ABOUT POETS AND POETRY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1648, 30 September 1903, Page 10

ABOUT POETS AND POETRY.

(By John, Christie.}

I.—POETS IN GENERAL.

They callqi him Master. Yet he was merely an irresponsible philosopher, who gave lessons in literature to a nig tit class attended by about

thirteen young men. To-night, only two pupils have turned up at the but they are the Master’s favourites: Ainslie, a somewhat shaggy-haired young fellow or seven-and-twenty or thereabout, and Trasider, a younger man, with indications of conceit about the m'outh, hut with a depth of eye and breadth of brow that suggest better things. “ I am glad you are the only two here to-night,” said the teacher; “for now there will he no lecture, and we can have a thoroughly pleasant evening. One has to talk and talk to drive sense into some beads; but though we sit and say nothing, you suck in knowledge all the time. Anyhow, I question whether anything worth saying could have been said under our chosen caption, ‘Poets and Poetry/” “ You mean,” observed Ainslie, “that all the good things have already been said about it by other people.” “Not that quite, perhaps. But, after - all, who are poets ? Madmen, who see * actual tilings awry, and, rhapsodise about their intuitions and hallucinations as though they w;ere objective realities.”

“ That,” said the other, “is hardly to the tune of what we have heard you say about old Homer, Job, Isaiah, David, and others of the singing brotherhood.”

“ Well, those old fellows knew how xo stand firm and look straight, no doubt; and David, for all his spiritual exaltations, loved a good domic catch, xoo; expressed, of course, in the most rehned and! academic Hebrew, with wit glinting and glancing ( like light on a seraph’s wing, each glint dying as aoon as born, hut only to he succeeded 'by another, rarer and more radiant ban its predecessor. Not David’s to descend to villainous Philistinese, on a par with the verbal abominations of vhe average clubman’s after-dinner lubricity.”

“What! David like catches!”

“ Well, the Talmudists say so, I believe; besides, any fool might know it, David being a man, not a plaster-of-Paris prig. But have you ever been struck with the, amount of rubbish* turned out by modern poets?” “How?”

“ I mean how men of real powers waste themselves on mere trash; stuff that is useless to mankind, and utterly discreditable to the writers as men of genius; rubbisih that shows them to have no more talent for self-criticism, than a plum pudding or a wax (doll.” “I am not a metaphysician,” Ainslie remarked; “ and cannot follow you in these soarings and sinkings. I dislike getting bogged in the incomprehensible. May I, without offence, ask you what you are driving at?” “And you are one of the students who do not need to have things explained to them! Surely ” The Master talked for fully a quarter of an hour in the somewhat volcanic, somewhat vitriolic style which he was apt to fall into when speaking privately to sympathetic listeners. When he had finished

“ I see,” said Ainsl'ie, “ tli.at you novel' abase your judgment in th© presence of even the most august genius.” “ Why should I ?” (retorted! the Master. “ There is a sens© in which a man of genius is a messenger from God. That, however, is no reason for treating him as though he were an Oriental monarch, and we his slaves. On his part, the man of genius is bound to do his work with dignity and thoroughness, without giving himself vain peacock airs on account of his mission or his manner of fulfilling it; and the business of mankind - is to respect the powers which are embodied in his person, to treat him, with honour as their custodian, aurl to profit spiritually, aesthetically aud intellectually from their application. But where a man of great powers misapplies his genius, judgment should specially qualify its attitude towards him. He will have many hut need we belong to them? In the highest region of thought and feeling let us forgive all faults and failings, but as a. matter of truth and justice in detail, it is an immoral thing to excuse a man, and particularly a great man, in a spirit of maudlin humanity, for leaving undone what lie should! have done, or for doing what lxe should not have done. Thus to excuse him does him no goqd, while it weakens and corrupts our moral sense, and the moral sense of those we carry with us in such matters.” “ I suppose observed the young man, “you would say that poets like I>ryden and Pope would have had more credit with posterity if they had burnt all their translations and imitations, and left us only such pieces as ‘ Absolam and Aohitorlrd ‘ Cymon and Iphegenia 5 and ‘Alexander’s Feast,’ in the one case, and. in the other, the ‘ Rape of the Rock,’

‘ Abelard to Eloisa 5 and the ‘ Elegy on tho Death of an Unfortunate Lady.’ Thomson, I suppose, you would confine to his ‘ Castle of Indolenoe ’; Gray to his odes and his ‘ Elegy ’; Burns to his best songs and the ‘Jolly Beggars, 5 Tam-o'-Shanter,’ the ‘Vision, 5 ‘Daisy, 5 the ‘Mouse,’ ‘Man Was Made to Mourn, 5 ‘ A Man’s a Man, 5 the ‘Address to the Deil, 5 ‘A Winter’s Night 5 and the ' Bard’s Epitaph 5 ; and Collins to his ‘ Passions. 5 55

