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Footnote 24:
Published in 1880 as the General Introduction to _The English Poets_,
edited by T. H. Ward.
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“The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy
of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever
surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an
accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received
tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has
materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached
its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry
the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine
illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea _is_ the
fact. The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious
poetry.”
Let me be permitted to quote these words of my own, as uttering the
thought which should, in my opinion, go with us and govern us in all our
study of poetry. In the present work it is the course of one great
contributory stream to the world-river of poetry that we are invited to
follow. We are here invited to trace the stream of English poetry. But
whether we set ourselves, as here, to follow only one of the several
streams that make the mighty river of poetry, or whether we seek to know
them all, our governing thought should be the same. We should conceive
of poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been the custom to
conceive of it. We should conceive of it as capable of higher uses, and
called to higher destinies, than those which in general men have
assigned to it hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we
have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to
sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most
of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced
by poetry. Science, I say, will appear incomplete without it. For finely
and truly does Wordsworth call poetry “the impassioned expression which
is in the countenance of all science”; and what is a countenance without
its expression? Again, Wordsworth finely and truly calls poetry “the
breath and finer spirit of all knowledge”: our religion, parading
evidences such as those on which the popular mind relies now; our
philosophy, pluming itself on its reasonings about causation and finite
and infinite being; what are they but the shadows and dreams and false
shows of knowledge? The day will come when we shall wonder at ourselves
for having trusted to them, for having taken them seriously; and the
more we perceive their hollowness, the more we shall prize “the breath
and finer spirit of knowledge” offered to us by poetry.
But if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, we must also
set our standard for poetry high, since poetry, to be capable of
fulfilling such high destinies, must be poetry of a high order of
excellence. We must accustom ourselves to a high standard and to a
strict judgment. Sainte-Beuve relates that Napoleon one day said, when
somebody was spoken of in his presence as a charlatan: “Charlatan as
much as you please; but where is there _not_ charlatanism?”—“Yes,”
answers Sainte-Beuve, “in politics, in the art of governing mankind,
that is perhaps true. But in the order of thought, in art, the glory,
the eternal honor is that charlatanism shall find no entrance; herein
lies the inviolableness of that noble portion of man’s being.” It is
admirably said, and let us hold fast to it. In poetry, which is thought
and art in one, it is the glory, the eternal honor, that charlatanism
shall find no entrance; that this noble sphere be kept inviolate and
inviolable. Charlatanism is for confusing or obliterating the
distinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only
half-sound, true and untrue or only half-true. It is charlatanism,
conscious or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate these. And
in poetry, more than anywhere else, it is unpermissible to confuse or
obliterate them. For in poetry the distinction between excellent and
inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or only
half-true, is of paramount importance. It is of paramount importance
because of the high destinies of poetry. In poetry, as a criticism of
life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of
poetic truth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will find, we
have said, as time goes on and as other helps fail, its consolation and
stay. But the consolation and stay will be of power in proportion to the
power of the criticism of life. And the criticism of life will be of
power in proportion as the poetry conveying it is excellent rather than
inferior, sound rather than unsound or half-sound, true rather than
untrue or half-true.
The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will be found to have a
power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can. A
clearer, deeper sense of the best in poetry, and of the strength and joy
to be drawn from it, is the most precious benefit which we can gather
from a poetical collection such as the present. And yet in the very
nature and conduct of such a collection there is inevitably something
which tends to obscure in us the consciousness of what our benefit
should be, and to distract us from the pursuit of it. We should
therefore steadily set it before our minds at the outset, and should
compel ourselves to revert constantly to the thought of it as we
proceed.
Yes; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best, the really
excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, should be
present in our minds and should govern our estimate of what we read. But
this real estimate, the only true one, is liable to be superseded, if we
are not watchful, by two other kinds of estimate, the historic estimate
and the personal estimate, both of which are fallacious. A poet or a
poem may count to us historically, they may count to us on grounds
personal to ourselves, and they may count to us really. They may count
to us historically. The course of development of a nation’s language,
thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a
poet’s work as a stage in this course of development we may easily bring
ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it
really is, we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise in
criticising it; in short, to over-rate it. So arises in our poetic
judgments the fallacy caused by the estimate which we may call historic.
