himself in his preface thus: "Though truth in her very nakedness sits in
so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora and Ganges few eyes can sound
her, I hope yet those few here will so discover and confirm that, the
date being out of her darkness in this morning of our poet, he shall now
gird his temples with the sun,"--we pronounce that such a prose is
intolerable. When we find Milton writing: "And long it was not after,
when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be
frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought
himself to be a true poem,"[102]--we pronounce that such a prose has its
own grandeur, but that it is obsolete and inconvenient. But when we find
Dryden telling us: "What Virgil wrote in the vigor of his age, in plenty
and at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining years;
struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius,
liable to be misconstrued in all I write,"[103]--then we exclaim that
here at last we have the true English prose, a prose such as we would
all gladly use if we only knew how. Yet Dryden was Milton's
contemporary.
But after the Restoration the time had come when our nation felt the
imperious need of a fit prose. So, too, the time had likewise come when
our nation felt the imperious need of freeing itself from the absorbing
preoccupation which religion in the Puritan age had exercised. It was
impossible that this freedom should be brought about without some
negative excess, without some neglect and impairment of the religious
life of the soul; and the spiritual history of the eighteenth century
shows us that the freedom was not achieved without them. Still, the
freedom was achieved; the preoccupation, an undoubtedly baneful and
retarding one if it had continued, was got rid of. And as with religion
amongst us at that period, so it was also with letters. A fit prose was
a necessity; but it was impossible that a fit prose should establish
itself amongst us without some touch of frost to the imaginative life of
the soul. The needful qualities for a fit prose are regularity,
uniformity, precision, balance. The men of letters, whose destiny it may
be to bring their nation to the attainment of a fit prose, must of
necessity, whether they work in prose or in verse, give a predominating,
an almost exclusive attention to the qualities of regularity,
uniformity, precision, balance. But an almost exclusive attention to
these qualities involves some repression and silencing of poetry.
We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glorious founder, Pope as
the splendid high priest, of our age of prose and reason, of our
excellent and indispensable eighteenth century. For the purposes of
their mission and destiny their poetry, like their prose, is admirable.
Do you ask me whether Dryden's verse, take it almost where you will, is
not good?
"A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged."[104]
I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the inaugurator of an age of
prose and reason. Do you ask me whether Pope's verse, take it almost
where you will, is not good?
"To Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down;
Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own."[105]
I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the high priest of an age of
prose and reason. But do you ask me whether such verse proceeds from men
with an adequate poetic criticism of life, from men whose criticism of
life has a high seriousness, or even, without that high seriousness, has
poetic largeness, freedom, insight, benignity? Do you ask me whether the
application of ideas to life in the verse of these men, often a powerful
application, no doubt, is a powerful _poetic_ application? Do you ask me
whether the poetry of these men has either the matter or the inseparable
manner of such an adequate poetic criticism; whether it has the accent
of
"Absent thee from felicity awhile ... "
or of
"And what is else not to be overcome ... "
or of
"O martyr sonded in virginitee!"
I answer: It has not and cannot have them; it is the poetry of the
builders of an age of prose and reason.
Though they may write in verse, though they may in a certain sense be
masters of the art of versification, Dryden and Pope are not classics of
our poetry, they are classics of our prose.
Gray is our poetical classic of that literature and age; the position of
Gray is singular, and demands a word of notice here. He has not the
volume or the power of poets who, coming in times more favorable, have
attained to an independent criticism of life. But he lived with the
great poets, he lived, above all, with the Greeks, through perpetually
studying and enjoying them; and he caught their poetic point of view for
regarding life, caught their poetic manner. The point of view and the
manner are not self-sprung in him, he caught them of others; and he had
not the free and abundant use of them. But whereas Addison and Pope
never had the use of them, Gray had the use of them at times. He is the
scantiest and frailest of classics in our poetry, but he is a classic.
And now, after Gray, we are met, as we draw towards the end of the
eighteenth century, we are met by the great name of Burns. We enter now
on times where the personal estimate of poets begins to be rife, and
where the real estimate of them is not reached without difficulty. But
in spite of the disturbing pressures of personal partiality, of national
partiality, let us try to reach a real estimate of the poetry of Burns.
By his English poetry Burns in general belongs to the eighteenth
century, and has little importance for us.
"Mark ruffian Violence, distain'd with crimes,
Rousing elate in these degenerate times;
View unsuspecting Innocence a prey,
As guileful Fraud points out the erring way;
While subtle Litigation's pliant tongue
The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong!"[106]
Evidently this is not the real Burns, or his name and fame would have
disappeared long ago. Nor is Clarinda's[107] love-poet, Sylvander, the
real Burns either. But he tells us himself: "These English songs gravel
me to death. I have not the command of the language that I have of my
native tongue. In fact, I think that my ideas are more barren in English
than in Scotch. I have been at _Duncan Gray_ to dress it in English, but
all I can do is desperately stupid."[108] We English turn naturally, in
Burns, to the poems in our own language, because we can read them
easily; but in those poems we have not the real Burns.
