Does this mean simply the immortality of fame? It is a higher thing than that. The beauty which the poet creates is itself creative, and having the principle of life in it, can never perish. Whitman cries,

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not today is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me! [Footnote: Poets to Come.]

Browning made the only apparent trace of Sordello left in the world, the snatch of song which the peasants sing on the hillside. Yet, though his name be lost, the poet's immortality is sure. For like Socrates in the Symposium, his desire is not merely for a fleeting vision of beauty, but for birth and generation in beauty. And the beauty which he is enabled to bring into the world will never cease to propagate itself. So, though he be as fragile as a windflower, he may assure himself,

I shall not die; I shall not utterly die, For beauty born of beauty—that remains. [Footnote: Madison Cawein, To a Windflower.]



CHAPTER VIII.

A SOBER AFTERTHOUGHT

Not even a paper shortage has been potent to give the lie to the author of Ecclesiastes, but it has fanned into flame the long smouldering resentment of those who are wearily conscious that of making many books there is no end. No longer is any but the most confirmed writer suffered to spin out volume after volume in complacent ignorance of his readers' state of mind, for these victims of eye-strain and nerves turn upon the newest book, the metaphorical last straw on the camel's load, with the exasperated cry, Why? Why? and again Why?

Fortunately for themselves, most of the poets who have taken the poet's character as their theme, indulged their weakness for words before that long-suffering bookworm, the reader, had turned, but one who at the present day drags from cobwebby corners the accusive mass of material on the subject, must seek to justify, not merely the loquacity of its authors, but one's own temerity as well, in forcing it a second time upon the jaded attention of the public.

If one had been content merely to make an anthology of poems dealing with the poet, one's deed would perhaps have been easier to excuse, for the public has been so often assured that anthologies are an economical form of publication, and a time-saving form of predigested food, that it usually does not stop to consider whether the material was worth collecting in the first place. Gleaner after gleaner has worked in the field of English literature, sorting and sifting, until almost the last grain, husk, straw and thistle have been gathered and stored with their kind. But instead of making an anthology, we have gone on the assumption that something more than accidental identity of subject-matter holds together the apparently desultory remarks of poets on the subject of the poet's eyebrows, his taste in liquors, his addiction to midnight rambles, and whatnot. We have followed a labyrinthine path through the subject with faith that, if we were but patient in observing the clues, we should finally emerge at a point of vantage on the other side of the woods.

The primary grounds of this faith may have appeared to the skeptic ridiculously inadequate. Our faith was based upon the fact that, more than two thousand years ago, a serious accusation had been made against poets, against which they had been challenged to defend themselves. This led us to conclude that there must be unity of intention in poetry dealing with the poet, for we believed that when English poets talked of themselves and their craft, they were attempting to remove the stigma placed upon the name of poet by Plato's charge.

Now it is easy for a doubter to object that many of the poems on the subject show the poet, not arraying evidence for a trial, but leaning over the brink of introspection in the attitude of Narcissus. One need seek no farther than self-love, it may be suggested, to find the motive for the poet's absorption in his reflection. Yet it is incontrovertible that the self-infatuation of our Narcissus has its origin in the conviction that no one else understands him, and that this conviction is founded upon a very real attitude of hostility on the part of his companions. The lack of sympathy between the English poet and the public is so notorious that Edmund Gosse is able to state as a truism: While in France poetry has been accustomed to reflect the general tongue of the people, the great poets of England have almost always had to struggle against a complete dissonance between their own aims and interests and those of the nation. The result has been that England, the most inartistic of the modern races, has produced the largest number of exquisite literary artists. [Footnote: French Profiles, p. 344.]

Furthermore, even though everyone may agree that a lurking sense of hostile criticism is back of the poet's self-absorption, another ground for skepticism may lie in our assumption that Plato is the central figure in the opposition. It is usually with purpose to excite the envy of contemporary enemies that poets call attention to their graces, the student may discover. Frequently the quarrels leading them to flaunt their personalities in their verses have arisen over the most personal and ephemeral of issues. Indeed, we may have appeared to falsify in classifying their enemies under general heads, when for Christopher North, Judson, Belfair, Friend Naddo, Richard Bame, we substituted faces of cipher foolishness, abstractions which we named the puritan, the philosopher, the philistine. Possibly by so doing we have given the impression that poets are beating the air against an abstraction when they are in reality delivering thumping blows upon the body of a personal enemy. And if these generalizations appear indefensible, still more misleading, it may be urged, is an attempt to represent that the poet, when he takes issue with this and that opponent, is answering a challenge hidden away from the unstudious in the tenth book of Plato's Republic. It is doubtful even whether a number of our poets are aware of the existence of Plato's challenge, and much more doubtful whether they have it in mind as they write.

Second thought must make it clear, however, that to prove ignorance of Plato's accusation on the part of one poet and another does not at all impair the possibility that it is his accusation which they are answering. So multiple are the threads of influence leading from the Republic through succeeding literatures and civilizations that it is unsafe to assert, offhand, that any modern expression of hostility to poetry may not be traced, by a patient untangler of evidence, to a source in the Republic. But even this is aside from the point. One might concede that the wide-spread modern antagonism to poetry would have been the same if Plato had never lived, and still maintain that in the Republic is expressed for all time whatever in anti-aesthetic criticism is worthy of a serious answer. Whether poets themselves are aware of it or not, we have a right to assert that in concerning themselves with the character of the ideal poet, they are responding to Plato's challenge.

