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another author who cannot write grammatical English, but who wipes out 

 the reputation of Tennyson. A third celestial says about George Elliot that, 

 " of all the major Victorian reputations, hers is the most faded. . . . We, 

 who have learned that art has nothing to do with ethics, and have acquired 

 a subtlety in the dissection of the human heart beyond the wildest dreams 

 of the Victorians, do well quietly to depose her." So, then, poetry need not 

 contain sharp saws, rich sentiment, or delicate technique ; it need not please, 

 flatter, charm, or soothe ; and it must have no moral teaching. It must in 

 short be modern. But why depose the Victorians only ? For if these things 

 be true, poetry began only a few years ago — and will end a few years hence. 

 Yet another critic says that " the last five years have produced a body 

 of poetry to match whose volume and merit we must go back to the first ten 



years of the seventeenth century." We admit the volume, but Well, 



very few people read these great works ; but I have had to read some of 

 them, and must confess to certain qualms. Certainly there are numerous 

 pretty little fiowtrs of verse peeping out here and there among the barren 

 rocks of politics, of which our journals are mostly composed ; and books of 

 verse (evidently issued at the expense of the authors) are poured forth in- 

 cessantly. What is the quality of them ? The pieces are almost entirely 

 lyrical — or not even that, because many of them possess no rhythm. For 

 example : 



" But what satisfaction do you think there is 



In a black printed word ? 



I tell you, we envy the painters and carvers." 



Apparently, in order to write poetry, all we have to do is to place successive 

 groups of words on different lines, each beginning with a capital. Our poets 

 are so democratic that they hate the discipline of rhythm just as many of 

 our working men seem to hate the discipline of work. But they abandon 

 not only rhythm, but every other supposed rule of verse ; and the more 

 " natural " they show themselves to be, the more do the critics seated on 

 Parnassus clap their jewelled hands at them. We must be " novel," 

 " natural," and " sincere " — that is all. How curious ; because some of the 

 greatest poems in literature show none of these qualities. 



We admit that many modern poems contain a pretty or fine phrase, or 

 even a fine figure ; but the beauty of the phrase or line seldom extends to 

 the whole stanza, much less to the whole piece ; and it is only an occasional 

 glimpse of beauty. It is that very naturalness, that very want of constructive 

 art, which ruins them. The other day I lent Prof. G. H. Clarke's Treasury 

 of War Poetry (Houghton MifBin Company, 1919) to a friend. He said he was 

 sorry to see that the only verse it contained with invention in it was my 

 " Apocalypse " — in which I had represented Humanity before the war as a 

 heroic figure defying the Ocean of Fate until a gigantic hand emerges and draws 

 him down ! I admit that from the modern point of view this is a shameful 

 poem, because nothing of the kind ever really happened, and it is a living 

 lie. " But," my friend added, " oddly enough, I still remember your out-of- 

 date poem, while I have forgotten all the others ! " That is precisely the 

 point. We remember inventions, we forget natural things. Nature is 

 beautiful, but manifold. The flowers are beautiful, but innumerable. Art 

 is not nature. Art is beautiful too — but unique. And the uniqueness gener- 

 ally lies in the invention — which is the stamp of the human spirit impressed 

 upon the formless metal of nature. Art seeks the beauty, not of nature, 

 but of the spirit. The vision lives, the reality dies. The defect of most of 

 the verses lauded by our modern critics is precisely that they are not living 

 lies. They are dead truths — like the pebbles at our feet. 



As for the critic who can see no relation between art and ethics, surely 

 be is thinking, not of art, but of journalese art. Real art is only philosophy 



