^^ 
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 LIFE IN POETRY: 
 LAW IN TASTE
 
 LIFE IN POETKY: 
 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 TWO SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED 
 IN OXFORD 
 
 18951900 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM JOHN COURTHOPE, C.B., M.A., Oxon. 
 
 HON. LL.D. EDINBUROH; HON". D.LITT. DURHAM; LATE f'ROKESSOR OK POETRV 
 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD ; HON. KKLLOW OK 
 
 NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 Eontion 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NKW YOHK : THK MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1901 
 
 All rights rfiertfti
 
 College 
 Library, 
 
 fo3 / 
 
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 c ''' 
 
 VI RO 
 
 gCI NUl'KR ARI.STOTELIS TTC/Di TTOLrjTLKT]-; LIBRUM, 
 
 PERBREVEM ILLUM QDIDEM SED VERE AUREUM, 
 
 RECENSUIT, ILLUSTRAVIT, COMMENDAVIT, 
 
 SAMUELI HENRICO BUTCHER, 
 
 TANT-E PHIIX)S0PHIJ5 INTERPRET! BTGNO, 
 
 AMICO 
 
 DE LITTERARUM REPUBLICA 
 
 EADEM SECUM VOLENTI EADEM NOLENTI, 
 
 HA8 PR^LECTIONES, 
 
 IN ORDINEM COACTAS, 
 
 JAM RUDE D0NATU3, 
 
 DEDICAT PRELECTOR. 

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAET I 
 
 INAUGURAL 
 Liberty and Authority in Matters of Taste 
 
 FAGS 
 
 1 
 
 PART II 
 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 l,ECT. 
 
 I. Poetical Conception 
 II. Poetical Expression 
 
 III. Poetical Decadence 
 
 IV. Poetry and the People 
 
 37 
 
 63 
 
 89 
 
 123 
 
 PART III 
 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 I. Intkodl'Ctory 
 
 II. Aristotle as a Cnrric 
 
 III. The Idea of Law in Fuencu Poetry 
 
 IV. The InEA of Law in German Poetky 
 V. The Ii)i;a ok Law in English Poetry 
 
 VI. Chaucer . 
 VII. Milton 
 VIII, Pope 
 
 IX. Byron and Tennyson 
 
 X. CONCLVSION 
 
 159 
 190 
 222 
 252 
 278 
 299 
 329 
 360 
 388 
 419
 
 PAET I 
 
 INAUGUKAL 
 
 LIBERTY AND AUTHOBITY IN MATTERS 
 OF TASTE
 
 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY IN MATTERS 
 OF TASTE 
 
 Even those of my predecessors who have been called 
 with higher qualifications than myself to discourse 
 on Poetry before the University of Oxford must, 
 on contemplating their duties, have felt that they 
 had to face a problem of peculiar difficulty. The 
 Professor of Poetry enjoys what I believe is the 
 unique honour of being raised to his Chair by the 
 vote of Convocation. Yet though he may thus be 
 said to represent the oldest seat of learning in the 
 British Empire on a subject of the deepest interest to 
 the human imagination, he finds himself launched on 
 this wide sea of thought without chart or compass or 
 any kind of external instruction to guide him in the 
 course which he is expected to steer. He is, indeed, 
 bound to deliver three lectures yearly during his 
 tenure of the Chair. But as to the subject-matter of 
 these lectures he is under no obligation. Whether he 
 should examine and discuss the general principles of 
 poetry ; whether he should rather dwell on the
 
 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 practice of individual poets ; whether he should draw 
 his illustrations exclusively from the acknowledged 
 classics of literature, or should also handle the debate- 
 able questions of modern art ; at all these points he 
 is left entirely to his own discretion. 
 
 If he seeks for a solution of his difficulty in the 
 definitions of language, he is at once met by an ambi- 
 guity of terms. We can have no doubt as to the 
 meaning of the words Logic and Natural Science, nor 
 as to the limitations imposed on those who give in- 
 struction in these subjects. But the word Poetry 
 may be used to signify either the outward form in 
 which imaginative thought is expressed by means 
 of metrical language, or that inward conception 
 of the mind preliminary to creation which is shared 
 by the poets with the professors of the other fine 
 arts. Thus we may without impropriety speak of 
 the Poetry of Painting and even of the Poetry of 
 Architecture. 
 
 Perhaps with natural piety the newly elected 
 Professor of Poetry looks for guidance to the inten- 
 tions or the character of the Founder of his Chair. 
 But here too search is in vain : of him little is 
 known that is definite, nothing that is remarkable. 
 Henry Birkhead must have been born in the first 
 quarter of the seventeenth century, for he took his 
 degree of M.A. in 1639. He appears to have been 
 affected by the religious difficulties of his time, for 
 shortly after taking his degree he became a Jesuit, 
 but, soon returning to the Church of England and 
 to Oxford, he was elected a Fellow of All Souls.
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 5 
 
 He was known as a skilful philologist. He was also 
 a writer of Latin verse, but there is no particular 
 merit in the compositions of this kind which he has 
 left behind him. When the Civil War broke out he 
 was prominent among the little group of Oxford 
 scholars and poets who attached themselves to the 
 cause of the king, and the most distinguished of 
 whom were John Cleveland and William Cartwright. 
 The characteristic features in the poetry of these 
 men are w^ell known. They helped to develop what 
 Addison calls the style of False Wit, and Johnson 
 the school of Metaphysical Poetry. Their object 
 was to give distinction to any theme, however trivial, 
 by adorning it with a multitude of far-fetched 
 metaphors, similes, and allusions. A specimen of 
 their art survives in a small volume of poems, written 
 by them in co-operation to celebrate the memory of Sir 
 Bevill Grenvill, who was killed in a skirmish with the 
 Parliamentary forces at Lansdown Hill. Birkhead's 
 contribution to this poetical garland was not absol- 
 utely the worst ; but he was the champion of a losing 
 cause, alike in politics and in poetry. He saw the 
 execution of the king for whom he had fought and 
 written ; the establishment of the Commonwealth ; 
 the Restoration of the Monarchy ; the Revolution of 
 1688. Living till 1695, he witnessed the influence 
 of the school of Cowley decline before the rising 
 school of Dryden ; and a Chair, which owed its 
 existence to the liberality of one so deeply imbued 
 with the spirit of the Middle Ages, was filled by its 
 first Professor almost at the same time that English
 
 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 society began to listen to the criticism of the Tatler 
 and Spectator. 
 
 The history of the Founder, then, throws no light 
 on the duties attaching to this Chair. Nor can any clear 
 notion of rule or system be gathered from the practice 
 of those who have held it. The list of the Professors 
 of Poetry indeed furnishes us with name after name 
 intimately associated with great changes in the poetical 
 taste of this country. Prominent in the early history 
 of the Chair we observe the figure of Joseph Spence, 
 author of the Polymetis, and of the better known 
 Anecdotes, which so vividly illustrate the literary 
 character of an acre that found its standard in the 
 poetry of Pope. Spence is followed after a short 
 interval by Lowth, who enlarged the range of taste 
 by his lectures on Hebrew Poetry, and attracted 
 the attention of the world of letters by his dispute 
 with Warburton, Pope's commentator and biographer. 
 Later in the century appears Thomas War ton, the 
 historian of English Poetry, and perhaps the earliest 
 pioneer of the Romantic Revival, which refreshed 
 with a new stream of thought and sentiment the 
 exhausted classicism of those times. Coming to the 
 present century, we admire the fine and balanced 
 taste of Milman, the writer of the polished Newdigate 
 prize poem on " The Belvedere Apollo," beginning : 
 
 Heard ye the arrow hurtle through the sky 1 
 Heard ye the dragon monster's dying cry ? 
 
 and containing the truly beautiful lines descriptive of 
 the statue :
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 7 
 
 For mild he seemed as in Elysian bowers, 
 Wasting in careless ease the joyous hours, 
 Haughty as bards have sung, with princely sway 
 Curbing the fierce, flame-breathing steeds of day. 
 Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep 
 By holy maid on Delphi's haunted steep. 
 Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove, 
 Too fair to worship, too divine to love. 
 
 Next to Milman in point of succession, and equal 
 to him in scholarship and refinement, the author of 
 the Christian Year lent indirectly the aid of his 
 criticism to the Lake School, then still > struggling 
 against the current of contemporary taste. Keble's 
 Prcelectiones, delivered as they were in Latin, 
 appealed to a necessarily limited audience, but a new 
 note was struck when Matthew Arnold, a name always 
 cherished with affectionate admiration in Oxford, 
 began to lecture in English. With him the classical 
 genius of poetry revived under new auspices. The 
 attention of the public at large was directed to the 
 form of the Greek drama as a vehicle for the expres- 
 sion of modern thought. Attic wit amused itself 
 with applying the standards of Hellenic culture to 
 every department of English life. It seems to me 
 but yesterday that I listened in statu pupillari to 
 the famous dictum pronounced from this Chair, that 
 "there were no Wraggs by the llissus." Neverthe- 
 less the stream of taste, diverted for the moment, has 
 in our own generation shown a tendency to flow back 
 into national channels, nor do I know of any book 
 which has done more to accomplish this change than 
 The Golden Treasury of Emjlish Song, a work of
 
 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 Greek beauty, whicli will always remain as a monu- 
 ment of the critical refinement and the large sym- 
 pathy of my predecessor, Francis Palgrave. 
 
 When I consider all this ambiguity in the meaning 
 of terms, this silence as to the intentions of the 
 Founder of the Chair, this diversity of taste and 
 practice among those who have held it, it appears 
 to me that the first question to be decided is, how 
 far it is possible to speak on Poetry with the con- 
 fidence which is expected from one who discharges 
 Professorial duties. I accordingly propose in this my 
 Inaugural Lecture to ask my audience to consider 
 with me the question of Liberty and Authority in 
 Matters of Taste, so that we may determine from this 
 point of view what limits Reason imposes on the Art 
 of Poetry, and to what extent we can apply in the 
 domain of Imagination those scientific methods which 
 are properly applied to the objects of Sense. But I 
 can imagine that an objection may be made on the 
 very threshold of such an inquiry. It may be said : 
 The question you raise is one that contains its own 
 answer. There can be no established law in the 
 sphere of Art and Taste. 
 
 The Mind is its own place, and in itself 
 
 Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. 
 
 In everything relating to aia67)cri<i, taste, perception, 
 the individual is free. Genius is the sole lawgiver 
 in Art ; and though the critic may serve the artist 
 by sharpening the faculty of perception, yet if he 
 attempts to measure works of art by any external
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 9 
 
 standard, he ignores the proverbial and accepted 
 wisdom of all ages : ttuvtcov /xerpov avOpajTroq : De 
 gustibus non est disputandum. 
 
 This is a formidable objection ; the more so because 
 it is an echo of the prevailing philosophy of the day 
 which we recognise by the name of Culture. The 
 philosophy of Culture is based on self-consciousness ; 
 that is to say, in this philosophy, the consciousness 
 of freedom in the individual mind is made the 
 standard and starting-point for all speculation about 
 Religion and Art. Let me cite, as an example of 
 what I mean by self-consciousness, a striking passage 
 from the chapter in Sartor Resartus, called "The 
 Everlasting No " : " The Everlasting No has said : 
 Behold thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe 
 is mine ; to which my whole Me now makes answer, 
 /am not thine, but free and for ever hate thee." 
 In the same spirit, though in a less obscure and 
 poetical style, Matthew Arnold defines Criticism to 
 be the free faculty that advances in the mind the 
 growth of an inward Perfection ; and, quite logically 
 from his own premises, he identifies Poetry with the 
 Idea as it exists in the individual mind and contrasts 
 it with dogmatic Religion. "The future of poetry," 
 he says, " is immense, because in poetry, where it is 
 worthy of its high destinies, our race as time goes 
 on will find an ever surer and surer stay. . . . Our 
 religion has materialised itself in the fact, in the 
 supposed fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for 
 poetry the idea is everything, the rest is a world of 
 illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emo-
 
 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 tions to the idea ; the idea is the fact. The strongest 
 part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry." 
 But the opinion of those who hold with the maxim 
 De gustihus non est disputanduni is supported by a 
 yet stronger ally in the prevailing taste of the age. 
 It seems to be a necessary characteristic of a highly 
 civilised society, that in proportion as it grows im- 
 patient of Authority in Belief it insists upon Novelty 
 in Imagination. Everywhere we hear the question 
 asked : May we know what this 7iew doctrine whereof 
 thou speakest is ? And from all quarters, in satisfac- 
 tion of the demand, comes the answer, in the revela- 
 tions of the new Humourist, the new Dramatist, the 
 new Woman. The same feeling is paramount even 
 in those whose imagination is accustomed to dwell in 
 the higher regions of art and taste, and I know not 
 where it is more eloquently expressed than in the 
 words of an Oxford scholar whose works live in the 
 minds of many of us as his memory is fresh in 
 our affections. " For us," says Walter Pater, " the 
 Renaissance is the name of a many-sided but yet 
 united movement in which the love of the things of 
 the intellect and the imagination for their own sake, 
 the desire of a more liberal and comely way of con- 
 ceiving life, make themselves felt, urging those who 
 experience this desire to search out first one and then 
 another means of intellectual or imaginative enjoy- 
 ment, and directing them not merely to the discovery 
 of old and forgotten sources of this enjoyment, but to 
 divine new sources of it, new experiences, new sub- 
 jects of poetry, new sources of art."
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE ii 
 
 What, then, is to be said in regard to this maxim, 
 De gustihus non est disputandum, supported as it is 
 by the philosophy of those who preach the gospel of 
 self- culture, and impelled by the powerful current 
 of the public taste ? I do not think that there can 
 be the slightest doubt as to the answer. To any one 
 who raises such a preliminary objection as I have 
 supposed, I would reply : You have stated strongly 
 one side of the truth, but you have ignored, com- 
 pletely ignored, the other. You have asserted the 
 claims of individual liberty, and up to a certain point 
 I agree with you. I do not deny that spiritual 
 liberty is founded on consciousness, and hence the 
 self-consciousness of the age is part of the problem 
 we are considering. I do not deny that the prevail- 
 ing rage for novelty must also be taken into account. 
 Liberty, variety, novelty, are all necessary to the 
 development of Art. Without novelty there can be 
 no invention, without variety there can be no char- 
 acter, without liberty there can be no life. Life, 
 character, invention, these are of the essence of 
 Poetry. But while you have defended with energy 
 the freedom of the Individual, you have said nothing 
 of the authority of Society. And yet the conviction 
 of the existence of this authority is a belief perhaps 
 even more firmly founded in the human mind than 
 the sentiment as to the rights of individual liberty. 
 If Henry Birkhead had not believed that the prin- 
 ciples of poetry were, like those of all other arts or 
 sciences, capable, up to a certain point at all events, 
 of definition and demonstration, would he, being in
 
 \ 
 
 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 possession of all bis senses, have bequeathed bis 
 property for the endowment of this Chair ? If the 
 University of Oxford, as a corporate body, had not 
 shared bis opinion, would it have accepted bis bene- 
 faction ? Could the long succession of those who 
 have filled this Chair have been maintained, if the 
 great majority of the Professors of Poetry, however 
 various their opinions, however opposite their tastes, 
 had not felt sure that there was in taste, as in science, 
 a theory of false and true, in art, as in conduct, a 
 rule of right and wrong ? And even among those 
 who have asserted most strongly the inward and 
 relative nature of poetry, do you think there was 
 one so completely a sceptic as to imagine that be 
 was the sole proprietor of the perception he sought 
 to embody in words ; one who doubted his power, 
 by means of accepted symbols, to communicate to 
 his audience his own ideas and feelings about ex- 
 ternal things ? Yet until some man shall have been 
 found bold enough to defend a thesis so preposterous, 
 we must continue to believe that there is a positive 
 standard, by which those at least who speak a 
 common language may reason about questions of 
 taste. 
 
 There is no doubt a point at which the principle 
 De gustihus non est disputandum must be strictly 
 applied. Our English law recognises this. We know 
 that when a man pursues his own taste so far as to 
 publish in writing that which is decided to be con- 
 trary to the law of the land, the plea of the offender 
 that he only WTote what seemed beautiful to him, or
 
 INAUGURAL IN MASTERS OF TASTE 13 
 
 what he believed to be true, will not avail for his 
 protection. Tastes of that kind we do not dispute 
 about; we punish them. It is seldom indeed in 
 England that any individual so far oversteps the 
 large liberties allowed him by the law as to translate 
 into action opinions which are recognised as dan- 
 gerous to the community. But beyond those appe- 
 tites which are proscribed as illegal there are secret 
 proceedings of thought and perception which, while 
 they elude the clumsy vigilance of the law, may 
 poison the atmosphere about us tastes that corrupt, 
 sentiments that emasculate, affectations that debase, 
 the whole spirit and character of society. To treat 
 these with easy tolerance is only a sign of social 
 cowardice. A nation which has a just sense of its 
 own greatness and liberty must also have a sense of 
 what is ideally noble and beautiful, and must not be 
 afraid to condemn any departure from this standard. 
 And indeed all experience shows that the instinct of 
 every society impels it to assert its authority in 
 questions relating to imagination and art. Nature 
 bids us judge in matters of taste : the difficulty is 
 how to judge rightly. Since, then, this is the object 
 of our inquiry, I will ask you in the first place very 
 briefly to glance at the different kinds of external 
 tribunal by which Society has endeavoured to decide 
 questions of taste, in order that we may see how far 
 we can accept their authority. 
 
 Perhaps the form of external authority which 
 most readily occurs to each of us is the Academy after 
 the French model. No one will deny a grandeur
 
 14 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY parti 
 
 to the constitution and history of this great body. 
 You will remember what was the object of its crea- 
 tion as described by Richelieu, its founder : " The 
 main function of the Academy shall be to work with 
 all possible care and diligence at giving sure rules to 
 our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and 
 capable of treating the arts and sciences." And 
 Renan, adding a slight emphasis to the idea of 
 Richelieu, says : " The duty of the Academy is to 
 preserve the delicacy of the French language." As 
 far as regards the intellectual history of France, these 
 strictly conservative duties have been performed with 
 splendid fidelity and success. The Academy has 
 admitted within its walls almost every great French 
 writer since the day of its foundation, so that on 
 literary grounds it may justly claim to speak with 
 the representative authority of France. In the stan- 
 dard of taste which it has consistently upheld the 
 French nation has seen the image of its own orenius. 
 One doubts whether to admire the Academy most 
 for the thoroughness with which it has realised the 
 idea of Richelieu, by carrying the rules of the French 
 language through the anarchy of the Revolution, or 
 for the courage with which it has maintained the 
 standard of Renan, by preserving the delicacy of 
 French thought in the days of M. Zola. 
 
 I do not wonder that so great a triumph should 
 have profoundly impressed the imagination of English 
 critics, or that we should frequently hear the opinion 
 expressed, that it would be an excellent thing if we 
 could have an institution of the same kind in Eng-
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 15 
 
 land. Those who speak in this way usually support 
 themselves by the authority of Matthew Arnold, and 
 refer to a lecture delivered, I believe, from this Chair, 
 on the Literary Influence of Academies. But they 
 seem to me to misunderstand the mind of that 
 eminent critic, because though all his arguments 
 point to the foundation of an Academy in England, 
 he concludes as follows : " An Academy quite 
 like the French Academy, a sovereign organ of 
 the highest literary opinion, a recognised authority 
 in matters of intellectual tone and taste, we shall 
 hardly have, and perhaps we ought not to wish to 
 have it." That is the conclusion of common sense, 
 and the most elementary considerations show why it 
 must be so. 
 
 The French Academy is an effect, not a cause ; it 
 is the product mainly of certain intellectual qualities 
 of the French people. It was founded as an institution 
 because, at a certain point of their history, the French 
 people became conscious that they possessed these 
 qualities, and a number of representative men began 
 to form themselves into a society for the purpose of 
 discussing questions of taste and expression. They 
 had no intention of initiating or legislating : they 
 came together to discuss and to judge. The English 
 people do not possess that analytical and logical 
 genius which would enable them to constitute a 
 representative assembly for the same purpose. 
 
 But if the French Academy derives its repre- 
 sentative character from the nature of the French 
 intellect, the official prestige and authority it possesses
 
 i6 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY part i 
 
 come to it solely from a political source. It was, in 
 fact, the offspring of the French Monarchy. It was 
 established by the king ; for a long time the king 
 retained and exercised the power of veto in its 
 elections : it would have been impossible to make it 
 a really comprehensive and representative assembly 
 if all the best minds of France had not first found 
 a natural centre of attraction in the Court. Even 
 therefore if the qualities of the English genius 
 facilitated, instead of hindering, the constitution of 
 an Academy like the French, the decentralisation of 
 English institutions and our habits of individual 
 liberty would necessarily prevent such a body from 
 exercising any authority. 
 
 I miofht dwell on other Courts, of the nature of 
 Academies, by means of which Society at different 
 times has attempted to pronounce judgment in 
 matters of taste. Such, for example, is the Coterie, 
 which may be defined as a miniature Academy with- 
 out official status, and which under various conditions 
 has exercised great influence in Italy, France, and 
 England. But as the Coterie represents no body of 
 opinion beyond itself, and as it flourishes most in 
 an aristocratic form of society, it is unnecessary to 
 speak of it in detail, and I pass on to consider a 
 tribunal with whose decrees we are all familiar, the 
 Court of Public Opinion. 
 
 Public opinion delivers judgment either collec- 
 tively, or representatively by means of an anonymous 
 press. When it acts collectively it is certainly one 
 of the most remarkable of human phenomena, and
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 17 
 
 I think that the spectacle of vast bodies of men 
 giving simultaneous expression to their consciousness 
 of what is right furnishes the strongest refutation 
 that could be desired of the fallacy in the maxim, 
 De gustihus non est disputandum. Such are the 
 judgments pronounced by the spectators in a theatre, 
 or by the audience at a public meeting when they 
 express their approval of or dissent from the opinions 
 of an orator. On these occasions the verdict of 
 public opinion is, for the moment at least, irresistible. 
 The dramatist is not obliged to regard it as final : 
 he may reason with his judges, as Aristophanes 
 did in the Clouds; he may even proclaim his con- 
 tempt for their taste, as Ben Jonson did in his Ode 
 to Himself after the failure of his Neiv Inn; but 
 he knows that there is no higher court to which he 
 can appeal. 
 
 It must be allowed that, as a tribunal of taste, 
 public opinion, or perhaps I should rather say 
 popular opinion, possesses certain great virtues. For 
 one thing, the taste of the people is almost always 
 natural, and natural taste is the foundation of good 
 taste. When a whole society at least a society 
 which is both historic and free judges collectively, 
 its instincts will not allow it to go very far astray. 
 It will reject what is nasty and unwholesome ; it will 
 favour such tastes as are on the whole manly, and 
 healthy, and vigorous. The judges in the gallery 
 of a theatre, who hiss the villain of a play for his 
 evil sentiments, are representatives of the authority 
 of popular opinion. Critics of this stamp will also
 
 i8 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY part i 
 
 show themselves intolerant of such fundamental 
 faults of taste as affectation and conceit, which pass 
 unscathed the judgment, for example, of the Coterie. 
 When a dramatist or any other kind of artist shows 
 that he is thinking more of his own nature than of 
 human nature, any large audience will be quick to 
 find him out. Nor is the collective verdict of the 
 public ever consciously unjust, because, as it judges 
 in the mass, it is not affected by those petty personal 
 motives of envy, jealousy, and resentment which so 
 often disturb the reason of private critics. 
 
 But public opinion as a court of justice has certain 
 obvious limitations and weaknesses. Like the old 
 Teutonic assemblies of freemen which announced 
 their decisions by the shouts of the multitude and 
 the clashing of shields, its powers are restricted to 
 simple approval or rejection. Moreover its judg- 
 ments are always arbitrary, being founded on emotion, 
 not on reason. The standard by which it judges 
 may be constituted out of the merest prejudice and 
 ignorance, yet as it knows of no other, it will regard 
 its own canon as conclusive. In no other tribunal 
 is the last word of the despot so decisively uttered : 
 ** Hoc volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas." 
 
 Again, even when it decides more deliberately 
 through the anonymous criticism of the press, public 
 opinion is subject to weaknesses, arising from hurry 
 and superficiality, which lower its authority as a tri- 
 bunal of taste. To judge rightly in matters of taste 
 we must have time. An enduring work of art is the 
 product of meditation and labour, and, from the nature
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 19 
 
 of things, it cannot be measured by a mere ephemeral 
 standard. The press can and does judge with admir- 
 able accuracy of the mass of novels, poems, plays, and 
 pictures, which men read, glance at, talk about, and 
 forget : its methods of swift intuition and general- 
 isation are inadequate to estimate the work of a 
 Raphael or a Milton, 
 
 I think that from the facts I have attempted to 
 put before you two conclusions may safely be drawn. 
 One is, that society in all ages has been constantly 
 attempting to assert its authority in matters of taste ; 
 the other is, that no form of social organisation of 
 which the world has had experience is likely to be 
 accepted as a tribunal of taste in such a country as 
 England. The Academy of the French pattern is 
 defective because it is the offspring of centralisation ; 
 the Coterie is defective because it is not represent- 
 ative ; Public Opinion is defective because it has no 
 recognised standard of judgment, and also because its 
 judgments are too rough and ready to be applicable 
 to the higher creations of Art. It may indeed be 
 doubted whether for such a society as ours, so full of 
 self-consciousness and the spirit of individual liberty, 
 so charged with party feeling, divided between so 
 many sections and interests, any representative body 
 could ever be formed which would be recognised as 
 giving expression to the deliberate sense of the com- 
 munity on purely aesthetic questions. Yet one thing 
 we may surely hope for the growth of an educated 
 Public Conscience in matters of taste which shall 
 exercise a general influence on private judgment.
 
 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 Perhaps the most signal of the services performed by 
 Matthew Arnold was the constancy with which he 
 insisted on the necessity of exercising right reason 
 within the sphere of criticism. This is no mere 
 rhetorical phrase. For not only is it possible to 
 apply right methods of reasoning in art and taste, 
 but certain evil consequences inevitably ensue when 
 these methods are neglected. Every critic who 
 attempts to decide a disputed point of taste must 
 satisfy two conditions ; in the first place he must 
 judge judicially, that is to say, he must strive to 
 regard the object of his criticism scientifically and 
 apart from prejudice ; in the second place he must 
 verify his own conclusions by reference to some 
 recognised standard of authority. This seems almost 
 like the statement of a truism, and yet how rare 
 it is to find both requirements fulfilled ! How 
 often, on the one hand, does private dislike and 
 prejudice intervene to cut off" the critic from the sight 
 of his object ; how often, on the other, is he satisfied 
 with the unassisted decision of his own consciousness ! 
 And what are the consequences ? Let me illustrate 
 by two notable examples what happens when critics 
 content themselves with satisfying one of the essential 
 conditions of good criticism without attending to the 
 other. 
 
 Probably no literary judgment ever produced more 
 disastrous results in the interests of 2:ood taste than 
 the article in the Quarterly Revieiv on Keats's Endy- 
 mion. Here the issue as between Liberty and 
 Authority was raised in a very trenchant manner.
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 21 
 
 Keats was an innovator. Both in his treatment of 
 his subject, in his diction, and in his versification, he 
 came into violent collision with the canons of com- 
 position accepted in his day. Yet in the points of 
 taste which called for a decision there was really 
 nothing new. The question, for example, as to the 
 right of coining new words or reviving disused words 
 in poetry was as old as Horace ; it had been debated 
 in Italy by Castiglione in his Courtier; it had been 
 raised in France by the Pleiad, and afterwards dis- 
 cussed by almost every French critic ; it was familiar 
 in England since the publication of Lyly's Euphues. 
 The ruling on the point is given with admirable 
 clearness in Horace's Ars Poetica 
 
 Multa renascentur quae jam cecidere, cadentque 
 Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, 
 Quern penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi. 
 
 Usus ; usage ; the genius of the language ; there 
 was the law. The sole question was whether Keats 
 had violated the law, and if so, with what amount of 
 justification. Nothing could have been simpler than 
 to apply the test of right reason. But how did 
 Croker deliver judgment? In the first place he 
 announced that he had only read one book of Endy- 
 mion, which was quite enough for him. In the next 
 place, as to the particular point at issue, lie decided 
 as follows : 
 
 " By this time our readers must be pretty well 
 satisfied as to the meaninfj of ]\Ir. Keats's sentences 
 and the structure of his lines. We now present
 
 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 them with some of the new words with which, in 
 imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our Language, 
 We are tokl that * turtles passion their voices ; ' that 
 an arbour was nested ; and a lady's locks gordianed 
 up ; and to supply the names of the nouns thus 
 verbalised, Mr. Keats with great fecundity spawns 
 new ones : such as ' men-slugs and human serpentry ' ; 
 the honey-feel of bliss ; wives prepare needments ; 
 and so forth." 
 
 Now as to the substance of this judgment we 
 cannot doubt that Croker was right. He had satisfied 
 one of the conditions of sound criticism in referring; 
 to a positive standard of authority, and, like all sane 
 critics before him, he had taken usage as the standard 
 of measurement, Keats had offended against the 
 genius of the English language with crudeness, 
 violence, and affectation. But could anything be 
 more unjudicial than the manner in which Croker 
 told him so, without making any allowance for the 
 fact that he was a young man, and evidently a young- 
 man of genius? More unfortunate still in the in- 
 terests of criticism was the fact that Croker's judg- 
 ment, besides being offensive and contemptuous in 
 tone, was in certain points incorrect. The standard 
 of usage by which he measured was simply the 
 standard recognised in his own day without reference 
 to the historic growth of the language, and he showed 
 ignorance in supposing Keats to have been merely 
 coining new words. Hence the "cockney school " as 
 he called the innovators, while they justly complained 
 of his manners, could also point to his mistakes.
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 23 
 
 They hardened themselves in impenitence, and began 
 to criticise by rules of their own the practice of the 
 prevailing school, whom, with a ludicrous self-im- 
 portance, they called the disciples of "one Boileau." 
 The general reader was puzzled with the dispute, but 
 when he turned to Endymion, and found there such 
 an exquisite passage as 
 
 Whence come ye, jolly Satyrs, whence come ye. 
 So many, and so many, and such glee ? 
 
 he was amazed at the blindness of the Quarterly 
 Reviewer, and concluding that he must be entirely 
 wrong, rejected his whole standard of measurement 
 though it was really a just one to the irreparable 
 damage of good taste and common sense. 
 
 This is an example of the consequences of not 
 judging judicially. As an illustration of the results 
 of judging by a merely private standard, I think I 
 shall not be mistaken in citing Matthew Arnold's 
 lecture on the Literary Influence of Academies. 
 You will remember that he there criticises a great 
 number of English authors, amongst others Addison, 
 Jeremy Taylor, Burke, and Mr. Ruskin, from whose 
 works he quotes passages as samples of bad taste 
 in writing. It is plain that Matthew Arnold is 
 here judging judicially. All the examples he pro- 
 duces are really examples of bad taste. All of them 
 are selected with great fineness of perception and 
 great accuracy of instinct. But whereas the kind of 
 taste they exhibit is extremely diverse, specific, and 
 characteristic of the individual, JMatthew Arnold
 
 2^ LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 chooses for his own purposes to ascribe their defects 
 to one single source, and that a national one. He 
 says : *' Adopting Dr. Newman's expressive word, 
 I say that in the bulk of the intellectual work of a 
 nation which has no centre, no intellectual metropolis 
 like an Academy like M. Sainte-Beuve's ' sovereign 
 organ of opinion,' like M. Kenan's ' recognised authority 
 in matters of tone and taste ' there is observable 
 a note of provinciality. Now to get rid of pro- 
 vinciality is a certain stage of culture, a stage the 
 positive results of which we must not make of too 
 much importance, but which is nevertheless indis- 
 pensable ; for it brings us on to the platform, where 
 alone the best and highest intellectual work can be 
 said to begin." There have been some who shrank 
 from bringino; an indictment ao^ainst a whole nation. 
 Matthew Arnold had no such diffidence. But what 
 is the supposed standard by which he judges ? The 
 note of provinciality ? How can the genius of a 
 great nation be called provincial ? Of what central 
 society is a nation a province ? Is it not plain that, 
 when Matthew Arnold produces a rhetorical effect by 
 a phrase like this, he is judging by a measure re- 
 cognised only by himself? The world would not 
 have accepted Quintilian's judgment on Seneca's style 
 as conclusive, if he had not criticised it by canons 
 which the world could understand. 
 
 Thus then w^e are brought to the practical question 
 "What is the final authority to which right reason 
 should refer in judging of matters of taste ? I do 
 not think that we can be in doubt about the answer.
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 25 
 
 In every art the standard is the example of the great 
 artist, the practice of those who are acknowledged to 
 be masters in the art. Not, however, because they 
 are arbitrary dictators. There are, I think, two 
 paramount reasons why the standard must be settled 
 by them. One is that argument from antiquity 
 which is so admirably stated by Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 in his Discourses on Painting. He says : " The modern 
 who recommends himself as a standard may justly be 
 suspected as ignorant of the true end, and unac- 
 quainted with the proper object, of the art which he 
 professes. To follow such a guide will not only re- 
 tard the student but mislead him. On whom then 
 can he rely, or who will show him the path that leads 
 to excellence ? The answer is obvious : those great 
 masters who have travelled the same road with 
 success are the most likely to conduct others. The 
 works of those who have stood the test of ages have 
 a claim to that respect and veneration to which no 
 modern can pretend. The duration and stability of 
 their fame is sufficient to evince that it has not been 
 suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and 
 caprice, but bound to the human heart by every tie 
 of sympathetic approbation." 
 
 But there is, it seems to me, another reason even 
 more powerful than the argument from antiquity, 
 though it merely presents a different side of the same 
 truth : great artists are the standards of art, because 
 they are old no doubt, but also because they are 
 representative. I take all great poetry to be not so 
 much what Plato thought it, the utterance of indi-
 
 26 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 vidual genius, half inspired, half insane, as the 
 enduring voice of the soul and conscience of man 
 living in society. The great poets and orators of 
 Greece and Rome are justly accepted as our masters 
 in eloquence, because their works present in an ideal 
 form lasting records of the thoughts and emotions 
 which the human heart experiences in the various 
 vicissitudes of active life. For example, Milton says, 
 in words which are a living part of our language. 
 
 Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
 
 (That last infirmity of noble mind) 
 
 To scorn delights and live laborious days. 
 
 But is it not a striking thought that, between two 
 and three thousand years before, the same sublime 
 logic should be found in the w^ords with which Homer 
 makes Sarpedon animate the courage of Glaucus, and 
 which have scarcely lost anything of their original 
 nobility, in the version of Homer's English translator? 
 
 Could all our care elude the gloomy grave 
 Which claims alike the fearful and the brave, 
 For lust of fame I would not vainly dare 
 In fighting fields to urge the soul to war. 
 But since, alas ! ignoble age must come, 
 Disease, and death's inexorable doom, 
 The life that others pay let us bestow, 
 And give to Fame what we to Nature owe. 
 Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live. 
 Or let us glory gain, or glory give. 
 
 We watch the conflict between divine and human 
 law in the Antigone of Sophocles, and we realise the 
 eternal truth of the dramatic situation when we pass 
 to the history of England and see it repeated in the
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 27 
 
 tragedy of Alice Lisle. How intelligible seems the 
 dispute between the Just and Unjust Argument in 
 the Clouds of Aristophanes to the old English Tory ! 
 Why do we in this country feel a peculiar sublimity in 
 the famous oath of Demosthenes on the souls of those 
 who fought at Marathon and Salamis ? Is it not 
 because we cherish the memories of the men who 
 perished under Nelson and AVellington in a later 
 defence of European liberty ? And when we read the 
 ever memorable lines of Virgil, 
 
 Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, mejiiento ; 
 
 Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem, 
 
 what Englishman is not proud to feel how justly 
 they may be applied to those who administer the 
 government of India ? 
 
 I conceive that it is this political spirit I use the 
 word 'political in its wide Greek sense which has 
 given a special character to the study of the classics 
 in the English Universities since the days of Erasmus 
 and Colet, of Cheke and Ascham. Our ideal of 
 classical education differs alike from the resthetic ideal 
 of the Italian Humanists, who deified the ancients 
 as absolute lawgivers in the sphere of abstract 
 form, and from the scientific ideal of the German 
 Universities, which regard tlie dead languages as one 
 of the many departments of abstract knowledge. 
 We in England, on the contrary, look on the classics 
 as a great school of taste, and we consider the educa- 
 tion of taste itself as a means to a practical, a
 
 28 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY iart i 
 
 political end. We have not allowed the necessarily 
 Pagan genius of the Greek and Roman writers to 
 undermine the foundations of the Christian faith, 
 but treating their works as living creations of 
 humanity, interpreting their spirit and character 
 with the kindred sympathy of freemen, we have 
 familiarised ourselves for centuries with the principles 
 that governed their imagination. We appreciate 
 their singular felicity in the choice of subject, the 
 chastened elegance of their composition, the har- 
 monious purity of their style. 
 
 Testimony is borne to the efficacy of this system of 
 University education by the most illustrious of those 
 who have pursued a diflferent object. " The office of 
 the English Universities," says Dollinger, "is by 
 means of the study of classics and mathematics, com- 
 bined with logic and moral philosophy and a college 
 education to turn out for the benefit of the State and 
 Society the cultivated and independent gentleman. 
 I will not conceal the fact that these renovated and 
 improved editions of the old and unfortunately ex- 
 tinct German bursaries, the colleges of Oxford and 
 Cambridge, have many a time as I observed their 
 working on the spot awakened in me feelings of 
 envy, and led me to long for the time when we 
 might again have something of the kind ; for I could 
 plainly perceive that their effect was to make in- 
 struction take root in the mind, and become a part 
 of it, and that their influence extended beyond the 
 mere communication of knowledge, to the ennobling 
 elevation of the life and character."
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 29 
 
 What member of the English Universities, above 
 all what member of the University of Oxford, would 
 wish to see an education which has borne such fruit 
 as this displaced in favour of a system calculated to 
 promote mere self-culture ? Year by year the Univer- 
 sities send to the Bar, to the Public Services, to the 
 great army of Journalism, bands of recruits who diffuse 
 the influence of their own tastes, and help to direct the 
 movements of popular opinion. Were there to be any 
 breach between the educated taste of the Universities, 
 and the natural taste of the public at large, the 
 whole system of irrigation in English aesthetic culture 
 would be tainted at its source. The taste of the Uni- 
 versities would become more monastic, more epi- 
 curean ; the taste of the public would grow more 
 rude, more barbarous. It should surely therefore be 
 the object of all patriotic endeavour to strengthen the 
 established principle of authority in matters of taste, 
 and to widen its base so as to meet the necessities of 
 our imperial society. 
 
 A great opportunity of advancing in this direc- 
 tion seems to be offered by the foundation of the 
 new Oxford School of English Language and Litera- 
 ture. For while the ancient classics must always 
 remain our primal authority in determining what 
 are the principles of good taste, it is in the classics 
 of our own country that we can best study the manner 
 in which these principles have been and should be 
 applied. Tlie tablets of the English School are still 
 almost a blank : it will depend upon the first teachers 
 and examiners what shall be written in them. You
 
 30 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY part 
 
 may make it a genuine school of taste, which shall 
 show the student what is the true standard of excel- 
 lence in English writing, and how he may measure 
 for himself the aberrations of eccentric genius. In 
 that case the School will follow the lines of Literce 
 Humaniores. You will cause the greatest English 
 writers to be studied mainly for the purpose 
 of understanding their spirit and character ; you 
 will show each of them in his just propor- 
 tions, and the place which he occupies in our 
 literature as a whole ; how he was affected by, 
 how he represented, and how he himself influenced, 
 the movement of his own age. In such a school the 
 exact study of language will be, as it is in Liter^cB 
 Humaniores, of the highest value in helping to un- 
 lock the secrets of thought, and in exhibiting the 
 orderly development of the law^s of taste and harmony. 
 Language is the instrument of thought, and, like the 
 winged sandals of Mercury, it may aid the mind to 
 mount into the higher regions of thought and imagina- 
 tion. But it would be an error to take Mercury's 
 sandals as the source of his divinity, and some- 
 thing of the kind would happen, if, as might be done 
 in the English School, the study of language were 
 allowed to predominate over the study of literature. 
 The study of language in itself is, like every branch 
 of science, of the highest intellectual interest. But 
 were it to be raised above literature, or even studied 
 apart from literature, I venture to say that you would 
 be wasting an unequalled opportunity ; for you would 
 be introducing a foreign educational principle which
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE 31 
 
 can never acclimatise itself in the genius of England 
 and Oxford. You might under such conditions get a 
 school of archaeological research, which would doubt- 
 less be of use and interest to the special student ; but 
 you would not get, what you may still get, a school 
 capable of exercising a national influence in the 
 discipline of English taste. 
 
 I have now arrived at something like a practical 
 conclusion to the inquiry with which I started. A 
 question is naturally raised by the scepticism of 
 an old society, whether any law or authority can 
 be recognised as binding in matters of taste. The 
 universal instinct, which in every society prompts 
 men to insist on their right of judging in such 
 matters, seems to point to the existence of some 
 principle of authority in the constitution of human 
 nature. But in what way can this authority be 
 enforced ? I have shown that it is idle to expect 
 Englishmen to submit their private liberty of judg- 
 ment to any external tribunal of taste. It would 
 appear, however, to be a less hopeless task, by close 
 attention to great works of art, to create a conscious- 
 ness of what is truly beautiful, and so to form a 
 canon of taste which shall impose itself on the in- 
 dividual judgment. A public conscience of this kind 
 must be the product of education, and the education 
 which is required is precisely tliat which has been 
 long established in the Eufjlish Universities. 
 
 As for the particular functions of this Chair in 
 promoting the education of taste, several conditions 
 have to be regarded. I do not think that the duties
 
 32 LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 
 
 of a Professor of Poetry lie mainly in the illustration 
 of technical principles ; for in poetry, even less than 
 in the other arts, is great work the result of mere 
 attention to rules ; it is the result of the inspiration, 
 corrected by the severe self -discipline, of genius. 
 Moreover, the rare occasions on which the Professor 
 of Poetry makes his appearance in the lecture-room 
 must preclude him from giving that minute and 
 systematic instruction in the subject which is rather 
 the function of a resident Professor of Literature 
 On the other hand, there are questions of taste 
 constantly and naturally rising out of the doubts 
 of a self-conscious society conflicts between Liberty 
 and Authority, between Novelty and Tradition 
 which suggest subjects that may be profitably con- 
 sidered from this Chair. I shall therefore hold 
 myself at liberty to treat Poetry in that wide and 
 general sense of the word which makes it coexten- 
 sive with the creative power of the Imagination, and 
 I shall devote my lectures mainly to examining the 
 laws and conditions on which the life of Poetry 
 depends. This may be done in a variety of ways : 
 by dwelling on the principles of great poetry ; by 
 observing the manner in w^hich these have been 
 applied by great poets ; by analysing the causes of 
 national movements of imagination ; and by tracing 
 the development of individual genius. Much also 
 may be learned from the fate of poets, who in all 
 ages have fallen victims to Affectation, Exaggeration, 
 Conceit, False Wit, False Sentiment, in a word to 
 all the immortal fallacies by which the fascination of
 
 INAUGURAL IN MATTERS OF TASTE ^3 
 
 novelty bewitches the inexperience and credulity of 
 taste. I am aware that the task I propose to myself 
 is one of great difficulty. To define the laws of 
 Good Taste becomes always harder as civilised 
 society moves farther away from the primal sources 
 of poetical inspiration. But at least we shall be 
 looking in the right direction if we take for our 
 standard the principle which Pericles recommended 
 to the Athenians (piXoaocjiovfMev dvev ^aXaKva'^ : We 
 pursue culture in a manly spirit.
 
 PAET II 
 
 LIFE IN POETKY
 
 POETICAL CONCEPTION 
 
 There is a certain irony in the relation between 
 art and criticism. The artist under the impulse of 
 imitation within him follows the lead of Nature, and 
 brings his imaginative idea into being guided only 
 by instinct and judgment. At a later stage in the 
 history of society, perhaps after creative energy has 
 ceased, comes the critic, and traces the idea back- 
 ward as far as he can through the artist's mind, 
 always stopping short, however, of the real sources 
 of life. Then deeming that he has penetrated the 
 secret of art, the critic begins to lay down the law 
 for the artist, and his law is usually wrong. 
 
 Wrong, indeed, he is almost bound to be, because 
 he has followed the order not of Nature l)ut of logic. 
 Yet, so vast is the persuasive power of logic, that 
 deductive criticism, a priori criticism, has had an 
 appreciable influence on the course of literature, 
 has, in fact, been the parent of all the Academies. 
 And it is observable that this kind of criticism 
 flourishes most in societies in which the spirit of
 
 38 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 political liberty has been, or is being, extinguished. 
 Academies began to thrive in the Italian Eepublics 
 after they had lost their freedom, in France when the 
 nation was tending towards absolute monarchy. As 
 regards the art of poetry, those who helped to found 
 the Academies submitted themselves without reserva- 
 tion to the authority of Aristotle. Misconstruing the 
 text of the Poetics, they deduced from their own 
 misunderstanding of the philosopher a code of 
 supposed artistic necessity, which had no basis in 
 the nature of things. They succeeded in getting 
 recognition for a set of rules which Corneille, while 
 submitting to them in theory, was obliged to dis- 
 regard in practice, and which were of such stringent 
 logic as to convince Voltaire and Frederick the Great 
 that Shakespeare was a barbarian and a bungler. 
 
 Criticism, in my opinion, is only of value so long 
 as it follows an inductive method. As I said in my 
 inaugural lecture, the sole authorities in the art of 
 poetry are the great classical poets of the world : the 
 business of the critic is to infer from their work the 
 true means of producing lasting pleasure. I propose, 
 therefore, in a series of lectures to discuss the question 
 of life in poetry, regarding it in three aspects : ( 1 ) 
 Poetical Conception ; (2) Poetical Expression ; (3) 
 Poetical Decadence. In my present lecture I shall 
 endeavour to trace the course of an imaginative 
 creation from the moment when a design first begins 
 to shape itself in a poet's brain. I shall ask to be 
 allowed to make but one assumption one, indeed, 
 which has been regarded as self-evidently true by all
 
 i-ECT. I POETICAL CONCEPTION 39 
 
 sound critics from the time of Aristotle namely, 
 that the end of the fine arts is to produce enduring 
 pleasure for the imagination. With the help of this 
 I shall then attempt to frame a working definition 
 of poetry, and shall inquire from the nature of the 
 art what must necessarily be its fundamental prin- 
 ciples. These I shall verify by applying them to 
 poems which are allowed to have attained the 
 position of classics, as well as to others which, after 
 enjoying a temporary popularity, have fallen into 
 neglect. Finally, after establishing my conclusions, 
 I shall consider what practical bearing they have on 
 the production of poetry in our own day. 
 
 With respect to life in poetry, as distinguished 
 from life in the other fine arts, it is plain, in the 
 first place, that poetry takes a distinct way of its 
 own to produce pleasure. It proceeds differently 
 from music, because that is an art which appeals to 
 the emotions through the ear, and, except when it 
 is joined to words, seldom raises ideas and images 
 in the mind. It differs again from painting and 
 sculpture, for, though these can suggest ideas and 
 images, they can do so only through the associations 
 of sight. Painting and sculpture can represent 
 movement and action, but their representation is 
 limited to a single moment of time. For instance, 
 in Raphael's great picture of the Fire in the Borgo, 
 there is an extraordinary suggestion of life and 
 passion. You see a mother just handing her child 
 out of a window ; a young man in the act of letting 
 himself drop from a roof ; other persons energetically
 
 40 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 striving tx> save their goods from the flames ; and 
 others again, whose property has been consumed, 
 prostrated with despair. But the infant is never 
 actually rescued ; the young man remains suspended ; 
 we know not how much salvage is effected, or what 
 becomes of the homeless refugees. 
 
 Another aspect of this arrested life in painting 
 and sculpture is expressed in Keats's fine Ode on a 
 Grecian Urn : 
 
 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
 
 Are sweeter : therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; 
 
 Not to the sensual ear, but more endeared 
 
 Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone. 
 
 Fair youth, beneath the trees thou canst not leave 
 Thy song, nor ever can these leaves be bare ; 
 Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 
 
 Though winning near the goal yet do not grieve : 
 She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss : 
 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair. 
 
 Poetry can represent ideal life of this kind, but 
 it can do much more. It can call up before the 
 mind, by a kind of inward painting, images of out- 
 ward forms which the act of sight has stored in the 
 memory ; and though some critics, like Sir Philip 
 Sidney, have thought that poetry can be dissociated 
 from metre, still the practice of the greatest poets 
 shows that it is the nature of the art to produce 
 pleasure by means akin to music. Beyond this, how- 
 ever, poetry, working through language, can free itself, 
 as painting and sculpture cannot, from the limitations 
 of time and space, and can represent in words, what 
 music cannot, a series of connected actions.
 
 LECT. I POETICAL CONCEPTION 41 
 
 But this is not all. Poetry differs from its sister 
 arts not only in the variety of its means but in the 
 diversity of its effects. Since it reaches its ends 
 through instruments so complex as thought and 
 language, it comprehends many styles ; unlike paint- 
 ing, for example, in which Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 admits only one legitimate method ; insisting 
 whether rightly or wrongly I do not presume to ques- 
 tion that the single aim of every great painter must 
 be the Historic or grand style. In poetry, on the con- 
 trary, the Epic, the Dramatic, the Ethical or Satirical 
 modes of composition are all distinct : each is capable 
 of producing a different kind of pleasure : and any 
 attempt to introduce the style proper to one depart- 
 ment into another would be a sign of incapacity in 
 the poet. Suited to different moods of the mind, 
 these various kinds of poetry adapt themselves to 
 the wants of opposite conditions of society. Satire, 
 that peculiarly Eoman form of poetry, found a 
 congenial soil in the manners of the City under the 
 Empire, when the epic, dramatic, and lyric motives of 
 composition all languished. In England, after the 
 Restoration, the questions which most strongly 
 stirred men's imaginations were of a religious and 
 political kind. To satisfy this taste the representa- 
 tive poet of the day produced works like Absalom 
 and Achitoi^hel, The Medal, and Reliyio Laici, 
 defending his style on the plea of its fitness for 
 his artistic needs : 
 
 And this unpolished rugged verse I cliosc, 
 As fittest for discourse and nearest prose.
 
 42 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 You will observe that Dryden says nearest prose ; 
 not actually prose ; meaning that his style suited 
 his subject, and that this, though akin to matter 
 usually treated in prose, had in itself an element of 
 imagination and emotion which adapted it for 
 expression in metre. When Matthew Arnold, look- 
 ing to the comparatively matter-of-fact nature of 
 their thought, says that Dryden and Pope are not 
 classics of our poetry, but classics of our prose, he 
 is the victim of a verbal fallacy. For if the end 
 of poetry be to produce enduring pleasure for the 
 imagination, and if Dryden and Pope, adopting 
 the usual machinery of poetry, satisfy this end, 
 these writers cannot be denied a place among our 
 poets merely because their subjects are less imagina- 
 tive than is the case with metrical writers of another 
 kind. We may, I think, be content to define poetry 
 as the art which produces pleasure for the imagina- 
 tion by imitating human actions, thoughts, and 
 passions, in metrical language. The life of poetry 
 is in fact that which is beautifully described by 
 Spenser in his Ruins of Time : 
 
 For deeds do die however nobly done, 
 
 And thoughts of men do as themselves decay, 
 
 But wise words, taught in numbers for to run, 
 
 Kecorded by the Muses, live for ay, 
 
 Ne may with storming showers be washed away, 
 
 Ne bitter-breathing winds with harmful blast. 
 
 Nor age, nor envy, may them ever waste. 
 
 Passins: on from our definition to consider the 
 nature of Poetical Conception, we have to remember
 
 LECT. I POETICAL CONCEPTION 43 
 
 that Fine Art does not, like photography, imitate real 
 Nature, but the idea of Nature existing in the mind. 
 Ideal Life is subject to laws of its own, and Horace, 
 in his Ars Poetica, says very justly : " Painters and 
 poets have always been allowed a just freedom of 
 conception : this is an admitted fact, and the critic 
 grants the indulgence that the poet asks." All that 
 the poet is required to do is to create a perfect 
 illusion ; to produce what Aristotle calls to indavov, 
 the effect of poetic probability ; or, in other words, 
 that idea of unity which is the essential condition of 
 organic life.^ When he is successful in doing this 
 he reaches the standard of the true poet described by 
 Pope in one of his Imitations of Horace : 
 
 'Tis he can give my heart a thousand pains, 
 Can make me feel each passion that he feigns ; 
 Enrage, compose, with more than magic art ; 
 With pity and with terror rend my heart ; 
 And snatch me through the earth or in the air, 
 To Thebes or Athens, when he will and where. 
 
 To produce this effect of organic ideal life is diffi- 
 cult, because in the mind Reason acts against Imagina- 
 tion, and because, in critical ages, men apply to poetic 
 inventions standards of judgment proper only to 
 scientific analysis. Aristotle, for example, cites some 
 of the criticisms passed in his day even on the Iliad. 
 Such and such a thing in the poem, said one, was 
 contrary to fact ; something else, said another, was 
 impossible by the laws of Nature; this and that a third 
 
 ' ir/xSj re yap ttjv trolrjffw aip(TijjT(ftov TriGavdv dSCyaTOv i) diriOavof Kal 
 Swardv. Aristotle, Foetics, xw. 17.
 
 44 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 declared to be opposed to experience. But, as the 
 philosopher shows, these objections were all ill- 
 grounded, because such is his vigorous phrase 
 "Homer tells lies as he ought." ^ He is not to be 
 judged by the laws of material Nature ; his concep- 
 tion is poetically true. Our imagination moves easily 
 through his ideal world. We readily grant him his 
 whole stock of marvellous hypothesis gods, giants, 
 celestial arms, and talking horses because w^e feel that 
 it proceeds from a living source in his own mind. Yet, 
 if a sophisticated poet were to force himself to invent 
 such things, merely to gratify our taste for the wonder- 
 ful, it is certain that every intelligent reader would 
 reject his conception with indignation and disgust. 
 
 In every genuinely inspired poetical conception 
 there are, as Aristotle and Horace both tell us, two 
 elements of life, one universal, the other individual. 
 The universal element is the idea of the subject, 
 whatever it may be, as it exists in an undeveloped 
 state in the human mind ; the individual element is 
 the particular form and character which is impressed 
 upon the subject by the creative genius of the poet. 
 As regards the process of creation by which these two 
 elements are fused into organic life, we cannot do 
 better than attend to what is said by Horace, a poet 
 who attempted various styles of poetry and succeeded 
 in them all. First, says Horace, there must be com- 
 plete union between the imagination of the poet and 
 the subject he selects. " All you who wTite " such is 
 his advice in his Ars Poetica " choose your subject in 
 
 ^ Aristotle, Poetics, xxv.
 
 LECT. I POETICAL CONCEPTION 45 
 
 accordance with your powers ; turn over in your mind 
 what your shoulders can bear and what they cannot. 
 The poet whose subject is completely assimilated to 
 his genius will not fail in point of eloquence and lucid 
 order." Every word of this advice is pregnant with 
 thought. There is a modern school of poets which 
 insists that all poetic creation is the work solely of 
 the poet's mind : form, they tell us, is everything, 
 matter nothing. But here you have one of the classic 
 poets of the world declaring that a large portion of 
 the life, and even of the form, of every poem is con- 
 tained germinally in the subject matter. Artistic 
 creation is not the mere act of the artist's will ; the 
 first movement of inspiration comes to him from out- 
 side ; hence the solemn invocations of the greatest 
 poets for divine aid in their undertakings ; as, for 
 example, at the opening of Paradise Lost : 
 
 And chiefly thou, Spirit, who dost prefer. 
 Before all temples, the upright heart and pure, 
 Instruct me, for thou knowest ; thou from the first 
 Wast present, and, Avith mighty wings outspread, 
 Dovelike, satst brooding o'er the vast abyss, 
 And madst it pregnant ; what in me is dark 
 Illumine ; what is low raise and support, 
 That to the height of this great argument 
 I may assert Eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of God to men. 
 
 And so too Dante, in the quaint but impressive 
 appeal to Apollo in his Paradiso : " Divine Virtue, if 
 thou wilt but inspire me to make manifest the shadow 
 of the blessed realm which is stamped upon my brain.
 
 46 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 thou wilt see me come to the tree that thou lovest, 
 and crown myself there with the leaves of which my 
 matter and thou will make me worthy."^ The reality 
 and power of this inspiration from without are 
 attested by the fact that, in many of the great poems 
 of the world, the form appropriate to the subject has 
 not been stamped at once upon the poet's conception. 
 You will remember that Paradise Lost first suggested 
 itself to Milton in the form of a miracle play, modelled 
 after the Greek drama, with the accompaniment of a 
 chorus. In the execution of this design he proceeded 
 some way, and wrote, among other passages, Satan's 
 speech to the Sun, which is now embodied in the 
 Fourth Book of Paradise Lost. Long meditation 
 and fresh inspirations from without were required 
 before the poet saw why the dramatic form was un- 
 fitted to his subject, and in what mould poetic neces- 
 sity demanded that his conception should come into 
 being. 
 
 Not very different was Scott's experience in the 
 conception of the Lay of the Last Minstrel. A lady 
 asked him to write an imitation of an ancient ballad. 
 Then, says Lockhart in his very interesting narrative : 
 " Sir John Stoddart's casual recitation of Coleridge's 
 unfinished Christahel had fixed the music of that 
 noble fragment in his memory ; and it occurs to him 
 that, by throwing the story of Gilpin Horner into 
 somewhat similar cadence, he might produce such an 
 echo of the later metrical romance as would seem to 
 connect his conclusion of the primitive Sir Tristrem 
 
 ' Dante, Paradiso, i. 22-27.
 
 LECT. I POETICAL CONCEPTION 47 
 
 with the imitation of the popular ballad in the Grey 
 Brother and Eve of St. John. A single scene of 
 feudal festivity in the Hall of Branksome, disturbed 
 by some pranks of a nondescript goblin, was probably 
 all that he contemplated ; but his accidental confine- 
 ment in the midst of a volunteer camp gave him 
 leisure to meditate his theme to the sound of the 
 bugle ; and suddenly there flashes on him the idea of 
 extending his simple outline so as to embrace a vivid 
 panorama of that old Border life of war and tumult 
 and all earnest passions with which his researches on 
 the minstrelsy had by degrees fed his imagination, 
 until every the minutest feature had been taken home 
 and realised with unconscious intensity of sympathy, 
 so that he had won for himself in the past another 
 world hardly less familiar or complete than the pre- 
 sent. Erskine or Cranstoun suggests that he would 
 " do well to divide the poem into cantos, and prefix to 
 each of them a motto explanatory of the action, after 
 the fashion of Spenser in the Fairy Queen. He 
 pauses for a moment and the happiest conception of 
 the frame- work of a picturesque narrative that ever 
 occurred to any poet, one that Homer might have 
 envied, the creation of the ancient Harper, starts 
 to life. By such steps did the Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel grow out of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
 Border." ^ 
 
 But besides this instinctive, unconscious union 
 between the imagination of the poet and his external 
 subject, the poet's conception, when born into the 
 
 ' Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. ii. p. 24 (1837).
 
 48 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 world, must be qualified to live in the imagination of 
 his audience. On this point too let us hear Horace. 
 " It is difficult," says he, " to clothe universal abstract 
 ideas with individual life and character, and you 
 would do better to ground a play on some story as 
 old and familiar as the Iliad, than to seek credit for 
 originality by representing something that nobody 
 has heard or thought of before." Yes, and why so ? 
 Because as the subject matter fitted for art exists in 
 embryo in the mind in general, and not merely in the 
 mind of the poet, the poet must satisfy those condi- 
 tions of ideal life which prepare the imagination of 
 the audience for the reception of his thought. If he 
 attempts to conjure up an ideal situation entirely out 
 of his own consciousness, it is almost certain that his 
 creation will have a lifeless or mechanical appearance, 
 or will provoke an instinctive opposition in the 
 reader's sense of probability. If, on the other hand, 
 he seeks to vitalise the inorganic matter already exist- 
 ing in general conception, his audience will, as it were, 
 conspire with him in the act of creation, and the 
 general pleasure his work will arouse will insure for 
 it immortality. For this reason the greater Greek 
 dramatists grounded their plays on the popular 
 mythology, while the Elizabethan poets took their 
 plots, as a rule, from novels or histories with which 
 their audience were already familiar. 
 
 AVe conclude, then, with Horace that the secret of 
 life in poetry lies in the power to give individual form 
 to universal ideas of nature adapted for expression in 
 any of the recognised classes of metrical composition.
 
 \ 
 
 LECT. I POETICAL CONCEPTION 49 
 
 Let us now look at the question from another side, 
 and apply this law to poems whose position has been 
 finally settled by the judgment of mankind. Why, 
 for example, is the Iliad so full of life ? Mainly 
 because the subject of the poem was very much alive 
 in Homer's own imagination : everything in it seems 
 to be of a piece, and to be said naturally and without 
 conscious effort. It must, however, also be admitted 
 that Homer enjoyed an immense advantage over all 
 his successors by starting in almost complete unity 
 with his theme. When he composed the Iliad the 
 poetical mode of conceiving things was the natural 
 mode of conception ; so that we may almost say the 
 image of the poem pressed itself on his mind from 
 the outside ready made, and all that he had to do 
 was to find an adequate mould for the expression. 
 In his verse the commonest objects and actions a 
 ship being rowed over the sea ; a banquet ; a sacrifice 
 are described in a manner at once grand and simple ; 
 not, I imagine, merely because Homer was a great 
 poet, but because, in his age, almost everything was 
 conceived as having a divine life of its own. Inability 
 to conceive of Nature in the same spirit of childlike 
 poetry extorted from Wordsworth his passionate 
 cry of regret : 
 
 Great God ! I had rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed out-worn, 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn, 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
 Or hear old Triton l)lo\v his wreatht-d horn.
 
 50 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 As regards the individual element in his poem, 
 therefore the union, that is to say, between the 
 poet's imagination and his subject Homer had 
 everything in his favour. What is to be said, how- 
 ever, of the union between his imagination and the 
 imagination of his audience ? Think how much 
 there is in the Iliad to militate against the pro- 
 duction of the desired effect ! A scheme of theology 
 which more than two thousand years ago was repudi- 
 ated by the philosopher ; a view of Nature which is 
 to-day incredible to the schoolboy ; a representation 
 of warfare which must seem ridiculous to the soldier ; 
 and a recital of methods of killing and w^ounding 
 which, since the invention of firearms, has lost its 
 interest even for the surgeon. What is it, then, in 
 Homer's poetry that produces such unequalled plea- 
 sure ? It is the element of the Universal. Nowhere 
 else, except in Shakespeare, w^ill you meet with so 
 many characters which are immediately perceived to 
 be living imitations of mankind ; so many sentiments 
 which at once move the affections; so many situations of 
 elemental interest and pathos ; nowhere else will you 
 find the images of things adapting themselves so readily 
 to the movement of verse whose majestic roll seems 
 animated by the very life of Nature, and yet is found 
 on examination to be the product of idealising Art. 
 
 In the ^Eneid we perceive the case to be quite 
 different. Here we have evidently a sharp separation 
 between the subject and the mind of the poet, and we 
 understand that Virgil's matter must have been long 
 meditated, assimilated, and transmuted, before the
 
 . 1 POETICAL CONCEPTION 51 
 
 p6em was ready to be born into the world. The 
 hero of the JEneid is, comparatively speaking, a poor 
 creature ; the sentiments and manners represented in 
 the poem, far from making us breathe a naturally heroic 
 atmosphere, provoke question and criticism ; many of 
 the incidents appear improbable, being in fact trans- 
 ferred from Homer, and having lost some of their life 
 in the passage. We feel through the last six books of 
 the epic that the poet is only carrying on the action 
 because the machinery of his work requires him to 
 do so. Nevertheless from the very first the yEneicl 
 has been alive ; it is alive still. What is the secret of 
 its vitality ? Partly, no doubt, the fact that Virgil 
 was able to impregnate his subject with certain 
 qualities of his own nature in which no poet has ever 
 equalled him, piety, gravity, sweetness. But partly 
 also the fact that he has developed out of his subject, 
 with unrivalled art, the elements that it contains of 
 the Universal. We know how the y^neid appeared 
 to Virgil's contemporaries. They hailed it as some- 
 thing greater than the Iliad. " Nescio quid majus 
 nascitur Iliade," said Propertius ; and though this 
 sounds like patriotic exaggeration, there is a sense 
 in which it is true. For the j^neid is par excellence 
 the epic of Civil Life. It is the poem of a Roman, 
 having for its theme the foundation of the Roman 
 Empire, and reflecting at every point the majesty 
 of the Roman character. That was the special 
 quality in it which so deeply influenced the genius 
 of Dante ; and wherever the civilising power of the 
 Roman Empire has been felt, that is, over the whole
 
 52 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 of modern Europe, there will this element of life in 
 the y^neid continue to produce sublime pleasure. 
 
 But there is a wider, a more human sense, in which 
 the JEneid may be said to be greater than the Iliad, 
 and that is in the conception of the pathetic. Not, of 
 course, that Homer is wanting in pathos ; he covers 
 a larger surface of the pathetic than Virgil ; but at 
 certain points Virgil goes deeper. His great poetical 
 principle is embodied in the line, " Sunt lacrimae 
 rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt," which a modern 
 poet has beautifully rendered : 
 
 Tears waken tears, and honour honour brings, 
 And mortal hearts are moved by mortal things.^ 
 
 Inadequate as the character of ^neas is on the 
 heroic side, it is exceedingly human, and the poet 
 has sounded the deepest feelings of our kind in the 
 description of his hero's adventures and misfortunes. 
 The narrative of the fall of Troy, the death of Dido, 
 the meeting of j35neas and Anchises in the lower 
 world, the deaths of Nisus and Euryalus, these things 
 will move the hearts of men through all time. Virgil 
 in such passages has individualised the Universal ; his 
 images live for ever in a stream of verse as deep and 
 full as Homer's is swift and brilliant. 
 
 Let me now, by way of contrast, refer to a 
 poem which having once enjoyed great popularity 
 has long passed, not indeed into oblivion, but neglect. 
 When the Thehais was first published, we know from 
 Juvenal that it was received with general enthusiasm, 
 
 ^ F. W. Myers, Classical Essays, p. 1 20.
 
 LECT. I POETICAL CONCEPTION 53 
 
 and even in the Middle Ages the reputation of 
 Statins was so great mainly no doubt on account 
 of his legendary Christianity that Dante assigns 
 him a place in his Purgatory. To-day he is known 
 only to professed scholars. Why ? If we try to 
 realise the manner in which the Tliebais came into 
 existence we shall be able to account for its literary 
 fate. Statins so far complied with Horace's advice 
 in the Ars Poetica as to choose a subject not less 
 well known to his audience than " the tale of Troy 
 divine." Unfortunately it had no special elements 
 of interest which could touch his heart as a man 
 and a Roman ; hence his subject never really passed 
 into his own imagination ; he hatched it, so to speak, 
 like an artificial incubator. Let us try to watch him 
 composing the Fourth Book, which is much the 
 best in the poem. Here his business was, in some 
 way or other, to conduct Polynices and the Argive 
 army to Thebes, where Eteocles had usurped the 
 government. Statins sets to work in a style wdiich 
 is eminently logical, and, in a way, scientific. He 
 starts his expedition with stir and bustle, and tells 
 us of all the rumours which the news of the invasion 
 set in circulation at Thebes. Then he appears to have 
 said to himself, " Now what eff'ect would these rumours 
 have had on the mind of Eteocles ? " Eteocles is con- 
 ceived as a gloomy tyrant. Of course, then, his bad 
 conscience would drive him to consult the prophet 
 Tiresias. Here came a splendid opportunity for what 
 Horace calls "a purple patch." Tiresias practised 
 magic in a wood ; the wood must therefore be de-
 
 54 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 scribed ; and described it is with great effect, and 
 so are the magical incantations. Next it is necessary 
 to learn the future from Laius, the founder of the 
 ruling family, who must be brought from the infernal 
 regions according to the precedent of JEneas, when he 
 went thither to seek the spirit of Anchises. Statins 
 seems to have thought within himself : " How can 
 I have a novel and effective other-world scene, some- 
 thing different from Homer's and Virgil's ? " and 
 so full is he of this idea, that he puts it into 
 the mouth of his imaginary characters. Tiresias, 
 being blind, has to be helped in his incantations by 
 his daughter Manto, who, after she has performed 
 the necessary rites, informs her father that hell is 
 in view ; but, says she, " what is the use of bringing 
 up the monsters of Erebus, the idly raging Centaurs, 
 the Giants, and all the rest of them ? " ^ In other 
 words. Homer and Virgil have done all this kind of 
 thing before. " Quite true," observes the practical 
 prophet, "everybody knows about the rebounding stone 
 of Sisyphus, and the fleeing waters of Tantalus, and the 
 wheel of Ixion : let us, for a change, have the spirits 
 of the wicked Argives and Thebans." ^ And accord- 
 ingly up come these from the nether world, one after 
 another, " stern Abas, and guilty Proetus, and mild 
 Phoroneus, and mutilated Pelops, and (Enomaus all 
 bestained with cruel dust." ^ Laius appears the last, 
 and delivers himself of an oracle so judiciously 
 obscure that, for all the information it affords his 
 hearers, they and the poet might have spared 
 
 1 Thehais, iv. 534-536. ^ Ihid. 537-544. ^ /^^-^^ 589-591.
 
 LECT. I POETICAL CONCEPTION 55 
 
 themselves the trouble they took to procure his 
 advice. Whoever compares this with the Sixth Book 
 of the JEneid will see the difference between Life 
 and Machinery in poetry. Statius is full of clever- 
 ness and learning ; he is careful to follow poetical 
 precedents ; but his creation is not alive ; he himself 
 did not care about it ; his Roman audience did not 
 care about it, though they applauded it ; it is vain 
 therefore to expect an audience to care about it in the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 How admirable is the reasoning of Juvenal in 
 the matter ! " These things," he says in substance, 
 " have no life. I must have life in my poetry : 
 I shall accordingly wT-ite Satire, and shall deal with 
 matters that really do interest us : every sort of 
 human action and passion, wishes, fears, anger, 
 pleasure, joy, philosophy, these are my subjects." ^ 
 Hence, though he is only a satirical poet, Juvenal, 
 having this strong individual element in himself, 
 and the element of the Universal in his theme, has 
 contrived to produce permanent pleasure for the 
 imagination ; while Statius, with his grandiose subject 
 and his sounding verse, has fallen into neglect. 
 Juvenal makes us see, as if they were things of 
 to-day, the perils of the streets in ancient Rome ; ' 
 the " bald Nero" and his flatterers in council over their 
 turbot ; ^ the Trojan-born aristocracy cringing for the 
 rich parvenu's doles ; * the bronze head of Sej anus's 
 statue turned into pots and pans.'' 
 
 ' Juvenal, H(d. i. 85-6. Ihid. iii. Und. iv. 
 
 * Ihld. i. 99-100. '-' IhitL .\. 01-64.
 
 56 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 And when a satirist is full, like Juvenal, of universal 
 interest, we can listen to him even though he talks 
 mainly of himself. Witness the opening of Pope's 
 Epistle to Arhuthnot, where every word seems to 
 throb and tingle with sensitive life : 
 
 Shut, shut the door, good John ! fatigued, I said, 
 Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead. 
 The dog-star rages, nay, 'tis past a doubt, 
 All Bedlam and Parnassus is let out. 
 Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand. 
 They rave, recite, and madden through the land. 
 
 And so on, through all the poet's interviews with 
 his literary tormentors, till we reach the climax in 
 the portrait of Atticus, where universal truth lives 
 as lastingly as in the characters of Achilles and 
 Hamlet : 
 
 Peace to all such ! But were there one whose fires 
 True genius kindles and true fame inspires ; 
 Blest with each talent and each art to please, 
 And born to write, converse, and live with ease ; 
 Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 
 Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne ; 
 View him ^vith scornful yet with jealous eyes. 
 And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; 
 Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer. 
 And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; 
 Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
 Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike ; 
 Alike reserved to blame and to command, 
 A timorous foe and a suspicious friend ; 
 Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged. 
 And so obliging that he ne'er obliged ; 
 Like Cato give his little senate laws, 
 And sit attentive to his own applause ;
 
 POETICAL CONCEPTION 57 
 
 While wits and Templars every sentence raise, 
 And wonder with a foolish face of praise : 
 Who but must laugh if such a man there be 1 
 Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? 
 
