A comparative estimate of modern English poets

Chapter I. Universal Suffrage In Art

HAZLITT says that the principle of universal suffrage is all very well in matters of political government, which affect the common interests of society, but is not in the least applicable to matters of taste, which can only be decided by the most refined understandings.* But, in the affairs of Parnassus, the judgments of the refined will often be found indisputably wrong, and those of the commonalty as indisputably right. Quinctilian thought that the " Argonautics " of Apollonius was a performance of a very high order of merit ; but the great mass of his countrymen invariably deemed it, what it unquestionably is, a performance of a very low order of merit. It cannot be denied that Queen Caroline was a lady of strong intellectual predilections ; at least so say Clarke and Leibnitz ; yet Stephen Duck was her favourite poet. Akenside and Warton were, probably, the most refined writers of their age. Yet Akenside thought so highly of Dyer's long since forgotten "Fleece," as to accept the light in which it was regarded by the public, as a test of the poetical qualities of the age. The lofty opinion which Warton had of the miserable

* "Round Table," vol. ii., p. 260.

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Elegiacs of Hammond, was hardly surpassed by his admiration of Gray. It is only the other day a wretched rhymester of Westmoreland was recommended by some of the foremost occupants of the episcopal bench, and two or three noble lords of acknowledged literary taste, to the crown, for a pension, as possessing merit on a level with Burns. We also know that a beardless youth, at the end of last century, succeeded' in palming off on the elite of London fashionable society, his stupid " Vortigern," for a genuine play of Shakespeare, until the representation of the piece, when both pit and gallery laughed it out of Covent Garden. Yet, Pye, the laureate of those days, wrote the prologue to the play, and Parr and Boswell, with a host of other literary celebrities, were vouchers for its authenticity. A few years earlier than this freak of young Ireland's, there died in the same year two Scotch poets, whose fame, while living, is now generally admitted to have been in inverse proportion to their merits. One was carried by torchlight, beneath nodding plumes, in solemn state, to Westminster Abbey. The other was laid, by an awkward squad of brother yeomen, beneath .a mound of turf in the quiet churchyard of Dumfries. To name Macpherson now as possessing gifts at all akin with the national minstrel of Scotland, would be deemed a sorry exhibition of taste. Yet there cannot be a doubt that, a century ago, Burns was comparatively obscure, while his more fortunate rival blazed in the poetical firmament, as a star of the first magnitude. We are not at all sure that, in the sphere of poetry, had universal suffrage been adopted at the close of last century, it would not have led us to truer results, than a suffrage based upon the possession of a certain quantum of refined judgment in the upper classes of society. For, while Macpherson was feted as a literary genius by the first circles in London, Burns was allowed to pass his best years as a mere gauger of whiskey barrels, in an obscure corner of a Scotch province.

So far, then, as the reputation of a poet is concerned, we

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN ART.

should be even more inclined to rest our judgment on the independent opinion of the commonalty, than upon that of any distinct section of the upper ten thousand, no matter however refined that section may be. For, poetry is an art connected with the delineation of human passions and feelings ; and of the truth of that delineation, the greater the number of judges, the more likely are we to arrive at a correct result. Moliere is said to have read over his plays to his maid-servant, and always found that her judgment anticipated the degree of success awarded by the public. And we do not doubt he was right.

Painting requires an educated eye, music a disciplined ear ; but poetry, diving to the bottom of the heart, which each one carries about with him, represents its sorrows and its joys, its hopes and fears. The circle of judges may therefore be proportionally enlarged, till it becomes commensurate with all who are in any way masters of the language in which the representation is conveyed. Those who possess a knowledge of the poet's words, are like the holders of a galvanic wire down which the stream of his thoughts flow, affecting each alike with the impression of his burning images, at least so far as the recipients of the poetic battery are possessed of a common organization.

