1918] on The Romantic Revival 263 



thing is done ; the artist seldom can. He may give us some 

 information about certain of the minor or more mechanical parts of 

 the processes in work ; but the true secret of his art is hidden most 

 of all from the artist. Once I visited Mr. Tinworth in his studio. 

 I asked him something about his process of work. He took up a 

 piece of clay, and under his nervous and pliant fingers, which seemed 

 to have life and reason in their very tips, the tiny piece of clay took 

 human shape. 



" That is how I do it," he said, as he crushed it into shapelessness 

 again. Yes, that is how we do it, the poet as well as the artist tells 

 you ; but the how is as much a mystery as ever. The artistic and 

 the poetic mind is bad at definitions, and therefore when Matthew 

 Arnold said that poetry was at root a criticism of life, we take the 

 liberty of believing that he is projecting the shadow of something 

 which profoundly interested him over his idea of poetry and mistook 

 the outline of the shadow for a definition of poetry. 



Indeed I would go further — and this has intimate bearing on the 

 rise of the Romantic School of poetry — and express my belief that a 

 poet never writes so badly as when he is under the conscious rule of 

 some theory of his art. He is only master when he rises so far above 

 it (I do not say neglects it) as to be unconscious of its existence ; 

 for there is always "in true poetry a certain happy abandon which 

 tends to create that the quality of " inevitableness " of which "Words- 

 worth spoke. 



Briefly, then, I distrust definitions, but this is quite a different 

 thing from saying that there are no qualities which should be found 

 in poetry. AVe look for imagination and harmony ; we delight in 

 simplicity where we find it ; we ask for colour, and we love it as it 

 appeals to our sense of fitness. But we must give poetry a latitude 

 which is claimed rightly by all imaginative arts ; and we must allow 

 to the poet the freedom of his individuality. 



He must, as has been said, create his own public. He must be 

 true to himself if he is to be true to those souls of whose secret 

 thoughts and unspoken aspirations he is to be the voice. 



When, therefore, oar reader in the library asks whether that is 

 good poetry in 183<J which was bad a few years before, our answer 

 must be that between the two dates there had arisen a generation 

 who found in Wordsworth the voice for which they were waiting. 

 In a part he created the thirst which he satisfied ; in a part he was 

 the mouthpiece of what struggled in many souls for utterance. The 

 age had changed. AYordsworth suited the England of 1830 ; he did 

 not suit the England of 1810-20. And whatever else is true, the 

 poet must speak the language of his age. The age says of the poet, 

 as the lover does of his mistress, 



" If she be not fair to me, 

 What care I how fair she be." 



And this sentiment must not be thrown away as though it only 



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