THE USE OF PC '~TR Y

AND THE USE OF CRIIIC!SM

 books by T. S. Eliot

COLLECTED POEMS
* 1909-1935
FOUR QUARTETS
MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL
THE WASTE LAND AND OTHER POEMS
THE FAMILY REUNION
SELECTED ESSAYS
ESSAYS ANCIENT AND MODERN
THE USE OF POETRY AND THE USE OF CRITICISM
THE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY
THOUGHTS AFTER LAMBETH
WHAT IS A CLASSIC?
POINTS OF VIEW

*
OLD POSSUM'S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS
 THE USE OF POETRY
AND THE USE OF CRITICISM

STUDIES IN
THE RELATION OF CRITICISM
TO POETRY IN ENGLAND

BY
T. S. ELIOT
Charles El,ot Norton Professor of Poetry
in Harvard Umverslty
1932- 1933

LONDON
FABER AND FABER LIMITED
24 RUSSELL SQUARE
FIRST PUBLI~HED NOVEMBER MCMXXxui
BY FABER AND FABER LIMITED
24 RUSSELL SQUARE LONDON w.e. I
SECOND IMPRESSION J ANUARY MCMXX~V
REPRINTED OCTOBER MCMXXXVII
JANUARY MCMXLIII, JULY MCM)flIV
OCTOBER MCMXLV, JUNE MCMxLVI
FEBRUARY AND DECEMBER MCMXi VIII
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
R. MACLEHOSE AND COMPANY LIMITED
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS GLASGOW
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 To the Memory of
CHARLES WHIBLEY
to ,,,,hom I promIsed a better book
 CONTENTS
PREFATORY NOTE II

I. INTRODUCTION 13
II. APOLOGY FOR THE COUNTESS
OF PEMBROKE 37
III. THE AGE OF DRYDEN 53
IV. WORDSWORTH AND COLE-
RIDGE 67
V. SHELLEY AND KEATS 87
VI. MATTHEW ARNOLD 10 3

VII. THE MODERN IviIND 121

VIII. CONCLUSION I43

9
 PREFACE

T hese lectures, dehvered at Harvard Umversity dunng

the wmter of1932-33, owe much to an audIence only
too ready to applaud ment and condone defect; but I am
aware that such success as they had was largely dramatic,
and that they wIll be solI more dlsappomnng to those who
heard them than they wLll be to those who dId not. I
should much prefer to leave my auditors wlth whatever
InlpreSSlon they then recelVed; but by the terms of the
FoundatIOn by Mr. StIllman the lectures must be subnlltted
for pubhcatIOn, and WIthIn a fixed perIod. Thus I explaIn
my COllll1lISSI0n of another unnecessary book.
I anl glad, however, of the opportunIty to record In
print my obhgatlon to the PresIdent and Fellows of Har-
vard College, to the N ortoll Professorslup CommIttee, and
In particular my grantude to Professor John LIvmgston
Lowes; to the Master of Ehot House and Mrs. Mernman,
wIth most pleasant memOrIes of the Associates and Tutors
of the House; to Dr. Theodore Spencer, and to Mr. and
Mrs. Alfred DWIght Sheffield for mnumerable cnticisnls
and suggestIons.
I much regret that willIe I was preparmg these lectures
for dehvery In Amenca, Mr. 1. A. Rtchards was ill Eng-
land; and that whIle I was preparmg them for pubhcatlo
tn England, he was m AmerIca. I had 'hoped that they
IDlght have the benefit of hIs CntlCIsnl.
T.S.E.
LOHdOll, August 1933.
II
 INTRODUCTION
November 4th, 1932
'The whole country IS now exclted by the pohncal
campa1gn, and ill a condltion of lrratlonal emotlon.
The best of the prospect IS that a reorgarusatlOn of parnes
seems not unlIkely as an mdlrect result of the present con-
test between the Republicans and the Democrats ... But
any radIcal change IS not to be hoped for.'
These words occur ill a letter WrItten by Charles Ello!
Norton on September 24th, 1876. The present lectures Wlll
have no concern with pohtlcs; I have begun WIth a poh-
tlcal quotatlon only as a remmder of the varIed mterests
of the scholar and humanist whom tlus foundatlon com-
memorates. The lecturer on such a foundation 1S fortunate
who can feel, as I do, sympathy and admlratlon for the
man whose memory the lectures are mtended to keep
hving. Charles Eliot Norton had the moral and spintual
quahtles, of a stOIC land, which are pOSSIble WIthout the
benefits of revealed rehglon; and the mental gIfts which
are pOSSIble wIthout gemus. To do the useful thing, to say
the courageous thing, to contemplate the beauttful thmg:
that IS enough for one man's hfe. Few men have known
better than he how to gIve Just place to the claims of the
pubhc and of the pnvate life; few men have had better
opportumty, few of those havmg the opportun1ty have
11
 INTRODUCTION
avatied theillselves of It better than he. The usual pohuclan,
the man of public affairs, IS rarely able to go to the 'publIc
place' WIthout assummg the 'pubhc face': Norton always
preserved hIS prIvacy. And hVIng as he dId In a non.
ChrIstian SOCIety, and In a 'world whIch, as he saw It on
both sIdes of the AtlantIc, showed signs of decay, he mam-
tamed the standards of the humanIty and hUl11all1snl that
he knew. He was able, even at an early age, to look upon
the passIng order WIthout regret, and towards the commg
order WIthout hope. In a letter of December 1869 he speaks
more strongly and more comprehenSIvely than In that
which I have quoted.
'The future IS very dark 111 Europe, and to me It looks as
If we were entering upon a perIod quite new In hlstory-
one ill wIllch the questIons on whIch partIes WIll dIvide,
and from whIch outbreak after outbreak of paSSIOn and
vlOlence will arIse, WIll not longer be pohtical but Im-
mediately socIal .. Whether our perIod of economIC
enterprIse, unlinuted competItIon, and unrestraIned IndI-
viduahsm, IS the rughest stage of human progress IS to me
very doubtful; and sometImes, when I see the eXIsting
conditIons of .European (to say nothIng of AmerIcan)
social order, bad as they are for the mass ahke of upper and
lower classes, I wonder whether our CIVIlIsatIon can mam-
tain Itself agamst the forces which are banding together
for the destructIon of many of the instItutions In which it
IS embodIed) or whether we are not to have another penod
of decline, fall, and rum and reVIval, hke that of the first
thirteen hundred years of our era. It would not gneve me
much to know that thIS were to be the case. No man who
14
 INTRODUCTION
knows what SOCIety at the present day really IS but must
agree that It IS not worth preservmg on Its present basIs.' 1
These are words to whIch many who approach con-
temporary problems wIth more dogmatic assumptions
than Norton's can gIve assent. Yet for hIm the permanent
Importanc~ ofhterature If not of dogma was a fixed pOInt.
The people wruch ceases to care for ltS hterary lnhentance
becomes barbanc; the people wruch ceases to produce
lIterature ceases to move In thought and sensIbility. The
poetry of a people takes Its hfe from the people's speech
and In turn gIves hfe to It, and represents Its hIghest pomt
of conSCIOusness, Its greatest power and ItS most delIcate
sensIbIlity.
In these lectures I have to deal as much or more WIth
cntIcism of poetry as wIth poetry Itself, and my subJcct is
not merely the relatIon of CrItIcIsm to poetry, If by that
we assume that we know alrcady what poetry is, and does,
and IS for. Indeed, a good part of cntlclsm has consIsted
SImply m the pursuIt of answers to these questtons, Let me
start WIth the SUppOSItIOn that we do not know what
poetry IS, or what It does or ought to do, or of what use it
IS; and try to find out, ill exammmg the relatIon of poetry
and CrItiCISlh, what the use of both of them IS. We may
even dIscover that we have no very clear Idea of what use
IS; at any rate we had better not assume that we know.
I shall not begm WIth any general defilutIOn of what IS
and what is not poetry, or any dIScussIon of whether poetry
need be always In verse, or any consIderatIOn of the dIf-
lMy quotatlons from Norton's letters are taken from the Life and
Letters ofCharles EllotNorton (Houghton, Mrlfhn' 2. vols.).
l~
 INTRODUCTION
Ference between the poetry-verse antIthesis and the poetry-
prose antithesis.', CrIticism, however, may be separated
from the begmni~g not into two kinds, but according to
two tendenCles. I assume that criticism is that department
of thought wruch elther seeks to find out what poetry is,
what its use is, what deslres It satisfies, why It is WrItten and
why read, or reclted; or which, making some conSClOUS or
unconSCIOUS assumptlon that we do know these things,
assesses actual poetry. We may find that good CrltICIsm has
other deSigns than these; but these are the ones wruch It 15
allowed to profess. CntICISm, of course, never does find
out what poetry is, ill the sense of arrlvmg at an adequate
defirut1o~) but I do not knc:w of what use such a definlt10n
would be if It were founet Nor can Crltlclsm ever arrlve at
"' ...
any final appraisal of poetry. But there are these two
theoretical hnuts of CrItiCIsm: at one of which we attempt
to answer the question 'what is poetry?' and at the other '1S
dus a good poem;>' No theoretic ingenuity will suffice to
answer the second question, because no theory can amount
to much which IS not founded upon a duect experience of
good poetry; but on the other hand our dIrect experIence
ofpoetry mvolves a good deal of generalising actiVIty:
The two questions, which represent the most abstract
formulation of what IS far from being an abstract aCtiVIty,
,imply each other. The cntic who remams worth readmg
has asked, if he has only Imperfecdy answered, both ques-
tions .. Anstode, m what we possess of rus wntmgs upon
poetry, does, I think, qUIcken our apprecIation of the Greek
tragtc dramatists; Colendge, ill his defence of the poetry of
Wordsworth, is led mto generalisations about poetry
r6
 INTRODUCTION
wInch are of the greatest Interest; and Wordsworth, in his
explanation of his own poetry, makes assertions about the
nature of poetry which, If exceSSIve, have a WIder bearmg
than even he may have realIsed. Mr. 1. A. Rlchards, who
ought to know, If anyone does, what eqUlpment the
sCIennfic cntlc needs, tells us that 'both a passlOnate know-
ledge of poetry and a capacity for dispassionate psycholo-
gical analysis' are reqUlred. Mr. Rlchards, hke every senous
critic of poetry, is a senous morahst as well. His ethics, or
theory of value, IS one which I cannot accept; or rather, I
cannot accept any such theory which IS erected upon purely
mdIvidual-psychological foundations. But his psychology
of the poetIC expenence is based upon his own experience
of poetry, as truly as his theory of value anses out of his
psychology. You may be dIssatIsfied WIth his phtlosophIcal
conclusions but snIl believe (as I do) in his chscriminating"
taste m poetry. But If on the other hand you had no faith in
the cntIc's ability to tell a good poem from a bad one, you
would put lIttle rehance upon the valIdIty of Ius theories.
In order to analyse the enjoyment and appreCIatIOn of a
good poem, the cntIc must have expenenced the ellJoy-
ment, and he must conVInce us of hIS taste. For the expen-
ence of enjoymg a bad poem while thmkmg It is a good
one IS very dllferent from that of enjoymg a good poem.
We do expect the critIC who theorises to know a good
poem when he sees it. It IS not always true that a person
who knows a good poem when he sees It can tell us why It
IS a good poem The expenence of poetry, hke any other
experience, IS only partially translatable mto words; to
begin with, as Mr. Rlchards says, 'It is never what a poem
B 17 E.U.P.
 INTRODUCTION
says that matters, but what It is'. And we know that SOllle
people who are lllartlculate, and cannot say why they hke a
poem, may have deeper and more dlscnmmatmg sensi-
blhty than some others who can talk ghbly about It; we
must remember too that poetry IS not wntten SImply to
prOVIde matenal for conversatIon. Even the most accom-
phshed of CrItICS can, In the end, only pOlnt to the poetry
wInch seems to mm to be the real tiling. Nevertheless, our
talkmg about poetry IS a part of, an extenslOn of, our expen-
ence of It; and as a good deal of tlunking has gone to the
makmg of poetry, so a good deal lllay well go to the study
, ofIt", The rurument of CrItIcism IS the ability to select a good
poem and reject a bad poem; and Its most severe test IS of
ltS ability to select a good new poem, to respond properly to
a new situatlon The expenence of poetry, as It develops m
the conSCIOUS and mature person, IS not merely the sum of
the expenences of good poems Education In poetry re-
qUIres an orgarusation of these expenences. There IS not
one of us who IS born WIth, or who suddenly acqUIres at
puberty or later, an Infallible dIscnmmation and taste.
The person whose expenence IS hffilted IS always hable to
be taken m by the sham or the adulterate article; and we
see generation after generatIon of untraIned readers bemg
taken in by the sham and the adulterate in Its own tlme-
mdeed preferrmg them, for they are more eaSIly assinulable
than the genUIne article. Yet a very large number of people,
I beheve, have the natlve capaCIty for enjoymg some good
poetry: how much, or how many degrees of capaCIty may
profitably be dtstmgUlshed, IS not part of my present pur-
pose to enqUIre, It IS only the exceptlOnal reader, certaInly,
18
 INTRODUCTION
who In the course of tune comes to classIfy and COlnpare
rus experiences, to see one m the light of others; and who, as
rus poetIc expenences multIply, wIll be able to understand
each more accurately. The element of enjoyment IS en-
larged mto apprecIatIOn, wruch brmgs a more Intellectual
addItIOn to the ongmalIntensity of feehng. It IS a second
stage In our understandIng of poetry, when we no longer
merely select and reject, but orgamse. We may even speak
of a trurd stage, one of reorgamsatlOn; a stage at wruch
a person already educated m poetry meets wIth sometlnng
new In rus own tIme, and finds a new pattern of poetry
arrangmg Itself m consequence.
Trus pattern, which we form In our own mmds out of
our own readmg of poetry that we have enjoyed, IS a kInd
of answer, wruch we make each for mmsel, to the ques-
tIOn 'what IS poetry?' At the first stage we find out what
poetry IS by readmg It and enjoymg some of what we read;
at a later stage our perceptIOn of the resemblances and dtf-
ferences between what we read for the first time and what
we have already enjoyed Itself contnbutes to our enJoy-
ment. We learn what poetry IS-If we ever learn-from
readmg It; but one mIght say that we should not be able to
recogmse poetry m partIcular unless we had an mnate Idea
of poetry m general. At any rate, the questIon 'what IS
poetry?' Issues qUIte naturally from our experIence of
poems. Even, therefore, although we may admIt that few
forms of mtellectual actiVIty seem to have less to show for
themselves, in the course of mstory, in the way of books
worth readmg, than does CntIcISm, It would appear that
CritiCISm, hke any phtlosophtcal aCtiVIty, IS InevItable and
19
 INTRODUCTION
reqmres no JustIfication. To ask 'what IS poetry?' is to
pOSIt the cnocal functIOn.
r suppose that to many people the thought must have
occurred, that at some penods when great poetry was
wntten there was no written cnOCIsm; and that in some
penods in wruch much cnOCIsm has been wntten the
quahty of the poetry has been Infenor. Tills fact has sug-
gested an antltheslS between the crItical and the creatIve,
between CrItIcal ages and creaove ages; and It IS sometImes
thought that CrItIcism flOUrIshes most at ornes when crea-
tlve VIgour IS ill defect. It IS WIth such a prejudtce In nnnd
that people have coupled WIth 'cnocal ages' the adjectIve
'Alexandrian'. Several gross assumptIons underhe tills pre-
judIce, incluclmg a confusion between several dIfferent
thmgs, and between works of very dIfferent quahty, m-
eluded under 'cnttcIsm'. I am using the term 'cnticIsm'
throughout these lectures, as I hope you will dIscover, WIth
a pretty narrow extension. I have no deSIre to extenuate the
vices of the vast number of books wruch pass by that
designatIon, or to flatter the lazy habIt of substltunng, for a
careful study of the texts, the assll1111ation of other people's
opinions. If people only wrote when they had something
to say, and never merely because they wanted to write a
book, or because they occupIed a posinon such that the
writing of books was expected of them, the mass of
criocism would not be wholly out of proportion to the
small number of criocal books worth reading. Neverthe-
less, those who speak as If cnOClsm were an occupatIon of
decadence, and a symptom, If not a cause, of the creatlve
unpotence of a people, Isolate the CIrcumstances of litera-
20
 INTRODUCTION
ture, to the extent of faisificatlon, from the CIrcumstances
ofhfe. Such changes as that from the epic poem composed
to be recIted to the epic poem composed to be read, or
those whIch put an end to the popular ballad, are illsepar-
able from socIal changes on a vast scale, such changes as
have always taken place and always will. W. P. Ker, ill his
essay on 'The Forms ofEnghsh Poetry', observed that.
'The art of the MIddle Ages generally IS corporate and
social; the sculpture, for example, as It IS found on the great
cathedrals. WIth the RenaIssance the motIve of poetry IS
changed. In the MIddle Ages there IS a natural hkeness to
the Greek condItIOns; after the Renaissance there IS a con-
scious and illtentIOnal reproductIon among the modern
natlons of the condItions wruch prevaIled III the poetry of
Rome. Greek poetry ill many respects IS medIaeval; the
LatIn poetry of the great age IS RenaIssance, an I1111tatlon
of types denved from Greece, wIth qUIte drlferent CIrcum-
stances and a dIfferent relatlon of the poet to Ins audlence.
'Not that Latln or modem poetry IS unSOCIal. It is true
... that the tendency of modern art, mcludmg poetry, is
often contrary to the popular taste of ItS tlme; the poets are
often left to themselves to find their themes and elaborate
theIr modes of expreSSIOn in sohtude, WIth results that are
often found as perplexmg and offenSIve, and as negligIble,
as Brownmg's Sordello was generally found to be.'
What is true of the ma.) or changes ill the form of poetry
IS, I tlnnk, true also of the change from a pre-cntical to a
critical age. It IS true of the change from a pre-plulosophIcal
to a phtlosophical age; you cannot deplore cntlelsm unless
you deprecate phIlosophy. You may say that the develop-
21
 INTRODUCTION
Inent of CntlCISm IS a symptom of the development, or
change, of poetry; and the development of poetry IS Itself
a symptonl of socIal changes. The Important moment for
the appearance of cnticism seems to be the time when
poetry ceases to be the expressIOn of the mlnd of a whole
peopl~. The drama of Dryden, wInch furmshes the cruef
occaSIOn for rus cntIcal WrItIng, IS formed by Dryden's per-
ceptlon that the possIbilities of wrItmg In the mode of
Shakespeare were exhausted, the fornl persIsts In the
tragedIes of such a wnter as Sludey (who IS much nlore up
to date m IllS comedIes), after the mmd and sensIbIlIty of
England has altered. But Dryden was not wntIng plays for
the whole people; he was wntmg In a form wInch had not
grown out of popular tradItIOn or popular requIrements, a
form the acceptance of wlnch had therefore to come by
diffUSIOn through a small SOCIety. Somethmg SImIlar had
been attempted by the Senecan draulatists. But the part of
SOCIety to wInch Dryden's work, and that of the Restora-
tIon comedians, could lmmedlately appeal constItuted
something hke an mtellectual arIstocracy; when the poet
finds mmself m an age m wruch there IS no Intellectual
anstocracy, when power IS In the hands of a class so demo-
cratised that wlulst still a class It represents Itself to be the
whole natIon; when the only alternatIves seem to be to
talk to a cotene or to sohloqrnse, the dUficulues of the poet
and the neceSSIty of CritICISm become greater.\ In the essay
from whIch I have Just quoted, Ker says:
'There IS no doubt that ill the nmeteenth century poets
are more left to themselves than they were ill the eIghteenth,
and the result is unrrustakable In theIr strength and weak-
22
 INTRODUCTION
ness .... The herOIc Independence of Browrung, and Indeed
all the adventurous capncIOus poetry of the runeteenth
century, IS closely related to CrItICISm, and to the eclectIc
learning wmch ranges over the whole world In search of
artIstIc beauty.... The thenles are taken from all the ages
and countnes; the poets are eclectIc students and CrItIcs,
and they are JustIfied, as explorers are JustIfied; they saCrI-
fice what explorers sacnfice when they leave their native
home. . . . I shall not be mIsunderstood If I remark that
thelr v1ctories brmg along wlth them some danger, If not
for themselves, at least for the fasmon, the tradItIon of
poetry.'
The gradual changes In the functIOn of poetry, as socIety
alters, WIll, I hope, emerge somewhat after we have con-
s1dered several CrItICS as representatIves of several genera-
tions. Durmg three hundred years cntlCISm has come to
modify Its assumptIOns and Its purposes, and It will surely
cont1nue to do so There are several forms which cntIc1sm
may take, there 1S always a large proportIOn of cntIcism
wmch 1S retrograde or Irrelevant, there are always many
wnters who are qualIfied neIther by knowledge of the past
nor by awareness of th,.,.e sens1b1hty and the problems of the
present. Our earhest cntic1sm, under the mfluence of
class1cal studIes and of Itahan cntIcs, made very large
assumpt10ns about the nature and functIon of hterature.
Poetry was a decoratIve art, an art for whIch sometImes
extravagant claims were made, but an art In which the
same pnnc1ples seemed to hold good for every cIvIhsat10n
and for every socIety; 1t was an art deeply affected by the
rIse of a new SOCIal class, only loosely (at best) assocIated
23
 INTRODUCTION
with the Church, a class self-conscious in Its possession of
the mysterIes of LatIn and Greek. In England the cntical
force due to the new contrast between Latm and vernacular
met, in the sIxteenth century) wIth just the nght degree of
resistance. That 15 to say, for the age whIch IS represented
for us by Spenser and Shakespeare, the new forces stImu
lated the native geruus and did not overwhelm It. The pur-
pose of my second lecture wIll be to gIve to the cnticism of
this penod the due wInch It does not seem to me to have
receIved. In the next age, the great work of Dryden in
CriticIsm IS, I thmk, that at the rIght moment he became
conscIOUS of the necessIty of affirmmg the natIve element m
hterature. Dryden IS more consclOusly Enghsh, In IllS plays,
than were his predecessors; lus essays on the drama and on
the art of translatIon are conSCIOUS studIes of the nature of
the Enghsh theatre and the Enghsh language; and even IllS
adaptation of Chaucer IS an assertIOn of the native tradItIon
-rather than, what It has sometimes been taken to be, an
amusmg and pathetic fatlure to appreCIate the beauty of the
Chaucenan language and metric. Where the Elizabethan
CrItiCS, for the most part, were aware of something to be
borrowed or adapted from abroad, Dryden was aware of
somethmg to be preserved at home. But throughout tills
period, and for much longer, one aSSUlnptlOn renlamed
the same: the assumptIOn as to what was the use of poetry.
Any reader of SIdney's Apology for Poetry can see that IllS
misomousoi agamst whom he defends poetry are men of
straw, that he is confident of havmg the sympathy of rus
reader with hun, and that he never senously has to ask
rumself the questIons, what poetry IS for, what it does, or
24
 INTRODUCTION
whether It IS deslIable. SIdney's assumption is that poetry
gives at once dehght and InstrUCtion, and IS an adornment
of social hfe and an honour to the nation.
I aln very far from dISSenting from these assumptions, so
far as they go; my pomt IS that for a long time they were
never questIOned or modIfied; that durmg that tlme great
poetry was written, and some CrItiCIsm wInch just because
of Its assumptions has permanent InstructlOn to gIve. I hold
Indeed that In an age m which the use of poetry 1S something
agreed upon you are more hkely to get that mmute and
scrupulous examlnation of felicity and blemish, line by lme,
which IS conspIcuously absent from the cntIclsm ofour time,
a CrItlClsnl which seems to demand of poetry, not that It
shall be well written, but that It shall be 'representative of
Its age'. I WIsh that we mlght dIspose more attentIon to the
correctness of expreSSIOn, to the clarity or obscunty, to the
grammatlcal preCISIon or inaccuracy, to the choice ofwords
whether Just or Improper, exalted or vulgar, of our verse:
In short to the good or bad breerung of our poets. My pOInt
here is that a great change in the attltude towards poetry,
In the expectatlons and demands made upon It, dId come,
we may say for convenience towards the end of the eIgh-
teenth century~ Wordsworth and Colendge are not merely
demohshmg a debased trarutlon, but revoltmg against a
whole SOCIal order; and they begIn to make claims for
poetry wInch reach their hIghest pomt of exaggeration ill
Shelley's famous phrase, 'poets are the unacknowledged
legIslators of mankInd'. Earher laudators of poetry had
Said the same thmg, but it chd not mean the same thtng:
Shelley (to borrow a successful phrase from Mr. Bernard
2S
 INTRODUCTION
Shaw) was the first, m tlus tradItIOn, of Nature's M.P.'s.
If Wordsworth thought that he was SImply occupIed wIth
reform of language, he was deceIved; he was occupIed
wIth revolutlOn of language, and lus own language was as
capable of artIficIalIty, and no more capable of naturalness,
than that of Pope-as Byron felt, and as Colendge candIdly
pointed out. The decay of relIgIOn, and the attntlOn of
pohucalinstitUtlOnS, left dubIous frontIers upon wruch the
poet encroached; and the annexatIOns of the poet were
legItImIsed by the cntlc. For a long tIme the poet IS the
pnest. there are stIll, I belIeve, people who nnaglne that
they draw rehgIOus ahillent from BrownIng or Mere-
dIth. But the next stage IS best exemphfied by Matthew
Arnold. Arnold was too temperate and reasonable a man
to mamtam exactly that rehgIOus InstructIon IS best con-
veyed by poetry, and he hUlls elf had very little to convey,
but he dIscovered a new formula: poetry IS not relIgIOn,
but It IS a capItal substItute for rehglOn-not Invahd port,
wluch may lend Itself to hypocnsy, but coffee WIthout
caffeme, and tea WIthout tannm. The doctnne of Arnold was
extended, If also somewhat travestied, In the doctnne of
'art for ares sake'. Tlus creed llught seem a reverSlOn to the
SImpler faIth of an earher tlme, In wInch the poet was like
a dentist, a man with a defil11te Job. But It was really a hope-
less adnussIOn of rrresponslbthty. The poetry of revolt and
the poetry of retreat are not of the same land. J
In our tIme we have moved, under vanous ImpulSIOns,
to new positIOns. On the one hand the study of psychology
has impelled men not only to InVeStlgate the illlnd of the
poet with a confident ease whtch has led to some fantastic
26
 INTRODUCTION
excesses and aberrant cntIcIsm, but also to lnVeStIgate the
mmd of the reader and the problem of' communicatIon'-
a word wInch perhaps begs a questIOn~ On the other hand
the study oflustory has shown us the relatIOn of both form
and content of poetry to the conditIOns of Its tIme and
place. The psychologIcal and the socIOlogIcal are probably
the two best advertIsed varieties of modern CrItiCIsm; but
the number of ways In wInch the problems of cntICIsm are
approached was never before so great or so confusmg.
Never were there fewer settled assumptIOns as to what
poetry IS, or why It comes about, or what It IS for. CrIti-
CIsm seems to have separated mto several dlverse kInds.
I have not made tlus bnef reVIew of the progress of
cntIcIsn11n order to lead up to assocIatmg myself WIth any
partIcular tendency of modern cntIcIsm, least of all the
socIOloglcal.,I suggest that we may learn a good deal about
CrIticIsm and about poetry by exa1ll1mng the Ins tory of
cntIc1sm, not merely as a catalogue of succeSS1ve notions
about poetry, but as a process of readjustment between
poetry and the world m and for wInch 1t 1S produced. We
can learn somethmg about poetry s1mply by studymg what
people have thought about 1t at one penod after another;
wlthout commg to the stult1fYIng conclUSIon that there IS
nothmg to be sa1d but that op1nIOn changes. Second, the
study of cntICIsm, not as a sequence of random conJec-
tures, but as readaptatIOn, may also help us to draw some
concluslOns as to what 1S permanent or eternal ill poetry,
and what 1S merely the expreSSIOn of the SpITlt of an age;
and by discovermg what does change, and how, and why,
we may become able to apprehend what does not change.
27
 INTRODUCTION
And by mvesttgatmg the problems of what has seemed to
one age and another to matter, by examining dIfferences
and identIties, we may somewhat hope to extend our own
hlllltatIOnS and lIberate ourselves from some of our pre-
Judices/ I will quote at thIs pomt two passages whIch I may
have occaslOn to quote agaIn. The first is from Dryden's
Preface to Annus Mirabilis:
'The first happiness of the poet's Inlagll1ation IS properly
InventlOn, or the fmdmg of the thought; the second IS
fancy, or the vanatIon, denvIng, or mouldmg of that
thought, as the judgement represents It proper to the sub-
Ject; the thIrd IS elocutIon, or the art of clothIng and adorn-
mg that thought, as found and vaned, in apt, sigruficant,
and soundmg words; the qUickness of the imagInatIOn IS
seen III the inventIon, the fertlhty m the fancy, and the
accuracy in the expressIOn.'
The second passage IS from Colendge's Biographia
Litteraria:
'Repeated medItatIOns led me first to suspect . . . that
Fancy and Imagination were two dIstinct and widely chf-
ferent faculttes, instead of being, accordmg to the general
behef, eIther two names WIth one meaning, or, at furthest,
the lower and htgher degree of one and the same power.
It is not, lawn, easy to conceIve a more appOSIte transla-
tion of the Greek phantasia than the Latm imaginatio; but It is
equally true that in all SOCIetIes there exists an mstlnct of
growth, a certam collective, unconscious good sense work-
ing progressively to dcsynon):Ill1se those words onginaily
of the same meanmg, wruch the conflux of dialects sup-
plied to the more homogeneous languages, as the Greek. and
2.8
 INTRODUCTION
the German.... Mtlton had a highly imaginative, Cowley
a very fancIful nund.'1
The way In whIch the expression of the two poets and
cntics 15 deternnned by their respective backgrounds IS very
marked. Evident also IS the more developed state of rnmd
of Colendge: Ius greater awareness of phIlology, and Ius
conSCIOUS determmatlon to make certam words mean cer-
taIn tlungs. But what we have to consider 15, whether what
we have here is two rachcally opposed theones of Poetlc
ImagInatIOn, or whether the two may be reconciled after
we have taken account of the many causes of difference
wIuch are found ill the passage of time between Dryden's
generation and Colendge's.
It may appear that most of what I have Said, whIle It may
have some bearmg on the appreciation and understandmg
of poetry, has very little to do With the wntlng of it. When
the critics are themselves poets, It may be suspected that
they have formed therr cntica! statements With a VIew to
Justifying their poetic practice. Such critiCIsm as the two
passages quoted IS hardly deSIgned to form the style of
younger poets; it IS rather, at its best, an account of the
poet's expenence ofrus own poetIc actiVity, relatedm terms

