I hope the Government will not think just now about appointing a Poet
Laureate. I hardly think they can be altogether in the right mood. The
business just now before the country makes a very good detective story;
but as a national epic it is a little depressing. Jingo literature
always weakens a nation; but even healthy patriotic literature has
its proper time and occasion. For instance, Mr. Newbolt (who has been
suggested for the post) is a very fine poet; but I think his patriotic
lyrics would just now rather jar upon a patriot. We are rather too much
concerned about our practical seamanship to feel quite confident that
Drake will return and “drum them up the Channel as he drummed them long
ago.” On the contrary, we have an uncomfortable feeling that Drake’s
ship might suddenly go to the bottom, because the capitalists have made
Lloyd George abolish the Plimsoll Line. One could not, without being
understood ironically, adjure the two party teams to-day to “play up,
play up and play the game,” or to “love the game more than the
prize.” And there is no national hero at this moment in the soldiering
line--unless, perhaps, it is Major Archer-Shee--of whom anyone would
be likely to say: “Sed miles; sed pro patria.” There is, indeed, one
beautiful poem of Mr. Newbolt’s which may mingle faintly with one’s
thoughts in such times, but that, alas, is to a very different tune. I
mean that one in which he echoes Turner’s conception of the old wooden
ship vanishing with all the valiant memories of the English:
There’s a far bell ringing At the setting of the sun, And a phantom
voice is singing Of the great days done. There’s a far bell ringing, And
a phantom voice is singing Of a fame forever clinging To the great days
done. For the sunset breezes shiver, Temeraire, Temeraire, And she’s
fading down the river....
Well, well, neither you nor I know whether she is fading down the river
or not. It is quite enough for us to know, as King Alfred did, that a
great many pirates have landed on both banks of the Thames.