The Use of Poetry & the Use of Criticism

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

24

PUBLI~HED

NOVEMBER MCMXXxui BY FABER AND FABER LIMITED 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

I. INTRODUCTION

II. APOLOGY FOR THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE

II

13 37

III. THE AGE OF DRYDEN

53

IV. WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE

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 Harvard 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 England; 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 contest 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 pohtlcal quotatlon only as a remmder of the varIed mterests of the scholar and humanist whom tlus foundatlon commemorates. 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 mamtamed 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 hlstoryone 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 Immediately socIal .. Whether our perIod of economIC enterprIse, unlinuted competItIon, and unrestraIned IndIviduahsm, 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 mamtain 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 contemporary 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 dIflMy 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 poetryprose 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 questions .. Anstode, m what we possess of 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

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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 knowledge of poetry and a capacity for dispassionate psychological 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 ellJoyment, and he must conVInce us of hIS taste. For the expenence 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 sensiblhty 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 accomphshed 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 expenence 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 reqUIres 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 tlmemdeed 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 purpose 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 enlarged 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 questIOn '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 dtfferences between what we read for the first time and what we have already enjoyed Itself contnbutes to our enJoyment. 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 suggested 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 creatlve 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 prejudIce, incluclmg a confusion between several dIfferent thmgs, and between works of very dIfferent quahty, meluded 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. Nevertheless, 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 litera20

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 illseparable 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 conscious 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 CIrcumstances 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 develop21

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 perceptlon 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 RestoratIon 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 democratised 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 weak22

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 saCrIfice 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 cons1dered several CrItICS as representatIves of several generations. 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 purpose 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 reader with hun, and that he never senously has to ask rumself the questIons, what poetry IS for, what it does, or

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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 eIghteenth 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 MeredIth. 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 conveyed 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 hopeless 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. CrItiCIsm 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 conJectures, 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 preJudices/ 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 subJect; the thIrd IS elocutIon, or the art of clothIng and adornmg 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 chfferent 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 translation 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 working progressively to dcsynon):Ill1se those words onginaily of the same meanmg, wruch the conflux of dialects supplied 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 certaIn 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 contamed 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 commun1cate-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 practIcal hfe, ill the expressIOn of It. Ifpoetry IS a form oCcommunication', 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. Consequentlythe 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 mstructlon 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 entertainment 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 explan31

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 eventually 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 mterested 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 without 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 enjoyment 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 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 twentysecond 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

rum

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 posses510n 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 expected to give and what he cannot. The poem has Its own eXistence, apart from us; It was there before us and will endure after us. It IS only at tlus stage that the reader IS prepared to chstmgUlsh between degrees of greatness ill poetry; before that stage he can only be expected to mstingmsh 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

any 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 development 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 'cultIvated' 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-

1ll

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 urunterestIng 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 apprecIate 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 adaptation of classical forms illustrated by the essay of CampIon, 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 posi37

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 seInlclaSSIcal 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 conventional 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 lUfluence 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 Invented can teach anyone to WrIte good Enghsh verse. It IS, t

38

COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE

as Mr. Pound has so often remarked, the musIcal phrase that matters.1 The great acInevement of Ehzabethan verSIficatIon 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 comparable 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 rIdiculIng 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 excellence of Shakespeare. But when we thmk of the multltude of bad plays, and the nUInber of preCIOUS but imperfect plays, wruch SIdney dId not hve to read or see performed, 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 nothing 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 contrast between the grandeur of the main plot and the nauseousness 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 moreare 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 the longest tIme ,1 maintain Its attentIon; but we hke s\"me farce as a rehef from our sentiment, however salacIous, and some sentlInent 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 represents 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 dramatIst-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 mstance, 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 Shakespeare 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 practICal 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 adversanes. 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 conscnpts 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 Shakespeare, 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; because I am more and more mterested, not m one play or another, 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 understandmg of what he attempted; and I belIeve that to admit his partial failures IS to approach the recognltlOn of 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.

rus

Tills consIderatIon may appear to have earned us far away from Sidney's simple assertton about the decorum to

44

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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 presupposed 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 sympathy 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 because 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 position, than attempted murder. And what I have denoIll1nated Unity of Sennment IS only a shghdy larger term than Druty of Action.

rus

Uruty, says Butcher, mrus edItion of the Poetics, IS mamfested 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 inextncably 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 purpose 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 confine 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 Castelvetro. ThlS IS not, of course, an Anstotehan doctnne.

