feeling which prevents some of us from so counting them in any but a very imperfect sense? Neglect of inanimate nature possibly even glaringly false description of it, as in Pope's Homer-need not argue the absence of poetry, any more than mere accurate and picturesque description need argue its presence. Descriptions of picturesque phenomena are used with much greater reserve by the great poets of antiquity than by most English writers since Thomson and Cowper; yet they are by no means used with less effect, for they are always strictly relevant to the human interest. But the most fatal want in Pope and his fellows is a want of passion. By passion is not necessarily meant, of course, any tumult of the mind; more often a kind of fervent stillness; but at any rate a condition in which the intellectual perception is, so to speak, steeped throughout in emotional contemplation of a possessing idea, with which it is for the time identified, yet without losing its intellectual formative energy. Only by "possession" of this kind, coinciding with the requisite faculty of words, is the perfect. poetic expression of the idea elicited. Though it often includes, it yet differs from, that "ardour and impetuosity of mind" allowed by Wordsworth to Dryden. Ardour of this kind is necessary to the orator also, but then the orator is always thinking first, or at least equally, of his audience, and the effect of his words on them: the poet is entirely occupied with the object of his imagination. In this fies the reason why didactic poems are in continual danger of degenerating into mere rhetorical verse-a danger which even the genius of Lucretius could not altogether surmount, and which repeatedly compelled Virgil to choose in the Georgics' between instruction and poetry. He seldom fails to choose the latter alternative. It is Lot of students of agriculture that he is thinking when he loses himself in imagination among the cool glens of Hamus, beneath the umbrage of the

giant boughs. But in Pope and Addison and Dryden, and the eighteenth-century poets generally, the rhetorical quality is predominant, and it is only in this rhetorical quality that I can see plausible justification of Mr. Courthope's attributing to that century a closer connexion between poetry and public life than is found during other periods. In the sonnets alone of the recluse Wordsworth there would seem to be more memorable witness to things of national concern.

It is by no means intended here that a man may not be both a rhetorician and a poet. Macaulay, for instance, was both; and though his vein of poetic metal is a small thing among the vast mines of his rhetoric, it runs pure and unconfused when it appears in his 'Lays.' Rhetoric must be included in the genius of a dramatic, and even of an epic, poet. Yet there are few momentous speeches in Homer or in Shakespeare which do not contain a poetic element far beyond the rhetoric with which it blends. Through the stern brief utterances of Achilles avenging, pierce such haunting strains as the lines

1

ἔσσεται ἢ ἠὼς ἢ δείλη ἢ μέσον ἦμαρ ὁππότε τις καὶ ἐμεῖο 'Αρει ἐκ θυμὸν ἕληται, ἢ ὅγε δουρὶ βαλὼν ἢ ἀπὸ νευρῆφιν ὀϊστῷ It is only through the presence of imaginative passion that the metrical form of expression justifies its use, at once as a necessity, and as an inexhaustible charm. Metre not only provides, as has not seldom been remarked, a balance and law which harmonises the passionate flow of imaginative emotion; but it also deepens and intensifies that emotion by bringing it into accord, so to speak, with the inner music which is at the heart of things, and through which alone their existence can have its fullest meaning, and be the object of vivid conception. Thus the art of poetry, instead of removing us from nature, brings us closer. This

1 "There cometh morn or eve or some noonday when my life too some man shall take in battle, whether with spear he smite or arrow from the string."

2

is an effect of metre far beyond the conciseness and power of impressing the memory in which Pope seems to have seen its chief merits.

be

The things which fertilise one poet's imagination may be very different from those which fertilise another's; the seed may be wafted from mediæval romance, or from Hellenic mythology, from the idea of the fall of man, or of the founding of a state, from clouds or from flowers, from mountains or from the sea. It may even found, under limitations to which I will return, in some of the political interests shudderingly repudiated by Mr. Lang. But whatever it may be, it is something which the poet must transfer, so to speak, from his imagination to ours, by means of his art and his feeling combined, or rather interfused. Some degree of sympathy, of course, is needed: the subject which interests him may seem so remote from humanity in general, or perhaps so trivial, that such transference is hardly possible; but this is only a question of degree. Now Pope not only generally chooses things to write about which are unlikely to inspire poetic feeling; but

