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.