"SCIENCE AND POLITICS," 2 IDYLLE. GALATEE, 2 A WINNOWER'S SONG TO THE WINDS, "TWO BIRDS WITHIN ONE NEST,"" MISCELLANY, PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & CO., BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. or From Macmillan's Magazine. most things that he dislikes? In any case the word "Liberal" is one of those THE separation of literary criticism question-begging, popular, political terms from politics appears to have been a gain which had been expelled from the critiboth to politics and to literature. If Mr. cism of poetry. It seems an error to Swinburne, for example, speaks unkindly bring back the word with its passionate about kings and priests in one volume, associations. Mr. Courthope will, perthat offence is not remembered against haps, think that the reviewer who thus him, even by the most Conservative critic, objects is himself a Liberal. It is not so; when he gives us a book like "Atalanta," and though I would fain escape from even "Erechtheus." If Victor Hugo ap- the thought of party bickerings, I probably plauds the Commune, the Conservative agree with Mr. Courthope in not wishing M. Paul de Saint Victor freely forgives him. In the earlier part of the century, on the other hand, poems which had no tinge of politics were furiously assailed, for party reasons, by Tory critics, if the author was a Whig, or had friends in the ranks of Whiggery. Perhaps the Whiggish critics were not less one-sided, but their exploits (except a few of Jeffrey's) are forgotten. Either there were no Conservative poets to be attacked, or the Whig attack was so weak, and so unlike the fine fury of the Tory reviewers, that it has lapsed into oblivion. Assuredly no Tory Keats died of an article, no Tory Shelley revenged him in a Conservative "Adonais," and, if Lord Byron struck back at his Scotch reviewers, Lord Byron was no Tory. to disestablish anything or anybody, not even the House of Lords. None the less it is distracting, when we are occupied for once with thoughts about poetry, to meet sentences like this: "Life, in the Radical view, is simply change; and a Radical is ready to promote every caprice or whim of the numerical majority of the moment in the belief that the change which it effects in the constitution of society will bring him nearer to some ideal state existing in his own imagination." Or again: "How many leagues away do they" (certain remarks of Mr. Burke's) "carry us from the Liberal Radicalism now crying out for the abolition of the hereditary branch of the Legislature?" and so on. One expects, in every page, to encounter the deceased wife's sister, or "a cow and three acres." It is not in the mood provoked by our enthusiasm for the hereditary branch of the Legislature, it is not when the heart stands up in defence of the game laws, that we are fit to reason about poetry. Consequently, as it appears to me, Mr. Courthope, in his excitement against Radicalism, does not always reason correctly, nor, perhaps, feel correctly, about poetry. In the happy truce of the Muses, which now enables us to judge a poet on his lit erary merits, Mr. Courthope has raised a war-cry which will not, I hope, be widely echoed. He has called his reprinted essays "The Liberal Movement in English Literature," and has thus brought back the howls of partisans into a region where they had been long silent. One cannot but regret this intrusion of the factions which have "no language but a cry" into As far as I understand the main thesis the tranquil regions of verse. Mr. Court of Mr. Courthope's book, it is something hope knows that the title of his essays like this. From a very early date, from will be objected to, and he tries to defend the date certainly of Chaucer, there have it. Cardinal Newman, he says, employs been flowing two main streams in English the term "Liberalism to denote a move- literature. One stream is the poetry of ment in the region of thought. Would it romance, the other is the poetry of mannot be as true to say that Cardinal New-ners. The former had its source (I am uses "Liberalism" as "short" for inclined to go a great way further back for its source) "in the institutions of chivalry, and in medieval theology." The other poetical river, again, the poetry of manners, "has been fed by the life, actions, man • Compare Maginn's brutal and silly attack on Shelley's" Adonais," recently reprinted in Maginn's "Miscellanies." Sampson, Low, and Company. ↑ John Murray, London, 1885. and manners of the nation." One might | ness. In the secular action and reaction, add to this that the "life and actions" of each of these tendencies has, at various our people have often, between the days times, been weak or strong. At the beof the Black Prince and of General Gor- ginning of this century, too, a party tinge don, been in the highest degree "ro- was certainly given, chiefly by Consermantic." This mixture, however, would vative critics, to the reborn romantic confuse Mr. Courthope's system. Dray- poetry. Keats cared as little as any man ton's "Agincourt," Lord Tennyson's "Revenge," may be regarded at will, perhaps, as belonging to the poetry of romance, or the poetry of national action. Mr. Courthope does not touch on this fact, but the reader will do well to keep it in mind, for reasons which will appear later. for what Marcus Aurelius calls "the driv elling of politicians," but even Keats, as a friend of "kind Hunt's," was a sort of Liberal. But admitting this party color. ing, one must add that it was of very slight moment indeed, and very casually distributed. Therefore, one must still regret, for reasons which will instantly appear, Mr. Courthope's introduction of party names and party prejudices into his interesting essays. The fortunes of the two streams of poetry have been different. The romantic stream was lost in the sands of Donne, Crashaw, Cowley, and the rest, but welled up again in the beginning of our own cen- It is probably the author's preoccupa. tury, in Scott, Coleridge, and others. The tion with politics which causes frequent poetry of manners, on the other hand, had contradictions, as they seem, and a genits great time when men, revolting from eral sense of confusion, which often make the conceits of degenerate romanticism, it very hard to follow his argument, and took, with Pope, Dryden, Thomson, and to see what he is really driving at. For Johnson, to "correctness," to working example, Scott, the Conservative Scott, under the "ethical impulse." Now the whom Mr. Courthope so justly admires, "correctness" and