 Even in lyric poetry, which seems above all other 
 forms of the art to be the vehicle of individual 
 feeling, if the verse is to have enduring life, the uni- 
 versal must be present either in the simplicity of the 
 emotion or in the common interest of the theme. No 
 better illustration of this truth can be found than 
 Gray's Elegy, a composition which has perhaps pro- 
 duced more general pleasure than any in our literature. 
 Take the last line of the first stanza : " And leaves 
 the world to darkness and to me," where two of the 
 most abstract words in the language are combined 
 with the most personal. Or again, the closing stanza, 
 in which the epitaph on the individual is brought 
 to a climax in the most universal idea that the human 
 mind can conceive : 
 
 No further seek his merits to disclose, 
 
 Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 
 
 (There they alike in trembling liope repose) 
 The bosom of his Father and his CJod. 
 
 Difficile est proprie communia dicerc. Difficult 
 indeed ! But to overcome the difficulty is the 
 triumph of art. And here the triumph is complete. 
 How simple and obvious are all the reflections, and 
 yet how individual they seem in the form in which 
 the poet presents them ! A single familiar image is 
 selected as the centre of a group of truths which 
 every man acknowledges, and, as a rule, forgets ; each
 
 58 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 stanza seems to condense in words the experience of 
 human society ; and breathes in its solemn harmony 
 the catholic teaching of the grave. 
 
 If then we are justified in believing this law of life 
 in poetry to be what we have described it, we may 
 draw some practical conclusions from it with regard 
 to the poetry of our own day. For is not one of the 
 most striking characteristics in modern poetical con- 
 ception the exaggeration of the individual element and 
 the neglect of the universal ? Many of the spiritual 
 forces in our society notably reaction from material- 
 ism, vulgarity, commonplace impel the imagination 
 towards a state of transcendental monasticism, thrust- 
 ing the mind inward upon itself, and urging it to the 
 contemplation of its own ideas without considering 
 them in relation to the ideas of others. Poetical con- 
 ception so formed will, by its own innate force, command 
 attention and respect from those whose spiritual ex- 
 perience has been in any way similar, and yet, as it 
 has been framed without reference to the wants of 
 human nature at large, will necessarily lack the 
 main element of enduring life. This is the danger 
 that in my opinion threatens the position of one of 
 the most eminent metrical composers of our own 
 generation ; I need hardly say that I refer to Robert 
 Browning. No one who is capable of appreciating 
 genius will refuse to admire the powers of this poet, 
 the extent of his sympathy and interest in external 
 things, the boldness of his invention, the energy of 
 his analysis, the audacity of his experiments. But 
 so absolutely does he exclude all consideration for the
 
 LECT. I POETICAL CONCEPTION 59 
 
 reader from his choice of subject, so arbitrarily, in his 
 treatment of his themes, does he compel his audience 
 to place themselves at his own point of view, that the 
 life of his art depends entirely on his individuality. 
 Should future generations be less inclined than our 
 own to surrender their imaginations to his guidance, 
 he will not be able to appeal to them through that 
 element of life which lies in the Universal. 
 
 If it is an error to look for the life of poetry ex- 
 clusively in the mind of the poet, it is no less an error 
 to derive its sources from the current tastes of the 
 people. What is universal is always popular in the 
 true sense of the word ; but what is popular is not 
 necessarily universal. Yet the modern poet is under 
 a strong temptation to adapt his conceptions to the 
 fashion of the moment. Modern invention and 
 science occupy the imagination with a dissolving 
 panorama of passing interests ; and to embody these 
 in a striking form is the proper end of the art of 
 journalism. The ability and success with which the 
 journalist discharges his functions naturally excite 
 emulation among those who practise the fine arts. 
 They imitate his methods. Hence they are led to 
 Realism in the choice of subject, Impressionism, 
 Literary Paradox, and all those other short cuts in art 
 through which seekers after novelty attempt to dis- 
 cover nine-days wonders for the imagination. By 
 the very hypothesis of fine art such methods must 
 necessarily be fallacious ; because, when the temporary 
 conditions to which they owe their being pass away, 
 the pleasure they excite perishes with them.
 
 6o LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 The abiding life of poetry must be looked for far 
 beneath the surface of society : it should be the aim 
 of the poet first to divine the true character of his 
 age, as distinct from the shows and illusions of things, 
 and then to discover which of the great moulds of 
 poetry corresponds most closely with the nature of his 
 thought. This is a truth written on every page of 
 classic English poetry. In the reign of Elizabeth 
 the life of the nation had its centre in the Crown, 
 and poetical energy found its natural expression in 
 the drama. The eighteenth century was an age of 
 aristocracy and philosophic thought ; accordingly the 
 characteristic poetry of that era was ethical or elegiac. 
 With the French Revolution began the great demo- 
 cratic movement which has prevailed for a hundred 
 years, and from that time to this the dominant 
 note in poetry has been lyrical. 
 
 I think that one difficulty in the way of forming 
 a poetic conception of Nature and Society in our own 
 day arises from our adhering too tenaciously to a 
 poetical tradition which no longer corresponds with 
 the life and reality of things. Poetry, like politics, is 
 an outward mode of expressing the active principle of 
 social life, and for three generations the master-spirit 
 in social action has been Liberty. In politics we 
 have seen Liberty embodying itself in all that we 
 understand by the word Democracy ; sweeping away 
 privilege, test, restriction ; widening the basis of 
 government ; wakening the energies of free thought ; 
 shaking the foundations of faith and authority. In 
 poetry the same principle has found utterance in the
 
 LECT. 1 POETICAL CONCEPTION 6i 
 
 varied emotions we comprehend under the name of 
 Romance. Romance was heard in the voice of Words- 
 worth sending out his thought into the heart of Nature; 
 in the voice of Byron rebellious against the laws of 
 Society ; in the voice of Shelley dreaming of the desti- 
 nies of humanity ; in the voice of Tennyson penetrating 
 the depths and intricacies of private sorrow. For uni- 
 versal conceptions such as these Romance has been the 
 fitting vehicle of expression. But alike in politics and 
 in poetry, the productive power of Liberty seems to 
 have reached its natural limits. Can Democracy, apart 
 from hereditary Monarchy, solve the problems it has 
 itself created ? civilise the swarming populations of 
 the city ? bind the young and vigorous colony more 
 closely to the venerable Mother Country? charm 
 away the demon of social envy ? curb the fury of 
 political faction? Or is Romance the poetical form 
 that can most fitly reflect those scientific ideas of 
 Nature and Society which press so powerfully on the 
 modern imagination ? It is just because Romance is 
 unable to do this that the school of poetry which has 
 adhered most faithfully to the romantic tradition now 
 sounds in its art the note of lyric pessimism. 
 
 There is surely an analogy in the tasks that lie 
 respectively before the modern statesman and the 
 modern poet. It is the part of the one, rising above 
 the pettinesses of party, to lead, to construct, to 
 consolidate in an imperial spirit. Not very different 
 should be the aim of poetry. The romantic poet 
 regards himself as " the idle singer of an empty day": 
 is it, however, just to charge the age with emptiness
 
 62 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 merely because it affords no materials fitted for ex- 
 pression in a particular poetical mould ? The art of 
 poetry has many mansions ; and it does not follow 
 that, if one mode of conceiving Nature has become 
 trite and mechanical, the resources of Nature herself 
 are exhausted. Sound reasoning would seem rather 
 to point to the conclusion that, since the subjective 
 and lyrical forms of poetry languish, the sources of 
 life are rather to be sought on the objective side, and 
 in the dramatic, ethical, and satiric forms of the art. 
 
 But perhaps to speculate precisely on this point is 
 to fall into the very error of academic criticism which 
 we started with condemning. It will be best to con- 
 clude with reiterating the truth that, while the force 
 of individual liberty and genius is absolutely neces- 
 sary to inspire poetic conception with the breath of 
 life, obedience to the law of the Universal in Nature 
 is no less needful, if the life thus generated is to be 
 enduring.
 
 II 
 
 POETICAL EXPRESSION 
 
 Experience shows me that, in England, it is unsafe 
 to suppose that the most elementary truths of criticism 
 will be accepted as self-evident, or that the most 
 familiar terms can be left without explanation. In 
 opening this series of lectures on " Life in Poetry," 
 I began, as I was bound to do, with a definition. I 
 said that " Poetry was the art which produces pleasure 
 for the imagination by imitating human actions, 
 thoughts, and passions in metrical language." Since 
 poetry had been regarded as an imitative art by a 
 hundred well-known critics from Aristotle down- 
 wards, and since not only Aristotle, but such modern 
 and Christian critics as Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
 had agreed that the end of poetry was to produce 
 pleasure for the imagination, I fondly hoped that 
 what I called a "working" definition might pass 
 without argument. But what happened ? A critic 
 in a weekly paper of high standing supposed that by 
 using the word " imitation " in relation to poetry I 
 must necessarily mean the photographic reproduction 
 of external objects, and that the word " pleasure "
 
 64 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 must by implication carry with it some low and 
 materialistic sense. Reasoning on this hypothesis, he 
 contrived, in the first place, to misinterpret the 
 argument in my lecture to an extent which, in my 
 vanity, I had hoped to be impossible, and, further, 
 to convince other people, as appeared from the 
 correspondence which ensued, that I was not only an 
 ignorant but an immoral person. 
 
 As I shall need my definition for the purposes of 
 my present lecture, let me say at starting that I 
 regard poetry as a fine art, and therefore subject to 
 the operation of laws which, like those of the other fine 
 arts, are capable of explanation ; that I call it an imita- 
 tive art because its function is to find beautiful forms 
 for the expression of ideas existing universally, but 
 embryonically, in the human imagination ; that while 
 I consider the end of poetry, as of all the fine arts, to 
 be, to produce pleasure for the imagination, this idea 
 of pleasure includes rapture, enthusiasm, even pain of 
 the kind intended by Aristotle, when he says that 
 Tragedy effects a purgation of Pity and Terror by 
 means of those passions. I must apologise to my 
 present audience for an explanation which they will 
 probably find superfluous, but as I desire to make 
 my argument as clear and convincing as is possible 
 from the nature of the subject, it is best to proceed 
 by the ordinary course of dialectic. 
 
 My last lecture was devoted to an investigation 
 of the law of poetical conception, which may be called 
 the soul of poetical life. We sought for the universal 
 conditions under which an idea must germinate and
 
 POETICAL EXPRESSION 
 
 come into being in the imagination of the individual 
 poet, in order afterwards to enjoy immortal life in 
 the imagination of the world. I shall deal to-day 
 with the laws of poetical expression, in other words, 
 of the outward form or body in which the poet's 
 conception is manifested. And just as in human 
 beings it is the complete union of soul and body 
 which constitutes the harmonious life of each person, 
 so in poetry the beauty and propriety of the imagin- 
 ative form will proceed from the organic unity of 
 the imaginative conception. This is a truth which 
 requires to be thoroughly realised, and I think I 
 cannot make it clear to you better than by reverting 
 to the words of Horace I have already cited : 
 
 Cui lecta potenter erit res, 
 Nee facundia deseret hunc nee lucidus ordo. 
 
 I do not understand Horace to mean that just 
 conception in poetry necessarily inspires the poet 
 with the best form of expression. Such an opinion 
 would be contrary to experience : the history of 
 poetry shows that many true poets, especially young 
 poets men like Persius and Oldham, for example 
 have wanted the perfect art which is needed to do 
 justice to their thoughts. Thus Dry den, in his lines 
 on the death of Oldham, asks : 
 
 early ripe, to thy abundant store 
 What could advancing age have added more '? 
 It might what Nature never gives the young 
 Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue : 
 But Satire needs not those, and Wit may shine 
 Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line. 
 F
 
 66 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 Horace is speaking rather of the inward conditions 
 that must be satisfied before a poetical conception can 
 be animated with the spark of life. What are they ? 
 First of all, res ; the poet must be sure that he has 
 something poetical to say. Next, what he has to 
 say must be lecta potenter, chosen suitably or 
 according to capacity, a phrase which, I think, has 
 a double meaning. The subject must be treated in 
 accordance with the powers of the poet, and conform- 
 ably with what its own nature requires. Poets are 
 often anxious to excel in styles of poetry for which 
 nature has not qualified them. Tennyson, for ex- 
 ample, constantly attempted the poetical drama, but 
 never with success. Keats and Shelley failed con- 
 spicuously whenever they aimed at comic humour. 
 Again, the subject must be treated in the manner 
 which its inherent nature and the circumstances of 
 the age demand. Paradise Lost, as we have already 
 seen, required epic treatment ; it could not have 
 properly taken a dramatic form, at least in Milton's 
 time. On the other hand, when the conditions of 
 just conception have been satisfied ; when the fruitful 
 subject has been selected ; when its true poetical 
 character be it epic, dramatic, or satiric has been 
 realised ; when the poet has allowed the subject in 
 all its bearings to blend and harmonise with his own 
 imagination ; then, as Horace says, he will find him- 
 self provided, as if by Nature herself, with the 
 richness of language and the lucid arrangement of 
 thought necessary to give to his conception the 
 appearance of organic life.
 
 LECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 67 
 
 We have seen that in every just poetical concep- 
 tion there are two indispensable elements of life 
 one individual, one universal. Both of these elements 
 must therefore reappear in the form of poetical 
 expression in which the poetical conception is given 
 to the world. The individual element in every great 
 poem is imparted to it solely by the genius of 
 the poet. It includes everything relating to the 
 treatment of the subject, all that helps to produce 
 the organic effect ; the just distribution of the matter, 
 the particular methods of diction, the peculiar com- 
 binations of metrical movement ; whatever, in fact, 
 constitutes the distinction, the character, the style of 
 the work. All this resembles the individuality of 
 the human body, and indeed the style of every 
 genuine poet may be compared to that total effect of 
 personality produced by the combination of feature, 
 the expression of the countenance, the complexion, 
 the shape, w^hich makes each single member of the 
 human race in some respect different from every other 
 member of it. To lay down laws of style for poetry 
 is to attempt the impossible. What form other than 
 that of the Divirie Comedy could have expressed the 
 universal idea contained in the subject ? Yet what 
 critical analysis could ever have arrived at the form 
 invented by the genius of Dante ? In Dante doubt- 
 less there is a strong lyrical note ; in the epic and 
 dramatic forms of poetry, on the contrary, the uni- 
 versal element predominates ; but even in these the 
 individual genius of the poet will always make itself 
 felt by some characteristic mode of expression. The
 
 68 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 treatment of a tragic subject by Ben Jonson differs 
 from the treatment of Shakespeare ; Shakespeare's 
 manner is equally distinguishable from Fletcher's ; 
 Pope's satiric style is unlike Dryden's, and Byron's 
 stands apart from both. 
 
 We cannot go beyond the simple principle of 
 Horace, which says that the right form of expression 
 will spring naturally out of a just mode of conception. 
 In all that portion of the art of poetry which relates 
 to the treatment of the subject, the sole guide of the 
 poet must be his own judgment : the extent of his 
 success in the expression of his ideas will be princi- 
 pally determined by the possession of a quality which, 
 as a factor of composition, is not less important than 
 imagination and invention. 
 
 But while the genius of the individual poet enjoys 
 this large freedom, there are certain universal laws of 
 expression, proper to the art of poetry, which no 
 individual poet can disregard with impunity ; and as 
 to the nature of these I think it is perfectly possible, 
 by the inductive method of criticism, to arrive at 
 positive and certain conclusions. I have said that, in 
 my opinion, poetry necessarily produces its effects by 
 means of metrical language. But upon this point 
 there is a dispute ; and the question which I am now 
 going to put before you for consideration is. Whether 
 metre is necessary for poetical expression, and, if so, 
 whether this necessity binds the poet to use forms of 
 diction which, even apart from metre, are diflferent 
 from the forms of prose ? 
 
 Now as to the first of these questions very oppo-
 
 lECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 69 
 
 site opinions have been advanced, according to the 
 view which has been taken of the nature of poetry ; 
 it has been said, on the one hand, that poetry is 
 merely versification, and, on the other, that verse is 
 not necessary for poetry. The former opinion had 
 its advocates as early as the days of Aristotle, who 
 shows us that certain authorities, of whom he does 
 not speak without respect, considered that poetry 
 consisted in putting words together in a certain 
 order determined by the quantity of their syllables, 
 one critic going even so far as to say that it would 
 be quite easy to make poetry if you were allowed to 
 lengthen or abbreviate syllables at will.^ Opposed to 
 this opinion is one equally extreme, but recommended 
 by the eminent names of Sir Philip Sidney and 
 Shelley. Sidney says, in his Apology for Poetry : 
 
 The greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical in- 
 ventions in that numberous kind of writing which is called verse. 
 Indeed but apparelled, verse being but an ornament and no cause 
 to poetry, since there have been many most excellent poets that 
 have never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need 
 never answer to the name of poets. For Xenophon, who did 
 imitate so excellently as to give us effigicm jmfi imperii, the por- 
 traiture of a just empire under the name of Cyrus (as Cicero 
 saith of him), made therein an absolute heroical poem. 
 
 And Shelley says, in his Defence of Poetry : 
 
 It is by no means essential that a poet should accommodate 
 his language to the traditional form, so that the harmony which 
 is its spirit be observed. The practice is indeed convenient and 
 popular and to be preferred, especially in such composition as 
 includes much action : but every great poet must inevitably 
 innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the exact 
 
 ' Aristotle, Poclius, xxii. 5.
 
 70 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 structure of his peculiar versification. The distinction between 
 poets and prose writers is a viilgar error. . . . Plato was essen- 
 tially a poet . . . the truth and splendour of his imagery and 
 the melody of his language are the most intense that it is possible 
 to conceive. . . . Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a 
 sweet and majestic rhythm which satisfies the sense no less than 
 the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the 
 intellect. 
 
 What Aristotle thought on the matter is not 
 quite clear. He extends the idea of poetical " imita- 
 tion " so as to include certain compositions in prose ; 
 but his argument is directed against those who think 
 that poetry lies solely in versification ; he does not 
 attempt to prove that metre is not a necessary accom- 
 paniment of the higher conceptions of poetry.^ This 
 great critic, therefore, cannot be ranged with those 
 who support that extreme opinion, and the arguments 
 of Sidney and Shelley will not stand examination. 
 The fallacy of the examples given by each of these 
 critics is, that they do not take into account the 
 different aims of the writers they cite. The end of 
 Xenophon in the Cyropcedeia was not to please but 
 to instruct ; if he produced an image pleasing to the 
 fancy, it was only by accident. Shelley's reasoning 
 is still more inconsequent. It does not follow, be- 
 cause the versification of every great poet innovates 
 on the practice of his predecessors, that versification 
 can therefore be dispensed with in poetry. Nor does 
 it follow, because the truth and splendour of Plato's 
 
 ' See Aristotle, Poetics, c. i. 6-8. A correspondence with Professor 
 Butcher, the eminent editor of Aristotle's Poetics, convinces me that by ^iXoi 
 \6yoi the philosopher means compositions in prose, and not, as I was at first 
 inclined to think, metrical words unaccompanied by music.
 
 LECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 71 
 
 imagery are the most intense that it is possible to 
 conceive, that he was therefore " essentially a poet " ; 
 the same might be said of the imagery of a great 
 orator ; yet oratory is not poetry. The end of Plato 
 was to convince by dialectic, and though for this 
 purpose he may have resorted to rhetorical and 
 poetical methods of persuasion, that does not take 
 him out of the class " philosopher," and transplant 
 him into the class " poet." The most that Sidney 
 and Shelley prove is, what every sensible critic would 
 be ready to grant without argument, that poetry does 
 not lie in metrical expression alone. 
 
 Against the obiter dicta of these two writers, 
 distinguished as they are, I put the universal practice 
 of the great masters of the art, and I ask, Why have 
 poets always written in metre ? The answer is. 
 Because the laws of artistic expression oblige them 
 to do so. When the poet has been inspired from 
 without in the way in which we saw Scott was in- 
 spired to conceive the Lay of the Last Minstrel 
 that is to say, when he has found his subject-matter 
 in an idea universally striking to the imagination, 
 when he has received this into his own imagination, 
 and has given it a new and beautiful form of life 
 there, then he will seek to express his conception 
 through a vehicle of language harmonising with his 
 own feelings and the nature of the subject, and this 
 kind of language is called verse. For example, when 
 Marlowe wishes to represent the emotions of Faustus, 
 after he has called up the phantom of Helen of Troy, 
 it is plain that some very rapturous form of expres-
 
 72 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 sion is needed to convey an adequate idea of such 
 famous beauty. Marlowe rises to the occasion in 
 those " mighty lines " of his : 
 
 Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
 And burned the topless towers of Ilium ? 
 
 But it is certain that he could only have ventured on 
 the sublime audacity of saying that a face launched 
 ships and burned towers by escaping from the limits 
 of ordinary language, and conveying his metaphor 
 through the harmonious and ecstatic movements of 
 rhythm and metre. 
 
 Or, to take another instance, Virgil more than 
 once describes the passion of the living when visited 
 by the spirits of those whom they have loved and 
 lost, and he invented a metrical form of expression 
 for the feeling, which he knew to be so beautiful that 
 he used it twice. Expressed in prose, the passage 
 runs thus : " Thrice he there attempted to throw 
 his arms round her neck ; thrice embraced in vain, 
 the phantom glided from his grasp ; light as the 
 empty winds, likest to a fleeting dream." There 
 is pathos in this ; but now listen to the verses : 
 
 Ter conatus ibi coUo dare brachia circum, 
 Ter, frustra comprensa, manus eftugit imago, 
 Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno. 
 
 What infinite longing, what depths of sorrow, are 
 expressed in the selection and collocation of the words, 
 and the rhythmical efi'ect of the whole passage ! Ho^\ 
 profound a note of melancholy is struck in the mono- 
 syllables with which each line opens ! How wonder-
 
 i.ECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 73 
 
 fully is the fading of the vision symbolised in the 
 dactylic swiftness with which the last line glides to 
 its close ! 
 
 Or, yet once more : you remember how Prospero 
 breaks off the marriage pageant in the Tempest to 
 deal with the conspirators, and the splendidly abrupt 
 transition of feeling with which he reminds his 
 audience of the end of all mortal things : 
 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 The cloud-cap't towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inhabit, shall dissolve ; 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stufif 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 
 
 I think no critic in his senses would say that the full 
 effect of this passage could be given in prose. 
 
 Nevertheless, though the necessity of metre to 
 poetry would thus appear to be proved by reason and 
 by the practice of the greatest poets, it has been denied 
 by one who was undoubtedly a master in the art. In 
 the well-known preface published with his poems in 
 1805 Wordsworth asserts that the poet is under no 
 obligation to write in verse, and that he himself only 
 does so on account, partly, of the additional pleasure 
 afforded by metre, and, partly, of certain technical 
 advantages to be derived from the practice. He 
 defends his theory as follows : 
 
 From the tendency of metre to throw a sort of half-conscious- 
 ness of unsubstantial existence over the whole composition, 
 there can be little doubt but that more |)athetic situations and
 
 74 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 sentiments that is, those that have a greater proportion of pain 
 connected with them may be endured in metrical compositions, 
 especially in rhyme, than in prose. . . . This opinion may he 
 illustrated by appealing to the reader's own experience of the 
 reluctance with which he comes to the representation of the dis- 
 tressful parts of Clarism Ilarlowe or TJie Gamester ; while Shake- 
 speare's writings in the most pathetic scenes never act upon us 
 as pathetic beyond the bounds of pleasure an effect which in a 
 much greater degree than might be imagined is to be ascribed 
 to small but continual and regular impulses of pleasurable sur- 
 prise from the metrical arrangement. 
 
 I think Wordsworth's analysis of emotion is clearly 
 wrong. The reason why the harrowing descriptions 
 of Richardson are simply painful, while Shakespeare's 
 tragic situations are pleasurable, is that the imagina- 
 tion shrinks from dwelling on ideas so closely imitated 
 from real objects as the scenes in Clarissa Harloive, 
 but contemplates without excess of pain the situation 
 in Othello, for example, because the imitation is 
 poetical and ideal. Prose is used by Richardson 
 because his novel professedly resembles a situation of 
 real life ; metre is needed by Shakespeare to make 
 the ideal life of his drama real to the imagination. 
 Wordsworth, if I may say so, has put the poetical 
 cart before the horse. 
 
 It may be admitted, however, that if Words- 
 worth's theoretical principles of poetical conception 
 were just, he would not only have been under no 
 necessity to write in metre, but he would have been 
 wrong to use it at all. He says of his own method : 
 
 The principal object proposed in these poems was to choose 
 incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or
 
 LECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 75 
 
 describe them throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection 
 of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw 
 over them a certain colouring of the imagination whereliy 
 ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual 
 aspect ; and further, and above all, to make these incidents and 
 situations interesting by tracing in them truly, though not 
 ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature : chiefly as far as 
 regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of 
 excitement. 
 
 Now, whether this method of composition can or 
 cannot be regarded as falling legitimately within the 
 art of poetry, it is at least certain that it is opposed 
 at all points to the mode of conception adopted by 
 the greatest poets of the world, as this has been 
 already described. It does not involve inspiration by 
 the universal idea from without, and the recreation of 
 the universal idea within, the mind of the individual 
 poet. It implies, on the contrary, that the inspira- 
 tion proceeds from the poet's own mind ; that the 
 poet can make even common things poetical by 
 throwing " over them a certain colouring of the 
 imagination ; " the process of conception described is 
 one not so much of imaginative creation as of 
 imaginative analysis ; and to express quasi-scientific 
 truths of this kind the metaphorical forms of lan- 
 guage peculiar to metrical writing are certainly not 
 required. 
 
 But, more than this, it can be shown that, in 
 endeavouring to put the particular conceptions he 
 speaks of into metre, Wordsworth was adopting a 
 wrong form of expression. Let me not be misunder- 
 stood. Wordsworth, I need hardly say, often wrote
 
 76 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 very nobly in metre ; but when he did so, he did none 
 of those things which, according to his own theory 
 of poetry, he ought to have done. For it is quite 
 certain that neither in Laodamia, nor in the Ode on 
 Immortality, nor in the lines about skating on Win- 
 dermere in the Prelude, nor in those about the 
 " lively Grecian " in the Excursion, nor in those 
 describing the Yew Trees of Borrowdale, nor in the 
 Sonnet on the Dawn on Westminster Bridge, nor in 
 that on Liberty, nor in a hundred other places, is 
 there anything of that analytical process of concep- 
 tion on which he sets so high a value. In all of the 
 examples I have mentioned there is the res lecta 
 potenter ; that is to say, an idea of universal interest. 
 This universal idea is assimilated with the poet's 
 imagination, and it is expressed in what is universally 
 felt to be a noble and beautiful form of words. But 
 sometimes Wordsworth really does work in the way 
 which he says is the right way. The whole concep- 
 tion and construction, for example, of the Prelude 
 and the Excursion are founded on a subject-matter 
 which is private to the poet himself, and consists for 
 the most part of conversational discourse about 
 external matters not of universal interest. Here 
 undoubtedly the whole process of imagination is 
 analytical, and consequently the forms of expression 
 used are, for the most part, prosaic. Take, for 
 example, the following lines, which are neither 
 better nor worse than hundreds, probably thou- 
 sands, in these poems :
 
 LECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 77 
 
 These serious words 
 Closed the preparatory notices 
 That served my Fellow Traveller to beguile 
 The way while we advanced up that wide vale. 
 
 Who does not perceive that the man who wrote this 
 was not, at the time he wrote it, in the right mood 
 for poetical expression? And accordingly, as he 
 chooses to express himself in metre, he often uses 
 wrong forms, as, for example, in a passage like this, 
 describing his residence in London : 
 
 At leisure then I viewed from day to day 
 
 The spectacles within doors, birds and beasts 
 
 Of every nature, and strange plants convened 
 
 From every clime ; and next those sights that ape 
 
 The absolute presence of reality, 
 
 Expressing, as in mirror, sea and land, 
 
 And what earth is, and what she has to show : 
 
 I do not here allude to subtlest craft, 
 
 By means refined attaining purest ends, 
 
 But imitations, fondly made, in plain 
 
 Confession of man's weakness and his loves. 
 
 Observe that Wordsworth is here working on a 
 subject of his own choosing an " incident and situa- 
 tion from common life," and he is trying to make 
 it fit matter for poetry by showing its relation to his 
 own mind, and yet, for all this, he does not contrive 
 to present his thought in what he calls " a selection 
 of language really used by men." For if he had done 
 this, he would simply have said: "Every day I was 
 accustomed to go to a natural history museum, or a 
 picture gallery, in which scenes from nature were 
 exactly imitated ; " that is to say, he might have
 
 78 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 expressed in twenty-four words what he actually ex- 
 presses in eighty-one. You see, too, that Wordsworth, 
 as he chooses to write in metre on such a subject, is, 
 in spite of himself, forced to use a kind of poetical 
 diction, which makes his style pedantic and obscure. 
 For what man in real life, wishing to describe what 
 he had seen at Kew Gardens, would say that he had 
 " viewed strange plants convened from every clime'' ? 
 Or who would think it worth while to say that the 
 Panorama of Niagara was an exhibition that " apes 
 the absolute presence of reality " ? 
 
 I think that what I have said serves to show that 
 the propriety of poetical expression is the test and 
 the touchstone of the justice of poetical conception. 
 Like all sound principles, Horace's maxim about the 
 right selection of subject is capable of being reversed. 
 Poetry lies in the invention of the right metrical 
 form be it epic, dramatic, lyric, or satiric for the 
 expression of some idea universally interesting to the 
 imagination. When the form of metrical expression 
 seems natural natural, that is, to the genius of the 
 poet and the inherent character of the subject then 
 the subject-matter will have been rightly conceived. 
 When, on the other hand, it is found to be prosaic, 
 obscure, strained, or affected, then we may be sure 
 either that the subject has not been properly selected 
 by the poet, or that the individuality of the poet has, 
 in the treatment, been indulged out of due proportion 
 to the universal nature of the subject. 
 
 Apply this test of what is natural in metrical ex- 
 pression to any composition claiming to be poetically
 
 LECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 79 
 
 inspired, and you will be able to decide whether it 
 fulfils the universal conditions of poetical life, or 
 whether it is one of those phantoms, or, as Bacon 
 calls them, idols of the imagination, which vanish as 
 soon as the novelty of their appearance has exhausted 
 its efi'ect. For instance, the American poet, Walt 
 Whitman, announces his theme, and asks for the 
 sympathy of the reader in these words : 
 
 Oneself I sing, a simple, separate person. 
 
 Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En Masse. 
 
 Poets to come, orators, singers, musicians to come. 
 
 Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for. 
 
 But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than 
 
 before known. 
 Arouse ! for you must justify me ! 
 
 I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns 
 a casual look upon you and then averts his face. 
 
 Leaving it to you to prove and define it. 
 
 Expecting the main thing from you. 
 
 Thou, reader, throbbest life, and pride, and love, the same 
 as I : 
 
 Therefore for thee the following chants. 
 
 To this appeal I think the reader may reply : 
 The subject you have chosen is certainly an idol of 
 the imagination. For if you had anything of universal 
 interest to say about yourself, you could say it in a 
 way natural to one of the metres, or metrical move- 
 ments, established in the English language. AVhat 
 you call metre bears precisely the same relation to 
 these universal laws of expression, as the Mormon 
 Church and the religion of Joseph Smith and Brigham 
 Young bear to the doctrines of Catholic Christendom.
 
 So LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 Again, we have the poetical ideal of the graceful 
 poet whose recent loss we in England have so much 
 cause to deplore. Mr. William Morris's aim in 
 poetry was* to revive the spirit and manner of the 
 past in opposition to the spirit of the present. He 
 says, in his Earthly Paradise : 
 
 Of Heaven and Hell I have no power to sing ; 
 I cannot ease the burden of your fears ; 
 Or make quick-coming death a little thing ; 
 Or bring again the pleasures of past years ; 
 Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears. 
 Or hope again for aught that I can say, 
 The idle singer of an empty day. 
 
 But rather when, aweary of your mirth. 
 
 From full hearts, still unsatisfied, ye sigh ; 
 
 And feeling kindly unto all the earth, 
 
 Grudge every minute as it passes by. 
 
 Made the more mindful that the sweet days die ; 
 
 Remember me a little, then, I pray. 
 
 The idle singer of an empty day. 
 
 The heavy trouble, the bewildering care, 
 
 That weigh us down, who live and earn our bread, 
 
 These idle verses have no power to bear. 
 
 So let us sing of names remembered. 
 
 Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead, 
 
 Nor long time take their memories away 
 
 From us poor singers of an empty day. 
 
 Of this we must say that it is tender, charming, even 
 beautiful, and under existing circumstances peculiarly 
 pathetic ; but still a poetical idol. We feel that the 
 form of expression in metre is not quite natural ; the 
 artifice is apparent. It bears the same relation to the 
 life of poetry that mere Ritualism bears to Religion.
 
 LECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 8i 
 
 The language does not proceed from the source of life 
 that inspired the poetry of Chaucer, Mr. Morris's 
 professed master. Chaucer would never have spoken 
 in this morbid way about life, and death, and action ; 
 he would never have regarded poetry as an opiate 
 for the imagination. His mode of conception was 
 masculine, humorous, dramatic ; he drew his inspira- 
 tion from the life about him, and accordingly the 
 metrical forms he used sprang naturally out of the 
 idiom of his time. 
 
 Once more, there is an idol of the art of poetry which 
 suggests that the source of poetical life is to be found 
 in words rather than in ideas. This is of all poetical 
 idols the most seductive, because it presents strongly 
 one side of the truth, and because it is recommended 
 by many brilliant poetical tours de force. Coleridge 
 defined prose to be words in the right order, poetry 
 to be the best words in the right order. And, 
 doubtless, the mere sound of words has the power of 
 raising imaginative ideas, as we see from Keats's 
 
 lines 
 
 Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell, 
 To toll me back again to my sole self ! 
 
 and we know that the word " nevermore " inspired 
 Edgar Poe with his remarkable poem, T/ie Raven. 
 But words, apart from things, can, as a rule, suggest 
 only fragmentary conceptions of life and nature. 
 What can be more delightfully suggestive of coming 
 poetry than the opening of Kuhla Khan f 
 
 In Xanadu did Knbla Khan 
 
 A stately pleasure-dome decree :
 
 82 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man 
 Down to a sunless sea. 
 
 But, as we know, Nature never provided the comple- 
 tion, nor could she have done so, of that wonderful 
 fragment of poetry. Sometimes, indeed, a whole 
 poem containing a definite idea may be constructed 
 on this principle, and a very fine example is furnished 
 by Mr. Swinburne's Dolores, where the aim of the 
 poet has, apparently, been to group a variety of 
 images round the single central phrase, " Our Lady 
 of Pain." Many of the stanzas in this poem com- 
 pletely satisfy Coleridge's definition of poetry, "the 
 best words in the right order," but, on the other 
 hand, as the inspiration proceeds from Avords rather 
 than ideas, there are many other stanzas in it which 
 have no poetical raiso7i d'etre, and which diminish 
 the effect of the whole composition. This mode of 
 expression belongs to the art of music rather than to 
 the art of poetry. Horace's rule is inverted : the 
 eloquence and order of the metrical arrangement 
 suggest the idea, not the idea the verse. I do not 
 say that such a method of composition is illegitimate ; 
 but it must be evident that the inspiration is of the 
 most fortuitous kind, and that one might as well 
 attempt to make oneself dream the same dream twice 
 over, as to find a regular principle of poetical ex- 
 pression in the metrical combination of words and 
 metaphors. 
 
 Few indeed are the metrical compositions that 
 will stand the test I propose, few the poems that
 
 LECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 83 
 
 answer perfectly to Spenser's description of life in 
 poetry : 
 
 JVise words, taught in numbers for to run, 
 
 Recorded by the Muses, live for ay. 
 
 But this being so, we may well ask ourselves the 
 question, Why is verse so abundantly produced in 
 our time ? Why do we so often find men in these 
 days, either using metre, like Wordsworth in the 
 passages I have cited, where they ought to have 
 expressed themselves in prose, or expressing them- 
 selves in verse in a style so far remote from the 
 standard of diction established in society that they 
 fail to touch the heart ? 
 
 I think the explanation of this curious pheno- 
 menon is that, though metre can only properly be 
 used for the expression of universal ideas, there is in 
 modern society an eccentric or monastic principle at 
 work, which leads men to pervert metre into a 
 luxurious instrument for the expression of merely 
 private ideas. The metrical form of expression is 
 the oldest form of literary language that exists. In 
 the early stages of society it is used for two reasons, 
 first because, as writing has not been invented, it is 
 the only way of preserving memorable thoughts, 
 and secondly because in primitive times what may 
 be called the poetical or ideal method of conceiv- 
 ing nature predominates over the scientific method. 
 Imagination is then stronger than reason, and the 
 poet is at once the story-teller, the theologian, the 
 historian, and the natural philosopher of society. 
 As society emerges from its infancy more scientific
 
 84 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 habits of thought are gradually formed ; the art of 
 writing is invented ; and men find the means of 
 preserving the records of ordinary observation and 
 experience in prose. Science is always withdrawing 
 fresh portions of nature from the rule of imagina- 
 tion ; and no one who is animated by a scientific 
 purpose, and understands how to use language 
 properly, thinks any longer of composing a treatise 
 on astronomy or an historical narrative in verse. 
 
 Yet, in spite of these achievements of civilisation 
 and science, it would be a vast mistake to suppose 
 that society in its later stages can dispense with the 
 poet and the art of metrical composition. The 
 deepest life of society is spiritual, ideal, incapable of 
 analysis. What binds men to each other is the 
 memory of a common origin, the prospects of a 
 common destiny, common perceptions of what is 
 heroic in conduct, common instincts as to what is 
 beautiful in art. The unimpassioned language, suit- 
 able to law and science, suffices not for the embodi- 
 ment of these great elemental ideas. The poet alone 
 possesses the art of giving expression to the con- 
 ceptions of the public conscience, and he is as much 
 bound to interpret the higher feelings of society in 
 the maturity of its development, as the scald or 
 minstrel was bound to act as interpreter for the 
 imagination of the primitive tribe. No other defence 
 of the art of poetry is needed than this, that, only 
 in imaginative creations, metrically expressed, can 
 society behold the image of its own unity, and 
 realise the objects of its own spiritual existence.
 
 POETICAL EXPRESSION 
 
 But since this is so, to pursue any other ideal is 
 ** to speak things nnworthy of Phoebus," and to 
 misapply the purposes of the art. Nevertheless it 
 cannot be denied that contrary views of the end of 
 poetry have asserted themselves in this generation. 
 The vulgar idea of poetry is, that it is something 
 private, peculiar, and opposed to common sense. 
 We have been taught by the poets themselves that 
 the source of poetry lies solely in the mind of the 
 individual poet, and that the life of poetical ex- 
 pression is to be found apart from the active life of 
 society. Philosophers have encouraged this belief. 
 John Stuart Mill attempts to draw a sharp distinc- 
 tion between the genius of the orator and that of the 
 poet ; the one, he says, speaks to be heard, the other 
 to be overheard.^ I venture to say that a more 
 false description of the life and nature of poetry has 
 never been given to the world. At no great epoch 
 of poetical production was the art of the poet ever 
 entirely separated from that of the orator. Did 
 Homer, Pindar, the Greek tragedians, and Aristo- 
 phanes not speak to be heard ? Were the Trouveres, 
 the Troubadours, the Ballad Singers, the Elizabethan 
 dramatists, the English satirists of the Restoration 
 and the Revolution, not dependent on an audience ? 
 There have been, it is true, epochs when the private 
 literary motives approved by Mill have prevailed in 
 poetical composition Alexandrian periods of litera- 
 ture, when the poet, abandoning the representation 
 of the great themes of action and passion, and sick 
 
 ' Dissertations and Discussions, i. 71 (1859).
 
 86 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 of self-love like Malvolio, has indulged himself in 
 the pleasures of soliloquy. But these were also the 
 ages in the history of the world when men for the 
 sake of life had destroyed the causes of living, when 
 a petty materialism had dwarfed their conception of 
 the sublime and the heroic, when liberty had perished, 
 and art languished in decay. 
 
 On this subject I propose to speak more fully in 
 my next lecture on Poetical Decadence. Meantime 
 the course of our argument brings me round to a 
 re-statement of the law of poetry, as it is declared 
 by Horace, and illustrated in the practice of all great 
 classic poets. The secret of enduring poetical life 
 lies in individualising the universal, not in uni- 
 versalising the individual. What is required of the 
 poet above all things is right conception the res 
 lecta potenter of Horace a happy choice of subject- 
 matter which shall at once assimilate readily with 
 the poet's genius, and shall, in Shakespeare's phrase, 
 " show the very age and body of the time his form 
 and pressure." The poet must be able not only to 
 gauge the extent of his own powers, but to divine 
 the necessities of his audience. He must realise the 
 nature of the subject-matter which, in his generation, 
 most needs expression, and know whether it requires 
 to be expressed in the epic, dramatic, lyric, or satiric 
 form. When the subject has been rightly conceived, 
 then, as Horace says, it will instinctively clothe itself 
 in the right form of expression, according to the 
 laws of the art. The poet's theme being of a universal 
 nature, Wordsworth was right in demanding that
 
 LECT. II POETICAL EXPRESSION 87 
 
 his diction should not be very remote from "the 
 real language of men " ; but as the poet's thought is 
 conveyed in verse, the expression of his ideas must 
 accommodate itself to the laws of metre, and these 
 exact a diction far more radically distinct, than 
 Wordsworth imagined, from the forms of prose. 
 As to the more particular character of poetic diction, 
 everything will depend on the individual genius of 
 the poet : the beauties of style must be studied in 
 the works of the great classic poets. Shakespeare 
 has furnished a thousand examples of poetic diction 
 suitable to the requirements of the romantic drama ; 
 the style of Paradise Lost, peculiar as it is, is 
 exactly appropriate to what Pope calls the out-of-the- 
 world nature of the subject; Dryden's character of 
 Zimri, and Pope's lines on the death of Buckingham, 
 reach the highest level of poetic diction in satire ; 
 and, lest I should be thought to depreciate the poetry 
 of our own day, let me cite one out of many suitable 
 passages from Tennyson's In MemoHam, to exemplify 
 the perfection of lyrical composition. The lines are 
 those in which the poet is describing the loss of the 
 individual human life in the total life of nature : 
 
 Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway, 
 The tender blossom flutter down ; 
 Unloved, that beech will gather brown, 
 
 This maple burn itself away ; 
 
 Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair, 
 
 liay round with flames her disk of seed. 
 And many a rose-carnation feed 
 
 With summer spice the humming air ;
 
 88 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 Unloved, by many a sandy bar 
 
 The brook shall babble down the plain, 
 At noon or when the lesser Wain 
 
 Is twisting round the polar star ; 
 
 Uncared for, gird the windy grove. 
 
 And flood the haunts of hern and crake ; 
 Or into silver arrows break 
 
 The sailing moon in creek and cove ; 
 
 Till from the garden and the wild 
 A fresh association blow, 
 And year by year the landscape grow 
 
 Familiar to the stranger's cliild ; 
 
 As year by year the labourer tills 
 
 His wonted glebe, or lops the glades ; 
 And year by year our memory fades 
 
 From all the circle of the hills. 
 
 There is hut one phrase in this passage which I 
 could wish to see altered. " Ttvisting round the 
 polar star " is a mode of expression too fanciful and 
 particular, in my judgment, to blend with the chaste 
 simplicity of the other images. But with this ex- 
 ception the poetical effect is produced by rendering a 
 general idea into language which differs from the 
 ordinary idiom only in the elegance and refinement of 
 the words chosen, and in the perfect propriety with 
 which they adapt themselves to the movement of 
 the verse. Horace's principle is vindicated in 
 practice ; the eloquence and lucid order of the 
 versification prove the justice and universality of 
 the thought.
 
 Ill 
 
 POETICAL DECADENCE 
 
 In my last two lectures I traced the conditions under 
 which Poetry comes into existence in the mind of 
 the poet, and the manner in which it clothes itself 
 with external form. I showed that it was the 
 product of the harmonious fusion of two contrary 
 elements, the Universal and the Individual. By the 
 universal element I mean what we often call by the 
 name Nature : whatever is furnished naturally to the 
 poet's conception by forces outside himself; the 
 sources of inspiration springing from the religion, 
 tradition, civilisation, education of the country to 
 which he belongs ; the general mental atmosphere of 
 the age in which he lives ; the common law of the 
 language in which he composes. By the individual 
 element I mean what we usually call Art ; including 
 all that is contributed by the genius of the poet, and 
 that helps to constitute the characteristic form or 
 mould in which the universal idea is expressed. 
 
 I shall in my present lecture go further, and try 
 to pursue the course of Life in Poetry in the history 
 of the art, because the Art of Poetry has a life of its
 
 90 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 own, exactly aualogous to the life of individual men 
 and of States, proceeding from infancy to maturity 
 and from maturity to decay. Great poetry of any 
 kind is, as a rule, produced within certain well-defined 
 periods of a nation's history, and the culminating 
 point in every such kind of poetry is reached by a 
 gradual ascent to the work of some great repre- 
 sentative or classic poet. When this point has been 
 reached we generally find an equally regular course 
 of declension, represented by poets not without genius, 
 but whose work is always characterised by certain 
 common defects, which denote the exhaustion of the 
 art and give warning of its approaching end. 
 
 In the Greek epic, for example, Homer, marking the 
 zenith of the art, has for his successors the literary 
 composers of the Alexandrian period ; and these 
 again have their epigoni in poets like the Pseudo- 
 Musseus. In the history of the Attic drama, the 
 movement of decline begins almost insensibly with 
 Euripides, but proceeds with increasing speed in 
 Agathon and other tragedians, whose names Time 
 has not cared to preserve. Pastoral poetry has still 
 to be invented, but the epigrammatists of Alex- 
 andria are the only representatives left, after the 
 fourth century, of all the lyric singers of the free 
 Greek cities ; and thus by degrees the voice of Greek 
 poetry dies into silence. Latin epic poetry declines 
 from the height to which it has been raised by Virgil, 
 through Lucan to Statins, from Statins to Claudian, 
 from Claudian to nothingness. The English poetical 
 drama, culminating in Shakespeare, moves down-
 
 LECT. Ill POETICAL DECADENCE 91 
 
 ward to Massinger, and expires in the rhyming 
 tragedies of Dryden and Lee. The ethical and 
 didactic poetry of England, arriving at its grand 
 climacteric in Pope, shows a dwindling force in 
 Johnson and Goldsmith, and reaches its last stage 
 of senility in the sounding emptiness of Erasmus 
 Darwin. 
 
 Now, this law of progress and decline, which is 
 common to all the fine arts, may, I think, be formulated 
 as follows. In the infancy of poetry or painting the 
 universal element of life predominates over the in- 
 dividual; men's imaginative conceptions, as we see 
 in the work of Giotto and Chaucer, are stronger than 
 their powers of technical expression. In the maturity 
 of art there is a perfect balance of the two opposing 
 elements, as shown in the works of Raphael and 
 Sophocles and Shakespeare. In the decadence of 
 art, the individual overbalances the universal : we 
 come to the stage either of insipid mannerism, ex- 
 emplified in the paintings of Carlo Dolci and the 
 poetry of Rogers ; or of violent exaggeration, such as 
 we find in the pictures of Michael Angelo Cara- 
 vaggio, and in tragedies like those of Seneca and 
 Nathaniel Lee. 
 
 I shall ask you therefore to consider the symptoms 
 that betoken the decline of poetry from its culminat- 
 ing point ; and I shall take my illustrations from 
 different periods, which, by universal critical consent, 
 are periods of decadence. The subject is indeed a 
 vast one, but I think I shall be able to establish the 
 truths which I am anxious to impress upon you, by
 
 92 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 presenting the matter in three aspects : (l) The 
 Decline of the Universal in Ages of Poetical Decad- 
 ence. (2) The Exaggeration of the Individual in 
 such ages, (3) The Abdication by Society of its 
 right of judgment in questions of Poetry and Art. 
 
 (1) As regards the Decline of the Universal, the 
 most vivid examples of this phenomenon are furnished 
 by the history of Greek poetry, because the Greek 
 genius was so comprehensive that there was no form 
 of poetical expression in which it did not produce 
 work of the highest excellence. Let us in the first 
 place make our observations on the ground of the Greek 
 drama. Probably few critics would care to contest 
 the opinion that the culminating point of Greek 
 tragedy is to be found in the (Edii^us Rex, and 
 indeed the reason for this is plain. In the early 
 days of the Greek drama the universal predominated 
 strongly over the individual. Every one who listens 
 to me knows that the form of Greek drama was 
 worked out almost instinctively by means of a union 
 between the Greek myths and the Chorus, which was 
 the original mouthpiece of the worship of Dionysus. 
 Now, the essence of the drama lies in the exhibition 
 of action ; but, even as late as the time of ^schylus, 
 the religious, or didactic, or universal element in 
 tragic conception was so powerful that, in plays like 
 the Agamemnon and the Eumenides, though the 
 course of the action is well defined, the Chorus seems 
 to be a more important part of the whole structure 
 than the actors themselves. In the CEdipus Rex, on 
 the other hand, there is a perfect balance between
 
 LECT. in POETICAL DECADENCE 93 
 
 Nature and Art ; the moral of the play is expressed 
 mainly by means of the action. Pity and terror are 
 aroused by the tragic order in which the events are 
 made to succeed each other ; the elevation to which 
 the hero is raised by his genius and wisdom before 
 the great TreptTveTeia to which he is exposed ; the 
 irony which makes the whole horror of the situation 
 apparent to the spectators, while the person most 
 afl'ected remains unconscious of the truth ; the crash 
 of ruin in which he is involved by the antecedent 
 sins of others rather than by his own all this is as 
 much in accordance with the Greek sense of religion 
 as are the doctrines of the Chorus in the trairedies of 
 iEschylus ; and it is more in harmony with the nature 
 of the drama as a form of poetic art. 
 
 But when we come to Euripides, with whom 
 begins the period of tragic decadence, the state of the 
 ideal atmosphere has manifestly changed. Poet and 
 audience have both lost much of their old religious 
 belief, and this mental chano^e brings with it a 
 corresponding change in the form of the drama. The 
 Chorus, no longer the natural mouthpiece of the 
 universal feeling of awe and reverence, dwindles into 
 a mere instrument for the invention of new melodies ; 
 on the other hand, the story is not arranged for the 
 purpose of bringing out the ideal significance of the 
 situation, but to display the poet's ingenuity in tlie 
 construction of his plot, or some other kind of artistic 
 cleverness. And this tendency was doubtless strongly 
 developed by Agathon, who, if there is any truth in 
 Aristophanes' representation of him in the Thesmo-
 
 94 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 phoriazusaCy must have been a typical representative 
 of those who follow art for art's sake. 
 
 Let us next turn to the Greek epic, and contrast 
 the work of its maturity and decadence as illustrated 
 respectively in the Iliad and the ArgonaiLtica of 
 Apollouius Rhodius. One of the most striking 
 characteristics in Homer's poetry is the richness and 
 variety of its materials, the universal nature of its 
 interest. The poet is at once a theologian, a states- 
 man, a moralist, and observe this particularly a 
 painter. There is scarcely an object in nature which 
 he does not represent ; and yet so perfect in him is 
 the balance between the universal and the individual, 
 that each of his conceptions is placed in its just 
 relation for the purposes of art. Those exquisite 
 touches of pathos, seeming to spring instinctively out 
 of the narrative ; those lofty strokes of rhetoric, so 
 proper to the occasion ; those detailed descriptions 
 which embody the very genius of painting all is 
 adapted to elevate, to humanise, to relieve the pro- 
 gress of the action. 
 
 How different is the case with Apollonius Rhodius ! 
 The master from whom Virgil learned so much was no 
 mean poet ; but in him whatever is excellent comes 
 scarcely at all from the universality of human interest 
 which abounds in the Iliad: almost everything 
 depends on the ingenuity of the artist. I do not 
 remember in the Argonautica a single passage of deep 
 natural pathos, a single general reflection or observation 
 universally true, a single effort of soul-stirring rhetoric. 
 All these elements have disappeared from the life of
 
 LECT. Ill POETICAL DECADENCE 95 
 
 the epic ; what remains to it is the genius of painting. 
 
 Apollonius's descriptions are admirable, whether he 
 
 exerts himself to paint the external symptoms of love 
 
 in Medea, or to heighten a scene of romantic adventure. 
 
 As a specimen of his powers in the latter class take 
 
 his description of Medea hypnotising the snake that 
 
 guarded the Golden Fleece,^ which may be translated 
 
 thus : 
 
 When to his ears the sweet enchantment came, 
 A languor shuddered through the serpent's frame. 
 Through all his length the soothing influence rolled, 
 And loosed the spiry volumes fold on fold ; 
 As swells a single wave mid Ocean's sleep. 
 Sullen and soundless, through the stagnant deep : 
 Yet, though the powerful charm benumbed the rest. 
 High o'er the ground up-towered his grisly crest : 
 Wide gaped his jaws to seize their prey. But now 
 The dauntless maiden dipped her charmed bough 
 In the fell broth, and on his eye-balls flung 
 The magic dew, and, while she sprinkled, sung ; 
 Till, 'neath the charming voice and odours shed 
 From the drugged potion, sank the languid head. 
 And through the trunks, inert and brown as they. 
 The lifeless coils stretched rood on rood away. 
 
 This reminds one of Turner's picture of Apollo 
 killing the Python. It is the work of a great painter. 
 And yet how inferior to Homer is Apollonius even on 
 his own ground ! Homer will often stand still to 
 breathe his imagination, in the midst of his rapid 
 narrative, by elaborating a simile beyond what is 
 required for the likeness itself ; but he never does 
 this without making the simile really illustrate the 
 action. For instance, he illustrates his account of 
 
 ' Argonautica, book iv. 149-161.
 
 96 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 Agamemnon watching the mustering of the troops of 
 the two Ajaces by the following simile : " As when 
 from a rock a herdman sees a cloud coming over the 
 sea before the blast of the west wind, and as he 
 stands afar off, it seems to be rushing across the sea 
 blacker than pitch, carrying with it a mighty whirl- 
 wind ; as he looks he shudders, and drives his flock 
 under a cave."^ 
 
 Apollonius admired and imitated Homer's manner 
 of painting : he is even more picturesque' than Homer 
 himself ; but there is this diff'erence between them, that 
 the poet of Alexandria introduces similes that do not 
 illustrate anything, merely for the sake of the painting. 
 Here is a characteristic example. " As when a sun- 
 beam plays on the side of a house, reflected from water 
 which has just been poured into a cistern, or perhaps 
 a pail : hither and thither it dances on the quick eddy ; 
 even so " What ? " even so the maiden's heart in 
 her breast was tossing, and tears of pity flowed from 
 her eyes."^ Or take this, which is still more 
 elaborate : "As when a poor working woman heaps 
 straws under a burning log, while she is at her task 
 of spinning wool, that she may make a blaze for her- 
 self at night beneath her roof, waking betimes ; and 
 the flame rising wondrously from the little log con- 
 sumes all the straw." A very charming and pathetic 
 picture ! But what do you suppose this poor working 
 woman is like ? Strange to say, like Medea in love ! 
 "Even so," says the poet, "beneath her breast cruel 
 love burned always secretly, and he changed her 
 
 ^ Iliad, book iv. 275. - Argonautica, book iii. 756-761.
 
 LECT. Ill POETICAL DECADENCE 97 
 
 tender cheek from red to pale by reason of the 
 anguish of her mind." ^ 
 
 Now, to measure the decay of the universal in 
 Greek epic poetry by a positive standard, the best 
 way is to compare this kind of thing, which is 
 really the best that Apollonius Rhodius can give, 
 with the contrast between the eloquence of Menelaus 
 and Odysseus as described by Antenor. You may 
 feel the greatness of Homer in Pope's version : 
 
 When Atreus' son harangued the listening train, 
 
 Just was his sense, and his expression plain, 
 
 His words succinct, yet full, without a fault. 
 
 He spoke no more than just the thing he ought : 
 
 But when Ulysses rose, in thought profound. 
 
 His modest eyes he fixed upon the ground ; 
 
 As one unskilled or dumb, he seemed to stand. 
 
 Nor raised his head, nor stretched his sceptred hand ; 
 
 But when he speaks, what elocution flows ! 
 
 Soft as the fleeces of descending snows, 
 
 The copious accents full, with easy art, 
 
 Melting they fall, and sink into the heart.- 
 
 Thus we find in Greek poetry the drama 
 declines and disappears : the epic declines and 
 disappears. For a moment you have a flash of fine 
 inventive genius in the Idylls of Theocritus. But 
 where does Theocritus go for his invention ? Though 
 the inspiration of poets in the great days of Greek 
 art proceeded essentially from civic sources, Theo- 
 critus has to go into the country, and to refresh the 
 jaded imagination of the eft'ete Alexandrians with the 
 rustic melodies of shepherd life. 
 
 > ArgonatUica, book iii. 291-298. '^ liiafl, book iii. 213. 
 
 H
 
 98 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 At last there is no distinctive form of poetry left 
 to the Greek muse but the epigram. I am tempted 
 to linger for a moment over this form of the Greek 
 poetic genius : there is something in it so beautiful, 
 so brilliant, and so tasteful, that, even at the very- 
 last, it seems wrong to think of decay in connection 
 with the immortal freshness of the race. On what- 
 ever subject Greek epigrams are written, they 
 contain a touch of poetry or graceful ingenuity that 
 is not to be found in the similar work of any other 
 people. Who does not feel, for example, the 
 Universal in the epigram assigned to Plato ? 
 
 dcTTepa^ u(TaOpe?'i, a.(TTijp e/xos ' etOe yevoifJLi^v 
 ov/aavos, cos TroAAots op^fxacriv el<i (re jSkeiro). 
 
 Dost gaze on stars, my star ? That I might be 
 Yon heaA^en, to gaze with myriad eyes on thee ! 
 
 Or in the beautiful and deeply pathetic elegy 
 of Callimachus on the poems of his dead friend 
 Heracleitus ? 
 
 ttTTc Tts HpaKXeiTe reov {xopov, c? & fj. SaKpv 
 rjyayiv, i/xvi'jcrdrjv 8 ocroraKis dp,<f)OTpoL 
 
 i^Aior V Xi<r)(^r) KUTcSwra/xei', aAAa cru [Xiv ttov 
 ^eiv AXiKapvacrcrev TerpaTraXai ctttoSi^' 
 
 al 81 Teat ^(oovctlv ar^Sove? yo-tv o TravTWV 
 upTraKTrjp Ai87ys ovk ctti X^^P^ fSaXei. 
 
 They told me, Heracleitus, you were dead : 
 Tears filled my eyes, to think, in days long fled. 
 How oft we two talked down the sun ; but thou, 
 Halicarnassian friend, art ashes now ! ^ 
 
 ^ I have a vague recollection of having seen the rendering of this couplet 
 somewhere, but, if I have taken it from anybody, I cannot discover, after 
 long search, to whom I owe it.
 
 LECT. HI POETICAL DECADENCE 99 
 
 Yet live thy nightingales, and on that band 
 All-robbing Death shall never lay his hand. 
 
 In the vein of pure wit, the following is probably 
 unmatched : 
 
 >(/3ixr6v dvrjp evpibv eAivrev l3p6\ov, avTap 6 ^^pvfrov 
 ov A,i7rv ov)(^ evpujv T]^(.v ov vpe f^po^ov. 
 
 I doubt if any other language could tell the story 
 so naturally and pointedly in two lines. Ausonius 
 gives it in four, in order to make the situation clear, 
 and, even with this license, his version is extremely 
 flat and prosaic.^ Dr. Johnson's rendering is clever : 
 
 Hie aurum ut reperit, laqueum abjicit, alter ut aurum 
 Non reperit nectit quern reperit laqueum. 
 
 But his "alter ut aurum non reperit" is not so 
 clear as the Greek, and he avoids a difficulty by 
 putting all his verbs into the present tense. The 
 following is the best I can make of it in English : 
 
 Tom meant to die, but, finding gold, found for his noose no 
 
 use ; 
 But Dick, his gold who could not find, used what he found, 
 
 the noose. 
 
 But when all is said, such clear-cut and perfect 
 jewels of individual thought do not compensate us 
 for the loss of the spontaneous treasures of creative 
 imagination, poured forth by the Greek mind in the 
 great days of its liberty, like gold brought down on 
 the stream of the Pactolus. 
 
 ' Tlifsauro iiivcnto qui liniina iiiortiH iiiihat 
 Liquit ovHiis laqueum quo jxiiturus erat. 
 At ijui quod terra alxlidcrat non reppcrit aurum 
 Quern laqueum iuvenit ne.xuit et periit.
 
 loo LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 Not essentially different is the lesson derived from 
 the history of Latin poetry. The Roman genius or 
 at least the art of poetry rises in an ascending scale 
 from Lucretius and Catullus to Virgil, from whom 
 it moves in a declining course through Lucan to 
 Ausonius. In Lucretius there is an abounding 
 source of native energy, a rush and volume of in- 
 spiration which almost swallows up art, though of 
 this, as Cicero says, there are many traces in the 
 De Rerum Natura. Something of the Universal, 
 something of poetic energy, had been consciously 
 lost even in Virgil's time, as we see from his com- 
 plaint at the opening of the third Georgic : 
 
 Cetera quae vacuas tenuissent carmine mentes 
 Omnia jam vulgata. 
 
 But Virgil knew how to repair the loss ; and 
 having selected such a truly Roman theme as the 
 Georgics, he produced, in his treatment of it, that 
 complete balance between the Universal and the 
 Individual which Lucretius had failed to attain. 
 When we come to Ausonius, on the contrary, 
 we find that the universal element has almost 
 vanished : there is, for example, in his very charming 
 poem on the Moselle, as compared with the Georgics, 
 a loss of poetical life almost exactly analogous to 
 that which occurs in Greek poetry between the 
 period of Homer and the period of ApoUonius. The 
 Georgics are full of beautiful pictures, but they are 
 also full of the genius of Roman action, and of the 
 Roman imperial spirit ; while the poem on the
 
 POETICAL DECADENCE 
 
 Moselle depends for its charm entirely on its land- 
 scape-painting. 
 
 I come to our own country. Did time permit 
 it would be easy to show in detail that an exact 
 parallel exists between the rise and decline of the 
 poetical drama in Athens and in England. In 
 England, as in Athens, the idea of tragedy arose 
 out of the religion of the country. Shakespeare's 
 tragedies are a direct development of the miracle 
 plays and moralities, just as the tragedies of ^Eschylus 
 and Sophocles are the final results of the evolution 
 of the drama from the rude exhibitions given by 
 Thespis at the festival of Dionysus. The history of 
 the tragic principle is the same in England and in 
 Greece. In the Attic drama the universal underlying 
 idea of the greater tragedians is Misfortune, necessarily 
 entailed on families and peoples by the curse of heredi- 
 tary sin : this idea was derived from the popular 
 myths on which the drama was founded. In the 
 Shakespearian tragedy the fundamental idea is Mis- 
 fortune, brought about by the weakness and corruption 
 of the human will ; and this idea of conflict between 
 good and evil, the natural product of the Christian 
 faith, was also the central principle determining the 
 action of all the ancient miracle plays and moralities. 
 It may be said therefore to be the universal idea of 
 tragedy in the mind of the English people, and, in one 
 shape or another, it survived on the English stage so 
 long as the poetical drama continued to flourish. 
 When the stage was revived after the Restoration, this 
 fundamental idea had vanished as a motive of tragedy.
 
 I02 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 Plays were then written to embody some abstract 
 idea of romantic love, or honour, or absolute mon- 
 archy, favoured by the Court, but not indigenous in 
 the mind of the people. The universal element in 
 the poetic drama was extinct ; and the poetic drama 
 itself, having no root, withered away. 
 
 It is the same with our epic poetry. The English 
 idea of epic action was composite, made up of many 
 contrary elements ecclesiastical, chivalric, civic, 
 Christian and Pagan and it was long before these 
 elements could find the right form of organic ex- 
 pression. We see them trying to struggle into 
 poetic life in the Faery Queen, a jDoem which is 
 overflowing with imaginative matter ; but they fail 
 to assume in it a perfectly consistent and intelligible 
 shape ; the English epic does not settle into its ideal 
 unity until a mould is found for it in Paradise Lost, 
 where all the elements treated by Spenser are mixed 
 with each other in such right proportion that the 
 just poetical balance is attained. After Milton, the 
 universal idea of the epic so rapidly dwindles that 
 it has no exponent in English poetry but Sir Richard 
 Blackmore, who, as Dryden says, " wrote to the 
 rumbling of his chariot wheels." 
 
 (2) I pass on to consider the second symptom of 
 poetical decadence, namely the exaggeration of the 
 individual element, which is the necessary result of 
 the decline of the universal. As the sense of poetry 
 dwindles in society at large, as people less and less 
 care for and believe in what is beyond and above 
 themselves, the poet endeavours more and more to
 
 I.ECT. Ill POETICAL DECADENCE 103 
 
 fill up the gap in imagination by novelty in art. 
 Observe how this was the case on the stage at 
 Athens. It is evident that neither Euripides himself 
 nor a very considerable portion of his audience 
 cared anything for the myths which formed the 
 subject of the tragic drama, except in so far as they 
 provided a groundwork of supposed fact on which plays 
 could be artistically constructed. The moral sentiment 
 counted for nothing ; what Euripides wanted above 
 all things was a subject that had not been treated in 
 poetry before. Hence he chose just those myths for 
 representation which his greater predecessors had left 
 untouched, and he defended his practice on the 
 ground that he was only representing realities. You 
 know how ^schylus deals with his argument in TJie 
 Frogs. Euripides asks (I use Frere's translation) : 
 
 But after all what is the horrible mischief ? 
 
 My poor Sthenobceas, what harm have they done 1 
 
 ^-Eschylus replies : 
 
 The example is folIoAved, the practice has gained, 
 And women of family, fortune, and worth, 
 Be^vildered with shame, in a passionate fury, 
 Have poisoned themselves for Bellerophon's sake. 
 
 Euripides : But at least you'll allow that I never invented it ; 
 Phaedra's aflair was a matter of fact. 
 
 yEschylus : A fact with a vengeance ! but horril>le facts 
 
 Should be buried in silence, not bruited abroad, 
 Nor brought forth on the stage, nor emblazoned in 
 
 poetry. 
 Children and boys have a teacher assigned them ; 
 The bard is a master for manhood and youth, 
 Bound to instruct them in virtue and truth, 
 Beholden and bound. ^ 
 
 ' Aristophanes, Rancr, 10-19-1057.
 
 I04 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 Euripides agaiu, if he chose an old myth, cast 
 about in all directions for a new way in which to 
 treat it. iEschylus and Sophocles roused pity and 
 terror by the ideal nature of the tragic situation : 
 Euripides sought to rouse the feeling of compassion 
 by stage effects, making his characters poor and 
 lame, dressing them in rags, and, generally speaking, 
 reducing the myth as far as possible to the level of 
 actual life. He endeavoured also to attract attention 
 and excite wonder by novelties of thought and ex- 
 pression, making his dramatis personae say things 
 which he knew would shock the prejudices of the 
 majority of his audience, and would please the 
 cultivated and clever minority: "Who knows whether 
 living is not the same as dying ? " " The tongue 
 swore, but the mind remained unsworn," and the 
 like. 
 
 Still, when all is said, Euripides was a great poet, 
 and his art was kept within due bounds by the sense 
 of the Universal still surviving in his audience. If we 
 wish to study the exaggeration of the Individual in 
 poetry, the most striking examples of it are to be 
 found in the plays of Seneca. All Seneca's plays 
 are founded on Greek myths ; and of course these 
 myths were in themselves nothing to him : they did 
 not in any way form part of the Roman conscience ; 
 moreover, his plays were never meant for acting ; 
 hence the sole motive of their composition was his 
 desire to match himself as a poet with the tragedians 
 of Athens, and to do something in tragedy which 
 they had not done. Observe then how he goes
 
 POETICAL DECADENCE 
 
 to work. In his Phaedra he enters into com- 
 petition with Euripides. Euripides, though he over- 
 stepped due bounds in the selection of the subject, 
 treated it with tragic instinct, and invested the 
 character of Phaedra in his Hippolytus with dignity 
 and nobility. Seneca aimed solely at giving an 
 exhibition of frenzied female passion, and his re- 
 presentation of Phaedra's character is so horrible that 
 I cannot use it for the purposes of illustration. 
 Again, in his Oedipus, Seneca matches himself with 
 Sophocles, and of course the result is still worse. 
 You can imagine for yourselves the lengths to 
 which exaggeration carries him from the single fact 
 that, after the awful ireptireTeia in the story, he 
 positively ventures to imagine a meeting and a 
 dialogue between (Edipus and Jocasta. In the 
 Trachiniae Sophocles represents the terrible death of 
 Hercules by means of a poisoned garment, which has 
 been sent to him by Deianira, under a misconception. 
 The hero in the midst of frightful suffering meets 
 his end with manly resolution ; but all that Sophocles 
 makes him say is I use the excellent translation of 
 Mr. Lewis Campbell : 
 
 Stubborn heart, ere yet again 
 Wakes the fierce rebound of {uiin. 
 While the evil holds aloof, 
 Thou, with bit of diamond proof, 
 Curb thy cry, with forced will 
 Seeming to do gladly still. 
 
 In his Hercules Oetaens, Seneca supposes that the 
 garment was sent to Hercules by Deianira in a
 
 io6 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 moment of mad jealousy. His mother Alcmena ex- 
 horts him to die with fortitude, to which the hero 
 makes the following reply : "If Caucasus exposed me 
 to be feasted on by the beak of the greedy vulture, 
 though all Scythia groaned, no tear or groan should 
 be wrung from me. If the wandering Symplegades 
 should crush me between their rocks, I would flinch 
 not from the dread of each returning shock. Let 
 Pindus fall upon me, and Hsemus, and Athos who 
 breaks the Thracian waves, and Mimas shaking off" 
 the thunderbolt of Jove. Nay, mother, though the 
 world itself should fall upon me, and on the world 
 the chariot of Phoebus all in flames should fire my 
 couch, no coward shriek should subdue the will of 
 Hercules. Let ten thousand wild beasts descend and 
 rend me all together. Let the Stymphalian bird on 
 one side with fierce yells, and on the other the bull 
 with all the terrors of his neck batter me ; let all the 
 monsters Earth breeds and dreadful Sinis hurl them- 
 selves on my limbs. Though I be dragged in pieces 
 I will keep silence."^ But if he means to keep 
 silence, why so many words ? Absence of inspiration, 
 exaggeration of art ! 
 
 It will suffice if I give you one more example of 
 the exaggerated art which arises out of the exhaustion 
 of nature. It is perfectly plain that both Dante and 
 Cowley derive their poetical ideas from the same 
 source, namely, the Scholastic Philosophy, though 
 one wrote when that philosophy had reached its 
 zenith, and the other when it was in the last age of 
 
 J Hercules Oetaeus, 1378-1396.
 
 POETICAL DECADENCE 107 
 
 decline. Each of these poets makes use of objects of 
 sense, in order to convey to the mind of the reader 
 an image of some unseen spiritual form of life. 
 Dante gives his reason for this practice, which is as 
 follows : " It is necessary to speak thus to your wit, 
 since only from an object of sense does it apprehend 
 what it afterwards makes the subject of understand- 
 ing. Hence the Scripture condescends to your 
 capacity, and attributes feet and hands to God, 
 meaning something else ; and Holy Church represents 
 to you in human likeness Gabriel, and Michael, and 
 the other who made Tobias whole acrain."^ See how 
 real this universal belief makes Dante's imagery. 
 Describing the appearance of certain souls whom he 
 met in the moon's sphere, he says : " As through 
 glasses transparent and polished, or through waters 
 clear and calm, not so deep as to make the bottom 
 dark, the lines of our faces are so faintly returned 
 that a pearl on a white forehead comes not with less 
 force against our eyes ; so saw I many faces ready to 
 speak." ^ Judging these to be reflections, he turns 
 his head behind him to see the objects from which 
 they proceed ; but Beatrice, "with a smile glowing in 
 her holy eyes," explains to him that these appearances 
 are true substances. Compare with this Cowley's 
 description of the Tree of Knowledge : 
 
 The sacred tree midst the fair orchard grew ; 
 
 The phoenix Truth did on it rest, 
 
 And bixilt his perfumed nest, 
 That right Porphyrian tree, which did time logic show : 
 
 * J'aradLio, canto iv. 40. * /bid. can to iii. 10.
 
 io8 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 Each leaf did learned notions give ; 
 The apples were demonstrative : 
 So clear their colour and divine, 
 The very shade they cast did other lights outshine. 
 