This may not be enough to justify our faith that these defensive expositions lead us anywhere. Let us agree that certain poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have answered Plato's challenge. But has the Poet likewise answered it? If from their independent efforts to paint the ideal poet there has emerged a portrait as sculpturally clear in outline as is Plato's portrait of the ideal philosopher, we shall perhaps be justified in saying, Yes, the Poet, through a hundred mouths, has spoken.

Frankly, the composite picture which we have been considering has not sculptural clarity. To the casual observer it bears less resemblance to an alto-relief than to a mosaic; no sooner do distinct patterns spring out of myriad details than they shift under the onlooker's eyes to a totally different form. All that we can claim for the picture is excellence as a piece of impressionism, which one must scan with half-closed eyes at a calculated distance, if one would appreciate its central conception.

Apparently readers of English poetry have not taken the trouble to scan it with such care. They may excuse their indifference by declaring that an attempt to discover a common aesthetic principle in a collection of views as catholic as those with which we have dealt is as absurd as an attempt to discover philosophical truth by taking a census of general opinion. Still, obvious as are the limitations of a popular vote in determining an issue, it has a certain place in the discovery of truth. One would not entirely despise the benefit derived from a general survey of philosophers' convictions, for instance. Into the conclusions of each philosopher, even of the greatest, there are bound to enter certain personal whimsicalities of thought, which it is profitable to eliminate, by finding the common elements in the thought of several men. If the quest of a universal least common denominator forces one to give up everything that is of significance in the views of philosophers, there is profit, at least, in learning that the title of philosopher does not carry with it a guarantee of truth-telling. On the other hand if we find universal recognition of some fundamental truth, a common cogito ergo sum, or the like, acknowledged by all philosophers, we have made a discovery as satisfactory in its way as is acceptance of the complex system of philosophy offered by Plato or Descartes. There seems to be no real reason why it should not be quite as worth while to take a similar census of the views of poets.

After hearkening to the general suffrage of poets on the question of the poet's character, we must bring a serious charge against them if a deafening clamor of contradiction reverberates in our ears. In such a case their claim that they are seers, or masters of harmony, can be worth little. The unbiased listener is likely to assure us that clamorous contradiction is precisely what the aggregate of poets' speaking amounts to, but we shall be slow to acknowledge as much. Have we been merely the dupe of pretty phrasing when we felt ourselves insured against discord by the testimony of Keats? Hear him:

How many bards gild the lapses of time! * * * * * ... Often, when I sit me down to rhyme, These will in throngs before my mind intrude, But no confusion, no disturbance rude Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime.

However incompatible the characteristics of the poets celebrated by Wordsworth and by Swinburne, by Christina Rossetti and by Walt Whitman may have seemed in immediate juxtaposition, we have trusted that we need only retire to a position where "distance of recognizance bereaves" their individual voices, in order to detect in their mingled notes "pleasing music, and not wild uproar."

The critic who condemns as wholly discordant the variant notes of our multitudinous verse-writers may point out that we should have had more right to expect concord if we had shown some discernment in sifting true poets from false. Those who have least claim to the title of poet have frequently been most garrulous in voicing their convictions. Moreover, these pseudo-poets outnumber genuine poets one hundred to one, yet no one in his right mind would contend that their expressions of opinion represent more than a straw vote, if they conflict with the judgment of a single true poet.

Still, our propensity for listening to the rank breath of the multitude is not wholly indefensible. In the first place pseudo-poets have not created so much discord as one might suppose. A lurking sense of their own worthlessness has made them timid of utterance except as they echo and prolong a note that has been struck repeatedly by singers of reputation. This echoing, it may be added, has sometimes been effective in bringing the traditions of his craft to the attention of a young singer as yet unaware of them. Thus Bowles and Chivers, neither of whom has very strong claim to the title of bard, yet were in a measure responsible for the minor note in Coleridge's and Poe's description of the typical poet.

Even when the voices of spurious bards have failed to chime with the others, the resulting discord has not been of serious moment. A counterfeit coin may be as good a touchstone for the detection of pure silver, as is pure silver for the detection of counterfeit. Not only are a reader's views frequently clarified by setting a poetaster beside a poet as a foil, but poets themselves have clarified their views because they have been incited by declarations in false verse to express their convictions more unreservedly than they should otherwise have done. Pseudo-poets have sometimes been of genuine benefit by their exaggeration of some false note which they have adopted from poetry of the past. No sooner do they exaggerate such a note, than a concerted shout of protest from true poets drowns the erroneous statement, and corrects the misleading impression which careless statements in earlier verse might have left with us. Thus the morbid singer exhibited in minor American verse of the last century, and the vicious singer lauded in one strain of English verse, performed a genuine service by calling forth repudiation, by major poets, of traits which might easily lead a singer in the direction of morbidity and vice.

The confusion of sound which our critic complains of is not to be remedied merely by silencing the chorus of echoic voices. If we dropped from consideration all but poets of unquestionable merit, we should not be more successful in detecting a single clear note, binding all their voices together. When the ideal poet of Shelley is set against that of Byron, or that of Matthew Arnold against that of Browning, there is no more unison than when great and small in the poetic world are allowed to speak indiscriminately.