II may remark here as well as anywhere else that the statement con-
tamed m tlns last sentence 15 hable to operate an rrranonal persuaslOn
upon the mmd of the reader. We agree that MIlton IS a much greater
poet than Cowley, and of another and supenor land We then concede
WIthout exammatlon that the chfference may be formulated by thlS neat
anntheSlS, and accept WIthout exammatlon the dIstInctIon between
imagination and fancy whIch Colendge has done no more than unpose.
The antIthesIs of highly agamst very 15 also an element of persuasion.
See p. 58.
 INTRODUCTION
ofrus own mind. The crltlcallmnd operatlng in poetry, the
critical effort wmch goes to the writing of It, may always
be in advance of the critIcal mind operatIng upon poetry,
whether It be one's own or some one else's. I only affirm
that there IS a sIgmficant relatlOn between the bestpoetry and
the best CrItIcIsm of the same penod. The age of CrItIcIsm
IS also the age of ctltIcal poetry. And when I speak of
modern poetry as bemg extremely crItIcal, I lnean that the
contemporary poet, who IS not merely a composer of
graceful verseS,-IS forced to ask mmself such quesnons as
'what IS poetry for?', not merely 'what am I to say?' but
rather 'how and to whom am I to say It?' We have to com-
mun1cate-If 1t 1S commUlllCatlOll, for the word may beg
the quesnon-an expenence which IS not an experience In
the ordInary sense, for It may only eXIst, formed out of
many personal expenences ordered In some way whIch
may be very dIfferent from the way of valuatIon of prac-
tIcal hfe, ill the expressIOn of It. Ifpoetry IS a form oCcom-
munication', yet that whIch IS to be commurucated IS the
poem Itself, and only mCldentally the experience and the
thought wInch have gone Into It. The poem's eXIstence IS
somewhere between the wnter and the reader; It has a
reahty whIch IS not SImply the reahty of what the writer IS
trying to 'express', or oEms expenence of writIng It, or of
the experience of the reader or of the WrIter as reader. Con-
sequentlythe problem ofwhat a poem 'means' IS a good deal
more difficult than It at first appears. If a poem of mine
enntled Ash-Wednesday ever goes mto a second edltlOn, I
have thought of prefiXIng to It the hnes of Byron from
DonJuatt:
30
 INTRODUCTION
'Some have accused me of a strange desIgn
Agamst the creed and morals of tIlls land,
And trace It IU this poem, every hue.
r don't pretend that I qUIte understand
My own meanmg when I would be very fine;
But the fact IS that I have nothmg planned
Except perhaps to be a moment merry ... '

There IS some sound crItlcal admoU1tlon m these hnes. But

a poem IS not just eIther what the poet 'planned' or what
the reader conceIves, nor IS ItS 'use' restrIcted wholly to
what the author mtended or to what It actually does
for readers. Though the amount and the quahty of the
pleasure which any work of art has gIven smce It came
Into eXlstence IS not Irrelevant, still. we never Judge It
by that; and we do not ask, after beIng greatly moved
by the SIght of a pIece of architecture or the audItIon of
a pIece of mUSIC, 'what has been my benefit or profit from
seeIng this temple or hearIng dlls mUSIC?' In one sense
the questIon Imphed by the phrase 'the use of poetry' is
nonsense. But there IS another Ineanmg to the question.
Apart from the varIety of ways ill which poets have used
theIr art, WIth greater or less success, WIth deSIgns of m-
structlon or persuaSIOn, there IS no doubt that a poet
WIshes to gIve pleasure, to entertam or dIvert people; and
he should normally be glad to be able to feel that the enter-
tainment or dIverSIOn IS enjoyed by as large and varIOUS a
number of people as pOSSIble. When a poet dehberately
restrIcts Ius pubhc by his chOIce of style of writ1ng or of
subject-matter, trus IS a specIal SItuatIon demandmg explan-
31
 INTRODUCTION
anon and extenuation, but I doubt whether this ever
happens. It IS one thIng to write ill a style which IS already
popular, and another to hope that one's wnting l11ay even-
tually become popular. From one pOlnt of VIew, the poet
aspires to the conchtIon of the musIc-hall comedIan. Being
mcapable of altermg his wares to suit a prevailing taste, if
there he any, he naturally desIres a state of SOCIety In wmch'
they may become popular, and in wInch his own talents
will be put to the best use. He is accordIngly Vltally mter-
ested ill the use of poetry. The subsequent lectures WIll treat
of the varylllg conceptlons of the use of poetry durmg the
last three centunes, as Illustrated ill cnticIsm, and especially
ill the critICISm prOVided by the poets themselves.

NOtE TO CHAPtER I
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF TASTE IN POETRY
It may he not inopportune, ill connexion with some of
the questions touched upon ill the foregomg chapter, to
summarISe here certam remarks which I made elsewhere
upon the Development of Taste. They are, I hope, not with-
out some bearmg upon the teaclung ofhterature m schools
and colleges.
I may be generahsmg my own lnstory unwarrantably,
or on the other hand I may be uttering what IS already a
commonplace amongst teachers and psychologIsts, when I
put forward the cOl1Jecture that the majority of clnldren,
up to say twelve or fourteen, are capable of a certam enjoy-
ment of poetry; that at or about puberty the majority of
~r use for It, but that a small minority

32
 INTRODUCTION
then find themselves possessed of a craVIng for poetry
wInch IS wholly dIfferent from any enjoyment experIenced
before. I do not know whether httle gIrlS have a dIfferent
taste in poetry from little boys, but the responses of
the latter I beheve to be faIrly umform. Horatius,
The Burial of Su John Moore, Bannockburn, Tennyson's
Revenge, some of the border ballads' a hkmg for nlartial
and sangwnary poetry is no more to be dtscouraged than
engagements WIth lead soldters and pea-shooters. The only
pleasure that I got from Shakespeare was the pleasure of
being commended for readmg htm, had I been a clnld of
more mdependent ffilnd I should have refused to read rum
at all. Recogrusmg the frequent deceptIons of memory, I
seem to remember that my early hkmg for the sort of verse
that small boys do hke varushed at about the age of twelve,
leavlng me for a couple of years Wlth no sort of Interest m
poetry at all. I can recall clearly enough the moment when,
at the age of fourteen or so, I happened to pick up a copy of
FItzgerald's Omar wInch was lying about, and the almost
overwhelmmg mtroductlon to a new world of feehng
wruch tlns poem was the occaSIOn of glVing me. It was hke
a sudden converSIon; the world appeared anew, pamted
WIth bright, dehcious and patnful colours. Thereupon I
took the usual adolescent course With Byron, Shelley,
Keats, Rossettl, Swmbume.
I take tlns perIod to have perSIsted unttl about my twenty-
second year. Bemg a perIod of rapId asslIn.1latlon, the end
may not know the begmning, so dtfferent may the taste
become. LIke the first perIod of clnldhood, It IS one beyond
whtch I dare say many people never advance; so that such
c 33 E.U.P.
 INTRODUCTION
taste for poetry as they retaIn In later hfe IS only a senti.
mental memory of the pleasures of youth, and IS probably
entwmed wlth all our ether sentImental retrospectIve feel.
mgs. It IS, no doubt, a perIod of keen en] oyment; but We
must not confuse the IntenSIty of the poetlc experience 1ll
adolescence wIth the mtense experIence of poetry. At tlus
perIod, the poem, or the poetry of a SIngle poet, mvades
the youthful conSClOusness and assumes complete posses-
510n for a tIme. We do not really see It as sometlnng with
an eXlstence outSIde ourselves; much as In our youthful
experIences of love, we do not so much see the person as
infer the eXistence of some outside object wluch sets ill
monon these new and delIghtful feelIngs III wluch we are
absorbed. The frequent result IS an outburst of sCrIbblmg
which we may callImttanon, so long as we are aware of
the meanmg of the word 'InntatlOn' whtch we employ.
It IS not dehberate chOlce of a poet to mllmc, bu..t wrItmg
under a land of daemomc posseSSIOn by one poet.
The tlnrd, or mature stage of enjoyment of poetry, comes
when we cease to IdentIfy ourselves WIth the poet we
happen to be readmg, when our CrItical faculties remam
awake; when we are aware of what one poet can be ex-
pected to give and what he cannot. The poem has Its own
eXistence, apart from us; It was there before us and will en-
dure after us. It IS only at tlus stage that the reader IS pre-
pared to chstmgUlsh between degrees of greatness ill
poetry; before that stage he can only be expected to ms-
tingmsh between the genume and the sham-the capaCIty to
make this latter mStlnctlOn must always be practised first.
The poets we frequent ill adolescence will not be arranged
34
 INTRODUCTION
1llany objectIve order of eminence, but by the personal
accIdents whIch put them into relatIon WIth us; and this IS
nght. I doubt whether It IS possIble to explam to school
chUdren or even undergraduates the differences of degree
among poets, and I doubt whether It IS WIse to try; they
have not yet had enough expenence ofhfe for these matters
to have much mearung. The perception of why Shakespeare,
or Dante, or Sophocles holds the place he has IS something
which comes only very slowly ill the course ofhvmg. And
the dehberate attempt to grapple wIth poetry which IS not
naturally congerual, and some of whtch never will be,
should be a very mature aCtiVIty indeed; an aCtiVIty which
well repays the effort, but whtch cannot be recommended
to young people WIthout grave danger of deadenmg theIr
senSIbility to poetry and confoundmg the genume develop-
ment of taste with the sham acquiSItiOn of It.
It should be clear that the 'development of taste' IS an
abstraction. To set before oneself the goal of bemg able to
enJoy, and m the proper objective order of ment, all good
poetry, IS to pursue a phantom, the chase after which
should be left to those whose ambItion It IS to be 'cultI-
vated' or 'cultured', for whom art IS a luxury article and Its
appreCIatiOn an accomphshment. For the development of
genume taste, founded on genume feelmg, IS mextncable
from the development of the personahty and character.1
Genume taste IS always unperfect taste-but we are all, as a
matter of fact, Imperfect people, and the man whose taste
In poetry does not bear the stamp of rus particular per-
lIn makmg thts statement I refuse to be drawn mto any dISCUSSIon of
the defirunons of'personahty' and 'charactee.

35
 INTRODUCTION
sonility, so that there are drlferences in what he hkes from
what we hke, as well as resemblances, and dtfferences ill the
way of hkmg the same thIngs, IS apt to be a very urunter-
estIng person WIth whom to dtscuss poetry. We may even
say that to have better 'taste' in poetry than belongs to one's
state of development, IS not to 'taste' anyt1nng at all. One's
taste in poetry cannot be Isolated from one's other mterests
and passlOns; it affects them and IS affected by them, and
must be hnnted as one's self IS hmIted.
Trus note is really mtroductory to a large and dtfficult
questIon: whether the attempt to teach students to appre-
cIate Enghsh hterature should be made at all; and wIth what
restnctIons the teachmg of Enghsh hterature can nghtly be
mcluded ill any acadermc cnrncnlum, If at all.
 APOLOGY FOR THE
COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
November 25th, I932

T he hterary CrIticIsm of the Ehzabethan penod IS not

very great in bulk; to the account wruch George
Samtsbury has gIven there cannot ill Its kmd be very much
to add, and from rus cntical valuation there IS not much to
detract. What concerns me here is the general opmlOn of It
wruch students are hkely to form, In relatlon to the poetry
of the age, on account of two 'lost causes' which that
cntICISm champlOned. The censure of the popular drama,
and the attempt to introduce a more severe claSSIcal form
Illustrated by the essay of SIr Pruhp SIdney, and the censure
of rhymed verse, and the attempt to Introduce some adap-
tation of classical forms illustrated by the essay of Cam-
pIon, might be taken, and have been taken, as strikmg
examples of the funhty of correctIve CntICISm, and of the
supenority of irreflective inspiranon over calculation. If I
can show that no such clear contrast IS possible, and that the
relation of the critical to the creatIve mmd was not one of
simple antagonism ill the Ehzabethan age, it will be eaSIer
for me to demonstrate the mttmacy of the creatlve and the
cnocal mind at a later period.
Everyone has read Campion's Observations in the Art of
English Poesie and Daniel's Defence ofRyme. CamplOn, who
except for Shakespeare was the most accomphshed master
of rhymed lyric of his time, was certainly in a weak posi-
37
 APOLOGY FOR THE
tlon for attackIng rhyme, as Damel In hIS reply was not
slow to observe. HIs treatise IS known to most people
merely as the repOSItory of two very beautIful pIeces,
Rose-cheeked Laura come and Raving war begot, and of a
number of other exerCIses most of wInch by theIr Infen.
onty bear WItness agamst him. ExpenmentatlOn WIth seInl-
claSSIcal metres IS less dended to-day than It was before the
tIme of Robert Bndges. I do not beheve that good Enghsh
verse can be WrItten qUIte In the way which Campion
advocates, for It IS the natural geruus of the language, and
not anCIent authonty, that must deCIde; better scholars than
I, have suspected even that Latln verslficatlOn was too much
mfluenced by Greek models; I do not even beheve that the
metnc of The Testament of Beauty IS successful, and I have
always preferred Dr. Bndges' earher and more conven-
tional verse to his later experIments. Ezra Pound's Seafarer,
on the other hand, IS a magnrlicent paraphrase explO1tmg the
resources of a parent language; I discern ItS beneficent lU-
fluence upon the work of some of the more Interestmg
younger poets to-day. Some of the older forms of Enghsh
versIficatIon are bemg revIved to good purpose. But the
point to dwell upon IS not that CampIon was altogether
wrong, for he was not; or that he was completely downed
by Daniel's rejomder; and we must remember that In other
matters DanIel was a member of the classlclslng school.
The result of the controversy between Campion and
Daniel is to estabhsh, both that the Latin metres cannot be
copIed in English, and that rhyme IS neIther an essentIal nor
a superflUIty. Furthermore, no prosodIC system ever In-
tvented can teach anyone to WrIte good Enghsh verse. It IS,
38
 COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
as Mr. Pound has so often remarked, the musIcal phrase
that matters.1 The great acInevement of Ehzabethan verSI-
ficatIon IS the deve10pnlent of blank verse; it IS the dramatIc
poets, and eventually MIlton, who are Spenser's true heirs.
Just as Pope, who used what IS nommally the same form as
Dryden's couplet, bears httle resemblance to Dryden, and
as the wnter to-day who was genumely mfluenced by
Pope would hardly want to use that couplet at all, so the
wnters who were slgmficantly Influenced by Spenser are
not those who have attempted to use Ins stanza, wInch IS
ImlTIltable. The second greatest accomphshment of the age
was the lync; and the lync of Shakespeare and CamplOn. .
owes Its beauty not pnmanly to Its use of rhyme or to Its
perfectlOn of a 'verse form', but to the fact that it IS wntten
to musIcal form; It IS wntten to be sung. Shakespeare's
knowledge of InUSlC IS hardly hkely to have been compar-
able to CamplOn's; but In that age a wnter could hardly
escape knowmg a httle. I can hardly conceive such a song as
Come away death bemg wntten except m collaboratlOn
wIth the musiclan. 2 But, to return to CamplOn and Darnel,

lwhen Mr. Dnnkwater says (Vlctortan Poetry) 'there IS now no new

verse form to be dIscovered m Enghsh' It IS rus own conceptlOn ofform
that precludes novelty He really means 'there can be no new verse
form exactly hke the old ones'-or hke what he thInks the old ones
are See a cunous book on the relanon of poetry to mUSIC, mtended
for readers WIth no techrucal knowledge of mUSIC, Magic ofMelody,
by John Murray GIbbon (Dent)
2The real supenonty of Shakespeare's songs over CampIon's IS not to
be found, so to speak, illtemally, but ill theIr setttng. I have elsewhere
commented upon the mtense dramanc value of Shakespeare's songs at
the pomts where they occur ill the plays

39
 APOLOGY FOR THE
I conslder the controversy important, not because either
was quite nght or wrong, but because it IS a part of the
struggle between natIve and foreIgn elements as the result
of whIch our greatest poetry was created. Calnpion pushed
to an extreme a theory wInch he dId not hImself often
practise, but the fact that people could then think along
such hnes IS sIgmficlnt.
The essay of SIdney m wInch occur the passages rIdicul-
Ing the contemporary stage, so frequently quoted, may
have been composed as early as ISBo; at any rate, was com.. '
posed before the great plays of the age were written. We
can hardly suppose that the wnter who ill passmg showed
not only a hvely appreclatlOn of Chevy Chase, but also of
Chaucer, smghng for mentlon what is Chaucer's greatest
poem-Troilus-would have been ImperceptIve of the ex-
cellence of Shakespeare. But when we thmk of the multl-
tude of bad plays, and the nUInber of preCIOUS but imper-
fect plays, wruch SIdney dId not hve to read or see per-
formed, we cannot deny that rus lamentatIons have some
applIcation to thlwhole penod. Weare apt, In tlunkmg of
the age of Shakespeare, to lmagme somethmg hke a fertile
field In which tares and fine wheat luxunated, In wluch the
former could not have been eradIcated Without rIsk to the
latter. Let both grow together untIl the harvest. I anl not
mchned to deny the exceptlOnalnumber of wnters of real
poetic and dramatIC geruus; but I cannot help regrettmg
that some of theIr best plays are no better than they are.
'So falleth It out,' says SIdney, 'that haVing mdeed no rIght
Comedy, In that cOffilcal part of our Tragedy we have no-
thing but scurnhty, unworthy of any chaste ears, or SOine
40
 COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
extreme show of doltlshness, indeed fit to hft up a loud
laughter, and nothIng else.' He is perfectly right. The
Changeling IS only a sohtary example m Its extreme con-
trast between the grandeur of the main plot and the nause-
ousness of the secondary plot from wmch It has Its title.
The plays of Marston and Heywood-the latter a wnter of
some theatncal ability, the former conSiderably more-
are sluularly disfigured. In The Witch of Edmonton we have
the odd spectacle of a play contammg COImC and tragic
elements, each pretty certalnly contnbuted by a dIfferent
writer, each nSlng at moments to great heights m Its own
land, but very Imperfectly welded; I find the readjustments
of mood requITed ill dus play very trymg. Now the desire
for 'comic rehef' on the part of an audience IS, I beheve, a
permanent cravrng of human nature; but that does not
mean that It IS a cravmg that ought to be gratIfied. It springs
from a lack of the capacity for concentration. Farce and
love-romances, espeCIally If seasoned With scabrousness,
are the two forms of entertamment upon wInch the human
mmd can most easIly, lovingly and fei ,1
the longest tIme
maintain Its attentIon; but we hke s\"me farce as a rehef
from our sentiment, however salacIous, and some sentl-
Inent as a rehef from our farce, however broad. The
audience wruch can keep Its attentIOn :fixed upon pure
tragedy or pure comedy IS much more highly developed.
The Atheruan stage got rehef through the chorus, and
perhaps some of ItS tragedy may have held attentIOn largely
by its sensatIonahsm. To my mmd, Racme's Berenice repre-
sents about the sunlIDlt of CIV1hsatIon In tragedy; and it IS,
in a way, a Chnstlan tragedy, with devotion to the State
41
 APOLOGY FOR THE
substItuted for devotion to dIvIne law. The dramatic poet
who can engross the reader's or the audItor's attention
durmg the space of a Berenice IS the most cIvIlIsed drama-
tIst-though not necessarily the greatest, for there are other
quahnes to consIder.
My pOlnt IS trus: that the ElIzabethan drama dId tend to
approach that unity offeeling wInch SIdney deslres. From
the tragedy or rustory In whIch the COmIC elenlent was
sImply left blank. to be supphed by some clown favoured by
the pIt (as some of the farce In Faustus IS supposed to be an
abbreVIatIOn of the gags of one comedIan), the drama grew
to matunty, ill, for example, Coriolanus, Volpone, and In a
later generation The Way of the World. And It dId tms, not
because dOCIle dramatists obeyed the WIshes of Sidney, but
because the Improvements advocated by SIdney happened
to be those wmch a maturmg CIVIlIsatIon would make for
Itself. The doctnne of Unity of Sentiment, In fact, happens
to be nght. And I tillnk, ill passIng, that snnply because we
have been Inchned to accept the 'COtnlC rehef' notlOn as a
kInd offixed law ofEhzabethan drama, we have sometImes
nnsunderstood the mtentlOn of the dramatIst: as, for m-
stance, In treatIng The Jew of Malta as a huffe-snuffe grand
tragedy dIsfigured by cloWlllsh IrrelevancIes of doubtful
taste, we have lll1ssed Its pomt.
Some objectors may brmg forward Shakespeare eIther
as a tnumphant exception to tills theory or as a tnumphant
refutation of It. I know well how chfficult It IS to fit Shake-
speare Into any theory, espeCIally If It be a theory about
Shakespeare; and I cannot here undertake a complete
justIfication, or enter upon all the qualIficatIons that the
42
 COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
theory reqmres. But we start wIth 'COmIC relief' as a prac-
tICal necessIty of the tIme for the wnter who had to make
IDS hving by wntmg plays. What IS really mterestmg IS
what Shakespeare made of trus neceSSIty. I thInk that when
we turn to Henry IV we often feel that what we want to
re-read and lmger over are the Falstaff epIsodes, rather than
the pohtlcalrughfalutln of the KIng's party and Its adver-
sanes. That IS an error. As we read from Part I to Part II
and see Falstaff, not merely gluttomsmg and playmg pranks
mdIfferent to affaIrs of State, but leadmg rus band of con-
scnpts and conversmg WIth local magnates, we find that the
rehef has become senous contrast, and that polItIcal saUre
Issues from It. In Henry V the two elements are st1l1 more
fused, so that we have not merely a chromcle of kings and
queens, but a umversal comedy In wruch all the actors take
part in one event. But It IS not In the rustories, plays of a
tranSIent and unsansfactory type, that we find the COmIC
relIef most nearly taken up Into a rugher umty of feelIng.
In Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream the farCIcal
element IS an essentIal to a pattern more complex and
elaborate that any constructed by a dramatist before or
smce. The KnockIng on the Gate In Macbeth has been CIted
too often for me to call attentIon to It; less hackneyed IS the
scene upon Pompey's galley m Antony and Cleopatra. TIns
scene IS not only m Itself a prodIgIOUS pIece of polItical
satIre-

'A beares the tlnrd part of the world, man ... '

but IS a key to everything that precedes and follows. To

demonstrate tills pomt to your satIsfactlon would, I know,
43
 APOLOGY FOR THE
reqtnre a whole essay to Itsel Here, I can only affirm that
for me the violence of contrast between the tragic and the
COmlC, the subhme and the bathetIc, in the plays of Shake-

speare, disappears ill Ills InatUt111g work; I only hope that

a companson of The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet and The
Tempest will lead others to the sanIe conclusIon. I was once
under censure for suggestmg that 111 Hamlet Shakespeare
was deahng wIth 'mtractable ma.tenal' lny words were
even interpreted as mamtainmg that Coriolanus IS a greater
play than Hamlet. I am not very much Interested In decldmg
wmch play of Shakespeare IS greater than whIch other; be-
cause I am more and more mterested, not m one play or an-
other, but in Shakespeare's work as a whole. I do not dunk
1t any derogation to suggest that Shakespeare dtd not always
succeed: such a suggestion would inlply a very narrow VIew
of success. HIs success must always be reckoned In under-
standmg of what he attempted; and I belIeve that to admit
his partial failures IS to approach the recognltlOn of rus real
greatness more closely than to hold that he was always
granted plenary mspiratton. I do not pretend that I thInk
Measure for Measure, or Troilus and Cressida, or All's Well
That Ends Well, to be a wholly 'successful' play; but if any
o~e of Shakespeare's plays were omitted we should 110t be
able to understand the rest as well as we do. In such plays, we
must consider not only the degree of wuficatlOn of all the
elements Into a 'Ulllty of sentlment', but the quahty and
kind of the emotions to be unified, and the elaborateness of
the pattern of UlllficatIon.
Tills consIderatIon may appear to have earned us far
away from Sidney's simple assertton about the decorum to
44
 COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
be observed In excludmg extraneous matter; but we are
really WIth Inm all the tIme. So Inuch, for the present, for
the Uruty of SentIment. But SIdney IS orthodox m laws
still more dIfficult to observe; for he says roundly, 'the stage
should represent but one place, and the uttermost t1me pre-
supposed In 1t should be, both by ArIstotle's precept and
common reason, but one day.' Tills unIty of place and t1me
IS a stumblIng-block so old that we tlunk 1t long smce worn
away: a law, lIke some others, so uruversally ViOlated, that,
hke the herome of Hood,

'We thought It dymg when 1t slept

And sleepIng when It dIed.'

