OXFORD POETRY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 770, 19 March 1910, Page 5

OXFORD POETRY.

_Mr..J v W. Mackail,,: Professor of Poetry, lecturing recentlyron..the-.sub-ject o£ Poetry., of .Oxford," said Oxford .had always: been the mother or nn S? this itself wouldnot jnfatle thereto ■ speak, of -■ the poetry of lMord.v,.When they- spoke of Oxford poets, meaning, poets who were educated at .Oxford, they;,were doing little more n D i> p - M lng thelr fanc y- ' One did not call Virgil, a Milanese poet, or Goethe a leipsic pr.Strasburg'poet. But, in the stricter sense, .the poetry of Oxford might iear :i two.meanings." Vln the first place It might mean, poetry, written about- Oxford, descriptive of Oxford,-either in its outward aspect or in its intellectual and social life, raised by .some touch of melodyj>r imagination into the sphere of poetry and forming the figured backgregmd upon which some image of iiras set in brief. ~ . e

The poetry of "Oxford, he said, mieht .^β. .poetical quality- of Oxford atself, the unago of perfection which Oxford embodied, or rather did not embody, but held within itself like a latent Thisl^--was

_If_ : turned over the pag«s, of any ono lefthe many modern collections of'poems plating to Oxford, ■ such as the '^Mtofh ¥n o£ t l£lS ', wUch was - he fancied, ithe fullest and most varied of them al in its contents, one could not fail to be tK b y f two tW»g3-' One of thlse the persistence from generation to lation of certain motives, the treatment ..The-other was the emergence from time to time in that superfieial uTkormity ot a now imaginative qualitv a new power of vision, one: might- call it Bn,the,partof a poet, or, in another way of regarding the matter, a new power of making itself visible on the part of Oxford, the eye changed, but what made the eye changewas, among other causes, the impact on it of new vibrations. Oxford was in transition; no one needed to :be. told that. Poetry was in transition, as it always was and alwaj's would be, and the poetry of Oxford was in tranei-hoh-.likewise. ' ■ . -■

The poet in any age, said the lecturer, was under the impression that he had been bora too late, and that cry was generally moet audible just at the times, ■when poetry was on the verge of its greatest movements and its most splendid achievements. One thing; at least, was certain. , That if as, that just as Oxford herself was passing through a process of expansion ' and modernisation the poetry of Oxford nmst undergo a corresponding change. Oxford had opened not only her gates, but her eyes; she was realising the •world. And no poetry in future would bo the poetry of Oxford in a full sense ■which did not take account of more than Oxford poetiy had hitherto taken account oi. ' - ' .'-'■■