" One touch of nature makes the whole world kin ; "

and the soundest, if not the only practical test, we can have of the genuineness of the touch, is the beating of the general bosom in common sympathy with it. But the opinion of the commonalty, to be of any worth, ought to be exercised upon matters which appeal to the general feelings, and under certain conditions which place its judgments beyond the reach of fashionable coteries or temporary prejudices. It is not so much the nature of the tribunal we would object to, — if the free and unbiassed exercise of its judgment could be obtained, — as its liability to being warped by foreign influence. In some matters, as in the higher walks of satire, its opinions do not seem of much weight. There are far more copies, now, in circulation of the " Minstrel," than of " Roscius." Yet, who would take Beattie for a greater poet than Churchill, — the one hardly deserving of the name, and the other the author of the most nervous lines in our language. But Churchill shot his arrows at particular characters of his age, now well-nigh forgotten ; and the private recklessness of the man, together with the ephemeral subjects of his muse, has eclipsed his poetical genius in the eyes of a generation which regards moral dignity as one of the first constituents of divine poetry. Even upon subjects with which it is competent to deal, the opinion of the commonalty is frequently not an independent opinion, but one adopted on trust at the dictation of literary cliques, or of persons of refined, but conventional, sympathies. For the public, occasionally, with respect to this branch of art, is in an idle mood, and luxuriously reposes upon the judgments manufactured for it by others. Sometimes, the unformed and growing state of a language, at others a perverted taste, will warp its judgment, and invest, as with a haze, the exercise of its critical faculties. At the rise of Greek letters, smooth writing was more esteemed than sublimity, and Simonides carried off the prize from ^Eschylus ; just as, at the origin of Latin comedy, Ennius was much more in repute than Terence or Plautus. But a more refined age reversed these crude decisions. The age of the Restoration was so blinded by political fanaticism and by French levity, as to prefer Sedley to Milton, and the plays of Shadwell to those of Shakespeare. It is, thus, that our ancient temples have occasionally to submit to the indignities of having the most salient beauties of their architecture buried beneath coats of lime-plaster. A generation rises up who sees more ornament in a flat surface of white chalk than in a groined arch, or in a bullioned window, or rich architrave, and who proceed to realize their barbarities, by consigning these triumphs to temporary oblivion. If, therefore, we are to rely upon universal suffrage as a guide to a correct discernment of the poetical

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN ART. 5

faculty, in matters falling within its competency, then, to make the test of real value, it must be one based upon the concurrent testimony of two or more ages, in order to eliminate the causes which occasionally interfere with its exercise upon independent and unfactitious grounds. For the past is crowded with bubble reputations, which once filled Europe with their fame. Who would think of citing Davenant and Blackmore, now, as poets, except in the lowest meaning of the term ? Yet in the eyes of their contemporaries, their place was as high as any on the steeps of Parnassus. What poet in his day filled a larger portion of the public eye than Ronsard, or a less portion than Milton ? Yet their generations had no sooner past away, than the renowned was consigned to oblivion, and the obscure was lifted up to greatness. It would, therefore, be a high degree of rashness, to conclude from the present, the future reputation of a poet. His contemporary fame is an earnest of endurinp greatness, only so far as his works may be conformable to the canons of sound criticism. If they will not stand this test, his triumph, depending on the breath of a fleeting multitude, must collapse, when that multitude shall have passed away.

ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS.

Chapter II. Philosophical Analysis

WHAT are the elements of poetry? Are there any marks or tests by which the higher, may be distinguished from its lower forms, endorsed by the judgment of the past, and likely to meet with so general an acceptance, as to anticipate with reference to contemporary poets, the judgment of the future ? Aristotle tried his hand at elaborating canons of poetical criticism, over twenty-two hundred years ago; but, owing to his fondness for abstract theories, and the narrow area to which his views were necessarily confined, his judgments would not be of much help to us now. How far poetry is an imitative art; what are the different species into which it may be divided ; what construction of plot is most calculated to produce excellence ; what are the functions of the Greek chorus, or the nature of the unities of time and place, — these are all that the master of Greek criticism touches in a theoretical manner, without the slightest psychological analysis, or any objective basis, beyond the literature of his own country. We stand, however, in this respect, in a superior position to Aristotle, having a better method, and a far more enlarged field to furnish a basis for our enquiries, as well as to test the accuracy of any theories which we may form upon the subject. These advantages enable us to go farther than Aristotle, who merely summarized the principles upon which the great poets of Greece acted, as a guide to a

