PART III THE PROGRESS OF POETRY § 35. Tradition in Poetry.-What is an original poem ? We have seen that a poet's language comes down to him laden with all the associations of its ancestry and use. Each word has its own colour, liable to harmonise or clash with the colours of other words in the same sentence. His vocabulary is governed by laws which he neglects at his own peril. We have seen, too, that a poet's expression follows certain fixed lines. If he aims at a direct representation of nature, he must mould the action he portrays into the dramatic shape; if he prefers description, he may write an epic poem, or an idyl, or a piece of narrative verse in the form of an epistle or a satire; finally, if he be filled with the desire to give expression to his personal reflection on a single feeling or a situation, the various forms of lyrical poetry are open to his choice, from the rigid framework of the sonnet to the lax structure of an elegy or of an ode. And within these limits of language and form our poet is bound by the traditions of metre, and rhyme, and alliteration, and the rest of the pleasurable devices which the labours of past poets have bequeathed pour encourager les autres. Again, we have seen that a poet is directed in his range of thought. He is a seer and an interpreter of life, a searcher of the secrets of nature, a seeker after the truth revealed in the light of imagination. He may understand botany, but he must not botanise; astronomy, but he must not count the stars; anatomy, but he must not dissect; chemistry, but he must not analyse. The special sciences may be a part of his equipment, but the art of a great poet is really a science of sciences, leading the soul, in Plato's language, "from a kind of night-like day up to a true day of real existence." The μakporépa odos, the longer road to truth, as described in the Sixth Book of the Republic, is peculiarly applicable to the way of poetic vision. Eyes cannot see without light. The sun gives light to the eyes, and the problem is what luminary gives the soul its faculty of sight. "This power," says Plato, "which supplies the objects of real knowledge with the truth that is in them, and which renders to him who knows them the faculty of knowing TRADITION IN POETIC THOUGHT 101 them, you must consider to be the essential Form of Good, and you must regard it as the origin of science, and of truth, so far as the latter comes within the range of knowledge: and though knowledge and truth are both very beautiful things, you will be right in looking upon good as something distinct from them, and even more beautiful. And just as, in the analogous case, it is right to regard light and vision as resembling the sun, but wrong to identify them with the sun; so, in the case of science and truth, it is right to regard both of them as resembling good, but wrong to identify either of them with good; because, on the contrary, the quality of the good ought to have a still higher value set upon it." * The poet pursues the "essential Form of Good," by whatever name we may call it. He tries to see with the eyes of his soul, to explain in the light of that vision the objects of common sensibility. Hence are derived the poet's new heaven and new earth-his God, whose thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways, *“... Hence the inseparable connection in Plato and Aristotle between reason and the good. . . Their words for reason and rational cover to a great extent the ground which is covered by words like 'spirit' 'spiritual' and 'ideal' in our philosophy. . . . The good of anything is to be or do what it is meant to be or do."-R. L. Nettleship, Lectures on the Republic of Plato, 220 et seq. his men and women, idealised by contemplation, relieved of the dross of circumstance, "how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals." "'* Hence, again, the poet's little child, 66 Sweet joy, but two days old, Sweet Joy I call thee;" + hence his birds and his flowers, the skylark of Shelley, the nightingale of Keats, the daffodil of Wordsworth, the daisy of Burns; hence his passions and emotions, his love, his sorrows, his joy. Hence, finally, the poet, in Milton's words, "soaring in the high region of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him ;" and irradiated, as Wordsworth tells us, by "The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration and the Poet's dream.” § 36. Force of Tradition.-Accordingly, we may join with Wordsworth in thanksgiving : Blessings be with them and eternal praise, THE FORCE OF TRADITION 103 But while we thank and praise, we remember that we are looking for the traces of originality in a poet whose expression and whose truth are handed down in this manner. Much poetry, it must be owned, is stereotyped, and it is a time-honoured critical exercise to go through the works of a new poet, and to refer it, line by line, and sentiment by sentiment, to the influence of older masters. Virgil's critics were untiring in this respect. They quoted Homer, Ennius, and Lucretius, as the quarry from which Virgil was hewn, till the poet himself turned on his detractors, and told them that adaptation was not plagiarism.* In our own time, too, the same thing is repeated. Mr Stephen Phillips, for instance, has been charged with the metre and rhythm of Marlowe, and with the words and thoughts of who knows how many poets. Thus, to select but a single example, before Mr Phillips dreamed of his immortality, "No longer shall I vex, but live my life Nocturnal soothings and nutritious sighs, The unhappy mind an odour shall be breathed," * The truth was finally expressed by Voltaire: "If Homer is the creator of Virgil, Virgil is certainly the finest of his works." |