is a greater poet than +Byron: which, everybody will allow, is absurd. Q.E.D.</p> + +<p>I daresay larks do not find much music in the thunder. But they have the +sense to be silent when they hear the roll of that untrembling diapason +that makes all things tremble.</p> + +<p>To speak the plain truth, we are threatened, just at present, with too +much of what Mr. Swinburne means by “singing.” Does he not remember the +following passage in the Fourth Book of <i>Paradise Regained</i>?—</p> + +<p class="poem">There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power<br /> +Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit<br /> +By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,<br /> +Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,<br /> +And his who gave them birth, <i>but higher sung</i>,<br /> +Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called.</p> + +<p>Milton goes on to speak of “the lofty grave tragedians” who employed +“chorus or iambic,”</p> + +<p class="poem">High actions and high passions best describing.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>Sheer lyricism just now is overmuch the mode. It is all very nice and +pleasant in its way, and within bounds, but one can have too much of a +good thing, and one does not want poetry to become <i>vox et præterea +nihil</i>. It is a fashion, doubtless, that will pass. If it does not, I fear +people will begin to say of poetry what some one said of operatic music, +<i>Ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d’être dit on le chante</i>, and we shall +require a Wagner in literature to denounce the meaningless <i>fioriture</i> of +musical bards bent on recalling the most irrelevant flourishes of +Donizetti. Mr. Tennyson never does, and has never done, that.</p> + +<p>The assertion that Mr. Tennyson was born with an inaptitude for musical +verse, though I conceive it to be very wide of the mark, I can at least +understand. It is made intelligible by remembering the limits Mr. +Swinburne assigns to music, and the characteristic preference he exhibits, +in his own writings, for certain forms of it. But when we are told that +“among all poems of serious pretensions in that line ... this latest epic +of King Arthur took the very lowest view of virtue, set up the very +poorest and most pitiful standard of duty, or of heroism for woman or for +man,” I own I feel as much perplexity as surprise. Perhaps the solution of +the riddle might be got at by again resorting to the process just +employed, and by inquiring what is Mr. Swinburne’s own standard of duty or +heroism for woman or for man, and informing ourselves through a diligent +reperusal of his poems, and of those writers whose productions he has the +loudest extolled, what it is he and they consider men and women ought +mainly to feel, and what it is they ought mainly to occupy themselves +with. But such a course might be invidious. Happily, moreover, it is +unnecessary. It is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> enough to bring Mr. Tennyson’s men and women into +court, to let men and women be the jury, and to read over to them the +following indictment:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I cannot say that Mr. Tennyson’s life-long tone about women and their +shortcomings has ever commended itself to my poor mind as the note of +a very pure or high one. There is always a latent, if not a patent +propensity in many of his very lovers, to scold and whine after a +fashion which makes even Alfred de Musset seem by comparison a model +or a type of manliness. His Enids and Edith Aylmers are much below +the ideal mark of Wordsworth, who has never, I believe, been +considered a specially great master in that kind; but his “little +Letties” were apparently made mean and thin of nature to match their +pitifully poor-spirited suitors! It cannot respectfully be supposed +that Mr. Tennyson is unaware of the paltry currishness and +mean-spirited malice displayed in verse too dainty for such base uses +by the plaintively spiteful manikins with the thinnest whey of sour +milk in their poor fretful veins, whom he brings forward to vent upon +some fickle or too discerning mistress the vain and languid venom of +their contemptible contempt.</p></div> + +<p>What does it mean? Several years ago I ventured to express the opinion +that Mr. Tennyson’s was rather a feminine than a masculine Muse, +borrowing, naturally enough, its idiosyncrasy from the period when it was +most susceptible to surrounding influences. One or two persons of far +higher critical authority than I can pretend to, told me I had struck a +true note, and to the opinion then advanced, I am still disposed in +substance to adhere. But I seize this opportunity to say that I have long +perceived that the opinion was advanced with exaggeration, and somewhat +unbecomingly; that the essay in which it appeared has for a considerable +time been out of print, and will never with the author’s consent be +republished; and finally that it would never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> have appeared at all but for +a circumstance which it would be disagreeable, because egotistical, to +explain explicitly, but which perhaps many will at once understand, if I +quote the following lines of De Musset to Sainte-Beuve:</p> + +<p class="poem">Ami, tu l’as bien dit: ...<br /> +<span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><br /> +“Il existe, en un mot, chez les trois quarts des hommes,<br /> +Un poëte mort jeune à qui l’homme survit,”<br /> +Tu l’as bien dit, ami, mais tu l’as trop bien dit.<br /> +Tu ne prenais pas garde, en traçant ta pensée<br /> +<span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">que tu blasphémais ...</span><br /> +... Je te rends à ta Muse offensée,<br /> +Et souviens-toi qu’en nous il existe souvent<br /> +Un poète endormi toujours jeune et vivant.</p> + +<p>But it is precisely because there is so much of the feminine quality in +Mr. Tennyson’s Muse, that his Muse is beloved of women, and is attractive +to all men to whom women are attractive. How often has it happened to one +to ask “What shall I read?” and to get for answer “Tennyson.” And though +one might be almost angry because neither Shakespeare, nor Milton, nor +Byron, nor Wordsworth, could get a hearing, so it was, and <i>femme le veut +Dieu le veut</i>. He is the poet of their predilection; and if it were true +that his women are not “very pure or high,” it would seem to follow that +the women in flesh and blood who love to read of them, are themselves not +very high or pure. Is not that another <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>? I confess I +never knew them ask any one to read <i>Vivien</i>. They prefer <i>Elaine</i>, and +<i>Guinevere</i>. Yet <i>Vivien</i> is a masterpiece, and that “harlot,” as Mr. +Tennyson very properly does not shrink from calling her, is the consummate +poetic type of women with very little poetry about them. But the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> +blameless love of Elaine, and the pardonable passion of Guinevere, are, to +say the least of it, equally emblematic; and I confess I should find +myself so different in blood, in language, in race, in instinct, in +everything, from the man who told me that he found the one mean and low, +or the other poor, pitiful and base, that, as I have declared, I should +not understand him.</p> + +<p>On two points, I imagine, most men, on consideration, would agree with Mr. +Swinburne. <i>The Idylls of the King</i>, <i>are</i> Idylls of the King, and not an +epic poem, nor indeed <i>one</i> poem of any kind. I am not aware that Mr. +Tennyson has ever said or suggested the contrary; and no man is +responsible for the extravagances of his less discreet or too generous +admirers. I suspect Mr. Tennyson would consider the terms Mr. Swinburne +himself applies to <i>Rizpah</i> as a trifle uncritical. The other point of +agreement they would have with Mr. Swinburne is that King Arthur, in the +<i>Idylls</i>, is not an adequate and satisfactory hero. But heroes from time +immemorial have had a knack of breaking in the hands of their creator. The +“pius Æneas” is not worthy of his vicissitudes, his mission, and his fate, +or of the splendid verse in which his name is forever embalmed. Milton +assuredly did not intend to make Lucifer his hero; but the ruined +Archangel dwarfs into insignificance all other personages in <i>Paradise +Lost</i>, human, divine, or infernal. From <i>Childe Harold</i>, Childe Harold all +but disappears; and I suspect it is only by aid of the drama that a writer +is able to say successfully, “Behold a man!”</p> + +<p>I think Mr. Swinburne will perceive that, though my lights may be less +than his, I am sincerely anxious to get at the truth, and that my object +is neither to provoke nor to propitiate, neither to extol nor to decry.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> +But what can I or any one say, in sufficient moderation, respecting the +following passage?—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“But,” says the Laureate, “it is not Malory’s King Arthur, nor yet +Geoffrey’s King Arthur, that I have desired to reproduce: on the +contrary, it is ‘scarcely other than’ Prince Albert” ... who, if +neither a wholly gigantic nor altogether a divine personage, was, at +least, one would imagine, a human figure.... This fact, it would +seem, was revealed to Mr. Tennyson himself, of all men on earth, by +some freak of the same humorous or malicious fairy who disclosed to +him the not less amusing truth, and induced him to publish it, with a +face of unmoved gravity, to the nation and the world, that whenever +he said King Arthur he meant Prince Albert. No satirist could have +ventured on either stroke of sarcasm.... Not as yet had the blameless +Albert, at the bidding of his Merlin Palmerston, led forth—we will +not say his Guinevere—to clasp the thievish hand of a then uncrowned +assassin.</p></div> + +<p>I said, a little while back, that I would not accuse Mr. Swinburne of +intentional want of generosity. Yet I am compelled to aver that a more +ungenerous passage than the above I never read; and it would seem still +more ungenerous were it to be quoted from more freely. Mr. Swinburne has +not the excuse that might be pleaded by a critic who was stupid. He is a +poet, and he knows what fine, delicate, subtle analogies are as well as +any one. There <i>is</i> a striking resemblance between the nobler qualities of +Mr. Tennyson’s “ideal knight” and those of the late Prince Consort, and it +was a true and fresh stroke of poetry to associate them as Mr. Tennyson +has done. But is it true, or fair, or “manly,” to assert that the poet +wished the one to be entirely identified with the other, much more that +when he mentions the one he means the other? I fear some people will +conclude that the above unmagnanimous passage was dictated by Mr. +Swinburne’s hatred of princes; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> less indulgent persons will add, by +his want of love for Mr. Tennyson.</p> + +<p>Now, to my thinking, the most loathsome of all characters is a sycophant. +Perhaps I am more comprehensive in my contempt for that tribe even than +Mr. Swinburne himself; for I hold in equal disdain the flatterers of +princes and the flatterers of the people. The folly, the feebleness, and +the fury of kings is to be matched only by the feebleness, the folly, and +the fury of crowds. Sensible men entertain a careful distrust of each, and +devise and maintain every possible barrier against the selfish vagaries of +both alike. It is the rare distinction of Prince Albert that he imposed +upon himself those checks which most men require to have imposed upon them +by others, and against which, whether proceeding from within or from +without, princes usually rebel. When we are shown a <i>demos</i> as wise, as +patriotic, as conscientious, and as capable of self-abnegation, as Prince +Albert, the time will have come for an honest man to chant its virtues, +and we shall be able to look forward to the future of our race with more +hopeful feelings than are at present possible to a sane philanthropy.</p> + +<p>Sycophants, therefore, can dance attendance on the Many as easily and as +mischievously as on the One; and of all the unmeasured adulators of the +multitude I know no one to compare with the poet before whom Mr. Swinburne +is perpetually prostrating himself, and before whom he bows and bobs and +genuflects an almost countless number of times in the course of the paper +on which I am commenting—to wit, M. Victor Hugo.</p> + +<p>I have no wish to assail any man of letters, be his foibles what they may. +But when Mr. Swinburne girds at both De Musset and Mr. Tennyson for having +written<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> civilly of princes, and observes that “poeticules love +princelings as naturally as poets abhor tyrants,” it is perhaps pertinent +to ask him if he is aware that the first verses of M. Victor Hugo were +passionately Royalist; that the refrain of one of his early poems is +“<i>Vive le Roi! Vive la France!</i>” that he celebrated the Duc d’Angoulême as +“the greatest of warriors”; that he mourned the death of Louis XVIII. with +loyal pathos; that he wrote a tragedy whose last line was “<i>Quand on haït +les tyrans, on doit aimer les rois</i>”; that the first patron of the author +of <i>Odes et Poésies Diverses</i> was a king, who gave M. Victor Hugo a +pension of a thousand francs out of his privy purse, which was afterwards +doubled, and which I believe was not resigned till the year 1832, or when +M. Victor Hugo was thirty years of age; and that though he for a time +seemed disposed to declare himself a Republican, he sought for and +obtained a seat in the House of Peers from Louis Philippe as recently as +1845. Far be it from me to attempt to turn these facts against the +reputation of M. Victor Hugo. I entertain no doubt they are capable of a +perfectly satisfactory explanation. But let us not have two weights and +two measures; and before Mr. Swinburne takes to throwing stones against +those who incur his displeasure, let him look carefully round to see if +some of those who excite his admiration are not living in a house with a +good many glass windows.</p> + +<p>Against M. Victor Hugo as a man I have necessarily no word to utter. But +Mr. Swinburne compels one to say something about him as a poet. In this +paper upon Mr. Tennyson and De Musset alone, we come upon the following +phrases, all of them applied to M. Victor Hugo: “The mightiest master of +the nineteenth century”; “One far greater than Byron or Lamartine”;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> “The +greatest living poet”; “The godlike hand of Victor Hugo”; “Only Victor +Hugo himself can make words thunder and lighten like these.” There is +more, I think, of the same kind; but it perhaps suffices to mention these, +for previous experience has made us familiar with the assumption that +underlies them.</p> + +<p>It would be as presumptuous in me to make the world a present of my +opinion as to who is the greatest of modern poets, as I conceive it is in +Mr. Swinburne to be perpetually pursuing that course. I will therefore +content myself with saying that to attribute that distinction to M. Hugo +seems to me simply ludicrous, unless clatter be the same thing as fame, +and confident copiousness is to be accepted as a conclusive credential of +superiority; that in the opinion of Sainte-Beuve, De Musset was far more +of a poet than M. Victor Hugo; and that, with the exception of Mr. +Swinburne himself, all English critics, with whom I am acquainted, +entertain no sort of doubt that Mr. Tennyson is a more considerable poet +than both De Musset and M. Victor Hugo put together with a large margin to +spare. In any case, does Mr. Swinburne think that, by “damnable iteration” +about the “great master,” he will alter the fact, or convert any human +being to a creed in the propagation of which he seems unaccountably +zealous? If he does, I recommend to his perusal the following brief +observation of Sainte-Beuve, which he will find in a “Causerie” upon +George Sand:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Ceux qui cherchent à imposer aux autres une foi qu’ils ne sont pas +bien sûrs d’avoir eux-mêmes, s’échauffent en parlant, affirment sur +tous les tons, et se font prophètes afin de tâcher d’être croyants.</p></div> + +<p>I have said that the zeal of Mr. Swinburne in perpetually asseverating the +unapproachable superiority of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> M. Victor Hugo is unaccountable. Perhaps, +however, it is to be accounted for by reading between the lines of the +following passage:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“As lyric poet and as republican leader, the master poet of the world +has equally deserved to attain this obloquy, to incur this tribute +from a journal”—the reference, I believe, is to the <i>Figaro</i> of +Paris—“to which the principles of republican faith, a writer to whom +the pretensions of lyric poetry are naturally and equally abhorrent +and contemptible: nor could any law of nature or any result of chance +be more equitably satisfactory than one which should gratify the +wish—or the three wishes—that all who do not love the one should +hate the other: that all such men should be even as M. Zola: and that +all such writers as M. Zola, should be haters and scorners alike of +republican principles and of lyric song.”</p></div> + +<p>With every desire not to be intolerant, and to inform oneself of what is +going on in this world, I think one may be pardoned for being unable to +read M. Zola. I should as soon think of doing things I will not even name, +as of reading <i>L’Assommoir</i>; and I fancy most Englishmen, whether +Monarchists or Republicans, whether lyrists or the most prosaic folk in +the world, entertain the same repugnance. But what, in the name of all +that is fair, and manly, and magnanimous, have political opinions got to +do with literary merit? Politics and literature are distinct, and though, +as abundant experience has shown, one and the same man may make his mark +in both, they are separate spheres of the same brain, and a man may be a +good poet and a bad politician, or a bad poet and a good politician, or +either good or bad in each capacity alike. Once you care one straw what +are the political opinions of a poet, there is an end of you as a critic. +Royalist, Republican, Communist, Deist, Pantheist,—what care I which of +these a poet is, so he is a poet? As a fact, I fancy the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> greater sort of +poets usually wear their creeds rather loosely; and if we find a poet, in +his character of poet, a perpetually passionate advocate, misgivings as to +his permanent fame may reasonably be entertained. Still no absolute rule +can be applied to these irregular planets. One likes a poet to love his +country, on the same principle which Cicero says made Ulysses love Ithaca, +“not because it was broad, but because it was his own.” Mr. Tennyson loves +his country warmly, and for this Mr. Swinburne rebukes him with indulging +in the “beardless bluster of the Tory member, not of a provincial deputy, +but of a provincial schoolboy.” This is perhaps the most inapt of all the +inapt observations in his amazing piece of criticism.</p> + +<p>I might say more, but I feel I have said enough, I hope, not too much of a +paper which, it seems to me, would be not unjustly described, in Mr. +Swinburne’s own words, as “pseudo-poetic rhapsody in hermaphroditic +prose,” and concerning which a person whose authority all would recognise +were I to mention him, observed to me, “This is the <i>Carmagnole</i> of +criticism.” But, before concluding, I should like, if Mr. Swinburne will +not think me presuming, to remind him, in all friendliness, that he, no +more than I, is any longer in the consulship of Plancus; that some of us +would have been thankful to have had our youthful follies treated as +leniently as his have been; and that the least return he can make for the +indulgence that has been extended to him in consideration of his genius, +is to remember the lines of the really “great master,”—not M. Victor +Hugo, but Shakespeare:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">... Reverence,</span><br /> +That angel of the world, doth make distinction<br /> +Of place ’tween high and low.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p> +<h2>ON THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO POLITICS</h2> + +<p>It occasionally happens to men of letters, at political gatherings, to be +asked to respond to the toast of Literature; so one may fairly conclude +that, in the opinion of many persons, there is between literature and +politics a close and familiar relation. I have long believed that there +is; and observation of the opinions of others has led me to inquire +whether the relation be one of amity or of antagonism. I propose to +endeavour, even though it be by reflections that may appear deliberative +rather than dogmatic, to elucidate a question that is not devoid of +interest.</p> + +<p>Mr. Trevelyan has recorded a saying of Macaulay to this effect, that a man +who, endowed with equal capacity for achieving distinction in literature +and in politics, selects a political career, gives proof of insanity. Most +men of letters, I fancy, would endorse that sentiment. But the decisions +which men have to make in this world are not, as a rule, presented to them +with the definiteness that gives artistic charm, as well as moral meaning, +to a well-known masterpiece in the Palazzo Borghese. Between Sacred and +Profane Love, between the love of literature and the pursuit of politics, +the line is not, in practice, drawn so hard and fast as in the beautiful +apologue immortalised by Titian. Loves that are altogether sacred and in +no degree<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> profane, are not, I imagine, frequently offered to any one; and +though loves wholly profane and in no measure sacred, are, perhaps, not so +uncommon, they are not likely in that absolutely coarse form to exercise +enduring attraction over the finer spirits. It is the curious and +inextricable amalgam of the two that constitutes the embarrassment. +Literature entirely divorced from politics is a thing by no means so +easily attained, or so disinterestedly sought after, as it is sometimes +assumed to be; and though, with much Parliamentary and extra-Parliamentary +oratory before our minds, we should hesitate to affirm that politics are +not occasionally cultivated with a fine disregard for literature, yet the +literary flavour that is still present in the speeches of some Party +Politicians, suffices to show that literature and politics are in practice +not so much distinct territories as border-lands whose boundaries are not +easily defined, but that continually run into, overlap, and are frequently +confounded with, each other.</p> + +<p>But is it to be desired, even should it appear to be possible, to restrict +literature and politics each to its own particular sphere, and forbid +either to trespass upon the territory of the other? Would they be gainers +by this absolute severance? I am disposed to think that both would be +losers; and the loss, I fancy, would fall more heavily upon literature +even than upon politics. Dickens is said to have expressed his regret +that, as he worded it, a man like Disraeli should have thrown himself away +by becoming a politician. The observation, perhaps, smacks a little of the +too narrow estimate of life with which that man of genius may not unjustly +be reproached. But few people, if any, would think of denying that Lord +Beaconsfield might have won more enduring distinction in the Republic of +Letters than can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> be accurately placed to his account, had he dedicated +himself with less ardour—or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, +with less tenacity—to party politics. Like most persons of a +contemplative disposition, he read sparingly, and found in the pages of +others not so much what they themselves put there, as a provocation and +stimulus to fresh thoughts of his own. “See what my gracious Sovereign +sent me as a present at Christmas,” he said to me one day. It was a copy +of the edition de luxe of <i>Romola</i>; and in it was written, in the +beautiful flowing hand of the Queen, “To the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G., +from his affectionate and grateful friend, Victoria.” “But,” he added, “I +cannot read it.” I ventured to recommend him not to make that confession +to everybody, for it would not raise their estimate of his literary +acumen. “Well,” he said, “it’s no use. I can’t.” No doubt <i>Romola</i> not +unoften smells overmuch of the lamp, and in all probability will not +permanently occupy the position assigned to it with characteristic +over-confidence by contemporaneous enthusiasm. But, if a man can read +novels at all, and if he demands from the novelist something more than the +mere craft of the story-teller, surely <i>Romola</i> ought to give him +pleasure; and I suspect it would have pleased him, had he permitted his +taste as a man of letters the same amount of expansion he afforded to his +tendencies as a practical politician. At the same time, I could well +understand a person arguing, though I could hardly agree with him, that he +was not designed by nature to be a more complete and finished man of +letters than he actually became, and that his keen interest in politics, +and the knowledge of political and social life he in consequence acquired, +contribute to his written works their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> principal charm and their most +valuable ingredients. I suspect the truth to be, that he was compounded in +such equal proportions of the man of meditation and the man of action, +that under no circumstances would he have been content to be merely a man +of letters, or merely a politician, and that he fulfilled his nature by +being alternately one and the other. That a man should attain to supreme +eminence in literature by pursuing such a course, is out of the question. +The wonder is that, having achieved even such literary distinction as he +did, he should have attained to such supreme eminence as a statesman.</p> + +<p>If, therefore, Lord Beaconsfield might have been a more distinguished man +of letters, had he not been so keen a politician, the proper conclusion +would seem to be that literature in his case suffered hurt, not from +politics, but from an excess of politics. It would not be easy to name a +character more utterly unlike his than Wordsworth—a man of letters pure +and simple, if we are ever to find one. True it is that Wordsworth in +extreme youth wrote some political verse, that he loved his country with +ardour, and that the word England had for him great and stimulating +associations; but, as a rule, he lived remote from human ken, divorced +from human business, amid the silence of the starry sky and the sleep of +the everlasting hills. What was the result? I admire the best and highest +poetry of Wordsworth with a fervour and an enthusiasm not exceeded by +those who will, perhaps, forgive me for calling them his more fanatical +worshippers. But I must continue to think that Wordsworth would have given +himself the chance of being a yet greater poet than he was, had he—I do +not say quitted his lakes, and hills, and streams; heaven forbid!—but had +he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> consorted at times more freely and fully with his fellow-men, had he +been not a poet only, but something in addition to a poet; had he led a +rather more mixed life; had he done, in fact, what we know was done by the +great Athenian dramatists, by Virgil, by Dante, by Chaucer, Spenser, +Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, and even by Shelley. Politics do not +necessarily mean party politics, though in this country, at this moment, +the one runs dangerously near to implying the other. Politics mean, or +ought to mean, the practical concerns of the many, of the state, of the +Empire, or of mankind at large, as contradistinguished from the mere +personal or class interests. But with those wider concerns Wordsworth +would have little or nothing to do, except in the most abstract way; and +the consequence is that his poetry is the poetry of the individual, and +nearly always of the same individual, and is lacking in the element of +variety, especially in the greatest element of all, viz. action, in which +is necessarily included the portrayal of passion and character.</p> + +<p>Would not the proper conclusion, therefore—a conclusion not overstrained +and if not stated with excessive dogmatism—seem to be, that literature, +though demanding precedence in the affections, and exacting the chief +attention of one who professes really to love it, is not a jealous +mistress, but, on the contrary, is only too well pleased to see even its +most attached votaries combine with their one supreme passion a number of +minor interests and even minor affections. A very sagacious person has +said, “Action may not bring happiness; but there is no happiness without +action.” I am not sure that that is quite true, for Epictetus, and even +Epicurus, would have something to say on the other side. But I entertain +little doubt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> that it is strictly true to affirm that the highest literary +eminence is not attainable by persons who stand aloof, and have always +stood aloof, from the field of action; that mere contemplation, no matter +how lofty, how profound, or how persistent, will not make a man a supreme +poet or a supreme artist of any kind; and that the doctrine of “art for +art’s sake,” if applied in a perverse signification, must end by narrowing +and finally debasing what it is intended to elevate. Action helps thought, +and thought helps action. By action thought is rendered more masculine, +attains to greater breadth, and acquires a certain nobleness and dignity. +Thanks to thought, action may become more definite, more precise, more +fruitful. But that is on the assumption that each exerts itself in due +times and seasons, and leaves to the other abundant opportunities and +ample latitude. When we are bidden to observe that</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">the native hue of resolution</span><br /> +Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,</p> + +<p>we well understand that thought has been excessive, that action has not +had fair play, and that the brain has paralysed the hand.</p> + +<p>No one can read the <i>Iliad</i> without feeling that the writer, or writers, +of the stirring debates with which it is thronged had consorted with, and +was intimately familiar with public life. Many years ago, addressing an +assembling of Cambridge undergraduates at a political meeting, and seeking +to justify the toast of literature they had given me as a text, I +ventured, with a certain levity congenial to my young but classical +audience, to ask if the <i>Iliad</i> is not a political poem, for is it not +full of discussions as animated as any of our own Parliamentary ones, in +which Agamemnon, Nestor,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> Ulysses, to say nothing of Thersites, +successively take part; and are not these succeeded, as in our own case, +by deliberations in an Upper House, where Juno, Venus, Vulcan, and even +Jove himself, participate in the oratorical debate? The first and last +note of the <i>Æneid</i>, indeed the one text of the great poem of Virgil, is +<i>Romanam condere gentem</i>, to show how was established, and to intimate how +might be extended, the Empire of Rome. Virgil, the most tender, the most +finished, the most literary of poets, took the warmest interest in the +politics of his country, or he would never have got much beyond the range +of his Pastorals and Bucolics. The first word in the first ode of Horace +is the name of an Augustan minister, quickly to be followed by the ode, +<i>Jam satis terris</i>, with its patriotic allusions to national pride and +military honour. Most people, I imagine, associate Dante with the period +of his exile, forgetting why he was exiled. He had to thank the interest +he displayed in the politics of his native city for that prolonged +banishment; and so keen a politician was this great contemplative bard, +that in the same poem in which Beatrice reproves him in heaven, Dante +represents his political enemies as gnashing their teeth in hell. That was +when he had become the man of letters pure and simple. But, in the hey-day +of his fortunes, and long after he had first seen and become enamoured of +Beatrice, and had written the <i>Vita Nuova</i>, he had taken so active a part +and become so influential a personage in the public affairs of Florence, +that, when invited to go on a difficult embassy, he exclaimed, “If I go, +who will stay? Yet, if I stay, who will go?” It was no backsliding, +therefore, no hesitation, that made Dante a public character for a moment, +quickly to repent his infidelity to the Muse. To the last, it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> +abundantly evident that he would fain have combined in his career the poet +and the politician. Yet the first words addressed by Virgil to Dante, when +they met <i>nel gran diserto</i>, and Dante asked him whether he was <i>ombra od +uomo certo</i>, seem almost to imply that Virgil meant to reprove the +intruder upon the <i>selva oscura</i> with condescending to mix in the turmoil +of public life, instead of confining himself to literature and philosophy. +These are the words, which students of the <i>Divina Commedia</i> will scarcely +require to have cited for them:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="poem">Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto<br /> +Figliuol d’Anchise, che venne da Troia,<br /> +Poichè il superbo Ilion fu combusto.<br /> +Ma tu perchè ritorni a tanta noia?<br /> +Perchè non sali il dilettoso monte,<br /> +Ch’è principio e cagion di tutta gioia?</p> + +<p>I was a poet, and I sang of that just son of Anchises, who came from +Troy after proud Ilion was laid in ashes. But you—why do you return +to worries of that sort! Why do you not ascend the delectable +mountain, which is the principle and cause of all true happiness?</p></div> + +<p>We must bear in mind, however, that the words are not the real words of +Virgil, but words put into his mouth by Dante at a period when Dante +himself was weary and sick to death of <i>tanta noia</i>, the annoyances and +mortifications of political life, and had cast longing eyes upon the +<i>dilettoso monte</i>. What real man of letters that ever ventured into the +arid and somewhat vulgar domain of Party-politics has not felt the same +feeling of revulsion, the same longing for the water-brooks? But, years +after Dante wrote that passage, he strove, petitioned, and conspired to be +allowed to return to Florence and its perpetual civic strife, and envied, +as Byron makes him say, in <i>The Prophecy of Dante</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">... Every dove its nest and wings,</span><br /> +Which waft it where the Apennine look down<br /> +On Arno, till it perches, it may be,<br /> +Within my all inexorable town.</p> + +<p>If the Crusades were not politics, we should have to narrow the meaning of +the word very considerably; and if the Crusades were political, another +Italian poet must be added to the list of those who have not disdained to +draw inspiration from public affairs, Torquato Tasso, the author of +<i>Gerusalemme Liberata</i>. And what are the first two lines of the <i>Orlando +Furioso</i>?—</p> + +<p class="poem">Le donne, i cavallier, l’arme, gli amori,<br /> +Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese, io canto.</p> + +<p><i>L’audaci imprese!</i> The loves of fair ladies were not enough for Ariosto, +but with them he needs must blend the clash of arms and mighty enterprise. +Both these poets were, in the phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, +“unscrupulously epic,” and fused the red-hot lava of their time in the +mould of their enduring verse. No one should need to be reminded that +Chaucer was the friend of statesmen and the colleague of ambassadors. In +him we find the two salient characteristics of all the best English +poetry—a close observation and tender love of external nature, and a keen +interest in the characters and doings of men; and, for this reason, he has +often been hailed as the precursor of Shakespeare. The lofty symbolism of +Spenser, and the unvarying elevation and dignity of his style, seem to +place him rather remote from the common herd, and to make him, in a sense, +a little less human than some might wish him to be. But in his writings he +holds himself aloof from the vulgar no more than Dante does; and like +Dante, he was a man of the world, and participated in the art of +government and the administration of public affairs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> The “poet of the +poets” combined literature with politics.</p> + +<p>The days of Burleigh were hardly days when the son of a provincial +wool-stapler was likely to be much heard of in the domain of politics. But +the historical plays of Shakespeare traverse a space of more than two +hundred years, or from King John to Henry VIII., and could not have been +written by one who did not combine with his unmatched poetic gifts a +lively interest in the politics of his country. Shakespeare is the idol of +us all, the only reproach I have ever heard addressed to him being that he +was rather too aristocratic in his sympathies, and too Conservative in the +non-Party sense, in his views; foibles which perhaps ought not to surprise +us in one who had so intimate a knowledge of human nature, and so shrewd +an appreciation of its strong and weak points. Nor was it an injury, but a +distinct gain, to the prince of dramatic poets, that he should have been +compelled to concern himself with the practical affairs of life, and to +busy himself actively with the management of a theatre. The lament about +his nature being subdued to what it worked in, may be taken as an +ebullition of momentary weakness, even in that robust and manly +temperament. Shakespeare was compounded of too many and too large elements +to have been a poet only; and “art for art’s sake,” wrongly interpreted, +could never have found lodgment in his wide sympathies, his capacious +understanding, and his versatile imagination.</p> + +<p>If Conservatism may, in a non-party sense, claim Shakespeare as an +authority in its favour, in Milton, on the other hand, I suppose +Liberalism again in a non-party sense would recognise a support. At any +rate, Cromwell’s secretary was a keen politician, and even a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> passionate +partisan. I have always thought the allusion made by Walter Scott to him +in his Life of Dryden hasty and unfair. “Waller was awed into silence,” he +says, “by the rigour of the puritanic spirit; and even the muse of Milton +was scared from him by the clamour of religious and political controversy, +and only returned, like a sincere friend, to cheer the adversity of one +who had neglected her during his career of worldly importance.” A more +recent writer seems to echo the same charge. “In 1641,” he says, “Milton +stepped into the lists of controversy as a prose writer, beginning the +series of works which, far more than his poetry, gave him his conspicuous +public standing during his lifetime, and have doubtless bereaved the world +of many an immortal verse which it would otherwise have to treasure.” That +Milton’s controversial writings gave him more conspicuous public standing +in his lifetime than his poetry is indisputable, and not to be wondered +at. A man’s contemporaries would naturally rather have him useful than +ornamental, provided he be useful on their side; and while persons whose +opinions were furthered by his political writings were, as might have been +expected, more interested in these than in poems from which they reaped no +advantage, those people, on the other hand, to whom his political writings +were obnoxious, felt themselves, as might also have been expected, but +little disposed to extol, or even to read, his poetry. It may, perhaps, be +taken as an absolute rule that a man of letters who takes a conspicuous +interest in contemporary politics thereby debars himself to a considerable +extent from literary popularity in his lifetime; a matter of little +moment, however, since to every reflective mind contemporary popularity is +no pledge of enduring fame, while contemporary neglect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> is not necessarily +an omen of eternal oblivion. But it is quite another thing to affirm that +men of letters who, like Milton, participate freely in the political +controversies of their time “bereave the world of many an immortal verse,” +or to insinuate, with Scott, that they desert the Muse for “a career of +worldly importance,” and only remember its charms in the season of their +adversity. I think any one who has read <i>Paradise Lost</i> and <i>Paradise +Regained</i> will be of opinion that Milton wrote quite as much verse as was +desirable, whether for our delectation or for his own fame. We see the +appalling result of always writing verse and never doing anything else, in +the portentous bulk bequeathed to us by even so eminent a poet as +Wordsworth, of matter that his idolaters persist in asking the world to +accept as a precious revelation, but which the world persists, and I +cannot doubt will always persist, in regarding as verse that ought to have +gone up the chimney. Matthew Arnold has, in current phrase, “boiled down” +Wordsworth, in order to make him more palatable to general consumption; +and he gives excellent reasons for having done so.</p> + +<p>“In Wordsworth’s seven volumes,” he says, “the pieces of high merit are +mingled with a mass of pieces very inferior to them: so inferior to them, +that it seems wonderful how the same poet should have produced both. Work +altogether inferior, work quite uninspired, flat and dull, is produced by +him with evident unconsciousness of its defects, and he presents it to us +with the same faith and seriousness as his best work.”</p> + +<p>Even in the edition of Wordsworth’s poetry Matthew Arnold has given us, +and which contains not a tenth of what Wordsworth published, he has +himself exhibited a little too much “faith and seriousness”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> respecting +what he has laboured to save from Lethe, and the “boiling down” process +will have to be gone through again by somebody else. The tenth part will +have to undergo the operation applied to the whole, and be itself reduced +to another one-tenth. The corn must be winnowed by a yet finer sieve; all +the chaff and husk must be blown away; and what then remains will be the +<i>fine fleur</i> of poetry indeed. In a word, had Wordsworth, like Milton, +devoted himself, at some season of his life, to public affairs, he would +doubtless have written less verse, and possibly more poetry. Had Milton +abstained altogether from politics, he would possibly have written more +verse, but it is improbable that he would have written more poetry. What +he wrote acquired strength, and even elevation, from his temporary contact +with affairs and his judicious co-operation with the active interests of +the State. “As the giant Antæus,” says Heine, “remained invincible in +strength as long as he touched mother earth with his feet, and lost this +power when Hercules lifted him into the air, so also is the poet strong +and mighty as long as he does not abandon the firm ground of reality, but +forfeits his power when he loses himself in the blue ether.” No doubt the +poet must have his head in the air, and no ether need be too high or too +rarefied for his imagination to breathe; but without a strong foothold of +the ground he runs the risk of too often lapsing, as Matthew Arnold +affirms Wordsworth constantly lapsed, into “abstract verbiage,” or of +falling into intolerable puerilities.</p> + +<p>Nor is it just to assert that Milton neglected the Muse during his career +of worldly importance. It would be as fair to say the same of Dante, +between whom and Milton, in point of genius as well as in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> vicissitudes of +life, there is a striking similarity. Dante wrote the <i>Vita Nuova</i> at a +comparatively early age, just as Milton wrote <i>L’Allegro</i>, <i>Il Penseroso</i>, +<i>Comus</i>, and <i>Lycidas</i> in the springtime of his life. Then came a pause, +indeed a long silence, for each of them, and it was not till they had +reached the meridian of intellectual life that they betook themselves each +to his <i>magnum opus</i>, Dante to the <i>Divina Commedia</i>, Milton to <i>Paradise +Lost</i>. Any one observant of the habit of our best English song-birds must +be aware that after singing, with a rapturous lyrical carelessness, +through the vernal months, they become silent during the heat of summer. +Then in early autumn they sing again, with more measure, more continence, +let us say with more self-criticism and fastidiousness; and though the +note may not be so boisterous, it is more mellow and mature.</p> + +<p>No doubt Dante and Milton did not take this course, of deliberate purpose; +with them, too, it was an instinct; but may we not suspect that poets +would give themselves a better chance of writing works that posterity will +not willingly let die, by observing a “close time,” a season of summer +silence between the April of the soul when sing they must, and the advent +of the early autumn days, with auburn tints, meditative haze, and grave +tranquil retrospects. Who shall say when the fruits of harvest-time begin +to ripen? But this clearly one may affirm, that but for the summer months, +when they seem almost to be stationary in colour, they would never ripen +at all. We know, I think, as a fact, that Milton commenced writing +<i>Paradise Lost</i> some years before the restoration of the Monarchy, but no +one can tell how much earlier still it was really commenced. Milton +himself could not have told.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> The children of the Muse are conceived long +before they quicken; and even a lyric, apparently born in a moment, was +often begotten in the darkness and the silence of the days gone by. Works +as colossal as the <i>Divine Comedy</i> and <i>Paradise Lost</i> have deep and +distant foundations, and the noblest passages of human verse are the +unpremeditated outpourings of men who are habitually plunged in +meditation. The least serious reflection upon the subject, if coupled with +any insight into the methods and operations of imaginative genius, will +satisfy anybody that in the very midst of his political controversies and +ecclesiastical polemics Milton was in reality already composing <i>Paradise +Lost</i>. Dante never returned to Florence after he was exiled, and it was in +banishment that he wrote the <i>Divina Commedia</i>. Yet the “Sasso di Dante,” +the stone on which he used to sit, gazing intently at the Duomo and at +Giotto’s Campanile, is one of the sacred sights of the profane Tuscan +city, and his townsmen had already learnt to speak of him as “One who had +seen Hell.” What enabled him to see it so clearly was his familiarity with +the ways of men and the uncelestial politics of Florence. It was through +Beatrice and the passion of Love—<i>Amor, che il ciel governi</i>—that he +gained access to Paradise, and a knowledge of those things of which he +says:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">... che ridire</span><br /> +Nè sa nè può qual di lassù discende.</p> + +<p>But the sadness of Purgatory, and the horrors of Hell, these he learned +from the wrangles of Guelph and Ghibelline, of these he obtained mastery +by being, in <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 1300, Priore of the fairest, but most mercurial of +cities. We have the authority of Shakespeare, who ought to have been well +informed on that subject, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> the lover and the poet are of imagination +all compact, and the brisk air of public policy is the best corrective for +the disease of narrow intensity to which both alike are peculiarly +subject.</p> + +<p>There would be no difficulty, I think, in showing that all the greater men +of letters of the eighteenth century were largely indebted for the +literary success they attained to the vivid interest they displayed in +public affairs. To mention Dryden, Swift, Pope, Addison is to conjure up +before the mind chapter upon chapter of English political history. Pope +says:</p> + +<p class="poem">Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory;</p> + +<p>and not without some reason, for, like his friend Swift, he cared more for +his own career than for either Party in the State. But no one can read the +valuable notes appended by Mr. Courthorpe to his edition of the great +satirist, without seeing how alive Pope was to the <i>quidquid agunt +homines</i> of his generation. As for Swift, he was for a time, as the writer +of an admirable paper upon him in the <i>Quarterly Review</i> asserts, the +political dictator of Ireland. When Gibbon betook himself to the task of +writing that monumental work which, I find, many persons to-day declare to +be unreadable, but which, I suspect, will be read when the most popular +books of this generation are forgotten, he wisely retired to the studious +quietude of Lausanne. But he narrates how the description of the tactics +of Roman legions and the victories of Roman Proconsuls was rendered more +facile and familiar to him by his previous experience as a Captain of +Yeomanry at home, while even his brief tenure of a seat in the British +Parliament enabled him to grasp with more alacrity and precision the +legislative conduct of the Conscript Fathers.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>In the nineteenth century which, despite its many privileges—not the +least of which, perhaps, was that of being able to express a very high +opinion of itself, without at the time being contradicted—enjoyed no +immunity from the general laws of human nature, I think the proposition +still holds good that men of letters who aspire to high distinction do +well not to disdain altogether the politics of their time. I have already +referred to Wordsworth, and ventured to suggest that he suffered in some +degree, as a poet, from being nothing but a poet. Byron presents a marked +contrast in this respect; and I am still of opinion, which I am comforted +to find is shared by most persons who are men of the world, and by men of +letters who are something more than men of letters, that Byron is, on the +whole, the most considerable English poet since Milton. Art for Art’s sake +is a creed that has been embraced by too many critics of our time. Do we +not find in this circumstance an explanation of their tendency to extol +the quietistic and solitary poets, and, on the other hand, to depreciate +the poets who deal with action and the more complex features of life? It +is the business of poets to deal with the relation of the individual to +himself, to the silent uniform forces of nature, and to other individuals, +singly and collectively: in other words, to be dramatic or epic, as well +as lyrical or idyllic. All poets of the first rank are both; yet the +quietistic and purely introspective critics assign a place, and a prior +place as a rule, in the front rank, to poets who are only second. I cannot +think that conclusions reposing on such demonstrably unsound canons of +criticism will permanently hold their ground. Byron contrived to crowd +into a very short life a vast amount both of poetry and of public +activity; acting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> upon his own recorded opinion that a man was sent into +the world to do something more than to write poetry. A writer who, I +fancy, belongs to the school, now happily becoming obsolete, whose verdict +was that Byron’s poetry, though good enough for Scott, Shelley, and +Goethe, is only “the apotheosis of common-place,” has recently expressed +the opinion that “Byron would not have gone to Greece if he had not become +tired of the Contessa Guiccioli.” As far as she is concerned, I can only +say, as one who knew her, and has many letters written by her on the +subject of Byron, that if at any time she ever became indifferent to him, +her affection for him experienced a marvellous revival. As for the +suggestion that he went to Greece because he was tired of his companion, +it surely was not necessary for a man to go to Greece to get rid of a +woman of whom he was tired, and certainly Byron was not the man to +consider the “world well lost” for a woman. But the letters he wrote to +his “companion” from Greece attest that his affection for her was still +not slight. In any case there is no necessity to cast about one for any +reason to explain Byron’s going to Greece, beyond the exceedingly simple +one that he was a man of action as well as a poet. Had he lived, instead +of dying, for Greece, I cannot doubt that English poetry would have reaped +a yet more glorious harvest from him, thanks to his incidental experiences +as a soldier and a statesman.</p> + +<p>The theme is one that easily lends itself to illustration; but enough +perhaps has been said to justify the conclusion that it is for the best +and highest interests of literature that those who love it before all +other things, and cherish it beyond all other considerations, should +nevertheless take a large and liberal view of what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> constitutes life, and +should include in the excursions of their experience and in the survey of +their contemplation what are called politics, or the business and +interests of the State. I do not propose that they should be vestrymen, +though I cannot forget that Shakespeare did not disdain to concern himself +in the local business of Stratford-upon-Avon. For men of letters to be +willing to interest themselves in politics, politics generally, must be +interesting. The issues raised must be issues of moment and dignity, +issues affecting the greatness of an Empire, the stability of a State, or +the general welfare of humanity. In a country like our own, where Party +Government prevails, it is not easy, indeed it is impossible, for a man of +letters to interest himself in politics without inclining, through +sympathy and conviction, to one Party in the State rather than to the +other; and there are occasions, no doubt, when Party issues are synonymous +with the greatness of the Empire, the stability of the State, and the +welfare of mankind. But a wise man of letters will do well to stand more +or less aloof from all smaller issues, and to avoid, as degrading to the +character and lowering to the imagination, Party wrangles that are mere +Party wrangles and nothing more.</p> + +<p>There have been seasons in the history of the human race, melancholy +seasons for the human mind, the “evil days” spoken of by Milton, when men +of letters could not, with any self-respect, mix in politics. How much +more highly we should think of Seneca if that literary Stoic had not been +a minister of Nero. There was no room for a self-respecting man of letters +in French politics during the reign of Napoleon I., none during the +earlier years of the reign of Napoleon III., unless he happened to be a +sincere admirer of a corrupt and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> brilliant despotism. There are +despotisms that are corrupt, or what is equally bad, vulgar and servile, +without being brilliant; and I am not alone in entertaining the fear lest +unadulterated Democracy—that is to say, the passions, interests, and +power of a homogeneous majority, acting without any regard to the passions +and interests that exist outside of it, and purged of all respect for +intellect that does not provide it with specious reasons and feed it with +constant adulation—should inflict upon us a despotism under which, again, +there will be no room in the domain of politics for men of letters who +respect themselves. It is not the business of a man of letters to take his +politics either from a Monarch or a Mob, or to push his fortunes—slightly +to alter a celebrated phrase—by those services which demagogues render to +crowds. If the love and pursuit of literature do not make a man more +independent in character, more disinterested in his reasonings, more +elevated in his views, they will not have done for him what I should have +expected from them. That politicians pure and simple are becoming less +imbued with the literary spirit is, I think, certain, and it is to be +regretted, because polite Politics are almost as much to be desired as +polite Literature, and should be little less imbued with the Horatian +sentiment, <i>Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros</i>. Many years ago I heard a +prominent politician in the House of Commons reproach Disraeli, then +Leader of the House, with servility to the Crown, for no other reason that +I could see than that, in explaining certain communications that had +passed between the Queen and the Prime Minister, he had made use of the +customary mode of speaking of the Sovereign. The imperturbability of +Disraeli in debate under the strongest provocation was notoriously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> one of +the secrets of his authority and influence. But it was plain on that +occasion, when he rose to reply, that he had been irritated by the charge. +But how did he rebut it? “The right honourable gentleman,” he said, “has +been pleased to accuse me of servility to the Crown. Well, Sir, I appeal +to gentlemen on both sides of the House, for they <i>are</i> gentlemen on both +sides of the House——” There was a sudden outburst of cheering. He did +not finish the sentence, but turned away to another matter. Could there +have been a more crushing yet a more parliamentary and well-bred rebuke? +Mr. Gladstone did not possess the same quiet power of reproval. But his +courtesy was uniformly faultless, even when he most indulged in indignant +invective. It is told of Guizot, that, when President of the Council in +France, on being interrupted by his opponents with unseemly clamour, he +observed, “I do not think, gentlemen, the solution of the controversy will +be assisted by shouting; and such clamour, however loud, will never reach +the height of my disdain.” One does not ask politicians to disarm; but +they must use the rapier, not the tomahawk; and it is Literature, and +Literature only, that can adequately teach them how to employ with ample +effect the seemly weapons of debate. If politicians and even Monarchs are +wise, they will respect Literature. After all, Literature has always the +last word. “A hundred years hence,” said a French poet to a rather saucy +beauty, “you will be just as beautiful as I choose to say you were”; and +the verses in which he said this have survived. Politicians whom +Literature ignores are in the same position. If Literature ignores them +they will be forgotten. If Literature condemns them they will stand +condemned. But Literature, in turn, should be fair-minded and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> sincere, +not disingenuous, not a partisan. It wields, in the long run, enormous +power, and therefore has corresponding responsibilities. If the public +taste in any direction, in politics, in letters, or any of the other Arts +grows debased, and current critical opinion follows the debasement, +Literature can only stand apart, or loftily reprehend them. Of all +influences, Literature is the most patient, the most persistent, and the +most enduring. Unfairness cannot long injure, malevolence cannot +permanently damage or depreciate it; for, as I have said, Literature, +lofty self-respecting Literature, always has the last word, the final +hearing, political partisanship having no power over the final estimation +in which it is held. At the beginning of the nineteenth century current +Tory criticism strove to belittle men of letters who happened to be +Liberals; and, since Toryism was then in the ascendant, it for a time, but +only for a time, partially succeeded. In our day, and for some few years +past, the influence of Liberalism has been visibly uppermost in current +criticism, which has in turn done scant justice to men of letters +suspected of holding different views. To the latter, as to the great +Liberal poets and other men of letters in the earlier days of the +nineteenth century, such patent partisanship can do no lasting injury. +Perhaps men of letters might themselves raise the standard of +dispassionate criticism were they always fair to each other, and not, as I +fear sometimes happens, be ungenerous to contemporaries, who for one +reason or another are not much favoured by them. There is a curious +passage in the 11th Canto of the <i>Purgatorio</i> of the <i>Divina Commedia</i>, +where Dante recognises a certain Oderesi, and compliments him on the +talent he showed when on earth as an illuminator or miniature painter. +Oderesi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> replies that Franco Bolognese was his superior in that art, but +that from jealousy he had failed to allow as much, and adds</p> + +<p class="poem">Di tal superbia qui si paga il fio:</p> + +<p>meaning thereby that he was now undergoing punishment for his unworthy +jealousy on earth.</p> + +<p>Even those to whom an Inferno or Purgatorio is a sheer fiction may be +reminded that Time’s final court of appeal, when it readjusts balances +falsely weighted in days gone by, will not fail to stigmatise those who +once belittled what, had they been more candid, they would have better +appreciated.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p> +<h2>A CONVERSATION WITH SHAKESPEARE IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS</h2> + +<p>I am aware that, in these days, when realism is all the rage and true +imagination at a discount, people will ask how, not being either an Æneas +or a Dante, I came to be admitted to an actual sight of the Elysian +Fields, and will not be fobbed off by any fanciful explanation such as +used to satisfy the more unsophisticated reader of former times. I +therefore hasten to satisfy their exacting curiosity by saying that I +happen to have done a good turn of late to the Pagan gods—not forgetting +the goddesses, whom one should always have on one’s side, since they hold +the keys of the position equally on earth, in the air, and +underground—and they made their acknowledgments to me by letting me know +that I might have my choice of an interview with any one, but only one, of +the personages among those who are now disporting themselves in the other +world. At first, I was rather tempted to name Eve, in order that I might +get an intelligible account from the most trustworthy source of the Tree +of Knowledge and the Tree of Good and Evil. But I thought she perhaps +would know as little about them as myself; so I thought I would ask for an +interview, with either Helen of Troy or with Cleopatra, when it suddenly +struck me that I should probably find both one and the other not very +unlike women I had already come across here in this upper world. So,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> +anxious to know whether or not there ever was a real flesh-and-blood +Shakespeare, and explaining that, if there was not, I had not the smallest +desire to have a talk with my Lord Verulam, I said, “Let me have a +colloquy with Shakespeare, the wisest, sweetest, wittiest, +largest-hearted, biggest-brained of human beings”; and, almost before I +had finished the sentence, I found myself in the Elysian Fields.</p> + +<p>At first, I forgot what I was there for at all, in my amazement at the +place itself. Though I am a tolerably close observer of external Nature, I +could not for the life of me surmise what season of the year I was in, and +finally perceived that I was in all the four seasons at one and the same +time. Primroses and bluebells were to be seen side by side with roses and +irises, with meadowsweet and traveller’s joy, grass ready for the scythe +not far from swaying wheat and heavily-burred hop-garden; while, well +within view, I could see slopes of virgin snow, and folks making ready to +go tobogganing on them. It was just the same with bird-life. Stormcock, +nightingale, cuckoo, corncrake, woodpecker, robin redbreast, were all +singing together, yet there was no discord in the concert.