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correct judgment of the past; whereas, we would summarize the more enlarged principles which our national poets have exemplified, as a guide to the judgment of the future. From the standard by which the poetry of the past has been estimated, we would fashion our opinions as to that of the present, in order to foreshadow as in a mirror the judgment of posterity.

Here, however, we encounter on the threshold of the subject a difficulty ; that is the variable nature of the organization of each individual to whom we appeal. We can readily agree in making out what constitutes the elements of poetry. But, discord is too apt to arise, when we assign to this writer such a depth of pathos, and to another such an amount of imagination, or sublimity, simply because we have no accurate weights or measures universally recognised, by which the intensity of such spiritual qualities can be tested, as readily as the quantities of material things. Brown, for instance, has a highly sympathetic nature, which only awaits a spark to explode. Jones's nature, on the contrary, is hard as iron, and could not be melted without being cast into a furnace. The poet, who appears to Brown profoundly pathetic, will strike Jones as being entirely wanting in that element. It is this variable organization which colours most of the criticism of the day, and makes art judgments so divergent and so conflicting. One critic is lymphatic ; he, therefore, deals very severely with a writer of a highly imaginative character. Another has a very sanguine temperament ; he, consequently, has no patience with a poet of the philosophic class. It is the same with nations as with individuals. The French have a very imperfect conception of the sublime ; and, therefore, Milton and Shakespeare have never been appreciated by them, to anything like the full extent of their genius. The Germans have a very inadequate notion of the facetious; and, therefore, the reputations of Hood, Swift, and Butler to them are so many enigmas. The Italians, likewise, lack the spirit of profound introspective analysis, and, therefore, such writers as Wordsworth and Coleridge are still at a discount on the other side of the Alps. It does not, however, follow, on account of these varying standards, that we are unable to test or gauge the qualities entering into the composition of any individual writer, at least within some definite limits of accuracy, any more than we should be unable to measure the dimensions or distances of the stars, on account of the variable haziness of the atmosphere through which they are viewed. We, in England, springing from a mixture of foreign peoples, are, perhaps, more fitted to wield the critical sceptre than any of our neighbours, who are much less composite in their origin. But, as the results of criticism, under the most favourable conditions, cannot be measured by any yard line, or counted upon our ten fingers, they must fail to coerce the irrational, the phlegmatic, and the dull ; and, therefore, at best can only be expected to meet with general, and not universal, recognition.

The question, as to what constitutes poetry, has been answered in various ways according to the notion uppermost in the writer's mind, rather than with a view to embrace the subject within the limits of a logical definition. Shelley has described poetry, as the language of the imagination, which is only one, though the chief element in it. Byron calls poetry, the feeling of past worlds and future, which is a description of the subject matter about which poetry is mainly, but by no means exhaustively, employed. Aristotle evidently thought he had fathomed the subject, when he told his readers, poetry was an imitative art, and that the things imitated were the passions and the manners of men. But this only reveals one of the modes by which the art manifests itself. Keats has more graphically represented poetry under the figure of a vessel, with invention for its pole star, imagination for the sails, and wit for its rudder. But imagination and invention in poetry are frequently only two ways of looking at the same thing. The metaphor, therefore, will not bear analysis. Coleridge, perhaps, has more accurately expressed himself, when he describes good sense as the body of poetry, fancy its drapery, motion its life,

