It is but rarely that an accomplished judge of literature will speak out boldly and unequivocally, without "hedging," so to speak, and not only declare that such-and-such a work reveals a rising genius, but give his reasons why he declares it, distinguishing the poetical elements in which the genius is shown. The critic should frankly a.n.a.lyse; but mostly he does not. He tells us, for instance, that Walt Whitman is the "Adam of a new poetical era," or else that he is "a dunce of inconceivable incoherence and incompetence"; but usually he does not show us the precise data upon which either conclusion is based. Cannot profundity of thought, ardour of emotion, power and charm of expression, be actually demonstrated as present or absent in a poet, when the critic is addressing himself to his natural readers, to wit, persons in whom are pre-supposed a certain amount of brains and heart, and cultivation of both? If they cannot, has criticism any real existence?
To begin with, each reader is bound to recognise how far he is himself at any time capable of appreciating particular kinds of poetry. Out of epic, lyric, dramatic, and descriptive poetry there is usually some one kind with which we have no natural sympathy. It follows not that, because a man is fond of peaches, pears, and grapes, he is also fond of pa.s.sionfruit or tomatoes. Of these latter he may be no judge whatever.
_Non omnia possumus omnes_ in the criticism of poetry, any more than in other departments of activity.
There are, for instance, some who have no patience with poetry of the mystic, half-dreamy kind, but must have their conceptions one and all definitely realized for them. They cannot away with emotional arabesques; they must have recognizable and rememberable outlines. There are others who cannot bring themselves to care for the poetry which broods upon inanimate nature; their interest centres wholly on the problems of man; just as there are limited souls who find no delight in landscapes, and think figure-painting the only field of art. These are no critics, perhaps never could be critics, of more than the verbal expression in those uncongenial regions of poesy. To be a true appreciator of all poetry a man must possess a harmoniously-developed nature, as full and large and liberal as poetry itself. Let us, therefore, begin by admitting and allowing for our limitations where we feel them to exist.
In the first place, we must set about our reading only when we are in the proper mood of receptivity. Poetry is not science, any more than painting is photography, or architecture is building in squares and cubes and circles. To approach the great poetry of "high seriousness"
when we are in a cynical or flippant mood; to s.n.a.t.c.h glances at a great drama or epic when we are in a hurry; to begin from the very first line by examining with a cold-blooded criticism a pa.s.sionate elegy or fiery lyric, is to act as if one sat at a concert of unfamiliar music only to criticise the gestures of the performers or to watch for an occasional weakness of the second violin. It is almost always open to adult human beings not to be reading poetry if they are not feeling disposed for it.
I say "almost always" because the "indolent reviewer" is apt to be an exception. Yet even the indolent reviewer might with advantage often remind himself that poetry is written for people who want to read it, and when they want to read it, and that no art pretends to force men into enjoying it at all times and seasons. Granting, then, that we know our own personal limitations, and what particular sense our organisation lacks; granting also that we are reading our poet spontaneously, simply because the pleasure of poetry is the pleasure we happen to be seeking; granting, further, that we are sufficiently cultivated and experienced in literature to possess ready apprehension of a thought, a fair taste in expression, and an ear for cadence and melody, there is, I believe, but one certain way of telling whether a verse-writer is a poet at all, and then whether as poet he is greater or less.
He must be read a first time without effort at criticism of any kind.
The words and rhythms, the thoughts and feelings contained in a particular poem will thus leave a certain general effect, an una.n.a.lysed impression. It will be as it is with the true judge of art when he stands before a picture, a statue, or a building. In its presence he either feels the spontaneous delight which comes of a general satisfyingness, or he feels the annoyance of a general unsatisfyingness, or he feels neither one nor the other. So with a poem. We shall either feel that the sounds and melodies have bathed us in delight, or we shall think them harsh, or we shall think nothing about them at all. We shall feel a high intellectual stimulation or a strong emotional excitement, or we shall think the pa.s.sage rather futile, or we shall be aware of no p.r.o.nounced feeling one way or the other. If we are constrained to say to ourselves, "What a n.o.ble pa.s.sage!" "What splendid verse!" "What a sweet song!" or to use any of those unstudied exclamations which spring to the lips before we have had time or inclination to realize our impressions more definitely--then, I maintain, we are justified in calling the writer at once and definitively a poet. Whether he is a greater poet or a minor poet remains still to be estimated, but poet he is, be he Burns or Swinburne, Tennyson or Watson or Davidson. Here, for instance, is a pa.s.sage from Watson"s elegy upon Tennyson, which he has called _Lachrymae Musarum_. I do not choose it because it is his best, but because it is typical:--
He hath returned to regions whence he came; Him doth the spirit divine Of universal loveliness reclaim, All nature is his shrine.
Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea, In earth"s and air"s emotion or repose, In every star"s august serenity, And in the rapture of the flaming rose.
There seek him if ye would not seek in vain, There, in the rhythm and music of the whole, Yea, and for ever in the human soul Made stronger and more beauteous by his strain.
For lo! Creation"s self is one great choir, And what is Nature"s order but the rhyme Whereto the world keeps time, And all things move with all things from their prime?
Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre?
In far retreats of elemental mind Obscurely comes and goes The imperative breath of song, that as the wind Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows.
Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, Extort her crimson secret from the rose, But ask not of the Muse that she disclose The meaning of the riddle of her might.
Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, Save the enigma of herself, she knows.
The master could not tell, with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped; E"en as the linnet sings, so I, he said-- Ah! rather as the imperial nightingale That held in trance the ancient Attic sh.o.r.e, And charms the ages with the notes that o"er All woodland chants immortally prevail!
And now from our vain plaudits, greatly fled, He with diviner silence dwells instead, And on no earthly sea, with transient roar, Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail, But, far beyond our vision and our hail, Is heard for ever and is seen no more.
Now it matters not what flaws the austere critic might find with a microscope in those lines. I feel certain that there is no one who would not at this first reading experience that inevitable glow of satisfaction which, in the cultured mind, is the unfailing criterion that the art is good. Whether Mr. Watson is further an original poet, a signal poetic force; whether he is a poet for the mind as much as for the ear, is a further question to be decided by a detailed a.n.a.lysis; but that he is a poet is, I beg leave to think, wholly undeniable. At first sight, has there been anything better in this vein since _Lycidas_?
Here, again, is a brief part of a song from Davidson"s _Fleet Street Eclogue_ of May Day. I quote these lines in particular, because, unlike most very short pa.s.sages of this poet, they admit of being disentangled from their setting. They are typical of only one side of a many-sided being, the side which exults in the simple sensuous delights of nature.
They are two stanzas from the song of the nightingale as interpreted by Basil:--
The lark from the top of heaven raved Of the sunshine sweet and old; And the whispering branches dipped and laved In the light; and waste and wold Took heart and shone; and the b.u.t.tercups paved The emerald meads with gold.
Now it is night, and--
The wind steals down the lawns With a whisper of ecstasy, Of moonlit nights and rosy dawns, And a nest in a hawthorn tree; Of the little mate for whom I wait, Flying across the sea, Through storm and night as sure as fate, Swift-winged with love for me.
And again I ask, has there, at first sight, been anything more like Sh.e.l.ley since Sh.e.l.ley"s _Cloud_?
a.s.suming that the first step in our method has left us quite satisfied that a writer (and here I leave Mr. Watson and Mr. Davidson and revert to the general case) possesses enough share in the divine gift to be called "poet," we may, if we are bent upon truly "appreciating" him, proceed to taste his lines over and over, to dwell in detail upon his expression, upon its charms and splendours and felicities, its vigour and terseness and simplicity. It may be that we shall find our first admiration continually increased, especially when we learn to realise the full music of the verse, the subtle tones of its "flutes and soft recorders," or the swell of the "organ-voice." We may come to taste "all the charms of all the Muses often flowering in one lonely word." It might be, on the other hand, that we should detect a certain over-fulness--what Coleridge has called a too-muchness--of diction; or a certain want of correspondence between the melodious language and any clearly apprehended mental picture. We might find the vigour too often lapsing into sheer bad taste, or the simplicity taking the fatal step into simpledom, as when Tennyson ends the story of Enoch Arden with the ba.n.a.l remark that
the little port Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.