</p> + +<p>“You want to see me, I am told,” I heard some one say behind me, and, +turning, I at once perceived that it was Shakespeare, not from the +striking resemblance to any of the portraits or busts, Droeshout, Chandos, +Stratford-on-Avon, or other effigy, but by his seeming to be compounded of +them all, with something superadded that I could recall in none of them. +Similarly, he did not seem to be of any particular age, either of youth, +early manhood, middle life, or yet elderly, but compounded of all the +years, at once young and engaging, in the grand climacteric, and withal +full of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> mellow wisdom. His eye glowed with fine frenzy, withal was tender +and melting as that of a boy-lover. I could not fail to observe this +extraordinary combination of ages and qualities; yet they did not strike +me as in any way incongruous, any more than I had found incongruity in all +the seasons being contemporaneous, and blossom and fruit subsisting +together. I had expected to be rather embarrassed and somewhat overawed on +first coming across this king of men; but his manner was so simple, so +frank and friendly, that he put me at my ease at once, and I ventured to +inquire if, in the Elysian Fields, they had any knowledge of what was +going on in the world they had once inhabited.</p> + +<p>“Ample knowledge,” he replied, “though we are not troubled with +newspapers, nor yet tormented by telegrams or telephones, but confine our +regard to what interests us.”</p> + +<p>“Have you happened to notice,” I asked, “that <i>A Winter’s Tale</i> has +recently been produced at His Majesty’s Theatre?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, and all the more because that indefatigable manager and +all-embracing actor, Mr. Tree, has not taken a part in it. He would have +rendered Autolycus very suitably.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps,” I went on, since I now felt on a footing of the most friendly +familiarity with one I had hitherto always thought of at a respectful +distance, “perhaps you have observed some of the criticisms on the play.”</p> + +<p>“To tell the truth,” he replied, “I have not. There were few such things +in my time, save by the audience; and my recollection of what few there +were does not dispose me to read fresh ones. But, if they have said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> +anything instructive or amusing, I shall be most happy to hear it.”</p> + +<p>“I am afraid,” I said, “they are more amusing than instructive.”</p> + +<p>“Then let me have them by all means. The only thing one is sometimes +tempted to find fault with in the Elysian Fields is that its denizens are +a trifle too serious for me; being just as much inclined as ever to say, +when I find myself in the company of my fellow-creatures, ‘With mirth and +laughter let me play the fool.’”</p> + +<p>Thus encouraged, I said that one critic had pronounced the play to be dull +as drama, and inferior as poetry; Autolycus to be a bore, yet by no means +the only tiresome feature in the play; the plot to be a succession of gaps +and puerilities; and that another observed what a pity it was you had made +Leontes a lunatic, a raving maniac, and a nuisance. As I recounted these +opinions, I could see no sign of annoyance on the face of the playwright, +but only a philosophic smile illumining his tranquil features.</p> + +<p>“I seem,” he said, “to have heard that some time ago some one commented on +the meanness of the fable and the extravagant conduct of it, and declared +that the comedy caused no mirth, and the serious portion no concernment. I +daresay there is truth in the first part of the criticism, but, in regard +to the second, I seem to remember that, at the Globe, there was a good +deal of mirth at the lighter scenes, and no small attention at the grave +ones. But perhaps audiences in my day were different from audiences in +yours. I am by no means sure that I wrote the whole of the play; indeed I +am pretty certain I did not. My chief share in it was the love-scene +between Florizel and Perdita.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>“Which I have always thought very beautiful, and the very opposite of +‘inferior as poetry.’”</p> + +<p>“Very good of you to say so; for I much enjoyed writing it. For the rest, +I suspect that a change has come over audiences, and still more over those +people whom you call critics. From what I have heard, they appear not to +confine themselves to appraising what is offered them, but want authors to +offer them something quite different, which is scarcely reasonable. +Moreover, they impute to an author motives he did not entertain, and ends +he did not have in view. For instance, I am supposed by them to have been +a rather successful delineator of character; overlooking the fact that I +over and over again cast character to the winds, in favour of the +situation, to which one surrendered oneself only too willingly, because in +doing so one was enabled to indulge one’s humour and temperament more +freely and fully.”</p> + +<p>“Am I right,” I asked, “in thinking that your humour and temperament lay +chiefly in a keen enjoyment of rural nature, the delineation of love +between men and women, and philosophic reflections on the various passions +of human beings?”</p> + +<p>“You put it rather flatteringly,” he said. “But I will not deny that what +you say concerning one’s disposition is true. The external world is so +beautiful, loving and being loved are so delightful, and human beings are +so interesting, that it is a writer’s own defect if he does not make them +appear beautiful, delightful, and interesting to others, no matter in what +form he presents them. If he has what you call the way with him, he will +make you accept as true almost any story, so long as he is telling it, no +matter what you may think of it afterwards. As a famous poet and critic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> +said long ago, <i>Incredulus odi</i>. Men naturally turn away from what seems +incredible. But what seems somewhat incredible when only read, appears +credible enough when acted, if acted well; and Ellen Terry was so +attractive and winning in her treatment of Polixenes, that the conjugal +jealousy of Leontes becomes, at least, almost intelligible.”</p> + +<p>“That was exactly what I myself felt the other day, when I went to see the +performance,” I said. “But I observe you quote Horace, though many persons +have maintained that you had little Latin, if any.”</p> + +<p>“Rather a mistake that, arising, I imagine, from their not knowing what +Grammar Schools were like in my time, when we were taught something more +than the rudiments of Latin, with the assistance of prompt corporal +chastisement if we showed a disinclination to master them. Nowadays, I +see, the birch, the ferule, and the cane, have fallen into disfavour, with +the result that many English boys, at schools supposed to be very superior +in the education they provide, refuse to learn anything except cricket and +rowing; two excellent accomplishments, but not quite covering the whole +ground of a liberal education.”</p> + +<p>“May I inquire,” I said, “if you, among others, had a liberal application +of the cane?”</p> + +<p>“My fair share,” he said, “but not for refusing to learn, since I enjoyed +being taught, and, still more, teaching myself; and a very little +learning, though some people have said it is a dangerous thing, goes a +long way if you only know how to turn it to account. My thrashings, which +were richly deserved, were given for being behindhand of a morning because +I had loitered with some rustic sight or sound that arrested me, and +suchlike irregularities of conduct. But what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> was taught us was taught +thoroughly, and I have sometimes thought that men deemed poets may be +taught and learn too much, as, for instance, my good friend Ben Jonson, +who has been justly compared to a heavy galleon, though a very well +trimmed and steered one, but which perhaps would sometimes have benefited +by a portion of its dead weight being cast overboard. Still he was a rare +poet all the same.”</p> + +<p>“Who is that, may I ask, with the pointed beard, that has just been joking +with a rubicund friar whom I no longer see, and then more gravely with a +seemly and tender-looking young woman, also vanished ‘into air, into thin +air,’ while he now stoops to gather daisies from the grass? I seem to know +his face.”</p> + +<p>“That is a delightful fellow, perhaps of all my companions here the most +congenial; the morning star of English song, Geoffrey Chaucer. <i>He</i> could, +and did, delineate character consistently if you like. I think it is his +cheerful, kindly sense of humour that recommends him so strongly to me. +But a nearer contemporary of mine in the other world whom you see there, +wearing an aspect of stately distinction, essentially what English folk +call a perfect gentleman, likewise enters much into the study of my +imagination. See! Now he turns his face towards you.”</p> + +<p>“Surely it is Edmund Spenser, is it not?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, the Poet’s poet. His verse is at once so natural and so noble, as to +be irresistible. I often repeat to myself two exquisitely musical and +briefly descriptive lines of his:</p> + +<p class="poem">A little lowly Hermitage it was,<br /> +Down in a dale, hard by a forest side.</p> + +<p>No amount of elaboration and detail would enable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> one to see the Hermitage +better, or indeed, as well; and the lyrical freedom of the ostensibly +iambic verse gives to it an irresistible charm.”</p> + +<p>“And, over and over again, if I may say so, gives to the blank verse of +your dramas the same magical quality that a more stately treatment of it +can never confer. But where is Milton?”</p> + +<p>“One sees him but seldom,” he replied; “and when Chaucer and I do catch +sight of him, we behave rather like truant schoolboys, and put on a grave +face, especially if he finds us in one of our lighter moods. We are all +rather in awe of him, for he never stoops to playfulness; and Chaucer, who +is rather irreverent sometimes, says he is so uniformly sublime as now and +then to be ridiculous. But, in our hearts, we greatly revere him. To tell +the truth, I think he prefers Wordsworth’s company to ours; and we find +more congenial society from time to time in—look! that handsome youth, +who carries his head with unconscious pride, and even here seems +half-discontented. The best is never good enough for him, and he cannot be +deluded even by his own illusions, poor fellow!”</p> + +<p>“It’s Byron,” I said, “is it not?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, there is no mistaking him; part man, part god, part devil. I believe +there was some doubt about admitting him here, lest he should rouse even +the Elysian Fields to mutiny, and a question whether he should not have an +enclosure all to himself. But he is a man of the world, and knows how to +behave himself when he chooses; and, when one of his misanthropic moods +comes over him, he wanders about scowling and muttering like a gathering +thunderstorm. I am told he breaks bounds sometimes to go in search of +Sappho. There would be a pair of them, would there not?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> What an +explosive power there was in him! for in the mind, as in your melanite, +force packs small.”</p> + +<p>“And Shelley? Where is Shelley?”</p> + +<p>“Where the bee sucks, I suspect; for he is the very Ariel of our company; +ever, even here, in search of the unattainable! But he is a great +favourite with all of us, he is so lovable.”</p> + +<p>“And the poet who has delighted my own generation,” I inquired. “Surely he +is among you.”</p> + +<p>“Not yet,” he replied; “though I have not the least doubt he will be, in +due course. No one is admitted here until he has been dead for fifty +years; Time, the door-keeper and guardian of Eternity, being more +deliberate than the janitors of Westminster Abbey, who, you must allow, +make some rather ludicrous blunders in admitting, on the very morrow of +their decease, at the importunity of friends and associates, persons for +whom, half a century later, no one will dream of claiming any special +posthumous distinction.”</p> + +<p>“I fear that is so,” I confessed. “We have been rather fussy and feverish +of late, and attribute to notoriety an enduring power it does not possess.”</p> + +<p>“Just so. Notoriety is one thing, Fame quite another. Will not the result +be that men who may without presumption entertain a humble hope that, as +our lofty friend Milton puts it, Posterity will not willingly let die all +that they may have done or written, will feel a distaste for these +precipitate distinctions, and even take precautions against them. We +notice that something of the same kind is taking place among you in regard +to what you call titular honours, since they have become so common, and +are lavished on such undistinguished persons, as to be no longer valued by +the truly distinguished.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>“That is so,” I said; “but it is inevitable in these days, and probably +useful to the State, satisfying a number of small ambitions.”</p> + +<p>“I understand,” he replied; and I thought to myself, of course he does, he +who understood everything. “In these days it is more important to satisfy +the many,” he went on, “than to content the few, and persons of real +distinction must always be few; and, after all, if these are wise as well +as distinguished, they must be content with anything that ministers to the +welfare of the community at large.”</p> + +<p>It was so interesting to me to hear this great dramatist and supreme poet +talking wisdom in this familiar manner, like any ordinary being, that I +made the most of my opportunity, and asked him if he thought what he had +just said served to explain the magnificent manner in which his plays are +presented to modern audiences, and if he approved of such presentation.</p> + +<p>“I should approve,” he replied, “if there were no danger of the mounting +of the piece diverting the attention of the audience from the play itself, +and if it did not appear necessary to modern stage-managers to cut out +whatever does not easily lend itself to spectacular devices. I quite +understand their motive; for, having been in my time not only an actor, +but part proprietor, and part stage-manager of theatres, I do not forget +that they must take into consideration the material results of their +enterprise. But my colleagues and I contrived to make a fair livelihood +out of our theatres without any large outlay on the scenery or the +dresses. Apparently, your modern audiences would yawn at, and not +understand, speeches that not only the courtiers of Elizabeth, but the +citizens of Blackfriars and the Chepe, listened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> to with rapt and +straining ears. We observe that you pique yourselves upon what you call +the progress you have made during the last three hundred years, and some +of us are rather amused at the self-complacent claim; and, though you +travel much faster, live much more luxuriously, and blow each other to +pieces more successfully than we did, it may be doubted if men’s minds +have made much advance, or if their intellectual qualities are not, +notwithstanding the increase of what you deem education, poorer and more +stinted than when the bulk of the nation read less, but reflected more.”</p> + +<p>“In one respect,” I ventured to say, “you can hardly withhold your +sympathy from the claim of our having made progress. We no longer regard +actors as vagabonds.”</p> + +<p>“I am not quite so sure of that,” he said, with a significant smile. +“Myself an actor as well as an author, my utterances in the second +capacity respecting the former are not particularly flattering; and the +fuss you have of late made over actors and actresses, as over millionaires +and transatlantic heiresses, is perhaps evidence less of admiration than +of self-interest, and an appetite for diversion.”</p> + +<p>“But,” I observed, “an actor was recently buried, with the customary +honours, in Westminster Abbey.”</p> + +<p>“But did everybody approve of it? Milton took care to inform me that many +did not; but my withers remained unwrung, and I playfully replied that I +was rather disposed to think that special form of posthumous +acknowledgment might not unsuitably be reserved for actors and +politicians—the author of <i>Paradise Lost</i> was, every now and then, an +active politician, was he not?—since the two have much in common, both +appealing to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> their audiences by voice, intonation, gesticulation, and +pursuit of popularity, and enjoying a wide but ephemeral notoriety.”</p> + +<p>I remembered the passage in <i>Henry the Sixth</i> where he says that he hates +“the loud applause and <i>aves</i> vehement” of the many, and of his little +esteem for those who “affect” such, and I followed up that silent +recollection by saying:</p> + +<p>“And, after all, Milton, Pope, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, lie far away from +that edifice; also, I might add, one greater than any of them—yourself.”</p> + +<p>“Dear old Stratford-on-Avon!” he said, as though he were musing rather +than addressing himself to me. “I am well content to be sepulchred there. +How I loved it! How I love it still! And how much I owed to it! My works, +such as they are, have in your ingenious age been attributed to one much +more nobly born, more highly educated, more deeply read, more erudite, +than I. They who started, and those who have accepted, that theory, little +understand that no such man could have written them. Whatever may be their +merit or demerit, their author could only be one who, born in a modest +condition, began by having the closest touch with frank unaffected human +nature, and for whom life and society expanded by degrees, until, though +still preferring the life removed, he could tell sad stories of the death +of kings, find books in the running brooks, and good in everything.”</p> + +<p>As he slowly uttered these familiar majestic words, he faded from my +sight; and all that was left was an enduring recollection of that +privileged interview.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p> + +<p><a name="f1" id="f1" href="#f1.1">[1]</a> In estimating Byron, people too often forget that the same poet wrote +<i>Manfred</i> and <i>Beppo</i>, <i>Childe Harold</i> and <i>Don Juan</i>. It is the variety, +in other words the extent, of Byron’s genius, that constitutes his greatness.</p> + +<p><a name="f2" id="f2" href="#f2.1">[2]</a> The renderings into English verse from Dante are by the author of the paper.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><strong>Transcriber’s Notes:</strong></p> + +<p>Other than the one correction noted by hover information, inconsistencies in +spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Bridling of Pegasus, by Alfred Austin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS *** + +***** This file should be named 35394-h.htm or 35394-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/9/35394/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Bridling of Pegasus + Prose Papers on Poetry + +Author: Alfred Austin + +Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35394] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS + + + + + THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS + + PROSE PAPERS ON POETRY + + + BY ALFRED AUSTIN + + POET LAUREATE + + + _Essay Index Reprint Series_ + + BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC. + FREEPORT, NEW YORK + (_Originally published by Macmillan and Co._) + + + + + First published 1910 + Reprinted 1967 + + Reprinted from a copy in the collections of + The New York Public Library + Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations + + + + +When Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus, set forth to kill the Chimera, +Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, gave him a golden bridle with which to curb +and guide his winged steed. Hence the title of this volume, "The Bridling +of Pegasus." + + + + +TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR ALFRED C. LYALL, K.C.B. + + +MY DEAR LYALL, + +I should think you must have observed, in the course of your reading, that +even in the most accredited organs of opinion, principles of literary +criticism, either explicitly stated or tacitly assumed, are often utterly +ignored, in the notice of some work or other in the self-same number. The +result can only be to create confusion in the public mind. + +In this volume, consisting of papers written at various times during the +last thirty years, no such contradiction will, I think, be found. Whether +they be deemed sound or otherwise, they are at least coherent; the canons +of criticism underlying them being that no verse which is unmusical or +obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may +possess; that Imagination in Poetry, as distinguished from mere Fancy, is +the transfiguring of the Real, or actual, into the Ideal, by what Prospero +calls his "so potent art"; and, if these conditions are complied with, +that the greatness of the poem depends on the greatness of the theme. + +To no one so much as to you am I indebted for criticism of the frankest +kind. That alone would lead me to ask you to accept the dedication of +these pages. But I find a yet further and stronger impulse to do so, in +the long and uninterrupted friendship that has subsisted between us, and +to which I attach so much value. + + Believe me always, + Yours most sincerely, + ALFRED AUSTIN. + + SWINFORD OLD MANOR, + _January 1910_. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + THE ESSENTIALS OF GREAT POETRY 1 + + THE FEMININE NOTE IN ENGLISH POETRY 28 + + MILTON AND DANTE: A COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST 60 + + BYRON AND WORDSWORTH 78 + + DANTE'S REALISTIC TREATMENT OF THE IDEAL 139 + + DANTE'S POETIC CONCEPTION OF WOMAN 156 + + POETRY AND PESSIMISM 170 + + A VINDICATION OF TENNYSON 197 + + ON THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO POLITICS 218 + + A CONVERSATION WITH SHAKESPEARE IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS 241 + + + + +THE ESSENTIALS OF GREAT POETRY + + +The decay of authority is one of the most marked features of our time. +Religion, politics, art, manners, speech, even morality, considered in its +widest sense, have all felt the waning of traditional authority, and the +substitution for it of individual opinion and taste, and of the wavering +and contradictory utterances of publications ostensibly occupied with +criticism and supposed to be pronouncing serious judgments. By authority I +do not mean the delivery of dogmatic decisions, analogous to those issued +by a legal tribunal from which there is no appeal, that have to be +accepted and obeyed, but the existence of a body of opinion of long +standing, arrived at after due investigation and experience during many +generations, and reposing on fixed principles or fundamentals of thought. +This it is that is being dethroned in our day, and is being supplanted by +a babel of clashing, irreconcilable utterances, often proceeding from the +same quarters, even the same mouths. + +In no department of thought has this been more conspicuous than in that of +literature, especially the higher class of literature; and it is most +patent in the prevailing estimate of that branch of literature to which +lip-homage is still paid as the highest of all, viz. poetry. Chaucer, +Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, have not been openly dethroned; but it would +require some boldness to deny that even their due recognition has been +indirectly questioned by a considerable amount of neglect, as compared +with the interest shown alike by readers and reviewers in poets and poetry +of lesser stature. Are we to conclude from this that there is no standard, +that there exist no permanent canons by which the relative greatness of +poets and poetry can be estimated with reasonable conclusiveness? It is +the purpose of this essay to show that such there are. + +The expression of individual opinion upon a subject so wide, no matter who +the individual might be, would obviously be worthless; and I have no wish +to do what has been done too often in our time, to substitute personal +taste or bias for canons of criticism that have stood the test of time, +and whereon the relative position of poets, great, less great, and +comparatively inferior, has reposed. The inductive method was employed +long before it was explicitly proclaimed as distinct from and more +trustworthy than the merely deductive; and it is such method that will, if +indirectly, be employed in this paper. Finally, I shall carefully abstain +from the rhetorical enthusiasm or invective that clouds the judgment of +writers and readers alike, and invariably degenerates into personal +dogmatism, together with intolerance of those who think otherwise. After +indicating, to the best of my ability, the laws of thought and the canons +of criticism on which should repose the estimate of the poetic hierarchy, +I will then ask the reader to observe if the conclusions leave the +recognised Masters of Song--Homer, AEschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, +Lucretius, Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron--unassailed +and unshaken in their poetic supremacy. + +There must perforce be certain qualities common to all poetry, whether the +greatest, the less great, or the comparatively inferior, and whether +descriptive, lyrical, idyllic, reflective, epic, or dramatic; and, so long +as there existed any authority or body of generally accepted opinion on +the subject, these were at least two such qualities, viz. melodiousness, +whether sweet or sonorous, and lucidity or clearness of expression, to be +apprehended, without laborious investigation, by highly cultured and +simple readers alike. Melodiousness is a quality so essential to, and so +inseparable from, all verse that is poetry, that it often, by its mere +presence, endows with the character of poetry verse of a very rudimentary +kind, verse that just crosses the border between prosaic and poetic verse, +and would otherwise be denied admission to the territory of the Muses. +Some of the enthusiasts to whom allusion has been made have, I am assured, +declared of certain compositions of our time, "This would be poetry, even +if it meant nothing at all"--a dictum calculated, like others enunciated +in our days, to harden the plain man in his disdain of poetry altogether. +It would not be difficult to quote melodious verse published in our time +of which it is no exaggeration to say that the words in it are used rather +as musical notes than as words signifying anything. In all likelihood such +compositions, and the widespread liking for them, arise partly from the +prevailing preference for music over the other arts, and in part from the +mental indolence that usually accompanies emotion in all but the highest +minds. Nevertheless it cannot be too much insisted on that music, or +melodiousness, either sweet or sonorous, is absolutely indispensable to +poetry; and where it is absent, poetry is absent, even though thought and +wide speculation be conspicuous in it. As Horace put it long ago in his +_Art of Poetry_, + + Non satis est pulchra esse poemata: dulcia sunto. + +Almost as essential to poetry, and equally as regards poetry of the +loftiest and poetry of the lowliest kind, is lucidity, or clearness of +expression. No poet of much account is ever obscure, unless the text +happens to be corrupt. When essays and even volumes are issued, since +deemed indispensable for the understanding of a writer labelled as a poet, +one may be quite sure that, however deep a thinker, he is not a poet of +the first order, and not a poet at all in the passages that require such +explanation. When one hears a well-authenticated story to the effect that +a great scholar said of an English paraphrase of a well-known Greek poem, +that he thought he had succeeded in gathering its meaning with the help of +the original, one ought to know what to think of the work. Yet, though +much of its author's verse is of that non-lucid character, it is +habitually saluted by many critics as great poetry. With all respect, I +venture to affirm that in such circumstances the designation must be a +misnomer. I remember a poem being read to me, in perfect good faith, by +its author, a man of great mental distinction and no little imagination, +of which, though I listened with the closest attention, not only did I not +understand one word, but I had not the faintest idea, as the colloquial +phrase is, what it was about. When it was published, I asked three ardent +admirers of the author to explain to me its meaning. They failed entirely +to do so. The saying, concerning the orator, _clarescit urendo_, is even +yet more applicable to the poet. He brightens as he burns. Yet, of recent +times, verse fuliginous, clouded, and enshrouded in obscurity, has been +hailed in many quarters, not only as poetry, but poetry of an +exceptionally superior sort. + +If it be urged that Dante, and even Shakespeare, do not always yield up +their meaning to the reader at once, the allegation must be traversed +absolutely. The immediate apprehension of the meaning of the _Vita Nuova_ +and the _Divina Commedia_ presupposes an intimate acquaintance with the +various dialects of the Italian language existing in Dante's time, and +likewise with the erudition he scatters so profusely, if allusively, +throughout his verse. But to the Italian readers of Dante, even +superficially acquainted with those dialects, and adequate masters of the +theology and the astronomy of Dante's time, those poems present no +difficulty. Of Shakespeare, the greatest of all the poets in our language, +let it be granted that he is not unoften one of the most careless and even +most slovenly; but rarely is he so to the obscuring of his meaning, and +never save casually, and in some brief passage. Yet let it not be inferred +that I am of opinion that the full meaning of the greatest passages in the +greatest poems is to be seized all at once, or by the average reader at +all. That is "deeper than ever plummet sounded," though Tennyson's +"indolent reviewer" apparently imagines that he at once fathoms the more +intellectual poetry of his time. There can be but few readers, and +possibly none but poets themselves, or persons who, to quote Tennyson +again, "have the great poetic heart," who master the full significance of +_Hamlet_ or of the tersely told story of Francesca da Rimini. But the +whole world at once understood the more obvious tenor of both, and is not +puzzled by either. There is a sliding scale of understanding, as there is +a sliding scale of inspiration. "We needs must love the highest when we +see it"; but "when we see it" is an important qualification in the +statement. + +I do not know that there are any qualities save melodiousness, sweet or +sonorous, and lucidity, that are absolutely essential to whatever is to be +regarded as poetry. In order to preclude misapprehension, let it be added +that, while both are essential to poetry, they will not, by themselves, go +far towards endowing verse with the poetic character. As an example of +this, let me cite verse which is not unmelodious, though not specially +remarkable for melodiousness, and not obscure, yet is not poetry, and +hardly on the border of it: + + I have a boy of five years old; + His face is fair and fresh to see; + His limbs are cast in beauty's mould, + And dearly he loves me. + + One morn we strolled on our dry walk, + Our quiet home all full in view, + And held such intermitted talk + As we are wont to do. + + My thoughts on former pleasures ran; + I thought of Kilve's delightful shore, + Our pleasant home when spring began, + A long, long year before. + + A day it was when I could bear + Some fond regrets to entertain; + With so much happiness to spare, + I could not feel a pain. + +This blameless, correct, harmonious, and thoroughly lucid verse is by a +poet who has written poetry of the noblest quality, no less a poet than +Wordsworth. Yet he sorely tries his readers by page after page no more +poetical than the foregoing; and he offered, on the first appearance of +every volume of his, ample matter for such critics as would rather be +sweepingly censorious than discriminating, to depreciate and even to +ridicule him. His reverent admirers, who comprise all true lovers of +poetry, are acquainted with, and probably possess, a copy of Matthew +Arnold's Selection, entitled _Poems of Wordsworth_--a small volume which +that gifted Wordsworthian, who knew and acknowledged with his usual sense +of humour how many unpoetical "sermons," as he called them, Wordsworth had +written, deliberately considered to contain all the real poetry he has +left us. If I may refer for a moment to my own copy of it, this is scored +with brief observations in pencil, the upshot of which is that the small +fraction of his work, which Matthew Arnold too liberally wished to be +regarded as _digna Phoebi_, would have again to be materially reduced by +a dispassionate criticism. + +The most generous critic, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, +let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or +utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the +appellation of poetry. But on a very thin thread of meaning poetry, or a +very fair imitation of it, may be hung by the aid of musical sound. +Without going so far as Arnold again, who once wrote to me that Shelley's +"My soul is an enchanted boat" seemed to him "mere musical verbiage," that +poem might serve as an instance of verse which, in spite of tenuity of +meaning, becomes poetry by sheer magic of exquisite music. + + My soul is an enchanted boat, + Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float + Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; + And thine doth like an angel sit + Beside a helm conducting it, + Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing + It seems to float ever, for ever, + Upon that many-winding river, + Between mountains, woods, abysses. + A paradise of wildernesses! + Till, like one in slumber bound, + Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, + Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound. + +There is a magic of sound in the verse so enchanting to a reader that he +may be pardoned for failing to observe at once that it is mainly musical +fancy. Many may remember a line of Tennyson: + + Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong. + +And are we not compelled to feel, on second thoughts, if we have any +capacity for discrimination, that here we have poetry of little meaning, +though the verse is exquisitely melodious? This is, I conclude, what +Arnold meant when he designated it, with a little exaggeration, "musical +verbiage." + +I have been obliged to linger somewhat on the threshold of my subject in +order to emphasise the essential importance and inseparable quality of +metrical melodiousness and lucidity in poetry, in order that, in whatever +follows in this paper, these indispensable conditions may not be lost +sight of; and also because of late each of them has been ousted from +consideration by those who have striven, and still strive, to induce +literary opinion to accept not only as poetry, but as great poetry, what +is conspicuously lacking in both. That I shall have the assent, however, +of the weight of authority on this point, and likewise that of the +ordinary unaffected lover of poetry, I can scarcely doubt; the more so, as +the conclusions thus far reached leave undisturbed upon their seats those +mighty ones, of all tongues and all nations, whose universally recognised +greatness has received the seal and sanction of many generations. + +What may be called the first principles of poetry having thus been +propounded, without any necessity for reaffirming them in the +investigation of other conclusions yet to be reached, I may move on to +what I imagine will be less familiar and perhaps more original in the +search for "The Essentials of Great Poetry." If we carefully observe the +gradual development of mental power in human beings, irrespectively of any +reference to poetry, but as applied to general objects of human interest, +we shall find that the advance from elementary to supreme expansion of +mental power is in the following order of succession, each preceding +element in mental development being retained on the appearance of its +successor: (1) Perception, vague at first, as in the newly born, gradually +becoming more definite, along with desires of an analogous kind; (2) +Sentiment, also vague at first, but by degrees becoming more definite, +until it attaches itself to one or more objects exclusively; (3) Thought +or Reflection, somewhat hazy in its inception, and often remaining in that +condition to the last; (4) Action, which is attended and assisted by the +three preceding qualities of Perception, Sentiment, and Thought or +Reflection. In other words, human beings perceive before they feel, +perceive and feel before they think, perceive, feel, and think before they +act, or at least before they act reasonably, though it may be but +imperfectly, and though the later or higher stages may in many cases +scarcely be reached at all. + +Now let us see if, in poetry, the same order or succession in development +and expansion does not exist. Never forgetting the essential qualities of +melody and lucidity, do we not find that mere descriptive verse, which +depends on perception or observation, is the humblest and most elementary +form of poetry; that descriptive verse, when suffused with sentiment, +gains in value and charm; that if, to the foregoing, thought or reflection +be superadded, there is a conspicuous rise in dignity, majesty, and +relative excellence; and finally, that the employment of these in +narrative action, whether epic or dramatic, carries us on to a stage of +supreme excellence which can rarely be predicated of any poetry in which +action is absent? If this be so, we have to the successive development of +observation, feeling, thought, and action, an exact analogy or counterpart +in (1) Descriptive Poetry; (2) Lyrical Poetry; (3) Reflective Poetry; (4) +Epic or Dramatic Poetry; in each of which, melody and lucidity being +always present, there is an advance in poetic value over the preceding +stage, without the preceding one being eliminated from its progress. + +Once again let us have recourse to illustration, which, when fairly +chosen, is probably the most effective method for securing assent. +Wordsworth presents us with an ample supply of illustrations in three out +of the four different kinds of poetry; and therefore to him let us have +recourse. In reading the first stanza of _The Pet Lamb_, and two or three +stanzas that follow, we have descriptive verse which may be regarded as +very elementary poetry, but to which it would seem to many to be +hypercritical to refuse that designation. It is too well known to need +citation. The opening lines of _The Leech-Gatherer_ display the same +elementary descriptive character. + + There was a roaring in the wind all night; + The rain came heavily and fell in floods; + But now the sun is rising calm and bright; + The birds are singing in the distant woods; + Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; + The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; + And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters. + + All things that love the Sun are out of doors; + The sky rejoices in the morning's birth; + The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the moors + The Hare is running races in her mirth; + And with her feet she from the plashy earth + Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun, + Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run. + + I was a traveller then upon the moor; + I saw the Hare that raced about with joy; + I heard the woods and distant waters roar; + Or heard them not, as happy as a boy: + The pleasant season did my heart employ; + My old remembrances went from me wholly, + And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy. + +I perceive that, in my copy of the volume of Selections made by Matthew +Arnold from the poems of Wordsworth, already alluded to, I have written at +the end of _Margaret_, "If this be poetry, surely many people may say they +have written poetry all their lives without knowing it." But as Matthew +Arnold's critical opinions will carry more weight than mine, and he has +included _Margaret_ in his Selection, let me quote a dozen lines or so +from its opening passage: + + 'Twas Summer, and the Sun had mounted high: + Southward the landscape indistinctly glared + Through a pale steam; but all the northern downs, + In clearest air ascending, showed far off + A surface dappled o'er with shadows flung + From brooding clouds; shadows that lay in spots + Determined and unmoved, with steady beams + Of bright and pleasant sunshine interposed; + Pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss + Extends his careless limbs along the front + Of some huge cave, whose rocky ceiling casts + A twilight of its own, an ample shade, + Where the Wren warbles. + +But there is, it must not be overlooked, merely Descriptive Poetry of a +much higher kind than the foregoing, though Wordsworth may not be the best +source from which to draw it. Perhaps its highest possibilities are to be +found in Byron, and conspicuously in the third and fourth cantos of +_Childe Harold_. Many of the passages of the kind that one remembers there +are, however, either too much suffused with the poet's personal feeling, +or too closely connected with great incidents in history and the fall of +empires, to be quite pertinent examples. A minor but sufficient example +taken from _Childe Harold_ may suffice for illustration: + + It is the hush of night, and all between + Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, + Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen, + Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear + Precipitously steep; and drawing near, + There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, + Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear + Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, + Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more. + +Far finer instances of poetry essentially descriptive in the same poem may +be referred to, _e.g._ Canto IV., stanza xcix., beginning "There is a +stern round tower of other days"; stanza cvii., beginning with "Cypress +and ivy, weed and wallflower grown"; stanza clxxiii., descriptive of Lake +Nemi; and even--for it also is strictly descriptive--stanza cxl., opening +with the well-known line "I see before me the gladiator lie." + +It could not be allowed that any of these, considered separately, +satisfies the conditions or essentials of great poetry, though, in company +with others, they contribute to that character in a very great poem +indeed. Moreover, they serve to show that even mere Descriptive Poetry, +which I have spoken of as the "lowest" or most elementary kind of poetry, +may rise to striking elevation of merit, and has its counterpart in the +sliding scale of observation in various individuals. + +Let us now take a step, and a long one, in the scale of importance +attained by the various kinds of poetry, and consider the classics of +Lyrical Poetry. Here extensive quotation will be less necessary, partly by +reason of the wide ground Lyrical Poetry covers, and partly because of its +relative popularity in our time, and the familiarity of so many readers +with its most enchanting specimens. There is ample room for personal taste +and individual idiosyncrasy within the vast boundaries of this fruitful +field. Many persons are sadly wanting in observation; and to only a +minority can real, serious thought be ascribed. But we all feel, we all +have visitations of sentiment; and therefore to all of us is Lyrical +Poetry more or less welcome. + +The causes, personal and social, that have given to Lyrical Poetry in our +time almost exclusive favour in public taste will be dealt with presently. +It will distract less from our main purpose to confine ourselves for the +present to the recognition of the fact, and to seek to show how very +various are the degrees of eminence in Lyrical Poetry. The lyrical note is +so natural to poets and poetry that we may expect to find it in the verse +of all poets, though in a minor degree in didactic verse; while in some +poets it almost monopolises their utterance. Though perhaps not obvious to +many ears to-day, it lurks in no little of Pope's _Epistle of Eloisa to +Abelard_, and is unmistakably present in his _Ode on St. Cecilia's Day_. +If I am asked if the lyrical note is to be found in Chaucer, the reply +must be that, though Chaucer has left nothing which the modern reader +would recognise as lyrical, what is called his iambic or five-foot metre +is far more anapaestic and lyrical than is the case with any subsequent +poet, except Shakespeare. There is a lilt in it equivalent to the lyrical +note, which those who read as Chaucer wrote recognise at once. One has +only to read the opening lines of the Prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_ +to perceive this. Not quite to the same extent perhaps as in Chaucer, but +withal very noticeably to the ear, the lyrical note is frequently to be +caught in Spenser, even where he is not obviously offering the reader +Lyrical Poetry; as, for instance, in this stanza in the first canto of the +_Fairy Queen_, beginning: + + A little lowly hermitage it was, + Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side. + +This is not Lyrical Poetry proper, as now understood. But Spenser has left +us in his _Epithalamion_ a lyrical poem with which only one other English +lyric can be placed in competition for the first place. It is too long for +more than one brief excerpt to be cited here: + + Wake now, my love, awake! for it is time; + The rosy Morne long since left Tithones bed, + All ready to her silver coche to clyme; + And Phoebus gins to shew his glorious hed. + Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies + And carroll of loves praise. + The merry Larke hir mattins sings aloft; + The Thrush replyes; the Mavis descant playes; + The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft; + So goodly all agree, with sweet consent, + To this dayes meriment, + Ah! my deere love, why doe ye sleepe thus long, + When meeter were that ye should now awake, + T' awayt the comming of your joyous make, + And hearken to the birds love-learned song, + The deawy leaves among? + For they of joy and pleasance to you sing + That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. + +One is sorry to think that this long, lovely, and varied lyric is less +known than it ought to be to the modern readers of Lyrical Poetry. I can +only say to them, "Make haste to read it." + +In Shakespeare's plays the lyrical note is so often to be heard in the +blank verse that the poet's natural aptitude and inclination for singing +were amply exercised there; and he gives most voice to it in such plays as +_As You Like It_ and _Romeo and Juliet_. But it recurs again and again +throughout his dramas. Such lines as: + + All over-canopied with lush woodbine, + + How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank, + + Under the shade of melancholy boughs, + +are illustrations of what I am pointing out. + +Without dwelling on the excellent lyrics written in the reigns of Charles +I. and Charles II., and confining ourselves to the _di majores_ of poetry, +we may pass on to Milton, whose _Allegro_ and _Penseroso_ as likewise the +lyrics in _Comus_, are too familiar to every one to be more than mentioned +as evidence of the persistence, in the past as in the present, of the +warbling impulse in all poets. Heard but fitfully during the greater part +of the eighteenth century, yet most arrestingly in Gray, Collins, and +Burns, Lyrical Poetry from the last onward without intermission, to our +own time, in Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson, is +almost the only poetry that has in recent days been much listened to, or +much written and talked about. This circumstance is far from being +conclusive as to whether, during the same period, poems higher and +greater than mere Lyrical Poetry have or have not been produced. But it is +absolutely certain that, if produced, they have been, so far, more or less +ignored; and that, if the same poets have written such and Lyrical Poetry +as well, they will have been considered and estimated by the latter only. + +But the domain of feeling and emotion in which Lyrical Poetry has room to +display its power and versatility is so extensive that lyrics are very +various in their themes and in the treatment of them. Love, religion, +patriotism, cosmopolitan benevolence, being, as I have shown in _The Human +Tragedy_, the most elevated and most permanent sources of human sentiment +and emotion, there will necessarily be in Lyrical Poetry, even considered +by itself, and apart from all the other forms of poetry, a scale of +relative elevation and importance. + +The love of individuals for each other, whether domestic, romantic, or +sexual, is much more common than any of the other three, being practically +universal; and it has given birth to so many well-known lyrics that it is +unnecessary to cite any of them here. Some of them are very beautiful; but +none of them, by reason of the comparative narrowness of their theme, +satisfies the essentials of great poetry. Not even Tennyson's _Maud_, +which is perhaps the most ambitious and the best known of long poems +dedicated mainly to the subject, though it contains lovely passages, +approaches greatness. + +Though what is understood as religious sentiment comes next to the love of +individuals for each other in the extent of its influence, it has produced +much verse, but, it must be allowed, little poetry, the reason probably +being that the religious sentiment of the few who are endowed with the +gift of writing poetry differs from that of the average "religious" +person. Nor can the fact be overlooked that there is a certain character +of reserve in Protestantism which has operated since the Reformation +against the growth of religious Lyrical Poetry. For that we must go either +to pre-Reformation days, or to the poetry of those who, like George +Herbert and the poetic kin of his time, clung to the Roman Catholic creed +after the modification of belief and ritual in the Anglican Church; or to +the poets in our own time trained in the Roman Catholic faith, and to that +extent, and on that ground, debarred from wide popularity among a +Protestant people. The De Veres, Faber, Coventry Patmore, and Newman, the +last notably in his _Dream of Gerontius_, may be named as instances of +what has been done in recent times in the sphere of religious poetry. +Scott's lovely "Ave Maria" in _The Lady of the Lake_, and Byron's stanza +beginning: + + Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer, + +are briefer specimens of what may be, and has been contributed in later +times to religious poetry; much smaller in bulk and volume than poetry +dedicated to the love of individuals for each other, but higher in the +rising scale of greatness, because of the greater dignity of its theme. + +Patriotic Lyrical Poetry need not detain us long. Most patriotic verse, +however spirited, is verse only, nothing or little more, though exceptions +could be cited, such as Drayton's _Agincourt_, Tennyson's _Relief of +Lucknow_, and _The Ballad of the "Revenge."_ But if in patriotic Lyrical +Poetry we include, as I think we should, poetry in the English tongue, but +not concerning England or the British Empire, I may name Byron's "Isles +of Greece" in _Don Juan_, which I had in my mind when I observed that +there is in our language only one lyrical poem that can compete for the +first place in Lyrical Poetry with Spenser's _Epithalamion_. + +3. Reflective Poetry. Over Reflective Poetry, in itself a stage of advance +beyond Descriptive Poetry and Lyrical Poetry in themselves, we need not +linger long, for the reason that, though Reflective Poetry is ample in +quantity, it is, outside the Drama, very limited in quality, most of it +being of so prosaic a character as not only not to be ranked above average +Lyrical Poetry, but far below it. Wordsworth furnishes us, for the purpose +of illustration, with both kinds, the higher and the lower Reflective +Poetry. As regards the latter, I would rather let Matthew Arnold, than +whom there is no warmer admirer of Wordsworth, be the spokesman: + + _The Excursion_ abounds with Philosophy [I prefer to call it Thought + or Reflection]; and therefore _The Excursion_ is to the Wordsworthian + what it never can be to the disinterested lover of poetry, a + satisfactory work. "Duty exists," says Wordsworth in _The Excursion_; + and then he proceeds thus: + + ... Immutably survive, + For our support, the measures and the forms + Which an abstract Intelligence supplies, + Whose kingdom is where time and space are not. + + And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that here is a sweet + union of philosophy and poetry. But the disinterested lover of poetry + will feel that the lines carry us really not a step farther than the + proposition which they would interpret; that they are a tissue of + elevated but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry. + +Merely observing that I wholly agree with the foregoing estimate, I pass +to the higher Reflective Poetry, of which Wordsworth has given us such +splendid but comparatively brief instances. The _Lines composed a few +miles above Tintern Abbey_, _Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a Picture of +Peele Castle_, his best Sonnets, the _Character of the Happy Warrior_, +the _Ode to Duty_, and, finally, the _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_ +seem to me to place Wordsworth above all other English Poets in the domain +of exclusively Reflective Poetry. I do not forget much noble Reflective +Poetry in _Childe Harold_; but it is too much blent with other elements, +and into it the active quality enters too strongly, for its more +reflective features to be separated from them. Moreover, it generally +falls far short of the intellectual note so strongly marked in +Wordsworth's best Reflective Poetry, into which, be it added, both the +descriptive and the lyrical notes, in accordance with the general law I am +seeking to expound in this paper, enter very largely, if, of course, +subordinately. It will be obvious, however, to any dispassionate lover of +poetry, that a merely reflective poem of any great length cannot well be +entitled to the designation of a great poem. Had such been possible, +Wordsworth would have bequeathed it to us. _The Excursion_ is the answer; +which, notwithstanding a certain number of fine passages, is, for the most +part, what Matthew Arnold says of it, "doctrine such as we hear in church, +religious and philosophical doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves +passages of such doctrine, and brings them forward as proofs of his poet's +excellence." + +If the reader has followed me so far, with more or less assent, he will be +prepared not only to allow, but of himself to feel, that there must be yet +another kind or order of poetry, in which the greatest poems are to be +found, poems that are neither exclusively nor mainly either descriptive, +lyrical, or reflective, but into which all three elements enter +subordinately, though none of them gives it its distinctive and supreme +character. + +4. Epic and Dramatic Poetry. That supreme kind of poetry is Epic and +Dramatic Poetry, though there may be very poor Epics, and Dramas in which +true poetry is scarcely to be observed, just as we have seen that there is +very inferior Descriptive, Lyrical, and Reflective Poetry. All that is +asserted is that great epic and dramatic poems must be greater than the +greatest poetry of the preceding kinds by reason of their wider range and +(as a rule) the higher majesty of their theme, and of their including +every other kind of poetry. + +It will perhaps have been noticed that Epic and Dramatic Poetry are here +placed in conjunction, not separately; and their being thus conjoined +needs a word of explanation. Though there is a radical distinction between +the two, this provisional union of them has been adopted in order to +afford an opportunity of pointing out what I think is generally +ignored--that poems which are essentially epical, or merely narrative, may +be written in dialogue or dramatic form, and so mislead incautious readers +into inferring that they are offered as dramas, in the acting sense of the +term. It is because, while remaining substantially epical or narrative in +character they may contain, here and there, dramatic situations, dramatic +rhetoric, and dramatic converse. The _Iliad_ is a conspicuous example of +this; the movement in the earlier portion of it being full of debate and +defiance among its characters, and these dramatic elements recurring, if +less frequently, throughout the entire work. To many persons the episodes +in the narrative of the _Divina Commedia_ that give rise to converse, +whether tender, terrible, or pathetic, are the most delightful portions of +it. What is it that makes the first six books of _Paradise Lost_ so much +more telling than the later ones? Surely it is the magnificence of the +speeches emanating from the mouths of the chief characters. _Childe +Harold_ is ostensibly only descriptive, reflective, and narrative; but the +personality and supposed wrongs of Byron himself, so frequently +introduced, confer on it, beyond these characters, certain features of the +drama and of dramatic action. Moreover, the magnificent ruins bequeathed +to the seven-hilled city by the fall of the Roman Empire enter so largely +into the fourth canto that this includes in it every species of verse, +from the descriptive to the dramatic. To cite a much smaller example, I +once said to Tennyson, "Do you not think that, had one met in a tragedy +with the couplet from Pope (_Ep. to the Sat._ ii. 205)-- + + _F._ You're strangely proud ... + + _P._ Yes, I am proud: I must be proud to see + Men not afraid of God, afraid of _me_ + +--one would be right in regarding it as very fine, dramatically?" and he +replied, "Yes, certainly." I recall the circumstance because it is an +extreme illustration of the momentary intrusion of one style into another. + +By slow but successive stages we have reached conclusions that may be thus +briefly stated. (1) The essentials of great poetry are not to be found in +poetry exclusively descriptive. (2) They are rarely to be met with in +poetry that is lyrical, and then only when reflection of a high order, as +in Wordsworth's _Intimations of Immortality_, or what is equivalent to +action operating on a great theme, as in Byron's _Isles of Greece_, +largely and conspicuously enters into these. (3) That they are to be met +with in Reflective Poetry of the very highest character, but never +throughout an exclusively reflective poem of any length. (4) That they are +chiefly to be sought for and most frequently found in either epic or +dramatic poetry where description, emotion, thought, and action all +co-operate to produce the result; that result being, to adduce supreme +examples, the _Iliad_, _Paradise Lost_, the _Divina Commedia_, the third +and fourth cantos of _Childe Harold_, _Hamlet_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_. + +Many years ago, in a couple of papers published in the _Contemporary +Review_ on "New and Old Canons of Poetic Criticism," I propounded, as the +most satisfactory definition of poetry generally, that it is "the +transfiguration, in musical verse, of the Real into the Ideal"; and I have +more than once advocated the definition. The definition applies to poetry +of all kinds. But, while this is so, the transfiguration must operate on a +great theme greatly treated, either lyrically, reflectively, epically, or +dramatically, in order to produce great poetry. + +I fancy I hear some people saying, "Quite so; who ever denied or doubted +it?" The answer must be that, for some time past, it has been tacitly, and +often explicitly, denied by critics and readers alike; reviewers to-day +criticising poetry in utter disregard and contravention of any such +canons, and readers in their conversation and practice following suit, +apparently without any knowledge or suspicion that such canons exist. Had +it been otherwise, an inquiry into the essentials of great poetry would +have been unnecessary. + +The permanent passions of mankind--love, religion, patriotism, +humanitarianism, hate, revenge, ambition; the conflict between free will +and fate; the rise and fall of empires--these are all great themes, and, +if greatly treated, and in accordance with the essentials applicable to +all poetry, may produce poetry of the loftiest kind; the underlying reason +being what, as usual, has been better and more convincingly stated by +Shakespeare than by any one else: + + We [actors on the stage] are not all alone unhappy: + This wide and universal theatre + Presents more woeful pageants than the scene + Wherein we play. + +For the great treatment of great themes in Epic, and yet more in Dramatic, +Poetry, think of what is required! Not mere fancy, not mere emotion, but a +wide and lofty imagination, a full and flexible style, a copious and ready +vocabulary, an ear for verbal melody and all its cadences, profound +knowledge of men, women, and things in general, a congenital and +cultivated sense of form--the foundation of beauty and majesty alike, in +all art; an experience of all the passions, yet the attainment to a +certain majestic freedom from servitude to these; the descriptive, +lyrical, and reflective capacity; abundance and variety of illustration; a +strong apprehension and grasp of the Real, with the impulse and power to +transfigure it into the Ideal, so that the Ideal shall seem to the reader +to be the Real; in a word, "blood and judgment," as Shakespeare says, "so +commingled." These are the qualifications of the writers that have +stirred, and still stir, in its worthier portion, the admiration, +reverence, and gratitude of mankind. + +Even this does not exhaust the requisite endowments of those who aspire to +write great poetry. Their sympathy with all that is demands from them a +fund of practical good sense, too often lacking in merely lyrical +poets--a circumstance that may render their work less attractive to the +average person, and even make it seem to such to be wanting in genius +altogether. Sane they must essentially be; and their native sanity must +have been fortified by some share in practical affairs, while their +robustness of mind must have received aid from the open air. They will be +found to be neither extravagant optimists nor extravagant pessimists, but +wise teachers and indulgent moralists; neither teaching nor preaching +overmuch in their verse, but unintentionally and almost unconsciously +communicating their wisdom to others by radiation. Dante always speaks of +Virgil as "Il Saggio." Tennyson puts it well where he says of the poet, +"He saw through good, through ill; He saw through his own soul." +Architecture, sculpture, music, the kindred of his own art, must be +appreciated by him; and nothing that affects mankind is alien to him. + +I should like to say, incidentally, and I hope I may do so without giving +offence, that I have sometimes thought that, in an age much given to +theorising and to considering itself more "scientific" than perhaps it +really is, the diminution of practical wisdom, somewhat conspicuous of +late in politics and legislation, is due in no small measure to the +neglect of the higher poetry, in favour, where concern for poetry survives +at all, of brief snatches of lyrical emotion. Hence legislation by emotion +and haste. + +If we ask ourselves, as it is but natural to do, what are the chief causes +that have brought about this change in public taste and sentiment, I +believe they will be found to be mainly as follow. (1) The decay of +authority already mentioned. (2) The perpetual reading of novels of every +kind, many of them of a pernicious nature, but