WITH VICTOBIAN POETRY 379 



Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 

 Tears from the depth of some divine despair. 



Seek, seeker, in thyself, submit to find 



In the stones bread and life in the blank mind. 



These haunt us like leading-phrases, the master notes of 

 the whole music. 



Starting with enthusiasm at the commencement of the 

 century, our poets have gradually lost such glow of hope as 

 inspired them with spontaneous numbers in its earlier decades. 

 The wide survey of elder and contemporary literatures sub- 

 mitted to their gaze has rendered them more assimilative, 

 reproductive, imitative, reminiscent than spontaneous. When 

 Matthew Arnold defined poetry in general to be ' a criticism 

 of life,' he uttered a curious and pregnant paradox. It would 

 be hardly a paradox to assert that Victorian poetry is in large 

 measure the criticism of all existing literatures. More and 

 more we have dedicated our powers to the study of technic- 

 alities, to the cultivation of the graces, the elaboration of 

 ornament, and to the acclimatisation upon English soil of 

 flowers borrowed from alien gardens of the Muses. We have 

 forgotten what George Sand said to Flaubert about style : 

 ' Tu la consideres cornme un but, elle n'est qu'un effet/ 

 The result is a polychromatic abundance of what may be 

 called cultured poetry, which does not reach the heart of the 

 people, and does not express its spirit. That is due, no doubt, 

 in part to the fact that there is less of aspiration than of 

 meditation to deal with now, less of an actual joy in eventful 

 living than of serious reflection upon the meanings and the 

 purposes of life. Yet this poetry is true to the spirit of 

 a critical and cultured age; and when the time comes to 

 gather up the jewels of Victorian literature, it will be dis- 

 covered how faithfully the poets have uttered the thoughts of 

 the educated minority. 



A comprehensive survey of our poetry is rendered difficult 

 by the fact that no type, like the drama of the sixteenth 

 century, has controlled its movement. We cannot regard it 