even when his subjects are moving (as the grief of Eloisa), they seem to contend in vain with the antithetical point-making of the expression. The fact of his writing in metre, and giving his readers pleasure by his epigrammatic skill in wielding it, is surely beside the mark in considering whether he is to be called a poet. The mere terseness and compendious convenience of metre can give pleasure when they fix a witty epigram on the mind, but this is not a poetic pleasure. Pope's deficiency may be well seen by comparing him with Gray, of whom Mr. Courthope speaks as "carrying on the ethical impulse communicated to poetry by Pope." Many lines of Gray share largely the mannerism of Pope's age, and yet by their interpenetrative glow of imaginative feeling are stamped as indisputable poetry. And not only in Gray, but also in Crabbe, there is at times imaginative passion; it is

lack of beauty, rather than lack of passion, that gives Crabbe but a low place among poets. For in high poetry this penetrative feeling must have its cause, however indirectly, in the contemplation of beauty of some kind; this is part of what Pindar means when he speaks of the favour of the Graces as indispensable. Verse of which the pervasive feeling and imagination are mainly excited by mean or hideous things may attain great power as satire, but not as pure poetry. It is as a satirist rather than as a poet that Byron seems to me to be entitled to rank high, in spite of the directness and facility, the rhetorical force which his prodigious ability gave him on subjects of many kinds. The Vision of Judgment' and 'Don Juan' seem to me his most successful works. I do not forget that this postulate of beauty might seem to deprive most of Dante's 'Hell' of its place in pure poetry. Some parts must be so excepted, I think, and also such parts of the Purgatory' and 'Paradise' as treat of matters where there is not enough feeling transmitted to the reader to prevent his thinking that they might as well have been in prose. Such are most of the theological and philosophical disquisitions. But even in the Inferno,' besides the broken lights of pathetic beauty, such as the meetings with Francesca, or with Brunetto Latini, the horrors are redeemed to poetry by the sense both of the noble and melancholy presence of the guide Virgil, and of the righteous judgments of God which overshadow the whole. Nor can there be a nobler poetical idea than that of the progress and purgation of the human spirit, symbolised through the entire poem by Dante's upward journey through hell and purgatory to the spheres of heaven.

The argument has somewhat led us away from the title of this paper and of Mr. Lang's, but a few further remarks more directly relevant to it may yet find room. On the principles sug gested above, it is plain what kind of power political theories or interests

may have in affecting poetry. If they attract a poet's imagination by something in them which he happens to feel vividly noble or imposing, they may contribute an element to his poetry. But it is also plain that this is not likely to happen in the case of contemporary party politics, because these are commonly involved in a cloud of prosaic and even mean associations, which render an imaginative presentment practically impossible. Of course a poet may be a politician, like any one else, when not concerned with his art, and the broad fundamental principles on which his politics are based may be capable of poetical expression. But it ean only be when remoteness has caused the prosaic details to disappear that the imagination will be sufficiently impressed by some moral or picturesque beauty discoverable beneath these to find material for poetry. And English politics of the eighteenth century would be among the least likely to afford such material. In the preceding age there was obviously far more idealism in the political world. And a knowledge of Milton's ardent political aspirations, and of his part in public affairs, repeatedly add great interest to his poetry. But from his poetry. itself politics are excluded, unless it be in a few of his sonnets. Even these, though they are inspired by contemporary men and things, deal only with the generalities and moralities of politics. Scott also, though of course in a far less degree, was involved in the party politics of his time. But it is one of the especial glories of his sane and kindly genius that this fact could never be discovered from his works of imagination. When he presents historical characters and parties in which analogies to modern politics might be found, no tinge of partisanship ever disturbs the serene and frank impartiality with which he depicts all the lights and shades of the "mighty opposites," who have, under whatever flag, animated the stage of human life by battling for the fulfilment of some political or religious

