over the wide field of literature. Rather let us return to some
practical bearing of this whole question. For a practical bearing it
has. It is this. Life consists of knowing, acting, admiring, loving, and
hoping. The ideal man would be at the same time sage, poet, artist, man
of virtue, and man of deeds. The perfect man would have all his
faculties of thinking, feeling, and doing wholesomely blended. Now
neither Hebraism nor Hellenism could produce the ideal man or
harmoniously develop all his best powers. Each had its defects. The
Hebrew, along with his intense spirituality and his moral strenuousness,
lacked intellectual justness, sense of proportion, social
appreciativeness, artistic truth and sobriety. The Hellene, along with
his lucidity of intellect, his justness of perception in art, and his
social aptitudes, lacked that sustained zeal for some moral principle
which leads either to the doing of great things or to the attainment of
sublime character. The dangers of Hebraism lay in excess of absorption,
in a proneness to fanaticism, in an obstinacy which might become
rabidness, in a certain misplaced loudness and disregard of dignity. The
dangers of Hellenism lay in proneness to sacrifice character to talent,
and deeds to thought. Hebraism tended towards asceticism and bigotry;
Hellenism towards indifference and self-indulgence. The narrow Puritans
of the seventeenth century revealed some of the dangers of excessive
Hebraism; some of the dangers of excessive Hellenism have appeared in
France. The modern French are in many things, though by no means in all
things, a copy of the ancient Greeks. They are so in their passion for
clear ideas. France is the land of the _philosophes_ and the critics.
The French are Hellenic in their dislike of _emphase_ and of
_originalite_, a word which comes to mean not so much originality as
eccentricity. And in such a connotation of _originalite_, there betrays
itself an important fact--that France is hardly the best country for the
production of great characters. "The great Frenchmen," it has been said,
"are apt to be Italians." Greece, too, failed to produce great
characters. Homer's heroes, like the eminent figures of Grecian history,
are of little moral force. Where the correct state of mind is to have
_point de zele_, as at Paris and Athens, mankind may avoid the
ridiculous, but can scarcely reach the sublime. Where the guiding force
is some clear idea, men may rise to some signal effort, like the battle
of Salamis or the French Revolution; but intellectual impulse has none
of the durability of moral impulse, and the fibre of resolve is soon
relaxed into languid discontent. Thus much may be said of Hellenism in
excess. Yet its services are immense. The social and material progress
of the world requires free play of thought, a certain boldness and
open-mindedness of inquiry; and for this we look rather to the spirit of
the _audax Iapeti genus_--the Hellenic spirit--than to the firm-set
minds of the sons of Shem. And, on the contrary, whatever may be urged
against Hebraism in excess, it is all the better for human life that men
should have the capacity for emotional depth and fervour, for tenacious
adherence to some high moral purpose. In these days of clamour and
dispute we need a diffusion of the Hellenic spirit to enable us to look
out on things exactly as they are, and to deliver us from fads and
fatuous agitations. But in these same days of weak convictions we need a
measure of Hebraic ardour and Hebraic fortitude to make our conduct
answer to what we see, and to prevent our seeing from ending in thoughts
and words.
What is principally needed is a blending in just proportion of the two
spirits. We want Hellenism for knowing and enjoying, Hebraism for
acting, loving, and hoping. "Without haste, without rest," should be our
maxim for progress. And that is equivalent to saying that neither the
Hebraic zeal nor the Hellenic repose can of itself satisfy our needs.
This blending could be obtained, more than we now seek to obtain it. The
leopard cannot change his spots, and the human being cannot wholly rid
himself of his congenital qualities. Nevertheless culture and habit are
second nature. There is scarcely a disposition of mind or manner of
sentiment into which we cannot bring ourselves by steadily encouraging
it. The faculties of the mind are like the muscles of the body. They
shrink to nothing if not exercised; they can be exercised symmetrically;
or some can be exercised at the expense of the rest. What we want is a
school culture, and a self-culture, which shall bring out all our best
powers, not one only of them or some few of them. At present our system
is all for knowledge. We seek for understanding of facts, but we do not
seek for a systematic view of life, for clear principles of art, or for
social many-sidedness. Of the best elements of the Hebraic spirit, we
are almost ceasing to seek anything at all. And this is wholly bad. We
shall breed up a race not only without what Matthew Arnold calls
distinction, but without any common animating soul, unless it be a
general selfishness and a general Philistinism.