“ You push my argument too far, and apply it too rigidly; but you are on the track of my literary ideal. Of tho poets you mention, Collins is almost the only one who did not waste himself on the transient and unimportant. He wrote hut little, and I would preserve nearly all ho wrote on account of its melody and tenderness. His poetry has the grace, the purity, the perfection of form of the finest statuary. Some may think it cold; but are those whe think so not cold themselves, or deficient in imagination? 55 * “ Even so; but who,” asked Ainslie, “reads Collins in these days?”

“ Assuredly not the average patrons of the book-stalls and circulating libraries, nor the persons who, at the publication of every tenth-rate novel, chatter about it as though it were a masterpiece of genius. Were these people able to distinguish real literature from literary slush, they would ho less addicted to the consumption of flummery and garbage. “By the way, speaking of Dryden and Pope, Gray and Collins, who were all scholars as well as poets, have you noticed the number of false or defective rhymes to he met in their work? Tho fact touches a point of real interest to these who wish to get into right relations with the genius of the English tongue. Is usage in the matter capricious? Were the rhymes which would be false now, also false then, or were the authors who used them less observant, less cultivated in the ear in regard to such tilings than we are nowadays? These may he trifles, hut the poet who overlooks them is not, in my opinion, on the highway of literary art. A false rhyme or an uncouth phrase in poetry is as had as a jarring note in music, or an incongruous tint in painting.” “ I suppose you think that the use of clipped, contracted and hermaphroditic words —such as ‘ wlio’d 5 for ‘ who would, 5 ‘you’ll’ for ‘you will,’ 1 ihou’rt ’ for ‘thou art., 5 ‘you’re 5 for ‘ you are ’ —iis incompatible with good literature.”

“ Certainly I do,” was the reply. _ “I know that these verbal abortions abound! even in the work of great poets. But all such abuses should disappear with the advance of literary culture.”

“ Some might say that you were inveighing against trifles in the interest of a priggish purism.” “ Well, I cannot regard it as a trifle if a manfejf genius beha!ve(s ais [though ihe could not express his passion or his mirth without playing tricks upon liis mother tongue. Let that be left to callow fools, punster’s and illiterate botchers. The most joyous gaiety, the most riant humour needs no 'such aids.” “Do you forget Tlhomas Hood?” “Forget Hood! Please, do not place me on the level of that recent reviewer, who, in his survey of the poetry of the nineteenth century, never once mentions Hood, though he dandles the names of George Darley and others of that ilk.”

“ I have,” said Ainslie. “ a friend who says that, were it not for Hood’s punning and! so-called humorous pieces, he would as soon set out for the Temple of Fame with liis budget- as with that of Alfred Tennyson.”

“That, I am afraid, is pushing personal preference beyond the limits of judicial criticism. Yet the man who wrote ‘ The Bridge of Sighs,’ ‘ The Song of the Shirt, 5 ‘ The Haunted House, 5 ‘ The of the Midsummer Fairies ’ and ‘ Ruth, 5 was a true poet, worthy of being loved for his humanity, and for his genius. By the way, has it ever struck you that ‘ln Memcriam,’ notwithstanding exquisite passages, aptly described by Tennyson himself as

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away, is in reality a, diffusive dissertation on a subject which is much more satisfactorily handled by Paul of Tarsus in his Epistle to the Romans: ‘O the depth of till© riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and! His ways past finding out: for of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things: to whom be glory for ever.’ Contrast the concentration an|d spiritual glow of this with the diffuseness and intellectual paleness of ‘ln Memoriam.’ In the one case you have the burning breath of virility, in the other the foggy sigh cf valetudinarianistin. Yet, ‘ In MeniGriam ’ is an interesting poetic mosaic. It fell in, too, with the spiritual temper of its time, and expressed! . moods and yearnings, by the expression of which thousand® of its readers felt their own souls lightened and brightened, and raised towards a certitude which would not have come to< them through Papl’s words'. Therefore, let us be careful how we judge it. But Tennyson himself was undoubtedly right in regarding

