Love of poetry is universal, but this is not saying much; for men
in general love it not as poetry, but as verse—the form in which
it commonly finds utterance, and in which its utterance is most
acceptable. Not that verse is essential to poetry; on the contrary,
some of the finest poetry extant (some of the passages of the Book
of Job, in the English version, for familiar examples) is neither
metric nor rhythmic. I am not quite sure, indeed, but the best test of
poetry yet discovered might not be its persistence or disappearance
when clad in the garb of prose. In this opinion I differ, though with
considerable reluctance, with General Lucius Foote, who asserts that
“every feature which makes poetry to differ from prose is the result
of expression.” This dictum he has fortified by but a single example:
he puts a stanza of Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” into very
good prose. Now, for one who has at times come so perilously near to
writing genuine poetry as has General Foote, this is a little too bad.
Surely no man of so competent literary judgment ever before affected
to believe that Tennyson’s resonant patriotic lines were poetry, in
any sense. They are, however, a little less distant from it in General
Foote’s prose version—“There were some cannons on the right, and some
on the left, and some in front, and they fired with a great noise”—than
they are in the original. And I have the hardihood to add that as a
rule the “old favorites” of the lyceum—the ringing and rhetorical
curled darlings of the public—the “Address to the American Flag,”
“The Bells,” the “Curfew Must Not Ring To-night,” and all the ghastly
lot of them, are very rubbishy stuff, indeed. There are exceptions,
unfortunately, but to a cultivated taste—the taste of a mind that not
only knows what it likes, but knows and can definitely state why it
likes it—nine in ten of them are offencive. I say it is unfortunate
that there are exceptions. It is unfortunate as impairing the beauty
and symmetry of the rule, and unfortunate for the authors of the
exceptional poems, who must endure through life the consciousness that
their popularity is a cruel injustice.
Far be it from me to underrate the value of the delicate and difficult
art of managing words. It is to poetry what color is to painting. The
thought is the outline drawing, which, if it be great, no dauber who
stops short of actually painting it out can make wholly mean, but to
which the true artist with his pigments can add a higher glory and
a new significance. No one who has studied style as a science and
endeavored to practice it as an art; no one who knows how to select
with subtle skill the word for the place; who balances one part of
his sentence against another; who has an alert ear for the harmony
of stops, cadences and inflections, orderly succession of accented
syllables and recurrence of related sounds—no one, in short, who knows
how to write prose can hold in light esteem an art so nearly allied
to his own as that of poetic expression, including as it does the
intricate one of versification, which itself embraces such a multitude
of dainty wisdoms. But expression is not all; while, on the one hand,
it can no more make a poetic idea prosaic than it can make falsehood
of truth, so, on the other, it is unable to elevate and beautify a
sentiment essentially vulgar or base. The experienced miner will no
more surely detect the presence of gold in the rough ore than a trained
judgment the noble sentiment in the crude or ludicrous verbiage in
which ignorance or humor may have cast it; and the terrier will with no
keener nose penetrate the disguise of the rat that has rolled in a bed
of camomile than the practiced intelligence detect the pauper thought
masquerading in fine words. The mind that does not derive a quiet
gratification from the bald statement that the course of the divine
river Alph was through caves of unknown extent, whence it fell into a
dark ocean, will hardly experience a thrill of delight when told by
Coleridge that
Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.
Nor would one who is capable of physically feeling the lines,
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
have disdained to be told by some lesser Shakspeare that he had
observed mornings so fine that the mountains blushed with pleasure to
be noticed by them. Poetry is too multiform and many sided for anyone
to dogmatize upon single aspects and phases of it as if they were
the whole; it has as many shapes as Proteus, and as many voices as a
violin. It sometimes thunders and sometimes it prattles; it shouts
and exults, but on occasion it can whisper. Crude and harsh at one
time, the voice of the muse is at another smooth, soft, exquisite,
luxurious; and again scholarly and polite. There is ornate poetry, like
the façade of a Gothic cathedral, and there is poetry like a Doric
temple. Poems there are which blaze like a parterre of all brilliant
flowers, and others as chaste and pallid as the white lily. It is all
good (though I hasten to explain with some alarm that I do not think
all verse is good) but the best minds are best agreed in awarding the
palm to poetry that is most severely simple in diction—in which are
fewest “inversions”—from which words of new coinage and compounding
are rigorously excluded, and the old are used in their familiar sense;
poetry, that is to say, that differs least in expression from the best
prose. A truly poetic line—a line that I never tire of repeating to
myself—is this from Byron:
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth.