But my pomt IS sInlply that the umtIes dIffer radIcally from

human legIslatIon m that they are laws of nature, and a law
of nature, even when It IS a law of human nature, IS quite
another thing from a human law. The kInd of lIterary law
in which Aristotle was interested was not law that he lard
down, but law that he dIscovered. The laws (not rules) of
unity of place and tIme relnain vahd ill that every play
whIch observes them in so far as its material allows IS ill that
respect and degree supenor to plays which observe them
less. I belIeve that m every play ill wInch they are not
observed we only put up WIth therr VIolation because we
feel that somethmg IS gamed wInch we could not have If
the law were observed. Trus is not to establish another law.
There is no other law possible. It 1S merely to recogmse that
m poetry as ill Me our business is to make the best of a bad
job. Furthermore, we must observe that the UnitIes are not
three separate laws. They are three aspects of one law: we
45
 APOLOGY FOR THE
may Vlolate the law of Unity of Place more flagrantly If We
preserve the law of Umty of TIme, or vice versa; we may
Violate both If we observe more closely the law of Druty of
SentIment.
We start, most of us, wIth an unconSCIOUS preJuchce
agamst the UmtIes-I mean, we are unconSCIOUS of the
large element ill our feehng wruch IS mere Ignorance and
mere preJudIce. I mean that Enghsh-speaking peoples have
ImmedIate and IntImate experIence of great plays In wInch
the Unities are grossly vIOlated, and perhaps of Infenor
plays in wInch they are more nearly observed. Furthermore,
we have a natural, mevitable and largely justIfiable sym-
pathy WIth the hterature of our own country and language,
and we have had the Umtles so rubbed mto us, when we
studied Greek or French drama, that we may tlnnk 1t 1S be-
cause of the unfaIDlhar dramat1c form that we do not care
for them so much as we care for Shakespeare. But It IS Just as
hkely that we do not care for them because they represent
the genius of an ahen people and a fore1gn tongue, and hence
are prejuchced agamst the dramatIc form. I beheve that
those plays of Shakespeare wInch approXimate more nearly
to observatIon of the U11ltles are in that respect better plays; I
would even go so far as to say that the Kmg of Denmark,
ill sendmg Hamlet to England, was attemptmg to v10late

the Dnity of Actlon. a CrIme far worse, for a man In rus

position, than attempted murder. And what I have denoIll1-
nated Unity of Sennment IS only a shghdy larger term than
Druty of Action.
Uruty, says Butcher, mrus edItion of the Poetics, IS mam-
fested mamly ill two ways.
46
 COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
'FIrst, in the causal conneXlOn that binds together the
several parts of a play-the thoughts, the emotIons, the
dcciSlOns of the will, the external events bemg inextnc-
ably Interwoven. Secondly, In the fact that the whole senes
of events, wIth all the moral forces that are brought into
collislOn, are dIrected to a smgle end. The actIon as It
advances converges on a definIte pOInt. The thread of pur-
pose runrung through It becomes more marked. All mmor
effects are subordmated to the sense of an ever-growmg
umty. The end IS lmked to the begInnIng wIth inevItable
certaInty, and In the end we ruscern the mearung of the
whole.'
It should be obVIOUS that the observance of trus UnIty
must lead us, gIven certam dramatIc matenal otherwIse
highly valuable, mevltably to vIolatIon of the Urutles of
Place and TIme. I As for TIme, ArIstotle only remarks
rather casually that the usual practIce of tragedy was to con-
fine ItSelf, so far as pOSSIble, to the actIOn of twenty-four
hours. The only modern author who has succeeded ill
observmg tms Uruty exactly IS Mr. James Joyce; and he has
done so wIth only shght deviatlOn from the Uruty of Place ,
as the actlOn all takes place In or near the town of Dublm,
and Dublm 15 a contnbutmg cause of the umty of the whole
book. But Sir Pruhp SIdney, wIth the weIght of Itahan
CrItICISm upon rus back, and probably not having read
Anstotle so deeply as he had read Latm authors and Itahan
CrItics WIdely, only went a httle too far: he was rIght m
prmclple, and he was Justlfied In rus strIctures upon the
IThe authonty for the Uruty of Place IS usually held to be Castel-
vetro. ThlS IS not, of course, an Anstotehan doctnne.

47
 APOLOGY FOR THE
drama of Ins day. A greater cntic than Sidney, the greatest
entic of Ins orne, Ben Jonson, says WISely:
'1 know notlung can conduce more to letters, than to
examine the Wrltmgs of the Ancients, and not to rest m
their sole authority, or take all upon trust from thenl; pro-
vIded the plagues of Judging, and pronouncmg against
them, be away; such as envy, bItterness, precIpitation,
Impudence, and scurnle scoffing. For to all the observatIons
of the Ancients, we have our own experience; which, if we
will use and apply, we have better means to pronounce.
It IS true they opened the gates, and made the way that
went before us; but as gmdes, not commanders.'
And further :
'Let ArIstotle and others have their dues; but If we can
make farther d1scoverIes of truth and fitness than they, why
are we envied';)'
It was natural that a member of the Countess of Pem-
broke's circle, Wrltmg wlnle popular hterature was stIll
mosdy barbarous, should be more fearful and mtolerant
than Ben Jonson, writIng towards dIe end of Ins days, WIth
a rich creative past in retrospect, and reVIewing his own
great work. I do not pretend that Sidney's cnticism made
any more impression upon the form wruch later poet!e
drama took than dtd, say, the example of Greville, Daniel
or Alexander. The clllef channel through wInch the Coun-
tess of Pembroke's crrcle may have- affected the course of
English poetry IS the great clvilising influence of Spenser.
Spenser exercIsed great influence upon Marlowe; Mar-
lowe first showed what could be done WIth dramatIc blank
verse, and Marlowe's great disciple Milton showed what
48
 COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
could be done with blank verse in a long poem. So great
the influence of Spenser seems to me, that I should say that
without it we might not have had the finest developments
of blank verse. Such a denvatlOn in Itself should be enou~
to rescue the Countess of Pembroke's fnends and relatives
from obscunty, enough to rugrufy therr cntlcal efforts, to
ralse them from the Ignormny of wealthy well-born
amateurs of the arts, or obscurantist supporters of a fasrid-
10US and sterue classlclSm.
So much for the two real problems of specIfic mterest
wruch occupied the attentlon of Ehzahethan cntics: the
problem of dramatic form and the problem of verse
technique. Of the fashion set by Sidney, the panegync
of poetry and the poet, I shall have more to say when I
come to contrast It with the laudatton of the Poet by
Shelley, and WIth, so to speak, his orclmatton by Matthew
Arnold. Puttenham and Webbe play chorus to SIdney.
Poetry, we are repeatedly told, IS 'makmg', and we are re-
mmded that 7T'OLlV means to make. LIp-servIce IS patd to
the Aristotehan 'Imitatton', but none of the wnters of the
perIod seems to have penetrated very deeply into the
notion of mimesis. The opimons of Plato and Anstode are
garbled hke a jurucious advertisement selection from a
book-reVlew. Webbe would have us believe that Plato and
Anstotle JOIn m supposmg 'all wIsdom and knowledge
to be included mystically in that ruvine mstinction where-
with they thought theIr vates to be inspired'. The notion of
divine inspl!atlon is made the most of. The poet expresses
both chVllle and worldly truth, and exerts moral mfluence
-here 'inutatIon' is brought in again. Fmally, the poet
D 49
 APOLOGY FOR THE
gIves de~ght, and in effect helps materially to maintaIn and
to raise the level of culture; no court IS glorious wIthout
mm, and no people great which has no poets. Interspersed
in the discourses of SIdney, Puttenham and Webbe are
some acute observatIons; and Puttenham's prefatory note
on Speech 1S most mterestmg. I am not concerned wIth
these, or wIth the C1rcumstances 1n wluch these essays were
brought forth; though I may be allowed to offer a word of
thanks, m passmg, to Gosson because lus School of Abuse
provoked them. It IS, however, worthy of remembrance
that these cntical treatises appeared just before the begmnmg
of the great age; so that If they are a SIgn of anythmg, It IS of
growth and not of decay.
And ill these SImple effUSIOns we have In embryo the
cntIcal questions wruch were to be dIscussed Iuuch later.
To talk of poets as makers and as inspired does not get us
very far, and thIs notion of msplratlOn need not be pressed
for hteralness; but It shows some perceptlon of the questlOn:
'how does the makmg of poetry come about?' To talk
vaguely of poets as plulosophers does not get us very far
either, but It IS the SImplest reply to the questIon: 'what IS
the content of poetry?' Slnularly wIth the account of
poetry ill ltS lugh moral purpose, the questIon of the rela-
tion of art and etlucs appears, and finally, ill the simple
assertions that poetry g1ves rugh dehght and adorns soc1ety
IS some awareness of the problem of the relatIon of the
poem to the reader and the place of poetry m society.
Once you have started you cannot stop. And these people
started before Shakespeare.
I shall have spoken to no purpose if I have glven the
50
 COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
ImpresSlOn that I wIsh sImply to affirm the Importance
of a neglected, or rather behttled group ofhterary people
whose taste IS supposed to have been counter to that
of the age. Had that been my mtention I should have
adopted a dtfferent scheme of treatment, dealt wIth them
severally, and ill parocular have had somethmg to say
about the specIal Importance of John Lyly ill the develop-
ment ofEnghsh prose and of proper comedy. My purpose
has been rather to determme the relaoon of the crlocal
currents to the general stream of creatIve activIty. In that
form of lllstorlcal survey wruch IS not concerned wIth the
total movement ofhterature, but wIth-on the lowest level
-mere readablhty, and wruch alms to tell us what works
we can solI enJoy, which emphasIses those books which
men have found It worth theIr wlule to contmue to read
and which are valuable to us lfrespecove of theIr hIstorlcal
pOSItiOn, some of these wnters are properly Ignored. The
works of SIr Pruhp SIdney, excepting a few sonnets, are not
among those to which one can return for perpetual re-
freshment; the Arcadia IS a monument of dulness. But I have
wIshed to affirm that In lookIng at the penod WIth an
mterest ill the development of the CrItIcal conSClOusness m
and towards poetry, you cannot dISSOCIate one group of
people from another; you cannot draw a hue and say
here IS backwater, here IS the mam stream. In the drama,
we seem to have on the one hand almost the whole body
of men of letters, a crowd of scholars conung down from
Oxford and CambrIdge to pIck a poor hving ill London,
needy and often almost desperate men of talent; and on
the other an alert, curious, semi-barbarous pubhc, fond
51
 APOLOGY FOR THE COUNTESS
of beer and bawdry, mcludmg much the same sort of
people whom one encounters m the local outIymg theatres
to-day, cravmg cheap amusement to thrill theIr emotions,
arouse theIr nnrth and satisfy their cunosIty; and between
the entertamers and the entertamed a fundamental homo-
geneIty of race, of sense of humour and sense of rIght and
wrong. The worst fault that poetry can comnut IS to be
dull, and the Ehzabethan dramatIsts were more or less
frequently saved from dulness or galvamsed mto anima-
tIon by the necessIty to amuse. Thelr hvehhood depended
upon It: they had to amuse or ~tarve.
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
December 2nd, 1932
n my prevlOus lecture I was concerned with the Ehza-
I bethan crItIcal nund expressIng Itself before the greater
part of the great hterature of the age had been wntten
Between them and Dryden occurs one great CrItical mmd,
that of a great poet whose cntical WrIting appears to be-
long to qwte the end of the penod. If I treated Ben Jon-
son's opinions with complete respect, I should conde1lll1
myself for speaking or Wrltlllg at all; for he says roundly,
'to judge of poets 1S only the faculty of poets; and not of all
poets, but the best'. Nevertheless, though I am not a good
enough poet to Judge ofJonson, I have already trIed to do
so, and cannot now make matters worse. Between SIdney
and Campion ill the latter part of the sixteenth century,
and Jonson wnting towards the end of Ins hfe, the greatest
penod of English poetry is comprehended; and the
maturing of the Enghsh mind in tlus ttme is well seen by
readmg the treatises of Sidney and Ins contemporaries, and
then the Discoveries ofJonson. He called Ins Discoveries also
Timber, and it IS ttmber WIth much undergrowth and dead
wood In It, but also hvmg trees. In some places, Jonson
does but express in a more adult style the same common-
places. About pc>etry:
'The study of It (if we will trust Aristotle) offers to man-
S3
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
land a certain rule, and pattern oflivmg well, and happIly;
chsposIng us to all civIl offices of society. If we wIll belIeve
Tully, It nounsheth, and Instructeth, our youth; delIghts
our age; adorns our prospenty; comforts our adverslty;
entertams us at home, keeps us company abroad, travaIls
With us, watches, dlvldes the tlme of our earnest, and
sports; shares m our country recesses, and recreatlons; mso-
much as the Wlsest and best learned have thought her the
absolute nustress of manners, and nearest oflan to vIrtue.'
Trus lIst of the Inents of poetry, wIth Its condltIOnal
references to Anstotle and Tully, has the quaIntness of a
generatIOn near to MontaIgne, and IS no lnore cOnVInCIng
than a patent medIcIlle cIrcular; and it has some of the
heavy sententIousness of FranCIS Bacon. Secondary to the
senous advantages to be derIved from poetry, comes the
assurance that poetry gIves pleasure, or, as he says, gUIdes us
by the hand of actIOn, WIth a ravIshmg delIght, and In-
credIble sweetness. The questions Imphed are, as I SaId to-
wards the end of my last lecture, among those fundamental
to CrItICIsm: Jonson has put them III a nper style than that
of the cntIcs who wrote III rus youth, but he has not
advanced the enqUIry. The authonty of antIqUIty, and the
assent of our preJudIces, are enough. It IS rather In lus
practical cntlClsm-I mean here not so much lus CrItlCISm
ofmdividual wnters, but Ius advlce to the practItlOner-that
Jonson has made progress. He reqUlres 111 the poet, first, 'a
goodness of natural Wlt'. 'To trus perfectIon of nature In
our poet, we reqUIre exerCIse of those parts, and frequent.'
HIs tlnrd reqUlsite ill a poet pleases me especlally: 'The
third reqwsite m our poet, or maker, IS Imitation, to be able
54
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
to convert the substances, or rIches of another poet, to hIs
own use.' When we come to a passage begmrung 'In
WrItIng there IS to be regarded the Invention, and the
Faslnon' we may, If we have already read some later
CrItiCS, expect more than we get. For so far as I understand
hun Jonson means notlung more than that before you
WrIte you must have somethIng to WrIte about, whIch is a
marufest truth frequently Ignored both by those who are
trymg to learn to write and by some of those who en-
deavour to teach wrItlng. But when we compare such pas-
sages as these from J011son wIth the passage whtch I quoted
from Dryden ill my first lecture9 we feel thattIn Dryden we
meet for the first tIme a man who IS speaklllg to us. It IS
from a CrItIcal essay wntten before Dryden had really
found out how to wnte poetry, but It IS somethIng very
dIfferent from an appeal to the anCIents; It 1S really analy-
tlcal., I wIll presume to quote It agaIn for the purpose of
closer examlnatlOn:
'The first happIness of the poet's ImagmatIOn IS properly
mventIOn, or the fmdtng of the thought, the second 15 fancy,
or the vanatlOn, denvIng, or mouldlllg of that thought, as
the Judgement represents 1t proper to the subject; the thIrd
15 elocutIon, or the art of dotiling and adornmg that

thought, as found and vaned, ill apt, sIgnIficant, and sound-

mg words, the qUIckness of the InlaginatlOn IS seen ill the
mventlon, the ferulity 1n the fancy, and the accuracy m the
expressIOn.' ,
'Fmdmg of the thought' does not mean findlllg a copy-
book maXl1n, or startIng WIth a synopsIs of what we are
gomg to put lnto verse, fIndmg an \dea' \vlnch IS later to
S5
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
be 'clothed and adorned' m a rather literal interpretation of
the metaphor. It corresponds to the mcepnon of any pIece
of imagmative writmg. It is not castIng about for a subject)
upon which, when found, the 'lmagmanon' IS to be exer-
clsed; for we must remark that 'mvention' IS the first
moment ill a process only the whole of which Dryden calls
'unaginatIon', and no less than the whole of which corre-
sponds to the celebrated and admrrable account of 1Illagm-
ation given by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
'Invention' ill the sense used here by Dryden does not seem
to me to be properly covered by the New English Dic-
tionary, wInch quotes tIns very passage ill support of the
followmg defimtion: 'The devlsmg of a subject, Idea. or
method of treatment, by exerCIse of the mtellect or Imagm-
ation.' The words 'mtellect or Imagmanon' strike me as a
burkmg of the question: if there is a clear dlstincnon be-
tween mventton by exercise of mtellect and mvention by
exerCIse of Imagmanon, then two defirunons are called for;
and If there is no chfference between mtellectual and
Imagmatlve InventIon there can hardly be much difference
between lmaginatIon and mtellect. But Dryden IS talking
expressly about imagination, not about intellect. Further-
more, the word 'devising' suggests the dehberate putting
together out of materials at hand; whereas I beheve that
Dryden's 'mvention' mc1udes the sudden irruption of the
germ of a new poem, possIbly merely as a state of feeling.
His 'mventton' is surely a findmg, a trouvaille. 'Fancy' re-
presents the conscious elaboration of the anginal donnee-
I prefer not to call that which IS found by invention by the
name of 'idea'; and fancy, I believe, covers also the con-
56
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
scious and delIberate uniting of severalmvennons In one
poem. 'Vanatlon, deriVing, or mouldmg of that thought',
Dryden calls It. 'Vanation' and 'mouldIng' are, I think,
pretty clear; 'denvmg' IS more dIfficult. I trunk that the
definItIOn 3B In the N.B.D. comes pretty close to It 'To
extend by branches or modllications.' Fancy is an actiVity
of the lmagmation rather than of the mtellect, but IS
necessarily In part an mtellectual aCtiVIty, masmuch as it
IS a 'moulding of the thought as judgement represents it
proper'. Dryden does not, I believe, necessarily Imply that
the 'thud happiness' of poenc imaginanon, 'elocunon', IS a
thtrd act, I mean, that the act of findIng the proper words,
'clothmg and adorning'the thought, begins only after the
operation of fancy is complete. In fancy the findIng of the
words seems to me already to have begun; that IS, fancy IS
pardy verbal; nevertheless, the work of elocution, 'cloth-
mg and adormng m apt, sIgmficant and soundIng words',
IS the last to be completed. Observe that 'soundIng' here
means what we, just as apprOXImately, should be hkely to
call 'mUSIcal': the fmdtng of the words and the order of
words expreSSIve of the underlying mood wruch belongs to
the mvennon. (Shakespeare's great lme 111 King Lear,
Never, never, never, never, never,
IS Just as sounding as Poe's hne adimred by Ernest Dowson,
The vIOl, the VIolet and the vIne.)
We are hable, I think, to underrate Dryden's crincal
analyses, by assummg that they only apply to the kind of
poetry that he Writes himself; and thus we may overlook
lus meanmg, as of the word 'invention'. Even if Dryden's
57
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
poetry seems to us of a pecuhar, and, as it has seemed to
many, a pecuharly unpoetIc type, we need not conclude
that lus mind operated qUIte differently from those of
poets at other penods; and we must remember hIS cathohc
and diSCrUn1nat111g taste In poetry.
I do not need, I dunk, to quote agaIn here the passage
froll1 Colendge wluch I quoted In contrast to that of
Dryden, because I do not propose to exanune it so narrowly.
You WIll have observed the more developed etymologIcal
sense I am not sure that Colendge has made as satIsfactory
an J.nalysis as that of Dryden. The dIstinction IS too sImple.
The last sentence, 'MIlton has a I11ghly ImaglnatlVe, Cow
ley a very fanClful lrund, , should be enough to arouse
SusplclOn. It represents a course of argument wluch IS
specIOUS. You assert a dIstmctl0n, you select two authors
who illustrate It to your satIsfaction, and you Ignore the
negatIve instances or drlIicult cases. If Colendge had wntten,
'Spenser had a lnghly Imagmatlve, Donne a very fancIful
nnnd,' the assumed superIorIty of ImaginatIOn to fancy
might not appear qUIte so Immediately convIncIng. Not
only Cowley, but all the metaphysical poets, had very
fancIful mmds, and If you removed the fancy and left only
imagmatlon, as ColerIdge appears to use these terms, you
would have no metaphysIcal poetry. The rustlnctl0n IS
adffilttedly a rustmctIOn of value; the term 'fancy' IS really
made derogatory, Just apphcable to clever verse that you
do not like.
Between Dryden, and Wordsworth and ColerIdge the
oue great C!1tlcal mmd IS that of Johnson. After Dryden,
and before Jolmson, there IS lnuch Just crItIcism, but no
58
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
great crinc. The lnferionty of common lUlnds to great
IS more paInfully apparent In those modest exerCIses of the
m.ll1d ill wInch common sense and sensIbIlIty are needed,
than In theIr faIlure to ascend to the Ingher BIghts of gelliUS.
Addlson IS a conSpICUOUS example of tIlls enlbarrassmg
medlOcnty, and he IS a symptom of the age whIch he
announced. The dIfference between the temper of the
eIghteenth century and that of the seventeenth IS profound.
Here, for example, IS AddIson on the subject on wInch we
have already heard Dryden and Colendge, the Imagma-
tlon:
'There are few words In the Enghsh language wInch are
employed ill a more loose and unCIrcumscn bed sense than
those of the fan~y and the ImagInatIOn. I therefore thought
It necessary to fix and determme the notIOn of these two
words, as I Intend to make use of them In the thread of my
followIng speculatIons, that the reader may conceIve
nghtly what IS the subject wInch I proceed upon '1
It IS perhaps as well to warn you that AddJ.sonis a wnter
towards whom I feel sometInng very lIke antIpathy. It
seems to me that even In these few words the smugness and
prIggIshness of the man appear. Of an age dUrIng whIch the
Church sank to an unlovehness unequalled before or smce,
AddIson was one of the most apposIte ornaments, he pos-
sessed the Chnstian VIrtues, and all ill the wrong order:
humIhty was the least of hIS attamments. It would seem,
from thIs account of 'fancy' and 'ImagInatIOn', that Adru-
son had never read, certamly never pondered, Dryden's
remarks upon the subject. I do not feel sure, however. that
1 The Spectalor,June 21st, 1712, No. 4Il
59
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
tIns yokIng of fancy and imagmatlon by Adchson chd not
stnke the eye of ColerIdge, and start hun upon Ins process
of dliferentlatlon. For Dryden 'Imagmatlon' was the whole
process of poetIc creation m wInch fancy was one element.
AddIson starts out to 'fix and determme' the notlon of the
two words; I cannot find any fixmg or determming of the
word 'fancy' m thIs or the followmg essays on the subject;
he IS entirely occupied WIth the Imagmatlon, and pnmarIly
wlth the vlSUal Imagmatlon, and solely WIth the VISUal
ImagmatIon accordIng to Mr. Locke. That IS a debt wluch
he hastens to acknowledge: he pays a handsome testimolllal
to the SCIentIfic truths wInch Locke has estabhshed. Alas,
philosophy IS not SCIence, nor IS hterary CrItICIsm; and It is
an elementary error to thInk that we have dIscovered as
objective laws what we have merely Inlposed by prIvate
legislation.
It IS cunous to find the old notions of dehght and m-
structlon, with winch the SIxteenth century defended
poetry, cropping up agam ill a form typIcal of the age of
Addison, but hardly WIth any greater profundIty of mean-
ing. Addtson observes that:
'A man of a pohte imagmatlon IS let rota a great many
pleasures that the vulgar are not capable of receIving. He
can converse With a pIcture, and find an agreeable com-
pamon ill a statue. He meets WIth a secret refreshment in a
descrIption, and often finds a greater satisfaction ill the
prospect of fields and meadows, than another does ill the
posseSSIon. '
The eighteenth-century emphases are illuminating. In-
stead of the courtler, we have the man of pohte imagm-
60
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
atlon. I suppose that Addison IS what one would describe as
a gentleman; as one might say, no better than a gentleman.
fIts notion of recomlnending Imaginatlon, because it
enables you to enj oy a statue or a piece of property Wlth-
out having to put your hand in your pocket to pay for It,
IS a very happy thought indeed. And gentleman as he IS, he
has a very low op1l11on of those who are not genteel:
'There are indeed but very few who know how to be
idle and Innocent, or have a relish of any pleasures that are
not crirmnal. '
Tell that, we might add, to the Unemployed. The par-
ticular exammation of AddIson may be left to Mr. Saints-
bury, whose History of Criticism IS always dehghtful,
generally useful, and most often rIght. My mtroductlon of
Adchson has not been, however, merely m order to poke
fun at rum. What is interesting and relevant to observe in
Adchson is not merely detenoratIon, a deterioration of
socIety, but of mteresting change. In the same series of
papers on Imagmation he says:
'It may here be worth our whtle to examIne how It
comes to pass that several readers, who are all acquamted
WIth the same language, and know the meanmg of the
words they read, should nevertheless have a dIfferent relish
of the same deSCrIptions.'
Addtson does not succeed m folloWIng up thts very
Important questIon WIth any very Important answer, but
It is suggestIve as the first awareness of the problem of com-
murucation; and his whole dIscussion of the nature of
Imaginanon, however fnutless for the purposes of hterary
critiCJ.sm~ IS a very interesting attempt at a general
61
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
aesthetics. Any matter wInch COines eventually to be the
subject of detaIled InVestIgatIOn and specIalIsed labour may
be preceded, long before any frUltful development takes
place, by such random guesses as these, wInch though not
directly productIve of frUItful results IndIcate the dIrection
ill wInch the mmd IS movmg.

AddIson, although too poor a poet to be stnctly com-

parable to the other CrItICS whom I have mentIoned and
have to mentIOn, acqUIres Importance by bemg thoroughly
representatIve of Ins age. The Instory of every branch
of mtellectual aCtIVIty provides the saIne record o~ the
dtminutIon of England from the tIme of Queen Anne.
It IS not so much the mtellect, but somet1ung superIor to
lllteliect, wInch went for a long time lIlto echpse, and tIns
luminary, by whatever name we may call It, has not yet
wholly Issued from Its secular obnubIlatIon. The age of
Dryden was stIll a great age, though begmrung to suffer a
death of the SpIrIt, as the coarsenmg of Its verse-rhythms
shows, by the tlme of AddIson theology, devotIOn and
poetry fell fast Into a formahstic slumber. AddIson IS de
fimtely a wnter for a lTIlddle class, a bourgeois hterary
dIctator. He was a popular lecturer. To lum poetry meant
dehght and edIficatIon In a new way. Johnson has here, ill
rus own language, fixed adrmrably the dIfference between
Dryden and AddIson as dIrectors of taste:
'Dryden has, not many years before, scattered CrItiCISm
over his prefaces WIth very httle parsImony, but though he
sometimes condescended to be somewhat famIliar, IllS
lnanner was ill general too scholastIc for those who had yet
theIr rudiments to learn, and found It not easy to under-
62
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
stand theIr master. HIs observations were framed rather for
those that were learnIng to wrIte, than for those that read
only to talk.
'An mstructor hke AddIson was now wantmg, whose
remarks, beIng superficIal, lrught be eaSIly understood, ar..d
bemg Just, might prepare the nlllld for more attamments.
Had he presented Paradise Lost to the publIc WIth all the
pomp of system and seventy of SCIence, the critIcIsm would
perhaps have been admIred, and the poem still have been
neglected; but by the blandIshments of gentleness and facIl-
Ity he has made MIlton an unIversal favounte, WIth whom
readers of every class trunk It necessary to be pleased.'
It was stIll then, apparently, a not unlettered penod, III
wInch readers of any class could dunk It necessary to be
pleased WIth Paradise Lost. But the usual classificatlOn of
Dryden, AddIson and Johnson together as CrItIcs of an
Augustan age faIls to allow adequately for two dIfferences:
the spintual deterioratlOn In SOCIety between the penods
of the first two, and the renlarkable IsolatlOn of the trurd.
It IS surely by unconSCIOUS Irony that we speak of an 'age
of Johnson' as we do of an 'age of Dryden' or an 'age of
Adruson'. Lonely In rus lIfe, Johnson seems to me stIll
more lonely In rus Intellectual and moral eXIstence. He could
not even very much like the poetry of rus age WIth whIch
ad111lrers of the eIghteenth century now 'dunk It necessary
to be pleased'; If more than just to Colhns, he was no more
than severe to Gray. He hImself, I am convIllced, IS theIr
supenor as a poet, not III senSIbIlIty, not ill metrIcal
dextenty or aptness of phrase, but In a moral elevatlon Just
short of subhnuty.
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
Such writIng as Johnson's Lives of the Poets and lus essay
on Shakespeare loses none of Its permanence from the con-
slderation that every generatlon must make Its own
appraisal of the poetry of the past, m the hght of the per-
formance of Its contemporanes and ImmedIate prede-
cessors. CntlCISm of poetry moves between two extremes,
On the one hand the cntIc may busy lumself so much with
the Imphcatlons of a poem, or of one poet's work-
Imphcations moral, social, rehglOus or other-that the
poetry becomes hardly more than a text for a dIscourse.
Such is the tendency of the morahsmg critics of the rune-
teenth century, to wlnch Landor makes a notable exception.
Or If you stick too closely to the 'poetry' and adopt no
attitude towards what the poet has to say, you Wlll tend to
evacuate It of all sigmficance. And furthermore there 15 a
plnlosoplnc borderhne, wlnch you must not transgress too
far or too often, If you wish to preserve your standmg as a
crinc, and are not prepared to present yourself as a plnlo-
sopher, metaphysician, soclOlog1st, or psychologist Instead.
Johnson, m these respects, IS a type of cntical integnty.
Withm his hmitations, he IS one of the great cnncs; and he
is a great cnnc partly because he keeps Wlthin lus hmlta..
tions. When you know what they are, you know where
you are. Considermg all the temptations to which one IS
exposed in judging contemporary WIlting, all the pre-
judlces which one IS tempted to mdulge in judgIng WIIters
of the immediately precedIng generatIon, I View Johnson's
Lives oj the Poets as a masterpIece of the Judiclal bench.
His style IS not so formally petfect as that of some other
prose writers of his time. It reads often hke the writing of
64
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN
a mall who IS more habltuated to talk111g than to wrltmg;
he seems to dunk aloud, and III short breaths, rather than
m the long penods of the lustonal1 or the orator. HIs
cntlCISm IS as salutary agamst the dognlatlc excesses of the
eIghteenth century-m.ore llldulged In France than III
England-as It IS agamst exceSSIve adulanon of mdlVidual
poets wIth theIr faults as well as vIrtues. We shall have, III
the runeteenth century, several vaganes to contemplate, of
cntlcs who do not so much practise cntlCIS111 as make use
of It for other purposes For Jolmson poetry was stIll poetry,
and not another dung. Had he lIved a generatIon later, he
would have been 0 bhged to look nlore deeply lllto the
foundatIOns, and so would have been unable to leave us an
example of what cntlclSlll ought to be for a CIVIlIsation
wluch, bemg settled, has no need, wlule It lasts, to enqulIe
mto the functions of ItS parts.

