silvered globes, oranges, gimcracks, and lighted candles are
not more incongruous ornaments to the stunted fir tree which
they decorate for the nonce at a Christmas party than the
tinsel thoughts and images which illustrate the subjects chosen
by these poets. Probably nothing will convince these writers
of their mistake; but for the sake of their readers, who may
not be beyond the reach of remonstrance, we submit that there
is an indefinable congruity and propriety in the most far-fetched
imagery of true poetic feeling which nothing but true feeling
can produce. The imagery in true poetry is always felt to be
simply illustrative, and never attracts attention on its own
account. If we call an image or a thought in a genuine poem
'striking,' the chances are that we have discovered it to be so
only after having voluntarily regarded it in isolation from its
context. In the whole of Shakspeare's plays we shall scarcely
find one striking thing' in the sense in which almost all our
living verse-writers aspire to be sayers of such things. The
contrary notion, which widely prevails, is mainly owing to the
evil influence of a remarkable school of critics who, in the early
years of this century, made it their chief delight to dwell with
altogether disproportionate emphasis of praise upon the mere
niceties of verbal expression in our ancient poets. The un-
earthing of that great sayer of fine things,' Fletcher, and the
immoderate praise bestowed upon him and other members of
the early spasmodic school' of English dramatists, we are
disposed to regard as having been great misfortunes for modern
English poetry. The ultimate result is now seen, on the one
hand, in such criticisms as those of Mr. George Gilfillan, and,
on the other, in such poems as Festus,' and A Life-Drama.'
In all such writings we find literally nothing but an aimless and
incoherent succession of striking things,' many bad, some
good, but all elaborately and by malice prepense striking.'
Hence, to a reader of old-fashioned mental habits, one who has
been accustomed to expect and require purpose, unity, and
vital sequence in all kinds of intellectual products, and, in
return, to give habitually that attention which such qualities
demand for their appreciation, the writings in question are
absolutely unreadable. The current of meaning or emotion,
if meaning and emotion can be predicated of such productions,
is never the same for ten lines or three sentences together; and
the conscientious endeavour to follow the general action or idea,
and at the same time to attend to all the collateral incoherences,
is, without exaggeration, the most distressing operation to which
we have ever been under the necessity of submitting our under-
standing.

6

•

6

6

"

We do not deny that the writers, of whom these complaints are made, have the faculty of occasionally expressing an image or a thought in what might be regarded as a picturesque manner, were such expressions found in the verses of a different order of poets; but as a wise sentence is despised in the mouth of a fool, so a beautiful phrase has little force when its intellectual origin is discredited by the context of tawdriness, bombast, and imbecility. Such accompaniments impair the tone of mind which is the condition of the reception of pleasing impressions; we naturally conclude that the poetic phrase has been either stolen or struck off by chance; and thus we miss that sense of relation to a source of living reality and humanity which is at the foundation of all feeling of beauty, poetic or otherwise, and we are rather shocked than delighted with the additional incongruity of a sentence here and there which, to quote a good line of Mr. Alexander Smith's, shines like a great diamond on a threadbare robe.' Our surprise at the occurrence of such passages becomes almost as small as our admiration when we reflect that to make an occasional hit of this kind is commonly the great end and occupation of the author's life. A better poet than these gentlemen can ever hope to become might no doubt, if he chose to sacrifice all higher considerations to superficial glare, make every line or stanza separately a work of independently striking' beauty or power. Indeed, in some of Mr. Tennyson's early poems, this experiment has been made. The Palace of Art,' for instance, is one string of fine things,' each of which may stand alone without loss, or rather with very much advantage; for their unflagging succession constitutes one of the least readable of Mr. Tennyson's poems. How refreshing in comparison is the other extreme of puritanical simplicity in the same poet's idyl called Dora,' in which we have a really fine poem with scarcely a quotable fine thing' in it! Mr. Matthew Arnold's Preface affords a passage so much to our purpose on this subject that we must extract it.

"

"

"

We can hardly at the present day understand what Menander meant when he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his comedy that he had finished it, not having yet written a single line, because he had constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern critic would have assured him that the merit of his piece depended on the brilliant things which arose under his pen as he went along. We have poems which seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and passages, not for the sake of producing any total impression. We have critics who seem to direct their attention merely to detached expressions, to the language about the action, not to the action itself. I verily think that the majority of them do not in their hearts believe that there is such a thing as a total impression to be derived from a

ided from a poet; they think the term a ical criticism. They will permit the poet ases, and to suffer that action to go as it them with occasional bursts of fine writing, ated thoughts and images.'

tic, common to the writers we are dend feverish craving for poetic reputation, calm confidence, often boldly expressed imate fame. We ask particular attention. use it seems to us to constitute the very 'ierian, from which these writers draw appear to have.

e, fame, next grandest word to God!'