 Clearly there is nothing natural here ; the poet 
 merely wants to make a display of his art art which 
 is in itself poor, because its mechanism is glaringly 
 apparent : nothing is required but to think of the 
 ideas suggested by "tree," "leaf," and "apples," and 
 to couple them in a verse with the ideas suggested by 
 "logic," "learned notions," "demonstrations." 
 
 (3) The last symptom of poetical decadence 
 which need be considered is the Abdication by 
 Society of its right of judgment in matters of Art 
 and Taste. In all great periods of poetical produc- 
 tion this right is freely exercised. Sometimes the 
 people criticises in public, as at Athens, where judges 
 representing the spectators decided, rightly or wrongly, 
 on the merits of the dramatists w^ho competed before 
 them for the prize. Sometimes the standard of taste 
 is determined by the voice of a few literary critics 
 who are felt to represent the sense of the community, 
 men like the Quintilius Varus spoken of by Horace, 
 who could say to the poet, " Correct this and that," 
 because as both had the same universal idea in their 
 minds, the critic could point out to the poet the 
 places in which his expression fell short of what was 
 ideally right. But when this universal sense of law 
 in art decays, then the average man begins to doubt 
 about the truth of his own perceptions ; and the 
 strong-willed artist introduces such novelties as he
 
 LECT. Ill POETICAL DECADENCE 109 
 
 may choose. The individual becomes despotic, and, 
 like all despots, he instinctively fortifies himself 
 with a bodyguard, consisting partly of fanatical 
 admirers, partly of those who find their account in 
 imposing on the public. 
 
 This is the origin of the Coterie, which in all 
 ages of artistic decline is a powerful factor in direct- 
 ing the fashion of taste. The poetical decadence of 
 Greece enjoyed a comparative freedom from the 
 plague, because the Greek genius was so richly 
 endowed that an idea of truth and nature survived 
 the loss of political liberty ; yet in Alexandria the 
 coterie of Callimachus was able to prevent Apollonius 
 Rhodius from obtaining a hearing. The coterie 
 throve at Rome in the Silver Age of Latin Literature ; 
 and from the letters of Pliny the younger we can 
 easily divine how the machinery of admiration was 
 prepared beforehand, and worked by a claque at the 
 public readings and recitations. When the last of 
 the great mediaeval Italian poets had said his say, a 
 hundred literary academies began to squabble over 
 the rival merits of Ariosto and Tasso. In France the 
 decay of mediaeval Romance was emphasised by the 
 enthusiasm with which it was cultivated in Made- 
 moiselle Scudery's little literary circle ; and the 
 Pr^cieuses went on copying the obsolete fashions of 
 the Troubadours till they were extinguished by the 
 ridicule of Moliere. In England the poetical barren- 
 ness of the last quarter of the eighteenth century 
 was illustrated in the notorious coterie of Delia 
 Crusca, who, with Laura Maria and Anna Matilda,
 
 no LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 attitudinised before a gaping public, and fell at last 
 too easy victims to the somewhat laboured satire of 
 Gifford. 
 
 This brings me naturally to the conclusion I 
 desire to draw from my argument. You will have 
 observed that all my examples of poetical decadence 
 have been taken from the historic periods of litera- 
 ture, and that I have said nothinof about the art and 
 poetry of our own day ; had I attempted to do so I 
 should have been in fault, because that would have 
 involved the assumption that we are living in an age 
 of artistic decline. Whether this is or is not the 
 case, posterity alone can decide with certainty ; but 
 meantime it is of the highest importance that we 
 should be able to form an opinion on the matter, 
 since we have Matthew Arnold's authority for the 
 statement that '* in poetry, when it is worthy of 
 its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find 
 an ever surer and surer stay." Poetry which is to 
 fulfil a duty of that kind must not be of a decadent 
 order. 
 
 Now modern society finds itself face to face with 
 this phenomenon, that the present creative tendency 
 in all forms of art is opposed to tradition. The 
 Preraphaelite movement in English poetry and paint- 
 ing ; the movement of the Symbolists in French 
 poetry ; the revolution effected by Wagner in German 
 music all of which claim to be the determining factors 
 in the art of the future agree in this, that they have 
 broken with the artistic principles of the past. 
 Moreover, the ideas involved in these movements
 
 POETICAL DECADENCE iii 
 
 have given rise to a most interesting dispute between 
 the representatives of science and the votaries of art. 
 On the one side the artists say to society : " There is 
 coming a new heaven and a new earth. Old things 
 have passed away ; all things have become new. 
 Religion is powerless : Science is ' bankrupt ' " that 
 is their phrase : " Art alone, mystical, symbolic, 
 spiritualistic art, can supply the void in the human 
 imagination." On the other side come the men of 
 science, represented by Herr Max Nordau, a name of 
 European reputation, and they say: "Do not trust 
 these artists ; they are charlatans, w^ho, so far from 
 being Apostles and Prophets, are to be classed as 
 * Mattoides,' ' Circulars,' ' Graphomaniacs,' and other 
 varieties of hysterical patients." Who shall decide 
 when doctors disagree ? 
 
 I confess that, when I read Herr Nordau's book 
 on " Degeneration," from which I have extracted 
 these names, and which is full of vigorous and viva- 
 cious thought and admirable literary criticism, I 
 thought that he was intending to take a humorous 
 revenge on the artists, for having called him a member 
 of a " bankrupt " company ; and that he had hit on 
 the happy device of the philosopher who, having 
 fallen into a dispute with a voluble fishwife, reduced 
 her to silence by calling her " an isosceles triangle." 
 But closer study showed me that the book was written 
 with true Teutonic seriousness. Frivolous observers 
 may regard art and poetry as the product of mere 
 fashion and whim. Not so the man of science, 
 who treats them as belonging to the department of
 
 112 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 pathology. " The physician," says Herr Nordau, " re- 
 cognises in the tendencies of contemporary art and 
 poetry, in the style of the creators of mystic, symbolic, 
 decadent works, and in the attitude of their admirers, 
 in the aesthetic impulses and instincts of fashionable 
 society, a concurrence of two well-defined pathologic 
 states with w^hich he is perfectly well acquainted, 
 degeneration and hysteria ; the lower degrees of 
 which are called neurasthenia." 
 
 Do you ask how this is proved ? The late M. 
 Paul Verlaine, the poetical chief of the French sym- 
 bolists, wrote an Art of Poetry, in which he lays 
 down rules very much opposed to those of Horace. 
 M. Verlaine's portrait shows, it appears, that the 
 shape of his skull resembles that of the degenerate 
 hysterics whom Lombroso classifies as born criminals. 
 What then can be more reasonable than to conclude 
 that the new French Art of Poetry is the product of 
 hysteria ? Again, in one of his poems, M. Verlaine 
 calls very frequently on the name of the Virgin. Of 
 course, says Herr Nordau ; exactly the same symp- 
 toms were noted by Dr. Legrain in an omnibus driver 
 suflering from hereditary mania. Mr. Rossetti, in a 
 ballad, employs a burden, which is certainly as sense- 
 less as it is ugly, " Eden bower's in flower," and " 
 the flower and the hour ! " Clearly, Herr Nordau 
 thinks, this is a case of echolalia, a mode of utterance 
 which seems to prevail among imbeciles and idiots. 
 
 Now, when these pathological methods of judg- 
 ment are applied to works of art, I think we may 
 venture to say, even to men of science, Ne sutor supra
 
 LECT. Ill POETICAL DECADENCE 113 
 
 crepidam. The methods are unscientific. Unless 
 Herr Nordau can prove that he has followed all the 
 operations of a poet's brain when he is composing, it 
 is not scientific to couple his case with that of the 
 madman or idiot, whose symptoms can be watched 
 in the ward of a hospital. And, again, unless his 
 investigations in the history of poetry have been 
 very much more extensive than I imagine, it is not 
 scientific to ascribe the practice of a poet to a physical 
 cause, when it may have been the result of mere 
 literary imitation. Will Herr Nordau, for instance, 
 venture to say that, when Shakespeare introduces 
 such a line as, " With hey, with hey I the thrush and 
 the jay ! " into a song, he does so under the influence 
 of hysteria ? Or when he finds, as he may, examples 
 of echolalia in the poetry of the Greeks and the 
 Romans, has he evidence to show that these people 
 were widely afflicted with neurasthenia ? 
 
 There is indeed something of question -begging 
 in Herr Nordau's whole arorument. " The ancient 
 
 O 
 
 Northern myth," says he, " contained the frightful 
 
 dogma of a Twilight of the Gods. In our days the 
 
 finest imaginations are haunted with the sombre 
 
 apprehension of a Twilight of Nations, in which sun 
 
 and stars are gradually extinguished, and in the 
 
 midst of a dying Nature men perish with their 
 
 institutions and works." In other words, the whole 
 
 of modern society is incurably afflicted with hysteria : 
 
 hence all modern art and poetry must necessarily 
 
 reflect the universal disease. 
 
 Conclusions of this kind are not very respectful 
 
 I
 
 114 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 to the human race, to the judgment of which even 
 men of science must submit their opinions ; and 
 perhaps they are somewhat premature. It may be, 
 of course, that time will justify Herr Nordau's fore- 
 bodings, and that the historian if any historians are 
 left will be able to trace the ruin of a perished 
 society to the ravages of hysteria. Meantime we, 
 who live in the present, are bound to regard the 
 artist, the individual who receives pleasure from art, 
 and the organised body of individuals who judge of 
 art, as responsible beings, who have as natural a capa- 
 city for deciding what is good or bad in the principles 
 of taste as for perceiving what is right or wrong in 
 the practice of morals. And hence, when the modern 
 painters and poets and musicians come to us, telling 
 us that the principles of ancient art are obsolete, and 
 that they themselves can supply us with new sources 
 of imaginative pleasure, and even fill the void caused 
 by the loss of religion, it is not sufficient to dismiss 
 them as " mattoides," or " graphomaniacs," or " cir- 
 culars," even though they may have fairly provoked 
 this kind of retaliation by speaking of the " bank- 
 ruptcy of science." On the other hand, they can 
 hardly expect us to accept their own estimate of 
 themselves without examination. We ought to con- 
 sider patiently what they have to tell us ; and my 
 main object in this series of lectures is to suggest a 
 method of induction from experience and observation, 
 by which society may be able to test the quality of 
 the pleasure which modern artists are offering to our 
 imagination.
 
 LECT. Ill POETICAL DECADENCE 115 
 
 I have shown in my earlier lectures that all poets 
 whose works have provided the world with enduring 
 pleasure have followed a universal mode of concep- 
 tion, and have conformed to certain invariable laws 
 of expression. I have shown to-day that the work 
 of all poets produced in periods of undoubted de- 
 cadence is distinguished by other characteristics also 
 invariable, also universal. In support of my argu- 
 ment I have not relied upon a single opinion that 
 has not received the critical consent of ages, or cited 
 a single fact that is not capable of positive verifica- 
 tion, in so far as the subject admits of this. I think 
 therefore that, in judging of the value of any modern 
 poem, I have the right to infer that, in so far as it 
 is conceived or expressed in a manner fundamentally 
 difierent from the great living poems of the world, it 
 is unlikely to contain the principle of enduring life ; 
 while in so far as it reproduces those particular 
 features we have been considering to-day, it is in all 
 probability the fruit of poetical decadence. 
 
 Let me apply this test, as a crucial instance, to 
 the principles and practice of modern P'rench poetry, 
 because in France, as is usual, the leaders of the new 
 School of Art defend their innovations on the ground 
 of logic. Speaking of right aim in poetry, M. Mal- 
 larme, one of the leaders of the French symbolists, 
 says : " To name an object is to destroy three-quarters 
 of the enjoyment of a poem." From this we see that 
 the new school of Poetry agrees with the old school 
 in holding that the end of poetry is to produce 
 pleasure for the imagination ; but if M. Mallarmd's
 
 ii6 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 words mean anything, they must mean that, when 
 Homer named the wrath of Achilles, or Milton the 
 loss of Eden, as the subjects of their poems, these 
 poets at once destroyed three-quarters of the pleasure 
 that their art might have produced. M. Mallarme 
 goes on to say : " The true goal of poetry is sugges- 
 tion. Symbolism consists in the artistic employment 
 of this mysterious principle ; in evoking, little by little, 
 an object, so as to indicate a state of soul, or, con- 
 versely, to choose an object, and to disentangle from 
 it a state of soul by a series of decipherings." 
 
 This, you may say, is a little obscure. But we 
 may divine M. Mallarme's meaning from M. Paul 
 Verlaine's Art Poetique, a poem containing very 
 many charming ideas that could have occurred only 
 to a man of genius, however perversely that genius 
 may have been employed. He says : 
 
 II faut aussi que tu n'ailles point 
 Choisir tes mots sans quelque m^prise : 
 Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise, 
 Oil rind6cis au Precis se joint. 
 
 Cast des beaux yeux derriere des voiles, 
 C'est le grand jour tremblant de midi, 
 C'est par un ciel d'automne atti6di, 
 Le bleu fouillis des claires etoiles ! 
 
 Car nous voulons la Nuance encor, 
 Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance ! 
 Oh ! la nuance seule fiance 
 Le reve au reve et la llute au cor ! 
 
 I do not pretend to understand what M. Verlaine 
 meant by these last two lines : probably he would
 
 LECT. Ill POETICAL DECADENCE 117 
 
 have admitted that he did not know himself. But 
 the drift of his advice is quite intelligible. Like 
 M. Mallarme, he says, "Do not choose definite 
 subjects : what we want in poetry is not expression 
 but suggestion ; neutral tints, not positive colours." 
 His Art Poetique is therefore naturally opposed to 
 the Ars Poetica of Horace : 
 
 Cui lecta potenter erit res 
 Nee facundia deseret hunc nee lueidus ordo. 
 
 M. Verlaine would maintain that Horace's principle, 
 " Denique sit quidvis simplex duntaxat et unum," 
 would not produce the effect that he himself desired. 
 Nor would it ; but why ? Because Horace and 
 M. Verlaine each aim at producing pleasure of a 
 different kind. Horace aims at pleasing the imagina- 
 tion with ideas, at creating an illusion of organic 
 ideal life, outlined with all the clearness of sculpture, 
 but animated with the breath of human sympathy. 
 M. Verlaine and M. Mallarme seek, by means of 
 metrical language, to evoke moods of the soul. 
 Horace strives to produce pleasure that may satisfy 
 the philosopher ; the pleasure desired by M. Verlaine 
 is the intoxication of the opium-eater. A poetical 
 idea is enjoyed as a thing of beauty by one generation 
 after another, semper, uhique, ah omnibus ; the 
 mood of the individual soul evaporates with the 
 fumes of the intellectual drug by which it is called 
 into being. 
 
 The French symbolists are therefore opposed to 
 the classical poets both in their ends and means ;
 
 ii8 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 but these are in full accord with the ends and means 
 of the poets of decadence. For observe that their 
 symbolism is quite of a different kind from that 
 of Dante, who, perhaps above all other poets, aimed 
 at the facundia and lucidus ordo desired by 
 Horace. Dante's symbolism was based on the 
 scholastic philosophy, when that system was univers- 
 ally accepted as the key to the interpretation of 
 Nature. When this philosophy ceased to satisfy 
 the intellect, then it also lost its poetical power, and, 
 as we see from the lines of Cowley I have already 
 cited, fell, for poetical purposes, into complete decay. 
 Modern symbolism or mysticism, which aims in 
 poetry at suggestion rather than expression, is in 
 reality identical with the taste for enigmas and 
 obscure thought represented in the style of 
 Lycophron of Alexandria, surnamed 6 arKoreivo^, 
 whose Cassandra is composed with a riddle in every 
 line. And who that is not a German now knows 
 anything of Lycophron except his name ? 
 
 Again, one of the distinguishing marks of great 
 classical poets, like Sophocles and Virgil, is their 
 reticence and reserve. The chief characteristic of 
 poetical decadence, as we see in Seneca, is lawlessness 
 in the choice of subject and violence of expression. 
 M. RoUinat, who is said to enjoy a high reputation 
 among his countrymen, is probably one of the few 
 poets in the world who can boast of having surpassed 
 Seneca in these qualities. Here are the titles of 
 some of his poems : Buried Alive ; TTie Soliloquy 
 of Tropmann; Putrefaction; Rondeau of the
 
 LECT. Ill POETICAL DECADENCE 119 
 
 Guillotined; and the following is the only quotable 
 portion of a composition describing the embalming 
 of a dead woman's body : "To snatch the dead 
 one, fair as an angel, from the cruel kisses of the 
 worm, I caused her to be embalmed in a strange 
 box. It was a night in winter." Then the whole 
 process of embalming is minutely painted. 
 
 One more example will suffice. All great classic 
 poetry reflects in an ideal way the active life of the 
 society in which it is composed. The Iliad breathes 
 in a heroic style the spirit of Greek warfare, 
 ^schylus, who fought at Marathon, Sophocles, who 
 served as a general with Pericles, fill their tragedies 
 with the patriotic sentiment of their age : the old 
 Attic comedy found its matter in contemporary social 
 interests : Shakespeare's chronicle plays popularise 
 half the history of England : the satires of Dryden 
 and Pope are the monuments of once living manners. 
 But the French symbolists whose aim it is to evoke 
 moods of the soul dread nothing so much as any 
 form of social activity. " Art for Art's sake ! " is 
 their cry. There is something pathetic in the 
 earnestness with which M. Charles Morice, the chief 
 philosopher of the school, utters his lamentations 
 over the exacting tyranny of public duties. " To 
 think," he cries, " that the poet should be obliged to 
 break off* in the middle of a stanza in order to go 
 and complete a period of twenty-eight days' training 
 in the army ! " Poor fellow ! And again : " The 
 agitations of the streets ; the grinding of the 
 Government machine ; journals ; elections ; changes
 
 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 of administration never has there been such a 
 hubbub ; the turbulent and noisy autocracy of 
 commerce has suppressed in public preoccupations 
 the preoccupation of Beauty ; and trade has killed 
 whatever might have been allowed by politics to live 
 on in silence." One feels sad as one thinks of the 
 happiness and quietism which might have been the 
 lot of this forlorn soul in some other period of 
 poetical decadence. We imagine, for example, that 
 he might have obtained from one of the Ptolemies, 
 say in the second century B.C., the post of sub- 
 librarian at Alexandria, and we fancy him com- 
 posing some afternoon, in a cool portico, without any 
 interruption from the drill-sergeant, the pentameter 
 of the epigram which he had begun in the morning. 
 Or he might have lived at Rome under the placid 
 reign of Domitian, free from all such disturbance as 
 the clamour of a vulgar newsboy, bawling over the 
 Palatine the latest stages of a ministerial crisis, 
 and breaking in on his preoccupation, as he put 
 together some tuneful trifle on a Greek subject, or 
 prepared for public recitation a flattering elegy on 
 Caesar's pet bear. 
 
 I have confined my observations to the modern 
 French School of Poetry, because I find there the 
 philosophy of a widespread movement put forward 
 in the most frank and lucid form. But, in fact, 
 the features which this school presents are repeated 
 with variations in the contemporary literature of 
 every country in Europe. For the moment, at least, 
 life in poetry is no longer looked for in that per-
 
 POETICAL DECADENCE 
 
 feet balance between the universal and individual 
 elements which is the essence of all classical art. The 
 aim of the poet is not now to create the natural in 
 the sphere of the ideal, the image of 
 
 Nature to advantage dressed, 
 What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed. 
 
 The essence of Life in Poetry and in all the arts, 
 according to the new philosophy, is Novelty. And 
 whence are the sources of this new life to be derived ? 
 The answer is, that each of the arts is to borrow 
 some principle from the others ; the painter aims at 
 effects which have hitherto been attempted only by 
 poetry ; the poet devotes his efforts to imitate in 
 words ideas which are more naturally expressed 
 by means of forms and colours, or indefinable 
 emotions like those which are aroused by the notes 
 of music ; the musician tries to combine with the 
 resources of his own art the beauties peculiar to 
 poetry and painting. I do not deny that, when these 
 experiments are made by men of genius, the artistic 
 result produced is often striking, and for a time even 
 pleasurable. But when it is claimed by the pioneers 
 of the new movement by the brotherhoods, the 
 societies, the coteries, which organise their efforts 
 to impose the new doctrines on the taste of a be- 
 wildered world that this confusion of the boundaries 
 of art is the beginning of a fresh and vigorous 
 outburst of artistic life, experience says, No ! The 
 things that are being attempted arc as old as civilised 
 society. The poet - musician who endeavours to
 
 122 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 create a new kind of pleasure, by combining on the 
 stage the principles of poetry, painting, and music, 
 is only doing what was done two thousand years ago 
 by Agathon and the late Attic tragedians. The poet 
 who exalts the element of painting inherent in his 
 art above the principle of action is following the 
 example of Apollonius Rhodius. The poet who tries 
 to attract attention to himself by an ideal repre- 
 sentation of extravagant and unnatural passion is 
 modelling himself upon Seneca. And Agathon, and 
 Apollonius Rhodius, and Seneca, are all poets of 
 decadent ages. 
 
 Now, if we are living in an age of poetical 
 decadence, it is a very serious matter, and questions 
 arise which urgently demand an answer. Is this 
 decadeuce confined to the genius and methods of the 
 poets themselves ? or does it extend to the taste of 
 that portion of society which the poets are specially 
 anxious to please? or does it imply a failure of 
 the sources of life in the nation at large ? These 
 are problems of the profoundest interest, and I shall 
 attempt to deal with them in the lecture with which 
 I propose to conclude this series namely, on the 
 relations that exist between the Life of Poetry and 
 the Life of the People.
 
 IV 
 
 POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Having noted the symptoms that universally ac- 
 company poetical decadence, and having observed 
 the appearance of many of these symptoms in 
 the poetry of every country of modern Europe, I 
 asked, with practical reference to the contemporary 
 poetry of England, whether this decadence had its 
 sources merely in the art itself; whether it was 
 the result, as Herr Nordau seemed to think, 
 of the decay of society ; or whether it was due 
 to some transitory conditions of taste which might 
 be removed by the influx of fresh elements of 
 imaginative life. Before 1 attempt to answer 
 these questions, let me consider an initial ob- 
 jection which has been made to my treatment of 
 the subject. A writer in the Spectator whom I 
 take to be the same courteous, but somewhat un- 
 sympathetic critic who previously censured, without 
 understanding, my use of the word " imitation " in 
 defining Poetry says : " We may say that the very
 
 124 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 same poet, and sometimes even a great poet like 
 Goethe, has had both a fresh and a decadent period 
 in his own poetry." In illustration of his point the 
 critic cites Scott's lines, " To a Lock of Hair," and 
 observes : '* This passionate outpouring of Scott's 
 momentary despair should show us how dangerous it 
 is to trace what seems to be decadence in any one 
 poet to general, social, and political causes. We 
 never know whether that which drives one poet into 
 artificial and morbid strains, into histrionic attempts 
 to simulate passions which he does not really feel, 
 may not drive another into those " fresh woods and 
 pastures new " which renew a decadent world. Scott 
 became the originator of a great and healthy litera- 
 ture through an attack of melancholy due to a 
 personal grief" 
 
 Now of this I am afraid I must say that the critic 
 has made no attempt to understand the sense of my 
 terms or the nature of my argument. I have no- 
 where used the word "decadence" as signifying the 
 decay of poetical power in the individual poet as com- 
 pared with himself Had I done so, I should doubt- 
 less have committed myself to many a proposition as 
 utterly incapable of proof as the assertion that " Scott 
 became the originator of a great and healthy literature 
 through an attack of melancholy due to a personal 
 grief" I have put forward no opinion in these 
 lectures which does not appear to me to be established 
 by history and experience. The subject of them has 
 been " Life in Poetry." By these words I mean the 
 qualities in poetry, whatever they are, whencesoever
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 125 
 
 they are derived, which have the power of producing 
 enduring pleasure ; and I have attempted to ascertain 
 their nature by examining the works of poets who 
 have been acknowledged, semj^er, ubique, ah omnibus, 
 to be the living poets of the world. By " Decadence 
 in Poetry " I mean poetical work which, though it may 
 have qualities capable of exciting temporary pleasure 
 and admiration, has not sufficient vitality to continue 
 to produce pleasure for posterity ; and here, again, I 
 have endeavoured to arrive at positive conclusions by 
 investigating the qualities of poets who are admitted 
 to be the representatives of recognised periods of 
 poetical decline. Whether my conclusions are right 
 or wrong can be determined only if my critics will 
 condescend to examine what my terms and arguments 
 really mean, and will deal with them on their own 
 ground. 
 
 Using the word " decadence," then, in the sense 
 in which I have been using it all along, inductive 
 criticism will, I think, furnish us with a decided 
 answer to the first of the questions I have proposed. 
 Experience makes it probable that the symptoms of 
 decadence in contemporary art and poetry are pro- 
 duced, not simply by a failure of imaginative power 
 in artists and poets, but by the exhaustion of some 
 active principle of life in society at large. There is, 
 in the first place, the fact that, in all previous periods 
 of poetical decadence, artistic decline has proceeded 
 j)ari passii with political decline. The decline of 
 Greek poetry began with the decline of the Greek 
 city states towards the close of the Peloponnesian
 
 126 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 War : the decline of Latin poetry advanced with 
 increased speed after the death of Augustus, when 
 the life of the old Republic dwindled away under the 
 Caesars : the decline of the distinctive forms of 
 mediaeval poetry became rapid after the Council of 
 Trent, when the principles of Catholicism and Feudal- 
 ism had also lost much of their vitality. 
 
 In the second place, it is evident that this joint 
 failure of social and imaginative life proceeds from a 
 common moral cause. The highest form of social 
 activity is reached when a state finds the true balance 
 of Liberty and Authority : the highest form of Life 
 in Poetry consists in the harmonious fusion of the 
 universal and individual elements of imagination : in 
 other words, when the individual poet embodies the 
 general consciousness of society as to what is sublime 
 and pathetic, noble and beautiful, in some organic 
 ideal creation which seems to be a true imitation of 
 nature. In both cases the just equilibrium is obtained 
 by obedience to laws above the will of the individual 
 and the majority of the moment, which laws consti- 
 tute the sources of life in society itself. The greatest 
 artists have shown themselves well aware of this 
 connection between the ^^o? or characteristic life of 
 the people and the life of art ; hence ^schylus and 
 Sophocles are, each in their own way, profoundly con- 
 servative in matters of faith and morals ; they regard 
 the legendary and traditional religion of the State as 
 something established, something not to be touched with 
 profane hands, but to be exalted and sanctified by all 
 the ennobling powers of poetry ; hence, too, the bitter
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 127 
 
 criticisms of Aristophanes on the analytical, sceptical, 
 and individualising methods of Euripides, to whom 
 nothing was sacred that gave him an opportunity of 
 displaying his own cleverness. We may conclude, 
 then, with confidence that whatever failure of life 
 may be observed in modern art and poetry is con- 
 nected with some failure of life in the people. 
 
 But the answer to the second question, namely, 
 whether this decadence in art proceeds from the 
 decadence of society as a whole, is far more complex 
 and difficult, and cannot be given with the confidence 
 which is expressed in some quarters. No man alive 
 is in a position to view modern civilisation from the 
 heights on which Gibbon surveyed the Decline and 
 Fall of the Koman Empire ; no inhabitant of contem- 
 porary Europe, certainly no Englishman, can look on 
 the life of his own country as Machiavelli did on the 
 life of Florence, and say, " Virtue has passed away 
 from us." Experience is wanting. For if we look to 
 the civilisations of Greece and Kome we see that the 
 conditions of public life in those communities were 
 quite different from our own. Then the Law and 
 Religion of the State were inextricably blended with 
 the life of the individual, and when the 77^09 of the 
 State decayed there was no power of recovery ; in a 
 moral sense, the community and the individual, 
 liberty and art, all degenerated together. But in 
 modern European civilisation the sources of public 
 life are far more numerous ; religious life is not so 
 completely fused with political life as in the states 
 of antiquity. International Life and Law are pre-
 
 128 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 served by the rivalry of evenly-balanced nations ; in 
 each nation the antagonistic interests of separate 
 classes help to keep alive the activity of the com- 
 munity as a whole. Beyond this, the moral, social, 
 and intellectual life of each Christian nation is re- 
 cruited by the art and civilisation of the Pagan world. 
 Hence the fountains of national life are less easily 
 exhausted in modern than in ancient times, and even 
 if the symptoms of modern Poetry indicate decadence 
 in the art, it does not follow that they are also the 
 imaginative reflection of general and inevitable social 
 decline. 
 
 All through the history of England, for example, we 
 see a tendency in the life of the nation to concentrate 
 itself in some particular part of the constitution, or 
 in some particular class, which becomes for the time 
 being the sovereign power, rallies round itself all the 
 faculties of the people, represents them to the world, 
 and at last falls into a state of exhaustion. Thus, in 
 the sixteenth century, the centre of English national 
 life was undoubtedly the Crown. The Crown, acting 
 through the Court, was the main instrument in trans- 
 forming the manners of the nation in the period of 
 transition from feudal custom to civil law and order. 
 The Crown, through the Episcopacy, was the means 
 of regulating, retrenching, and defining the external 
 modes of religious life rendered necessary by the 
 separation of England from the Papacy. The Crown 
 was also the protector of the infant commerce of the 
 nation, and its defence against all the foreign powers 
 that menaced its independence. And yet, while all
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 129 
 
 things seemed to make for the establishment of 
 Absolutism, the onward movement of national life 
 was exhausting the power of the Crown, as the cocoon 
 which guards the chrysalis disappears when it has pre- 
 pared the organism for a new era of existence. 
 
 English poetry in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries is but the imaginative reflection of the active 
 movement in the heart of the nation, and exhibits in 
 itself that remarkable phenomenon of simultaneous 
 Decadence and Revival which seems to perplex the 
 critic of the Spectator, to whom I have before alluded. 
 He observes, for instance, that Cowley, who was 
 certainly a poet of Decadence, was also a contempor- 
 ary of Milton ; and he asks, therefore, rather triumph- 
 antly, How can you speak of an age which produced 
 Milton as being an age of Decadence ? The answer 
 is obvious. As far as the poets of the seventeenth 
 century in England embodied simply and solely the 
 exhausted spirit of the Middle Ages, to that extent 
 theirs was an age of Decadence. Donne was a con- 
 temporary of Shakespeare ; and yet almost all the 
 motives of Donne's poetry are of a decadent order, 
 because he fixed his attention mainly on the waning 
 scholastic principle in the national life, instead of on 
 the active civic principle ; and just in the same way 
 Cowley went on vainly clothing his thoughts in feudal 
 and mediaeval forms, while Milton, breathing into his 
 soul all that was energetic and life-giving in the social 
 atmosphere about him, was qualifying himself to re- 
 produce this in the organic epic form of Paradise Lost. 
 
 Carry on this idea of the intimate connection 
 
 K
 
 130 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 between national life and national poetry into the 
 periods following the Revolution of 1688, and you 
 will see that it helps to explain the changes of taste 
 in the imagination of the people. Look at the history 
 of the eighteenth century. The feudal Monarchy has 
 disappeared : the aristocratic families of England have, 
 to a very great extent, taken the place of the Mon- 
 archy as the governing power in the country : the 
 semi- Catholic theology of the seventeenth century is 
 overlaid by the latitudinarian reasoning springing 
 out of the philosophic Humanism of the Reformation. 
 Does not the characteristic poetry of the period 
 faithfully correspond with the political, religious, and 
 social state of things ? It is not such a great school 
 of poetry as that of the Elizabethan dramatists and 
 Milton, because it does not embrace so many elements 
 of imagination ; it cuts out the mediaeval and romantic 
 principles : nevertheless, it is thoroughly successful in 
 fusing the universal springs of inspiration that remain, 
 namely, the Humanistic and the National. The 
 imaginative product is those admirable pictures of life 
 and manners, and that beautiful and perfect form of 
 social expression, which characterise literary style from 
 the times immediately preceding the Revolution of 
 1688 down to the death of Pope. But as these aristo- 
 cratic forms of life are dependent mainly on but two 
 sources, the period of aristocratic decadence sets in 
 more quickly than was the case with the mediaeval 
 styles of poetry. The aristocratic principle inspires 
 poems like the Rape of the Lock, the Epistles and 
 Satires of Pope, and Tfie Essay on Mari; it is
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 131 
 
 still strongly felt in such works as The Deserted 
 Village and The Traveller ; but it becomes pompous 
 and grotesque in Darwin's Botanic Gardeii, tame and 
 mannered in The Pleasures of Hope and The 
 Pleasures of Memory. Here, too, we see that the 
 decline of the Classic style in poetry is coincident 
 with the decay of aristocratic supremacy which was 
 terminated by the Reform Bill of 1832. 
 
 This aristocratic decline was due to an exaggerated 
 conception of the principle of Constitutional Order ; 
 and the exaltation of the principle of authority in 
 politics finds its analogy in literature, in the predomi- 
 nant attention paid by the aristocratic writers of the 
 period to correctness of style. The rise of the Middle 
 Classes, on the other hand of the Classes, whose politi- 
 cal influence has, on the whole, now been paramount 
 for more than sixty years was characterised by a pas- 
 sionate devotion to the principle of individual liberty. 
 At first allying themselves with the Whig section of the 
 aristocracy, the Middle Classes advanced cautiously, 
 qualifying the principle of commercial liberty, for 
 example, as Adam Smith did, with a defence of the 
 Navigation Laws, and contenting themselves with 
 such measures of Reform as might be conceded by 
 a leader like Lord Grey. But as their political power 
 increased, each of the sections of which the Middle 
 Classes are composed showed a tendency to pursue its 
 own ideal of Freedom Freedom of Thought, Freedom 
 of Speech, Freedom of Trade without reference to 
 the order of the corporate life of the nation ; and 
 hence the general eflfect of national policy since 1832
 
 132 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 has been at once to promote all the activities of 
 personal life Money-making, Journalism, Mechanical 
 Invention and to resist any interference on the part 
 of the State with the freedom of the individual. 
 The net result of the habit has been a decline in the 
 influence of central authority. 
 
 Now it is well worth observing what a close rela- 
 tionship there is between this political tendency in 
 the history of the INIiddle Classes, as the governing 
 power of the country, and the movement in the 
 sphere of taste and imagination which has accom- 
 panied it. Since the close of the last century the 
 main current of taste has run in strono: antagonism 
 to the aristocratic principles established after the 
 Revolution of 1688. So long as the dominant 
 motive of the new school of poetry was, in one form 
 or another, the sentiment of action inspired by the 
 French Revolution, the chief poets of the early part 
 of the present century, Byron, Shelley, and when 
 he was not misled by his own theories Wordsworth, 
 sought mainly to amplify and extend universal modes 
 of poetical expression sanctioned by generations of 
 usage. Very soon, however, the centrifugal, in- 
 dividualising tendencies of the time disclosed them- 
 selves in two theories of poetry which, while sharply 
 opposed to each other in their results, were agreed 
 in placing the source of Poetry solely in the mind 
 of the individual poet, and in disregarding the con- 
 tinuity of tradition in the art itself. One of these 
 was headed by Wordsworth, who taught, first, that 
 the poet can make all things poetical by his own
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 133 
 
 imagination, and hence that the selection of dis- 
 tinctively imaginative subjects is not essential in 
 poetry ; secondly that, as the proper language of 
 poetry is the language actually used by simple men, 
 all traditional distinctions between the language of 
 poetry and the language of prose are false and arbi- 
 trary. The other movement originated with Keats, 
 who, shrinking from the forms of vulgarity and mean- 
 ness visible in the actual life of his time, sought for 
 the life of poetry in abstract beauty of form. In both 
 directions there has been a withdrawal from those 
 universal sources of imaginative life that inspire the 
 action of the nation, and a corresponding exaggera- 
 tion of individual consciousness ; the followers of 
 Wordsworth carrying Poetry into the sphere of 
 Philosophy, Analysis, Psychology, with an almost 
 complete disregard of the universal requirements of 
 art ; and the disciples of Keats seeking to identify 
 the art of Poetry more and more with the arts of 
 Painting and Music. 
 
 Similar symptoms, as I showed in my last lecture, 
 manifest themselves in all historic periods of Poetical 
 Decadence. If it be asked how I connect these 
 symptoms with the characteristic taste of the Middle 
 Classes, I answer : First, the impassioned pursuit of 
 Liberty has encouraged an enormous growth of self- 
 consciousness, which accounts for the exaggeration of 
 the individual element in modern poetry ; secondly, 
 the sectional tendencies in the Middle Classes have 
 helped to disintegrate that union of primal forces on 
 which the ideal life of the nation so largely depends ;
 
 134 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 and this accounts for the decay of the universal 
 element. 
 
 The Middle Classes have always played a great and 
 valuable part in English History by balancing and 
 reconciling conflicting principles in the nation, but 
 they have not been themselves strongly in sympathy 
 with any one of these. The Middle Class, as such, has 
 been opposed to the life of ecclesiastical Catholicism 
 by reason of its Puritanic instincts ; it has been 
 opposed to the life of Feudalism in consequence of its 
 commercial instincts ; mainly inspired by the practical 
 object of the moment, it has little sympathy with the 
 tradition of classical culture ; while its own worship of 
 personal liberty naturally tends to weaken the life and 
 action of the nation as a whole. Intellectually eager, 
 and of a boundless private benevolence, its imaginative 
 interest is excited by the novel and curious rather 
 than by the beautiful, just as its most practical 
 virtues are those which radiate from the centre of 
 home, independently of the larger interests of the 
 State. It is a rare thing to find an average English- 
 man of the Middle Class submitting the freedom of 
 his individual impulses to the control of any reasoned 
 ideal, divine or human. But this habit of mind 
 does not take us into the region of the Universal, 
 or quicken that historic conscience which is, on the 
 one hand, an essential condition of social order, 
 and, on the other, a necessary element in the life 
 of poetry. And hence, now that the Middle Classes 
 find themselves confronted with collective ideals of 
 Order or Disorder, opposed to . their own notions
 
 LBCT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 135 
 
 of Individual Liberty the ideal of Socialism ; the 
 aggressive ideals of other Nations ; the ideals of the 
 Greater Britain beyond our own islands they are 
 bewildered and perplexed ; and the exhaustion of 
 their capital stock of beliefs reflects itself in the an- 
 archical conflict of ideas embodied in contemporary 
 Fiction and Poetry. 
 
 History, however, shows us that the political decline 
 of a single class need not involve decadence in the 
 people ; and it cannot be said that there has been a lack 
 of ideals of attempts to recover the idea of the Uni- 
 versal in our national life and poetry originated by 
 men of genius with a view of staying the contemporary 
 movement of imaginative exhaustion in the Middle 
 Class. I propose to consider briefly three such ideals, 
 because they seem to me to represent characteristically 
 the main tendencies which, during the present genera- 
 tion, have been operating in the governing portion of 
 society ; and if I examine them with strictness, and 
 even severity, I would ask my hearers to believe that 
 it is not because I do not sympathise with much of 
 what is proposed, or because I wish to depreciate the 
 genius of those who propose it, but because I am 
 trying to test the adequacy of the one, arid the 
 authority of the other, by a standard which is above 
 and beyond that of any individual, namely, the ideal 
 life of England itself 
 
 The first ideal which I will consider was put 
 forward from the midst of the Middle Class, and by 
 one whose name is eminent among the holders of this 
 Chair ; I need hardly say that I allude to the ideal of
 
 136 LIFE IN POETRY part ii 
 
 culture as defined by Matthew Arnold. Matthew 
 Arnold enjoys the rare distinction of having been the 
 first to oppose the imaginative self-satisfaction of the 
 Middle Classes ; his portrait of Bottles, as the self- 
 satisfied Englishman, is in its way a creation ; his play- 
 ful vein was never more happily employed than in 
 commenting on such watchwords as the " Dissidence of 
 Dissent " ; he showed courage in criticising the self- 
 conscious swagger of anonymous journalism. Many 
 of his favourite phrases, "Right Reason," "Our better 
 Selves," "Perfection," seem to involve the recognition of 
 some positive and universal standard of authority by 
 reference to which the soundness of all private ideals 
 may be tested. He uses language which shows his 
 sense of the necessity of the Universal as an element 
 in the Life of Poetry : " We are sure," he says, " that 
 the endeavour to reach through culture the firm 
 intelligible law of things, we are sure that the detach- 
 ing ourselves from our stock notions and habits, that 
 a more free play of consciousness, an increased desire 
 for sweetness and light, and all the bent which we 
 call Hellenising, is the master-impulse now of the life 
 of our nation and of Humanity somewhat obscurely 
 perhaps for the moment, but decisively for the im- 
 mediate future and that those who work for this are 
 the sovereign educators." This sounds well. But 
 the moment these phrases are examined, it is seen 
 that they have no reference to the Universal, as 
 manifested in our English life, but are, in fact, the 
 quintessence of Individualism, the climax of Negation. 
 The free play of Consciousness which is recom-
 
 LEcr, IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 137 
 
 mended is in reality only the analysis of Self-Con- 
 sciousness. The idea of Perfection is derived from a 
 comparison of self with the imperfection of one's 
 neighbours. Asked what ideal of national action he 
 desires to promote, Matthew Arnold replies : " Because 
 machinery is the bane of politics, and an inward 
 working, and not machinery is what we most want, 
 we keep advising our ardent young Liberal friends to 
 think less of machinery, to stand more aloof from the 
 arena of politics at present, and rather to try and 
 promote with us an inward working." In fact, 
 Matthew Arnold, in respect of all that concerns life 
 and action, seems to be in pretty general agreement 
 with that melancholy apostle of Poetical Decadence, 
 M. Charles Morice, whose opinions I noticed in my 
 last lecture. I do not understand very readily 
 how either Politics or Poetry can dispense with the 
 aid of machinery. Of Poetry at any rate we may 
 say that all the great forms of enduring Poetry, Epic, 
 Dramatic, Lyric, are essentially based upon action ; 
 and it is therefore a significant illustration of the 
 Individualism, which is a sign of Decadence, that 
 Matthew Arnold should define Poetry as the Criti- 
 cism of Life. 
 
 Again, if we test the ideal of self-conscious 
 Culture by its practical results, we find that it off'ers 
 very unsatisfactory remedies for those excesses of 
 Middle Class Individualism which it justly criticises. 
 I know of no more salutary corrective for the vanity 
 of the criticism which trusts solely to the infallibility 
 of its own intuitions, than a comparison of the
 
 138 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 principles recommended by Matthew Arnold with his 
 practical application of them. For example : "To 
 reach through Culture the firm intelligible law of 
 things." Think then of Matthew Arnold's application 
 of this principle to English society, and " the law of 
 things" which was disclosed to his perception; his divi- 
 sion of his own nation into Barbarians, Philistines, 
 and Populace could any phrases and terms be found 
 to-day more esoteric, more unmeaning, more obsolete ? 
 Or again : " An increased desire for sweetness and 
 light." Was it sweetness and light that suggested to 
 Matthew Arnold's imagination the simile of the three 
 Lord Shaftesburys ? Or : " All the bent which we call 
 Hellenising." Hellenising, nevertheless, was of no 
 avail to prevent that fine and beautiful taste which 
 once embodied itself in The Scholar Gipsy and 
 Thyrsis from conceiving and committing to print the 
 following sentence : "From such a spectacle as that 
 of poor Mrs. Lincoln a spectacle to vulgarise a 
 whole nation aristocracies undoubtedly preserve us ! " 
 A form of Culture which is constantly violating the 
 first principles of good breeding will scarcely enable 
 us to renew the decadent life of Poetry. 
 
 Another ideal of Life and Poetry is offered to us 
 by Mr. Swinburne. Mr. Swinburne has, in one 
 respect, taken his torch from the hand of Matthew 
 Arnold. His is " the bent which we call Hellenising." 
 But he understands the word in a difi"erent sense 
 from that of his predecessor. Hellenising with Mr. 
 Swinburne means ideas drawn exclusively from the 
 fountain of the Classical Renaissance, a tributary of
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 139 
 
 English poetry undoubtedly full of life and freshness, 
 but which, unless it is merged with the other waters 
 of the national imagination, soon swells into revolu- 
 tion. From the first his most characteristic poems 
 have been those which, like Atalanta in Calydo7i, 
 have been inspired by recollections of Greek 
 mythology and the Greek drama. The effect of this 
 source of inspiration has been to give his genius great 
 largeness of idea and great swiftness of movement ; 
 and the influence of these qualities on the art has 
 been beneficial, because they have helped to deliver 
 imagination from Wordsworth's fatal heresy, that 
 there is no distinction between the diction of poetry 
 and the diction of prose. Mr. Swinburne has done 
 more than any living poet to prove the intimate con- 
 nection between Poetry and Oratory ; and when he 
 lights on a theme worthy of his genius, no man has 
 shown a greater mastery of the traditional style of 
 English lyric verse : witness his very fine lines on 
 Greece in Songs before Sunrise : 
 
 There where our Eiist looks always to thy West, 
 
 Our mornings to thine evenings, Greece to thee, 
 These lights that catch the mountains crest by crest, 
 
 Are they of stars or beacons that we see 1 
 Taygetus takes here the winds abreast, 
 
 And there the sun resumes Thermopylio ; 
 The light is Athens where those remnants rest, 
 
 And Salamis the sea-wall of that sea ; 
 The grass men tread upon 
 Is very Marathon ; 
 The leaves are of that time unstricken tree, 
 
 That storm nor sun can fret, 
 
 Nor wind, since she that set,
 
 I40 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 Made it her sign to men whose shield was she : 
 
 Here, as dead Time his deathless things, 
 Eurotas and Cephisns keep their sleepless springs. 
 
 The weakness of Mr. Swinburne's ideal is that it 
 is not drawn from the active traditional Life of the 
 People. It was well to replenish Poetry from the 
 spring of classical culture, the loss of which, under 
 the influence of Middle Class taste, was starving the 
 stream of English poetical conception, just as the loss 
 of the mediaeval spring diminished the volume and 
 energy of the aristocratic style in the last century. 
 But it was not well to isolate the tributary of the 
 Renaissance from the current of the national thought 
 and language, in which it had been historically 
 blended with other influences, and, by a violent re- 
 action from the tastes of the Middle Classes, to set 
 up the ideal of Paganism as something opposed to 
 the ideal of Christianity. The consequence of the 
 separation has been that, though the idea of the 
 Universal enters into Mr. Swinburne's poetical con- 
 ceptions, it is of an abstract character, and does not 
 spring out of the ^^o? and tradition of the people : 
 having its source rather in the self-consciousness of 
 the poet than in the widely diff'used consciousness of 
 society, it can be apprehended by the intellect, but 
 does not often touch the heart. Mr. Swinburne's 
 abstract mode of poetical conception reflects itself 
 vividly in his modes of poetical expression. His 
 verse is of a fine oratorical order, but the oratory is of 
 a kind which appeals only to those who can follow 
 the train of ideas set in motion by a particular key-
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 141 
 
 note. Picturesque phrases, detached from books, 
 provide themes for metrical composition ; the imagery 
 of the Bible, separated from its religious associations, 
 is transferred into the sphere of Revolutionary 
 politics ; the words employed, instead of being sug- 
 gested by the spontaneous energy of thought, seem 
 to fall into their places through some prearrangement 
 of rhythmical melody. But these as I have already 
 urged are methods better fitted for the arts of Paint- 
 ing and Music than for Poetry, and hence the pursuit 
 of Abstract Ideal Form seems a principle as inade- 
 quate as the Criticism of Culture for supplying the 
 universal element needed to counteract the decadence 
 of poetical Life. 
 
 The poetry of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, on the other 
 hand, supplies many of the elements of life and action 
 which are wanting in Mr. Swinburne's poetry. Mr. 
 Kipling has learned much from Mr. Swinburne in the 
 way of versification swiftness, energy, freedom of 
 style ; and he has applied these qualities to subjects 
 taken directly from the life of the people. Wherever he 
 looks he finds something to interest his imagination ; 
 his motto is Quidquid agunt Jioniines. Indian Mytho- 
 logy ; Suttee ; the Parnell Commission ; American 
 humour ; elementary instincts of race and nation ; 
 the simple yet unerring intuitions of the Barrack 
 room ; all these supply him with themes for verse ; 
 and he generally treats them in the form of the 
 Ballad, often with admirable eff'ect. Those of my 
 audience who may have read a poem called An 
 Imperial Rescript, ridiculing from the popular point
 
 142 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 of view the nebulous philanthropy of schemes pro- 
 ceeding from lofty spheres in Germany, will recog- 
 nise an almost unrivalled genius for seizing and 
 reproducing the modes of thought characteristic of 
 the people in different nations. And in the very fine 
 narrative poem called East and West they will 
 equally appreciate the power of an imagination 
 capable of translating the undying spirit of Chivalry 
 into the modern thought and language proper to the 
 Western and Eastern minds. The country owes a 
 large debt of gratitude to Mr. Kipling for reviving 
 in English poetry the spirit of manly action and 
 imperial enthusiasm as a corrective of the miserable 
 pessimism which is the canker of modern society. 
 
 Still Mr. Kipling's method of Poetical Conception 
 and Expression has its limitations, which may be 
 defined by saying that it shows an imperfect ap- 
 preciation of the diff'erence between the Life of Verse 
 and the Life of Poetry. His work, if I may borrow 
 the convenient jargon of the time, is that of an Im- 
 pressionist ; and Metrical Impressionism bears the 
 same relation to Poetry as Journalism to Literature. 
 The life which he seeks to embody in his poetry is 
 derived from observations of the actual world of sense 
 and experience rather than from the world of universal 
 ideas. Take his conception of Romance for example. 
 He blames his contemporaries for not seeing that 
 there is Romance in the working of an express 
 train. But this is to use the word Romance in a 
 private sense, without reference to its universal 
 historical meaning, and to ignore that craving for the
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 143 
 
 Ideal and the Supernatural which is a fundamental 
 instinct of the human mind. Again, in a poem 
 called the Story of Ung, he seems to place the 
 difference between the artist and those whom the 
 artist seeks to please in the artist's superior powers of 
 observation and exact imitation ; he thinks that the 
 artist sees and imitates somethinsj in actual nature 
 which others do not see ; whereas the real superiority 
 of the painter or the poet, if we measure by the work 
 of the highest excellence, lies, as I have already urged, 
 in the ability to find expression for imaginative 
 ideas of nature floating unexpressed in the general 
 mind. 
 
 Mr. Kipling has, quite logically, no belief in any 
 kind of criticism ; and his ideas on the subject of Art 
 are put forward in a sketch of a critic in the Neolithic 
 Age, which contains a parable : 
 
 A rival of Solutre told the tribe my style was outr6 : 
 'Neath a hammer forged of dolomite he fell ; 
 
 And I left my views on art, barbed and tanged, below the 
 heart 
 Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle. 
 
 Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting dogs 
 
 fed full, 
 And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong ; 
 And I wiped luy mouth and &iid : *' It is well that they are 
 
 dead ; 
 For I know my work is right and theirs is wrong." 
 
 But my Totem saw the shame ; from his ridge-pot shrine he 
 came. 
 
 And he told me in a vision of the night, 
 " There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, 
 
 And every single one of them is right."
 
 144 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 That is excellent and amusing verse ; but the 
 parable and its moral are untrue, both historically and 
 scientifically. For in the early tribal stage of society 
 the poetical view of Nature is universal ; criticism 
 does not exist ; the poet puts readily into verse the 
 poetical thoughts shared by all his countrymen. 
 It is when society advances, when men begin to dis- 
 tinguish the thoughts that should be expressed in 
 prose from the thoughts that are proper for verse, 
 that criticism seeks to discover the rules of right and 
 wrong. The sphere of the Universal and Ideal is 
 contracted by the mind itself, and the task of high 
 genius lies in finding out the themes that are fitted 
 for poetry, and in clothing them with the form of ex- 
 pression adapted to their true nature. Of the nine 
 and sixty ways of constructing civil lays only the 
 great classical poets of every country know how to 
 invent the way which will continue to give pleasure 
 to the imagination ; and, therefore, as I have said 
 many times, it is in the works of the great classical 
 poets alone that the law of poetry is to be looked for. 
 
 The failure to recognise the validity of this law is 
 the weak point in Mr. Kipling's poetry. He is not 
 careful in the selection of his themes ; he does not 
 reflect on the nature of the Universal ; like Ung in 
 his own poem, he has something of a contempt for 
 the ideas of his audience. Consequently he often 
 fails in point of expression. Satisfied with his own 
 individual perceptions, he thinks only of embodying 
 them in a swift and fluent form of verse, without 
 considering how they will strike the judgment of the
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 145 
 
 reader ; hence his thoughts often lack distinction, 
 and he takes no trouble to choose out of his vast 
 vocabulary of popular words those which are really- 
 adapted for the purposes of poetry. Experience has 
 recently read him a lesson as to the nature of the 
 Universal in poetry which he will doubtless lay to 
 heart. He desired very rightly to do honour to the 
 Canadians for the imperial aim of their proposed 
 financial legislation, and he thought to please them 
 by a set of verses, in which he called Canada " Our 
 Lady of Snows." But he did not altogether please 
 them. The Canadians, with a just critical instinct, 
 perceived that the title of the poem was not poetically 
 true. It was, in fact, an affectation borrowed from 
 those abstract musical modes of diction sanctioned by 
 the example of Mr. Swinburne, not having any sound 
 foundation in Nature, and lacking the simple dignity 
 which the occasion demanded. 
 
 Let me now put before you, as succinctly as I can, 
 the whole question in the form which the course of 
 our argument has caused it to assume. The most 
 marked characteristic in the contemporary art and 
 literature of every country in Europe, is the pursuit 
 of Novelty ; by which word I mean not the freshness, 
 character, and individuality, which are essential to 
 every work of genius, but the determination to discover 
 absolutely new matter for artistic treatment, and the 
 deliberate rejection of those first principles of taste 
 which the greatest artists have traditionally obeyed. 
 In the art of Poetry, for example, the one with which 
 we are immediately concerned, the modern artist, in
 
 146 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 opposition to ancient practice, either ignores the 
 necessity of finding his groundwork in the selection 
 and conception of a subject common to himself and his 
 audience, or insists on his right of treating his subject 
 without regard to the public taste and experience. 
 Every one can see for himself that this is the way in 
 which an essentially modern dramatist like Ibsen 
 constructs his plays. If for the moment we extend, 
 with Aristotle, the word Poetry so as to include 
 fictions in prose, we observe that, in the most 
 characteristic form of the Russian or French novel, 
 the aim of the writer, almost invariably, is to manipu- 
 late a priori ideas so as to illustrate a moral of his 
 own making a structural method which is opposed 
 to the tradition of story -telling from the days of 
 Boccaccio downwards. 
 
 Analysis of motive, not ideal representation of 
 action, is, in fact, the first principle of contemporary 
 epic and dramatic composition. Analysis has pene- 
 trated even the lyrical mode of poetical expression, 
 causing the poet to look for themes mainly in personal 
 sentiments and opinions, which are as often as not the 
 fruits of pessimist philosophy. Corresponding with 
 this revolution in the sphere of poetical conception, 
 there has been a complete departure from traditional 
 development in the modes of poetical expression. 
 The modern versifier looks for words, phrases, and 
 rhythmical movements, as far removed as possible 
 from the prevailing popular idiom ; and in pursuit of 
 his end he confuses the hitherto well-defined boundaries 
 between poetry, on the one hand, and painting and
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 147 
 
 music on the other, assimilating his practice wherever 
 he can to the methods adopted by the professors of 
 those sister arts. 
 
 The question is whether these strongly outlined 
 features are the signs of Life or Decadence in Poetry. 
 The new School of Poetry and its admirers say that 
 they are the manifestation of an exuberant energy, 
 and that the art has before it a boundless future of 
 growth and productiveness. On the other hand, the 
 men of science, represented by Herr Nordau, main- 
 tain that the fashionable novelties of the day are the 
 signs of Poetical Decadence. But this conclusion 
 they arrive at from other than aesthetic premises. 
 In Herr Nordau's judgment the Decadence of Art 
 is only a necessary phase of the general decay of 
 modern society ; he holds that the action of Imagina- 
 tion is febrile, affected, and unmanly, because society, 
 exhausted by the wear and tear of city life, has become 
 hysterical, nervous, and corrupt. Poetical Decadence 
 is part and parcel of Social Degeneration, and is, there- 
 fore, to be judged on the crudest pathological principles. 
 
 Against this fatalist method of judgment, equally 
 unscientific in its procedure and depressing in its 
 conclusions, it is necessary to protest. I agree with 
 Herr Nordau in thinking that the tendencies of 
 modern Poetry, Painting, and Music are indicative of 
 artistic Decadence rather than artistic Invention, since 
 they are substantially identical with the characteristics 
 that have always presented themselves in historic 
 periods of artistic and social decline. But it would 
 be unworthy of those who are conscious of moral
 
 148 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 freedom to believe that the process of decay in such 
 periods has followed an iron law of destiny, or that we 
 are to-day the victims of an imaginative disease which 
 it is beyond our power to remedy. The causes of 
 Poetical Decadence are partly individual, in so far as 
 they proceed from the errors of the artist, partly 
 social, in so far as they depend upon the condition of 
 the public taste ; in both cases they are moral, not 
 physical, and are therefore under our own control. 
 
 In the individual artist decline of power proceeds 
 from a self-conscious analysis which cuts off the mind 
 from the great universal sources of Inspiration, and 
 leads it to feed upon itself, or to look for the foun- 
 tains of life in the local and transitory interests of the 
 moment. Artistic vanity of this kind obtrudes itself 
 in all stages of society. Homer furnishes us with an 
 example of it many centuries before the Christian era. 
 You may remember the lines in which, in his own 
 inimitable incidental way, he describes how Thamyris 
 lost the gift of poetry : " The Muses," says he, " meet- 
 ing Thamyris the Thracian as he went up from CEchalia 
 from the house of Eurytus the OEchalian, made him 
 cease from singing. For he made in his boasts 
 as though he would prevail, even though the 
 Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, should sing 
 against him. But they, being provoked to anger, 
 made him blind, and took away from him divine song 
 and made him forget his minstrelsy." Thamyris was 
 self-conscious ; he was a follower of Art for Art's 
 sake ; enamoured of his own thoughts, his own skill, 
 he failed to understand that all genuine inspiration
 
 POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 149 
 
 omes to the mind unconsciously, as we have seen 
 that it came to Scott when he was meditating The Lay 
 of the Last Minstrel. Homer and Milton, on the other 
 hand, show themselves reverently aware of this truth 
 when they call on the Heavenly Muse to raise their 
 genius to the height of their arguments, and submit 
 themselves obediently to the external laws of their art. 
 Self-conscious vanity in the nineteenth century is 
 described by a great writer who was himself as re- 
 sponsible as any man for the propagation of the deadly 
 principle of Imaginative Analysis : " Trop souvent a 
 Paris," says Balzac, " dans le desir d'arriver plus 
 promptement que par la voie naturelle a cette celebrite 
 qui pour eux est la fortune, les artistes empruntent 
 les ailes de la circonstance, ils iroient se grandir en se 
 faisant les hommes d'une chose, en devenant les 
 souteneurs d'une syst^me, et ils esperent changer une 
 coterie en public. Tel est republicain, tel autre est 
 Saint-Simonien, tel est aristocrate, tel catholique, tel 
 juste milieu, tel moyen ^ge, ou allemand, par parti 
 pris. Mais si I'opinion ne donne pas le talent, elle 
 le gate to uj ours, t(^moin le pauvre garyon vous venez 
 de voir. L'opinion d'un artiste doit etre la foi dans 
 les oeuvres, et son seul moyen de succfes le travail, 
 quand la nature lui a donne le feu sacr^." ^ When 
 authors so dissimilar as Homer and Balzac agree in 
 ascribing the decay of art to exaggerated self-con- 
 sciousness, the impassioned followers of Novelty 
 would do well to pause and consider in what direction 
 they are hurrying with so much enthusiasm. 
 
 ' Les comidiens sans le savoir.
 
 ISO LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 The second cause of the Decadence of Poetry is 
 social, namely, the want of cultivation and refinement 
 in the public taste. Under the rule of the Middle 
 Classes so different in this respect from the aris- 
 tocracy of the eighteenth century the principle De 
 gustihus non est disputanduvn has received, in the 
 sphere of Art, as much encouragement as the principle 
 Laisser Faire in the sphere of Politics and Economics. 
 Philosophic authority is cited in favour of this 
 sublime indifference, which arises, in fact, from sheer 
 insensibility. " The Art," says Addison, "is to con- 
 form to the Taste, not the Taste to the Art." A true 
 saying, but one that needs to be understood. As the 
 end of art is to produce pleasure, poets and all other 
 artists must take into account alike the constitution 
 of the human mind and the circumstances of the 
 society which it is their business to please. Shake- 
 speare would not have been the greatest of dramatists if 
 he had simply attempted to embody his own aesthetic 
 and moral conceptions, without considering what was 
 expected of him in the structure of his plays, even by 
 "the groundlings." Eaphael and Titian were great 
 painters because they reflected, not only on what was 
 beautiful in itself, but on the relation of the beautiful 
 to altar-pieces and other architectural conditions in 
 the religious life of their time. So much submission 
 to the social order on the part of the artist is neces- 
 sary, if the Universal in art is to be manifested to the 
 world with individual colour, life, and character. 
 
 But in allowing this I am far from assenting to 
 the proposition that the idea of the Universal, the
 
 user. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 151 
 
 enduring law of life in Art, is to be found in un- 
 educated public taste. Popular taste has, no doubt, 
 a foundation in Nature. The majority, judging by 
 instinct, often agree among themselves, and make 
 their opinion irresistibly felt, as is shown by the 
 judgments of the spectators in the theatre, or by the 
 popularity of a novel, and in these judgments there is 
 generally some truth. But the unrefined instinct of the 
 multitude is, as a rule, in favour of what is obvious 
 and superficial : impatient of reflection, it is attracted 
 by the loud colours and the commonplace sentiment 
 which readily strike the senses or the affections. 
 Observe the popular songs in the Music Halls, the 
 pictorial advertisements on the hoardings, the books 
 on the railway stall, the lists in the circulating 
 libraries ; from these may be divined the level to 
 which the public taste is capable of rising by its own 
 untrained perception. That which is natural in such 
 taste is also vulgar ; and if vulgar Nature is to be 
 the standard of Art, nothing but a versatile mediocrity 
 of invention is any longer possible. Let Art conform 
 to Taste in this sense of the word ; let the imagination 
 of the people be identified with the imagination of 
 the majority of the moment ; let Money be the 
 standard by which all things are to be measured ; and 
 it follows logically that every kind of art must trans- 
 form itself into some species of journalism, and that 
 what is traditionally known as Fine Art must fall into 
 hopeless decay. 
 
 I decline, however, to identify the transient 
 impressions of what is called Public Opinion with
 
 152 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 the settled Conscience of the People, or to believe 
 that this Conscience is so deadened and materialised 
 as to be unable to apprehend the law upon which 
 the life of Poetry and all fine art depends. Let me 
 remind you of the definition with which we started 
 on this inquiry. *' Poetry is the art of producing 
 pleasure for the imagination by imitating human 
 actions, thoughts, and passions in metrical language." 
 "The art of producing pleasure for the imagination." 
 What pleasure ? whose imagination ? Not pleasure 
 for the mere collection of individuals living in 
 England, the majority of whom, to use the words 
 of Aristotle, are necessarily " without any idea of 
 the noble and truly pleasant, of which they have 
 never tasted." Not pleasure intended to gratify the 
 refined curiosity of the sect or the coterie, or even 
 adapted to the separate perceptions and inclinations 
 of the aristocracy, the Middle Classes, and the 
 Democratic Classes ; but pleasure which can be felt 
 by what is best in the English People as a whole, 
 when it throws its imagination back to its own 
 infancy, and travels along the course of the traditions 
 of its art and literature ; pleasure such as has been 
 produced by one generation of great poets after 
 another whose work still moves in the reader wonder 
 and delight. 
 
 Again, what is meant by Imitation in Poetry? 
 Not the prosaic transcript of external things. Not 
 even that imaginative representation of things which 
 may be produced by an analysis of the poet's own 
 consciousness. Self-consciousness must no doubt
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 153 
 
 enter in some degree into all modern artistic con- 
 ceptions; we cannot escape from it; it is the inevitable 
 attendant of the advance of society in knowledge 
 and civilisation. But if Poetry is to survive I 
 will go further and say if the civilisation of England 
 is to survive we must recognise, as the true sphere 
 of imitation, a region of consciousness above and 
 beyond our own ; the source of life which Matthew 
 Arnold was thinking of when he speaks of "right 
 reason," " our better self," " the firm intelligible law 
 of things " ; and which Mr. Kipling's soldier heroes 
 dimly but undoubtingly apprehend, when they exalt 
 in their peculiar idiom the virtues of discipline, 
 obedience, and order. The poet must imitate the 
 Universal. It is only when he starts from the basis 
 of an universal Idea whether this be the inspiration 
 of Faith or the tradition of Authority that he 
 acquires the power to create; that is, to reproduce 
 in an ideal form the image of external Nature. 
 
 See how this truth is illustrated in the work of the 
 two greatest creators in English Poetry, Shakespeare 
 and Milton. Shakespeare is supreme among poets, 
 because he was the least hampered by the distractions 
 of self- consciousness, or at any rate had his own self- 
 consciousness most under control ; accepting alike 
 every species of established order in the world about 
 him, he was able to sympathise with whatever was 
 Catholic and Chivalric, National and Historic, Schol- 
 astic and Humane, in English Society, to conceive a 
 multitude of characters at once natural and ideal, and 
 to breathe dramatic life and reality into a hundred
 
 154 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 imaginary situations that liad been for ages floating 
 vaguely in the tales of trouveres and annalists. 
 Milton, rising above the sphere of self-consciousness, 
 conquered for himself a large region of ideal freedom 
 by blending in his mind universal, though opposing, 
 conceptions, derived from the dogmas of the Christian 
 Keligion, the imagery of mediaeval Romance, and all 
 the art, culture, and civic wisdom of Pagan Antiquity. 
 Inspiration by the Universal, then, must be 
 regarded as the essential source of Life in Poetry. 
 This has been the main contention of the series of 
 lectures I have now concluded. I have shown by 
 reference to the works of the greatest poets how the 
 universal idea is conceived in the imagination ; how 
 it demands for itself expression by means of metre 
 as distinct from prose ; how when the sense of the 
 Universal wanes in society the art of Poetry also 
 dwindles and declines. But there remains a side of 
 the question which I have only touched superficially. 
 Though the suggestion of universal ideas to the 
 poet proceeds from unconscious inspiration, the right 
 treatment of the Universal is the function of Taste. 
 At this point, in fact, self-co7isciousness necessarily 
 comes into operation. Theoretically we are all ready 
 to acknowledge that the end of every kind of poetry 
 is "to hold the mirror up to Nature," that is, to 
 express the undefined idea of what is naturally 
 beautiful, sublime, or pathetic ; the difficulty is to 
 present this common idea to our own generation ; " to 
 show the very age and body of the time, his form and 
 pressure."
 
 LECT. IV POETRY AND THE PEOPLE 155 
 
 To put the problem in the shape of a question, 
 How is the poet to subject the liberties of genius 
 to the laws of cultivated taste? For though, in 
 the late stage of society at which we have 
 arrived, each man retains in his own imagination 
 fragments and glimpses of the great ideal view of 
 Nature which in its infancy our society shared 
 collectively, this has been so individualised by the 
 natural growth of civilisation, and so obscured by 
 the intervention of transient fashions of thought, 
 that anything like consent in matters of art and 
 taste seems to be almost impossible. I imagine 
 that Tennyson, perhaps the most skilful poetical 
 artist of the century, completely deceived himself 
 when he declared that he sang "but as the linnet 
 sings." The modern poet has to decide in the first 
 place whether the ideas that present themselves to 
 his imagination are genuine inspirations or only 
 Idols of the Fancy ; then to discover the form best 
 suited to embody his conception ; to estimate the 
 value of different ideas relatively to the composition 
 as a whole ; to select some, to reject others, to 
 arrange what remain ; to find the right word for 
 the expression of the thought, and the right position 
 of the word in the verse. All these perplexing 
 conditions make the composition of poetry as different 
 as possible from the song of a bird ; Art as well as 
 Nature has to be consulted ; and if poetic conception 
 is to issue in a permanent form of poetic expression, 
 the poet must be a man not only of the highest 
 invention but of the finest judgment.
 
 156 LIFE IN POETRY 
 
 Such being the case, it appears to me that it 
 will be both natural and useful to supplement this 
 inquiiy into the conditions of Life in Poetry by 
 an investigation of the nature of Law in Taste. 
 I propose during the remainder of my tenure of 
 this Chair to consider that subject in a fresh series 
 of lectures, in which I shall attempt to show the 
 universality of the instinct which has prompted men 
 in civilised communities to express in verse their 
 idea of Nature, and also the causes which have so 
 modified man's idea of the Universal in Nature as 
 to give a peculiar character and individuality to 
 the poetry of every nation ; when I have completed 
 this survey I shall seek to draw from it some practical 
 conclusions as to the possibility of directing the 
 course of liberal education in England, and particu- 
 larly in the Universities, with a view to influencing 
 the national taste.
 
 PART III 
 
 LAW IN TASTE
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 In most of the departments of Life or Knowledge, 
 Englishmen have earned the character of yielding a 
 ready obedience to the claims of Law and Order. 
 We are strict in requiring submission to the pre- 
 scriptions of Moral Law. We know that our civil 
 liberties depend on our loyal observance of the 
 Common Law of the land. We perceive the 
 necessity of subordinating the freedom of individual 
 fancy to the severe laws of Physical Science. But 
 there is a very extensive region of the understanding 
 within which each of us is inclined to claim for 
 himself an absolute exemption from law ; we do not 
 admit that there is any obligation on the individual 
 to examine, school, and regulate his perceptions in 
 matters of Art and Taste. " There has never been 
 in England," says Augustus Schlegel, "an academical 
 school of taste ; in art, as in life, every man there 
 gives his voice for what best pleases him, or what is 
 most suitable to his own individual nature." And 
 so far have we carried this liberty that criticism, or 
 the would-be exposition of aesthetic law, has fallen
 
 i6o LAW IN TASTE 
 
 among us into something like disrepute. " The 
 critics," said Lord Beaconsfield, making an epigram 
 which he knew would be popular, '* are the men who 
 have failed." 
 
 How far is this tendency in the English mind 
 reasonable ? It is undoubtedly grounded on two 
 fundamental instincts in the constitution of our 
 nature, our determination to abide by the results 
 of experience, and our love of what is practical. 
 Englishmen are sceptical in all matters that cannot 
 be brought to the test of actual experience, and it is 
 this national characteristic which has given rise on 
 one side to the inductive philosophy of Bacon, Locke, 
 and Newton, and on the other to the speculative 
 school of David Hume, which maintains that no 
 system of order is discoverable transcending the 
 immediate perceptions of sense. Within the domain 
 of philosophy we are right to follow logic to its 
 legitimate conclusions. But reasoning which is valid 
 for the philosopher may for the average mind simply 
 provide an excuse for avoiding the primary duties 
 of thought. We are obliged to recognise not only 
 the fact that from the days of Aristotle men in 
 every generation, and in every civilised society, 
 have occupied themselves with attempts to discover 
 the fundamental laws of Fine Art, but also that, by 
 the very constitution of the human mind, each man 
 is a critic. When we read a work of fiction, or look 
 at a picture or a statue, if we reflect at all, we go 
 through some process of reasoning and comparison 
 which justifies our mind in remaining in a state of
 
 INTRODUCTORY i6i 
 
 pleasure or dissatisfaction. Moreover, we find that 
 this process of reasoning is not an operation peculiar 
 to ourselves, but something that can be compared 
 with and measured by the experience of our neigh- 
 bours. Evidently, then, our immediate aesthetic 
 perceptions are capable of analysis, and there is 
 at least a possibility, that the common perceptions 
 of any society of men about objects of art may be 
 derived from some absolute system of Law and 
 Order in Nature itself. 
 