What we want is a broader, less mechanical culture. We want to be
steeped not only in facts, but in stimulating thoughts, religious and
poetical. Splendid culture means splendid ideals, and if a nation could
acquire the clear thinking of Hellenism combined with the immense moral
resolve of Hebraism, that nation, knowing its aims, and making steadily
towards them, would afford a spectacle of grandeur and of power such as
no nation now presents.
The Principles of Criticism
Applied to
Two Successors of Tennyson
It is perhaps hardly necessary to explain that in the words "successors
of Tennyson" I make no reference to an actual or a prospective Poet
Laureate. The position primarily held by Tennyson in his lifetime, and
the only position in which posterity will regard him, is the position of
the poet. That he was the laureate also is no doubt a matter of some
biographical interest, but it is of little further significance. It will
be doing no injustice to the large quantity of agreeable verse-writing
which has been executed by Mr. Alfred Austin if we take it for granted
that his appointment carries the laureateship back to what it was before
Wordsworth and Tennyson lent it the lustre of their names. The laureate
is now, as in the days of Southey, a literary officer in the Queen's
service, chosen, as other officers are wont to be chosen, by the
political powers that be. Our present interest is rather in those who
come after Tennyson as pre-eminent among the free and single-hearted
servants of the Muses.
Again, by his "successors" I mean simply those who come after--those
masters of younger birth who seem most nearly to take his place now that
he is gone--not any avowed disciples, still less servile imitators of
his thought or style. Following upon Homer there was the school of the
Homeridae, or "sons of Homer." A cluster of poets at the beginning of the
seventeenth century were styled "the sons of Ben Jonson." There are no
doubt "sons of Tennyson" at this present date. With these we have now no
concern. They are but satellites, while that for which we are scanning
the poetical horizon is a rising star of a magnitude in some degree
comparable with the stars which have set with the deaths of Matthew
Arnold, Browning and Tennyson. There is, I believe, more than one such
star already well advanced into the firmament. I am one of those who
believe that this is an age unusually rich in genuine poetry. There are
to-day singing in the English tongue enough of so-called minor poets to
have made the poetical fortune of any epoch between the Elizabethan
period and our own. This century has seen re-enthroned the Miltonic
doctrine that poetry should be "simple, sensuous, and passionate"; it
has learned from Wordsworth of the divinity in Nature, from Shelley of
the passion in it, from Tennyson how to express its moods; it has
learned from Byron how to be frank about humanity, from Wordsworth how
to sympathize with it, from Browning how to understand it; it has been
taught by Shelley how to write with melody, by Keats how to write with
richness, by Wordsworth with simplicity, by Tennyson with grace and
luminousness, by Arnold with chasteness. It has availed itself of these
great examples to such good purpose that the average of reputable verse
written to-day is more instinct with feeling, more vitalised with
thought, more satisfying in expression, than much which is studied and
belauded and quoted because it was written a century or two ago.
With great boldness perhaps, but with no less deliberateness of
judgment, I maintain that contemporary men and women might better spare
for the living, breathing, and often very beautiful work of their
contemporaries, some of the time and appreciation which they do not
grudge to give over and over again, even if it be with some conscious
effort, to the elaborate conceits of the seventeenth century, to the
rather frigid frugalities of a Gray, the laborious melancholies of a
Collins, or the cold transparencies of a Landor. No doubt justice will
be done in the end, but why not do as much of it as possible at once?