47

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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; provIded 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 Pembroke'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 Countess 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; Marlowe 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 fasrid10US 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 remmded that 7T'OL€lV 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 wherewith 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

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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 relation 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 development 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 refreshment; 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 homogeneIty 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 animatIon 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 Ehzabethan 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 belong to qwte the end of the penod. If I treated Ben Jonson'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 commonplaces. About pc>etry: 'The study of It (if we will trust Aristotle) offers to man-

I

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; msomuch 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 IncredIble sweetness. The questions Imphed are, as I SaId towards 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 endeavour to teach wrItlng. But when we compare such passages 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 analytlcal., 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 soundmg 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 copybook 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 exerclsed; 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 corresponds to the celebrated and admrrable account of 1Illagmation 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 Dictionary, 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 Imagmation.' The words 'mtellect or Imagmanon' strike me as a burkmg of the question: if there is a clear dlstincnon between 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. Furthermore, 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' represents the conscious elaboration of the anginal donneeI prefer not to call that which IS found by invention by the name of 'idea'; and fancy, I believe, covers also the con56

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, 'clothmg 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 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 Imagmatlon: '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 possessed 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 Adruson had never read, certamly never pondered, Dryden's remarks upon the subject. I do not feel sure, however. that IS

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 mstructlon, 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 meaning. 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 compamon 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. Instead of the courtler, we have the man of pohte imagm60

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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 Wlthout 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 particular exammation of AddIson may be left to Mr. Saintsbury, 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 commurucation; 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

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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 comparable 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-

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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 facIlIty 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.

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Such writIng as Johnson's Lives of the Poets and lus essay on Shakespeare loses none of Its permanence from the conslderation that every generatlon must make Its own appraisal of the poetry of the past, m the hght of the performance of Its contemporanes and ImmedIate predecessors. 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 workImphcations 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 runeteenth 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 plnlosopher, 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 prejudlces 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

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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

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WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE December 9th, 1932 t IS natural, and In so rapId and superficIal a reVIew as 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 document; 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.

I

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

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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 manTrus 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 Biographia 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 Colendge as druggmg rumself WIth metaphysicS I was tmnkmg senously of these Ins own words: 'haply by abstruse research 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

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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 acmevement IS so much greater than ColerIdge's as It appears, is uncertaIn. Whether power and msplratlOn remamed WIth lum to the end is, alas, not even doubtful. But W ordsworth 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

rus

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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 ofWordsworth upon Colendge, durmg theIr bnef penod of llltlmate 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, temperament 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 Imagmanon; 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 ~

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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 mentioned by a wnter In The Morning Post as 'hterary bolsheViks' 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 bservatIon'. 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 prmclples. 'The language of the tmddle and lower classes of socIety'lls of course perfectly proper when you are representmg dranlatically the speech of these classes, and then no other language IS proper; slnularly when you are representlUg dramatIcally the language of the upper classes; but on lWhat was Wordsworth's conceptIon of the language of the upper classes of Soclety?

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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 current 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 medIOCrltIes True, Gray "vas overrated. but then Johnson had COlne down on Gray wIth a deadlIer force than Wordsworth 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 ordsworth 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.

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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 disproportlOn 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 act1vIty, 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 Independence better If you understand the purposes and socIal passions which anImated Its author; and unless you understand these you WIll nnsread Wordsworth's hterary CfltlClSm entIrely. IncIdentally, those who speak of Wordsworth 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

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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 recantatIOn 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.'

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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 understood 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

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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 illvolves 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 Important 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

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its operation. It dIssolves, dIffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate, 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 forgotten 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 between 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

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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 exploratlon 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

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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 Imagmation 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 ... reveals 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 delight . . . Wlth the power of reducing multitude into IPrinciples ofLiterary Cnticism, p. 191 79

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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 attentron to the profundIty of the plnlosopluc problems mto which the study of poetry may take us. And the two men 80

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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 makmg 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 stabilisations 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

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from Mllton to Wordsworth, or from perhaps even before Milton, as an un(ortunate interlude durmg which the Enghsh 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 contemporanes, 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 culmmatmg 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 Manley 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 though I suspect a shght WIlfulness In bnnging 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

rus,

rum

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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 " ThiS not mereIy that between " C1aSSlcaI" an d " ronlantlC. 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 anything 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

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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 profound level of mSlght than that of Colendge or W ordsworth 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 Dryden and Johnson, then what we have to do IS to re-tnteg84

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rate It: otherwIse we are lIkely to get only succeSSIve alternatIons 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 Wordsworth 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 whatever. 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

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and behefs, just how much, I wonder, remaIns? To retam them, or to keep thenl ill IDlnd Instead of delIberately extrudmg them ill preparatlOn for enjoymg IllS poetry, IS that not necessary to appreCIate how great a poet W Otdsworth really is? ConsIder, for m