It is from the description of a storm in the Alps, in “Childe Harold.”
I will quote the whole stanza in order that the reader may be reminded
how much of the excellence of this line depends upon its context:
And this is in the night—most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight—
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again ’tis black—and now the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth.
It would not be difficult, were it worth while, to point out in this
stanza almost as many faults as it has lines; after the “lit lake” the
“phosphoric sea”—a simile that repeats the image and debauches it—is
singularly execrable, and the “young earthquake’s birth” is almost as
bad; but all the imperfections of the stanza count for nothing, for
they are redeemed by its merits, and particularly by that one splendid
line. Yet how could the thought it holds be more baldly stated? I only
stipulate that the rain shall be “big,” and “dancing” seem to be the
manner of its approach. With these not very hard, and perfectly fair,
conditions let ingenuity do its malevolent worst to vulgarize that
thought. These few instances prove, I hope, that poetry, whatever it
is, is something more than “words, words, words”—that there is such a
thing as poetry of the thought.
But let us take a different kind of example. If poetry is all in the
manner, as General Foote avers, expression must be able to create
poetry out of anything; at least, no line has been drawn between the
prosaic ideas upon which expression can work its miracle and those
upon which it can not. I am, therefore, justified by a familiar law of
logic in assuming that it is meant that expression, by the mere magic
of method, can make any idea poetical. Now, I beg most respectfully to
submit the following problems to be “worked out” by believers in that
dictum: Make poetry of the thought that—
(1) Glue is made from the hoofs of cattle, and (2) silk purses by
macerating the ears of sows in currant jelly.
If anyone will build a superstructure of poetry upon either of those
“ideas” as a foundation I will be first and loudest in calling
attention to the glory of the edifice.
I have said that men in general do not love poetry as poetry, but as
verse. They are pleased with verse, but if the verse contain poetry
they like it none the better for that. To the vast majority of the
readers of even the higher class newspapers, verse and poetry are
terms strictly synonymous. The pleasure they get from metre and rhyme
is merely physical or sensual. It is much the same kind of pleasure
as that derived from the clatter of a drum and the rhythmic clash
of cymbals, and altogether inferior to the delight that the other
instruments of a band produce. Emerson, I believe, accounts for our
delight in metrical composition by supposing metre to have some
close relation to the rhythmical recurrences within our physical
organization—respiration, the pulse-beat, etc. No doubt he is right,
and if so we need not take the trouble to deride the easy-going
intellect that is satisfied with sound for sentiment whenever the sound
is in harmony with the physical nature that perceives it, for in such
sounds is a natural charm. The old lady who found so much Christian
comfort in pronouncing the word “Mesopotamia” was nobody’s fool; the
word consists of two pure dactyls.
For an example of the satisfaction the ordinary mind takes in mere
metre there is nothing better than the senseless refrains of popular
songs—things which make not even the pretense of containing ideas.
From the “hey ding a ding” of Shakspeare and the “luddy, fuddy,” etc.,
of Mr. Lester Wallack’s famous thieves’ song in “Rosedale,” to the
“whack fol-de-rol” of inferior and less original composers, they are
all alike in appealing to nothing in the world but the sense of time.
And in this they differ in no essential particular from the verses in
the newspapers; for such ideas as these contain—and God knows they are
harmless—are probably never perfectly grasped by the reader, who, when
he has finished his “poem,” is very sure to be unable to tell you what
it is all about. I have proved this by repeated experiments, and I
believe I am not far wrong on the side of immoderation in saying that
of every one hundred adults who can read and write with ease, there
are ninety and nine to whom poetry is a sealed book—who not only do
not recognize it when read, but do not understand it when pointed out.