It is for these reasons that I beg your attention to an attempt at an
appreciation of two contemporary singers, both excellent, though
differing in the nature of their excellence. Their names are John
Davidson and William Watson.
But first it would be well to look a little closely at that word
"appreciation," and to examine frankly the considerations which make up
a literary judgment. I am induced to take this course after a somewhat
amused survey of a series of criticisms which have been passed upon the
two poets who are our immediate subject. One writer, for instance,
speaks of Mr. Davidson's works as "marked from end to end by the
careless fecundity of power," while the next tells us of the self-same
verses that they have "the severe restraint and very deliberately willed
simplicity of M. Guy de Maupassant." Careless fecundity and deliberate
restraint are sufficiently irreconcilable terms to apply to the same
creations. Another critic tells us of Mr. Watson that "it is of
'Collins' lonely vesper-chime' and 'the frugal note of Gray' that we
think as we read the choicely worded, well-turned quatrains that succeed
each other like the strong unbroken waves of a full tide," and I cannot
but wonder how a full tide of strong waves can suggest anything either
"frugal" or "well-chosen." It is turbid judgments such as these, and an
intellectual slovenliness which is content to accept words and phrases
without attaching definite notions to them, that discredit the average
English criticism, when set beside the lucid Greek appreciation of
Aristotle and Longinus, or of those Frenchmen like Taine or Ste. Beuve
who know exactly what they look for and why they look for it. We still
require a few Matthew Arnolds to drill us in the first steps in
criticism. It seems almost as if we had accepted for literature the
ultra-democratic maxim that every man has as much right as every other
man to judge a poem--if not a good deal more right.
The appreciation of a poet means the estimation of his rank, the
separation of his precious metal from his dross, to the end that we may
get the utmost enjoyment out of his beauties, while we feel the
intellectual satisfaction which comes of a reasoned opinion at first
hand. We appreciate the poet at his true value when we set his
particular contribution to the literary joys of life neither too high
nor too low. We fully appreciate him when we derive from him the keenest
delight which he is capable of affording. And I know of no other process
for the attainment of this end than the one which I am about to
propound. It is, I think, a method which is analytical without being
mechanical, and judicial without being cold.
The excellence of the poems of Tennyson has been placed beyond doubt by
a consensus of the best judgment, when there some day swim into our ken
first one and then another small volume bearing the name of William
Watson or John Davidson. We perhaps read these volumes receptively
enough, and form some sort of impression concerning them. But we are not
sure of ourselves; we wait to hear what other people have to say. If we
hear praise, we feel encouraged to join in it; if we hear disparagement,
we grow suspicious of our own more favourable judgment. Perhaps, on the
other hand, with that half-resentment which we are always apt to feel at
new claims to poetic eminence, and for which a large measure of excuse
is to be found in the fact that ambitious but futile rhymesters are a
veritable plague of flies to publisher and public--in this spirit of
half-resentment we ask, "Who is this Watson?" "Who is this Davidson?"
and incontinently proceed to examine them in a cold and carping spirit,
with a keen eye to their faults of detail, and with a sort of illogical
assumption that if they had been of much account we should somehow have
heard of them before.
It is but rarely that an accomplished judge of literature will speak out
boldly and unequivocally, without "hedging," so to speak, and not only
declare that such-and-such a work reveals a rising genius, but give his
reasons why he declares it, distinguishing the poetical elements in
which the genius is shown. The critic should frankly analyse; but mostly
he does not. He tells us, for instance, that Walt Whitman is the "Adam
of a new poetical era," or else that he is "a dunce of inconceivable
incoherence and incompetence"; but usually he does not show us the
precise data upon which either conclusion is based. Cannot profundity of
thought, ardour of emotion, power and charm of expression, be actually
demonstrated as present or absent in a poet, when the critic is
addressing himself to his natural readers, to wit, persons in whom are
pre-supposed a certain amount of brains and heart, and cultivation of
both? If they cannot, has criticism any real existence?