We might, unhappily, discover these things, or, on the contrary, we might find them so rare that our admiration at the expressive genius of the poet would increase, until we were sure that the thing of beauty was really and truly a superlative joy for ever.
And not only in diction and melody, but in that supreme Shakespearian poetic gift of imagination which can vividly portray, body forth in clear form, what others can only feel in a vague and misty way while lacking the power to express it--in this gift also the great poet is known, not at the first reading, nor at the second, nor at the third. An image, a metaphor, which seems most perfect when first met, may lose much of its apparent completeness and depth when the mind examines it; whereas upon many another, which appeared at first so easy and obvious, there is revealed the very stamp of that G.o.dlike genius which creates, as if without effort, the one unsurpa.s.sable, soul-satisfying "name."
If, the more we return to a poet"s work, the more it grows upon us and the more we see in it, then, as Longinus truly declares, it possesses the quality of the sublime. Without that result the poet may be great, but not of the greatest. To employ once more that definition which I still find the best yet constructed, true poetry is the "exquisite expression of an exquisite impression." For a reader to reach the apprehension of such an impression in all its exquisiteness, and to recognize the full exquisiteness of its expression, requires some effort. Under the pellucid diction may lurk amazing depths. We must therefore read a poet, and read him anew. This is the way to attain to a reasoned and discriminating judgment, and to escape those vain and vague impressions which we can neither trust ourselves nor impart to others.
So much for the heads of the sermon. The application is to Tennyson"s successors. Of William Watson and John Davidson as men, I know practically nothing. I am fain to confess that I have no desire to know anything. There is too much personal gossip already interfering with our enjoyment of literature. These men"s work is presumably their best selves, and except for such hints of their personality as occur in their poems, I know not "whether they be black or white." Incidentally, Mr.
Watson lets us learn that he is from the North of England, and I gather that Mr. Davidson is a Scot from the fact that he scans "world" as two syllables, uses "I mind" in the sense of "I remember," and talks unpatriotically enough of his nurture in that easily identifiable region where are to be found--
A chill and watery clime; a thrifty race Using all means of grace To save their souls and purses.
Among their many points of difference, the two men have this prime quality in common, that they are ready to rely upon their own poetical resources. Their work contains, indeed, many an echo of their great predecessors, many a suggestion of familiarity with Milton or Pope, Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley, or Tennyson. It is evident that both have steeped themselves in the literature which is best calculated to make an English poet. But it is equally evident that they have mastered their material, and not allowed their material to master them. Watson, it is true, has attained to a much less firm and spontaneous style than Davidson, but it would be false to say of him that he is, in point of diction, the imitator of any poet in especial, or that he moulds his style upon Tennyson more than on Milton, or upon Milton more than on Wordsworth.
And what is true of their form is true of their matter. They think with their own brains and feel with their own natures. They fall back upon no master and no fashion to direct them what to say or leave unsaid.
Whatever opinion we may form of their force and range, we cannot but recognise that it is themselves whom they are expressing. And it may be taken as an axiom that nothing so commends the man who speaks to the interest of the man who listens as this--the fact that the speaker is telling his own thought. That, I believe, is the secret of the hold which Browning possesses upon his votaries, and which Goethe will for all time exercise.
We recognise with both our poets that this initial charm is theirs, and if we find in Davidson the richer nature and the more robust, the more infused with Browning"s rough, virile strain, we are no less confident that Watson"s verse is the natural cream gathered from his daintier and more purely intellectual moods. But in thus comparing the men I antic.i.p.ate my evidence.
