12. THE JUDGMENT OF POETRY

In the section on the Purposes of the Artist, above, it has been said that poetry may be regarded as structural, presentative, representative, interpretative, and creative, and that the highest reach is attained when interpretation and creation are conjoined. Poetry should, however, be submitted to still other tests if a broadly critical judgment of it is desired. The degree in which the poem has won acceptance, the manner of its expression, classical or romantic, its view of life, the quality of its highest moments, and the effect produced by it upon the senses and the emotions, must all be passed in review.

The Degree of Acceptance: Classic. - A classic is a poem whose position is above dispute. It has stood the test of time, is of the class. It has endured because it has had the power to appeal to the hearts and judgment, not of one crowd or coterie of men, nor of one country or period, but of all who have known it in all climes, through successive changes of literary fashion. And it has had this power of appeal because of its intrinsic truth, worth, and beauty. A classic then, like the tragedies of Eschylus and Sophocles, or of Shakespeare, like the epics of Homer, Dante, and Milton, has a meaning both real and exalted, a power to move men that is universal, a place that endures. And the poet who makes the classic we call a classic too.

The Manner: Classical, Romantic. The manner of a poem or other work of art may be classical or romantic. The manner is classical in spirit when it conforms to authority, to the traditional and accepted belief concerning man's relation to the supernatural, to the necessity which orders personality and conduct and the issues of life. It is classical in style when it conforms to the conventional and therefore somewhat more rigid laws of expression; to the canons of taste handed down from of old, the regulations of type and figure, diction and metre sanctioned by usage, unquestioned because so long undisturbed. The manner is, on the other hand, romantic in spirit when it expresses the independence of the individual, the desire that springs eternal for freedom, the assertion of self as against creed and authority, and sleek and self-satisfied custom. "Our pent wills fret and would the world subdue," but since the conditions of life are unfavorable to the achievement of our ideals, the poet of romantic spirit transports us to a Land of Heart's Desire, where the stubborn facts of life are modified, and fate falls away and men are as gods. This is the republic of imagination. These are the meadows of love and heroism and wonder. In style, too, the romantic poet may "let olde thinges pase." If so, he gropes nature anew and glories in discovering and making some new thing, he ventures upon

variations of the ancient types, he eschews the critical canons as received, he devises for himself principles, he agonizes to invent metres and a 'spontaneous' diction. He succeeds in part; he could not possibly succeed in toto. The next generation finds that most of his inventions had been invented before, and that the only new thing under the sun is the old thing under new conditions. Still, while the romantic maker, the Marlowe, or the Peele, is in the flush of his making, he accomplishes much for which 'letters' must be grateful; he shocks the world into a new casting up of accounts, into a readjustment of canons and classics. Always there are followers who will run into excess, but a few—the Shakespeares, the Miltons-find the golden mean.

The long preeminence of Greek and Latin masterpieces accounts for the technical application of the term 'classics' to those literatures. For the same reason the term 'classical' is commonly used of the Greek and Latin manner and the authority derived therefrom. But in reality there are modern classics as well as ancient, and some of the poems that we call classical, because long established, like the Odyssey of Homer, were probably, in style at least, romantic to their first hearers. The Iliad is classical in spirit and in style, so too Paradise Lost and Lycidas. Pope's Rape of the Lock is classical in style, and so is the Deserted Village. The latter, however, verges on the romantic spirit. Macaulay's Horatius is classical in subject and I should say in spirit, but in style it is a romantic ballad. The Lady of the Lake and The Ancient Mariner are romantic both in style and spirit.

The View of Life: Idealistic, Realistic, etc. We frequently

hear literature called 'idealistic' or 'realistic.' Now no literature of the highest kind can be only idealistic or only realistic, any more than it can be only æsthetic. By idealism in art we should understand an effort on the artist's part to express the rightness or the wrongness of some view of life or some course of conduct. If the artist emphasizes this aspect of his subject out of relation to its other necessary aspects, its truth and its beauty, he passes from the studio to the pulpit. By realism we should understand an effort on the artist's part to express the exact or scientific truth about the subject presented; but if he overdoes this, in his painstaking honesty reproducing insignificant and unnecessary facts and details instead of those only that are necessary to the imaginative representation of the truth, his work will probably produce the effect of a haphazard photograph, purposeless and confused, or of some of Zola's novels or Walt Whitman's poems, or at the best of an ill-arranged text-book. By astheticism we should mean the effort on the part of the artist to show the relation of his subject to the world of emotion, especially to the higher or artistic reaches of feeling, those capable of appreciating the beautiful, the sublime, the pathetic, the