Then, again, a poet or a poem may count to us on grounds personal to
ourselves. Our personal affinities, likings, and circumstances, have
great power to sway our estimate of this or that poet’s work, and to
make us attach more importance to it as poetry than in itself it really
possesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high importance. Here
also we over-rate the object of our interest, and apply to it a language
of praise which is quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source of a
second fallacy in our poetic judgments—the fallacy caused by an estimate
which we may call personal.
Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how naturally the study of the
history and development of a poetry may incline a man to pause over
reputations and works once conspicuous but now obscure, and to quarrel
with a careless public for skipping, in obedience to mere tradition and
habit, from one famous name or work in its national poetry to another,
ignorant of what it misses, and of the reason for keeping what it keeps,
and of the whole process of growth in its poetry. The French have become
diligent students of their own early poetry, which they long neglected;
the study makes many of them dissatisfied with their so-called classical
poetry, the court-tragedy of the seventeenth century, a poetry which
Pellisson long ago reproached with its want of the true poetic stamp,
with its _politesse stérile et rampante_, but which nevertheless has
reigned in France as absolutely as if it had been the perfection of
classical poetry indeed. The dissatisfaction is natural; yet a lively
and accomplished critic, M. Charles d’Héricault, the editor of Clément
Marot, goes too far when he says that “the cloud of glory playing round
a classic is a mist as dangerous to the future of a literature as it is
intolerable for the purposes of history.” “It hinders,” he goes on, “it
hinders us from seeing more than one single point, the culminating and
exceptional point; the summary, fictitious and arbitrary, of a thought
and of a work. It substitutes a halo for a physiognomy, it puts a statue
where there was once a man, and hiding from us all trace of the labor,
the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures, it claims not study but
veneration; it does not show us how the thing is done, it imposes upon
us a model. Above all, for the historian this creation of classic
personages is inadmissible; for it withdraws the poet from his time,
from his proper life, it breaks historical relationships, it blinds
criticism by conventional admiration, and renders the investigation of
literary origins unacceptable. It gives us a human personage no longer,
but a God seated immovable amidst His perfect work, like Jupiter on
Olympus; and hardly will it be possible for the young student, to whom
such work is exhibited at such a distance from him, to believe that it
did not issue ready made from that divine head.”
All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must plead for a
distinction. Everything depends on the reality of a poet’s classic
character. If he is a dubious classic, let us sift him; if he is a false
classic, let us explode him. But if he is a real classic, if his work
belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true and right
meaning of the word _classic_, _classical_), then the great thing for us
is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, and to
appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which has not the
same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what is
formative; this is the great benefit to be got from the study of poetry.
Everything which interferes with it, which hinders it, is injurious.
True, we must read our classic with open eyes, and not with eyes blinded
with superstition; we must perceive when his work comes short, when it
drops out of the class of the very best, and we must rate it, in such
cases, at its proper value. But the use of this negative criticism is
not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling us to have a clearer sense
and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly excellent. To trace the labor,
the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures of a genuine classic, to
acquaint oneself with his time and his life and his historical
relationships, is mere literary dilettantism, unless it has that clear
sense and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be said that the more we
know about a classic the better we shall enjoy him; and, if we lived as
long as Methuselah and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and
wills of perfect steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is
plausible in theory. But the case here is much the same as the case with
the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The elaborate
philological groundwork which we require them to lay is in theory an
admirable preparation for appreciating the Greek and Latin authors
worthily. The more thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall
be able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors. True, if time were not so
short, and schoolboys’ wits not so soon tired and their power of
attention exhausted; only, as it is, the elaborate philological
preparation goes on, but the authors are little known and less enjoyed.
So with the investigator of “historic origins” in poetry. He ought to
enjoy the true classic all the better for his investigations; he often
is distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and with the less good he
overbusies himself, and is prone to over-rate it in proportion to the
trouble which it has cost him.
