As the scheme which the Author has here endeavoured to execute has not,
so far as he knows, the advantage of any near precedent in any
literature, he hopes that a few explanatory words may be offered without
incurring censure for egotism.
Our history is so eminently rich and varied, and at the same time, by the
fact of our insular position, so stamped with unity, that from days very
remote it has supplied matter for song. This, among Celts and Angles, at
first was lyrical. But poetry, for many centuries after the Conquest,
mainly took the annalistic form, and, despite the ability often shown,
was hence predoomed to failure. For a nation's history cannot but
present many dull or confused periods, many men and things intractable by
poetry, though, perhaps, politically effective and important, which
cannot be excluded from any narrative aiming at consecutiveness; and, by
the natural laws of art, these passages, when rendered in verse, in their
effect become more prosaic than they would be in a prose rendering.
My attempt has therefore been to revert to the earlier and more natural
conditions of poetry, and to offer,--not a continuous narrative; not
poems on every critical moment or conspicuous man in our long annals,--but
single lyrical pictures of such leading or typical characters and scenes
in English history, and only such, as have seemed amenable to a strictly
poetical treatment. Poetry, not History, has, hence, been my first and
last aim; or, perhaps I might define it, History for Poetry's sake. At
the same time, I have striven to keep throughout as closely to absolute
historical truth in the design and colouring of the pieces as the
exigencies of poetry permit:--the result aimed at being to unite the
actual tone and spirit of the time concerned, with the best estimate
which has been reached by the research and genius of modern
investigators. Our island story, freed from the 'falsehood of
extremes,'--exorcised, above all, from the seducing demon of
party-spirit, I have thus here done my best to set forth. And as this
line of endeavour has conducted and constrained me, especially when the
seventeenth century is concerned, to judgments--supported indeed by
historians conspicuous for research, ability, and fairness, but often
remote from the views popularized by the writers of our own day,--upon
these points a few justificatory notes have been added.
A double aim has hence governed and limited both the selection and the
treatment of my subjects. The choice has necessarily fallen, often, not
on simply picturesque incident or unfamiliar character, but on the men
and things that we think of first, when thinking of the long chronicle of
England,--or upon such as represent and symbolize the main current of it.
Themes, however, on which able or popular song is already extant,--notably
in case of Scotland,--I have in general avoided. In the rendering, my
desire has been always to rest the poetry of each Vision on its own
intrinsic interest; to write with a straightforward eye to the object
alone; not studious of ornament for ornament's sake; allowing the least
possible overt intrusion of the writer's personality; and, in accordance
with lyrical law, seeking, as a rule, to fix upon some factual picture
for each poem.
* * * * *
To define, thus, the scope of what this book attempts, is, in itself, a
confession of presumptuousness,--the writer's own sense of which is but
feebly and imperfectly expressed in the words from Vergil's letter to
Augustus prefixed as my motto. In truth, so rich and so wide are the
materials, that to scheme a lyrical series which should really paint the
_Gesta Anglorum_ in their fulness might almost argue 'lack of wit,'
_vitium mentis_, in much greater powers than mine. No criticism, however
severe, can add to my own consciousness how far the execution of the
work, in regard to each of its aims, falls below the plan. Yet I would
allow myself the hope, great as the deficiencies may be, that the love of
truth and the love of England are mine by inheritance in a degree
sufficient to exempt this book, (the labour of several years), from
infidelity to either:--that the intrinsic worth and weight of my subject
may commend these songs, both at home, and in the many Englands beyond
sea, to those who, (despite the inevitably more engrossing attractions of
the Present, and the emphatic bias of modern culture towards the
immediate and the tangible), maintain that high and soul-inspiring
interest which, identifying us with our magnificent Past, and all its
varied lessons of defeat and victory, offers at the same time,--under the
guidance from above,--our sole secure guarantee for prosperous and
healthy progress in the Future.
The world has cycles in its course, when all
That once has been, is acted o'er again;
and only the nation which, at each moment of political or social
evolution, looks lovingly backward to its own painfully-earned
experience--_Respiciens_, _Prospiciens_, as Tennyson's own chosen device
expresses it--has solid reason to hope, that its movement is true
Advance--that its course is Upward.
* * * * *
It remains only to add, that the book has been carefully revised and
corrected, and that nineteen pieces published in the original volume of
1881 are not reprinted in the present issue.
F. T. P.
_July_, 1889