ENGLISHMAN 



2936 



ENGLISHMAN 



French literature was felt in the 

 spirit and the form alike of English 

 novel and poetry and critical prose. 

 The doctrine of " art for art's sake " 

 found ardent disciples in Oscar 

 Wilde, whose early imitative poems 

 were followed by prose essays of 

 original and subtle beauty, Inten- 

 tions, comedies in which something 

 of the art of Congreve was revived, 

 and one or two poems, The Ballad 

 of Reading Gaol, which owed their 

 tragic beauty to the bitter experi- 

 ence of which they were born ; 

 Arthur Symons ; Ernest Dowson, 

 author of at least one immortal 

 lyric ; Lionel Johnson, the rare 

 quality of whose scholarly and 

 thoughtful verse time will make 

 more manifest ; Rachel Annand 

 Taylor, whose lyrics have the 

 jewelled richness and hardness of 

 the Italian art of the Renaissance. 

 The older tradition of the Humani- 

 ties in English poetry, classical in 

 spirit and form, was preserved 

 in the verse of William Watson, 

 and of Robert Bridges, the poet 

 laureate. 



The "Art ior Art" Movement 



But poetry has never been for 

 Englishmen sopurely an art, a ques- 

 tion of exquisite form cultivated for 

 its own sake, as for the French. For 

 the English inspiration has ever 

 been its source and ralson d'etre, 

 and inspiration is born of a quick- 

 ening theme, of life realized with a 

 heightened intensity on this side or 

 that religion, country, nature, the 

 vicissitudes of human experience. 

 The " art for art " movement 

 yielded place rapidly to poetry of 

 two kinds that whose inspiration 

 comes from within, spiritual, sym- 

 bolistic, religious, and that wFiich 

 seeks its subjects in the changing 

 face of nature and men's lives, 

 realistic, prophetic, combative. 

 William Butler Yeats learned from 

 Blake the significance of the imag- 

 ination as the levealer of transcen- 

 dental truths, and found in Irish 

 mythology the symbols in which 

 these truths may be shadowed 

 forth. His lyrics hold a place of 

 their own among the finest in the 

 language. 



Francis Thompson, morbid and 

 devout, sensuous and metaphy- 

 sical, found in all his themes, 

 nature, child and woman, symbols 

 of Catholic truth and Divine mys- 

 teries, the ultimate object of his 

 ecstatic ardours expressed in a 

 style full of rich tangled imagery 

 reminiscent of Crashaw and Keats 

 and Shelley, and in luxuriant, trail- 

 ing rhythms. In The Hound of 

 Heaven he has made one certain 

 contribution to all future antholo- 

 gies of English verse, a poem 

 abounding in " images which find 

 a mirror in every mind, and with 



sentiments to which every bosom 

 returns an echo." 



But if Yeats and Thompson 

 represent one direction in which 

 poetry moved away from the cult 

 of imagery and rhythm for their 

 own sake, the stronger current was 

 that which flowed towards actu- 

 ality, the absorption into poetry of 

 all the stuff of everyday experi- 

 ence, the employment, in preference 

 to the jewelled, precious diction of 

 romantic poetry from Keats to 

 Thompson, of " language really 

 used by men," including the slang 

 and oaths of the low street. 

 William E. Henley, as well as Kip- 

 ling, led the way in Hospital Verses 

 and London Voluntaries ; he was 

 followed by John Davidson, and 

 the bulk of Georgian poets, John 

 Masefield, William H. Davies, Wil- 

 fred Wilson Gibson, Ralph Hodgson, 

 Rupert Brooke, Lascelles Aber- 

 crombie, though there are individ- 

 ual divergents, as Walter de la 

 Mare, Sturge Moore, and the Irish 

 poets A. E. (George Russell) and 

 James Stephens. 