The real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems. Let us boldly say that
of much of this poetry, a poetry dealing perpetually with Scotch drink,
Scotch religion, and Scotch manners, a Scotchman's estimate is apt to be
personal. A Scotchman is used to this world of Scotch drink, Scotch
religion, and Scotch manners; he has a tenderness for it; he meets its
poet half way. In this tender mood he reads pieces like the _Holy Fair
or Halloween_. But this world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and
Scotch manners is against a poet, not for him, when it is not a partial
countryman who reads him; for in itself it is not a beautiful world, and
no one can deny that it is of advantage to a poet to deal with a
beautiful world. Burns's world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and
Scotch manners, is often a harsh, a sordid, a repulsive world; even the
world of his _Cotter's Saturday Night_ is not a beautiful world. No
doubt a poet's criticism of life may have such truth and power that it
triumphs over its world and delights us. Burns may triumph over his
world, often he does triumph over his world, but let us observe how and
where. Burns is the first case we have had where the bias of the
personal estimate tends to mislead; let us look at him closely, he can
bear it.
Many of his admirers will tell us that we have Burns, convivial,
genuine, delightful, here--
"Leeze me on drink! it gies us mair
Than either school or college;
It kindles wit, it waukens lair,
It pangs us fou o' knowledge.
Be't whisky gill or penny wheep
Or ony stronger potion,
It never fails, on drinking deep,
To kittle up our notion
By night or day."[109]
There is a great deal of that sort of thing in Burns, and it is
unsatisfactory, not because it is bacchanalian poetry, but because it
has not that accent of sincerity which bacchanalian poetry, to do it
justice, very often has. There is something in it of bravado, something
which makes us feel that we have not the man speaking to us with his
real voice: something, therefore, poetically unsound.
With still more confidence will his admirers tell us that we have the
genuine Burns, the great poet, when his strain asserts the independence,
equality, dignity, of men, as in the famous song _For a' that and a'
that_--
"A prince can mak' a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's a boon his might,
Guid faith he manna fa' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their dignities, and a' that,
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that."
Here they find his grand, genuine touches; and still more, when this
puissant genius, who so often set morality at defiance, falls
moralizing--
"The sacred lowe o' weel placed love
Luxuriantly indulge it;
But never tempt th' illicit rove,
Tho' naething should divulge it.
I waive the quantum o' the sin,
The hazard o' concealing,
But och! it hardens a' within,
And petrifies the feeling."[110]
Or in a higher strain--
"Who made the heart, 'tis He alone
Decidedly can try us;
He knows each chord, its various tone;
Each spring, its various bias.
Then at the balance let's be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What's _done_ we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."[111]
Or in a better strain yet, a strain, his admirers will say,
unsurpassable--
"To make a happy fire-side clime
To weans and wife,
That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life."[112]
There is criticism of life for you, the admirers of Burns will say to
us; there is the application of ideas to life! There is, undoubtedly.
The doctrine of the last-quoted lines coincides almost exactly with what
was the aim and end, Xenophon tells us, of all the teaching of Socrates.
And the application is a powerful one; made by a man of vigorous
understanding, and (need I say?) a master of language.
But for supreme poetical success more is required than the powerful
application of ideas to life; it must be an application under the
conditions fixed by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Those
laws fix as an essential condition, in the poet's treatment of such
matters as are here in question, high seriousness;--the high seriousness
which comes from absolute sincerity. The accent of high seriousness,
born of absolute sincerity, is what gives to such verse as
"In la sua volontade è nostra pace..."
to such criticism of life as Dante's, its power. Is this accent felt in
the passages which I have been quoting from Burns? Surely not; surely,
if our sense is quick, we must perceive that we have not in those
passages a voice from the very inmost soul of the genuine Burns; he is
not speaking to us from these depths, he is more or less preaching. And
the compensation for admiring such passages less, for missing the
perfect poetic accent in them, will be that we shall admire more the
poetry where that accent is found.
No; Burns, like Chaucer, comes short of the high seriousness of the
great classics, and the virtue of matter and manner which goes with that
high seriousness is wanting to his work. At moments he touches it in a
profound and passionate melancholy, as in those four immortal lines
taken by Byron as a motto for _The Bride of Abydos_, but which have in
them a depth of poetic quality such as resides in no verse of Byron's
own--
"Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met, or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted."