 Again, it is argued that, even if the laws of taste 
 were discoverable, they would be of no practical use, 
 either to the artist who creates, or to the world 
 which judges of the artist's work. This is an argu- 
 ment which finds a kind of ally in the disposition 
 of the philosopher. For example, a distinguished 
 member of this University, Mr. Bernard Bosanquet, 
 the author of a very valuable History of Esthetic, 
 which may be studied with the greatest advantage by 
 all who wish to follow me in this course of lectures, 
 says : " Esthetic theory is a branch of philosophy, 
 and exists for the sake of knowleds^e, and not as a 
 guide to practice." Now that is surely not quite 
 true. Aristotle, the first of aesthetic theorists, was 
 no doubt interested in discovering the laws of fine 
 art, mainly as part of the system of Nature, but no 
 sooner had he defined the fundamental laws of poetry 
 than he proceeded to apply them, as we see from the 
 rules he lays down for the composition of "the 
 perfect tragedy." In the same way Mr, Kuskin in 
 our own time began his Modern Painters with an 
 
 M
 
 i62 LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 investigation of general principles, and after satisfy- 
 ing himself as to the nature of these, he brought 
 many painters and poets to his bar of judgment, 
 causing thereby a great revolution in the sphere of 
 taste. 
 
 The truth is, that art forms so large a part 
 of the enjoyment of life, that the study of its 
 principles cannot be carried on altogether in the 
 sublime and indifferent region of philosophy. The 
 fears, the hopes, the ambitions of men mingle them- 
 selves inseparably with the serene practice of art, 
 often, indeed, stirring up something of that eager 
 and acrid emotion which accompanies the conflict of 
 politics in a free country ; so that though it be true, 
 as Schlegel says, that " in England every man gives 
 his voice for what best pleases him, or what is most 
 suitable to his own nature," yet it is equally true 
 that every man of spirit is anxious to see his own 
 artistic opinion prevail, and, just as in politics, will 
 use all the machinery at his disposal to make it 
 prevail. To the constant clashing of myriads of in- 
 dividual tastes, advocated without method, and with 
 all the heat of party spirit, is to be attributed the 
 unhappy reputation which has gathered round the 
 name of the English critic. 
 
 My object in the course of lectures which I 
 propose to deliver is to consider the question of 
 Law in Taste in a practical temper, to examine what 
 its nature is, where it is to be looked for, how^ it is 
 to be applied, and to what extent it can be made 
 the subject of mental training and discipline. I am
 
 INTRODUCTORY 165 
 
 auxious to remove the question alike from the region 
 of metaphysics and the atmosphere of party, and I 
 therefore ask my hearers to condescend to enter 
 upon the inquiry in the most elementary manner, 
 banishing, as far as possible, all technical and philo- 
 sophical terms, and making use only of such arguments 
 as can be popularly understood. 
 
 Now the Law of Taste must be determined by 
 the end of Fine Art, and let me say at once that 
 when I speak of Fine Art, I am satisfied with the 
 distinction which Aristotle draws between the useful 
 and the imitative Arts ; between those which have a 
 practical end in use or profit, and those whose end is 
 pleasure ; between those which seek to make Nature 
 their servant, and those which are satisfied with 
 imitating her ; the latter alone namely Poetry, 
 Sculpture, Painting, Music, and to a certain extent 
 Architecture being entitled to the name of the Fine 
 Arts. The end of Fine Art may therefore be re- 
 garded from two sides : one being the object of 
 Imitation which the artist proposes to himself; the 
 other the effect which the imitation itself produces on 
 the mind. First, as to the object of imitation. I use 
 the word " imitation " partly because it has been con- 
 secrated by long usage in all discussions about Fine 
 Art, and partly because it is, on the whole, the 
 most general and philosophic term applicable to the 
 subject, since it is obvious that, in one sense or 
 another, all the fine arts involve a representation 
 either of external objects or of the facts of human 
 nature. This is the case even with Music. Music,
 
 i64 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 indeed, appeared to the Greeks to be the most 
 imitative of all the arts, because it was the most 
 direct outward manifestation, in a rhythmical form, of 
 the passions and emotions of men. We ourselves 
 regard it in a different light, and find it difficult to 
 associate with Music the idea of imitation except 
 when it is accompanied with words. Nevertheless, 
 the titles assigned by great modern masters to 
 their compositions show that, to a certain extent 
 at all events, human ideas and experiences are 
 intended to be expressed by a combination of 
 harmonious sounds; witness Mendelssohn's Songs 
 without Words, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, 
 and the different kinds of marches and requiems of 
 other composers. 
 
 The first region in which we may look for the 
 existence of Law in Art is, therefore, the merely 
 correct imitation of external things, as they are 
 conveyed to the mind through the senses. Each of 
 the Fine Arts has certain elementary laws of imita- 
 tion which the artist is bound to obey ; for example, 
 the painter's work must conform to the laws of per- 
 spective, and the proper distribution of light and 
 shade ; the musical composer must understand the 
 due distribution of keys and rhythms ; the poet 
 must be acquainted with the conditions under which 
 words can be harmoniously arranged in metre ; and 
 the man who would qualify himself to be a critic 
 in any one of these arts must have the same 
 amount of theoretical knowledore as the artist. 
 
 But this principle of the correct imitation of
 
 INTRODUCTORY 165 
 
 Nature carries us but a very little way in our 
 investigations of the Law of Taste ; because it is 
 evident that Nature and Art work with different 
 materials, and express themselves in different forms. 
 To imitate Nature correctly in any of the Arts is 
 not to copy the exact appearances of things. The 
 sculptor or painter does not attempt to imitate 
 Nature by creating men in flesh and blood, but by 
 representing them in marble and colour ; the poet, 
 in so far as he is a poet, will not reproduce on the 
 stage the tragedies of life as they are met with in the 
 police courts and reported in the newspapers ; he 
 shows to the spectators the actions and characters of 
 men in situations of his own contriving. Every 
 artist, in fact, puts into his imitation of external 
 things something that is not to be found in the 
 particular aspect of Nature. What that something 
 is has been a matter of dispute from the earliest 
 days of criticism. Some of the ancients called it to 
 KoXov, others rh ^iXriov ; some of the moderns define 
 it as the Beautiful, others as the Characteristic : this 
 much at least is agreed upon, that the end of Fine 
 Art is to produce an appearance of organic life in 
 the sphere of the Ideal resembling something that 
 exists in the sphere of the Real. 
 
 From this it follows very clearly that the end of 
 Fine Art is not accomplished when the artist has 
 put into form the ideal object which he has proposed 
 to himself. For the object of imitation is, by the 
 hypothesis, something external to the mind, and if 
 the work of the artist be alone looked to, we cannot
 
 1 66 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 be sure that it is not an image of a monster, or 
 chimera, or some other form of unreal existence. 
 The artist himself may be like Horace's mad gentle- 
 man at Argos, who sat in the empty theatre pleasing 
 himself with the idea that he was witnessing the 
 progress of a drama on the stage. We want some 
 test and verification of the ideal life presented to us 
 by Art ; and it is on this account that we have to 
 look for the end of Fine Art in the effect which the 
 imitation produces on the mind ; in other words, we 
 may decide that, quite apart from all questions as to 
 the nature of the Beautiful or the Characteristic, the 
 end of Fine Art is to produce aesthetic pleasure. 
 When the pleasure felt is universal, when it is felt, 
 that is to say, alike by the skilled critic and by the 
 world which judges from instinct, then, and not till 
 then, can it be said that life has been organised and 
 created in the sphere of the Ideal, and the objective 
 aim of Art certainly realised. 
 
 It is true that philosophers deny the necessity of 
 considering pleasure as an essential portion of the 
 law of Fine Art. Mr. Bosanquet who regards the 
 investigation of the law of Beauty as the proper 
 subject of aesthetic science, and who defines Beauty 
 as " the characteristic, in as far as expressed for sense 
 perception or imagination," says : "If, indeed, we 
 were attempting a psychological determination of 
 the feeling that attends or constitutes the peculiar 
 enjoyment known as the enjoyment of beauty, we 
 should probably have to deal with a term not 
 mentioned in the definition above proposed the
 
 INTRODUCTORY 167 
 
 term pleasure. But in attempting to analyse what 
 it is that distinguishes perceptions or imaginations 
 productive of this enjoyment from others which are 
 not so productive, it appears to me that we should 
 commit a serious error if we were to limit ' expres- 
 siveness ' or ' characterisation ' either by beauty, 
 which is the term to be defined, or by pleasantness 
 which is a quality not naturally coextensive with the 
 term to be defined." 
 
 It may, indeed, be possible for the philosopher, 
 whose mind dwells familiarly among abstract terms, 
 so to isolate his perceptions that the ideas conveyed 
 by the words, the Beautiful, the Sublime, the Ugly, 
 may come to have a kind of objective existence ; 
 that he may feel himself able to note the laws of 
 their nature, and to deduce from these the principles 
 and limits of Fine Art. But even the philosopher 
 must, in the first instance, have based his ideas on 
 his observation of concrete things, which he includes 
 under the words "beautiful," "sublime," and "ugly," 
 and it is certain that he could not have detached 
 these primary perceptions from the feelings of 
 pleasure or pain with which they were accompanied. 
 In the ultimate search, therefore, it seems certain that 
 the laws of taste may be more confidently looked for 
 in the affections of the mind, which it is possible to 
 analyse with some precision, than in the nature of an 
 external Order, which may indeed have an absolute 
 existence, but which can only be known to us by its 
 operation on, and its relation to, the organs of 
 perception.
 
 i68 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 If this be so, however, another question of great 
 difficulty and complexity at once arises. What is 
 the nature of this imaginative pleasure which is so 
 inseparably associated w^ith the productions of Fine 
 Art ? Is it to be regarded as an end in itself, per- 
 fectly free and independent of all moral considerations? 
 Or does it, like the pleasures of sense, fall within the 
 scope and jurisdiction of the moral law ? Must it be 
 held the peculiar property of the individual, which 
 may be enjoyed by him without any sense of re- 
 sponsibility to his neighbours ? Or have his neigh- 
 bours, who share the common perception, a right to 
 pronounce judgment on these enjoyments of the 
 individual, in so far as they constitute an element in 
 the life and well-being of society ? 
 
 Such are the questions which arise immediately 
 we beofin to reflect on the nature of Law in Taste ; 
 and in the midst of the multitudinous ocean of 
 sentiments and opinions on which we are tossed, it 
 is surely well for each man to look for the steadfast 
 guidance of the stars ; to form in his mind some 
 settled principles by which he may test the value of 
 the various w^orks of art which are produced for his 
 pleasure. I propose, therefore, in my present lecture 
 to ask, in the first place, whether ^Esthetic Philo- 
 sophy, as such, and apart from artistic practice, can 
 reveal to us any immutable truths about the two 
 ends of Fine Art, Ideal Imitation and Imaginative 
 Pleasure ; and if not, whether there is any other 
 method that we can pursue to discover the Law of 
 Taste, For this purpose it will be convenient to
 
 INTRODUCTORY 169 
 
 give a very brief historical sketch, determined by 
 well-known landmarks, of what Philosophy has said 
 upon the two points I have mentioned. 
 
 Koughly speaking, the history of aesthetic 
 criticism has run through five periods : the Greek 
 civic period ; the Alexandrian and Roman period ; 
 the Mediaeval period ; the period of the Renaissance ; 
 and the Modern period following the French Re- 
 volution. To take first what has been said in each 
 period about Ideal Imitation. The first to approach 
 the subject was Plato, who appropriated the word 
 Imitation as it was popularly used by his con- 
 temporaries, and decided that, as the artist merely 
 copied that surface of Nature which was three 
 degrees removed from the truth of things, he must, 
 as a teacher of falsehood, be banished from the Ideal 
 Republic. Aristotle, continuing the use of Plato's 
 terms, treated the question both more practically and 
 more profoundly. He regarded Art as a rival creator 
 with Nature, holding that the function of Art was 
 to observe Nature's intentions in creation, and to 
 express, in a matter and form distinct from that of 
 Nature, a higher conception of the ends she had in 
 view. Reasoning from these philosophical principles 
 he laid down in his Poetics, as a practical critic, 
 certain definite rules with regard to poetical com- 
 position, notably as to the construction of the perfect 
 tragedy and the character of the ideal hero. 
 
 So far Philosophy had treated Art from a social 
 and political point of view. J^lato and Aristotle had 
 been educated in the midst of ideas derived from
 
 I70 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 the traditions of Greek political freedom, and all 
 their criticism of Fine Art was inspired by their 
 conceptions of the duties and capacities of the 
 individual as a member of the State. But in 
 the Alexandrian -Roman period the point of view 
 of the aesthetic philosopher began to alter : the 
 ideas of men grew cosmopolitan ; their aesthetic 
 reasoning became more theoretical and abstract. 
 Within this period we find, for example, the philo- 
 sopher Plotinus grounding himself on Plato in his 
 speculations about the Beautiful ; but, so far from 
 condemning the artist's imitation of Nature, he 
 approves of it as helping men to conceive an image 
 of Divine Good. Thus he says of sculpture : 
 " Phidias did not create his Zeus after any perceived 
 pattern, but made him such as he would be if Zeus 
 deigned to appear to mortal eyes." In this period 
 too appears the aesthetic treatise assigned to Longinus, 
 Hepl vy^ov<i, or The Sublime, from which we see that 
 the imagination of the artist is now allowed to travel 
 beyond the imitation of what is regularly and 
 symmetrically beautiful, and in which we get the 
 first glimpse of the later controversy about the place 
 of the " Ugly " in art. Moreover, there is a growing 
 perception of the interrelation of the different Fine 
 Arts as the vehicles of Imitation. Cicero, for example, 
 says : "In fact, all the arts which relate to humanity 
 have a certain common bond, and are united by 
 a kind of family relationship ; " while Plutarch, 
 making the idea more specific, quotes the saying of 
 Simonides that " Poetry is speaking painting, and
 
 INTRODUCTORY 171 
 
 painting dumb poetry." Finally, we have critical 
 treatises like Horace's Ars Poetica, in which, as in 
 the Poetics of Aristotle, there is a certain amount 
 of reasoning from general principles, and a certain 
 number of practical rules of composition. 
 
 From the Alexandrian -Roman we pass to the 
 Mediaeval Period, in which we witness the full effects 
 on Art of the philosophical reasoning of Plato and 
 Plotinus. The result of the Platonic and Neo-Platonic 
 tradition joined to the teaching of the Catholic Church 
 is, as regards Art, and especially the Art of Poetry 
 Allegory. Things that are seen are used by the poet 
 as symbols and shadows of truths invisible. Dante, 
 for example, says of Allegory : " Thus it is fitting 
 to speak to your wit, seeing that it is only from a 
 sensible object that it can apprehend what it after- 
 wards makes worthy of the understanding. Where- 
 fore the Scripture condescends to your intelligence and 
 -attributes feet and hands to God, while it understands 
 something else ; and Holy Church represents to you 
 in human likeness Gabriel and Michael, and the other 
 who restored Tobias to health." 
 
 The period known as the Renaissance brought the 
 artist back from symbolism to the direct imitation of 
 Nature, and advanced the authority of Aristotle, as 
 an aesthetic philosopher, above that of Plato. This 
 epoch is marked by several widespread controversies 
 concerning the nature of Imitation in Fine Art, all 
 more or less derived from legacies of thought and 
 criticism bequeathed by the Greeks and Romans. 
 In the seventeenth century Corneille, in three famous
 
 172 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 essays based on a misinterpretation of the Poetics of 
 Aristotle, defined the duties of the dramatist in com- 
 position. The rules that he laid down were accepted 
 with certain modifications as the law of the French 
 stage, which was finally declared in the celebrated 
 essay prefixed by Voltaire to his Semiramis, where 
 he speaks of Shakespeare as a " drunken savage," 
 Partly provoked by Voltaire's arrogance, and partly 
 following national instinct, Lessing, in his Harti- 
 hurgische Dramaturgic, attacked the first principles 
 of the French drama, opposing to them a sounder 
 interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics, and a more in- 
 telligent appreciation of the art of Shakespeare. 
 Meantime, a parallel discussion, originated by the 
 Polymetis of Spence, one of the early holders of 
 this Chair of Poetry, had arisen concerning the 
 relationship between Poetry and Painting. It took 
 its rise from the saying of Simonides to which I have 
 before alluded, and gradually developed into the 
 theories of Mengs and Winckelmann, based on the 
 study of Greek sculpture. This debate culminated 
 in Lessing's essay, Laocoo7i, in which that great critic 
 defined, more precisely than any previous writer, 
 the diff'erent functions of Imitation discharged by 
 Poetry and Painting. Almost at the same time 
 philosophical inquiries into these or similar ques- 
 tions were made by Hogarth in his Analysis of 
 Beauty, by Burke in his essay on The Sublime and 
 Beautiful, and by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his Dis- 
 courses, treating of the Grand and Characteristic styles 
 in Painting, and of the first principles of that art.
 
 INTRODUCTORY 173 
 
 Last of all we come to our own period, which 
 may be truthfully called the Revolutionary Period, 
 since it begins with the epoch of the French Revolu- 
 tion. The primum mobile of taste in this era is the 
 philosophy of Kant, who started the great funda- 
 mental question, How to reconcile the world of sense 
 and phenomena with the world of ideal Order existing 
 in the mind. It would be impossible for me, in the 
 brief time at my disposal, to condense into an intel- 
 ligible shape the complex and difficult reasoning of 
 Kant on the subject of Beauty and Fine Art. Suffice it 
 to say, he himself concludes that the result of all theor- 
 ising on such matters must remain purely subjective. 
 
 But if that be so, how can the artist be any 
 longer sure that he has a firm groundwork in his 
 imitation of external things, or that he will be 
 able to convey to the imagination of others the 
 organic conception which exists in his own ? This 
 was a question to which Schiller and Goethe, whose 
 ambition it was to found a literature in Germany on 
 philosophical principles, felt themselves bound to 
 provide a theoretical answer. Each did so in his 
 own way. Schiller, accepting the doctrine of Kant 
 and Fichte, that the individual mind is the centre of 
 the universe, nevertheless maintained that, for the 
 artist, Beauty may have an external existence. The 
 individual artist, he reasoned, has the capacity of 
 clearly noting and reflecting on the semblances of 
 things in his own mind ; he has also within him the 
 power of imitation, or, as Schiller called it, " the play- 
 impulse," in other words, the desire of reconstructing
 
 174 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 the likenesses of external things in concrete images 
 according to his own ideas of Order ; out of these 
 primary innate powers springs the organism of Fine 
 Art. Goethe, on the other hand, who disliked 
 metaphysics, based his aesthetic reasoning on his 
 own perception of the falsehood of the classical 
 conventionalism which had invaded all the arts in 
 the eighteenth century, and maintained that the 
 cause of art was the desire of the soul to imitate the 
 idea of the Characteristic which it notes in the objects 
 of external Nature. He seems to have obtained 
 his generalised idea of the Characteristic partly from 
 the distinct and contrasted types of ideal life embodied 
 in Greek and German architecture, and partly from 
 the observations of Winckelmann and Lessing on the 
 inner significance of Greek sculpture and painting. 
 
 Not long after Goethe had originated the idea 
 of the Characteristic, Augustus Schlegel gave it 
 outline and emphasis in his Lectures on Dramatic 
 Poetry^ by drawing a sharp line of distinction between 
 the Classic and Romantic spirit, and between the 
 different methods of imitation pursued by the poets 
 in ancient and modern times. Next, starting from 
 the basis of the ideas and terms rendered familiar by 
 the writings of Goethe and Schlegel, Schelling pro- 
 vided a philosophical framework for the suggestion 
 furnished by Schiller. He worked up, as it were, 
 through the purely subjective crust of Kant's philo- 
 sophic principles to a kind of objective point in which 
 he supposed the unconscious spirit of life in the 
 world to meet with the conscious spirit of the
 
 INTRODUCTORY 175 
 
 individual mind, the result being the perception of 
 Beauty and artistic Creation. This he called the 
 Absolute. Hegel carried the idea a step further. 
 He combined Schelling's conception of the unconscious 
 spirit of life in the world with Schlegel's critical 
 distinctions between Ancient and Modern, Classical 
 and Romantic Art, in such a way that the uncon- 
 scious life of the world was represented by him as 
 progressing from point to point, like stages in a 
 journey, each of which was reflected in the conscious 
 mind of man through successive phases of Art. Every 
 stage of civilisation in the world has found, in fact, 
 according to Hegel, a central representation in one 
 of the Arts, and each of the arts again has passed 
 through three phases of imitation, called respectively 
 the Symbolic, the Classic, and the Romantic. With 
 Hegel whatever has been fruitful in the German 
 analysis of the nature of Ideal Imitation comes to an 
 end. It is needless to say that the interest aroused 
 by these discussions has by no means been confined 
 to the sphere of philosophy, but has for good or ill 
 reacted on the course of art itself. The speculative 
 theories of Germany led to the war between the 
 Classicists and Romanticists in France after the re- 
 storation of the Bourbons, and prepared the way for 
 the Preraphaelite movement in England after the 
 first Reform Bill. 
 
 Now if we turn back to the other side of the 
 question, and ask what the philosophy of the world 
 has said about law in taste with regard to the effect 
 which Fine Art produces in the mind, we see, in the
 
 176 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 first place, that the common wisdom of the Greeks 
 held the purpose of Fine Art to be didactic and 
 educational ; the function of Poetry at least being to 
 provide instruction sweetened by pleasure. Strabo, 
 for example, condemning the opinion of Eratosthenes 
 that "the aim of the poet is always to charm the 
 mind, not to instruct," says, " that poetry is a kind 
 of elementary philosophy which introduces us early 
 to life, and gives us pleasurable instruction in refer- 
 ence to character, emotion, action." To Plato this 
 instinctive conception of his countrymen appeared 
 false and vulgar. On the one side, his own course 
 of speculation led him to think that the artist 
 occupied himself with the imitation only of the 
 deceptive and fleeting shows of things ; on the other 
 he had a contempt for pleasure as an end in life, 
 rating what he held to be the highest kind of pleasures 
 only fifth in his scale of goods. Speaking of the 
 pleasure produced by tragic poetry, as if Poetry were 
 the sister of an Art like Cookery, he asks ironically : 
 " To what does their solemn sister, the wondrous Muse 
 of Tragedy, devote herself ? Is all her aim and desire 
 only to give pleasure to the spectators, or does she 
 fight against and refuse to speak of their pleasant 
 vices, and willingly proclaim in word and song truths 
 welcome and unwelcome ? Which is her character ? " 
 To this the interlocutor with Socrates has to reply : 
 " There can be no doubt that Tragedy has her face 
 turned towards pleasure and gratification ; " where- 
 upon Socrates proceeds with a further question: "And 
 is not that the sort of thing which we were just now
 
 INTRODUCTORY 177 
 
 describing as flattery?" Plato therefore, who banished 
 poets from his Republic because they were the imitators 
 of Falsehood, would also have banished them on the 
 ground that they were, as he supposed, purveyors of 
 immoral Pleasure. His attitude towards Fine Art 
 resembles that of the English Puritans. 
 
 The intellectual position of Aristotle is entirely 
 different. He says distinctly that the end of Poetry, 
 as of all fine art, is to produce a pleasurable effect in 
 the mind. When Plato objects against Homer that he 
 produces imaginative pleasure by stories of the gods 
 which are untrue and immoral, Aristotle is content to 
 reply that these stories, being current among the people, 
 lie at the root of that art of Poetry which is the source 
 of ideal pleasure. By arguing in this way against the 
 moral philosopher, Aristotle separates himself to a 
 certain extent from the popular Greek tradition, which 
 assigned to Poetry a moral and didactic function ; 
 he no longer regards the pleasure arising out of 
 poetry as something directly associated with instruc- 
 tion, but as aesthetic enjoyment, a thing which is 
 to be examined according to the laws of its own 
 nature. Nevertheless, he is far from excludino- the 
 operation of moral law from the domain of aesthetic 
 pleasure. Moral considerations enter into his defini- 
 tion of Tragedy. " Tragedy," he says, " is an imitation 
 of an action and of life, of happiness and misery ; and 
 happiness and misery consist in action, the end of 
 human life being a mode of action, not a quality." 
 There is moral feeling even though the metaphor 
 on which they are based may be material in the 
 
 N
 
 178 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 celebrated words which describe tragedy as " effecting 
 through pity and fear the purgation of those emotions." 
 And there is a distinct application of moral law in 
 the veto placed by Aristotle on such a representation 
 in tragedy of gratuitous wickedness, as is given 
 by Euripides in the character of Menelaus in the 
 Orestes. 
 
 To some modern writers Aristotle has appeared 
 inconsistent in limiting the liberties of aesthetic 
 enjoyment by the intervention of moral law. Mr. 
 Bosanquet observes : " The emphasis which he rightly 
 laid on utterance and intelligence did not lead him 
 to the idea that the delight of these factors of art 
 was no mere psychical accident, but was the mani- 
 festation of joy in self-expression, the ultimate root 
 and ground of aesthetic pleasure ; and, therefore, 
 when we are asked whether Aristotle recoornised 
 aesthetic as apart from real interest (either moral 
 or hedonistic), we are thrown into perplexity." For 
 my own part, I think that this difficulty may readily 
 be cleared up. Aristotle did not, like modern philo- 
 sophers, consider man in a mere individual human 
 capacity ; he regarded him as a " political being," 
 and only cared to contemplate him in a state of 
 society. Hence all his speculations about him are 
 tacitly limited by some practical assumption ; he 
 measures virtue in the abstract by its manifestation 
 in the wise and prudent man (o <l>p6vcfio<;) ; and the 
 same kind of test is applied to discriminate the 
 varieties of aesthetic enjoyment. The end of Fine 
 Art is to produce pleasure in the imagination, but
 
 INTRODUCTORY 179 
 
 the Standard of such pleasure is the impression made 
 on the mind of the accomplished and cultivated 
 member of society (6 -xapiet,^), which may be regarded 
 as the rule of what ought to be, in this depart- 
 ment of human nature. Such a man will not 
 require the elementary " pleasurable instruction " 
 spoken of by Strabo ; he will indulge his imagina- 
 tion in every kind of enjoyment that gives play 
 to his healthy instincts ; but he will repress with 
 sternness those spiritual solicitings which tend to 
 the corruption of his own nature and the enervation 
 of society. 
 
 To me, indeed, it seems that Aristotle, in thus 
 associating Art with Morality, is far more profound and 
 consistent than the modern German philosophers who 
 attempt to exclude all moral considerations from what 
 they call the Science of ^Esthetics, and who analyse 
 man merely as an isolated sentient being. Kant, indeed, 
 the father of all modern German philosophy, occupies 
 a logical position in the matter. If I understand 
 him rightly in his Critique of tJte Power of Judgment, 
 he holds that those only are perfectly free perceptions 
 of Beauty which are accompanied in the mind with 
 a sensation of pleasure, without any perception of 
 dependeiK.e or relation ; and that these perceptions 
 cannot be classed under any rational conception or 
 associated with a moral end. But if this be so, the 
 analysis of aesthetic pleasure ought to be limited to 
 the purely physical feelings that are associated with 
 beautiful sights and sounds, such as the example 
 which Kant gives of our pleasure in the beauty of
 
 i8o LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 a flower ; and hence the consistent followers of Kant 
 have endeavoured to develop his a3Sthetic philosophy 
 by an investigation of the permanent physical con- 
 ditions which accompany sensations of mental pleasure, 
 inquiring, for example, what geometrical figures are 
 most pleasant to the eye ; how far the pleasures of 
 the ear arise from the import of single notes in music 
 or from measured intervals of sound ; and what are 
 the elementary meanings of the association of colours. 
 From questions of this kind all moral considerations 
 are, of course, properly excluded. But obviously the 
 pleasure produced in the imagination by works of Fine 
 Art, and especially Poetry, cannot be examined in this 
 way, and Kant, who maintained that all Beauty capable 
 of presenting an ideal was as he expressed it not 
 free but " dependent," would not have considered 
 Poetry as falling within the purely aesthetic sphere. 
 
 Hegel and his followers, on the contrary, are 
 like Kant, anxious to exclude moral judgment 
 from the aesthetic sphere, but are at the same time 
 resolved to include poetry within the domain of 
 aesthetic philosophy, and Mr. Bosanquet criticises 
 Kant's position as follows : "If beauty is regarded 
 as subservient to morality, or is judged by the 
 standard of specifically moral ideas, it is beyond a 
 doubt unfree or dependent. But if the content of 
 life and reason is taken into beauty, and perceived 
 not as the expression of morality, but as the utter- 
 ance in another form of that reasonableness which is 
 also to be found in morality, then we first destroy 
 the restriction of ideal beauty to man for there is
 
 INTRODUCTORY i8l 
 
 reasonableness in all nature and we secondly break 
 down the extraordinary paradox that the highest 
 beauty is not free. That beauty which is the largest 
 and deepest revelation of spiritual power is not the 
 most dependent but the freest beauty, because it 
 implies no purpose whatever excepting that which 
 constitutes its own inmost nature, the expression of 
 reason in sensuous form." If it were not presumptuous 
 for a professor of Poetry to criticise a philosopher on 
 his own ground, I should venture to remark that the 
 argument that Beauty and Morality are only forms of 
 reasonable life, and that the former may therefore 
 be included in the sphere of philosophic analysis, is a 
 somewhat extraordinary petitio principii. 
 
 When we survey the long history of aesthetic 
 inquiry can we say that Philosophy, apart from 
 artistic practice, has thrown any light upon the laws 
 of taste ? To this question we must answer, in the 
 first place, that a very large portion of aesthetic 
 philosophy, as being concerned solely with abstract 
 knowledge, has no bearing on our purposes. What 
 we are in search of is some settled principle or 
 principles which shall help us, in appreciating the 
 merits of a work of art, to determine whether the 
 artist has adopted a right method of ideal imitation, 
 and whether our judgment of his work, as measured 
 by the feeling of pleasure or pain in our mind, rests 
 upon a basis of reason. We are in no way helped to 
 a decision on such points when Hegel tells us that 
 " beauty is the presentation of truth to sense and 
 fancy," or when Hartmann, who is supposed by some
 
 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 to have said the last word on the subject, affirms that 
 "beauty is the life of love apprehending its own 
 ground and purpose." One German philosopher after 
 another may suggest a scientific classification of the 
 Fine Arts, but not one of these will help us to decide, 
 in a particular instance, when the poet, in his concep- 
 tion and execution, is passing beyond the limits of his 
 own art into that of the painter, or when the musician 
 is encroaching upon the territory of the poet. 
 
 It is said, how^ever, that Philosophy is bound to 
 determine the absolute place of Art in the scheme of 
 Nature, before we can formulate the laws which ought 
 to regulate the work of the artist ; and no doubt artists 
 in late periods of production have based their work on 
 abstract systems of reasoning, as Wagner, for example, 
 in music, and the English Preraphaelites in poetry and 
 painting. But experience teaches us to look with 
 scepticism on the absolute principles which aesthetic 
 philosophy claims to have a right to apply to the 
 practice of art. They are the product of a science 
 which, according to Hartmann, its latest exponent, 
 professes to date only from the last decade of the 
 eighteenth century, which has been investigated 
 almost exclusively in Germany, and which thinks 
 scorn of all the critical inquiries of the older 
 Gentile world, including the Poetics of Aristotle. 
 There is no trace in it of that progress from point 
 to point of discovery which marks the course of 
 physical science. Everything is at sixes and 
 sevens ; the followers of Hegel are at war with the 
 followers of Schopenhauer ; the terms which are
 
 INTRODUCTORY 183 
 
 employed in the classilication of the Arts Symbolic, 
 Classical, Romantic are not of universal significance, 
 but are the legacy of a chance literary tradition. 
 As to what aesthetic philosophy has discovered con- 
 cerning the relationship of the arts to each other, 
 the conclusion of Hartmann, who is the last comer in 
 the field, is thus characterised by Mr, Bosanquet : 
 " The whole passage, which I have quoted because 
 it puts Hartmann's view conveniently together and 
 shows the outrageous results of the extreme Wagnerian 
 influence (I do not say of Wagner's own theoretical 
 writings, with which 1 am not acquainted), could 
 hardly have been written by any man with a true 
 feeling for any branch of art." 
 
 These last words words, be it remembered, of 
 the Historian of Esthetic Philosophy suggest a new 
 consideration. The critical rules of the philosopher 
 are of no use to the greatest artists. .111 great Art 
 precedes criticism. Homer and the Greek tragedians 
 produced their work without reference to the philo- 
 sophic principles afterwards discovered in it by 
 Aristotle. On the other hand, no great tragic writer 
 ever composed a drama according to the ideal recipe 
 proposed in the Poetics. Criticism was practically 
 unknown in England in the time of Shakespeare, who 
 constructed his plays according to his own sense of 
 fitness, limited only by the external conditions then 
 regulating dramatic production. There is nothing to 
 indicate that Wagner's theoretical principles, apart from 
 his practice, will extend the area of operatic music. 
 When Millais advanced in tlie practical knowledge
 
 1 84 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 of his art he abandoned the principles of the Pre- 
 raphaelites on which he had founded his earliest work. 
 Now, if great works of art are produced without 
 any conscious application of philosophic principles, 
 ought we not, in searching for the law of taste, to look 
 away from the abstractions of philosophy to the con- 
 crete productions of art ? We know from the enduring 
 feeling of pleasure accompanying the work of the great 
 artist that the method he has taken in producing 
 his work must have been right. We have no such 
 opportunity of verifying the reasoning of the great 
 philosopher. The philosopher comes with his 
 analysis, claiming the whole field of Nature as his 
 dominion. By examining poems, and statues, and 
 pictures, he raises and seeks to solve vast questions 
 of the greatest interest as to what is the essence of 
 Beauty ; how the Ugly is related to the Beautiful ; 
 how the various Arts are related to each other and, 
 arguing from his metaphysical conclusions, he often 
 ventures to prescribe to the artist practical rules of 
 composition. But does any one believe that if a late 
 Greek dramatist had composed a tragedy on the 
 pattern suggested by Aristotle, he would have been 
 able to awaken the same kind of pleasure as had been 
 felt in the sublime irregularity of the Agamemnon 
 and the Prometheus of ^schylus ? Obviously, then, 
 the philosopher must have left some essential condi- 
 tion of life out of his analysis. Meantime the artist 
 has doubtless been unconsciously face to face with 
 many of the abstract problems suggested by the 
 philosopher, but when he comes, for example, to
 
 INTRODUCTORY 185 
 
 consider how the harmony of his composition is to be 
 reconciled with the introduction of ugly or discordant 
 elements, behold, the difficulty vanishes in the effect. 
 Solvitur amhulando. 
 
 There is but one Absolute and Divine Source of 
 ideal Beauty, but the rays that proceed from it are 
 modified in their passage through the mind, and are 
 thence reflected in a thousand different forms accord- 
 ing to the varying genius of those who strive to 
 imitate it. Chinese, Hindu, Assyrian, Egyptian, 
 Greek, and the modern nations of Europe, have all 
 embodied in the Fine Arts their ideas of what is 
 spiritual and unseen. To reduce their opposite con- 
 ceptions to a central law of taste would be impossible, 
 nor do I believe that there is real evidence of progress 
 and development from one type of Fine Art to another. 
 We are entitled to graduate the artistic merit of 
 different races, just as we discriminate the races them- 
 selves in the scale of intellect, but practically the 
 ideal art of each of them may be said to proceed from 
 within, and to contain in itself its peculiar law of 
 taste. In other words, the law of taste in each nation 
 consists in the development of its own genius or 
 character, in conformity with its sense of natural 
 Beauty. 
 
 How, then, may we proceed by inductive methods 
 to investigate the law of Character in national Art ? 
 First, from the outside, by observing in each nation 
 the growth of its powers of ideal Imitation. The 
 purpose of all the Fine Arts is eminently social ; 
 and the truly great artist in any society derives
 
 i86 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 his fame from his power to give expression to the 
 common perception of what is noble and beautiful. 
 These perceptions are always clearest and most un- 
 clouded in the early stages of a nation's life while 
 it is still unconscious, or only half-conscious, of the 
 greatness of its capacities and its destinies. It is 
 then that the bent of the national genius discloses 
 itself Faith is firm. The mind receives impressions 
 vividly, and feels no doubt about their truth. The 
 artist selects with unerring judgment characteristic 
 forms of expression, and proceeds in a definite direc- 
 tion from point to point of invention. Again there is 
 in every society which has the gift of ideal imitation 
 a specially fruitful period of productive art. Such 
 was in Greece the period between Homer and the 
 death of Pericles, when all the Fine Arts reached their 
 zenith. Such, too, in the history of Italian painting 
 was the period between Giotto and Raphael. By care- 
 ful observation of the works of art produced in these 
 periods we may generalise confidently as to the par- 
 ticular bent of Greek and Italian taste. 
 
 But the aesthetic character of any society may also 
 be investigated from within, by tracing the natural 
 turn of its criticism, in other words, the declaration of 
 law by those who judge of right and wrong in art from 
 the effect which art produces in the mind. There comes 
 a stage in the life of every nation when it emerges 
 from the state of almost intuitive action into the 
 full consciousness of thought, when its instinctive un- 
 wavering percejjtion of the forms of external nature 
 is obscured or distorted by the vast variety of
 
 INTRODUCTORY 187 
 
 interests which it observes in itself. The growth 
 of commerce, the changes of religion, the revolutions 
 of politics, the conflicting ideals of education, the 
 general march of civilisation, all sweep successively, 
 like advancing tides, over the primal instincts of 
 infantine society. There is something in such pro- 
 gress like the stages described by Wordsworth in the 
 life of the individual : 
 
 The youth, who daily further from the East 
 
 Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended ; 
 
 At length the man perceives it die away, 
 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 But in the life of nations the vision never entirely 
 dies away. The desire of ideal imitation, the shadow 
 at least of Poetry, remains to the last ; but in the 
 late days of national life artistic creation is always 
 accompanied by criticism. The historical period at 
 which Criticism appears varies according to the 
 character of different nations. Sometimes, as in 
 Greece, it arises in the natural order of develop- 
 ment, after the great period of instinctive creation 
 has exliausted itself. Sometimes, as in the classical 
 period of French literature. Creation and Criticism 
 seem to go hand in hand. In Germany Criticism 
 preceded the artistic creations of Goethe and Schiller. 
 In England the principles of Criticism have constantly 
 fluctuated according as the character of artistic pro- 
 duction has been modified by internal changes of 
 society. But amid all this variety there may be
 
 1 88 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 traced a certain unity ; and while the progress of art 
 is materially affected by the changes of critical taste, 
 taste itself, in so far as it is the expression of 
 general perception, is determined by that National 
 Character, or 77^09, which is the original source of 
 art. 
 
 Life in Art and Law in Taste are, in fact, the 
 opposite sides of the same proverbial shield. Life in 
 Poetry, as I have already said, is the re-creation in 
 an organic form of the universal ideas or impressions 
 which the mind derives from Nature. Law in Taste 
 is the intuitive perception of the conditions of life 
 which constitute the organic unity of the work of art. 
 Hence Pope, with epigrammatic truth, associates the 
 spheres of Poetry and Criticism : 
 
 In poets as true genius is but rare, 
 True taste as seldom is the critic's share. 
 Both must alike from Heaven derive their light, 
 These born to judge, the others born to write. 
 
 That will be the text of the series of lectures I 
 propose to deliver. To deal with so great a subject 
 exhaustively volumes would be required. But I hope, 
 within the time by which my occupation of this Chair 
 is limited, to suggest to you lines of thought which 
 may not be unprofitable. In my next lecture I shall 
 dwell on the idea of unity common to all Art, as 
 illustrated in the Poetics of Aristotle, the great repre- 
 sentative of Greek character and Greek criticism. In 
 the three following lectures I shall show how this 
 idea of unity reappears in the respective poetry of 
 the French, German, and English nations, and how
 
 INTRODUCTORY 189 
 
 it is modified in each case by tlie national character, 
 and by different moral, social, and political conditions. 
 I shall then, in four lectures, take Chaucer, Milton, 
 Pope, Tennyson and Byron as the types of poetical 
 art in different periods of English history, in order 
 to show how each of them preserves in his work that 
 unity and continuity of character which is the great 
 law of taste. My concluding lecture, summing up 
 the results of our inquiry, will be devoted to the 
 practical consideration of the methods which ought 
 to be pursued in liberal education with regard to the 
 trainincr of taste.
 
 II 
 
 ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 
 
 If ever a man was qualified by genius and circum- 
 stances to declare the fundamental laws that govern 
 the production of works of fine art, it was Aristotle. 
 Aristotle was the fitting representative of a race 
 whom Nature had endowed more richly than any 
 people before or since with the power of embodying 
 beautiful conceptions in ideal forms of expression. 
 He lived at an epoch when that race had passed indeed 
 the meridian of its greatness, but was far from having 
 sunk into decrepitude. Born in 384 B.C., within 
 twenty years of the death of Socrates, he died in 322 
 B.C. within twenty years of the battle of Cli?eronea. 
 During that period the arts of Poetry, Painting, and 
 Sculpture continued to flourish, so that Aristotle was 
 acquainted not only with the principles observed by 
 great masters in the full maturity of art, but also 
 with the devices to which men naturally resort when 
 the springs of natural invention are beginning to fail. 
 The Poetics abound in instructive comparisons be- 
 tween the opposite aims of Polyguotus and Zeuxis 
 in painting, of Sophocles and Euripides in poetry ;
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 191 
 
 inferences are drawn not only from the Iliad of 
 Homer but from the Deliad of Nichochares ; and 
 the contemporary mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus, 
 the tragic novelties of Carcinus, and the metrical 
 experiments of Chseremon, furnish matter for criticism 
 not less interesting than the established practice of 
 the elder poets. Philosophy was fully developed, and 
 Aristotle was already classed among the greatest, if 
 not allowed to be the greatest, of philosophers. He had 
 examined in the Politics all the known varieties of civil 
 government ; in the Ethics the laws of morality ; in 
 the Physics the laws of external Nature ; in the Meta- 
 2)hysics the first principles of existence ; in the De 
 Anima the constitution of the soul in living things. 
 He seems to have approached the subject of Fine Art 
 and Poetry with peculiar interest and enthusiasm. 
 Though the Poetics is not an elaborate treatise on 
 technical practice, it is exhaustive in its examination 
 of principle, and the condensed philosophical epigrams, 
 which drop from the writer in a manner elsewhere 
 unusual to him, show how deeply he had thought upon 
 the subject. Every species of poetry which the Greek 
 world had yet produced is considered by him ; so 
 that in the Poetics we have a study of all the 
 varieties of the art close to the source of nature, and 
 unobscured by those conflicts of nations and languages, 
 of religions and philosophies, which have since con- 
 fused the human imagination. 
 
 What wonder then that Aristotle's treatise on 
 Poetry should have been accepted by a large portion 
 of the world with the reverence due to the utterance
 
 192 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 of an inspired law-giver ? That in France the oracles 
 he was supposed to have delivered on the question of 
 the Dramatic Unities should have been allowed to 
 control the stage practice of the greatest poets ? 
 That in Germany, Lessing, the immediate forerunner 
 of Goethe and Schiller, should have avowed his faith 
 that the Poetics of Aristotle was as infallible as the 
 Elements of Euclid ? The wonder rather is, that in 
 England the authority justly belonging to this work 
 should not have been recognised. It is no doubt 
 the case that, from the days of Sidney and Ben 
 Jonson down to the time of the First Reform Bill, a 
 considerable section of the English world of letters 
 have endeavoured to reinforce the advocacy of their 
 own opinions with the supposed doctrines of Aris- 
 totle ; but, on the other hand, the Poetics has never 
 been, like the Ethics and Politics, prescribed as a 
 systematic part of liberal education in this country ; 
 the general tendency has rather been to deny the 
 judicial competency of Aristotle to intervene in any 
 controversy of modern taste. 
 
 This disposition is mainly the result of a belief that 
 Aristotle's doctrines are in some way hostile to our 
 darling liberty. To any one who understands the 
 Poetics it will be clear that men who reason thus are 
 the victims of a gross superstition ; still, it is unques- 
 tionable that, either from a misunderstanding of his 
 text or from political and national prejudices, the 
 meaning of the philosopher has, in many passages, been 
 egregiously perverted by his would-be disciples, and 
 in such a way as to bring discredit on his teaching.
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 193 
 
 If we are rightly to value the Poetics, we must 
 separate what is essential in the treatise from what 
 is merely local and accidental ; and I shall there- 
 fore attempt first to examine the principles on 
 which the reasoning of Aristotle about Fine Art 
 depends, and then to distinguish these from the purely 
 technical rules which have been elevated by critical 
 tradition into such disproportionate importance. 
 
 The three main principles underlying Aristotle's 
 criticism are : ( 1 ) That the function of Poetry, as of 
 all Fine Art, is imitation, not instruction ; (2) That 
 the object of imitation in Poetry is the Universal, not 
 the Particular ; and (3) that the test of the justice of 
 poetic imitation is the permanent pleasure produced in 
 society by the work, not merely the pleasure felt by 
 the artist in creating it. With regard to the first of 
 these propositions, Aristotle found the term Imitation 
 established in popular usage ; the Greeks had per- 
 ceived instinctively that the first aim of every artist 
 was to imitate an object. It was for this very 
 reason that Plato objected to art itself as immoral ; 
 since he supposed it to be the aim of the poet and 
 painter to copy what was essentially false, as being 
 only an imperfect resemblance of true Being. Aris- 
 totle, with profounder insight into the nature 
 of human instinct, accepted the popular term, 
 and explained the origin of Poetry as follows : 
 " Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two 
 causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, 
 the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from 
 
 childhood, one difi'erence between him and other 
 
 o
 
 194 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 animals being that he is the most imitative of living 
 creatures ; and through imitation he learns his earliest 
 lessons ; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in 
 things imitated." 
 
 I venture to think that Aristotle is less success- 
 ful in his explanation of the cause of this universal 
 instinct. He says : " The cause of this again is, that 
 to learn gives the liveliest pleasure not only to 
 philosophers but to men in general, whose capacity, 
 however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason 
 why men enjoy seeing a likeness is that, in con- 
 templating it, they find themselves learning or infer- 
 ring, and saying perhaps, * Ah, that is he ! ' For if 
 you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure 
 will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the 
 execution, the colouring, or some such other cause." 
 The objection to this reasoning is, in the first place, 
 that it seems to run counter to Aristotle's general 
 position in the Poetics^ which is, that Art is not 
 directly didactic ; and secondly, that the very fact of 
 our being pleased with the recognition of a likeness 
 proves that we have already acquired a knowledge 
 of the original. 
 
 I imagine that our pleasure in Fine Art arises 
 primarily from imitation itself, because we thereby 
 feel both in ourselves and in the artist a cer- 
 tain sense of divine power, which brings us into 
 closer relation with the Creator of things. Many of 
 the Greeks, as I have said, regarded Poetry as a kind 
 of elementary branch of philosophic education, but 
 Aristotle did not agree with this opinion, which is
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 195 
 
 indeed confuted by the constitution and history of man. 
 A single illustration of the matter will be sufficient 
 for our purpose. Shakespeare's Tempest evidently 
 aims at producing pleasure simply by means of 
 imitation ; it is in no sense of the word didactic. 
 Ben Jonson, in the Prologue to Every Man in His 
 Hurrwur, finds fault with the play for its want of 
 moral aim ; and, in the Prologue to Every Man out 
 of His Humour, he defines what he considers should 
 be the didactic end of the drama : 
 
 Who is so patient of the impious world 
 
 That he can check his spirit, or rein his tongue ? 
 
 Or who hath such a dead unfeeling sense 
 
 That heaven's horrid thunder cannot wake ? 
 
 To see the earth cracked with the weight of sin. 
 
 Hell gaping under us, and o'er our heads 
 
 Black ravenous ruin with her sail-stretched wing 
 
 Ready to sink us down and cover us, 
 
 Who can behold such prodigies as these 
 
 And have his lips sealed up ? Not I ; my soul 
 
 Was never ground into such oily colours, 
 
 To flatter vice and dark iniquity : 
 
 But with an armed and resolved hand, 
 
 I'll strip the ragged follies of the time 
 
 Naked as to the birth. 
 
 Now the answer to Jonson's protest is that, three 
 centuries having since gone by, for one man that 
 laboriously studies his dramatic satires, powerful as 
 they are, ten thousand read with delight such a 
 creation as The Tempest. Hence it may be inferred 
 that in none of the professedly didactic poems of the 
 world, such as the De Rerum Natura, the Georgics, 
 and the Essay on Man, does the virtue lie in the
 
 196 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 philosophy, but rather in the purely imaginative 
 ideas which the skill of the poet enables him to 
 group about his central philosophical conception. 
 
 "The cause of this again" as Aristotle would 
 say is involved in the second great fundamental 
 principle of the Poetics, namely, that Poetry is an 
 imitation of the Universal, not of the Particular. 
 At first sight there is to us, as to the Greeks, some- 
 thing strange in a proposition like this ; for if the 
 end of Fine Art be imitation, close fidelity to the 
 original would seem to be the first essential in an 
 artist's work. But immediately we begin to think, 
 we see that the artist is not a copyist of Nature, but 
 a rival creator with her, going to work in a different 
 way and with a diff'erent end. Nature works with 
 materials apprehended by sense and experience 
 flesh, blood, spirit, and the like : the artist works 
 with ideas and imitates ideas ; and thus, though his 
 work is a likeness of something in Nature, yet the 
 likeness exists only in his own mind and in the mind 
 of those whom he hopes to please. To put the truth 
 in a concrete form : Aristotle says, in one place, that 
 the dramatist deals with character, passion, and 
 action. Action, passion, and character are objects to 
 be observed in nature, and the poet must produce a 
 likeness of them ; but Aristotle says, in another place, 
 that the dramatist will proceed after the manner of a 
 good portrait painter, who is in the habit of making 
 his portrait somewhat more beautiful than the original. 
 What I suppose he means is, that the inferior portrait 
 painter will indeed be able to reproduce the outward
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 197 
 
 lines and colours that exist in the face and form of 
 the person before him, but will not be able to repre- 
 sent the life and character of the man himself. 
 These are manifested in the expression ; the good 
 painter, seizing this, will divine the unseen source 
 from which it springs, and will be able to heighten 
 what he actually observes in such a way as to 
 express more beautifully the intention of Nature. 
 He will thus be able to convey through the like- 
 ness of an individual an universal idea of character. 
 On the same principle, in the higher walks of 
 painting, we see that, when Raphael represents St. 
 Paul preaching on Mars' Hill, he does not pay atten- 
 tion to what the Apostle says about himself, that 
 his " bodily presence was weak and his speech con- 
 temptible," but paints him with the commanding 
 figure and gesture which is felt to be appropriate to 
 the greatness of the message he is delivering. 
 
 What, then, is this Universal in Poetry, if in 
 Painting its presence may be detected in the strictest 
 kind of artistic imitation that exists, namely, the 
 art of the portrait-painter ? Two passages from the 
 Poetics may be cited as peculiarly illustrative of 
 Aristotle's meaning. One is that in which he con- 
 trasts Poetry with History : "It is evident from 
 what has been said that it is not the function of the 
 poet to relate what has happened, but what may 
 happen, what is possible according to the law of 
 probability or necessity. The poet and the historian 
 differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work 
 of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would
 
 198 LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 still be a species of history. Poetry, therefore, is a 
 more philosophical and a higher thing than history ; 
 for poetry tends to express the universal, history the 
 particular. By the universal I mean how a person of 
 given character will on occasion speak or act, accord- 
 ing to the law of probability or necessity ; and it is 
 this universality at which poetry aims in the names 
 she attaches to the personages. The particular is, 
 for example, what Alcibiades did or suffered. In 
 comedy this is already apparent ; for here the poet 
 first constructs the plot on the lines of probability, 
 and then inserts characteristic names unlike the 
 lampooners who write about particular individuals. 
 But tragedians still keep to real names, the reason 
 being that what is possible is credible ; what has not 
 happened we do not at once feel to be possible, but 
 what has happened is manifestly possible, otherwise 
 it would not have happened." 
 
 The other passage occurs in the 25th chapter where 
 Aristotle is defending Homer against objectors. He 
 says : "In general the impossible must be justified 
 [in poetry] by reference to artistic requirements, or 
 to the higher reality, or to received opinion. With 
 respect to the requirements of art a probable im- 
 possibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable 
 and yet possible. Again, it may be impossible that 
 there should be men such as Zeuxis painted. 'Yes,' 
 we may say, * but the impossible is the higher thing ; 
 for the ideal type must surpass the reality.' To 
 justify the irrational we appeal to what is commonly 
 said to be. In addition to which we urge that the
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 199 
 
 irrational sometimes does not violate reason ; just as 
 it is probable that a thing may happen contrary to 
 probability." 
 
 In these profound and penetrating, though un- 
 systematised, observations are contained all the 
 essential principles necessary to the production of a 
 work of Fine Art. The aim of Fine Art is to create 
 an appearance of organic nature in the world 
 of ideas; and the Universal is the ideal space 
 which the imagination must secure for itself in 
 order to create with perfect freedom. The highest 
 work of Art is that which, while presenting the most 
 lively image of Nature, least hampers the imagination 
 by suggesting a comparison of itself with particular 
 things. Thus, in Greek tragedy, the dramatist first 
 obtained for himself a secure base of poetic proba- 
 bility by choosing his fable from the accepted 
 legends of his race. As Aristotle says, the things he 
 represented were said to have happened ; how they 
 happened was a matter for full liberty of representa- 
 tion within the limits of the probable ; and it was 
 therefore open to the poet to introduce into his work 
 the element of to ^cXtiov, or the ideal, by means of 
 music, scenery, uncommon language, raising the 
 stature of the actors above the mortal standard, and 
 other devices. Shakespeare, uj) to a certain point, 
 works exactly on the same lines as the Greeks ; that 
 is to say, he finds the required likeness to external 
 nature in the incidents of some well-known story, 
 into which he projects all the vitality of his own 
 experience ; he provides the ideal atmosphere of his
 
 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 tragedies in the vagueness and uncertainty of the time 
 and place of the action, and in the lofty, metaphorical, 
 and unreal character of the language used by the 
 actors. Where he differs from the Greeks is in the 
 closeness with which, in certain parts of his action, 
 he imitates particular nature, as in the Grave-diggers' 
 scene in Hamlet or the reasoning of the Fool in Lear; 
 a device which, harmonising with the character of the 
 composition as a whole, not only furnishes the most 
 agreeable contrasts, but insensibly enhances the feel- 
 ing of reality and probability in the more ideal parts 
 of the representation. 
 
 Though the nature of the Universal can best 
 be understood by reference to the heroic styles of 
 Poetry, whether epic or dramatic, yet its presence is 
 equally necessary in those works of fine art in which 
 the imitation deals with the more ordinary characters, 
 actions, and passions of men, the adopted vehicle of 
 expression being prose. Aristotle admits the Mimes 
 of Sophron and Xenarchus, which were written in 
 prose, into the sphere of poetic imitation ; and in the 
 same way the nature of the Universal in art may be 
 illustrated from such works as Don Quixote and the 
 Waverley Novels. We observe, for example, the 
 Universal in the trial scene in The Heart of Midlothian. 
 In many respects this is an imitation of things as 
 they immediately appear to the senses; the story being 
 based on the incidents of everyday life, the locality 
 being an ordinary Court of Justice, the diction of the 
 actors a close reproduction of the dialect of the people. 
 And yet the extraordinary effect of nature which the
 
 ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 
 
 scene produces in the mind is not the result of an 
 accurate study of particulars. In the generalisation 
 of character, in the selection of incidents, in the 
 contrast of emotions, the fiction is so artfully raised 
 above the level of experience, that the imagination 
 moves in an ideal world. Helen Walker, the heroine 
 of the story as it happened in reality, did not, we feel 
 very sure, speak with the poetry that pervades the whole 
 character of Jeanie Deans ; Effie Deans is invested 
 with an attractiveness not likely to have been pos- 
 sessed by her original ; if the father of the prisoner 
 fainted during the actual trial, the episode would not 
 have been accompanied with all the picturesque and 
 pathetic circumstances imagined by the novelist. In 
 every direction there is room for the development of 
 TO ySeXrioi/, Aristotle's indispensable element of the 
 ideal. 
 
 Observe this again in a yet more limited sphere, 
 the set of circumstances represented in Miss Austen's 
 Pride and Prejudice. Everything in this novel 
 time, place, action, diction, costume reminds us of 
 our daily life ; and yet under this commonplace 
 surface a great artist has revealed a most dramatic con- 
 flict of universal human emotions. To have imagined 
 a being, manly, honourable, generous, but so eaten up 
 with the pride of birth and rank that he has brought 
 himself, on conscientious principles, to separate a 
 friend from a young woman with whom he is in 
 love, on account of her undesirable connections ; to 
 bring him, by the irony of events, to fall in love 
 with the sister of her whom he has injured, a person
 
 202 LAW IN TASTE part in 
 
 possessing all the fascinations of grace, frankness, and 
 high spirit, supplying by the lightning rapidity of 
 her wit and intuition her want of knowledge and 
 experience ; to exhibit the conflict between the man's 
 pride and his passion ; to cause his pride, when it 
 can no longer resist, to revenge itself for its defeat 
 by an offensive proposal of marriage ; to paint, in 
 language of the exactest propriety, the maidenliness 
 and severity with which the heroine rejects the suit, 
 and the humiliation, the astonishment, the indigna- 
 tion of the hero ; finally, to describe the gradual 
 process by which the fine nature of the man, recognis- 
 ing the justice of his sentence, purges itself of its 
 master vice and makes a generous return for the 
 indignity done to it never was there a more admir- 
 able Seo-t<f, or complication of plot, in any Greek 
 comedy ; never a more well-conceived TrepcTrereca, or 
 reversal of the action ; never a more satisfactory 
 Xvcri<;, or denouement of the moral situation. Justly 
 may we transfer to the creator of so perfect a work 
 the compliment which was, perhaps with some exag- 
 geration, paid to Menander : "Oh Nature and Jane 
 Austen, which of you has copied from the other ? " 
 
 You will observe that the essential characteristic 
 of the Universal, according to Aristotle, is to re- 
 present "what is possible according to the law of 
 probability or necessity." Herein lies the great 
 distinction between Fine Art and Philosophy. Both 
 of them seek to express Truth, but truth of a 
 different kind, and expressed by different means. 
 Philosophy expresses Truths of Fact, Fine Art
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 203 
 
 Truths of Idea : Philosophy proceeds by means 
 of analysis, Fine Art by means of imitation : Philo- 
 sophy seeks to arrive at the causes of things as 
 they are, Fine Art to create an image of things 
 pleasing to the mind. As society advances in refine- 
 ment, there is a constant tendency among artists to 
 encroach on the sphere of philosophy ; and this 
 practice receives some encouragement from the 
 language of Aristotle himself, who says that "poetry 
 is a more philosophical and a higher thing than 
 history." But it is clear that Aristotle did not mean 
 by this to imply that the method of poetry was the 
 same as the method of philosophy, for he says, in 
 another place, that the poet bases his work on what 
 is, logically speaking, a fallacy ; that is to say, the 
 poet asks the reader to grant him, as the groundwork 
 of his ideal creation, a hypothesis of things that have 
 at the time no actual existence. 
 
 This is indeed the method of all great dramatic 
 and epic poets and of the masters of romantic 
 fiction, but it is not that of certain other great 
 writers, such as Ben Jonson and Balzac, who 
 may be called the Realists of Art, and whose 
 work, as being the product of robust genius, is of 
 high intellectual interest. Ben Jonson and Balzac 
 endeavour to arrive at the Universal by observing the 
 facts they see before them, extracting from them 
 some general motive of moral conduct or some prin- 
 ciple of social action, and then reconstructing the 
 result of their analysis in an ideal form. But I do 
 not think any one would venture to assert that their
 
 204 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 creations are as probable and life-like as those of the 
 other poets I have mentioned. They are at once too 
 abstract and too particular. Ben Jonson, for ex- 
 ample, observed with unrivalled accuracy the various 
 humours, follies, and vices of the society that revolved 
 round the Court of Elizabeth and James I. ; he 
 sought to perpetuate them in an ideal form. But to 
 us his persons seem almost as abstract as those of the 
 old Moralities, and even in his own day he was obliged 
 to label them with names like Morose, Puntarvolo, 
 Pennyboy, Truewit, which, like the comic masks of 
 the Greeks, might in some degree indicate to the 
 audience the nature of the character intended. On 
 the other hand, in his Alchemist, it is almost painful 
 to observe the vast amount of learning he has em- 
 ployed in idealising a form of imposture which has 
 long ceased to interest society. 
 
 The case is not very dififerent with Balzac. In 
 Balzac we find always the idea of the Universal ; the 
 Seven Deadly Sins make their presence felt in every 
 page of La Comedie Humaine ; but they are so over- 
 laid with a multiplicity of sordid detail, copied 
 directly from real life, that we are almost justified 
 in doubting whether the sins themselves have not 
 vanished with the obsolete society of Louis Philippe. 
 Both Jonson and Balzac, moreover, disregard another 
 principle of Aristotle's, namely, that the drama (and of 
 course in the same way the novel) should not dwell 
 overmuch on the representation of evil. If good on 
 the whole did not preponderate over evil, human 
 society could not exist ; yet, in such representations
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 205 
 
 of life as Pere Goriot or La Cousine Bette, the interest 
 of the reader is almost entirely absorbed in the con- 
 templation of what is mean and bad. Perhaps it will 
 be said that evil is, on the whole, paramount in such 
 a drama as King Lear; but here the characters are 
 raised so high above the ordinary level, and the 
 action is thrown into so remote a past, that the 
 scenes of horror and wickedness in which the play 
 abounds do not press too strongly upon our sense of 
 reality, while the representation of evil is mitigated 
 by the idea of religion and retributive justice : 
 
 This shows you are above, 
 You heavenly justicers, that these our crimes 
 Do speedily avenge ! 
 And: 
 
 The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
 Do make us plagues to scourge us. 
 
 Throughout King Lear we feel that Tragedy is, ac- 
 cording to Aristotle's definition, through pity and 
 terror effecting a purgation of these emotions ; it is 
 not so in La Comedie ILumaine. 
 
 I almost shudder when I think what Aristotle 
 would have said about the conception, formed by some 
 of our modern Realists, of the law of poetic probability, 
 that is to say, of the method by which Fine Art 
 makes fictitious personages behave and speak in the 
 sphere of ideal action as we feel that they ought. 
 For example, an ingenious writer promises to tell me 
 a story of life in the time of the Indian Mutiny, and 
 I look forward to being transported out of myself 
 into scenes of heroic adventure, devotion, and self- 
 sacrifice, in a period which has now for all English-
 
 2o6 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 men begun to invest itself with the purple atmosphere 
 of Romance. But I have not been long introduced 
 to the ideal actors in the tale, before I find myself 
 mixing familiarly with John Nicholson, or Hodson of 
 Hodson's Horse, or Herbert Edwardes, and obliged to 
 follow a narrative of the siege of Delhi, related with 
 all the minuteness of a Kinglake or a Gardiner. And 
 as I listen to the discourse of this or that great 
 historical personage, enlivened with the " said he," 
 or " said she " of the novelist, I wake out of my dream 
 of imagination, and ask with an inevitable scepticism, 
 "Did they?" 
 
 Again, another famous story-teller undertakes to 
 show me what should be the ideal character of " The 
 Christian " in the nineteenth century. I suppose that 
 I am about to travel into that poetical region of the 
 Pilgrim's Progress which I can so readily realise in 
 imagination, and visions arise before me of the Land 
 of Beulah, and the Delectable Mountains, and Vanity 
 Fair, and the House Beautiful. Nor, indeed, are the 
 action or the actors of the story much more closely 
 related to the course of real life than the adventures 
 of Mercy, or Pliable, or Greatheart, or Mr. Worldly- 
 Wiseman ; so that something of a moral shock 
 is felt in the imagination when such very abstract 
 persons appear before us in Roman collars and 
 high-heeled shoes, delivering their souls in the 
 comic songs of the Music Hall and the dialect of 
 the slums. If only the author had known what 
 Aristotle says about the representation of character : 
 " The fourth necessary point is consistency ; for.
 
 LECT. 11 ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 207 
 
 though the subject of the imitation, the person who 
 suggested the type, may be inconsistent, still he must 
 be consistently inconsistent " if only the novelist, I 
 say, had been aware of this principle of Fine Art, he 
 would hardly have attempted to blend the style of 
 Bunyan with the style of M. Zola. 
 
 Let us try again. I lately studied with great 
 interest an experiment made by an eminent French 
 novelist, whose name is favourably known in 
 this University, M. Paul Bourget, to modernise the 
 story of Hamlet. It may be conjectured that M. 
 Bourget, if he had lived in ancient times, would have 
 sympathised with the contemporary critics, mentioned 
 by Aristotle, who found fault with Homer for making 
 the Greeks stand still while Achilles chased Hector 
 round the walls of Troy. Perhaps he thought that a 
 character like Hamlet would hardly have been the 
 product of the dark ages; or that those ages were 
 not likely to have possessed Universities ; or to have 
 reasoned philosophically on the principles of the 
 drama. At any rate he set himself to correct these 
 historic improbabilities, by presenting the extremely 
 modern character of Hamlet in a modern setting. 
 
 Up to a certain point he had before him perfectly 
 plain sailing. Nothing was easier than to arrange 
 the Confessions of a sentimental young Frenchman, 
 corresponding, to a certain extent, with the soliloquies 
 of Hamlet ; to make the hero relate how almost his 
 earliest recollection was the discovery of the murdered 
 body of his father; how he vowed to discover and 
 slay the assassin ; how his mother, a kind of French
 
 2o8 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 Mrs. Copperfield, married again ; how he him- 
 self was sent to a Lycee, in which his brooding 
 suspicion began to settle in the right quarter. 
 
 But here M. Bourget's difficulties began. The ghost 
 of Hamlet's father is an essential part of the machinery 
 of the play ; but a ghost would not readily assimilate 
 with the atmosphere of a French novel ; he must 
 therefore be replaced. The ingenious author replaces 
 him with a maiden aunt, a sister of the hero's father, 
 into whose confiding ears (of course in strict accord- 
 ance with the law of probability) the deceased 
 husband has poured, through a series of letters, his 
 fears and jealousies as to the state of his wife's affec- 
 tions. On her deathbed the maiden aunt signifies by 
 gestures to her nephew that she wishes these letters 
 to be destroyed without being read. He promises to 
 destroy them, but nevertheless reads them, an action 
 which causes him, in his Confessions, profuse self- 
 reproaches. " my prophetic soul, my stepfather ! " 
 
 Our modern Hamlet has now confirmed his sus- 
 picions with the discovery of a motive, but, being 
 Hamlet, he is still far from having made up his mind 
 to act. Shakespeare's hero was able to advance upon 
 the information of the ghost : 
 
 The play's the thing 
 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. 
 
 But as a play like the one in Hamlet could hardly 
 be acted in a modern French drawing-room, the 
 avenging son can only try to frighten his stepfather 
 by dark innuendoes, showing that he is aware of his
 
 ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 209 
 
 guilt, and hinting that an old juge d' instruction has 
 his eye upon him. Devices of this kind naturally 
 fail to shake the marble composure of the guilty man, 
 and since the author cannot avail himself of Rosen- 
 crantz and Guildenstern, or the voyage to England, 
 or the fencing-match, he is obliged to work out his 
 denouement by one of those never-failing hypotheses 
 which Gaboriau leads us to suppose are the usual 
 instruments of the French police, involving, on this 
 occasion, the existence of a black-mailing brother of 
 the stepfather and some more compromising letters. 
 
 Now, at the end of such a story, has not every 
 one a critical right to ask, Is this really the way in 
 which crime is committed, discovered, and punished in 
 the nineteenth century ? On the other hand, is there 
 anything in Shakespeare's treatment of the legendary 
 story of Hamlet that shocks our sense of poetic prob- 
 ability ? And if the answer to the latter question 
 be No ! does it not then follow that every man who 
 would compose a work of Fine Art must live in the 
 atmosphere of to ^eXrtov, or the Higher Reality ? 
 
 The third great fundamental principle of Aristotle's 
 criticism is, that the test of all true Imitation is the 
 enduring pleasure it produces in the mind of society, 
 not simply the pleasure which the artist feels in 
 creation. I believe I am right in saying that Pleasure 
 nowhere enters into Aristotle's definition of Fine Art ; 
 and yet it is no less certain that, throughout the 
 Poetics, the pleasure produced for mankind in general 
 is assumed as the moving cause of all Poetic creation. 
 This is apparent from sentences like these : *' Every
 
 2IO LAW IN TASTE 
 
 one feels a natural pleasure in things imitated : " 
 " The drama is superior to the epic because it affords 
 the most vivid combination of pleasures : " " The poet 
 is guided in what he writes by the wishes of his 
 audience ; the pleasure, however, hence derived " 
 (that is, from the happy endings of tragedies) " is not 
 the true tragic pleasure." 
 
 And this reasoning is just. For man being, 
 as Aristotle says, ^vaet ttoXitckov ^(pov, created for 
 the purposes of society, the poet or painter is not 
 to be regarded as an isolated lunatic, but as the 
 representative of his kind. Were it otherwise, 
 the man who produced a series of monsters, like 
 those described by Horace at the beginning of 
 the Ars Poetica, might insist, without fear of con- 
 tradiction, that he was the author of beautiful works 
 of art. Or again, as indeed often happens, the co- 
 operation of a number of clever people to impose 
 their own taste on society might be taken as the 
 determining standard of artistic beauty and truth. 
 But, indeed, the standard lies not in the will of the 
 artist, but in the constitution of human nature. 
 Doubtless the artist has alone the power of expressing 
 the unseen truth which many feel ; the great artist, 
 the fine artist, therefore, is he who is able to create 
 an image of what is universally felt ; who knows 
 equally well what are the resources and what the 
 limits of his art ; what means he possesses to snatch 
 from nature her mysterious secrets ; and how to 
 resist those temptations of his own mind that are 
 always ready to betray him into ambitious error.
 
 ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 211 
 
 The artist who, though he may, in a sense, be 
 a man of genius, has not attained to the region 
 of fine art, will, on the contrary, insist on enforcing 
 his own will in creation against the instincts and 
 intuitions of society. That I may not appear to 
 dogmatise, let me attempt to apply the law of 
 Aristotle to the two great opposing factions of modern 
 painters the Naturalists and the Impressionists. 
 Both of these, bitterly antagonistic to each other, are 
 equally contemptuous of the claim of the normally 
 constituted spectator to form a judgment of his own 
 on the general effect of a picture. Yet what says 
 Aristotle ? "A beautiful object, whether it be a 
 picture of a living organism or any whole composed 
 of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement 
 of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude, for 
 beauty depends on magnitude and order." This is 
 only another way of saying that, if a man attempt to 
 portray a beautiful object, without regard to these 
 necessary rules, he will fail to produce a pleasurable 
 effect on the mind. 
 
 The Naturalists who seek to reduce painting to 
 the level of photography, adhere so strictly to the 
 imitation of the particular in Nature, that they seek 
 to copy every hair on a caterpillar, every leaf on a 
 tree. This is not what the human imagination re- 
 quires: " An exceedingly small object," says Aristotle, 
 ** cannot be beautiful, for the view of it is confused, 
 the object being seen in an almost imperceptible 
 moment of time." At the opposite extreme the Im- 
 pressionists endeavour to introduce into painting the
 
 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 principle of Music. I met the other day with the 
 following very eloquent description by Mr. Whistler 
 of the harmonies produced in Nature by the approach 
 of Night: " When the eveninoj mist clothes the river- 
 side with poetry as with a veil, and the poor buildings 
 lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys 
 become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in 
 the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, 
 and fairyland is before us then the wayfarer hastens 
 home ; the working-man and the cultivated one, the 
 wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to under- 
 stand as they have ceased to see, and Nature, who 
 for once has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to 
 the artist alone, her son and her master, her son in 
 that he loves her, her master in that he knows her. 
 To him her secrets are unfolded, to him her lessons 
 have become gradually clear. He looks at the flower, 
 not with the enlarging lens that he may gather facts 
 for the botanist, but with the light of one who sees, 
 in her choice selection of brilliant tones and delicate 
 tints, suggestions of future harmonies." 
 