E 65 E.U I-
 WORDSWORTH AND
COLERIDGE
December 9th, 1932
t IS natural, and In so rapId and superficIal a reVIew as
I trus mevitable, to consIder the cntIclsm of Wordsworth
and of Coleridge together. But we must keep ill rrund how
very dIfferent were not only die men themselves, but the
CIrcumstances and motives of the cOmpOSItIOn of their
prmcipal crItical statements. Wordsworth's Preface to
Lyrical Ballads was wntten while he was snllin rus youth,
and wlnle rus poetIc geruus stIll had much to do; Colendge
wrote the Biographia Litteraria much later ill hfe, when
poetry, except for that one bnef and toucrung lament for
lost youth, had deserted lum, and when the dIsastrous
effects of long dISSIpatIon and stupefactIon ofhts powers ill
transcendental metaphysIcs were brmgmg Inm to a state of
lethargY1 WIth the relatIon of ColerIdge's thought to
subsequent theologIcal and pohtlcal development I am
not here concerned. The Biographia IS our prmclpal docu-
ment; and In connexion wIth that there IS one piece of lus
formal verse which in Its pasSIonate self-revelatIon rIses
almost to the height of great poetry. I mean Dejection:
an Ode.
There was a ame when, though my path was rough,
TIns joy within me dalhed wIth distress,
And all nusfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dream ofhappllless:
67
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
For hope grew round me, hke the twining vine,
And frUlts and folIage, not my own, seemed nune.
But now afihctlon bows me dnwn to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mIrth;
But oh! each VISItatIOn
Suspends what nature gave me at my bIrth,
My shapmg SpUIt of ImagInatIOn.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be stIll and patIent, all I can,
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man-
Trus was my sale resource, my only plan.
Till that wruch suits a part mfects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habIt of my soul.
ThIS ode was wntten by Apnl 4th, 1802: the Bio-
graphia Litteraria were not publIshed for fifteen years after
that. The hnes strIke my ear as one of the saddest of
confeSSIOns that I have ever read. When I spoke of Cole-
ndge as druggmg rumself WIth metaphysicS I was tmnkmg
senously of these Ins own words: 'haply by abstruse re-
search to steal from my own nature all the natural man'.
Coleridge was one of those unhappy persons-Donne, I
suspect, was such another-of whom one mIght say, that
if they had not been poets, they mlght have made something
of theIr hves, nnght even have had a career; or conversely,
that if they had not been mterested m so many thmgs,
crossed by such dIverse paSSIons, they lUlght have been
great poets It was better for Colendge, as poet, to read
books of travel and exploratIon than to read books of
metaphysics and polItical econOlny. He dId genumely want
68
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
to read books of metaphysIcS and polItIcal economy, for
he had a certam talent for such subjects. But for a few years
he had been VIsIted by the Muse (I know of no poet to
whom tlus hackneyed Inetaphor IS better apphcable) and
thenceforth was a haunted luan; for anyone who has ever
been VISIted by the Muse is thenceforth haunted. He had
no vocatlOn for the relIgIOus lIfe, for there again somebody
hke a Muse, or a lnuch Ingher beIng, IS to be ll1voked, he
was condemned to know that the httle poetry he had
wntten was worth nlore than all he could do WIth the rest
of Ins hfe. The author of Biographia Litteraria was already a
fumed man. Sometlmes, however, to be a 'ruIned man' IS
Itself a vocation.
Wordsworth, on the other hand, wrote lus Preface, as I
have said, willIe in the plelutude of Ins poetIc powers and
while lus reputatIon was still only sustamed by readers of
dlscernment. And he was of an OpposIte poetIC type to
Colendge. Whether the bulk ofms genume poetIC acmeve-
ment IS so much greater than ColerIdge's as It appears, is
uncertaIn. Whether rus power and msplratlOn remamed
WIth lum to the end is, alas, not even doubtful. But W ords-
worth had no ghastly shadows at hIS back, no Eumerudes
to pursue 111m; or If he dId, he gave no SIgn and took no
notIce; and he went dronll1g on the stIll sad music of
mfirmlty to the verge of the grave. HIs illsplratlOn never
havmg been of that sudden, fitful and ternfymg bnd that
VISIted ColerIdge, he was never, apparently, troubled by
the conSClOusness of haVIng lost It. As Andre Glde's
Prometheus said, ill the lecture wInch he gave before a
large auchence m Pans: II faut avoir un aigle. Coleridge
69
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
remamed. m contact WIth his eagle., Neither In detaIl of
~

hfe and interest were the two men surular-Wordsworth

mdlfferent to books, Colendge the voraclOUS reader. But
they had that In common wInch was more Important than
all dIfferences: they were the two most OrIgInal poetIc
minds of theIr generatIOn. TheIr mfluence upon each other
was consIderable; though probably the Influence ofWords-
worth upon Colendge, durmg theIr bnef penod of llltl-
mate assoCIatiOn, was greater than that of Colendge upon
Wordsworth Tms recIprocal mfluence would hardly have
been possIble to such a degree wIthout another Influence
wInch held the two men together, and affected both of
them more deeply than eIther knew, the Influence of a
great woman. No woman has ever played so Important a
part in the hves of two poets at once-I mean theIr poetlc
hves-as dId Dorothy Wordsworth.
The emphasis upon the dIfferences of mlnd, tempera-
ment and character of the two men must be all the greater
because theIr cntical statements must be read together. In
some respects there IS of course, as would be expected, a
conSCIOUS dtfference of opmion. Wordsworth wrote his
Preface to defend lus own maImer of WrItIng poetry, and
Coleridge wrote the Biographia to defend Wordsworth's
poetry; or ill part he dtd. I must confine myself to two
pOilltS. One IS Colendge's doctrme of fancy and Imagma-
non; the other IS that on wluch ColerIdge and Wordsworth
made common cause: theIr new theory of poetIc dIction.
Let me take up the latter pOlnt first. In tlus matter of
poetIc mction, It IS at first very hard to understand what all
the fuss is about. Wordsworth's poems had met wIth no
70
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
worse recepnon than verse of such novelty is accustomed to
receIve I myself can remember a tIme when some questIon
of 'poetIC dIctIOn' was In the air; when Ezra Pound Issued
lus statement that 'poetry ought to be as well wntten as
prose'; and when he and I and our colleagues were men-
tioned by a wnter In The Morning Post as 'hterary bol-
sheViks' and by Mr. Arthur Waugh (With a point wInch
has always escaped me) as 'drunken helots' . But I thmk that
we belIeved that we were affinrung forgotten standards,
rather than setting up new Idols.}W ordsworth, when he
saId that rus purpose was 'to imit~te, and as far as pOSSIble,
to adopt, the very language of men', was only saymg In
other words what Dryden had saId, and fightmg the battle
wruch Dryden had fought; and Mr. Garrod, m calhng
attention to trus fact, seems to me intemperate In assertmg
that Dryden had never Inade real to rumself'two VItal
consideratIons: first, that such language must express
passlOn, and secondly, that it must base Itself 111 Just 0 bser-
vatIon'. Dryden among the shades ffilght medttate upon
Mr. Garrod's conception of paSSIOn and observatIOn. And
on the other hand, as has also been pomted out, first by
Colendge lllmself In the Biographia, Wordsworth by no
means worried himself to excess In obserVIng rus own prm-
clples. 'The language of the tmddle and lower classes of
socIety'lls of course perfectly proper when you are repre-
sentmg dranlatically the speech of these classes, and then no
other language IS proper; slnularly when you are represent-
lUg dramatIcally the language of the upper classes; but on
lWhat was Wordsworth's conceptIon of the language of the upper
classes of Soclety?

71
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
other occaSlOns, It is not the busIness of the poet to talk like
any class of socIety, but lIke himself-rather better, We
hope, than any actual class, though when any class of
socIety happens to have the best word, phrase or expletive
for anythmg, then the poet IS entItled to It As for the cur-
rent style of wntlng when the Lyrical Ballads appeared, It
was what any style of wnting becomes when It falls lUto
the hands of people who cannot even be called medIO-
CrltIes True, Gray "vas overrated. but then Johnson had
COlne down on Gray wIth a deadlIer force than Words-
worth could exert. And Donne has seemed to us, In recent
years, as stnlong a peculIarly conversJtlonal style; but dId
Wordsworth or Colendge acclaIm Donne? No, when It
came to Donne-and Cowley-you wIll find that W ords-
worth and Colendge were led by the nose by Samuel
Johnson, they were Just as eIghteenth century as anybody,
except that where the eIghteenth century spoke of lack
of elegance the Lake poets found lack of paSSlOn. And
much of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge IS
just as turgId and artIficIal and elegant as any eIghteenth
century dIe-hard could wIsh. What then was all the fuss
about?
There really was somethIng to make a fuss about. I do
not know whether Professor Garrod has grasped It, but if
so he seems to Ignore It, Professor Harperl, however, seems
to have it by the nght lug. There IS a remarkable letter of
Wordsworth's ill 1801 which he wrote to Charles James
Fox 11l sendIng him a copy of the Ballads. You wIll find
a long extract from this letter m Professor Harper's book
lIn Ius LIfe ofWordsworth.
72
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
I quote one sentence. In commend1ng Ins poems to the
fasluonable pOhtlCIan'S attentlOl1 Wordsworth says:
'Recently by the spreadmg of manufactures through
every part of the country, by the heavy taxes upon postage,
by workhouses, houses of Industry, and the mventlOn of
soup shops, etc., superadded to the mcreasmg dispropor-
tlOn between the pnce of labour and that of the necessaries
of !tfe, the bonds of domest1c feehng among the poor, as
far as the mfluence of these clungs has extended, have been
weakened, and 1n Innumerable Instances entIrely destroyed.'
Wordsworth then proceeds to expound a doctrme wInch
nowadays IS called dIstnbut!sln. And Wordsworth was not
merely takIng advantage of an opportunIty to lecture a
rather dlsreputable statesnlan and rouse !um to useful act1v-
Ity, he was senously explalillng the content and purpose of
lus poems: wIthout thIs preamble Mr. Fox could hardly be
expected to nlake head or tall of the IdIOt Boy or the saIlor's
parrot. You Inay say that tIllS publIc Splnt IS Irrelevant to
Wordsworth's greatest poems; nevertheless I beheve that
you WIll understand a great poem hke Resolution and Inde-
pendence better If you understand the purposes and socIal
passions which anImated Its author; and unless you under-
stand these you WIll nnsread Wordsworth's hterary
CfltlClSm entIrely. IncIdentally, those who speak of Words-
worth as the ongmal Lost Leader (a reference wruch
Brownmg, as I remember, derued) should make pause and
consider that when a man takes polItICS and soclal affaIrs
senously the dIfference between revolutIOn and reactIon
may be by the breadth of a haIr, and that Wordsworth may
possIbly have been no renegade but a man who thought, so
73
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
far as he thought at all, for himself But It is Wordsworth's
socIal mterest that msplres IDS own novelty of form 111
verse, and backs up IDS exphclt remarks upon poetIc dIction;
and It IS really dus socIal mterest wIDch (conscIously or not)
the fuss was all about. It was not so llluch from lack of
thought as from warmth of feehng that Wordsworth
ongmally wrote the words 'the language of conversatIon
Ul Imddle and lower class socIety'. It was not from any re-
cantatIOn of polItIcal pnnciples, but from haVIng had It
brought to rus attentIon that, as a general hterary prmclple,
trus would never do, that he altered them. Where he wrote
'my purpose was to Imttate, and as far as pOSSIble, to adopt,
the very language of men' he was sayIng what no senous
critIC could dIsapprove.
Except on trus pomt of dIctIon, and that of 'choOSIng
mCIdents from common hfe', Wordsworth IS a most
orthodox cntIc. It IS true that he uses the word 'enthusIasm'
wruch the eIghteenth century dId not hke, but In the lnatter
of mtmeSlS he IS more deeply Anstotehan than some who
have almed at followmg Anstotle more closely. He says of
the poet:
'To these quahtIes he has added a dISpOSItIOn to be
affected more than other men by absent dungs as If they
were present; an ability of conjuring up In hunself paSSIons,
whtch are mdeed far from bemg the same as those produced
by real events, yet (especIally m those parts of the general
sympathy wIDeh are pleasIng and delIghtful) do luore
nearly resemble the paSSIOns produced by real events, than
anything wruch, from the motIons of their own mtnds
merely, other men are accustomed to feel III themselves.'
74
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
Here IS the new version of ImitatIon, and I think that it
1S the best so far:
'Anstotle, I have been told, has saId, that Poetry IS the
most plulosopluc of all WritIng; It IS so: Its object IS truth,
not mdividual and local, but general, and operatIve.'
I find that 'It IS so' veryexhtlaratmg. For my part, rather
than be parrotted by a hundred generatIOns, I had rather
be neglected and have one man eventually come to my
conclusIOns and say 'there IS an old author who found tms
ont before I dId' .
Jwhen you find Wordsworth as the seer and prophet
whose functIon It IS to Instruct and edIfy through pleasure,
as 1f tills were sOlnething he had found out for lumsel, you
may begIn to dunk that there IS sometlung m1t, at least for
some kmd~ of poetry. SOlne portIons of dus enthusIasm I
beheve Wordsworth cominunicated to Coleridge. But
Wordsworth's revolutIonary faIth was more vital to mm
than It was to Colendge. You cannot say that It inspIred
rus revolutlOn III poetry, but It canllot be d1sentangled frOln
the motIves of hIS poetry. (Any radIcal change In poetIC
form IS hkely to be the symptom of some very much
deeper change in socIety and In the IndivIduaL I doubt
whether the Impulse In Colendge would have been strong
enough to have worked its way out, but for the example
and encouragement ofWordsworth. I would not be under-
stood as affirm1ng that revolutIonary enthusiasm IS the best
parent for poetry, or as JustIfying revolution on the ground
that 1t WIll lead to an outburst of poetry-wInch would be
a wasteful, and hardly justifiable way of produclllg poetry.
Nor am I IndulgIng 111 socIological ctltlcisln, wInch has to
75
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
suppress so much of the data, and whIch IS Ignorant of so
much of the rest. I only affirm that all human affaIrs are
mvolved WIth each other, that consequently all rustory ill-
volves abstractlon, and that m attemptmg to Wll1 a full
understandmg of the poetry of a penod you are led to the
consideratlOn of subjects wInch at first sIght appear to have
lIttle bearmg upon poetry. These subjects have accordmgly
a good deal to do wIth the CntlCISm of poetry; and It IS such
subjects wruch make mtelhgible Wordsworth's InabIhty to
apprecIate Pope, and the Irrelevance of the metaphysIcal
poets to the Interest whIch he and Colendge had at heart.
WIth the foregomg observatlOns m mInd, let me turn to
consIder the great Importance, m the Biographia Litteraria,
of the dIstInction between Fancy and ImagInatiOn already
touched upon, and of the defirutlon of Imaglllation gIven
111 a later passage. 'Repeated medItatIons led me fi,rst to
suspect . . . that Fancy and ImagInatIon were two dIstmet
and widely dIfferent facultIes, mstead of beIng, accordmg
to the general behef, eIther two names WIth one meanmg,
or, at furthest, the lower and Ingher degrees of one and the
same power.' In Chapter XIII he draws the followmg Im-
portant dIstmctIons:
'The ImagmatIon then I consIder eIther as pnmary, or
secondary. The Pnmary Imagmatton I hold to be the hvmg
power and pnme agent of all human perception, and as a
repetitIon m the fillite mmd of the eternal act of creation m
the mfimte I AM. The Secondary ImagInation I consIder as
an echo of the former, co-eXlstmg with the conSCIOUS WIll,
yet stIll as Identical WIth the pnmary In the kind of its
agency, and chffering only in degree, and m the mode of
76
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
its operation. It dIssolves, dIffuses, dissipates, in order to re-
create, or where tms process is rendered impossIble, yet
still at all events It struggles to ldeahse and to unIfy. It is
essentIally vital, even as all objects (as objects) arc essentially
fixed and dead.
'FANCY, on the other hand, has no other counters to
play wIth, but fiXItICS and dcfinItes. Thc fancy IS Indeed no
other than a mode of ll1enl0ry emancIpated from the order
of orne and space; whIle It IS blended wIth, and modIfied
by that empIrical phenolnenon of the wIll, whIch we
express by the word ChOIce. But equally WIth the ordmary
memory the Fancy must receive all ItS Inaterlals ready made
from the law of aSSocIatIon. '
I have read some of Hegel and FIchte, as' well as Hartley
(who turns up at any moment with ColerIdge), and for-
gotten It; of SchellIng I am entirely Ignorant at first hand,
and he IS one of those nUInerous authors whonl, the longer
you leave them unread, the less deSIre you have to read.
Hence It may he that I wholly faIl to appreCIate this passage.
My mmd IS too heavy and concrete for any flight ofabstruse
reasonmg. If, as I have already suggested, the dtfference be-
tween Imagmation and fancy anl0unts in practIce to no
more than the dIfference between good and bad poetry,
have we done more than take a turn round Robin Hood's
barD/ It IS only If fancy can be an ingredIent 111 good poetry,
and If you can show some good poetry wInch is the better
for It; It IS only If the distlllction 11lulnll1ates our immechate
preference of one poet over another, that it can be of use to
a practIcal mind lIke trune. Fancy Inay be 'no other than a
mode of memory emancIpated fronl the order of space and
77
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
tIme'; but It seems unWIse to talk of memory In conneXlOn
with fancy and onut It altogether from the account of
Imagmation. As we have learnt from Dr. Lowes's Road to
Xanadu (If we chd not know It already) memory plays a
very great part m ImagmatlOn, and of course a much larger
part than can be proved by that book; Professor Lowes
had only hterary remmlscences to deal wIth, and they are
the only lund of rel.TI1l1lscence wruch can be fully traced
and identIfied: but how much more of memory enters
mto creation than only our readmg ! Mr. Lowes has, I dunk,
demonstrated the Importance of lnstInctive and uncon..
soous, as well as dehberate selectIon. Colendge's taste, at
one perIod of hfe, led rum first to read voraclOusly ill a
certam type of book, and then to select and store up certam
kInds of imagery from those books.1 And I should say that
the mmd of any poet would be magnetIsed In Its own way,
to select automatically, mms readIng (from pIcture papers
and cheap novels, mdeed, as well as senous books, and least
hkely from works of an abstract nature, though even these
are ahment for some poetic mmds) the matenal-an Image,
a phrase, a word-which may be of use to rum later. And
this selecnon probably runs through the whole of lus
senSItive Me. There nnght be the expenence of a cruld of
ten, a small boy peermg through sea-water In a rock-pool,
lAnd by a nght appreclatlon The ClIcumstances of early explora-
tlon might well snmulate the lmagmatlons of those who endeavoured
to set down precisely what they had seen m such a way as to convey an
accurate lID.preSSlOU to Europeans who had no experience of anythmg
surular. They would often, naturally, stimulate the ImagInation beyond
the perception, but It IS usually the accurate Images, the fidehty of
wluch may sci1 be recognlsed, that are the most telling
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
and finchng a sea-anemone for the first tIme: the sImple
expenence (not so simple, for an exceptlOnal cluld, as 1t
looks) might he dormant tn his mind for twenty years, and
re-appear transformed tn some verse-context charged wIth
great Imagmattve pressure. There IS so much memory In
Imagmation that If you are to dIstInguIsh between Imagma-
tion and fancy In Colendge's way you must define the
dllference between memory tn ImagInatIOn and memory
U1 fancy; and It IS not enough to say that the one 'dIssolves,
chffuses and dtssipates' the memories ill order to re-create,
wlnlst the other deals wIth 'fiXItIes and defimtes'. Tms
distIDctlOn, In ItSelf, need not gIve you dIstmct ImaginatIOn
and fancy, but only degrees ofImagInatiVe success. It would
seem from Mr. Richards's notel that he IS almost as much
baffled by the passage which I have quoted, or at least by
part of It, as I am. You have to forget all about ColerIdge's
fancy to learn anythIng from him about Imagmanon-as
With AddIson-but from Colendge there IS a good deal to
learn. I quote another passage, In the fonn m wluch Mr.
R.:tchards has abbreviated It:
'That synthetIC and magIcal power, to which we have
exclusIvely appropriated the name of ImagInatIon ... re-
veals Itself In the balance or reconcIhatIon of opposite or
dtscordant qualItIes . . . the sense of novelty and freshness,
With old and famlhar objects; a more than usual state of
emotion, with more than usual order; judgement ever
awake and steady self-possession WIth enthUSIasm and
feehng profound or vehement.' 'The sense of mUSIcal de-
light . . . Wlth the power of reducing multitude into
IPrinciples ofLiterary Cnticism, p. 191
79
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE

varIety of effect, and nlodlfying a senes of thoughts by

some one predonnnant thought or feehng.'
What such descn ptlons are worth, frolll the P01llt of
view of psychologIcal cntlclSln of to-day, can best be learnt
from Mr. RIchards's book fronl whIch I have quoted them.
What IS my concern here IS a less profound matter, the
place of Wordsworth and Colendge In the lllstoncal pro~
cess of CrItlCIsm. You WIll have observed In the passage Just
quoted a richness and depth, an awaleness of comphcatlOn
which takes It far out of the range of Dryden. This IS not
sImply because ColerIdge thought more profoundly than
Dryden, though he dId. Nor aln I sure that ColerIdge
learned so much from German phIlosophers, or earher from
Hardey, as he thought he dId; what IS best In hIs cpticism
seems to come from Ins own dehcacy and subtlety of InsIght
as he reflected upon lus own expenence of WrItlng poetry.
Of the two poets as cntlcs, It was Wordsworth who knew
better what he was about: rus crltlcaiinsight, 1n trus one
Preface and the Supplement, IS enough to gIve rum the
htghest place. I do not assIgn lum thIs pOSitIOn because he
cared about the reVIval of agnculture and the relation of
productIOn and consumption, though such mterests are
symptomatrc; there IS, m rus poetry and In his Preface, a
profound spintual reVIval, an lllsplratloll communIcated
rather to Pusey and Newman, to Ruskm, and to the great
humarutarlans, than to the accredited poets of the next
age~ Colendge, WIth his authonty due to his great readIng,
probably chd much more than Wordsworth to brmg atten-
tron to the profundIty of the plnlosopluc problems mto
which the study of poetry may take us. And the two men
80
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
together need no thIrd wlth thetn to Illustrate the 111lnd of
an age of consclOUS change. It IS not merely that they were
lllterested In a varIety of speculatIve subjects and of prac...
tical matters of Inlpartance far theIr time, but that theIr
lllterests were Involved In e.lch other and the first famt
SIgn of such c0111phcatI0l1 appeared when AddIson derIved
lus theory of Imagmation 111 the arts froln the theOrIes of
Locke. In Wordsworth and Colendge we find not merely
a vanety of Interests, evcn of paSSIonate Interests; It IS all
one passlOn expressed through thenl all- poetry was for
them the expressIOn of a totalIty of unIfied mterests.
I have trIed to exillbit thc cnticism of Dryden and of
Jolmson, 111 tIllS very bnef reVIew, In Its approprIateness to
theIr penods of Instory, penods when there was, for the
purpose of hterary determInation, a stasI's. And to exlubit
that of Wordsworth and Colendge as the cnticism of an
age of change. Even If It be true that change IS always mak-
mg ready, underneath, dunng a stable perIOd, and that a
penod of change contaIns witlun Itself the elements of
hnutatIOn willch wIll bnng It to a halt, yet some stabilis-
ations are more deeply founded than others. It IS WIth
Matthew Arnold that we come to a penod of apparent
stabIhsatIOn wInch was shallow and prelnature.