Does this prove that only the supreme poet speaks truly, and that we must hush all voices but his if we would learn what is the essential element in the poetic character? Then we are indeed in a hard case. There is no unanimity of opinion among us regarding the supreme English poet of the last century, and if we dared follow personal taste in declaring one of higher altitude than all the others only a small percentage of readers would be satisfied when we set up the Prelude or Adonais or Childe Harold or Sordello beside the Republic as containing the one portrait of the ideal singer worthy to stand beside the portrait of the ideal philosopher. And this is not the worst of the difficulty. Even if we turn from Shelley to Byron, from Wordsworth to Browning, in quest of the one satisfactory conception of the poet, we shall not hear in anyone of their poems the single clear ringing note for which we are listening. When anyone of these men is considering the poetic character, his thought behaves like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between two poles.

Thus we ourselves have admitted the futility of our quest of truth, the critic may conclude. But no, before we admit as much, let us see exactly what constitutes the lack of unity which troubles us. After its persistence in verse of the same country, the same period, the same tradition, the same poet, even, has led us to the brink of despair, its further persistence rouses in us fresh hope, or at least intense curiosity, for what impresses us as the swinging of a pendulum keeps up its rhythmical beat, not merely in the mind of each poet, but in each phase of his thought. We find the same measured antithesis of thought, whether he is considering the singer's environment or his health, his inspiration or his mission.

In treatment even of the most superficial matters related to the poet's character, this vibration forces itself upon our attention. Poets are sofar from subscribing to Taine's belief in the supreme importance of environment as molder of genius that the question of the singer's proper habitat is of comparative indifference to them, yet the dualism that we have noted runs as true to form here as in more fundamental issues. When one takes the suffrage of poets in general on the question of environment, two voices are equally strong. Genius is fostered by solitude, we hear; but again, genius is fostered by human companionship. At first we may assume that this divergence of view characterizes separate periods. Writers in the romantic period, we say, praised the poet whose thought was turned inward by solitude; while writers in the Victorian period praised the poet whose thought was turned upon the spectacle of human passions. But on finding that this classification is true only in the most general way, we go farther. Within the Victorian period Browning, we say, is the advocate of the social poet, as Arnold is the advocate of the solitary one. But still our classification is inadequate. Is Browning the expositor of the gregarious poet? It is true that he feels it necessary for the singer to "look upon men and their cares and hopes and fears and joys." [Footnote: Pauline.] But he makes Sordello flee like a hunted creature back to Goito and solitude in quest of renewed inspiration. Is Arnold the expositor of the solitary poet? True, he urges him to fly from "the strange disease of modern life". [Footnote: The Scholar Gypsy.] Yet he preaches that the duty of the poet is

to scan Not his own course, but that of man. [Footnote: Resignation.]

Within the romantic period the same phenomenon is evident. Does Wordsworth paint the ideal poet dwelling apart from human distractions? Yet he declares that his deepest insight is gained by listening to "the still sad music of humanity". In Keats, Shelley, Byron, the same antithesis of thought is not less evident.

We cannot justly conclude that a compromise between contradictions, an avoidance of extremes, is what anyone of these poets stands for. It is complete absorption in the drame of human life that makes one a poet, they aver; but again, it is complete isolation that allows the inmost poetry of one's nature to rise to consciousness. At the same time they make it clear that the supreme poet needs the gifts of both environments. To quote Walt Whitman,

What the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe with all its shows of day and night) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of men, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone; —Then the full-grown poet stood between the two and took each by the hand; And today and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release till he reconciles the two, And wholly and joyously blends them.

The paradox in poets' views was equally perplexing, no matter what phase of the poetic character was considered. A mere resume of the topics discussed in these essays is enough to make the two horns of the dilemma obtrude themselves. Did we consider the financial status of the poet? We heard that he should experience all the luxurious sensations that wealth can bring; on the other hand we heard that his poverty should shield him from distractions that might call him away from accumulation of spiritual treasure. Did we consider the poet's age? We heard that the freshness of sensation possessed only by youth carries the secret of poetry; on the other hand we heard that the secret lies in depth of spiritual insight possible only to old age. So in the allied question of the poet's body. He should have

The dress Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness At eye and ear,

that no beauty in the physical world may escape him. Yet he should be absorbed in the other world to such a degree that blindness, even, is a blessing to him, enabling him to "see, no longer blinded by his eyes." The question of the poet's health arose. He should have the exuberance and aplomb of the young animal; no, he should have a body frail enough to enable him, like the mediaeval mystic, to escape from its importunatedemands upon the spirit.

In the more fundamental questions that poets considered, relating to the poet's temperament, his loves, his inspiration, his morality, his religion, his mission, the same cleavage invariably appeared. What constitutes the poetic temperament? It is a fickle interchange of joy and grief, for the poet is lifted on the wave of each new sensation; it is an imperturbable serenity, for the poet dwells apart with the eternal verities. What is the distinguishing characteristic of his love? The object of his worship must be embodied, passionate, yet his desire is for purely spiritual union with her. What is the nature of his inspiration? It fills him with trancelike impassivity to sensation; it comes upon him with such overwhelming sensation that he must touch the walls to see whether they or his visions are the reality. [Footnote: See Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of Wordsworth, Vol. II, p. 480.] How is his moral life different from that of other men? He is more fiercely tempted, because he is more sensitive to human passions; he is shut away from all temptations because his interest is solely in the principle of beauty. What is the nature of his religious instinct? He is mad with thirst for God; he will have no God but his own humanity. What is his mission? He must awaken men to the wonder of the physical world and fit them to abide therein; he must redeem them from physical bondage, and open their eyes to the spiritual world.