This movement, too, has its 

 metaphysical aspect, and it is here 

 that one feels the influence of 

 Meredith and Hardy. For these 

 poets, also, have endeavoured to 

 see the world round them through 

 unprejudiced eyes, have broken 

 with the tradition, religious, ethical, 

 and artistic, of English poetry from 

 Chaucer to Tennyson, have put 

 forth on a North-West Passage of 

 their own, with what result time 

 only can tell. The effect of the 

 Great War was, if anything, 

 to intensify the movement, the 

 desire for actuality, the groping 

 after a metaphysic that corre- 

 sponds to that actuality. Of all the 

 abundant poetry which flowed 

 home from the trenches but little 

 dealt with the traditional topics 

 of war, glory, and conquest. 

 The Great Sacrifice 



It was charged with memories of 

 England, of the beauty and sweet- 

 ness of the homeland for which the 

 writers were making the great .sac- 

 rifice ; a strenuous endeavour to 

 see the terrible things around them 

 as they really were, a seeking after 

 some view of life that would with- 

 out illusion reconcile these things 

 in an harmonious whole. The 

 haunting verses of Charles Sorley 

 are typical poems of this genera- 

 tion, strangely unconcerned with 

 the topics of young men's songs, 

 wine and women and the luxury 

 of passing sorrow, piercingly nat- 

 ural and direct in style, thoughtful 

 and original, full of a high spirit 

 of effort and resolve : 



If I have suffered pain, 

 ? It is because I would; 



the poetry of one who has awak- 



ened to a sense of the inner mean- 

 ing and mystery of things before 

 he has realized all their appeal to 

 the senses and the imagination and 

 the heart. 



The English drama, which since 

 Congreve has only at rare intervals, 

 in the comedy of Goldsmith and 

 Sheridan, been a channel of any im- 

 portance to the stream of English 

 literature, was given a fresh interest 

 and significance bv the witty social 

 comedy of Oscar Wilde ; and by the 

 clever, vivid, paradoxical come- 

 dies of Bernard Shaw, who adapted 

 Ibsen to the British taste for prac- 

 tical teaching and hearty humour ; 

 by Galsworthy's sensitive and 

 sombre pictures of social injustice 

 and cruelty; by others like Gran- 

 ville Barker, and by the very differ- 

 ent Irish plays, poetic and sym- 

 bolic, or, in the work of J. M. 

 Synge, ironical and reflective, and 

 the light and fanciful plays of 

 J. M. Barrie. 



Aspects o? the Later Fiction 



But no form of literature has 

 diminished the popularity of the 

 novel. The English writers who 

 bulked most largely in the first two 

 decades of the 20th century were 

 the novelists : H. G. Wells, author 

 of scientific romances and satirical 

 social studies, reflecting as in a clear, 

 many-sided crystal the tastes and 

 tendencies of various strata of 

 English society ; Arnold Bennett, 

 fantastic humorist and realistic 

 portrayer of life in the " five 

 towns " ; John Galsworthy, whose 

 novels are the counterpart of his 

 plays ; Joseph Conrad and Comp- 

 ton Mackenzie, realists with a 

 fine sense for the beauty of setting 

 and style. Gilbert Chesterton and 

 Hilaire Belloc, poets, humorists, 

 and essayists, are also authors of 

 novels fantastic and satirical. 



H. J. C. Grierson 



Bibliography. A Literary History 



of the English People from the Ori- 



fins to the Renaissance, J. A. A. J. 

 usserand, Eng. ed. 1895, etc. ; 

 Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English 

 Literature, ed. D. Patrick, 1901-3 ; 

 A Short History of English Litera- 

 ture, G. E. B. Saintsbury, 3rd ed. 

 1903 ; English Literature, R. Gar- 

 nett and Edmund Gosse, 1903-4 : 

 The Cambridge Hist, of English 

 Literature, ed. A. W. Ward and 

 A. R. Waller, 14 vols., 1907-16 ; 

 English Literature : Medieval, W. P. 

 Ker, 1912 ; Modern English Litera- 

 ture from Chaucer to the Present 

 Day, G. H. Mair, 1914. 



Englishman, THE. Leading 

 daily newspaper in Calcutta. First 

 appearing July 2, 1821, as John 

 Bull in the East, in 1833 it was 

 bought by H. Stocqueler, who 

 changed its name to John Bull. A 

 year later it became known as The 

 Englishman. Under Major Fen- 

 wick's editorship it became a 