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and imagination its soul. We need, however, a complete and exhaustive definition of the elements of poetry, and not a loose enumeration of the faculties employed in their manipulation. Such Leigh Hunt has attempted, in defining poetry as the utterance of a passion for truth, beauty, and power, embodying and illustrating its conception's by imagination and fancy, and modulating its language on the principle of variety in uniformity. But this definition would exclude pure thought, and that wide circle of subjects in which feeling is made tributary to it, without manifesting that overmastering energy which imaginative passion would imply. A large portion of, what may be called, pure, descriptive, contemplative, and didactic poetry, would, if Leigh Hunt's definition were accepted, have to be separated from its domain. It is evident that these and other such attempts to enclose within fixed boundaries, all the peculiar region of poetry, only present us with fragments of the subject, which are often, indeed, insisted upon with the sectarian spirit of excluding those, from the roll of poets, against whom the framers of such definitions have any antipathy.

This thrusting the idle figments of the fancy too prominently forward, as the grand discriminating criterion of poetry, has been a source of great mischief, in deterring a matter-of-fact age from cultivating a deep acquaintance with a subject so powerfully capable of neutralizing its prosaic tendencies. Society is too much considered, in the present age, under its economic aspects. Men are considered as almost exclusively influenced by motives of gain. All aesthetic feeling, as a motive power, is banished from the world of action, and pinioned to the sphere of sentiment. Hence poetry, as the expression or embodiment of our perception of beauty, is considered as the mere pastime of our leisure hours, leaving no further mark on the world's course, than the last game of billiards, or the next game of croquet. Whereas, what is the fact? The ancient nations fought with desperate energy, for ten years, on account of a beautiful woman, and even in these economic times, two of io ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS.

the most advanced races in Europe, have disorganized their social structure, and rushed to exterminate each other, on account of a beautiful river. The Celt and the Teuton, indeed, have been fighting, at intermittent intervals, for the Rhine, during the last 300 years. The crusades, which flung Europe at the throat of Asia, and which have given more colour to modern history than any other event, arose out of feelings connected with man's yearnings for the infinite, and those spiritual aspirations which constitute the essence of poetry. The influence of popular songs upon the multitude is known to all. The "Lillibullero" was one of the chief agents in effecting the collapse of the Stuart dynasty, and the Marseillaise, more powerfully than any other cause, contributed to the victories which the armies of the French Republic gained over those of foreign despots. The hymns of the early Christian Church, or those sung by the Albigenses in their mountain fastnesses, acted like a talisman in perpetuating modes of belief destined to fling society upon fresh paths.

It appears, therefore, so far from the subject of poetry being the mere ebullition of man's transient feelings, or its expression falling like a snow-flake upon the stream of events, no subjects lie so permanently about man's heart, or are more intimately connected with his most serious affairs, or have so definitely moulded the course of history, as those which ordinarily find their useful embodiment in song. But the most favourable idea now entertained of poetry is, that it is a sort of phantom world, a mere region of spectral illusion with which truth has very little to do, beyond engrafting living passion on mimic heroes, and making fictitious characters assume the appearance of reality. This, certainly, embraces a large slice of the poetic territory, but by no means the heart of it. For, the description of actual, falls as much within the function of the poet, as imaginary, suffering. We are liable indeed to be more excited by the narration of real, than simulated, passion. Burns' " Highland Mary" comes much nearer to our feelings than the " Angelica " of Ariosto, and we

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are moved more by the every-day realities in Crabbe, than by any of the enchantments in Spenser. It is the province of poetry, to carry us out of ourselves, to make us forget our own petty concerns and selfish views in the sympathy created by the joys and griefs of others ; to make our hearts beat in unison with the general interests of humanity ; and whether the means, by which these results are achieved, have a real or fictitious basis, it amounts pretty much to the same thing as far as the scope of the art is concerned.