But a whole poem of that quality Burns cannot make; the rest, in the
_Farewell to Nancy_, is verbiage.
We arrive best at the real estimate of Burns, I think, by conceiving his
work as having truth of matter and truth of manner, but not the accent
or the poetic virtue of the highest masters. His genuine criticism of
life, when the sheer poet in him speaks, is ironic; it is not--
"Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest, they must be best
Because they are Thy will!"[113]
It is far rather: _Whistle owre the lave o't!_ Yet we may say of him as
of Chaucer, that of life and the world, as they come before him, his
view is large, free, shrewd, benignant,--truly poetic, therefore; and
his manner of rendering what he sees is to match. But we must note, at
the same time, his great difference from Chaucer. The freedom of Chaucer
is heightened, in Burns, by a fiery, reckless energy; the benignity of
Chaucer deepens, in Burns, into an overwhelming sense of the pathos of
things;--of the pathos of human nature, the pathos, also, of non-human
nature. Instead of the fluidity of Chaucer's manner, the manner of Burns
has spring, bounding swiftness. Burns is by far the greater force,
though he has perhaps less charm. The world of Chaucer is fairer,
richer, more significant than that of Burns; but when the largeness and
freedom of Burns get full sweep, as in _Tam o' Shanter_, or still more
in that puissant and splendid production, _The Jolly Beggars_, his world
may be what it will, his poetic genius triumphs over it. In the world of
_The Jolly Beggars_ there is more than hideousness and squalor, there is
bestiality; yet the piece is a superb poetic success. It has a breadth,
truth, and power which make the famous scene in Auerbach's Cellar, of
Goethe's _Faust_, seem artificial and tame beside it, and which are only
matched by Shakespeare and Aristophanes.
Here, where his largeness and freedom serve him so admirably, and also
in those poems and songs where to shrewdness he adds infinite archness
and, wit, and to benignity infinite pathos, where his manner is
flawless, and a perfect poetic whole is the result,--in things like the
address to the mouse whose home he had ruined, in things like _Duncan
Gray, Tarn Glen, Whistle and I'll come to you my Lad, Auld Lang Syne_
(this list might be made much longer),--here we have the genuine Burns,
of whom the real estimate must be high indeed. Not a classic, nor with
the excellent[Greek: spoudaihotaes] of the great classics, nor with a
verse rising to a criticism of life and a virtue like theirs; but a poet
with thorough truth of substance and an answering truth of style, giving
us a poetry sound to the core. We all of us have a leaning towards the
pathetic, and may be inclined perhaps to prize Burns most for his
touches of piercing, sometimes almost intolerable, pathos; for verse
like--
"We twa hae paidl't i' the burn
From mornin' sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne ..."
where he is as lovely as he is sound. But perhaps it is by the
perfection of soundness of his lighter and archer masterpieces that he
is poetically most wholesome for us. For the votary misled by a personal
estimate of Shelley, as so many of us have been, are, and will be,--of
that beautiful spirit building his many-colored haze of words and images
"Pinnacled dim in the intense inane"--[114]
no contact can be wholesomer than the contact with Burns at his archest
and soundest. Side by side with the
"On the brink of the night and the morning
My coursers are wont to respire,
But the Earth has just whispered a warning
That their flight must be swifter than fire ..."[115]
of _Prometheus Unbound_, how salutary, how very salutary, to place this
from _Tam Glen_--
"My minnie does constantly deave me
and bids me beware o' young men;
They flatter, she says, to deceive me;
But wha can think sae o' Tam Glen?"
But we enter on burning ground as we approach the poetry of times so
near to us--poetry like that of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth--of which
the estimates are so often not only personal, but personal with passion.
For my purpose, it is enough to have taken the single case of Burns, the
first poet we come to of whose work the estimate formed is evidently apt
to be personal, and to have suggested how we may proceed, using the
poetry of the great classics as a sort of touchstone, to correct this
estimate, as we had previously corrected by the same means the historic
estimate where we met with it. A collection like the present, with its
succession of celebrated names and celebrated poems, offers a good
opportunity to us for resolutely endeavoring to make our estimates of
poetry real. I have sought to point out a method which will help us in
making them so, and to exhibit it in use so far as to put any one who
likes in a way of applying it for himself.
At any rate the end to which the method and the estimate are designed to
lead, and from leading to which, if they do lead to it, they get their
whole value,--the benefit of being able clearly to feel and deeply to
enjoy the best, the truly classic, in poetry,--is an end, let me say it
once more at parting, of supreme importance. We are often told that an
era is opening in which we are to see multitudes of a common sort of
readers, and masses of a common sort of literature; that such readers do
not want and could not relish anything better than such literature, and
that to provide it is becoming a vast and profitable industry. Even if
good literature entirely lost currency with the world, it would still be
abundantly worth while to continue to enjoy it by oneself. But it never
will lose currency with the world, in spite of momentary appearances; it
never will lose supremacy. Currency and supremacy are insured to it, not
indeed by the world's deliberate and conscious choice, but by something
far deeper,--by the instinct of self-preservation in humanity.