The impatient listener to this lengthy catalogue of the poet's views may assert that it has no significance. It merely shows that there are many kinds of poets, who attempt to imitate many aspects of human life. But surely our catalogue does not show just this. There is no multiform picture of the poet here. The pendulum of his desire vibrates undeviatingly between two points only. Sense and spirit, spirit and sense, the pulse of his nature seems to reiterate incessantly. There is no poet so absorbed in sensation that physical objects do not occasionally fade into unreality when he compares them with the spirit of life. Even Walt Whitman, most sensuous of all our poets, exclaims,

Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts, non-realities. [Footnote: Apparitions.]

On the other hand there is no poet whose taste is so purely spiritual that he is indifferent to sensation. The idealism of Wordsworth, even, did not preclude his finding in sensation

An appetite, a feeling and a love That had no need of a remoter charm By thought supplied.

Is this systole and diastole of the affection from sense to spirit, from spirit to sense, peculiarly characteristic of English poets? There may be some reason for assuming that it is. Historians have repeatedly pointed out that there are two strains in the English blood, the one northern and ascetic, the other southern and epicurean. In the modern English poet the austere prophetic character of the Norse scald is wedded to the impressionability of the troubadour. No wonder there is a battle in his breast when he tries to single out one element or the other as his most distinctive quality of soul. Yet, were it not unsafe to generalize when our data apply to only one country, we should venture the assertion that the dualism of the poet's desires is not an insular characteristic, but is typical of his race in every country.

Because the poet is drawn equally to this world and to the other world, shall we characterize him as a hybrid creature, and assert that an irreconcilable discord is in his soul? We shall prove ourselves singularly deaf to concord if we do so. Poets have been telling us over and over again that the distinctive element in the poetic nature is harmony. What is harmony? It is the reconciliation of opposites, says Eurymachus in the Symposium. It is union of the finite and the infinite, says Socrates in the Philebus. Do the poet's desires point in opposite directions? But so, it seems, do the poplars that stand tiptoe, breathless, at the edge of the dreaming pool. The whole secret of the aesthetic repose lies in the duality of the poet's desire. His imagination enables him to see all life as two in one, or one in two; he leaves us uncertain which. His imagination reflects the spiritual in the sensual and the sensual in the spiritual till we cannot tell which is the more tangible or the more meaningful. We sought unity in the poetic character, but we can reduce a nature to complete and barren unity only by draining it of imagination, and it is imagination which enables the poet to find aesthetic unity in the two worlds of sense and spirit, where the rest of us can see only conflict. There is a little poem, by Walter Conrad Arensberg, which is to me a symbol of this power of reflection which distinguishes the poetic imagination. It is called Voyage a L'Infine:

The swan existing Is like a song with an accompaniment Imaginary.

Across the grassy lake, Across the lake to the shadow of the willows It is accompanied by an image, —as by Debussy's "Reflets dans l'eau."

The swan that is Reflects Upon the solitary water—breast to breast With the duplicity: "The other one!"

And breast to breast it is confused. O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession! It is accompanied by the image of itself Alone.

At night The lake is a wide silence, Without imagination.

But why should poets assume, someone may object, that this mystic answering of sense to spirit and of spirit to sense is to be discovered by the imagination of none but poets? All men are made up of flesh and spirit; do not the desires of all men, accordingly, point to the spiritual and to the physical, exactly as do the poet's? In a sense; yes; but on the other hand all men but the poet have an aim that is clearly either physical or spiritual; therefore they do not stand poised between the two worlds with the perfect balance of interests which marks the poet. The philosopher and the man of religion recognize their goal as a spiritual and ascetic one. If they concern themselves more than is needful with the temporal and sensual, they feel that they are false to their ideal. The scientist and the man of affairs, on the other hand, are concerned with the physical; therefore most of the time they dismiss consideration of the spiritual as being outside of their province. Of course many persons would disagree with this last statement. The genius of an Edison, they assert, is precisely like the genius of a poet. But if this were true, we should be moved by the mechanism of a phonograph just as we are moved by a poem, and we are not. We may be amazed by the invention, and still find our thoughts tied to the physical world. It is not the instrument, but the voice of an artist added to it that makes us conscious of the two worlds of sense and spirit, reflecting one another.

Supposing that all this is true, what is gained by discovering, from a consensus of poets' views, that the distinctive characteristic of the poet is harmony of sense and spirit? Is not this so obvious as to be a truism? It is perhaps so obvious that like all the truest things in the world it is likely to be ignored unless insisted upon occasionally. Certainly it has been ignored too frequently in the history of English criticism. Whenever men of simpler aims than the poet have written criticism, they have misread the issue in various ways, and have usually ended by condemning the poet in so far as he diverged from their own goal.

