MR GOLDWIN SMITH AS CRITIC.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 5474, 31 December 1904, Page 15

MR GOLDWIN SMITH AS CRITIC.

Writing on “English Poetry and English History”:in tho “American Historical Review,” Mr Goldwin Smith (says tho “Nation 1 ') rapidly rims his finger down tho annals of his country, from Chaucer to the present hour, characterising the poetic output of the several periods, and passing summary judgment here and there on individual writers. Shakespeare's political opinions come in for notice, and his views of “the mystery of existence and the other world.” And when Giordano Bnttno visited England and became “the centre of an intellectual circle which sat with closed doors, was Shakespear e perchance one of that circle?” The Baconians are dismissed in the sentence, “No person of sense; it may be presumed, doubts that Shakespeare wrote his own plays”; the one strong point in their case being the miracle of the product from such an humble origin and education. Of Pope, Mr Smith says; “Nothing in its way excels ‘The Rape of the Lock,’ or, ■indeed, in its way the translation of the ‘lliad,’ little Homeric as the translation is.” “Unsurpassed in his own line,” too, is Burns, “one of tho foremost in the eecond-class of poetry,” whose character fa too much thrust upon our sympathy. Coleridge, “in his peculiar way, may be said to be about the greatest of Anglican divines.” Shelley “is not the first- of poets in mental power, but he fa, it seems to me, the most purely and ini tensely poetic.” . Scott’s “Marmion” fa “the most truly epic thing in our language.” Tennyson “was one of jbhe greatest of poets,” and “has been called a great teadher. But he has nothing definite to teach.” Matthew Arnold's poetry is “simply high art.” Browning’s characteristic poems “do not give me pleasure of that sort which it is supposed' to be the special function of poetry to give.” Fnally: “We seem now to have come to a break in the life of poetry in England,” and “the phe* nomenon appears to be common to Europe in general. Is science killing poetic feeling P”