Hence, it appears, that powers of observation and keen analysis of life and character play a distinguished part in poetic composition, and that they may occasionally supply the place of imagination, where they are not, as in fictitious narrative, subsidiary to it. Chaucer is generally a favourite poet, with those who accept the purely imaginative element, as the distinguishing feature in poetry. But even in the tales of Chaucer, there are pictures drawn from contemporary life and manners, with which the imaginative element had nothing whatever to do. These pictures entirely arose out of the emotions which certain visual facts excited in his mind. In the above category may be set down the poems of Crabbe, the satires of Dryden and Juvenal, the moral essays and epistles of Pope and Horace. Here, we have external character graphically delineated, social phenomena faithfully reproduced, and both relieved by lively sallies of wit or the softer emotions of pity. Even in the great creative poets, where the imaginative element rules supreme, the inferential and constructive faculties, with philosophic insight into human events, play a most distinguished role, in the evolution of poetic thought ; for not only have fabulous personages to be vitalized by human passion, but fictitious narratives have to be constructed, with that logical sequence which always sees the effect in the cause, and reads in a knot of composite phenomena, a few abiding laws and plastic ideas. Unity has to be impressed upon a mass of heterogeneous materials. Divergent parts have to be centralized, and artistic design made to wear all the appearance of nature. It is evident, therefore, though a philosopher need not be a poet, that a great poet must be a philosopher.

As Leigh Hunt denned poetry to be passionate imagination, Ebenezer Elliot, himself a poet of no inconsiderable powers, characterized it as impassioned truth. To this view, John Stuart Mill has more or less subscribed, by denominating poetry, as, the mere influence of the feelings over our thoughts in solitude, and the embodiment of theN ideas resulting therefrom, in metrical language. But I would guard as much against making all poetry the mere temporary ebullition of the feelings, as the simple product of the imaginative element Ebenezer Elliot's definition, though good as far as it goes, is, like all those which have preceded it, only fragmentary. For, all truth which awakes within us the feeling of the infinite, whether impassioned or not, I hold to be poetry. Hence, all recondite laws which reveal the foundation of our being, or excite a vivid sensation of the past, or a palpable foreshadowing of the future, constitute poetry, in the loftiest sense. What the doctrine of destiny was to the Greek, the abiding permanence of law, as revealed in all social and natural phenomena, is to us. In this light, poetry may be considered as philosophy made sensible. In following Hamlet into the churchyard, we derive an important lesson as to the indestructibility of matter. " Why may not imagination follow the noble dust of Alexander till we find it stopping up a bung-hole?" When Spenser calls the lily the plant and flower of light, he points to the fact, that there is no substance in the lily to decompose light, and, therefore, it is clad in pure whiteness. In like manner, when Byron tells us, that the mind in love is fevered into false creation, and that neither worth nor beauty exist outside the mind's ideal shape of such,* the poet reveals a psychological truth which might form the basis of a metaphysical theory. When he, also, identifies man's first consummation of love with his fall,! he supplies a her- * " Childe Harold," c. iv., s. 122, 123. + "Don Juan," c. i., v. 127.

meneutical key to the First Book of Genesis, which the Jews themselves have long admitted the sense of. So when Tennyson, in allusion to the religious aspect of humanity, says,

Our petty systems have their day,

They have their day and cease to be,

They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O ! Lord, art more than they:* —

to what else can the poet refer but the fact, real or assumed, that the character of men's creeds depends upon their state of knowledge, and that, as their scientific basis shifts, the mode in which they worship the Deity, must vary, according to the insight into His nature which they gain from His works? Again, when Byron speaks of our nature being bound with an electric chain, which, as it is stricken by any casual object, presses past recollections upon us,f he lays bare a fundamental law in connection with the association of ideas. In most of these cases, the exercise of the imagination is common both to the poet and philosopher. But, the man of science subjects the suggestions of that faculty to rigid numerical tests or to the ordeal of experiment, while the poet leaves them in their shadowy state to throw a veil of spirituality over the material world. The one employs the imagination to connect facts with abiding laws, to reveal, by means of general axioms, the mechanism of the universe. The other uses the imagination to reveal the sources of the mechanism itself, and its connection with the infinite. The one seeks to explain certain classes of phenomena by definite principles, the other mounts to the causes in which both principles and phenomena have their origin. Hence, it not unfrequently happens that poets, while contemplating the marvels of the universe, hit upon truths which anticipate scientific discoveries, and sometimes, indeed, serve as the basis of scientific progress. The law of gravitation has been found in Dante. Shakespeare revealed the circulation of the blood,