It is obvious that the moral obsession which has twisted so much of English criticism is the result of a failure to grasp the real nature of the poet's vitality. Criticism arose, with Gosson's School of Abuse, as an attack upon the ethics of the poet by the puritan, who had cut himself off from the joys of sense. Because champions of poetry were concerned with answering this attack, the bulk of Elizabethan criticism, that of Lodge, [Footnote: Defense of Poetry, Musick and Stage Plays.] Harrington, [Footnote: Apology for Poetry.] Meres, [Footnote: Palladis Tamia.] Campion, [Footnote: Observations in the Art of English Poetry.] Daniel, [Footnote: Defense of Rhyme.] and even in lesser degree of Sidney, obscures the aesthetic problem by turning it into an ethical one.

In the criticism of Sidney, himself a poet, one does find implied a recognition of the twofold significance of the poet's powers. He asserts his spiritual pre-eminence strongly, declaring that the poet, unlike the scientist, is not bound to the physical world.[Footnote: "He is not bound to any such subjection, as scientists, to nature." Defense of Poetry.] On the other hand he is clearly aware of the need for a sensuous element in poetry, since by it, Sidney declares, the poet may lead men by "delight" to follow the forms of virtue.

The next critic of note, Dryden, in his revulsion from the ascetic character which the puritans would develop in the poet, swung too far to the other extreme, and threw the poetic character out of balance by belittling its spiritual insight. He did justice to the physical element in poetry, defining poetic drama, the type of his immediate concern, as "a just and lively image of human nature, in its actions, passions, and traverses of fortune," [Footnote: English Garner, III, 513.] but he appears to have felt the ideal aspect of the poet's nature as merely a negation of the sensual, so that he was driven to the absurdity of recommending a purely mechanical device, rhyme, as a means of elevating poetry above the sordid plane of "a bare imitation." In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke likewise laid too much stress upon the physical aspect of the poet's nature, in accounting for the sublime in poetry as originating in the sense of pain, and the beautiful as originating in pleasure. Yet he comes closer than most critics to laying his finger onthe particular point which distinguishes poets from philosophers, namely, their dependence upon sensation.

With the single exception of Burke, however, the critics of the eighteenth century labored under a misapprehension no less blind than the moral obsession which twisted Elizabethan criticism. In the eighteenth century critics were prone to confuse the spiritual element in the poet's nature with intellectualism, and the sensuous element with emotionalism. Such criticism tended to drive the poet either into an arid display of wit, on the one hand, or into sentimental excess, on the other, and the native English distrust of emotion led eighteenth century critics to praise the poet when the intellect had the upper hand. But surely poets have made it clear enough that the intellect is not the distinctive characteristic of the poet. To be intelligent is merely to be human. Intelligence is only a tool, poets have repeatedly insisted, in their quarrel with philosophers. In proportion as one is intelligent within one's own field, one excels, poets would admit. If one is intelligent with respect to fisticuffs one is likely to become a good prize-fighter, but no matter how far refinement of intelligence goes in this direction, it will not make a pugilist into a poet. Intelligence must belong likewise, in signal degree, to the great poet, but it is neither one of the two essential elements in his nature. Augustan critics starved the spiritual element in poetry, even while they imagined that they were feeding it, for in sharpening his wit the poet came no nearer expressing the "poor soul, the center of his sinful earth" than when he reveled in emotion. We no longer believe that in the most truly poetic nature the intelligence of a Pope is joined with the emotionalism of a Rousseau. We believe that the spirituality of a Crashaw is blent with the sensuousness of a Swinburne.

Nineteenth century criticism, since it is almost entirely the work of poets, should not be thus at odds with the conception of the poet expressed in poetry. But although nineteenth century prose criticism moves in the right direction, it is not entirely adequate. The poet is not at his best when he is working in a prose medium. He works too consciously in prose, hence his intuitive flashes are not likely to find expression. After he has tried to express his buried life there, he himself is likely to warn us that what he has said "is well, is eloquent, but 'tis not true." Even Shelley, the most successful of poet-critics, gives us a more vivid comprehension of the poetical balance of sense and spirit through his poet-heroes than through The Defense of Poetry, for he is almost exclusively concerned, in that essay, with the spiritual aspect of poetry. He expresses, in fact, the converse of Dryden's view in that he regards the sensuous as negation or dross merely. He asserts:

Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conception in naked truth and splendor, and it is doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not necessary to temper this planetary music to mortal ears.

The harmony in Shelley's nature which made it possible for his contemporaries to believe him a gross sensualist, and succeeding generations to believe him an angel, is better expressed by Browning, who says:

His noblest characteristic I call his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in the absolute, and of beauty and good in the concrete, while he throws, from his poet-station between them both, swifter, subtler and more numerous films for the connection of each with each than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge.[Footnote: Preface to the letters of Shelley (afterward found spurious).]

Yet Browning, likewise, gives a more illuminating picture of the poetic nature in his poetry than in his prose.

The peculiar merit of poetry about the poet is that it makes a valuable supplement to prose criticism. We have been tempted to deny that such poetry is the highest type of art. It has seemed that poets, when they are introspective and analytical of their gift, are not in the highest poetic mood. But when we are on the quest of criticism, instead of poetry, we are frankly grateful for such verse. It is analytical enough to be intelligible to us, and still intuitive enough to convince us of its truthfulness. Wordsworth's Prelude has been condemned in certain quarters as "a talking about poetry, not poetry itself," but in part, at least, the Prelude is truly poetry. For this reason it gives us more valuable ideas about the nature of poetry than does the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. If it is worth while to analyze the poetic character at all, then poetry on the poet is invaluable to us.

