ESSAYS 139 



and every good poet has been justly accused by every bad critic of theft. Art is 

 built upon art as coral upon coral and mountain upon mountain : 



For poems are not made but grow ; and like 

 The crystal spikelets of the ocean caves, 

 Accumulate for ever. 



Art is the creation of perfections — which become immortal because they are per- 

 fections, not because they are eccentricities. Novelty in detail is generally bad 

 art, and true originality must lie in the ultimate degree of perfection of the whole 

 complex — quite another matter and a difficult task indeed. 



Mr. Edmund Gosse says sarcastically in the satirical preface to his admirable 

 poems— which he tells us are unknown to readers of the present day— that " there 

 is nothing in which fashion alters so rapidly as it does in poetry." But of course 

 poetry is the same to-day as it was in the time of Job and Homer, and it is only 

 the false gods which are decked in new-fashioned robes. Hence the follies of 

 impressionists, cubists, topicalists, localists, and the rest of them. Art has arts, 

 but no tricks ; flavours, but no sauces. True art is great precisely because she is 

 above fashion. Wordsworth protested against the classical form, and Burns is 

 admired for his "local colour" ; but the only things worth reading in them are the 

 classical and the universal. 



I saw the other day a review applauding what calls itself Imagist Poetry, one 

 merit of which would appear to consist in leaving out the rhythm of verse ; and 

 the reviewer seemed to think that there was something new and therefore 

 admirable in this trick. But of course poetry without rhythm is always not 

 only possible but, with certain lofty substance, may be of the very highest ; as in 

 the Bible, and in Hugo's prose, where the lines are broken to mark, not the time- 

 bars, but the cadence of sense and sound. It is, however, a different matter with 

 other substance, for which rhythm and rhyme are the water of crystallisation of 

 the thoughts, without which they fall into dust ; and a cut diamond is always more 

 beautiful than a lump of carbon. One might as well claim merit for painting 

 pictures without colour. 



The same critic then proceeds to contemn the use of certain words like 

 glamour because they are supposed to be poetical, and also certain forms of verse 

 because "they are filled with ghosts, Pan and Proserpine, and Paolo and 

 Francesca, and all sorts of old unhappy things that infest the poets' mind and 

 will out in his poetry." The truth is that such names are symbols of whole groups 

 of ideas which the poet uses just as the algebraist uses his x, y and z. In Pan 

 we see instantly the mystery of forest and field, and in Proserpine the innocence 

 and beauty of the spring flowers. The words are as vital as mountain, river, and 

 heavens, but they present, not only visions of nature, but often also entire tracts 

 of human experience — so that, for instance, the mere words Paolo and Francesca 

 give us a complete poignant drama in one flash. True poetry delights in such 

 images just as true music loves certain old cadences. But as there are decadent 

 algebraists who would try to teach us algebra without symbols, so there would 

 seem to be critics who would have us forsake the great and ancient symbolic 

 words which have enshrined certain thoughts in us ere the dawn of history. 



Such reviewers would reduce us by successive deletions to the inane. The 

 careful construction of speech is mere rhetoric, the crash of stormy words is 

 bombast, images are fustian, passion is rhodomontade, old forms are eclectic, and, 

 in short, the last thing to be used in art is art. Subject is of course quite un- 

 important, and all the poet must do is to write perfectly simply of simple things, 