 Every one must admit that this is a very delicate 
 analysis in words of an imaginative impression on the 
 mind ; but the question for the painter is. How can the 
 vast and vague image of a city at night, conveyed to 
 the soul of the artist through his eye, be reproduced 
 to the eye and soul of the spectator by means of form 
 and colour ? We are in the region of to uTreipov, the 
 Infinite. " No object of vast size," says Aristotle, 
 *' can be beautiful, for as the eye cannot take it all in 
 at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for
 
 I.KCT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 213 
 
 the spectator ; as, for instance, if there were a picture 
 a thousand miles long." That is the truth of the 
 matter. All Fine Art requires unity of conception : 
 there is a Poetry in Painting, a wide and varied 
 sphere : the principle of to ^ekrtov may be variously 
 expressed in the general truths of light and colour 
 and landscape, as they are in the art of Cuyp, and 
 Kembrandt, and Gainsborough, and Turner, and Con- 
 stable : but everywhere there is a limit ; and the test 
 of the justice of the ideal imitation is the feeling of 
 completeness and of serene and harmonious pleasure 
 awakened in the mind of the beholder. 
 
 I think I have said enough to show that the 
 greatness of Aristotle as a critic is the result of his 
 knowledge of the laws of human nature, which are 
 the foundation of every organic creation of art. No 
 critic has ever equalled him in his profound analysis 
 of the constitution and the operations of the mind 
 of man ; no critic has so felicitously illustrated the 
 soundness of his abstract principles by concrete 
 illustrations, drawn from the practice of great artists. 
 I have left myself but little space to dwell on what 
 I venture to think the weak points in the criticism 
 of the Poetics ; nor, indeed, would it be worth while 
 to do so, were it not that, by some caprice of destiny, 
 it is just the more fallacious of Aristotle's doctrines 
 that have most influenced the course of artistic taste. 
 
 His critical method is, it seems to me, attended 
 by two disadvantages. One of these arises out 
 of the excess of his own genius ; he exaggerates 
 the functions of logical analysis in Fine Art. So
 
 !i4 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 long as he restricts his unrivalled powers of observa- 
 tion and induction to the operations of nature and 
 the positive practice of great artists, his reasoning is 
 incomparable ; but his good angel leaves him when, 
 confiding in his logic, he presses on into the territory 
 of invention and dares to lay down rules for the 
 poets. We see him at his best in his definition 
 of Greek Tragedy : " Tragedy is an imitation 
 of an action that is serious, complete, and of a 
 certain magnitude ; in language embellished with 
 each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds 
 being found in separate parts of the play ; in the form 
 of action, not of narrative ; through pity and fear 
 effecting the proper purgation of these emotions." 
 Every word of this is original, profound, true ; and 
 not less admirable is his employment of logic in his 
 25th chapter to defend the practice of Homer against 
 prosaic critics. 
 
 Compare, however, with passages like these his 
 employment of the same method in his exhaustive 
 enumeration of the diff'erent kinds of Recognition 
 possible in Tragedy how superficial and trivial 
 are the results of his analysis ! Or see him striving 
 to define what must be the structure of a Perfect 
 Tragedy, by proving that it ought not to be this, 
 that, or something else : " A perfect tragedy should, 
 as we have seen, be arranged not on the simple but on 
 the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions 
 which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive 
 mark of tragic imitation. It follows plainly, in the 
 first place, that the change of fortune presented must
 
 LECT. 11 ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 215 
 
 not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from 
 prosperity to adversity ; for this moves neither pity 
 nor fear ; it simply shocks us. Nor, again, that of 
 a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity ; for 
 nothing can be more alien to the spirit of tragedy ; 
 it possesses no single tragic quality ; it neither 
 satisfies the moral sense nor calls forth pity or fear. 
 Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain 
 be exhibited. A plot of this kind would doubtless 
 satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither 
 pity nor fear ; for pity is aroused by unmerited 
 misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like our- 
 selves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither 
 pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the char- 
 acter between these two extremes that of a man 
 who is not eminently good and just, yet whose 
 misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity 
 but by some error or frailty. He must be one who 
 is highly renowned and prosperous a personage like 
 (Edipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such 
 families." 
 
 When we examine this attempt to limit the pro- 
 cedure of the poet, we find that it breaks down in all 
 directions. In the first place, the enumeration of the 
 possibilities of tragedy is not exhaustive, for not only 
 does it plainly omit to conceive the structure of a 
 play like Macbeth, but it does not even take into 
 account the tragic composition of such a play as the 
 Agamemnon. Again, the premises of the reasoning 
 are not always true : for example, as Professor 
 Butcher very justly points out, it is not true to say
 
 2i6 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 *'The spectacle of a virtuous person brought from 
 prosperity to adversity moves neither pity nor fear;" 
 otherwise the Antigone would not be a good tragedy. 
 And once more Aristotle is inconsistent with himself, 
 for whereas he has said elsewhere that " unity of plot 
 does not consist in the unity of the hero," he now 
 makes everything tragic in a tragedy depend on the 
 character of the hero rather than on the nature of the 
 action as a whole. 
 
 The other weak side in the criticism of Aristotle 
 is a certain defect of poetic sensibility or intuition, 
 probably arising out of the circumstances of his time. 
 We are always aware in the Poetics of the presence 
 of the Genius of Prose, which makes us feel that the 
 social temperature must have affected both the creative 
 instinct of the artist and the judgment of the critic : 
 it is difiBcult, for instance, to believe that such hope- 
 lessly matter of fact objections against Homer as 
 those which Aristotle notices would have been 
 possible in the generation of ^^schylus, or even in 
 that of Aristophanes. Poetic invention indeed was 
 by no means dead, but it had passed out of the 
 region of Inspiration, and was becoming more and 
 more mechanical amid the processes of conscious art. 
 Though Aristotle allows that poetry is a thing in- 
 spired, he writes throughout his treatise as if all 
 its effects could be attained by analysis, and the 
 examples with which he supports his reasoning show 
 that he shared the preferences of his age. 
 
 When he speaks of Comedy he is always think- 
 ing in anticipation of the prosaic principles of the
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 217 
 
 New Comedy : the old and poetic comedy of Aristo- 
 phanes he practically ignores. In tragedy, though 
 his ideal seems to be the CEdipus Rex, and though 
 he frequently compares Euripides disadvantageously 
 with Sophocles, yet it is evident that the practice 
 of Euripides is what he himself best understood. 
 iEschylus, on the other hand, he rarely mentions ; 
 and the reasons for this order of preference may 
 be divined from his view of the relative import- 
 ance of the different parts of Greek tragedy. 
 The parent source of the Greek drama was un- 
 doubtedly the Chorus, both as being the vehicle of 
 expression for the religious feeling on which the idea 
 of tragedy depended, and also as the primal institu- 
 tion out of which the whole structure of the play was 
 gradually evolved. Hence the predominance of the 
 Chorus in the tragedies of ^Eschylus, and hence too, 
 in consequence of the cooling of religious feeling in 
 society, the trivial position it came to occupy in the 
 plays of Euripides. Aristotle regards the Chorus 
 merely as one of the six parts of which every 
 Tragedy consists, and all that he thinks it worth 
 while to say about it is, that " Song holds the chief 
 place among the embellishments." 
 
 On the other hand, Aristotle places the whole life 
 of tragedy in the plot. " The plot," he says, " is the 
 first principle, and as it were the soul of a tragedy." 
 This is quite in accordance with the ideas of 
 Euripides, Agathon, and tlieir followers, who en- 
 deavoured to replenish the sinking springs of inspira- 
 tion with all the contrivances of artistic ingenuity.
 
 2i8 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 But it is surely not true. The plot of a play is the 
 external framework which holds together the poetic 
 organisation ; it is, if you will, the backbone of 
 tragedy, but it would be wrong to say that the soul 
 of the Eu'nienides or the Prometheus Vinctus or of 
 Macbeth lay in the outward form of those works. 
 The soul of any tragedy lies in the conception of 
 the poet, in the intensity with which he imagines 
 the reality of a dramatic situation, and breathes life 
 and being into the materials from which he creates. 
 Out of the essential unity of the poetic conception 
 the plot is evolved by degrees; but in embryo the 
 tragedy was in existence already ; all the plots of 
 the really great tragedies of the world are founded 
 on legendary stories; and looking at the matter from 
 the opposite side, though Aristotle praises Agathon, 
 who began the practice of inventing his own tragic 
 plots, yet since none of this poet's plays have come 
 down to us, it may be not unfairly inferred that 
 they wanted the life and soul that produces immortal 
 pleasure. 
 
 It is indeed evident that, in the Poetics, Aristotle 
 attempts to lay down two kinds of critical law of 
 very different reach and value, one of which stands 
 to the other much in the same relation as Inter- 
 national Law to Municipal Law. He declares, in the 
 first place, not expressly but by implication, the first 
 principles of the Law of Unity, which, being based 
 on the constitution of human nature, is itself the 
 foundation of all Fine Art. In doing this, he con- 
 fronts the poet or painter as the representative of
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 219 
 
 the rights of society. He says to the artist in effect : 
 " Such and such are the laws of the human mind ; in 
 your compositions you are bound to obey them. It 
 is of course open to you to disregard these limits, and 
 to seek to overleap them ; it is even possible that, if 
 you do so, you may, by ingenious and novel con- 
 trivances, succeed in producing momentary pleasure ; 
 but you will not be able to arouse that enduring and 
 universal pleasure which I assume to be the aim of 
 your ambition : hence you will not have created a 
 work of Fine Art." 
 
 So far, well. But Aristotle goes beyond this : 
 he attempts from the Law of Unity to deduce a 
 number of technical bylaws, and to impose on 
 taste what we may call an Act of Poetical Uniformity. 
 Here he is plainly proceeding ultra vires ; he is 
 invading the liberties of the poet, attempting, by 
 means of logical analysis, to restrict the prerogatives 
 of genius ; and hence his critical edicts cease to possess 
 universal authority. He failed to fathom all the 
 conditions necessary for poetical creation even in his 
 own age ; much less could his analysis exhaust the 
 springs of inspiration in the times that were to 
 come. 
 
 Yet so binding is the force of logic, so vast the 
 intellectual power of Aristotle, that his followers, 
 through many generations of the world's history, 
 endeavoured to emphasise whatever was most faulty 
 in his criticism. The deep and universal truths on 
 which his reasoning was founded lay beneath the 
 surface ; his technical rulings were explicit ; and
 
 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 these the Italian, French, and a few even of the 
 German critics after the Renaissance some from a 
 natural preference for Absolute Authority, others 
 because they confounded the laws of taste with those 
 of mathematics sought to stereotype into a critical 
 code. Without reflecting that Aristotle was only 
 speaking as a Greek to Greeks, and drawing his 
 inferences from a comparatively limited range of 
 observation, the Castelvetros, the Voltaires, the 
 Prussian Fredericks, accepted his local and particular 
 rules as so many infallible Vatican decrees. They 
 misconstrued the text of the Poetics ; they deduced 
 from the most casual remarks of the philosopher 
 principles of poetical orthodoxy of which he never 
 dreamed ; they invented binding dogmas about the 
 dramatic unities, and the limits of tragic action and 
 character : in short, while they entirely neglected his 
 doctrine of the Law of Unity in Art, they disgusted 
 all lovers of rational liberty by seeking to enforce with 
 pains and penalties his Act of Poetical Uniformity. 
 
 Time has cured many of these aberrations. 
 Modern scholars, particularly English and German 
 scholars, have devoted themselves with admirable 
 patience and industry to the elucidation of Aristotle's 
 critical treatise. Among these we his countrymen 
 have every reason to be proud of Professor Butcher's 
 edition of the Poetics. In this, perhaps for the first 
 time, the general principles of Aristotle's philosophy 
 have been made to illustrate his assthetic opinions ; 
 and the essential and universal elements in his 
 criticism have been detached from what is merely
 
 LECT. II ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC 221 
 
 local and accidental with such beautiful lucidity, that 
 there is now no reason why the Poetics should not 
 be read by a Headmaster with the cleverer boys in 
 any of our great Public Schools. All that Aristotle 
 says about Imitation, the Universal, Poetic Truth, 
 and the Law of Ideal Probability, is made to emerge 
 in distinct relief like the clear outlines of Greek 
 sculpture. And these are eternal truths. No man 
 who has not an intuitive or an acquired knowledge of 
 what Aristotle means by these principles can under- 
 stand the necessary conditions of a work of Fine Art. 
 Armed with this knowledge, on the other hand, he 
 may penetrate the organic ideas in the work of 
 Homer and Sophocles ; he may confirm the truth of 
 Aristotle's critical principles by observing how exactly 
 his ideas have been followed by those who were 
 separated from him by generations of time and 
 diversities of religion and language ; he may apply 
 them to test the value of the artistic novelties which 
 are presented for contemporary judgment. Perhaps 
 in this gradual course of education he may rid him- 
 self of some of the scepticism implied in such a 
 maxim as De gustibus non est disputandum. For 
 human nature is the same in all ages, and, in the 
 common consent of mankind about what is really 
 great and beautiful in art, we find a sure intimation 
 of the unity of the soul and a pledge of its im- 
 mortality.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 
 
 Fine art, as I liave already attempted to show, is 
 the imitation, by the poets, painters, sculptors, and 
 musicians of any people, of the idea of the Universal 
 in Nature. This idea springs out of the character 
 of the race, the course of its history, the common 
 perceptions of its men of genius. As the life of a 
 nation develops, the practice of its various artists 
 instinctively falls in with the growth of society, 
 advances with it to maturity, and languishes in its 
 decline. Sometimes, as in ancient Greece, the history 
 of art seems to manifest itself with almost as much 
 certainty and regularity as the life of a flower, or a 
 tree, or a human body. The Greek poet discovered 
 by a kind of spontaneous instinct how to express the 
 idea of greatness in his race in the divine simplicity 
 of hexameter verse ; the Greek musician learned at 
 a very early stage how to imitate human passions in 
 dance and song. With the remarkable development 
 of civic life that followed the Persian invasion the 
 Greek architect and sculptor co-operated to embody in 
 marble the loftiest ideas of religion. Instinctively,
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 223 
 
 in the same aire, the dramatist combined, from the 
 epic minstrelsy and the religious hymn, a mode of 
 imitation fitted to express the profounder ideas of 
 society about life and nature. With rare and delicate 
 taste, ^schylus and his two great successors made the 
 drama, in its progressive development, a mirror for all 
 the changes of moral and religious feeling that trans- 
 formed the Athenian mind between the battle of 
 Marathon and the Sicilian Expedition. And when, 
 after the battle of Chaeronea, the Greek enthusiasm 
 for liberty and the old Hellenic belief in the Gods 
 died away together, the loss of imaginative energy in 
 society reflected itself in the purely prosaic imitation 
 of the New Comedy. In all directions the law of 
 Greek art was embodied in the works of great 
 artists, and, as I said in my last lecture, Aristotle's 
 best criticism in the Poetics is not new legislation, 
 but the declaration of the law of Nature already 
 existing in art. 
 
 Had it been the destiny of Aristotle to declare 
 the aesthetic law of any modern European nation, his 
 task would have been far more difiicult. In no 
 Christian society has the artist shown the same 
 spontaneous faculty for imitating Nature as in Greece. 
 Many obstacles stand between Nature and the 
 imagination of the modern artist. To begin with, 
 he has been cut off' from the fountainhead of 
 his primajval instincts by the conversion of his 
 ancestors to Christianity. Moreover, the nation in 
 modem Europe is not constituted simply, as in the 
 small Greek states, but is vast and complex, composed
 
 224 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 of antagonistic classes, each with its own perceptions 
 and ideals, which often baffle the attempt of the 
 artist to divine the ideas common to the whole 
 society. Lastly, the modern imagination and judg- 
 ment are bewildered by the presence of surviving 
 models of Hellenic art, which constantly oppose them- 
 selves to the ideas derived from Christian education. 
 Nevertheless, a historic examination of art will hardly 
 leave room for doubt, that the varieties of ideal imita- 
 tion in the different countries of Europe have been 
 as much the product of national character, as was 
 the case in the City States of Greece ; and I propose 
 in this lecture to illustrate, as clearly as I can in 
 the time at my disposal, how national forces have 
 combined to give a dominant bias to the genius of 
 French poetry. 
 
 Experience shows how closely the master qualities 
 of the French character still correspond with Caesar's 
 description of them. The assimilation of Visigothic 
 and Frankish elements have not materially altered in 
 the Gaul either the brilliant and fickle temperament, 
 vividly coloured by transient emotions, the rapid logical 
 perception of things, or the sense of artistic form and 
 proportion common to all races that have felt the 
 influence of the Latin mind. As this national 
 character expands in the course of French history, 
 there passes before the imagination a long drama of 
 something like civil war between two mutually 
 irreconcileable factions the bourgeoisie and the 
 feudal aristocracy. The landmarks of the struggle 
 stand forth prominently ; the long agonising conflict
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 225 
 
 of the early ages between the Crown, as the repre- 
 sentative of civil law and order, and the great 
 vassals, as the representatives of feudal privilege ; the 
 victory of the Crown, allied with the bourgeoisie, 
 under Louis XL ; the religious wars between 
 Catholics and Huguenots ; the accession of Henry 
 IV. and the elimination of the Huguenots as a 
 political power ; the wars of the Fronde and the 
 annihilation of the political power of the feudal 
 aristocracy ; the absorption of all the powers of the 
 State by the Crown in the reign of Louis XIV. ; the 
 decay of the Monarchy in the eighteenth century ; 
 the French Revolution. 
 
 As illustratinoj the working of the Law of National 
 Character in literature, nothing can be more remarkable 
 than the vivid reflection of this course of political 
 development in the various stages of French poetry. 
 There, in the very infancy of society, may be observed 
 the trenchant antithesis between the genius of the two 
 opposing classes in the contrasted styles of the Pro- 
 ven9al lyric and the fabliau of the Trouvere ; the one 
 the poetical vehicle of the inhabitants of the Castle, 
 the other of the inhabitants of the town. We see the 
 two types brought into deliberately satiric contrast 
 in the famous Romance of the Rose, in the latter part 
 of which the bourgeois John de Meung mocks at the 
 ideals of his chivalric predecessor William de Lorris. 
 The alliance between the Court and tiie bourgeoisie 
 is symbolised in the poems of Marot, who set him- 
 self to refine the character of the old French poetry 
 to suit the more fastidious taste of Francis I. On 
 
 Q
 
 226 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 the other hand, the poetry of Ronsard, the repre- 
 sentative, with the Pleiad, of the party of the 
 aristocracy, reflects in a new form the old tendency 
 of the castled nobility to mark out for themselves a 
 manner of conception and expression sharply separated 
 from that of the vulgar. Ronsard's movement, in 
 spite of his real genius, is seen from the first to be 
 against the inevitable tendency of things, and is 
 therefore doomed to failure ; and in the same way 
 D'Aubigne's Huguenot ideals, unable to make head 
 against the Catholic tendency in the French nation, 
 find utterance, like a lonely " Vox Clamantis," in 
 the lofty strains of Les Tragiques. Henry IV. 
 ascends the throne ; and with Malherbe, as the 
 dictator of poetical taste, the victory of the Mon- 
 archical over the feudal principle in French politics, 
 the victory of reason over imagination in French 
 poetry, is practically decided. 
 
 If, turning from this general historic view, we 
 ask how these two parties respectively manifested 
 their character in French literature, it is clear, in the 
 first place, that the qualities in the French nation 
 which the aristocracy communicated to the language 
 were of the feminine order, both in their virtue and their 
 defect. How remarkable is the long array of brilliant 
 women who have left a name in French literature 
 The Countess of Champagne, Christine de Pisan, The 
 Marquise de Rambouillet, Madame du Sable, Madame 
 de Sevigne ! How powerful an influence on the course 
 of refined taste was exercised by the Cours d' Amour, 
 the Hotel Rambouillet, the Salons of the Pr^cieuses!
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 227 
 
 From the noble ladies of France, and the men who, 
 according to the laws of chivalry, declared themselves 
 theii* servants, the French idiom acquired that ex- 
 quisite vein of irony and innuendo which made 
 French conversation for so long the standard of 
 manners in European society, and French prose the 
 finest instrument of criticism, letter-writing, and 
 diplomacy. But the masculine qualities of imagina- 
 tion are conspicuous by their absence. What the 
 French aristocracy wanted in their literary style was 
 substance, sincerity, a sense of the reality of things. 
 Weigh the names of their representative men, Charles 
 of Orleans, Ronsard, Voiture, Chapelain, St. Amant, 
 against such names as Rabelais, La Fontaine, Moli^re, 
 and Voltaire, representatives of the bourgeoisie ; ob- 
 serve the triviality of matter in the lyrics of the 
 Troubadours, in the poetry written for the Hotel 
 Rambouillet, in the romance of the Grand Cyrus; 
 and you will see the defeat of the French aristocracy 
 in the conflict of History explained in the conflict of 
 Ideas. 
 
 The bourgeois element in French poetry is of an 
 evidently opposite kind. It has none of the romance, 
 delicacy, or spiritual imagination, which distinguish 
 the work of the chivalric party ; its qualities are, 
 above all, good sense, shrewd observation, keen logic, 
 a penetrating appreciation of hypocrisy and unreality, 
 an unerring sense of the ridiculous, an Epicurean en- 
 joyment of life. Deprive this bourgeois genius of its 
 native tendency to vulgarity, by putting it under the 
 patronage of the Court, give it subjects for imitation
 
 228 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 suitable to its knowledge and powers, find it an 
 instrument of expression analogous to its favourite 
 fabliau ; and the flower of the French imagination will 
 in time unfold itself in the Comedies of Moli^re and 
 the Fables of La Fontaine. It is in the works of 
 these two writers, perhaps above all others, that we 
 may observe the operation of what it is not im- 
 proper to call the idea of Natural Law in French 
 Poetry. 
 
 Moli^re has been severely censured by the more 
 austere critics of France as a careless and slovenly 
 writer. He is blamed for want of polish in his style, 
 for his incorrect selection of metaphors, for his auda- 
 cious plagiarisms ; and all these reproaches he has 
 to some extent justly incurred. But his defects are 
 almost the inevitable accompaniment of his splendid 
 qualities as a comic creator. Moliere imitated the 
 ridiculous in Nature wherever he found it. When 
 he thought that Spanish or Italian phrases, or the 
 vulgarisms of French idiom, were expressive of char- 
 acter, he used them without any regard to the delicate 
 nerves of the French Academy. With as little hesita- 
 tion he drew on the inventions of the classic and 
 Italian dramatists or the fabliaux of Boccaccio, if 
 they furnished him with convenient plots for framing 
 his observation of what was deserving of ridicule in 
 his own society. But all his creations are eminently 
 original. Nowhere else than in France could such uni- 
 versal types of human nature as M. Jourdain, Tartufe, 
 and Alceste have been conceived and embodied. No 
 one but Moliere could have observed with such nice
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 229 
 
 precision, and have expressed in dialogue so spark- 
 ling and lifelike, the essence of absurdity in the 
 manners of Les Precieuses or Les Femmes Savantes. 
 As a mirror for such universal truths of Nature the 
 refined literary language of the Academy, and the 
 conventional standard of manners in the H6tel 
 Rambouillet, were equally inadequate. Moli^re in his 
 Comedies doubtless leans to farce ; but he does so 
 because the old popular French farces furnished him 
 with the ideal atmosphere required to give poetical 
 truth to the observed realities of Nature. Nor do his 
 bourgeois instincts carry him into excess. His seem- 
 ingly bufibon extravagance of conception and spon- 
 taneous exuberance of expression were kept within 
 due limits by the sense that his plays were to be 
 performed before the most fastidious of monarchs, 
 who would never have tolerated the exhibition of 
 vulgarity beyond what was necessary for the purposes 
 of art. Hence, in spite of its negligence, the composi- 
 tion and language of Moliere are in the highest sense 
 well-bred, harmonious, and classic. 
 
 Exactly analogous to the dramatic practice of 
 Molifere is the literary practice of La Fontaine, except 
 that, as the poems of the latter were intended to be 
 read, no one has ever blamed him for incorrectness of 
 style. La Fontaine makes no more effort than Molifere 
 to raise himself into a consciously ideal atmosphere. 
 He cares no more than Moliere did for the praise of 
 absolute originality ; his fables, like the plots of 
 Moliere, are borrowed from the inventions of pre- 
 decessors, fabulists such as Phijedrus, Babrius, Horace,
 
 230 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 and a hundred others. But through all this borrow- 
 ing and adaptation, the unmistakable character of the 
 old French fabliau, and the individuality of La 
 Fontaine, make themselves felt. His verses breathe 
 the easy Epicurean air characteristic of his class. 
 His peasants and citizens are types of the men and 
 women whom he saw in the farms and markets ; his 
 beasts use the average human language of prudence 
 and good sense. In the flow of his verse we listen to 
 the natural idiom of the conversation of his time. 
 Nevertheless, the ideal atmosphere, required for the 
 imitation of the Universal, is never absent from his 
 creations, and knowing as he did that he was writing 
 for refined society, his poetry, with all its apparent 
 ease, is in reality the result of the most careful selec- 
 tion of words and harmonies. 
 
 The dominant bias of French taste, however, dis- 
 closes itself not merely in works in which the artist 
 is felt to be dealing with materials akin to his own 
 nature, but in the abstract reasoning by which men 
 of genius have endeavoured to regulate practice in the 
 higher spheres of poetic invention. For example, 
 the French idea of law in art is strikingly exhibited 
 in the approved rules of composition for the tragic 
 drama. Unlike the dramas of Athens and of England, 
 the tradition of the theatre in France is not of popular 
 origin, but is the late creation of a few great poets, 
 accommodating their practice to the taste of com- 
 paratively refined audiences. There was, indeed, a 
 time when the itinerant stage of the Middle Ages 
 found a welcome among the French, as among the
 
 LBCT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 231 
 
 English people, but these exhibitions had so dwindled 
 during the miserable period of the Hundred Years' 
 AVar, that, at the close of the sixteenth century, one 
 company of actors, in the Hotel Bourgogne, was 
 sufficient to satisfy the dramatic requirements of the 
 whole country. When the taste for the stage began 
 to revive the poet was free to invent for himself, and 
 he naturally turned for his models to the tragedies of 
 Seneca, never meant for acting, in which an abstract 
 situation is worked out by means of rhetorical har- 
 angues and sharply pointed dialogue. The form 
 thus adopted proved so acceptable to French taste, 
 that, in spite of the efforts of Voltaire and Diderot, 
 it kept possession of the stage for nearly 200 
 years. 
 
 Having thus grounded the practice of the drama 
 on the authority of Seneca, the French poets proceeded 
 to regulate it by the supposed theory of Aristotle. 
 Corneille was the first to define the law of the stage in 
 his Discourse on the Three Unities of Action^ Time, 
 and Place. He assumed that the external form of 
 the Greek drama was something immutable ; that 
 Aristotle had defined its changeless rules in the 
 Poetics; and that these rules had been faithfully ob- 
 served in his own tragedies. Now the only unity 
 on which Aristotle really insists is Unity of Action ; 
 and in his Discourse Corneille plainly shows that 
 he does not know what Aristotle meant by Unity 
 of Action. Unity of Action in the Poetics means 
 simply the representation on the stage of a fictitious 
 story, with a proportioned beginning, middle, and end,
 
 232 LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 involving a display of human passion, character, and 
 misfortune, in such a form as to appear probable and 
 lifelike to the spectators. 
 
 Shakespeare and the Greek poets perfectly under- 
 stood the working of this fundamental law. So 
 vividly does Shakespeare conceive his ideal situations 
 as a whole, that he even realises in his imagination 
 the state of the climate and temperature, as when 
 Hamlet says to Horatio : " The air bites shrewdly ; 
 it is very cold ; " or when Duncan praises the amenity 
 of Macbeth's Castle : 
 
 This guest of summer, 
 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, 
 By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath 
 Smells wooingly here : no jutty, friese, 
 Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
 Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : 
 Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, 
 The air is delicate. 
 
 So, again, in ^s You Like It, when Oliver asks 
 the way to Rosalind's cottage, with what particular 
 details the poet brings the scene before us ! 
 
 Good morrow, fair ones : pray you, if you know, 
 Where in the purlieus of this forest stands 
 A sheep-cote fenced about with olive trees ? 
 
 To which Celia replies : 
 
 West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom : 
 The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream 
 Left on your right hand brings you to the place. 
 
 The fact is, that both the Greek and English 
 dramatists were the natural successors of the minstrels
 
 LECT. in THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 233 
 
 the former of Homer and the cyclic poets, the latter 
 of the mediaeval trouveres and their imaginations 
 were accustomed to live in the ideal action of the 
 story-tellers. Now for a story in itself Corneille cared 
 nothing. What he meant by unity of action was the 
 unity of abstract idea in a drama. He understood 
 very well the nature of the stage effects required to 
 produce emotion in an audience ; and he constructed 
 his plays logically and scientifically with a view to 
 securing these effects. I imagine that the way in 
 which he composed a tragedy was something like 
 this : First he searched for a situation in which he 
 might exhibit a conflict between the will and the 
 passions ; then, when he had found the subject, he 
 filled in the situation with the characters, and de- 
 termined their relations to each other in successive 
 scenes ; after that, he thought out the emotions and 
 sentiments proper to each scene ; lastly, he coloured 
 the whole of the dialogue with impassioned rhetoric 
 and epigrammatic points. 
 
 Composing on this principle, Corneille was able to 
 exclude from the structure of his drama every exter- 
 nal incident that was not necessary to the evolution 
 of his abstract idea, but he was far from attaining 
 unity of action. He strove to imitate, as far as 
 possible, the outward form of Greek tragedy, and 
 took note of Aristotle's saying, that it is not necessary 
 to represent on the stage the whole of a recorded 
 action. But he did not observe that the reason of 
 this was that, in the Athenian theatre, the audience 
 were all familiar with the whole story represented,
 
 234 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 and so were able to supply from their imagination the 
 necessary gaps in the action. But this is not the case 
 in The Cid. Corneille, in this play, merely selects 
 from the story of the Spanish hero such episodes as 
 he deemed necessary for the treatment of his own idea. 
 We are plunged at the opening of the play in tnedias 
 res. We do not know, except from the table oi dramatis 
 personae, who Don Rodrigue and Chimene are ; who 
 Don Diegue and Don Gomes are, or what were the 
 events which led to the quarrel causing the complication 
 of the whole drama. The dramatic situation resembles a 
 chess-board after the game has been developed accord- 
 ing to one of the conventional openings. The love of 
 Rodrigue for Chimene is held in check by Rodrigue's 
 filial obligation to avenge the insult offered to his 
 father ; the love of Chimene for Rodrigue is checked 
 by the duty imposed on her to avenge the death of 
 her father; the dramatic interest depends on the 
 solution of the psychological puzzle. 
 
 It is extremely interesting and instructive to 
 observe how carefully Corneille applies the Law of 
 the Three Unities to a tragedy thought out on this 
 completely abstract principle. He wished to make 
 the play appear logical to the audience on the stage ; 
 he did not care about making it appear real to the 
 universal imagination. Accordingly, he pleads apolo- 
 getically, in his Discourse on the Three Unities, that 
 he has not departed from the rule of Unity of Place 
 further than he was absolutely obliged by the nature of 
 his subject. And as to the Unity of Time, since the 
 action of the play is restricted by the supposed law
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 235 
 
 to twenty-four hours, the dramatist is obliged by the 
 course of events to make Don Eodrigue first kill Don 
 Gomes, then conquer the Moors, then come back to 
 fight a second duel with Don Sanche ; and that he 
 may do all this within the prescribed time limits, his 
 father, Don Diegue, opposes the desire of the king to 
 give The Cid an interval for rest and refreshment, 
 observing that it is nothing for a man of his son's 
 heroic valour to come from a battle to a duel without 
 making a pause ! 
 
 And yet, though Corneille is so anxious to satisfy 
 the demands of a dramatic law which has no existence 
 in truth or nature, he sees no improbability in repre- 
 senting Chim^ne making long speeches to her lady- 
 in-waiting in order to show the audience the state of 
 her mind in the struggle between her inclination and 
 her duty ; no improbability in bringing Don Eodrigue 
 to his mistress, after he has killed her father, to entreat 
 her to plunge the same sword into his own heart ; no 
 improbability in causing the king to decide that 
 Chimene's plea for vengeance against the man who 
 has killed her father shall be satisfied by a duel 
 between Eodrigue and Chimene's selected champion, 
 the prize of victory being the hand of Chim^ne her- 
 self; no improbability in leading us to suppose, at the 
 close of the play, that Chimene marries her father's 
 slayer and lives happily for ever after ! Such im- 
 probabilities could never have been conceived by any 
 poet who understood the moaning of Aristotle's prin- 
 ciple of Unity of Action in the imitation of Nature ; 
 but they proved no obstacle to the appreciation of
 
 236 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 the tragedy by an audience which accepted the 
 artificial hypothesis with which the poet started, and 
 mainly desired to have their own love of antithesis 
 and rhetoric satisfied in a dramatic form of representa- 
 tion. 
 
 Far be it from me, as an Englishman, to speak 
 with disrespect of the great dramatists of France. 
 Viewed in their relation to the taste of French society, 
 plays like Horace, Cinna, Phedre, and Athalie 
 seem to be marvels of dramatic skill and invention. 
 My argument is that a society like that of France 
 was incapable of conceiving tragic action like that 
 found in the plays of iEschylus and Shakespeare. 
 The action of the poetic drama in Greece and England 
 was a reflection of widespread popular energy, of 
 freedom of thought, speech, and deed, of national 
 greatness and patriotism, exalted by an inward sense 
 of power and by the defeat of such foreign enemies 
 as Xerxes and Philip II. No such inspiring air 
 of liberty stirred the imagination of France in the 
 seventeenth century. With what feelings would 
 Louis XIV., retaining in his memory his youthful 
 experiences of the Frondist wars, have witnessed on 
 the stage the suff"erings of legitimate kings, deprived, 
 as in Richard II. and Macbeth, of their thrones and 
 lives by the usurpation of ambitious subjects? How 
 would his monarchical pride have revolted against 
 such a spectacle as King Lear, stripped of his last 
 shred of authority, the sport of the elements, the 
 companion in adversity of fools and madmen ! What 
 would the Jesuits have said to the daring doubts and
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 237 
 
 speculations of Hamlet's conscience ? Absolutism 
 and centralisation called for another order of dramatic 
 exhibition in France. Driven from her free range in 
 external Nature, the Muse of Tragedy retired into the 
 recesses of the human soul, whose inner conflicts she 
 might represent without rousing the political suspicion 
 of king or cardinal. Yet even here she was haunted 
 by the phantoms of her own self-consciousness. The 
 overpowering sense of the authority of Aristotle, the 
 anticipation of the verdict of the associated critics of 
 the Academy, the oppressive idea of a dramatic 
 standard formed by ancient models of unrivalled 
 excellence, all these influences co-operated to make 
 the French dramatist voluntarily fetter himself in 
 his imitation of nature. The Law of the Three Unities 
 is an illustration of the tendency in the French 
 character, as developed by the history of France, to 
 repress the liberties of imagination by the analysis of 
 Logic. 
 
 As the French law of the stage is defined by 
 Corneille in his Discourse on the Unities, so the law 
 of French literary taste is expounded by Boileau in 
 the Art Poetique. Critics are apt to undervalue 
 poems of the class of Horace's Ars Poetica and Pope's 
 Essay on Criticism, because they regard them as 
 abstract treatises on taste, containing cold and 
 commonplace maxims of composition ; whereas their 
 real interest and importance lie in the fact that they 
 are declarations of law by a victorious literary party. 
 The Ars Poetica and the Epistle to Augustiis were 
 manifestoes of the Hellenising party in Roman
 
 238 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 literature, directed against those who favoured the 
 rude facility of poets like Lucilius and Plautus. The 
 Essay on Cnticisrti is an argument in verse against 
 the taste represented by the Metaphysical Poets of 
 the seventeenth century in England. More suggestive 
 than either of these poems, because more relentless 
 and uncompromising, the Art Poetique stands out 
 prominently as the final declaration of Law, by the 
 literary representatives of the French bourgeoisie, in 
 alliance with the Crown on the one hand, and with the 
 Classical Humanists on the other, against the aristo- 
 cratic literary party represented in the coteries of the 
 Precieuses. The artistic value of the apparently 
 abstract rules formulated in the poem consists in 
 their oblique way of reflecting on the practice of 
 the Scuderys, St. Amaut, and Pradon. The Art 
 Poetique is the formulated expression of the law of 
 French poetry, first recognised nearly a century before 
 in the verses of Malherbe, whose praises Boileau so 
 enthusiastically sounds. " Lastly," he says, " came 
 Malherbe, the first in France to give an example of 
 just cadence in verse, to show the power of a word in 
 its right place, and to restrict the Muse to the laws 
 of duty. Restored by this wise writer, our language 
 no longer offered any rude shock to the refined ear. 
 Stanzas learned how to close gracefully ; one verse 
 no longer ventured to overlap another. Everything 
 approves the justice of his laws, and this faithful 
 guide still serves as a model to the authors of our 
 time. Walk in his steps ; love his purity ; imitate the 
 clearness of his happy style."
 
 i.ECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 239 
 
 What, then, was the ideal which Boileau, by his 
 reasoning and illustrations, set before the French 
 poet ? The expression of Truth, Reason, Logic. The 
 aim was not wanting in life and vigour. Genius, 
 says the critic, at the opening of the Art Poetique, is 
 indispensable, but the medium in which genius must 
 work is good sense. " Tout doit tendre au bon 
 sens." And again, "Good sense must prevail even 
 in song." Hardly so deeply laid as the foundation 
 of Horace, " Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et 
 fons," the rule implies that the standard of the correct 
 imitation of nature is the lucid perception and logic 
 of the bourgeois mind, aided by the refined manners 
 of the court. " Etudiez la cour, connaissez-vous la 
 ville." Above all, whatever subject is chosen, the 
 poet must go to its essence, and not be satisfied till he 
 has found the exact and perfect form of words required 
 for the expression of the thought. Not a word about 
 Beauty, Liberty, Imagination, Fancy. In every phrase 
 we hear the voice of the stern proscriber, the Sulla of 
 poetry, on the watch to put on the list for massacre 
 some dangerous partisan of the Plotel Rambouillet, 
 who has managed to escape critical notice. 
 
 Boileau was well aware that Poetry could not 
 dispense with the aristocratic element in language ; 
 and being at war with the principle favoured by the 
 social aristocracy, he sought to fill the void in his 
 critical system by allying himself with the literary 
 aristocracy of the Renaissance, and exalting the 
 authority of the Greek and Roman classics. The 
 principle was excellent so long as it meant no more
 
 24 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 thau self-criticism by the highest standard of antiquity. 
 But Boileau was almost inevitably carried into error 
 by his logic. He regarded all the types of verse com- 
 position met with in the history of French literature as 
 immutable moulds of thought ; and he fancied that the 
 classic propriety of each could be determined by settled 
 rules. " Every poem," he says, " shines with its proper 
 beauty. The rondeau, Gallic by birth, has the artless- 
 ness of nature, the ballad, strictly subject to its old 
 maxims, often owes a lustre to the caprice of its 
 rhymes. The madrigal, more simple and more noble 
 in its style, breathes gentleness, tenderness, and love." 
 Thus, in opposition to his own and Horace's teach- 
 ing, that the form of poetry must necessarily adapt 
 itself to the thought, he speaks as if poetry lay in 
 stereotyped forms of versification. In spite of his 
 foundation of sound reasoning, he came insensibly 
 to identify the imitation of Nature, under the guid- 
 ance of good sense, with the mere external imitation 
 of Greek and Roman poets. 
 
 Two examples will show the inconsistencies 
 into which his logic betrayed him. Among the 
 various types of poetry which he found himself 
 obliged to define was the Eclogue. According to 
 the dictates of good sense this form of poem must, 
 he says, avoid the two extremes of pompous elevation 
 on the one hand, and of rustic meanness on the other. 
 An easy abstract rule ; but what does it practically 
 mean ? " Between these two excesses," says Boileau, 
 " the path is diflficult. In order to find it, follow 
 Theocritus and Virgil. Let their feeling compositions.
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 241 
 
 dictated by the Graces, never quit your hands ; turn 
 them over by night and day. They alone in their 
 learned verse will be able to teach you by what art 
 an author may without meanness lower his style ; 
 how to sing of Flora and the fields, of Pomona and 
 the woods ; how to animate two shepherds to contend 
 on the flute, to celebrate the allurements of love's 
 pleasures ; to transform Narcissus into a flower ; to 
 cover Daphne with bark ; and by what art at times the 
 eclogue invests the country and the woods with consular 
 dignity." Would a poet who in Louis XIV.'s time 
 acted obediently on these instructions have been imi- 
 tating Nature according to the law of Good Sense ? 
 
 Again, Boileau found himself much perplexed how 
 to apply the principle of Good Sense to his idea of an 
 epic poem. The epic, he says, sustains itself by faith 
 and lives by fiction ; therefore you cannot dispense 
 in a poem of this kind with the machinery of pagan 
 mythology. Hence it is impossible to write a Christian 
 epic. " In vain," he says, alluding to the attempts in 
 this direction of poets in the anti-classic camp ; "in 
 vain do our deluded authors, banishing from their 
 verse these traditional ornaments, strive to make 
 God, the saints, and the prophets act like the deities 
 sprung out of the poets' imagination, take the reader 
 into Hell at every step, and introduce him to Ashtaroth, 
 Beelzebub, and Lucifer alone. The awful mysteries of 
 the Christian faith are incapable of gay and brilliant 
 ornament. On every side the Gospel presents to the 
 mind the spectacle only of Repentance and Judgment, 
 
 and the inexcusable mixture of fiction gives to its 
 
 R
 
 242 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 truths an air of fable. What an object to offer to the 
 eye, the devil blaspheming against heaven the devil, 
 whose aim it is to abase the glory of your Hero, and 
 who often disputes the victory with God ! " 
 
 True enough in its application to the feeble inven- 
 tion of Scud(5ry and his companions, a criticism like 
 this only proves that the French were incapable of 
 producing a great epic poem. It does not prove that 
 there was anything fundamentally wrong in the con- 
 ception of Paradise Lost. And the same rigid 
 restrictive logic characterises all Boileau's devices with 
 regard to diction and versification the exclusive use 
 of the Alexandrine, the caesura always in the middle 
 of the line, the avoidance of the hiatus and the " en- 
 jambement," the choice of words to harmonise exactly 
 with the movement of the rhythm, all which are only 
 the final declaration by the Academic dictator of the 
 laws first promulgated by Malherbe. For the time 
 the victory of Boileau and the ideas of the cultivated 
 bourgeoisie over the party of mediaeval Romance was 
 complete. Nor was it a mere transient fashion of 
 taste. For about one hundred and fifty years the 
 Law of Classicism, as defined in the Art Poetique, 
 exerted an irresistible authority. In spite alike of the 
 half-hearted efforts of Voltaire to enlarge the liberties 
 of dramatic action, and of the experiments of Diderot in 
 sentimental comedy, the classic style, founded on the 
 Law of the Three Unities, reigned supreme upon the 
 French stage through the eighteenth century. But 
 it was a party triumph, a Pyrrhic victory, won by the 
 vigour of a certain element in society, and liable to be
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 243 
 
 reversed when the class from which the movement 
 sprang lost its vitality. Undermined by the growth 
 of natural science, by the philosophy of the encyclo- 
 paedists, and by the sentimentalism of Eousseau, the 
 imposing structure of French classicism fell almost at 
 the first discharge of artillery brought against it by the 
 Romantic party after the restoration of the Bourbons. 
 It is not to be denied that it deserved its fate. 
 But at the same time it would be well for us English- 
 men to examine very carefully the true lesson to be 
 learned from the triumph of French Romanticism. 
 The Law of Classic Taste in France could not have 
 remained paramount for so long a period ; its author- 
 ity could not have been instinctively recognised by 
 so many great creative intellects, or so clearly 
 defined by a succession of able critics, if it had not 
 represented something real and positive in the con- 
 stitution of the French character. And lookino^ at 
 the matter historically, when we see that the idea of 
 the manner in which Nature ought to be imitated in 
 Poetry, as expressed in the Art Poetique, is actually 
 embodied in the poems of La Fontaine and Moliere, 
 and that the idea of the structure and versification 
 proper to the drama is the same in the tragedies of 
 Racine and Voltaire as in the criticism of Boileau, 
 then candid minds will allow that, however narrow 
 may have been the sphere of imitation, and ^however 
 restricted the perception of harmony, both adapted 
 themselves to an irresistible tendency of things in 
 the development of French society. The great error 
 of the Romanticists was that they ignored the exist-
 
 244 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 ence of this historic law. As a revolt in the sphere 
 of art and imagination their movement was fully- 
 justified, and nothing would have been easier for 
 them than to show that a law of taste, which might 
 have been suitable for the times of Louis XIV., was 
 quite unsuitable for the times of Charles X. 
 
 What the Romanticists wanted, however, was not 
 a revolt but a Revolution, The rules, distinctions, 
 practices, and traditions, which had been the result 
 of so much ingenious thought and labour, were to 
 be swept away, and Poetry was to find for herself a 
 basis in first principles, supposed to be entirely modern. 
 What were they ? The manifesto of the victorious 
 Romanticists is to be found in the Preface to Victor 
 Hugo's Cromivell, which founds its reasoning on 
 this colossal generalisation : "To sum up the facts 
 we have just observed, Poetry has three Ages, each 
 of which corresponds with an epoch of society : Ode, 
 Epic, Drama. Primitive times are lyric, ancient 
 times are epic, modern times are dramatic. The Ode 
 sings eternity ; the Epic solemnises history ; the 
 Drama paints life. The character of the first kind of 
 poetry is naivete; the character of the second sim- 
 plicity ; the character of the third truth. The 
 rhapsodists mark the transition of the lyric poets to 
 the epic poets, as the romance-writers from the epic 
 poets to the dramatic poets. Historians arise in the 
 second epoch ; chroniclers and critics in the third. 
 The personages of the Ode are Colossi : Adam, Cain, 
 Noah ; those of the Epic are giants : Achilles, Atreus, 
 Orestes ; those of the Drama are men : Hamlet, Mac-
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 245 
 
 beth, Othello. The Ode derives its life from the 
 ideal, the Epic from the grandiose, the Drama from the 
 real. In a word, this threefold Poetry springs from 
 three great sources the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare." 
 The upshot of this reasoning is, that the end of the 
 modern or romantic drama is to paint real character, 
 and Victor Hugo tells us very naively how this was 
 done in the case of Cromivell. He had for a long 
 time accepted the portrait of the regicide, painted by 
 Bossuet, as true to life ; but, happening to come across 
 an old document of the seventeenth century, he dis- 
 covered that the portrait did not resemble the 
 original. The idea must therefore be corrected, and 
 the proper place for correcting it was the Drama. 
 Accordingly he read a vast number of books, from 
 which he generalised the character of the man and 
 his times, chose a dramatic moment in the life of his 
 hero which would enable him to exhibit his real 
 motives to the reader, surrounded him with more 
 than sixty other dramatis personae, and finally com- 
 pleted the portrait of the character in a play which 
 extended itself to about 12,000 lines. It seems, 
 indeed, to have struck Victor Hugo that there was 
 something paradoxical in the fact that a composition 
 founded on jesthetic principles, in an epoch of the 
 world in which the drama was the natural vehicle of 
 imaginative thought, could not possibly be acted, and 
 he made a half promise that, at some future time, he 
 would adapt Cromwell for the stage. I am not 
 aware, however, that he ever reduced his ideas to 
 practice.
 
 246 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 But what Victor Hugo did not perceive was that, 
 while he professed to be sweeping away all French 
 dramatic tradition, while he imagined himself to be 
 imitating Shakespeare, and to be creating in a spirit 
 of unfettered liberty, he was showing a complete 
 ignorance of the principle on which Shakespeare's 
 plays are constructed, and was unconsciously follow- 
 ing, though with a variation, the stage principles of 
 his predecessors. As I have already said, Shake- 
 speare's method of dramatic creations, like that of the 
 Greeks, is to reduce what was originally a well- 
 known epic story into such a form as will please the 
 imagination of spectators in a theatre ; the method 
 of the French playwright is to analyse an idea in his 
 own mind and then to reproduce it in a dramatic 
 shape. It matters not that the idea which Hugo 
 analysed was that of a single man's character, while 
 that which Corneille analysed was a psychological 
 situation ; that, in TJie Cicl, the spectacle to be con- 
 templated is a conflict between Love and Honour, 
 and, in Cromivell, the conflict of motives in the mind 
 of a regicide ; in both cases the imaginative process is 
 the same, the logical combination of abstract ideas ; 
 in both cases the artistic result is fundamentally the 
 same, a play depending for its efi'ect on rhetorical 
 speeches and epigrammatic points. This is the 
 method of Seneca, not the method of Shakespeare. 
 
 Examine, again, the motto of another great 
 standard-bearer of Romanticism, Theophile Gautier. 
 His principle, " Art for Art's sake," seems to promise 
 the artist unlimited liberty in imitating Nature, pro-
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 247 
 
 vided he is possessed of adequate skill. When illus- 
 trated by Gautier's own practice, however, his maxim 
 evidently implies a determination to identify the 
 methods of poetry with the methods of painting. 
 Gautier endeavoured to imitate Nature in words, 
 exactly in the same w^ay as the painter imitated her 
 in form and colour. Now, in my lecture on " Poetical 
 Decadence " I fully admitted that the art of poetry 
 included an element analogous to the art of painting, 
 as may be plainly seen in the descriptions and similes 
 of great poets like Homer, Virgil, Milton, Spenser, and 
 Ariosto. Nor do I deny that Gautier's poetry abounds 
 in admirable pictorial tours de force, such as the 
 humorous picture, in his J^maux et Camees, of Winter 
 as an old violinist. " With red nose and pale face, and 
 with a desk of icicles, he executes his theme in the 
 quartet of the Seasons. He sings with an uncertain 
 voice old-world quavering airs : his frozen foot warms 
 itself while it marks the time. And like Handel, whose 
 wig lost its powder when he shivered, he makes the 
 white sprinkling of snow fly from the nape of his neck." 
 But to confine the function of poetry, as Gautier 
 did, to word-painting is surely, in the first place, to 
 form a meagre conception of the art, and in the 
 second place, this supposed invention of the Romanti- 
 cists is really nothing more than an application of the 
 old classic law of Boileau, that the poet is bound to 
 find for his verse the word exactly corresponding 
 with the image in his mind. Turn to the Lutrin, 
 and Boileau's picture of the Treasurer of La Chapelle 
 in bed will furnish you with a brilliant sample of the
 
 248 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 word-painting which was Gautier's whole poetical 
 stock-in-trade : " In the dark retirement of a deep 
 alcove is piled a costly feather-bed. Four pompous 
 curtains in a double circle defend it from the light of 
 day. There, amid the calm and peaceful silence, reigns 
 over the swan -down a happy indolence, and there 
 the prelate, fortified by breakfast, and sleeping a light 
 sleep, waited for dinner. Youth in full flower beams 
 in his countenance ; his chin descends by two storeys 
 on to his breast, and his body, thick- set in its short 
 stature, makes the bed groan beneath its lazy weight." 
 Do not the instances I have given furnish in 
 themselves an answer to the reasoning of the Romanti- 
 cists? Had these children of the Revolution pos- 
 sessed real self-knowledge they would have per- 
 ceived that their most successful work was conceived 
 in accordance with the old classical law, and they would 
 have aimed only at such an amplification of that law as 
 would give free play to their own gifts and genius. 
 Unfortunately they were animated by a spirit not of 
 comprehension but exclusion. The party of the 
 Romanticists had gained the upper hand, and they 
 were determined to proscribe and massacre the party 
 of the Classicists as ruthlessly as the Classicists of the 
 seventeenth century had proscribed and massacred 
 the party of the Precieuses. Romanticism under 
 Louis XIV. and under Louis Philippe was equally 
 the protest of a faction against the inevitable tend- 
 ency of things ; but in the one case it was the struggle 
 of a social caste against the principle of Absolut- 
 ism, in the other of a literary coterie against the
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 249 
 
 principle of Equality. Just as Mdlle. de Rambouillet 
 and her friends sought to separate themselves from 
 the vulgar world by the nicety of their manners and 
 language, so did Theophile Gautier and his followers 
 seek to shock the instincts of the bourgeoisie by their 
 red waistcoats and outrageous verses, "For us," 
 says Gautier, in his account of the Romantic move- 
 ment, " the world divided itself into ' Flamboyants ' 
 and ' Neutral Tints,' the one the object of our love, 
 the other of our aversion. We wanted life, light, move- 
 ment ; audacity of thought and execution, a return to 
 the fair period of the Renaissance and true antiquity ; 
 we rejected the tame colouring, the thin and dry 
 design, the compositions resembling groups of dwarfs, 
 that the Empire had bequeathed to the Restoration." 
 To the foreign critic it seems that, as in French 
 politics the centralising principle has overpowered 
 local liberty, so in French art the native tendency 
 is for logic to prevail over imagination. Whatever 
 literary party has been dominant in the taste of 
 French society has sought to establish its supremacy by 
 imaginative Analysis. The result has been to develop 
 in the art of our neighbours great beauty of abstract 
 Form, a splendid capacity of lucid expression, but 
 more and more to turn away the creative impulse of 
 the artist from the imitation of universal ideas of life 
 and action. In the rival theories and practice of the 
 modern French Naturalists and Impressionists I seem 
 to detect, under a changed form, the old party struggle 
 between the Classicists and the Romanticists. In one 
 direction, I see the disciples of Gustave Flaubert, by
 
 250 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 a new application of the precepts of Boileau, employ- 
 ing all the resources of precise and artistic language 
 to decorate the sordid commonplace of bourgeois life ; 
 in another, M. Anatole France, as the successor of 
 Renan, arresting the transient impressions of his own 
 mind in a succession of delicate phrases, which would 
 have been the delight of the Hotel Rambouillet. But, 
 in both directions. Analysis undermines the conscience 
 with the suggestion of subjects and ideas which lie at 
 the very foundation of the Family and the State. 
 
 Must these things be? Is it impossible for the 
 French novelist to contemplate Man under any aspect 
 except that which involves some relation to his 
 neighbour's wife ? impossible for him to transport 
 the imagination into the world of ideal action ? 
 Perhaps it may be answered, that all the energies 
 of the nation are concentrated in Paris, where lies 
 its brain, and that Analysis alone can penetrate 
 to the principle of life underlying the wild ex- 
 citement of the Parisian Bourse, the gossip of the 
 Parisian journal, the intrigues of the Parisian draw- 
 ing-room. But Paris is not France : the poetry of 
 the people, its historic soul and character, lies else- 
 where. Turn away from the dissolving scene of life 
 in the capital, with its superficial reflection of vulgar 
 materialism, to the bypaths of rural France, where 
 Nature pursues her ancient round in the midst of silent 
 labour and elemental pieties. Pause in imagination, 
 for example, in the valley of the Loire, as that noble 
 river flows peacefully amidst historic battle-grounds ; 
 through walled towns, where every stone seems to
 
 LECT. Ill THE IDEA OF LAW IN FRENCH POETRY 251 
 
 recall some national memory Orleans, Tours, Angers ; 
 through fields in which, here and there, peasants 
 may still be seen, as Millet saw them, listening with 
 bent heads to the voice of the Angelus ; under gray 
 chateaux, which, perhaps no longer tenanted by the 
 descendants of their former lords, look down, at 
 fixed seasons, on popular festivals celebrated around 
 them since the Middle Ages will any man of taste 
 and imagination, viewing scenes like these in the 
 light not of romance but of history, and thinking of 
 all the movement and animation of the present in its 
 relation to the past, venture to say that Moliere and 
 La Fontaine would have found nothing worthy of 
 imitation in the France of this century ? Would they 
 not have been able to show us in an ideal form, though 
 it were but in comedy, how much of the historic 
 character of their country has survived the conflict of 
 thirty generations ; how many of the primaeval springs 
 of national life combine to preserve the unity of 
 French society ; to what extent the ancient religion is 
 still a moving power in the hearts of the people ? Let 
 it be granted that it is no longer the drama or the 
 poem, but the novel, which is the vehicle of imagina- 
 tive expression. Yet the novel also can be made the 
 mirror of the ideal imitation of Nature, and the novelist 
 who is able to give a reflection of the true morals and 
 manners of France in the classic language inherited 
 from Pascal and Mme. de Sevigne, will command an 
 European audience as wide and appreciative as in the 
 days of Louis Quatorze.
 
 IV 
 
 THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 
 
 The same inevitable forces out of which arose the 
 character of French Poetry are seen to be work- 
 ing, though under very different circumstances, to 
 determine the character of German Poetry ; and it is 
 this law, or idea of law, in Germany which I propose 
 to make the subject of my present lecture. First of 
 all, let us consider precisely the nature of the facts 
 with which we have to deal. It cannot be said that 
 Germany has expressed the idea of the Universal, 
 either in the creative departments of Poetry or in 
 the plastic Arts, with as much character as Italy, 
 England, France, or even Spain. The Germans have 
 produced no romantic epic of universal European 
 fame, like the Orlando Furioso, no classic epic that 
 can be named with Paradise Lost ; no romance like 
 Do7i Quixote; no tragic drama comparable, I do 
 not say with the tragedies of Shakespeare, but even 
 with those of Corneille and Racine ; no comic drama 
 approaching within visible distance of that of Moli^re. 
 In painting, two German names alone are household 
 words, Holbein and Albert Diirer. To compensate for
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 253 
 
 these deficiencies, the Germans are supreme in Music : 
 Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven form a triumvirate 
 whom the united musicians of the rest of Europe would 
 challenge in vain. From Germany have come the great 
 men of contemplation in Religion, Philosophy, and 
 Criticism Luther, Kant, Lessing. And in lyric poetry 
 that department of the art which is most akin to 
 Music their compositions (I am thinking of the ballads 
 of Schiller and Uhland, of Faust, and of Heine's Songs) 
 have roused emotions in the hearts of men untouched 
 by the lyric poetry of any other nation, with the 
 possible exception of the poetry of Byron. 
 
 I think that these facts are precisely the results 
 that might be expected to follow from the genius of 
 the German character, and the course of German his- 
 tory. German genius, at least as manifested out- 
 wardly up to quite modern times, has been rather 
 contemplative than practical. The German has or 
 had two generations ago the same strange contrasts 
 in his character as are noted by Tacitus : the love of 
 arms, joined with the tendency to domestic indolence ; 
 the passion for intellectual liberty, accompanying the 
 neglect of the arts of society ; energy in war, followed 
 by reverie in peace. In peace, says the practical 
 Roman historian, *' ipsi hebent, mira naturae diver- 
 sitate, cum idem sic ament inertiam et oderint 
 quietem." Something of this contradictory combina- 
 tion of qualities is visible in the characters of many 
 of the greatest Germans ; they are content that their 
 bodies shall never travel out of sight of their own 
 hearth-smoke, if their souls have freedom to soar
 
 254 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 through the Infinite. Luther, shaking the world from 
 his monastery, with his doctrine of Justification by 
 Faith ; Kant, revolutionising philosophy in his little 
 provincial town, beyond w^hose walls he rarely stirred ; 
 both were true Germans. And hence it seems to me 
 quite natural that, when the Germans strive to express 
 their idea of the Universal in the sphere of creative 
 imagination, they should turn with the readiest 
 sympathy to that one of the Fine Arts which at once 
 exerts the widest sway over the pure emotions, and is 
 least under the direction of Reason, least subject to 
 the limitations of plastic form ; in other words, the 
 German genius has closer affinities with the Art of 
 Music than with the Arts of Poetry and Painting. 
 
 If, however, we look at the creative departments 
 of Poetry, as actually developed in Germany, we shall 
 see how faithfully the practice of the poets reflects 
 the ideas of action proper to the history of the Ger- 
 man people. The political history of Germany is the 
 exact antithesis of the history of France, for while 
 the prominent feature of French history is an exces- 
 sive centralisation leading to Absolutism, the char- 
 acter of German history is an excess of Individualism 
 resulting in Anarchy. Until recently the Germans 
 had no political ideal of united action which could 
 be reduced to practice. At a time when Spain, 
 France, and England were all nations with clearly 
 defined interests and policies, Germany was a loose 
 aggregation of States, in which the old feudal, semi- 
 tribal order was still predominant ; the Emperor 
 being its impotent head, and against that head all the
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 255 
 
 other members, each in conflict with the other, being 
 in rebellion the Princes at war with their Sovereign, 
 the Cities and Knights with the Princes, the Peasantry 
 with the Knights and the Cities. From the midst 
 of this caldron of chaos rose the Reformation, and 
 from the Reformation the Thirty Years' War, with its 
 political and spiritual divisions of Catholic against 
 Protestant, and its fruits of desolation, poverty, 
 despair. When the wars were over, each petty 
 exhausted state settled down within its own limits, 
 and began to cultivate civil arts in its own way, 
 having cut itself ofi" from the mediaeval ideals of 
 the Christian Republic, without having been able to 
 assimilate the ideals of the modern Nation. 
 
 Such was the state of politics in Germany at the 
 time when the foundations of modern German litera- 
 ture were laid. The most characteristic period of 
 German Poetry is the century between the Seven 
 Years' War and the French Revolution of 1848 ; and 
 during that period the most common complaint of 
 German writers of genius is the want of great 
 central ideas of action to form a basis of national art. 
 Goethe, in his Dichtung und Wahrheit, describes the 
 prevailing condition of things in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century : " Because in peace patriotism 
 really consists only in this, that every one sweeps his 
 own doorstep, minds his own business, learns his 
 own lesson, that it may go well with his house, so 
 did the feeling for Fatherland excited by Klopstock 
 find no object on which it could exercise itself." 
 Germany was full of men of imagination ; they
 
 !56 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 were all anxious to write great epics and great 
 dramas ; unfortunately they had to make their poetical 
 bricks without straw, having neither characteristic 
 ideas of political unity, nor any continuous tradition 
 of rude art out of which they might consciously 
 develop more perfect forms. Hence each poet was 
 forced to think out the first principles of composition 
 for himself ; and one of the characteristics of German 
 poetry is, that, in the higher walks of the Art, Criti- 
 cism precedes Creation, 
 
 Now if we apply the twofold Law of Fine Art to 
 Klopstock's Messiah, the most celebrated epic that 
 Germany has produced, we shall see how its form 
 was afi'ected by the imaginative conditions I have 
 just described. The matter may be best illustrated 
 by the method of comparison, and Klopstock's idea 
 of poetical law be inferred by contrasting the mode 
 of composition followed in the Messiah with that of 
 Paradise Lost. Both Milton and Klopstock agree in 
 the selection of a subject of universal interest; in 
 both of them the matter which is the foundation of 
 their conception is derived from the Bible, But 
 Milton has obtained for himself perfect freedom of 
 poetical creation by laying his action in the pre- 
 historic period described in the first chapters of 
 Genesis, whereby he is enabled to treat the story of 
 the Fall in the epic form consecrated by the usage of 
 such great poets as Homer and Virgil. He has shown 
 equal judgment in limiting the action of Paradise 
 Regained to the single episode of the Temptation, 
 which he can treat in epic style without any
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 257 
 
 departure from Scripture authority. Klopstock, on 
 the other hand, has formed no central conception of 
 the action which he proposes to relate. He begins 
 his epic with the events immediately preceding the 
 Crucifixion, but he transports his action, as he pleases, 
 from the sphere of the real to the supernatural, em- 
 bellishing it with episodes of angels and demons 
 which have no basis in the Scripture narrative. 
 This attempt to fuse what is historical with what is 
 purely poetical betrays a fatal want of judgment 
 in view of the nature of the subject, and would never 
 have been made if Klopstock, before beginning to 
 write, had realised the truth of what Aristotle says 
 as to the difference between Poetry and History. 
 
 Observe again the remarkable contrast in the 
 vehicles of language which Milton and Klopstock re- 
 spectively employ for the expression of their ideas. 
 The English of Milton is a fusion of the Saxon and 
 Latin elements in our tongue, the one stream bearing 
 on its face all the spiritual character derived from its 
 Teutonic source, the other coloured with the rich 
 hues of traditional Latin civilisation and philosophy. 
 The language of Klopstock is that pure German 
 which he himself thus describes: "Let no living 
 tongue venture to enter the lists with the German. 
 As it was in the oldest times when Tacitus describes 
 it, so it still remains, solitary, unmixed, incomparable." 
 A true description, however boastful, but not one that 
 recommends the German language as the vehicle for 
 a subject into which have flowed all the ideas of the 
 
 late Alexandrian philosophy, the mediaival science of 
 
 s
 
 258 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 the Schoolmen, the civil conceptions of Roman Law, 
 and the mystical theology of the Jewish Talmud. 
 A similar difference is visible in the metrical form 
 of the two poems. The blank verse of Milton is 
 essentially a national metre, refined with the highest 
 art from the usage of three earlier generations of 
 English poets ; the metre of the Messiah is an 
 exotic imitation of the classic hexameter, invented 
 by Klopstock, and having no root in the German 
 language. In these essential respects, therefore, the 
 Messiah must be pronounced to want the national 
 character required to make a first-class German epic 
 poem. 
 
 Again, let us apply the two-fold law of Fine Art 
 to the German drama. What is meant by the Uni- 
 versal in dramatic poetry is a situation of general 
 interest, such as we find in Macbeth or the CEJdipus 
 Rex; characters animated by motives common to 
 humanity ; love, jealousy, revenge, as we see them 
 exhibited in men like Othello and Orestes ; sentiments 
 of general human application, " To be, or not to be," 
 or "The quality of mercy is not strained," etc. etc. 
 In order that the dramatist may produce these uni- 
 versal effects, it is practically necessary, first, that the 
 subject or idea of the action shall be common both to 
 his audience and to himself, and, secondly, that the 
 form or character of his drama shall have been the 
 product of long stage experience, as was the case 
 both in Athens under Pericles and in England under 
 Elizabeth. Now neither of these conditions was 
 satisfied when Lessing founded the modern German
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 259 
 
 drama in the eighteenth century ; Germany had then 
 neither a national idea of action, nor a national 
 dramatic tradition. Lessing himself says in his 
 Hamburgische Dramaturgie : " Out on the good- 
 natured idea to procure for the Germans a national 
 theatre, when we Germans are not yet a nation ! I 
 do not speak of our political constitution but of our 
 social character. It might almost be said that this 
 consists in not desiring to have an individual one. 
 We are still the sworn copyists of all that is foreign ; 
 especially are we still the obedient admirers of the 
 never enough to be admired French." 
 
 In spite of these unfavourable circumstances, three 
 men of eminent genius Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe 
 determined to lay the foundations of a national 
 theatre. How did they set to work ? Lessing, as he 
 confesses, formed his dramatic conceptions in the 
 spirit not of a poet but of a critic. He based his idea 
 of the Universal on the Poetics of Aristotle, of which 
 he says : " I do not hesitate to acknowledge (even if 
 I should therefore be laughed to scorn in these en- 
 lightened times) that I consider this work as infallible 
 as the Elements of Euclid." His first impulse towards 
 dramatic creation was accordingly to prove that the 
 French dramatists did not rightly understand Aris- 
 totle's meaning in the Poetics, and then to build his own 
 theatrical edifice on what he conceived to be Aristotle's 
 first principles. But this procedure was a violation of 
 the Law of Character in Fine Art, for, as I have said 
 in my lecture on Aristotle, the rules for composition in 
 the Poetics were generalised only from Greek examples,
 
 26o LAW IN TASTE 
 
 and in many respects were not applicable to the circum- 
 stances which necessarily determined the form of the 
 modern drama. True, Lessing had no traditional forms 
 on which to model his creations, because the mediaeval 
 drama had died out without having developed any 
 German stage. But the forms which he himself 
 evolved cb priori from his critical imagination were 
 devoid of national life and character. This is par- 
 ticularly noticeable in what is perhaps his greatest 
 dramatic eflfort, Emilia Galotti. His aim in this 
 tragedy was to exhibit, in a dramatic form, the moral 
 eflfects of corrupt aristocratic manners such as then 
 prevailed in the Courts of the German princes. He 
 thought that he might effect his aim by allegorising 
 the story of Appius and Virginia, for he hoped that 
 the fame of that legend would enlist on his behalf the 
 sympathies of his audience. But he never considered 
 whether the action of a father stabbing his daughter 
 to preserve her chastity was characteristic of modern 
 manners, or in accordance with what Aristotle calls 
 the law of ideal probability. Though Corneille as 
 a critic is not to be compared with Lessing, he 
 shows himself in Horace to have a more practical 
 understanding of the fundamental laws of the drama, 
 for he takes care in that play not to offend against the 
 appearance of probability, by modernising the facts of 
 the story, while at the same time he flatters the pre- 
 judices of his audience, by pretending'that the Romans 
 felt and spoke like Frenchmen. 
 
 Schiller's dramas have far more life than Lessing's, 
 because he wrote as a poet, not primarily as a critic,
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 261 
 
 and so breathed his own genius and ardour into his 
 ideal creations ; but he had as little conception as 
 Lessing of the essential law of the stage. Hear what 
 he says in his preface to the Robbers : "This play is 
 to be regarded merely as a dramatic narrative, in 
 which, for the purpose of working out the innermost 
 operations of the soul, advantage has been taken of 
 the dramatic method, without otherwise conforming 
 to the stringent rules of theatrical composition, or 
 seeking the dubious advantage of stage adaptation." 
 In other words, Schiller wrote for the reflective reader, 
 not for spectators in the theatre absorbed by the ideal 
 reality of action ; with him the audience is left out of 
 account. And what is true of his Robbers is more or 
 less true of all his plays ; seek for the element of 
 poetry in them, and you will find it to be rather 
 lyrical than dramatic ; the best passages in Don 
 Carlos, Wallenstein, and even William Tell, are 
 those in which he pours out his own emotions, not 
 those in which it is necessary for him to carry the 
 audience out of themselves into the action and passion 
 of the imaginary situation. 
 
 As for the plays of Goethe, with the exception of 
 Faust, of which I shall speak presently, they breathe 
 the spirit of sculpture, the most remote of all the arts 
 from the genius of action. Heine describes them with 
 cruel justice ; he likens them to the statues of the gods 
 in the Louvre, " with their white expressionless eyes, a 
 mysterious melancholy in their stony smiles." " How 
 strange," he continues, " that these antique statues 
 should remind me of the Goethian creations, which are
 
 262 LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 likewise so perfect, so beautiful, so motionless ! aud 
 which also seem oppressed with a dumb grieving that 
 their rigidity and coldness separate them from our 
 present warm, restless life, that they cannot speak and 
 rejoice with us, and that they are not human beings, 
 but unhappy mixtures of divinity and stone." No 
 more in the drama than in the epic did the Germans 
 find that ideal matter and form which needed to 
 blend congenially with their imaginations before it 
 could assume the character of Fine Art. 
 
 How different is the case with German lyric 
 poetry! The German song -writers began to be 
 celebrated in the last quarter of the eighteenth 
 century, just at the period when the mind of Europe 
 was agitated with the apprehended approach of a 
 great change in the structure of society, the more 
 mysteriously alarming that its nature could not be 
 divined. All felt it, but most of all the Germans. 
 Cut off from the outlets of expression in political life, 
 the ardent minds of Germany sought with the more 
 vehemence to give utterance to this universal feeling 
 in the sphere of imagination and emotion. In the 
 German language they had an instrument admirably 
 adapted to their purpose. As Klopstock said of it, 
 it had remained since the days of Tacitus " solitary, 
 unmixed, incomparable." With its ancient inflections, 
 its homely words, its abstract terms, its extraordinary 
 powers of compounding itself, this venerable parent 
 language was capable of touching primitive chords of 
 emotion in all who possessed a strain of Teutonic 
 blood that is to say, in every nation north of the
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 263 
 
 Alps. But it was not possible to strike out at one 
 heat the essential character of national art, and 
 German philosophers, as well as German poets, made 
 many experiments before they hit upon the true form. 
 The failure of the Holy Roman Empire to produce any 
 working ideal of life and action had left the German 
 mind in a position of contemplative isolation, and 
 with a strong tendency to regard all human affairs 
 from a cosmopolitan point of view. Such an abstract 
 mode of conception was foreign to the genius of 
 Fine Art, which deals either with concrete images or 
 positive emotions, and will not come to the artist at 
 the bidding of analytical philosophy. 
 