nearly all of them +calculated to indispose readers to care for any poetry save of an +emotional lyrical character. (3) The increase--be it said with all due +chivalry--of feminine influence and activity alike in society and +literature; women, generally speaking, showing but a moderate interest in +great issues in public life, and finding their satisfaction, so far as +reading is concerned, in prose romances, newspapers, and short lyrics. (4) +The febrile quality of contemporaneous existence; the ephemeral +excitements of the passing hour; and the wholesale surrender to the +transient as contrasted with the permanent, great poetry concerning itself +only with this last--a circumstance that makes the _Odyssey_, for +instance, as fresh to-day as though it had been published for the first +time last autumn; whereas the life of most prose romances, like the lady's +scanty attire, _commence a peine, et finit tout de suite_. + +I hope no one will imagine--for they would be mistaken in doing so--that +these pages have been prompted by a disposition to depreciate the age in +which we are living, and just as little to manifest disdain of it, though +one need not conceal the opinion, in respect of the lower literary taste +so widely prevalent, that, as Shakespeare says, "it is not and it cannot +be for good." My object has been something very different from this. It +has been to recall canons of poetry and standards of literary excellence +which I believe can never be destroyed though for a time they may be +obscured, and which have of late been too much ignored. That such neglect +will in the very faintest degree prevent those whose instinct it is to +say, with Virgil, "paulo majora canamus," from following their vocation, +without a thought of readers or reviewers, I do not suppose. It is good +for poets, and indeed for others, not to be too quickly appreciated. It is +dangerous for them, and sometimes fatal, to be praised prematurely. + +The great stumbling-block of literary criticism, alike for the +professional critic and the unprofessional reader, is the tacit assumption +that the opinions, preferences, and estimates of to-day are not merely +passing opinions, preferences, and estimates, but will be permanent ones; +opinions, preferences, and estimates for all future time. There is no +foundation, save self-complacency, for such a surmise. What solid reason +is there to suppose that the present age is any more infallible in its +literary judgments than preceding ages? On the contrary, its infallibility +is all the less probable because of the precipitation with which its +opinions are arrived at. Yet past ages have been proved over and over +again, in course of time, to be wrong in their estimate of contemporaneous +poetry, in consequence of their mistaking the passing for the permanent. +The consequence in our time of this error has been that one has seen the +passing away of several works loudly declared on their appearance to be +immortal. The only chance a critic has of being right in his judgments is +to measure contemporary literature by standards and canons upon which +rests the fame of the great poets and writers of the past, and, tried by +which, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron have been assigned +their enduring rank in the poetic hierarchy. "Blessings be with them," +says Wordsworth (Sonnet xxv.): + + Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, + Who gave us nobler lives and nobler cares, + The Poets who on earth have made us heirs + Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays. + +It is only the great poets, the poets in whom we can recognise the +essentials of greatness, who can do that for us. They are not rebels, as +are too many lyrical poets, but reconcilers; and they offer to external +things and current ideas both receptivity and resistance, being not merely +of an age, but for all time. It is their thoughts and the verse in which +their thoughts are embodied that are enduringly memorable. For great +poetry, as Wordsworth teaches us in a single line, is not mere emotion, +not mere subtle or sensuous singing, but + + Reason in her most exalted mood. + +A still greater authority than Wordsworth, no other than Milton, has +immortalised in verse the principles for which I have ventured to contend +in prose. In _Paradise Regained_ (iv. 255-266) he says: + + There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power + Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit + By voice or hand, and various-measured verse, + AEolian charms and Dorian lyrick odes, + And his who gave them breath but higher sung, + Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called, + Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own; + Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught + In Chorus or Iambick, teachers best + Of moral prudence, with delight receiv'd, + In brief sententious precepts, while they treat + Of fate, and chance, and change in human life, + High actions and high passions best describing. + + + + +THE FEMININE NOTE IN ENGLISH POETRY + + +Women, to whom a barbarous description, willingly accepted by themselves, +has been applied, have recently been much in the public eye, and still +more in the public prints. But I should not class them under the +designation of feminine; and, though they may have invaded prose fiction, +they have not been, and I think they never will be, met with in Poetry. +They are noisy, but numerically weak. Eve listening to the Tempter, then +bewailing her weakness; Ruth amid the alien corn; Magdalen and her box of +spikenard; Helen of Troy following evil-hearted Paris; Beatrice in heaven; +Una and the milk-white lamb; Rosalind and Celia in _As You Like It_; the +Lily Maid of Astolat in the _Idylls of the King_--these are women of whom, +or, at least, of the sentiments and sympathies of whom, as manifested in +English poetry, I wish to speak. The most progressive age one can possibly +conceive will never succeed in leaving human nature behind, and I have not +the smallest doubt that women will continue to be womanly to the end of +time. + +What, then, is feminine as contrasted with masculine? what is womanly as +compared with manly, whether in literature or in life? Men and women have +many qualities in common, and resemble more than they differ from each +other. But while, speaking generally, the man's main occupations lie +abroad, the woman's main occupation is at home. He has to deal with public +and collective interests; she has to do with private and individual +interests. We need not go so far as to say, with Kingsley, that man must +work and woman must weep; but at least he has to fight and to struggle, +she has to solace and to heal. Ambition, sometimes high, sometimes low, +but still ambition--ambition and success are the main motives and purpose +of his life. Her noblest ambition is to foster domestic happiness, to +bring comfort to the afflicted, and to move with unostentatious but +salutary step over the vast territory of human affection. While man busies +himself with the world of politics, with the world of commerce, with the +rise and fall of empires, with the fortunes and fate of humanity, woman +tends the hearth, visits the sick, consoles the suffering--in a word, in +all she does, fulfils the sacred offices of love. + +Now the highest literature--and Poetry is confessedly the highest +literature--is a transfiguring reflex of life; and in its magic mirror we +perforce see reflected all the thoughts, feelings, interests, passions, +and events of human existence. In English poetry, therefore, we shall +expect to hear both the masculine note and the feminine note; and in what +proportions we hear them will be incidentally indicated in the course of +my remarks. But it is the Feminine Note in which we are at present +specially interested, and if I am asked to define briefly what I mean by +this Feminine Note, I should say that I mean the private or domestic note, +the compassionate note or note of pity, and the sentimental note or note +of romantic love. + +Now I am well aware there are numbers of people who look on poetry as +something essentially and necessarily feminine, and who will say, "What do +you mean by speaking of the Feminine Note in English poetry? Surely it has +no other note, poetry being an effeminate business altogether, with which +men, real robust men, need not concern themselves." The people who hold +this opinion can have but a very limited acquaintance with English poetry, +and a yet more limited familiarity with the poetry of other ages and other +nations that has come down to us. As a matter of fact, though the feminine +note has rarely, if ever, been wholly absent from poetry, it is only of +late years comparatively that it has become a very audible note. I should +be carried too far away from my subject if I attempted to demonstrate the +accuracy of this assertion by a survey, however rapid, of all the +best-known poetry in languages, dead and living, of other times and other +peoples. But to cite one or two familiar examples, is the feminine note, I +may ask, the predominant, or even a frequent, note in the _Iliad_? The +poem opens, it is true, with a dispute among the Argive chiefs, and mainly +between Agamemnon and Achilles, concerning two young women. But how +quickly Chryseis and Bryseis fall into the background, and in place of any +further reference to them, we have a tempest of manly voices, the clang of +arms, the recriminations of the Gods up in Olympus, and the cataloguing of +the Grecian ships! Lest perhaps tender interest should be absent overmuch, +just when Paris is being worsted in his duel with Menelaus for the +determination of the siege, Venus carries him off under cover of a cloud, +and brings Helen to his side. Then follows a scene in which the fair cause +of strife and slaughter stands distracted between her passion for Paris, +her shame at his defeat and flight, and her recollection of the brave +Argive Chief she once called her lord. But more fighting promptly +supervenes, and, save in such a passing episode as the lovely leave-taking +of Hector and Andromache, the poem moves on through a magnificent medley +of fighting, plotting, and speech-making. Even in that exceptionally +tender episode what are the farewell words of Hector to his wife, "Go to +your house and see to your own duties, the loom and the distaff, and bid +your handmaidens perform their tasks. But for war shall _man_ provide." It +is over the dead body of Patroclus that Achilles weeps; and whatever tears +are shed in the _Iliad_ are shed by heroes for heroes. Life, as +represented in that poem, is a life in which woman plays a shadowy and +insignificant part, and wherein domestic sentiments are subordinated to +the rivalries of the Gods and the clash of chariot-wheels. + +This subordinating of woman to man, of individual aims and private +feelings to great aims and public issues, is equally present in the great +Latin poem, the _AEneid_. "Arms and the Man, I sing," says Virgil at once, +and in the very first line of his poem; and though in one book out of the +twelve of which it consists he sings of the woman likewise, it is but to +leave her to her fate and to liberate AEneas from her seductions. Virgil is +rightly esteemed the most tender and refined writer of antiquity. Yet to +the modern reader, accustomed to the feminine note in poetry, there is +something amazingly callous, almost cruel, in the lines with which, while +the funeral pyre of Dido is still smoking, he tells us how AEneas, without +a moment's hesitation, makes for the open sea, and sails away from +Carthage. But then the main business of AEneas was not to soothe or satisfy +the Carthaginian queen, but to build the city and found the Empire of +Rome. "Spirits," says Shakespeare, "are not finely touched save to fine +issues"; and it never would have occurred to Virgil to allow the hero of +the _AEneid_ to be diverted from his masculine purpose by anything so +secondary as the love, or even the self-immolation, of a woman. + +Let us, however, overleap the intervening centuries, and betake ourselves +to the poetry of our own land and our own language. Chaucer, the first +great English poet, was, like all writers of supreme genius, a prolific +and voluminous writer, and we have thousands of verses of his besides the +Prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_. But it is by this latter work that he +is best known; and it is pre-eminently and adequately representative, both +of his own genius and of the temper of the times in which he lived. You +will have to hunt very diligently through his description of the Knight, +the Squire, the Yeoman, the Prioress, the Monk, the Merchant, the Sergeant +of the Law, the Franklin, the Miller, the Manciple, and the rest of his +jovial company, in order to find anything approaching the feminine note. +He says little about what any of them thought, and absolutely nothing +concerning what they felt, but confines himself to descriptions of their +personal appearance, of their conduct and their character, in a word, of +their external presentation of themselves. The Knight who wore a doublet +all stained by his coat of mail, was well mounted, and had ridden far, no +man farther. The Squire, or page, had curly locks, and had borne himself +well in Flanders and Picardy. The Yeoman bore a weighty bow, handled his +arrows and tackle in admirable fashion, and was dressed in a coat of +green. The Monk was fat and in good case, and loved a roast swan more than +any other dish. The Friar, we are told, had made many a marriage at his +own cost, and would get a farthing out of a poor widow, though she had +only one shoe left. The Franklin had a white beard and a high complexion, +kept a capital table, and blew up his cook loudly if the sauces were not +to his liking. The Wife of Bath had married five husbands, not to speak of +other company in her youth; and the Sumpnor loved garlic, onions, and +leeks, had a fiery face, and doated on strong wine. There is nothing very +feminine in all this, is there? The one sole touch of tenderness that I +can remember, and it is very elementary and introduced quite casually, is +that in which we are told that the Prioress is so full of pity that she +would weep if she saw a mouse caught in a trap. One can easily surmise +what sort of tales would proceed from such downright, hearty, unromantic +personages; and, save where any of them recite well-known stories from +ancient poets, their own narratives are as buxom, burly, and as +unsentimental as themselves. If princes and princesses, fine lords and +ladies, be the heroes and heroines of the Tale, a certain amount of +conventional pity is extended to their woes. But if the personages of the +story be, as they for the most part are, common folk, and such as the +story-tellers themselves would be likely to know, their misfortunes and +mishaps are used merely as a theme for mirth and merciless banter. The +humour displayed is excellent, but it is not the humour of _charity_. It +is not compassionate, and it is not feminine. The feminine note is not +absent from Chaucer's Tales, but it is generally a subordinate note, a +rare note, a note scarcely heard in his great concert of masculine +voices. + +Passing from the pages of Chaucer to those of Spenser is like passing from +some cheery tavern where the ale is good and the jokes are excellent, but +a trifle coarse, and the company diverting but a little mixed, to the +banqueting-hall of some stately palace, where the wines and meats are of +the choicest, where all the guests are of high degree, the women all fair, +the men all courtly, and where fine manners and dignified speech leave no +place for loud lewd laughter or even for homely familiarity. Surely in one +who is such a poet, and such a gentleman, and in every respect, to quote a +line of his own "a very perfect gentle knight," we shall come across, ever +and anon at least, the feminine note. And indeed we do. The first three +stanzas of the _Fairy Queen_ are dedicated to the description of the +Knight that was pricking on the plain. But listen to the fourth: + + A lovely lady rode him fair beside, + Upon a lowly ass more white than snow; + Yet she much whiter; but the same did hide + Under a veil that wimpled was full low, + And over all a black stole did she throw; + As one that inly mourned, so was she sad, + And heavy sate upon her palfrey slow. + Seemed at heart some hidden care she had. + And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she lad. + So pure and innocent as that same lamb + She was, in life and every virtuous lore. + She by descent from royal lineage came. + +Her name, as doubtless you well know, was Una, and, when by foul +enchantment she is severed a while from her true knight, harken with what +a truly feminine note Spenser bewails her misfortune: + + Nought is there under heaven's wide hollowness + Did recover more dear compassion of the mind + Than beauty brought to unworthy wretchedness + Through envy's snare, or fortune's freaks unkind. + I, whether lately through her brightness blind, + Or through allegiance, and fast fealty + Which I do owe unto all womankind, + Feel my heart prest with so great agony, + When such I see, that all for pity I could die. + +Spenser cannot endure the thought of beauty in distress. So at once he +brings upon the scene a ramping lion, which, in the ordinary course of +things would have put a speedy end to her woes. But not so Spenser's lion: + + Instead thereof he kissed her weary feet, + And licked her lily hands with fawning tongue, + As he her wronged innocence did weet. + O how can beauty master the most strong. + +And thus he goes on: + + The lion would not leave her desolate, + But with her went along, as a strong guard + Of her chaste person, and a faithful mate + Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard: + Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward, + And when she waked, he waited diligent + With humble service to her will prepared. + +This allegiance and fast fealty which Spenser declares he owes unto all +womankind is the attitude, not only of all true knights and all true +gentlemen, but likewise, I trust, of all true poets. But do not suppose on +that account that Spenser is a feminine poet. He is very much the reverse. +It would be impossible for a poet to be more masculine than he. + + Upon a great adventure he was bound, + +he says at once of his hero, and describes how the knight's heart groaned +to prove his prowess in battle brave. Spenser has the feminine note, but +in subordination to the masculine note; and if I were asked to name some +one quality by which you may know whether a poet be of the very highest +rank, I should be disposed to say, "See if in his poetry you meet with the +feminine note and the masculine note, and if the first be duly +subordinated to the second." + +I wish it were possible, within the limit I have here assigned myself, to +apply this test and pursue this enquiry at length in regard to +Shakespeare, in regard to Milton, and likewise in regard to Dryden and +Pope. But of this I am sure that the wider and deeper the survey the more +clear would be the conclusion that in Shakespeare, as we might have +expected, the masculine note and the feminine note are heard in perfect +harmony, but by far the larger volume of sound proceeds from the former. + +When, then, was it that the feminine note, the domestic or personal note, +the compassionate note or note of pity, the purely sentimental note, was +first heard in English poetry as a note asserting equality with the +masculine note, and tending to assert itself as the dominant note? + +One of the most beautiful and best-known poems in the English language is +Gray's _Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_; and in the following +stanzas which many of you will recognise as belonging to it, do we not +seem to overhear something like the note of which we are in search?-- + + Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade, + Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, + Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, + The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. + + The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, + The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, + The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, + No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. + + For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, + Or busy housewife ply her ev'ning care: + No children run to lisp their sire's return, + Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. + +Here our sympathy is asked, not for kings and princesses, not for great +lords and fine ladies, not for the rise and fall of empires, but for the +rude forefathers of the hamlet, for the busy housewife, for the +hard-working peasant and his children, for homely joys and the annals of +the poor. But Gray does not maintain this note beyond the five stanzas I +have just quoted. He quickly again lapses into the traditional, the +classic, the purely masculine note: + + The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Pow'r, + And all that Beauty, all that Wealth e'er gave, + Await alike th' inevitable hour, + The paths of glory lead but to the grave. + + Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, + If Mem'ry o'er their tombs no trophies raise, + Where through the long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault, + The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. + + Can storied urn, or animated bust, + Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? + Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, + Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death? + +The stanzas that follow are splendid stanzas, but they are the stately and +sonorous verse of a detached and moralising mind, not the pathetic verse +of a sympathising heart. We have to wait another twenty years before we +come upon a poem of consequence in which the feminine note is not only +present, but paramount. In the year 1770, nearly a century and a half +ago, appeared Goldsmith's poem, _The Deserted Village_, and in it I catch, +for the first time, as the prevailing and predominant note, the note of +feminine compassion, the note of humble happiness and humble grief. In +Goldsmith's verse we hear nothing of great folks except to be told how +small and insignificant are the ills which they can cause or cure. + + Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; + A breath can make them, as a breath hath made; + But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, + When once destroyed, can never be supplied. + +Goldsmith's themes in _The Deserted Village_ are avowedly: + + The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, + The never-failing brook, the busy mill, + The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill, + The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, + For talking age and whispering lovers made. + +We seem to have travelled centuries away from the _Troilus and Cressida_, +or the _Palamon and Arcite_ of Chaucer, from the Red Cross Knight and Una, +from the Britomart, the Florimel, the Calidore, the Gloriana of Spenser, +from the kingly ambitions and princely passions of Shakespeare, from the +throes and denunciations of _Paradise Lost_, and equally from the +coffee-house epigrams and savage satire of Pope. We have at last got among +ordinary people, among humble folk, people of our own flesh and blood, +with simple joys and simple sorrows. What could be more unlike the poetry +we have so far been surveying than these lines from _The Deserted +Village_?-- + + Sweet was the sound when oft at evening's close + Up yonder hill the village murmur rose, + There, as I passed, with careless steps and slow, + The mingling notes came softened from below. + The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, + The sober herd that lowed to meet their young, + The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, + The playful children just let loose from school. + +Which of you does not remember the description in the same poem of the +Village Clergyman? the man who was to all his country dear, etc. Some of +you, I daresay, know it by heart. Nothing is too lowly, some would say, +nothing too mean, for Goldsmith's tender Muse. He loves to dwell on the +splendour of the humble parlour, on the whitewashed wall, the sanded +floor, the varnished clock, the chest of drawers, and the chimney-piece +with its row of broken teacups. Truly it is a feminine Muse which can make +poetry, and, in my opinion, very charming poetry, out of broken teacups. + +The feminine note once struck, the note of personal tenderness, of +domestic interest, of compassion for the homely, the suffering, or the +secluded was never again to be absent from English poetry; and Cowper +continued, without a break, the still sad music of humanity first clearly +uttered by Goldsmith. What is the name of Cowper's principal and most +ambitious poem? As you know, it is called _The Task_; and what are the +respective titles of the six books into which it is divided? They are: +_The Sofa_, _The Time-Piece_, _The Garden_, _The Winter Evening_, _The +Winter Morning Walk_, _The Winter Walk at Noon_. Other poems of a kindred +character are entitled _Hope_, _Charity_, _Conversation_, _Retirement_. +Open what page you will of Cowper's verse, and you will be pretty sure to +find him either denouncing things which women, good women, at least, find +abhorrent, such as the slave-trade, gin-drinking, gambling, profligacy, +profane language, or dwelling on occupations which are dear to them. + + O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, + +he exclaims-- + + Some boundless contiguity of shade, + Where rumour of oppression and deceit + Of unsuccessful or successful war, + Might never reach me more! My ear is pained, + My soul is sick with every day's report + Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. + There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, + It does not feel for man. + +These are the opening lines of the _Time-Piece_, and they sound what may +be called the note of feminine indignation; a note which is reverted to by +him again and again. + +More placidly but still in the same spirit, he exclaims: + + Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast, + Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, + And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn + Throws up a steaming column, and the cups + That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, + So let us welcome peaceful evening in. + +Farther on, he describes how-- + + 'Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat + To peep at such a world, to see the stir + Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd. + Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease + The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced + To some secure and more than mortal height, + That liberates and exempts me from them all. + +Again, invoking evening, he says: + + Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm + Or make me so. Composure is thy gift: + And whether I devote the gentle hours of evening + To books, to music, or the poet's toil, + To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit, + Or turning silken threads round ivory reels, + When they command whom man was born to please. + +Could there well be a more feminine picture than that? All the politics, +commerce, passions, conflicts of the world are shut out by Mrs. Unwin's +comfortable curtains, and, with her and Lady Austen for sympathising +companions, the poet fills his time, with perfect satisfaction, by holding +their skeins of wool, and meditating such homely lines as these: + + For I, contented with a humble theme, + Have poured my stream of panegyric down + The vale of nature where it creeps and winds + Among her lovely works, with a secure + And unambitious ease reflecting clear + If not the virtues, yet the worth of brutes. + And I am recompensed, and deem the toils + Of poetry not lost, if verse of mine + May stand between an animal and woe, + And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge. + +Cowper was never married, nor ever, as far as I know, in love, though Lady +Austen, to her and his misfortune, for a time seemed to fancy he was; and +in his verse therefore we do not meet with the note of amatory sentiment. +But what love is there in this world more beautiful, more touching, more +truly romantic, than the love of a mother for her son, and of a son for +his mother? And where has it been more charmingly expressed than in +Cowper's lines on the receipt of his mother's picture? After that +beautiful outburst-- + + O that those lips had language! Life has passed + With me but roughly since I heard thee last + +--he proceeds to recall the home, the scenes, the tender incidents of his +childhood, but, most of all, the fond care bestowed on him by his mother: + + Thy nightly visits to my chamber made + That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid, + Thy fragrant waters on my cheek bestowed + By thy own hand, till fresh they were and glowed, + All this, and more endearing still than all, + Thy constant flow of love that knew no fall, + Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and breaks + That humour interposed too often makes; + All this still legible in memory's page, + And still to be so to my latest age, + Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay + Such honour to thee as my numbers may, + Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, + Not scorned in Heaven, though little noticed here. + +The lines are not in what is called the highest vein of poetry. They have +not the bluff masculinity of Chaucer. They lack the magic of Spenser. They +do not purify the passions through terror as is done by _Lear_ or +_Macbeth_, and they are much inferior in majesty to the + + Cherubic trumpets blowing martial sound + +of Milton. But they come straight from the heart, and go straight to the +heart. They are thoroughly human, what we all have felt, or are much to be +pitied if we have not felt. They are instinct with the holiest form of +domestic piety. They are feminine in the best sense, and have all the +feminine power to attract, to chasten, and to subdue. + +As far as character and conduct are concerned, there could not well be two +poets more unlike than Cowper and Burns; and their poetry is as unlike as +their temperament. I fear Burns indulged in most of the vices against +which Cowper inveighs; and not unoften he glorified them in verse. Upon +that theme do not ask me to dwell this evening. All it is necessary to +point out here is, that in Burns, as in Cowper, and as in Goldsmith, we +have the compassionate note, the note of pity for suffering, of sympathy +with the lowly; in a word, we again have the feminine note. In _The +Cotter's Saturday Night_ Burns paints a picture, as complete as it is +simple, of humble life. We have the cotter returning home through the +chill November blast with the weary beasts; the collecting of his spades, +his mattocks, and his hoes; the arrival at his cottage; the expectant wee +things running out to meet him; the ingle-nook blinking bonnily; the +cheerful supper of wholesome porridge; the reading of a passage from the +Bible, the evening hymn, and the family prayer before retiring to rest. +There is a line in _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ which might be taken as +the text on which most of Burns's poems are written: + + The cottage leaves the palace far behind. + +All his sympathies are with cottages and cottagers, whether he be +expressly describing their existence, writing _A Man's a Man for a' that_, +_The Birks of Aberfeldy_, _Auld Lang Syne_, or addressing lines to a mouse +whose nest he has turned up with his plough. All are written in a spirit +of compassion for suffering, of sympathy with the lowly, of admiration for +honest poverty. They are fundamentally tender, and, though expressed in +manly fashion enough, fundamentally feminine, the poetry of a man who +lived habitually under the influence of women. + +I think it will be allowed that I have given no grudging admiration to the +feminine note in English poetry, and in so far as it is a note of sympathy +with the more humble and less fortunate ones of the earth. But, in verse, +kindly and compassionate sentiment is not everything. Indeed, it is +nothing at all unless it be expressed in such a manner, the manner +suffused with charm of style, that it is thereby raised to the dignity of +true poetry. There are many excellent persons who accept as poetry any +sentiment, or any opinion expressed in metre with which they happen to +agree. But neither sound opinion nor wholesome sentiment suffices to +produce that exceedingly delicate and subtle thing which alone is rightly +termed poetry, and, in abandoning lofty themes, and descending to humbler +ones, writers of verse unquestionably expose themselves to the danger not +only of not rising above the level of their subject, but even of sinking +below it. The Romans had a proverb that you cannot carve a Mercury out of +every piece of wood, meaning thereby that by reason of Mercury not being a +standing or reposing figure, but a figure flying through the air, and +therefore with limbs and wings extended, the material out of which he is +made has to be both considerable in size and excellent in quality. What is +true of Mercury is truer still of Apollo. You cannot make poetry out of +every subject; and your only chance of making poetry out of any subject is +to do so by treating the subject either nobly, or with charm. Realism, +unadulterated Realism, which is a dangerous experiment in prose, is a +sheer impossibility in poetry; for in poetry what is offered us, and what +delights us, is not realistic but ideal representation. No doubt the very +music of verse is part of the means whereby this ideal representation is +effected; but it will not of itself suffice, as may easily be proved by +reciting mere nonsense verses in which the rhythm or music may be +faultless. I could quote page after page from Cowper, which is verse only, +and not poetry, because it is nothing more than the bare statement of a +fact set forth in lines consisting of so many feet. Here, for instance, is +a specimen. It comes in his poem on _The Sofa_: + + Joint-stools were then created, on three legs, + Upborne they stood: three legs upholding firm + A mossy slab, in fashion square or round. + At length a generation more refined + Improved the simple plan, made three legs four, + Gave them a twisted form vermicular + And o'er the seat with plenteous wadding stuffed + Induced a splendid cover, green and blue, + Yellow and red, of tapestry richly wrought, + And woven close, or needlework sublime. + +Perhaps you think this is a parody of Cowper. But I can assure you it is +nothing of the kind. It was written by the poet himself; and in his +abounding pages you will find hundreds of verses of this realistic and +pedestrian character. But not Cowper alone, one much greater than Cowper, +one who rose over and over again to the very heaven of poesy, Wordsworth +himself, has likewise left hundreds, aye, thousands of verses, little +better than the passage I have just read from Cowper, through the mistaken +notion that kindly feeling, compassion for the poor and the patient, and +sound moral sentiments, when expressed in verse, must result in poetry. +There is no one here whose admiration of Wordsworth at his best can be +greater than mine, but, in order to show you how the feminine note in +poetry, the note of sympathy with the weak, the obscure, and the +unfortunate, can even in the voice of a great master of poetry, lapse into +verse utterly destitute of the soul and spirit of poetry, I will ask you +to allow me to read you a portion of _Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman_: + + And he is lean and he is sick; + His body, dwindled and awry, + Rests upon ankles swoln and thick; + His legs are thin and dry. + One prop he has, and only one, + His Wife, an aged woman, + Lives with him, near the waterfall, + Upon the village Common. + + Oft, working by her husband's side, + Ruth does what Simon cannot do; + For she, with scanty cause for pride, + Is stouter of the two. + And though you with your utmost skill + From labour could not wean them, + Alas! 'tis very little--all + Which they can do between them. + + O Reader! had you in your mind + Such stores as silent thought can bring, + O gentle Reader! you would find + A tale in everything. + What more I have to say is short, + And you must kindly take it: + It is no tale; but, should you _think_, + Perhaps a tale you'll make it. + +Is not that sorry stuff, regarded as poetry? Wordsworth here had the +assistance of the music, not only of verse, but of rhyme; and with what a +result! It is the feminine note of pity in its dotage, whereby we see +that it is not enough to have a warm heart, to have tender feelings, to be +full of sympathy for the suffering, and then to express them in verse. In +the prose of conversation and of everyday life, kindly feeling is all well +enough. But the Heavenly Muse will not place herself at our disposal so +readily and cheaply. She is a very difficult lady, is the Heavenly Muse, +not easily won, and never allowing you, if you want to remain in her good +graces, to approach her, that is to say, in dressing gown and slippers. +She is the noblest and most gracious lady in the world, and the best, the +most refined, the most elevating of companions. Therefore you must come +into her presence and win her favour, not with free-and-easy gait and in +slovenly attire, but arrayed in your very best, and with courtly and +deferential mien. When poets wrote of gods and goddesses, of mighty +sieges, and of the foundation and fall of empires; when their theme was +the madness of princes, and the tragic fate of kings, when their hero was +Lucifer, Son of the Morning, nay, even when they discoursed of free will +and fate, or of the drawing-room intrigues of persons to whom powder, +patches, billets-doux were the chief things in existence, there was no +need to remind them that their style must be as lofty, as dignified, as +refined, or as finished as their subject. No doubt, they sometimes waxed +stilted and fell into excess, whether in rhetoric or in conceits, but they +never forgot themselves so far as to be slovenly or familiar. Stella, you +know, said Swift could write beautifully about a broomstick. Possibly he +could; but note the concession, that if a man writes, at least if he would +write poetry, he must write _beautifully_. Both Cowper and Wordsworth set +the example of writing verse that is not beautiful, though indeed Young +in his _Night Thoughts_, and Thomson in _The Seasons_, had already done +something of the same kind. But they have not the authority of Cowper, +much less the authority of Wordsworth. Let who will be the authority for +it, prosaic utterance in verse, realism in rhyme, no matter what the +subject, is an incongruity that cannot be too severely condemned. A very +large proportion of the verse of Crabbe, once so popular, but now, I +fancy, but little read, is of little value, by reason of the presence of +this defect. Yet while I indicate, and venture to reprove, the feebleness +into which the feminine note in English poetry has too often declined and +deteriorated, never let us forget that it has contributed lovely and +immortal poetry to the language, poetry to be found in Wordsworth, poetry +such as melts us almost to tears in Hood's _Song of the Shirt_, or in Mrs. +Barrett Browning's _The Cry of the Children_. Horace, who was a great +critic as well as a great poet, said long ago that it is extremely +difficult to express oneself concerning ordinary everyday facts and +feelings in a becoming and agreeable manner; and to do this in verse +demands supreme genius. As a set-off to the example of feebleness I just +now cited in Wordsworth, listen how, when the mood of inspiration is on +him, he can see a Highland girl reaping in a field--surely an ordinary +everyday sight--and threw around her the heavenly halo of the divinest +poetry: + + Behold her, single in the field, + Yon solitary Highland Lass! + Reaping and singing by herself; + Stop here, or gently pass! + Alone she cuts, and binds the grain, + And sings a melancholy strain; + O listen! for the Vale profound + Is overflowing with the sound. + + No Nightingale did ever chaunt + So sweetly to reposing bands + Of Travellers in some shady haunt, + Among Arabian sands: + A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard + In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, + Breaking the silence of the seas + Among the farthest Hebrides. + + Will no one tell me what she sings? + Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow + For old, unhappy, far-off things, + And battles long ago: + Or is it some more humble lay, + Familiar matter of to-day? + Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, + That has been, and may be again? + + Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang + As if her song could have no ending; + I saw her singing at her work, + And o'er the sickle bending;-- + I listened till I had my fill, + And when I mounted up the hill, + The music in my heart I bore, + Long after it was heard no more. + +But there is another manifestation of the feminine note in English poetry, +distinct from, though doubtless akin to, the one we have been considering; +a note which likewise was not heard in it till about a hundred years ago, +but which has been heard very frequently since, and which seems at times +to threaten to become its dominant and all-prevailing note, or at any rate +the only one that is keenly listened to. Instead of the note of interest +in and pity for others, it has become the note of interest in and pity +either for oneself, or for one's other self; a note so strongly personal +and suggestive as to become egotistic and entirely self-regarding. This +is the amatory or erotic note, which I think you will all recognise when I +give it that designation; the note which appears to consider the love of +the sexes as the only important thing in life, and certainly the only +thing worth writing or singing about. More than two thousand years ago, a +Greek poet wrote a lyric beginning, "I would fain sing of the heroes of +the House of Atreus, I would fain chant the glories of the line of Cadmus; +but my lyre refuses to sound any note save that of love." In these days +the poet who expressed that sentiment and acted on it would have a great +many listeners; and no doubt Anacreon, too, had his audience in ancient +Greece. But he was not ranked by them side by side with their great poets +who _did_ take the tragic story of the House of Atreus for their theme. It +can only be when feminine influence is supreme in society and in +literature, and when the feminine note in poetry has become, or threatens +to become, paramount, that the sentiment and practice of Anacreon is +viewed with approbation and favour. Byron has said in a well-known +passage: + + For love is of man's life a thing apart; + 'Tis woman's whole existence. + +If I know anything about women, that is a gross exaggeration, unless in +the term love be included love of parents, love of brothers and sisters, +love of children, in a word, every form and manifestation of affection. +Still it is not necessary to deny--indeed if it be true it is necessary to +admit--that love, in the narrower if more intense signification of the +word, does play a larger part in the lives, or at any rate in the +imagination, of most women than it does in the lives and the imagination +of most men; and it is not to be denied that practically all women, and a +fair sprinkling of men, now take an almost exclusive interest in the +amatory note in poetry. Nor let any one say that this was always so, and +that poetry and poets have from time immemorial occupied themselves mainly +with the passion of love. Indeed they have not done so. It would be to +show an utter ignorance of the genius of Homer, of the great Greek +dramatists, of Virgil, of Dante, of Spenser, of Shakespeare, of Milton, +and of the temper of the times in which they lived, to say that they could +sound only notes of love. They sounded these sometimes, but seldom and +rarely, in comparison with their other and more masculine notes, and +always in due subordination to these. I will not go so far as to say that +they thought, with Napoleon, that love is the occupation of the idle, and +the idleness of the occupied, but they knew that however absorbing for a +season the passion of love as described by many poets and by nearly all +modern novelists may be, it _is_ a thing apart; and, as such, they dealt +with it. They did not ignore its existence, or even its importance, but +they did not exaggerate its existence and its importance, relatively to +other interests, other occupations, other duties in life. It was because +of the high fealty and allegiance which Spenser declared he owed to all +womankind that he did not represent women as perpetually sighing or being +sighed for by men. It was because Shakespeare had such absolute +familiarity, not with this or that part of life, but with the whole of it, +that even in _Romeo and Juliet_, in _Othello_, in _Measure for Measure_, +and again in _As You Like It_, he represented the passion of love at work +and in operation along with other sentiments and other passions; and, in +the greater portion of his dramas either does not introduce it at all, or +assigns to it a quite subordinate place. In _Romeo and Juliet_ the brave +Mercutio, the Tybalt "deaf to peace," the garrulous nurse, the true +apothecary, the comfortable Friar, as Juliet calls him, all these and +more, have their exits and their entrances, and all, in turn, demand our +attention. _Romeo and Juliet_ is a love-drama indeed; but even in _Romeo +and Juliet_, though love occupies the foremost place and plays the leading +part, it stands in relation to other passions and other characters, and +moves onward to its doom surrounded and accompanied by a medley of other +circumstances and occurrences; just as true love, even the most +engrossing, does in real life. The same just apprehension of life, the +same observance of accurate proportion between the action of love and the +action of other passions and other interests, may be observed in +_Othello_. Othello is not represented merely as a man who is consumed and +maddened by jealousy, but as a citizen and a soldier, encompassed by +friends and enemies, and brought into contact, not with Desdemona and Iago +alone, but with the Duke of Venice, with valiant Cassio, with witty +Montano, with Brabantio, with Gratiano, in a word with people and things +in general. + +Neither would it be any more to the purpose to object that Herrick, that +Suckling, that Lovelace, and other poets of the seventeenth century wrote +love-lyrics by the score, with many of which I have no doubt you are +acquainted, and some of which are very beautiful. For these, for the most +part, were amatory exercises, not real breathing and burning love-poems; +dainty works of art sometimes, but not sicklied o'er with the pale cast of +amatory passion. They were seventeenth-century reminiscences of the +conventional love-lyrics of the Troubadours of Provence, when there +existed an imaginary court of Love and a host of imaginary lovers. +Indeed, if I were asked what was the truest and most succinct note uttered +by their English imitators, I think I should have to say that I seem to +catch it most distinctly in the lines of Suckling beginning: + + Why so pale and wan, fond lover? + Prithee, why so pale? + +--and ending with: + + If of herself she will not love, + Nothing can make her: + The devil take her! + +But we catch a very different amatory note, and that of the most personal +and earnest kind, when the voice of Burns, and then the voice of Byron, +were heard in English poetry. In Byron the note is almost always +passionate. In Burns it is sometimes sentimental, sometimes jovial, +sometimes humorous, sometimes frankly and offensively coarse. Many readers +cannot do full justice to the North-Country dialect in the following +lines, but the most Southern of accents could not quite spoil their simple +beauty: + + The westlin wind blaws loud an' shrill; + The night's baith mirk and rainy, O; + But I'll get my plaid, an' out I'll steal, + An' owre the hills to Nannie, O. + + Her face is fair, her heart is true, + As spotless as she's bonnie, O: + The op'ning gowan, wat wi' dew, + Nae purer is than Nannie, O. + +That is one amatory, one feminine note in Burns. Here is another: + + There's nought but care on every han', + In every hour that passes, O; + What signifies the life o' man, + An' 'twere na for the lasses, O. + + Auld Nature swears the lovely dears + Her noblest work she classes, O: + Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, + An' then she made the lasses, O. + +I have no fault to find with these lines. They express a profound and +enduring truth; and, if they do so with some little exaggeration, they do +it half humorously, and so protect themselves against criticism. But I +really think--I hope you will not deem me unchivalrous in saying so--we +have, during the present century, heard too much, both in poetry and in +prose romance, as we are now hearing too much in newspapers and magazines, +of "the lasses, O." Not that we can hear too much of them in their +relation to each other, to men, and to life. The "too much" I indicate is +the too much of romantic love, that leaves no place for other emotions and +other passions equally worthy, or relegates these to an inferior position +and to a narrower territory. I should say that there is rather too much of +the sentimental note in Byron, in Shelley, in Keats, just as I should say +that there is not too much of it in Wordsworth or in Scott. To say this is +not to decry Byron, Shelley, and Keats--what lover of poetry would dream +of decrying such splendid poets as they?--but only to indicate a certain +tendency against which I cannot help feeling it is well to be on our +guard. The tendency of the times is to encourage writers, whether in prose +or verse, to deal with this particular theme and to deal with it too +frequently and too pertinaciously. Moreover, there is always a danger that +a subject, in itself so delicate, should not be quite delicately +handled, and indeed that it should be treated with indelicacy and +grossness. That, too, unfortunately, has happened in verse; and when +that happens, then I think the Heavenly Muse veils her face and weeps. It +must have been through some dread of poetry thus dishonouring itself that +Plato in his ideal Republic proposed that poets should be crowned with +laurel, and then banished from the city. For my part, I would willingly +see such poets banished from the city, but not crowned with laurel. No +doubt Plato's notion that poets should chant nothing but hymns to the Gods +and praises of virtue is a little narrow and exacting, but if they are to +sing songs worthy of themselves, and of mankind, they must be on the side +of virtue and of the Gods. Hark with what perfect delicacy a masculine +poet like Scott can deal with a feminine theme: + + What though no rule of courtly grace + To measured mood had trained her pace, + A foot more light, a step more true + Ne'er from the heath-flower dashed the dew. + Ev'n the light harebell raised its head, + Elastic from her airy tread. + What though upon her speech there hung + The accents of the mountain tongue? + Those solemn sounds, so soft, so clear, + The listener held his breath to hear. + +That is how manly poets write and think of women. But they do not dwell +over much on the theme; they do not harp on it; and when you turn the +page, you read in a totally different key: + + The fisherman forsook the strand, + The swarthy smith took dirk and brand; + With changed cheer the mower blythe + Left in the half-cut swathe the scythe. + The herds without a keeper strayed, + The plough was in mid-furrow stayed. + The falconer tossed his hawk away, + The hunter left the stag at bay. + Prompt at the signal of alarms, + Each son of Albion rushed to arms. + So swept the tumult and affray + Along the margin of Achray. + +Does it not remind you of the passage I quoted from Homer, where Hector +says to Andromache, "Go! to your house, and see to your loom and distaff, +but for war men will provide"? Scott, like Homer, observed the due +proportion between love and life, giving love ample room, but not +allotting it excessive space. If again one wants to hear how delicately, +how worthily, how manfully, poets can write of love and of women, what can +one do better than recall this perfect lyric of Wordsworth's?-- + + Three years she grew in sun and shower, + Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower + On earth was never sown; + This Child I to myself will take; + She shall be mine, and I will make + A Lady of my own. + + "Myself will to my darling be + Both law and impulse: and with me + The Girl, in rock and plain, + In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, + Shall feel an overseeing power + To kindle or restrain. + + "She shall be sportive as the Fawn + That wild with glee across the lawn + Or up the mountain springs; + And hers shall be the breathing balm, + And hers the silence and the calm + Of mute insensate things. + + "The floating Clouds their state shall lend + To her; for her the willow bend; + Nor shall she fail to see + Even in the motions of the Storm + Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form + By silent sympathy. + + "The Stars of midnight shall be dear + To her; and she shall lean her ear + In many a secret place + Where Rivulets dance their wayward round, + And beauty born of murmuring sound + Shall pass into her face. + + "And vital feelings of delight + Shall rear her form to stately height, + Her virgin bosom swell; + Such thoughts to Lucy I will give + While she and I together live + Here in this happy Dell." + + Thus Nature spake--The work was done-- + How soon my Lucy's race was run! + She died, and left to me + This heath, this calm and quiet scene; + The memory of what has been, + And never more will be. + +Neither should I like it to be supposed that I think Byron could not write +on this same theme in the noblest manner. He did so frequently; he would +not have been the great poet he is if he had not done so. Listen to this, +for example: + + She walks in beauty, like the night + Of cloudless climes and starry skies, + And all that's best of dark and light + Meet in her aspect and her eyes. + Thus mellowed to that tender light + Which Heaven to gaudy day denies. + + One shade the more, one ray the less, + Had half impaired the nameless grace + Which waves in every raven tress, + Or softly lightens o'er her face, + Where thoughts serenely sweet express + How pure, how dear, their dwelling place. + + And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, + So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, + The smiles that win, the tints that glow, + But tell of days in goodness spent, + A mind at peace with all below, + A heart whose love is innocent. + +Women are honoured and exalted when they are sung of in that manner. They +are neither honoured nor exalted, they are dishonoured and degraded, when +they are represented, either in prose or verse, as consuming their days in +morbid longings and sentimental regrets, and men are represented as having +nothing to do save to stimulate or satisfy such feelings. What is written +in prose is not here my theme. I am writing of poets and poetry, and of +the readers of poetry. Novelists and novel-readers are a different and +separate subject. But I may say in passing that poetry and the readers of +poetry have suffered somewhat during the present generation from novels +and novel-readers. A newer and narrower standard of human interest has +been set up; and while the great bulk of readers have turned from poetry +to prose romances, writers of verse have too frequently tried to compete +with novelists, by treating love as the central interest and the main +business of life. Homer did not think it such, neither did Virgil, nor +Dante, nor Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare, nor Milton, and let us +not think so. I urge every one, every now and again at least, to lay down +the novel and open the poem: but let it be a poem that will enlarge one's +conception of life, that will help one to think loftily, and to feel +nobly, will teach us that there is something more important to ourselves +even than _ourselves_, something more important and deserving of attention +than one's own small griefs and own petty woes, the vast and varied +drama of History, the boundless realm of the human imagination, and the +tragic interests and pathetic struggles of mankind. We need not close our +ear to the feminine note, but should not listen to it over much. The +masculine note is necessarily dominant in life; and the note that is +dominant in life should be dominant in literature, and, most of all, in +poetry. + + + + +MILTON AND DANTE: A COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST + + +No celebrations in our time have been more serious, more scholarly, or +more impressive, than the various gatherings, held during the year lately +come to end, in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of the +birth of Milton. The earliest was held, with peculiar appropriateness, at +Christ College, Cambridge, in the month of June. In the hall of the +college was given a dinner, presided over by the Master, who had gathered +round him men holding high positions alike at Cambridge and Oxford, and +poets, scholars, artists, historians, and essayists of true distinction. +On this occasion an admirable eulogium of Milton was pronounced by Mr. +Mackail. The dinner was succeeded by a representation of _Comus_ in the +theatre of the town, by the students of the University, with all the charm +that usually accompanies the efforts of competent amateurs. With the +advent of the exact date of the tercentenary the celebrations were many in +number and interesting in variety, in which the members of the British +Academy took a prominent part. On December 9 a musical celebration was +held in the afternoon in the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, at which the +Bishop of Ripon delivered an eloquent sermon; and at the same hour the +writer of this paper gave a private lecture before the Dante Society, from +the notes of which this article is expanded. In the evening he had the +honour of attending and responding to the toast of Poetry, proposed by the +Italian ambassador, at the banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London at +the Mansion House, to the largest and most impressive gathering of men of +eminence in letters, the arts, the drama, the law, and the Legislature, +that has ever met in that spacious hall of traditionally magnificent +hospitality. A week later a performance of _Samson Agonistes_ was given in +the Burlington Theatre before a large and representative audience. The +more serious section of the daily press, moreover, allotted much space to +reports of the celebrations in honour of Milton, the _Times_ maintaining +in this respect its best traditions. + +No one, therefore, can say that the birth, the poetry and prose, the +character and the career and the influence of Milton have not been +solemnly celebrated by his countrymen. But it is necessary to add, in the +interests of truth, that the celebrations were essentially and exclusively +scholarly, and were hardly, if at all, shared in by the nation at large. +The intellectual sympathies of the educated were warmly touched, but the +heart of the British people was not reached. + +Now let us turn--for the subject of this paper is not Milton alone, but +Milton and Dante--to the sexcentenary of the birth of Dante in the city of +Florence, the month and year of his birth having been May 1265. I had been +spending the winter in the City of Flowers, and I could not leave it, in +order to journey northward, till after the Dante Commemoration had been +held. I shall never forget it. From dawn to dusk the entire Florentine +people held joyous festival; and, with the coming of night, not only the +entire city, its palaces, its bridges, its Duomo, its Palazzo Vecchio, +that noblest symbol of civic liberty, but indeed all its thoroughfares and +the banks of its river broke into lovely light produced by millions of +little cressets filled with olive oil, and every villa round was similarly +illuminated. The pavement of the famous square of the Uffizi Palace was +boarded over; and overhead was spread a canvas covering dyed with the +three Italian national colours. Thither thronged hundreds of peasant men +and women, who danced and made merry till the early hours of the morning. +At the Pagliano Theatre were given _tableaux vivants_ representing the +most famous episodes in the _Divina Commedia_, Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi +reciting the corresponding passages from that immortal poem. + +What a comparison, what a contrast it suggests between the solemn, +serious, but limited honour done by us to Milton, and the exultant, +universal, national honour paid by his countrymen to Dante! I should add +that eight thousand Italian municipalities sent a deputation carrying +their local pennons to the square of Santa Croce, where a statue of Dante +was unveiled, amid thunderous applause, to popular gaze. + +Now let us turn to a more personal contrast between the two poets. To many +persons, probably to most in these days, the most interesting feature in +the life of a poet is his relation to the sex that is commonly assumed, +perhaps not quite correctly, to be the more romantic of the two. In +comparing Dante and Milton in that respect one is struck at once by the +fact that, while with Dante are not only associated, but inseparably +interwoven, the name and person of Beatrice, so that the two seem in our +minds but one, knit by a spiritual love stronger even than any bond +sanctioned by domestic law for happiness and social stability, Milton had +no Beatrice. It would be idle to contend that the absence of such love has +not detracted, and will not continue to detract, from the interest felt in +Milton and his poetry, not perhaps by scholars, but by the world at large, +and the average lover of poetry and poets. For just as women can do much, +to use a phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, towards "making a poet out +of a man," so can they do even more, either by spiritual influence or by +consummate self-sacrifice, to widen the field and deepen the intensity of +his fame. No poet ever enjoyed this advantage so conspicuously as Dante. +It will perhaps be said that this was effected more by himself than by +her. Let us not be too sure of that. In Italy, far more than in northern +climes, first avowals of love are made by the eyes rather than by the +tongue, by tell-tale looks more than by explicit words. What says +Shakespeare, who knew men and women equally well? + + A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon + Than love that would seem hid. Love's night is noon. + +Dante's own account of his first meeting with Beatrice confirms this +surmise. This is what he himself says, after Beatrice, as Boccaccio +relates, "very winning, very graceful, in aspect very beautiful," had +turned her gaze on Dante from time to time at their first meeting. "At +that moment the spirit of life which abides in the most secret chamber of +the heart began to tremble, and tremulously it spake these words, 'Behold +a god stronger than I, who cometh to lord it over me.'" These may perhaps +seem strange words in which to record the first meeting of a boy of nine +with a girl of eight. But, over and above the fact that they are the +record, written several years later, of the feeling aroused by that first +meeting, allowance must be made for the proverbial precocity of genius, +and also for that of southern over northern temperaments. Its genuineness +is confirmed by the whole sequel, as testified by the _Vita Nuova_ and the +_Divina Commedia_; the presiding presence of Beatrice in both having long +before been anticipated by the words, "If it shall please Him, by whom all +things live, to spare my life for some years longer, I hope to say that of +her which never yet hath been said of any lady." How completely that hope +was attained is to be seen in the closing canto of the _Purgatorio_ and in +the whole of the _Paradiso_. + +The life and poetry of Milton contain nothing (if exception be made of his +beautiful and lofty sonnet, written in the very spirit of the _Divina +Commedia_, on his second wife, "Methought I saw my late espoused Saint") +to compare with Dante's love, at once real and ideal, masculine yet +mystical, for Beatrice. The language used by Eve in addressing Adam, in +_Paradise Lost_-- + + My author and disposer, what thou bidst + Unargued I obey, so God ordains. + God is thy law, thou mine-- + +and the very choice of a subject the dominating incident of which is +described by the well-known words, "The woman did give me, and I did eat," +would almost seem to indicate that Milton's conception of woman, and his +attitude towards her, were such as can be attributed to no other poet. It +is the attitude of unqualified masculine domination. Again, in _Samson +Agonistes_ the very centre and pith of the poem is the incorrigible +frailty and inferiority of women--a thesis that would be extraordinary, +even if true, for a poet. Samson starts with a reproval of himself for +weakly revealing the secret of his strength to the persistent subtlety of +a woman, "that species monster, my accomplished snare," as he calls +Dalila, since "yoked her bond-slave by foul effeminacy"--a servitude he +stigmatises as "ignominious and infamous," whereby he is "shamed, +dishonoured, quelled." When Dalila, profoundly penitent for what she has +done, thereby incurring his displeasure, prostrates herself before him, +and sues for pardon, he spurns her from him with the words, + + Out, out, hyaena! these are thy wonted arts, + +and goes on to say they are the arts of every woman, "to deceive, betray," +and then to "feign remorse." With abject humility she confesses that +curiosity to learn all secrets, and then to publish them, are "common +female faults incident to all our sex." This only causes him to insult and +spurn her yet more fiercely; and he declares that God sent her to "debase +him"--one of those theological peculiarities which apparently made God an +accomplice with "this viper," for which the non-Calvinistic Christian +finds it difficult to account. + +Nor can it be said that Milton is here, like Shakespeare, speaking only +dramatically and objectively. The Chorus in _Samson Agonistes_ is of his +opinion, declaring that the man is favoured of heaven who discovers "one +virtuous woman, rarely found"; and that is why + + God's universal law + Gave to the man despotic power + Over his female in due awe, + Nor from that right to part, an hour, + Smiles she or lour. + +After delivering itself of these opinions, the Chorus suddenly exclaims, +"I see a storm," which, in the circumstances, is perhaps scarcely +wonderful. + +What a different note is this from that struck by Dante, when he speaks of +"that blessed Beatrice, who now dwells in heaven with the angels, and on +earth in my heart, and with whom my soul is still in love." Far from +thinking that severe command on the part of the one and unquestioning +submission on the part of the other form the proper relation of lover and +maiden, husband and wife, Dante avers that + + Amor e cor gentil son' una cosa, + +that love and a gracious gentle heart are one and the same thing; and in +the _Paradiso_, shortly before the close of the poem, he exclaims: + + O Beatrice! dolce guida e cara. + +It may perhaps be thought that one might be more lenient towards Milton's +foibles, especially at such a time as the present, in contrasting his +attitude towards woman with that of Dante. But in Milton there was so much +that was noble, so pathetic, and even so attractive, that he can well +afford to have the truth told concerning him; and to omit his view of the +most important of all personal relations in life, as depicted for and +bequeathed to us in his poetry, would be to leave an obvious gap of the +utmost import in comparing and contrasting him with Dante. + +But now let us ask, in order to redress the balance, what has Dante to +show, in kind, against _Il Penseroso_, _L'Allegro_, _Lycidas_, and +_Comus_? I put the prose works of both poets aside; and there remains on +the side of Dante only the self-same Dante from first to last, the Dante +of the _Vita Nuova_ and the _Divina Commedia_. Milton, as a poet, had, on +the contrary, a brilliant, an attractive, and a poetically productive +youth. If Dante ever was young in the same sense, he has left no trace of +it in his poetry. Save for Beatrice, there is an austerity even in the +most tender passages of his verse. He seems never to relax in his gravity, +I had almost said in his severity. His very love for Florence is +expressed, for the most part, in harsh upbraiding. An unrelenting awe +dominates his poetry. For Virgil he entertains a humble far-off reverence. +There is no poet of whom it can be so truly said that he remained +unchanged from first to last, and presents to us only one aspect +throughout his works. In reading the English poet one finds oneself in the +presence of two Miltons, not unlike each other in the splendid quality of +the verse, but profoundly differing in tone, temperament, and outlook on +life. In the author of _L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, _Lycidas_, and +_Comus_ there is a youthful buoyancy, an all-pervading cheerful +seriousness worthy of one complacently but justly confident of his powers, +in no degree at war with the world, but on amicable terms with it, and +regarding life on the whole, and on its human side, as a thing to +sympathise with and enjoy. Hear the young Milton's invitation to vernal +exultation and joy: + + But come, thou goddess fair and free, + In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, + And, by men, heart-easing Mirth, + Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, + With two sister Graces more, + To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore; + Or whether (as some sages sing) + The frolic wind that breathes the spring, + Zephyr, with Aurora playing, + As he met her once a-Maying; + There, on beds of violets blue, + And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew, + Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair, + So buxom, blithe, and debonnair. + +What is there in Dante to compare with that? There is much by way of +contrast, but no note anywhere in his verse so generous, so exhilarating, +so thoroughly human. And this is how Milton, in the April of his days, +continues: + + Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee + Jest, and youthful jollity, + Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, + Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles, + Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, + And love to live in dimple sleek; + Sport that wrinkled Care derides, + And Laughter holding both his sides. + Come and trip it, as you go, + On the light fantastic toe; + And in thy right hand lead with thee + The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty; + And, if I give thee honour due, + Mirth, admit me of thy crew, + To live with her, and live with thee, + In unreproved pleasures free. + +And what, in the yet happy and in no degree morose Milton, are the +"unreproved pleasures"? They are: + + To hear the lark begin his flight, + And, singing, startle the dull night, + From his watch-tower in the skies, + Till the dappled dawn doth rise; + Then to come, in spite of sorrow, + And at my window bid good-morrow, + Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, + Or the twisted eglantine; + While the cock, with lively din, + Scatters the rear of darkness thin, + And to the stack, or the barn-door, + Stoutly struts his dames before: + Oft listening how the hounds and horn + Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, + From the side of some hoar hill, + Through the high wood echoing shrill. + +Where is the stern Puritan Milton in these cheerful, generous verses? +Where the detester and active enemy of the Cavaliers in the lines that +follow, dwelling proudly on the + + Towers and battlements ... + Bosom'd high in tufted trees, + +the homes of the hereditary gentlemen of England? And think of the lines +"Then to the spicy nut-brown ale," down to "The first cock his matin +rings." They are almost Shakespearean in their sympathy with mirth and +laughter, their enjoyment of harmless practical jokes, their boundless +indulgence to human nature. And what is the conclusion of the poem? + + These delights if thou canst give, + Mirth, with thee I mean to live. + +There exists in no language a more lyrical outburst inspired by the +hey-day of life, and lavishly radiating rustic joy. They are as jocund as +a gipsy rondeau of Haydn, as gracious as the tapestries of Fragonard, as +tender as the Amorini of Albani, and as serenely cheerful as the matchless +melodies of Mozart. You may read every line, whether in verse or prose, +that Dante ever wrote, and you will come across no such spring-like note +as this. Frequently he is tearful, tender, pathetic, and paternally +compassionate, but nowhere does he express the faintest sympathy with +"Laughter holding both its sides." + +Gradually, however, there stole over the younger Milton a great, a grave +change. His domestic experiences with his first wife could not have +ministered to his happiness or content; experiences partly caused by the +somewhat worldly ideals and desires of his spouse, but still more, +perhaps, by his theory that what the husband bids it is the duty of the +wife "unargued to obey." + +Meanwhile the promptings of his muse slackening for a long interval--an +experience that has happened in the lives of other poets--he turned to +prose, and to the controversial side of prose. Being of a dogmatic +temperament, he quickly became involved in the acerbities of political, +theological, and ethical polemics. For a time he employed his +uncompromising pen on what seemed to be the winning side. But the aims of +the ruling party in the Commonwealth were not then, any more than they are +now, in harmony with the main character and ideals of the English people; +and Milton found himself not only in the camp of the vanquished, but +indicated by his previous actions as an object for Anglican and Royalist +retaliation. The buoyant elasticity of youth had subsided in him; even the +generous vigour of early manhood had vanished; and he found himself, in +advanced middle life, disappointed and disheartened. The natural austerity +of his character and principles deepened with his new situation and +changed outlook. He had fallen, as he thought, on evil days and evil +tongues; and, scandalised by the sensual levity of the King's Court and +favourites, he pondered with almost exultant and vindictive retrospect on +Adam and Eve's first disobedience and its fruits, and devoted his severe +genius and magnificent diction to justifying the ways of God to man. + +The Milton of these later years was bowed down by many family vexations, +some of them due, no doubt, to his own exacting character and ideas. He +was baffled and beaten in the political field where he had been so doughty +a combatant, and for a time a triumphant one, and was finally deprived of +all hope of regaining his pristine position; and last, and saddest of all, +there fell on him total blindness, which, after his magnificent apostrophe +to _Holy Light, Offspring of Heaven first-born_, he touchingly laments in +the well-known but never too often to be recited passage in the third book +of _Paradise Lost_: + + I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, + Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down + The dark descent, and up to reascend, + Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe, + And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou + Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain + To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; + So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs, + Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more + Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt + Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, + Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief + Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, + That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow, + Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget + Those other two equall'd with me in fate, + So were I equall'd with them in renown, + Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, + And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old. + Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move + Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird + Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid + Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year + Seasons return, but not to me returns + Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, + Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; + But cloud instead, and ever-during dark + Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men + Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair + Presented with a universal blank + Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased, + And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. + So much the rather, thou celestial light, + Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers + Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence + Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell + Of things invisible to mortal sight. + +Could there be poetry of the personal kind more free from reprehensible +egotism, more dignified, more majestic, and at the same time more pathetic +than that? Let us recur to it, and read it, when we are tempted to judge +Milton harshly for any less admirable, less lovable characteristics, from +which no mortal can be wholly free; and the verdict must be, "Everything +is forgiven him, because he suffered much, and expressed those sufferings +in his verse, the truest exponent of his deepest feelings, with +magnanimous and magnificent serenity." Nor let it ever be lost sight of +that, though in the political and theological domain he was anything but +free from fanaticism and bitter partisanship, he uniformly fought for +liberty of speech and printing--liberty, of all our possessions the most +precious, and for the safety and stability of the State the most +indispensable condition. To what extent, in the part Dante played in the +local politics of Florence, which led to his exile, he too was fighting +for liberty, in the sense in which I have just expressed it, it is not +possible for a dispassionate person to hold a confident opinion. In all +probability liberty, as we understand the word, was struggled for and +understood neither by him nor by those who drove him into exile. But, like +Milton, he bore his ostracism with manly dignity, consoling himself and +enriching posterity with a splendid poem, and only craving for safe +shelter and peace, as he said at the monastery gate: _Son' uno che implora +pace_. + +In comparing Milton and Dante one might justly be reproached for an +obvious omission if one did not refer, however briefly, to the intense +love of both for music. Very recently Mr. W. H. Hadow, than whom no one +writes with more knowledge or sympathy of music, lectured before the Royal +Society of Literature on Milton's love and knowledge of it. Music, he +truly said, was Milton's most intimate of delights; and he referred to +what Johnson relates of the poet's constantly playing on the organ. In the +second canto of the _Purgatorio_ Dante recognises the musician Casella, +hails him as "Casella mio," and begs him who on earth had soothed Dante's +soul with music to do the same for him now. Casella obeys, and Dante says +it was done so sweetly that he can hear him still; words that recall +Wordsworth's lovely couplet: + + The music in my heart I bore + Long after it was heard no more. + +To my great surprise an eminent man of letters, who is also a poet, said +to me recently that the present writer was one of the few writers of verse +he knew who loved music, and who continually asked for music, more music, +adding that poets, as a rule, did not care for it. I was amazed, and cited +Shakespeare and Milton as a matter of course, and many a lesser poet, +against so untenable a thesis, concluding with the opening lines of +_Twelfth Night_: + + If music be the food of love, play on. + Give me excess of it. + +Surely music is not only the food of love, but of poetry as well; and do +not "music and sweet poetry agree"? + +Another point of similarity between Milton and Dante is their total lack +of humour, so strange in two great poets, and one of them an Englishman. +Chaucer is continually on the edge of boisterous laughter. Spenser seems +constantly on the verge of a well-bred smile. Shakespeare, to use his own +language, asks to be allowed with mirth and laughter to play the fool, +though the most gravely thoughtful and awfully tragic of all poets. The +author of _Childe Harold_ is likewise the author of _The Vision of +Judgment_ and _Don Juan_. Scott is one of the greatest of British +humorists. But on the face of neither Dante nor Milton do we find the +trace of a smile either coming or gone. + +The Rev. Lonsdale Ragg, in his searching and erudite work, _Dante and his +Italy_, maintains the opposite view at p. 190 _sqq._ But I, at least, find +him on this head unconvincing. None of the passages in Dante to which he +refers would satisfy the definition of humour as employed by Sterne, +Steele, Addison, or Charles Lamb, and cited by Thackeray in his delightful +papers on _The English Humorists_. Dante is scornful, satirical, +merciless; humorous he never is. Nor is Milton. They meet on the common +ground of uncompromising seriousness. + +Another parallel I will presume to draw between Dante and Milton is one of +supreme importance; but I can do so only briefly. No man, in my humble +opinion, has the full requisites of a poet of the highest order unless at +some period or another of his life he has been associated by practice and +direct experience with other men in matters of public interest. Milton and +Dante alike had that experience. So had Chaucer, so had Spenser, so had +Shakespeare, so had Byron. They were men of the world, and did not, as +Matthew Arnold said of Wordsworth, "avert their gaze from half of human +fate." I am aware that the opposite view is assumed in much criticism +to-day; and the highest rank is claimed for poetic recluses who write only +of individual joys, sorrows, and emotions, their own mostly, and manifest +a complete want of concern in the wide issues of mankind. That was not a +standard of criticism till our own time; nor will it, I believe, be the +standard of future ages. Dante and Milton both satisfy the older standard, +the older and the more abiding one. + +No comparison of Dante with Milton would be complete that omitted +consideration of the respective themes of their chief works, their two +great epic poems, the _Divina Commedia_ and _Paradise Lost_. I am disposed +to think, though others may think differently, that Dante has in this +respect a signal advantage over Milton. If any one is curious to see how a +man of great parts, but in some respects of rather insular views, can fail +to understand the theme of the _Divina Commedia_, and Dante's treatment of +it, he has only to turn, as Mr. Courthope did in his address to the +British Academy, to Macaulay's essay on Milton, where Dante is written of +as though he were nothing but a great Realist. Many years ago I suggested +as a definition of poetry, and have more than once urged the suggestion, +that it is "the harmonious transfiguration of the Real into the Ideal by +the aid of elevating imagination," so that, when the poet has performed +that operation, his readers accept the ideal representation as real, that +surest test of the greatness of a poet, provided his theme itself be +great. The _Divina Commedia_ stands that test triumphantly; and the result +is that Dante makes credible, even to non-believers while they read the +poem, the central conception and beliefs of medieval Christianity, which +are still those of Roman Catholic Christianity. Hence they remain real +facts for the transfiguring idealism of poets to deal with. + +Can the same be said of _Paradise Lost_? What is "real" does not depend on +the arbitrary choice of any one, but on the _communis sensus_, the general +assent of those to whom the treatment of the assumed "real" is addressed. +Is that any longer so in the case of _Paradise Lost_? Are the personality +of the devil, the insurrection of Lucifer and the rebel angels, and their +condemnation to eternal punishment, with power to tempt mortals to do that +which will lead to their sharing that punishment, now believed in by any +large number of Christian Englishmen or English-speaking Christians, or is +it ever likely again to be so believed in? I must leave the question to be +answered by every one for himself. But on the answer to it, it is obvious, +the realistic basis of _Paradise Lost_ depends. If the reply be negative, +then what remains is the magnificence of the imagery and the sonority of +the diction. To extol the one over the other in these respects would +indeed be invidious. It is enough to place them side by side to manifest +their equality. If Milton writes: + + Him the Almighty Power + Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky + With hideous ruin and combustion down + To bottomless perdition, there to dwell + In adamantine chains and penal fire, + Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms; + +Dante writes: + + Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, + Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira, + Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle, + Facevan un tumulto, il qual s'aggira + Sempre in quell' aria senza tempo tinta, + Come l'arena quando il turbo spira. + +Withal, it would show imperfect impartiality if one failed to allow that +there is more variety in the _Divina Commedia_ than in _Paradise Lost_. +Milton never halts in his majestic journey to soothe us with such an +episode as that of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, or closes it +with so celestial a strain as that describing the interview of Dante with +Beatrice in Heaven. + +No third poet in any nation or tongue could be named that equals Dante and +Milton in erudition, or in the use they made of it in their poetry. The +present writer is himself too lacking in erudition to presume to expatiate +on that theme. Others have done it admirably, and with due competency. But +on this ground, common to them both, I reluctantly part with them. To each +alike may be assigned the words of Ovid, _Os sublime dedit_, and equally +it may be said of both, that, in the splendid phrase of Lucretius, they +passed beyond the _flammantia moenia mundi_. Finally, each could truly +say of himself, in the words of Dante, + + Minerva spira e conducemi Apollo. + +"The Goddess of Wisdom inspires me, and the God of Song is my conductor +and my guide." + + + + +BYRON AND WORDSWORTH + + +The present age can hardly be reproached either with an absence of +admirers or with a lack of self-complacency. Even its most fervid +flatterers, however, ever and anon admit that it exhibits a few trifling +defects; and among these is sometimes named a diminution of popular +interest in poetic literature. Some have attributed this decline to one +cause, some to another; but the fact can hardly be disputed. The Heavenly +Muse is suffering a partial eclipse. The gross and material substance of +the earth has somehow got between her and the Soul, that source and centre +of her gentle light; and some enthusiasts aver that with the progress of +Science and the production at will of its precise and steadfast lights, +fitful luminaries of night may henceforth be dispensed with. But spiritual +eclipses, though not to be predicted with the accuracy with which physical +eclipses are foretold, and though unfortunately they endure for longer +periods, are equally transitory; and the nineteenth century was scarcely +original, nor will its successor prove to be correct, in fancying that the +garish and obedient flame of material philosophy will prove a satisfactory +substitute for the precious, if precarious illumination of the Spirit. + +Among the causes that have contributed to divert popular affection and +popular sympathy from poetical literature, there are three that deserve to +be specially indicated. The first of these is the multiplication of prose +romances, which, though so much lower in literary value and in artistic +character than poetry, and so much less elevating in their tendency, are +better fitted to stimulate the vulgar imagination, and minister more +freely to the common craving for excitement. The second cause is the +reaction that has settled upon mankind from the fervid hopes inspired by +the propagation of those theories and the propounding of those promises +which the historian associates with the French Revolution. All saner minds +have long since discovered that happiness is to be procured neither for +the individual nor for the community by mere political changes; and the +discovery has been distinctly hostile to literary enthusiasm. Finally, +many poets, and nearly all the critics of poetry, in our time, seem +determined to alienate ordinary human beings from contact with the Muse. +The world is easily persuaded that it is an ignoramus; and the vast +majority of people, after being told, year after year, that what they do +not understand is poetry, and what they do not care one straw about is the +proper theme and the highest expression of song, end by concluding that +poetry has become a mystery beyond their intelligence, a sort of +freemasonry from whose symbols they are jealously excluded. Unable to +appreciate what the critics tell them are the noblest productions of +genius, they modestly infer that between genius and themselves there is no +method of communication; and incapable of reading with pleasure the poetry +they are assured ought to fill them with rapture, they desist from reading +poetry altogether. They have not the self-confidence to choose their own +poets and select their own poetry; and indeed in these days, the only +chance any writer has of being read is that he should first be greatly +talked about. Thus, what between the poets who are talked about by +so-called experts, and thus made notorious, but whom ordinary folks find +unreadable, and the poets, if there be any such, whom ordinary folks would +read with pleasure if they knew of their existence, but of whom they have +scarcely heard, poetry has become "caviare to the general," who content +themselves with the coarser flavour of the novel, and the more easily +digested pabulum of the newspaper. + +But if poetry is now comparatively little read, no one can deny that it is +much written about; and many persons would perhaps see in the second of +these facts a reason for doubting the reality of the first. But the +contradiction is only apparent. Poetry is the subject at present of much +prose criticism, prose exposition, and prose controversy; but the +controversialists are largely the poets themselves, or those who aspire to +the title. The subject is treated by them with much earnestness, indeed +with some little heat; and it is easy to perceive that the main object of +most of the disputants is to establish the superiority of the poet whom +the critic himself most admires, and possibly whom he himself most +resembles. The controversy rages around those poets alone who are claimed +by the nineteenth century, and practically, these are five in number; +Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth. Each of these has his +votaries, his disciples, his passionate advocates. The public look on, a +little bewildered; for who is to decide when doctors disagree? Few, if +any, of the disputants lay down explicit canons respecting poetry, which +may enable a competent bystander to play the part of umpire even to his +own satisfaction; and he is left, like the controversialists themselves, +to abide by his own personal tastes, and to estimate poets and poetry +according to his individual fancy. + +It was therefore with no slight satisfaction one heard that one of our +poets, who is likewise a critic, but who brings to his criticisms +moderation of language and measure of statement, was about to appraise the +English poets who have written in this century, but who have for many +years joined the Immortals. To Mr. Matthew Arnold, if to any one amongst +us, may be applied the passage from Wordsworth, to be found in the +"Supplementary Essay" published in 1815: + + Whither then shall we turn for that union of qualifications which + must necessarily exist before the decisions of a critic can be of + absolute value? For a mind at once poetical and philosophical; for a + critic whose affections are as free and kindly as the spirit of + society, and whose understanding is severe as that of dispassionate + government? Where are we to look for that initiatory composure of + mind which no selfishness can disturb; for a natural sensibility that + has been tutored into correctness, without losing anything of its + quickness; and for active faculties, capable of answering the demands + which an author of original imagination shall make upon them, + associated with a judgment that cannot be duped into admiration by + aught that is unworthy of it? Among those, and those only, who, never + having suffered their youthful love of poetry to remit much of its + force, have applied to the consideration of the laws of this art the + best power of their understandings. + +To Mr. Arnold, if to any, we say, this enumeration of the qualities +indispensable to a trustworthy critic of poetry, may be applied; and if +the conclusions at which he bids us to arrive should not turn out to be +such as we can wholly accept, at least we shall have the satisfaction of +feeling that we dissent from one who has not invited our attention in +vain, and who perhaps, by the avowals he incidentally makes in the course +of his argument, has enabled us to hold with all the more confidence +certain opinions which we will endeavour to establish by independent +reasons of our own. + +Here, with sufficient brevity for the present, is the conclusion of Mr. +Arnold on the vexed question of the primacy among English poets, no longer +living, of the last century: + + I place Wordsworth's poetry above Byron's, on the whole, although in + some points he was greatly Byron's inferior. But these two, + Wordsworth and Byron, stand, it seems to me, first and pre-eminent in + actual performance, a glorious pair, among the English poets of this + century. Keats had probably, indeed, a more consummate poetic gift + than either of them; but he died having produced too little and being + as yet too immature to rival them. I for my part can never ever think + of equalling with them any other of their contemporaries; either + Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium; or + Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his + luminous wings in vain. Wordsworth and Byron stand out by themselves. + When the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to recount her + poetic glories in the century which has just then ended, the first + names with her will be these. + +We do not propose to traverse the entire field of controversy here lightly +indicated; our purpose being to confine ourselves to a consideration of +Mr. Arnold's particular conclusion, that Wordsworth's poetry should be +placed above Byron's. But before passing to that duty, we may say, +parenthetically, that though we agree with Mr. Arnold that Shelley's +poetry often exhibits a lamentable "want of sound subject-matter," the +claims of the "beautiful and ineffectual angel" are here somewhat +summarily dismissed; and that when Mr. Arnold says further that he "doubts +whether Shelley's delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far +more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of time +better, and finally come to stand higher than his poetry," he makes us +lift our eyes in sheer amazement, and somewhat more than doubt whether +this will not prove to be among the utterly falsified prophecies of very +able critics. + +Holding the opinion he does concerning Wordsworth and Byron, Mr. Arnold +has published a selection from the works of both, in distinct and separate +volumes, and he believes that he has thereby rendered an equal service to +each. "Alone," he writes, "among our poets of the earlier part of this +century, Byron and Wordsworth not only furnish material enough for a +volume of this kind, but also, it seems to me, they both of them gain +considerably by being thus exhibited." We, on the contrary, submit that if +the comparison is to end here, and is to be confined to the results +produced by Mr. Arnold's method, a more unjust and inadequate method, as +far as Byron is concerned, could not possibly be resorted to. Wordsworth +gains considerably, but Byron loses considerably, to employ Mr. Arnold's +language, by being thus exhibited. No doubt, Mr. Arnold means to be just. +He always means to be just. But in the very description he gives of the +contents of these two volumes on their respective title-pages, does he not +betray a sort of unconscious consciousness that he is dealing with two +very different poets, and with two poets whose works are very different? +If this be not so, how comes it that he calls one volume _"Poems" of +Wordsworth_, and the other _"Poetry" of Byron_? The distinction is a +genuine one. Indeed, it is something more than genuine; it was inevitable, +and Mr. Arnold was obliged to make it, if the title of each volume was to +describe its contents correctly. The best poems of Wordsworth are short, +most of them remarkably short; and therefore, in a volume of selections +from his works, they can without difficulty be presented in their +integrity. The best poems of Byron, like the best poems of AEschylus, of +Virgil, of Dante, of Shakespeare, of Milton, are of considerable length; +and if selections from Byron are to be made, his best poems must be +mutilated for the purpose. Mr. Arnold has mutilated them accordingly. +Thus, while intending to treat Wordsworth and Byron in precisely the same +manner, he has treated them, and by the very conditions of the case could +not help treating them, in an entirely different manner. + +That Mr. Arnold has not been altogether insensible to this objection--and, +indeed, with his calm and dispassionate penetration, he was not likely to +be--is apparent not only in the different description he gives of the +contents of the two volumes, on their respective title-pages, but from +certain observations in his prefatory essay upon Byron. When he says that +"there are portions of Byron's poetry which are far higher in worth, and +far more free from fault than others," or that "Byron cannot but be a +gainer by having attention concentrated upon what is vivid, powerful, +effective, in his work, and withdrawn from what is not so," he is, we +would suggest, stating nothing more than a truism, or what is equally true +of every poet. He is only beating the air, and hesitating to close with +the real difficulty with which he feels himself confronted. But when he +proceeds to urge that "Byron has not a great artist's profound and patient +skill in combining an action or in developing a character,--a skill which +we must watch and follow if we are to do justice to it," he shows that he +feels it to be necessary to offer a defence for applying to Byron a +treatment from which Byron may possibly suffer. We confess, with all our +admiration for Mr. Arnold--and it is as deep as it is sincere--we have +never been able to resist the suspicion that he is _tant soit peu_ a +sophist; and surely it is sophistry, in the course of an attempt to show +that Byron and Wordsworth each equally gain by the "selection" method of +treatment, to urge, with that air of tranquil and well-bred triumph of +which Mr. Arnold is so consummate a master, that "to take passages from +work produced as Byron's was, is a very different thing from taking +passages out of the _Oedipus_ or the _Tempest_ and deprives the poetry +far less of its advantage"? For the question is not whether Sophocles, +Shakespeare, and Byron may be treated ostensibly in the same manner by an +editor of selections, without injustice being done to any of them, but +whether Wordsworth and Byron can. That is the question; and it is not +answered, but avoided, by altering the terms of the proposition. + +What, therefore, really remains of this plea of Mr. Arnold's, this excuse +for mutilating Byron's poems and presenting them in fragments, is the +allegation that Byron is not, _above and before all things_, a great, +patient, and systematic artist. That much may be granted; and no competent +critic would deny it. But more cannot be granted than is strictly true; +and candour equally demands that it should be admitted that though Byron +was not long-suffering and far-reaching enough in the conception of his +poems, nor careful and self-critical enough in their execution, he +possessed at least enough of the instinct and the scope of the artist to +produce works that cohere with themselves, and that have a unity of design +sufficiently definite to mark it as something distinct from the mere +succession of executed detail. Will Mr. Arnold seriously pretend that a +more "vivid, powerful, and effective" impression is not created upon the +mind by a perusal of the whole of _Manfred_, than by a perusal of portions +of it, or of one or two dissociated Acts? Mr. Arnold turns Byron's own +modest confessions against himself, and lays stress upon the avowal that +the _Giaour_ is "a string of passages." But if any one were, after due +reflection, to maintain, that more justice is done to Byron by reading +some of its passages than by reading the whole of the poem, we confess we +should be obliged to entertain some doubt as to his own instincts as an +artist. For, where men like Byron are concerned, it is peculiarly true +that the divinity of the Muse shapes their ends, rough-hew these how they +may. Of every one of Byron's tales--the _Siege of Corinth_, _The Bride of +Abydos_, _Parisina_--this is equally true. It has more than once been +observed that _Childe Harold_ suffers from the fact that a period of eight +years elapsed between the composition of the first and second cantos, and +the composition of the third and fourth; and as far as style is concerned, +the contrast is very striking, two of the cantos being for the most part +almost as feeble, and two of them as forcible, as anything deserving the +name of poetry well can be. Nevertheless, there would be no difficulty in +showing, and we think no reader of poetry endowed with a fair amount of +artistic sense would require to be shown, that a certain oneness of +purpose and unity of drift presides over and accompanies the entire poem, +in a word that it is substantially homogeneous; and if any one, after +reading through the third and fourth cantos at a stretch, as we recently +did, were to tell us that he thought a few extracts from each give an +adequate conception of the two, and that reading portions is in effect +equivalent to reading the whole, we should have reached that limit of +controversy which is expressed by a silence that is not assent. It is true +that Mr. Arnold has been fairly lavish in his extracts from _Childe +Harold_; yet out of the 300 stanzas which compose the third and fourth +cantos, his selection contains only 114, or little more than a third. But +it is not only by the curtailment of the quantity, but by the treatment +applied to what is selected, that injury is done to _Childe Harold_. The +passages quoted are scattered at intervals through the volume, so that all +consecutiveness and coherence are lost. The majestic march of the poem is +utterly broken. The subtle argument that lurks in the order of every +poem--whether it be the _lucidus ordo_ of a speech, or an order less +obvious and patent--is completely destroyed. The strain neither begins nor +ends, neither rises nor falls, neither pauses nor progresses. The statue +is shivered to pieces, and we are offered a collection of chips, mixed up +with fragments from other marbles that have been treated with equal +ruthlessness. Here there is a hand, here a portion of a foot, here a +section of the features, here a bit of the torso. They still are +magnificent, and full of suggestiveness. But are they equal and equivalent +to the entire statue? Are they as good as the whole of the original work? +With surprising paradox Mr. Arnold assures us they are considerably +better. + +This singular conclusion is attained, it seems to us, by the excessive +assertion, or at least by the exaggerated application, of a theory in +which there is, unquestionably, a solid element of truth. We have said +that Byron is not an austere and consistent artist. But that is not to +affirm that he is not an artist at all; whereas, in thus treating his +productions fragmentarily, Mr. Arnold acts as though such an assertion +were true. Byron, says Mr. Arnold, is not "architectural." But is he not? +There is architecture, and architecture; the severe and systematic +architecture of the Greeks, and the more free, irregular, unmethodical +architecture which we know as Gothic. In the conception, and what in +technical parlance is called the composition, of his works, Byron is +assuredly no Greek. The exquisite oneness of design characteristic of +Athenian genius he certainly did not borrow from the land and the race no +one has so splendidly extolled. But if we turn to some of the noblest +productions of Gothic architecture, what do we find? We find Cathedrals of +unquestioned beauty and of universal fame, produced, it would +superficially seem, almost haphazard; without design, without plan, even +without architect. In our own land we may see Minsters that, begun in the +eleventh, were not finished till the fifteenth century. Like _Childe +Harold_, they bear the evident marks of different ages, and of different +styles; and like _Don Juan_, they show that they were commenced without +their parent knowing where or how they were to end. Nay, like it again, +some of them remain unfinished to this day. But will any one affirm that +their integrity, as they stand, is nothing to them, and nothing to us? +Because no great master-conception presided over their origin and their +execution, will no injury be done to them by taking them to pieces, and +saying, "Here is a lovely apse; here you see a beautiful flying buttress; +here contemplate an exquisite rood-screen; here you have an admirable bit +of the choir, and there a glorious specimen of the roof"? + +Nor can it be urged that this illustration does violence to the process +Mr. Arnold has adopted. On the contrary, the analogy is not strong enough; +for _Manfred_, _The Corsair_, _Cain_, _Childe Harold_ itself, were +conceived and executed, not less, but far more homogeneously, than the +edifices with which we have compared them, and if it would be unjust and +inadequate to treat Gothic cathedrals after this fashion, it is still more +unjust and inadequate to treat Byron's poems after this fashion. More +glaring still becomes the injustice, and more utter the inadequacy, when +we remember in whose company he is so treated. Mr. Arnold does not break +Wordsworth's poems to pieces and present us with the fragments; for there +is no necessity to do so. The long ones Mr. Arnold cheerfully throws over, +confessing that _The Excursion_ "can never be a satisfactory work to the +disinterested lover of poetry," and even that Jeffrey was not wrong when +he said of it, "This will never do." To adhere to our metaphor, it is a +large comfortless Meeting-house; and so is the _Recluse_. The best of +Wordsworth's poems, as we have said, and as Mr. Arnold says, are his short +ones. There are charming English cottages, or, if it be preferred--for we +have no intention of decrying them, we admire them vastly--exquisite +little wayside chapels; and they fit conveniently into the space, without +being tampered with, which Mr. Arnold has provided for them. But the best +of Byron's poems are the long ones; are vast Gothic edifices that soar +high into the air and cover a vast amount of ground, and therefore cannot +be compressed into the same compass. We have seen how Mr. Arnold gets over +the difficulty. He pulls them down, places bits and sections of them side +by side with the untouched cottages and still complete oratories of +Wordsworth, and asks us to compare the two. We are far from saying that, +even under these conditions, the comparison ends to Byron's disadvantage. +But it surely must be evident to every one that the conditions are not +equal, and therefore, however fair were the intentions of the editor, that +they are not really just. We should be sorry if any one supposed we +consider Mr. Swinburne as sound a critic as Mr. Arnold. But, upon this +particular question, Mr. Swinburne has propounded a conclusion against +which, we submit, Mr. Arnold contends in vain. "The greatest of Byron's +works was his whole work taken together." Nothing could be more terse or +more true; and if Mr. Swinburne would be content always to form his +judgments thus calmly and comprehensively, and to express them with this +brevity and directness, he would soon come to exercise an authority which +is at present refused by many to his literary verdicts. + +But though, if the comparison instituted between Byron and Wordsworth by +Mr. Arnold were to be confined within the conditions he has imposed on +both alike, great injustice would be done to Byron, it may well be doubted +if the plan adopted by Mr. Arnold will really tend to Byron's +disadvantage. On the contrary we suspect that, with the best will in the +world to do all he can for Wordsworth, Mr. Arnold has done him rather an +ill turn. For the whole, or anything approaching to the whole, of the best +of Byron, is not to be found in the volume of selections edited by Mr. +Arnold; and everybody will feel that Byron is a far greater poet than he +could possibly be made to appear by any such method. But all the best +poetry of Wordsworth is in the volume Mr. Arnold dedicates to him; and we +entertain little doubt that there is no dispassionate critic who would not +be obliged to allow that a considerable portion, indeed we fear the +greater portion of it, is not poetry at all. The process Mr. Arnold has +applied to Wordsworth, will have to be applied over again, and with +greater rigour. He has rejected as "not satisfactory work to the +disinterested lover of poetry," an immense quantity of what Wordsworth +conceived to be such. Another editor will have to reject a considerable +proportion of what Mr. Arnold has too indulgently included. His selection +will have to be selected from afresh; and thus, with doubtful +friendliness, he has pointed and prepared the way for some entirely +dispassionate critic who will leave of Wordsworth only what, to "the +disinterested lover of poetry," is worth leaving; and this unfortunately, +though of a high and delightful quality, will prove to be comparatively +little. In a word, to do Byron anything like justice, we require several +volumes of the size of that Mr. Arnold devotes to him; we require, in +fact, most of what he wrote. To do Wordsworth justice, we require a volume +less than half the size of what Mr. Arnold gives us; we require, in fact, +to suppress at least three-fourths of what he wrote. + +But, again, we can raise no question, and propound no conclusion which Mr. +Arnold, with his penetrating sense and acute susceptibility, has not +himself more or less discerned. After observing, "we must be on our guard +against Wordsworthians," he thus writes, in a vein of delicate humour: + + I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians: and if we are to get + Wordsworth recognised by the public and by the world, we must + recommend him not in the spirit of a clique, but in the spirit of + disinterested lovers of poetry. But I am a Wordsworthian myself. I + can read with pleasure and edification _Peter Bell_, and the whole + series of _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, and the addresses to Mr. + Wilkinson's spade, and even the _Thanksgiving Ode_; everything of + Wordsworth, I think, except _Vaudracour and Julia_. It is not for + nothing that one has been brought up in the veneration of a man so + truly worthy of homage; that one has seen and heard him, lived in his + neighbourhood, and been familiar with his country. + +Alas! even the best of us are mortal; and we accept this graceful passage +as Mr. Arnold's confession that he, too, is a Wordsworthian against whom +we must be on our guard. An extremist of a school he could not now be; but +"it is not for nothing," as he says, that he was trained in it. "Once a +priest," says an Italian proverb, "always a priest"; and, we fear, once a +Wordsworthian, always a Wordsworthian. It is no reproach; but "we must be +on our guard." For our part, we are tolerably familiar with Wordsworth's +country, but, beyond that, we are under no such spell as Mr. Arnold +confesses to above. We entertain profound veneration and homage for +Wordsworth, but it is the result, not so much of early teaching--the most +difficult of all lessons to unlearn--as of independent admiration and +sympathy inspired in riper years. We, too, can read _Peter Bell_ and the +_Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, but with more edification than pleasure; and we +have read, afresh, every word of what Mr. Arnold has included in his +_Poems of Wordsworth_, only to reach the conclusion we have already +stated, that from many, only too many of them, the spirit, the essence, +the indefinable something, of poetry is absent. + +We should be sorry to be thought guilty of dogmatism, and there is always +peril in generalisations. Let us therefore descend to particulars, as far +as space will permit, and analyse the contents of Mr. Arnold's _Poems of +Wordsworth_. The volume consists of 317 pages; of which 20 are dedicated +to "Poems of Ballad Form," 92 to "Narrative Poems," 56 to "Lyrical Poems," +34 to "Poems akin to the Antique and Odes," 32 to "Sonnets," and 83 to +"Reflective and Elegiac Poems." + +In the first division, _We are Seven_, _Lucy Gray_, and _The Reverie of +Poor Susan_, are the only poems that can be pronounced wholly +satisfactory, and that give real pleasure. _Anecdote for Fathers_ and +_Alice Fell_ would be just as well away, for they would raise the +reputation of no poet, save it be with those against whom "we must be on +our guard." The poems, _The Childless Father_, _Power of Music_, and +_Star-Gazers_, are redeemed only by their moral; and perhaps of _Power of +Music_, even this cannot be said. + + An Orpheus! an Orpheus!--yes, Faith may grow bold, + And take to herself all the wonders of old;-- + Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same + In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name. + + His station is there;--and he works on the crowd, + He sways them with harmony merry and loud; + He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim-- + Was aught ever heard like his Fiddle and him? + + What an eager assembly! what an empire is this! + The weary have life, and the hungry have bliss; + The mourner is cheered, and the anxious have rest; + And the guilt-burthened soul is no longer opprest. + +Then follow eight stanzas, in which the baker, the apprentice, the +newsman, the lamplighter, the porter, the lass with her barrow, the +cripple, the mother, and others, are described as stopping to listen, in +language similar to that of the three stanzas we have quoted; the only +slight improvement upon it being such lines as "She sees the Musician, +'tis all that she sees," until we reach the conclusion: + + Now, coaches and chariots! roar on like a stream; + Here are twenty souls happy as souls in a dream: + They are deaf to your murmurs, they care not for you, + Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue. + +The more ardent admirers of Wordsworth are in the habit of assuming that +those persons who approach their favourite poet with a more hesitating +homage, fail to appreciate the beauty of simplicity, and fancy that a +composition is not poetical because it lacks what is called elevation of +language and the "grand style." We can assure them, in all sincerity, that +far from that being the basis of our inability to admire all that they +admire, we admire Wordsworth most, and we admire him immensely, when he is +as simple as it is possible to be. We have just cited a poem, which we +scarcely think deserves that name. But, side by side with it, in Mr. +Arnold's volume, is a much shorter composition, on precisely the same +theme, which is, if possible, still more simple in treatment, but which is +true poetry, if true poetry was ever written. It is called _The Reverie of +Poor Susan_: + + At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, + Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years: + Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard + In the silence of morning the song of the Bird. + + 'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees + A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; + Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, + And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. + + Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, + Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; + And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, + The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. + + She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade, + The mist and the river, the hill and the shade: + The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, + And the colours have all passed away from her eyes. + +After reading _The Reverie of Poor Susan_, we may pay Wordsworth's Muse +the compliment that was paid by the Latin poet to the woman who was +_simplex munditiis_. Its neat simplicity is in great measure the secret of +its success; but it is not mean in its simplicity. Neither, as in the +other poems we have contrasted with it, have we to wait till the end of +the poem for the moral and the meaning. The moral is interwoven and +interfused with it, and every line breathes the soul and essence of the +entire composition. But nearly all these "Poems of Ballad Form" are +didactic; and does not Mr. Arnold tell us, in his preface, "Some kinds of +poetry are in themselves lower kinds than others; the ballad kind is a +lower kind; the didactic kind, still more, is a lower kind"? Of the twenty +pages of these poems of lower kind, we are strongly disposed to think that +the "disinterested lover of poetry" would discard twelve, and retain only +eight, and that Wordsworth, to use Mr. Arnold's phrase, would "stand +higher" if this were done. + +But even this proportion between retention and rejection cannot well be +maintained by the disinterested lover of poetry as he advances through the +volume. The "Narrative Poems" occupy nearly a third of it, and in this +section the amount of real poetry is meagre indeed. We had no conception +how many short poems Wordsworth had written, unredeemed by "the gleam, the +light that never was, on sea or land," till we read this collection +consecutively; and we read it in the open air, in a beautiful country, on +the loveliest day of a lovely May. But nothing could possibly attune the +heart of the disinterested lover of poetry to such verses as these: + + When Ruth was left half desolate, + Her father took another mate; + And Ruth, not seven years old, + A slighted child, at her own will + Went wandering over dale and hill, + In thoughtless freedom, bold. + + There came a Youth from Georgia's shore-- + A military casque he wore, + With splendid feathers drest; + He brought them from the Cherokees; + The feathers nodded in the breeze, + And made a gallant crest. + + "Beloved Ruth!" No more he said. + The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed + A solitary tear: + She thought again--and did agree + With him to sail across the sea, + And drive the flying deer. + + "And now, as fitting is and right, + We in the Church our faith will plight, + A husband and a wife." + Even so they did; and I may say + That to sweet Ruth that happy day + Was more than human life. + +Not only is it impossible, we think, for the disinterested lover of poetry +to read this either with pleasure or with edification, but it is not easy +for him to read it without an ever-broadening smile. As a rule, the verse +to be met with in our less fastidious Magazines is not of a very high +order. But we doubt if the editor of any one of them would consent to +insert the foregoing stanzas, or those that follow, with their, "But as +you have before been told," "Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared, They +for the voyage were prepared," "God help thee, Ruth! Such pains she had, +That she in half a year was mad," and such like specimens of unartistic +and naive childishness. Surely, if there be any one who thinks this +poetry, it must be Mr. Arnold's friend, the British Philistine? If +Murdstone and Quinion could be converted and ever took to reading poetry, +would not this be the sort of verse that would delight them? And would +they not do so by reason of that "stunted sense of beauty," and that +"defective type" of intellect with which Mr. Arnold justly reproaches the +English middle-class? + +Did these poems stand alone, in their prosaic puerility, we might be +surprised that Mr. Arnold had reproduced them; but we should have been +content to conclude that, like Homer, both poet and editor had been +nodding. But we turn page after page of these "Narrative Poems" to be +astonished by what we encounter. The next poem to _Ruth_ is _Simon Lee: +The Old Huntsman, with an Incident in which he was Concerned_: + + Few months of life has he in store, + As he to you will tell, + For still, the more he works, the more + Do his weak ankles swell. + My gentle Reader, I perceive + How patiently you've waited, + And now I fear that you'll expect + Some tale will be related. + + O Reader! had you in your mind + Such stores as silent thought can bring, + O gentle Reader! you would find + A tale in everything. + What more I have to say is short, + And you must kindly take it: + It is no tale; but, should you _think_, + Perhaps a tale you'll make it. + +Simon is grubbing the stump of a tree, but was unequal to the task. The +poet takes the mattock from his hand, and with a blow severs the root, "At +which the poor Old Man so long, And vainly had endeavoured." Thankful +tears come into his eyes, whereupon the poet remarks: + + I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds + With coldness still returning; + Alas! the gratitude of men + Hath oftener left me mourning. + +The sentiment is nice and pretty, but is it poetry, or, even if it were, +could it make poetry of the doggerel--for surely there really is no other +name for it--that precedes it? And do Wordsworthians against whom Mr. +Arnold tells us we ought to be on our guard, or Wordsworthians who fancy +that we need not be on our guard against _them_, suppose that moralising +correctly and piously in verse about every "incident" in which somebody +happens to be "concerned," renders the narrative a "tale,"--much more, +makes poetry of it? We are far from saying that Wordsworth might not, in a +happier mood, have written poetry upon this particular incident. But we do +say, with some confidence, that he has unfortunately not done so; that the +incident, narrated in the manner in which he has narrated it, cannot of +itself be accepted as poetry--which, as Mr. Arnold well knows, is the +extreme Wordsworthian theory, as advocated by Wordsworth himself in pages +upon pages of controversial prose; and that we are greatly astonished Mr. +Arnold should indirectly lend it countenance, by reprinting and stamping +with his precious approval, such infelicitous triviality as the above. We +cannot shrink from saying this, through an unworthy dread lest we should +be confounded with "the tenth-rate critics and compilers to whom it is +still permissible to speak of Wordsworth's poetry, not only with +ignorance, but with impertinence." Mr. Arnold has himself shown that he +does not hesitate to speak in pretty strong terms of those portions of +Wordsworth's verse which he does not regard as poetry. He describes them +as "abstract verbiage"; he acknowledges that they are so inferior, it +seems wonderful how Wordsworth should have produced them; and in a passage +delightfully humorous he imagines a long passage of Wordsworth being +declaimed at a Social Science Congress to an admiring audience of men with +bald heads and women in spectacles, "and in the soul of any poor child of +nature who may have wandered in thither, an unutterable sense of +lamentation, mourning, and woe." + +All that we ask, therefore, is to be allowed the same amount of liberty +which Mr. Arnold himself has exercised, and to be permitted to do what he +has done. We, too, would fain disengage what is valuable in Wordsworth's +poetry from what is worthless. We, too, would fain "exhibit his best work, +and clear away obstructions from around it." But we contend, and we +willingly leave the decision to disinterested lovers of poetry, that such +poems as _Ruth_ and _Simon Lee_ are not only not Wordsworth's best work, +but not good work at all; on the contrary are part of the obstruction from +which it should be cleared. + +The next two poems in the "Narrative" section refer to the fidelity of +dogs, and a single stanza will suffice to show that they are of much the +same calibre as the two that precede them: + + But hear a wonder for whose sake + This lamentable tale I tell! + A lasting monument of words + This wonder merits well. + The Dog, which still was hovering nigh, + Repeating the same timid cry, + This Dog, had been through three months' space + A dweller in that savage place. + +Next in order comes _Hart-Leap Well_, which consists of two parts. In the +first we come across such lines and phrases as "Joy sparkled in the +prancing courser's eyes," "A rout that made the echoes roar," "Soon did +the Knight perform what he had said, And far and wide thereof the fame did +ring," "But there is matter for a second rhyme, And I to this would add +another tale," which are simply a distress to the disinterested reader of +poetry. In the second part, the poet warms up, and ends with a passage +which is very beautiful: + + Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well; + Small difference lies between thy creed and mine: + This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell; + His death was mourned by sympathy divine. + + The Being, that is in the clouds and air, + That is in the green leaves among the groves, + Maintains a deep and reverential care + For the unoffending creatures whom he loves. + + The Pleasure-house is dust:--behind, before, + This is no common waste, no common gloom; + But Nature, in due course of time, once more + Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom. + + She leaves these objects to a slow decay, + That what we are, and have been, may be known; + But, at the coming of the milder day, + These monuments shall all be overgrown! + + One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, + Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals; + Never to blend our pleasure or our pride + With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. + +Of course, this is poetry, and very good poetry; and it is, justly, one of +the favourite passages of ardent admirers of Wordsworth. But we can +scarcely refrain from saying that, good as it is, there exists something +of precisely the same kind, and, as it happens, in precisely the same +metre, which is considerably better. Surely, no one will have any +difficulty in naming it. It is Gray's famous _Elegy_. Yet we remember how +indignant the "Wordsworthians against whom we ought to be on our guard" +were with the _Quarterly Review_, because there appeared in it a paper in +which Wordsworth and Gray were compared. To mention them in the same +breath was sacrilege! We do not wish to affirm that the disinterested +lover of poetry believes Gray ever to have scaled the heights where +Wordsworth's wing sometimes floats almost without effort. But it cannot be +uninteresting to mark that, in what we may call the middle notes, +Wordsworth is distinctly inferior to Gray, though ever and anon his voice +gets entirely beyond Gray's compass. + +It would be impossible, with any regard for space, to quote from, or even +to name, every poem reproduced by Mr. Arnold, which in our opinion would +have been better suppressed. But if we seem to have established our +contention so far, we think the reader may rely upon it that he would more +or less concur in what else might be said on this score. _The Force of +Prayer_, _The Affliction of Margaret_, _The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian +Woman_, are little if any less trivial than the poems already condemned; +while in _The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_, we read six pages +equally poor and unpoetical, suddenly to come upon such a quatrain as the +following: + + Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; + His daily teachers had been woods and rills, + The silence that is in the starry sky, + The sleep that is among the lonely hills. + +The last two lines it would be impossible to praise too highly. Only the +silence of profound reverence can do them justice. They are touches like +these, touches like "the harvest of a quiet eye," that give to Wordsworth +his holy predominance, and whatever predominance, after fair examination, +must be adjudged him. But how few they are! Perhaps it is in the nature of +things that they should be so. But being so few and far between, they +cannot fill up the blank that intervenes. They are indeed "Angels' +visits." But even poetry has to do mainly with human guests, and a poet +must be judged, as Mr. Arnold truly affirms, by "the ample body of +powerful work" he leaves behind. We cannot assume that much of +Wordsworth's poetry is not unutterably bad, because some of it is +unutterably beautiful. The utmost we can do is to grant, concerning him, +what he himself said so finely of a young girl: + + If thou appear'st untouched by solemn thought, + Thy nature is not therefore less divine: + Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, + And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, + God being with thee when we know it not. + +It is possible that like the "dear child, dear girl," he lay in Abraham's +bosom "all the year," but he communicates the fact, he impresses us with +the fact, but seldom. As a rule, he seems to be outside the Temple +altogether. Hence these magnificent bursts of poetical depth and +sublimity, which, be it said, are peculiar to Wordsworth, are mere short +passages, and there are not many of them. But if they suffice, after a +complete survey of the works of both poets, to place Wordsworth above +Byron, we shall be obliged to conclude that they suffice to place him +above every poet that ever lived. That such a theory of poetry, such a +canon of criticism is untenable, unless we are to cast every hitherto +accepted theory of poetry and every former canon of criticism to the +winds, we trust, in due course, to be able to establish. + +We are aware that _The Brothers_ is a favourite composition with +thoroughgoing Wordsworthians. But as we have been told to be on our guard +against them, we need not hesitate to say that it seems to us to consist +of very ordinary verse, and the piece itself to be devoid of any real +poetical temperament, though it fills sixteen pages in Mr. Arnold's +collection. Sixteen more are occupied by _Margaret_, upon which we are +unable to pronounce a different or a modified verdict. Both abound in such +passages as the following: + + He left his house: two wretched days had past, + And on the third, as wistfully she raised + Her head from off her pillow, to look forth, + Like one in trouble, for returning light, + Within her chamber-casement she espied + A folded paper, lying as if placed + To meet her waking eyes. This tremblingly + She opened--found no writing, but beheld + Pieces of money carefully enclosed, + Silver and gold. "I shuddered at the sight," + Said Margaret, "for I knew it was his hand + Which placed it there: and ere that day was ended, + That long and anxious day! I learned from one + Sent hither by my husband to impart + The heavy news,--that he had joined a Troop + Of soldiers, going to a distant land. + He left me thus--he could not gather heart + To take a farewell of me; for he feared + That I should follow with my Babes, and sink + Beneath the misery of that wandering life." + +If this be poetry, then poetry is very easily written, and what has +hitherto been supposed to be the highest, the most difficult, and the +rarest, of the arts, presents no more difficulty to the person who knows +how to write at all than the simplest, baldest, and most unartistic prose. +What, for instance, is this?