The idea of tracing historic origins and historical relationships cannot
be absent from a compilation, like the present. And naturally the poets
to be exhibited in it will be assigned to those persons for exhibition
who are known to prize them highly, rather than to those who have no
special inclination towards them. Moreover the very occupation with an
author, and the business of exhibiting him, disposes us to affirm and
amplify his importance. In the present work, therefore, we are sure of
frequent temptation to adopt the historic estimate, or the personal
estimate, and to forget the real estimate; which latter, nevertheless,
we must employ if we are to make poetry yield us its full benefit. So
high is that benefit, the benefit of clearly feeling and of deeply
enjoying the really excellent, the truly classic in poetry, that we do
well, I say, to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in
studying poets and poetry, and to make the desire of attaining it the
one principle to which, as the _Imitation_ says, whatever we may read or
come to know, we always return. _Cum multa legeris et cognoveris, ad
unum semper oportet redire principium._
The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our judgment and
our language when we are dealing with ancient poets; the personal
estimate when we are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any
rate modern. The exaggerations due to the historic estimate are not in
themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. Their report hardly enters
the general ear; probably they do not always impose even on the literary
men who adopt them. But they lead to a dangerous abuse of language. So
we hear Cædmon, amongst our own poets, compared to Milton. I have
already noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished French critic for
“historic origins.” Another eminent French critic, M. Vitet, comments
upon that famous document of the early poetry of his nation, the
_Chanson de Roland_. It is indeed a most interesting document. The
_joculator_ or _jongleur_ Taillefer, who was with William the
Conqueror’s army at Hastings, marched before the Norman troops, so said
the tradition, singing “of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, and
of the vassals who died at Roncevaux;” and it is suggested that in the
_Chanson de Roland_ by one Turoldus or Théroulde, a poem preserved in a
manuscript of the twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we
have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, of the chant
which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigor and freshness; it is not
without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a
document of some poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic
value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monument of epic
genius. In its general design he finds the grandiose conception, in its
details he finds the constant union of simplicity with greatness, which
are the marks, he truly says, of the genuine epic, and distinguish it
from the artificial epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; this is
the sort of praise which is given to Homer, and justly given. Higher
praise there cannot well be, and it is the praise due to epic poetry of
the highest order only, and to no other. Let us try, then, the _Chanson
de Roland_ at its best. Roland, mortally wounded, lays himself down
under a pine-tree, with his face turned towards Spain and the enemy—
“De plusurs choses à remembrer li prist,
De tantes teres cume li bers cunquist,
De dulce France, des humes de sun lign,
De Carlemagne sun seignor ki l’nurrit.”[25]
That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable poetic quality of
its own. It deserves such praise, and such praise is sufficient for it.
But now turn to Homer—
Ὣς φάτο· τοὺς δ ἤδη κατέχεν φυσίζοος αἶα
ἐ Λακεδαίμονι αὖθι, φίλῃ ἐν πατρίδι λαίῃ[26]
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Footnote 25:
“Then began he to call many things to remembrance,—all the lands which
his valour conquered, and pleasant France, and the men of his lineage,
and Charlemagne his liege lord who nourished him.”—_Chanson de
Roland_, iii. 939-942.
Footnote 26:
“So said she; they long since in Earth’s soft arms were reposing,
There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedæmon.”
_Iliad_, iii. 243, 244 (translated by Dr. Hawtry).
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We are here in another world, another order of poetry altogether; here
is rightly due such supreme praise as that which M. Vitet gives to the
_Chanson de Roland_. If our words are to have any meaning, if our
judgments are to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise
upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior.
Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry
belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us
most good, than to have always in one’s mind lines and expressions of
the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of
course we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may
be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, when we
have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible touchstone for
detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the
degree of this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside
them. Short passages, even single lines, will serve our turn quite
sufficiently. Take the two lines which I have just quoted from Homer,
the poet’s comment on Helen’s mention of her brothers;—or take his
Ἆ δειλώ, τί σφῶϊ δόμεν Πηλῆϊ ἄνακτι
θνητᾷ; ὑμεῖς δ’ ἐστὸν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε.
ἦ ἵνα δυστήνοισι μετ’ ἀνδράσιν ἄλγε’ ἔχητον;[27]
the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus;—or take finally his
Καὶ σέ, γέρον, τὸ πρίν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὂλβιον εἶναι·[28]
the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. Take that
incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino’s tremendous words—
“Io no piangeva; sì dentro impietrai.
Piangevan elli....”[29]
take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil—
“Io son fatta da Dio, sua mercè, tale,
Che la vostra miseria non mi tange,
Nè flamma d’esto incendio non m’assale....”[30]
take the simple, but perfect, single line—
“In la sua vòlontade è nostra pace.”[31]
Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth’s expostulation
with sleep—
“Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge....”
and take, as well, Hamlet’s dying request to Horatio—
“If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story....”