 Hence the critical advice of Herder, a truly 
 representative German, to his young countrymen in 
 the eighteenth century was barren and futile. Herder 
 said : " National literature is of little importance ; 
 the age of world literature is at hand, and every one 
 ought to work in order to accelerate the coming of 
 the new era. What we want is a poetry in harmony 
 with the voices of the peoples and with the whole 
 heart of mankind. Our studies must be cosmo- 
 politan, and must include the popular poetry of the 
 Hebrews, the Arabs, the Franks, Germans, Italians, 
 Spaniards, and even the songs and ballads of half- 
 savage races." That is the opinion of a man who 
 understands the necessity of expressing the Universal 
 in poetry, but wlio has not the least conception of the 
 meaning of the characteristic. It is needless to say 
 that nothing in the shape of Poetry ever came in 
 Germany, or could come anywhere, out of such
 
 264 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 a horrible witches' cauldron as Herder proposed to 
 mix. 
 
 Not less contrary to the true law of character in 
 art was the attempt made by the patriotic party in 
 Germany to express in the lyric poetry of their native 
 language ideas of a civil or political order. If ideas 
 of this kind be embodied in lyric verse, the style 
 adopted must be lofty and severe, but of what was 
 needed for such a style the Germans, with their want 
 of political training, had no conception. How far they 
 were from attaining it may be imagined from a com- 
 parison of Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard 
 with Frederick Schubart's once famous poem. Die 
 Fiirstengruft, or The Vault of the Princes. Both poets 
 have here selected a subject of universal interest, and 
 both seek to draw out its essential character by a series 
 of contrasted images. Gray hits the mark. How 
 solemn and heroic is the march of the verse in which he 
 represents the compensations in the respective lots of 
 prince and peasant that make them equal in the grave ! 
 
 Th' applause of listening senates to command. 
 The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 
 To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land. 
 And read their history in a nation's eyes. 
 
 Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone 
 Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined, 
 Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne. 
 And shut the gates of mercy on mankind ; 
 
 The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 
 To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame. 
 Or heap the shrines of luxury and pride 
 With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 265 
 
 Schubart's poem, on tte contrary, is a rhetorical 
 invective against the princes of Germany, whom 
 he reproaches as the tyrants of their race. It 
 proceeds to its climax by a succession of contrasts, 
 glaring, violent, theatrical, though not wanting in 
 force and power, describing the coffins of the princes 
 rotting in the glimmering light of the vault, with 
 silver shields hanging over them, and grinning 
 skulls, emblems of vanity. There is no flesh now 
 so the poet reflects on the hands which once, by a 
 stroke of the pen, consigned good and wise men to 
 prison ; the stars and orders shine like comets on the 
 breasts of skeletons. The ear can hear no more the 
 voice of flattery or lascivious music, or the cry of 
 hounds and horses, with which they sought to still 
 the voice of conscience. Let the hoarse croak of the 
 raven be far from the vault, and every rural sound, 
 as well as the voice of mourning, lest they should 
 awake those who in their day were deaf to the 
 prayers of the peasant whose fields they ravaged, 
 and to the sobs of children and the sighs of soldiers, 
 made orphans and cripples in their wars. 
 
 In a poem like this we feel the characteristic 
 imagination of the German people endeavouring in 
 an uncongenial subject for the presence of death 
 demands solemnity and humbleness to express its 
 sense of the infinite, the terrible, the grotesque, the 
 spectral, without ever arriving at the desired eflect. 
 A nearer approach to perfection is made by Biirger, 
 whose imitations of the old ballad style woke an 
 answering chord in the imagination of Walter Scott,
 
 266 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 and helped to hasten the romantic revival in England. 
 In his Leonora, Biirger expressed the wild unrest of 
 the European imagination during the revolutionary 
 epoch in a highly characteristic manner, by associating 
 it with the images of demons and spectres still sur- 
 viving among the people of Germany. 
 
 It was not, however, till Goethe produced Faust 
 that the German lyric poets discovered the form of 
 art qualified to give expression to the universal 
 revolutionary emotion. In Faust everything is 
 as it should be in art. The varied characters of 
 Faust himself, Mephistopheles, and Gretchen, to- 
 gether form the full complement of spiritual human 
 feeling which manifested itself in an outward form 
 during the epoch of the French Revolution ; the 
 picturesque scenes of local life which are scattered 
 through the drama Auerbach's wine-cellar, the 
 Brocken, the town fountain, the cathedral are 
 all necessary to the general eflPect ; the little touches 
 of sentiment Gretchen's song of the King of Thule, 
 the flower divination, the peasants' holiday enjoy- 
 ment if one of these had been away, the poem would 
 have lacked something of its complete perfection. 
 
 And yet the form of Faust is not essentially 
 dramatic but lyrical ; it could never be satisfactorily 
 acted on the stage like a play of Shakespeare ; in its 
 theatrical aspect it is only suitable for opera. Why 
 then has it achieved its undisputed place as one of 
 the great representative poems of the world ? The 
 answer is because, while its form is exactly suited to 
 the universal nature of the subject, the character of
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 267 
 
 that form is specifically German. Faust is German 
 in its subject. The legend of Faustus grew up in 
 Germany itself during the sixteenth century, and 
 had therefore for generations been in the minds of 
 the people. Goethe assimilated it, brooded over it 
 during his youth, and poured into this mould all his 
 own individual characteristics, as well as the national 
 characteristics of his race. Again Faust is German 
 in its dramatic form. Faust himself, with his vast 
 intellectual energy and his sense of ennui, represents 
 the philosophic mind of Europe in the eighteenth 
 century, but, above all, the mind of Germany, de- 
 prived of the opportunities of action, and recalling the 
 description of Tacitus : " Ipsi hebent : idem homines 
 inertiam amant, quietem oderunt." Mephistopheles 
 is but the reflection of the ironic, scoffing spirit 
 which is the natural product of such a soil in the 
 cultivated portion of society ; Gretchen, on the 
 other hand, with her simple domestic instincts and 
 her trusting piety, typifies the unsophisticated 
 elements in the German people. Finally, Faust is 
 German in its style : there is in it none of that 
 uneasy artificial sense of experiment which we find in 
 earlier German poets of the eighteenth century ; the 
 versification is easy and flowing, suited alike to the 
 nature of the subject and to the genius of the language. 
 It is precisely these qualities that give colour and 
 character to the songs of Ileinrich Heine, Goethe's 
 lineal successor in German poetry. I believe that it 
 was Thiers who described Heine as the wittiest 
 Frenchman since Voltaire, one of those epigrams in
 
 268 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 which the superficial cleverness is a symptom of 
 internal falsehood. Heine no doubt imitated Voltaire 
 in the raillery with which he assailed established 
 beliefs and institutions ; but his raillery is quite 
 devoid of the logical analysis which characterises the 
 work of the author of Candide. It would be equally 
 true to say that Heine was the wittiest Englishman 
 since Byron, whom he also imitates in his combina- 
 tion of the cynical with the pathetic ; but Heine's 
 irony is not less remote from Byron's aristocratic 
 scorn than from Voltaire's philosophic mockery. 
 
 Heine was a representative German, though no 
 doubt the hatred of the Jew for the country, with all 
 its institutions and rulers, that oppressed the Jewish 
 race, was also strongly developed in his character. 
 In one of his most characteristic songs he imagines a 
 girl in a foreign land struck with compassion for 
 him and inquiring who he is. He answers : 
 
 I am a German poet, 
 
 In the German land well known ; 
 When men count the best names in it, 
 
 They will count with these my own. 
 
 And what I feel, little maiden, 
 
 Men feel in the German land ; 
 When they reckon its fiercest sorrows, 
 
 My sorrows with those will stand. 
 
 What were the German sorrows ? Heine unites in 
 himself the characters of Faust, Mephistopheles, and 
 Gretchen, despair, scoffing, tenderness ; and he ex- 
 presses the agony caused by this conflict of emotions 
 under the image of the lover who has lost his love.
 
 LECT.iv THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 269 
 
 The image he employs is both universal and nation- 
 ally characteristic ; universal in its ordinary applica- 
 tion, as well as in giving utterance to the yearning 
 of the human heart for the infinite 
 
 The desire of the moth for the star, 
 
 Of the night for the morrow, 
 The devotion to something afar 
 
 From the sphere of our sorrow 
 
 characteristic in its expression of the sense of vanity 
 in the German mind, caused by the contrast between 
 their own energy in metaphysical speculation and 
 their impotence in political action. But of the essen- 
 tial elements in his poetry I venture to say that the 
 least congenial to his imagination was the scofiing 
 wit of Mephistopheles, and that the chief ingredient 
 in his art was the domestic tenderness of Gretchen. 
 
 We may see this from the prevailing features in 
 Heine's lyrical style. Matthew Arnold and other 
 critics have spoken with just appreciation of the per- 
 fection of Heine's lyrical form, but it is worth while 
 to note more precisely the essential character of that 
 form. Its character lies, I think, in the use of 
 images, which are at once perfect in expression, and 
 which yet suggest something beyond what is ex- 
 pressed, of metrical words which set in motion an 
 infinite train of thoughts and emotions. Let me 
 attempt by a single example, which will speak for 
 itself, to show you what I mean. Here is a very 
 inadequate rendering in English of a little poem 
 complete in three stanzas about the three Kings of 
 Cologne :
 
 270 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 The three holy Kings from the Eastland came ; 
 
 Each asks wherever he passes, 
 " Which way is the way to Bethlehem, 
 
 My lovely lads and lasses 1 " 
 
 The young and the old, they could not say ; 
 
 The Kings fared onward featly, 
 And followed a golden star alway. 
 
 That shone full high and sweetly. 
 
 The star over Joseph's house abode ; 
 
 They passed 'neath the roof -tree lowly ; 
 The Baby cried, the Oxen lowed ; 
 
 Then sang those three Kings holy. 
 
 Imagine Voltaire, or indeed any one but a German, 
 writing anything like that. It strikes exactly the 
 same note as Goethe's " There was a King of 
 Thule " in Faust. And this note was possible to the 
 German poet, and to no other, because the German 
 people were nearer than any other nation to the 
 Middle Ages, because, with their Christianity, they 
 had retained in their imagination something of their 
 old primeval beliefs about Nature, and because their 
 pure unmixed language was qualified to give ex- 
 pression to this ancient unconscious association of 
 ideas. To a certain extent their poetic faculty was 
 shared by other branches of the Teutonic and Celtic 
 races, and Wordsworth notices the mysterious effect 
 in his stanza describing the unconscious song of the 
 Highland Maiden : 
 
 Will no one tell me what she sings 1 
 Perhaps the mournful numbers flow 
 
 For old forgotten, far-oflF things, 
 And battles long ago.
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 271 
 
 But as the folk-lore of Germany is far richer and 
 wilder than that of England, in proportion as it has 
 kept clearer of the stream of Hellenic civilisation, so 
 is it better adapted, by the simple domesticity of its 
 imagery, to touch what may be called the universal 
 Gothic heart of modern Europe. 
 
 It is in this spiritual elfin region that Goethe and 
 Heine find the largest freedom for their imagination. 
 In their verse we listen to mysterious voices from the 
 pine-trees rustling outside the windows of the lonely 
 cottage in the mountains, or to strange primeval 
 colloquies between plants and animals ; the white 
 gleam of the Siren's body is perceived in the whirl- 
 pool ; small armies of dwarfs and kobolds creep 
 out of the bowels of the earth. Not in the bitter 
 Mephistophelian cynicism with which Heine often 
 thinks it fine, in Byronic fashion, to close his pathetic 
 lyrics, not there do we feel the genuine heart of the 
 poet, but in those self- forgetful reveries, tender 
 and mysterious as the folk - songs of Marguerite, 
 in which he talks in their own language to the 
 peasants of the Harz mountains. Witness that 
 unequalled cottage scene, where the little maiden 
 whispers her beliefs with pleasing trepidation to her 
 lover by the sinking fire : 
 
 Little folk and tiny people 
 Bread and bacon leave us none ; 
 Late at night 'tis in the cupboard, 
 In the morning it is gone. 
 
 Little people to the cream-bowl 
 Come by night and take the best ;
 
 272 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 And they leave the bowl uncovered, 
 And the cat laps up the rest. 
 
 And the cat's an old witch-woman 
 Who, at midnight's stormiest hour, 
 Often in the haunted mountains 
 Crawls on the old ruined tower. 
 
 There in old time stood a castle. 
 Feasts were held and arms would glance 
 Knights, and squires, and noble ladies 
 Used to thread the torchlight dance. 
 
 But it chanced a wicked sorceress 
 Cast her spell on tower and guest ; 
 Now there's nothing left but ruins. 
 Where the owlets build their nest. 
 
 Aunt, who's now in heaven, told me 
 That the proper word of doom, 
 At the proper hour of midnight. 
 Spoken in the proper room. 
 
 It will turn those ancient ruins 
 Into castle halls once more ; 
 Knights, and squires, and noble ladies 
 Dance as gaily as of yore. 
 
 And whoe'er he be that speaks it, 
 Tower and people at that word. 
 With the sound of drum and trumpet, 
 Shall proclaim their youthful lord. 
 
 Not only in Goethe and Heine do you hear this 
 note of genuine lyric inspiration. It is of the essence 
 of the poems of Uhland and many another less 
 known singer who has taken the rough diamonds 
 of suggestion from the Volks-Lied and polished them 
 into gems of art. Let me venture to give you one
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 273. 
 
 more specimen from the songs of Wilhelm Miiller, 
 father of our eminent Professor of Comparative Philo- 
 logy, which will show you, even in the imperfect 
 mirror of our own language, with what exquisite skill 
 tlie German lyric poets link universal sentiments 
 with images drawn from the traditions of the people. 
 The subject of the poem is Vineta, an old town said 
 by German legend to lie buried beneath the Baltic : 
 
 Often on the evening silence stealing 
 From the sea-depths, fathoms, fathoms down, 
 Bells sound faintly wondrous tidings pealing 
 Of the old-world, ocean-buried, town. 
 
 There it stands for ever, ruins hoary, 
 Undecaying in their billowy grave ; 
 From the bulwarks flakes of golden glory 
 Rise, and paint the mirror of the wave. 
 
 And the fisher who, at red of even. 
 Once has seen that vision near the shore, 
 Heedless of dark cliff and frowning heaven, 
 Haunts the enchanted spot for evermore. 
 
 Often from the heart's deep places stealing 
 Upward, upward, to the world above, 
 Come to me, like far bells faintly pealing, 
 Voices of the days of vanished love. 
 
 Yes ! a faery world is sunk thereunder, 
 From whose hoary ruins still, meseems. 
 Visions, full of heaven's own light and wonder. 
 Rise, and paint the mirror of my dreams. 
 
 And whene'er I hear those faint bells ringing. 
 Through the magic waves I sink, ah me ! 
 Sink, and seem to hear the angels singing, 
 In that old-world town beneath the sea. 
 T
 
 274 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 I cannot impress too strongly upon those who 
 hear me that a knowledge of the way in which the 
 law of Fine Art operates will not enable us to pro- 
 duce works of Fine Art. That can be accomplished 
 by Genius alone. But, on the other hand, Genius 
 can achieve nothing of permanent value without 
 obedience to Law ; and the knowledge of the opera- 
 tion of Law is of service to Genius because it 
 strengthens the judgment; it shows the artist how 
 he must obey nature in order to command it ; it 
 teaches him to judge himself; to recognise the limits 
 within which he can enjoy artistic and individual 
 freedom ; to test the quality of his own art by com- 
 paring it with what is permanent in the characteristic 
 art of his country. 
 
 Hence all that I have attempted to do in this 
 lecture is to estimate the law or character of German 
 Poetry historically. I do not for a moment presume 
 to assert that German Poetry in the future will in- 
 evitably move in the same grooves and channels as in 
 the past. Character is modified by circumstances to 
 an almost unlimited extent, and during the present 
 generation the history of Germany has undergone 
 something like a revolution. The idea of German 
 Unity, which floated with incorporeal ghostliness 
 before the men of the eighteenth century, has in our 
 times taken a positive external shape ; the German 
 State, the German Empire exists ; what we want to 
 know, before we can foresee how far this chanofc in 
 history will modify the character of German art, is 
 just what no foreigner can at present know, namely,
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 275 
 
 whether the structure of German Unity has been 
 imposed upon the nation, by the genius of great 
 rulers, statesmen, and soldiers, or whether it is the 
 natural product of the mind and character of the 
 people. In the former case it may be destroyed, as it 
 has been created, from without ; in the latter the 
 ideas of action it excites will be reflected in the 
 sphere of spiritual imagination. We can see that, in 
 the material aspect of things, Germany, as a state, has 
 freed herself from the reproach which, from the days 
 of Tacitus, has clung to her, of being wanting in 
 practical aim. It can no longer be said of her rulers : 
 "Ipsi hebent : inertiam amant, quietem oderunt." 
 The full powers of the State are devoted to perfecting 
 the splendid scientific faculties of the German mind, 
 so as to make it irresistible in the operations of war 
 and the enterprise of commerce, and to render the 
 influence of Germany paramount in the councils of 
 Europe. 
 
 But after all, the question as regards Fine Art 
 is. What eff'ect has this great historical change made 
 in the elementary German character, or how far 
 has that character caused the change, because the 
 source of all Poetry, of all ideal creation, is the mind 
 of the People itself ? How will the intense passion of 
 the German mind for free thought and speculation 
 reconcile itself with the rule of the military Absolut- 
 ism, which seems to be the necessary instrument for 
 realising the ambitions of the new German State ? 
 And again, in what poetic form will these imperial 
 ideals express themselves without destroying that
 
 lit "Ll^SN IN TASTE 
 
 domestic sensibility and that spirit of romance and 
 reverie which have been in the past the parents of 
 German song and German music ? 
 
 It is certainly a striking fact that the establish- 
 ment of the German Empire has not been followed by 
 a period of characteristic creation in German Fine Art, 
 at least in the arts of Painting and Poetry. There 
 have been characteristic movements of art in other 
 nations. The movement of the Poetical Preraphaelites 
 of England, and that of the Poetical Symbolists in 
 France, may not fulfil the requirements of the 
 Universal, but certainly neither of them is wanting 
 in distinct character. Nor is characteristic move- 
 ment wanting -in that one of the Fine Arts in 
 which the Germans specially excel, for a German 
 of remarkable genius has, within our own genera- 
 tion, endeavoured to extend the functions of Music, 
 by making it into a vehicle for the expression of 
 intellectual ideas. Of the wisdom of his aims I do 
 not venture to speak, since the question, whether this 
 particular art is justified in appropriating the prin- 
 ciples of another, is one that belongs to the Chair of 
 Music rather than to that of Poetry. But of what is 
 passing in the poetical imagination of the German 
 people, as distinct from the mind of the German State, 
 we know nothing for in poetry the German soul is at 
 present silent. 
 
 I do not wonder that it should be so. To 
 find out the form of Poetry fitted to reflect the 
 conflict of ideas between Feudalism and Socialism, 
 Catholicism and Rationalism, as well as the forces
 
 LECT. IV THE IDEA OF LAW IN GERMAN POETRY 277 
 
 that attract the centrifugal units of German nation- 
 ality to the Imperial Crown, is a task that requires 
 meditation both long and deep. Yet the problem 
 will doubtless be faced. And when the Muse of 
 Germany speaks again through the genius of a great 
 poet, it is to be expected that her utterances will 
 not simply take the old lyrical form, but that she will 
 also employ those forms of drama or romance which 
 are needed to express universal ideas of life and 
 action. In the sphere of Poetry, as in that of 
 Politics, the Germans will perhaps awake the sleeping 
 Barbarossa.
 
 THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 As illustrating the subject of my present lecture, I 
 find a passage in Pope's Essay on Criticism which is 
 well deserving of examination. It is this : 
 
 But soon by impious arms from Latium chased 
 The banished Muse her ancient boundaries passed. 
 Through all the northern world the arts advance, 
 But critic learning flourished most in France. 
 The rules a nation born to serve obeys, 
 And Boileau still in right of Horace sways. 
 But we brave Britons foreign laws despised, 
 And lived unconquered and uncivilised : 
 Fierce for the liberties of art, and bold. 
 We still defied the Romans as of old. 
 
 In these lines the poet is describing the progress 
 from Italy to the north of Europe of the great 
 movement known as the Classical Renaissance. Con- 
 sidering that the description is in verse, the history 
 in the first six lines is surprisingly accurate. It is, 
 of course, not true that the storming of Rome by 
 the Constable Bourbon, the feat of " impious arms " 
 to which Pope is alluding, was the cause of the
 
 LECT. V THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 279 
 
 spread of the movement northwards ; but it is an 
 undoubted fact that soon after that event the effects 
 of the Eenaissance begin to show themselves in the 
 poetry of the courts, both of Francis I. and of 
 Henry VIII. Though the sun of Italian poetry was 
 then far declined, the "critic learning" grounded on 
 the supposed authority of Aristotle, and fostered in the 
 Academies of Italy, was very influential in preparing 
 the way for the later Academic criticism of France. 
 Pope is fully justified in saying that the doctrines, 
 ascribed by this tradition of culture to Aristotle, 
 " flourished most in France " ; and he is also right in 
 explaining the fact by the tendency in the French 
 character to submit to absolute authority. It is no 
 wonder that, taking the tradition at second hand 
 from the French critics, who themselves echoed 
 the opinions of Scaliger and Castelvetro, imagining 
 too that the science of the Greeks had been trans- 
 mitted through Horace's Ars Poetica to the poetical 
 treatises of Vida and Boileau, he should have 
 believed that the " rules " he looked upon as the 
 source of true culture were derived straight from the 
 imperial head of ancient philosophy. 
 
 When, however, he comes to describe the attitude 
 of the English mind towards these " rules," his 
 history becomes superficial and incorrect. At no 
 time was it true, in the broad sense of the word, that 
 English artists " despised foreign laws " : on the 
 contrary, one of the most noticeable features in the 
 history, alike of English painting and of English 
 poetry, has been the influence exercised on the course
 
 28o LAW IN TASTE 
 
 of our artistic development by foreign models. Of 
 the careful study bestowed from the middle of the 
 last century by our painters on the work of the 
 Italian, Dutch, and French masters, I need say 
 nothing. Confining my attention to the history of 
 poetry with which Pope is dealing, it will be sufl&- 
 cient to disprove his assertion by reference, in the 
 infancy of our poetry, to the work of Chaucer, who 
 not only translated the Roman de la Rose, but 
 derived much of his philosophy of life from that 
 poem ; who also in his House of Fame constantly 
 kept in view The Divine Comedy of Dante ; and 
 who drew the scheme of The Canterbury Tales from 
 the Decameron of Boccaccio. After Chaucer we pass 
 on to the practice of Wyatt, Surrey, and their followers 
 imitated from Petrarch ; after that, on the one hand, 
 to the poetry of Milton, so profoundly influenced 
 by the Italian writers, both in Latin and vernacular 
 verse, and, on the other, to Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 who, under the influence of the style and structure 
 of the Spanish play, altered the whole tradition of 
 the English romantic drama. 
 
 Even if we examine Pope's history within the 
 limits to which he intended to confine it, it cannot 
 be said that the English, as a nation, ever set them- 
 selves deliberately to oppose the authority of the 
 supposed Aristotelian " rules." On the contrary, the 
 first elaborate treatise of criticism in the English 
 language. Sir Philip Sidney's Apologie for Poetry, 
 is confessedly grounded upon them. Half a century 
 before Corneille, Sidney had advocated with ardour
 
 LECT. V THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 281 
 
 the principle of the Unities, as expounded by the 
 critics of Italy ; and he censured Spenser for using 
 dialect in his Shepherd's Calendar^ on the ground 
 that the experiment was an innovation on classical 
 example. Ben Jonson, in the next generation, con- 
 stantly sneers at his contemporaries for their barbarous 
 neglect of the Unities. Dryden, though he never 
 ventures to deviate from the practice of the English 
 stage into the paths of critical orthodoxy, always 
 speaks with superstitious reverence of the authority 
 of French critical law. And, if any further proof 
 were required to indicate the gathering volume of 
 opinion in this direction, it would be furnished by 
 the drift of thought in Pope's Essay on Criticism, 
 and by Addison's dramatic criticisms in the Spectator, 
 which vividly reflect the movement of taste in the 
 reign of Queen Anne. 
 
 In any case, supposing it had been true that the 
 English had defied the critical tradition of the 
 Humanists, passed on to France from Italy, this 
 would not have proved them to be uncivilised. For, 
 in the first place, the laws in question were not 
 the laws of Aristotle. The rule of the Unities of 
 Time and Place is not to be found in the Poetics 
 of that philosopher ; the only Unity, on the necessity 
 of which Aristotle insists as a law of dramatic 
 poetry, is Unity of Action. The first mention of 
 the law of Unity of Time is in the commentary of 
 Scaliger on the Poetics, published in 1561, where the 
 principle is deduced by mere inference from casual 
 expressions of Aristotle ; the law of Unity of Place is
 
 282 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 in like manner inferred quite arbitrarily and for the 
 first time by Castelvetro, in his edition of the Poetics, 
 published in 1571 ; Aristotle nowhere lays down such 
 a rule in his treatise, nor did the Greek dramatists 
 observe it in practice. Corneille was the first dramatist 
 to proclaim his submission to rules dictated to him 
 by the two Italian critics ; he defended his practice by 
 reasoning, but he only succeeded in establishing it, 
 because it fell in with the taste of the logical, and 
 rather prosaic, French genius, which completely mis- 
 interpreted Aristotle's use of the term Imitation. 
 
 Once more : let us even suppose Aristotle to 
 have been the author of " the rules," as Pope 
 imagined ; this fact would not have obliged English 
 dramatists, on any rational theory of authority, to obey 
 his particular edicts. The Law of the Three Unities 
 could at most have been classed with Aristotle's by- 
 laws, such as his requirements for the form of the 
 perfect tragedy, or for the character of the ideal 
 tragic hero ; and these, as I have before urged, being 
 derived from his observation solely of the practice 
 of the Greek stage, have no application whatever to 
 the form and structure of the drama in other nations, 
 which is based on conceptions of the Universal in 
 Nature in many respects fundamentally diff'erent 
 from the ideas of the Greeks. 
 
 Had Pope been better acquainted with the mean- 
 ing of Aristotle, he would have perceived that, pro- 
 vided his countrymen conformed to the philosopher's 
 grand principle of imitating the Universal in Nature, 
 they were quite right to imitate it according to
 
 LECT. V THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 283 
 
 the law imposed upon them by their national 
 character and history. So long as they obeyed in a 
 philosophic spirit their own municipal law of art, 
 they might despise foreign laws without incurring 
 the reproach of insular barbarism. The application 
 of the French " rules" to a play like Hamlet, which 
 caused Voltaire to call Shakespeare a drunken savage, 
 shows an ignorance of the methods of art actually 
 employed by the English poet which recoils on the 
 head of the French critic ; and though Boileau 
 pronounced dictatorially that it was impossible to 
 write an epic upon a Scripture subject, yet the logical 
 impossibility of the critic was overcome, without any 
 violation of the true laws of Poetry, in Milton's 
 Paradise Lost. To attempt to confine the liberties 
 of the poet by any a priori system of critical 
 legislation is, as I have said more than once, worse 
 than useless. Genius must be left to find out the 
 law for itself. 
 
 Not that this implies that there is no law beyond 
 the will of genius. " Fierce " as the English poets 
 were, and rightly were, for the liberties of wit, the 
 best and most representative of them knew that 
 these liberties must be confined within certain limits 
 and directed to a definite end. The end they had in 
 view was the imitation of the Universal, but the 
 aspect of the Universal that manifests itself to the 
 English artist is modified and coloured by a character 
 peculiar to his own society, so that the poetical forms 
 in which he reflects his ideas are necessarily different 
 from the forms in use among the artists of other
 
 284 LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 nations. It is for the artist to decide in what way 
 he can turn to his purpose the principles, instincts, 
 and institutions, which go to make up national 
 character ; how far he may successfully extend his 
 individual liberties within the law can only be 
 determined by the force of his genius. All that the 
 critic can usefully do is to collect the law of art, 
 by observing what are the elements common to the 
 work of a nation's greatest artists, and to note the 
 working of the law of national character in art, by 
 comparing the manner of imitating the Universal 
 prevailing in one nation with that prevailing in 
 another. 
 
 It was for this reason that, before attempting to 
 discover what is the predominant idea of law in 
 English Poetry, I examined in previous lectures how 
 the law of national character has manifested itself in 
 the poetry both of France and of Germany. For it 
 is plain that in their elements, the French, German, 
 and English minds have much in common with each 
 other ; we all originally spring from one race ; we 
 were all converted from heathenism to the Christian 
 religion ; we all inherited the institutions of Teutonic 
 chivalry ; the English language is made up of words 
 mainly derived from German and French sources. It 
 may, therefore, be concluded that Nature has put us all 
 in the way of taking the same view of the Universal ; 
 and that the very divergent views of it, which are, 
 as a matter of fact, disclosed in the art and poetry 
 of the three nations, are due to peculiarities in the 
 character and history of each people.
 
 LECT.v THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 285 
 
 Comparing the English character then either with 
 the French or the German, the first thing that strikes 
 every inquirer is the great multiplicity of elements 
 which the English exhibits, in contrast with the 
 simplicity of the other two. The German race has 
 remained completely unmixed, and many features, 
 noted in their character by an accurate observer like 
 Tacitus, have survived in it with very little change. 
 Again, much of what Csesar says of the character 
 of the ancient Gauls is obviously applicable to the 
 character of the modern Frenchman. At first sight 
 this seems somewhat strange, when we remember that 
 the conquering Franks were of pure Teutonic descent ; 
 but when we see how completely, in the French 
 language, the German element has been merged in 
 the Romance, it is easy to understand that the 
 genius of the barbarous victors was subdued by 
 the civilisation of the Romanised Celt. 
 
 No ancient historian has attempted to analyse 
 the character of the English nation. It is made 
 up of British, Anglo - Saxon, Scandinavian, and 
 Norman elements, each of which has been fused in the 
 organic whole without entirely losing its individual 
 existence. How much influence the British element 
 has exercised on our whole character may be 
 doubted ; if we are to judge from language, very 
 little, for the number of Celtic words we use may 
 be easily reckoned. Nor do I tliink that Matthew 
 Arnold is anything but fanciful when he ascribes 
 certain features in the style of English poetry to 
 the Celtic strain in our blood, though of course
 
 2S6 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 I should be the last to deny the influence of the 
 Celtic genius as one of the sources of mediaeval English 
 Romance. The love of constitutional liberty, which 
 is so dominant a feature in the English character, 
 may fairly be ascribed to our German ancestry ; 
 but the somewhat sluggish and stationary temper 
 of the Saxons must, after they were once insularisedj 
 have sunk into torpor and decay, if it had not 
 been quickened by the life and movement of the 
 adventurous Scandinavian immigrants ; on the other 
 hand, the directing genius of the Normans runs in 
 unbroken continuity through the entire history of the 
 English nation. 
 
 If we turn our inquiry from race to language, 
 we find the same principle of simplicity in the 
 elements prevailing in German and French as 
 compared with English. I quoted in my last lecture 
 Klopstock's description of the purity of the German 
 language, the structure of which he boasts to have 
 remained unchanged since the days of Arminius. 
 French, on the contrary, exhibits the growth of 
 fresh organic forms out of the structural decay of 
 Latin, and reflects in its history a regular process of 
 transformation and development. English derives its 
 vocabulary both from French and German, showing 
 a curious drama of give and take between the two 
 opposing elements. Physically, the dominant character 
 of the German in our language is indicated by the 
 imposition of the Saxon mode of accentuation on im- 
 migrant words. Thus the words Saturn, beauty, 
 fortune, nature, in which the accent is now thrown
 
 LECT. V THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 287 
 
 back, according to the Saxon principle, on to the first 
 syllable, were in the time of Chaucer and his con- 
 temporaries accentuated, according to the French 
 principle, on what would have been the penultimate 
 syllable of the Latin word Saturn, heautee, fortune, 
 nature. But, by way of compensation, the superior 
 power of the French, in all matters relating to art and 
 culture, manifests itself in the disappearance of the 
 Saxon alliterative verse before the invasion of French 
 metres determined by accent and rhyme. 
 
 Passing from the elements of character in them- 
 selves to the war of the elements in action, we may 
 observe, in the sphere of politics, how very differently 
 each of the three nations has proceeded in its attempt 
 to reconcile the conflicting principles of which its life 
 is composed. Our primitive ancestors, besides be- 
 queathing to each of us certain universal ideas of the 
 duties of man to God, to the Family, and to the State, 
 handed down also certain common institutions Mon- 
 archy, Aristocracy, and Popular Control representing 
 various interests and tendencies in society, by means 
 of which it has been our destiny to develop, accord- 
 ing to our several circumstances, the course of our 
 national life. The history of France and Germany 
 shows us the spectacle of one or other of these prin- 
 ciples growing to such power that, like Aaron's 
 serpent, it swallows up the rest. On the other hand, 
 though the dominant feature in the political history 
 of England is undoubtedly 
 
 Freedom slowly bro;uleiiing down 
 From precedent to precedent,
 
 288 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 the growing movement of liberty thus described 
 does not, as Tennyson's verses seem to imply, arise 
 from the inward expansion of a single principle ; it is 
 the total result of the conflict between the equally 
 balanced forces of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Demo- 
 cracy. There is no trace in the history of England 
 of the centralising tendency of things in France, 
 absorbing all the functions and colour of local liberty 
 into an omnivorous Absolutism. There is visible none 
 of the anarchical rivalry of Orders that prevailed in 
 the Holy Roman Empire, reducing the power of the 
 Imperial throne to impotence and inaction. At one 
 time in our history the Monarchical principle was pre- 
 dominant, at another the Aristocratic ; forward move- 
 ment and fresh equilibrium were attained by the 
 People throwing its weight into one scale or the other, 
 as circumstances required. Centuries of conflict, 
 sometimes ending in civil war, were needed to develop 
 the principle of hereditary liberty, contained in such 
 documents as Magna Cliarta and the Bill of Rights, 
 into the complex fabric of the British Empire. The 
 leading feature in the character of the English Con- 
 stitution is its power of reconciling contrary impulses 
 of action. 
 
 As it has been with us in the external sphere of 
 politics, so it is in the sphere of faith and imagination. 
 From the very early days of our religion w^e can see that 
 a universal conflict has been proceeding in the mind of 
 Christendom, between the principle of authority, re- 
 presented by Councils defining the dogmas of the 
 Church, the principle of individual liberty, represented
 
 LECT. V THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 289 
 
 by the constant succession of heresies and schisms, 
 and the naturally opposed principles of Paganism and 
 Revealed Religion. But during the last six centuries 
 the making of organic thought in the great national 
 communities of Europe has been the result of the 
 fusion, in different proportions, of certain antagonistic 
 elements, Catholicism, Feudalism, Humanism, and 
 Reform, and each nation has striven to settle the 
 struggle proceeding in its midst in the way most 
 consistent with its own character. 
 
 France, in which the principle of kingly authority 
 showed from the first a tendency to be predominant, 
 found little difiiculty in reconciling, at least super- 
 ficially, the principle of Catholicism with the principle 
 of the Renaissance. A Concordat with the Pope enabled 
 Francis I. to repress the inconvenient aspirations of the 
 Galilean Church ; and the Pagan splendour of the late 
 painting and sculpture of Italy was welcomed at the 
 Court of a monarch who boasted the title of the Most 
 Christian King. But the spirit of the Reformation 
 never gained a foothold in the French imagination. 
 Though Clement Marot translated the Psalms, and 
 though Rabelais, in the early editions of his Romances, 
 introduced ideas favourable to the Humanist reformers 
 of religion, the general character of Marot's poetry 
 is not devotional, and Rabelais made haste to suppress 
 his liberalism as soon as he found it was disapproved 
 by authority. The genius of D'Aubigne, the greatest 
 of the Huguenot writers of mediaeval France, is 
 hardly representative of his nation, and perhaps the 
 only attempt to treat the subject of revealed religion
 
 >9o LAW IN TASTE 
 
 spiritually in French poetry is Boileau's aridly Jansen- 
 ist Epistle on the Love of God. 
 
 Germany, in the sphere of spiritual thought, has 
 been as unreservedly on the side of individual liberty 
 as France on the side of central authority. She it 
 was, above all other countries, who nourished the 
 genius of the Reformation. In the persons of 
 Luther and Kant she led the revolt against what is 
 established both in Religion and Philosophy. But 
 then Germany, owing to the unmitigated feudalism 
 of her institutions, was incapable of assimilating the 
 intellectual movement of the Renaissance at the same 
 time as the great nations of Western Europe. The 
 Classical Revival was essentially civic in its origin, 
 and there was in Germany in the sixteenth century 
 no recognised civic centre round which art and litera- 
 ture could organise themselves to the same extent as 
 in France and England. When the different States 
 of the Empire, at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 
 settled down into exhausted quietude, the Renaissance 
 began to make its influence felt in the Courts of the 
 Princes ; but its operation was entirely opposed to 
 the experience of the European nations of the West. 
 Winckelmann, Lessing, and Goethe had no doubt a far 
 clearer insight into the nature of Greek art than the 
 French and Italian critics, who followed the pseudo- 
 Aristotelian tradition, but they viewed it in the 
 abstract, as critics and philosophers, and not in its 
 relation to the life of their own country. 
 
 England has marked out for herself a path of 
 Culture between that of France and Germany. The
 
 LECT. V THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 291 
 
 bent of her historical character has been to blend the 
 principles of liberty and authority. She has studied 
 how to accommodate the necessities of innovation with 
 the traditions of old experience. Into our Universities, 
 the cradles of the ancient Scholasticism, we received 
 the teaching of Erasmus and his fellow Humanists, so 
 that when Luther, with all his violent Tertullian-like 
 hatred of Greek poetry and philosophy, poured him- 
 self forth in a flood of rebellion against the old regime, 
 carrying on the tide of his enthusiasm all that Ger- 
 manic element in the English nation which, nearly two 
 centuries before, had been stirred by the preaching of 
 Wycliffe, we were saved by the strength of our dykes 
 from the submerging of invaluable elements in our 
 life and history. Yet this did not prevent the spirit 
 of the Reformation from penetrating the inmost 
 recesses of the national character, or from finding vivid 
 forms of expression in the greatest works of English 
 poetry. I need say nothing, for the fact is obvious, 
 of its influence on the composition of Paradise Lost ; 
 but its presence in the plays of Shakespeare, though 
 more subtly disguised, is equally unmistakable. I 
 do not think that any one can read with attention 
 either Hamlet, Maeheth, or Measure for Measure, 
 without perceiving how powerful was the conflict in 
 England between the selfish, egotistic, material prin- 
 ciple of life, deliberately advocated by such an illus- 
 trious representative of the Italian Eenaissance as 
 Machiavelli, and the principle of Conscience, which 
 was the prime spiritual cause of the Reformation. 
 From all this it seems to follow, first, that the
 
 292 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 *' rules," or '* foreign laws," of which Pope speaks 
 with respect in the Essay on Criticism, are only one 
 of many elements that have combined to determine the 
 course of our national art and culture ; and that, if 
 English poetry, like the poetry of other nations, is a 
 mirror of our national character and history, then the 
 great fundamental law under w^iich the ojenius of the 
 English poet must act, in order to produce any lasting 
 work, is the know^ledge both of what may be called 
 the Balance of Power between the constituent elements 
 of our imagination, and also of the method of fusing 
 these contrary principles into a harmonious whole. 
 
 In practice we find this to have been the aim 
 of all the most representative English masters, not 
 alone in the art of poetry but in the art of painting. 
 " The summit of excellence," says Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 in his Fifth Discourse, " seems to be an assemblage 
 of contrary qualities, but mixed in such proportion 
 that no one part is found to counteract the others. 
 How hard this is to be attained in every art, those 
 only know who have made the greatest progress in 
 their respective professions." So hard, indeed, is it, 
 that one notices throuofhout Sir Joshua's teachinor a 
 perhaps excessive tendency to insist on the necessity 
 of often suppressing elements of life, valuable in them- 
 selves, for the sake of harmonious effect. For example 
 he says : "A statue in which you endeavour to unite 
 stately dignity, youthful elegance, and stern valour, 
 must surely possess none of these to an eminent 
 degree. Hence it appears that there is much difficulty 
 as well as danger in an endeavour to concentrate in a
 
 LECT. V THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 293 
 
 single subject those various powers which, rising from 
 different points, naturally move in different direc- 
 tions." But genius is genius precisely because it 
 knows how to overcome apparently insuperable diffi- 
 culties. If it had not been for the authority of Sir 
 Joshua, apparently on the other side, I should have 
 ventured to suggest that the particular combination 
 of qualities he supposes w^as to be found in the statue 
 of the Apollo Belvedere, and I am at least confident 
 that it is well within the reach of poetry, which of 
 all the arts is the one with most capacity for the 
 imitation of contrary qualities in action. 
 
 It is not too much to say that in English 
 Poetry the reconciliation of contraries is the char- 
 acter impressed on the works of a long succession 
 of great poets, who have been so conscious of the 
 strife of principles in their own sphere, and of 
 the dominant tendencies in the spirit of their age, 
 that they have each known how to imitate in an 
 ideal form the movement of life in Nature and Society. 
 We see, for example, the principle at work in the Visi07i 
 of Piers the Plowman, in which the poet's powerful 
 but confused attempt to work out an ideal scheme of 
 harmony between Church and State so strikingly 
 anticipates the actual course of events at the Refor- 
 mation. We see it, too, in the brilliant, vivacious, 
 squabbling, company of Chaucer's pilgrims to the 
 shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the representa- 
 tives of so many opposing interests and so many 
 distinct orders in society, yet all united by the sense 
 of a common religious duty to be performed, and
 
 294 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 already so far advanced in the art of self-government 
 as to be willing to compose their quarrels under the 
 general and moderating guidance of the host of The 
 Tabard. The most profound and comprehensive 
 conception of the mingled tragedy and comedy of 
 life ever expressed in poetry is to be found in the 
 dramas of Shakespeare, in whose genius the elements 
 are so mixed that it is difficult to say whether the 
 spirit of the ancient Church, of the Reformation, or 
 of Humanism, is the stronger. The Satires of Pope, 
 faithfully reflecting in this respect the genius of the 
 eighteenth century, seem almost to eliminate the 
 mediaeval element from the national imagination, in 
 a purely civic development of the principle of the 
 Renaissance ; but in Byron and Tennyson the spirit 
 of individual liberty returns on the top of the tide, 
 seeking, under the guise of mediaeval forms, to express 
 its revolt against the classic and aristocratic conven- 
 tions of the eighteenth century, without, however, 
 losing sight of the historic conflict of principles in 
 English Poetry. 
 
 In future lectures I shall hope to illustrate the 
 working of this law of national character more fully and 
 particularly from the practice of our most representa- 
 tive poets. Meantime, let me say a few concluding 
 words about the kind of test we ought to apply, to 
 see whether the law is fulfilled in any work of con- 
 temporary English poetry that we may be called upon 
 to judge. In the first place, I would repeat what I 
 have said in an earlier lecture, that the presence of the 
 Universal in a work of art cannot always be inferred
 
 LECT. V THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 295 
 
 from the popularity of that work.^ Tempting no 
 doubt it is to decide in this way, for never was there 
 an age in which Fame travelled with such lightning 
 speed as our own. There is something dazzling and 
 impressive in the sale of tens of thousands of copies 
 of a poem or a romance, nor is it for a moment to be 
 denied that any book which succeeds in pleasing the 
 imagination of so many human beings must possess 
 ill itself some striking qualities of art, though not 
 necessarily, or even probably, of fine art. For the 
 people judges by its emotions, sensations, and 
 instincts, not by its reason ; and it is almost as 
 impossible to divine the efiect which a work of 
 imagination will produce on the popular mind as to 
 forecast the temper in which public opinion will act 
 in the sphere of politics. All that we can be sure 
 of is that the quality in a work of art which 
 fascinates the imagination of the people will be, like 
 the considerations that sway them in politics, simple, 
 obvious, akin to their superficial sentiments, and as 
 unlike as possible to that mysterious struggle of 
 opposite forces, the sum of which eventually determines 
 the national action and character, A novel like The 
 Sorrows of Werther will always be, in the beginning, 
 more popular and famous than a poem like Faust. 
 
 Looking at the matter from the opposite side, 
 while a work of genius will necessarily have in it 
 an element strongly appealing to the universal, and 
 therefore to the popular, imagination, we know 
 by abundant evidence that tlie kind of imitation 
 
 Pages ir,0.1ol.
 
 296 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 which arrests general attention is not that in which 
 the essential motive thought of a great poet re- 
 sides. For example, a number of contemporary 
 allusions to Hamlet prove beyond question that 
 what most impressed the audience in the Eliza- 
 bethan theatre was by no means the general plot 
 of the play or the character of the Prince of Den- 
 mark, but the appearance of the ghost. It is equally 
 certain, from the title attached to the early acting 
 copies of King Lear, that the imaginative pleasure 
 experienced by the spectators arose much less from 
 the sublime representation of the madness of the 
 old king, than from Edgar's realistic assumption of 
 the character of poor Tom of Bedlam. 
 
 Equally fallacious is it to look for the character, 
 which is the mark of all Fine Art, in singularity of 
 expression. There is a very strong tendency in our 
 times to adopt this standard of judgment. Whether 
 it be disdain for the judgment of the multitude, or 
 an instinctive perception that singularity is eventually 
 the surest means of attracting the attention of the 
 crowd, every observer must have noticed the growing 
 inclination of men of genius to invent forms which 
 reflect not so much the universal character of the 
 nation, as their own personal peculiarities. At first 
 this studied pursuit of unpopular ends meets with 
 coldness and contempt in the public at large, but it 
 is noted and even approved by the intellectual few, 
 who appreciate more intensely eccentricity in an 
 author, in proportion as they value in themselves 
 the sagacity which enables them to interpret it. By
 
 LECT. V THE IDEA OF LAW IN ENGLISH POETRY 297 
 
 degrees an ever-increasing circle of admirers imposes 
 its own thoughtfulness on the unreflecting public, 
 which, though still unable to understand, is no longer 
 bold enough to ridicule. " Those who come to mock 
 remain to pray." Surrounded by a powerful body- 
 guard, the once neglected inventor of singularities 
 tramples with impunity on the traditions of art, and 
 the coterie invests with a species of temporary 
 authority an eccentric practice which may have its 
 primary roots in Mannerism and Affectation. 
 
 The just mean of a true work of Fine Art lies 
 between Popularity and Singularity ; such a work is 
 the expression of Universal truth bearing the stamp 
 of national character. The critic in judging a new 
 poem will do well to ask certain questions about 
 its qualities. First as regards its conception. Does 
 it strike the imagination, in its general effect, as 
 imitating the idea of Nature as a whole ? Does it 
 reflect in itself the strife of opposing principles which 
 make up the sum of our civilisation, our Christian 
 faith, our hereditary institutions, the long tradition 
 of European culture ? Are these conflicting ideas 
 fused in it in the same way as we see them fused in 
 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, 
 in Pope's Essay on Man, in Gray's Elegy, in Tenny- 
 son's In Memoriam f So too in respect of expression, 
 every English poem, which is really a work of fine 
 art, will combine in itself the universal with the 
 particular. If it is justly conceived, if it holds the 
 mirror truly up to nature, then the expression also 
 will seem natural, the art will be concealed, and the
 
 298 LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 effect left on the mind will be Repose and not 
 Violence or Singularity, Close examination alone 
 will reveal what thought and labour have often 
 been given to arrive at this result ; the selection and 
 rejection of ideas ; the choice of words characteristic 
 yet not forced ; the variation of periods ; the combina- 
 tion of harmonies ; in a word, all that subtle mixture 
 of elements which gives life and soul and movement 
 to an individual style. And as a style of this kind is 
 generalised by the poet from a wide acquaintance with 
 the practice of the best poets in our literature, so it can 
 be rightly judged only by those who have a knowledge 
 of the historic development of our language. In criti- 
 cising the language of a modern poet, look in his verse 
 to see if it possesses the hereditary national quality of 
 condensing thought in an ej)igrammatic form see if 
 you can find a family likeness in it to lines like these : 
 
 Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Shakespeare. 
 
 They also serve who only stand and wait. Milton. 
 
 A man so various that he seemed to be 
 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome. Dryden. 
 
 Man never is, but always to be, blest. Pope. 
 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Gray. 
 
 Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Byron. 
 
 In all these lines the total effect of the idea expressed 
 is simple, natural, universal, and yet the individual 
 character is strongly marked, and the means adopted 
 to produce the effect are very complex. Such a 
 reconciliation of opposing qualities is the universal 
 condition of all Fine Art.
 
 VI 
 
 CHAUCER 
 
 I SAID in my last lecture that the whole course of 
 English Poetry was a continued illustration of the 
 primary law that the Universal Pleasure, which is 
 the end of Fine Art, proceeds from the harmonious 
 fusion of contrary qualities. To-day I shall try to 
 show that the first example of this great law or 
 characteristic of English metrical composition is to be 
 found in Chaucer, who is therefore rightly regarded 
 as the Father of our Poetry. 
 
 I am well aware that, in stating these proposi- 
 tions, I have to face two strong contrary currents of 
 opinion : one the popular belief or prejudice derived 
 from the instinct of Race ; the other, the scientific 
 reasoning of critical experts, who judge of all ques- 
 tions of literature mainly by the light of Language. 
 As regards the first of these forces, we live in a 
 democratic age, and a democracy is impressed by the 
 simplicity of phrases, rather than by the science of 
 reasoning. English democracy likes to think that, in 
 the British Constitution and the British Empire, the
 
 300 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 Anglo-Saxon element is the only one worth consider- 
 ing ; and patriotism welcomes any theory which 
 derives the genius of our Poetry from a purely Anglo- 
 Saxon source. The theory best calculated to flatter 
 this instinct is the theory of the Philologists, that, 
 modern English being the direct offspring of Anglo- 
 Saxon, and Poetry being merely the highest and 
 most beautiful form of language as it exists in any 
 particular age, Csedmon, and not Chaucer, is to be 
 honoured as the founder of English Poetry. 
 
 If this view is to be justified, those who maintain 
 it must be able to prove certain positive facts. They 
 must show a continuity in the art of English Poetry 
 from Anglo-Saxon to modern times, attested first by 
 the Saxon birth and lineage of the poets ; secondly, 
 by the adoption in the English nation of a mode and 
 system of versification peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon 
 race ; thirdly, by the development of a general tradi- 
 tion of Culture derived from purely insular and 
 indigenous sources. I hope to make it clear to you, 
 not only that none of these three things can be 
 proved, but that they are the exact opposite of the 
 truth ; that from the time of Chaucer an element of 
 nationality, which is not Anglo-Saxon, is introduced 
 by the very necessity of things into the lineage of 
 our poets ; that, in consequence of the innovations of 
 Chaucer, the Anglo-Saxon prosody was superseded by 
 modes of metrical composition of French origin ; and 
 that, by the genius of the same poet, the exhausted 
 stream of Anglo-Saxon thought was replenished and 
 invigorated from the fresh fountains of imagination
 
 CHAUCER 
 
 then beginning to stir the mind on the continent of 
 Europe. 
 
 To begin with the question of birth and race. 
 Before the Norman Conquest of England all the poets 
 of the country were of course of Saxon descent. We 
 have Caidmon and Cynewulf and the authors, who- 
 ever they were, of the fine poems Judith, and The 
 Death of Byrthnoth, and The Battle of Brunanburh. 
 After the Conquest Orm and Layamon continued to 
 write in a language that still preserved something of 
 the ancient Saxon structure. But Chaucer, it is plain, 
 was of a different race. The name of his family le 
 Chancier probably derived, according to Professor 
 Skeat, from their occupation either of hosiers or shoe- 
 makers, betokens French affinities ; while Verstegan, 
 doubtless relying on some tradition, describes him con- 
 fidently as being of the Wallon extraction. And if 
 we consider, it seems to be perfectly agreeable to the 
 nature of things that a poet of a third strain, not 
 Saxon, not Norman, but capable of understanding the 
 qualities of both, should have first learned to express 
 the genius of the two opposing races who, under the 
 strong rule of the Norman kings, had fused them- 
 selves for ever into a single people. Poetry must 
 reflect in the sphere of imagination whatever is the 
 sovereign principle of action in the national consti- 
 tution. That predominant force in the days of the 
 elder Plantagenets was certainly not mainly Saxon. 
 The Anglo-Saxon monarchy had fallen a victim to its 
 own internal decay, and the Norman C/onquest was 
 due to the inward need, felt by English society, of
 
 302 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 being reduced to form and order by some force 
 external to itself. For more than two centuries the 
 great Saxon body of the nation suffered the chasten- 
 ing discipline imposed upon it by the powerful brain 
 and the iron will of its Norman rulers. 
 
 A striking passage in Hallam's Middle Ages vividly 
 describes the position of the Saxons in England after 
 the Norman Conquest : " I would not extenuate the 
 calamities of this orreat revolution, true thouo;h it be 
 that much good was brought out of them, and that we 
 owe no trifling part of what inspires self-esteem to 
 the Norman element of our population and our polity. 
 England passed under the yoke ; she endured the 
 arrogance of foreign conquerors ; her children, even 
 though their loss in revenue may have been ex- 
 aggerated, and still it was enormous, became a lower 
 race, not called to the councils of their sovereign, not 
 sharing his trust or his bounty. They were in a far 
 different condition from the provincial Romans after 
 the Conquest of Gaul, even if, which is hardly 
 possible to determine, their actual deprivation of 
 lands should have been less extensive. For not only 
 they did not for several reigns occupy the honourable 
 stations which sometimes fell to the lot of the Roman 
 subject of Clovis or Alaric, but they had a great deal 
 more freedom and importance to lose. Nor had they 
 a protecting church to mitigate barbarous superiority ; 
 their bishops were degraded and in exile ; the 
 footstep of the invader was at their altars ; their 
 monasteries were plundered and their native monks 
 insulted. Rome herself looked with little favour
 
 CHAUCER 303 
 
 on a church which had preserved some measure of 
 independence. Strange contrast to the triumphant 
 episcopate of the Merovingian kings ! " 
 
 In these depressed conditions no Saxon poet, 
 unless endowed with unusual flexibility of mind, 
 could have so divested himself of the attributes of his 
 race, as to imitate the manners of his age in the gay- 
 temper and with the wide knowledge of the world 
 exhibited in The Canterbury Tales. He would have 
 had none of the sympathy or insight required for the 
 production of such finished portraits of the ruling 
 classes as those of Chaucer's Knight, Monk, or 
 Prioress. On the other hand, no Norman poet living 
 in England would have been likely to study the 
 characters of such insignificant members of society 
 as Keves, Millers, and Carpenters, or indeed of 
 the wealthy commercial classes, whose representatives 
 make so considerable a figure in the group of pilgrims. 
 Chaucer, however, being neither Saxon nor Norman, 
 was admirably fitted by his social position to under- 
 stand the general movement of things. The son of a 
 London vintner, his early observation and criticism 
 of the humours of middle-class life inspired him with 
 the idea of that characteristically English imitation 
 of nature, afterwards carried to such splendid heights 
 by Shakespeare in his Histories, Tragedies, and 
 Tragi-Comedies. As a servant in the house of John 
 of Gaunt, he had an acquaintance not less accurate 
 and profound with all the niceties of artificial taste, 
 by which the conquering nobility sought to dis- 
 tinguish their manners from those of the vulgar ;
 
 304 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 hence his satirical portraits of courtiers and fine ladies 
 and gentlemen are as finely finished as those of 
 Dryden and Pope in a later age. In the ideal atmo- 
 sphere of The Canterbury Tales the petty distinctions 
 between Saxon and Norman seem to disappear, since 
 both races are measured by the universal standard 
 of humanity and common-sense. 
 
 In passing to the second question, namely, how far 
 Chaucer is justly called the Father of English Poetry 
 by virtue of his language and versification, I may 
 remark that I have been myself exposed to strong 
 critical censure for making the assertion, that between 
 the poetry of Caedmon and the poetry of Chaucer 
 there is absolutely no link of connection. I venture 
 to repeat that the proposition is unassailable. I am 
 not, of course, so foolish as to mean that the words 
 which Chaucer used, and which we with further 
 alterations use to-day, are not derived from the 
 vocabulary of Csedmon ; the question, however, relates 
 less to words in themselves than to syntax and 
 prosody. If Tennyson is to be regarded as the lineal 
 descendant not only of Chaucer but of Csedmon, 
 then it appears to me that, by parity of reasoning, 
 Victor Hugo must be allowed to trace his poetical 
 pedigree back to Ennius, the poems of Guillaume de 
 Lorris and Jean de Meung being treated as half-way 
 houses on the road. This, of course, would be 
 generally recognised as absurd ; yet the scientific 
 principle is precisely the same. The alliterative 
 versification of the Anglo-Saxons, as of all the 
 primitive Teutonic nations, was the product of the
 
 CHAUCER 305 
 
 language in its synthetic form ; and when that 
 original structure fell into decay, the fabric of metrical 
 harmony naturally collapsed at the same time. 
 What the English poets in the fourteenth century 
 had to decide was, whether the ancient Anglo-Saxon 
 metrical forms could be still preserved, with such 
 modifications as were required by the altered con- 
 ditions of the language ; or whether the language 
 required to be recast in new moulds of harmony im- 
 posed upon it from without. Both these conflicting 
 ideals had their supporters in the fourteenth century. 
 The most distinguished champion of the Conservatives 
 was Langland, author of TJie Vision of William con- 
 cerning Piers the Plowman. He was backed in his 
 literary practice by other poets, whose names, doubt- 
 less well known in their day, have now perished, and 
 who wrote the poems called William of Paleme, 
 and Sir Gawayne arid the Green Knight. Chaucer 
 was the head of the innovating poets, who wrote 
 in rhyme after the French manner. His system 
 proved victorious ; and he has therefore justly been 
 acclaimed by Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser, Dryden, and 
 Wordsworth, as the founder of the art of English 
 Poetry. 
 
 On the other hand, as always happens in such 
 cases, the supporters of the defeated party revenged 
 themselves by denouncing Chaucer as the corrupter of 
 the true art of English Poetry ; just as Na3vius, who 
 tried to maintain at Rome the use of the old Saturnian 
 metre, observes, in his self-made epitaph, with an 
 oblique sneer at Ennius, that the Cameuse would
 
 3o6 LAW IN TASTE part iii 
 
 bewail himself as the last who knew how to speak the 
 Latin tongue. Skinner, a philologist of the seven- 
 teenth century, who, like his modern descendants, 
 cared much more for antiquities than for literature, 
 speaks of Chaucer in a Latin passage, which may be 
 thus translated : ** Through this unwholesome itch for 
 novelty the Flemings, by introducing French words 
 indiscriminately into their country, seriously polluted 
 the purity of the national tongue ; and the poet 
 Chaucer set a very bad example by importing whole 
 waggon-loads of words from France into our language, 
 robbing it, adulterated as it was in consequence of 
 the Norman Conquest, of almost all its native grace 
 and beauty." In rather milder language, Verstegan, 
 another philologist, says : " Some few years after 
 came Geoffrey Chaucer, who, writing his poesies in 
 English, is of some called the first illuminator of the 
 English tongue. Of their opinion I am not, though 
 1 reverence Chaucer as an excellent poet for his time. 
 He was, indeed, a great mingler of English with 
 French, unto which language (belike for that he was 
 descended of French or rather Wallon race) he carried 
 a great affection." 
 
 Here we have a double charge brought against 
 Chaucer : he is said to have destroyed the existing 
 standard of his native tongue, which in itself possessed 
 ''grace and beauty," and to have done so by mixing 
 it with an incongruous foreis^n idiom. That Chaucer 
 imported into the English of his time whole waggon- 
 loads of French words is undeniable ; but that he 
 thereby helped to destroy a beautiful and elegant
 
 LECT. VI CHAUCER 307 
 
 form of existing literature is a mere flourish of 
 rhetoric. The Anglo - Saxon language of course 
 possessed a literary standard both in verse and 
 prose, just as the Anglo-Saxon kingdom before the 
 Conquest enjoyed a political constitution ; but, like 
 the latter, it showed no capacity for growth and 
 expansion. Even in the hands of Layamon, writing 
 about one hundred and fifty years after the Conquest, 
 the structure of the alliterative measure, preserved 
 by many generations of minstrels, is seen to have 
 fallen into complete decay; while, though Saxon 
 prose, under the direction of Alfred, had proved 
 itself an admirable instrument of translation, it was 
 never used for any form of original composition 
 more inspiring than chronicles and homilies. It 
 possessed, therefore, no quality capable of arresting 
 either the internal change which was rapidly trans- 
 forming the structure of the popular speech, or the 
 political tendency to discourage in the schools the 
 use of the Saxon grammar. Higden, the antiquary, 
 says in the reign of Edward III. : " The impairing of 
 the birth tongue is by cause of two things : one is 
 for that children in school, against the usage and 
 manner of all other nations, be compelled for to learn 
 their own language, and for to construe their lessons 
 and their things in French, and have since the 
 Normans come first into England. Also gentlemen's 
 children be taught for to speak French, from the 
 time that they be rocked in their cradle, and can 
 speak and play with a child's brooch. And up- 
 laudish men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and
 
 3o8 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 make a great business for to speak French for to be 
 more accounted of." 
 
 From this it is phiin that both the decay of the 
 old Saxon grammar, and the importation into England 
 of French words, were part of a natural movement of 
 things, long anterior to the age of Chaucer, and quite 
 independent of any innovation on his part. The 
 total effect of the movement was to create a new 
 composite language, which at present was without a 
 literature, and which, if it was to become an instru- 
 ment capable of expressing the thoughts and feelings 
 of civil society, required to be subjected to the same 
 refining influences as Dante's predecessors applied to 
 the vulgar tongue of Italy. The question as to the 
 poetry of the new language was, whether the main 
 form or character impressed upon it should be Saxon 
 or French, Langland decided for the Saxon ; and 
 you may judge of the metrical effects which he pro- 
 duced by the opening of The Vision of Piers the 
 Ploivman : 
 
 In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne, 
 
 I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were, 
 
 In habit as an heremite unholy of workes, 
 
 Went wyde in this worlde wondres to here. 
 
 Ac on a May morning on Malvern hulles 
 
 Me bifel a ferly of fairy methoughte ; 
 
 I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste 
 
 And as I lay and lened and looked on the wateres 
 
 I slumbered in a slepynge it sweyed so merie. 
 
 Here you will see that Langland has religiously pre- 
 served the traditional structure of the alliterative 
 measure, two stressed syllables beginning with the
 
 LECT. VI CHAUCER 309 
 
 same letter being placed in tlie first half of the verse, 
 and one stressed syllable beginning with the same 
 letter as the others in the second half. We also 
 perceive in his verses the dactylic movement inherent 
 in Anglo-Saxon. But I think we must, most of us, 
 feel that, while this measure in the compact inflected 
 form of the old Anglo-Saxon would have had a grand 
 sound when chanted by the minstrel, the efi"ect in 
 Middle English, as a vehicle for allegorical narrative, 
 is disagreeably monotonous. It is almost impossible 
 to conceive that, by any variety of pause or period, a 
 system of complex harmony could have been developed 
 out of such an inflexible structure. 
 
 Let us now examine what Chaucer made of his 
 effort to combine the uninflected remains of the 
 Saxon vocabulary, and the analytic grammatical 
 forms of the English which had grown out of the 
 Saxon, with French rhythms and metres. The result 
 of his experiment has been very variously judged. 
 On the one side Dryden, writing when English had 
 assumed a fixed form, and knowing nothing of the 
 primitive stages of the language, says : ** The verse of 
 Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us. They 
 who lived with him, and some time after him, 
 thought it musical ; and it continues so even in our 
 judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lidgate 
 and Gower, his contemporaries. 'Tis true I cannot 
 go so far as he who published the last edition of him, 
 for he would have us believe the fault is in our ears, 
 and that there were really ten syllables in a verse 
 where we find but nine. But this opinion is not
 
 3IO LAW IN TASTE 
 
 worth confuting ; 'tis so gross and obvious an error, 
 that common sense (which is a rule in every thing 
 but matters of Faith and Revelation) must convince 
 the reader that equality of numbers in every verse, 
 which we call ' heroic,' was either not known or not 
 practised in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter 
 to produce some thousands of his verses which are 
 lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole 
 one, and which no pronunciation can make other- 
 wise." 
 
 I need hardly point out to-day that Speght, the 
 editor referred to by Dryden, was perfectly right in 
 his opinion ; and that, with correct orthography, 
 there are few verses in Chaucer which cannot be 
 read harmoniously according to the pronunciation 
 of the poet's day. So far indeed has opinion veered 
 round on the subject, that the tendency now rather 
 is to teach that any verse of Chaucer or his contem- 
 poraries, which sounds inharmonious in our ears, is 
 to be defended on the assumption of some license 
 recognised by the metrical composers of the time. I 
 will not attempt to go into this question, but will 
 confine myself to the point on which I wish to insist, 
 namely, that Chaucer, by adapting French principles 
 of versification to the peculiar conditions of Middle 
 English, took the best means possible of harmonising 
 the language, and that his practice, in its most 
 essential features, was continued and developed by 
 the poets who are recognised to be the chief masters 
 in the use of the heroic couplet. 
 
 For it is this measure to which Dryden is alluding
 
 LECT. VI CHAUCER 3H 
 
 in the criticism I have just read to you. Chaucer 
 introduced it into England from France, modelling 
 his usage on a popular French poet, rather older than 
 himself, Guillaume de Machault. I can hardly doubt 
 that the French decasyllabic or hendecasyllabic line, 
 which is the basis of the metre, was remotely derived 
 from the Latin trimeter iambic, shortened to meet 
 the requirements of rhyme. At any rate the 
 rhythmical accentual movement is equivalent to 
 that of the iambus, the essence of the French metre 
 being that the line should consist of five accents 
 evenly distributed, and of ten or eleven syllables, 
 the last sounded syllable in the second line of a 
 couplet rhyming with the last sounded syllable of 
 the first line. There must also be a caesura or pause 
 after the fourth syllable. 
 
 These characteristics are preserved in the English 
 decasyllabic line of the normal type, whether used 
 in the couplet or not, as, for example. 
 
 They dl | so serve | who 6n | \y sUnd | and wait | 
 
 where the accent falls evenly on the second, fourth, 
 sixth, eighth, and tenth syllables, and the caesura 
 after the fourth syllable. The English line, however, 
 admits of much more variety than the French, partly 
 because it combines the trochaic movement (that is 
 to say, the accentuation of the first of two syllables 
 rather than the second) with the iambic as in Pope's 
 line, " Die of a rose in aromatic pain " and partly 
 because in it the csesura can fall after any syllable 
 between the third and the seventh. Till the time of
 
 312 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 Pope this latter peculiarity was not observed by the 
 critics, though it was of course practised by the best 
 poets ; and George Gascoigne who wrote on English 
 Prosody in the middle of Elizabeth's reign imagined 
 that, as in French poetry, the caesura must always 
 fall after the fourth syllable. In the following 
 couplet of Pope, for example, the caesura in the first 
 line is placed after the fifth, and in the second, after 
 the sixth syllable : 
 
 Where thou, great Anna, | whom three realms obey 
 Dost sometimes counsel take, | and sometimes tea. 
 
 We see the caesura falling after the seventh syllable 
 in 
 
 And universal Darkness | covers all ; 
 
 and sometimes we find a line with a kind of double 
 caesura, one after the second syllable, one after the 
 seventh, as 
 
 Lawrence, of virtuous father, virtuous son. 
 
 Now while none of these shades and niceties of 
 harmony are to be found in the early English poets 
 who imitated the French rhyming system, and who 
 for the most part did not venture beyond the facile 
 octosyllabic measure, or the monotonous Alexandrine, 
 they are all exhibited, in beautiful completeness, in 
 the versification of Chaucer, as may be verified by 
 any one who takes the trouble to analyse the open- 
 ing lines of the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. 
 I will try to read them to you in such a manner that
 
 CHAUCER 313 
 
 you may note at once the distribution of the accent 
 and the place of the caesura : 
 
 Whan that Aprille | with his shoures sote 
 The droghte of Marche | had perced to the rote 
 And bathed every veyne | in swich licour 
 Of which vertu | engendred is the flour ; 
 Whan Zephirus | eek with his sote breeth 
 Inspired hath | in every holt and heeth 
 The tendre croppes | and the yonge sonne 
 Hath in the Ram | his halfe cours y-ronne 
 And smale fowles | maken melodye, 
 That slepen al the night | with open ye, 
 (So priketh hem nature | in hir corages) ; 
 Than longen folk | to goon on pilgrimages, 
 (And palmers j for to seken straunge strondes) 
 To feme halwes | couthe in sondry londes ; 
 And specially | from every shires ende 
 Of Engelond | to Caunterbury they wende. 
 The holy blisful martir | for to seke. 
 That hem hath holpen | whan that they were seke. 
 
 In this passage, then, you may observe the normal 
 type of the iambic line, with the accent falling evenly 
 on the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth 
 syllables ; the combination of the trochaic with the 
 iambic movement, and the varied distribution of the 
 caesura. You find in the very opening of the first 
 line an example of a trocliee " Whan that " ; while 
 out of eighteen lines the caesura falls in the French 
 manner in eight after the fourth syllable ; in five of 
 them after the fifth ; in two after the sixth ; and 
 twice only after the third and seventh respectively. 
 
 The lines further illustrate the perfectly regular 
 process by which Chaucer naturalised French words 
 in English, and which Skinner calls robbing "our
 
 314 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 language of its native grace and beauty." " Aprille," 
 "March," " veyne," " licour," " vertu," " engendred," 
 "flour," " Zephirus," "melodyc," "nature," "corages," 
 "pilgrimages," "palmers," "specially," are all words 
 of Latin origin, yet they associate themselves in the 
 most friendly manner with their neighbours of Saxon 
 descent. The composition of the vocabulary through- 
 out the entire passage is a marvellous monument 
 of delicate perception, observation, and judgment. 
 Chaucer saw that the two languages had been brought 
 by different roads to almost exactly the same level, 
 and that a bridge of communication existed between 
 them in their common use of the final vowel e, which, 
 as the uniform sign in each of ancient inflections, had 
 assimilated the terminations of a very large number 
 of French and English words. 
 
 Chaucer also availed himself of the perpetual 
 migration into England of new words, to enrich and 
 vary the resources of versification. He observed 
 that, while the tendency of English was to throw 
 back the accent as far as possible, the French accent 
 fell on the final or penultimate syllables of words ; 
 and since the naturalised alien words, when they first 
 settled in our language, retained their own native 
 mode of accentuation, it was open to him to adapt 
 his usage to the requirements of his metre. Thus 
 we see in the Prologue that he uses " vertu " for 
 "virtue"; " Natiire " for "Nature," "licoiir" for 
 "liquor"; but when it suits him he speaks of 
 " virtue " and " Nature " ; hence it may be doubted 
 whether the language was ever so richly equipped
 
 CHAUCER 315 
 
 for rhyming purposes, as in the days when Chaucer 
 was bringing about his much-abused fusion of the 
 Latin and Teutonic stocks. 
 
 I pass on to consider poetry as a mirror of 
 thought and culture ; and I ask what would have 
 been the intellectual character of English poetry, if 
 the Saxons rather than the French, if Csedmon and 
 not Chaucer, had determined the line of its develop- 
 ment. The answ^er to this question plainly is, that 
 the Character of its thought would have been, in the 
 first place, so overwhelmingly religious as almost to 
 exclude the principle of the secular imitation of 
 life and action ; in the second place, it would have 
 been imitative rather than original ; in the third 
 place, it would have been insular, and little accessible 
 to the great movement of art and learning proceeding 
 from the Continent. 
 