NOTE TO CHAPTER IV

ON MR. HERBERT READ'S APPRAISAL OF THE

POETRY OF WORDSWORTH

There is a VIew of Enghsh poetry, already of some

antIqUIty, wluch conSIders the roam hue of Enghsh poetry
F 81 E.U.P.
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
from Mllton to Wordsworth, or from perhaps even before
Milton, as an un(ortunate interlude durmg which the Eng-
hsh muse was, If not besIde herself, at least not ill posseman
of her faculties. I am sorry to find tIns view, wInch Was
largely Wordsworth's own, re-stated and confirmed by
Mr. Herbert Read. Mr. Read IS one of a few contempo-
ranes, hke Mr. Richards, wIth whom I almost never feel
qUlte happy 111 disagree111g; but when, In Ins adffilrable
small essay, Form in Modern Poetry, he WrItes as follows, I
can only exclaim, 'What are we commg to?':
"The mam traditIOn of Enghsh poetry . . . begms wIth
Chaucer and reaches ItS final culmmatIOn m Shakespeare.
It IS contradIcted by most French poetry before BaudelaIre,
by the so-called claSSIcal phase of Enghsh poetry culmmat-
mg in Alexander Pope, and by the late Poet Laureate. It was
re-estabhshed m England by Wordsworth and ColerIdge,
developed m some degree by Browmng and Gerard Man-
ley HopkIns, and m our own day by poets hke WIlfred
Owen, Ezra Pound and T. S. Ehot.' I
To some extent I am 111 agreement; that IS, I dare say that
my valuation of the earher poets, poet for poet, would
apprOXImate closely enough to Mr. Read's; and my
adtnlranon for the late Poet Laureate is as moderate as
rus, though I suspect a shght WIlfulness In bnnging rum
into thIs context. But I observe first that Mr. Read goes
Wordsworth one better and excludes MIlton; and when a
poet has done as big a Job as Milton, is it helpful to suggest
that he has just been up a bhnd alley? And is Blake too
minor a poet to count? As for French poetry, Mr. Read
saves the situation WIth the quahfication 'mose, so that I
82
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
suppose BaudelaIre's master Racine just squeaks in. And is
it not arbItrary to assert that the' classIcal phase' of Enghsh
poetry (If we are to employ that term at all) culminates in
Pope? Surely Johnson belongs to It, and, wIth a touch of
sennmentahsnl and even Iuawlashness, Gray and Colhns;
and where would Landor be but for the classical tradItion?
I hasten to add Mr. Read's next remark: 'The dIstlnction IS
not mereIy that between " C1aSSlcaI" an d " ronlantlC. " ThiS
divlsion cuts across In a dtfferent dIrection.' I dunk that I
understand trus qualIficatIon, and If I understand I agree;
nevertheless Mr. Read seenlS to have been USIng the term
'classical' m two dIfferent meanIngs. Mr. Read's dIviSIons
are too clear-cut to leave Iny Inind at ease. He considers
that the poetIc process of a mind lIke Drydcn's and that of
a mmd hke Wordsworth's are essentially dtvcrse; and he
says roundly of Dryden's art, t Such art is not poetry.' Now
I cannot see why Dryden's and Wordsworth's lninds should
have worked any more dIfferently froin each other than
those of any other two poets. I do not believe that any two
poets' minds work quite in the salue way, so far as we can
know enough about the matter for 'workmg' to mean any-
thing at all; I do not beheve that even the sanle poet's mInd
need work 1ll the same way In two dtfferent but equally
good poems; but there must also be somethlllg in common
in the poetIc process of all poets' nunds. Mr. Read quotes,
m support of his contention, a passage from the Atmus
Mirabilis which I have not gIven:
'The ComposItIOn of all poems IS or ought to be of wit;
and WIt ill the Poet, or wit writing (If you WIll give me leave
to use a School distinctlon), is no other than the faculty of
83
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
imagmatlon in the Writer; wInch, hke a rumble SpaUlel,
beats over and ranges through the field of Memory, till
It sprmgs the Quarry It hunted after; or, WIthout metaphor,
wInch searches over all the Memory for the SpecIes or Ideas
of those dungs wInch It designs to represent. Wit written
is that wInch IS well defined, the happy result of Thought,
or product of Imagmatlon.'
I should have thought tIns merely a happy descrIptIon, m
the language avatlable at Dryden's time, and at a less pro-
found level of mSlght than that of Colendge or W ords-
worth at theIr best, of the same sort of process that the latter
were attempting to descnbe m language nearer to our own.
But Mr. Read says No, what Dryden IS talkIng about IS
somethmg different: It IS wit written, not poetry. Mr. Read
seems to me to have fallen Into the error which I mentlOned
m the text, of thmkmg that Dryden IS only talkIng of hIS
own kmd of poetic composltlOn, and that he was qUlte
Incapable of appreclatmg Chaucer and Shakespeare. Yet
all that I myselfhave to go upon, ill the end, IS the bnd of
el1Joyment that I get from Dryden's poetry.
The dIfference of oplillon lnlght be put In a metaphor.
In reVlewmg Enghsh poetry, Mr. Read seems to charge
lnmself With the task of castmg out devils-though less
drastically than Mr. Pound, who leaves notlllllg but a room
well swept and not garrushed. What I see, ill the htstory of
English poetry, is not so much daemoruc posseSSIOn as the
, sphttmg up of personahty. If we say that one of these
parttal personahtles which may develop m a natlOnal mmd
IS that which marufested Itself ill the period between Dry-
den and Johnson, then what we have to do IS to re-tnteg-
84
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
rate It: otherwIse we are lIkely to get only succeSSIve alter-
natIons of persollahty. Surely the great poet IS, among
other dungs, one who not merely restores a tradttlOn wInch
has been In abeyance, but one who 111 hIs poetry re-tWInes
as many straYIng strands of tradItion as posslble~ Nor can
you Isolate poetry frool evcrytlul1g else In the Ins tory of a
people; and It 15 rather strong to suggest that the EnglIsh
mmd has been deranged ever S111ce the tlole of Shakespeare,
and that only recently have a few fitful rays of reason
penetrated its darkness. If the lualady IS as chromc as that,
It IS pretty well beyond cure.
 SHELLEY AND KEA TS
February 17th, 1933
would appear that the revolutIon effected by Words-
I
t
worth was very far-reaclung Indeed. He was not the first
poet to present himself as the mspired prophet, nor Indeed
1S tlus qUlte Wordsworth's case. Blake may have pretended,

and wIth sonle clalln, to have penetrated mystenes of

heaven and hell, but no claIm that Blake tn1ght make
seems to descend upon the 'poet' m general; Blake sImply
had the VISIons, and made use of poetry to set them forth.
Scott, and Byron In Ius more popular works, were merely
socIety entertaIners. Wordsworth IS really the first, ill the
unsettled state of affaIrs llllus tIme, to annex new authonty
for the poet, to meddle with SOCIal affairs, and to offer a
new kind of rehglOus sentIment wruch It seemed the
pecuhar prerogat1ve of the poet to Interpret. SInce Matthew
Arnold made Ins SelectIons from Wordsworth's poetry, It
has become a commonplace to observe that Wordsworth's
true greatness as poet IS independent of Ins opllllons, of lus
theory of dIctIon or oflus nature-prulosophy, and that It 15
found In poems in wluch he has no ulterior motIve what-
ever. I am not sure that this CrItIcal eclect1cIsm cannot go
too far; that we canjudge and enjoy a man's poetry wlule
leavmg wholly out of account all of the things for wluch
he cared deeply, and on behalf of wmch he turned hls
poetry to account. If we dIsmlsS Wordsworth's mterests
87
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
and behefs, just how much, I wonder, remaIns? To retam
them, or to keep thenl ill IDlnd Instead of delIberately ex-
trudmg them ill preparatlOn for enjoymg IllS poetry, IS that
not necessary to appreCIate how great a poet W Otdsworth
really is? ConsIder, for m<;tance, one of the very finest poets
of the first part of the 111l1eteenth century: Landor He IS an
undoubted master of verse and prose; he IS the author of at
least one long poem wruch deserves to be nluch more read
than It IS, but rus reputatIon has never been such as to brIng
lum mto companson wIth Wordsworth or wIth eIther of
the younger poets wIth whom we have now to deal. It IS
not only by reason of a handful of poenlS or a number of
Isolated hues expressIve of deeper emotIon than that of
whIch Landor was capable, that we gIve Wordsworth rus
place; there IS sometrung 1l1tegral about such greatness, and
somethmg sigillficant 111 Ius place 111 the pattern of Iustory,
with which we have to reckon And 111 estlmat1l1g for our-
selves the greatness of a poet we have to take Into account
also the history ofllIs greatness. Wordsworth IS an essentIal
part oflustory; Landor only a Inagnificent by-product.
Shelley both had VIews about poetry and nlade use of
poetry for expressmg VIews. WIth Shelley we are struck
from the begmnmg by the nUlllber of dllngs poetry IS ex-
pected to do, from a poet who tells us, 111 a note 011 vcgeta-
riamsm, that 'the orang-outang perfectly resenlbles man
both m the order and the number of Ills teeth', we shall not
know what not to expect. The notes to Queen Mab ex-
press, It IS true, only the VIews of an mtelhgent and enthusI-
astIC schoolboy, but a schoolboy who knows how to wnte;
and throughout rus work, wInch IS of no s111all bulk for a
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
rus
short hfe, he does not, I thmk, let us forget that he took
ldeas senously. The Ideas of Shelley seem to DIe always to
be Ideas of adolescence-as there IS every reason why they
should be. And an enthuslasDl for Shelley seems to me also
to be an affaIr of adolescence: for lllost of us, Shelley has
marked an Intense penod before Inatunty, but for how
many does Shelley remaIn the companion of age? I confess
that I never open the volume of hIs poeins SImply because
I want to read poetry, but only WIth SOlne specIal reason for
reference I find Ills Ideas repellent; and the dIfficulty of
separatmg Shelley fronl hIs Ideas and behefs IS still greater
than WIth Wordsworth. And the bIOgraphical Interest
wInch Shelley has always excIted makes It dIfficult to read
the poetry WIthout relne111bermg the Inal1: and the man
was humourless, pedantIc, self-centred, and sometImes
almost a blackguard. Except for an occaslOnal flash of
/
shrewd sense, when he IS speakmg of someone else and not
concerned WIth Ius own affaIrS or WIth fine wnt111g, his
letters are msufferably dull. He Inakes an astol11slung con-
tra~t WIth the attractIve Keats. On the other hand, I adnut
that Wordsworth does not present a very pleasmg person-
ahty eIther, yet I not only enjoy Ius poetry as r cannot
enJoy Shelley's, but J el1Joy It InDre than when I first read
It. I can only fUll1ble (abatmg n1y prejUdICeS as best I can)
for reasons why Shelley's abuse of poetry does me more
VIOlence than Wordsworth's.
Shelley seems to have had to a !ugh degree the unusual
faculty of pasSlO11ate apprehension of abstract Ideas.
Whether he was not SOlnetlmeS confused about IllS own
feelmgs, as we may be tempted to beheve when confounded
89
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
by the plulosophy of Epipsychidion, is another matter. I do
not mean that Shelley had a metaphysIcal or pluIosoplucal
mind; his nund was In some ways a very confused one: he
was able to be at once and with the same enthusIasm an
eighteenth-century ratlOnahst and a cloudy Platolllst. But
abstractions could eXCIte m him strong emotIon. HIs views
remamed pretty fixed, though hts poetIc gIft matured. It IS
open to Us to guess whether lus ll1lnd would have matured
too; certamly, ill his last, and to my lllind greatest though
unfinished poem, The Triumph of Life, there IS eVIdence not
only of better wntmg than III any preVIOUS long poem,
but of greater WIsdom:

'Then what I thought was an old root that grew

To strange dIstortIon out of the hillSIde,
Was Indeed one of those (sic) deluded crew
And that the grass, which methought hung so wIde
And wlute, was but lus tlun dIscoloured haIr
And that the holes he vaInly sought to lude
Were or had been eyes ... '

There IS a precIsion of Image and an economy here that IS

new to Shelley. But so far as we can Judge, he never qUIte
escaped from the tutelage of Godwm, even when he S3;W
through the humbug as a man; and the weIght of Mrs.
Shelley must have been pretty heavy too. And, takIng Ius
work as It is, and WIthOUt vain conjectures about the future,
we may ask. IS It possIble to Ignore the \deas' In Shelley's
poems, so as to be able to enjoy the poetry?
Mr. I. A. Rtchards deserves the credIt of havIng done the
pIOneer work tn the problem of Behef ill the enjoyment of
90
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
poetry; and any methodical pursUIt of the problem I must
leave to rum and to those who are qualIfied after him. But
Shelley raIses the questIon In another form than that in
w1nch It presented Itself to Dle III a note on the subject
w1nch I appended to an essay on Dante. There, I was con-
cerned wIth two hypothetlcal readers, one of whom accepts
the phtlosophy of the poet, and the other of whonl rejects
It; and so long as the poets In questIon were such as Dante
and Lucretius, trus seenled to cover the lllatter. I am not a
Buddhtst, but SOlne of the early BuddInst scriptures affect
me as parts of the Old Testalncnt do; I can still enjoy
FItzgerald's Omar, though I do not hold that rather smart
and shallow VIew of life. But some of Shelley's VIews I
posltlvely dIslIke, and that hanlpers my enjoyment of the
poems in which they occur; and others seeln to me so
puenle that I cannot enjoy the poems In wInch they occur.
And I do not find It possIble to skip these passages and
satIsfy myself wIth the poetry In wmch no proposItion
pushes Itself forward to daIl11 assent. What complIcates the
problem still further IS that 111 poetry so fluent as Shelley's
there IS a good deal which IS just bad jingling. The follow-
lllg, for Instance:
'On a battle-trumper's blast
I Bed hither, fast, fast, fast,
MId the darkness upward cast.
From the dust of creeds outworn,
From the tyrant's banner torn,
GatherIng round me, onward borne,
There was nungled many a cry-
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!'
91
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
Walter Scott seidoin fell as low as tlus, though Byron more
often But m such lInes, harsh and untunable, one IS all the
more affronted by the ideas, the Ideas wInch Shelley bolted
whole and never assImIlated, vIsIble In the catchwords of
creeds outworn, tyrants and pnests, wluch Shelley em-
ployed WIth such reiteratlOn. And the bad parts of a poem
can contannnate the whole, so that when Shelley rIses to
the heIghts, at the end of the poenl:

'To suffer woes wluch Hope dunks Infin1te;

To forgIve wrongs darker than death or nIght;
To defy Power, whIch seeins oinnipotent;
To love, and bear, to hope tIll Hope creates
From ItS own wreck the tIung It contemplates. '

hnes to the content of wInch bebef IS neIther gIven nor

demed, we are unable to enJoy them fully. One does not
expect a poem to be equally sustaIned throughout; and ill
some of the most successful long poelns there IS a relatlOn
of the more tense to the more relaxed passages, wInch IS
Itself part of the pattern of beauty. But good hues amongst
bad can never gIve more than a regretful pleasure. In read.
mg Epipsychidion I am thoroughly gravelled by lInes lIke:

'True love ill tills dIffers from dross or clay,

That to ruVlde IS not to take away ...
I never was attached to that great sect
Whose doctnne IS, that each one should select
Out of the crowd, a mlstress or a fnend
And all the rest, though fatr and WIse, commend
To cold oblivlon...'
 SHELLEY AND KBATS

so that when I come, a few hues later, upon a lovely image

like.
'A VISIon hke Incarnate Apnl, warnIng
WIth smIles and tears, Fro~t the anatomy
Into hIs SUlnlner grave,'

I am as much shocked at finding It in such IndIfferent COln-

pany as pleased by findmg It at all. And we InLlst adnut that
Shelley's finest long poeIns, as well as 1>ome of IllS worst,
are those 111 wInch he took IllS Ideas very senously.1 It was
these Ideas that blew the 'fadl11g coal' to hfe; 110 more than;
WIth Wordsworth, tan we Ignore them WIthout getting
sometlnng no more Shelley's poetry than a wax effigy
would be Shelley.
Shelley said that he dlshked didactlc poetry, but rus own
poetry IS clllefly dIdactIc, though (In fmrness) not exactly m
the sense 111 wluch he was USIng that word. Shelley's pro-
fessed VIew of poetry IS not russln111ar to that of W ords-
worth. The language In wInch he clothes It 111 the 'Defence
of Poetry' IS very magluloqucnt, and WIth the exception of
the magmficent image wInch Joyce quotes somewhere In
Ulysses ('the mind In creatIon IS as a fachng coal, wluch
some lllvlsible mfiucncc, hke an Inconstant Wind, awakens
to transItory brightness') it seelns to Ine an InferIor pIece of
WrItl11g to W ordswort1{' s great preface. He says other fine
thIngs too; but the follOWIng IS more sigluficant of the way
in wInch he relates poetry to the socIal activIty of the age.
IHe dId not, for Instance, appear to take his Ideas very seriously in
The Witch of Atlas, whlch, wlth all Its charm, I clunk we may dlSlruss
asa tnfle

93
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
4The most unfailmg herald, companion and follower of
the awakemng of a great people to work a beneficIal change
in opmion or mstltUtlOn, is poetry. At such perIods there is
an accumulatlon of the power of commurucatmg and re-
celvmg Intense and Impassioned conceptlOl1S respectIng
man and nature. The persons In whom trus power resldes
may often, so far as regards many portions of thelr nature,
have little apparent correspondence with that splnt of good
of wInch they are the mlmsters. But even wlulst they deny
and abjure, they are yet cOlnpelled to serve, the power
wInch is seated on the throne of their own soul.'
I know not whether Shelley had In mmd, In IllS reserva..
tIons about 'the persons In whom tlns power resldes', the
defects of Byron or those of Wordsworth; he lS hardly
hkely to have been contemplating his own. But tills IS a
statement, and is elther true or false. If he IS suggestmg that
great poetry always tends to accompany a popular 'change
m oplnlon or mstttutlOn', that we know to be false. Whether
at such penods the power of' commurucatIng and recelving
intense and 1mpassioned conceptions respectIng man and
nature' accumulates IS doubtful; one would expect people
to be too busy m other ways. Shelley does not appear, ill
tlns passage, to Imply that poetry Itself helps to operate
these changes, and accumulate this power, nor does he
assert that poetry IS a usual by-product of change of these
bnds; but he does affirm some relation between the two;
and ill consequence, a parncular relation between his own
poetry and the events of lus own time, from wInch It
would follow that the two throw hght upon each other.
TIns is perhaps the first appearance of the ktnetic or revolu~
94
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
cionary theory of poetry; for Wordsworth dtd not general-
ise to this point.
We may now return to the questlon how far It pos- IS

sible to enjoy Shelley's poetry without approving the use

to wInch he put It, that is, without shanng IllS VIews and
sympatlues. Dante, of course, was about as thoroughgoing
a chdactlClst as one could find; and I have nlaintalned else-
where, and still maintain, that it is not essentIal to share
Dante's behefs in order to enJoy IllS poetry.l If In thIs In-
stance I may appear to be extcndIng the tolerance of a
bIassed mind, the example ofLucretlus wIll do as well: one
may share the essential behefs of Dante and yet enjoy
LucretlUs to the full. Why then should thIs general in-
demmty not extend to Wordsworth and to Shelley? Here
Mr. Rlchards comes very patly to our help:2
'ColerIdge, when he ren1arkcd that a "wIlhng suspenSIon
of disbehef" accompanlcd much poetry, was notmg an
Important fact, but not qUIte in the happiest terms, for we
are neither aware of a dIS belIef nor voluntarIly suspendmg
ltin these cases. It IS better to say that the question ofbehef
or dtsbelief, in the Intellectual sense, never arises when we
are readmg well. If unfortunately It does arIse, eIther
through the poet's fault or our own, we have for [he
moment ceased to be reading and have become astronomers,

lMr. A. E. Housman has affirmed (The Name altd Nature of Poetry,

p. 34) that 'good relIgIOUS poetry, whether ill Keble or Dante or Job, 18
hkely to be most Justly apprec1ated al1d most dlscnmmatmgly rehshed
by the undevout'. There IS a hard atom of truth In tlns, but 1f taken
hterally It would end m nonsense.
!Practical Criticism, p. 277.
9S
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
or theologIans, or 1110rahsts, persons engaged m qUIte a
dIfferent type of aCtlVIty.'
We may be pennltted to Infer, III so far as the dIstaste of
a person hke myself for Shelley's poetry IS not attnbutable
to Irrelevant prejudIces or to a slmple bhnd spot, but IS due
to a pecuhanty 111 the poetry and not III the reader, that It IS
not the presentatlon of behefs wInch I do not hold, Of-to
put the case as extrell1ely as posslble-ofbehefs that eXCIte
my abhorrence, that Inakes the dIfficulty. Stl1lless IS It that
Shelley IS dehberately Inaklng use of hIS poetIc gIfts to
propagate a doctnne, for Dante and Lucretius did the same
tiling. I suggest that the pOSItIOn IS sOlnewhat as follows.
When the doctr111e, theory, behef, or 'vIew of hfe' pre-
sented m a poenl IS one wInch the Irund of the reader can
accept as coherent, mature, and founded on the facts of
experIence, It Interposes no obstacle to the reader's enJoy-
ment, whether It be one that he accept or deny, approve or
deprecate When It IS one wInch the reader rejects as
chIldish or feeble, It may, for a reader of well-developed
mmd, set up an almost complete check. I observe 1ll passmg
that we may dIstmgUlsh, but WIthout precisIOll, between
poets who employ theIr verbal, rhythnuc and Imagmative
gIft m the serVIce of Ideas willch they hold passlOnately,
and poets who employ the Ideas wInch they hold with more
or less settled convictlon as nlatenal for a poenl; poets may
vary mdefinitely between these two hypothetIcal extremes,
and at what pomt we place any partIcular poet must remam
mcapable of exact calculatIon. And I am Inchned to thmk
that the reason why I was mtoXlcated by Shelley's poetry
at the age of fifteen, and now find It almost unreadable,
96
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
is not so much that at that age I accepted his ideas, and
have since come to reject them, as that at that age 'the ques-
tion ofbehef or dlsbehef', as Mr. RIchards puts It, did not
ame. It IS not SO much that thirty years ago I was able to
read Shelley under an IllusIon wInch experience has dis-
Slpated, as that because the questIOn of behef or dIsbelief
did not arIse I was in a much better positIon to enJoy the
poetry. I can only regret that Shelley did not hve to put Ius
poetIc gifts, wInch were certainly of the first order, at the
serVice of more tenable beliefs-wluch need not have been,
for my purposes, behefs nlore acceptable to me.
There IS, however, more to the problem than that. I was
struck by 'a sentence In Mr. Aldous Huxley's IntroductIOn
to D. H. Lawrence's Letters. 'How bItterly', he says of
Lawrence, 'he loathed the Wilhehn-Meisterish VIew of love
as an educatlon, as a means to culture, a Sandow-exercIser
for the soul!' PrecIsely; Lawrence in my opinion was nght;
but that view runs through the work of Goethe, and If you
mshke It, what are you gOIng to do about Goethe? Does
'culture' requrre that we nlake (what Lawrence never did,
and I respect him for It) a dehberate effort to put out of
mmd all our convIctions and passionate behefs about hfe
when we SIt down to read poetry? If so, so much the worse
for culture. Nor, on the other hand, may we dIstingUIsh, as
people sometImes do, betweell the occasions on which a
particular poet is 'being a poet' and the occaSIOns on which
he IS 'bemg a preacher'. That is too facile. If you attempt to
emt Shelley, or Wordsworth or Goethe in trus way, there
is no one point at wInch you must stop rather than another,
and what you get in the end by this process IS something
G
97 E.U.P.
 SHELLBY AND KEATS
which is not Shelley, or Wordsworth or Goethe at all,
but a mere unrelated heap of charming stanzas, the deb!ls
of poetry rather than the poetry Itself. And by using, or
abusmg, tms prInCIple of IsolatIon you are in danger of
seekmg from poetry some Illusory pure enjoyment, of
separatmg poetry from everytlllng else In the world, and
cheatmg yourself out of a great deal that poetry has to give
to your development.
Some years ago I trIed to make the pOInt, in a paper on
Shakespeare, that Dante possessed a 'plulosophy' In a sense
111 wmch Shakespeare held none, or none of any Importance.
I have reason to beheve that I dId not succeed In maktng the
point clear at all. Surely, people say, Shakespeare held a
'phtlosophy', even though It cannot be formulated; surely
our readmg of Shakespeare gIves us a deeper and WIder
understandmg ofhfe and death. And although I was anXIOUS
not to gIve such an Impression, I seem to have gIven some
readers to think that I was thereby estImatIng the poetry of
Shakespeare as of less value than Dante's. People tend to
beheve that there IS Just some one essence of poetry, for
whIch we can find the formula, and that poets can be
ranged according to theIr posseSSIon of a greater or less
quantIty of tills essence. Dante and LucretIUS expounded
exphcIt phtlosophtes, as Shakespeare did not. ThIs SImple
dlstmct!on is very clear, but not necessarIly hIghly Im-
portant. What IS Important is what dIstIngUIshes all of
these poets from such poets as Wordsworth, Shelley and
Goethe. And here agam I thInk that Mr. Richards can
throw some hght on the matter.
I beheve that for a poet to be also a plulosopher he would
98
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
have to be virtually two men; I cannot think of any
example of this thorough schIzophrenia, nor can I sec any-
dung to be gaIned by It: the work IS better performed in-
side twO skulls than one. Colendge IS the apparent exalnple,
but I beheve that he was only able to exerCIse the one
activity at the expense of the other. A poet Il1ay borrow a
pInlosophy or he Inay do wIthout one. It is when he
pInlosopmses upon rus own poetic InsIght that he IS apt to go
wrong. A great deal of the weakness of modern poetry IS
accounted for 111 a few pages of Mr. RIchards's short essay,
Science and Poetry; and although he has there D. H. Law-
rence under speCIfic exaInIllatloll, a good dcal of what he
says apphcs to the Romantic generation as well. 'To dIS ....
nngUlsh" he says, 'allll1tultiOll of an enlotion froll1 an in-
tultlon by It, is not always easy.' I belIeve that Wordsworth
was InclIned to the same error of wInch Mr. RIchards
finds Lawrence gUllty. The case of Shelley IS rather dif-
ferent: he borrowed ideas-which, as I have saId, IS per-
fectly legItImate-but he borrowed shabby ones, and when
he had got them he muddled them up w1th his OW1l1l1tUl-
tions. Of Goethe perhaps it is truer to say that he dabbled
ill both plulosophy and poetry and nlade no great success
of elther; rus true role was that of the nlall of the world and
sage-a La Rochefoucauld, a La Bruyere, a Vauvellargues.
On the other hand, I should conSIder it a false silnphfica-
tlon to present any of these poets, or Lawrcnce of whom
Mr. Richards was spcalang, sitllply a'i a case of individual
error, and leave 1t at that. It is not a WIlful paradox to assert
that the greatness of each of these writers IS Indissolubly
attached to lus practice of the error, of his own speCIfic
99
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
variation of the error. Their place In history, their import-
ance for theu own and subsequent generations, IS involved
mit; tlus 15 not a purely personal matter. They would not
have been as great as they were but for the hlUitatlOns
whIch prevented them from beIng greater than they were
They belong wIth the numbers of the great heretIcs of all
nmes. This glVes them a slgmficance qUIte other than that
ofKeats, a singular figure In a vaned and remarkable period.
Keats seems to me also a great poet. I am not happy
about Hyperion: It contams great hnes, but I do not know
whether It IS a great poem. The Odes-especially perhaps
the Ode to Psyche-are enough for hts reputatIon. But I
am not so much concerned wIth the degree of Ius greatness
as WIth Its land; and Its land IS mamfested more clearly m hts
Letters than m hIs poems; and In contrast WIth the lands
we have been reviewmg, It seeins to me to be much more
the hnd of Shakespeare.1 The Letters are certaInly the most
notable and the most Important ever wntten by any
English poet. Keats' 5 egotism, 5uch as it IS, is that of youth
whIch tlme would have redeemed. H1s letters are what
letters ought to be; the fine thmgs come m unexpectedly,
neither mtroduced nor shown out, but between tnae and
trIfle. Hls observatlOns suggested by Wordsworth's Gypsey,
m a letter to Batley of 1817, are of the finest quahty of
CrItlCIsm, and the deepest penetration:
'It seems to me that If Wordsworth had thought a htde

