POETRY 259 tive prose as Plato s 1 Or is not the instinct for form too strong to be stifled 1 By the poets themselves metre was always considered to be the one indispensable requisite of a poem, though, as regards criticism, so recently as the time of the appearance of the Waverley Novels, the Quarterly Review would sometimes speak of them as " poems "; and perhaps even now there are critics of a very high rank who would do the same with regard to romances so concrete in method and diction, and so full of poetic energy, as Wutheriny Heights and Jane Eyre, where we get absolutely all that Aristotle requires for a poem. On the whole, however, the theory that versification is not an indispens able requisite of a poem seems to have become nearly obsolete in our time. Perhaps, indeed, many critics would now go so far in the contrary direction as to say with Hegel (Aesthetik, iii. p. 289) that "metre is the first and only condition absolutely demanded by poetry, yea even more necessary than a figurative picturesque diction." At all events this at least may be said that in our own time the division between poetical critics is not between Aristo telians and Baconians ; it is now of a different kind alto gether. While one group of critics may still perhaps say with Dryden that " a poet is a maker, as the name signi fies," and that " he who cannot make, that is, invent, has his name for nothing," another group contends that it is not the invention but the artistic treatment, the form, which determines whether an imaginative writer is a poet or a writer of prose, contends, in short, that emotion is the basis of all true poetic expression, whatever be the subject matter, that thoughts must be expressed in an emotional manner before they can be brought into poetry, and that this emotive expression demands even yet some thing else, viz., style and form. T But, although many critics are now agreed that " L art P tic est une forme," that without metre and without form there can be no poetry, there are few who would contend
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that poetry can exist by virtue of any one of these alone, or even by virtue of all these combined. Quite inde pendent of verbal melody, though mostly accompanying it, and quite independent of " composition," there is an atmosphere floating around the poet through which he sees everything, an atmosphere which stamps his utterances as poetry ; for instance, among all the versifiers contem porary with Donne there was none so rugged as he occa sionally was, and yet such songs as " Sweetest love, I do not go for weariness of thee " prove how true a poet he was whenever he could master those technicalities which far inferior poets find comparatively easy. While rhythm may to a very considerable degree be acquired (though, of course, the highest rhythmical effects never can), the power of looking at the world through the atmosphere that floats before the poet s eyes is not to be learned and not to be taught. This atmosphere is what we call poetic imagination, a subject which will have to be fully discussed further on. But first it seems necessary to say a word or two upon that high temper of the soul which in truly great poetry gives birth to this poetic imagination. The " message " of poetry must be more unequivocal, more thoroughly accentuated, than that of any of the other fine arts. With regard to modern poetry, indeed, it may almost be said that if any writer s verse embodies a message, true, direct, and pathetic, we in modern Europe cannot stay to inquire too curiously about the degree of artistic perfection with which it is delivered, for Words worth s saying " That which comes from the heart goes to the heart " applies very closely indeed to modern poetry. The most truly passionate poet in Greece was no doubt in a deep sense the most artistic poet ; but in her case art and passion were one, and that is why she has been so cruelly misunderstood. The most truly passionate nature, and perhaps the greatest soul, that in our time has ex pressed itself in English verse is Elizabeth Barrett Brown ing ; at least it is certain that, with the single exception of Hood in the "Song of the Shirt," no writer of the century has really touched our hearts with a hand so powerful as hers, and this notwithstanding violations of poetic form, notwithstanding defective rhymes, such as would appal some of the contemporary versifiers of England and France " who lisp in numbers for the numbers [and nothing else] come." The truth is that in order to produce poetry the soul must for the time being have reached that state of exaltation, that state of freedom from self-consciousness, depicted in the lines " I started once, or seemed to start, in pain, Resolved on noble things, and strove to speak, As when a great thought strikes along the brain, And flushes all the cheek. " Whatsoever may be the poet s " knowledge of his art," into this mood he must always pass before he can write a truly poetic line. For, notwithstanding all that we have said and are going to say upon poetry as a fine art, it is in the deepest sense of the word an "inspiration" indeed. No man can write a line of genuine poetry without having been "born again " (or, as the true rendering of the text says, "born from above"); and then the mastery over those highest reaches of form which are beyond the ken of the mere versifier comes to him as a result of the change. Hence, with all Mrs Browning s metrical blemishes, the splendour of her metrical triumphs at her best. For what is the deep distinction between poet and prose- man 1 A writer may be many things besides a poet ; he may be a warrior like ^Eschylus, a man of business like Shakespeare, a courtier like Chaucer, or a cosmopolitan philosopher like Goethe ; but the moment the poetic mood is upon him all the trappings of the world with which for years he may perhaps have been clothing his soul the world s knowingness, its cynicism, its self-seek ing, its ambition fall away, and the man becomes an inspired child again, with ears attuned to nothing but the whispers of those spirits from the Golden Age, who, according to Hesiod, haunt and bless the degenerate earth. What such a man produces may greatly delight and astonish his readers, yet not so greatly as it delights and astonishes himself. His passages of pathos draw no tears so deep or so sweet as those that fall from his own eyes while he writes ; his sublime passages overawe no soul so imperi ously as his own ; his humour draws no laughter so rich or so deep as that stirred within his own breast. It might almost be said, indeed, that Sincerity and Con- Sincerity science, the two angels that bring to the poet the wonders an . (1 con " of the poetic dream, bring him also the deepest, truest delight of form. It might almost be said that by aid of sincerity and conscience the poet is enabled to see more clearly than other men the eternal limits of his own art to see with Sophocles that nothing, not even poetry itself, is of any worth to man, invested as he is by the whole army of evil, unless it is in the deepest and highest sense good, unless it comes linking us all together by closer bonds of sympathy and pity, strengthening us to fight the foes with whom fate and even nature, the mother who bore us, sometimes seem in league to see with Milton that the high quality of man s soul which in English is expressed by the word virtue is greater than even the great poem he prized, greater than all the rhythms of all the tongues that have been spoken since Babel and to see with Shakespeare and with Shelley that the high passion which in English is called love is lovelier than all art, lovelier than all the marble Mercuries that " await the chisel of the sculptor" in all the marble hills. So
much for our first inquiry " What is poetry ? "