The English Lyric 25 



the major composition of human character and the basis of inter- 

 course and understanding. But just because the major charac- 

 ter — human nature — is universal, it cannot furnish a text for 

 discriminations ; the marking of differences must be on a scale 

 of minor moods. 



Similar qualification applies to literatures and critical separa- 

 tions of them. Just as Arnold's ' luminous mode ' is the ele- 

 mental mode of all poetry and a sine qua non of any poetic 

 development, so the elemental impulses of the poet are those 

 which first find expresssion in his work. They are the primor- 

 dial impulses of human nature ; their appeal is universal and 

 they always appear in the theme and treatment of what the 

 critics call world-literature. Shakespeare is neither Saxon nor 

 Celt nor mere Englishman : he is a laureate of mankind. 



But exceptis excipiendis, as the scholastics have it, — let us 

 except the things that are to be excepted and take for granted 

 what ought to be assumed. The prefaces are palpable. What 

 point remains? 



Well, there remains the picturesque truth. Despite the con- 

 formity of their cephalic indices, the substantively staid English- 

 man is not apt to be mistaken for the roisterous son of Erin. 

 And in primitive literatures it is difficult anywhere to find a 

 sharper or more consistently maintained contrast of neighbors 

 than exists between the first poetries of Saxon and Celt. There 

 is never any clanger of confusing their characteristics : energy 

 and fire, steadfastness under fate, — these are Saxon ; and as 

 invariably buoyancy in joy, tumult in despair, belong to Cymry 

 and Gael. 



But all this is for literature in embryo, — before the English 

 had come to its own. There was to be an era of fusion; there- 

 after, a people. And amid this people any poet might chal- 

 lenge his lineage in vain to show sole paternity for one race or 

 the other; never could he thread warp of Saxon from woof of 

 Celt, nor in his fabricked character say what shimmer came 

 from this thread, what from that. Time is in truth alchemical : 

 no material is invulnerable to its transmutations; granted sped 

 years, new creation is certain. So time created the poet-soul 



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