11 have not read Mr Murry's Keats and Shakespeare' perhaps I say no

more than Mr Murry has sald better and more exhaustively 1ll that
book. I am sure that he has medItated the matter much more deeply
than I have.
100
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
deeper at that moment, he would not have wntten the
poem at all. I should judge It to have been written in one
of the most comfortable Inoods of Ius hfe-It IS a kmd of
sketchy Intellectual landscape, not a search for truth.'
And in a letter to the saIne correspondent a few day~
later he says:
'In passmg, however, I must say one thIng that has
pressed upon me lately, and Increased my Hmmhty and
capablhty of subnusslon-and that IS tlus truth-Men of
Gemus are great as certaln ethereal chenucals operatmg on
the Mass of neutral Intellect-but they have not any mdl-
vlduahty, any determined character-I would call the top
and head of those who have a proper selfMen ofPower.'l
This IS the sort of remark, which, when made bya man so
young as was Keats, can only be called the result of genius.
There IS hardly one statement of Keats about poetry,
wInch, when considered carefully and wIth due allowance
for the dIfficulties of communication, will not be found to
be true; and what IS more, true for greater and nlore mature
poetry than anythIng that Keats ever wrote.
But I am being tempted into a descant upon the general
brilliance and profunchty of the observations scattered
through Keats's letters, and should probably be tempted
further into remarking upon their merIt as models of cor-
respondence (not that one should ever take a model m
letter-wntmg) and theIr revelation of a charmmg per-
sonahty. My design, in this very narrow frame, has been
IMr. Herbert Read quotes tlus passage in his Form In Modem Poetry,
but pursues Ius speculatIons to a pomt to wInch I would not wuhngly
followhnn.
101
 SHELLEY AND KEATS
only to refer to them as evidence of a very dIfferent kmd of
poetIc mind than any of those I have just been considermg.
Keats's saymgs about poetry, thrown out in the course of
pnvate correspondence, keep pretty close to mtultion; and
they have no apparent beanng upon his own times, as he
himself does not appear to have taken any absorbing mterest
m pubhc affaIrs-though when he dId turn to such matters,
he brought to bear a shrewd and penetrating intellect.
Wordsworth had a very dehcate sensibIlIty to social Me
and social changes. Wordsworth and Shelley both theonse.
Keats has no theory, and to have formed one was Irrelevant
to his mterests, and ahen to his mind. If we take either
Wordsworth or Shelley as representatIve of rus age, as
belllg a VOIce of the age, we cannot so take Keats. But we
cannot accuse Keats of any withdrawal, or refusal; he was
merely about rus bUSIness. He had no theones, yet ill the
sense appropnate to the poet, In the same sense, though to
a lesser degree than Shakespeare, he had a 'prulosopluc'
mmd. He was occupIed only with the highest use ofpoetry;
but that does not imply that poets of other types may not
nghdy and sometimes by oblIgatIon be concerned about
the other uses.

t02
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
Even if the dehght we get from Arnold's writings, prose
and verse, be moderate, yet he is in some respects the most
satIsfactory man of letters of his age. You remember the
famous judgement which he pronounced upon the poets of
the epoch whIch I have just been considenng; a Judgement
which, at its ume, must have appeared starthngly mde-
pendent. 'The Enghsh poetry of the first quarter of dllS
century,' he says In hIs essay on The Function of Criticism,
'WIth plenty of energy, plenty of creatIve force, dId not
know enough.' We should be nght too, I think, if we added
that Carlyle, Rusk1n, Tennyson, Browrung, w1th plenty of
energy, plenty of creauve force, had not enough WIsdom.
The1r culture was not always well-rounded; the1r know-
ledge of the human soul was often partial and often shallow.
Arnold was not a man of vast or exact scholarship, and he
had ne1ther walked 1n hell nor been rapt to heaven, but
what he dId know, of books and men, was in its way well..
balanced and well-marshalled. After the prophetIC frensles
of the end of the eIghteenth and the beginnmg of the rune-
teenth century, he seenlS to come to us sayIng: 'TillS poetry
IS very fine, It IS opulent and careless, It IS sometllnes pro-
found, It IS hIghly ongmal; but you w1ll never estabhsh and
mamtam a tradluon If you go on in thIs haphazard way.
There are mmor VIrtues whIch have flOUrIshed better at
other times and In other countries: these you must gIve
heed to, these you must apply, in your poetry, In your
prose, m your conversatlOn and your way of hVIng; else
you condemn yourselves to enjoy ~nly fitful and transIent
bursts ofhterary bnllia,nce, and you WIll never, as a people,
a natIon, a race, have a fully formed tradItIon and person-
104
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
ality.' However well-nourished we may be on previous
hterature and previous culture, we cannot afford to neglect
Arnold.
I have elsewhere tried to point out some of Arnold's
weaknesses when he ventured into departments of thought
for wmch his mmd was unsuIted and ill-eqUIpped. In
plnlosophy and theology he was an undergraduate; in
rehglOn a Phtlistlne. It IS a pleasanter task to define a man's
hmttations withtn the field In whtch he is qualified; for
there, the definition ofhnutatlOn may be at the same time a
preelSlon of the writer's excellences. Arnold's poetry has
little techrucal interest. It is acadeffilc poetry in the best
sense; the best frUIt which can Issue from the promise shown
by the pnze-poem. When he IS not SImply bemg htmself,
he IS most at ease in a master's gown: Empedocles on Etna is
one of the finest acadenuc poems ever wntten. He tned
other robes which became him less well; I cannot but thmk
of Tristram and Iseult and The Forsaken Merman as charades.
Sohrab and Rustum is a fine piece, but less fine than Gebir,
and in the claSSIcal hne Landor, WIth a finer ear, can beat
Arnold every tlme. But Arnold IS a poet to whom one
readIly returns. It IS a pleasure, certamly, after aSsoclatmg
WIth the riff-raff of the early part of the century, to be in
the company of a lnan qui sait se conduire; but Arnold IS
somethmg more than an agreeable Professor of Poetry.
With all hts fastIdIousness and superciliousness and offici-
ality, Arnold is more Intimate WIth us than Brownmg,
more intimate than Tennyson ever IS except at moments,
as in the passlonate flights m In Memoriam. He is the poet
and CrItIC of a penod of false stablht, Alllns Wrltlllg In the
105
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
kind of Literature and Dogma seems to me a valiant attempt
to dodge the issue, to mediate between Newman and
Huxley; but ~his poetry, the best of It, is too honest to
employ any but ms genuIne feehngs of unrest, lonehness
and dIssatIsfaction. Some of lns hIDltatlons are mamfest
enough. In his essay on The study of Poetry he has several
paragraphs on Burns. and for an Enghshman and an
Enghshman of Ius ttme, Arnold understands Bums. very
well. Perhaps I have a partlahty for small oppreSSlve
natlonahtles hke the Scots that makes Arnold's patronismg
manner lrntate me; and certatnly I suspect Arnold of help-
ing to fix the wholly mlstaken notIon of Burns as a smgular
untutored Enghsh dJ.alect po_et, lD.S.tead of as a decadelltre-
presentatlve of a great ahen trarution. But he says (takIng
occasion to rebuke the country 111 which Burns hved) that
'no one can deny that It IS of advantage to a poet to deal
WIth a beautlful world'; and tms remark strIkes me as be-
traymg a hmitatlOn, It IS an advantage to manland m
general to hve m a beautiful world; that no one can doubt.
But for the poet IS It so Important? We Inean all sorts of
thmgs, I know, by Beauty. But the essential advantage
for a poet IS not, to have a beautlful world WIth wruch
to deal: It IS to be able to see beneath both beauty and
ugIiness~ 'to see the boredom, and the horror, and the
glory.
The VISlOn of the horror and the glory was denIed to
Arnold, but he knew something of the boredom. He speaks
much of the 'consolatory' power of Wordsworth's poetry,
and it IS m connexion WIth Wordsworth that he makes
many ofms Wisest observattons about poetry.
106
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
'But when will Europe's latter hour
Agam find Wordsworth's heahng power?
Others wIll teach us how to dare,
And agamst fear our breast to steel:
Others wIll strengthen us to bear-
But who, all who, wIll make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly-
But who, hke hIm, wIll put It by?'l
Hts tone is always of regret, of loss of faIth, lUstabllity,
nostalgIa:
'And love, Iflove, of happIer men.
Ofhapplet: men, for they, at least,
Have dreamed two human hearts mIght blend
In one, and were through faIth released
From IsolatIon without end
Prolonged, nor knew, although no less
Alone than thou, thelr lonehness.'
Tlus IS a famihar enough sentIment; and perhaps a more
robust comment on the situatIOn IS, that If you don't hke It,
you can get on with it; and the verse Itself IS not lughly
chstingUlshed. Marguerite, at best, IS a shadowy figure,
neither very paSslOnately desired nor very closely observed,
a mere pretext for lamentation. His personal emonon 18
mdeed most convincing when he deals WIth an 1mpersonal
II do not quote these hnes as good verse They are very carelessly
Wrltten The fourth hue is particularly clumsy, the SIXth has a bathetic
repetltlon. To 'put by' the cloud of human descmy IS not a fehctcous
expresslOn. The dashes at the end of two !mes are a symptom of weak-
ness, hke Arnold's irntating use ofItahclsed words.
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
subject. And when we know his poetry, we are not sur..
prlsed that in his criticism he tells us httle or nodung about
ms expenence ofwntlng it, and that he 1S so httle concerned
with poetry from the maker's pOInt of view. One feels that
the WrItmg of poetry brought rum httle of that excItement,
that joyful loss of self m the workmansInp of art, that ill-
tense and transItory rehef wInch comes at the moment of
completlOn and 1S the chief reward of creatIve work. As
we can forget, m readmg rus Crltlclsm, that he IS a poet
mmself, so it IS all the more necessary to rem1nd ourselves
that rus creative and rus cntical Wrltlngs are essentially the
work of the same man. The same weakness, the same
necessIty for sometrung to depend UPQll,- which make lum
an acadeIDlc Eoet Inake rum an academIC cntiC.
From tIme to tnne, every hundred years or so, It IS
desirable that some CrIt1C shall appear to reV1ew the past ~lf
our hterature, and set the poets and the poems 1n a new
order. ThIs task IS not one of revolutlOn but of readJust-
ment. What we observe 1S partly the same scene, but ill a
chfferent and more dIstant perspectIve; there are new and
strange objects m the foreground, to be drawn accurately ill
proportlon to the more famlhar ones wruch now approach
the honzon, where all but the most eminent becOIne m-
VISIble to the naked eye. The exhaustlve crinc, arlned with
a powerful glass, Will be able to sweep the d1stance and gam
an acquamtance WIth nunute objects in the landscape WIth
wruch to compare mmute objects close at hand; he will be
able to gauge mcely the posltlOn and proportion of t4e
objects surrounding us, in the whole of the vast panorama.
Trus metaphoncal fancy only represents the 1deal; but
108
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
Dryden, Johnson and Arnold have each performed the
task as well as human fraIlty WIll allow. The majorIty of
cr1tics can be expected only to parrot the opiruons of the
last master of cntlcIsnl; anl0ng more Independent mmds a
perIod of destructIon, of preposterous over-estImatIon, and
of succeSSIve fashions takes place, untIl a new authority
comes to Introduce some order. And It IS not merely the
passage of tIme and accumulatIon ofnew artIstIc experIence,
nor the IneradIcable tendency of the great majorIty of men
to repeat the opInions of those few who have taken the
trouble to clunk, nor the tendency of a mmble but myopic
mmonty to progenerate heterodoXies, that makes new
assessments necessary. It IS that no generatIOn is Interested in
Artmquite the same way as anyother; each generation, hke
each mdivIdual, brIngs to the contemplanon of art Its own
categones of apprecIatIOn, makes Its own demands upon
art, and has its own uses for art. 'Pure' artistic appreclanon
15 to my thInkIng only an Ideal, when not merely a figment,
and must be, so long as the appreCIation of art IS an affaIr of
hnuted and transient human bemgs eXlstmg m space and
time. Both arnst and audience are hnuted. There IS for each
time, for each artist, a kind of alloy required to make the
metal workable mto art; and each generatIon prefers Its
own alloy to any other. Hence each new master of CrIti-
CIsm performs a useful serVIce merely by the fact that his
errors are of a dtfferent kmd from the last; and the longer
the sequence of cntics we have, the greater amount of cor-
rection is pOSSIble. I

It was deSIrable after the surpnsmg, varIed and abundant

contnbution of the Romantic Penod that tills task of
109
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
criticism should be undertaken again. N otbing that was
done ill tlus period was of the nature of what Arnold was
able to do, because that was not the tIme in wruch It could
be done. Coleridge, Lamb, Hazhtt, De QUIncey, dId work
of great Importance upon Shakespeare and the Ehzabethan
dramatists, and dIscovered new treasure wruch they left for
others to calculate. The mstruments of Arnold's time
appear now, of course, very antIquated: Ius was the epoch
of Ward's English Poets, and of The Golden Treasury, bIrth-
day albums and calendars WIth a poetical quotatlOn for
each day.jAmold was not Dryden or Johnson; he was an
Inspector of Schools and he became Professor of Poetry.
He was an educator. The valuatIon of the RomantIc poets,
ill academIC CIrcles, is stlll very largely that wIDch Arnold
made. It was rIght, It was Just, It was necessary for Its time;
and of course It had Its defects./It IS tInged by lus own un-
certaInty, lus own apprehensIons, rus own VIew of what it
was best that hIS own tlme should beheve; and It IS very
much influenced by Ins religious attitude! HIs taste is not
comprehenSIve. He seems to have chosen, when he could-
for much of Ins work 15 occasional-those subjects in con-
neXIOn WIth wInch he could best express Ius VIews about
morals and SOCIety: Wordsworth-perhaps not qUIte as
Wordsworth would have recognised himself-Heme,
AmIel, Guerm. He was capable of learning from France and
from Germany. But the use to wruch he put poetry was
hmIted; he wrote about poets when they prOVIded a pretext
for his sermon to the Bntish pubhc; and he was apt to thmk
of the greatness of poetry rather than of Its genumeness.
There IS no poetry which Arnold experIenced more
lIO
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
deeply than that of Wordsworth; the hnes which r quoted
above are not so much a critIcism of Wordsworth as a
testlIDorual of what Wordsworth had done for him. We
may expect to find in the essay on Wordsworth, if any-
where, a statement of what poetry meant to Arnold. It IS
in Ins essay on Wordsworth that occurs Ills famous de-
firution: 'Poetry is at bottom a cnticism ofhfe.' At bottom:
that IS a great way down; the bottom IS the bottom. At the
bottom of the abyss is what few ever see, and what those
cannot bear to look at for long; and it IS not a 'criticism of
hfe'. If we mean hfe as a whole-not that Arnold ever saw
life as a whole-from top to bottom, can anythmg that we
can say of it ultimately, of that awful mystery, be called
cnttcIsm? We brIng back very lIttle from our rare descents,
and that IS not CntlCISln. Arnold might Just as well have
saId that Chnstian worship IS at bottom a critIcIsm of the
TrinIty. We see better what Arnold's words amount to
when we recogruse that his own poetry IS deCIdedly critIcal
poetry. A poem hke Heine's Grave IS CrItIcIsm, and very fine
critiCIsm too; and a kind of critICISm wIDch IS Jusnfied be-
cause It could not be made In prose. SometImes Arnold's
critiCIsm IS on a lower level:
'One morn, as through Hyde Park we walked,
My friend and I, by chance we talked,
Of Lessing' s fanled Laocoon.'1
lIt may be sald of Amold's mferIor work, as was sald of that of an
InferIor poet, that he faggoted rus verses as they fell, And If they
rhymed and rattled, all was well. Of course we do not Judge Arnold as
a poet by such effUSions as thiS, but we cannot be blamed for formmg a
lower opiruon of hiS capaclty for self-criocism. He need not have
printed them.
lIT
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
The poem about HeIne IS good poetry for the same
reason that 1t 15 good CrIt1cism: because He1ne IS one of the
personae, the masks, behmd which Arnold IS able to go
through rus performance. The reason why some Cflticism
15 good (1 do not care to generahse here about all CrItICIsm)
IS that the CrItic assumes, In away, the personahty of the
author whom he CrItICIses, and through trus personality IS
able to speak WIth rus own voice. Arnold's Wordsworth is
as much hke Arnold as he IS hke Wordsworth. SometImes a
CrItIc may choose an author to CrItICIse, a role to assume, as
far as pOSSIble the antIthesis to rumself, a personahty whlch
has actuahsed all that has been suppressed ill hinlself; we can
sometimes arrIve at a very satIsfactory IntImacy with our
anti-masks.
'The greatness of a poet', Arnold goes on to say, 'Ites ill
rus powerful and beautIful application of Ideas to hfe.' Not
a happy way of puttlllg It, as If Ideas were a lotion for the
mflamed skm of suffermg humanIty. But It seems to be
what Arnold thought he was dOIng. He presently quahfies
dus assertion by pointmg out that 'morals' must not be
mterpreted too narrowly:
'Morals are often treated ill a narrow and false fashIOn;
they are bound up WIth systems of thought and behef
wInch have had thetr day; they are fallen mto the hands of
pedants and profeSSIOnal dealers; they grow ttresome to
some of us.'
Alas! for morals as Arnold conceived them; they are
grown still more t1reso~e. He then remarks sIgmficantly m
speakmg of the 'wordswortluans':
'The W ordsworcluans are apt to pratse him for.the wrong
112
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
thmgs, and to lay far too much stress upon what they call
lus plulosophy. Hls poetry IS the reahty, rus p1ulosophy-so
far, at least, as It may put on the form and habIt of a
"SCIentIfic systell1 of thought", and the more that It puts
them 011-1S the IllusIon. Perhaps we shall one day learn to
make this propositIon general, and to say. Poetry IS the
reahty, plulosophy the 11luslOn.'
Tills seems to me a stnkIng, dangerous and subversIve
assertion. Poetry is at bottom a CrIticIsm of hfe; yet pInlo-
sophy IS llluslOn; the reahty is the critIcIsm of hfe. Arnold
IUlght have read LeSSIng's famed Laocoon with a VIew to
dlsentanghng his own confusions.
We must remember that for Arnold, as for everyone
else, 'poetry' meant a partIcular selectIon and order of poets.
It meant, as for everyone else, the poetry that he hked, that
he re-read; when we COlne to the pOInt of making a state-
ment about poetry, It IS the poetry that sticks m our mmds
that weIghts that statement. And at the same tIme we
notice that Arnold has come to an Op1lllOn about poetry
chfferent from that of any of rus
predecessors. For W ords-
worth and for ~helley poetry was a verucle fot one land of
prulosophy or another, but the phllosophy was somethmg
beheved m. For Arnold the best poetry supersedes both
rehgIon and plulosophy. I have tned to Indtcate the results
of this conjuring trIck elsewhere.1 The most generahsed
form of my own VIew IS SImply tIns: that nothIng in tlus
world or the next IS a substitute for anythmg else, and If you
find that you must do wIthout something, such as rehglous
falm or phtlosopluc hehe, then you must just do Wlthout It.
1 'Arnold and Pater', In Selected Essays.
H 113 E.U.P.
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
I can persuade myself, I find, that some of the dungs that I
can hope to get are better worth havIng than some of the
thmgs I cannot get; or I may hope to alter myself so as to
want dIfferent dungs; but I cannot persuade nlyself that It
IS the same desires that are satisfied, or that I have m effect
the same trung under a dIfferent nalne.
A French fnend...said of the late York Powell of Oxford:
'II etait aussi tranquille dans son manque de foi que Ie mystique
dans sa croyance.' You could not say that of Arnold; lus
charm and rus mterest are largely due to the painful posi-
tIon that he occupied between faIth and rusbehe LIke
many people the vanisillng of whose rehgious faith has left
behInd only habIts, he placed an exaggerated emphasIs upon
morals. Such people often confuse morals with theIr own
good habIts, the result of a sensIble upbnnging, prudence,
and the absence of any very powerful temptatIon; but I do
not speak of Arnold or of any partIcular person, for only
God knows. Morals for the saInt are only a prehmmary
matter; for the poet a secondary matter. How Arnold finds
morals m poetry IS not clear. He tells us that:
'A poetry of revolt agamst moral ideas is a poetry of
revolt agamst life; a poetry of llldtfference towards moral
Ideas IS a poetry of IndIfference towards life,' but the
statement left In suspenslOn, and WIthout Arnold's tIlus-
tratmg It by examples of poetIC revolt and poetIc m-
difference, seems to have httle value. A httle later he tells us
why Wordsworth IS great:
'Wordsworth's poetry IS great because of the extra-
ordinary power WIth wInch Wordsworth feels the joy
offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us ill the SImple
114
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
primary affectlOlls and duties, and because of the extra-
ordmary power with wInch, In case after case, he shows us
tlusJoy, and renders It so as to make us share It.'
It IS not clear whether 'the simple prImary affectIOns and
dutIes' (whatever they are, and however chstmgwshed
from the secondary and the complex) is meant to be all
expansIOn of 'nature', or another joy st.l.8.Ii:radded: I rather
think the latter, and take 'nature' to mean the Lake DIS-
trict. I am not, furthermore, sure of the meanmg of the con-
junctlOn of two quite dIfferent reasons for Wordsworth's
greatness: one beIng the power wIth wmch Wordsworth
feels the JOY of nature, the other the power by wmch-. he
makes us share it. In any case, it IS defimtely a commumca:
han theory, as any theory of the poet as teacher, leader, or
priest IS bound to be. One way of testIng It IS to ask why
other poets are great Can we say that Shakespeare's poetry
IS great because of the extraordInary power wIth wmch

Shakespeare feels estimable feehngs, and because of the

extraordmary power wIth which he makes us share them?
I enJoy Shakespeare's poetry to the full extent of my
capaCIty for enjOYIng poetry; but I have not the shghtest
approach to certatnty that I share Shakespeare's feehngs;
nor am I very much concerned to know whether I do or
not. In short, Arnold's account seems to me to err ill
puttmg the enlphasls upon the poet's feehngs, instead of
upon the poetry. We can say that in poetry there IS com-
mUl11Cation from writer to reader, but should not proceed
from trus to trunk of the poetry as bemg pnmanly the
vehicle of conlmurucatlOn. Communlcanon may take
place, but will explaIn nothmg. Or Arnold's statement may
lIS
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
be cnticised In another way, by asking whether W ords-
worth would be a less great poet, If he felt With extra-
ordmary power the horror offered to us In nature, and the
boredom and sense of restrlctlOn In the sImple pnmary
affectIOns and dutIes? Arnold seelns to tlunk that because,
as he says, Wordsworth 'deals With more of life' than
Burns, Keats and Heine, he IS deahng WIth more of moral
Ideas. A poetry whIch IS concerned With moral Ideas, It
would appear, IS concerned WIth lIfe; and a poetry con-
cerned WIth lIfe IS concerned WIth moral Ideas.
ThIS IS not the place for dISCUSSing the deplorable moral
and relIgIOus effects of confusmg poetry and morals In the
attempt to find a substItute for relIgIous faith. What con-
cerns me here, IS the disturbance of our lIterary values In
consequence of It. One observes tIns In Arnold's CrItICIsm.
It IS easy to see that Dryden underrated Chaucer; not so
easy to see that to rate Chaucer as highly as Dryden dtd
(m a penod in wInch CrItlCS were not laVIsh of superlatIves)
was a tnumph of objectIVIty for ItS tIme, as was Dryden's
consistent dlfferentIation between Shakespeare and Beau-
mont and Fletcher. It IS easy to see that Johnson underrated
Donne and overrated Cowley; it IS even pOSSIble to come
to understand why. But neIther Johnson nor Dryden had
any axe to grmd; and In theIr errors they are more con-
~ than Arnold. Take, for instance, Arnold's opUllon of
Ch~ucer, a poet who, although very dtfferent from Arnold,
was not altogether defiCIent m high senousness. FIrst he
contrasts Chaucer WIth Dante: we admit the inferIOrIty,
and are almost convmced that Chaucer IS not serious
enough. But IS Chaucer, m the end, less serious than
ll6
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
Wordsworth, with whom Arnold does not compare him?
And when Arnold puts Chaucer below Franc;ols Villon,
although he IS Ul a way rIght, and although It was htgh tlnle
that somebody In England spoke up for Vll1on, one does
not feel that the theory of ' hIgh senousness' IS In operatIOn.
That IS one of the troubles of the CrItIC who feels called upon
to set the poets In rank: If he IS honest WIth hIs own seIHi-
blhty he must now and agaIn VIolate lus own rules of ratmg.
There are also dangers anslng from beIng too sure that one
knows what 'genuIne poetry' IS. Here IS one very pOSItIVe
pronouncement:
'The dIfference between genmne poetry and the poetry
of Dryden, Pope and all theIr school, IS bnefly tlus: theIr
poetry IS conceIved and composed m theIr WIts, genume
poetry IS conceived and composed ill the soul. The dIf-
ference between the two bnds of poetry IS Immense. '1
And what, we wonder, had Arnold-
'For ngorous teachers seIzed rus youth
And purged its faIth, and tnmmed Its fire,
Showed 111m the mgh wmte star of Truth,
There bade rum gaze, and there aspIre;
Even now theIr wruspers pIerce the gloom:
What dost thou In trus hving tomb?'
what had a man whose youth was so rIgorously seIzed and
purged at Rugby, to do WIth an abstract entity hke the
Soul? 'The dtfference between. the two lands of poetry is
lPractlcally the same dlstinctlon as that of Arnold IS mamtamed,
though wlth more subtlety and persuaSIveness, by Mr. Housman moo
Name and Nature ofPoetry . A newer and more radIcal classwcanon to the
same effect lS that of Mr. Herbert Read already quoted.
117
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
Immense.' Dut there are not two kinds of poetry, but many
bnds; and the dIfference here 1S no more Immense than
that between the land of Shakespeare and the bnd of
Arnold. There IS petulance In such a judgement, arrogance
and excess of heat. It was JustIfiable for Colendge and
Wordsworth and Keats to depreCIate Dryden and Pope, in
the ardour of the changes wluch they were busy about;
but Arnold was engaged 1n no revolutlOn, and lus short-
s1ghtedness can only be excused.
I do not mean to suggest that Arnold's conception of the
use of poetry, an educator's VIew, vItIates lus CrItiCIsm. To
ask of poetry that it glve rehgious and philosopluc satIs-
faction, wlule deprecatmg plulosophy and dogmatIc
religIOn, IS of course to embrace the shadow of a shade.
But Arnold had real taste. HIs preoccupations, as I have
said, make rum too exclusIvely concerned wlthgreat poetry,
and wlth the greatness of It. HIs VIew of MIlton IS for thls
reason unsatlsfymg. But you cannot read lus essay on The
Study of Poetry wlthout bemg convlnced by the fehclty of
his quotatlOlls: to be able to quote as Arnold could IS the
best eVldence of taste. The essay IS a classic m EnglIsh
CntlC1sm: so much IS saId in so lIttle space, WIth such
economy and with such authOrIty . Yet he was so conSC10US
of what, for rum, poetry was for, that he could not alto-
gether see It for what 1t IS. And I am not sure that he was
rughly SenSltlve to the musIcal quahttes of verse. HIs own
occaslOnal bad lapses arouse the susp1cion; and.~o far as I
can recollect he never emphasises tms vIrtue of poetlc style,
tlu.s fundamental, m rus CrItlclsm. What I call the 'auditory
Imagmanon' IS the feeling for syllable and rhythm, pene-
118
 MATTHEW ARNOLD
ttatmg far below the conSCIOUS levels of thought and feel-
mg, lllvlgoratmg every word; sl11kmg to the most prlIni-
rive and forgotten, returnIng to the OrIgm and bringing
somethmg back, seekIng the beginrung and the end. It
works through mearungs, certamly, or not wIthout Inean-
mgs m the ordInary sense, and fuses the old and obhterated
and the trIte, the current, and the new and surprIsmg, the
most anCIent and the most CIVIlIsed mentahty. Arnold's
notIon of 'hfe', In Ins account of poetry, does not perhaps
go deep enough.
I feel, rather than observe, an Inner uncertamty and lack
of confidence and conVIctIon In Matthew Arnold: the con-
servatIsm which SprIngs from lack of faIth, and the zeal for
reform whIch sprIngs from dlshke of change. Perhaps,
lookmg Inward and findIng how htde he ha.d to support
lnm, looking outward on the state of SOCIety and Its
tendenCIes, he was sonlewhat dIsturbed He had no real
sereruty, only an Impeccable demeanour. Perhaps he cared
too much for CIVIlIsatIon, forgettmg that Heaven and
Earth shall pass away, and Mr. Arnold WIth them, and
there IS only one stay. He IS a representatIve figure. A man's
theory of the place of poetry IS not mdependent of Ins VIew
ofhfe In general.