Perhaps it is too much for us to decide whether the picture of the poet at which we have been gazing is worthy to be placed above Plato's picture of the philosopher. The poet does not contradict Plato's charge against him. His self-portrait bears out the accusation that he is unable to see "the divine beauty—pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colors and varieties of human life." [Footnote: Symposium, 212.] Plato would agree with the analysis of the poetic character that Keats once struggled with, when he exclaimed,

What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Pentralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge—With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

Plato would agree with this,—all but the last sentence. Only, in place of the phrase "negative capability," he would substitute "incapability," and reflect that the poet fails to see absolute beauty because he is not content to leave the sensual behind and press on to absolute reality.

It may be that Plato is right, yet one cannot help wishing that sometime a poet may arise of greater power of persuasion than any with whom we have dealt, who will prove to Plato what he appears ever longing to be convinced of, that absolute ideality is not a negation of the sensual, and that poetry, in revealing the union of sense and spirit, is the strongest proof of idealism that we possess. A poet may yet arise who will prove that he is right in refusing to acknowledge that this world is merely a surface upon which is reflected the ideals which constitute reality and which abide in a different realm. The assumption in that conception is that, if men have spiritual vision, they may apprehend ideals directly, altogether apart from sense. On the contrary, the impression given by the poet is that ideality constitutes the very essence of the so-called physical world, and that this essence is continually striving to express itself through refinement and remolding of the outer crust of things. So, when the world of sense comes to express perfectly the ideal, it will not be a mere representation of reality. It will be reality. If he can prove this, we must acknowledge that, not the rationalistic philosopher, but the poet, grasps reality in toto.

However inconclusive his proof, the claims of the poet must fascinate one with their implications. The two aspects of human life, the physical and the ideal, focus in the poet, and the result is the harmony which is art. The fact is of profound philosophical significance, surely, for union of the apparent contradictions of the sensual and the spiritual can only mean that idealism is of the essence of the universe. What is the poetic metaphor but the revelation of an identical meaning in the physical and spiritual world? The sympathetic reader of poetry cannot but see the reflection of the spiritual in the sensual, and the sensual in the spiritual, even as does the poet, and one, as the other, must be by temperament an idealist.



INDEX

Addison, Joseph, "A.E." (see George William Russell), Aeschylus, Agathon, Akins, Zoe, Alcaeus, Aldrich, Anne Reeve, Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, Alexander, Hartley Burr, Alexander, William, Allston, Washington, Ambercrombe, Lascelles, Anderson, Margaret Steele, Angelo, Michael, Arensberg, Walter Conrad, Aristotle, Arnold, Edwin, Arnold, Matthew, his discontent; on the poet's death; inspiration; loneliness; morality; religion; usefulness; youth; his sense of superiority. Arnold, Thomas, Asquith, Herbert, Austin, Alfred,

Bacon, Josephine Dodge Daskam, Baker, Karle Wilson, Baudelaire, Charles Pierre, Beatrice, Beattie, James, Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, Beers, Henry A., Benet, Stephen Vincent, Benet, William Rose, Bennet, William, Binyon, Robert Lawrence, Blake, William, later poets on; on inspiration; on the poet as truthteller; on the poet's religion. Blunden, Edmund, Boccaccio, Boker, George Henry, Borrow, George, Bowles, William Lisle, Branch, Anna Hempstead, Brawne, Fanny H., Bridges, Robert, Bronte, Emily, Brooke, Rupert, Browne, T. E., Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, appearance; Aurora Leigh; on Keats; on the poet's age; content with his own time; democracy; eyes; habitat; health, humanitarianism, inferiority to his creations, inspiration, love, morals, pain, personality, religion, resentment at patronage, self-consciousness, self-expression, sex, usefulness, other poets on,

Browning, Robert, on fame, on inspiration, on the poet's beauty, loneliness, love, morals, persecutions, pride, religion, self-expression, sex, superiority, usefulness, on Shakespeare, on Shelley, Sordello, other poets on Bryant, William Cullen Buchanan, Robert Bunker, John Joseph Burke, Edmund Burleigh, William Henry Burnet, Dana Burns, Robert, his self-depreciation, on the poet's caste, habitat, inspiration, love of liberty, morals, persecutions, poverty, superiority, other poets on Burton, Richard Butler, Samuel Byron, Lord, his body, escape from himself in poetry, friendship with Shelley, indifference to fame, later poets on, his morals, his mother, his religion, self-portraits in verse, superiority, on Tasso

Camoeens Campbell, Thomas Campion, Thomas Candole, Alec de Carlin, Francis Carlyle, Thomas Carman, Bliss Carpenter, Rhys Cary, Alice Cary, Elisabeth Luther Cassells, S. J. Cavalcanti, Guido Cawein, Madison Cellini, Benvenuto Cervantes Chapman, George Chatterton, Thomas Chaucer, Geoffrey Cheney, Annie Elizabeth Chenier, Andre Chesterton, Gilbert Keith Chivers, Thomas Holley Clare, John Clough, Arthur Hugh Coleridge, Hartley Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, appearance; on Blake; on Chatterton; friendship with Wordsworth; on the poet's habitat; health; love; morals; reflection in nature; religion; youth; usefulness; later poets on Collins, William, Colonna, Vittoria, Colvin, Sidney, Conkling, Grace Hazard, Cornwall, Barry (see Procter, Bryan Waller), Cowper, William, Cox, Ethel Louise, Crabbe, George, Crashaw, Richard, Cratylus,