ously exclaims one of the school; and for ler prefer to pluck bright honour from the cation of verses seemingly written under her nce. In accordance with this view of the false writers in question, we find that the works he first fury for fame are commonly their best. deluding and transitory popularity which retravagance and self-assertion for the first instalme; their motive for doing their best is at an subsequent attempt can they equal themselves. t remarkable quality common to these writers is 20 lack of acquaintance with all that is the true aterial, namely, the ordinary realities of human have the latest geological, astronomical, chemical, discoveries; the newest applications of steam and the very last imported curiosities of social and reli7, put under contributions for the development and of-nothing! We seek in vain among these elabopretentious glosses and commentaries for the simple. manity. It is all words, words, words!' The men en are the meagre and ghastly offspring of a debilitaotism. What Mr. Ruskin, in his last publication, says false high art' painters, is exactly true of such poets. ey mistake their vanity for inspiration, their ambition for reatness of soul, and take pleasure in what they call "the "ideal" merely because they have neither humility nor capa'city enough to comprehend the real.' Fine poems, like fine manners, so far from contradicting common sense, as the vulgar often think, carry out its dictates with extraordinary minuteness and perfection; and, at the very least, we expect that persons pretending to the august rank of poets should write things which

6

6

persons of average good sense and feeling might acknowledge without discredit. A palace,' Coleridge said, should at least 'be a house;' and a poet should at least be a sensible man. But how strangely is this primary necessity overlooked in our days, as well by poets as their readers. They give us the paperhangings of fancy, the chandeliers of imagination, and the 'stucco' of poetic diction; but where are the bricks of commonsense, the rafters of reflection, and the corner and key-stones of morality, that should constitute the solid structure of which all this magnificence is properly nothing but the appendage?

6

As we might expect, the vastness of the aim professed in each of the works of such writers is commonly in direct proportion to the incapacity of the author, who generally sets out with the intention of writing, not only a great poem, but the great poem of this age, and of all ages past and to come. The place of their dramas-for they all write dramas-is usually space; the time,' eternity; the dramatis personæ,' the hierarchies of heaven and hell, a certain number of walking gentlemen' of the intermediate mortal rank, and the coming poet,' who combines the characteristics and prerogatives of all three, and for the original of whom we have seldom far to seek. From these elements the problem of life,' whatever that may mean with these persons, all of whom seem to be deeply concerned in its elucidation, is to be evolved. Their heroes have a supreme disregard for every kind of moral or social conventionality' and a manifest contempt for all action or purpose in life, but that of making poems and long speeches about themselves and the sublime and beautiful. They have always the misfortune -the worst that can happen to men or poets-of having no profession but that of contemplating stars and primroses, despising their fellow creatures or patronising them with a still more contemptuous philanthropy, and making love in a condescending style to young ladies of the sumptuous' type. These writers invariably take occasion, in the course of their Life,' 'Death,' or other Drama,' to print their arrears of unpublished lyrics without the slightest pretence of congruity. The chief of these lyrics is usually one in Lockesley Hall' metre, the prevailing thought-to express it in the characteristic language of one of the school-being,—

6

'Lo, this gorgeous day goes queenlike with the treasures of all time, And her men and women dangle on the verge of the sublime.'

How explain the fact that, in some instances, the sale of the works of these writers rivals that of the publications of the Poet Laureate, and that, for the most part, they have been

welcomed by the minor critics with respect, and sometimes with enthusiasm? We admit our inability to account for this singular caprice of the public taste, for it seems that, although very little good poetry is written in these days, a great deal of indifferent poetry is bought; we feel bound, however, for our own justification, to note such approximate reasons as occur to us. The temporary popularity of these poems among persons of some culture and understanding, seems partly explicable when we discover that these writings contain innumerable good things from the great and comparatively unread poets, diluted, disjointed, and vulgarised so as to enable them to strike a common order of apprehension. In all but one or two exceptions these works are tissues of gross, though perhaps unconscious plagiarism. For one person who is capable of appreciating a well-sustained poetic flight there are a hundred who can derive a certain amount of pleasure from a good image or a well-turned line, when its effect is emphasized by isolation. Hence separate bright thoughts and images, which, in a great writer, make less popular effect, because they are the appropriate and subordinate parts of a whole, are received with enthusiastic admiration when they glitter one by one among the decorations of Mr. Smith's or Mr. Bailey's christmas tree. Writers like Mr. Henry Taylor and Mr. Aubrey De Vere, who exceed in the opposite, but far nobler and more truly poetic extreme of depending somewhat too exclusively upon the higher qualities of our nature, are scarcely regarded as poets by the partisans of the new school; nor can we feel surprise at this when we consider the almost savage repugnance to, and incapacity for, attention, which appear to be increasingly characteristic of the popular mind in our day. It not only requires no attention to enable a reader to receive whatever poetic delectation there may be in most of our modern poets; but a dormant condition of that faculty is one of the prime conditions of receiving pleasure from their writings. Fortunately for the popularity of many modern writers, in prose as well as verse, the intellects of most modern readers move, as it were, in 'snow'shoes,' which enable them to traverse an unsubstantial surface without sinking into the depths of mud which obstruct at every step the advance of a thoughtful reader. Wherever, as is sometimes the case even with Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning, the meaning is hidden by the hardness of the expression, the reader is carried along by the play of verse, and he may console himself for having missed what will hardly repay the effort of extracting it from such a knot of words.

But, after all, the vanity of connoisseurship, as we have