DEATH IN ENGLAND

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 151, 23 December 1938, Page 15

DEATH IN ENGLAND

PROF. LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

A CELEBRATED POET

i_,ascelles Abercrombie, whose death nas occurred was the son of Williarh Abercrombie, of Ashton-on-Mersey. Cheshire, says the "Manchester Guardian." He was born in 1881 and was educated at Maivern College and at the Victoria University. Manchester, where he concentrated more especially on scientific studies, After working tor a short spell as a journalist on the staff of -he "Liverpool Evening Post' he was obliged, owing to ill health, to relinquish city life for quieter work in the country, and presently settled at Ryton. in Gloucestershire, While living in his delightful thatched cottage there—delightful in spite of, its somewhat intimidating name; The j Gallows—much of his best work was j done, and from it were issued his two j verse-pamphlets. "Mary and the Bramble" and "The SaJe of Saint Thomas" (Part I), and also the quarterly garland ]of poetry. "New Numbers," a joint venture in which his colleagues Rupert Brooke, John Drinkwater, and Wilfred Gibson shared. The war, which brought so many pleasant things to a close, abruptly ended this enterprise and soon broke up the little group of poets that had been gathering round The Gallows. In 1915 Abercrombie himself, having been rejecter' as medically unfit for active service, returned to Liverpool, where, with that unfailing sense of the fitness of things which characterises the military mind; he was given employment as a munition worker LIVERPOOL APPOINTMENT. At the close of the war, more rationally, he was appointed lecturer on poetry at Liverpool Jniversity, and in 1922 Professor of English Literature at Leeds University, a post which he held until' 1929, when be became Hildred Carlile Professor oi English Literature at Bedford College, London, a chair he held until 1935, when he was appointed Goldsmiths' Reader in English a, Oxford University The least professorial oi professors, his academic career was marked by many honours and distinctions: Clark Lecturer, Trinity College, Cambridge (1923): Ballard Mathews Lecturer, University College, Bangor (1924); Leslie Stephen, Lecturer, Cambridge (1929); Lecturer on Fino Arts, Queen's University, Belfast (1931-32); and Turnbull Lecturer, the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States (1935) Among honorary degrees he received that of a Doctor of Letters from Manchester. Abercrombie produced a fine body of critical work; his volumes of lectures —"The Theory of Art" (1922); "Principles of English Prosody" (1923); "The Theory of Poetry" (1924); "The Idea of Great Poetry" (1925); and "Romanticism" (1926)— constitute, perhaps, the most important contribution to the theory of poetics that has been made in our time But these academical activities are of themselves no more than irrelevant episodes in the career of a poet. A poet's true biography is recorded in his on unique work; his life is one with the life of his verse. A great I critic, Lascelles Abercrombie was even greater as a creative artist. With the publication of "Poems and Interludes"

(1908) he stepped at once into the front rank of contemporary poets, and the volumes that followed—"Emblems of Love" (1912); "Deborah" (1912); "Four Short Plays" (1922); "Phoenix" (1923); "Twelve Idylls" (1928); and "The Sale of Saint Thomas" (1931) — only served to consolidate the position he had won. an eminence which was accorded a sort of semi-official recogni.ion when his Collected Poems were included in the Oxford Poets. From the first Abercrombie's art was peculiarly mature in conception and workmanshrp> no mere promising effort, but a definite and intensely individual achievement, If the poet ever indulged in poetical exercises he was careful to keep , such prentice work from the public eye. BAD TRUE ORIGINAUTX. While his work was without that spurious "originality" which betrays itself in mere eccentric divagations from normality, it was always informed with and vitalised by true originality, which is achieved most surely when a fresh artistic consciousness works in and so reinvigorates the old tradition. In a day- of strange allegiances and of licentious metrical extravagances Abercrombie'3 work was always true to the centre, but his astonishing virtuosity in the use of words enabled him to create for himself, as every true poet must create for himself, a language of his own. Though some of his poems hap» pened to be included in Mr, Marsh's "Georgian" anthologies, Abercrombie was too big and individual a personality to fit readily into any group. In a predominantly lyrical age his gifts were not especially lyrical, his work being remarkable for its intellectual grasp and range rather than for its singing quality. He was by no means an "easy poet. It may be that the bent of AbercromSie's mind Vas too essentially metaphysical for him ever to have been a great dramatic poet, though much of his best work was cast in dramatic form and many of his plays found their way on to the stage for at least one performance, his conceptions were perhaps too individual, his style was perhaps too idiosyncratic to make the immediate appeal that is necessary to success In the actual theatre, but in the ideal theatre of the mind the persons of -iis imagination live with a profound life of their own and move with an epic grandeur. Yet splendid as is Abercrombie's achievement, one cannot help speculating on what he might have done but for the disruption of the War. Like all artists of his generation whose gifts were maturing when war broke out, his productive impulse received " check, arid while some artists were able to bridge the gap of those four desolating years and to set to work again with renewed vigour, there were few who had not lost some of their original vitality. Abercrombie, dogged as he was by ill health and obliged to engage himself reluctantly in academical activities, seemed to find less and less time for his own work. Nevertheless, though the major portion of his- poetry belongs to the comparatively untttubled pre-war period, it was after the war that he was to write perhaps the loveliest of all his poems, "The Death of the Friar." and to bring to a magnificent close, his most ambitious narrative work, "The Sale of Saint Thomas." While, as with most poets of his calibre, general recognition during his lifetime was somewhat grudging and, to say the least, entirely inadequate to his merit, his work won and, we may safely say, will always retain the esteem of his peers. In the work of Abercrombie the old miracle recurred and English poetry again renewed itself. .