-- + + At length the expected letter from the kinsman came, with kind + assurances that he would do his utmost for the welfare of the boy; to + which requests were added that forthwith he might be sent to him. Ten + times or more the letter was read over. Isabel went forth to show it + to the neighbours round; nor was there at that time on English land a + prouder heart than Luke's. When Isabel had to her house returned, the + old man said, "He shall depart to-morrow." To this word the housewife + answered, talking much of things which, if at such short notice he + should go, would surely be forgotten. But at length she gave consent, + and Michael was at ease. + +Is this prose or verse? We have printed it as prose. Wordsworth wrote it +as verse, and Mr. Arnold has reproduced it as poetry. Had all Wordsworth's +compositions been of this calibre, and a painfully large number of them +are, well might John Stuart Mill affirm that any man of good abilities +might become as good a poet as Wordsworth by giving his mind to it, and we +will add that a man of good abilities could hardly employ them worse. Yet +this passage, and fourteen pages of verse not one whit better than it, are +to be met with in _Michael_, one of the narrative poems Mr. Arnold, with +special emphasis, begs us to admire. "The right sort of verse," he says, +"to choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true and most +characteristic form of expression, is a line like this from _Michael_: + + And never lifted up a single stone. + +There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style, +strictly so called; yet it is expressive of the highest and most +expressive kind." Of course, in order to properly appreciate it, we must +know the context, which fortunately is easily compressed. Michael and his +son Luke were to build a sheepfold; but, as told in the passage we have +printed, Luke is sent to a kinsman, who will advance him in life. Before +he goes, Michael takes him to lay the first stone of the sheepfold. The +lad then leaves home, falls into dissolute courses, and at last hides +himself beyond the seas. After that, it is narrated of Michael: + + And to that hollow dell from time to time + Did he repair, to build the Fold of which + His flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet + The pity which was then in every heart + For the Old Man--and 'tis believed by all + That many and many a day he thither went, + And never lifted up a single stone. + +We have asked several disinterested lovers of poetry, some of them ardent +admirers of Wordsworth, what they think of this; and we are bound to say +that most of them failed to see anything in it whatsoever. That is not our +case. We feel the force of the situation, and the apt simplicity of the +concluding line. Yet repeat it, dwell on it, and surrender ourselves to it +as we will, we fail to persuade ourselves that it merits the lofty eulogy +pronounced on it by Mr. Arnold. It is with hesitation that we presume, on +such a point, and where the issue is so direct, to place our opinion in +seeming competition with his; but we can only leave the decision to the +_communis sensus_ of disinterested lovers of poetry. But nothing--not even +Mr. Arnold's authority--could satisfy us that this line suffices to lend +the wings of poetry to fourteen closely printed pages of such pedestrian +verse as that of which _Michael_ for the most part consists. + +The only other poem in the "Narrative" section of the volume is _The +Leech-Gatherer_; and it, besides containing many lines of admirable +poetry, is itself a coherently beautiful poem. But when, resuming our +analysis, we enquire how much poetry there is in the 112 pages, or in more +than the third portion of the volume we have as yet examined, what do we +find? Exactly 20, and only 20, which we honestly believe the disinterested +lover of poetry, the critic to whom Mr. Arnold makes appeal, would +recognise as strictly deserving that description. We can seriously assert +that this is the amount we should save from the wreck, if we were editing +a selection from Wordsworth, were disengaging his good work from his bad, +and were seeking to obtain for him readers who care nothing whatever about +him personally, and who only wish ever and anon to steep themselves in the +atmosphere of native and sterling poetry. We are well aware that, from +another and a more extended point of view, Wordsworth never wrote a line, +in verse or in prose, which is not worth preserving, and worth reading. +But that is not at present the question. We are dealing with the critical +contention of a great and influential critic, that "what strikes me with +admiration, what establishes in my opinion Wordsworth's superiority"--to +Byron, be it understood, and to every English poet since Milton--"is the +great and ample body of powerful work which remains to him, even after all +his inferior work has been cleared away." This it is which renders it +necessary to clear away the inferior work, in order that we may see if the +body of "powerful" work that remains be really "ample" or not. + +The "Lyrical Poems" contain the best, the most characteristic, and the +most valuable of the compositions of Wordsworth. For our part, we should +have excluded _To a Sky-Lark_, at page 126--not the beautiful one with the +same title at page 142--_Stray Pleasures_, the two poems _At the Grave of +Burns_, _Yarrow Visited_, _Yarrow Revisited_, in spite of their vogue with +Wordsworthians _quand meme_, _To May_, and _The Primrose of the Rock_. +There would then be left 33 pages containing the best poems _of their +kind_ anywhere to be found, and of inestimable value to the disinterested +lover of poetry. The fervid lover of poetry knows them by heart, and +carries them with him through life. Is it necessary to give their names? +_She was a Phantom of Delight_, _The Solitary Reaper_, _Three Years She +Grew_, _To the Cuckoo_, _I Wandered lonely as a Cloud_--these, and their +companions, to be found about the middle of Mr. Arnold's volume, are among +the most precious, and will remain among the enduring possessions of +mankind. Nor is it only that they fill the mind with elevating thoughts +and swell the heart with sacred sentiments. They make one regard, with a +peculiar affection, the poet who wrote them. But we must not allow this +literary love to warp literary judgment. No such feeling is awakened for +their authors by _Childe Harold_ or _Hamlet_. But to conclude that +Wordsworth is, therefore, a greater poet than Byron or Shakespeare, would +be as illegitimate in the one instance as in the other. It would be to +imitate the filial and uxorious fondness of the late Mr. Carlyle, who +gravely tells us that his father had a larger intellect than Burns, and +that his amiable, long-suffering wife wrote letters of greater value and +insight than the works of George Sand and George Eliot, and "all the pack +of scribbling women from the beginning of time." To love Wordsworth is +pardonable; nay, it is inevitable to those who are intimate with his +tenderest work. But the critic must disengage his judgment from his +affections, if he is not to mislead the persons he aspires to instruct, +and to injure the art of whose dignity he is bound to be jealous. + +Briefly, then, and pursuing to the end the "disinterested-lover-of-poetry" +method recommended to us by Mr. Arnold, and of which we think we have +already given illustrations to enable any one to decide for himself +whether we pursue it with equity and candour, we reach the conclusion +that, of the 317 pages composing Mr. Arnold's collection, only 103, on a +liberal estimate, contain what is worth preserving as poetry; or at least, +if there be any dispute as to whether it is poetry, there can be none, +outside the specially Wordsworthian circle, as to its being very inferior +poetry indeed, and in no degree calculated to confer, extend, or uphold +any man's reputation as a poet. That it is admirable in sentiment and +laudable in moral purpose, may at once be granted. But the purest of +sentiments and the loftiest of purposes do not constitute poetry, even +when apparelled in verse. Indeed we may say of them what Mr. Arnold +himself says of those portions of Wordsworth's writings which he discards, +that they are "doctrine such as we hear in church, religious and +philosophical doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves passages of +such doctrine, and brings them forward in proof of his poet's excellence. +But however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here presented, more of +the characters of _poetic_ truth, the kind of truth we require from a +poet." + +It may possibly seem an ungracious part to dwell upon the inferior +portions of Wordsworth work, and to play the _role_ of Devil's Advocate in +the case of one who is assured beforehand of the honours of canonisation. +But it should be remembered that this invidious task has been imposed upon +us by Mr. Arnold, who has asserted, and challenged contradiction to the +assertion, that in Wordsworth is to be found "an ampler body of powerful +work," which constitutes his superiority over every English poet since +Milton. It is he who has rendered it necessary, in justice to other poets, +to enquire with accuracy, what _is_ the amount of powerful work to be +found in Wordsworth; and this cannot be done without careful and judicial +scrutiny. Our object is the same as Mr. Arnold's; not to decry Wordsworth, +but to ascertain his proper place in relation to other poets. If we seem +to have spoken of him harshly, then so must Mr. Arnold; the only +difference between us being that he thinks a certain proportion of +Wordsworth's verse poor stuff, while we view a yet larger portion of it in +that light. Nor is it the example of Mr. Arnold alone that can be cited in +exoneration of perfect outspokenness. M. Scherer is a distinguished French +critic, whom Mr. Arnold quotes, and M. Scherer has in turn introduced Mr. +Arnold's _Selections_ from Wordsworth to the French public in the pages of +the _Temps_. He is a warm admirer of Wordsworth, and, as Mr. Arnold tells +us, an excessive depreciator of Byron. From him, therefore, we may, with +all the less scruple, cite the following avowals: + + The simplicity of Wordsworth's subjects and manner too often + degenerates into triviality, the simplicity of his style into + poverty. He abuses his love for puerile anecdotes, makes us a present + of stories about dogs, and of recitals of what a little girl has said + to her sheep. He not only parades enthusiasm for flowers and birds, + but predilection for beggars, cripples, and idiots. The lower a + person is in the scale of being, the more he strives to awaken our + sympathy in his favour. There are no details so minute, so + insignificant, that he does not take a special pleasure in remarking + them. Is he narrating a walk he takes in summer, he will speak of + "the host of insects gathering round his face, and which are ever + with him as he paces along." + + The habit of seeking and finding lessons in the smallest incidents of + his walks becomes a didactic mania. He extracts moralities from every + object, he preaches sermons at every turn. Often, too, this preaching + vein is far from being poetical. One sometimes seems to be listening + to the psalm-singing of a Conventicle. This, for example, resembles a + hymn of Watts. + + The poetry of Wordsworth, with the tendency it always had towards the + prosaic, often lapses into it altogether. + +This, we submit, is only another way of saying what we have ventured to +say, and what Mr. Arnold himself has said. May we not reasonably conclude +that M. Scherer would reject at least all that we have rejected? But, in +any case, that there is substantial agreement between us and him, so far, +is evident. + +What, then, is the "ample body of powerful work" that is left of +Wordsworth after the eliminating process has been applied to it by the +disinterested lover of poetry? Between three and four thousand lines; +rather more than the amount of matter in the third and fourth cantos of +_Childe Harold_, rather less than the amount of matter in _Hamlet_. The +quantity therefore, the "body" of work left, is not very large. Still we +should not contest that it was "ample" enough to establish the superiority +of Wordsworth over Byron, if it happened to be sufficiently "powerful" for +the purpose. Though quantity must count for something, even in the +comparison of poet with poet, since quantity implies copiousness, and +usually implies versatility, quality counts for much more, if the +difference in quality be marked, and suffices to abolish the consideration +of quantity altogether, if the superiority in respect of quality be +sufficiently great. If, for example, the four thousand lines, or +thereabouts, of poetry Wordsworth has written, had been embodied, say, in +a _Hamlet_, then work so powerful would have been ample to establish his +superiority not only over every English poet since Milton, but over every +poet since the one who has left us, so to speak, several _Hamlets_. + +For what is it that renders _Hamlet_ so great and so powerful? Is it +single lines of beautiful poetry? Is it detached passages of profound and +elevated thought presented in poetic guise? These go for much, more +especially when we consider them in connection with that of which they are +the drapery. But what would they be, and what should we think of them, +detached from the conception of the drama itself, without the plot, +action, and progress of the piece, without the invention and unfolding of +its characters, without its varied and forcible situations, without its +wit, its irony, its humour? What should we think of _Hamlet_ if divested +of the panorama of moving human passions, of its merciless tragedy, and, +finally, of its utter absence of moral so complete, that moralists have +been for a hundred years wrangling what the moral is? These are the +qualities, and these alone, which make great poetry and great poets. + +What has Wordsworth of all these? The answer, if candid and disinterested, +must be, Absolutely nothing. He has written no epic, no drama, no poem of +any kind in which so much as an attempt is made to deal with the clashing +of the various passions that "stir this mortal frame." Of Action he is +utterly devoid. Of Invention, he seems absolutely unconscious. He has no +wit; he has no humour. He has conceived no character, he has portrayed no +character. If he can be said to deal with situations at all, they are of +the simplest and most elementary kind, and he does not in any sense create +them. He finds them at his door. No one blames him for making use of them, +where he makes use of them well; but this is a very different thing from +the invention shown in _Macbeth_ or _The Tempest_, or even in _Cain_, in +_Manfred_, and in _The Siege of Corinth_. Sardanapalus is not a Lear, nor +is Myrra a Cordelia. But, as exhibitions and portraitures of human +character and human passion in poetry they are as much beyond _Lucy Gray_, +or _Michael_, or the little Child in _We are Seven_, as Lear and Cordelia +are beyond them in turn. + +Upon this point let us again hear M. Scherer: + + We must expect from Wordsworth neither the knowledge of the human + heart which worldly experience gives, nor that interior drama of the + passions which a man can describe well only on condition of having + been their victim, nor those general views upon history and society + which are formed partly by study, partly by the practice of public + affairs. Our poet is as much a stranger to the disquietudes of + thought as to those of ambition, to the sufferings of love and of + hate as to that resignation at which one arrives when one has + discerned how very small are the great affairs of this world. He has + nothing of that sublime melancholy, of those fervid questionings, of + those audacious revolts, in which poetry delighted fifty years ago. + Still less has he that mocking scepticism, that raillery now gay now + bitter, which succeeded the songs of despair. He will never be of + those who trouble souls as Byron does, who arm them with irony like + Heine, or who calm them, like Goethe, by the virtue of true + understanding. Wordsworth is simply a Solitary who has long gazed + upon Nature and much analysed his own feelings. Scarcely should we + dare to call him a philosopher, so wanting in him is the reasoning + and speculative element. Even the title of thinker only half becomes + him. He is a contemplative. + +It is true that, at the end of his review of Wordsworth, and without any +previous admonition that he is going to do so, M. Scherer says, in one +brief sentence, "Wordsworth seems to me to come after Milton, notably +below him in my opinion, but withal the first after him"; thus endorsing +the judgment of Mr. Arnold. But, unlike Mr. Arnold, he makes no attempt to +establish or justify this view, but throws it out, as an _obiter dictum_, +after writing a long essay, every argument and every phrase of which tend +towards a diametrically opposite conclusion. So thoroughly is this the +case, that we can honestly say we agree with every word in his essay, with +the exception of the one brief sentence we have just cited. + +But in the longer and more detailed passage quoted above, is not +everything conceded for which we are contending? According to M. Scherer, +Wordsworth has knowledge neither of the human heart nor of the interior +drama of the passions. He has no broad views of history and society. He is +a stranger to love, hatred, ambition, and the disquietudes they cause, as +well as to the disquietudes caused by deep thought; and not having passed +through these, he has necessarily not "come out upon the other side," and +is equally a stranger to the tranquillity of complete knowledge and +complete experience. He is not a philosopher; he is hardly a thinker. He +is a contemplative solitary, who has consorted much with woods, lakes, and +mountains, and has dwelt much upon the sensations they excite in himself. +Verily, this is a sorry equipment for a great poet. Is it an exaggeration +to say that, if all this be true, Wordsworth is destitute of most of the +qualities which in a great poet have hitherto been deemed indispensable? +If, in spite of these remarkable deficiencies, he really be the greatest +English poet since Milton, we shall be forced to conclude that English +poets since Milton have been far less powerful, of far lower calibre, and +of far less value, than has generally been supposed. + +What then is the precise value, the real calibre, the particular kind of +power, of that "ampler body of powerful work" which Wordsworth has given +us? We have seen it is not an epic, nor a drama, nor one great +comprehensive poem of any kind. It consists of lyrics, ballads, sonnets, +and odes; of many of which it would not be just or critical to say more +than that they are very sweet and charming, several of which must be +pronounced exquisite, and a few, very few, of which may be designated +sublime. We own we share the general opinion that the greatest composition +of Wordsworth is the _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_. We are surprised +and disappointed to find Mr. Arnold speaking rather coldly of it; and M. +Scherer likewise refers to it in a depreciatory tone, though he gives +different reasons for his conclusion. M. Scherer thinks it "sounds a +little false," and adds that he "cannot help seeing in it a theme adopted +with reference to the poetic developments of which Wordsworth was +susceptible, rather than a very serious belief of the author." We confess +we think the judgment harsh, and the reasons given for it insufficient, +if not indeed irrelevant. The objection Mr. Arnold entertains for it is +that "it has not the character of poetic truth of the best kind; it has no +real solidity. The instinct of delight in Nature and her beauty had no +doubt extraordinary strength in Wordsworth himself as a child. But to say +that universally this instinct is mighty in childhood, and tends to die +away afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful." + +Now, with all deference to Mr. Arnold, which is due to him in a special +manner when he is expounding Wordsworth, Wordsworth does not say this. In +the first place, Wordsworth, after describing the comparative and +temporary diminution of this instinct, describes its revival and +transfiguration in another guise. But what is far more important to note +is, Wordsworth does _not_ say the instinct is universal. He is writing as +a poet, not as a psychologist; and though he treats of an objective infant +for a time, and uses the pronoun "_our_ infancy," he in reality is +describing his own experience, and letting it take its chance of being the +experience of a certain number of other people. What, we may well ask, can +a poet do more than this, when he gets into the higher range, the upper +atmosphere of poetry? When Shakespeare talks of "the shade of melancholy +boughs," he does not mean that everybody feels them to be melancholy. That +is the privilege--the melancholy privilege, if any one wills it so--of the +higher natures. That what Wordsworth describes in his splendid _Ode_ not +only was true of himself, but is true likewise of all great poetic +spirits, we entertain no doubt; and it will become true of an +ever-increasing number of persons, if mankind is to make progress in the +intimate and integral union of intellectual and poetic sentiment. In our +opinion, the highest note of Wordsworth is struck in this Ode, and +maintained through a composition of considerable length and of +argumentative unity of purpose. It is struck by him elsewhere--indeed in +the lines on Hartley Coleridge, we have a distinct overture, so to speak, +to the Ode; but nowhere is it sustained for so long, or with such oneness, +definiteness, and largeness of aim. There is, perhaps, no finer poem, of +equal length, in any language. We could well understand any one +maintaining that there exists no other so fine. + +But, if this Ode be struck out of the account, what remains to represent +an "ample body of powerful work"? For, after all, in criticism, if we +criticise at all, we must use words with some definite meaning. Perhaps +Mr. Arnold would tell us that it is not the business of true Culture to be +too definite; and we should heartily agree with him. One of the things +that makes prose so inferior to poetry is its inaccurate precision. But it +is Mr. Arnold himself who, on this occasion, compels us to be precise. He +has elected to compare Wordsworth with every poet since Milton, and, in +doing so, he has been obliged to use language which, to be of any use, +must be more or less definite. What is meant by "ample"? Still more, what +is meant by "powerful"? Does he mean that Wordsworth's "Lyrical Poems," +which we think to be the best of Wordsworth's compositions after the Ode, +and which he thinks the best, before the Ode, are "powerful"? Let us quote +perhaps the best of them, already quoted elsewhere, but that can never be +read too often: + + Behold her, single in the field, + Yon solitary Highland Lass! + Reaping and singing by herself; + Stop here, or gently pass! + Alone she cuts, and binds the grain, + And sings a melancholy strain; + O listen! for the Vale profound + Is overflowing with the sound. + + No Nightingale did ever chaunt + So sweetly to reposing bands + Of Travellers in some shady haunt, + Among Arabian sands: + A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard + In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, + Breaking the silence of the seas + Among the farthest Hebrides. + + Will no one tell me what she sings? + Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow + For old, unhappy, far-off things, + And battles long ago: + Or is it some more humble lay, + Familiar matter of to-day? + Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, + That has been, and may be again? + + Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang + As if her song could have no ending; + I saw her singing at her work, + And o'er the sickle bending;-- + I listened till I had my fill, + And when I mounted up the hill, + The music in my heart I bore, + Long after it was heard no more. + +This is exquisite; and of the sort of exquisiteness that leads one, in +private, and in uncritical colloquies, to fall, as the phrase runs, into +ecstasies. But can it, with any regard to accuracy of speech, be described +as "powerful" work? We submit that it cannot. _Lear_ is powerful. The +first six books of _Paradise Lost_ are powerful. The first four cantos of +_Don Juan_ are powerful. The _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_ is +powerful. But unless we are to lose ourselves in a labyrinth of critical +confusion, we must no more allege or allow that _The Solitary Reaper_ is +powerful, than we can affirm that _Where the Bee Sucks_ is powerful, that +Milton's sonnet, _To the Nightingale_ is powerful, or that Byron's _She +Walks in Beauty like the Night_ is powerful. They are all very beautiful; +but that is another matter, and it will not do to confound totally +different things. + +How many lyrics, as perfect as the one we have quoted, has Wordsworth +written? We can count but nine; and the most liberal computation could not +extend them beyond twelve. To these would have to be added perhaps twice +as many, very inferior to these, but still very beautiful, a certain +number, but a very limited number, of first-rate sonnets, the Odes we have +referred to, and detached lines and passages from other poems, notably the +passage in the poem _On Revisiting Tintern Abbey_. The result would be +about a third of the amount we ourselves should altogether extract from +Wordsworth, and of which alone it could justly be said that some of it was +powerful, and all of it was very beautiful work. + +This is what, we venture to assert, remains, after rigid scrutiny, of "the +ampler body of powerful work" which Wordsworth has given us. These are the +compositions which, according to Mr. Arnold, "in real poetical achievement +... in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring +freshness," establish Wordsworth's superiority. + +Now can this claim possibly be allowed, unless, as we have said, all +previous canons of criticism, and all previous estimates of poetry are to +be cast to the winds? If it is to be allowed, then AEschylus, Euripides, +Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, must come down from their +pedestals, and be regarded by us with very different eyes from those with +which we have hitherto scanned them. For what are the marks, what the +qualities, which have distinguished these poets above their fellows, and +by reason of which the world has extolled their genius? It is not merely +for poetic diction, for tenderness of sentiment, for elevation of feeling, +for apt simile, appropriate metaphor, illuminating imagery, and the play +of fancy as exhibited in subordinate detail, that we estimate them as we +do. Neither is it, as we have already pointed out, but as we must repeat, +for detached passages of sublimity, nor yet for short poems of exquisite +beauty, that they have been assigned the rank they occupy. They occupy +that rank by reason of their great conceptions, by reason of their +capacity to project long and comparatively complex poems dedicated to a +lofty theme, and to conduct these through all their intricate windings +from first to last, by employing all the arts, all the expedients, all the +resources of Imagination, chief among which are Action, Invention, and +Situation. To these, of course, must be added copious, elastic, and +dignified language, melody, pathos, and just imagery; for, without these, +a man is not a poet at all. These are the very instruments of his craft, +the very credentials of his profession; and if he has these, no one will +challenge his right to be called a poet. But, unless the higher qualities, +the greater credentials are also his, he must be content with an inferior +place, no matter how many beautiful or sublime things he may have said, +and no matter how excellent the doctrines he may have taught. He has +failed to show his mastery over the great materials, his familiarity with +the great purposes, of his art. Wordsworth projected two long poems, _The +Prelude_ and _The Excursion_; and, practically, these two are one. They +are of portentous length; and that is their only claim to be considered +great. They have no Action, no Situation, no Invention, no Characters. +They consist of pages upon pages, nay, of books upon books, of +interminable talk, in which in reality Wordsworth himself is the only +talker. Little of the talk is poetry. Much of it is, as Mr. Arnold says, +"abstract verbiage." But we need not pursue the theme. Mr. Arnold candidly +confesses that when Jeffrey said of _The Excursion_, "this will never do," +he was quite right. + +Unquestionably, he was right; and he would still have been right, even had +_The Excursion_ contained a far greater number of passages of true poetry +than it does. It will be an evil day for poetry, and for the readers of +poetry, if it ever comes to be allowed that the sole or the main function +of poetry is to _talk about_ things, and that a man can get himself +accepted as a great poet by pursuing this course. Unfortunately, it was +Wordsworth's theory that he could. It would be fatal if critics became of +the same opinion. It is their bounden duty, on the contrary, to protest +against such a theory. Wordsworth sets it down, in black and white, both +in prose and verse, over and over again: + + O Reader! had you in your mind + Such stores as silent thought can bring, + O gentle Reader! you will find + A tale in everything. + What more I have to say is short, + And you must kindly take it: + It is no tale; but, should you think, + Perhaps a tale you'll make it. + +Here is the theory full-blown. The poet is not to tell the tale, the +reader is to make it one, by thinking; and if he only thinks enough, he +will find a tale in everything! Could anything be more grotesque, or more +utterly opposed to any sane canon of the function of an author, and his +relation to his readers? It is the business of the poet to tell the tale, +and thereby to set the reader thinking; an altogether different process +from the one here suggested. "Wordsworthians against whom we must be upon +our guard," often cite the following stanza with admiration: + + The moving accident is not my trade; + To freeze the blood I have no ready arts: + 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, + To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts! + +Have they forgotten the "moving accidents by flood and field," or do they +not know whose trade it was to unfold a tale that + + Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood? + +Piping a simple song for thinking hearts, is all very well. But it will +not do to say, or to suggest, or to allow it to be inferred, that doing +this makes a man as great a poet as doing what Wordsworth did not and +plainly could not do. In the last book of _The Excursion_, he says: + + Life, death, eternity! momentous themes + Are they--and might demand a seraph's tongue, + Were they not equal to their own support; + And therefore no incompetence of mine + Could do them wrong.... + Ye wished for art and circumstance, that make + The individual known and understood; + And such as my best judgment could select + From what the place afforded, could be given. + +But _no_ subject is equal to its own support, where the poet is concerned, +however it may be with the preacher and the moralist. The poet himself +must support it. We _do_ wish for act and circumstance, in poetry; and +when Wordsworth tells us that he has, in _The Excursion_, given us the +best of these he can, we can only answer that this best is not enough, but +wholly insufficient and inadequate. + +That Mr. Arnold would deny all this, if put to him plainly, we do not +believe. It is all the more to be regretted that he should have expressed +himself in such a manner as to encourage others in forming judgments and +holding opinions which imply affirmation to the contrary. When he quotes +from Wordsworth the following lines, + + Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope, + And melancholy fear subdued by faith, + Of blessed consolation, in distress, + Of moral strength and intellectual power, + Of joy in widest commonalty spread, + +and adds that "here we have a poet intent on the best and master thing," +and wishes us to infer Wordsworth's superiority from that fact, does he +not perceive that he is not only misleading his readers, but flagrantly +contradicting what he himself avers in the selfsame essay? Being "intent" +on these subjects is not enough. A further question remains to be +answered; viz. how has the poet dealt with them? Nowhere has Wordsworth +dealt with them so completely, so ambitiously, so exhaustively, as in _The +Excursion_. Yet what does Mr. Arnold say of it? He says that _The +Excursion_ can never be a satisfactory work to the disinterested lover of +poetry, and that much of it is "a tissue of elevated but abstract +verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry." It is plain, therefore, +that being "intent" even on "the best and master thing" does not suffice. +The passage Mr. Arnold quotes, leaving the incautious reader to infer that +it _does_ suffice, is merely the + + Life, death, eternity! momentous themes, + +and their being "equal to their own support" over again. Wordsworth is +perpetually telling us that his subject is Man, and wishes us to infer +that, the subject being great, what is written on it must be great. +Unfortunately, Man, with him, is like Love with the Scotch girl; it is Man +"in the abstract." Shakespeare also treats of Man; but he treats of him +_in men_, and Wordsworth does not. In fact, he communes. As M. Scherer +says, he is a Solitary, a Contemplative. In a word, he is essentially, and +before all things a subjective poet, and reader after reader has +complained, and critic after critic has confessed, that to be subjective, +not objective, to reflect instead of to act, to think rather than to +narrate, is the bane of modern poetry, and the conclusive mark of the +inferiority of so large a proportion of it. + +Yet, this notwithstanding, Mr. Arnold tells us that Wordsworth "deals with +that in which life really consists"; and, not content with this, he +actually goes on to declare that "Wordsworth deals with more of life than +they do";--"they" being every English poet since Milton, and indeed every +poet of every tongue since Milton, with the exception of Goethe! We can +only say that such an assertion is astounding; the most startling paradox, +indeed, we ever encountered in a criticism by a critic of authority. To +argue upon it against Mr. Arnold is, happily, superfluous; for Mr. Arnold +has anticipated and categorically answered his own paradox. Let him open +his own poems; let him turn to _Stanzas In Memory Of Obermann_, and let +him read on until he comes to the following couplet: + + But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken, + From half of human fate. + +Has he forgotten the passage? or would he now expunge it? Mr. Arnold the +poet, and Mr. Arnold the critic, are evidently at issue. But we think no +one will experience much difficulty in deciding which of two has "hit the +nail on the head," and whether it be sound criticism to affirm that +Wordsworth deals with that in which life really consists, or sound +criticism to affirm that with one half of life he does not deal at all. At +any rate, these rival criticisms are not to be reconciled, and Mr. Arnold +must elect between the two. + +What is the first and broad conclusion to be drawn from all that has been +said? It is this: that Wordsworth, as a poet, has treated great subjects +with marked and striking inadequacy, and smaller subjects with marked and +striking success. Now we submit that no man deserves to be called or +considered a great poet who has not treated some great subject in a great +manner. This is the mark, this is the test, of a great poet; and if we +once surrender this distinction, this standard, we soon lose ourselves in +hopeless critical confusion and entanglement. But no great subject _can_ +be greatly or adequately treated in poetry, save objectively, and with the +help of action, passion, incident, of all the expedients, in fact, we have +enumerated. It never can be treated adequately or greatly by merely +writing _about_ it. This is all that Wordsworth has done with his great +subjects, with "truth, grandeur, beauty, love," and the rest of them; and +therefore, as far as great subjects are concerned, he has failed, and +failed conspicuously. Where he has succeeded, and succeeded conspicuously, +succeeded admirably, succeeded perfectly, is in smaller subjects, such as +_The Solitary Reaper_, _The Cuckoo_, _Three Years She Grew_, and their +companions. This is to have done much; but it is not to have left behind +"an ample body of powerful work." Much less is it to have left behind an +"ampler" body of powerful work than every English poet since Milton, Byron +included. + +For what is the "ample body of powerful work" that Byron has left? If +Byron had failed as completely as Wordsworth in the treatment of his +larger themes, in a word, of his great subjects, then, in spite of much +fine lyrical work in Byron, the palm would have to be adjudged to +Wordsworth. But what critic of authority, who means to retain it, will +come forward and assert that Byron has failed in the treatment of his +larger themes, of his great subjects? Is _Childe Harold_ a failure? Is +_Manfred_ a failure? Is _Cain_ a failure? Is _Don Juan_ a failure? We, +like Mr. Arnold, can honestly say that though we "felt the expiring wave +of Byron's mighty influence," we now "regard him, and have long regarded +him, without illusion"; in fact, with just as little illusion as we regard +Wordsworth, which is perhaps more than Mr. Arnold can yet say. We are +unable to assert, with Scott, that, in _Cain_, "Byron has matched Milton +on his own ground." It would have been very wonderful if he had, as +wonderful as if Virgil had matched Homer on Homer's own ground. "Sero +venientibus ossa"; or, as some one put it during the controversy between +the respective merits of the Ancients and the Moderns, "The Ancients have +stolen all our best ideas." Besides, though Byron has not matched Milton +on the ground Milton occupied first and pretty nigh exhausted, Byron has +done many other things that Milton has not done. We are equally unable to +say that Byron, "as various in composition as Shakespeare himself, has +embraced every topic in human life"; though we strongly incline to think +that a dispassionate and exhaustive survey would show him to be more +various in composition, and to have embraced a greater number of topics +appertaining to human life, than any poet, English or foreign, ancient or +modern, except Shakespeare.[1] Equally unable are we to accept the dictum +of Goethe, which Mr. Arnold vainly endeavours to explain away, by trying +to prove that Goethe did not mean what he certainly said, viz. that Byron +"is in the main greater than any other English poet." + +Therefore, as we say, we look upon Byron without any illusion, and without +any wish to extol him above his real rank, by calling on his behalf even +such witnesses as Scott and Goethe. We look at his works with the same +detachment and dispassionateness as we look at the Parthenon or on the +Venus of Milo. But, so looking on them, looking on them not through any +pet theories of our own, not with any moral, theological, or sectarian +bias, but simply with the same "dispassionate-lover-of-poetry" eyes with +which we look on _Antigone_, the _AEneid_, the _Fairy Queen_, or _Faust_, +we find ourselves unable to resist the conclusion, that, like them, +_Childe Harold_, _Manfred_, _Cain_, and _Don Juan_ are great poems, are +great themes, greatly treated. This is not to say that they are perfect, +that they are in every way satisfactory. Is the _Fairy Queen_ perfectly +satisfactory? Is the _AEneid_ perfectly satisfactory? No critic has ever +found them so. Is the _Iliad_ perfectly satisfactory? It would be very odd +if it were, seeing that, as no one but Mr. Gladstone any longer doubts, it +is the work, not of one poet, but of several poets. But when all has been +urged against them that can be urged by the most judicial criticism, they +remain great subjects greatly executed. In the same manner, so do Byron's +greater poems. Roughly and broadly speaking, they _are_ satisfactory; +whereas in no sense can _The Prelude_ and _The Excursion_ be said to be +satisfactory. On the contrary, they are entirely unsatisfactory. In a +word, of Byron's larger works, it may be said that they will "do"; of +Wordsworth's, on the contrary, as Jeffrey said, and as Mr. Arnold himself +allows, they "won't." That is the distinction; and it is an immense one. + +Byron is not Shakespeare; for he lags considerably behind Shakespeare in +Invention, Action, and Character, by dint of which, and in conjunction +with which, the highest faculties of the poet are displayed. But a poet +may lag considerably behind Shakespeare, and yet exhibit these in a +conspicuous degree. It is in Character, no doubt, that Byron is more +particularly weak, as compared with Shakespeare, though he is by no means +so weak, in himself, and as compared with others, as people have come to +assume, by hearing the point so superficially iterated. It is not that +Byron cannot depict character; but he does not depict a sufficient number +of characters. They are not numerous and various enough. When M. Scherer +says that "Byron has treated hardly any subject but one--himself," he is +repeating the parrot-cry of very shallow people, and is doing little +justice to his own powers as a critic. Indeed, had Shakespeare never +lived, it is probable that it would never have occurred to any one to urge +against Byron his deficiencies in this respect. It is because he is so +great a poet, because he is so great in other respects, and because some +critics have therefore inadvertently attempted to place him on a level +with Shakespeare, that his inferiority in this particular suggested itself +to those holding a juster view. Once suggested, it was harped upon, +exaggerated, and, we may fairly say, has now been done to death. We +presume, however, that no one would suggest that, even in the poetic +presentation of Character, Byron, however inferior to certain other +writers, is not immeasurably superior to Wordsworth, who never even +attempted to portray Character. + +When we turn from the consideration of the power shown by Byron in the +presentation of Character, to his power shown in Action, Invention, and +Situation, the account becomes a very different one. In brisk and rapid +narrative, in striking incident, in prompt and perpetual +movement--qualities in which not only is Wordsworth deficient, but of +which he is absolutely devoid--Byron exhibits his true greatness as a +poet. Even in the _Tales_, in _The Giaour_, _The Bride of Abydos_, _The +Corsair_, _The Siege of Corinth_, _The Prisoner of Chillon_, which it has +of late been the fashion, we had almost said the affectation, to +depreciate, there is a stir, a "go," a swift and swirling torrent of +action, a current of animation, a full and foaming stream of narrative, a +tumult and conflict of incident, which will never cease to be regarded as +among the best, the highest, and the most indispensable elements of +poetry, until we are all laid up in lavender, until we all take to moping +and brooding over our own feelings, until we all confine ourselves to +"smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought"; until we all +become content + + To sit without emotion, hope, or aim, + In the loved presence of the cottage-fire. + And listen to the flapping of the flame, + Or kettle whispering its faint undersong. + +Even if one confined oneself merely to Byron's _Tales_, the assertion that +Wordsworth "deals with more of life" than Byron, would be startling. Love, +hatred, revenge, ambition, the rivalry of creeds, travel, fighting, +fighting by land and fighting by sea, almost every passion, and every form +of adventure, these are the "life" they deal with; and we submit that it +is to deal with a considerable portion of it; with far more of life at any +rate than Wordsworth deals with in the whole of his poems. Listen to his +own confession: + + And thus from day to day my little boat + Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably. + +Now turn to Byron: + + O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, + Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free, + Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam, + Survey our empire, and behold our home. + These are our realms, no limit to their sway! + +That is precisely the difference. The horizon of Byron is so much larger. +Far from it being true that Wordsworth deals with more of life than Byron +does, the precise opposite is the truth, that Byron deals with far more of +life than Wordsworth does, if by life we mean the life of men, of men of +action, of men of the world, and not the life, as M. Scherer says, of +Solitaries, Contemplatives, and Recluses. + +If we turn to Byron's Dramas, to _Sardanapalus_, to _The Two Foscari_, to +_The Doge of Venice_, no doubt we crave for yet more action, more +incident, more situation, than Byron gives us. But we do so because +Shakespeare has accustomed us to crave for more; and the craving has been +intensified by the sensational character of modern novels and modern +stage-plays. Nevertheless these are present, in no small amount, in the +plays we have named; and whether people choose to consider the amount +great or small, surely it is immeasurably greater than the amount of +action, invention, and situation Wordsworth exhibits in any and every +poem, of any and every kind, he ever wrote. + +We have more than once mentioned _Childe Harold_, but we must refer to it +once more and finally, in support and illustration of what we have been +urging. The persons who are of opinion that Byron never treated any +subject but himself, will perhaps likewise be of opinion that, in _Childe +Harold_, Byron treats only of himself, and that it is a purely +contemplative and subjective poem. A more superficial opinion could not +well be held. In form contemplative, it is in substance a poem full of +action, situation, and incident; in a word, it is a poem essentially and +notably objective. It is the only poem, ostensibly contemplative, of which +this can be said; and it assumes this complexion and character by dint of +Byron's own character, which was above all things active, and could not be +content without action. In _Childe Harold_, Byron summons dead men and +dead nations from their sepulchres, and makes them live and act again. He +revivifies Athens, he resuscitates Rome. He makes Cicero breathe and burn; +he makes the fallen columns and shattered pillars of the Forum as eloquent +as Tully. Petrarch once more waters the tree that bears his lady's name. +The mountains find a tongue. Jura answers from her misty shroud. The +lightning becomes a word. Rousseau tortures himself afresh; Gibbon afresh +saps solemn creeds with solemn sneer; afresh Egeria visits Numa in the +silence of the night, his breast to hers replying. Lake Leman woos, and +kisses away the cries of the Rhone, as they awake. Then she reproves like +a sister's voice. The boats upon the lake are wings to waft us from +distraction. The stars become the poetry of Heaven. Waterloo is fought +before our very eyes. The defiles fatal to Roman rashness are again +crowded with Numidian horse, and Hannibal and Thrasymene flash before our +eyes. A soul is infused into the dead; a spirit is instilled into the +mountains. The torrents talk; the sepulchres act. Movement never ceases, +and the situation is perpetually shifting. Its incidents are almost the +whole of History. In it we have--what M. Scherer justly says Wordsworth +has not--the knowledge of the human heart which worldly experience gives, +the interior drama of the passions which a man can describe well only on +condition of having been their victim, and those general views upon +History and society which are formed partly by study, partly by the +practice of affairs. All this, too, we have, in the third and fourth +cantos--for the first and second are very inferior--presented, in +language, imagery, and music, of the noblest and most elevated kind; till, +swelling, as an organ swells, before it closes, the poem concludes with +that magnificent address to the Ocean, which rounds it off and completes +it, even as the physical ocean rounds off and completes the physical +earth. In no other poem that was ever written are Nature and man--not Man +in the abstract, but men as they act, strive, feel, and suffer--so +thoroughly interfused and interwoven; and they are interwoven and +interfused as they are interwoven and interfused in actual life, not by +men contemplating and talking, but by men doing and acting, in a word, by +living. And if the reference be to men in general and life in general, and +not to a particular sort of man living a particular sort of life away from +other men, then we make bold to say, though in doing so we contradict Mr. +Arnold roundly, that in _Childe Harold_ alone there is "an ampler body of +powerful work," and that _Childe Harold_ alone "deals with more of life," +than all Wordsworth's poems, not even selected from, but taken in their +integrity, without the diminution of a single passage or the omission of a +single line. + +At this point, Mr. Arnold steps in with a notable plea. It may be that +much of what Wordsworth has written is trivial, and that still more of it +is abstract verbiage, or doctrine we hear in church, perfectly true, but +wanting in the sort of truth we require, poetic truth. It may also be that +Wordsworth has written no one great poem, and that the poem he fancied to +be great will not do, and can never be satisfactory to the disinterested +lover of poetry. It may furthermore be the case that in Wordsworth's poems +we have to lament a deficiency, if not indeed a total absence of Action, +Invention, Situation, and Character, and that he is only a Contemplative, +a Recluse, a Solitary, analysing the sensations produced upon himself by +dwelling upon mountains, woods, and waters. All this may be so. But, says +Mr. Arnold, "Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life," the greatness of a +poet depends upon his criticism of life, and Wordsworth's criticism of +life is more complete, more powerful, and more sound, than that of any +English poet since Milton, indeed than that of any poet since Milton, with +the one exception of Goethe. + +The great and the justly acquired authority of Mr. Arnold must not deter +us from saying that to no canon of criticism upon poetry with which we are +acquainted do so many objections present themselves. We suspect Mr. Arnold +himself has discerned some of these since he first propounded it; for +while in his Prefatory Essay upon Wordsworth he urges it with absolute +confidence, in his Prefatory Essay on Byron he does so more hesitatingly, +and exhibits more anxiety to explain it. But does he not explain it away, +when he says, "We are not brought much on our way, I admit, towards an +adequate definition of poetry as distinguished from prose by that truth"? +Upon this point M. Scherer, an admirer, like ourselves, of both Wordsworth +and Mr. Arnold, has some just observations: + + Wordsworth seems to Mr. Arnold to have the qualities of poetic + greatness, and Mr. Arnold accordingly defines these qualities. The + great poet, in his opinion, is the one that expresses the most noble + and the most profound idea, upon the nature of man, the one who has a + philosophy of life, and who impresses it powerfully on the subjects + which he treats. The definition, it will be perceived, is a little + vague. + +Mr. Arnold, we all know, is rather partial to vagueness, being of opinion +that it is of the essence of Culture to be more or less vague, and that +without a certain amount of vagueness there can be no sweetness and no +light. We should be sorry to seem to say anything against those delightful +characteristics, lest we should be supposed to be without them; and we +hereby declare ourselves all in favour of our "consciousness playing +about our stock notions," even if those stock notions be sweetness and +light themselves, with their accompanying charm of vagueness. But though, +in all seriousness, what Swift calls sweetness and light are invaluable +qualities, despite the partial vagueness they entail, yet when two poets +are compared, and a definition of the main business and main essence of +poetry is offered, in order that by it the relative greatness of the two +may be tested, it is just as well that the definition should not be too +vague, should be at any rate precise enough to afford the test desired. +But what is the use of it if it does not "bring us much on our way"? + +Unfortunately, Mr. Arnold's theory of poetry being a criticism of life not +only does not help us along our road, it tends to take us off our road. We +regret we have not left ourselves space to deal with his theory at length, +and can only hope we may have an opportunity of returning to it. But lest +Mr. Arnold should be tempted to raise it to the dignity of a "stock +notion," and to bestow upon it the privilege of that faithful iteration +which is bestowed upon "culture," "sweetness and light," "Barbarians, +Philistines, and Populace," which have a good deal more to say for +themselves, we think it well to point out to him that, by averring poetry +to be "a criticism of life," he is giving a handle to the Philistines of +criticism, and to the enemies of sweetness and light, which they may turn +against him in a notable manner. + +For _whose_ "criticism of life"? Does he not perceive that he is enabling +people to maintain, which unfortunately they are already only too disposed +to do, that this poet is a great poet because they consider his criticism +of life to be right and true, and that other poet to be not a great poet, +or a much smaller poet, because they consider his criticism of life to be +wrong and false? Why, this is the very pest and bane of English criticism +upon poetry, and upon art generally; the criticism which in reality +resolves itself into "I agree with this; I like that." This is the +criticism of sheer and unadulterated Philistinism, against which Mr. +Arnold has been waging such excellent and needed war for several years. +Nor, in spite of much vagueness, will it be possible for Mr. Arnold to +escape from this consequence of his dictum that poetry is a criticism of +life. For at last, after much that seems to us like beating about the +bush, he goes straight to the point, and makes the fatal confession in +plain words. + + As compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at many points less + lucid, though far less a master of style, far less of an artist, + gains so much by his criticism of life being, in certain matters of + profound importance, healthful and true, whereas Leopardi's pessimism + is not, that the value of Wordsworth's poetry, on the whole, stands + higher for us, I think, than that of Leopardi's, as it stands higher + for us, I think, than that of any modern poetry except Goethe's. + +Higher, because it is more healthful! That any critic, not an abject +Philistine, should say such a thing, amazes us beyond words. Surely Mr. +Arnold is aware that there are persons whose opinion on that subject +carries much weight, who consider that Goethe's criticism of life is +neither healthful nor true, but on the contrary false or mischievous, yet +who do not on that account deny to Goethe the title of a great poet. Is +Mr. Arnold really serious when he asserts that, other things being equal, +one poet is less great than another poet because the first is a pessimist, +and the other is an optimist? If he is, let us have two more volumes of +Selections; one containing all the best optimist poetry, and the other +containing all the best pessimist poetry, that was ever written. Which +collection would be the more true, we do not undertake to know, and, as +critics and disinterested lovers of poetry, we do not care. But we +entertain no doubt whatever which Selection would contain the finest +poetry. It would not be the optimist one. Some of the finest poetry ever +written upon life is to be found surely in the Old Testament. What might +be taken as its motto? "Vanity of Vanities. All is Vanity." As far as this +life, and any criticism of it are concerned, it is a very Gospel of +Pessimism. + +Is the conclusion then that a pessimistic criticism of life necessarily +makes a poet greater than another poet who criticises it from an +optimistic point of view? Not in the least. The consideration--we do not +say to the positive philosopher, to the historian, to the moralist, +but--to the disinterested lover of poetry, is simply irrelevant. + +But there is an attitude towards life which does give a poet the chance at +least of being greater than either a poet who criticises life as a +pessimist, or than a poet who criticises it as an optimist. That attitude +is one neither of pessimism nor of optimism; indeed, not a criticism of +life at all, or at least not such a criticism of life as to leave it open +to any one to declare that it is healthful and true, or that it is +insalubrious and false. Will Mr. Arnold tell us what is Shakespeare's +criticism of life? Is it pessimistic or optimistic? We are almost alarmed +at asking the question; for who knows that, in doing so, we may not be +sowing the seeds of a controversy as long and as interminable as the +controversy respecting the moral purpose, the criticism of life in +_Hamlet_? Once started, the controversy will go on for ever, precisely +because there is no way of ending it. What constitutes, not the +superiority, but the comparative inferiority, of Byron and Wordsworth +alike, is their excessive criticism of life. They criticise life overmuch. +It is the foible of each of them. What constitutes the superiority of +Shakespeare is, that he does not so much criticise life, as present it. He +holds the mirror up to nature, and is content to do so, showing it with +all its beautiful and all its ugly features, and with perfect +dispassionateness. Hence his unequalled greatness. + +We regret we have not space to set this forth more at length. But Mr. +Arnold will scarcely misunderstand us; and we would venture to ask him to +ponder these objections, and to let his consciousness play freely about +them. If he does so, we have little doubt that the theory about poetry +being a criticism of life, with its appalling consequences to the critic, +to the disinterested lover of poetry, to the adherent of culture, to the +friend of sweetness and light, and in fact to every one but the Philistine +with his stock ideas, will silently be dropped. + +But if Mr. Arnold sees insuperable objections to this course, and the +canon about poetry being a criticism of life is to be added to that list +of delightful formulae, which, during the last decade, have shed so much +light on our condition, then we can only once more appeal from Mr. Arnold +to Mr. Arnold, and ask how it is that Wordsworth can be considered to have +criticised life, and to "deal with that in which life really consists," if +it be true, as Mr. Arnold tells us it is true, that + + Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken + From half of human fate. + +How, we shall still have to ask, can a poet be said to have criticised +life of whom such an ardent admirer as M. Scherer can observe, "As for +cities, Wordsworth seeks to ignore them. He takes them for a discordant +note which it is only just and right to drown and get rid of in the +general harmony of creation." + +But we must end; and we submit that we have established our case. +Wordsworth can be made to figure as the greatest poet since Milton, only +by canons of criticism that would make him not only a greater poet than +Milton, but a greater poet than any poet that preceded Milton. If this be +so, let us know it. But if not, it is vain work, trying to extol him, as a +poet, above Byron. Mr. Arnold has done Byron injustice by making +selections from his works, and asserting that selections are better than +the whole of the works from which they are selected. You might as well +select from a mountain. What should we think of the process that said, +"Here is an edelweiss, here some heather, here a lump of quartz, here a +bit of ice from a glacier, here some water from a torrent, here some +pine-cones, here some eggs from an eagle's nest; and now you know all +about Mont Blanc"? Byron is no more to be known in that fashion than the +Matterhorn is. You must make acquaintances with pastoral valleys, with +yawning precipices, with roaring cataracts, with tinkling cattle-bells, +with the rumble of avalanches, with the growl of thunder, with the zigzag +lightning, with storm, and mists, and sudden burst of tenderest sunshine, +with these, with more, in fact with all, if Alp or Byron is to be really +known. But Mr. Arnold has rendered Byron one service at least. When he +says that Byron and Wordsworth stand first and pre-eminent among the +English poets of this century, he relieves Byron of danger of rivalry. + + + + +DANTE'S REALISTIC TREATMENT OF THE IDEAL + +READ AT THE TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE DANTE SOCIETY ON JUNE 13, +1900. + + +To discourse of Dante, concerning whom, ever since Boccaccio lectured on +the _Divina Commedia_ in the _Duomo_ of Florence, more than five hundred +years ago, there has been an unbroken procession of loving commentators, +must always be a difficult undertaking; and the difficulty is increased +when the audience addressed, as I believe is the case this evening, is +composed, for the most part, of serious students of the austere +Florentine. The only claim I can have on your attention is that I am, in +that respect at least, in a more or less degree, one of yourselves. It is +now close on forty years since, in Rome, as Rome then was, one repaired, +day after day, to the Baths of Caracalla--not, as now, denuded of the +sylvan growth of successive centuries, but cloaked, from shattered base to +ruined summit, in tangled greenery--and in the silent sunshine of an +Imperial Past surrendered oneself to + + quella fonte + Che spande di parlar si largo fiume, + +that unfailing stream of spacious speech which Dante, you remember, +ascribes to Virgil, which Dante equally shares with him, and to each +alike of whom one can sincerely say: + + Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore, + Che m'han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. + +But love and study of Dante will not of themselves suffice to make +discourse concerning him interesting or adequate; and I am deeply +impressed with the disadvantages under which I labour this evening. But my +task has been made even exceptionally perilous, since it has been preceded +by the entrancing influence of music, and music that borrowed an added +charm from the melodious words of the poet himself. May it not be with you +as it was with him when the musician Casella--"Casella mio"--acceded to +his request in the Purgatorial Realm, and sang to him, he says, + + si dolcemente, + Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona-- + +sang to him so sweetly that the sweetness of it still sounded in his ears; +words that strangely recall the couplet in Wordsworth, though I scarcely +think Wordsworth was a Dante scholar: + + The music in my heart I bore + Long after it was heard no more. + +Many of you remember, I am sure, the entire passage in the second canto of +the _Purgatorio_. But, since there may be some who have forgotten it--and +the best passages in the _Divina Commedia_ can never be recalled too +often--and since, moreover, it will serve as a fitting introduction to the +theme on which I propose for a brief while to descant this evening, let me +recall it to your remembrance. Companioned by Virgil, and newly arrived +on the shores of Purgatory, Dante perceives a barque approaching, so swift +and light that it causes no ripple on the water, driven and steered only +by the wings of an Angel of the Lord, and carrying a hundred disembodied +spirits, singing "_In exitu Israel de AEgypto_." As they disembark, one of +them recognises Dante, and stretches out his arms to embrace the Poet. The +passage is too beautiful to be shorn of its loveliness either by +curtailment or by mere translation: + + Io vidi uno di lor trarresi avante + Per abbracciarmi con si grande affetto, + Che mosse me a far lo somigliante. + O ombre vane, fuor che nell' aspetto! + Tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi, + E tante mi tornai con esse al petto. + + Among them was there one who forward pressed, + So keen to fold me to his heart, that I + Instinctively was moved to do the like. + O shades intangible, save in your seeming! + Toward him did I thrice outstretch my arms, + And thrice they fell back empty to my side.