The poems of John Davidson upon which I have based my judgment are those contained in the _Fleet Street Eclogues_ (the first and second series), and in the volume of _Ballads and Songs_. The name of the latter explains itself. In the former are contained some dozen pieces, written in dialogue, in various metres. The interlocutors are London journalists and poets, who meet in Fleet Street on such holidays as Lammas, May Day, Michaelmas, and the New Year, and there hold a kind of discursive symposium on such themes as then and there present themselves. I mildly call the discussion "discursive," though it would be fair in one or two instances to dub the piece frankly a medley. Usually the special holiday suggests a reference to the charms of nature as they are to be seen in the country at that date, and as they are, alas! not to be seen in Fleet Street. This device affords scope for not a few charming word-pictures, as simple in outline and as complete in suggestion as the drawings of flowers and tree sprays made by the j.a.panese, and as effective in the artistic directness and simplicity of the language as if they had been written by Burns or by a Greek lyrist. I do not think that it would be possible to find anywhere in the English language more pure and fresh delight in the sights and sounds of rural nature expressed with such apparent navete. And all the time the mind"s eye is kept so closely, so distinctly, on the object that the result is often the sublimity of art as defined by Longinus, the selection and combination of exactly those features which are the most essential and most telling. For instance, no man who did not feel and realize with vividness, no man who lacked a genius for expression, could so select and place just the touches which describe the sudden descent of the lark in the evening sky. The lines occur in the song of "Spring" in _Ballads and Songs_:--
High, O high, from the opal sky, Shouting against the dark, "Why, why, why, must the day go by?"
Fell a pa.s.sionate lark.
The words "opal," "shouting," "fell," and "pa.s.sionate," are exactly the words, and all the words, which could be demanded in an ideal word-picture by those who have been familiar with the scene itself. And to make the ideal twice ideal, the very sound of the bird is brought before one"s mind after a score of years, by the whole pa.s.sage, and particularly in the reiterated "Why, why, why." If there is more consummate simplicity of art anywhere contained in as small a compa.s.s of words, I confess I do not know where it is to be found. Sh.e.l.ley does not surpa.s.s this.
Throughout Davidson"s poems there is this same positive revelling in those delights of the eye and ear and smell which meet the wanderer in the country. They are fresh to him every time; and he realizes and fulfils that function of the poet, the bringing back of new freshness into things common, at which he hints when he makes one of his characters say:--
Dear Menzies, talk of sight and sound, And make us _feel_ the blossom-time.
In these more sensuous moods he is so filled with the simple Chaucerian gladsomeness of spring that he can sing, or make one of his characters sing--for after all, his characters are but so many sides of himself--
I have been with the nightingale; I have learned his song so sweet; I sang it aloud by wood and dale, And under my breath in the street.
And again--
I can hear in that valley of mine, Loud-voiced on a leafless spray, How the robin sings, flushed with his holly-wine, Of the moonlit blossoms of May.
In all such pa.s.sages there is the genuine note of the vernal joy which stirs naturally in the blood of all men who are men. The writer feels as the birds feel, nay, as the burgeoning hedges feel, when--
The blackbirds with their oboe voices make The sweetest broken music, all about The beauty of the day, for beauty"s sake, And all about the mates whose love they won, And all about the sunlight and the sun.
Or when--
A pa.s.sionate nightingale adown the lane Shakes with the force and volume of his song A hawthorn"s heaving foliage.
But this sensuous rapture, which reminds us of Keats, though of a Keats whose expression is more like that of Sh.e.l.ley, is by no means all that Davidson can feel in nature. Through the eyes and other senses the influence of nature penetrates to his soul and spirit. He touches Wordsworth in such lines as these:--
All my emotion and imagining Were of the finest tissue that is woven, From sense and thought....
I seemed to be created every morn.
A golden trumpet pealed along the sky: The sun arose: the whole earth rushed upon me.
Sometimes the tree that stroked my windowpane Was more than I could grasp; sometimes my thought Absorbed the universe.
It is true that these words are put in the mouth of that one of his dramatis personae who is of the most melancholy and brooding disposition; but he who can make another say--
I am haunted by the heavens and the earth; ... I am besieged by things that I have seen: Followed and watched by rivers; snared and held In labyrinthine woods and tangled meads; Hemmed in by mountains; waylaid by the sun; Environed and beset by moon and stars; Whispered by winds and summoned by the sea.