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unflagging invention, but a sure sense for style which never forsakes him. No people has possessed a richer national genius for poetry than the English. Their ill success in the longer narrative, the objective as distinguished from the subjective type of poetry, cannot, therefore, be traced to any fundamental disability. But in the greater poetry, natural genius is not enough. Our poetry, as Arnold never wearied of insisting, failed through neglect of form, or through indifference to qualities of style which may be absent even where genius is present. That he was right the poetry reviewed in this book abundantly proves. In no writer since Milton can we feel that the sense for style is continually evident, “ the certain excellence and perfection of language" of which Longinus speaks; he is our one first-rate master in the grand style." For the most part also our poets rarely foresaw the end from the beginning, rarely so planned their works as to subordinate the parts to the whole and to bring them to a natural and fit conclusion. They embarked on their voyages without charts, sometimes, one might fancy, without thought of any port of destination. What an eloquent example is Spenser. His Faerie Queene, though longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined-a royal barque, indeed-never reached harbour. But in a long poem, if its success is to be measured by its pretensions, not only is form necessary, a sustained nobility is necessary. Goethe, "of attempting a large work. . . . expenditure of mental force are required to arrange and round off a great whole; and then what powers, and what a tranquil, undisturbed situation in life, to express it with the proper fluency." A lyric may be supported during its brief flight by the spirit and fervour of its initial impulse. In the long poem the author must frequently conduct us through stretches of level country, along the lower slopes of Parnassus, where the pressure of inspiration is barely felt. Through such stretches, along these lower levels, if he be master of an assured style he will continue to give us pleasure, though pleasure of a quieter kind. But many of our poets who attempted epic or the longer narrative, though the true nature of poetry was not hidden from

Beware," said What exertion and

them, though, like Browning in The Ring and the Book, they wrote at times with genius, were incapable, through some deficiency of ear or musical invention, of producing, except in their happiest moments, verse that was more than correct, that had in it any arresting or satisfying quality. They were wrecked on the shallows of commonplace, on the shoals of the superfluous, or on the rocks of rhetorical magniloquence. Our longer narratives are poems great in passages rather than great poems, splendid elevations are followed by melancholy and forbidding depressions. The English poets, following each his own vein, display marked originality, an originality so pronounced as to amount in the eyes of our foreign critics to eccentricity. They give full scope to their individual tastes, often to their displeasing idiosyncracies, unrestrained by any regard for tradition, or any inquiry into the principles of their art. They write to please themselves, "to give themselves the exterior sensation of their individuality,” rather than to please others, or to create objective and visible shapes of beauty. The metaphysical bent, too, the subjective tendency of the English nature, wars against success in narrative, in the objective style. Characteristic of the English nature in general, this metaphysical bent discovers itself more and more as we approach our own times, it has become a feature of modern thought. More and more the world seems impelled towards the theoretic, the interior, the mental region, so that for the artist to escape from it, to create bright, clear pictures, like those of the visible and real world, pictures such as Homer gives us, or Beowulf, seems for the present beyond hope. If Hegel is to be believed, we have even less to expect from the future. For if ours be a reflective age, coming ages will be even more reflective. Our ways of thought infect the artist, "the whole spiritual culture of the age is of such a kind that he himself stands within this reflective world and its conditions." Art is, and will remain, on the side of its higher destiny," concludes Hegel," a thing of the past." 1 Let us trust that the philosopher

1 The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art, translated by Bernard Bosanquet, p. 55.

was deceived in this matter. Even philosophers have been known to err, and prophecy is dangerous work. But when Professor Bradley accounts for the ill success of the longer poems of Wordsworth's age by the same tendency, the bent of that age towards the intellectual and analytical mood, its keen interest in ideas, in abstract questions, his argument seems conclusive.1 Nothing, as he shows, can be more unfriendly towards the production of the more ambitious narrative poetry -which to interest us must make its ideas visible, must give them objective shape and value-than this preoccupation with abstract and critical modes of thought. The poets of that age exhibited this inward tendency, this speculative habit of mind. Fascinated by such ideas as lay at the roots of the French Revolution, they concerned themselves with the future and schemes for the reconstruction of society, whereas the poets of earlier epochs, undistracted by the clash of conflicting theories, were free to ponder and to shape anew in clear sculptured forms, in vivid scene and action, the ideas already familiar and fixed in the national imagination. Criticism may thus, partially at least, account for the defects in our longer narrative poems.

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There are readers, however, who are far from deploring these defects, who, as we saw,2 have no liking for the long poem, or believe it under the friendliest conditions impossible. “You say that one half is very good," said Byron, in reply to some criticism of Don Juan, you are wrong; for if were, it would be the finest poem in existence. Where is the poetry of which one half is good? . . . No-no; no poetry is generally good-only by fits and starts—and you are lucky to get a sparkle here and there." If not wholly good, however, there exist poems, like those of Virgil and Milton, so admirable, of such noble quality throughout, that the true lovers of poetry would sacrifice much to retain them, even in every word and line. If we are to have no more such poetry, if the long poem is doomed, we can only say with Professor Bradley

1 The Long Poem in Wordsworth's Age, Oxford Lectures on Poetry. 2 Chap. ix., p. 176

that "something of inestimable worth will perish." And we may, perhaps, take some comfort to ourselves by recalling the history of poetry, and how often that history shows her powers of revival and renewal; when

"she herself hath burnt, and spicy nest, The lovely bird with youthful pens and comb, Doth soar from out her cradle and her tomb."

APPENDIX

For the following translations I am indebted to my friend Mr. RITCHIE GIRVAN, Lecturer on English Language in the University of Glasgow.

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EXODUS," 154-168

Pharaoh's Approach

Hopeless in mind they stood

After they saw from out the south advancing
Pharaoh's army, bearing on high their spears
Close ranked like forest trees, the troops agleam,
The banners reared aloft, a nation's force
Treading the boundary ways-embattled close
They came, with spears arrayed, and glancing shields,
And blare of trumpets. Over the corpses screamed
The birds of battle lusting for the fray,

Their wings all dewed, and he who claims the slain,
The raven, hastened to that place, and wolves
Their hideous call of the night-time cried aloud
In hope of carrion, brutish and ruthless beasts,
Which savagely followed with the foe and boded
The host's destruction-such as at mid of night
Watch howling round the outposts where men dwell.

"GENESIS," 1982-1995

The Battle of the Kings

Fierce for the fray the hosts drew nigh, with lances
Loud ringing, while around the spear shafts screamed
The raven, swart bird of battle, on his wings
The dew still wet, and in his breast high hope
Of feasting on the slain. In mighty columns
Hastened the heroes forward, high of heart,
Helmed for the onset, till the companies closed

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