* "In Memoriam." Prelude, t " Childe Harold," c. iv., s. 23.

before it was propounded by Harvey.* Goethe, while contemplating plants, hit upon the important law regulating their growth, which has revolutionized botany. It came into the mind of the same poet, stumbling over some bones in a churchyard, that the spinal sheath was only a prolongation of the development of the skull, an idea of which Owen has made so much in his work on the vertebrae of animals. We all know that the poet Haiiy, while pondering over the beauty of the inorganic world, discovered the great law of the isomorphism of minerals, solving that problem by an effort of the imagination, which had baffled the efforts of a crowd of inductive philosophers. It is, indeed, a function which the poet enjoys in common with the philosopher, to conduct the soul into the interior adyta of the universe, to reveal hidden laws, and to bring to light the host of analogies which exist between the spiritual and material order of things. So far, then, is poetry from being opposed to science and philosophy, that it may be regarded as the helpmate to both. It deals primarily with truth, and only with fiction as subsidiary thereto. When the poet wishes to show the play of peculiar passions, under peculiar circumstances, he has recourse to fabulous narrative. But truth is, nevertheless, his object, though it may be derivative. Where the circumstances are not feigned, but real, the truth he aims at is direct. But whether derivative or direct, the poet fulfils his loftiest mission, when the truths which he sets forth assume the dignity of abiding laws, revealing the foundations of man's nature, or laying bare those great principles which blend the mind with the harmonies of the external world, and control his destinies under conflicting civilizations. If these truths are oftener intertwined with fable than otherwise, it is to make them more -universal or general, to interest the human heart in their evolution, and enable the poet to display them with more unshackled facility.

* "Coriolanus," Act i., sc. t, — Speech of Menenius Agrippa.

Truth, then, I would make equally the aim of the poet and the philosopher. But with the man of science, it is truth unconnected with the feelings, truth reduced into system, rising from the ground of numerical tests and of inductive experiment; whereas, the poet deals with truth in its deductive range, arising out of his imaginative instincts and connected with his emotional nature. But, while admitting poetic truth to be always suffused with feeling, I would not go as far as Mr. Mill in saying that feeling ought to be the leading element in it.* Just as I would guard the domain of poetry from being unduly monopolized by fiction, so I would guard it from being the arena of vague sentimentality. The loftiest poetry must be tinged with feeling, but never entirely dominated by it. Thought, not mere emotion, must be the guiding principle in it. But Mr. Mill inverts this position. He will have it, that the highest poetry is the mere ebullition of feeling, and that where thought comes in to assume the guiding rein, we realize the distinction between poets of culture, as distinguished from those of nature. He, even, cites Wordsworth, confessedly one of the first poets of this country, as one who allowed thought to guide his feelings, and, therefore, as one who could not derive his poetic lineage from nature. But on this subject, the popular judgment appears sounder than that of the philosopher. For, those are generally esteemed poets of culture who produce nothing strikingly original themselves, but allow the thoughts and phraseology of other writers to dominate their ideas and expressions ; while genuine poets, or, in other words, those not made but born such, derive their heritage from nature, quite independent of the influence of others. They are those who enrich the world with new thoughts, and who only employ feeling to stamp their ideas with that earnestness which blend them with the human heart for ever. The rational and emotional nature have each their proper functions, the one as the guiding, and the other, as the motive, power ; but if the propelling is to * " Poetry and its Varieties : Essays and Dissertations."