A SKETCH OF ENGLISH POETRY

FROM BLAKE TO BROWNING

CHAPTER I

POETRY AND ITS RELATION TO LIFE

POETRY and criticism being by no means the universal concern of the world, but only the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and of idle men who read there.' This is how Pope, writing in 1716, felt it to be with poetry and criticism, that they were exclusively the affair of a comparatively small class, the leisured and cultivated few. The feeling of to-day is substantially the same. Readers have greatly increased in numbers since Pope wrote, but they have not, in any large proportion, come to care for poetry and criticism; they leave these, together with many other things, out of view, making no secret of their preference for that ephemeral literature which is of interest to-day, and is consigned to oblivion to-morrow. While, then, the newspaper is a matter of universal concern, poetry, although of immeasurably older, not to say nobler, birth, has never become so, and the promise that it will ever become so is

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slight. Why is this? It is in part because there has always been, and still is, a wide-spread misapprehension of the nature and the office of poetry, or, in other words, of what poetry really is, and of what it can do for us. The critics have never made these things clear, but have, for the most part, darkened counsel with words. They have been content to address a minority which, in moments of foolish pride, is sometimes spoken of as 'a certain acute and honourable minority.' Criticism seems to have strengthened rather than dispelled the impression that poetry is a something altogether without weight or substance, a texture of light and air, like rainbow or sunset, pleasant to look upon, but, like them, incapable of being brought into any definite or profitable relationship with life. By many people poetry is thought to differ from science in this, that while the latter deals with facts, the former is concerned with abstractions; that while science is clear knowledge available for life, poetry is vague fancy available for no end, except, it may be, to feed the dreams of the indolent. In a practical age some apology for poetry is looked for. It is asked, 'Of what advantage is the study of poetry?' or 'What is it?' 'Is it a true thing?' But when the misapprehension spoken of is removed, apology will be idle; when once it comes to be clearly seen what the best poetry really is, and what it can do for us, nothing more will be needed. It will not be at all necessary to speak rapturously about it, to exalt its claims upon men's attention, or to trumpet the advantages accompanying a study of it in response to the trumpets that sound loudly on behalf of science. Although the poets are their own best apologists, there is still room for criticism, a criticism which shall address itself to those who, for some reason or other, have never felt drawn to poetical writings,

who speak of themselves as without a taste for poetry. Criticism addressed to this class would be invaluable, for many such persons as are here spoken of ask, in all sincerity, as they have a right to ask, wherein it will be to their advantage to give time and attention that have such serious and, we may almost say, inexorable demands made upon them, to give this time and attention to a study which seems to have no very definite issue. 'All about and around us,' said a recent writer, 'a faith in poetry struggles to be extricated, but it is not extricated.' And it is so. Among those who have made friends with the poets this faith, this confidence in poetry, is very marked. They are satisfied of its quite incalculable worth, conscious that nothing can take its place, and that it has a kind of magic virtue peculiar to itself; but with the vast majority of readers, 'a faith in poetry struggles to be extricated, but it is not extricated.' Lovers of poetry, indeed, wish that it were otherwise, and are willing to give their testimony in behalf of what they love; but while the minds of almost all men are so determinedly employed in other and far different directions, and, amid the tumult of voices proclaiming many gospels, to gain a hearing for the cause of poetry is not an easy matter. Poetry, we may safely say, will never attract the crowd, or draw to the seclusion of its shrine a multitude of devotees such as worship with passionate abandonment the great goddess Success, and so can never become, in any complete sense, a universal concern; but we may indulge the hope that by means of a wise criticism the confines of the poetic realm will be indefinitely extended, and the benign influences of its sovereignty experienced by an ever-growing number of subjects. Plato, when he made his famous indictment against the poets, and shut against them the gates of his

ideal commonwealth, did not pass a judgment from which there was to be no appeal. If good defence was made on her behalf, willing re-admittance was to be granted to Poetry; she was to be allowed to return from exile. 'And to those of her defenders,' he said, 'who are lovers of poetry, yet not poets, I think that we may grant a further privilege-they shall be allowed to speak in prose on her behalf; let them show not only that she is pleasant but also useful to states and to human life, and we will gladly listen; for if this can be proved we shall surely be the gainers, I mean if there is a use in poetry as well as a delight.' The task imposed upon the critics is the same to-day. Let them show that poetry is not only pleasant but also useful to states and to human life.'

Believers in poetry share with all men the desire to make the best of life, but ideas of what in reality are the best things in life, and where teaching in regard to them may be found, differ very widely. Confidence in poetry arises from the belief that into the poetry of the world have entered the opinions of the wisest minds of the world as to what these best things are, and that thus to become acquainted with poetry is to take a sure step towards wisdom. In the effort to frame for ourselves a just philosophy of life many of us have found the most reliable guides among the poets, and in their company have passed not only the most happy, but also the most helpful, hours of our lives. To show how it is that poetry has produced this faith in itself, to make the interest in it deeper, fuller, and more intelligent, is the first duty of criticism; and an enquiry, however short and incomplete, into its nature, and the relation it bears to life, will therefore be serviceable as an introduction to the poetry of any particular era.

We may premise freely that a definition of poetry is im

possible. Definition implies complete analysis, and in the end there always remains something in poetry that escapes analysis. And this is so, because poetry is rooted in and springs from the soil of human nature, and has to do with that nature in its relation to the world, and as it is constituted, with all its elemental powers and affections, with its primary facts. That nature, however far back we press the enquiry, can never be fully explained, and poetry also evades complete analysis. Not, indeed, that, strictly speaking, poetry itself is insusceptible of complete exposition, but rather the conditions of human nature, upon which its existence depends. Its genesis and nature are as inexplicable as that of life itself, for life throbs in it. Like all the other arts, it is wholly an achievment of man, of his creative instinct. 'The things which are said to be done by Nature, are indeed done by divine art,' and in the spirit of man has, from the first, been present a joy in creation, which we may suppose is akin to that felt by the Architect of the universe. Man's effort to express and to perpetuate his ideas through various mediums has resulted in the arts. Directed through the medium of colour it has produced painting; through the medium of sound, music; through the medium of language, poetry. But before poetry came to be a developed art, long before any conscious effort was involved in its production, the impulse in which its springs are set uttered itself at sight of the wonder and beauty of Nature in half-articulate cry perhaps, or, aroused by keen joy or sorrow, in the spontaneous, vivid language of the feelings—an elemental or primitive song in the compass of a single gush of emotion.

Traced to its earliest beginnings, poetry is found associated with religious feeling. Into the dullest and