[2] + +Words that will recall to many of you the lines in the second book of the +_AEneid_, where AEneas describes to Dido how the phantom of his perished +wife appeared to him as he was seeking for her through the flames and +smoke of Troy, and how in vain he strove to fold her in one farewell +embrace. + + Ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum, + Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago. + +Similarly, the incorporeal figure in the _Divine Comedy_ bids Dante desist +from the attempt to embrace him, since it is useless; and then Dante +discerns it is that of Casella, who used oftentimes in Florence to sing +to him, and now assures the poet that, as he loved him upon earth, so here +he loves him still. Encouraged by the tender words, Dante calls him +"Casella mio," and addresses to him the following request: + + Se nuova legge non ti toglie + Memoria o uso all' amoroso canto, + Che mi solea quetar tutte mie voglie, + Di cio ti piaccia consolare alquanto + L'anima mia, che con la sua persona + Venendo qui, e affannata tanto. + + If by new dispensation not deprived + Of the remembrance of beloved song + Wherewith you used to soothe my restlessness, + I pray you now a little while assuage + My spirit, which, since burdened with the body + In journeying here, is wearied utterly. + +Quickly comes the melodious response: + + "Amor che nella mente mi ragiona," + Comincio egli allor si dolcemente, + Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona. + Lo mio Maestro, ed io, e quella gente + Ch'eran con lui, parevan si contenti, + Com'a nessun toccasse altro la mente. + + "Love that holds high discourse within mind," + With such sweet tenderness he thus began + That still the sweetness lingers in my ear. + Virgil, and I, and that uncarnal group + That with him were, so captivated seemed, + That in our hearts was room for naught beside. + +Not so, however, the guide of the spirits newly arrived in Purgatory. +Seeing them "_fissi ed attenti alle sue note_," enthralled by Casella's +singing, he begins to rate them soundly as "_spiriti lenti_," lazy, +loitering spirits, asks them what they mean by thus halting on the way, +and bids them hasten to the spot where they will be gradually purged of +their earthly offences, and be admitted to the face of God. The canto +closes with the following exquisite lines: + + Come quando, cogliendo biada o loglio, + Gli colombi adunati alla pastura, + Queti, senza mostrar l'usato orgoglio, + Se cosa appare ond' elli abbian paura, + Subitamente lasciano star l'esca, + Perche assaliti son da maggior cura; + Cosi vid'io quella masnada fresca + Lasciar il canto, e fuggir ver la costa, + Com'uom che va, ne sa dove riesca. + + As when a flight of doves, in quest of food, + Have settled on a field of wheat or tares, + And there still feed in silent quietude, + If by some apparition that they dread + A sudden scared, forthway desert the meal, + Since by more strong anxiety assailed, + So saw I that new-landed company + Forsake the song and seek the mountain side, + Like one who flees, but flies he knows not whither. + +Now, if we consider this episode in its integrity, do we not find +ourselves, from first to last, essentially in the region of the Ideal? +Whether you believe in the existence of a local habitation named +Purgatory, or you do not, none of us, not even Dante himself, has seen it, +save with the mind's eye. It was said of his austere countenance by his +contemporaries that it was the face of the man who had seen Hell. But the +phrase, after all, was figurative, and not even the divine poet had, with +the bodily vision, seen what Virgil, in one of the most pathetic of his +lines, calls the further ashore. Moreover, for awhile, and in what may be +termed the exordium of the episode, Dante surrenders himself wholly to +this Ideal, and treats it idealistically. First he discerns only two +wings of pure white light, which, when he has grown more accustomed to +their brightness, he perceives to be the Angel of the Lord, the steersman +of the purgatorial bark: + + Vedi che sdegna gli argomenti umani, + Si che remo non vuol, ne altro velo + Che l'ale sue, tra liti si lontani + + * * * * * + + Trattando l'aere con l'eterne penne-- + +lines that for ethereal beauty, are, I think unmatched; and I will not +presume to render them into verse. But what they say is that the Angel had +no need of mortal expedients, of sail, or oar, or anything beside, save +his own wings, that fanned the air with their eternal breath. The barque, +thus driven and thus steered, is equally unsubstantial and ideal, for it +makes no ripple in the wave through which it glides. But at length--not, +you may be quite sure, of purpose prepense, but guided by that unerring +instinct which is the great poet's supreme gift--Dante gradually passes +from idealistic to realistic treatment of the episode, thereby compelling +you, by what Shakespeare, in _The Tempest_, through the mouth of Prospero, +calls "my so potent art," to believe implicitly in its occurrence, even if +your incapacity to linger too long in the rarefied atmosphere of the Ideal +has begun to render you incredulous concerning it. For all at once he +introduces Casella, Florence, his own past cares and labours there, the +weariness of the spirit that comes over all of us, even from our very +spiritual efforts, and the soothing power of tender music. Then, with a +passing touch of happy egotism, which has such a charm for us in poets +that are dead, but which, I am told, is resented, though perhaps not by +the gracious or the wise, in living ones, Dante enforces our belief by +representing Casella as forthwith chanting a line of the poet's own that +occurs in a _Canzone_ of the _Convito_: + + Amor che nella mente mi ragiona. + + Love that holds high discourse within my mind. + +For a moment we seem to be again transported into the pure realm of the +Ideal, as not Dante and Virgil alone, but the souls just landed on the +shores of Purgatory, are described as being so enthralled by the +song--_tutti fissi ed attenti_--that they can think of and heed nothing +else. But quickly comes another realistic touch in the reproof to the +spellbound spirits not there to loiter listening to the strain, but to +hurry forward to their destined bourne. Finally, as if to confirm the +impression of absolute reality, while not removing us from the world, or +withdrawing from us the charm, of the Ideal, the poet ends with the +exquisite but familiar simile of the startled doves already recited to +you. + +What is the impression left, what the result produced, by the entire +canto? Surely it is that the poet's imagination, operating through the +poet's realistic treatment of the Ideal, and his idealistic treatment of +the Real, has taken us all captive, so that we feel nothing of the +_Incredulus odi_ disposition, the unwillingness to believe, and the mental +antipathy engendered by that unwillingness, so tersely and so truly +described by Horace, but yield credence wholly and absolutely to the +existence of a place called Purgatory, with its circles, its denizens, its +hopes, its aspirations, and purifying power. But, read where you will in +the pages of the _Divina Commedia_, you will find this is one of the main +causes of its permanent hold on the attention of the world. Its theology +may to many seem open to question, to some obsolete and out of date; its +astronomy necessarily labours under the disadvantage of having been prior +to the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, not to speak of the +great astronomers of later date, including our own times; and its +erudition, weighty and wonderful as it is, can occasionally be shown by +more recent and more advantageously circumstanced scholarship to be faulty +and inaccurate. But so long as these are presented to us nimbused by the +wizard light that fuses the Real and the Ideal, we believe while we read +and listen, and that is enough. The very first line of the _Divina +Commedia_, so familiar to every one, though it is to introduce us to the +horrors of the _Inferno_, is so realistic, so within the range of the +experience of all who have reached the meridian of life or even looked on +that period in others, that we are at once predisposed to yield our +imagination passively to what follows. But I must allow that the passage +which does immediately follow, and which discourses of the panther, the +lion, and the wolf, is so symbolic, and has lent itself to so many +suggestions and interpretations, that, had the poem generally been +conceived and composed in that fashion, it would not only have fallen +short of immortality, it would long since have been buried in the pool of +Lethe, which is the predestined resting-place of all untempered and +unredeemed symbolism in verse. I smile, and I have no doubt you will smile +also, when I say that I, too, have my own interpretation of the inner +meaning of those three menacing beasts. But be assured I have not the +smallest intention of communicating it to you. I gladly pass on, gladly +and quickly, as Dante himself passes on, to a more welcome and less +disputable apparition, who answers, when questioned as to who and what he +is, that man he is not, but man he was; that his parents were of Lombardy, +and all his folk of Mantuan stock; that he lived in the age of the great +Caesar and the fortunate Augustus; that he was a poet--_Poeta fui_--sang of +the just and right-minded son of Anchises, the pious AEneas, who came to +Italy and founded a greater city even than Troy, when proud Ilium was +levelled to the dust. In the presence of Virgil we forget the embarrassing +symbolism of the preceding passage, and believe once more; and, when Dante +addresses him in lines of affectionate awe, that you all know by heart, +and with repeating which all lovers of poets and poetry console themselves +when the prosaic world passes on the other side, every doubt, every +misgiving, every lingering remnant of incredulity is dismissed, and we are +prepared, nay, we are eager, to take the triple journey, along two-thirds +of which Virgil tells Dante he has been sent by the _Imperador che lassu +regna_, the Ruler of the Universe, to conduct him. Prepared we are, nay, +eager, I say, to hear the _disperate strida_ of the _spiriti dolenti_, the +wailings of despair of the eternally lost, and the yearning sighs of those +_che son contenti nel fuoco_, who are resigned to purgatorial pain, and +scarce suffer from it, since they are buoyed up by the hope of finally +joining the _beate genti_, and, along with the blessed, seeing the face of +God. + + Allor si mosse, ed io gli tenni dietro, + +says Dante in the closing line of this, the First Canto of the _Divina +Commedia_. + + Then moved he on, and I paced after him. + +Could you have a more realistic touch? So realistic, so real is it, in the +Realm of the Ideal, that, just as Dante followed Virgil, so we follow +both, humble and unquestioning believers in whatever may be told us. + +I am not unaware that, in an age in which the approval of inflexibly +avenging justice consequent on wrongdoing is less marked and less frequent +than sentimental compassion for the wrongdoer, the punishments inflicted +in the _Inferno_ for the infraction of the Divine Law, as Dante understood +it, are found repellent by many persons, and agreeable to few. I grant +that they are appalling in their sternness; nor was Dante himself +unconscious of this, for he does describe Minos as "scowling horribly" as +the souls of the damned came before him for judgment, and for +discriminating consignment to their allotted circle of torture. Always +terse, and therefore all the more terrible, he nevertheless exhausts the +vocabulary of torment in describing the _doloroso ospizio_, the dolorous +home from which they will never return. As Milton speaks of the "darkness +visible" of Hell, so Dante, before him, writes of it as _loco d'ogni luce +muto_, a place silent of light, but that wails and moans like a +tempestuous sea, battered and buffeted by jarring winds, finally +designated + + La bufera infernal, che mai non resta. + + The infernal hurricane that ceases never. + +Of those who are whirled about by it, _di qua, di la, di giu, di su_, +hither and thither, upward and downward, he writes the awful line: + + Nulla speranza li conforta mai, + Non che di posa, ma di minor pena. + + They have no hope of consolation ever, + Or even mitigation of their woe. + +I could not bring myself, and I am sure you would not wish me to cite more +minutely, the magnificently merciless phrases--all of them thoroughly +realistic touches concerning ideal torment--wherewith Dante here makes his +_terza rima_ an instrument or organ on which to sound the very diapason of +the damned; and, did he dwell overlong on those deep, distressing octaves +of endless suffering, without passing by easy and natural gradations into +the pathetic minor, he would end by alienating all but the austerer +natures. But he is too great an artist, too human, too congenitally and +rootedly a poet, to make that mistake. I am sure you all know in which +canto of the _Inferno_ occur the terrific phrases I have been citing, and +need no telling that they are immediately followed by the most tender and +tearful passage in the wide range of poetic literature. While even yet the +sound of _la bufera infernal_ seems howling in our ears, suddenly it all +subsides, and we hear instead a musically plaintive voice saying: + + Siede la terra, dove nata fui, + Sulla marina dove il Po discende, + Per aver pace co' seguaci sui. + + The land where I was born sits by the sea, + Unto whose shore a restless river rolls, + To be at peace with all its followers. + +Then comes the love-story of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, told +in such exquisite accents, so veiled in music, so transfigured by verse, +that even the sternest moralist, I imagine, can hardly bring himself to +call it illicit. I confess I think it the loveliest single passage in +poetry ever written; yes, lovelier even than anything in Shakespeare, for +it has all Shakespeare's genius, and more than Shakespeare's art; and I +compassionate the man or woman who, having had the gift of birth, goes +down to the grave without having read it. There is no such other +love-story, no such other example of the _lacrymae rerum_, the deep abiding +tearfulness of things. Nothing should be taken from, nothing can be added +to it. To me it seems sacred, like the Ark of the Covenant, that no one +must presume to touch; and I own I tremble as I presume, here and there, +to attempt, unavailingly, to translate it. It was my good fortune to be in +Florence in the month of May 1865, when the City of Flowers, the City of +Dante, which then seemed peopled with nightingales and roses, was +celebrating the six-hundredth anniversary of the birth of her exiled poet; +and those of us who loved him assembled in the Pagliano Theatre to hear +Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi repeat, to the accompaniment of living +pictures, the best-known passages of the _Divina Commedia_. One of those +supreme elocutionists, who still lives, recited the story of Paolo and +Francesca; and from her gifted voice we heard of the _tempo de' dolci +sospiri_ and _i dubbiosi aesiri_, the season of sweet sighs and hesitating +desires, the _disiato riso_, the longed-for smile, the trembling kiss, the +closing of the volume, and then the final lines of the canto: + + Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse, + L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade + Io venni men cosi com'io morisse: + E caddi, come corpo morto cade. + + While the one told to us this dolorous tale, + The other wept so bitterly, that I + Out of sheer pity felt as like to die; + And down I fell, even as a dead body falls. + +This unmatched tale of tender transgression and vainly penitential tears +almost reconciles us to the more abstract description of punishment that +precedes it, and the detailed account of pitiless penalty that follows +it, in succeeding cantos; and the absolute fusion of the ideal and the +real in the woeful story imparts to it a verisimilitude irresistible even +by the most unimaginative and incredulous. Rimini, Ravenna, Malatesta, are +names so familiar to us all that any story concerning them would have to +be to the last degree improbable to move our incredulity. But who is it +that is not prepared to believe in the sorrows of a love-tale? + + Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, + Could ever hear by tale or history, + The course of true love never did run smooth. + +It is the greatest of all masters of the human heart, the greatest and +wisest teacher concerning human life, who tells us that; and Dante, who in +this respect is to be almost as much trusted as Shakespeare himself, makes +Francesca, with her truly feminine temperament, say: + + Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, + Mi prese del costui piacer si forte, + Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona. + + Love that compels all who are loved to love, + Entangled both in such abiding charm, + That, as you see, he still deserts me not. + +As we hear those words, it is no longer Rimini, Ravenna, Malatesta, Paolo, +Francesca, that arrest our attention and rivet it by their reality. We are +enthralled by the ideal realism, or realistic idealism, call it which you +will, of the larger and wider world we all inhabit, of this vast and +universal theatre, of whose stage Love remains to-day, as it was +yesterday, and will remain for ever, the central figure, the dominant +protagonist. + +So far we have seen, by illustrations purposely taken from passages in the +_Inferno_ and the _Purgatorio_ familiar to all serious readers of the +_Divine Comedy_, how Dante, by realistic touches, makes us believe in the +ideal, and how, by never for long quitting the region of the Ideal, he +reconciles us to the most accurate and merciless realism. But there is a +third Realm to which he is admitted, and whither he transports us, the +_Paradiso_. Some prosaically precise person would, perhaps, say that the +thirtieth canto of the _Purgatorio_ is not a portion of the _Paradiso_. +But you know better, for in it Beatrice appears to her poet-lover: + + Sotto verde manto, + Vestita di color di fiamma viva, + + In mantle green, and girt with living light, + +while angelic messengers and ministers from Heaven round her scatter +lilies that never fade; and when Dante, overcome by the celestial vision, +turns to Virgil with the same instinctive feeling of trust + + Col quale il fantolin corre alla mamma, + Quando ha paura + +--trust such as is shown by a little child hurrying to its mother when +afraid, and exclaims, translating a line of Virgil's own: + + Conosco i segni dell' antica fiamma, + + O how I know, and feel, and recognise + The indications of my youthful love;-- + +he finds that Virgil, _dolcissimo padre_, his gentle parent and guide, has +left him, and he stands alone in the presence of Beatrice, and hears her +voice saying: + + Non pianger anco, non pianger ancora; + Che pianger ti convien per altra spada. + + Weep not as yet, Dante, weep not as yet, + Though weep you shortly shall, and for good cause. + +Tearless, and with downcast eyes, he listens to her just reproaches, +trying not even to see the reflection of himself in the water of the +translucent fountain at his side:-- + + Tanta vergogna mi gravo la fronte. + + So strong the shame that weighed my forehead down. + +And so he turns aside his glance to the untransparent sward, till comes +the line, awful in its reproving simplicity: + + Guardami ben: ben son, ben son Beatrice! + + Look at me well! Yes, I am Beatrice! + +Then full and fast flow the tears, like melting snows of Apennine under +Slavonian blast. + +But there is yet worse to come, yet harder to bear, when, not even +addressing him, but turning from him to her heavenly escort, she speaks of +him as "_Questi_," "this man," and tells them, in his hearing, how much +his love for her might have done for him, had he still lived the _vita +nuova_, the pure fresh life with which love had inspired him while she was +yet on earth. But when she was withdrawn from him to Heaven, when she was +of flesh disrobed and became pure spirit, and so was more deserving of +love than before. + + Questi si tolse a me, e diessi altrui. + + This man from me withdrew himself, and gave + Himself to others. + +What think you of that as a realistic treatment of the Ideal? If there be +any among my audience, members of the sex commonly supposed to be the +wiser, who but partly feel and imperfectly apprehend it, then let them ask +any woman they will what she thinks of it, and she will answer, "It is +supreme, it is unapproachable." + +After such an illustration of the power of Dante over one of the main +secrets of fascination in great poetry, it is unnecessary to go in search +of more. With illustrating my theme of this evening I have done, and it +only remains to add a few words of repetition and enforcement of what has +been already indicated, lest perchance, if they were omitted, my meaning +and purpose should be misapprehended or overlooked. Did you happen to +observe that, a little while back, I used the phrase, "the ideal realism, +or realistic idealism, call it which you will"? But now, before +concluding, let me say, what has been in my mind all along, and has been +there for many years, that great poetry consists of the combination of +ideal Realism, realistic Idealism, and Idealism pure and simple. Upon that +point much might be said, and perhaps some day I may venture to say it. In +all ages the disposition of the more prosaic minds--by which term I do not +mean minds belonging to persons devoid of feeling, or even of sentiment, +but persons destitute of the poetic sense, or of what Poetry essentially +is--has been to incline, in works of fiction whether in prose or verse, to +Realism pure and simple; and the present Age, thanks to the invention of +photography and the dissemination of novels that seek to describe persons +and things such as they are or are supposed to be, has a peculiar and +exceptional leaning in that direction. The direction is a dangerous one, +for the last stage of Realism pure and simple in prose fiction is the +exhibition of demoralised man and degraded woman. In poetry, thank Heaven, +that operation is impossible. No doubt, it is possible in verse just as it +is possible in prose, and perhaps even more so; and there are persons who +will tell you that it is Poetry. But it is not, and never can be made +such. Poetry is either the idealised Real, the realistic Ideal, or the +Ideal pure and simple. In other words, as I long since endeavoured to +show, Poetry is Transfiguration. Attempts are made in these days, as we +all well know, to get you to accept Realism pure and simple as the newest +and most inspired utterance of the Heavenly Maid. But they will not be +successful. In that great hall of the Vatican, whither throng pilgrims +from every quarter of the world, and to whose walls Raphael has bequeathed +the ripest and richest fruits of his lucid, elevated, and elevating +genius, is a presentation of the Muse. She is seated on a throne of +majestic marble. Her feet are planted on the clouds, but her laurelled +head and outstretched wings are high in the Empyrean, and round her maiden +throat is a circlet enamelled with the unageing stars. With one hand she +cherishes the lyre, with the other she grasps the Book of Wisdom; and her +attendants are, not the sycophants of passing popularity, but the eternal +angels of God, upholding a scroll wherein are inscribed the words _Numine +afflatur_. She sings only when inspired. That is the Muse for me. Surely +it is the Muse for you. At any rate, it was the Muse of Dante; the Muse +that inspired the _Divina Commedia_ through his love for Beatrice. As an +old English song has it, "'Tis love that makes the world go round," a +homely truth that Dante idealised and transfigured in the last line of his +immortal poem: + + L'Amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stelle. + + Love, + That lights the sun and makes the planets sing; + +love of Love, love of Beauty, love of Virtue, love of Country, love of +Mankind; or, as one might put it in this age of physical discovery: + + Electric love illuminates the world. + + + + +DANTE'S POETIC CONCEPTION OF WOMAN + + +The imaginative estimate or ideal conception of Woman by the Poets has +always been deemed exceptionally interesting, especially by women +themselves, for, as a rule, it is agreeable; and, even if the presentation +be sometimes a little overcharged with glowing colour, all of us, men and +women alike, are not otherwise than pleased with descriptions that portray +us, not exactly as we are, but as we should like to be. Withal, a +portrait, to obtain recognition, must have in it some resemblance to the +original; and, speaking in the most prosaic manner, one need not hesitate +to affirm that any representation of women, at least of womanly women, +that was not attractive would be a travesty of the fact. + +Alike in the _Vita Nuova_ and the _Divina Commedia_, Beatrice Portinari +figures so largely, and Dante's love for her from childhood in her tenth +till her death in her twenty-sixth year is so striking that most persons +think of the great Florentine Poet in association with no other women, +their characters, their occupations, temptations, weaknesses, virtues, and +everyday duties. Yet no man could be a Poet such as Dante who confined his +ken to so limited a field of observation and feeling, and to whom the +whole range of feminine emotion and action was not familiar; and, in the +exposition of that theme, I would invite attention to that wider range and +scope of interest, though from it Beatrice will not be forgotten. Let us +turn, first of all, to the fifteenth canto of the _Paradiso_, where +Cacciaguida, the Poet's ancestor, describes, while Beatrice looks on with +assenting smile, the simplicity of Florentine manners in former times, +alike in men and women, but in women especially--times dear to Dante, +since they immediately preceded those in which he himself lived. + + Fiorenza, + +says Cacciaguida, calling the city by its original name, + + Fiorenza, dentro della cerchia antica, + Si stava in pace, sobria e pudica. + Non avea catenella, non corona, + Non donne contigiate, non cintura, + Che fosse a veder piu che la persona. + + Florence, within her ancient boundaries + Was chaste, and sober, and in peace abode. + No golden bracelets and no head-tires then, + Transparent garments, rich embroideries, + That caught the eye more than the wearer's self. + +He goes on to say that the Florentine ladies of that day left their mirror +without any artificial colouring on their cheeks. Mothers themselves +tended the cradle, and maidens and matrons drew off the thread from the +distaff, while listening to old tales of Troy, Fiesole, and Rome. It is +Dante's own description of the manners and customs of the days when he was +a child. + +Some, perhaps, will ask, "Surely there is nothing very poetic in the +foregoing description of woman?" If so, one must reply, indeed there is, +and only the acceptance of the idea of Poetry prevailing amongst us of +late years, which is essentially false, because so narrow and so exclusive +of the simplest poetry at one end of the scale, and of the highest poetry +at the other, could make any one doubt that a really poetic and +imaginative conception of woman must include the dedication, though not +the entire dedication, of herself to domestic duty and tenderness. + +Is there nothing poetic in Wordsworth's picture of a girl turning her +wheel beside an English fire? + +Is there nothing poetic in Byron's description?-- + + A mind at peace with all below, + A heart whose hopes are innocent. + +Or in Coventry Patmore's?-- + + So wise in all she ought to know, + So ignorant in all beside. + +Is there, I venture to ask, nothing poetic, nothing romantic in the +description of a young girl who blends with cultivated sensibility to +Literature and Art homely tasks thus described?-- + + ... She brims the pail, + Straining the udders with her dainty palms, + Sweet as the milk they drain. She skims the cream, + And, with her sleeves rolled up and round white arms, + Makes the churn sing like boulder-baffled stream. + A wimple on her head, and kirtled short, + She hangs the snow-white linen in the wind, + A heavenly earthliness. + +In the whole range of poetic literature there is no more celebrated +passage than the essentially domestic picture, in the Sixth Book of the +_Iliad_, of Hector, Andromache, and their baby boy, where the Trojan hero, +before sallying forth to battle afresh, stretches out his arms to clasp +the little Astyanax. It might be pedantic to recite the passage in the +original. But here is an excellent translation of it by Mr. Walter Leaf: + + So spake glorious Hector, and stretched out his arms to his boy. But + the child shrank back to the bosom of his fair-girdled nurse, + dismayed at his dear father's aspect, and in dread at the horse-hair + crest that he beheld nodding fiercely from the helmet's top. Then his + dear father laughed aloud, and his lady-mother; and forthwith + glorious Hector took the helmet from his head and laid it, all + gleaming, upon the ground; then kissed he his dear son, and dandled + him in his arms. + +Surely everybody feels the poetic, the romantic character of the incident, +founded on the loves of the household and the hearth. Turn to Chaucer, to +Milton, to Shakespeare, to any great Poet, and you will find that, like +Dante, they included simple duties in their poetic conception of woman. +Only in an age sicklied o'er with lackadaisical or sensuous sentimentality +could it be otherwise. + +But a poet's ideals of what women should be, and often are, is shown not +only by what he extols, but by what he condemns, and, in this respect, +Dante, poet-like, is sparing and reserved. Most--indeed, nearly all--of +the persons whom he indicates by name as being eternally punished in the +Circles of the Inferno are men; partly, perhaps, because Dante, who, it +must be owned, would have been loved by Doctor Johnson as a good hater, +had political and other scores of the kind to settle with those he +describes as having a perpetual lease in the lower regions, but in part, +also, because he could not bring himself to write harshly of any woman he +had known. But to a few notorious female rebels against what he deemed +womanly character and conduct, and who had lived many hundred years before +his day, he is pitilessly severe. It would be difficult to quote lines +from any Poet more so than those in which he describes Semiramis as among +those whom + + Nulla speranza gli conforta mai. + +She has not even hope to fall back on as a mitigation of her endless +torments. Of her offences against his ideal of woman he says: + + A vizio di lussuria fu si rotta, + Che libito fe lecito in sua legge, + Per torre il biasmo in che era condotta. + +She was so steeped in wickedness that she promulgated laws permitting +others to act as she herself did, in order to annul the stigma that would +otherwise have been attached to her. He is a little hard and unjust to +Dido, whom Virgil treats with such exquisite tenderness, in naming her +along with "lustful Cleopatra" in the same passage. To Helen he is more +indulgent, in words at least, content with saying that she was the guilty +cause of dire events, "_per cui tanto reo tempo si volse_"; but she does +not escape endless expiation. Some of my readers will remember how much +more damning of her conduct is Virgil in the Sixth Book of the _AEneid_, +where Priam represents her as giving the signal to the Greeks to enter +Troy, and having concealed his sword, that he may fall a helpless victim +to the vengeance of Paris, whom the fair wanton wished to propitiate in +the hour of her lord's triumph. + +But what is Dante's attitude towards Francesca da Rimini, in the most +beautiful passage, it seems to me, in the whole range of narrative Poetry? +Many, I am sure, know it by heart, and have thereby fortified themselves +against the modern less-refined treatment of it even by men aspiring to be +regarded as poets. Often as one has repeated it to oneself, one has never +felt that Dante had for Francesca any harsher feeling than sympathetic +compassion. He casts around her the halo of the purest sentiment; he +brings music of matchless verbal sweetness to the description of the hour, +the place, the circumstances of her disinterested and unselfish +surrender. The very lines in which he leads up to her pathetic story, +lines in which his feeling concerning frail and hapless love seems to be +purposely expressed in general and wide-embracing language, are in +themselves significant to those who observe their meaning. He says that +when he heard Virgil name the numerous knights and fair dames who were +suffering from having subordinated prudence to impulse, he only felt +troubled for them and bewildered. + + Pieta mi vinse, e fu quasi smarrito. + +The first thing he notices in Francesca and her lover is their buoyancy in +the air, as though they were the finest and most tenuous of spirits; and +when he says to Virgil that he would fain have speech with them, the reply +is that he has only to appeal to them by the love that still moves them, +and they will draw nigh to him. Then follows that lovely simile of doves +floating to call, and Francesca's recognition of Dante with the words: + + O animal grazioso e benigno! + +who is sure to have pity on her hapless doom. When Francesca pauses in her +narrative, and Dante bows his head for sorrow, Virgil shows what is his +own feeling by the brief question addressed to Dante, "What think you?" +Dante replies in a voice broken by emotion: + + ... O lasso, + Quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio + Meno costoro al doloroso passo! + +and, turning to Francesca, he says that her fate fills his eyes with tears +and his heart with anguish. Encouraged by the poet's sympathy, she tells +him what happened, "_al tempo de' dolci sospiri_," in the season of sweet +sighs, in itself a preliminary and melodious appeal for indulgence, and +that he must be patient with her if she tells her tale, sobbing as she +speaks. Torn between sweet remembrance and regret, she cannot refrain from +recalling + + ... il disiato riso + Esser baciato da cotanto amante, + +or intimating with supreme delicacy what ensued in the final line of her +narrative: + + Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante. + +The story she had been reading with Paolo Malatesta of Lancelot and +Guinevere fell from their hands, and that day they read no further on. And +Dante? All he says is that he felt like to die for grief, and fell to the +ground even as a dead body falls. From the first line to the last he +utters no word of blame or reproach. He would not have been a poet had he +done so. + +Let us now turn from the fifth book of the _Inferno_ to the third of the +_Paradiso_, that we may add to our knowledge of Dante's poetic conception +of Woman. He there beholds Piccarda Donati, whom he had known in her +lifetime on earth, but at first does not recognise, because, as she +herself says with heavenly humility, she is now much fairer to look on +than she was then. Withal, she adds, she occupies only an inferior place +in Heaven, because she was forced, and sorely against her own will, to +violate her vow of virginity. She begins her story by saying simply: + + Io fui nel mondo vergine sorella, + +that she was a nun dedicated to God, and goes on to tell how she was +violently torn from her cloister by her brother, Forese Donati, and his +accomplices, to further family ambition, and compelled to submit to the +marriage rite. Dante, feeling, as it seems to me, that this did not +detract from her merit, asks her if she is contented with the relatively +inferior position in Paradise she says she is assigned among celestial +denizens. I trust many readers know her reply, for it is one of the +noblest and most beautiful passages in the whole of the _Divina Commedia_. +Like all fine passages in Poetry, adequate rendering of it in another +tongue is not attainable. But the best translation of it with which I am +acquainted is that of C. B. Cayley--no Cary, mark you--in _terza rima_, +and of which I remember I availed myself when, many years ago, I was +beginning to learn Italian, and read Dante for the first time among the +then leafy-covered ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. Here is Piccarda's +reply: + + Our will, O brother mine, is kept at rest + By power of heavenly love, which makes us will, + For nought else thirsting, only things possessed. + If we should crave to be exalted still + More highly, then our will would not agree + With His, who gives to us the place we fill. + For 'tis of our own will the very ground, + That in the will of God we govern ours. + +Then comes that supremely beautiful line, not to be surpassed by any line +even in Dante: + + In la sua voluntade e nostra pace. + + Our peace is in submission to His will. + +Is it fanciful to think that in that line also Dante has betrayed and +bequeathed to us, perhaps unconsciously, his main conception of Woman, as +a gentle and adoring creature, who finds her greatest happiness in +subordinating her will to those who are deserving of the trust she reposes +in them? + +But Piccarda does not end the dialogue with her own story. She tells Dante +that the great Costanza, as she calls her, who married the German Henry +the Fifth, was also torn from a convent where she had taken the veil, and +forced into Royal nuptials. But when she was thus compelled to violate her +vows, + + Contra suo grado e contra buona usanza, + Non fu dal vel del cuor giammai disciolta. + + She wore the vestal's veil within her heart. + +And, as if to indicate that the conduct of each was condoned by the Virgin +of Virgins, Dante concludes by saying: + + ... _Ave + Maria_, cantando; e cantando vanio, + + She faded from our sight, singing _Ave Maria_, + +and once again he concentrated his gaze on Beatrice, Beatrice whom he +regarded as his highest poetic conception of Woman. Fully to grasp what +that was, we must descend from Heaven to earth and recall the origin and +growth of his adoration of her, as described in the _Vita Nuova_. + +To some commentators on Dante, the narrative to be read there has +suggested difficulties when, in reality, there are none, leading them to +urge that a child of nine years of age could not feel what is therein +described, and that, therefore, it is purely symbolic, and was written not +about any human creature, but indicated Philosophy, or the desire for +spiritual enlightenment and the search for heavenly wisdom, which was +Dante's overpowering impulse almost from the cradle. The answer to such an +interpretation of the passage is that it betrays an utter ignorance of the +emotional precocity of the poetic temperament, and of the vague but +intense hold Love can acquire over Poets from their earliest years. + +Of the reality underlying the idealism of the _Vita Nuova_, we therefore +need have no doubt whatever. Dante's Beatrice was Beatrice Portinari, a +Florentine maid first, a Florentine bride later, whose people lived in the +Corso, near the Canto de' Pazzi. + +All that follows in the narrative of the _Vita Nuova_ may be relied on +just as implicitly; how, when she was eighteen years of age, he met her +again walking in the streets of Florence between two noble ladies older +than herself, and graciously, as Dante says, returned his salute; how, +with the naif shyness of a youth consumed with love, he tried to dissemble +it by pretending to be enamoured of another damsel, which only made +Beatrice look away when she met him; and how he contrived to convey to her +indirectly, through a poem he wrote, that she had misjudged him; how, +thereon, she looked on him graciously once more; and how, alas! in her +twenty-fifth year, she was summoned from this world to the world above. +Then the _Vita Nuova_ draws mournfully to a close, ending with these +significant words:-- + + After I had written this sonnet, there appeared to me a wonderful + vision, in which I saw things that made me determine to write no more + of this dear Saint until I should be able to write of her more + worthily; and, of a surety, she knows that I study to attain unto + this end with all my powers. So, if it shall please Him by Whom all + things live, to spare my life for some more years, I hope to say that + of her which never yet hath been said of any lady; and then may it + please Him, who is the Father of all good, to suffer my soul to see + the glory of its mistress, the sainted Beatrice, who now, abiding in + glory, looketh upon the face of Him who is blessed for ever and ever. + +For the fulfilment of that determination we must return to the _Divina +Commedia_, written in the fullness of the Poet's powers. But there are +three lines in the _Vita Nuova_ about the death of Beatrice that have +haunted me ever since I first read them, and whose beauty, I am sure, all +will feel: + + Non la ci tolse qualita di gelo, + Ne di color, siccome l'altro fece, + Ma sola fu sua gran benignitade: + +lines very difficult to translate, but the meaning of which is that she +died neither from chill nor from fever, which carries off other mortals, +but only of her great benignness, or excess of goodness, which rendered +earth an unfitting dwelling-place for her, and Paradise her only true +home. + +It is not necessary to comment here on the First Canto of the _Divina +Commedia_. That, one has done already before the Dante Society, and it is +not requisite for one's present theme. But in Canto the Second we meet +with the Beatrice of the _Vita Nuova_. She it is that sends Virgil, who +dwells in the neutral territory of Limbo, to the Poet, saying: + + Io son Beatrice, che ti faccio andare: + Amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare. + +And not only does she say that she is animated by love, which has caused +her, now in Heaven, to feel so compassionately towards him, but also +because he loved her so while she was on earth, and continued to do so +after she had quitted it, with a fidelity that has lifted him above the +crowd of ordinary mortals, and made of him a Poet. Here, let it be said in +passing, we get another indication of Dante's poetic conception of Woman, +which is, among other qualities, to co-operate in the making and fostering +of Poets, a mission in which they have never been wanting. Where, indeed, +is the Poet who could not say of some woman, and, if he be fortunate, of +more than one, what, in the Twenty-second Canto of the _Purgatorio_, Dante +makes Statius say to Virgil, "_Per te poeta fui_," "It was through you +that I became a Poet." + +Throughout the remaining Cantos of the _Inferno_, Beatrice naturally is +never mentioned, nor yet in the _Purgatorio_, till we reach Canto the +Thirtieth, wherein occurs perhaps the most painful scene in the +awe-inspiring poem. In it she descends from Heaven, an apparition of +celestial light, compared by the Poet to the dazzling dawn of a glorious +day. Smitten with fear, he turns for help to Virgil, but Virgil has left +him. "Weep not," says Beatrice to him, "that Virgil is no longer by your +side; you will need all your tears when you hear me." Then begins her +terrible arraignment: + + Guardaci ben: ben sem, ben sem Beatrice. + + Look on me well! Yes, I am Beatrice. + +Confused, Dante gazes upon the ground, and then glances at a fountain hard +by; but, seeing his own image trembling in the water, he lowers his eyes +to the green sward encircling it, and fixes them there, while she upbraids +him for his deviation from absolute fidelity to her memory, and his +disregard of her heavenly endeavours still to help and purify him. +Boccaccio says that Dante was a man of strong passions, and possibly, +indeed probably, he was. But Beatrice seems to reproach him with only one +transgression, and, if one is to say what one thinks, she has always +appeared to me a little hard on him. Nor does she rest content till she +has compelled him to confess his fault. He does so, and then she tells him +to lay aside his grief, and think no more of it, for he is forgiven. +Perhaps, in mitigation of the feeling that her severity was in excess of +the cause, one ought to remember, since it is peculiarly pertinent to my +theme, that we are in the above harrowing scene presented with the +crowning characteristic of Dante's poetic conception of Woman, that, be +the offence against her what it may, she forgets and forgives. + +It might be interesting on some other occasion to inquire how far Dante's +poetic conception of Woman is shared by Poets generally, and by the +greater Poets of our own land in particular. Meanwhile one may affirm that +the inquiry would serve to show that it is in substance the same, though +no other Poet, in whatsoever tongue, has extolled and glorified a woman as +Dante did Beatrice. But Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, +Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, could all be shown, by apposite +illustration, to leave on the mind a conception of woman as a being +tender, devoted, faithful, helpful, "sweet, and serviceable," as Tennyson +says of Elaine, quick to respond to affection, sensitive to beauty in +Nature and Arts, sympathising companion alike of the hearth and of man's +struggle with life--in a word, a creature of whom it is true to say, as, +indeed, Byron _has_ said, that "Love is her whole existence," meaning by +Love not what is too frequently in these days falsely presented to us in +novels as such, but Love through all the harmonious scale of loving, +maternal, filial, conjugal, romantic, religious, and universal. + +Read then the Poets. They have a nobler conception of woman and of life +than the novelists. Their unobtrusive but conspicuous teaching harmonises +with the conduct of the best women, and has its deep foundation in a +belief in the beneficent potency of Love, from the most elementary up to +an apprehension of the meaning of the last line of the _Divina Commedia_: + + L'amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stelle. + + Love that keeps the sun in its course, and journeys with the planets in + their orbit. + + + + +POETRY AND PESSIMISM + + +The term Pessimism has in these later days been so intimately associated +with the philosophical theories of a well-known German writer, that I can +well excuse those who ask, What may be the connection between Pessimism +and Poetry? There are few matters of human interest that may not become +suitable themes for poetic treatment; but I scarcely think Metaphysics is +among them. It is not, therefore, to Schopenhauer's theory of the World +conceived as Will and Idea, that I invite your attention. The Pessimism +with which we are concerned is much older than Metaphysics, is as old as +the human heart, and is never likely to become obsolete. It is the +Pessimism of which the simplest, the least cultured, and the most +unsophisticated of us may become the victims, and which expresses the +feeling that, on the whole, life is rather a bad business, that it is not +worth having, and that it is a thing which, in the language used by the +Duke in _Measure for Measure_, in order to console Claudio, none but fools +would keep. + +Now, as all forms of feeling, and most forms of thought, are reflected in +the magic mirror of Poetry, it is only natural that gloomy views of +existence, of the individual life, and of the world's destiny should from +time to time find expression in the poet's verse. There is quite enough +pain in the experience of the individual, quite enough vicissitude in the +history of nations, quite enough doubt and perplexity in the functions and +mission of mankind, for even the most cheerful and masculine Song to +change sometimes into the pathetic minor. What I would ask you to consider +with me is if there be not a danger lest poetry should remain for long in +this minor key, and if the Poet does not find ample justification and +warrant--nay, should he be a true and comprehensive interpreter of life, +of + + All moods, all passions, all delights, + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + +if he does not find himself compelled, in reply to the question, "What of +the night?" to answer, "The stars are still shining." + +No survey of the attitude of Poetry towards Pessimism would be +satisfactory that confined itself to one particular age; and I shall ask +you, therefore, to attend to the utterances of poets in other generations +than our own. But, since our own age necessarily interests us the most, +let us at least _begin_ with IT. + +I should be surprised to find any one doubting that during the last few +years a wave of disillusion, of doubt, misgiving, and despondency has +passed over the world. We are no longer so confident as we were in the +abstract wisdom and practical working of our Institutions; we no longer +express ourselves with such certainty concerning the social and moral +advantages of our material discoveries; we entertain growing anxiety as to +the future of our Commerce; many persons have questioned the very +foundations of religious belief, and numbers have taken refuge from +conflicting creeds in avowed Agnosticism, or the confession that we know +and can know absolutely nothing concerning what it had long been assumed +it most behoves us to know. One by one, all the fondly cherished theories +of life, society and Empire; our belief in Free Trade as the evangelist of +peace, the solution of economic difficulties and struggles, and the sure +foundation of national greatness; all the sources of our satisfaction with +ourselves, our confidence in our capacity to reconcile the rivalry of +capital and labour, to repress drunkenness, to abolish pauperism, to form +a fraternal confederation with our Colonies, and to be the example to the +whole world of wealth, wisdom, and virtue, are one by one deserting us. We +no longer believe that Great Exhibitions will disarm the inherent ferocity +of mankind, that a judicious administration of the Poor Law will gradually +empty our workhouses, or that an elastic law of Divorce will correct the +aberrations of human passion and solve all the problems of the hearth. The +boastfulness, the sanguine expectations, the confident prophecies of olden +times are exchanged for hesitating speculations and despondent whispers. +We no longer seem to know whither we are marching, and many appear to +think that we are marching to perdition. We have curtailed the authority +of kings; we have narrowed the political competence of aristocracies; we +have widened the suffrage, till we can hardly widen it any further; we +have introduced the ballot, abolished bribery and corruption, and called +into play a more active municipal life; we have multiplied our railways, +and the pace of our travel has been greatly accelerated. Telegraph and +telephone traverse the land. Surgical operations of the most difficult and +dangerous character are performed successfully by the aid of anaesthetics, +without pain to the patient. We have forced from heaven more light than +ever Prometheus did; with the result that we transcend him likewise in our +pain. No one would assert that we are happier, more cheerful, more full of +hope, than our predecessors, or that we confront the Future with greater +confidence. All our Progress, so far, has ended in Pessimism more or less +pronounced; by some expressed more absolutely, by some with more +moderation; but felt by all, permeating every utterance, and infiltrating +into every stratum of thought. + +Now let us see to what extent these gloomy views have found expression in +poetry, and, first of all, in the writings of not only the most widely +read but the most sensitive and receptive poet of our time, Alfred +Tennyson. Tennyson came of age in 1830, or just on the eve of the first +Reform Bill, when a great Party in the State, which was to enjoy almost a +monopoly of power for the next thirty years, firmly believed, and was +followed by a majority of the nation in believing, that we had only to +legislate in a generous and what was called a liberal sense, to bring +about the Millennium within a reasonable period. They had every possible +opportunity of putting their belief into practice, and they did so with +generous ardour. Now in that year 1830 there appeared what was practically +Tennyson's first volume; and save in the instance of the short poem +beginning + + You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease, + Within this region I subsist, + +and the somewhat longer but still comparatively brief one, opening with + + Love thou thy land, with love far-brought + From out the storied Past, + +there is no reference in it to the political or social condition of the +English people. The bulk of the poems had evidently been composed, so to +speak, in the lofty vacuum created by the poet and the artist for himself, +save where, in the lines, + + Vex not thou the Poet's mind + With thy shallow wit: + Vex not thou the poet's mind, + For thou canst not fathom it, + +he seemed to be giving the great body of his countrymen notice that they +had nothing in common with him, or he with them. And, in the two +exceptions I have named, what is his attitude? You all remember the lines: + + But pamper not a hasty time, + Nor feed with vague imaginings + The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings + That every sophister can lime. + +And so he goes on, through stanzas with which, I am sure, you are +thoroughly familiar, ending with the often-quoted couplet: + + Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed + Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay. + +It would be difficult to find, in verse, a more terse or accurate +embodiment of what, in no Party sense, we may call the Conservative mind, +the Conservative way of looking at things, or a more striking instance of +contemporaneous verse reflecting what had recently been the average public +temper of the moment. The England of the years that immediately preceded +1830 was an England wearied with the strain and stress of the great war +and the mighty agitations of the early part of the century, and now, +craving for repose, was in politics more or less stationary. Therefore in +this earliest volume, of one of the most sensitive and receptive of +writers, we encounter only quiet panegyrics of + + A land of settled government, + A land of just and old renown, + Where Freedom slowly broadens down + From precedent to precedent. + + Where Faction seldom gathers head, + But, by degrees to fulness wrought, + The strength of some diffusive thought + Hath time and space to work and spread. + +Here we have none of the rebellious political protests of Byron, none of +the iconoclastic fervour of Shelley, none even of the philosophic yearning +of Wordsworth. It was a Conservative, a self-satisfied England, and the +youthful Tennyson accordingly was perfectly well satisfied with it, +evidently having as yet no cognizance of the fact that Radicalism was +already more than muling and pewking in the arms of its Whig nurse, and +that Reforms were about to be carried neither "slowly," nor by "still +degrees," nor in accordance with any known "precedent." + +Tennyson's next volume was not published till 1842. During the twelve +years that had elapsed since the appearance of its predecessor, a mighty +change had come not only over the dream, but over the practice, of the +English People. It was an England in which the stationary or conservative +tone of thought of which I spoke was, if not extinct, discredited and +suppressed, and the fortunes of the Realm were moulded by the generous and +hopeful theories of Liberalism. Tennyson meanwhile had been subjected to +the influences of what he called the wondrous Mother Age; and harken how +now--it scarcely sounds like the same voice--the eulogist of the "storied +Past," the deprecator of "crude imaginings" and of a "hasty time," +confronts the dominant spirit and rising impulses of the new generation: + + For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, + Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; + + Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, + Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; + + Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, + With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm; + + Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd + In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. + + There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, + And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. + +Did Optimism ever find a clearer, more enthusiastic, or more confident +voice than that? I have sometimes thought that when the Historian comes to +write, in distant times, of the rise, progress, and decline of Liberalism +in England, he will cite that passage as the melodious compendium of its +creed. You all know where the passage comes; for you have, I am sure, the +first _Locksley Hall_ by heart. + +But there is another _Locksley Hall_, the _Locksley Hall_ which the Author +himself calls _Locksley Hall Sixty Years After_, published as recently as +1886. You are acquainted with it, no doubt; but I should be surprised to +find any one quite so familiar with it as with its predecessor. It is not +so attractive, so fascinating, so saturated with beauty. But for my +purpose it is eminently instructive, and I will ask you to listen to some +of its rolling couplets. + + Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end? + Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend. + + Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past, + Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last. + + Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise: + When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, spoken lies? + + Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn, + Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, "Ye are equals, equal-born." + + Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat. + Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat. + + Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom + Larger than the Lion,--Demos end in working its own doom. + + Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game; + Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name. + + Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all; + Step by step we rose to greatness,--thro' the tonguesters we may fall. + +Was there ever such a contrast as between these two _Locksley Halls_? The +same poet, the same theme, the same metre, but how different the voice, +the tone, the tendency, the conclusion! All the Liberalism, all the +enthusiasm, the hope, the confidence, of former years have vanished, and +in their place we have reactionary despondency. It is as though the same +hand that wrote the Christening Ode to Liberalism, had composed a dirge to +be chanted over its grave. + +The genius of Tennyson needs no fresh panegyric. It is but yesterday he +died, in the fullness of his Fame; and that his works will be read so long +as the English language remains a living tongue, I cannot doubt. But if, +while his claim to the very highest place as an artist must ever remain +uncontested, doubts should be expressed concerning his equality with the +very greatest poets, those who express that doubt will, I imagine, base +their challenge on the excessive receptivity, and consequent lack of +serenity of his mind. In the first _Locksley Hall_ the poet is an +Optimist. In the second _Locksley Hall_ he is a Pessimist. And why? +Because, when the first was written, the prevailing tone of the age was +optimistic; and, when the second was composed, the prevailing tone