comic, the tragic, etc.; but if nothing but emotions (actual or æsthetic) are portrayed or appealed to, the work results in sentimentalism. None of these extremes is to be tolerated in true poetry. Life must be treated by the poet as having a common relation to what is right or ideal, to what is true or real, and to what is emotional or beautiful. Absolute poetry expresses all three phases of the meaning of life, according to the purpose of the poet and the capability of the subject. The perfect poet, if ever there were one, would therefore be a sane, all-sided, and hospitable soul, seeing, feeling, and valuing things aright, and recounting the outcome in the artistic form specially suited to each subject in turn. It of course rarely happens that the poet and his subject together make for a treatment real, ideal, and æsthetic in equal parts. The proportion due to the conditions must be observed. The Canterbury Tales as a whole present the fitting minutia, the worth, and the aesthetic quality of their subject; but it is only natural that the Prologue should emphasize the reality of things- the detail of manners. Comus presents the ideal and æsthetic aspect of life rather than the realistic, for that was properly the end in view. The Eve of St. Agnes aims æsthetically to delight the emotions and imagination; it preserves the reality of appearances, but it has no particular ideal of conduct to emphasize, because the subject admitted of little, and the poet cared not a whit.

The Test Passage. - Matthew Arnold has suggested that in appraising poems we should test them by comparison with those lines, or passages, of the great masters of poetry in which men have agreed to recognize high poetic quality' lines of unquestioned significance for truth, of high poetic seriousness, of inevitable beauty. While this could not possibly be a complete method of appraisement, for it deals with moments or parts and not with the accumulating momentum and the total effect, it is useful so far as it goes; and even more useful as suggesting a consideration even more vital to poetic appreciation. That, in substance and matter, style and manner, these best-of-all lines, these test lines or touchstones of poetry, have a mark, an accent of high beauty, worth, and power, Matthew Arnold says; but he refuses to define the mark and accent. "They are far better recognized," he says, "by being felt in the verse of the master, than by being perused in the prose of the critic." True, probably; but that is to reason in a circle. How can you be sure that what you have felt has been felt or should be felt by others you know not why you yourself felt it? Unless you have some reason other than your liking, or the liking of those who have gone before, for choosing the touchstone' by which you shall test the relative worth of poetic productions, your 'touchstone' will not compel universal consent. Now, if we examine the touchstones chosen by Arnold, we shall, I think, discover that they have a common characteristic not analyzed by

if

nim. If we determine that the characteristic is vital, we may demand it when we choose touchstones for ourselves. One of Arnold's test verses is "the simple, but perfect, single line" from Dante :

"In la sua voluntade è nostra pace."

In His will is our peace. And another is from Milton:

"And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome."

"

The characteristic of each - so far as the thought goes is that it holds, as if in balance, and perfect balance at that, the two extremes of the thought conveyed, and that each of these extremes, opposed as they are, contributes to the full significance of the whole. In the former test line the central thought is 'peace.' The thought is rich, full, and final because it holds in balance the conditions that in opposition could not make it, but that in harmony do; 'God's will' and our little wills. The former expressed, the latter suggested. In the second passage contrasted aspects of courage are held in solution; courage that in defeat confesses it not, courage that in conflict cannot be defeated. The mere style, moreover, of each of these passages displays rhythmical and musical form balanced in itself and suited to the idea expressed. 'Voluntade' balances in sound, as well as in sense, 'nostra pace.' Vowels and consonants hold a sequence through the line expressive of perfect unison. In the other passage, 'Never' matches with 'else' in sense and sound; 'courage' with 'overcome,' which is itself a climax to ‘submit' and 'yield.'

This characteristic of the reconciliation of opposites in substance and style is the accent that marks all Arnold's touchstones. An artistic effect may be sometimes produced by suppressing one extreme, or even the higher balancing thought; but what is suppressed must be suggested. The presence of this characteristic explains why it is that every one chooses as a passage of inevitable poetry the stanzas in Childe Harold descriptive of the Dying Gladiator. Such lines as

such lines express the significant thought in its aspects most opposed and yet most vital, and in the one emotive, imaginative, balanced, and rhythmical form appropriate to it.

The supremely poetic moment of just this quality abounds in the verse of Milton. In the Comus it inspires such lines as

"Virtue could see to do what Virtue would

By her own radiant light, though sun and moon
Were in the flat sea sunk;"

Wordsworth at his best gleams with lines jewelled in sound and sense,

such as

and

"The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, still of ample power

To chasten and subdue;"

"His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love;"

and, in the lament for Lucy:
:-

"But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!"

and in every stanza of the Ode to Duty till we reach the stately conclusion

"And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live."

The balance of the thoughts-opposed, yet reconciled and of the component sounds is in all these lines perfect and manifest. So also in Coleridge:

He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;"

and in Keats, as through the stanza opening,

"Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird;"

and in Shelley, with every chord of

"We look before and after

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."

The last line of which reminds us of Tennyson's equally poetic

"Sweet as remembered kisses after death;"