WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 387 



The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 

 And murmuring of innumerable bees. 



Here, as in the former instance of lyric verse, it would be 

 unreasonable to contend that Elizabethan poets surpassed the 

 Victorian. On the contrary, the latter know more distinctly 

 what they are about, and sustain the sweetness of their style 

 at a more equal level. They are 'capable of a more perfectly 

 even flow of sugared verse. What we have to notice is that 

 the quality has altered, and that the change is due to the 

 more involved, more concentrated intellectual conditions of 

 the later age. Poets are no longer contented with impulsive 

 expression. And as I said before, they cannot 'recapture 

 the first fine careless rapture ' of their adolescent masters in 

 the art of song. The wayward breezes and the breath of 

 wild flowers in the earlier sweetness escape them. 



VII 



The freedom and spontaneity of the Elizabethan age had 

 attendant drawbacks. Owing to the absence of reflection and 

 self-criticism, poets fell into the vices of extravagance and 

 exaggeration, bombast and euphuism. In their use of 

 language, the indulgence of their fancy, the expression of 

 sentiment and the choice of imagery, they sought after 

 emphasis, and displayed but little feeling for the virtue of 

 reserve. All the playwrights, without even the exception of 

 Shakespeare, are tainted with these blemishes. Jonson, who 

 was an excellent critic when he dictated mature opinions 

 in prose, showed a lack of taste and selection in his dramafc. 

 There is a carelessness, a want of balance, a defect of judg- 

 ment in the choice of materials and their management, a 

 slovenliness of execution, throughout the work of that period. 

 Superfluities of every kind abound, and at the same time we 

 are distressed by singular baldness in details. What can be 

 poorer, for example, than Jonson's translations from Virgil 

 and Catullus, more clumsy and superfluous than his trans- 

 lations from Sallust and Tacitus ? Poets seem to have been 

 satisfied with saying, ' This will do,' instead of labouring till 



c c 2 