II9
 THE MODERN MIND
March 17th , 1933
here IS a sentence In Mantain's Art and Scholasticism
T wruch occurs to me In this context: 'Work such as
PIcasso's', he says, 'shows a fearful progress In self-con-
sciousness on the part of paInting.'
So far I have drawn a few lIght sketches to mrucate the
changes In the self-consclOusness of poets thinkmg about
poetry. A thorough hIstory of trus 'progress m self-con-
sClOusness' In poetry and the critIcism of poetry would have
lands of crlt1clSln to consIder wruch do not fall Wlthm the
narrow scope of these lectures: the Iustory of Shakespeare
CrItIcIsm alone, m wruch, for Instance, Morgann's essay on
the character of Falstaff, and Coler1dge's Lectures on
Shakespeare would be representatIve moments, would
have to be considered m some detaIl. But we have observed
the notable developnlent In self-consciousness ill Dryden's
Prefaces, and In the first senous attempt, which he made,
at a valuation of the Enghsh poets. We have seen rus work
In one dIrectIon contInued, and a method perfected, by
Johnson l11lus careful eStlmatlOn of a number of poets, an
estlmate arnved at by the apphcation of what are on the
whole admlrably consIstent standards. We have found a
deeper insIght into the nature of the poetic actiVIty ill re-
marks scattered through the wntings of Colendge and m
III
 THE MODERN MIND
the Preface of Wordsworth and in the Letters of Keats; and
a perceptIon, stIll immature, of the need to elucidate the
social function of poetry in Wordsworth's Preface and In
Shelley's Defence. In the cnticism of Arnold We find a
contmuatlOn of the work of the Ronlantic poets with a
new appraIsal of the poetry of the past by a method wInch,
lackmg the precislOn of Jolmson's, gropes towards wIder
and deeper conneXlOns. I have not wIshed to exhIbIt thls
'progress In self-consclOusness' as beIng necessanly progress
wIth an assoclatlOn of higher value. For one thIng, It cannot
be wholly abstracted from the general changes m the human
trund In rustory; and that these changes have any teleo-
logIcal sIgmficance IS not one of my assumptlOns.
Arnold's InSIstence upon order In poetry accordmg to a
moral valuatlOn was, for better or worse, of the first
importance for hIs age. When he IS not at his best he
obVIOusly falls between two stools Just as rus poetry IS too
reflectIve, too rummatIve, to rIse ever to the first rank, so
also IS hIs crItIcism. He IS not, on the one hand, qUIte a pure
enough poet to have the sudden illUnlInatlOns whIch we
find ill the CrItIcism ofWordsworth, Colendge and Keats;
and on the other hand he lacked the mental dlsciphne, the
paSSlOn for exactness In the use of words and for consIstency
and contlnmty of reasorung, whIch dIstInguIshes the phllo-
sopher. He sometImes confuses words and meanmgs:
neIther as poet nor as prulosopher should he have been
satIsfied WIth such an utterance as that 'poetry 1S at bottom
a CntIClsm of hfe'., A more profound 1ns1ght Into poetry
and a more exact use of language than Arnold's are re-
quired. The cnncal method of Arnold, the assumptIons of
122.
 THE MODERN MIND
Arnold, remained valid for the tr:st of Ins cC'ntury. In quit~
diverse developments. it is thc cndd'itn of Anmld that sets
the tone: Walter Pater, Arthur Symous, Addington Sy-
monds, Leshe Stephen, F. W. H. Myers t George Sailltsbury
-all the more emincIlt crincal names of the time bear
Witness to It.
Whether we agree or not WIth any or all of his con-
clusions, whether we adnllt or deny dlat Ius method is
adequate, we must admIt that the work ()f Mr. 1. A.
RIchards WIll have becn of cardmal importance in the
lustory of literary criticism. Even if his cnticism proves to
be entIrely on the wrong track, even if this modern 'sclf-
consclOusness' turns out to be only a blind alley, Mr.
Rtchards wlll have dOlle something ill accelerating the
exhaustIon of the possibIlities. He WIll have helped in~
directly to dIscredIt the criticism of persons qualified
neIther by sensibllity nor by knowledge of poetry) from
whIch we suffer daily. There IS some hope of ,greater
c1amy; we should begin to learn to distinguish the apprecia-
tIon of poetry from theorising about poetry, and to know
when we are not talkmg about poetry but about sometlung
else suggested by it. There are two elements in Richards's
scheme, both of considerable importance for its ultimate
standing, of which I have the gravest doubts but wllh
wInch I am not here concerned: his theory of Value and'
rus theory of Education (or rather the theory of EducatIon
assumed 111 or imphed by his attItude in Practical Criticism).
As for psychology and hngUlStlCS, that is Ius field and not
mine. I am more concerned here with what seem to me to
be a few unexanuned assumptlons that he has made. I do
 THE MODERN MIND
not know whether he sull adheres to certam assertIOns made
m Ins early essay Science and Poetry; but I do not understand
that he has yet made any publIc 1110dlp.catlOn of them. Here
IS one that IS ill my mlnd
'The most dangerous of the SCIences IS only now be-
g111l1lng to come mto actlOn. I am tlunla.ng less of Psycho-
analysIs or of BehavlOunsm than of the whole subject
wInch mcludes them. It IS very probable that the Hmden-
burg Lme to wInch the defence of our tradItIons retIred as a
result of the onslaughts of the last century wIll be blown up
In the near future. If tIns should happen a mental chaos such
as man has never expenenced may be expected. We shall
then be thrown back, as Matthew Anlold foresaw, upon
poetry. Poetry IS capable of savIng US .... '
I should have felt completely at a loss In thIs passage, had
not Matthew Arnold turned up; and then It seemed to me
that I knew a httle better what was what. I should say that
an affirmation hke this was lughly charactenstic of one type
of modem mmd. For one of the thIngs that one can say
about the modem mmd IS that It comprehends every
extreme and degree of opilllOn. Here, from the essay, Art
and Scholasticism, wInch I have already quoted, IS Mr.
Maritam:
'It IS a deadly error to expect poetry to provIde the super-
substantIal nOUrIshment of man.'
Mr. Mantam IS a theologIan as well as phIlosopher, and
you may be sure that when he says 'deadly error' he IS ill
deadly earnest. But If the author of Anti-Moderne IS hardly
to be conSIdered a 'modern' man, we can find other
VarIetIes of opimon. In a book called The Human Parrot,
124
 THE MODERN MIND
Mr. MontgOlnery Belgton has two essays, one called Art
and Mr. Maritaln and the other What is Critt'cism, from
whIch you wIll learn that neIther Mantam nor RIchards
knows what he IS talkIng about. Mr. RIchards further malll-
tams that the expenence of poetry is not a mystIcal revela-
non, and the Abbe Henn Bremond,1111 Prayer and Poetry, IS
concerned wIth telllllg us In what bnd and degree It IS. On
this pomt Mr. Belgl0n IS apparently In accord wIth Mr.
Richards. And we may be WIse to keep m trund a remark of
Mr. Herbert Read ill Form in Modern Poetry: 'If a hterary
cntIc happens to be also a poet ... he IS lIable to suffer
from dIlemnlas whIch do not trouble the plulosopluc calm
ofms more prOSaiC colleagues.'
Beyond a behef that poetry does somethIng of Import-
ance, or has something of Importance to do, there does not
seem to be much agreement. It IS Interestmg that In our
time, wInch has not produced any vast number ofImportant
poets, so many people-and there are many more-should
be asklng questIOns about poetry. These problems are not
those wInch properly concern poets as poets at all; If poets
plunge Into the discussion, it IS probably because they have
lnterests and CUrIOSItIes outSIde of Wtltlllg poetry. We
leed not smnmon those who call themselves Humanists
(for they have for the most part not been pnmanly
)ccupled wIth the nature and functIon of poetry) to bear
WItness that we have here the problem of relIgIOUS faIth
md ItS SubstItutes. Not all contemporary cntIcs, of
lWhile preparmg thls book for press I learn wIth great regret of the
~bbe Bremond's untimely death It IS a great pIty that he could not
lave hved to complete the Histoire du sentIment religieux en France
IZ5
 THE MODERN MIND
course, but at least a number who appear to have httle else
in common, seem to consIder that art, speCIfically poetry,
has sometlung to do wIth rehgIOn, though they dIsagree as
to what tIllS sometrung may be. The relationshIp IS not
always enVIsaged so morahstlcally as It was by Arnold, nor
so generally as in the statement by Mr. RIchards wInch I
quoted. For Mr. BelgIOn, for Instance,
'An outstandmg example of poetic allegory IS ill the fmal
canto of the Paradiso, where the poet seeks to gIVe an
allegoncal account of the BeatIfic VIsIon, and then declares
lus efforts vaIn. We may read tIllS over and over agam, and
m the end we shall no more have had a revelatIOn of the
nature of the VISIOn than we had before ever we had heard
of eIther It or Dante.'
Mr. BelgIOn seems to have taken Dante at his word.
But what we expenence as readers IS never exactly what the
poet experienced, nor would there be any pOInt In ItS bemg,
though certamly It has some relatIon to the poet's expen-
ence. What the poet experIenced IS not poetry but poetIC
materIal; the wntmg of the poetry is a fresh 'experIence'
for lum, and the readIng of It, by the author or anyone
else, IS another thIng sull. Mr. BelgIOn, In denyIng a theory
which he attrIbutes to Mr. Mantaill, seems to me to make
his own nustakes; but it IS a rehgion-analogy wIDch IS in
questIon. Mr. RIchards IS much occupIed WIth the rehgIOus
problem simply ill the attempt to aVOId It. In an appendIX
to the second edItIOn of Principles ofLiterary Criticism he has
a note on my own verse, wruch, being as favourable as I
could deSIre, seems to me very acute. But he observes that
Canto XXVI of the Purgatorio 111UtnUla.tes my 'perSIstent
126
 THE MODERN MIND
concern with sex, the problem of our generatIon, as re-
ligIon was the probiein of the last.' I readuy ad1ll1t the
Importance of Canto XXVI, and It was shrewd of Mr.
RIchards to notice It; but In rus contrast of sex and rehglOn
he makes a d1stinctIOn wlllch IS too subule for me to grasp.
One mIght tlunk that sex and relIgIOn were 'problellls' lIke
Free Trade and Inlpenal Preference; It seems odd dlat the
human race should have gone 011 for so many thousands of
years before It suddenly realIsed that relIgion and sex, one
nght after the other, presented problems.
It has been my VieW throughout-and it is only a com-
monplace after all-that the development and change of
poetry and of the critIcIsm of It IS due to elements which
enter from outsIde ..! trled to draw attention not so much to .
the importance of Dryden's 'contnbutIon' to hterary
CrItlCIsm, as Ifhe were merely addmg to a store of quantIty,
as to the importance of the fact that he should want to
artIculate and expound lus VIews on drama and translation
and on the Enghsh poetry of the past; and, when we came
to JOMson, to call attentIOn to the further development of
an rustoncal conSCIOusness wInch made Johnson want to
estimate, In more detaIl, the EnglIsh poets of lus own age
and of previous ages,l and It seemed to me that Words-
worth's theOrIes about poetry drew their ahnlent from
socIal sources. To Matthew Arnold we owe the credIt of
brmgIng the relIgIOUS Issue exphcItly mto the dISCUSSIon of
literature and poetry; and WIth due respect to Mr. R.t.chards,
and With Mr. Rlchards rumself as a WItness, It does not
IThe fact that Johnson was worlang largely to order only mdlcates
that tlus rustorlcal conSClousness was already developed.
127
 THE MODERN MIND
seem to me that this 'Issue' has been wholly put aSIde and
replaced by that of 'sex'. My contemporanes seem to me
still to be occupIed wIth It, whether they caIl themselves
churchmen, or agnostics, or ratlOnahsts, or SOCIal revolu-
tl0ruStS. The contrast between the doubts that our con-
temporanes express, and the questlOns that they ask and
the problems they put themselves, and the attitude of at
least a part of the past, was well put by Jacques RlvH~!re 111
two sentences:
'If in the seventeenth century Mohere or Racme had
been asked why he wrote, no doubt he would have been
able to fmd but one answer; that he wrote 'for the enter-
tamment of decent people' (pour distrqire les honn~tes gens).
It IS only wIth the advent of RomantIcIsm that the hterary
act came to be conceIved as a sort of raId on the absolute
and Its result as a revelatlOn.'
RIVIere'S form of expresslOn IS not, to my mmd, alto-
gether happy. One mIght suppose that all that had hap-
pened was that a WIlful perverSIty had taken posseSSlOn of
hterary men, a new hterary rusease called ROmantiCIsm.
That IS one of the dangers of expressmg one's meanmg m
terms of 'ROmantiCIsm': It is a term wluch is constandy
changmg ill dIfferent contexts, and wluch IS now hmlted to
what appear to be purely hterary and purely local prob-
lems, now expandmg to cover almost the whole of the hfe
of a time and of nearly the whole world. It has perhaps not
been observed that ill Its more comprehensIve sigruficance
'ROmantiCIsm' comes to mclude nearly everythmg that
rustInguishes the last two hundred and fifty years or so
from theIr predecessors, and mcludes so much that It ceases
128
 THE MODERN MIND
to brmg with it any praIse or blame. The change to which
RIv1ere alludes IS not a contrast between Mohere and
Racine on the one hand and more modern French WrIters
on the other; It neIther reflects cred1t upon the former nor
lmphes mfenonty In the latter. In the mterest of clarity and
slmphcIty I wIsh Inyself to avoid employmg the terms
RomantIcIsm and Clas~ilc1sm, terms wInch inflame
pohtical paSSlOns, and tend to prejudice our concluslOns. I
am only concerned with my contentlon that the notion of
what poetry is for, of what IS its functIon to do, does change,
and therefore r quoted Rlviere; I am concerned further
WIth cnticism as eVIdence of the conceptlon of the use of
poetry in the cntic's tIme, and assert that ill order to com-
pare the work of different cntlcs we must mvestlgate theIr
assumptions as to what poetry does and ought to do.
Exammation of the crItIcIsm of our time leads me to be-
heve that we are stIli ill the Arnold perIod.
I speak of Mr. RIchards's views WIth some cW:1idence.
Some of the problems he dIscusses are themselves very
dtfficult, and only those are quahfied to CrItiCISe who have
applied themselves to the same specIalised studIes and have
acquired proficIency ill tlns land of thmkmg. But here I
hmit myself to passages 111 whIch he does not seem to be
speakmg as a specIalIst, and in wmch I have no advantage of
speCIal knowledge eIther. There are two reasons why the
wnter of poetry must not be thought to have any great
advantage. One IS that a dISCUSSIon of poetry such as thts
takes us far outSIde the lInuts withm wInch a poet may
speak wIth authority; the other is that the poet does many
dungs upon ll1Stlnct, for whIch he can gIve no better
I 129 :E.U.P.
 THE MODERN MIND
account than anybody else. A poet can try, of course, to
gIve an honest report of the way in wInch he Inmself
wntes the result may, lfhe IS a good observer, be illumm-
atll1g. And m one sense, but a very hlnlted one, he knows
better what Ins poems 'mean' than can anyone else; he may
know the lnstory of their composItton, the matenal wInch
has gone m and come out m an unrecognisable form, and
he knows what he was trymg to do and what he was mean-
ing to mean. But what a poem means IS as much what It
means to others as what It means to the author; and mdeed,
m the course of ame a poet may become merely a reader ill
respect to Ins own works, forgettmg hIs ongmal meanmg
-or WIthout forgetttng, merely changIng. So that, when
Mr. Richards asserts that The Waste Land effects 'a com-
plete severance between poetry and all behefs' I am no
better quahfied to say No! than IS any other reader. I will
admtt that I clunk that eIther Mr. Rlchards is wrong, or
I do not understand hIs meanmg. The statement mIght
mean that It was the first poetry to do what all poetry m
the past would have been the better for domg: I can hardly
thmk that he mtended to pay me such an unmerited com-
phment. It mIght also mean that the present sltuaaon IS
radtcally dIfferent from any m which poetry has been pro-
duced m the past: namely, that now there IS nothIng m
which to beheve, that Behef itself is dead; and that there-
fore my poem IS the first to respond properly to the modem
SItuatIon and not call upon Make-Beheve. And It IS In
tlus conneXlOn, apparently, that Mr. RIchards observes
that 'poetry is capable ofsaVlllg us'.
A dIsCUSSIon of Mr. RIchards's theories. of knowledge 1
 THE MODERN MIND
value and meaning would be by no means irrelevant to this
assertion, but It would take us far afield, and I aln not the
person to undertake it. We cannot of course refute the
statement 'poetry IS capable of saving us' without knowing
wluch one of the nlultlplc dcfinltions of salvation Mr.
Richards has in nund. l (A good 111any people behave as if
they thought so too: otherWIse their Interest III poetry is
chfficult to explain) I anI sure, from the dIfferences of
enVIronment, of perIod, and of Inental furniture, that sal-
vation by poetry is not qUIte the same tiling for Mr.
Rlchards as It was for Arnold; but so far as I am
concerned these are nlcrely dIfferent shades of blue. In
Practical Criticism 2 Mr. Richards provides a reCIpe wInch I
dunk throws sonle lIght upon his theological ideas. He says:
'Somet1ung hke a techl11que or ritual for heightemng
sincerity mIght well be worked out. When our response to
a poem after our best efforts remams uncertam, when we
are unsure whether the feelings it eXCItes come from a deep
source in our expenence, whether our hking or dtsliking
15 genuine, IS ours, or an accIdent of fashion, a response to
surface details or to essentials, we may perhaps help our-
selves by considering it in a frame of feelings whose Sill-
cetlty IS beyond our questiorung. SIt by the:fire (WIth eyes
shut and fingers pressed firmly upon the eyeballs) and con-
SIder WIth as full "reahsatlOn" as posslble-'
lSee hIs Mencius on the Mind. There IS of course a locution m wroch
we say of someone 'he IS not one of us', it IS possIble that the 'us' of
Mr. RIchards's statement represents an equally lmuted and select
number.
2Second Impression, p .290.
13 1
 THE MODERN MIND
five pomts wInch follow, and wInch I shall comment upon
one by one. We may observe, in passmg, the Intense re-
lIgious seriousness of Mr. Richards's attitude towards
poetry.l What he proposes-for he lunts in the passage
above that lus sketch might be elaborated-Is nothIng less
than a regImen of SpIrItual ExerCIses. Now for the pomts.

I Man's loneliness (the isolation ofthe humansUuation).

Lonelmess IS known as a frequent attItude 111 romantic
poetry, and m the form of 'lonesomeness' (as I need not
remmd Amencan readers) IS a frequent attItude ill con-
temporary lyncs known as 'the blues'. But In what sense IS
Man m general Isolated, and from what? What is the
'human sItuatIOn'? I can understand the IsolatIon of the
human sItuation as Plato's DlOtlma expounds It, or in the
ChrIstian sense of the separatIOn of Man from God, but
not an Isolation wInch IS not a separation from anythmg ill
particular.

II. Thefacts ofbirth and ofdeath, in their inexplicable oddity.

I cannot see why the facts of bIrth and of death should
appear odd m themselves, unless we have a conception of
ITrus passage IS mtroduced by a long and Important dISCUSSIon of
COnfUCIUS' concepnon of'smcenty', wruch should be read attentIvely.
In passmg, It is worthy of remark that Mr Rlchards shares lus mterest
m Chmese plulosophy WIth Mr. Ezra Pound and Wlth the late Irvmg
BabbItt. An Investigatlon of an mterest common to three apparently
qUlte drlferent thmkers would, I beheve, repay the labour. It seems to
indIcate, at least, a deracmaoon from the ChrIStIan trachtlon The
thought of these three men seems to me to have an lUterestUlg SlIl1ll-
anty
 THE MODERN MIND
some other way of conung Into the world and of leavmg
it, which strikes us as nlore natural.

III. The inconceivable immensity ofthe Universe.

It was not, we reillclllber, the 'unmense spaces' them-
selves but theIr eternal silence that terrIfied Pascal. WIth a
defi11lte relIgIOUS background tlu~ IS mtelligible. But the
effect of popular astronomy books (lIke SIr James Jeans's)
upon me IS only of the Insigntficance of vast space.

IV. Man's place in the perspective oftime.

I confess that I do not find thIS espeCIally edlfymg eIther,
or stimulaong to the ImagmatIon, unless I brmg to Its con-
templatlOn some behef that there IS a sense and a meanmg
In the place of human history In the lustory of the world. I

fear that 111 filany people this subject of meditatIon can only
stlmulate the Idle wonder and greed for facts whIch are
satIsfied by Mr. Wells's compendIa.

V. The enormity (sc. enormousness) ofman's ignorance.

Here agam, I must ask, Ignorance of what? I am acutely
aware, for instance, of my own Ignorance of spectfic sub-
jects on whtch I want to know lnore; but Mr. RIchards
does not, surely, mean the Ignorance ofany mdIvidual man,
but of Man. But 'Ignorance' must be relatIve to the sense ill
wruch we take the term 'knowledge'; and ill Mencius on the
Mind Mr. Rlchards has gIven us a useful analYSIS of the
numerous meanings of 'knowledge'. Mr. RIchards, who
has engaged tn what I believe will be most frUltful mvesti-
ganons of controversy as systematised nusunderstandmg,
133
 THE MODERN MIND
may justly be able to accuse me of pervertlng Ius meanmgs.
But lus modern substitute for the Exercises of St. IgnatlUs IS
an appeal to our feehngs, and I am only trymg to set down
how they affect nune. To me Mr. Rlchards's five pomts
only express a modern emotional attitude wIuch I cannot
share, and which finds its most sentimental expreSSIOn In
A Free Man's Worship. And as the contemplatIon of Man's
place m the Uruverse has led Lord Russell to wnte such bad
prose, we may wonder whether It will lead the ordmary
asprrant to understandmg of good poetry. It IS Just as hkely,
I suspect, to confirm him ill his taste for the second-rate.
I am wllhng to adffilt that such an approach to poetry
may help some people: my pomt IS that Mr. Rlchards
speaks as though It were good for everybody. I am per-
fectly ready to concede the eXIstence of people who feel,
think and believe as Mr. Richards does ill these matters,
If he will only concede that there are some people who do
not. He told us ill Science and Poetry:
'For centuries . . . countless pseudo-statements-about
God, about the umverse, about human nature, the relations
of mind to mmd, about the soul, Its rank and destmy ...
have been beheved; now they are gone, Irrecoverably; and
the knowledge whlch has killed them IS not of a kmd upon
which an equally fine organIsation ofthennndcanbe based.'
I subffilt that tlns is Itself a pseudo-statement, If there IS
such a thmg. But these thmgs are mdeed gone, so far as
Mr. Richards IS concerned, if they are no longer beheved
by people whose mmds Mr. Richards respects: we have no
ground for controversy there. I only assert agam that what
he is trymg to do IS essentially the same as what Arnold
I~A
 THE MODERN MIND
wanted to do: to preserve emotions without the behd1
with which their history has been involved. It would seem
that Mr. Rlchards, on his own showing, is engaged in a
rear-guard rehglOus actloll. 1
Mr. Mantam, with an equally strong cOllviction that
poetry WIll not save us, IS equally despondent about the
world of to-day. 'Could any weakness', he asks, 'be greater
than the weakness ofour contemporanc~?' It is no more, as I
have saId before, the particular bUSllless of the poet as poet
to concern lnmselfwith Marit3.1n' 8 attempt to deternune the
positl0n of poetry in a Christian world than It IS to concern
rumself wlth Richards's attempt to determine the positlOn
of poetry in a pagan world: but these various ambIent
Ideas get 111 through the pores, and produce an unsettled
state of nund. Trotsky, whose Literature and Revolution is
the most sensible statement of a CommunIst attitude that
I have seen, 2 18 pretty clear on the reIatlOl1 of the poet to Ius
enVIronment. He observes:
'ArtIstIc creanon IS always a comphcated turning inslde
out of old forms, under the influence of new stlmuh wruch

lSomewhat m the Spirit of'rehglon without reveIatton', ofwlnch a

grea.ter exponent than Mr. Juhan Huxley was Emmanuel Kant. On
Kant's attempt (winch deeply mfluenced later German theology) see an
illUminatIng passage m A. E Taylor's The Faith of a Moralist, valli,
chap n.
2There were also some Ulteresnng artlcles m The New Republic by
Mr. Edmund Wuson, m controversy (If I remember correctly) with
Mr. Michael Gold I regret chac I cannot gIve the exact reference. The
ma.jor part of Trotsky's book IS not very mteresang for those who are
unacquamted WIth the modern RUSSlall authors: one suspects that most
of Trotsky's swans are geese.
13S
 THE MODERN MIND
origmate outsIde of art. In tIDs large sense of the word, art
IS a handmaiden. It is not a dIsembodIed element feeding on
ltself, but a function of SOCIal man mdlssolubly tied to Ius
hfe and enVIronment.'
There IS a stnkmg contrast between tlns conceptIOn of
art as a handmaIden, and that wInch we have just observed
of art as a saVIour. But perhaps the two notIons are not so
opposed as they appear. Trotsky seems, in any case, to
draw the commonsense dIstinction between art and pro-
paganda, and to be dimly aware that the materIal of the
artlst IS not hts behefs as held, but lus behefs as felt (so far as
hIs behefs are part of Ins matenal at all); and he IS senSIble
enough to see that a period of revolutlon IS not favourable
to art, SInce It puts pressure upon the poet, both dIrect and
lnchrect, to make rum overconscious of hIs behefs as held.
He would not hmlt Commurust poetry to the wntmg of
panegyncs upon the RUSSIan State, any more than I should
hmIt ChriStian poetry to the COmpOSItiOn of hymns; the
poetry ofVillon IS just as 'Chnstlan' ill tlns way as that of
Prudentlus or Adam of St. Victor-though I thInk It would
be a long time before SOVIet SOCIety could afford to approve
a Villon, If one arose.1 It is probable, however, that Rus-
sian hterature will become Increasingly unmtelhglble, In-
creasingly meaningless, to the peoples of Western Europe
unless they develop in the same dIrection as Russia. Even as
things are, m the present chaos of opInlon and behef, we

IThe Roman and Commumst Idea of an index of prohibIted books

seems tome perfecdysoundm prmciple. It is a question (a) of the good-
ness and uwversahty of the cause, (b) of the mtelligence that goes to the
apphcatlon
 THE MODERN MIND
may expect to fmd qUIte dIfferent lIteratures eXlstmg m the
same language and the same country. 'The unconcealed and
palpable mfluence of the devIl on an Important part of con-
temporary hterature', says Mr. Mantam, 'IS one of the
slgnIDCant phenomena of the hIstory of our tlme.' I can
hardly expect most of my readers to take tIns remark sen-
ously;l those who do WIll have very dIfferent CrIterIa of
crIticism from those who do not. Another observatIon of
Mr. Maritain's may be less unacceptable'
'By showmg us where moral truth and the genuine
supernatural are SItuate, rehgIOn saves poetry from the
absurdtty of behevmg itself destIned to transform etlncs
and hfe: saves it from overweenmg arrogance.'
Trus seems to me to be putring the finger on the great
weakness of much poetry and cntIcism of the nmeteenth
and twentIeth centunes. But between the motIve wInch
Rtvlere attnbuted to Mohere and Racme2 and the mouve
of Matthew Arnold bearmg on shoulders Immense what he
thought to be the orb of the poet's fate, there IS a serIOUS
via media.
As the doctrme of the moral and educatIonal value of
poetry has been elaborated in dIfferent forms by Arnold
and Mr. Richards, so the Abbe Bremond presented a
modem eqUIvalent for the theory of divme inspIration.

lWlth the mfluence of the devu on contemporary hterature I shall

be concerned ill more detaJ.l ill another book
2Wmch does not seem to me to cover the case. Let us say that It was
the prunary motIve (even m Athalie). An exact statement would need
much space; for we cannot concern ourselves only Wlth what went on
WIde the poet's head, but WIth the general state of sooety.