 How entirely it would have been under the 
 guidance and domination of the Church is shown 
 by the consistently ecclesiastical character of the 
 chief monuments of Anglo-Saxon or Middle English 
 literature, the poems of Caidmon and Cynewulf, 
 the homilies of ^Ifric, the sermons of Wycliffe, 
 the allegory of Langland. Imitative the English 
 poets would no less certainly have been, yielding 
 to the ideas presented to them with the readiness 
 rather of docile scholars than of orifjinal inventors. 
 The Saxon writers I have mentioned think mainly 
 of instructing their hearers in the truth ; they 
 care little about pleasing their imagination with 
 the beauties of form and expression. Hence they
 
 3i6 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 put a very small amount of their own thought into 
 the ideas which they strive to popularise in the 
 Saxon tongue. The writer who has the credit for 
 the poems of Csedmon contents himself avowedly 
 with a paraphrase of the Scripture narrative in 
 Teutonic phrases and imagery. Alfred's attempts 
 to found a school of Saxon prose-writing aimed only 
 at translations of the works of well-known Latin 
 theologians and historians. Cynewulf is even more 
 completely submissive to ecclesiastical authority than 
 Csedmon. The few Saxon poets who venture on a 
 flight beyond the prescribed boundaries of religious 
 instruction are generally tasteless imitators of Latin 
 originals. Cynewulf's contemporaries, for example, 
 greatly admired the riddles of a very poor Latin 
 poet, Symphosius, and imitated them in their own 
 phraseology ; while in the reign of Edward IIL 
 several transcripts of tedious French romances were 
 made into modern English alliterative verse. As to 
 the insular tendencies of the native English genius 
 we have only to listen to the sighs of the monastic 
 author of Cursor Mundi, and the Puritanic reflections 
 of Robert of Brunne on the sinfulness of dramatic 
 entertainments not authorised by the Church, to see 
 how strong was the antipathy of the Saxon portion 
 of the nation to the movement of secular art and 
 thought invading England from France and Italy. 
 
 All that is best and finest in the Saxon im- 
 agination is expressed in The Vision of Piers the 
 Plowman. No one, I think, can study the great poem 
 of Langland without feeling that he is in the company
 
 CHAUCER 
 
 3U 
 
 of a genius endowed with very admirable qualities 
 of poetry. It is written with the faith of an apostle 
 and the indignation of a satirist. Langland handles 
 much of the subject-matter of Chaucer with an 
 observation hardly less extensive, and with thought 
 more profound. His imagination is at once sublime 
 and humorous. At times it moves in regions of the 
 most remote mystery ; from these it passes abruptly 
 to imitate the humours of real life, with all the relish 
 and accuracy of a Dutch painter. Now we are with 
 Antichrist and his forces, besieging the House of 
 lenity ; now keeping company with Tim the Tinker 
 and Wat the Warrener in a tavern on Comhill, 
 or at the booths of Winchester Fair. But whether 
 he be humorous or sublime, metaphysical or realistic, 
 a prophet-like earnestness animates the archaism of 
 his style, and sounds to us from a distant century the 
 trumpet notes of truth and sincerity. 
 
 For all this there is something wanting to the 
 poetry of Langland that prevents it from taking the 
 same rank as that of Chaucer. It lacks the note of 
 the Universal, Neither in the mode of conception 
 nor in the form of expression can The Vision of 
 Piers the Plowman be said to be an artistic imita- 
 tion of Nature. The poet himself confesses that he 
 is unable to interpret the confused view of life which 
 presents itself to his imagination. He describes the 
 vision that he saw of the Field full of Folk, of which, 
 however, he could make nothing, till he was aided 
 by Holy Church. Holy Church puts into his hands 
 the key with which in the Middle Ages she provided
 
 3i8 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 all theologians and poets the allegorical interpre- 
 tation of Nature and Scripture. The adoption of 
 this mode of imitation would not have been in itself 
 a bar to the treatment of the subject on universal 
 lines, for both The Divine Comedy and The PilgHms 
 Progress, founded as they are on ideas common to 
 the Christian world, are in their general scheme 
 perfectly intelligible. But in order to understand 
 even the framework of Langland's narrative, we 
 must not only have a pretty extensive acquaintance 
 with the history of his times, but also with the 
 view of the triple division of Feudal society held by 
 the scholastic theologians. And even when this has 
 been mastered, the general idea of life presented in 
 the poem is that of a mystic, the final impression 
 left on the imagination a chaos of confused, though 
 poetical, details. 
 
 No poem, in respect of its design, offers a stronger 
 contrast to The Vision of Piers the Plowman than 
 The Canterbury Tales. The Feudal system, with 
 all the vast fabric of society built on its founda- 
 tions, has, like the primaeval vegetation converted 
 into coal, been long ago metamorphosed by time into 
 other forms ; yet in the poetry of Chaucer, the 
 image of the ancient structure abides for ever. 
 The gathering of the pilgrims with a common purpose 
 in the courtyard of the Tabard Inn ; the wonder- 
 ful composition of the wayfaring group, its religious 
 equality, its social etiquette ; the masterly figures of 
 the Knight, the Monk, the Franklin, the Wife of 
 Bath, vivid and clear-cut as the sculptures of the
 
 CHAUCER 319 
 
 Parthenon ; the general air of freshness, simplicity, 
 and nature, pervading the whole poem, and especially 
 the Prologue ; in all these features the great work of 
 Chaucer furnishes perhaps the most instructive ex- 
 ample in literature of the true methods of imitative 
 art. 
 
 Push the comparison with Langland a little 
 further, and you find that Chaucer's artistic supe- 
 riority arises from his power of reconciling contrary 
 principles of imagination. In the first place, we ob- 
 serve the complete fusion in The Canterbury Tales 
 of the universal and the particular. The poet's 
 first care is to form in his imagination a general plan 
 and outline of ideal action. When this has been 
 arranged, he is prepared to fill in the details with 
 a minuteness of imitation which must satisfy the 
 strictest Preraphaelite, and to justify himself, on 
 dramatic principles, against some of the objections 
 made to the realism of his painting. 
 
 Who so shall telle a tale after a man, 
 
 He moot reherce as ny as ever he can 
 
 p]verich a word, if it be in his charge, 
 
 Al speke he never so rudeliche and large. 
 
 Or elles he moot telle his tale untrewe 
 
 Or feyne thing, or finde wordes newe. 
 
 He may nat spare, althogh he were his brother ; 
 
 He moot as wel seye o word as another. 
 
 Crist spak himself ful brode in holy writ, 
 
 And wel ye woot no vileinye is it. 
 
 Eek Plato seith, who so that can him rede, 
 
 The wordes mote ben cosin to the dede. 
 
 Langland'a imitation of details is equally minute ;
 
 320 LAW IN TASTE partiii 
 
 but then Langland did not know how to frame the 
 organic whole to which the real details should give 
 life and colour. 
 
 Again Chaucer may be advantageously contrasted 
 with Langland, and other of his immediate pre- 
 decessors, in his treatment of the opposing principles 
 of art and morality. Two extreme and rival opinions 
 have always divided opinion on this subject. One 
 side maintains that art must be the immediate 
 servant of morality ; that it is the business of the 
 poet to decide how he will instruct and improve 
 mankind, before he thinks of imitating Nature. 
 Langland and all the Saxon poets before him took 
 this didactic view. On the other side, it is contended 
 that art is independent of morals ; and is concerned 
 only with imitation an opinion which is brilliantly 
 illustrated in the Decameron. For beauty and 
 symmetry of structure Boccaccio's work is almost 
 unrivalled ; and yet the entire absence in its design 
 of the ethical element deprives it of a claim to 
 stand in the very highest rank among the monuments 
 of human imagination. Chaucer, with rare insight, 
 recognises that he must reconcile these two antag- 
 onistic views. His business as a poet was in the 
 first place with story-telling, but he would have 
 been untrue to all the traditions of English art and 
 character if, in the composition of his stories, he 
 had ignored the influence of the Catholic Church. 
 It was from the Church that th-Q fabliau had received 
 its first refinement ; collections of monastic tales like 
 Barlaam and Josafat and the Gesta Romanum
 
 LECT. VI CHAUCER 321 
 
 had pioneered the way for the Decameron. The 
 Church too had preserved in her Ark, through the 
 ages of barbarism, all the salvage of ancient art 
 and science which enriched the active imagination 
 of the early European poets. To eliminate the moral 
 element in story-telling was therefore to be a traitor 
 to the Church, of which Chaucer was a faithful son. 
 
 On the other hand, Chaucer knew that, as an 
 artist, his first duty was imitation, instruction only 
 his second. Moreover, he was the first English poet 
 who was a layman ; and he looked on Nature and 
 society with the steady gaze of one who had been 
 both a soldier and a diplomatist. In order to 
 harmonise these conflicting claims, he bases his 
 central scheme on a dramatic principle. In TJie 
 Canterbury Tales most of the imitations of Nature 
 are moral, but they are accommodated with perfect 
 propriety to the character of the different story- 
 tellers ; and what is wanting to any speaker in the 
 way of taste and refinement is corrected by the 
 criticism of his companions. In this way Chaucer 
 avoids, on the one hand, the tediousness of the 
 sermon, which is a flagrant defect in the composition 
 of Langland's Vision ; and on the other, the shame- 
 less license which discredits the character of the gay 
 company in the Decameron. 
 
 But the crowning triumph of Chaucer's art, as 
 contrasted with Langland's, was his naturalisation in 
 English poetry of the highest culture of continental 
 Europe. The English people had been trained by 
 degrees to accept a new standard of taste. Chastened
 
 322 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 and braced by centuries of stern discipline under 
 Norman rule, they had become conscious of their 
 revived power as a nation ; at Crecy and Poitiers 
 they had avenged the defeat inflicted on them by 
 the French at Hastings. The new language, which 
 had sprung out of the marriage between Saxon and 
 French, had expelled the latter tongue, first from the 
 law courts in the reign of Edward IIL, and after- 
 wards from the grammar schools in the reign of 
 Richard II. But as yet the dominant feeling in the 
 English mind was a narrow insular patriotism, which 
 expressed itself in the poetry of Laurence Minot, in 
 a manner much resembling the spirit of those who 
 are now called Jingoes, when they boast of the 
 superiority of the English to all other nations. No 
 English writer before Chaucer had shown himself 
 alive to the nature of the spiritual forces which, in 
 every country of Europe, were transforming the life 
 of Catholic and Feudal society. 
 
 Chaucer introduced these new ideas to his 
 countrymen. His position in the household of John 
 of Gaunt obliged him to study the prevailing tastes 
 of Norman chivalry, and these are reflected in his 
 translation of The Romance of the Rose, The 
 Parlia/ment of Foules, The Legend of Good Women, 
 and other poems. But of far more importance to 
 the enlargement of English Culture was his inter- 
 course with Italy, to which country he was twice 
 sent on missions of diplomacy. He had a wide 
 acquaintance with Italian literature. The House 
 of Fame shows that he had studied Dante's Divine
 
 LECT. VI CHAUCER 323 
 
 Comedy ; he translated, or rather re- wrote in English, 
 the Filostrato of Boccaccio, embodying in his version 
 a poem of Petrarch ; and though some would persuade 
 us that he knew nothing of the Decameron, I cannot 
 think that a man of such omnivorous reading was not 
 well acquainted with that famous work. 
 
 From his studies of Italian life and literature he 
 learned that humane and civic art which character- 
 ises the composition of The Canterbury Tales. Life, 
 manners, and the general movement of things, disclosed 
 themselves to his imagination in their true propor- 
 tions, and the ideal reflection of his experience is 
 seen in the admirable methods of good breeding, 
 irony, and common sense, with which characters like 
 the Knight and the Host regulate the behaviour of 
 their fellow pilgrims. Equal consideration is shown 
 to all the company, yet each member of it is kept 
 in his proper place. We have none of the scolding 
 dogmatism with which Langland's Abstract Person- 
 ages tell the reader what he ought to think and 
 do : the men and women of the pilgrimage, by their 
 own behaviour, whether dignified, vulgar, absurd, or 
 indecent, show us what is right and wrong in human 
 conduct. The busy host interferes to put down the 
 squabbles between the meaner persons ; when, on the 
 other hand, the Monk wearies the audience with the 
 insuti'erable length of his Tragedies, the Knight, as 
 becomes his high station, is made to act as the 
 saviour of society. Sometimes, again, the tale told is 
 intended to cast ridicule on the taste for long-winded 
 romances, and then the poet himself assumes the
 
 324 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 responsibility for boring his companions, and patiently 
 puts up with their unceremonious criticism, which 
 reflects the actual change of taste in society at large. 
 
 Hence, though Chaucer can in no sense be called 
 the descendant of the Anglo-Saxon poets, and though 
 he may be said to have imported into England not 
 only waggon-loads of words from France, but streams 
 of ideas from that country and Italy, yet is he justly 
 accounted the father of English poetry. Since his 
 time our poetry has continued from age to age to 
 develop the mixed character which he was the first to 
 impress upon it, reflecting the varying forces which 
 played upon his own imagination. In The Canterbury 
 Tales we see the first outlines of that mixed manner 
 of conceiving the external contrasts of Life and Society 
 which Shakespeare afterwards brought to maturity in 
 his tragi-comedies ; we see too the already mature 
 development of a dramatic imagination which de- 
 lights in representing the spiritual inconsistencies of 
 human nature. Of this quality the main ingredient 
 is humour, that peculiar creative power which can 
 make an imaginary person expose his own weaknesses 
 and absurdities without destroying all regard for him 
 in the aff'ections of the reader or spectator. Since the 
 Wife of Bath related her experiences of marriage, this 
 kind of oblique satire has made itself felt again and 
 again in the mouths of ideal personages in English 
 literature Falstaff" and Dogberry, Sir Roger de 
 Coverley, Bailie Nicol Jar vie and the Laird of 
 Dunibiedikes, Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Micawber, Mrs. 
 Nickleby, and even Mrs. Gamp. No foreign nation
 
 LECT. VI CHAUCER 325 
 
 having produced ideal work of a like character (with 
 the single notable exception of Don Quixote), English 
 poetry may fairly claim pre-eminence in creative 
 humour, and as The Canterbury Tales are the first 
 example of such imitation, the glory of having im- 
 pressed this character on English poetry must be 
 ascribed to Chaucer. 
 
 To Chaucer again, as I have already urged, is due 
 the mixed character of our versification. He deter- 
 mined its course while the judgment of the poets was 
 still wavering. Ennius first found out the way to 
 naturalise Greek metres in the Latin language, thus 
 converting it into a harmonious instrument for the 
 expression of lofty thought and emotion ; and in like 
 manner did Chaucer refine the Saxon vocabulary with 
 rhythms and metres, derived from France and Italy, 
 which have served as the vehicles of ideas for many 
 generations of English poets. The correctness of his 
 intuition and the soundness of his procedure were at 
 once acclaimed by the despairing emulation of his 
 disciples and successors, Lydgate and Occleve ; in the 
 next age the new rhetoric he had established was 
 carried north of the Tweed by James I. of Scotland : 
 when Wyatt and Surrey introduced into our language 
 the refinements of Italy, their experiments were still 
 based on the vocabulary and syntax of Chaucer ; and 
 it was from that " well of English undefiled " that 
 Spenser drew the enchanted words and images which 
 enabled him to transport the fancy into Fairyland. 
 It is no doubt true that Chaucer's poetry contains 
 none of the dactylic and anapa)stic movements, charac-
 
 326 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 teristic of Anglo-Saxon, which later ages have drawn 
 out of our language : from the existing conditions of 
 the tongue this would have been impossible ; but of 
 the large volume of our versification, up to the age 
 of Tennyson, which is inspired by the iambic move- 
 ment and derived from French sources, Chaucer is 
 the fountain-head. 
 
 And as the mixed character of the English people 
 has been the inspiring source of Chaucer's poetry, so 
 is the poetry of The Canterbury Tales perhaps the 
 most accurate of all mirrors for reflecting the English 
 character. At first this may seem a paradoxical say- 
 ing. Since the mirthful company of pilgrims rode out 
 of the courtyard of The Tabard on a showery April 
 morning, more than five hundred years ago, the feudal 
 character of English society has vanished as com- 
 pletely as the material fabric of that famous inn. 
 A new nation seems to have grown up vastly trans- 
 cending the old in all the arts and amenities of life. 
 The England of to-day possesses means of expression 
 for its sentiments, ideas, and opinions, of which 
 those simple pilgrims never dreamed. Every morn- 
 ing the journalist puts together for our instruction 
 a coherent image of the world, in which the whole 
 surface of life, with all its incidents and emotions, 
 is photographed with marvellous accuracy, and in 
 which the judgment of the spectator on the transient 
 drama is expressed in a lucid form of words. So 
 vivid to each mind is this reflection of its own ex- 
 perience, that, for the moment, what is really but the 
 reflection of our environment seems to be the living
 
 LECT. VI CHAUCER 327 
 
 portrait of ourselves. And yet the lapse of a montli, 
 a week, even a day, may so completely alter the 
 external aspect of things, or our opinion of them may 
 be so entirely revolutionised, that in the new kaleido- 
 scopic figure presented to us by the journals we 
 look in vain for a single feature of our former con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Compared with the confused and evanescent 
 imagery of real life, how changeless and abiding is 
 that ideal English landscape with its varied company 
 of pilgrims, " ever on the march through the brilliant 
 atmosphere of April," sparkling with many-coloured 
 robes and exhilarated with cheerful sounds, as the cook 
 rides out ahead playing on the bagpipes, and the abbot 
 follows with his bridle jingling in the whistling wind ! 
 How English it all seems ! The little society so lively 
 and pugnacious, so petulant and free of speech, and 
 yet so amenable to law and order ! The pilgrims 
 themselves, each alive with human follies and whims, 
 the demure gray-eyed Prioress, with her aristocratic 
 daintiness, her pet dogs, and her motto derived from 
 the Courts of Love the physician, whose study was 
 but little on the Bible the bustling Serjeant at Law, 
 who yet seemed busier than he was the Friar, proud 
 of his artificial lisp the Wife of Bath, man-like in 
 her scarlet hose and with her sharp spurs the Host 
 himself, large, and frank, and wise in his savoir /aire , 
 possessed of all the qualities required for a guide and 
 leader of men ! And as the imagination dwells with 
 delight on the clear outlines of a scene vivid with all 
 these jewels of description, it is marvellous to think
 
 328 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 that we are lookinfj on the resemblances of men 
 and women who have been in their graves for five 
 centuries : settinor aside their dress and a somewhat 
 
 o 
 
 old-fashioned mode of expression, we might be in the 
 company of our next-door neighbours of to-day. But 
 Aristotle can furnish us with the key to the mystery : 
 it is to be found, he would tell us, in the poet's 
 knowledge of the law of Fine Art : " Poetry is a 
 higher and more philosophical thing than history ; for 
 while history expresses only the particular, poetry 
 tends to express the universal."
 
 VII 
 
 MILTON 
 
 A PRELATE eminent in letters recently told me that 
 he had tried without success to persuade the young 
 men and women of his acquaintance to study Para- 
 dise Lost. On my asking him the reason, he said 
 that his friends informed him that they could not 
 put up with Milton's theology. The answer seemed 
 to me a remarkable one for two reasons. In the 
 first place, I was struck with the profound ignorance 
 it disclosed of the first principles of criticism in those 
 who thought it sufficient. To judge a poem by its 
 theology, or even its morality, is very much like 
 valuing a horse by its colour or the length of its tail ; 
 and I imagine that if there be any who attempt to 
 make purchases in the horse-market on this principle 
 they do not find themselves in possession of very 
 excellent bargains. Some elementary knowledge of 
 the " points " of a poem is required in the person 
 who presumes to pass a judgment on it. 
 
 But again I was impressccl with the extraordinary 
 vanity and conceit implied in the judgment of the 
 Bishop's young friends. Not to be able to ** put up "
 
 330 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 with Paradise Lost involves a belief in the mind of the 
 critic that the blame for this distaste is to be imputed 
 to the defect of the poet rather than to his own insen- 
 sibility. And perhaps at first sight it might seem as 
 if there were something to be pleaded in defence of this 
 conclusion, since Aristotle says justly that the end of 
 Fine Art is to produce pleasure ; and Addison says 
 with equal justice that the art is to conform to the 
 taste, and not the taste to the art. But then the 
 pleasure and the taste which Aristotle and Addison 
 are thinking of are not the pleasure and taste of 
 the individual, but the permanent judgment of 
 the world : " Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab 
 omnibus." An established classic, a work of fine art 
 which has passed this ordeal, becomes an integral part 
 of the law of taste ; before any individual dissents 
 from the general judgment he must understand thor- 
 oughly the grounds upon which it has been passed ; 
 and if he finally elects to abide by his own judgment 
 in preference to that of the world, he must face the 
 presumption that his taste is wrong. 
 
 Now Paradise Lost is one of the few supreme 
 poems on which the opinion of competent judges has 
 been practically unanimous. Critics have spoken of it 
 in very diff'erent tones of sympathy and enthusiasm ; 
 but not one has ventured to question the presence in 
 it of qualities denoting sublime genius. Algarotti, 
 Addison, Voltaire, Johnson, Macaulay have in un- 
 qualified language paid a tribute to its colossal great- 
 ness. If, therefore, there be in the present day, with 
 all its gushing appreciation, all its hurried exaggera-
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 331 
 
 tion of the value of contemporary work, a tendency to 
 under-estimate the rank of Milton in poetry, it is at 
 least desirable that the question should be examined 
 on clear technical principles, and I have therefore 
 determined to ask you to-day to consider, as scientific- 
 ally as possible, what those qualities are in Paradise 
 Lost which ought to secure for it the reverence and 
 admiration of all lovers of Fine Art. 
 
 The locus classicus for the appreciation of the 
 poem is of course the series of papers written by 
 Addison in the Spectator, and I should recommend 
 every one who wishes to get a well-proportioned 
 view of the whole composition to study carefully that 
 excellent criticism. It contains, indeed, no profound 
 thought ; all the observations lie on the surface ; but 
 it gives the student a clear insight into the general 
 structure of the work, and selects with admirable 
 taste and judgment the specimens of its particular 
 beauties. As a positive estimate of Milton's poetical 
 performance, however, it is open to one objection, 
 namely, that Addison, following the example of the 
 French and Italian critics of his age, professedly 
 applies in aU its details the method of critical analysis 
 adopted by Aristotle in his Poetics, thus leaving on 
 the mind of the reader the impression that Milton's 
 merit consists in satisfying Aristotle's rules. Now, 
 as neither Milton nor any other great poet ever 
 thought in his composition of Aristotle's rules, this 
 line of analysis does not follow the order of nature ; 
 nor will it avail with any critic who, starting with a 
 prejudice against Milton, is also indisposed to accept
 
 332 LAW IN TASTE part in 
 
 the authority of Aristotle. The real question is, to 
 what extent is Paradise Lost an illustration of the 
 laws of Fine Art, and these, as I have repeatedly said 
 in the course of my lectures, ought to be declared, 
 much more with reference to the fundamental philo- 
 sophical principles discoverable in the Poetics, than 
 with reference to Aristotle's technical analysis. 
 
 Taking then the fundamental reasoning on which 
 Aristotle's philosophical ideas of poetry are based, 
 every great poem ought to fulfil three conditions : 
 (l) It must be an imitation of the Universal in 
 Nature ; (2) The conception of the Universal in 
 it must possess an individual character ; and (3) 
 The opposite qualities which go to make up this 
 individual character must be 'combined in complete 
 harmony of expression. As to the first point, 
 there are four great poems which may be said in 
 a very special manner to illustrate the imitation of 
 the Universal : The Hiad, The j^neid, The Divine 
 Comedy, and Paradise Lost. Of these, the two 
 latter exhibit a higher and wider conception of 
 Nature than the two former. Homer, indeed, is 
 unequalled in the various representation of human 
 action and character; but the supernatural part of 
 his conception that which relates to the divine 
 order and government of Nature, being based on 
 polytheistic fancy, is necessarily at variance with our 
 ideas of " the probable." Virgil, inferior to Homer in 
 the imitation of character, is unrivalled in the stateli- 
 ness of his conception of human society ; but as his 
 reflection of the order of things is derived from the
 
 LECr. VII MILTON 333 
 
 universal supremacy of the Roman Empire, which 
 has long disappeared, it is local and partial ; nor is his 
 representation of the divine government of the world 
 much more probable than Homer's. 
 
 Dante and Milton, on the other hand, present, each 
 in their own way, an image of the whole constitution 
 of Nature, physical, moral, and social. The Divine 
 Comedy enables the imagination to pass from Hell, 
 the earth's centre, right up, through the nine spheres 
 recognised by the Ptolemaic astronomy, to the empy- 
 rean Heaven which is the seat of God Himself; and it 
 treats on the way of every kind of human passion and 
 character, and of their relations to the universal order 
 of things. Of Paradise Lost Addison very well says 
 in his remarks on the third book: "As Milton's genius 
 was wonderfully turned to the sublime, his subject is 
 the noblest that could have entered into the thoughts 
 of man. Everything that is truly great and astonish- 
 ing has a place in it. The whole system of the intel- 
 lectual world ; the chaos and the creation ; heaven, 
 earth, and hell, enter into the constitution of the poem." 
 
 The action of Paradise Lost relates in an ideal form 
 the whole moral history of the human race between the 
 Fall of Man and his redemption by the Son of God. 
 Its universal character appears in the poet's invocation: 
 
 Of man's first disobedience and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the world and all our woe 
 With loss of Elden till one happier Man 
 Restore us, and regain that blissful seat 
 Sing Heavenly Muse.
 
 334 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 He here announces a subject far more extensive 
 than the consequences of the wrath of Achilles, or the 
 foundation of the Roman Empire ; and he elsewhere 
 speaks with conscious pride of the greatness of the 
 characters who support his action : 
 
 Never since created man 
 Met such embodied force, that, named with, these 
 Could merit more than that small infantry 
 Warred on by cranes, though all the giant brood 
 Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined 
 That fought at Thebes or Ilium, on each side 
 Mixed with auxiliar gods. 
 
 It is plain, then, that as far as regards the first 
 condition of a great poem, Paradise Lost, in its 
 imitation of the Universal, stands above both Hie 
 Iliad and The j^neid, and on a level with TTie Divine 
 Comedy. 
 
 But to go on to the second point ; while Poetry 
 is an imitation of the Universal, the universal 
 truths of Nature that it imitates are not of an 
 abstract nature, like the universal truths of Mathe- 
 matics. Poetry deals with truths of the imagina- 
 tion, and answers completely to the definition which 
 Hamlet gives of the drama, when he speaks of " the 
 purpose of playing, whose end both at the first and 
 now was and is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to 
 Nature" that is, in the Aristotelian phrase, to 
 imitate the Universal and " to show virtue her own 
 feature, scorn her own image, and the very age 
 and body of the time his form and pressure." In 
 other words, every great imitation of Nature in
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 335 
 
 poetry will reflect in itself not only the abstract ideas 
 of tilings in the mind of a chance individual, but 
 the whole conception of order, of liberty, of religion, 
 philosophy, and learning, which makes up the idea of 
 Nature in the poet's generation. Poetry imitates 
 universal Truth, but in such a way as to exhibit that 
 characteristic idea of it stamped on the mind of 
 society at large in a particular place and time. 
 
 There is no better way of realising the manner in 
 which Paradise Lost shows " the age and body of 
 the time his form and pressure," than by comparing 
 Milton's conception with Dante's ; for if there be one 
 great poem that more than another furnishes an ideal 
 image of contemporary society, it is The Divine 
 Comedy. It is the most faithful and sublime mirror 
 that exists of the idea of Nature in the Middle Ages. 
 The main character of this idea may be summed up in 
 a single word, Authority, both in Church and State. 
 First of all, Dante's conception reposes on the Unity 
 of Faith as defined by the Church in the scholastic 
 philosophy, and more particularly in the Summa 
 Theologica of S. Thomas Aquinas. According to that 
 philosophy all truths, even the most mysterious, 
 could be understood, or at least believed, if they were 
 reasoned on syllogistically in the right way ; and 
 practically reasoning in the right way meant squaring 
 the settled dogmas of the Church with the infallible 
 philosophy of Aristotle, according to the method of 
 Aquinas. How faithfully Dante adhered to this 
 philosophical principle, in his poetical fashion, appears 
 in a passage like the following, which is typical of
 
 336 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 the entire imaginative character of The Divine 
 Comedy: "Let this be always a lead to thy feet, 
 to make thee move as slow as a weary man towards 
 the * yes ' and * no ' that thou seest not. Low down 
 is he among the fools who affirms or denies without 
 distinction ; for in the one no less than in the other 
 case the current opinion swerves in a false direction, 
 and afterwards the desire binds the understanding." 
 Here is the Scholastic Philosophy contained poetically 
 in a nutshell. The universal idea of Nature having 
 been formed by a process of syllogistic reasoning, 
 starting from the First Cause of things, and being 
 fortified by a series of almost mathematical proofs, 
 all physical phenomena had to be explained on a 
 hypothesis mainly theological. Hence the Ptolemaic 
 theory of astronomy, which in the Middle Ages was 
 regarded as unquestionably true, was incorporated 
 by the Church as an article of faith, with the result, as 
 we know, that Galileo's assertion of the rotation of the 
 earth on its own axis was imputed to him for heresy. 
 
 Again, the theory of social order in the Middle 
 Ages rested, like the unity of the Faith, on a hypo- 
 thesis of universal political Authority. Europe was 
 organised on the system of what was known as the 
 Christian Republic ; that is to say, as a single society 
 under the joint rule of the Pope and the Emperor, 
 the former being the earthly representative and Vicar 
 of Christ, the latter the head of the Feudal Order, 
 and heir, through the intervention of the Papacy, of 
 the Roman Emperors of the West. 
 
 Unreal as was this theory, it was accepted, like
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 337 
 
 the Ptolemaic system, by the highest intellects of the 
 Middle Ages, as part of the divine order of the Uni- 
 verse. In this respect The Divine Comedy gave 
 back to "the age and body of the time" a perfect 
 reflection of its " form and pressure." " Man," says 
 Dante in his treatise De Monarchia, " has need of 
 a double direction, that is to say, of the Supreme 
 Pontiff, whose office is to bring the human race by 
 the light of Kevelation to Eternal Life, and of the 
 Emperor, who must direct them to a temporal end by 
 the teaching of philosophy." And the philosophical 
 principle is illustrated with the most admirable 
 poetical logic in the Paradiso. The uninstructed 
 reader, for example, naturally asks why such a char- 
 acterless person as the Emperor Justinian should 
 have been exalted by Dante into Paradise ; but the 
 poet shows that the logic of his fiction is absolutely 
 above criticism. Justinian appears in the Second 
 Heaven as the representative both of theological 
 orthodoxy and of the imperial law and justice typi- 
 fied by the Roman Empire. He undertakes to prove 
 to Dante that the principle of the Holy Roman Empire 
 is something superior to the party conception of it by 
 Ghibelline and Guelph ; and, in order to establish the 
 point, he demonstrates how it enters into the scheme 
 of God's Providence. Beginning with the far-off 
 days when in the words of the Paradiso " Pallas 
 died to give it a kingdom," he traces the secular 
 growth and expansion of the Roman Empire, till it 
 arrives at its destined climax, which he thus describes : 
 ** But that which the [holy] ensign, which causes me
 
 338 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 to speak, had done of old and was about to do through 
 the mortal world which is subject to it, becomes in 
 appearance little and obscure, if it be looked at in the 
 third Caesar's hand with clear eye and pure afifection : 
 for the living justice, which inspires me, granted to it by 
 the hand of him of whom I speak the glory of working 
 vengeance for his wrath." In less enigmatic language, 
 the Roman Empire, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, was 
 a necessary instrument in the work of the Atonement. 
 The argument leading up to this curious conclusion is 
 given more fully in the treatise De Monarchia ; it is 
 as follows : "If the Roman Empire had not been of 
 divine right, the sin of Adam could not have been 
 [humanly] punished in Christ. ... If Christ had 
 not suffered under the ordinary judge, his penalty 
 would not have been a lawful punishment ; and the 
 ordinary judge could only be one having jurisdiction 
 over the whole human race. And Tiberius Caesar, 
 whose representative Pilate was, would not have had 
 this jurisdiction, unless the Roman Empire had been 
 of right divine." 
 
 When Dante with his clear vision looked abroad 
 upon the world, he must have seen how ill the existing 
 facts of society fitted in with this theory of universal 
 Authority how impossible, for example, it was to 
 harmonise the Feudal System, its local fiefs and its 
 rights of hereditary succession, its barbarous customs, 
 its essential anarchy, with his civic idea of the Holy 
 Roman Empire. But living as he did at a time 
 w^hen no one thought of questioning the soundness 
 of the scholastic method of deductive reasoning, and
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 339 
 
 when all the great nations of Europe were still in 
 the chrysalis stage, he regarded the constitution 
 of the Christian Republic as an emanation of the 
 Love or Will of God, and held that its authority was 
 not absolute only on account of the imperfection 
 of human nature. In this respect he argued on 
 the same principles as the physical philosophers 
 of his age, who, when they observed that certain 
 motions of the heavenly bodies were inconsistent 
 with the perfectly circular movement of the spheres 
 imagined by Ptolemy, immediately set to work to 
 make the observed facts square with their system, by 
 inventing what was called the theory of the Epicycle. 
 Precisely in the same way Dante in Paradise asks King 
 Charles Martel to resolve his doubt how it is that, if all 
 authority proceeds from the will of God, good rulers 
 can be succeeded by bad. The King explains to him 
 that, for the regulation of civil society, there must be 
 a diversity of functions ; and that though ideas pro- 
 ceed pure from the mind of God, yet, entering into 
 the habitation of different mortal bodies, they take 
 various directions ; and hence, by the influences of 
 the planets, Fortune, under the control of the Divine 
 Foresight, provides for the necessary fluctuations in 
 human afl'airs. 
 
 Now in the three hundred and fifty years that inter- 
 vened between the writing of The Divine, Comedy and 
 the publication of Paradise Lost the entire conception 
 of Nature and Society had altered. It no longer 
 rested on the basis of authority. The Spiritual Unity 
 of Christendom, reposing on the authority of the
 
 340 LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 Scholastic Logic, had been shattered by the Reforma- 
 tion. In phice of the political unity of Europe, in- 
 volved in the theory of the Christian Republic, had 
 arisen the European Equilibrium, constituted by the 
 rivalry of various powerful nations, and shadow- 
 ing forth the first faint outlines of diplomacy 
 and the foundations of International Law. The 
 Ptolemaic theory of the Universe had been, if not 
 displaced, at least considerably discredited by the 
 reasoning of Copernicus and Galileo. America had 
 been discovered. Printed books diffused knowledge, 
 only to be obtained in Dante's time from manuscripts 
 or oral lectures. This knowledge, instead of being 
 confined to the scholarly few who were able to 
 acquire it in Latin, was propagated in the vulgar 
 tongues of the different nations ; on the other hand, 
 the philosophy and literature of the ancients were no 
 longer viewed through the scholastic medium, but 
 were scientifically studied in the original languages. 
 
 Hence what chiefly characterises the seventeenth 
 century is the altered attitude of the mind towards 
 external authority. Milton's age is penetrated by 
 doubts as to the truth about the movements of the 
 heavenly bodies. The Ptolemaic theory is not 
 absolutely rejected, but its authority is impugned. 
 Bacon, for example, does not believe in the diurnal 
 motion of the earth, but he says : " With no better 
 reason is it afiirmed that all the heavenly bodies 
 move in perfect circles ; that there are eccentrics 
 and epicycles whereby the constancy of motions in 
 perfect circles is preserved. . . . And it is the
 
 LECT, VII MILTON 341 
 
 absurdity of these opinions that has driven men to 
 the opinion of the diurnal motion of the earth ; which 
 I am convinced is most false." In the same spirit 
 Milton makes the angel Raphael reply to the ques- 
 tions of Adam on the subject : 
 
 To ask or search I blame thee not, for heaven 
 Is as the book of God before thee set, 
 Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn 
 His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or years. 
 This to attain, whether heav'n move or earth, 
 Imports not, if thou reckon right ; the rest 
 From man or angel the great architect 
 Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge 
 His secrets to be scanned by them who ought 
 Rather admire ; or if they list to try 
 Conjecture, He his fabric of the heavens 
 Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move 
 His laughter at their quaint opinions wide 
 Hereafter, when they come to model heav'n 
 And calculate the stars, how they wiU. wield 
 The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive, 
 To save appearances ; how gird the sphere 
 With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er 
 Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter is suspense of 
 
 judgment : 
 
 Heav'n is for thee too high 
 To know what passes there ; be lowly wise. 
 Think only what concerns thee and thy being ; 
 Dream not of other worlds. 
 
 In these two passages we find an expression of the 
 spirit of the Renaissance as regards Science, in oppo- 
 sition to the spirit of the Middle Ages the inductive 
 principle of reasoning, which, refusing to be bound by
 
 342 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 a priori authority, proceeds to its conclusions only 
 by way of observation ; and the humanist tendency, 
 which inclines to concentrate observation on man and 
 his immediate interests, rather than on those meta- 
 physical questions which absorbed men's intellect in 
 the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the spirit of the 
 Renaissance is not the predominant spirit in Paradise 
 Lost. The purpose of the poet, as he tells us, is 
 
 To assert eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of God to men. 
 
 Hence, like Dante in The Divine Comedy, he still 
 moves in a theological atmosphere ; like Dante he 
 feels the need of an infallible authority to set forth 
 the true conception of Nature ; but the authority on 
 which he relies is not that of the Church, formulated 
 and defined in the philosophy of Aquinas, but the in- 
 spiration of the Holy Scriptures interpreted by his own 
 
 reason : 
 
 And chiefly thou, Spirit, that dost prefer 
 Before all temples the upright heart and pure. 
 Instruct me for thou knowest. . . . 
 
 What in me is dark 
 Illumine, what is low raise and support. 
 
 To sum up, therefore, the fundamental difference 
 between TTie Divine Comedy and Pai^adise Lost in a 
 sentence : one conception of Nature is that evolved by 
 the logic of the Catholic Schoolmen out of the opinions 
 of the Christian Fathers, the other that of the reason 
 of the English Independent, exercising itself on the 
 text of the Bible ; " the age and body of the time " 
 reflected in one poem is the authority of the Latin
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 343 
 
 Church, in the other the liberty of the Teutonic 
 Reformation. 
 
 I pass on to consider the third essential of a great 
 poem, as it is illustrated in the form of Paradise Lost. 
 Does the composition satisfy Sir Joshua Reynolds' 
 definition of a work of Fine Art, namely, an ideal 
 organism, made up of contrary parts harmonised into 
 unity in such a manner that no one part is felt to 
 predominate unduly over the others ? Is the poet's 
 conception of Nature communicated to the reader in 
 a clear, characteristic, and appropriate form of ex- 
 pression ? In deciding this point, I think that a very 
 false impression of the merit of Paradise Lost has 
 been created by Macaulay, who contrasts the style of 
 Milton with that of Dante, without attempting to 
 account for the difference. He says : " The poetry 
 of Milton differs from that of Dante as the hiero- 
 glyphics of Egypt differed from the picture-writing of 
 Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for 
 themselves ; they stand simply for what they are. 
 Those of Milton have a signification which is often 
 discernible only to the initiated. Their value depends 
 less on what they represent than on what they re- 
 motely suggest. However strange, however grotesque, 
 may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to 
 describe, he never shrinks from describing it. He 
 gives us the shape, the colour, the sound, the smell, 
 the taste ; he counts the numbers, he measures the 
 size. His similes are the illustrations of a traveller. 
 Unlike those of other poets, and especially of Milton, 
 they are introduced in a plain business-like manner ;
 
 344 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from 
 which they are drawn, not for the sake of any orna- 
 ment which they may impart to the poem, but simply 
 in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear to 
 the reader as it is to himself." 
 
 Were it the case that Milton's form of expression 
 did not make his conception as clear to the intelligent 
 reader as it was to himself, this would be a fatal 
 flaw in the art of his poem. But as a matter of fact, 
 the ideal imagery of Paradise Lost is as clear and 
 distinct as that of The Divine Comedy; only it is 
 employed in a different way and for a different pur- 
 pose. So far from its being true that in Dante as 
 Macaulay says "the images speak for themselves 
 and stand for what they are," the Italian poet tells 
 us over and over again that he merely makes use of 
 sensible images as a necessary mode of conveying 
 spiritual truths to the weakness of human understand- 
 ing. The great distinctness with which he describes 
 external objects is due to his desire to give, by means 
 of an allegorical symbol, a clear idea of the unseen 
 world. Milton, on the other hand, employs images 
 that do " speak for themselves and stand for what 
 they are." His poem describes a real action, and 
 though this action the fall of the Rebel angels, the 
 temptation of Man, and the loss of Eden passes in a 
 supernatural sphere, it is related in such a way as 
 to give a probable account of events that actually 
 happened in that sphere. 
 
 The form of The Divine Comedy is the most com- 
 pletely original that is found in the whole range of
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 345 
 
 j^oetry. It is a narrative of the poet's own experience 
 in the unseen world, an account of all that he saw 
 and heard in his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and 
 Paradise ; and, as Macaulay justly says, he paints 
 every object that he met with extraordinary distinct- 
 ness ; but this by the very conditions of his art 
 he was bound to do, in order to make his fiction 
 credible to his hearers. Moreover, it was easier for 
 him than for Milton to make the composition of his 
 whole poem pictorial, in proportion as the universal 
 idea of Nature and Society in the Middle Ages the 
 Ptolemaic scheme of the celestial spheres, the syllo- 
 gisms of the Scholastic Logic, the dual government 
 of the Christian Republic was more limited and 
 symmetrical than the corresponding idea of the Uni- 
 versal in the seventeenth century. The framework 
 of Dante's ideal conception was provided for him by 
 universal authority and universal belief; all that he 
 had to do was to communicate poetic life and colour 
 from his own imagination to the ready-made organic 
 form. This, it is needless to say, he did with un- 
 equalled genius. 
 
 Milton, on the contrary, chose to present his 
 materials to the reader in the form of a regular epic. 
 He had to relate in his poem not his own experience 
 but that of others of Man, of the Fallen Angels, of 
 the Son of God. Instead of starting, like Dante, on 
 his journey through the unseen world from Hell, the 
 centre of the fixed and motionless Earth, and working 
 up his way by symmetrical stages to the Empyrean 
 Heaven, Milton calls on the Spirit of God to enable
 
 346 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 him to describe the external causes and events that 
 led to the loss of Eden : 
 
 Say, first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy sight 
 Nor the deep tract of Hell say first what cause 
 Moved our grand Parents in that happy state, 
 Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off 
 From their Creator, and transgress his will, 
 For one restraint, lords of the world beside ? 
 
 In execution of this purpose, he begins his narra- 
 tive, just as Homer does in the Odyssey and Virgil in 
 the jEneid, at a point midway in the action described, 
 and afterwards, in the body of the poem, employs also 
 in the Homeric and Virgilian manner one of the lead- 
 ing characters to relate the preceding events necessary 
 for the full comprehension of the action as a whole. 
 The action of Paradise Lost practically opens with 
 the departure of Satan from Hell to devise mischief 
 against God's recently created universe, and whoever 
 would form a clear conception of Milton's idea of 
 Nature must take the trouble to follow, as on a map, 
 the flight of the person whom Dryden rightly calls 
 the hero of the poem, from his first encounter with 
 Sin and Death, down to the moment when he makes 
 his entrance into Eden. Macaulay, I should imagine, 
 had never attempted to track the imagination of the 
 poet with this minuteness, but if the reader studies 
 Paradise Lost in the excellent edition of Professor 
 Masson, he will find that Milton's ideal topography 
 is quite as clear as Dante's. Like Dante, Milton 
 assumes the Ptolemaic scheme of the heavens as 
 the basis of his poetic description ; but as, by the
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 347 
 
 epic form of his poem, he is bound to view it from 
 without, and to show the positions of Hell, of Chaos, 
 and of the Empyrean, relatively to the universe, 
 the imagery seems vaster and less symmetrical than 
 that of Tlie Divine Comedy. This is just as it should 
 be. Compared with Dante's upward movement into 
 Paradise, the wanderings of Milton's Satan outside 
 the world of Creation, and his downward plunge to 
 the earth through the spheres of the fixed stars and 
 the planets, afford an exact reflection of the progress 
 of astronomical knowledge between the age of the 
 Schoolmen and the age of Bacon. 
 
 But though Milton triumphantly overcomes the 
 first difiiculty with which he was confronted, and pre- 
 sents to the reader a clear pictorial idea of Nature as 
 a whole, he has still to solve the problem how to 
 harmonise the action, which is his subject, with the 
 epic form of poetical expression. This is an obstacle 
 which no Christian poet, who attempts a regular epic, 
 can avoid. Tasso, in his Treatise 07i the Structure of 
 Epic Poet't^, very frankly explains the nature of the 
 task. The epic poet, he says, has to take into account 
 two contrary conditions : first, that the reason of the 
 reader postulates in the poetical narrative the appear- 
 ance of probable truth ; and secondly, that the im- 
 agination requires the presence of the marvellous, the 
 supernatural, and all the embellishments and fictions 
 with which this form of poetry is associated. By the 
 epic poets of Greece and Rome the difficulty was not 
 felt, both because they took for their subjects legendary 
 events, which were supposed to have actually occurred,
 
 348 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 thus securing for their conceptions a basis of prob- 
 ability, and also because they could please the 
 imagination with the appearance in their stories of 
 the numerous gods and goddesses who were believed 
 to intervene in the government of the world. When 
 polytheism disappeared with the advent of Christianity, 
 this supernatural machinery was no longer available 
 for the purposes of the poet. Dante indeed, the first 
 great Christian poet in the vulgar tongues of modern 
 Europe, did not feel the want of it. The action which 
 he described in Tlie Divine Comedy was his own ex- 
 perience in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, and when, 
 by the force of his genius, he had made his narrative 
 seem probable to his hearers, his difficulties of inven- 
 tion were at an end, because his report of what he saw 
 and heard was marvellous and supernatural in itself. 
 
 But Tasso, who, in his Jerusalem Delivered, 
 attempted to preserve the traditional epic form of 
 Homer and Virgil, was forced to deal with the standing 
 difficulty, nor can it be said that he was quite success- 
 ful in overcoming it. He sought to combine history 
 with romance. He chose a historical subject, and 
 thereby secured for his poem a basis of belief in the 
 reader's mind ; but when he came to elevate his 
 historical truth by means of supernatural machinery, 
 invention failed him. Allowing that it was not per- 
 missible for a Christian poet to introduce into his 
 work Pagan deities, he contended that he might still 
 enliven his narrative with the persons of diabolical 
 agents, with magical enchantments, and with all the 
 fictions of romance that Ariosto had introduced into
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 349 
 
 the Orlando Furioso. But in this experiment Tasso, 
 if I may say so, fell between two poetical stools. His 
 historical and romantic elements are not harmonised. 
 The real interest of the Jerusalem lies in the loves of 
 Rinaldo and Armida, in the wanderings of Erminia 
 among the shepherds, and in the beauty of the 
 various descriptions. Admirable in themselves, these 
 episodes, as the reader very clearly perceives, are not 
 essentially connected with the main action of the 
 deliverance of Jerusalem. The romantic parts have 
 no real relation to the historical whole. 
 
 If a poet of Tasso's genius failed to conquer the 
 difficulties inherent in the epic treatment of a secular 
 historical subject, failure was ten times more inevitable 
 in the case of the lesser artists who devoted their 
 ejBforts to sacred themes. For here it was evident that 
 no element of romance could be allowed to colour the 
 severe outlines of historic Scriptural truth ; and though 
 several French poets in the seventeenth century 
 ventured on the experiment, their attempts to raise 
 their subject into the higher poetical atmosphere were 
 both painful and grotesque. It is little wonder that 
 Boileau, judging from these performances, and ap- 
 parently without knowledge of Milton's great poem, 
 should have pronounced the task of writing an epic on 
 a sacred subject to be an artistic impossibility. 
 
 Such poetical failures and such a critical judgment 
 give us an idea of the sublime art employed in the 
 construction of Paradise Lost. From the invocation 
 with which the poem opens, down to the noble 
 melancholy of the last line " Through Eden took
 
 350 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 their solitary way," the unity of the ideal organism 
 is absolute and blameless. Yet in the entire narrative 
 there is scarcely a detail that has not some warrant 
 either in the text of Scripture or in sacred legend 
 the account of the Creation, for example, and of the 
 Fall is merely an amplification of the Bible narrative, 
 and the history of the fall of the Angels is founded on 
 immemorial tradition so that Aristotle's requirement 
 of a basis of probability is fully satisfied. At the 
 same time the scenes and incidents described are in 
 themselves so vast and marvellous, that the imagin- 
 ation, transported beyond the range of experience, 
 moves with delight amid the realities of a supernatural 
 sphere. The same is true of the characters who con- 
 duct the action to its destined end. All but two are 
 represented on a colossal scale, yet with attributes 
 and qualities which Scripture authority and human 
 experience render easy of conception. No divine, 
 angelic, or diabolic personage is introduced whose 
 name is not mentioned in the Bible or the Apocrypha. 
 And Titanic as the imagination of character is, it is 
 so dramatically conceived, so finely graduated, so ex- 
 quisitely rendered, that we never feel ourselves chilled 
 by an atmosphere of allegory and abstraction. Pity 
 and Fear are always at work. Who can read without 
 profound emotion the description of Satan about to 
 address the host of fallen spirits whom he had led to 
 their doom ? 
 
 Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn, 
 Tears such as angels weep, burst forth ; at last 
 Words interwove with sighs found out their way.
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 351 
 
 Or what poetical rendering of despair ever equalled in 
 tragic intensity the passion of the Devil as uttered in 
 his speech to the Sun, or described in the feelings 
 with which he gazes on the happiness of Adam and 
 Eve? 
 
 Again, we have to admire in Paradise Lost the 
 harmony that is effected between the spirit of the 
 whole conception and the form in which it is ex- 
 pressed. The spirit of the poem is Christian, but the 
 form is classical, and therefore Pagan, so that we at 
 once find ourselves in the presence of that great 
 opposition of thought which, from very early days, 
 had divided the Christian Church. TertuUian ruth- 
 lessly condemned the study of all Pagan literature ; 
 Gregory the First used his authority to drive Virgil 
 and Horace out of the schools ; but human nature 
 was too strong for them. A compromise was effected. 
 The Pagan poets were in a way converted and 
 Christianised very much in the same manner as many 
 of the Greek myths were transmuted into saintly 
 legends, and with so much success, that in the Middle 
 Ages Virgil, Ovid, and Statins were accepted as 
 established text -books in the course of Christian 
 rhetoric. In consequence of this compromise the 
 stories of Pagan mythology never gave Dante any 
 trouble. His verse is studded with mythological 
 allusions, rendered familiar to him by his scholastic 
 education. He speaks of Icarus, and Glaucus, and 
 Alcides, and the daughter of Latona, as if they were 
 persons no less real than Belisarius, or Justinian, or 
 the reigning Pope : all of them provide him with
 
 352 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 imagery which helps to illustrate some spiritual truth 
 in the constitution of the unseen world. 
 
 But Milton, like Luther, and many of the leaders 
 of the Reformation, judged of Pagan literature with 
 something of the austere spirit of Tertullian. You 
 will all remember the famous passage in Paradise 
 Regained where Satan tempts the Saviour with the 
 spectacle of the art, poetry, and philosophy of Athens. 
 Not so familiar, but quite as characteristic, is the 
 Saviour's reply : 
 
 If I would delight my private hours 
 With music or with poem, where so soon 
 As in our native language can I find 
 That solace ? All our Law and Story strewed 
 With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed, 
 Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon 
 That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare 
 That rather Greece from us these arts derived 
 111 imitated while they loudest sing 
 The vices of their deities, and their own, 
 In fable, hymn, or song, so personating 
 Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame. 
 
 Strange, indeed, it is to think that these lines 
 should have been written by one who had deliber- 
 ately adapted the matter of the Hebrew Scriptures to 
 the requirements of Hellenic form, who, in the inmost 
 nature of his genius, as illustrated by the regular 
 structure of his poem, by the Homeric picturesque- 
 ness of his similes, by the Virgilian music in the roll 
 of his proper names, and by the Latin turn of his 
 diction, shows himself steeped in classic learning, 
 penetrated with the spirit and character of classic
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 353 
 
 poetry ! Nevertheless, there is no contradiction in his 
 style. Paradise Lost is free from every trace of cold 
 formal imitation. The form of the poem is essenti- 
 ally original, and seems to spring spontaneously out 
 of the central design ; and the sublime art of Milton 
 is nowhere more conspicuous than in the skill with 
 which he turns the mythological imagery of a religion 
 recognised as false to the illustration and embellish- 
 ment of a Christian theme. 
 
 Let me remind you of a very few instances in 
 which classical precedents have inspired him with 
 the starting-point for his grandest imagery. The 
 Catalogue of the Ships in the Iliad evidently sug- 
 gested the magnificent enumeration of the false gods 
 of the Gentiles in Paradise Lost. The tradition of 
 the Church had long sanctioned the dim belief that 
 the gods of the Greeks were devils, but I believe 
 Milton was the first to appropriate the idea for 
 poetical purposes, and to identify the Gentile deities 
 with the fallen angels : 
 
 Godlike Shapes, and Forms 
 Excelling human ; princely Dignities ; 
 And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones. 
 Though of their names in Heavenly records now 
 Be no memorial, blotted out and rased 
 By their rebellion from the Books of Life. 
 
 On this principle Mammon, the chief architect of 
 Hell, is identified with Vulcan ; but at the same time 
 the errors of the Pagan mythology are most ingeni- 
 ously and poetically corrected : 
 
 2a
 
 354 LAW INV.STE 
 
 111 Ausonian land 
 Men called him Mulcibcr ; and how he fell 
 From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove 
 Sheer o'er the crystal battlements : from morn 
 To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
 A summer's day, and with the setting sun 
 Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star, 
 On Lemnos, the JEgsesiU isle. Thus they relate, 
 Erring ; for he with this rebellious rout 
 Fell long before ; nor aught availed him now 
 To have built in Heaven high towers ; nor did he scape 
 By all his engines, but was headlong sent, 
 With his industrious crew, to work in Hell. 
 
 Ovid's ingenious but conceited description of Nar- 
 cissus suggested to Milton Eve's most exquisite, most 
 natural, relation of her feelings when she first saw her 
 own reflection in the water. When Satan in the 
 Garden of Eden stands confronted with the angel 
 Gabriel, the situation reminds the poet of Jupiter in 
 the j^neid, weighing in the scales the fates of ^neas 
 and Turnus. This raises in his mind the sublime 
 image of the Almighty hanging forth in heaven 
 
 The golden scales yet seen 
 Betwixt Astrsea and the Scorpion sign ; 
 
 but since, as Bishop Newton justly points out, it 
 would have been highly improper to represent Omni- 
 science as ignorant of the event, the poet feigns that 
 the action was intended to warn Satan of the fruit- 
 lessness of strife, by showing him the lightness of his 
 own weight in the balance. And yet once more, the 
 mixture of the Christian and classical imagery may
 
 MILTON 
 
 355 
 
 be illustrated by the sublime invocation at tbe open- 
 ing of Book VII. : 
 
 Still govern thou my song, 
 Urania, and fit audience find, though few. 
 But drive far off the barbarous dissonance 
 Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race 
 Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard 
 In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears 
 To raptvu-e, till the savage clamour drowned 
 Both harp and voice ; nor could the Muse defend 
 Her son. So fail not thou Avho thee implores ; 
 For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream. 
 
 I am far from contending that Milton is invariably 
 successful in blending the opposing elements of which 
 his poem consists, that the form of Paradise Lost is 
 always appropriate to the matter, the Christian spirit 
 never out of harmony with the Pagan model. Parts 
 of the narrative are undoubtedly dry and barren ; the 
 same may be said of every long poem, and notably of 
 Tlie Divine Comedy. Many of the details are out of 
 place. In my opinion almost the whole of the Sixth 
 Book, in which Milton, desiring to supply the 
 obvious deficiency of incident in his subject, gives, 
 through the mouth of Raphael, a very particular 
 account of the War in Heaven, might have been 
 omitted with advantage. Frequent conceits, puns, and 
 satirical allusions, degrade the style in places below 
 its usual lofty level ; and on the other hand, the Latin 
 idioms, by means of which the diction is exalted, are 
 sometimes pushed beyond the point at which the 
 sublime marches with a less admirable quality. But 
 on the whole I should be prepared to maintain with
 
 356 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 confidence that, having regard to the unity and 
 grandeur of the ideal scheme, the subordination of 
 the parts to the whole, and the perfection of the 
 workmanship, Paradise Lost satisfies more thoroughly 
 than any epic poem of equal scope Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds's definition of Fine Art. 
 
 Nor is the grandeur of Milton's art conspicuous 
 only in its result ; it is also to be measured by the 
 greatness of the mental processes which produced it. 
 Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson 
 Agonistes were Milton's latest works ; like Chaucer's 
 Canterbury Tales, like Shakespeare's Hamlet and 
 King Lear, they were the offspring of a period when 
 all his poetical faculties had been trained by long 
 experience to work together. Brought into being in 
 the midst of blindness, poverty, political and social 
 disgrace, Paradise Lost gains in scope and grandeur 
 by the adverse circumstances of its gestation. We 
 see in its composition how the elements have been 
 separated, sifted, recombined. As late as 1639 the 
 evidence shows that Milton was meditating a quite 
 different subject, a romantic one, the history of King 
 Arthur, which, it is evident, could never have 
 harmonised with the classic form he would certainly 
 have attempted to give it. When, after the agony 
 of the Civil War, his mind begins to weigh the pos- 
 sibilities of a Scriptural subject, his imagination 
 stands doubtful in the choice of the necessary form. 
 At first the drama suggests itself ; and we know that 
 Satan's address to the sun was composed for a work 
 fashioned on the lines of the old Miracle Plays, an
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 357 
 
 antiquated mould no longer suited to the character of 
 the age. Finally, however, the poet reverts to the epic 
 form, and the artistic judgment being now right, all 
 the materials begin to settle themselves into their 
 proper places ; the recollections of the old romantic 
 Arthurian theme are employed to embellish the 
 narrative with simile and allusion ; the stern heart of 
 Puritanism circulates its life-blood through all the 
 veins and arteries of the poetic organism. 
 
 From all this it follows that both in its conception 
 and its expression Paradise Lost is a monument 
 illustrating, in the highest form, not only the universal 
 laws of poetry, but the operation of the English law of 
 taste. In my last lecture I dwelt on the manner in 
 which that law is illustrated in the poetry of Chaucer. 
 I showed how the task of the great founder of our 
 poetry lay in harmonising the genius of the Saxon and 
 Norman-French languages, and how he expanded the 
 insular religious spirit of Saxon poetry by uniting it 
 with the more secular tendencies of art and science then 
 manifesting themselves on the Continent of Europe, and 
 particularly in Italy. Milton carried on the national 
 tradition ; but the problem he had to solve in poetry 
 was of a different order. His destiny was to reconcile 
 the genius of Humanism with the temper of the 
 Reformation. 
 
 For nearly a century before the appearance of 
 Paradise Lost two separate streams of thought had 
 been running side by side in the English mind, as 
 represented in the Universities, without any attempt 
 being made to blend them into unity. One was the
 
 358 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 theology of the Reformation, whether represented by 
 Luther, Calvin, or Arminius ; the other was the imita- 
 tion of classical forms, images, and idioms, encouraged 
 by the Renaissance. The classical form had been 
 made the vehicle for the Reformed theology, and the 
 artistic result was grotesque enough. What could be 
 more incongruous than to turn the serene beauty of 
 the idylls of Theocritus into an allegorical weapon of 
 Genevan divinity ? Yet this was what had been done 
 by Spenser in his Shepherd's Calendar. In Milton's 
 youth the Humanist spirit had so much prevailed at 
 Cambridge over the acrid temper of sectarianism, that 
 his early poems, L Allegro, II Penseroso, and Comus, 
 are inspired with an air of absolute classical repose, 
 and even in Lycidas the note of theological contro- 
 versy only faintly disturbs the pastoral calm of the 
 elegiac style. Perhaps some epicures of art may even 
 regret the exchange of outlines so sweet and chaste 
 for the more complex harmonies of Milton's later 
 compositions. But if, as at one time seemed probable, 
 he had been sacrificed to the resentments of the 
 Restoration, the world, while it would have had cause 
 to deplore the loss of perhaps the most charming lyric 
 poet in the English language, would have had no 
 suspicion that there had perished in that imagination 
 an epic poem of the same class as the Iliad and The 
 Divine Comedy. The long fallow period, apparently 
 so barren in poetical inspiration, devoted wholly to 
 controversy, pamphleteering, and politics, was in 
 reality needed to bring the fanciful and abstract 
 imagination of the recluse poet into touch with the
 
 LECT. VII MILTON 359 
 
 realities of the world about him. Plunging into the 
 civil conflict equipped with his admirable artistic 
 sense of order and proportion, a strong perception of 
 actuality enabled him to give back an image of the 
 war of life in an ideal form. The product of this strife 
 of contraries was Paradise Lost. 
 
 In Paradise Lost are reflected all the contrary in- 
 tellectual tendencies of the age the energy of Hebraic 
 faith, the aspirations of Hellenic art and philosophy, 
 the romance of mediaeval chivalry ; but all these op- 
 posing elements are fused by a supreme judgment into 
 a unity of conception which was beyond the reach of 
 Spenser and Sidney. Verse, composed with the severe 
 regularity of Sophocles, seems to swell into the sublime 
 enthusiasm of the Psalms of David, or to breathe the 
 stem ardours of the trumpets of Dunbar. In the 
 commerce between the genius of the poet and his age 
 there is something that resembles the joint action that 
 produces the forms of the clouds, when the sun draws 
 up the crude vapours from the bosom of the earth and 
 fashions them into a thousand exquisite shapes of 
 aerial architecture. The characteristics of the style 
 of Paradise Lost can indeed be only fitly described 
 by the word Miltonic, but through the inspiration 
 of Milton we feel the presence of the life, the char- 
 acter, and the history, of the English People.
 
 VIII 
 
 POPE 
 
 In my earlier lectures on Law in Taste I have 
 endeavoured to arrive at my conclusions inductively 
 and historically. Starting with the laws which govern 
 the art of Poetry as a whole, and which are very 
 clearly laid down in Aristotle's Poetics, we have seen 
 that the first and greatest of these is that which defines 
 Poetry to be the imitation of the Universal. I have 
 shown that the second, and hardly less important, law 
 of Poetry is the Law of National Character, whereby the 
 Universal in nature is presented to the mind in such 
 a particular form as the genius and circumstances of 
 each nation require. In my two last lectures I 
 attempted successively to draw out the law of 
 character in English Poetry by reference to the 
 practice of Chaucer, the father of our poetry, and to 
 that of Milton, who, in one branch of the art, is 
 acknowledged by all competent critics to stand in the 
 same rank as Homer. In neither of these poets do 
 we find any distinct declaration of the artistic principles 
 on which they proceeded ; the operation of the law of 
 national character has to be inferred from their work.
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 361 
 
 I would now ask you to direct your attention to 
 the genius of a poet who stands on a different foot- 
 ing from Chaucer and Milton, who consciously and 
 deliberately schooled his imagination by a definite 
 critical standard, and who has defined in the clearest 
 possible manner what that standard was. I need 
 hardly say that I refer to Alexander Pope, who, as 
 you all know, proclaimed the end of his art to be 
 correctness, and who embodied what he believed to be 
 the law of poetical taste in his Essay on Criticism. 
 
 Nothing in criticism is more valuable than the 
 attempts of eminent artists, who, if I may use a some- 
 what familiar metaphor, " know the ropes " of their 
 art, to think out the first principles of procedure, and 
 though it does not follow either that Pope's practice con- 
 formed to the highest law of English Poetry, or that 
 his declaration of that law was entirely accurate, his 
 opinions are at least deserving of the highest respect 
 and consideration. This consideration, I am sorry to 
 say, has not always been granted to it. Critics, who 
 ought to have known better, have decried the Essay 
 on Criticism. De Quincey, for example, who, him- 
 self only a prose writer, should have felt that he 
 might appreciate imperfectly the motives of a writer 
 in verse, arrogantly sneers at it as a collection of 
 maxims, "the most mouldy with which criticism has 
 baited its rat-traps." It has been also disparaged by 
 poets like Bowles, because it gives prominence to a 
 view of poetry with which they have little sympathy, 
 and which they hold to be petty, restricted, and even, 
 in a sense, " unpoetical." The position of these men
 
 362 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 is more intelligible than that of De Quincey ; but 
 their depreciation of Pope's poetry is discounted by 
 their obvious incapacity to understand the peculiar 
 conditions which gave rise to the declaration of law 
 contained in the Essay on Criticism. I will, there- 
 fore, ask you first to consider what is the law of 
 poetical conception declared by Pope ; then, what is 
 the nature of his law of poetical expression ; and 
 lastly, in what respects his principles and practice 
 fall short of the highest law of English Poetry, as 
 embodied in the work of poets like Chaucer and 
 Milton. 
 
 Three main rules of guidance are laid down by 
 Pope in his Essay. They are these : " Follow 
 Nature;" " Avoid false wit ; " ''Imitate the Classics." 
 The first of these principles is declared as follows : 
 
 First follow Nature and your judgment frame 
 By her just standard which is still the same. 
 Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, 
 One clear, unchanged, and universal light, 
 Life, force, and beauty must to all impart 
 At once the source, and end, and test of art. 
 
 So good a judge as Mr. Leslie Stephen regards 
 this principle as one of what De Quincey calls 
 "mouldy commonplaces," because he thinks that the 
 maxim was common to critics in all ages. But that 
 is just what it was not. Pope's advice as to following 
 Nature was, in fact, a re-declaration of the law of 
 Aristotle, as opposed to the practice of the poets of 
 the Middle Ages. I do not mean to say that Dante 
 did not imitate Nature ; he would not have been the
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 363 
 
 supreme poet that he was if he had failed to do so. 
 I mean this, that though Nature has, as Pope says, 
 " a just standard which is still the same," yet she 
 reveals herself to men in different ages in different 
 aspects, and therefore requires to be imitated in 
 different forms. Let me illustrate this point by a 
 concrete example, to which I have already referred 
 for another purpose. Tasso, in his Discourse on the 
 Structure of Epic Poetry, starts one of Aristotle's 
 questions about a point on which his judgment is per- 
 plexed, namely, how far it is possible in a Christian 
 epic to make use of supernatural machinery, as the 
 Greeks and Romans did ; since the gods and goddesses, 
 on whose actions so much of the interest of the ancient 
 epic depends, are in the Christian scheme of life con- 
 demned as false and delusive idols. In other words, 
 the polytheistic conception of Nature, prevalent when 
 Aristotle proclaimed that poetry was an imitation of 
 the Universal, was abhorrent to the monotheistic 
 belief of the Middle Ages. Tasso, therefore, could 
 not imitate Nature quite in the same manner as 
 Homer. 
 
 Nor would a poet of the Middle Ages have pre- 
 sented such an imitation of Man, and Society, and 
 Human Life, as would have been characteristic of a 
 Greek poet. The idea of man in Greek and Roman 
 times was founded on a perfectly civic condition of 
 things; the idea of man in the Middle Ages was 
 founded on a system, partly ecclesiastical, and partly 
 feudal, such as we see reflected in the philosophy of 
 the Schoolmen : a view quite as universal as the civil
 
 364 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 view of the Romans for it prevailed all over Mediasval 
 Europe and yet quite opposed to it. Dante, we 
 know, conceived of the order of human society, as 
 proceeding immediately from the mind of God, and 
 he regarded the constitution of Europe in his day, 
 whether this were called the Holy Roman Empire, or 
 the Christian Republic, as part of the divine govern- 
 ment of the Universe. Hence Dante's conception of 
 Nature was primarily theological ; and hence too the 
 eminently suggestive remark of Boccaccio in his 
 Life of Dante : " I say that Theology and Poetry 
 may be said to be almost one where their subject is 
 the same : nay, more, I say that Theology is nothings 
 but God's poetry." 
 
 Again, as the Mediaeval idea of the Universal 
 differed fundamentally from the idea of the Universal 
 in Greek and Roman times, so was the idea of 
 Nature in the seventeenth century beginning to 
 oppose itself to that of the Middle Ages. The 
 Humanism of the Renaissance had something in 
 common with the thought both of the Christian and 
 pre-Christian eras. In its direct investigation of 
 physical nature, and in its appreciation of the civic 
 constitution of society, it had close affinities with the 
 spirit of Greek and Roman philosophy ; on the other 
 hand, the basis of its conception of things still 
 rested on the traditional theology of the Church. 
 But the framework of this theology was being im- 
 mensely modified by circumstances, such as the 
 speculation of Copernicus, the discoveries of Colum- 
 bus, the invention of printing, and the new
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 365 
 
 political system of Europe which arose out of the 
 Reformation. Though, it was true, as Pope says, 
 that Nature, both in itself and in the general con- 
 stitution of the human mind, shone with " one clear, 
 unchanged, and universal light," yet that light in 
 the most representative conception of the seventeenth 
 century was no longer mainly theological, 
 
 I turn to consider the second point, namely, the 
 law of poetical expression, as it is declared in the 
 Essay on Criticism : 
 
 Expression is the dress of thought, and still 
 Appears more decent as more suitable. 
 A vile conceit in pompous words expressed 
 Is like a clown in regal purple dressed. 
 
 These lines define very happily the law of expression, 
 as embodied in the work of the best classical writers, 
 who, imitating Nature on the polytheistic principle, 
 conceived of her with admirable force and simplicity, 
 as she lay before their eyes. But the passage also 
 indicates very suggestively the nature of the re- 
 volution in thought, caused by the transition from 
 mediaeval to modern times. In the Middle Ages 
 the centre of man's interest had been shifted from 
 the visible world of sense to the world beyond the 
 grave, and in order to express the theological con- 
 ception of Nature, the poet had recourse to the 
 forms of Allegory which were almost unused by his 
 Pagan predecessors, l^occaccio, in the Life of Dante, 
 to which I have already referred, says : " What is it, 
 but a kind of poetic invention, when in the Scripture 
 Christ is spoken of at one time as a lion, at another
 
 366 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 as a lamb, sometimes as a worm, at other times as a 
 dragon, at others as a rock, and in many other 
 ways to recite all which would be tedious. What 
 else are the words of the Saviour in the Gospel, but 
 a discourse of what is beyond the senses, which 
 manner of speaking we in more ordinary language 
 call allegory." It will be observed that Boccaccio 
 here says almost exactly the same thing as Beatrice, 
 when she explains to Dante the use of allegory : 
 " Thus it is needful to speak to your wit, because 
 from the object of sense alone it apprehends what it 
 afterwards makes worthy of the understanding," In 
 fact, the theological conception of Nature in the 
 Middle Ages is the secret of the abundant use in 
 those ages of the allegorical form of poetry. 
 
 The theological habit of thought continued to 
 prevail in Europe long after Catholic unity was 
 destroyed by the Reformation ; and theological 
 subjects were in special favour with the Humanist 
 poets of the Reformed persuasion. But in none of 
 these is Nature conceived in the same clear and 
 universal light as she is presented to us in the 
 Divine Coraedy. Again, in consequence of their 
 theological turn of thought, the allegorical form was 
 extremely popular with the English poets of the 
 first half of the seventeenth century ; but no one can 
 fail to observe that this form was employed by them, 
 not as it was by Dante for the conveyance of spiritual 
 truths, but for the purpose of pleasing the im- 
 agination with riddles, paradoxes, and far-fetched 
 metaphors. The allegorical form at that period, in
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 367 
 
 fact, became a poetical end in itself. Out of this 
 decadent tendency of the imagination arose the 
 practice of False Wit, so admirably defined by 
 Johnson, who nevertheless failed to trace it to its 
 native source. " Wit, abstracted from its effects 
 upon the hearer, may," he says, " be more rigorously 
 and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia 
 conco7's, a combination of dissimilar images, or dis- 
 covery of occult resemblances in things apparently 
 unlike." And in this respect Locke contrasts the 
 poetry still agreeable to the taste of his age with 
 the operations of sense, judgment, and reason. 
 "This," he says, "is a way of proceeding quite con- 
 trary to metaphor and allusion ; wherein for the 
 most part lies the entertainment and pleasantry of wit 
 which strikes so lively on the fancy, and is therefore 
 so acceptable to all people." Aiming persistently at 
 the discovery of subtle resemblances, and the com- 
 bination of contrary images, the poets of the seven- 
 teenth century altogether neglected the necessary 
 basis of all true poetry, the Universal in Nature. 
 Johnson describes with equal happiness and sagacity 
 the unsoundness of their method : " Their attempts 
 were always analytic ; they broke every image into 
 fragments, and could no more represent, by their 
 slender conceits and laboured particularities, the 
 prospects of nature, or the scenes of life, than he 
 who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit 
 the wide effulgence of a summer noon." 
 