There is hardly any subject on which the ignorance of educated persons
is more deep, dark and universal. And in one sense it is hopeless. By
no set instruction can a knowledge of poetry be gained. It is (to those
having the capacity) a result of general refinement—the fruit of a
taste and judgment that come of culture. The difficulty of imparting it
is immensely enhanced by the want of a definition. If one have gift and
knowledge it is easy enough to say what is poetry, but not so easy to
say what poetry is.
Hunters have a saying that a deer is safe from the man that never
misses. Likewise it may be said that the faultless poet gets no
readers; for, as the hunter can never miss only by never firing, so
the poet can avoid faults only by not writing. There is no such thing
in art or letters as attainable perfection; the utmost that any man
can hope to do is to make the sum and importance of his excellences so
exceed the sum and importance of his faults that the general impression
shall seem faultless—that the good shall divert attention from the bad
in the contemplation and efface it in the recollection. In considering
the character of a particular work and assigning it to its true place
amongst works of similar scope and design, we must, indeed, balance
merits against demerits, endeavoring in such a general way as the
nature of the problem permits, to say which preponderate, and to what
extent, making allowance in censure and modification in praise. But the
author of the work is to be rightly judged by a different method, and
he who has done great work is great, despite the number and magnitude
of his failures and imperfections. These may serve to point a moral
or illustrate a principle by its violation, but they do not and can
not dim the glory of the better performance. Is he not a strong man
who can lift a thousand pounds, notwithstanding that in acquiring the
ability he failed a hundred times to lift the half of it? Who was the
strongest man in the world—he who once lifted the greatest weight,
or he who twice lifted the second greatest? The author of “Paradise
Lost” wrote afterward “Paradise Regained.” He who wrote a poem called
“In Memoriam” wrote a thing called “The Northern Farmer.” Of what
significance is that? Shall we count also a man’s washing-list against
him? Suppose that Byron had not written the “Hours of Idleness”—would
that have enhanced the value of “Childe Harold”? Is our hoard of
Shakspearean pure gold the smaller because from the mine whence it came
came also some of the base metal of “Titus Andronicus”? Surely it does
not matter whether the hand that at one time wrote the lines “To Helen”
was at another time writing “The Bells” or whittling a pine shingle.
Literature is not like a game of billiards, in which the player is
rated according to his average. In estimating the relative altitudes of
mountain peaks we look no lower than their summits.
In judging men by this broader method than that which we apply to
their work we do but practice that method whereby posterity arrives
at judgments so just and true that in their prediction consists the
whole science of criticism. To anticipate the verdict of posterity—that
is all the most daring critic aspires to do, and to do that he
should strive to exclude the evidence that posterity will not hear.
Posterity is a tribunal in which there will be no testimony for the
prosecution except what is inseparable from the strongest testimony
for the defence. It will consider no man’s bad work, for none will be
extant. Nay, it will not even attend to the palliating or aggravating
circumstances of his life and surroundings, for these too will have
been forgotten; if not lost from the records they will be whelmed under
mountains of similar or more important matter—Pelion upon Ossa of
accumulated “literary materials.”
These are points to which the critics do not sufficiently attend—do
not, indeed, attend at all. They endeavor to anticipate the judgment
of posterity by a method as unlike posterity’s as their judgment and
ingenuity can make it. They attentively study their poet’s private
life and his relation to the time and its events in which he lived.
They go to his work for the key to his character, and return to his
character for the key to his work, then ransack his correspondence for
side-lights on both. They paw dusty records and forgotten archives;
they thumb and dog’s-ear the libraries; and he who can turn up an
original document or hitherto unnoted fact exults in the possession
of an advantage over his fellows that will justify the publication of
another volume to befog the question. Then comes posterity, calmly
overlooks the entire mass of ingenious irrelevance, fixes a tranquil
eye upon those lines which the poet has inscribed the highest, and
determines his mental stature as simply, as surely and with as little
assistance as Daniel discerning the hand of God in the letters blazing
upon the palace wall.