ideal, or, it may be, for little but the satisfaction of a barbaric love of strife. It is only natural, perhaps, that, among political ideas, those of a "Liberal or progressive kind should have been more often and more directly expressed in poetry, for the vague future lends itself more readily to the moulding of imagination than the familiar order of things seen in the light of common day. Even if the idealisation be of the past, this is hardly more corroborative of a practical and political Conservatism of existing institutions. But happily the instinct of poets has pretty nearly banished party politics and definite political specifics of all kinds from poetry-at any rate from the best. The one great exception is an exception that may really be said to go far to prove the rule. Dante not only argued systematically for his cherished political theory in prose, but also eagerly welcomed all occasions for vindicating it in his great poem. The doctrine of the divinely appointed ordinance of the Holy Roman Empire may be said to be incorporated in the fabric of the 'Divina Commedia.' Going beyond generalities in praise of freedom or tradition, progress or order, Dante urges his specific remedy for the political ills and difficulties of the world-its repose under the wing of the imperial "bird of God." But then this was a remedy at which no practical politician had at that time any intention of aiming. Doubtless the idea of the Roman Empire had still some traditional authority over the minds of men. But the then emperor was too fully occupied with affairs on a much smaller scale to listen to Dante's cry to him on behalf of "widowed Rome. As to the Ghibellines, they only profaned il sacrosanto segno by usurping it.

"Faccian gli Ghibellin, faccian lor arte Sott' altro segno; chè mal segue quello Sempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte." 1

1 "Let the Ghibellines practice their arts under some other banner than this; for ever is he an ill follower thereof who dissevers it from justice."

If the universal empire of Rome had been before Dante's view as a militant or a triumphant reality, instead of as a visionary ideal of the reign of justice and peace, it would probably soon have lost its power of inspiration. When we speak of the failure of politics to inspire poetry, it need hardly be said that such politics do not include the sentiment of patriotism, of resistance to oppressors or invaders, or to national enemies generally. This is happily a sentiment which has known no distinction of parties in our country, and has found expression alike in the Conservative Wordsworth, the Liberal Tennyson, and the Radical Burns; and I am glad to see that Mr. Lang reminds his readers that in the falsely-named "classical period" of the eighteenth century English patriotism found no poetic expression comparable to that achieved in the age when it has been alleged that the Revolution had corrupted our literature with cosmopolitan indifference. To the eighteenth century in England belong great and solid achievements, but not the imaginative aspirations of the Reformation, or of the Revolution, or of the age of the Crusades and the foundation of the great monastic orders of Dominic and Francis. Out of all the nineteen centuries since the Christian era, only in the three periods containing those three great movements can Europe claim to have felt the full influence of those "golden stars beneath which poets are said to be born.

But such wide fields of disquisition are not to be entered now. In conclusion I would merely say a word to deprecate any imputation of dogmatism in these matters. In the first place, I am well aware that if several people write about a subject of this kind they are very likely to misunderstand each other, and also to use the same words in senses that differ with the user. They may be repeating when they mean to controvert, and possibly controverting when they mean to repeat. Further, with regard to the view here

supported-the view that the estimate" of poetry is ultimately a matter of perception rather than argument, that the highest poetic qualities are apprehensible but indefinable - those who think thus are by virtue of their faith especially bound (however hard it seem) to be most careful to hold frankly to the principle, and not merely to "respect the right of private judgment," but to try to believe that when a judgment differs from theirs it may be based on some real perception of qualities not apparent to themselves, perhaps overlaid with defects which their idiosyncrasy makes exceptionally disfiguring in their eyes, perhaps appealing to associations which to them are insignificant. Personally, for instance, I would most willingly sacrifice the whole of Childe Harold,' if need were, to preserve Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan,' or Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper,' or one of Macaulay's 'Lays.' Yet it is undeniable that a great body of opinion would be opposed, that a great number of persons who derive genuine pleasure from poetry think as highly of Byron as a poet as I think of him as a satirist. Others, again, may hold Wordsworth's 'Reaper' a simple and graceful piece without any especial rare and penetrative charm. Others (including a greater number of respect able judges) will allow little to Macaulay's poetry except "a certain ardour and impetuosity." Dr. Mommsen classes theÆneid' with the 'Henriade'; and we know Voltaire's opinions on Dante and Shakespeare. All this only shows how subtle is the appeal of poetry, and on what complex associations it depends in each individual case. Probably, therefore, not very much is to be gained by discussion of whether this or that is true poetry, still less by too elaborate attempts at artificial classification of poets. Let us by all means know all we can of what there was in the concerns of a poet's age,-political, religi ous, social, literary, artistic-which was likely to influence his mind and