the choice of moral has to appear as a Liberal, almost a revotopics which prevailed in the eighteenth lutionary, in verse. Mr. Courthope quotes century were "Conservative," and the new Coleridge's account of the origin of "Lyriburst of romantic poetry was "Liberal," cal Ballads " as "the first note of the new and was connected with the general revo- departure,' which I have called the 'Liblutionary and Liberal movement in poli-eral Movement in English Literature.'" tics, speculation, and religion. Finally, Well, but the Tory Scott was an eager Mr. Courthope thinks that "the Liberal follower of Coleridge's; he played (if we movement in our literature, as well as in are to be political) Mr. Jesse Collings to our politics, is beginning to languish." Coleridge's Mr. Chamberlain. This, by Perhaps Mr. Chamberlain and his friends itself, proves how very little the Liberal are not aware that they are languishing. movement in literature was a party moveIn the interests of our languishing poetry, ment, how little it had to do with Liberalat all events, Mr. Courthope briefly pre- ism in politics. scribes more "healthy objectivity" (the words are mine, and are slang, but they put the idea briefly), and a "revival of the simple iambic movements of English in metres historically established in our literature." In this sketch of Mr. Courthope's thesis, his main ideas show forth as, if not new, yet perfectly true. There is, there has been, a poetry of romance of which the corruption is found in the wanton conceits of Donne and Crashaw. There is, there has been, a poetry of manners and morals, of which the corruption is didactic prosi Again, when Mr. Courthope is censuring, and most justly censuring, Mr. Carlyle's grudging and Pharisaical article on Scott, he speaks of Carlyle as a "Radical," and finds that "our Radical Diogenes" blamed Scott "because he was a Conservative, and amused the people." Now Carlyle, of all men, was no Radical; and Scott, as a Conservative, is a queer figure in a Liberal movement. Another odd fact is that the leaders of the Liberal move. ment" steeped themselves" in the atmo sphere of feudal romance. Whatever else feudal romance may have been, it was eminently anti Radical, and, to poetic | poetry, like Providence, "is Tory." This Radicals, should have been eminently un- may seem an audacious guess. I am led congenial. Odder still (if the Liberal to make it partly by observing that Mr. movement in literature was a party move- Courthope's own poems, especially the ment to any important extent) is Mr. charming lyrics in "The Paradise of Courthope's discovery that Macaulay was Birds," have a freedom and a varied music, a Conservative critic. Yet a Conserva- extremely Liberal, extremely unlike John. tive critic Macaulay must have been, be- son and Thomson, and not all dissimilar cause he was in the camp opposed to that to what we admire in the Red Republican of Coleridge and Keats. Macaulay was verse of Mr. Swinburne. Now, if Mr. a very strong party man, and, had he been Courthope writes verse like that (and I aware that his critical tastes were Tory, wish he would write more), surely his inhe would perhaps have changed his tastes. most self must, on the whole, tend rather Yet again, Mr. Courthope finds that op- to the poetry he calls Liberal, than to that timism is the note of Liberalism, while which (being a politician) he admires as "the Conservative takes a far less san- Conservative, but does not imitate. All guine view of the prospects of the art of this, however, is an attempt to plumb"the poetry," and of things in general. But abysmal depths of personality." We are Byron and Shelley, in Mr. Courthope's on firmer ground when we try to show argument, were Liberal poets. Yet Mr. that Mr. Courthope expresses too high an Courthope says, speaking of Shelley, "like opinion of the typical poetry of the eighByron, he shows himself a complete pessi- teenth century. Now this really brings mist." For my own part (and Mr. Court- us face to face with the great question, hope elsewhere expresses the same opin- Was Pope a poet? and that, again, leads ion), Shelley seems to me an optimist, in us to the brink of a discussion as to what his queer political dreams of a future is poetry. On these matters no one will where Prometheus and Asia shall twine ever persuade his neighbors by argument. beams and buds in a cave, unvexed by We all follow our tastes, incapable of conpriests and kings a future in which all version. I must admit that I am, on this men shall be peaceful, brotherly, affection- point, a Romanticist of the most "dishev ate sentimentalists. But Mr. Courthope elled "character; that Pope's verse does must decide whether Byron and Shelley not affect me as what I call poetry affects are to be Conservatives and pessimists, me; that I only style Pope, in Mr. Swinor Liberals and optimists. At present burne's words, "a poet with a difference." their position as Liberal pessimists seems, This is one of the remarks which inspire on his own showing, difficult and pre- Mr. Courthope to do battle for Pope, and carious. Macaulay, too, the Liberal Ma- for Thomson, and Johnson, and the rest. caulay, is a pessimist, according to Mr. Mr. Matthew Arnold, too, vexes Mr. Courthope. All this confusion, as I ven- Courthope by calling Pope and Dryden ture to think it, appears to arise, then,"classics of our prose." Why are they from Mr. Courthope's political preoccupa tions. He shows us a Radical Carlyle, a Conservative Macaulay; a Scott who is, perhaps, a kind of Whig; a Byron, who, being pessimistic, should be Conservative, but is Liberal; a Shelley, who is Liberal, though, being pessimistic, he ought to be Conservative. It is all very perplexing, and, like most mischief, all comes out of party politics. It is less easy to demonstrate, what I cannot help suspecting, that Mr. Courthope's great admiration of the typical poetry of the eighteenth century comes from his persuasion that that not poets? he asks: and "Who is a poet if not Pope?" Who? Why from Homer onwards there are many poets; there are "many mansions," but if Pope dwells in one of them I think it is by courtesy, and because there are a few diamonds of poetry in the fine gold of his verse. But it is time to say why one would (in spite of the very highest of all living authori. ties) incline to qualify the title of "poet' as given to Pope. It is for a reason which Mr. Courthope finds it hard to understand. He says that Mr. Matthew Arnold and Mr. Swinburne deny Pope the laurel |