The Press. Saturday, September 25, 1915. Poetry and National Character.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15393, 25 September 1915, Page 10

The Press. Saturday, September 25, 1915. Poetry and National Character.

Under this title, Professor W. M. Dixon, of Glasgow University, recently dclivorod tho annual "Leslio "Stephen" lecture at Cambridge, and tho lecturo has just been published in book form. Like all Professor Dixon's published utterances, it shows clear insight into the factors which go to make up a iiteraturo; and it covers n. wido Tango of illuslintivo material Perhaps a text for tho whole discoursa might bo found in ono senlciice: "An "instinct for emancipation, for a free " passage everywhere, appears clearly "'in cur literature, as in our national "character; so that wo are, and hare • always been, wilting to pardon ar.v- ---" thing to nonius, to trust to its happy ".moments, to overlook its vagaries, to " permit every man to lie a law to hini"self." Tho spirit of liberty and tho >turdv national sense, which have made Knglnnd what sho i<s, iiave also stamped themselves on her literature, especially on her poetry. >o far luck as the Middle Ages, England, under the influence of this sturdy nationality, withdrew herself from, tho compart system

<>*' feudal and Catholic Europe, and went her own way. There grew up what she likes to call her inde[>endence, but what her critic> namo her insularity. Ilor political system was hewn nut of the bod rock u f her own national character, and her poetry —from its crudest beginnings—exhibited the same .self-centred independence. .A- time went on, tho breach widened. Italy and France still lay under the influence of the old Latin culture: but even Norman influence could not bring England back into tho fold. And throughout the whole range of its history, notwithstanding a great variety and abundance of Continental influences on individuals, our literature has developed in conformity with our national character; Mid it it that character which, for good

or evil, is responsible for our whole poetic evolution. Let us see how this independence has operated. We have gained much by it, but we have also suffered loss. We know that there is in France an institution called "The Academy. ' one of whose main functions is tho general | supervision and guidance of literary production, the establishment of canons of literary taste and form, the pruning of excesses and extravagances, the imposition of restraint on the exuberances and eccentricities of genius. From timo to time voices have been raised, and very influential voices, too, in favour of the adoption of a similar institution in England. But the idea was alien, and the national spirit would hnve none of it. English poetry has always revelled in the delights of anarchy; it will submit itself to no tribunal except the developed natural genius of the inditidnal. As to the gains and losses: on tho one hand, it is more than probable that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies would not have passed the tests of an acadcmy on the lines of tho French. As far as Milton is concerned, whatever might have been the chances of " Comus" and "Lycidas," "Paradise Lost" would undoubtedly have been rudely shorn. We might go down from period to period, and fiiul that it is only the independence of English literature that has saved it. Tho fate of C'arlyle under an academy is too awful to contemplate. Thus our men of gonitis havo had freedom to expand to tho ftill breadth and scope of their powers. And whatever measure of restraint, finish, lucidity, and grace they have, attained to, has been the fruit of solf-disciolino and of those controlling influences to which they havo voluntarily submitted themselves. Whatever has boon achieved English people feel to bo their very own.

But liberty, whether political or literary, has to he paid for; and (as we aro now learning), the price is sometimes high. The very qualities in which our national character is defective are thoso in which our poetic literaturo is defoctive. A great poem is not merely a bundle of inspired fragments. a series of brilliant flashes illumining surrounding masses of gloom. It is a finished work of art. Newman defined poetry as "originality energis- " ing in a world of beauty." Plato, on the other hand, said that wo cannot enter the temple by art alone. No, we might reply; nor without it either. Now, nobody would claim for tho British national temperament that it i 3 fundamentally artistic, or that it energises in a world of beauty. And so, when wo survey our poetic achievements in the mass, we havo to admit that, with all its great moments, thoro is something amorphous, irregular, and unfinished about it. Its least conspicuous qualities are tho restraint, tho harmonious grace, tho balance and perfection of form, the lucidity, tho finish, which aro tho most conspicuous poetic qualities of, say, the Greeks, or the French. This is the prico which we havo paid for our liberty; for abandoning tho tradition, which Professor Dixon well calls the capitalised experience of culture. It would bo idle here, as well as impossible, to go into individual exceptions to this generalisation. Wo arc speaking in masses, as one must do in trying to follow main streams of development. Those of us who have read even a littlo French criticism, even Taino or Brnnetibre, know that the view hero presented is that held of us by the French mind. And yet tho greatness of our achievement in poetry remains an incontestable fact. Tho apparent inconsistency between that achievement and tho assumed dullness and Philistinism of the Anglo-Saxon mind has long been a source of perplexity to critics. "How "much greater." exclaims Matthew Arnold, "is our natr&n in poetry than in "prose!" And tho only solution -which (in his Icctureß at Oxford) ho could suggest was, that it was all due to tho Celtic element in U3. Wo may leave this to the ethnologists. So far we havo been speaking partly in Professor Dixon's language and partly in our own. In conclusion we will put very briefly two points suggested to us by Professor Dixon's illustrations. His theory of tho association of political liberty with literary liberty is hardly born© out by tho case of France. Tho Academy, itself a closo oligarchic despotism, was founded under conditions of political despotism. But its grip is just as firm on the republican Franco of to-day as it was on the Franco of Richelieu. The other point relates to Grcoce. The golden ago of Greek literature coincided with tho most advanced typo of democracy, perhaps, that the world has over seen. And vet this exuberance of political freedom brought us corresponding excesses or riotous licentiousness in literary form. Tho poetry of that ago stands as the model for ail time of purity and diastemas of form, restraint, dignity, and statuesque beauty.