of the +time had become pessimistic. + +It will scarcely be doubted, therefore, that there does exist a real and a +very grave danger lest Poetry should, in these perplexing and despondent +days, not only be closely associated with Pessimism, but should become for +the most part its voice and echo. I am precluded from presenting to you +illustrations of this danger from the works of living writers of verse. +But in truth, the malady of which I am speaking--for malady, in my +opinion, it is--began to manifest itself long before the present +generation, long before Tennyson wrote, and when indeed he was yet a child +in the cradle. The main original source of Modern Pessimism is the French +movement known as the Revolution, which, by exciting extravagant hopes as +to the happy results to be secured from the emancipation of the +individual, at first generated a fretful impatience at the apparently slow +fulfilment of the dream, and finally aroused a sceptical and reactionary +despondency at the only too plain and patent demonstration that the dream +was not going to be fulfilled at all. It is this blending of wild hopes +and extravagant impatience that inspired and informed the poetry of +Shelley, that produced _Queen Mab_, _The Revolt of Islam_, and _Prometheus +Unbound_. In Byron it was impatience blent with disillusion that dictated +_Childe Harold_, _Manfred_, and _Cain_, and finally culminated in the +mockery of _Don Juan_. Keats, while ostensibly holding aloof from the +political and social issues of his time, succumbed and ministered to the +disease, even if unconsciously and unintentionally, more even than either +Byron or Shelley; for _they_ went on fighting against, while _he_ +passively submitted, to it. Keats found nothing in his own time worth +sympathising with or singing about, and so took refuge in mythological and +classical themes, or in the expression of states of feeling in which he +grows half in love with easeful death, in which more than ever it seems +sweet to die and to cease upon the midnight with no pain, and to the high +requiem of the nightingale to become a sod that does not hear. + +Now it is an instructive circumstance that, in recent years, a distinct +and decided preference has been manifested both by the majority of critics +and by the reading public for the poetry of Keats even over the poetry of +the other two writers I have named in connection with him. In Byron, +notwithstanding his rebellious tendency, notwithstanding the gloom that +often overshadows his verse, notwithstanding his being one of the +exponents of those exaggerated hopes and that exaggerated despondency of +which I have spoken, there was a considerable fund of common sense and a +good deal of manliness. He was a man of the world and could not help being +so, in spite of his attitude of hostility to it. Moreover, in many of his +poems, action plays a conspicuous part, and the general passions, +interests, and politics of mankind are dealt with by him in a more or less +practical spirit, and as though they concerned him likewise. Shelley, too, +not unoften condescended to deal with the political, social, and religious +polemics of his time, though he always did so in a passionate and utterly +impracticable temper, and would necessarily leave on the mind of the +reader, the conviction that everything in the world is amiss, and that +the only possible remedy is the abolition of everything that had hitherto +been regarded as an indispensable part of the foundation of human society. +But Keats does not trouble himself about any of these things. He gives +them the go-by, he ignores them, and only asks to be allowed to leave the +world unseen, and with the nightingale, to fade away into the forest dim. + + Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget + What thou among the leaves hast never known, + The weariness, the fever, and the fret + Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; + Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, + Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; + Where but to think is to be full of sorrow + And leaden-eyed despairs; + Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, + Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. + +This is the voice, I say, which, during the last few years, has been +preferred even to Shelley's, and very much preferred to Byron's. And why? +You will perhaps say that Keats's workmanship is fascinatingly beautiful. +In the passage I have cited, and in the entire poem from which it is +taken, that unquestionably is so. But I trust I shall not give offence if +I say that the number of my countrymen and countrywomen who lay stress on +the artistic manner, whether in verse or prose, in which an opinion is +expressed, compared with the number of those who value poetry or prose +chiefly because it expresses the opinions they value and the sentiments +they cherish, is very small. No, Keats is preferred because Keats turns +aside from the world at large, and thinks and writes only of individual +feeling. Hence he has been more welcomed by recent critics, and by recent +readers of poetry. Indeed, certain critics have laboured to erect it into +a dogma, indeed into an absolute literary and critical canon, that a poet +who wishes to attain true distinction must turn his back on politics, on +people, on society, on his country, on patriotism, on everything in fact +save books--his own thoughts, his own feelings, and his own art. Because +Byron did not do so they have dubbed him a Philistine; and because Pope +did precisely the reverse, and the reverse, no doubt, overmuch, they +assert that he was not a poet at all. + +It is not necessary to dwell on the fatuousness of such criticism, more +especially as one discerns welcome signs of a disposition on the part of +the reading public to turn away from these guides, and a disposition even +on the part of the guides themselves in some degree to reconsider and +revise their unfortunate utterances. But I have alluded to the doctrine in +question, in order to show you to what lengths Pessimism, which is only a +compendious expression of dissatisfaction with things in general, in other +words with life, with society, and with mankind, can go, and how it has +culminated in such disdain of them by poets, that they brush them aside as +subjects unworthy of the Muse. Surely Pessimism in Poetry can no farther +go, than to assume, without question, that man, life, society, patriotism +are not worth a song? + +I should not wonder if some will have been saying to themselves, "But what +about Wordsworth; Wordsworth, who was the contemporary, and at least the +equal, alike in genius and in influence, of the three poets just named?" I +have not forgotten Wordsworth. Wordsworth was of too pious a temperament, +using the word pious in its very largest signification, to be a Pessimist; +for true piety and Pessimism are irreconcilable. Nevertheless Wordsworth, +as a poet, likewise experienced, and experienced acutely, the influence of +the French Revolution. Upon this point there can be no difference of +opinion; for he himself left it on record in a well-known passage. +Everybody knows with what different eyes Wordsworth finally looked on the +French Revolution; how utterly he broke with its tenets, its promises, its +offspring; taking refuge from his disappointment. + +But something akin to despondency, if too permeated with sacred +resignation wholly to deserve that description, may be discovered in the +attitude henceforward assumed by Wordsworth, as a poet, towards the world, +society, and mankind. Not only did he write a long poem, _The Recluse_, +but he himself was a recluse, and the whole of _The Excursion_ is the +composition of a recluse. Matthew Arnold, always a high authority on +Wordsworth, has said: + + But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken + From half of human fate. + +Indeed they did; turning instead to the silence that is in the sky, to the +sleep that is in the hills, to the mountains, the flowers, and the poet's +own solitary _meditations_. He declared that he would rather be a Pagan +suckled in a creed outworn than one of those Christian worldlings, of +which society seemed to him mainly to consist. This is not necessarily +Pessimism. But it goes perilously near to it; and the boundary line would +have been crossed, but that Wordsworth's prayer was answered, in which he +petitioned that his days might be linked each to each by natural piety. + +Of Matthew Arnold himself, as a poet, I am able to speak; for though he +was not long ago one's contemporary, he is no longer one of ourselves. In +Matthew Arnold it has always seemed to me, the poet and the man, his +reason and his imagination, were not quite one. They were harnessed +together rather than incorporated one with the other; and, many years +before he died, if I may press the comparison a little farther, the poet, +the imaginative part of him became lame and halt, and he conveyed his mind +in the humbler one-horse vehicle of prose. The poetic impulse in him was +not strong enough to carry him along permanently against the prosaic +opposition of life. Nevertheless, he was a poet who wrote some very +beautiful poetry; and he exercised a powerful influence, both as a poet +and as a prose-writer, on the thoughts and sentiments of his time. Now, +what do we find him saying? Listen! + + Wandering between two worlds, one dead, + The other powerless to be born, + With nowhere yet to rest my head, + Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. + Their faith, My tears, the world deride, + I come to shed them at your side. + + There yet perhaps may dawn an age, + More fortunate alas! than we, + Which without hardness will be sage, + And gay without frivolity. + Sons of the world, oh haste those years! + But, till they rise, allow our tears. + +Hark to the words he puts into the mouth of Empedocles: + + And yet what days were those, Parmenides! + Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought + Nor outward things were closed and dead to us; + But we received the shock of mighty thoughts + On simple minds with a pure natural joy. + + * * * * * + + We had not lost our balance then, nor grown + Thought's slaves, and dead to every natural joy. + +In another poem he declares: + + Achilles ponders in his tent: + The Kings of modern thought are dumb; + Silent they are, though not content, + And wait to see the future come. + + * * * * * + + Our fathers watered with their tears + The sea of time whereon we sail; + Their voices were in all men's ears + Who passed within their puissant hail. + Still the same ocean round us raves, + But we stand mute and watch the waves. + +Last and worst of all, and in utter despondency and pessimism he cries: + + Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead, + Your social order, too! + Where tarries He, the Power who said, + _See_, I make all things new? + ... The past is out of date, + The future not yet born; + And who can be alone elate, + While the world lies forlorn? + +Can Pessimism in Poetry go farther than that? Many will perhaps think it +cannot; but, unfortunately, it can. It is only from poets who are dead, if +dead but recently, that one can draw one's illustrations; otherwise I +could suggest you should read to yourselves volume upon volume of verse, +the one long weary burden of which is the misery of being alive. I daresay +you will not be sorry that one is precluded from introducing these +melancholy minstrels. But the spirit that imbues and pervades them is +compendiously and conveniently expressed in a composition that I _can_ +read to you, and which I select because it seems to express, in reasonably +small compass, the indictment which our metrical pessimists labour to +bring against existence. + +I have confined my survey entirely to poets of our own land, and have said +nothing to you of Giacomo Leopardi, the celebrated Italian Pessimistic +Poet; nothing of Heine, whose beautiful but too often cynical lyrics must +be known to you either in the original German, or in one or other of the +various English versions, into which they have been rendered; nothing of +the long procession of railers, sometimes bestial, nearly always +repulsive, in French verse, beginning with Baudelaire, and coming down to +the _petits creves_ of poetry who are not ashamed to be known by the name +of _decadens_, and who certainly deserve it, for if they possess nothing +else, they possess to perfection the art of sinking. One would naturally +expect to find in the country where occurred the French Revolution, the +most violent forms of the malady which, as I have said, is mainly +attributable to it; and surely it is a strong confirmation of the truth of +that theory that it is in France poetic pessimism has in our day had its +most outrageous and most voluminous expression. + +I hope no one supposes that I am, even incidentally, intending to +pronounce a sweeping and unqualified condemnation of the great movement +known in history as the French Revolution. That would indeed be to be as +narrow as the narrowest pessimist could possibly show himself. The French +Revolution, as is probably the case with every great political, religious, +or social movement, was in its action partly beneficial, partly +detrimental. It abolished many monstrous abuses, it propounded afresh some +long-neglected or violated truths; and it gave a vigorous impulse to human +hope. But it was perhaps the most violent of all the great movements +recorded in human annals. Accordingly, it destroyed over much, and it +promised over much. In all probability, action and reaction are as nicely +balanced in the intellectual and moral world as in the physical, and +exaggerated hopes must have their equivalent in correlated and co-equal +disappointment. I sometimes think that the nineteenth century now closed +will be regarded in the fullness of time as a colossal egotist, that began +by thinking somewhat too highly of itself, its prospects, its capacity, +its performances, and ended by thinking somewhat too meanly of what I have +called things in general, or those permanent conditions of man, life, and +society, which no amount of Revolutions, French or otherwise, will avail +to get rid of. + +In truth, if I were asked to say briefly what Pessimism is, I should say +it is disappointed Egotism; and the description will hold good, whether we +apply it to an individual, to a community, or to an age. + +For nothing is more remarkable in the writings of pessimistic poets than +the attention they devote, and that they ask us to devote, to their own +feelings. Far be it from me to deny that some very lovely and very +valuable verse has been written by poets concerning their personal joys, +sorrows, hopes, longings, and disappointments. But then it is verse which +describes the joys, sorrows, hopes, longings, and disappointments common +to the whole human race, and which every sensitive nature experiences at +some time or another, in the course of chequered life, and which are +peculiar to no particular age or generation, but the pathetic possession +of all men, and all epochs. The verse to which I allude with less +commendation, is the verse in which the writer seems to be occupied, and +asking us to occupy ourselves, with exceptional states of suffering which +appertain to him alone, or to him and the little esoteric circle of +superior martyrs to which he belongs, and to some special period of +history in which their lot is cast. The sorrows we entertain in common +with others never lead to pessimism, they lead to pity, sympathy, pathos, +to pious resignation, to courageous hope. I wish these privileged invalids +would take to heart those noble lines of Wordsworth: + + So once it would have been--'tis so no more-- + I have submitted to a new control-- + A power is gone which nothing can restore, + A deep distress hath humanized my soul! + +I sometimes think these doleful bards have never had a really deep +distress, that their very woe is fanciful, and that like the young +gentleman in France of whom Arthur speaks in _King John_, they are as sad +as night, only for wantonness. But far from being rebuked by critics for +their sea-green melancholy, they have been hailed as true masters of song +for scarcely any better reason than that they declare themselves to be +utterly miserable, and life to be equally so. Indeed by some critics it +has been raised into a literary canon, not only that all Poetry, to be of +much account, must be written in the pathetic minor, but that the poets +themselves, if we are to recognise them as endowed with true genius and +real sacred fire, must be unhappy from the cradle to the grave. If they +can die young, if they can go mad, or commit suicide, so much the better. +Their credentials as great poets are then firmly established. Even a +pathetic phrase has been invented to describe the natural and inevitable +condition of such sacred persons, a phrase that must be well known to +you--the Sorrows of Genius. + +Therefore, in the really sacred name of Genius, of Literature, of Poetry, +I protest against this pitiable, this mawkish, unmanly, unwholesome, and +utterly untrue estimate both of poetry and poets. No first-rate poet ever +went mad, or ever committed suicide, though one or two, no doubt, have +happened to die comparatively young. It is utterly dishonouring to poets, +it is utterly discrediting to men of genius, to represent them as feeble, +whining, helpless, love-sick, life-sick invalids, galvanised from time to +time into activity by a sort of metrical hysteria. Because Shelley has +truly said that + + Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought + +--and because in _Julian and Maddalo_ he has represented Byron as saying +that men + + ... learn in suffering what they teach in song + +--are we to conclude that sadness and suffering are the only things in +life, the only things in it deserving of the poet's music? No one will +ever be a poet of much consequence who has not suffered, for, as Goethe +finely says, he who never ate his bread in sorrow, knows not the Heavenly +Powers. But, if our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest +thought, they are not necessarily our strongest or our greatest songs; and +if we accept the assertion that men learn in suffering what they teach in +song, do not let us forget the "learning" spoken of in the line. The poet, +no doubt, has to learn by suffering, but having learnt, he has then, in my +opinion, to help others not to be miserable, but to be happy. + +I cannot here allude to well-known poets of other ages and other nations, +avowedly great and permanent benefactors of mankind, all of whom alike +were completely free from this malady of universal discontent. But let me +at least take a cursory survey of our native poets; for, after all, to us +English men and English women, what English poets have felt and said +concerns us most and interests us most deeply. Let us see what is their +attitude to external nature, to man, woman, life, society, and the general +dispensation of existence. + +You know how our modern pessimists cannot see a tree, a flower, or a +mountain, but straightway they drop into what I may call a falling +sickness, and all the beauty of the woods, fields, and sky merely suggests +to them a picturesque background for their own superior sighs and sorrows. +How differently Chaucer looks upon the panorama of this fair earth of +ours! He is a great student, as men in the early days of the Renaissance +were, and he tells us that he hath such delight in reading books, and has +in his heart for them such reverence, that there is no game which can tear +him away from them. But, when the month of May comes, and the birds sing, +and the flowers begin to shoot, then, he adds, "Farewell my book and my +devotion!" He wanders forth and beholds the eye of the daisy; and this +blissful sight, as he calls it, softeneth all his sorrow. Elsewhere he +describes how he cannot lie in bed for the glad beams of the sun that pour +in through the window. He rushes out, and is delighted with everything. +The welkin is fair, the air blue and light, it is neither too hot nor too +cold, and not a cloud is anywhere to be seen. This disposition of content +with and joy in external Nature, Chaucer displays equally when he consorts +with his kind. It is very noticeable, though I am not aware if it has been +pointed out before, how he portrays all the various pilgrims and +personages in the famous _Prologue to the Canterbury Tales_ as of cheerful +and generally jovial spirits. There is not a melancholy person, not a +pessimist, in the whole company. He describes himself as talking and +having fellowship with every one of them, and we may therefore conclude he +also was pretty cheerful and genial himself. Even of his "perfect gentle +knight," whom he evidently intended to describe as the pink of chivalry, +he says: + + And though that he was worthy, he was wise. + +And there never was, and never will be, wisdom without cheerfulness. As +for the young Squire, the lover and lusty bachelor, that accompanied the +Knight, Chaucer says of him, in a couplet that has always struck me as +possessing a peculiar charm: + + Singing he was or fluting all the day, + He was as merry as the month of May. + +He says of him, though he could sit a horse well, he could also write +songs; and we can easily surmise what the songs were like. Chaucer's Nun +or Prioress is delineated by him as full pleasant and amiable of port, and +as even taking trouble to feign the cheerful air of a lady of the Court. +When the Monk rides abroad, men could hear his bridle jingling in a +whistling wind as clear and loud as the chapel bell. Do not the words stir +one's blood to cheerfulness, and sound like a very carillon of joy? Of the +Friar it is recorded that certainly he had a merry note, and well could he +sing and play upon the harp, and that while he sang and played, his eyes +twinkled in his head, like stars in the frosty night. The business of the +Clerk of Oxenford was by his speech to sow abroad moral virtue; but +Chaucer adds, "And gladly would he learn--" mark that word "gladly" "--and +gladly teach." The Franklin, a country gentleman, he declares, was wont to +live in delight, for he was Epicurus' own son. The Shipman draws many a +draught of wine from Bordeaux; well can the wife of Bath laugh and jest; +the Miller is a regular joker and buffoon; a better fellow you cannot +find, he avers, than the Sumpnor; and the Pardoner, for very jollity, goes +bareheaded, singing full merrily and loud. As for the Landlord of the +"Tabard," he is described as making great cheer, being a right merry man. +He declares there is no comfort nor mirth in riding to Canterbury, even on +pilgrimage, as dumb as a stone, and that they may smite off his head if he +does not succeed in making them merry; and it all ends by Chaucer +declaring that every wight was blithe and glad. Indeed, these are such a +cheery, such a jovial set, that the only sorrow we can feel in connection +with them is regret that we, too, were not of that delightful company. + +I wonder if it has occurred to you, while reading these brief and cursory +extracts from Chaucer, to say to yourselves, "How English it all is!" If +not, may I say it for you? I am free to confess that I am one of those who +think--and I hope there are some in this room who share my opinion--that +the epithet English is an epithet to be proud of, an adjective of praise, +a mark of commendation, and connotes, as the logician would say, +everything that is manly, brave, wholesome, and sane. These latter-day +melancholy moping minstrels are not English at all, they are feeble copies +of foreign originals. Between them and Chaucer there is absolute +alienation. About them there is nothing jolly or jovial, and there is not +one good fellow among them. + +Let us turn to the next great name according to chronological order in +English Poetry; let us glance, if but rapidly, at the pages of Spenser. +You could not well have two poets of more different dispositions than +Chaucer and Spenser. One seems to hear Chaucer's own bridle jingling in a +whistling wind, to see his own eyes twinkling in his head like stars in +the frosty night, and one thinks of him, too, as singing or fluting all +the day long and being as merry as the month of May. In the gaze, on the +brow, and in the pages of Spenser, there abides a lofty dignity, as of a +high-born stately gentleman, deferential to all, but familiar with none. +Indeed he resembles his own Gentle Knight in the opening lines of the +_Fairy Queen_, the description of whom I have always thought is none other +than the portraiture of himself. If ever a poet had high seriousness it is +Spenser. He never condescends to indulge in the broad jests dear to +Chaucer, frequent in Shakespeare, common in Byron. Yet between him and +Chaucer, between him and every great poet, there is this similarity, that +he looks on life with a cheerful mind. It is a grave cheerfulness, but +cheerfulness all the same; and, in truth, cheerful gravity, and high +seriousness are one and the same thing. + + Full jolly Knight he seemed, and fair did sit, + As one for Knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit! + +he says in the very first stanza of his noble poem. "Jolly," no doubt, +does not mean quite the same thing with Spenser as it does with Chaucer. +There is the difference in signification, we may say, that there is, in +character, between the Landlord of the "Tabard" and the Gentle Knight. But +never does the latter lapse into melancholy, much less into Pessimism. He +is too active, on too great adventure bound, and too impressed with its +solemn importance, for that. Spenser himself significantly expresses the +fear that his Gentle Knight + + Of his cheer did seem too solemn sad, + +as though he wished to let us know that even solemn sadness is a fault. +But he soon enables us to discern that appearance is misleading, and +reflects in reality only a noble, lofty, and serene temper, and that +desire to win the worship and favour of the Fairy Queen, which he tells +us, "of all earthly things, the Knight most did crave." As soon as Spenser +has described the lovely lady that rode the Knight beside, he says: + + And forth they pass, with _pleasure_ forward led. + +And again + + Led with _delight_, they thus beguile the way. + +There is no buffoonery, as in the _Canterbury Tales_, but a wise equable +serenity that contemplates man and woman, beauty, temptation, danger, +sorrow, struggle, honour, this world and the next, with a Knightly +equanimity that nothing can disturb. But why should I dwell on the point, +when Spenser himself has written one line which I may call his confession +of faith on the subject?-- + + The noblest mind the best contentment has. + +What a noble line! the noblest, I think, in all literature. Let us commit +it to heart, repeat it morning, noon, and night, and it will cast out for +us all the devils, aye, all the swine of Pessimism. What does this grave, +this serious, this dignified English poet say of the Muses themselves?-- + + The Sisters Nine, which dwell on Parnass' height, + Do make them music for their more delight! + +That is Spenser's conception of the mission of poetry, and of the function +of the poet--to make them music for their more delight--I acknowledge it +is mine. I earnestly trust it is that of many. + +There is no passion of the human heart, no speculation of the human mind, +to which Shakespeare has not, in some passage or another, given expressive +utterance; and since in life there is much sorrow, no little suffering, +and ample sadness, chapter and verse can readily be found in his universal +pages for any mood or any state of feeling. But what is the one, broad, +final impression we receive of the gaze with which Shakespeare looked on +life? A complete answer to that question would furnish matter for a long +paper. But one brief passage must here suffice. In the most terrible and +tragic of all his tragedies, _King Lear_, and in the most terrible and +tragic of all its appalling incidents, the following brief colloquy takes +place between Edgar and his now sightless father: + + Away, old man; give me thy hand; away! + King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en: + Give me thy hand, come on. + No farther, sir, + +replies Gloster in despair, + + No farther, sir! A man may rot even here. + +What is Edgar's answer?-- + + What! In ill thoughts again? Men must endure + Their going hence, even as their coming hither, + Ripeness is all: come on! + +If, at such a moment, and in the very darkest hour of disaster, +Shakespeare puts such language into the mouth of Edgar, is it wonderful +that he should, in less gloomy moments, take so cheerful a view of life, +that Milton can only describe his utterances by calling them "woodnotes +wild"? + +And Milton himself? Milton almost as grave as Spenser and certainly more +austere. Yet I do not think that Pessimism, that the advocates of +universal suicide, since life is not worth living, will be able to get +much help or sanction for their doleful gospel from the poet who wrote +_Paradise Lost_ expressly to + + ... assert Eternal Providence + And justify the ways of God to man. + +Milton has given us, in two of the loveliest lyrics in the language, his +conception of Melancholy and of Joy. Of his _L'Allegro_ I need not speak. +But in _Il Penseroso_, if anywhere in Milton, we must look for some +utterance akin to the desolation and the despair of modern pessimistic +poets. We may look, but assuredly we shall not find it. + + Then let the pealing organ blow, + To the full-voiced choir below. + +In protesting, therefore, against Pessimism in Poetry, I am only returning +to the oldest, soundest, and noblest traditions in English Literature, and +in the English character. I trust no one supposes I am denying or that I +am insensible to the existence of pain, woe, sadness, loss, even anguish +and acute suffering, as integral and inevitable elements in life; and if +poetry did not take note of these, and give to them pathetic and adequate +expression, poetry would not be, as it is, coextensive with life, would +not be the Paraclete or Comforter, with the gift of tongues. In poetry the +note of sorrow will be, and must be, occasionally, and indeed frequently +struck; it should not be the dominant key, much less the only key in which +the poet tunes his song. There is much in our modern civilisation that is +very unbeautiful, nay, that is downright ugly, whether we look on it with +the eye of the artist or with the vision of the moralist. Moreover, I +perceive--who could fail to perceive?--that we have in these days some +very dark and difficult social problems to solve. Then let the poet come +to our assistance by accompanying us with musical encouragement. For, +remember, the poet has to make harmony, not out of language only, but out +of life as well. I was once looking at a violin, a very lovely violin, a +Stradivarius of great value and exquisite tone, and I asked the lady to +whom it belonged of what wood the various parts of the instrument was +composed. She told me, with much loving detail; but, she said, "I ought to +add that I have been told no violin can be made of supreme quality unless +the wood be taken from that side of the tree which faces south." It is the +same with the Poet. If he is to give us the sweetest, the most sonorous, +and the truest notes, his nature must have a bias towards the sunny side. + + + + +A VINDICATION OF TENNYSON + +[This paper appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ a quarter of a century ago, +in reply to one that had been published in the same periodical in the +previous month.] + + +In the days of Chivalry, whose spirit, I trust, still lingers with us, +though its forms may have passed away, the prelude to a peaceful +tournament, or _joute de plaisance_, was the salutation of each other by +the combatants. In the pages which follow an effort will be made in some +degree to dislodge Mr. Swinburne from that seat of critical judgment which +he occupies with such gallant confidence, with such waving of plume and +such clashing of shield. But before the lists are opened, let me salute, +with something more than ceremonial courtesy, the exquisite lyrical genius +of the poet, and the solid accomplishments of the scholar. That premised, +I will, without further preliminary, betake me to my task. + +In the latest number of one of the ablest of monthly reviews, Mr. +Swinburne, enlarging on a passage, rather cursory and incidental than +definitive or judicial, inserted by M. Taine at the close of his brilliant +survey of English poetry, institutes a comparison between Mr. Tennyson and +Alfred de Musset. With Mr. Swinburne's opening remark every one must +agree. It is distinctive of this age, he says, that the greatest of the +great writers who were born about the opening of the century, are still +working with splendid persistence. It was affirmed by Menander that those +the gods love die young. Is it because the gods themselves are dead, that +the heavenly favourites are nowadays permitted to exceed even the +scriptural span of life? Be this as it may, to Mr. Tennyson, with peculiar +aptness, may be addressed the lines of Wordsworth, inspired by a very +different personage: + + Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, + Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nigh, + A melancholy slave; + But an old age serene and bright, + And lovely as a Lapland night, + Shall lead thee to thy grave. + +More appropriate still perhaps, for the moment, would be an excerpt from +Alfred de Musset himself, whom the gods loved not well enough either to +cut off in the flower of his youth, or to leave hanging till he had +achieved maturity. Mr. Swinburne, no doubt, knows the lines by heart: + + Mais comment fais-tu donc, vieux maitre + Pour renaitre? + Car tes vers, en depit du temps, + Ont vingt ans. + + Si jamais ta tete qui penche + Devient blanche, + Ce sera comme l'amandier, + Cher Nodier: + + Ce qui le blanchit n'est pas l'age, + Ni l'orage; + C'est la fraiche rosee en pleurs + Dans les fleurs. + +To this survival of power in Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Swinburne pays homage after +his fashion. Who could possibly withhold it? _The "Revenge,"_ _The Battle +of Lucknow_, and most of all _Rizpah_, show that, even as in the days of +_Locksley Hall_, ancient founts of inspiration well through Mr. Tennyson's +fancy yet; serving to remind us that Nature rejoices in the occasional +violation of her own laws, that roses are not altogether unknown in +November, and that even when the snowdrop whitens the ground, the lark +will sometimes carol up to heaven. + +To the wedded strength and sadness in _Rizpah_ Mr. Swinburne offers ample +testimony, and this is how he does it: + + Nothing more piteous, more passionate, more adorable for intensity of + beauty, was ever before this wrought by human cunning into the + likeness of such words, as words are powerless to praise. Any + possible commentary on a poem of this rank must needs be as weak and + worthless as the priceless thing which evoked it is beautiful and + strong. + +I confess I am disposed to feel that this is so. But Mr. Swinburne, +disregarding his candid avowal of what is worthless, proceeds with the +commentary: + + But one which should attempt by selection or indication to underline, + as it were, and to denote the chiefest among its manifold beauties + and glories, would be also as long and as wordy as the poem is short + and reticent. Once or twice in reading it a man may feel, and may + know himself to be none the unmanlier for feeling, as though the very + heart in him cried out for agony of pity, and hardly the flesh could + endure the burden and the strain of it, the burning bitterness of so + keen and divine a draught. A woman might weep it away and be "all + right" again--but a man born of woman can hardly be expected to bear + the pity of it. + +There is more to the same effect; indeed two whole pages, in the course of +which we are assured that "never assuredly has any poor penman of the +humblest order been more inwardly conscious of such impotence in words to +sustain the weight of their intention than am I at this moment of my +inability to cast into any shape of articulate speech, the impression and +the emotion produced by the first reading of Tennyson's _Rizpah_"; that +"the poet never lived on earth whose glory would not be heightened by the +attribution of this poem to his hand"; that any one who hesitated to +affirm as much must be "either cancerous with malevolence or paralytic +with stupidity"; that now at least "there must be an end for ever on all +hands to the once debatable question whether the author can properly be +called in the strictest sense a great poet"; and, finally, that "there +must be an end for ever, and a day beyond at least, of a question which +once was even more hotly debatable than this, the long-contested question +of poetic precedence between Alfred Tennyson and Alfred de Musset." + +To all who, like myself, admire _Rizpah_ vastly, and who never doubted +that Mr. Tennyson was a larger poet than Alfred de Musset, the above is, +in a sense, consolatory. But I confess that, even when first perusing it, +and not having yet reached what follows, the note of panegyric struck me +as strained, not to say forced, and I had an uncomfortable sort of feeling +that somebody would have to pay the expense of this prodigal eulogium. To +borrow a line Mr. Swinburne himself quotes: + + Cette promotion me laisse un peu reveur. + +Even when Mr. Swinburne praises, and no one praises more liberally, I do +not know how it strikes other people, but he always gives me the idea that +he is directing his panegyric _at_ somebody who is not being panegyrised; +in other words, that he is, to say the least, as much bent upon scarifying +some one who is not mentioned, as on complimenting the person who is. Even +in the passage just reproduced, with the chant over the glories of Mr. +Tennyson, is mingled a gibe at "wandering apes" and "casual mules." This, +I say, put me upon my guard. "Is it conceivable," I said to myself, "that +_Rizpah_, fine, forcible, and effective as it is, should cause all this +difference in a man's estimate of Mr. Tennyson as a poet? Is it possible +that any Englishman at least, should have had to wait till this time of +day to discover that 'any comparison of claims between the two men must be +unprofitable in itself, as well as unfair to the memory of the lesser +poet'?" Finally, and to speak my whole mind with perfect candour, it +struck me that, splendid of its kind as _Rizpah_ undoubtedly is, there is +surely some exaggeration in saying, "If this be not great work, no great +work was ever, or will ever be done in verse by any human hand"; and that +Mr. Tennyson himself has not unfrequently done work fully as good as it, +and, _me judice_, even better. + +One had not to read much farther to discern that these misgivings were +well founded. Somebody indeed had to pay for all the lavish praise of +_Rizpah_, and it was the author of _Rizpah_ himself. I felt sure I should +come to the other side of the shield, the obverse hollows of all this +embossed, and, if I may be permitted to say so, somewhat turgid +appreciation; and come to it I did. + + There are whole poems of Mr. Tennyson's first period which are no + more properly to be called metrical than the more shapeless and + monstrous parts of Walt Whitman, which are lineally derived as to + their form--if form that can be called where form is none--from the + vilest example set by Cowley, when English verse was first infected + and convulsed by the detestable duncery of sham Pindarics. At times, + of course, his song was then as sweet as ever it has sounded since; + but he never could make sure of singing right for more than a few + minutes or stanzas. The strenuous drill through which since then he + has felt it necessary to put himself, has done all that hard labour + can do to rectify this congenital complaint: by dint of stocks and + backboard he has taught himself a more graceful carriage.... It may + be the highest imaginable sign of poetic power or native inspiration + that a man should be able to grind a beauty out of a deformity or + carve a defect into a perfection; but whatever may be the comparative + worth of this peculiar faculty, no poet surely ever had it in a + higher degree or cultivated it with more patient and strenuous + industry than Mr. Tennyson. Idler men, or men less qualified, and + disposed to expend such length of time and energy of patience on the + composition and modification, the rearrangement and recision and + re-issue, of a single verse or copy of verses, can only look on at + such a course of labour with amused or admiring astonishment, and a + certain doubt whether the linnets, to whose method of singing Mr. + Tennyson compares his own, do really go through the training of such + a musical gymnasium before they come forth qualified to sing. + +Everybody has heard of the operation described by Pope as "damning with +faint praise." But damning with exaggerated praise is a new invention, and +it is employed in Mr. Swinburne's paper, doubtless unintentionally, but +with striking effect. As we shall see directly, it is not only on what Mr. +Swinburne calls "the crowning question of metre," that Mr. Tennyson is +assigned a comparatively inferior place, but he is arraigned for his low +estimate of women, for his sympathy with princes, and for various other +crimes and misdemeanours. To say of _Rizpah_, "never since the beginning +of all poetry were the twin passions of terror and pity more divinely +done into deathless words, or set to more perfect and profound +magnificence of music," seems a poor set-off to the reproaches just cited, +and still more to those that have yet to be set forth. There is no fear +that any one--and Mr. Tennyson himself, I should think, least of all--will +place _Rizpah_ quite in the same category with _Oedipus_ or _Lear_. But +there is perhaps some little danger lest the inadvertent should believe, +on Mr. Swinburne's authority, that Mr. Tennyson hits and maintains the +right note only after the same sad drudgery and pain by dint of which we +are told--with about equal accuracy--poor Malibran was taught to sing. It +is said that women of not very generous temperament will go out of their +way to insist that a beautiful slattern dresses admirably, in order to be +in a position plausibly to challenge her beauty. I am sure Mr. Swinburne +is not purposely ungenerous; but in first extolling Mr. Tennyson to the +skies for his poem of _Rizpah_, and then decrying him almost below the +ground for his defective ear, for his base estimate of women, and for his +adulation of princes, he reminds me of the fable of the eagle who bore the +tortoise aloft into heaven, and then let it fall to earth, in the hope of +smashing its shell, and dining off the contents. If I remember rightly, +the shell did not break after all, and the bird had to flap away as hungry +as ever. In any case, after reading first the extravagant laudation, and +then the yet more extreme obloquy contained in Mr. Swinburne's paper, I +think everybody will agree that, to quote a line with which doubtless he +is familiar, Mr. Tennyson deserved: + + Ni cet exces d'honneur ni cette indignite. + +What is the full measure of "_cette indignite_" will be seen by and by. +But before passing to the other reproaches addressed by Mr. Swinburne to +the Laureate, I should like to be allowed to say something about this +question of singing, of ear, of what Mr. Swinburne calls "the crowning +question of metre." It is not the first time Mr. Swinburne has assumed +that he possesses infallible authority upon this point. Now he must +forgive me for remarking that though musicalness is unquestionably the +most noticeable mark, and the most delightful quality, of his own verse, +it is, for the most part, music of a particular kind. It is of the florid +order, rather than of the stately; it is lyrical and Lydian, well +calculated to soothe or to carry along, and sometimes enjoying the Lethean +faculty of making those who read it forget to ask what it means, or indeed +if it means anything very substantial. I will not say that Mr. Swinburne +has adopted the principle, "Take care of the sound, and the sense will +take care of itself." But he not unfrequently reminds one of this facile +theory, and some of his imitators have adopted it without reserve. I +cannot say whether the story is accurate; but I remember being told that, +on hearing a poem of Mr. Swinburne's read aloud, Mr. Tennyson quietly +quoted a line of his own from _The Lotos-Eaters_: + + Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong. + +I should be as unfair to Mr. Swinburne as Mr. Swinburne is to Mr. +Tennyson, if I hinted that he has not done much work to which the above +verse is altogether inapplicable. But he is at once the poet, the prophet, +and the critic of what I may call, _par excellence_, the Lyrical School; +and his idea of singing, his standard of ear, his touchstone of "the +crowning question of metre," is associated with the great triumphs of +lyricism pure and simple. + +Now I trust I am not insensible to the exquisite melody, the delicious +dactyls of Shelley, of De Musset, and, I will add, of Mr. Swinburne +himself. But the Lyricists pure and simple--and certainly, as far as verse +is concerned, De Musset never became anything else--are, after all, the +_flentes in limine primo_. They are children, or at most they are boys. +Every poet, no doubt, should pass through that preliminary stage; but he +should not stay there. There should come a time when the puerile voice +changes, and henceforward is recognised as masculine. It should acquire a +passionate composure, and like the spirit that informs it, should be, not +only spacious as the air, not only soaring and circumambient as the sky, +but deep and sonorous as the sea. De Musset, as Mr. Swinburne half allows, +never underwent this solemn transformation; and it is perhaps, on that +very account, that all of us find him, within limits, so irresistibly +attractive. He is the poet of the transitional period between boyhood and +manhood. + + Mes premiers vers sont d'un enfant, + Les seconds, d'un adolescent. + +He never got beyond the sweet sick springtime of the soul, when it +searches for what it is never to find, when it strains towards what it +never can clutch, when the "flowers appear on the earth, the time of the +singing of the birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our +land; the fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the +tender grape give a good smell," and the whole want and utterance of the +heart is embodied in the cry, "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come +away!" He who has not "_passe par la_" will never be much of a poet; but +he who does not pass beyond it, will never be a great one. Yet this +season of the "Song of Songs" is the eternal quest of the young, the +eternal regret of the old. Nothing can superannuate its charm, nothing can +quench its fascination. At the climax of his strength and his fame, Byron +could not help exclaiming, "The days of our youth are the days of our +glory," and M. Taine was doubtless under the spell of this periodically +recurring sentiment, this irresistible return, ever and anon, to one's +first love, when, for a brief moment, flinging sober criticism and just +judgment to the winds, he asked if it is not pardonable to prefer the +author of _Les Nuits_ to the author of the _Idylls_. + +Just one word more about "singing." Speaking of the earlier poems of De +Musset, Mr. Swinburne observes: "Of all thin and shallow criticisms, none +ever was shallower or thinner than that which would describe these +firstlings of Musset's genius as mere Byronic echoes." True enough. But, +he goes on to say, "in that case they would be tuneless as their original, +whereas they are the notes of a singer who cannot but sing." + +This is not the first time we have been treated to this opinion. Once +before Mr. Swinburne has spoken of Byron as a singer who could not sing. I +ventured to reply, at the time, that he was a singer who could not or +would not shriek. It is necessary to repeat the protest. No doubt Byron +shows, as a rule, rather volume of voice than flexibility; and from a +determination not to resemble excellent models, but to strike out a line +for himself--a passion for pseudo-originality, from which lesser poets +that could be named, since his time, have likewise suffered--his blank +verse is generally detestable. But Shelley did not find out that Byron +could not sing; neither did Scott, nor Goethe, nor Lamartine, nor +Pushkin, nor Leopardi, nor De Musset himself. He speaks of the "chant" of +Byron as that of "_un cygne_," and compares the echo of his song to "_le +torrent dans la verte vallee_." Mr. Swinburne's discovery is strictly his +own, and I should advise him not to press it. Indeed it would not be +difficult to dispose of it by the method of reasoning familiarly known as +a _reductio ad absurdum_. Mr. Swinburne affirms that the question of metre +is the crowning question, in other words, that the greatest poets are the +most musical, and most people would be disposed to agree with the dictum, +if the question what music is were first satisfactorily settled. But Mr. +Swinburne will have it that Byron cannot sing, whereas it is quite certain +that Mr. Swinburne can. Therefore Mr. Swinburne is a greater poet than +Byron: which, everybody will allow, is absurd. Q.E.D. + +I daresay larks do not find much music in the thunder. But they have the +sense to be silent when they hear the roll of that untrembling diapason +that makes all things tremble. + +To speak the plain truth, we are threatened, just at present, with too +much of what Mr. Swinburne means by "singing." Does he not remember the +following passage in the Fourth Book of _Paradise Regained_?-- + + There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power + Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit + By voice or hand, and various-measured verse, + AEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes, + And his who gave them birth, _but higher sung_, + Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called. + +Milton goes on to speak of "the lofty grave tragedians" who employed +"chorus or iambic," + + High actions and high passions best describing. + +Sheer lyricism just now is overmuch the mode. It is all very nice and +pleasant in its way, and within bounds, but one can have too much of a +good thing, and one does not want poetry to become _vox et praeterea +nihil_. It is a fashion, doubtless, that will pass. If it does not, I fear +people will begin to say of poetry what some one said of operatic music, +_Ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'etre dit on le chante_, and we shall +require a Wagner in literature to denounce the meaningless _fioriture_ of +musical bards bent on recalling the most irrelevant flourishes of +Donizetti. Mr. Tennyson never does, and has never done, that. + +The assertion that Mr. Tennyson was born with an inaptitude for musical +verse, though I conceive it to be very wide of the mark, I can at least +understand. It is made intelligible by remembering the limits Mr. +Swinburne assigns to music, and the characteristic preference he exhibits, +in his own writings, for certain forms of it. But when we are told that +"among all poems of serious pretensions in that line ... this latest epic +of King Arthur took the very lowest view of virtue, set up the very +poorest and most pitiful standard of duty, or of heroism for woman or for +man," I own I feel as much perplexity as surprise. Perhaps the solution of +the riddle might be got at by again resorting to the process just +employed, and by inquiring what is Mr. Swinburne's own standard of duty or +heroism for woman or for man, and informing ourselves through a diligent +reperusal of his poems, and of those writers whose productions he has the +loudest extolled, what it is he and they consider men and women ought +mainly to feel, and what it is they ought mainly to occupy themselves +with. But such a course might be invidious. Happily, moreover, it is +unnecessary. It is enough to bring Mr. Tennyson's men and women into +court, to let men and women be the jury, and to read over to them the +following indictment: + + I cannot say that Mr. Tennyson's life-long tone about women and their + shortcomings has ever commended itself to my poor mind as the note of + a very pure or high one. There is always a latent, if not a patent + propensity in many of his very lovers, to scold and whine after a + fashion which makes even Alfred de Musset seem by comparison a model + or a type of manliness. His Enids and Edith Aylmers are much below + the ideal mark of Wordsworth, who has never, I believe, been + considered a specially great master in that kind; but his "little + Letties" were apparently made mean and thin of nature to match their + pitifully poor-spirited suitors! It cannot respectfully be supposed + that Mr. Tennyson is unaware of the paltry currishness and + mean-spirited malice displayed in verse too dainty for such base uses + by the plaintively spiteful manikins with the thinnest whey of sour + milk in their poor fretful veins, whom he brings forward to vent upon + some fickle or too discerning mistress the vain and languid venom of + their contemptible contempt. + +What does it mean? Several years ago I ventured to express the opinion +that Mr. Tennyson's was rather a feminine than a masculine Muse, +borrowing, naturally enough, its idiosyncrasy from the period when it was +most susceptible to surrounding influences. One or two persons of far +higher critical authority than I can pretend to, told me I had struck a +true note, and to the opinion then advanced, I am still disposed in +substance to adhere. But I seize this opportunity to say that I have long +perceived that the opinion was advanced with exaggeration, and somewhat +unbecomingly; that the essay in which it appeared has for a considerable +time been out of print, and will never with the author's consent be +republished; and finally that it would never have appeared at all but for +a circumstance which it would be disagreeable, because egotistical, to +explain explicitly, but which perhaps many will at once understand, if I +quote the following lines of De Musset to Sainte-Beuve: + + Ami, tu l'as bien dit: ... + + * * * * * + + "Il existe, en un mot, chez les trois quarts des hommes, + Un poete mort jeune a qui l'homme survit," + Tu l'as bien dit, ami, mais tu l'as trop bien dit. + Tu ne prenais pas garde, en tracant ta pensee + + * * * * * + + que tu blasphemais ... + ... Je te rends a ta Muse offensee, + Et souviens-toi qu'en nous il existe souvent + Un poete endormi toujours jeune et vivant. + +But it is precisely because there is so much of the feminine quality in +Mr. Tennyson's Muse, that his Muse is beloved of women, and is attractive +to all men to whom women are attractive. How often has it happened to one +to ask "What shall I read?" and to get for answer "Tennyson." And though +one might be almost angry because neither Shakespeare, nor Milton, nor +Byron, nor Wordsworth, could get a hearing, so it was, and _femme le veut +Dieu le veut_. He is the poet of their predilection; and if it were true +that his women are not "very pure or high," it would seem to follow that +the women in flesh and blood who love to read of them, are themselves not +very high or pure. Is not that another _reductio ad absurdum_? I confess I +never knew them ask any one to read _Vivien_. They prefer _Elaine_, and +_Guinevere_. Yet _Vivien_ is a masterpiece, and that "harlot," as Mr. +Tennyson very properly does not shrink from calling her, is the consummate +poetic type of women with very little poetry about them. But the +blameless love of Elaine, and the pardonable passion of Guinevere, are, to +say the least of it, equally emblematic; and I confess I should find +myself so different in blood, in language, in race, in instinct, in +everything, from the man who told me that he found the one mean and low, +or the other poor, pitiful and base, that, as I have declared, I should +not understand him. + +On two points, I imagine, most men, on consideration, would agree with Mr. +Swinburne. _The Idylls of the King_, _are_ Idylls of the King, and not an +epic poem, nor indeed _one_ poem of any kind. I am not aware that Mr. +Tennyson has ever said or suggested the contrary; and no man is +responsible for the extravagances of his less discreet or too generous +admirers. I suspect Mr. Tennyson would consider the terms Mr. Swinburne +himself applies to _Rizpah_ as a trifle uncritical. The other point of +agreement they would have with Mr. Swinburne is that King Arthur, in the +_Idylls_, is not an adequate and satisfactory hero. But heroes from time +immemorial have had a knack of breaking in the hands of their creator. The +"pius AEneas" is not worthy of his vicissitudes, his mission, and his fate, +or of the splendid verse in which his name is forever embalmed. Milton +assuredly did not intend to make Lucifer his hero; but the ruined +Archangel dwarfs into insignificance all other personages in _Paradise +Lost_, human, divine, or infernal. From _Childe Harold_, Childe Harold all +but disappears; and I suspect it is only by aid of the drama that a writer +is able to say successfully, "Behold a man!" + +I think Mr. Swinburne will perceive that, though my lights may be less +than his, I am sincerely anxious to get at the truth, and that my object +is neither to provoke nor to propitiate, neither to extol nor to decry. +But what can I or any one say, in sufficient moderation, respecting the +following passage?-- + + "But," says the Laureate, "it is not Malory's King Arthur, nor yet + Geoffrey's King Arthur, that I have desired to reproduce: on the + contrary, it is 'scarcely other than' Prince Albert" ... who, if + neither a wholly gigantic nor altogether a divine personage, was, at + least, one would imagine, a human figure.... This fact, it would + seem, was revealed to Mr. Tennyson himself, of all men on earth, by + some freak of the same humorous or malicious fairy who disclosed to + him the not less amusing truth, and induced him to publish it, with a + face of unmoved gravity, to the nation and the world, that whenever + he said King Arthur he meant Prince Albert. No satirist could have + ventured on either stroke of sarcasm.... Not as yet had the blameless + Albert, at the bidding of his Merlin Palmerston, led forth--we will + not say his Guinevere--to clasp the thievish hand of a then uncrowned + assassin. + +I said, a little while back, that I would not accuse Mr. Swinburne of +intentional want of generosity. Yet I am compelled to aver that a more +ungenerous passage than the above I never read; and it would seem still +more ungenerous were it to be quoted from more freely. Mr. Swinburne has +not the excuse that might be pleaded by a critic who was stupid. He is a +poet, and he knows what fine, delicate, subtle analogies are as well as +any one. There _is_ a striking resemblance between the nobler qualities of +Mr. Tennyson's "ideal knight" and those of the late Prince Consort, and it +was a true and fresh stroke of poetry to associate them as Mr. Tennyson +has done. But is it true, or fair, or "manly," to assert that the poet +wished the one to be entirely identified with the other, much more that +when he mentions the one he means the other? I fear some people will +conclude that the above unmagnanimous passage was dictated by Mr. +Swinburne's hatred of princes; and less indulgent persons will add, by +his want of love for Mr. Tennyson. + +Now, to my thinking, the most loathsome of all characters is a sycophant. +Perhaps I am more comprehensive in my contempt for that tribe even than +Mr. Swinburne himself; for I hold in equal disdain the flatterers of +princes and the flatterers of the people. The folly, the feebleness, and +the fury of kings is to be matched only by the feebleness, the folly, and +the fury of crowds. Sensible men entertain a careful distrust of each, and +devise and maintain every possible barrier against the selfish vagaries of +both alike. It is the rare distinction of Prince Albert that he imposed +upon himself those checks which most men require to have imposed upon them +by others, and against which, whether proceeding from within or from +without, princes usually rebel. When we are shown a _demos_ as wise, as +patriotic, as conscientious, and as capable of self-abnegation, as Prince +Albert, the time will have come for an honest man to chant its virtues, +and we shall be able to look forward to the future of our race with more +hopeful feelings than are at present possible to a sane philanthropy. + +Sycophants, therefore, can dance attendance on the Many as easily and as +mischievously as on the One; and of all the unmeasured adulators of the +multitude I know no one to compare with the poet before whom Mr. Swinburne +is perpetually prostrating himself, and before whom he bows and bobs and +genuflects an almost countless number of times in the course of the paper +on which I am commenting--to wit, M. Victor Hugo. + +I have no wish to assail any man of letters, be his foibles what they may. +But when Mr. Swinburne girds at both De Musset and Mr. Tennyson for having +written civilly of princes, and observes that "poeticules love +princelings as naturally as poets abhor tyrants," it is perhaps pertinent +to ask him if he is aware that the first verses of M. Victor Hugo were +passionately Royalist; that the refrain of one of his early poems is +"_Vive le Roi! Vive la France!