98 INDOOE STUDIES 



attention is fixed mainly on the value of the separate 

 thoughts and images which occur in the treatment 

 of an action. They regarded the whole; we regard 

 the parts. We have poems which seem to exist 

 merely for the sake of single lines and passages, not 

 for the sake of producing any total impression. 

 We have critics who seem to direct their attention 

 merely to detached expressions, to the language about 

 the action, not to the action itself. I verily think 

 that the majority of them do not in their hearts 

 believe that there is such a thing as a total im- 

 pression to be derived from a poem at all, or to 

 be demanded from a poet; they think the term a 

 commonplace of metaphysical criticism. They will 

 permit the poet to select any action he pleases, and 

 to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he 

 gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writ- 

 ing, and with a shower of isolated thoughts and 

 images. That is, they permit him to leave their 

 poetical sense ungratified, provided that he gratifies 

 their rhetorical sense and their curiosity." 



Here we undoubtedly have the law as deducible 

 from the Greek poets, and perhaps as deducible from 

 the principles of perfect taste itself. Little wonder 

 Arnold found Emerson's poems so unsatisfactory, 

 — Emerson, the most unclassical of poets, with no 

 proper sense of wholeness at all, no continuity, no 

 power to deal with actions. Emerson has great pro- 

 jectile power, but no constructive power. His aim 

 was mainly to shoot a thought or an image on a line 

 like a meteor athwart the imagination of his reader. 