Dana, Richard Henry, Daniel, Samuel, D'Annunzio, Gabriele, Dante, G.L. Raymond on; Oscar Wilde on; Sara King Wiley on; Dargan, Olive, David, Davidson, John, Davies, William Henry, Dermody, Thomas, Descartes, Dickinson, Emily, Dionysodorus, Dobell, Sidney, Dobson, Austin, Dommett, Alfred, Donne, John, Dowden, Edward, Dowson, Ernest, Drake, Joseph Rodman, Drinkwater, John, Druce, C.J., Dryden, John, Dunbar, Paul Laurence, Dunroy, William Reed, Dunsany, Lord Edward, Dyer, Sidney, Ehrman, Max, Elijah, Eliot, Ebenezer, Eliot, George, Emerson, Ralph Waldo, his contempt for the public; his democracy; his humility; on inspiration; on love of fame; on the poet's divinity; love; morals; poverty; solitude; usefulness Euripedes, Euthydemus, Evans, Mrs. E.H.,

Fainier, C.H., Fairfield, S. L., Field, Eugene., Flecker, James Elroy, Flint, F.S., French, Daniel Chester, Freneau, Philip Morin, Fuller, Frances, Fuller, Metta,

Gage, Mrs. Frances, Garnett, Richard, Gibson, Wilfred Wilson, Giddings, Franklin Henry, Gilbert, Sir William Schwenek Gilder, Richard Watson; on Helen Hunt Jackson; on Emma Lazarus; on the poet's age; blindness; inspiration; morality; normality; poverty Gillman, James Giltinan, Caroline Goethe Gosse, Edmund Gosson, Stephen Graves, Robert Gray, Thomas Grenfil, Julian Griffith, William Guiterman, Arthur

Hake, Thomas Gordon Halleck, Shelley Halpine, Charles Graham Hardy, Thomas Harris, Thomas Lake Harrison, Birge Hayne, Paul Hamilton Hazlitt, William Hemans, Felicia Henderson, Daniel Henley, William Ernest Herbert, George Herrick, Robert Hewlett, Maurice Hildreth, Charles Latin Hill, H., Hilliard, George Stillman Hillyer, Robert Silliman Hoffman, C. F. Hogg, Thomas Jefferson Holland, Josiah Gilbert Holmes, Oliver Wendell Homer Hood, Thomas Hooper, Lucy "Hope, Lawrence" (see Violet Nicolson) Horne, Richard Hengest Houghton, Lord Houseman, Laurence Hovey, Richard Hubbard, Harvey Hubner, Charles William Hughes, John Hugo, Victor Hunt, Leigh

Ingelow, Jean

Jackson, Helen Hunt Jameson, Mrs. Anna Brownell Johnson, Donald F. Goold Johnson, Lionel Johnson, Robert Underwood, Johnson, Rossiter Johnson, Dr. Samuel Jonson, Ben

Kaufman, Herbert Keats, John; his body; on Burns; Christopher North on; on his desire for fame; his egotism; on Elizabethan poets; on expression; on the harmony of poets Homer's blindness; on his indifference to the public; on inspiration; later poets on Keats; on love; quarrel with philosophy; on the poet's democracy, gift of prophecy, habitat, morals, persecutions, unpoetical character, unobtrusiveness, usefulness Keble, John Kemble, Frances Anne Kent, Charles Kenyon, James Benjamin Kerl, Simon Khayyam, Omar Kilmer, Joyce Kingsley, Charles Kipling, Rudyard Knibbs, Harry Herbert

Lamb, Charles Landor, Walter Savage; on Byron; confidence in immortality; on female poets; on Homer; on intoxication and inspiration; on the poet's age, morals, pride; on poetry and reason; on Shakespeare; on Southey Lang, Andrew Lanier, Sidney Larcom, Lucy Laura Lazarus, Emma Ledwidge, Francis Le Gallienne, Richard Leonard, William Ellery Lindsay, Vachel Lockhart, John Gibson Lodge, Thomas Lombroso, Cesare Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth; his democracy; on grief and poetry; Michael Angelo; on the poet's morals, solitude; on the savage poet; on inspiration Longinus Lord, William W. Low, Benjamin R. C. Lowell, Amy Lowell, James Russell; on Burns; on the poet's age, divinity, habitat, inspiration, usefulness Lucan Lucretius Lytton, Bulwer, on Andre Chenier; on the female poet; on Milton; on the poet's appearance, fame, persecution, usefulness

McDonald, Carl Mackaye, Percy Maclean, L. E. "Macleod, Fiona" (see William Sharp) MacNiel, J. C. Mann, Dorothea Lawrence Mansfield, Richard Map, Walter Markham, Edwin Marlowe, Christopher, Alfred Noyes on, Josephine Preston Peabody on, Marquis, Don, Masefield, John, Massey, Gerald, Masters, Edgar Lee, Meres, Francis, Meredith, George, Meredith, Owen, Meynell, Alice, Meynell, Viola, Middleton, Richard, Millay, Edna St. Vincent, Miller, Joaquin, Milton, John, Miriam, Mitchell, L. E., Mitchell, Stewart Mitford, Mary Russell, Montgomery, James, Moody, William Vaughan, Moore, Thomas, Morley, Christopher, Morris, Lewis, Morris, William, Myers, Frederick W. H.

