ESSAYS 141 



by its own excessive output; the concentrated and purified jewel of a life-time's 

 work is lost in that lake of slosh. It is also true that many writers reach fame by 

 the mass rather than by the quality of their penmanship. But in charity we must 

 remember that the duty of critics is, not to criticise, but to amuse. It is impossible 

 to criticise poetry. We can only recognise it. 



What, however, most depresses modern poetry is perhaps the puny nature of 

 the themes required by the critics — petty personal reminiscences, baby-pictures, 

 occasional reflections, namby-pamby moralising, old ballad-tales reset with new 

 tricks, verses to Henry and Mary, to faith and constancy and death, to college 

 tankards, to other poets, to politicians, to anti-vivisectors, and so on ; and these, 

 not crystallised as perfections, but thrown out anyhow with a chance good line or 

 phrase somewhere. This is the ultimate fruit of the Wordsworthian revolution— 

 of which the critics have been the demagogues and the result a decadent democracy 

 of art living half alive in a land where no one works and it is " always afternoon." 

 Massive inventions are impossible here, great groupings grotesque, constructions 

 wearisome, satire is rudeness, wit buffoonery, drama an occasional wail, and the 

 great movements of the world pass unrecorded. The theory of the simple tale 

 simply told ends merely in gush of no interest to any one, where even those who 

 do the gushing often have little experience of life and no philosophy to gush about. 

 The ancients brought every subject within the domain of poetry ; we now give her 

 a single altar lit by the flame of " feeling " and make her a goddess of gush. 

 Where do we find living history, or philosophy, or even politics, or indeed any 

 discussion of anything interesting in our verse of to-day ? And the greatest of 

 possible dramas, the drama of science, has scarcely yet been even attempted. 1 



Our charge against writers, reviewers, and public alike comes to this, that what 

 they generally take to be poetry is, even in the intention and throw of it, too trivial 

 to be poetry : an affair merely of verbal prettinesses or curiosities ; written merely 

 for the sake of writing, not because there is something to say which must be said. 

 Indeed, it is generally evident that behind the polished phrases there is really 

 nothing at all to say — no blood-won experience either of the inquiry which yields 

 truth, the pain which yields happiness, or the horror which yields beauty. The 

 writers have often seen nothing, done nothing, lived nothing. They deal in words 

 not things, and address critics not humanity. Their art is particular not con- 

 structive — not a shining crystal to be held and turned in the hands of Time, but a 

 glittering sand which runs through his fingers. And the reviewers are of the same 

 order— blind, I should say, to all but the word-granules of that which they analyse : 

 so much so that I have never yet seen a review even of the Iliad or of one of 

 Shakespeare's great philosophies. 



The ancients were wiser than we are, and Lucretius for one put all the science 

 of his day into music. For poetry is not merely a temporary heat of the heart, but 

 a making of monuments of and for the spirit of humanity. The harp of the Muse 

 has many strings — nay every possible string ; but the modern reviewer would 



1 One of the friends quoted at the beginning of this article said to me that "not 

 even yet does the world understand the full meaning of science." For instance, 

 a Sunday paper, in reviewing Mr. Masefield's exquisite sonnets on beauty 

 (Science Progress, January 1917), remarks that "the scientific trimmings of 

 too many of them spoil the sonnets, just as similar embellishments have spoiled 

 some of Mr. Masefield's prose " ! Can British unintellectualism go further ? The 

 same number of the paper blames a judge for punishing a boy for stealing a rabbit, 

 because the boy said he " did so want a rabbit." Science disfigures poetry and 

 theft is justified by desire. 