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE[116]
Practical people talk with a smile of Plato and of his absolute ideas;
and it is impossible to deny that Plato's ideas do often seem
unpractical and impracticable, and especially when one views them in
connection with the life of a great work-a-day world like the United
States. The necessary staple of the life of such a world Plato regards
with disdain; handicraft and trade and the working professions he
regards with disdain; but what becomes of the life of an industrial
modern community if you take handicraft and trade and the working
professions out of it? The base mechanic arts and handicrafts, says
Plato, bring about a natural weakness in the principle of excellence in
a man, so that he cannot govern the ignoble growths in him, but nurses
them, and cannot understand fostering any other. Those who exercise such
arts and trades, as they have their bodies, he says, marred by their
vulgar businesses, so they have their souls, too, bowed and broken by
them. And if one of these uncomely people has a mind to seek
self-culture and philosophy, Plato compares him to a bald little
tinker,[117] who has scraped together money, and has got his release
from service, and has had a bath, and bought a new coat, and is rigged
out like a bridegroom about to marry the daughter of his master who has
fallen into poor and helpless estate.
Nor do the working professions fare any better than trade at the hands
of Plato. He draws for us an inimitable picture of the working
lawyer,[118] and of his life of bondage; he shows how this bondage from
his youth up has stunted and warped him, and made him small and crooked
of soul, encompassing him with difficulties which he is not man enough
to rely on justice and truth as means to encounter, but has recourse,
for help out of them, to falsehood and wrong. And so, says Plato, this
poor creature is bent and broken, and grows up from boy to man without a
particle of soundness in him, although exceedingly smart and clever in
his own esteem.
One cannot refuse to admire the artist who draws these pictures. But we
say to ourselves that his ideas show the influence of a primitive and
obsolete order of things, when the warrior caste and the priestly caste
were alone in honor, and the humble work of the world was done by
slaves. We have now changed all that; the modern majesty[119] consists
in work, as Emerson declares; and in work, we may add, principally of
such plain and dusty kind as the work of cultivators of the ground,
handicraftsmen, men of trade and business, men of the working
professions. Above all is this true in a great industrious community
such as that of the United States.
Now education, many people go on to say, is still mainly governed by the
ideas of men like Plato, who lived when the warrior caste and the
priestly or philosophical class were alone in honor, and the really
useful part of the community were slaves. It is an education fitted for
persons of leisure in such a community. This education passed from
Greece and Rome to the feudal communities of Europe, where also the
warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone held in honor, and where
the really useful and working part of the community, though not
nominally slaves as in the pagan world, were practically not much better
off than slaves, and not more seriously regarded. And how absurd it is,
people end by saying, to inflict this education upon an industrious
modern community, where very few indeed are persons of leisure, and the
mass to be considered has not leisure, but is bound, for its own great
good, and for the great good of the world at large, to plain labor and
to industrial pursuits, and the education in question tends necessarily
to make men dissatisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for them!
That is what is said. So far I must defend Plato, as to plead that his
view of education and studies is in the general, as it seems to me,
sound enough, and fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, whatever
their pursuits may be. "An intelligent man," says Plato, "will prize
those studies, which result in his soul getting soberness,
righteousness, and wisdom, and will less value the others."[120] I
cannot consider _that_ a bad description of the aim of education, and of
the motives which should govern us in the choice of studies, whether we
are preparing ourselves for a hereditary seat in the English House of
Lords or for the pork trade in Chicago.
Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, that his scorn of trade
and handicraft is fantastic, that he had no conception of a great
industrial community such as that of the United States, and that such a
community must and will shape its education to suit its own needs. If
the usual education handed down to it from the past does not suit it, it
will certainly before long drop this and try another. The usual
education in the past has been mainly literary. The question is whether
the studies which were long supposed to be the best for all of us are
practically the best now; whether others are not better. The tyranny of
the past, many think, weighs on us injuriously in the predominance given
to letters in education. The question is raised whether, to meet the
needs of our modern life, the predominance ought not now to pass from
letters to science; and naturally the question is nowhere raised with
more energy than here in the United States. The design of abasing what
is called "mere literary instruction and education," and of exalting
what is called "sound, extensive, and practical scientific knowledge,"
is, in this intensely modern world of the United States, even more
perhaps than in Europe, a very popular design, and makes great and rapid
progress.