To begin with, each reader is bound to recognise how far he is himself
at any time capable of appreciating particular kinds of poetry. Out of
epic, lyric, dramatic, and descriptive poetry there is usually some one
kind with which we have no natural sympathy. It follows not that,
because a man is fond of peaches, pears, and grapes, he is also fond of
passionfruit or tomatoes. Of these latter he may be no judge whatever.
_Non omnia possumus omnes_ in the criticism of poetry, any more than in
other departments of activity.
There are, for instance, some who have no patience with poetry of the
mystic, half-dreamy kind, but must have their conceptions one and all
definitely realized for them. They cannot away with emotional
arabesques; they must have recognizable and rememberable outlines. There
are others who cannot bring themselves to care for the poetry which
broods upon inanimate nature; their interest centres wholly on the
problems of man; just as there are limited souls who find no delight in
landscapes, and think figure-painting the only field of art. These are
no critics, perhaps never could be critics, of more than the verbal
expression in those uncongenial regions of poesy. To be a true
appreciator of all poetry a man must possess a harmoniously-developed
nature, as full and large and liberal as poetry itself. Let us,
therefore, begin by admitting and allowing for our limitations where we
feel them to exist.
In the first place, we must set about our reading only when we are in
the proper mood of receptivity. Poetry is not science, any more than
painting is photography, or architecture is building in squares and
cubes and circles. To approach the great poetry of "high seriousness"
when we are in a cynical or flippant mood; to snatch glances at a great
drama or epic when we are in a hurry; to begin from the very first line
by examining with a cold-blooded criticism a passionate elegy or fiery
lyric, is to act as if one sat at a concert of unfamiliar music only to
criticise the gestures of the performers or to watch for an occasional
weakness of the second violin. It is almost always open to adult human
beings not to be reading poetry if they are not feeling disposed for it.
I say "almost always" because the "indolent reviewer" is apt to be an
exception. Yet even the indolent reviewer might with advantage often
remind himself that poetry is written for people who want to read it,
and when they want to read it, and that no art pretends to force men
into enjoying it at all times and seasons. Granting, then, that we know
our own personal limitations, and what particular sense our organisation
lacks; granting also that we are reading our poet spontaneously, simply
because the pleasure of poetry is the pleasure we happen to be seeking;
granting, further, that we are sufficiently cultivated and experienced
in literature to possess ready apprehension of a thought, a fair taste
in expression, and an ear for cadence and melody, there is, I believe,
but one certain way of telling whether a verse-writer is a poet at all,
and then whether as poet he is greater or less.
He must be read a first time without effort at criticism of any kind.
The words and rhythms, the thoughts and feelings contained in a
particular poem will thus leave a certain general effect, an unanalysed
impression. It will be as it is with the true judge of art when he
stands before a picture, a statue, or a building. In its presence he
either feels the spontaneous delight which comes of a general
satisfyingness, or he feels the annoyance of a general unsatisfyingness,
or he feels neither one nor the other. So with a poem. We shall either
feel that the sounds and melodies have bathed us in delight, or we shall
think them harsh, or we shall think nothing about them at all. We shall
feel a high intellectual stimulation or a strong emotional excitement,
or we shall think the passage rather futile, or we shall be aware of no
pronounced feeling one way or the other. If we are constrained to say to
ourselves, "What a noble passage!" "What splendid verse!" "What a sweet
song!" or to use any of those unstudied exclamations which spring to the
lips before we have had time or inclination to realize our impressions
more definitely--then, I maintain, we are justified in calling the
writer at once and definitively a poet. Whether he is a greater poet or
a minor poet remains still to be estimated, but poet he is, be he Burns
or Swinburne, Tennyson or Watson or Davidson. Here, for instance, is a
passage from Watson's elegy upon Tennyson, which he has called _Lachrymae
Musarum_. I do not choose it because it is his best, but because it is
typical:--
He hath returned to regions whence he came;
Him doth the spirit divine
Of universal loveliness reclaim,
All nature is his shrine.
Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea,
In earth's and air's emotion or repose,
In every star's august serenity,
And in the rapture of the flaming rose.
There seek him if ye would not seek in vain,
There, in the rhythm and music of the whole,
Yea, and for ever in the human soul
Made stronger and more beauteous by his strain.
For lo! Creation's self is one great choir,
And what is Nature's order but the rhyme
Whereto the world keeps time,
And all things move with all things from their prime?
Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre?
In far retreats of elemental mind
Obscurely comes and goes
The imperative breath of song, that as the wind
Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows.
Demand of lilies wherefore they are white,
Extort her crimson secret from the rose,
But ask not of the Muse that she disclose
The meaning of the riddle of her might.
Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite,
Save the enigma of herself, she knows.
The master could not tell, with all his lore,
Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped;
E'en as the linnet sings, so I, he said--
Ah! rather as the imperial nightingale
That held in trance the ancient Attic shore,
And charms the ages with the notes that o'er
All woodland chants immortally prevail!
And now from our vain plaudits, greatly fled,
He with diviner silence dwells instead,
And on no earthly sea, with transient roar,
Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail,
But, far beyond our vision and our hail,
Is heard for ever and is seen no more.
Now it matters not what flaws the austere critic might find with a
microscope in those lines. I feel certain that there is no one who would
not at this first reading experience that inevitable glow of
satisfaction which, in the cultured mind, is the unfailing criterion
that the art is good. Whether Mr. Watson is further an original poet, a
signal poetic force; whether he is a poet for the mind as much as for
the ear, is a further question to be decided by a detailed analysis; but
that he is a poet is, I beg leave to think, wholly undeniable. At first
sight, has there been anything better in this vein since _Lycidas_?
Here, again, is a brief part of a song from Davidson's _Fleet Street
Eclogue_ of May Day. I quote these lines in particular, because, unlike
most very short passages of this poet, they admit of being disentangled
from their setting. They are typical of only one side of a many-sided
being, the side which exults in the simple sensuous delights of nature.
They are two stanzas from the song of the nightingale as interpreted by
Basil:--
The lark from the top of heaven raved
Of the sunshine sweet and old;
And the whispering branches dipped and laved
In the light; and waste and wold
Took heart and shone; and the buttercups paved
The emerald meads with gold.
* * * * *
Now it is night, and--
The wind steals down the lawns
With a whisper of ecstasy,
Of moonlit nights and rosy dawns,
And a nest in a hawthorn tree;
Of the little mate for whom I wait,
Flying across the sea,
Through storm and night as sure as fate,
Swift-winged with love for me.
And again I ask, has there, at first sight, been anything more like
Shelley since Shelley's _Cloud_?
Assuming that the first step in our method has left us quite satisfied
that a writer (and here I leave Mr. Watson and Mr. Davidson and revert
to the general case) possesses enough share in the divine gift to be
called "poet," we may, if we are bent upon truly "appreciating" him,
proceed to taste his lines over and over, to dwell in detail upon his
expression, upon its charms and splendours and felicities, its vigour
and terseness and simplicity. It may be that we shall find our first
admiration continually increased, especially when we learn to realise
the full music of the verse, the subtle tones of its "flutes and soft
recorders," or the swell of the "organ-voice." We may come to taste "all
the charms of all the Muses often flowering in one lonely word." It
might be, on the other hand, that we should detect a certain
over-fulness--what Coleridge has called a too-muchness--of diction; or a
certain want of correspondence between the melodious language and any
clearly apprehended mental picture. We might find the vigour too often
lapsing into sheer bad taste, or the simplicity taking the fatal step
into simpledom, as when Tennyson ends the story of Enoch Arden with the
banal remark that
the little port
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.
We might, unhappily, discover these things, or, on the contrary, we
might find them so rare that our admiration at the expressive genius of
the poet would increase, until we were sure that the thing of beauty was
really and truly a superlative joy for ever.