_" that he celebrated the Duc d'Angouleme as +"the greatest of warriors"; that he mourned the death of Louis XVIII. with +loyal pathos; that he wrote a tragedy whose last line was "_Quand on hait +les tyrans, on doit aimer les rois_"; that the first patron of the author +of _Odes et Poesies Diverses_ was a king, who gave M. Victor Hugo a +pension of a thousand francs out of his privy purse, which was afterwards +doubled, and which I believe was not resigned till the year 1832, or when +M. Victor Hugo was thirty years of age; and that though he for a time +seemed disposed to declare himself a Republican, he sought for and +obtained a seat in the House of Peers from Louis Philippe as recently as +1845. Far be it from me to attempt to turn these facts against the +reputation of M. Victor Hugo. I entertain no doubt they are capable of a +perfectly satisfactory explanation. But let us not have two weights and +two measures; and before Mr. Swinburne takes to throwing stones against +those who incur his displeasure, let him look carefully round to see if +some of those who excite his admiration are not living in a house with a +good many glass windows. + +Against M. Victor Hugo as a man I have necessarily no word to utter. But +Mr. Swinburne compels one to say something about him as a poet. In this +paper upon Mr. Tennyson and De Musset alone, we come upon the following +phrases, all of them applied to M. Victor Hugo: "The mightiest master of +the nineteenth century"; "One far greater than Byron or Lamartine"; "The +greatest living poet"; "The godlike hand of Victor Hugo"; "Only Victor +Hugo himself can make words thunder and lighten like these." There is +more, I think, of the same kind; but it perhaps suffices to mention these, +for previous experience has made us familiar with the assumption that +underlies them. + +It would be as presumptuous in me to make the world a present of my +opinion as to who is the greatest of modern poets, as I conceive it is in +Mr. Swinburne to be perpetually pursuing that course. I will therefore +content myself with saying that to attribute that distinction to M. Hugo +seems to me simply ludicrous, unless clatter be the same thing as fame, +and confident copiousness is to be accepted as a conclusive credential of +superiority; that in the opinion of Sainte-Beuve, De Musset was far more +of a poet than M. Victor Hugo; and that, with the exception of Mr. +Swinburne himself, all English critics, with whom I am acquainted, +entertain no sort of doubt that Mr. Tennyson is a more considerable poet +than both De Musset and M. Victor Hugo put together with a large margin to +spare. In any case, does Mr. Swinburne think that, by "damnable iteration" +about the "great master," he will alter the fact, or convert any human +being to a creed in the propagation of which he seems unaccountably +zealous? If he does, I recommend to his perusal the following brief +observation of Sainte-Beuve, which he will find in a "Causerie" upon +George Sand: + + Ceux qui cherchent a imposer aux autres une foi qu'ils ne sont pas + bien surs d'avoir eux-memes, s'echauffent en parlant, affirment sur + tous les tons, et se font prophetes afin de tacher d'etre croyants. + +I have said that the zeal of Mr. Swinburne in perpetually asseverating the +unapproachable superiority of M. Victor Hugo is unaccountable. Perhaps, +however, it is to be accounted for by reading between the lines of the +following passage: + + "As lyric poet and as republican leader, the master poet of the world + has equally deserved to attain this obloquy, to incur this tribute + from a journal"--the reference, I believe, is to the _Figaro_ of + Paris--"to which the principles of republican faith, a writer to whom + the pretensions of lyric poetry are naturally and equally abhorrent + and contemptible: nor could any law of nature or any result of chance + be more equitably satisfactory than one which should gratify the + wish--or the three wishes--that all who do not love the one should + hate the other: that all such men should be even as M. Zola: and that + all such writers as M. Zola, should be haters and scorners alike of + republican principles and of lyric song." + +With every desire not to be intolerant, and to inform oneself of what is +going on in this world, I think one may be pardoned for being unable to +read M. Zola. I should as soon think of doing things I will not even name, +as of reading _L'Assommoir_; and I fancy most Englishmen, whether +Monarchists or Republicans, whether lyrists or the most prosaic folk in +the world, entertain the same repugnance. But what, in the name of all +that is fair, and manly, and magnanimous, have political opinions got to +do with literary merit? Politics and literature are distinct, and though, +as abundant experience has shown, one and the same man may make his mark +in both, they are separate spheres of the same brain, and a man may be a +good poet and a bad politician, or a bad poet and a good politician, or +either good or bad in each capacity alike. Once you care one straw what +are the political opinions of a poet, there is an end of you as a critic. +Royalist, Republican, Communist, Deist, Pantheist,--what care I which of +these a poet is, so he is a poet? As a fact, I fancy the greater sort of +poets usually wear their creeds rather loosely; and if we find a poet, in +his character of poet, a perpetually passionate advocate, misgivings as to +his permanent fame may reasonably be entertained. Still no absolute rule +can be applied to these irregular planets. One likes a poet to love his +country, on the same principle which Cicero says made Ulysses love Ithaca, +"not because it was broad, but because it was his own." Mr. Tennyson loves +his country warmly, and for this Mr. Swinburne rebukes him with indulging +in the "beardless bluster of the Tory member, not of a provincial deputy, +but of a provincial schoolboy." This is perhaps the most inapt of all the +inapt observations in his amazing piece of criticism. + +I might say more, but I feel I have said enough, I hope, not too much of a +paper which, it seems to me, would be not unjustly described, in Mr. +Swinburne's own words, as "pseudo-poetic rhapsody in hermaphroditic +prose," and concerning which a person whose authority all would recognise +were I to mention him, observed to me, "This is the _Carmagnole_ of +criticism." But, before concluding, I should like, if Mr. Swinburne will +not think me presuming, to remind him, in all friendliness, that he, no +more than I, is any longer in the consulship of Plancus; that some of us +would have been thankful to have had our youthful follies treated as +leniently as his have been; and that the least return he can make for the +indulgence that has been extended to him in consideration of his genius, +is to remember the lines of the really "great master,"--not M. Victor +Hugo, but Shakespeare: + + ... Reverence, + That angel of the world, doth make distinction + Of place 'tween high and low. + + + + +ON THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO POLITICS + + +It occasionally happens to men of letters, at political gatherings, to be +asked to respond to the toast of Literature; so one may fairly conclude +that, in the opinion of many persons, there is between literature and +politics a close and familiar relation. I have long believed that there +is; and observation of the opinions of others has led me to inquire +whether the relation be one of amity or of antagonism. I propose to +endeavour, even though it be by reflections that may appear deliberative +rather than dogmatic, to elucidate a question that is not devoid of +interest. + +Mr. Trevelyan has recorded a saying of Macaulay to this effect, that a man +who, endowed with equal capacity for achieving distinction in literature +and in politics, selects a political career, gives proof of insanity. Most +men of letters, I fancy, would endorse that sentiment. But the decisions +which men have to make in this world are not, as a rule, presented to them +with the definiteness that gives artistic charm, as well as moral meaning, +to a well-known masterpiece in the Palazzo Borghese. Between Sacred and +Profane Love, between the love of literature and the pursuit of politics, +the line is not, in practice, drawn so hard and fast as in the beautiful +apologue immortalised by Titian. Loves that are altogether sacred and in +no degree profane, are not, I imagine, frequently offered to any one; and +though loves wholly profane and in no measure sacred, are, perhaps, not so +uncommon, they are not likely in that absolutely coarse form to exercise +enduring attraction over the finer spirits. It is the curious and +inextricable amalgam of the two that constitutes the embarrassment. +Literature entirely divorced from politics is a thing by no means so +easily attained, or so disinterestedly sought after, as it is sometimes +assumed to be; and though, with much Parliamentary and extra-Parliamentary +oratory before our minds, we should hesitate to affirm that politics are +not occasionally cultivated with a fine disregard for literature, yet the +literary flavour that is still present in the speeches of some Party +Politicians, suffices to show that literature and politics are in practice +not so much distinct territories as border-lands whose boundaries are not +easily defined, but that continually run into, overlap, and are frequently +confounded with, each other. + +But is it to be desired, even should it appear to be possible, to restrict +literature and politics each to its own particular sphere, and forbid +either to trespass upon the territory of the other? Would they be gainers +by this absolute severance? I am disposed to think that both would be +losers; and the loss, I fancy, would fall more heavily upon literature +even than upon politics. Dickens is said to have expressed his regret +that, as he worded it, a man like Disraeli should have thrown himself away +by becoming a politician. The observation, perhaps, smacks a little of the +too narrow estimate of life with which that man of genius may not unjustly +be reproached. But few people, if any, would think of denying that Lord +Beaconsfield might have won more enduring distinction in the Republic of +Letters than can be accurately placed to his account, had he dedicated +himself with less ardour--or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, +with less tenacity--to party politics. Like most persons of a +contemplative disposition, he read sparingly, and found in the pages of +others not so much what they themselves put there, as a provocation and +stimulus to fresh thoughts of his own. "See what my gracious Sovereign +sent me as a present at Christmas," he said to me one day. It was a copy +of the edition de luxe of _Romola_; and in it was written, in the +beautiful flowing hand of the Queen, "To the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G., +from his affectionate and grateful friend, Victoria." "But," he added, "I +cannot read it." I ventured to recommend him not to make that confession +to everybody, for it would not raise their estimate of his literary +acumen. "Well," he said, "it's no use. I can't." No doubt _Romola_ not +unoften smells overmuch of the lamp, and in all probability will not +permanently occupy the position assigned to it with characteristic +over-confidence by contemporaneous enthusiasm. But, if a man can read +novels at all, and if he demands from the novelist something more than the +mere craft of the story-teller, surely _Romola_ ought to give him +pleasure; and I suspect it would have pleased him, had he permitted his +taste as a man of letters the same amount of expansion he afforded to his +tendencies as a practical politician. At the same time, I could well +understand a person arguing, though I could hardly agree with him, that he +was not designed by nature to be a more complete and finished man of +letters than he actually became, and that his keen interest in politics, +and the knowledge of political and social life he in consequence acquired, +contribute to his written works their principal charm and their most +valuable ingredients. I suspect the truth to be, that he was compounded in +such equal proportions of the man of meditation and the man of action, +that under no circumstances would he have been content to be merely a man +of letters, or merely a politician, and that he fulfilled his nature by +being alternately one and the other. That a man should attain to supreme +eminence in literature by pursuing such a course, is out of the question. +The wonder is that, having achieved even such literary distinction as he +did, he should have attained to such supreme eminence as a statesman. + +If, therefore, Lord Beaconsfield might have been a more distinguished man +of letters, had he not been so keen a politician, the proper conclusion +would seem to be that literature in his case suffered hurt, not from +politics, but from an excess of politics. It would not be easy to name a +character more utterly unlike his than Wordsworth--a man of letters pure +and simple, if we are ever to find one. True it is that Wordsworth in +extreme youth wrote some political verse, that he loved his country with +ardour, and that the word England had for him great and stimulating +associations; but, as a rule, he lived remote from human ken, divorced +from human business, amid the silence of the starry sky and the sleep of +the everlasting hills. What was the result? I admire the best and highest +poetry of Wordsworth with a fervour and an enthusiasm not exceeded by +those who will, perhaps, forgive me for calling them his more fanatical +worshippers. But I must continue to think that Wordsworth would have given +himself the chance of being a yet greater poet than he was, had he--I do +not say quitted his lakes, and hills, and streams; heaven forbid!--but had +he consorted at times more freely and fully with his fellow-men, had he +been not a poet only, but something in addition to a poet; had he led a +rather more mixed life; had he done, in fact, what we know was done by the +great Athenian dramatists, by Virgil, by Dante, by Chaucer, Spenser, +Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, and even by Shelley. Politics do not +necessarily mean party politics, though in this country, at this moment, +the one runs dangerously near to implying the other. Politics mean, or +ought to mean, the practical concerns of the many, of the state, of the +Empire, or of mankind at large, as contradistinguished from the mere +personal or class interests. But with those wider concerns Wordsworth +would have little or nothing to do, except in the most abstract way; and +the consequence is that his poetry is the poetry of the individual, and +nearly always of the same individual, and is lacking in the element of +variety, especially in the greatest element of all, viz. action, in which +is necessarily included the portrayal of passion and character. + +Would not the proper conclusion, therefore--a conclusion not overstrained +and if not stated with excessive dogmatism--seem to be, that literature, +though demanding precedence in the affections, and exacting the chief +attention of one who professes really to love it, is not a jealous +mistress, but, on the contrary, is only too well pleased to see even its +most attached votaries combine with their one supreme passion a number of +minor interests and even minor affections. A very sagacious person has +said, "Action may not bring happiness; but there is no happiness without +action." I am not sure that that is quite true, for Epictetus, and even +Epicurus, would have something to say on the other side. But I entertain +little doubt that it is strictly true to affirm that the highest literary +eminence is not attainable by persons who stand aloof, and have always +stood aloof, from the field of action; that mere contemplation, no matter +how lofty, how profound, or how persistent, will not make a man a supreme +poet or a supreme artist of any kind; and that the doctrine of "art for +art's sake," if applied in a perverse signification, must end by narrowing +and finally debasing what it is intended to elevate. Action helps thought, +and thought helps action. By action thought is rendered more masculine, +attains to greater breadth, and acquires a certain nobleness and dignity. +Thanks to thought, action may become more definite, more precise, more +fruitful. But that is on the assumption that each exerts itself in due +times and seasons, and leaves to the other abundant opportunities and +ample latitude. When we are bidden to observe that + + the native hue of resolution + Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, + +we well understand that thought has been excessive, that action has not +had fair play, and that the brain has paralysed the hand. + +No one can read the _Iliad_ without feeling that the writer, or writers, +of the stirring debates with which it is thronged had consorted with, and +was intimately familiar with public life. Many years ago, addressing an +assembling of Cambridge undergraduates at a political meeting, and seeking +to justify the toast of literature they had given me as a text, I +ventured, with a certain levity congenial to my young but classical +audience, to ask if the _Iliad_ is not a political poem, for is it not +full of discussions as animated as any of our own Parliamentary ones, in +which Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, to say nothing of Thersites, +successively take part; and are not these succeeded, as in our own case, +by deliberations in an Upper House, where Juno, Venus, Vulcan, and even +Jove himself, participate in the oratorical debate? The first and last +note of the _AEneid_, indeed the one text of the great poem of Virgil, is +_Romanam condere gentem_, to show how was established, and to intimate how +might be extended, the Empire of Rome. Virgil, the most tender, the most +finished, the most literary of poets, took the warmest interest in the +politics of his country, or he would never have got much beyond the range +of his Pastorals and Bucolics. The first word in the first ode of Horace +is the name of an Augustan minister, quickly to be followed by the ode, +_Jam satis terris_, with its patriotic allusions to national pride and +military honour. Most people, I imagine, associate Dante with the period +of his exile, forgetting why he was exiled. He had to thank the interest +he displayed in the politics of his native city for that prolonged +banishment; and so keen a politician was this great contemplative bard, +that in the same poem in which Beatrice reproves him in heaven, Dante +represents his political enemies as gnashing their teeth in hell. That was +when he had become the man of letters pure and simple. But, in the hey-day +of his fortunes, and long after he had first seen and become enamoured of +Beatrice, and had written the _Vita Nuova_, he had taken so active a part +and become so influential a personage in the public affairs of Florence, +that, when invited to go on a difficult embassy, he exclaimed, "If I go, +who will stay? Yet, if I stay, who will go?" It was no backsliding, +therefore, no hesitation, that made Dante a public character for a moment, +quickly to repent his infidelity to the Muse. To the last, it is +abundantly evident that he would fain have combined in his career the poet +and the politician. Yet the first words addressed by Virgil to Dante, when +they met _nel gran diserto_, and Dante asked him whether he was _ombra od +uomo certo_, seem almost to imply that Virgil meant to reprove the +intruder upon the _selva oscura_ with condescending to mix in the turmoil +of public life, instead of confining himself to literature and philosophy. +These are the words, which students of the _Divina Commedia_ will scarcely +require to have cited for them: + + Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto + Figliuol d'Anchise, che venne da Troia, + Poiche il superbo Ilion fu combusto. + Ma tu perche ritorni a tanta noia? + Perche non sali il dilettoso monte, + Ch'e principio e cagion di tutta gioia? + + I was a poet, and I sang of that just son of Anchises, who came from + Troy after proud Ilion was laid in ashes. But you--why do you return + to worries of that sort! Why do you not ascend the delectable + mountain, which is the principle and cause of all true happiness? + +We must bear in mind, however, that the words are not the real words of +Virgil, but words put into his mouth by Dante at a period when Dante +himself was weary and sick to death of _tanta noia_, the annoyances and +mortifications of political life, and had cast longing eyes upon the +_dilettoso monte_. What real man of letters that ever ventured into the +arid and somewhat vulgar domain of Party-politics has not felt the same +feeling of revulsion, the same longing for the water-brooks? But, years +after Dante wrote that passage, he strove, petitioned, and conspired to be +allowed to return to Florence and its perpetual civic strife, and envied, +as Byron makes him say, in _The Prophecy of Dante_: + + ... Every dove its nest and wings, + Which waft it where the Apennine look down + On Arno, till it perches, it may be, + Within my all inexorable town. + +If the Crusades were not politics, we should have to narrow the meaning of +the word very considerably; and if the Crusades were political, another +Italian poet must be added to the list of those who have not disdained to +draw inspiration from public affairs, Torquato Tasso, the author of +_Gerusalemme Liberata_. And what are the first two lines of the _Orlando +Furioso_?-- + + Le donne, i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori, + Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese, io canto. + +_L'audaci imprese!_ The loves of fair ladies were not enough for Ariosto, +but with them he needs must blend the clash of arms and mighty enterprise. +Both these poets were, in the phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, +"unscrupulously epic," and fused the red-hot lava of their time in the +mould of their enduring verse. No one should need to be reminded that +Chaucer was the friend of statesmen and the colleague of ambassadors. In +him we find the two salient characteristics of all the best English +poetry--a close observation and tender love of external nature, and a keen +interest in the characters and doings of men; and, for this reason, he has +often been hailed as the precursor of Shakespeare. The lofty symbolism of +Spenser, and the unvarying elevation and dignity of his style, seem to +place him rather remote from the common herd, and to make him, in a sense, +a little less human than some might wish him to be. But in his writings he +holds himself aloof from the vulgar no more than Dante does; and like +Dante, he was a man of the world, and participated in the art of +government and the administration of public affairs. The "poet of the +poets" combined literature with politics. + +The days of Burleigh were hardly days when the son of a provincial +wool-stapler was likely to be much heard of in the domain of politics. But +the historical plays of Shakespeare traverse a space of more than two +hundred years, or from King John to Henry VIII., and could not have been +written by one who did not combine with his unmatched poetic gifts a +lively interest in the politics of his country. Shakespeare is the idol of +us all, the only reproach I have ever heard addressed to him being that he +was rather too aristocratic in his sympathies, and too Conservative in the +non-Party sense, in his views; foibles which perhaps ought not to surprise +us in one who had so intimate a knowledge of human nature, and so shrewd +an appreciation of its strong and weak points. Nor was it an injury, but a +distinct gain, to the prince of dramatic poets, that he should have been +compelled to concern himself with the practical affairs of life, and to +busy himself actively with the management of a theatre. The lament about +his nature being subdued to what it worked in, may be taken as an +ebullition of momentary weakness, even in that robust and manly +temperament. Shakespeare was compounded of too many and too large elements +to have been a poet only; and "art for art's sake," wrongly interpreted, +could never have found lodgment in his wide sympathies, his capacious +understanding, and his versatile imagination. + +If Conservatism may, in a non-party sense, claim Shakespeare as an +authority in its favour, in Milton, on the other hand, I suppose +Liberalism again in a non-party sense would recognise a support. At any +rate, Cromwell's secretary was a keen politician, and even a passionate +partisan. I have always thought the allusion made by Walter Scott to him +in his Life of Dryden hasty and unfair. "Waller was awed into silence," he +says, "by the rigour of the puritanic spirit; and even the muse of Milton +was scared from him by the clamour of religious and political controversy, +and only returned, like a sincere friend, to cheer the adversity of one +who had neglected her during his career of worldly importance." A more +recent writer seems to echo the same charge. "In 1641," he says, "Milton +stepped into the lists of controversy as a prose writer, beginning the +series of works which, far more than his poetry, gave him his conspicuous +public standing during his lifetime, and have doubtless bereaved the world +of many an immortal verse which it would otherwise have to treasure." That +Milton's controversial writings gave him more conspicuous public standing +in his lifetime than his poetry is indisputable, and not to be wondered +at. A man's contemporaries would naturally rather have him useful than +ornamental, provided he be useful on their side; and while persons whose +opinions were furthered by his political writings were, as might have been +expected, more interested in these than in poems from which they reaped no +advantage, those people, on the other hand, to whom his political writings +were obnoxious, felt themselves, as might also have been expected, but +little disposed to extol, or even to read, his poetry. It may, perhaps, be +taken as an absolute rule that a man of letters who takes a conspicuous +interest in contemporary politics thereby debars himself to a considerable +extent from literary popularity in his lifetime; a matter of little +moment, however, since to every reflective mind contemporary popularity is +no pledge of enduring fame, while contemporary neglect is not necessarily +an omen of eternal oblivion. But it is quite another thing to affirm that +men of letters who, like Milton, participate freely in the political +controversies of their time "bereave the world of many an immortal verse," +or to insinuate, with Scott, that they desert the Muse for "a career of +worldly importance," and only remember its charms in the season of their +adversity. I think any one who has read _Paradise Lost_ and _Paradise +Regained_ will be of opinion that Milton wrote quite as much verse as was +desirable, whether for our delectation or for his own fame. We see the +appalling result of always writing verse and never doing anything else, in +the portentous bulk bequeathed to us by even so eminent a poet as +Wordsworth, of matter that his idolaters persist in asking the world to +accept as a precious revelation, but which the world persists, and I +cannot doubt will always persist, in regarding as verse that ought to have +gone up the chimney. Matthew Arnold has, in current phrase, "boiled down" +Wordsworth, in order to make him more palatable to general consumption; +and he gives excellent reasons for having done so. + +"In Wordsworth's seven volumes," he says, "the pieces of high merit are +mingled with a mass of pieces very inferior to them: so inferior to them, +that it seems wonderful how the same poet should have produced both. Work +altogether inferior, work quite uninspired, flat and dull, is produced by +him with evident unconsciousness of its defects, and he presents it to us +with the same faith and seriousness as his best work." + +Even in the edition of Wordsworth's poetry Matthew Arnold has given us, +and which contains not a tenth of what Wordsworth published, he has +himself exhibited a little too much "faith and seriousness" respecting +what he has laboured to save from Lethe, and the "boiling down" process +will have to be gone through again by somebody else. The tenth part will +have to undergo the operation applied to the whole, and be itself reduced +to another one-tenth. The corn must be winnowed by a yet finer sieve; all +the chaff and husk must be blown away; and what then remains will be the +_fine fleur_ of poetry indeed. In a word, had Wordsworth, like Milton, +devoted himself, at some season of his life, to public affairs, he would +doubtless have written less verse, and possibly more poetry. Had Milton +abstained altogether from politics, he would possibly have written more +verse, but it is improbable that he would have written more poetry. What +he wrote acquired strength, and even elevation, from his temporary contact +with affairs and his judicious co-operation with the active interests of +the State. "As the giant Antaeus," says Heine, "remained invincible in +strength as long as he touched mother earth with his feet, and lost this +power when Hercules lifted him into the air, so also is the poet strong +and mighty as long as he does not abandon the firm ground of reality, but +forfeits his power when he loses himself in the blue ether." No doubt the +poet must have his head in the air, and no ether need be too high or too +rarefied for his imagination to breathe; but without a strong foothold of +the ground he runs the risk of too often lapsing, as Matthew Arnold +affirms Wordsworth constantly lapsed, into "abstract verbiage," or of +falling into intolerable puerilities. + +Nor is it just to assert that Milton neglected the Muse during his career +of worldly importance. It would be as fair to say the same of Dante, +between whom and Milton, in point of genius as well as in vicissitudes of +life, there is a striking similarity. Dante wrote the _Vita Nuova_ at a +comparatively early age, just as Milton wrote _L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, +_Comus_, and _Lycidas_ in the springtime of his life. Then came a pause, +indeed a long silence, for each of them, and it was not till they had +reached the meridian of intellectual life that they betook themselves each +to his _magnum opus_, Dante to the _Divina Commedia_, Milton to _Paradise +Lost_. Any one observant of the habit of our best English song-birds must +be aware that after singing, with a rapturous lyrical carelessness, +through the vernal months, they become silent during the heat of summer. +Then in early autumn they sing again, with more measure, more continence, +let us say with more self-criticism and fastidiousness; and though the +note may not be so boisterous, it is more mellow and mature. + +No doubt Dante and Milton did not take this course, of deliberate purpose; +with them, too, it was an instinct; but may we not suspect that poets +would give themselves a better chance of writing works that posterity will +not willingly let die, by observing a "close time," a season of summer +silence between the April of the soul when sing they must, and the advent +of the early autumn days, with auburn tints, meditative haze, and grave +tranquil retrospects. Who shall say when the fruits of harvest-time begin +to ripen? But this clearly one may affirm, that but for the summer months, +when they seem almost to be stationary in colour, they would never ripen +at all. We know, I think, as a fact, that Milton commenced writing +_Paradise Lost_ some years before the restoration of the Monarchy, but no +one can tell how much earlier still it was really commenced. Milton +himself could not have told. The children of the Muse are conceived long +before they quicken; and even a lyric, apparently born in a moment, was +often begotten in the darkness and the silence of the days gone by. Works +as colossal as the _Divine Comedy_ and _Paradise Lost_ have deep and +distant foundations, and the noblest passages of human verse are the +unpremeditated outpourings of men who are habitually plunged in +meditation. The least serious reflection upon the subject, if coupled with +any insight into the methods and operations of imaginative genius, will +satisfy anybody that in the very midst of his political controversies and +ecclesiastical polemics Milton was in reality already composing _Paradise +Lost_. Dante never returned to Florence after he was exiled, and it was in +banishment that he wrote the _Divina Commedia_. Yet the "Sasso di Dante," +the stone on which he used to sit, gazing intently at the Duomo and at +Giotto's Campanile, is one of the sacred sights of the profane Tuscan +city, and his townsmen had already learnt to speak of him as "One who had +seen Hell." What enabled him to see it so clearly was his familiarity with +the ways of men and the uncelestial politics of Florence. It was through +Beatrice and the passion of Love--_Amor, che il ciel governi_--that he +gained access to Paradise, and a knowledge of those things of which he +says: + + ... che ridire + Ne sa ne puo qual di lassu discende. + +But the sadness of Purgatory, and the horrors of Hell, these he learned +from the wrangles of Guelph and Ghibelline, of these he obtained mastery +by being, in A.D. 1300, Priore of the fairest, but most mercurial of +cities. We have the authority of Shakespeare, who ought to have been well +informed on that subject, that the lover and the poet are of imagination +all compact, and the brisk air of public policy is the best corrective for +the disease of narrow intensity to which both alike are peculiarly +subject. + +There would be no difficulty, I think, in showing that all the greater men +of letters of the eighteenth century were largely indebted for the +literary success they attained to the vivid interest they displayed in +public affairs. To mention Dryden, Swift, Pope, Addison is to conjure up +before the mind chapter upon chapter of English political history. Pope +says: + + Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory; + +and not without some reason, for, like his friend Swift, he cared more for +his own career than for either Party in the State. But no one can read the +valuable notes appended by Mr. Courthorpe to his edition of the great +satirist, without seeing how alive Pope was to the _quidquid agunt +homines_ of his generation. As for Swift, he was for a time, as the writer +of an admirable paper upon him in the _Quarterly Review_ asserts, the +political dictator of Ireland. When Gibbon betook himself to the task of +writing that monumental work which, I find, many persons to-day declare to +be unreadable, but which, I suspect, will be read when the most popular +books of this generation are forgotten, he wisely retired to the studious +quietude of Lausanne. But he narrates how the description of the tactics +of Roman legions and the victories of Roman Proconsuls was rendered more +facile and familiar to him by his previous experience as a Captain of +Yeomanry at home, while even his brief tenure of a seat in the British +Parliament enabled him to grasp with more alacrity and precision the +legislative conduct of the Conscript Fathers. + +In the nineteenth century which, despite its many privileges--not the +least of which, perhaps, was that of being able to express a very high +opinion of itself, without at the time being contradicted--enjoyed no +immunity from the general laws of human nature, I think the proposition +still holds good that men of letters who aspire to high distinction do +well not to disdain altogether the politics of their time. I have already +referred to Wordsworth, and ventured to suggest that he suffered in some +degree, as a poet, from being nothing but a poet. Byron presents a marked +contrast in this respect; and I am still of opinion, which I am comforted +to find is shared by most persons who are men of the world, and by men of +letters who are something more than men of letters, that Byron is, on the +whole, the most considerable English poet since Milton. Art for Art's sake +is a creed that has been embraced by too many critics of our time. Do we +not find in this circumstance an explanation of their tendency to extol +the quietistic and solitary poets, and, on the other hand, to depreciate +the poets who deal with action and the more complex features of life? It +is the business of poets to deal with the relation of the individual to +himself, to the silent uniform forces of nature, and to other individuals, +singly and collectively: in other words, to be dramatic or epic, as well +as lyrical or idyllic. All poets of the first rank are both; yet the +quietistic and purely introspective critics assign a place, and a prior +place as a rule, in the front rank, to poets who are only second. I cannot +think that conclusions reposing on such demonstrably unsound canons of +criticism will permanently hold their ground. Byron contrived to crowd +into a very short life a vast amount both of poetry and of public +activity; acting upon his own recorded opinion that a man was sent into +the world to do something more than to write poetry. A writer who, I +fancy, belongs to the school, now happily becoming obsolete, whose verdict +was that Byron's poetry, though good enough for Scott, Shelley, and +Goethe, is only "the apotheosis of common-place," has recently expressed +the opinion that "Byron would not have gone to Greece if he had not become +tired of the Contessa Guiccioli." As far as she is concerned, I can only +say, as one who knew her, and has many letters written by her on the +subject of Byron, that if at any time she ever became indifferent to him, +her affection for him experienced a marvellous revival. As for the +suggestion that he went to Greece because he was tired of his companion, +it surely was not necessary for a man to go to Greece to get rid of a +woman of whom he was tired, and certainly Byron was not the man to +consider the "world well lost" for a woman. But the letters he wrote to +his "companion" from Greece attest that his affection for her was still +not slight. In any case there is no necessity to cast about one for any +reason to explain Byron's going to Greece, beyond the exceedingly simple +one that he was a man of action as well as a poet. Had he lived, instead +of dying, for Greece, I cannot doubt that English poetry would have reaped +a yet more glorious harvest from him, thanks to his incidental experiences +as a soldier and a statesman. + +The theme is one that easily lends itself to illustration; but enough +perhaps has been said to justify the conclusion that it is for the best +and highest interests of literature that those who love it before all +other things, and cherish it beyond all other considerations, should +nevertheless take a large and liberal view of what constitutes life, and +should include in the excursions of their experience and in the survey of +their contemplation what are called politics, or the business and +interests of the State. I do not propose that they should be vestrymen, +though I cannot forget that Shakespeare did not disdain to concern himself +in the local business of Stratford-upon-Avon. For men of letters to be +willing to interest themselves in politics, politics generally, must be +interesting. The issues raised must be issues of moment and dignity, +issues affecting the greatness of an Empire, the stability of a State, or +the general welfare of humanity. In a country like our own, where Party +Government prevails, it is not easy, indeed it is impossible, for a man of +letters to interest himself in politics without inclining, through +sympathy and conviction, to one Party in the State rather than to the +other; and there are occasions, no doubt, when Party issues are synonymous +with the greatness of the Empire, the stability of the State, and the +welfare of mankind. But a wise man of letters will do well to stand more +or less aloof from all smaller issues, and to avoid, as degrading to the +character and lowering to the imagination, Party wrangles that are mere +Party wrangles and nothing more. + +There have been seasons in the history of the human race, melancholy +seasons for the human mind, the "evil days" spoken of by Milton, when men +of letters could not, with any self-respect, mix in politics. How much +more highly we should think of Seneca if that literary Stoic had not been +a minister of Nero. There was no room for a self-respecting man of letters +in French politics during the reign of Napoleon I., none during the +earlier years of the reign of Napoleon III., unless he happened to be a +sincere admirer of a corrupt and brilliant despotism. There are +despotisms that are corrupt, or what is equally bad, vulgar and servile, +without being brilliant; and I am not alone in entertaining the fear lest +unadulterated Democracy--that is to say, the passions, interests, and +power of a homogeneous majority, acting without any regard to the passions +and interests that exist outside of it, and purged of all respect for +intellect that does not provide it with specious reasons and feed it with +constant adulation--should inflict upon us a despotism under which, again, +there will be no room in the domain of politics for men of letters who +respect themselves. It is not the business of a man of letters to take his +politics either from a Monarch or a Mob, or to push his fortunes--slightly +to alter a celebrated phrase--by those services which demagogues render to +crowds. If the love and pursuit of literature do not make a man more +independent in character, more disinterested in his reasonings, more +elevated in his views, they will not have done for him what I should have +expected from them. That politicians pure and simple are becoming less +imbued with the literary spirit is, I think, certain, and it is to be +regretted, because polite Politics are almost as much to be desired as +polite Literature, and should be little less imbued with the Horatian +sentiment, _Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros_. Many years ago I heard a +prominent politician in the House of Commons reproach Disraeli, then +Leader of the House, with servility to the Crown, for no other reason that +I could see than that, in explaining certain communications that had +passed between the Queen and the Prime Minister, he had made use of the +customary mode of speaking of the Sovereign. The imperturbability of +Disraeli in debate under the strongest provocation was notoriously one of +the secrets of his authority and influence. But it was plain on that +occasion, when he rose to reply, that he had been irritated by the charge. +But how did he rebut it? "The right honourable gentleman," he said, "has +been pleased to accuse me of servility to the Crown. Well, Sir, I appeal +to gentlemen on both sides of the House, for they _are_ gentlemen on both +sides of the House----" There was a sudden outburst of cheering. He did +not finish the sentence, but turned away to another matter. Could there +have been a more crushing yet a more parliamentary and well-bred rebuke? +Mr. Gladstone did not possess the same quiet power of reproval. But his +courtesy was uniformly faultless, even when he most indulged in indignant +invective. It is told of Guizot, that, when President of the Council in +France, on being interrupted by his opponents with unseemly clamour, he +observed, "I do not think, gentlemen, the solution of the controversy will +be assisted by shouting; and such clamour, however loud, will never reach +the height of my disdain." One does not ask politicians to disarm; but +they must use the rapier, not the tomahawk; and it is Literature, and +Literature only, that can adequately teach them how to employ with ample +effect the seemly weapons of debate. If politicians and even Monarchs are +wise, they will respect Literature. After all, Literature has always the +last word. "A hundred years hence," said a French poet to a rather saucy +beauty, "you will be just as beautiful as I choose to say you were"; and +the verses in which he said this have survived. Politicians whom +Literature ignores are in the same position. If Literature ignores them +they will be forgotten. If Literature condemns them they will stand +condemned. But Literature, in turn, should be fair-minded and sincere, +not disingenuous, not a partisan. It wields, in the long run, enormous +power, and therefore has corresponding responsibilities. If the public +taste in any direction, in politics, in letters, or any of the other Arts +grows debased, and current critical opinion follows the debasement, +Literature can only stand apart, or loftily reprehend them. Of all +influences, Literature is the most patient, the most persistent, and the +most enduring. Unfairness cannot long injure, malevolence cannot +permanently damage or depreciate it; for, as I have said, Literature, +lofty self-respecting Literature, always has the last word, the final +hearing, political partisanship having no power over the final estimation +in which it is held. At the beginning of the nineteenth century current +Tory criticism strove to belittle men of letters who happened to be +Liberals; and, since Toryism was then in the ascendant, it for a time, but +only for a time, partially succeeded. In our day, and for some few years +past, the influence of Liberalism has been visibly uppermost in current +criticism, which has in turn done scant justice to men of letters +suspected of holding different views. To the latter, as to the great +Liberal poets and other men of letters in the earlier days of the +nineteenth century, such patent partisanship can do no lasting injury. +Perhaps men of letters might themselves raise the standard of +dispassionate criticism were they always fair to each other, and not, as I +fear sometimes happens, be ungenerous to contemporaries, who for one +reason or another are not much favoured by them. There is a curious +passage in the 11th Canto of the _Purgatorio_ of the _Divina Commedia_, +where Dante recognises a certain Oderesi, and compliments him on the +talent he showed when on earth as an illuminator or miniature painter. +Oderesi replies that Franco Bolognese was his superior in that art, but +that from jealousy he had failed to allow as much, and adds + + Di tal superbia qui si paga il fio: + +meaning thereby that he was now undergoing punishment for his unworthy +jealousy on earth. + +Even those to whom an Inferno or Purgatorio is a sheer fiction may be +reminded that Time's final court of appeal, when it readjusts balances +falsely weighted in days gone by, will not fail to stigmatise those who +once belittled what, had they been more candid, they would have better +appreciated. + + + + +A CONVERSATION WITH SHAKESPEARE IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS + + +I am aware that, in these days, when realism is all the rage and true +imagination at a discount, people will ask how, not being either an AEneas +or a Dante, I came to be admitted to an actual sight of the Elysian +Fields, and will not be fobbed off by any fanciful explanation such as +used to satisfy the more unsophisticated reader of former times. I +therefore hasten to satisfy their exacting curiosity by saying that I +happen to have done a good turn of late to the Pagan gods--not forgetting +the goddesses, whom one should always have on one's side, since they hold +the keys of the position equally on earth, in the air, and +underground--and they made their acknowledgments to me by letting me know +that I might have my choice of an interview with any one, but only one, of +the personages among those who are now disporting themselves in the other +world. At first, I was rather tempted to name Eve, in order that I might +get an intelligible account from the most trustworthy source of the Tree +of Knowledge and the Tree of Good and Evil. But I thought she perhaps +would know as little about them as myself; so I thought I would ask for an +interview, with either Helen of Troy or with Cleopatra, when it suddenly +struck me that I should probably find both one and the other not very +unlike women I had already come across here in this upper world. So, +anxious to know whether or not there ever was a real flesh-and-blood +Shakespeare, and explaining that, if there was not, I had not the smallest +desire to have a talk with my Lord Verulam, I said, "Let me have a +colloquy with Shakespeare, the wisest, sweetest, wittiest, +largest-hearted, biggest-brained of human beings"; and, almost before I +had finished the sentence, I found myself in the Elysian Fields. + +At first, I forgot what I was there for at all, in my amazement at the +place itself. Though I am a tolerably close observer of external Nature, I +could not for the life of me surmise what season of the year I was in, and +finally perceived that I was in all the four seasons at one and the same +time. Primroses and bluebells were to be seen side by side with roses and +irises, with meadowsweet and traveller's joy, grass ready for the scythe +not far from swaying wheat and heavily-burred hop-garden; while, well +within view, I could see slopes of virgin snow, and folks making ready to +go tobogganing on them. It was just the same with bird-life. Stormcock, +nightingale, cuckoo, corncrake, woodpecker, robin redbreast, were all +singing together, yet there was no discord in the concert. + +"You want to see me, I am told," I heard some one say behind me, and, +turning, I at once perceived that it was Shakespeare, not from the +striking resemblance to any of the portraits or busts, Droeshout, Chandos, +Stratford-on-Avon, or other effigy, but by his seeming to be compounded of +them all, with something superadded that I could recall in none of them. +Similarly, he did not seem to be of any particular age, either of youth, +early manhood, middle life, or yet elderly, but compounded of all the +years, at once young and engaging, in the grand climacteric, and withal +full of mellow wisdom. His eye glowed with fine frenzy, withal was tender +and melting as that of a boy-lover. I could not fail to observe this +extraordinary combination of ages and qualities; yet they did not strike +me as in any way incongruous, any more than I had found incongruity in all +the seasons being contemporaneous, and blossom and fruit subsisting +together. I had expected to be rather embarrassed and somewhat overawed on +first coming across this king of men; but his manner was so simple, so +frank and friendly, that he put me at my ease at once, and I ventured to +inquire if, in the Elysian Fields, they had any knowledge of what was +going on in the world they had once inhabited. + +"Ample knowledge," he replied, "though we are not troubled with +newspapers, nor yet tormented by telegrams or telephones, but confine our +regard to what interests us." + +"Have you happened to notice," I asked, "that _A Winter's Tale_ has +recently been produced at His Majesty's Theatre?" + +"Yes, and all the more because that indefatigable manager and +all-embracing actor, Mr. Tree, has not taken a part in it. He would have +rendered Autolycus very suitably." + +"Perhaps," I went on, since I now felt on a footing of the most friendly +familiarity with one I had hitherto always thought of at a respectful +distance, "perhaps you have observed some of the criticisms on the play." + +"To tell the truth," he replied, "I have not. There were few such things +in my time, save by the audience; and my recollection of what few there +were does not dispose me to read fresh ones. But, if they have said +anything instructive or amusing, I shall be most happy to hear it." + +"I am afraid," I said, "they are more amusing than instructive." + +"Then let me have them by all means. The only thing one is sometimes +tempted to find fault with in the Elysian Fields is that its denizens are +a trifle too serious for me; being just as much inclined as ever to say, +when I find myself in the company of my fellow-creatures, 'With mirth and +laughter let me play the fool.'" + +Thus encouraged, I said that one critic had pronounced the play to be dull +as drama, and inferior as poetry; Autolycus to be a bore, yet by no means +the only tiresome feature in the play; the plot to be a succession of gaps +and puerilities; and that another observed what a pity it was you had made +Leontes a lunatic, a raving maniac, and a nuisance. As I recounted these +opinions, I could see no sign of annoyance on the face of the playwright, +but only a philosophic smile illumining his tranquil features. + +"I seem," he said, "to have heard that some time ago some one commented on +the meanness of the fable and the extravagant conduct of it, and declared +that the comedy caused no mirth, and the serious portion no concernment. I +daresay there is truth in the first part of the criticism, but, in regard +to the second, I seem to remember that, at the Globe, there was a good +deal of mirth at the lighter scenes, and no small attention at the grave +ones. But perhaps audiences in my day were different from audiences in +yours. I am by no means sure that I wrote the whole of the play; indeed I +am pretty certain I did not. My chief share in it was the love-scene +between Florizel and Perdita." + +"Which I have always thought very beautiful, and the very opposite of +'inferior as poetry.'" + +"Very good of you to say so; for I much enjoyed writing it. For the rest, +I suspect that a change has come over audiences, and still more over those +people whom you call critics. From what I have heard, they appear not to +confine themselves to appraising what is offered them, but want authors to +offer them something quite different, which is scarcely reasonable. +Moreover, they impute to an author motives he did not entertain, and ends +he did not have in view. For instance, I am supposed by them to have been +a rather successful delineator of character; overlooking the fact that I +over and over again cast character to the winds, in favour of the +situation, to which one surrendered oneself only too willingly, because in +doing so one was enabled to indulge one's humour and temperament more +freely and fully." + +"Am I right," I asked, "in thinking that your humour and temperament lay +chiefly in a keen enjoyment of rural nature, the delineation of love +between men and women, and philosophic reflections on the various passions +of human beings?" + +"You put it rather flatteringly," he said. "But I will not deny that what +you say concerning one's disposition is true. The external world is so +beautiful, loving and being loved are so delightful, and human beings are +so interesting, that it is a writer's own defect if he does not make them +appear beautiful, delightful, and interesting to others, no matter in what +form he presents them. If he has what you call the way with him, he will +make you accept as true almost any story, so long as he is telling it, no +matter what you may think of it afterwards. As a famous poet and critic +said long ago, _Incredulus odi_. Men naturally turn away from what seems +incredible. But what seems somewhat incredible when only read, appears +credible enough when acted, if acted well; and Ellen Terry was so +attractive and winning in her treatment of Polixenes, that the conjugal +jealousy of Leontes becomes, at least, almost intelligible." + +"That was exactly what I myself felt the other day, when I went to see the +performance," I said. "But I observe you quote Horace, though many persons +have maintained that you had little Latin, if any." + +"Rather a mistake that, arising, I imagine, from their not knowing what +Grammar Schools were like in my time, when we were taught something more +than the rudiments of Latin, with the assistance of prompt corporal +chastisement if we showed a disinclination to master them. Nowadays, I +see, the birch, the ferule, and the cane, have fallen into disfavour, with +the result that many English boys, at schools supposed to be very superior +in the education they provide, refuse to learn anything except cricket and +rowing; two excellent accomplishments, but not quite covering the whole +ground of a liberal education." + +"May I inquire," I said, "if you, among others, had a liberal application +of the cane?" + +"My fair share," he said, "but not for refusing to learn, since I enjoyed +being taught, and, still more, teaching myself; and a very little +learning, though some people have said it is a dangerous thing, goes a +long way if you only know how to turn it to account. My thrashings, which +were richly deserved, were given for being behindhand of a morning because +I had loitered with some rustic sight or sound that arrested me, and +suchlike irregularities of conduct. But what was taught us was taught +thoroughly, and I have sometimes thought that men deemed poets may be +taught and learn too much, as, for instance, my good friend Ben Jonson, +who has been justly compared to a heavy galleon, though a very well +trimmed and steered one, but which perhaps would sometimes have benefited +by a portion of its dead weight being cast overboard. Still he was a rare +poet all the same." + +"Who is that, may I ask, with the pointed beard, that has just been joking +with a rubicund friar whom I no longer see, and then more gravely with a +seemly and tender-looking young woman, also vanished 'into air, into thin +air,' while he now stoops to gather daisies from the grass? I seem to know +his face." + +"That is a delightful fellow, perhaps of all my companions here the most +congenial; the morning star of English song, Geoffrey Chaucer. _He_ could, +and did, delineate character consistently if you like. I think it is his +cheerful, kindly sense of humour that recommends him so strongly to me. +But a nearer contemporary of mine in the other world whom you see there, +wearing an aspect of stately distinction, essentially what English folk +call a perfect gentleman, likewise enters much into the study of my +imagination. See! Now he turns his face towards you." + +"Surely it is Edmund Spenser, is it not?" + +"Yes, the Poet's poet. His verse is at once so natural and so noble, as to +be irresistible. I often repeat to myself two exquisitely musical and +briefly descriptive lines of his: + + A little lowly Hermitage it was, + Down in a dale, hard by a forest side. + +No amount of elaboration and detail would enable one to see the Hermitage +better, or indeed, as well; and the lyrical freedom of the ostensibly +iambic verse gives to it an irresistible charm." + +"And, over and over again, if I may say so, gives to the blank verse of +your dramas the same magical quality that a more stately treatment of it +can never confer. But where is Milton?" + +"One sees him but seldom," he replied; "and when Chaucer and I do catch +sight of him, we behave rather like truant schoolboys, and put on a grave +face, especially if he finds us in one of our lighter moods. We are all +rather in awe of him, for he never stoops to playfulness; and Chaucer, who +is rather irreverent sometimes, says he is so uniformly sublime as now and +then to be ridiculous. But, in our hearts, we greatly revere him. To tell +the truth, I think he prefers Wordsworth's company to ours; and we find +more congenial society from time to time in--look! that handsome youth, +who carries his head with unconscious pride, and even here seems +half-discontented. The best is never good enough for him, and he cannot be +deluded even by his own illusions, poor fellow!" + +"It's Byron," I said, "is it not?" + +"Yes, there is no mistaking him; part man, part god, part devil. I believe +there was some doubt about admitting him here, lest he should rouse even +the Elysian Fields to mutiny, and a question whether he should not have an +enclosure all to himself. But he is a man of the world, and knows how to +behave himself when he chooses; and, when one of his misanthropic moods +comes over him, he wanders about scowling and muttering like a gathering +thunderstorm. I am told he breaks bounds sometimes to go in search of +Sappho. There would be a pair of them, would there not? What an +explosive power there was in him! for in the mind, as in your melanite, +force packs small." + +"And Shelley? Where is Shelley?" + +"Where the bee sucks, I suspect; for he is the very Ariel of our company; +ever, even here, in search of the unattainable! But he is a great +favourite with all of us, he is so lovable." + +"And the poet who has delighted my own generation," I inquired. "Surely he +is among you." + +"Not yet," he replied; "though I have not the least doubt he will be, in +due course. No one is admitted here until he has been dead for fifty +years; Time, the door-keeper and guardian of Eternity, being more +deliberate than the janitors of Westminster Abbey, who, you must allow, +make some rather ludicrous blunders in admitting, on the very morrow of +their decease, at the importunity of friends and associates, persons for +whom, half a century later, no one will dream of claiming any special +posthumous distinction." + +"I fear that is so," I confessed. "We have been rather fussy and feverish +of late, and attribute to notoriety an enduring power it does not +possess." + +"Just so. Notoriety is one thing, Fame quite another. Will not the result +be that men who may without presumption entertain a humble hope that, as +our lofty friend Milton puts it, Posterity will not willingly let die all +that they may have done or written, will feel a distaste for these +precipitate distinctions, and even take precautions against them. We +notice that something of the same kind is taking place among you in regard +to what you call titular honours, since they have become so common, and +are lavished on such undistinguished persons, as to be no longer valued by +the truly distinguished." + +"That is so," I said; "but it is inevitable in these days, and probably +useful to the State, satisfying a number of small ambitions." + +"I understand," he replied; and I thought to myself, of course he does, he +who understood everything. "In these days it is more important to satisfy +the many," he went on, "than to content the few, and persons of real +distinction must always be few; and, after all, if these are wise as well +as distinguished, they must be content with anything that ministers to the +welfare of the community at large." + +It was so interesting to me to hear this great dramatist and supreme poet +talking wisdom in this familiar manner, like any ordinary being, that I +made the most of my opportunity, and asked him if he thought what he had +just said served to explain the magnificent manner in which his plays are +presented to modern audiences, and if he approved of such presentation. + +"I should approve," he replied, "if there were no danger of the mounting +of the piece diverting the attention of the audience from the play itself, +and if it did not appear necessary to modern stage-managers to cut out +whatever does not easily lend itself to spectacular devices. I quite +understand their motive; for, having been in my time not only an actor, +but part proprietor, and part stage-manager of theatres, I do not forget +that they must take into consideration the material results of their +enterprise. But my colleagues and I contrived to make a fair livelihood +out of our theatres without any large outlay on the scenery or the +dresses. Apparently, your modern audiences would yawn at, and not +understand, speeches that not only the courtiers of Elizabeth, but the +citizens of Blackfriars and the Chepe, listened to with rapt and +straining ears. We observe that you pique yourselves upon what you call +the progress you have made during the last three hundred years, and some +of us are rather amused at the self-complacent claim; and, though you +travel much faster, live much more luxuriously, and blow each other to +pieces more successfully than we did, it may be doubted if men's minds +have made much advance, or if their intellectual qualities are not, +notwithstanding the increase of what you deem education, poorer and more +stinted than when the bulk of the nation read less, but reflected more." + +"In one respect," I ventured to say, "you can hardly withhold your +sympathy from the claim of our having made progress. We no longer regard +actors as vagabonds." + +"I am not quite so sure of that," he said, with a significant smile. +"Myself an actor as well as an author, my utterances in the second +capacity respecting the former are not particularly flattering; and the +fuss you have of late made over actors and actresses, as over millionaires +and transatlantic heiresses, is perhaps evidence less of admiration than +of self-interest, and an appetite for diversion." + +"But," I observed, "an actor was recently buried, with the customary +honours, in Westminster Abbey." + +"But did everybody approve of it? Milton took care to inform me that many +did not; but my withers remained unwrung, and I playfully replied that I +was rather disposed to think that special form of posthumous +acknowledgment might not unsuitably be reserved for actors and +politicians--the author of _Paradise Lost_ was, every now and then, an +active politician, was he not?--since the two have much in common, both +appealing to their audiences by voice, intonation, gesticulation, and +pursuit of popularity, and enjoying a wide but ephemeral notoriety." + +I remembered the passage in _Henry the Sixth_ where he says that he hates +"the loud applause and _aves_ vehement" of the many, and of his little +esteem for those who "affect" such, and I followed up that silent +recollection by saying: + +"And, after all, Milton, Pope, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, lie far away from +that edifice; also, I might add, one greater than any of them--yourself." + +"Dear old Stratford-on-Avon!" he said, as though he were musing rather +than addressing himself to me. "I am well content to be sepulchred there. +How I loved it! How I love it still! And how much I owed to it! My works, +such as they are, have in your ingenious age been attributed to one much +more nobly born, more highly educated, more deeply read, more erudite, +than I. They who started, and those who have accepted, that theory, little +understand that no such man could have written them. Whatever may be their +merit or demerit, their author could only be one who, born in a modest +condition, began by having the closest touch with frank unaffected human +nature, and for whom life and society expanded by degrees, until, though +still preferring the life removed, he could tell sad stories of the death +of kings, find books in the running brooks, and good in everything." + +As he slowly uttered these familiar majestic words, he faded from my +sight; and all that was left was an enduring recollection of that +privileged interview. + + + + +Footnotes: + +[1] In estimating Byron, people too often forget that the same poet wrote +_Manfred_ and _Beppo_, _Childe Harold_ and _Don Juan_. It is the variety, +in other words the extent, of Byron's genius, that constitutes his +greatness. + +[2] The renderings into English verse from Dante are by the author of the +paper. + + + + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. + +The misprint "Wordworth" was corrected to "Wordsworth" (page 181). + +Hyphenation inconsistencies have been retained from the original. + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Bridling of Pegasus, by Alfred Austin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS *** + +***** This file should be named 35394.txt or 35394.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/9/35394/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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