THE POET LAUREATE AS CRITIC.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13372, 14 January 1907, Page 3

THE POET LAUREATE AS CRITIC.

i!*r Alfred Austin, the Poet Laureate. in x »n address on tshe relation of literature to politics at the Lowkm Institution said . that mere contemplation^ no matter how lofty or profound* would not make a supreme man of letters or a supreme artist of any kind. The appalling result of always writing verses and never doing anything else was seen in the portentous bulk of poetry bequeathed to us by Wottdsworth, which the wc>rld persisted, and would Always persist, in regarding aft verse muoh of which ought to have gone up the chimney. Matthew 'Arnold had boiled down Wordsworth to a tenth of his bulk, and his works would have to be bodied 'down still more some d-ay. The poet forfeited, hid power when Ec lost Mmself; in the blue etEer. No doubt he must have hia Eead itf the blue ether, and none could be too rarefied fcxr his unagina/tion to breathe, but witliout 1 a strong" foothold on the ground he. ran. the risk o f lapsing too often, as Mattfiew Arnold allowed that Wordsworth oftm lapsed, into mere abstract verbiage. Byron was a direct ' contrast with Words'worlK, and he was, on the whole, the most "conquerable" poet since Milton. It was well for the literary man that he* should concern himself with politics and the affairs of the world. ■ ' W*