Naden, Constance, Nash, Thomas, Neihardt, John Gneisenau, Nero, Nerval, Gerard de, Newbolt, Henry, Newman, Henry, Newton, Sir Isaac, Nicolson, Violet, Nordau, Max Simon, North, Christopher, Noyes, Alfred,

O'Connor, Norreys Jephson, Osborne, James Insley, O'Sheel, Shaemus, Otway, Thomas,

Pater, Walter, Patmore, Coventry, on the poet's expression, indifference to fame, love, morals, religion, usefulness Payne, John, Peabody, Josephine Preston, Percival, James Gates, Percy, William Alexander, Petrarch, Phidias, Phillips, Stephen, Phillpotts, Eden, Pierce, C. A., Plato, Ion, Phaedo Philebus, Phaedrus, Republic, Symposium, Poe, Edgar Allan, Pollock, Robert, Pope, Alexander, Pound, Ezra, Praed, Winthrop Mackworth Price, C. Augustus Procter, Adelaide Anne Procter, Bryan Cornwall

Rand, Theodore Harding Raphael Raymond, George Lansing Reade, Thomas Buchanan Realf, Richard Reno, Lydia M. Rice, Cale Young Rice, Harvey Riley, James Whitcomb Rittenhouse, Jessie Rives, Hallie Erven Robbins, Reginald Chauncey Roberts, Cecil Roberts, Charles George Douglas Robinson, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Mary Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, on Chatterton, on Dante, on Marston, on the poet's age, expression, inspiration, love, morals, usefulness Rousseau, Jean Jacques Ruskin, John Russell, George William Ryan, Abram J.

Sampson, Henry Aylett Sandburg, Carl Sappho; Alcaeus on, modern poets on her genius, on her passion Savage, John Saxe, John Godfrey Scala, George Augustus Schauffler, Robert Haven Schiller, Johann Christoff Friedrich Scott, Sir Walter Seeger, Alan Service, Robert Shairp, Principal Shakespeare, William Sharp, William Shelley, Percy Bysshe, and Byron, on female poets, his hostility to the public, his indifference to his body, on Keats, on the poet's early death, habitat, inspiration, love, madness, loneliness, morals, persecutions, poverty, religion, seership, usefulness, on prenatal life, on Tasso Shenstone, William Sidney, Sir Philip Sinclair, May Smart, Christopher Smith, Alexander, Smith, J. Thorne, jr., Socrates, Solomon, Soran, Charles, Southey, Robert, Spenser, Edmund, Sprague, E.L., Stedman, Edmund Clarence, Stephens, James, Stickney, Trumbull, Stoddard, Charles Warren, Sullivan, Sir Arthur, Swinburne, Algernon, chafing against moral restraints; on Victor Hugo; on Marston; on his mother; on the poet's age; love of liberty; morals; parentage; religion; usefulness; on Christina Rossetti; on Sappho; on Shelley Symons, Arthur,

Taine, Hippolyte Adolph, Tannahill, John, Tasso, Torquato, Taylor, Bayard, Teasdale, Sara, Tennyson, Alfred, burlesque on inspiration in wine; his contempt for the public; on the poet's death; expression; inspiration; intuitions; love of liberty; lovelessness; morality; pantheism; persecution; rank; religion; superiority to art; usefulness Tertullian, Thomas, Edith, Thompson, Francis, confidence in immortality; humility; on inspiration; on love and poetry; on Alice Meynell; on Viola Meynell; on the poet's body; expression; grief; habitat; loneliness; morals; youth Thomson, James, Thomson, James (B.V.), his atheism; on Mrs. Browning; on inspiration; on pessimistic poetry; on Platonic love; on Shelley; on Tasso; on Weltschmerz Timrod, Henry, Tolstoi, Count Leo, Towne, Charles Hanson, Trench, Herbert, Tupper, Martin Farquhar,

Van Dyke, Henry, Vergil, Verlaine, Paul Marie, Villon, Francois, Viviani, Emilia,

Waddington, Samuel Ware, Eugene Watts-Dunton, Theodore Wesley, Charles West, James Harcourt Wheelock, John Hall White, Kirke Whitman, Walt; confidence in immortality; democracy; on expression; on the poet's idleness, inspiration, morals, normality, protean nature, love, reconciling of man and nature; on the poet-warrior; his zest Whittier, John Greenleaf Wilde, Oscar, on Byron; on Dante; on Keats; on love and art; his morals; on the poet's prophecy; on the uselessness of art Wiley, Sara King Winter, William Woodberry, George Edward; apology; on friendship; on the poet's love; on inspiration; on Shelley Wordsworth, William; confidence in immortality; on female poets; his friendship with Coleridge; on James Hogg; on inspiration; Keats' annoyance with Wordsworth; on love poetry; on the peasant poet; on the poet's democracy, habitat, morals, religion, solitude; the Prelude; on prenatal life; quarrel with philosophy; repudiation of inspiration through wine Wright, Harold Bell

Yeats, William Butler Young, Edmund

THE END