137
 THE MODERN MIND
The task of Prayer and Poetry IS to estabhsh the hkeness, and
the dIfference of land and degree, between poetry and
mystIcIsm In Ins attempt to demonstrate thIs relation he
safeguards rumself by Just quahficatlOns, and makes many
penetratIng remarks about the nature of poet;y. I will con-
fine myself to two pIeces of cautIOn. My first qualm IS over
the assertIon that' the more of a poet any particular poet IS,
the more he IS tormented by the need of commumcatmg
rus experience'. ThIs IS a downright sort of statement
wInch IS very easy to accept Wlthout exarmnation; but the
matter IS not so sImple as all that. I should say that the poet
IS tormented primarily by the need to wnte a poem-and
so, I regret to find, are a legion of people who are not
poets. so that the Ime-between 'need' to wnte and 'deSIre'
to WrIte is by no means easy to draw. And what IS the
expenence that the poet is so bursnng to communicate?
By the time It has settled down mto a poem It may be so
dUferent from the ongmal expenence as to be hardly
recogmsable. The' expenence' m question may be the result
of a fuslOn of feehngs so numerous, and ultimately so
obscure m theIr ongms, that even If there be commumca-
tIon of them, the poet may hardly be aware of what he IS
commumcatmg; and what IS there to be communicated
was not m eXistence before the poem was completed. 'Com-
mumcatlon' will not explam poetry. I will not say that
there IS not always some varymg degree of commumcatlon
ill poetry, or that poetry could eXist WIthout any com-

murucatIon takIng place. There IS room for very great

mmvidual vmatlon in the motlves of equally good mdi-
VIdual poets; and we have the assurance of Coleridge,
138
 THE MODERN MIND
wIth the approval of Mr. Housman, that Ipoetry gIves most
pleasure when only generally and not perfecdy understood'.
And I dunk that Illy first objection to Bremond's theory IS
related to the second, In wluch also the questlOn of motIve
and llltention enters. Any theory wluch relates poetry very
closely to a rehglOus or a socIal scheme of thmgs alms,
probably, to explain poetry by chscovenng its natural
laws; but It IS In danger of binding poetry by legIslation to
be observed-and poetry can recogruse no such laws
When dle crItIC falls Into tlus error he has probably
done what we all do: when we generahse about poetry, as
I have saId before, we are generalising from the poetry
wInch we best know and best lIke; not from all poetry, or
even all of the poetry wluch we have read. What IS 'all
poetry'? EverythIng WrItten m verse wluch a sufficIent
number of the best nunds have consIdered to be poetry.
Bya suffic1ent number, I mean enough persons of dtfferent
types, at dIfferent tlmes and places, over a space of time,
and mcluding foreIgners as well as those to whom the
language IS native, to cancel every personal bIas and
eccentncIty of taste (for we nlust all be shghdy eccentrIC
In taste to have any taste at all). Now when an account hke
the Abbe Bremond's IS tested by bemg made Itself a test, it
tends to reveal some narrowness and exclusIveness; at any
rate, a good deal ofpoetry that I lIke would be excluded, or
gIven some other name than poetry; just as other wnters
who hke to include much prose as bemg essentIally 'poetry'
create confuslOn by mcludIng too much. That there is a
relation (not necessarily noetic, perhaps merely psycho-
logical) between mystiCIsm and some lands of poetry, or
139
 THE MODERN MIND
some of the lands of state In wInch poetry IS produced, I
make no doubt. But I prefer not to define, or to test,
poetry by means of speculatIOns about Its ongms, you
cannot find a sure test for poetry, a test by whIch you may
dIstIngUIsh between poetry and mere good verse, by re-
ference to Its putatIve antecedents In the mmd of the poet
Bremond seems to me to mtroduce extra-poetIc laws for
poetry. such laws as have been frequently made, and con-
stantly vIOlated.
There IS another danger m the assoclatlOn of poetry WIth
mYStiCISm besIdes that whlch I have Just mentioned, and
that of leadmg the reader to look m poetry for rehgIOus
satisfactIOns. These were dangers for the cntic and the
reader; there IS also a danger for the poet. No one can read
Mr. Yeats's Autobiographies and IllS earher poetry WIthout
feehng that the author was trymg to get as a poet sOlnethmg
hke the exaltatton to be 0 btamed, I beheve, from hasInsch or
mtrous made. He was very much fascmated by self-Induced
trance states, calculated symbohsm, medIums, theosophy,
crystal-gazmg, folklore and ho bgo bhns. Golden apples,
archers, black pIgs and such paraphernaha abounded.
Often the verse has an hypnotIc chann. but you cannot
take heaven by magIC, espeCIally If you are, hke Mr. Yeats,
a very sane person Then, by a great t!lumph of develop-
ment, Mr. Yeats began to wnte and IS still wnting some of
the most beautIful poetry In the language, some of the
clearest, SImplest, most dlrect.1
IThe best analYSIS of the weakness of Mr Yeats's poetry that I know
ISm Mr. Rlchards's Sctence and Poetry But I do not dunk that Mr
RIchards qUlte apprecIated Mr Yeats's lacer work.
 THE MODERN MIND
The number of people capable of appreciatIng' all poetry'
is probably very snlall, If not merely a theoretIcal hffilt;
but the number of people who can get some pleasure and
benefit from some poetry IS, I beheve, very large. A per-
fectly satIsfactory theory wInch apphed to all poetry would
do so only at the cost of beIng vOIded of all content; the
more usual reason for the unsatisfactormess of our theones
and general statenlents about poetry IS that whIle professmg
to apply to all poetry, they are really theOrIes about, or
generahsatlons from, a hffilted range of poetry. Even when
two persons of taste hke the same poetry, tIns poetry will
be arranged ill theIr 1111nds in shghcly drfferent patterns;
our IndIVIdual taste In poetry bears the mdehble traces of
our IndIVIdual hves WIth all theIr expenence pleasurable
and pamflll. We are apt eIther to shape a theory to cover)
the poetry that we fmd most movmg, or-what IS less
excusable-to choose the poetry wInch illustrates the theory
we want to hold. You do not find Matthew Arnold quot-
lUg Rochester or Sedley. And It IS not merely a matter of 1

mruvldual caprIce. Each age demands chfferent things from

poetry, though Its demands are modtfied, from time to
tIme, by what some new poet has given. So our critiCISm,
from age to age, WIll reflect the thmgs that the age demands;
and the crItICIsm of no one man and of no one age can be
expected to embrace the whole nature of poetry or exhaust
all of Its uses. Our contemporary crItiCS, hke therr pre-
decessors, are making particular responses to particular
SItuatIons. No two readers, perhaps, will go to poetry WIth
qillte the same demands. Amongst all these demands from
poetry and responses to It there is always some permanent,
I41
 THE MODERN MIND
element ill common, just as there are standards of good and
bad wntmg independent of what anyone of us happens to
lIke and dishke; but every effort to formulate the common
element IS hnnted by the hnntatlons of partIcular men m
partIcular places and at partIcular tlmes; and these hmlta-
tIons become mamfest m the perspective ofrustory.

14 2
 CONCLUSION
March 3ISt, 1933

I hope that I have not given the Impression, in this cur-

sory reVIew of theones past and present, that I estImate
the value of such theones accordmg to theIr degree of ap-
proxinlatlon to some doctrme wInch I hold myself, and pay
them off accordmgly. I am too well aware of limItatIOns of
mterest for wruch I do not apologIse, and of lllcapaclty for
abstruse reasonmg as well as less pardonable shortcommgs.
I have no general theory of my own; but on the other hand
I would not appear to dIsmiss the VIews of others Wlth the
mdIffetence which the pracononer may be supposed to feel
towards those who theonse about lus craft. It is reasonable,
I feel, to be on guard agamst V1ews whIch claIm too much
for poetry, as well as to protest agamst those wluch claun
too httle; to recogmse a number of uses for poetry, with-
out adnuttlng that poetry must always and everywhere be
subservient to anyone of them. And wlule theories of
poetry may be tested by their power of re:firung our sensi-
bIhty by lllCreaslng our understandmg, we must not ask.
that they serve even that purpose of addmg to our enjoy-
ment of poetry: any more than we ask of ethIcal theory
that it shall have a drrect apphcatlon to and tnfluence upon
human behavIOur. CrItical speculanon, like phllosophical
speculatIon and scientlfic research, must be free to follow
ltS own course; and cannot be called upon to show !nune..

143
 CONCLUSION
diate results; and I beheve that the pondermg (1n jUdtC10US
moderanon) of the questIons whIch It raIses will tend to
enhance our enJoYlnent.
That there IS an analogy between myst1cal expenence
and some of the ways m which poetry 1S WrItten I do not
deny; and I thmk that the Abbe Bremond has observed
very well the dIfferences as well as the hkenesses; though,
as I have saId, whether the analogy is of signIcance for the
student of rehgIOn, or only to the psycholog1st, I do not
know. I know, for mstance, that some forms of ill-health,
debility or anaelllla, may (If other CIrcumstances are favour-
able) produce an efflux of poetry m a way approaclung the
condItIon of automatic WrItIng-though, m contrast to the
claIms sometImes made for the latter, the materIal has
obVIOusly been mcubatmg WIthIn the poet, and cannot be
suspected ofbemg a present from a frIendly or 1mpertment
demon. What one WrItes m tIns way may succeed III
standmg the examination of a more normal state of lllllld;
It gIves me the 1mpressIOn, as I have just Said, of havmg
undergone a long mcubatIon, though we do not know
unttl the shell breaks what kInd of egg we have been
SIttIng on. To me It seems that at these moments, whIch
are charactensed by the sudden hfnng of the burden of
anXiety and fear whIch presses upon our datly hfe so
steachly that we are unaware of it, what happens IS
somethIng negative. that IS to say, not 'msplratIOn' as we
commonly thmk of It, but the breakmg down of strong
habItual barrIers-whIch tend to re-form very qwckly.l
11 should hke to quote a confirmation of my own experIence from
Mr. A. E. Housman's Name and Nature of Poetry. 'In short I thmk that

144
 CONCLUSION
Some obstructIon is momentanly wlnsked away. The
accompanying feeling IS less hke what we know as posiuve
pleasure, than a sudden rehef from an mtolerable burden. l'
agree wIth Bremond, and perhaps go even further, ill
findIng that thIs dtsturbance of our quotIchan character
which results m an incantatIon, an outburst of words wmch
we hardly recogruse as our own (because of the effordess-
ness), is a very chfferent thmg from mystIcal illummatIon.,
The latter IS a vIsion wruch may be accomparued by the'
realisation that you will never be able to commUlllcate It to
anyone else, or even by the reahsatlon that when It IS past
you will not be able to recall It to yourself; the former IS
not a VISIon but a motIon ternunatIng ill an arrangement of
words on paper.
But I should add one reservation. I should heSItate to say
that the expenence at whIch I have lunted IS responsIble
for the creation of all the most profound poetry wntten,
or even always of the best of a smgle poet's work. For all I
know, It may have much more slgrucance for the psycho-
logist's understandmg of a partIcular poet, or of one poet in
a certam phase, than It has for anyone's understandmg of

the production of poetry, m Its first stage, IS less an actIve than a passlve
and mvoluntary process; and uI were obhged, not to define poetry.
but to name the class of trungs to wInch It belongs, I should call It a
secretion; whether a natural secretion, hke turpentIne m the fir, or a
morbid secretlon, hke the pearl m the oyster. I thmk that my own case,
though I may not deal With the matter so cleverly as the oyster does, 1$
the latter; because I have seldom wntten poetry unless I was rather out
of health, and the experIence, though pleasurable, was generally
aguatmg and exhaustIng' I take added saosfaCtlon In the fact that I only
read Mr. Housman's essay some tIme after my own bnes were written.
TA < E.U.P.
 CONCLUSION
poetry. Some finer nunds, mdeed, may operate very
dIfferendy; I cannot think of Shakespeare or Dante as
havmg been dependent upon such caprIcious releases.
Perhaps tIns throws no hght on poetry at all I am not even
sure that the poetry wInch I have WrItten m tlns way IS the
best that I have wntten; and so far as I know, no CrItIC has
ever Identified the passages I have in mmd. The way m
which poetry IS WrItten IS not, so far as our knowledge of
these obscure matters as yet extends, any clue to ItS value.
But, as Norton wrote m a letter to Dr. L. P. Jacks m 1907,
'1 have no behef that such VIews as mine are hkely WIthIn
any reasonable tIme to be held by a consIderable body of
tnen'; for people are always ready to grasp at any gUlde
whIch will help them to recognIse the best poetry WIthout
havmg to depend upon theIr own sensIbility and taste.
The faIth lU mystIcal msplratlOn is responsible for the
exaggerated repute of Kubla Khan. The imagery of that
fragment, certatnly, whatever ItS origins lU Colendge's
readmg, sank to the depths of Colendge's feeling, was
saturated, transformed there-'those are pearls that were
hIs eyes'-and brought up lUto dayhght agam. But It IS not
used: the poem has not been WrItten. A smgle verse IS not
poetry unless It IS a one-verse poem; and even the fmest hne
draws Its Me from Its <70ntext. OrganIsation IS necessary as
well as 'mspIratton'. The re-creatIon of word and image
whIch happens fitfully ill the poetry of such a poet as Cole-
rIdge happens almost mcessandy with Shakespeare. AgaIn
and agam, in his use of a word, he will gIve a new meanmg
or extract a latent one; agam and agatn the right Imagery,
saturated whtle It lay in the depths of Shakespeare's
 CONCLUSION
memory, will I'lse hke Anadyomene from the sea. In
Shakespeare's poetry this reborn image or word wIll have
Its rational use and justification; in much good poetry the
orgamsatlOn will not reach to so ratlOnal a level. I will take
an example which I have used elsewhere: I am glad of the
opportumty to use it again, as on the preVlous occaSIOn I
had an inaccurate text. It is from Chapman's Bussy
D'Ambois:
'Fly where the evenmg from the Ibertan vales
Takes on her swarthy shoulders Hecate
Crowned wIth a grove of oaks: fly where men feel
The burning axletree, and those that suffer
Beneath the chanot of the snowy Bear.... '
Chapman borrowed tlus, as Dr. Boas POllltS out, from
Seneca's Hercules CEteus :
'dic sub Aurora POSlt1S Sabaels
ruc sub occasu posins H1berts
qruque sub plaustro patiuntur ursae
qui que fervent! quatluntur axe'
and probably also from the same author's Hercules Furens:
'sub ortu sohs, an sub cardme
giaclalis ursae?'
There is first the probability that tlus Imagery had some
personal saturanon value, so to speak, for Seneca; another
for Chapman, and another for myself, who have borrowed
it twice from Chapman. I suggest that what gives it such
illtensity as It has ill each case 1S its saturatton-I will not
say with 'assoc1ations', for I do not want to revert to
Hartley-but with feelings too obscure for the authors
TA'"7
 CONCLUSION
even to know qUIte what they were. And of course only a
part of an author's imagery comes from his readll1g. It
comes from the whole ofrus sensitlve hfe smce early cruld-
hood. Why, for all of us, out of all that we have heard,
seen, felt, in a lifetlme, do certam tmages recur, charged
wIth emonon, rather than others? The song of one btrd,
the leap of one fish, at a partIcular place and tIme, the scent
of one flower, an old woman on a German mountain path,
~lX ruffians seen through an open window playing cards at
mght at a small French raIlway junction where there was a
water-lllill. such memories may have symbohc value, but
of what we cannot tell, for they come to represent the
depths of feehng Into which we cannot peer . We lllight
Just as well ask why, when we try to recall visually some
penod in the past, we frnd in our memory just the few
meagre arbitrarily chosen set of snapshots that we do find
there, the faded poor souverurs ofpaSSIOnate moments.!
Thus far IS as far as my expenence will take me m trus
dIrection. My purpose has not been to examine thoroughly
anyone type of theory of poetry, still less to confute it; but
I rather to indtcate the kinds of defect and excess that we
must expect to:find in each, and to suggest that the current
. tendency IS to expect too much, rather than too little, of

1 In chapter XX1l of Princtples of Literary Criticism Mr. Rlchards diS-

cusses these matters in IDS own way. As eVldence that there are other
approaches as well, see a very mterestmg arttcle Le symbolisme et l' ~me
prlm.tive by E. Catlliet and J. A Bede m the Revue de litterature com-
parle for Apr:Il-June I932. The authors, who have done field-work m
Madagascar, apply the theones of Levy-Bruhl: the pre-logical men-
tality persists m clvtlised man, but becomes avatlable only to or through
the poet.
 CONCLUSION
poetry. No one of us, when he thinks about poetry, IS
wIthout Ius own bIas; and Abbe Bremond's preoccupation
wIth mysticism and Mr. Rtchards's lack of interest m
theology are equally sIgmficant. One VOIce was raIsed, m
our tlme, to express a VIew of a different kInd; that of a
man who wrote several remarkable poems mmself, and who
also had an aptitude for theology. It IS that ofT. E. Hulme:
'There IS a general tendency to dunk that verse means
httle else than the expressIOn of unsatlsfied emotlon.
People say: "But how can you have verse wIthout sentl-
ment?" You see what it IS; the prospect alarms them. A
claSSIcal reVIval to them would mean the,prospect of an
and desert and the death of poetry as they understand It,
and could only conle to ill the gulf caused by that death.
Exactly why this dry claSSical sP1rtt should have a pOSItiVe
and legitImate neceSSIty to express Itself In poetry IS utterly
InconceIvable to them. . . . The great ann IS accurate, pre-
ClSe and defirute descrtptlOn. The first thIng IS to reahse how
extraordlnanly chfficult thIs IS. . . . Language has ItS own
speCIal nature, Its own conventIOns and communal ideas.
It IS only by a concentrated effort of the nund that you can
hold it fixed to your own purpose.'
This IS, we must remark at once, not a general theory of
poetry, but an assertIon ofthe claIms of a particular land of
poetry for the wnter's own tIme. It may serve to remind us
how vartous are the kmds of poetry, and how variously
poetry may appeal to different minds and generations
equally quahfied to appreciate It.
The extreme of theonsmg about the nature of poetry,
the essence of poetry If there is any, belongs to the study of
J49
 CONCLUSION
aestheocs and 15 no concern of the poet or of a CrIttc WIth
my hnnted quahficatlons. Whether the self-conscIOusness
Involved 111 aesthetlcs and In psychology does, not nsk
violatmg the fronoer of conSCIOusness, IS a queStIon which
I need not raIse here; It IS perhaps only my pnvate eccen-
triCIty to beheve that such researches are perilous If not
gUlded by sound theology. The poet IS 11luch more VItally
concerned Wlth the socIal 'uses' ofpoetry, and wIth his own
place m socIety; and tills problem IS now perhaps more
Importunately pressed upon hIs conSCIOUS attentIon than
at any prevIOUS tIme. The uses of poetry certamly vary as
society alters, as the pubhc to be addressed changes. In thts
context sometlnng should be saId about th,e vexed questlon
of obscunty and urunteiligibility. The chfficulty of poetry
(and modem poetry IS supposed to be dIfficult) may be due
to one of several reasons. FIrst, there may be personal
causes wInch make It ImpOSSIble for a poet to express rum-
self ill any but an obscure way; wlule dus may be regret-
table, we should be glad, I thInk, that the man has been
able to express himself at all. Or drlficulty may be due Just
to novelty: we know the nrucule accorded m turn to
Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats, Tennyson and Browning
-but must remark that Brownmg was the first to be called
dUlicult; hosole crltlcs of the earher poets found them
dUlicult, but called them silly. Or chfficulty may be caused
by the reader's havmg been told, or havmg suggested to
lnmself, that the poem IS gomg to prove dIfficult. The
ordmary reader, when warned agamst the obscunty of a
poem, 15 apt to be thrown mto a state of consternatIon very
unfavourable to poetlc receptiVity. Instead ofbegmning, as
ISO
 CONCLUSION
he should, III a state of SenSItIVIty, he obfuscates hIs sen~es
by the deSIre to be clever and to look very hard for some-
tIung, he doesn't know what-or else by the deSIre not to
be taken ill. There IS such a thmg as stage frIght, but what
such readers have IS pIt or gallery fnght. The more seasoned
reader, he who has reached, ill these matters, a state of
greater purity, does not bother about understandmg; not, at
least, at first. I know that some of the poetry to wInch I
am most devoted IS poetry wInch I dId not understand at
first readmg; some IS poetry wInch I am not sure I under-
stand yet: for mstance, Shakespeare's. And finally, there 15
the dIfficulty caused by the author's havillg left out some-
thmg wmch the reader IS used to findmg; so that the reader,
bewildered, gropes about for what IS absent, and puzzles
rus head for a kmd of 'meaning' wInch IS not there, and IS
not meant to be there.
The chIef use of the 'meanmg' of a poem, ill the ordmary
sense, may be (for here agam I am speakmg of some kInds
of poetry and not all) to satlsfy one habIt of the reader, to
keep lus nund dIverted and qwet, whlle the poem does Its
work upon him: much as the Imagmary burglar is always
provIded WIth a bIt of mce meat for the house-dog. TIns IS
a normal SItuation of whIch I approve. But the minds of all
poets do not work that way; some of them, assuming that
there are other nunds hke theIr own, become ImpatIent of
this 'meamng' wInch seems superfluous, and perceIve pos-
SIbilities of mtensity through Its ehmmauon. I am. not
assertlng that tlus SItuatIOn IS Ideal; ~mly that we must
write out poetry as we C:pl, and take it as we find It. It ma'1
be that for some perIods of SOClety a more relaxed form of
lSI
 CONCLUSION
wntmg IS nght, and for others a more concentrated. I be-
lIeve that there must be many people who feel, as I do, that
the effect of some of the greater l1ll1eteenth-century poets IS
chmirushed by theIr bulk. Who now, for the pure pleasure
of It, reads Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats even, cer-
tamly Brownmg and Swmbume and most of the French
poets of the century-entire? I by no means beheve that
the 'long poem' IS a thmg of the past; but at least there must
be more m It for the length than our grandparents seemed to
demand; and for us, anything that can be SaId as well m
prose can be said better ill prose. And a great deal, m the
way of meanmg, belongs to prose rather than to poetry.
The doctnne of' art for art's sake', a mistaken one, and more
advertised than practised, contamed tills true Impulse be-
hmd It, that It IS a recogrunon of the error of the poet's
trymg to do other people's work. But poetry has as much
to learn from prose as from other poetry; and I clunk that
an Interaction between prose and verse, lIke the mteract10n
between language and language, IS a condItion of VItalIty In
lIterature.
To return to the question of obscunty: when all excep-
tions have been made, and after admItting the pOSSIble
eXIstence of minor ' illfficult' poets whose pubhc must
always be small, I beheve that the poet naturally prefers to
write for as large and mIscellaneous an auruence as possible,
and that It is the half-educated and ill-educated, rather than
the uneducated, who stand In hIS way: I myself should like
an audtence wInch could neither read nor write.1 The most
IOn the subject of educanon, there are some helpful remarks In
Lawrence's Fantasia of the UnconscIous.
152
 CONCLUSION
useful poetry, soclally, would be one wInch could cut
across all the present stratIfications of public taste-stratl-
ficatlons wlnch are perhaps a slgn of socIal dIsmtegratlOn.
The ldeal medium for poetry, to my nund, and the most
mrect means of soclal 'usefulness' for poetry, IS the theatre.
In a play of Shakespeare you get several levels of slgru-
ficance. For the SImplest audItors there IS the plot, for the
more thoughtful the character and collihct of character, for
the more literary the words and phrasmg, for the more
musically sensitive the rhythm, and for audItors of greater
senSItiveneSS and understandmg a meamng wmch reveals
Itself gradually. And I do not believe that the classmcatlon
of audIence IS so clear-cut as tIns; but rather that the sensl-
tlveness of every audItor IS acted upon by all these elements
at once, though m c.hfferent degrees of conSCIOusness. At
none of these levels IS the audItor bothered by the presence
of that wIDch he does not understand, or by the presence of
that in whIch he IS not interested. I may make my mearung
a httle clearer by a SImple mstance. I once deSIgned, and
drafted a couple of scenes, of a verse play. My mtentlon
was to have one character whose sensIbility and mtelh-
gence should be on the plane of the most sensitive and in-
telligent members of the audience; rus speeches should be
addressed to them as much as to the other personages ill
the play-or rather, should be addressed to the latter, who
were to be materIal, hteral-mmded and VISIOnless, with
the conSCIousness ofbemg overheard by the former. There
was to be an understanding between tlus protagonist and a
small number of the audIence, whlle the rest of the audIence
would share the responses of the other characters tn the play.
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 CONCLUSION
Perhaps this IS all too dehberate, but one must experiment
as one can.
Every poet would hke, I fancy, to be able to thmk that
he had some dIrect SOCIal utility. By tills, as I hope I have
already made clear, I do not mean that he should meddle
with the tasks of the theologIan, the preacher, the econo-
'll11st, the SOCIOlogIst or anybody else; that he should do
anythIng but wnte poetry, poetry not defmed 1U terms of
somethIng else. He would hke to be somethmg of a
popular entertamer, and be able to dunk lus own thoughts
behmd a tragIC or a C01ll1C mask. He would hke to convey
the pleasures of poetry, not only to a larger audIence, but
to larger groups of people collectlVely, and the theatre IS
the best place U1 which to do It. There nught, one fanCies,
be some fulfilment ill excltmg clus cOinmunal pleasure, to
gIve an ImmedIate compensatIon for the parns of tummg
blood into ink. As tlungs are, and as fundamentally they
must always be, poetry IS not a career, but a mug's game.
No honest poet can ever feel,quite sure of the permanent
value of what he has W!1tten. he may have wasted lus hme
and messed up his hfe for nothmg. All the better, then, If
he could have at least the satlsfactlon of havmg a part to
play ill SOCIety as worthy as that of the music-hall comedIan.
Furthermore, the theatre, by the techrucal exactlons whIch
It makes and hnutations which it Imposes upon the author,
by the obhgatlon to keep for a defirute length of tlme the
sustamed lnterest of a large and unprepared and not wholly
perceptive group of people, by Its problems whIch have
.constandy to be solved, has enough to keep the poet's
~onscious nund fully occupIed, as the pamter's by the manl-
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 CONCLUSION
pulation of lus tools. If, beyond keeping the mterest of cl.
crowd of people for that length of l1me, the author can
make a play wInch IS real poetry, so much the better.
I have not attempted any defillltlOn of poetry, because I
can dunk of none wInch does not assume that the reader
already knows what It IS, or wInch does not falsIfy by
leavIng out much more than it can mclude. Poetry begms,
I dare say, wIth a savage beatlng a drum ill a Jungle, and It
retams that essential of percussion and rhythm; hyper-
bohcally one might say that the poet IS older than other
human bemgs-but I do not want to be tempted to endmg
on dus sort of flourish. I have mSlsted rather on the varIety
of poetry, varIety so great that all the kInds seem to have
nothmg in common except the rhythm of verse instead of
the rhythm of prose: and that does not tell you much about
all poetry. Poetry IS of course not to be defined by Its uses.
If It commelnorates a pubhc occasIOn, or celebrates a
fesnval, or decorates a rehgious nte, or amuses a crowd, so
much the better. It may effect revolutions In sensIbility.
such as are perIodIcally needed; may help to break up the
conventional modes of perception and valuatIon wInch are
perpetually formmg, and make people see the world
afresh, or some new part of It. It may make us from time
to tlme a httle more aware of the deeper, unnamed feehngs
wInch form the substratum of our bemg, to which we
rarely penetrate; for our hves are mostly a constant evasion,
of ourselves, and an evaSIOn of the VIslble and senSIble
world. But to say all this is only to say what you know'
already, if you have felt poetry and thought about your I
feelings. And I fear that I have already, throughout these;
ISS
 CONCLUSION
lectures, trespassed beyond the bounds wruch a htde self-
knowledge tells me are Iny proper frontIer. If, as James
Thomson observed, 'hps only smg when they cannot kIss',
It may also be that poets only talk when they cannot sing.
I am content to leave my theonsmg about poetry at
tills pomt. The sad ghost of Colendge beckons to me from
the shadows

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