Why, I have sometimes asked myself, did not Pater say the right words on
a writer greater than Mérimée--George Meredith? I imagine that he
never admired his novels enough to try his hand on a subject not quite
his own. Certain books, I confess, ought to have been launched at the
British Philistine, like David's one convincing pebble, straight to the
forehead. I confess also (my own fault it was in regard to Meredith)
that to write about Carlyle, Swinburne or Meredith, without
unconsciously reproducing some tricks of manner, is a feat of which any
man might be proud.
_The Egoist_ is a wonderful book, and in its elemental comedy it
challenges Congreve and even Molière; but in the elemental tragedy of
certain parts of _Rhoda Fleming_ and _Richard Feverel_, he challenges
Webster, or almost Shakespeare. Yet the uncouthness that disfigures
certain pages in _Richard Feverel_ is a mere after-taste of Arabian
extravagance. It is a new kind of uncouthness that comes into prominence
in _The Egotist_--that exaggeration of qualities which one sees in the
later works of men who have a pronounced style, even in the case of
Browning. No prose writer of our time has written finer or viler English
than Meredith. It is a mistake to treat him as if he were stylist first,
and novelist afterward, as Flaubert might almost be said to be. Meredith
is a conscious artist always--as conscious as Goncourt, with whom he may
be compared for his experimental treatment of language, his attempt to
express what has never been expressed before by forcing words to say
more than they are used to say. Sometimes they give his message, but
ungraciously, like beaten slaves; sometimes the message seems to go
astray. That is why Englishmen, forgetting triumph after splendid
triumph of style, will sometimes tell you that Meredith can not write
English, just as Frenchmen gravely assure one another that the novels of
the Goncourts are written in any language but French.
That astonishing little volume, _Modern Love and Poems of the English
Roadside_, published in 1862, has never received anything like justice
except at the hands of such a fellow-craftsman as Swinburne. While I for
one can not but feel that Meredith works more naturally, with a freer
hand, in prose than in verse, that poem of _Modern Love_ seems to me
among the masterpieces of contemporary poetry. It is the most distinctly
modern poem ever written. There has been nothing like it in English
poetry: it brings into our literature something fundamentally new,
essentially modern. Side by side with this super-subtle study of passion
and sensation, we have the homely realism of "Juggling Jerry"--a poem
which can only be compared with Burns' "Jolly Beggars" for triumphant
success in perhaps the most difficult kind of literature.
So far I quote from an old article of mine, which was answered by
William Watson. Here is part of his answer, printed in _The Academy_:
Now I should like to ask, what has the British Philistine done that he
should have a book shied at his head in the way Mr. Symons thinks
desirable? As regards Meredith, it seems to me that the British
Philistine has been most exemplary in what he would call the discharge
of his duty. He has tried his very best to read Meredith, and has
failed; or he has read Meredith, but has failed in the attempt to enjoy
him. I fancy, however, that when Meredith's devotees speak of the
British Philistine, they really mean the vast majority of the public,
and it seems to me a little absurd, that because there is an author
whose writings the public are comparatively indifferent to, it should be
constantly assured that the only person not in the least responsible for
such indifference is the author. Other writers have achieved popularity
before Meredith. Perhaps the best proof of the futility of trying to
convert people into an attitude of admiration by "aiming" a book at them
is afforded by Meredith's novels themselves. They are, in Mr. Symons'
sense of the word, "aimed" at the British Philistine, if ever novels
were. He has been pelted through, I do not know how many, volumes--but
have the missiles converted him?
I leave all these questions unanswered, as they deserve no answer, after
Time's verdict on Meredith. Now, what was, and is, the place of Sir
William Watson in literature? The difference between literature and what
is preeminently literary may be clearly illustrated on examination of
his poems. No poems written in our time are more literary. They come to
us asking to be received on account of their legitimate lineal descent
from earlier poets, from Wordsworth and from Matthew Arnold for
instance. "If," says the writer, frankly--
If I be indeed
Their true descendant, as the veriest hind
May yet be sprung of kings, their lineaments
Will out, the signature of ancestry
Leap unobscured, and somewhat of themselves
In me, their lowly scion, live once more.
Many of the poems are about poets, or about books; some are purely
critical. And they are indeed, as they profess to be, in the tradition;
they strike no unfamiliar note to any ears acquainted with the music of
English poetry. Their range is limited, but within it they exhibit an
unquestionable mastery of a particular kind of technique. Few lines are
bad, all are careful, many are felicitous. Every poem has a certain
neatness and order about it. The spirit of the whole work is orderly,
reticent and dignified. Nothing has been left to chance, or to the
appeal of lawless splendors. An artist has been at work. At work on
what? At all events, not on the only really satisfactory material for
the poet--himself. Watson tells us that he has chosen the best of
himself for giving to the world:
I have not paid the world
The evil and the insolent courtesy
Of offering it my baseness for a gift.
Well and good; but has he, in choosing among his selves, chosen really
the essential one, base or not base, ignoble or not ignoble? He has
chosen the self that loves good literature, thinks estimable thoughts,
feels decorous emotions, and sets all this into polished and poetical
verse. That is enough for the making of literary poetry, but not for
poetry which shall be literature.
Watson, in his study of the great writers, seems never to have realized
that what matters chiefly, what tells, is not the great phrase, but the
personality behind the phrase. He has learned from many writers to make
phrases almost as fine as those writers have made; his phrases are never
meaningless in themselves, and they can be exquisite in their form. But
the phrase, coming with nothing but its own significance behind it, a
rootless flower, deriving no life from the soil, fails to convey to us
more than an arid, unsatisfying kind of pleasure. There it is, a
detached thing; to be taken, you may say, for what it is worth; only,
live words will not be so taken. Compare Watson's "Ode to Autumn" with
the "Ode to Autumn" of Keats. The poem is one of Watson's best poems; it
is full of really poetical phraseology. But the ode of Keats means
something in every word, and it means Keats quite as much as autumn.
Watson's poem means neither autumn nor Watson; it represents Watson
setting himself to describe autumn.
Take his "Hymn to the Sea." It is a long piece of exultant rhetoric,
very finely imagined, full of admirable images; the most beautiful
similes are gathered and brought together to represent the sea's
multitudinous moods; but when the poem is finished, and you have admired
it at leisure, you do not feel that this poet loves the sea. The poetry
of Byron is assailable on many sides, but when he wrote those too
rhetorical lines, now hackneyed almost out of recognition, beginning--
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
he wrote out of his heart, as nearly as he could, and the lines, faulty
as they are, have remained alive ever since. Mr. Watson's verse is very
much better verse, but will--
Grant, O regal in bounty, a subtle and delicate largess,
come back to men's lips as often, or for as long
a time, as those faulty lines of Byron's?
In his "Apologia," Watson replies to those who have complained that he
has brought nothing new into poetry--
I bring nought new
Save as each noontide or each Spring is new.
Into an old and iterative world.