‘ Mauri 5 as the corner-stone of his glory. Then, the best of bis short© goems rank with the finest things in terature, and will probably survive.to the end of time as wells of refreshment for feeling hearts and liberal minds. So far as my personal spiritual life and intellectual satisfactions are concerned, the ‘ Idylls of the King 5 need never have been written, except ‘ Merlin 5 and Vivien, 5 ‘Guinevere’ and “The Passing of Arthur. 5 These are worthy to bo bound up with ‘ Maud, 5 the shorter masterpieces, and the beautiful lyrics scattered throughout ‘ The Princess, 5 and standing elsewhere on their own feet. But the ‘ldylls 5 as a whole are, for my personal taste, too- suggestive of a milliner’s showroom.” “That,” rejoined Ainslie", “is, perhaps. the reason why they are so popular with, women.” “ Beware of cleverness, young man ; beware of cleverness. Few tilings arc so likely to prove fatal a soul’s salvation or a mind’s development, or more, certain to lead to the facile and fatuous infallibility of the politician, journalist, and literary critic. Easy is the descent to Hades.”

“Well, I am warned. But, passing Tennyson, surely you will admit that Swinburne is ”

“ In one sense, a wilderness of words, in another, a temple of burnished brass, shining in the sun, on an eastward slope. The fervid radiance thereof is, indeed, trying to the eyes, hut from all the place there come forth melodies more haunting than any which have fallen on mortal ears since the of Menuion’s statue. For a great poet, he has written too much that is of merely temporary and insular interest, hut wlieu''he strikes a universal note, as he often does, its effect is like that produced by mighty music. However, it is Swinburne’s misfortune that, teeming as he does with energy, lie has not energy enough to restrain himself. Id is dithyrambic method is for great subjects and great occasions—a thing wherewith to lash the ocean, but not puddles by tho way side. The poet has failed to this sufficiently in mind, so that, though his genius is a fountain of fire. Ills lack of judgment has littered! his pages with unimportant work —work in which the workmanship, however good, cannot compensate for the transient interest or essential unimportance of the subjects. Buell things are, at host, literary warnings, and, on these, genius never should expend its divine vitality.”, “And Browning?”

“ Browning’s lumber would sink anyone but himself. His work suggests a tropical forest, where there are wonderful sights and sound's, and the rarest foliage, but also much disordered luxuriance and impassability. Some of his poems are so fine and so noble. —‘ Saul,’ for instance, and ‘ Pippa Passes ’ —that they insist survive even the unfavourable conditions created for them, by much of his other work, which violates that sense of proportion., that genius for form, which is so essential in literature. Yet, in his essence, he is, perhaps. the greatest British-horn genius of his time: with what firmness and clearness lie pom-trays characters the most diverse, and how thoroughly ho turns the human heart inside out, for example, in ‘ The Ring and the Book.’ Still, many men, and these not Philistines, would as soon chew hay and eat sawdust as assimilate Browning; and the poet who lacks artistic form and proportion is damned—as a poet. Even Apollo would have failed as a god had he generally disported himself in the guise of Caliban.” “What of Wordsworth?” asked the young man. “Words'worth’s garden and grounds,” replied the other, “contain some of the loveliest flowers and finest trees in the world of literature; hut what piles of shavings, heaps of sawdust and 'lumps of fu/nhewn rock are scattered hither and thither and all round. _ In any final summing up, something similar would have to be said, too, of Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byron, who have all, more or less, marred their total effectiveness by giving way to that fatal facility which 'SO many men of genius have for working in veins in which they cannot be, or at least never are, at their best. In my opinion, however, it is not England, but America which supplies the fupreme suggestion in this, connection. iook at Edgar Allan Poe, and look ah Walt Whitman., each iso admirable —with a large qualification; one in respect to matter, and the other manner. But the man who, with adequate genius, combines the musical charm and literary art of the one with the vivid, warm, comprehensive humanity and instinct for the universal of the other, will be the poet of his age, and a great poet for all time.” “Axe these men nob very remarkable; in fact., excellent, in their respective ways? Are you not counselling an interference with nature’s work in suggesting, in regard to tilings so different, combination V 1

“Bet nature go on producing what she chooses: as a lover of the highest literary excellence, I merely say that, in my opinion, that excellence will be reached by the man who gives us work which combines the vitally distinctive qualities of Poe and Whitman.” “Is it not wise to beware of counsels of perfectipn, fit for young gods bent on the goal of some heavenly Olympus,

but far above halting mortals, of th# earth, earthy P Can any man, by taking tnought, add one cubit to his stature, the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin; or even geniu* realise itsejlf in spate Of phytsijo Vogycal 1 structure or psychological bias or limitation ?” “It is no doubt wise to remember all that; yet not less wise, also, to beware of giving undue emphasis to those very questions.” (To he Continued.)