 Let me illustrate these remarks by some concrete 
 examples of what is called the "metaphysical"
 
 368 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 poetry of the seventeenth century. First, I will 
 give you a specimen of the neglect of the Universal 
 common in this kind of poetry, and nowhere 
 more characteristically manifested than in Phineas 
 Fletcher's Purple Island. The subject of the Purple 
 Island, as the author declares, is theological. It 
 professes to describe the State of Man's Nature after 
 the Fall, and the conflict by which he is restored to 
 a State of Grace, a theme, no doubt, of universal 
 interest. The form in which the subject is embodied 
 is allegory. Speaking in the character of a shepherd, 
 the poet expounds to his companions the history and 
 constitution of an island which typifies the body 
 and soul of man ; and so far the theological subject, 
 and the allegorical form of the work, place it in the 
 same category of composition as Tlie Divine Comedy. 
 But immediately the poet begins to execute his 
 design, it is seen that his poem, unlike Dante's, is 
 wanting altogether in unity of thought and action. 
 What was really attractive to Fletcher in the poetical 
 idea was the opportunity afi'orded of likening the 
 diflferent parts of the human body to the physical 
 configuration of an island. Five or six cantos of his 
 poem are devoted entirely to anatomy, and the ingenuity 
 with which the particular resemblances are worked out 
 is quite admirable. When, however, this essentially 
 partial conception is expressed, the poetical impulse 
 is exhausted. All that is moral in the subject, all 
 that is organically required for the development of 
 the action, is treated perfunctorily, and since the 
 subject provides no natural exit, the author is
 
 LECT, VIII POPE 369 
 
 obliged to conclude it with a fight between the 
 Prince of the Island and a Dragon, in feeble imitation 
 of Spenser in the first book of The Faery Queeyi. 
 
 From this neglect by the metaphysical poets of 
 the Universal in their conceptions springs an essential 
 impropriety in their forms of expression, which may 
 be exemplified from a poem written by Giles Fletcher, 
 brother of Phineas, Christ's Death and Victory. 
 Here, too, we have a theological subject, almost 
 identical with Paradise Regained; and here, again, 
 there is a complete absence of unity of action. The 
 four cantos of which the poem is composed deal 
 separately with particular themes : The Contest 
 between Divine Justice and Mercy ; the Temptation ; 
 the Crucifixion and Descent into Hell ; the Resur- 
 rection and Ascension into Heaven. The poet takes 
 his start from the text of the Bible, but embroiders 
 his narrative with a number of paradoxes, metaphors, 
 classical similes, and strangely coined words, in such 
 a manner as to produce an effect of brilliantly con- 
 trasted patchwork. His whole strength is thrown 
 into his particular descriptions, the character of which 
 may be inferred from a few examples ; of which the 
 following gives a portrait of the Redeemer evidently 
 modelled on the description of Adonis by Marino : 
 
 His cheeks as snowy apples, soft in wine, 
 Had their red roses quencht with lilies white, 
 And like to garden strawberries did shine, 
 Washt in a bowl of milk, or rosebuds bright. 
 Unbosoming their breasts against the light. 
 
 Here love-sick souls did eat, there drank and made 
 Sweet-smelling posies that could never fade. 
 2b
 
 370 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 The shocking effeminacy of this speaks for itself. 
 Here, again, is a stanza followed by a simile which 
 shows what havoc wit made of taste in the seven- 
 teenth century. The poet is describing the holy 
 women returninsf from the Entombment : 
 
 o 
 
 So home their bodies went to seek repose, 
 But at the grave they left their souls behind : 
 who the force of love celestial knows 
 That can the claims of nature's self unbind, 
 Sending the body home -w-ithout the mind ! 
 Ah, blessed Virgin ! what high angel's art 
 Can ever count thy tears or sing thy smart, 
 When every nail that pierced his hand did pierce thy heart. 
 
 So Philomel, perched on an aspen sprig. 
 
 Weeps all the night her lost virginity, 
 
 And sings her sad tale to the merry twig, 
 
 That dances at such joyful misery, 
 
 Ne ever lets sweet rest invade her eye. 
 But leaning on a thorn her dainty chest. 
 For fear soft sleep should steal into her breast, 
 
 Expresses in her song grief not to be expressed. 
 
 But, after all, the most striking examples of the 
 " false wit " of the seventeenth century are to be 
 found in the lyric poets, of whom Crashaw may be 
 taken as a notable example, since his work attracted 
 the criticism of Pope himself, who calls him a 
 "worse Cowley," and observes of him : "I take this 
 poet to have writ like a gentleman, that is at leisure 
 hours, and more to keep out of idleness than to 
 establish a reputation, so that nothing regular or just 
 can be expected of him. All that regards design, 
 form, fable, which is the soul of poetry, all that 
 concerns exactness or consent of parts, which is the
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 371 
 
 body, will probably be wanting. Only pretty con- 
 ceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and 
 something of a neat cast of verse, which are pro- 
 perly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry, 
 may be found in these verses. . . . His thoughts, 
 one may observe in the main, are pretty ; but some- 
 times far-fetched, and too often strained and stiffened 
 to make them appear the greater. For men are 
 never so apt to think a thing great as when it is odd 
 or wonderful ; and inconsiderate authors would rather 
 be admired than understood." 
 
 Richard Crashaw was a convert to Roman 
 Catholicism, with a soul possessed by the mystical 
 piety characteristic of women like S. Teresa and 
 Mme. Guyon. But he was also an excellent 
 classical scholar, and he endeavoured to find 
 a vehicle for his devotional feelings in the forms 
 and images invented to express the wholly an- 
 tagonistic sentiments of Anacreon and Catullus. 
 His poetry is full of sighs, kisses, ardours, languors, 
 and embraces, intended to express the amorous 
 raptures of the soul in a state of religious ecstasy. 
 To every one who can appreciate either the stern 
 devotional style of Dante, or the exquisite taste of 
 Virgil, the combination must appear deplorable. 
 Here, for example, are some lines " On the Glorious 
 Assumption of the Blessed Virgin " : 
 
 Hark, she is called ! the parting hour is come ! 
 
 Take thy farewell, poor world, Heaven must go home. 
 
 A piece of heavenly light, purer and brighter 
 
 Than the chaste stars, whose choice lamps come to light her,
 
 372 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 While through the crystal orbs, clearer than they, 
 She climbs, and makes a far more milky way. 
 She's called again ! hark, how th' immortal Dove 
 Sighs to his silver mate : Rise up, my love, 
 Rise up, my fair, my spotless one. 
 The winter's past, the rain is gone : 
 The spring is come, the flowers appear 
 No sweets, since thoii art wanting here. 
 
 He sends Mrs. M. R. the present of a Prayer-Book, 
 and writes in it the following description of a soul 
 transported by Divine Love : 
 
 fair ! fortunate ! rich ! dear ! 
 happy and thrice happy she, 
 Dear silver-breasted dove. 
 Whoe'er she be, 
 Whose early love 
 With winged vows 
 
 Makes haste to meet her morning spouse, 
 And close with his immortal kisses ; 
 
 Happy soul, who never misses 
 
 To improve that precious hour : 
 
 And every day 
 
 Seize her sweet prey, 
 
 All fresh and fragrant as he rises. 
 
 Dropping with a balmy shower 
 
 A delicious dew of spices. 
 
 In a hymn to the name and honour of S. Teresa 
 we find the following conception of the Saint's ex- 
 periences in the moment of death : 
 
 How kindly will thy gentle heart 
 Kiss the sweetly killing dart : 
 And close in his embraces keep 
 Those delicious wounds that weep 
 Balsam, to heal themselves with thus ;
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 373 
 
 When these thy deaths so numerous 
 Shall all at once die into one, 
 And melt thy soul's sweet mansion : 
 Like a soft lump of incense, basted 
 By too hot a fire, and wasted 
 Into perfuming clouds, so fast 
 Shalt thou exhale to Heaven at last 
 In a dissolving sigh, and then 
 
 what 1 ask not the tongues of men ! 
 
 One of his favourite themes is the Weeping Magda- 
 lene, whose tears he likens to stars, cream on the 
 Milky Way, gold, dew, pearls, and balsam, and nectar 
 for souls on their arrival in Heaven : 
 
 When some new bright guest 
 
 Takes up among the stars a room, 
 
 And Heaven will make a feast, 
 Angels with their bottles come, 
 
 And draw from these full eyes of thine 
 
 Their master's water, their own wine. 
 
 Angelic tapsters ! Poetry of this kind shows us very 
 clearly what had happened to the religious imagina- 
 tion in the seventeenth century. We see the decay 
 of the old austere theological method, applied to the 
 interpretation of Nature by the Catholic Church. We 
 see at the same time the perversion of the time- 
 honoured forms of allegorical poetry, and their mixture 
 with the pseudo-classical forms of the Renaissance, just 
 as in the architecture of the period, and especially in 
 the Churches of the Jesuits, we find fat and florid 
 Cupids, as the only kind of image which can convey 
 to men's minds the idea of angels. 
 
 This discordia concws of false wit was what Bacon
 
 374 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 calls an idol of the Cave, because it had a superficial 
 resemblance to fine art when truly defined, that is to 
 say, " an assemblage of contrary qualities mixed in 
 such proportion that no one part is felt to counteract 
 another." But whereas fine art implies a union 
 of contrary principles actually existing in Nature, 
 false wit aims solely at the combination of dissimilar 
 ideas of the mind without any reference to the actual 
 truth of things. Pope fully understood that this 
 practice was a violation of the law of Fine Art, and 
 that it was the business of the poet to find a founda- 
 tion for his conceptions in the Universal : hence his 
 definition of True Wit : 
 
 True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, 
 
 What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed. 
 
 The couplet sets forth the constant aim implied in 
 his standard of correctness. His idea of correctness, 
 therefore, may be defined as an imitation of Nature, 
 in which an attempt is made to combine the Catholic 
 spirit of the Middle Ages with the civic and philo- 
 sophic ideas of the Renaissance, in the forms con- 
 secrated by the usage of classic poetry. 
 
 In many respects Pope was exceedingly well 
 equipped both by nature and training for the accom- 
 plishment of this task. Born of Roman Catholic 
 parents, he had also had a Roman Catholic education ; 
 but this strong initial tendency towards mediae valism 
 was counteracted by his early introduction to the 
 best society of London, which was of course emphati- 
 cally Protestant. His temperament and perceptions
 
 LECT. vni POPE 375 
 
 naturally caused him to aim at a balance between the 
 two religions, and he describes himself as 
 
 Papist or Protestant, or both between, 
 Like good Erasmus in an honest mean. 
 
 His age and the society about him impelled his genius 
 in the same direction. The year of his birth, 1688, 
 marked the opening in England of the new constitu- 
 tional era. Proscribed from taking part in politics, 
 in which, from his association with Swift and Boling- 
 broke, he was nevertheless deeply interested, he 
 formed for himself a philosophic idea of the English 
 constitution as a whole. While he was familiar with 
 the nature of the controversy between the Roman 
 and Anglican Churches, he had also read Bacon, and 
 Locke, and Newton, to say nothing of the various 
 Deistical writers who put forward their ideas so 
 voluminously in the early part of the eighteenth 
 century. Hence, in his conception of Nature, his 
 imagination may be observed undergoing a develop- 
 ment from Catholicism to what may be called a state 
 of Catholic Deism. Listen, for example, to the im- 
 passioned lines in which he makes Heloise address 
 Abelard, and say if they do not breathe the very 
 spirit of S. Benedict or S. Buonaventura : 
 
 Of all affliction taught a lover yet 
 "Tis sure the hardest science to forget. 
 How shall I love the sin yet keep the sense 1 
 How love the offender yet detest the offence 1 
 How the dear object from the crime remove ? 
 Or how distinguish penitence from love 1 
 Unequal task ! a passion to resign
 
 376 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 For hearts so touched, so pierced, so lost as mine. 
 Ere such a soul regain its peaceful state, 
 How often must it love, how often hate ! 
 How often hope, despair, resent, regret, 
 Conceal, disdain do all things but forget ! 
 But let heaven seize it, all at once 'tis fired. 
 Not touched but rapt, not wakened but inspired ! 
 Oh come, oh teach me nature to subdue. 
 Renounce my love, my life, myself and you. 
 Fill my fond heart with God alone, for He 
 Alone can rival, can succeed to thee. 
 
 Or this, which has in it something of the spirit of 
 Crashaw, though without his conceit : 
 
 Vital spark of heavenly flame. 
 Quit, quit, this mortal frame. 
 Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying, 
 the pain, the bliss of dying ! 
 
 Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife ! 
 
 And let me languish into life. 
 
 Hark they whisper : Angels say. 
 Sister spirit, come away. 
 What is this absorbs me quite. 
 Heals my senses, steals my sight, 
 
 Drowns my spirit, draws my breath ? 
 
 Tell me, my soul, can this be Death ? 
 
 The world recedes ; it disappears ! 
 Heaven opens on my eyes ! my ears 
 
 With sounds seraphic ring : 
 Lend, lend your wings ! I mount ! I fly ! 
 Grave, where is thy victory 1 
 
 Death ! where is thy sting ? 
 
 Compare this glowing enthusiasm with the Deistic 
 rationalism of the address to the Creator in the 
 Universal Prayer :
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 377 
 
 Father of all ! in every age, 
 
 In every clime adored 
 By saint, by savage, and by sage, 
 
 Jehovah, Jove, or Lord. 
 
 Thou first great Cause, least understood, 
 
 Who all my sense confined, 
 To know but this, that Thou art good 
 
 And that myself am blind ! 
 
 AVhat a contrast ! And yet both the youthful and the 
 mature conceptions have one thing in common, the 
 idea of Nature, of the Universal, apprehended by 
 feeling and instinct in the one case, arrived at by an 
 effort of Reason in the other. The latter perception 
 expresses itself in the note of triumph animating the 
 vigorous concluding lines of the Essay on Man, in 
 which the poet defines his idea of Poetry, and, 
 addressing Bolingbroke, declares : 
 
 That urged by thee I turned the tuneful art 
 From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart ; 
 For wit's false mirror held up nature's light ; 
 Showed erring pride whatever is is right ; 
 That reason, passion, answer one great aim ; 
 That true self-love and social are the same ; 
 That virtue only makes our lives below, 
 And all our knowledge is ourselves to know. 
 
 You may say, How limited an idea of Nature, of 
 the Universal, is this, compared with Dante's idea of 
 the Universe as presented in The Divine Comedy ! 
 and you will say it justly. Still, it is fair to remem- 
 ber, in the first place, that this restriction of know- 
 ledge to self-knowledge is only the completion of a 
 tendency of thought which reveals itself in Paradise
 
 378 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 Lost, where, as I pointed out in my last lecture, the 
 Archangel Raphael exhorts Adam : 
 
 Be lowly wise, 
 Think only what concerns thee and thy being, 
 Dream not of other worlds. 
 
 And, in the second place, the just standard of com- 
 parison is not so much Pope's idea of Nature 
 measured by Dante's, as Pope's contrasted with the 
 False Wit of the poets of the seventeenth century, 
 Phineas and Giles Fletcher, Donne, Crashaw, Quarles, 
 and Cowley. Compared with any of these 
 for they had all of them given over the attempt 
 to conceive Nature poetically as a whole the 
 view of Nature presented in the Essay on Man 
 appears simple, harmonious, majestic. Moreover, it 
 is the idea of Pope's age ; it reflects the universal 
 tendency of thought working in England and France 
 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the 
 movement, that is to say, of experimental and induc- 
 tive philosophy, started by Bacon and carried on 
 from him through Hobbes to Locke, and from Locke 
 to Bolingbroke and Hume. That is the meaning of 
 Pope's boast that he 
 
 Turned the tuneful art 
 From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart. 
 
 And that, too, explains why, by an inevitable 
 inward movement, Pope's genius changed from 
 romantic themes of pure fancy, like his Pastorals, to 
 the moral, satiric, and didactic vein characteristic of 
 his work in his later years.
 
 LECT. viii POPE 379 
 
 Two main features distinguish Pope's conception 
 of the Universal in Nature from that of poets like 
 Milton and Chaucer. The first is the almost total 
 elimination of the theological element, and the 
 antagonism of the poet to the scholastic way of 
 thinking tendencies of reasoning which are reflected 
 in passages like the following : 
 
 For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight ; 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right. 
 
 Scotists and Thomists now in peace remain, 
 Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck Lane. 
 
 A second deluge learning thus o'errun, 
 
 And the Monks finished what the Goths begun. 
 
 Slave to no sect, who takes no pi'ivate road, 
 But looks through Nature up to Nature's God. 
 
 To sum up the character of Pope's idea of the Uni- 
 versal on the religious side : it is an attempt to 
 reconcile the modern spirit with the spirit of antiquity, 
 by eliminating the spirit of the Middle Ages. 
 
 The second feature is that, on the secular side, 
 Pope's tendency is to harmonise the civic spirit of the 
 Greeks and Romans with the national spirit of modern 
 Europe by striking out the feudal element. The spirit 
 of feudal chivalry, which, in the thirteenth century, 
 found its abode in thousands of castles over the 
 whole of Europe, and which in the sixteenth century 
 concentrated itself in the Courts of powerful Monarchs, 
 was, in the seventeenth century, languishing in the 
 last stages of decay. The poetical forms, in which
 
 38o LAW IN TASTE 
 
 this spirit revealed itself to the imagination, had 
 passed through corresponding stages of development, 
 from the lyrics of the Troubadours and the romances of 
 the Trouveres to tlie Sonnets of Petrarch, and thence 
 to the Arcadias of Sannazaro and Sidney, until, in the 
 seventeenth century, the approaching dissolution of 
 chivalrous romance is shown in the Grand Cyrus of 
 Mdlle. de Scudery and in the Mistress of Cowley. 
 Still, even in that late age, the old fire of poetry, 
 animated by the principles of Love, Honour, and 
 Loyalty, breaks through the smoke of conceit and 
 paradox in some of the lyrics of the English cavaliers, 
 the last representatives of the dying feudal order, as 
 in Lovelace's lines : 
 
 Yet this inconstancy is such 
 
 As you too shall adore : 
 I could not love thee, dear, so much 
 
 Loved I not honour more. 
 
 Or in Montrose's charming verses : 
 
 My dear, my only love, I pray 
 
 That little world of thee 
 Be governed by no other sway 
 
 But purest Monarchy. 
 For if confusion have a part, 
 
 Which virtuous souls abhor, 
 And call a synod in thy heart, 
 
 I'll never love thee more. 
 
 Of this element of Eomance there is no trace in 
 the mature poetry of Pope ; into his conception of 
 society there enters neither the Petrarcan tradition 
 of chivalrous love, continued through more than
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 381 
 
 three centuries of sonnet-writers, nor the legendary 
 spirit of the tales of Arthur and Charlemagne, which 
 impressed itself so strongly on the imagination of 
 Milton. In place of it reigns the genius of Satire, 
 whether it be the satire of social manners, embodied 
 in the exquisite mock-heroic style of the Rape of tlie 
 Lock, or the satire of party politics and personal 
 conflict, reflected in the didactic energy of the Epistle 
 to Arhuthnot, the Moral Essays, and the Imitations 
 of Horace. In this respect, too. Pope was the child of 
 his age. The day of Sidney and Essex, even of Love- 
 lace and Montrose, of the mediaeval knight and courtier, 
 with his refinements, his graces, and his caste senti- 
 ments, had passed ; the day of Walpole and Pulteney 
 and Bolingbroke and Carteret, of clubs and cofiee- 
 houses, had supervened ; the aristocracy of England 
 were no longer the followers of a semi-absolute 
 Monarch ; they were the leaders of a ruling Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 As the elements of Theology and Chivalry 
 vanished out of Pope's conception of Nature and 
 Society, so did the form of Allegory disappear from 
 his critical standard of expression. For allegory, in 
 his judgment, had come to be identical with the form 
 of False Wit, with that straining after remote and 
 paradoxical ideas, and that hunt for unheard-of images 
 and metaphors, which is the characteristic note of 
 the typical poet of the seventeenth century. Correct- 
 ness, on the other hand, which was Pope's constant aim, 
 implies the rejection of all that is weak, superfluous, 
 and irrelevant, in the conception of a subject viewed
 
 382 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 as an organic whole, together with the selection of 
 the words best adapted for the clear conveyance of 
 thought in a metrical form. As he himself put it in 
 one of his Imitations of Horace : 
 
 But how severely with themselves proceed 
 The men who write such verse as we can read ! 
 Their own strict judges not a word they spare, 
 That wants or force or light or weight or care. 
 Howe'er unwillingly it quits its place, 
 Nay, though at Court (perhaps) it may find grace ; 
 Such they'll degrade, and sometimes in its stead 
 In downright charity revive the dead. 
 
 Prune ihe luxuriant, the uncouth refine, 
 But show no mercy to an empty line ; 
 Then polish all with so much life and ease. 
 You think 'tis Nature and a knack to please. 
 " But ease in writing comes from art not chance. 
 As those move easiest who have learned to dance." 
 
 I think we are now in a position to determine both 
 the extent of the service rendered by Pope to the 
 art of English poetry and the limitations of his 
 genius. His great, his pre-eminent merit is his clear 
 declaration, his careful observance, of the paramount 
 law of Poetry, the Imitation of the Universal. 
 Assuming as a first principle of taste, that Fine Art 
 lies in the harmonious reconciliation of contrary 
 qualities, it must be acknowledged that Pope found 
 out the way of harmonising the civic ideas of the 
 Greeks and Romans, and the classical forms of expres- 
 sion, with the national English spirit of the eighteenth 
 century, and with the genius of the then fully developed 
 English language. This was a great achievement ;
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 383 
 
 but we have to recognise at the same time that, in 
 order to obtain his clear conception of the Universal, 
 he was obliged to narrow and retrench his idea of the 
 second crreat law of Fine Art, the Law of National 
 Character. 
 
 As I said in my lecture on Chaucer, the English 
 national character is made up of an extraordinary 
 mixture of elements, and our highest poetry is 
 a reflection of all these combined qualities. It 
 reflects the Christian Religion, as it is formulated and 
 defined in Mediaeval Theology ; it reflects the tradi- 
 tions of ancient art, in the full and perfect forms 
 recovered for us by the Renaissance ; and lastly, it 
 reflects the movement of our national life and history 
 made up by the fusion of different races and languages. 
 Such is the mixed character of the poetry of Chaucer, 
 of Shakespeare, of Milton, which may be described as 
 theological, feudal, classical, and national ; whereas, 
 on the other hand, from the poetry of Pope the 
 theological and feudal elements of our historic life 
 are excluded. His poetry is therefore necessarily 
 less elevated, and more restricted in its scope than 
 that of his greatest predecessors ; it may be added 
 that it does not conform so completely as their s to 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds's definition of Fine Art. Pope 
 himself felt this and expressed the idea forcibly 
 in a letter to Swift. He says : " My understanding 
 indeed, such as it is, is extended rather than 
 diminished ; I see things more in the whole, more 
 consistent, and more clearly deduced from, and related 
 to, each other. But what I gain on the side of
 
 384 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 philosophy, I lose on the side of poetry ; the flowers 
 are gone when the fruits begin to ripen, and the fruit 
 perhaps will never ripen perfectly." So, too, he puts 
 it in the Epistle to Arhuthnot, when, speaking of the 
 poetry of his youth, he says : 
 
 Soft were my numbers ; who could take offence, 
 While pure Description held the place of sense ? 
 Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme, 
 A painted mistress or a purling stream. 
 
 Following the inevitable bent of his genius and his 
 time, he subordinated the play of imagination to the 
 severity of reason and judgment, more than was 
 consistent with the highest requirements of English 
 Fine Art. A poem, in which the element of Fancy 
 is so much subdued as it is in the Essay on Man, 
 cannot be ranked, as an imitation of Nature, in the 
 same class as Paradise Lost ; nor can compositions, 
 which exclude so completely the sentiments connected 
 with romance and pastoral ism as the Moral Essays, 
 or which restrict the idea of society so rigidly to 
 the representation of town life as the Imitations 
 of Horace, be regarded as affording so complete 
 a reflection of English feudal, rural, and domestic 
 character as TJie Canterbury Tales or the Allegro 
 and Penseroso. 
 
 The same kind of criticism must be passed on 
 Pope's declaration of the law of poetical expression, 
 as defined in his term Correctness. His idea of 
 correctness, in so far as it consists in imitating the 
 spirit of the great classical authors, is sound, and so
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 385 
 
 is the principle which he lays down in the Essay on 
 Criticism : 
 
 Those Rules of old discovered, not devised, 
 Are Nature still but Nature methodised ; 
 Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained 
 By the same laws which first herseK ordained. 
 
 And when he applies this principle of imitating the 
 classics by the instinctive light of his genius, as he 
 does in the Epistle to Arhuthnot, nothing can be 
 more truly English, natural, and correct, than the style 
 which results from it. But an excessive reverence 
 for the classics often led him into formal imitation, 
 which, judged by the Law of English Character in 
 Poetry, was essentially incorrect. His attitude 
 towards the Latin and Greek poets sometimes seems 
 almost servile : 
 
 Hail, Bards triumphant ! born in happier days ; 
 
 Immortal heirs of universal praise. 
 
 Whose honours with increase of ages grow, 
 
 As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow ; 
 
 Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound, 
 
 And worlds applaud that must not yet be found ! 
 
 O may some spark of your celestial fire 
 
 The last, the meanest of your sons inspire 
 
 (That on weak wings from far pursues your fliglits. 
 
 Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes), 
 
 To teach vain wits a science little known, 
 
 T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own ! 
 
 Formal imitation of the classics, which produces the 
 
 manner of writing found in Pope's Pastorals or his 
 
 Messiah, cannot be said to be the following of 
 
 Nature. 
 
 2c
 
 ?86 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 To sum up what has been said : Pope's conception 
 of the law of taste determines his place in English 
 poetry. There are certain modern critics who deny- 
 altogether his title to be ranked as a classic English 
 poet. This is a judgment as bigoted as it is absurd. 
 The pleasure with which his poetry is read by all 
 who can appreciate art is a proof of the soundness of 
 his own conception of the Universal in Nature. Pope 
 is, and will remain, one of the great English classics. 
 But not less unreasonable is it to proclaim him, as 
 Matthew Arnold does, a classic not of our poetry but 
 our prose ; for this would imply that he and Dryden, 
 whom Matthew Arnold couples with him, had made an 
 artistic mistake in employing the metrical form of ex- 
 pression. Pope is one of the great English poets ; how- 
 beit, as the author of the Book of Samuel says of certain 
 of David's mighty men, he attains not to the rank of 
 the first three. He did not reflect to the same 
 extent as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, all those 
 complex principles which make up the Christian idea 
 of the Universal in Nature, or all that fusion of 
 tastes and tendencies which constitutes the English 
 character. Hence he was not qualified to succeed 
 in the highest walks of poetry, the epic and the 
 dramatic : the inevitable development of his genius, 
 directed by the character of his age, helped to 
 suppress the lyrical and romantic vein in his imagina- 
 tion. On the other hand, in the ethical, the satiric, 
 the didactic, in a word, the more familiar departments 
 of poetry, he is supreme, and within this range his 
 verse is deserving of the closest study, on account
 
 LECT. VIII POPE 387 
 
 alike of the clear conception of Nature which it 
 embodies, and of the severe self -judgment so 
 opposed to the indolence, the inaccuracy, and the 
 obscurity of modern methods with which he strives 
 to give to every thought the highest polish of correct 
 expression.
 
 IX 
 
 BYRON AND TENNYSON 
 
 Macaulay gives it as his opinion, in his Essay on 
 Milton, that as civilisation advances poetry almost 
 necessarily declines. This proposition seems to con- 
 tain the misstatement of an important truth. As 
 Macaulay states it, it is certainly not true, for the 
 j^neid, The Divine Comedy, and Paradise Lost, were 
 all produced at an advanced epoch of civilisation in 
 their different communities. Nevertheless, it is a 
 historical fact that, after a certain point of civilisation 
 is reached, poems of this class cease to be produced ; 
 and further, we have complaints from late poets, such 
 as AVordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson, that social 
 circumstances are unfavourable to their art. 
 
 What, then, shall we say as to the truth of the 
 matter ? This, I think. The advance of civilisation 
 necessarily involves a conflict between the principles of 
 liberty and authority, because it necessitates, on the 
 one hand, the strengthening of the central institutions 
 on which the life of the community depends, and, on the 
 other, the growth of a self-consciousness in each indi- 
 vidual, which is to some extent adverse to the claims of
 
 I.ECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 389 
 
 society. A state is free and great in proportion as it 
 succeeds in reconciling liberty with authority. This 
 antagonism in the life of society is of course reflected 
 in the life of Art, so that, whereas poetry is defined 
 by Aristotle to be the imitation of the Universal in 
 Nature, there is a strong tendency in late poetry to 
 be transformed into the imitation of self- consciousness 
 in the soul of the individual. When the authority of 
 society is paramount, when, by virtue of a common 
 belief, men think together about the principles of 
 right and wrong, good and evil, then the poet can 
 readily use the drama to imitate, before an audience, in 
 the persons of actors, the universal idea of the conflict 
 always proceeding in human nature. When, how- 
 ever, the right of the individual to dissent from the 
 established creeds of society has been fully recognised, 
 history seems to show that epic and dramatic poetry 
 become inadequate forms of imitation. Thus we 
 have no record of the production of any really great 
 dramas on the Attic stage after the death of Socrates ; 
 nor has any great epic or dramatic poem been written 
 in England since the establishment of the Parlia- 
 mentary regime in 1688. Lyric poetry, on the 
 contrary, may flourish, and has flourished, in the later 
 stages of society, because this is a form of the art 
 better adapted than the others for the expression of 
 individual ideas. Hence Macaulay's proposition, if 
 properly amended, may stand, that when society 
 reaches the stage at which self-consciousness is widely 
 diff'used, the epic, dramatic, and it may be added the 
 didactic, forms of poetry decline, and where poetry
 
 390 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 survives as an art, men mainly seek to express their 
 ideas of Nature in the lyric form. 
 
 The series of lectures which I have had the 
 honour of deHvering to you have been an illustration 
 of this general truth. I have shown that the course 
 of modern European civilisation has been evolved out 
 of the conflict between several distinct and contrary 
 tendencies ; the tradition of Art and letters derived 
 from pre-Christian times, the formulated teaching of 
 the Catholic Church, and the customs and institutions 
 of the barbarous conquerors of the Roman Empire. 
 From this struggle of forces have arisen those vary- 
 ing ideas of Nature which philosophers in successive 
 ages have striven to define and poets to imitate, and 
 according as one principle or another among them 
 has gained the mastery, so has the balance varied in 
 men's minds between social authority and individual 
 liberty. But however the social equilibrium may 
 have been determined, I have not hitherto passed in 
 my lectures beyond the consideration of stages of Art, 
 in which the universal idea of Nature is imitated in 
 one of the more external forms epic, dramatic, or 
 didactic. We have seen the principles of liberty and 
 authority harmonised by the poets in such ideal 
 reflections of society as The Divine Comedy, The 
 Canterbury Tales, the plays of Shakespeare, Paradise 
 Lost, the Moral Essays of Pope ; but in each and all 
 of these, even in the last, the general and external 
 imitation of men and things prevails over the self- 
 conscious exhibition of the individual soul. We 
 have now reached an epoch in which the centrifugal
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 391 
 
 movement of the individual mind away from the 
 authoritative beliefs of society makes itself apparent 
 by a wide expression of self-consciousness in art. 
 The poet begins to turn his gaze inward ; he shifts 
 the sphere of observation from the life and character 
 of society to the seclusion of his own mind. As a 
 natural consequence, during the period extending 
 from the French Kevolution to our own day, the 
 lyrical form of poetry has prevailed ; the last hundred 
 years have been the age of the Odes on Immortality, 
 the Skylark, and the Nightingale, the age of In 
 Memoriam. And what is of main interest in rela- 
 tion to law in taste is to observe, first the indirect 
 influence of society in imposing its own limitations 
 and character on the ideas of the individual poet, and 
 next the nature of the ideal form in which the poet 
 attempts to give the appearance of universality to his 
 own self-consciousness. 
 
 But let me, to begin with, illustrate what the 
 self-conscious spirit in art is, by showing it, perhaps 
 in its earliest, certainly in its most characteristic, 
 shape, at the opening of Rousseau's Confessions ."I 
 form," says Rousseau, " an enterprise which has had 
 no precedent and will have no imitators. I wish to 
 show my fellows a man in all the truth of Nature, 
 and this man myself and nobody else. I feel my 
 heart and I know men. I am not like any of those 
 whom I have seen : I venture to believe that I have 
 not been made like anybody else in existence. If 
 I am not better than they arc, at least I am 
 something different. Whether Nature has done well
 
 392 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 or ill in breaking the mould in which she has cast me 
 may be decided after reading me. Let the last 
 trumpet sound when it will, I shall come wdth this 
 book in my hand to present myself before the 
 Sovereign Judge. I shall say boldly : Here is what 
 I have done, and what I have thought, and what 
 I was. I have told the good and the evil with 
 the same frankness. I have kept back nothing 
 bad : I have added nothing good ; and if I have 
 happened to employ some indifferent ornament, 
 this has been only to fill up a void occasioned by 
 want of memory. I may have supposed true what 
 I knew might be so, never what I knew to be 
 false. I have shown myself such as I was, good, 
 generous, sublime, when I have been so ; I have un- 
 veiled my inward nature as thou thyself, Eternal 
 Being, hast seen it. Gather about me the innumer- 
 able crowd of my fellows ; let them hear my con- 
 fessions ; let them blush for my unworthiness ; let 
 them bewail my sufferings. Let each of them in turn 
 lay bare his heart at the foot of Thy throne with the 
 same sincerity, and then let one of them say if he 
 dare : ' I was better than this man.' " 
 
 This unqualified assertion of the rights of the 
 individual conscience is indeed only the extension of 
 a spiritual movement which may be traced back to 
 the Renaissance. Shakespeare says in one of his 
 Sonnets : 
 
 For why should others' false adulterate eyes 
 Give salutation to my sportive blood 1 
 Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 393 
 
 Which in their wills count bad what I think good ? 
 
 No, I am that I am, and they that level 
 
 At my abuses reckon up their own : 
 
 I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel ; 
 
 By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown ; 
 
 Unless this general evil they maintain, 1 
 
 All men are bad, and in their badness reign. 
 
 But evidently self-consciousness must have become 
 widely diffused in European society since Shake- 
 speare's time, for you will observe that Rousseau goes 
 very near relying on the principle against which 
 Shakespeare protests : " All men are bad, and in their 
 badness reign." He says frankly : " I am a poor, 
 mean, pitiful, fellow, but I know that there is some- 
 thing interesting to the world in my poverty, mean- 
 ness, and pitifulness ; and I am sure that if I publish 
 my weaknesses you, my neighbours, who are really no 
 better than myself, will be fascinated with the picture 
 I shall show you. This condition of mind is so 
 universal that, although I am myself, and nobody is 
 like me, still I may confess myself to mankind 
 without any fear of forfeiting their sympathy and 
 esteem." 
 
 As Rousseau's Confessions furnish the most strik- 
 ing, if not the earliest, evidence of the spread of 
 self- consciousness in European society, so are his 
 novels the first examples of the effects of that self- 
 consciousness on imitative art. Like all men of 
 ardent imagination, Rousseau was anxious to uni- 
 versalise his own ideas, but while the creative artists 
 who preceded him sought to base theii- imitation of 
 Nature on the actions and passions of men in civil
 
 394 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 society, Kousseau sought for his materials in his own 
 breast. Over and over again he tells us in his 
 Confessions that such and such incidents in La 
 Nouvelle Hcloise and Emile are ideal reflections of 
 his individual experience, but since he found the 
 spectacle of his own passions and sentiments a drama 
 too bare of incident for the demands of imagination, 
 he endeavoured to extend it by his descriptions of 
 external nature, for the sake not of imitating objects 
 in themselves, but of showing them in their relation 
 to the moods of the mind. As almost all imaginative 
 writers since Rousseau have followed in his footsteps, 
 he may fairly be regarded as the founder of the self- 
 conscious, or romantic, mode of imitation. 
 
 The cause of this mood of mind, with the artistic 
 practice which resulted from it, was the recoil from 
 the system of Absolutism, which, during the 
 eighteenth century, prevailed over the whole conti- 
 nent of Europe. The idea of Nature then almost 
 universally established had been the work of a small 
 circle of scholars and philosophers revolving about 
 the difl"erent European courts, and since all the 
 avenues to fortune were in the power of the govern- 
 ing few, organised society was well content with 
 Leibnitz's creed of optimism, with Boileau's code of 
 taste, and with the general conclusion of Pope's 
 Essay on Man, "Whatever is is right." On the 
 other hand, the governed many, excluded from all 
 the privileges of political liberty, and oppressed with 
 the spectacle of widespread misery among the masses 
 of the people, were much more inclined to think.
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 395 
 
 " Whatever is is wrong." The men of letters, there- 
 fore, who represented this portion of the people, 
 bending their imagination inward, naturally framed 
 abstract ideas of society apart from the springs of 
 political action. Certain it is that Le Contrat Social 
 was the product of the most characteristic genius 
 of the reign of Louis XV. in France, and that 
 La Nouvelle Heloise, followed in the next genera- 
 tion by The Sorrows of Werther, prepared the way 
 for the final development of French and German 
 Romanticism. 
 
 In England the case was different. There at least 
 the regime of constitutional liberty was firmly estab- 
 lished, and the spectacle of its exercise both in the 
 sphere of politics and letters had influenced pro- 
 foundly the Continental imagination. In England 
 the spirit of compromise reigned supreme. The 
 nation had grown up in the midst of Catholic and 
 Feudal institutions, without suffering any check to 
 its internal development. Humanism, established in 
 the Universities by the efforts of the first scholars of 
 the Renaissance, while it had enlarged and liberalised 
 the old ways of scholastic thinking, had also helped to 
 mitigate the moral rigidity of the Calvinistic Reformers. 
 The Crown, without being deprived of its prerogative, 
 was checked in the exercise of it by Parliament. 
 
 Nevertheless, this social and intellectual balance 
 had not been attained without sacrifices, mainly 
 at the expense of the mediaeval order of things, 
 and many individuals, who were in sympathy 
 with that order, felt the restrictions in the idea
 
 396 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 of Nature and Society, imposed upon them alike by 
 the political system of Walpole and by the poetical 
 system of Pope. Their imaginations, dissatisfied with 
 the ideals of national action, were forced into secret 
 and subterranean channels. Many such underground 
 streams of thought may be observed flowing in the 
 English art and literature of the eighteenth century, 
 quite apart from the visible river of national life, so 
 deeply tinged with the colours of Deism, Materialism, 
 Patriotism, and Classicalism. We see there the stream 
 of Mysticism, represented equally in such a book as 
 William Law's Serious Call to a Devout Life, and at 
 a later date in the painting and poetry of Blake ; 
 the stream of Methodism manifesting itself in the 
 preaching of the Wesleys and the poetry of Cowper ; 
 the stream of Romanticism obscurely passing from 
 the French pastoral romance of the seventeenth 
 century into the sentimental novels of Richardson, 
 and thence again crossing to the Continent to inspire 
 the imagination of Rousseau. 
 
 Swelled by all these dififerent tributaries, there was 
 in England, on the eve of the French Revolution, a 
 great volume of romantic self-consciousness, running 
 counter to the main stream of national taste, as we see 
 it reflected in a periodical like the Anti- Jacobin, which, 
 on one side, expresses the political conservatism of Pitt, 
 and, on the other, the literary conservatism of Pope, 
 Johnson, and Giff'ord. When the spiritual dykes burst, 
 thewaters of self-consciousness rushed forth in a torrent 
 of lyric verse, of which the original impulse has con- 
 tinued to be felt for more than a hundred years.
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 397 
 
 They made for themselves two distinct channels 
 one, containing the active or, as it may be called, 
 political spirit of self-consciousness, and seeking an 
 outlet in a revolt against the creeds, customs, and 
 institutions of society, the other, the reflective spirit 
 which restricts itself to an analysis of the feelings 
 and passions of the mind ; both found an outward 
 expression in ideal forms of art. The former move- 
 ment, which includes the poetry of Shelley, may be 
 studied in the work of Byron ; the latter, embracing 
 the genius both of Wordsworth and Coleridge, has 
 its latest, and in many respects its most comprehensive, 
 expression in the works of Tennyson. 
 
 Byron is the most self-conscious figure in the 
 whole history of poetry ; and as the operations of 
 Kousseau's self-consciousness can best be observed in 
 his Confessions, so is the key to Byron's self-con- 
 sciousness furnished by his earliest volume. Hours of 
 Idleness. Here he may be seen, contemplating his 
 inward image and exhibiting himself to mankind, pre- 
 cisely as if he were some object in external nature. 
 Though the book is announced as the work of " a 
 minor," the writer moralises upon himself as an ex- 
 hausted votary of pleasure. In an address to one of 
 his acquaintance he speaks of himself as " a Timon of 
 19." He appears before the mirror of his imagination, 
 sometimes as the impoverished lord of a half-ruined 
 Abbey, sometimes as the last of a long line of wicked 
 ancestry, or again, as the heart-broken lover of one 
 whom marriage with a rival has separated from him 
 for ever. Already his passion for solitary Nature and
 
 398 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 his antagonism to society, afterwards so powerfully 
 expressed in the third canto of Childe Harold, is re- 
 vealed in the germ, nor, in view of his history, is it 
 possible to read without wonder the following lines, 
 the work of a boy of nineteen : 
 
 Few are my years, and yet I feel 
 
 The world was ne'er designed for me : 
 Ah ! why do darkening shades conceal 
 
 The hour when man must cease to be 1 
 Once I beheld a splendid dream, 
 
 A visionary scene of bliss. 
 Truth ! wherefore did thy hated beam 
 
 Awake me to a world like this ? 
 
 I loved but those I loved are gone, 
 
 Had friends my early friends are fled, 
 How cheerless feels the heart alone. 
 
 When all its former hopes are dead ! 
 Though gay companions o'er the bowl 
 
 Dispel awhile the sense of ill ; 
 Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul, 
 
 The heart, the heart is lonely still. 
 
 Fain would I fly the haunts of men ; 
 
 I seek to shun, not hate, mankind ; 
 My breast requires the sullen glen, 
 
 W^hose gloom may suit a darkened mind. 
 Oh, that to me the wings were given, 
 
 Which bear the turtle to her nest ! 
 Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven, 
 
 To flee away, and be at rest. 
 
 Truly, says the Scripture, " The heart is deceitful 
 above all things, who can know it ? " Little did 
 Byron think, when he breathed, in all sincerity, his 
 sentimental and monastic aspirations for the wings of
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 399 
 
 a dove, that, within a year, he would be attacking 
 in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, the most 
 famous and powerful names in the literature of the 
 time ; that his request for the sullen glen whose 
 gloom might suit a darkened mind was to be followed 
 by years of excitement, in which the creator of Conrad 
 and Cain and Sardanapalus was to impersonate for the 
 moment the spirit of all that was brilliant and revolu- 
 tionary in the society about him. The truth is that 
 Byron's nature was far too ardent and energetic to 
 confine itself, like Rousseau, to the cloister of his own 
 thought ; he needed to project his imagination into 
 action, whether as the leader of a national rising in 
 Greece or as the satirist of society in England. He 
 thirsted for distinction, and sought it sometimes in 
 swimming, boxing, and even in cricket, sometimes in 
 epic, dramatic, and satiric verse ; nor can anything 
 be more instructive to the critic than to observe the 
 action and reaction between the self-consciousness of 
 his powerful genius and the immutable necessities of 
 these, the more external forms of the art of poetry. 
 
 Viewed strictly on their epic and dramatic side, 
 the romantic tales and tragedies of Byron are wanting 
 in most of the qualities which such compositions de- 
 mand. This is a deficiency which, as I have said, is 
 common to all late poets. The great minstrel, the 
 born dramatist, must be above all things a creator. 
 It is his business to produce what Aristotle calls t6 
 TTiOavov, the efi'ect of ideal probability, to invent a 
 visionary world in which his own imagination and 
 that of his audience can breathe freely outside them-
 
 400 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 selves, to people it with beings unlike anything in 
 actual experience, and yet capable of raising in the 
 minds of his hearers images of men and women, ex- 
 pressing themselves in sentiments and diction recall- 
 ing those of real life. Should any appearance of 
 mechanism or artifice raise the suspicion that these 
 actors are the lifeless puppets of the poet's brain, a 
 sense of unreality intrudes on the sacred ground, and 
 the illusion vanishes. For the creation of the illusion a 
 groundwork of legend or history seems almost neces- 
 sary, because, as Aristotle says, the mind most readily 
 believes in things which are reported to have happened ; 
 certain it is that neither the Greek dramatists nor 
 Shakespeare invented the matter of their dramas. 
 But in the late days of poetry it is difficult to find 
 legendary matter on which the imagination can work 
 sympathetically ; hence the creative instinct turns to 
 the prose romance in preference to poetry, and prob- 
 ably the only example of an ancient legend being 
 conceived by a self-conscious poet with unerring 
 instinct, and expressed with perfect propriety, is 
 Goethe's Faust. 
 
 But while all self-conscious art is liable to these 
 drawbacks, Byron's poetry suffers from them in a more 
 than ordinary degree. His method of composing a 
 drama, for example, is entirely undramatic. He never 
 selects his action for its interest as a whole, but because 
 it gives him an opportunity for the exhibition of 
 certain special characters, sentiments, and descriptions, 
 a method which is of course an inversion of the method 
 of Sophocles or Shakespeare. Nothing can be more
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 401 
 
 absurd than the plot of Manfred or The Defo7"med 
 Transformed ; nothing more bare of dramatic situa- 
 tion than The Tivo Foscari or Sardanapalus. Of the 
 arts of complication, change of fortune, and denoue- 
 ment, necessary to the construction of a good play 
 or a good story, Byron was either ignorant or care- 
 less, as must be evident to every reader of Lara or 
 The Corsair. Nor are these defects of ideal structure 
 atoned for by the interest and sympathy excited by 
 the characters represented. We do not think of 
 Byron's dramatis personae as we do of Ulysses, or 
 Thersites, or Shylock, or Meg Merrilies, that is to 
 say, as beings who have an ideal existence of their 
 own ; Cain, and Manfred, and Lara, and Conrad, are 
 felt to be nothing but externalised reflections of the 
 poet himself. 
 
 But when we turn from the epic and dramatic 
 forms of Byron to the lyrical impulse out of which 
 they spring, the whole aspect of the question changes. 
 We see then that the characteristics of his poetry 
 are the result of an effort to find what is universal in 
 nature in his own self- consciousness, and to bring 
 himself into touch with society by clothing his self- 
 consciousness in an external shape. The epic form of 
 verse is employed by him, because it gives him an 
 opportunity of describing his own moods and those 
 appearances of inanimate Nature which are akin to 
 them ; the drama enables him to multiply himself in 
 a variety of dramatis personae, and by means of 
 frequent soliloquy ; in the satire, especially the per- 
 sonal form of satire, developed by Pope, he can 
 
 2d
 
 402 LAW IN TASTE part iii 
 
 indulge fully his spleen against the established order 
 of society. Hence we are necessarily brought to judge 
 of his work from the starting-point fixed by Rousseau, 
 and setting aside the question whether any man has 
 a right to confess himself to the reader without 
 reference to the supreme authority of moral law, the 
 points for the critic to decide are, first, whether the 
 poetry of Byron raises in the mind the idea of the 
 Universal, and secondly, whether the form of his ex- 
 pression is an adequate vehicle for communicating 
 this idea to the world. 
 
 As to the first question there can be but one answer. 
 Byron, the most self-conscious, the most individual, 
 of English poets, is also, in a sense, the most repre- 
 sentative of all English poets since Shakespeare. 
 Whatever there is in human nature of consciousness 
 of good and evil, of rebellion against the law and 
 order of the universe, of discontent with the standards 
 of society, seems to have concentrated itself in the 
 mind of this child of genius, convulsed by the violence 
 of his own passions, morbidly sensitive to a single 
 physical defect, haunted by the fear of madness and 
 the sense of inherited crime, always revolving in his 
 heart the real or imaginary injuries he had suffered 
 from mankind. The meeting of so many outward 
 and inward forces in Byron's imagination produced in 
 him two typical moods, both of which had been ex- 
 pressed long before in dramatic and epic poetry. 
 One was the intellectual ennui of Hamlet: " What a 
 piece of work is a man ! How noble in reason ! how 
 infinite in faculties ! in form and moving how express
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 403 
 
 and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in ap- 
 prehension how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! 
 the paragon of animals ! And yet to me, what is this 
 quintessence of dust ? Man delights not me ; no, nor 
 woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to 
 say so." 
 
 Under the influence of Rousseau, the discontent 
 with self and society, thus expressed in the character 
 of Hamlet, grew into the feeling for external Nature, 
 so widely experienced in the modern mind, which 
 Byron expresses in Childe Harold : 
 
 I live not in myself, but I become 
 Portion of that around me ; and to me 
 High mountains are a feeling, but the hum 
 Of human cities torture : I can see 
 Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be 
 A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, 
 Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee, 
 And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain 
 Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain. 
 
 Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part 
 Of me and of my soul, as I of them ? 
 Is not the love of these deep in my heart 
 With a pure passion "i should I not contemn 
 All objects, if compared with these ? and stem 
 A tide of suffering, rather than forgo 
 Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm 
 Of those whose eyes are only turn'd below, 
 Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not 
 glow ? 
 
 Here is the sentimental mood sketched in Hours 
 of Idleness, developed to sublime intensity. But just 
 as Hours of Idleness was followed by English Bards
 
 404 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 and Scotch Reviewers, so, in Don Juan, Byron almost 
 immediately abandons the monastic impulse, embodied 
 in Childe Harold, for his still more characteristic role 
 of reckless defiance, and, in his inflexible opposition to 
 all forms of established authority, seems to appropriate 
 the attitude of him whom Dryden called the hero of 
 Paradise Lost and Johnson the first of the Whigs : 
 
 All is not lost ; the unconquerable will, 
 And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
 And courage never to submit or yield, 
 And what is else not to be overcome. 
 
 Who does not hear the accents of the lost Arch- 
 anfjel in this stanza of Don Juan ? 
 
 And I will war, at least in words, and should 
 My chance so happen deeds, with all M^ho war 
 
 With Thought ; and of Thought's foes by far most rude, 
 Tyrants and sycophants have been and are. 
 
 I know not who may conquer : if I could 
 Have such a prescience, it should be no bar 
 
 To this my plain, sworn, downright, detestation 
 
 Of every despotism in every nation. 
 
 If any proof were needed of the universal character 
 of Byron's conception, it would be found in the 
 splendid natural force of his expression. His verse 
 may be of course blamed, and justly, for defects of 
 execution, for tawdriness, slovenliness, negligence, 
 and obscurity ; but, when all is said, no poet equals 
 him in the irresistible power with which he moulds 
 ideal forms to embody inward emotions. His genius 
 is above all things lyrical ; as I have said, he uses 
 epic, dramatic, and satiric forms only for the sake of
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 405 
 
 self-expression ; but the ease and vigour with which 
 he adapts each in turn to his purpose are wonderful. 
 He is at home in every kind of metre. He employs 
 the Spenser stanza for analysis of feeling and descrip- 
 tions of scenery, turns the classic heroic couplet into 
 a vehicle for the swift rush of romantic passion, seizes 
 on the soliloquy and blank verse of the drama, as the 
 mirror to reflect his feeling for nature and his loath- 
 ing for the world, and transforms the light mock- 
 heroic of the Italian ottava rinia into savage satire 
 on English society. His best work is done when he 
 can assume a point of vantage or a character which 
 allows him to comment on himself and mankind, 
 whether this be contemplative, as in Childe Harold, 
 or cynical, as in Don Juan, and he himself is quite 
 aware of the characteristic tendency of his genius. 
 
 If I have any fault it is digression, 
 Leaving my people to proceed alone, 
 While I soliloquise beyond expresaion. 
 
 As a rule self-consciousness and soliloquy lead to 
 affectation ; but it was not so with Byron, whose modes 
 of expression are absolutely natural. Theatrical as 
 his thought often is, he was saved from the worst of 
 all literary vices, partly by the immense force of his 
 genius, partly by the excellence of his literary judg- 
 ment, and partly also by his knowledge of social con- 
 ventions and language. Whether his judgments of 
 the world and himself are sound or not, they are at 
 least sincere, and they are delivered with the frank 
 defiance of one who is confident of having taken the
 
 4o6 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 measure of his audience. In this respect his style 
 differs from that of most of his contemporaries, par- 
 ticularly the Lake School, who contended against the 
 world without having mixed in it, thus drawing from 
 Byron a criticism which was not altogether unjust : 
 
 You gentlemen ! by dint of long seclusion 
 From better company, have kept your own 
 
 At Keswick, and through still continued fusion 
 Of one another's minds, at last are grown 
 
 To deem, as a most logical conclusion, 
 That Poesy has wreaths for you alone. 
 
 Completely versed in the conditions of the 
 eighteenth century style, Byron was able to harmonise 
 it with the opposite tendencies and characteristics of 
 his own age, and his verse admirably illustrates our 
 postulate of English Fine Art, namely, the fusion of 
 contrary qualities. Macaulay says of him with truth : 
 " He was the man of the last thirteen years of the 
 eighteenth century, and of the first twenty-three years 
 of the nineteenth century. He belonged half to the 
 old and half to the new school of poetry. His per- 
 sonal taste led him to the former ; his thirst for praise 
 to the latter ; his talents were equally suited to both. 
 His fame was a common ground on which the zealots 
 of both sides, Gifford, for example, and Shelley, might 
 meet. He was the representative not of either literary 
 party, but of both at once, and of their conflict, and 
 of the victory by which that conflict was terminated. 
 His poetry fills and measures the whole of the vast 
 interval through which our literature has passed since 
 the time of Johnson. It touches the Essay on Man
 
 LECT.ix BYRON AND TENNYSON 407 
 
 at the one extremity aud The Excursion at the 
 other." 
 
 Tennyson, not much more than twenty years 
 younger than Byron, naturally fell to some extent 
 under the same poetic influences, and his earliest 
 published work which appeared in the little volume 
 called Poems by Two Brothers (1827) is suffused 
 with the colours of the Byronic after-glow. In the 
 volume of his poems printed in 1830 appeared a 
 composition of some length (since suppressed) entitled 
 "Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive 
 Mind not at unity itself," full of that morbid intro- 
 spective spirit, generated by " the self- torturing 
 sophist wild Rousseau," which breathes through 
 Hours of Idleness. This vein of self-analysis is, at 
 a somewhat later date, worked out with more art in 
 The Two Voices, and, not unnaturally, it is accom- 
 panied in Locksley Hall by an anti- social and 
 misanthropic mood, almost as gloomy as Byron's own : 
 
 Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of 
 
 youth ! 
 Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth ! 
 
 Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule ! 
 Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the 
 fool! 
 
 The misanthropic view of Nature and Society is 
 carried still further in Maud : 
 
 I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal ; 
 I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or like 
 A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way : 
 For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal ;
 
 4o8 LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by 
 
 the shrike, 
 And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder 
 
 and prey. 
 
 From the soliloquising habit of Bjrron, too, Tenny- 
 son took the form of lyrical monologue in character, 
 in which he is fond of embodying his self-conscious 
 moods. But when his modes of conception and 
 expression are more closely compared with Byron's, 
 the self-consciousness of each is seen to spring from 
 a totally different source. Byron's is personal, the 
 product of character, temper, inheritance ; Tennyson's 
 is reflective, the result of the pressure of society on 
 the individual mind, of the decay of inward faith in 
 the midst of the weakening of external creeds and 
 institutions. As he says in the " Supposed Con- 
 fessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind " : 
 
 How sweet to have a common faith ! 
 
 To hold a common scorn of death, 
 
 Ajid at a burial to hear 
 
 The creaking cords which wound and eat 
 
 Into my human heart, whene'er 
 
 Earth goes to earth, with grief, not fear. 
 
 With hopeful grief, were passing sweet ! 
 
 Byron's self- consciousness always expressed itself 
 in some form of action ; Tennyson's ends in reflec- 
 tion. He says in the spirit of Hamlet : 
 
 weary life ! weary death ! 
 spirit and heart made desolate ! 
 damned vacillating state ! 
 
 Moreover, the poetical forms which each poet
 
 J 
 
 BYRON AND TENNYSON 409 
 
 chooses for the vehicles of his emotion are radically 
 opposed. Byron describes himself in the epic, and 
 makes his characters soliloquise of himself in the drama ; 
 he would never have dramatised his self-consciousness 
 in a lyric form as Tennyson does in Locksley Hall 
 and Maud. What Byron was in his attitude towards 
 society at the beginning, that he remained to the 
 end, rebellious, irreconcilable, scornful, satiric ; the 
 lyric and satiric impulse, disclosed in Hours of Idle- 
 ness, exhibits itself, only with matured power, in 
 Don Juan. Tennyson, on the contrary, seems to be 
 always advancing in endeavour towards some point of 
 art in which his mind may attain repose and unity ; 
 he seeks to mer^e his own self-consciousness in the 
 larger consciousness of society, and in proportion as 
 he approaches to this external point of contemplation, 
 he leaves behind him the fluid lyric impulse of his 
 youth, seeking to imprison his ideas in the visible 
 and abiding forms peculiar to the arts of painting and 
 sculpture. Of these self-conscious movements of his 
 imagination he gives us in his poems many interest- 
 ing autobiographical glimpses. How suggestive, for 
 example, are the following lines from In Memoriam 
 written with reference to the remark of a woman that 
 " doubt is devil-born " when read in connection with 
 the interjections of "the second-rate mind not at 
 unity with itself" " damned vacillating state ! " 
 
 I know not : one indeed I knew 
 
 In many a subtle question versed, 
 Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first, 
 
 But ever strove to make it tnze :
 
 4IO LAW IN TASTE 
 
 Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 
 
 At last he beat his music out. 
 
 There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds. 
 
 And SO again, in illustration of the sensitiveness 
 with which the poet's self- consciousness shrinks or 
 expands with the self-consciousness of society, it is 
 interesting to contrast the conclusion of Locksley 
 Hall with the conclusion of Maud. The jilted 
 lover in the former cries : 
 
 Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath 
 
 and holt. 
 Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt. 
 
 Let it fall on I^ocksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow ; 
 For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go. 
 
 But the semi-madman of Maud gets rid of his " old 
 hysterical mock-disease " thus : 
 
 And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath 
 With a loj'al people shouting a battle cry, 
 Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly 
 Far into the North, and battle, and seas of death. 
 
 Let it fiame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind. 
 We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still, 
 And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind ; 
 It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill ; 
 I have felt with my native land, I am one Avith my kind, 
 I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd. 
 
 But whether the poet's haunting self-consciousness 
 finds relief in this manner, or whether, as in Locksley 
 Hall Sixty Yea^^s After, it relapses into something 
 of the "old hysterical mock -disease," the artistic
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 411 
 
 resolve to arrest the transitory feeling in a perfect 
 and abiding ideal form remains. How intimately 
 this poetic impulse is associated with the centrifugal 
 movement of the individual apart from society is 
 shown by a very fine passage in The Palace of Art : 
 
 No nightingale delighteth to prolong 
 
 Her low preamble all alone, 
 More than my soul to hear her echo'd song 
 Throb thro' the ribbed stone ; 
 
 Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth, 
 
 Joying to feel herself alive, 
 Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible earth, 
 Lord of the senses five ; 
 
 Communing with herself : " All these are mine, 
 
 And let the world have peace or wars, 
 'Tis one to mo." 
 
 " I take possession of man's mind and deed. 
 I care not what the sects may brawl. 
 I sit as God holding no form of creed. 
 But contemplating all." 
 
 Almost inevitably an imagination thus affected 
 seeks to develop in the art of poetry those elements 
 which are most akin to the plastic arts and to music. 
 Among the English poets Tennyson is the greatest 
 word-painter. Whatever form of poetry he attempts 
 and he has attempted all this tendency is stamped 
 upon it, and success attends him in proportion as the 
 form is capable of being used for sculpturesque, or 
 pictorial, or musical, purposes. The genius of painting 
 inspires to perfection the monologues and lyrical 
 idylls Tithonus, Ulysses, Mariana in the Moated
 
 412 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 Grange, and the like which form the bulk of Tenny- 
 son's earlier work. It attains its meridian in In 
 Memoriam, where, joined with the penetrating force 
 of intense self- analysis, it succeeds in giving dignity 
 of form to the most familiar objects and associations. 
 What other poet has ever written thus of a picnic ? 
 
 Nor less it pleased in livelier moods, 
 
 Beyond the bounding hill to stray. 
 And break the livelong summer day 
 
 With banquet in the distant woods ; 
 
 Whereat we glanced from theme to theme, 
 Discuss'd the books to love or hate, 
 Or touch'd the changes of the state, 
 
 Or threaded some Socratic dream ; 
 
 But if I praised the busy town, 
 
 He loved to rail against it still, 
 For " ground in yonder social mill 
 
 We rub each other's angles down, 
 
 " And merge," he said, " in form and gloss 
 The picturesque of man and man." 
 We talk'd : the stream beneath us ran. 
 The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss. 
 
 Or cool'd within the glooming wave ; 
 
 And last, returning from afar, 
 
 Before the crimson-circled star 
 Had fall'n into her father's grave, 
 
 And brushing ankle-deep in flowers. 
 
 We heard behind the woodbine veil 
 The milk that bubbled in the pail, 
 
 And buzzings of the honied hours. 
 
 Analogous to this power of word-painting in Tenny- 
 son is the delight in novel metrical experiments for the 
 purpose of embodying moods of self-consciousness, as in
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 413 
 
 Maud; memories of travel, as in The Daisy ; impres- 
 sions of character, as in TTie Northern Farmer ; or the 
 movement of ancient rhythms, as in his imitation of 
 Latin Alcaics and his translation of the T7ie Battle of 
 B^mnanburh. Rare, indeed, is the skill with which 
 he arrests the fugitive impression ; but it is to be 
 observed that his musical and pictorial methods only 
 avail him so long as he confines himself to the lyrical 
 sphere. When his ambition carries him to the com- 
 position of dramatic or epic verse, self-consciousness 
 destroys the ideal illusion, and fails to conceal the 
 labours of his art. Tennyson is even less dramatic 
 than Byron. Marino Faliero and Cain at least raise 
 the idea of the poet's energetic and typical personality, 
 but Queen Mary, and Harold, and Bechet imitate no 
 universal idea. The same is true of Tennyson's epical 
 efforts. The Idylls of the King, for example. In my 
 opinion the poet was ill-inspired in his attempt to make 
 that beautiful and suggestive tour de force, the Moi'te 
 d' Arthur of the early poems, the foundation of an epic 
 without unity, in which the actions and characters of 
 knights are employed merely to decorate the transient 
 phases of modern self-consciousness. Still more in- 
 a|)propriate are these pictorial and metrical effects, 
 when applied to heighten and dignify the familiar 
 incidents of life. Take, for example, the manner in 
 which the poet, in Aylmers Field, narrates the dis- 
 covery by Sir Aylmer, in a tree, of the clandestine 
 correspondence between Leolin Averill and Edith 
 Aylmer :
 
 414 LAW IN TASTE part iii 
 
 There the manorial lord too curiously 
 
 Raking in that millennial touchwood-dust 
 
 Found for himself a bitter treasure-trove ; 
 
 Burst his own wyvern on the seal, and read, 
 
 Writhing, a letter from his child, for which 
 
 Came at the moment Leolin's emissary, 
 
 A crippled lad, and coming turn'd to fly. 
 
 But scared with threats of jail and halter gave 
 
 To him that fluster'd his poor parish wits 
 
 The letter which he brought, and swore besides 
 
 To play their go-between as heretofore. 
 
 Nor let them know themselves betray'd ; and then. 
 
 Soul-stricken at their kindness to him, went 
 
 Hating his own lean heart and miserable. 
 
 I venture to say that a more un-English mannerism, 
 in the form of narrative poetry, was never invented. 
 
 The poetry of Byron and Tennyson furnishes a 
 striking illustration of that law which I en- 
 deavoured to define at the opening of my lecture. 
 Great as the position of each is in the history of our 
 poetry, their success has not been achieved in the 
 epic and dramatic departments of the art. They 
 have not enriched our imagination with those ideal 
 scenes of action and passion, which in the earlier 
 stages of society the poet, breathing the atmosphere 
 of common beliefs and customs, is able to call up 
 before the mind of a public audience. Their task has 
 been accomplished in the lyrical sphere ; it has been 
 theirs to find the metrical form fitted to express 
 emotions which, though universal, find as a rule no 
 outlet in the life of society, and remain buried 
 in the secret consciousness of the individual soul. 
 Byron's power lies in the intense force and natural-
 
 LECT.ix BYRON AND TENNYSON 413 
 
 ness of the language in which he communicates his 
 own consciousness to the reader; Tennyson's in the 
 art with which he uses words so as to place the most 
 subtle movements of the reader's consciousness before 
 the imagination in an almost visible form. 
 
 It is by virtue of this representative form that 
 both poets satisfy the law of the art as defined by 
 Aristotle. Though it is, of course, impossible to 
 test the presence of the Universal in lyric poetry in 
 the same way as in epic and dramatic poetry, by 
 comparing the imagery of the poet with the life 
 of Nature itself, yet, viewed in a certain aspect, the 
 imitation of self - consciousness may assume an ex- 
 ternal shape. If the lyric poet does not, like the 
 dramatist, " hold the mirror up to nature," he can, 
 nevertheless, " show the very age and body of the 
 time his form and pressure." And as, by the 
 Aristotelian canon, the art of the dramatist is seen 
 in the representation of ideas of action and passion 
 which seem always natural, always probable, so the 
 art of the lyric poet is felt by his touching those 
 sentiments and emotions which are common to 
 society, or have been common to it in some stage 
 of its historic life. Judged by this standard both 
 Byron and Tennyson will be found to satisfy the 
 law of their art. Each in his own way is a 
 thoroughly representative poet. Byron expresses 
 the passions of a ruling caste, the impulse of revolt 
 widely felt in the last days of the ascendency of 
 that great and powerful class, which directed the 
 government of England after the Revolution of
 
 4i6 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 1688. Blended in his verse there is perceived a 
 conflict of opposing tendencies, the desperation of a 
 Catiline and the patriotism of a Cicero, the selfish- 
 ness of the debauched and gambling companions of 
 the Prince Regent, and the public spirit of the men 
 who defended the liberties of Europe against the 
 armies of Napoleon. Who does not feel the self- 
 conscious emotion of aristocratic English society in 
 the speech which Byron puts into the mouth of 
 Marino Faliero, when urged to destroy the Venetian 
 Senate ? Isaac Bertuccio says to him : 
 
 You passed their sentence, and it is a just one. 
 
 Faliero replies : 
 
 Aye, so it seems and so it is to you ; 
 
 You are a patriot, plebeian Gracchus 
 
 The rebel's oracle, the people's tribune 
 
 I blame you not you act in your vocation ; 
 
 They smote you, and oppressed you, and despised you : 
 
 So they have me : but you ne'er spoke with them ; 
 
 You never broke their bread, nor shared their salt ; 
 
 You never had their wine-cup at your lips ; 
 
 You grew not up with them, nor laughed, nor wept, 
 
 Nor held a revel in their company ; 
 
 Ne'er smiled to see them smile, nor claimed their smile 
 
 In social interchange for yours, nor trusted. 
 
 Nor wore them in your heart of hearts, as I have. 
 
 This is not good dramatic poetry, for nothing can be 
 more improbable than that one conspirator should so 
 address another, but, regarded as an ideal lyrical 
 reflection of the sentiments towards society of 
 Byron and a large number of his contemporaries 
 in the period just antecedent to the first Reform
 
 LECT. IX BYRON AND TENNYSON 417 
 
 Bill, it would be difficult to find finer verse. And 
 the imitation of these emotions will always be 
 interesting to those who care for the history of their 
 country. 
 
 Tennyson's lyrical mode of expressing social self- 
 consciousness is equally characteristic. His verse 
 does not reflect, like Byron's, the personal discontent 
 of a class, but rather the inward sufi'ering of the 
 individual who cannot bring his mind into harmony 
 with the ideals of a free and expanding community. 
 The self-consciousness he represents is that of a large 
 portion of educated society, caused by the change from 
 oligarchical to democratic self-government eff'ected 
 by the Reform Bill of 1832. As a poet, sensitively 
 alive to all outward change, he is aware of the 
 material growth of the nation in numbers, in wealth, 
 and in all the external arts and refinements of life. 
 At the same time, as an individual, his imagination 
 fails to find satisfaction in the public life of the nation, 
 expressed in the acts of its government, while his own 
 consciousness is distracted by a perpetual analysis of 
 the beliefs and customs on which the historic character 
 of society is founded. This conflict between the spirit 
 of action and the spirit of reflection has stimulated 
 the genius of every prominent English writer in the 
 last two generations : outlets of expression have been 
 sought for it in the self-torturing prose of Sartor 
 Resartus; in the analytical psychology of Middle- 
 march; in the quasi-dramatic monologues of Men 
 and Women. But as it is in its essence self- 
 conscious, the true form for its utterance would seem 
 
 2e
 
 4i8 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 to be lyrical ; and uowhere, I think, has a lyrical 
 vehicle been found for it equal in harmony, in 
 lucidity, in repose, in dignity, in all those condi- 
 tions which Fine Art demands, to the verse of 
 In Memoriam.
 
 X 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Now that I have come to the close of this series of 
 lectures, it only remains for me to look back over 
 the ground that has been covered, and to sum up 
 the results of the argument that I have endeavoured 
 to develop. But before doing so it is perhaps not 
 unnatural for me on this, the last occasion on which 
 I shall have the honour of addressing you, to review 
 for a moment the general circumstances of the period, 
 during which I have held the Chair of Poetry cir- 
 cumstances which have doubtless exercised an un- 
 conscious influence in directing me to the choice of 
 my subject, and I suppose also in shaping to some 
 extent the tendency of my thought. By a curious 
 coincidence I was chosen Professor of Poetry just 
 after a general election had decided an issue of the 
 gravest importance to the fortunes of the United 
 Kingdom ; I lay down my oftice after another 
 general election has given the verdict of the people 
 on a policy which, for good or ill, must be regarded 
 as a turning-point in the destinies of the British 
 Empire. Unless we are to look on art as an abstract 
 almost inhuman region, remote from the actions and
 
 420 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 emotions of the living world, it is impossible not to 
 feel that great events like these must reverberate in 
 the spiritual sphere, and perhaps awake fresh move- 
 ments of taste and imagination. 
 
 By another coincidence, not less noteworthy, I 
 bring my term of office to an end with the close 
 of a century. It may be the effect of fancy or 
 superstition, but we are certainly moved by a 
 common instinct to look on each cycle of a hundred 
 years as marking by itself a definite stage in the 
 course of human affairs. Successive centuries present 
 themselves under separate and distinctive aspects, 
 and seem to carry forward the stages of the world's 
 history like the connected acts of a drama. If we 
 turn our imagination back to the time when the 
 distinctively modern era begins, we see in the six- 
 teenth century the great movements of the Renais- 
 sance, and the Reformation at work to undermine the 
 Catholic fabric of the Papacy and the Empire, which 
 constituted the order of mediaeval Europe, and to 
 lay the foundations of the Balance of Power, which 
 holds together the society of our own times. Here 
 we have the opening of the drama the Seo-t? as 
 Aristotle would have called it, or the evolution of the 
 situation. A second act seems to begin with the 
 seventeenth century, as we watch the progress of 
 the disintegrating movement in the heart of each 
 nation, and the struggle of rival monarchies, repre- 
 senting separate national interests, to obtain the 
 preponderance of power within the newly balanced 
 European system. The eighteenth century is the
 
 LECT. X CONCLUSION 421 
 
 third act, in which the structural interest of the 
 drama reaches its climax : from the dawn of the 
 century to its last decade the solvent of Philosophy 
 continues to loosen the exterior framework of Feudal 
 Absolutism, raised up by the joint labours of the 
 Renaissance and the Reformation, till it is on 
 the point of toppling to its fall in the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 The fourth act brings us to the close of our own 
 century. And as we look back on its long scene of 
 change and transformation, we recognise that the 
 master passion of the dying era has been Liberty, 
 Liberty, in the first place, for peoples. From the 
 carnivals of the first Revolution, in the streets of Paris, 
 down to the last earthquake shocks of 1848, races and 
 nationalities start into infant life, and strive after 
 ideals as yet but dimly understood amid the chaotic 
 struggle for existence. Liberty is aimed at, in the 
 second place, for the individual. In one way or 
 another the tendency of the century, at any rate the 
 first half of it, has been to seek to confine the func- 
 tions of the State within the narrowest possible limits, 
 so as to allow the individual the fullest play in 
 developing his capacities as he chooses. Each in- 
 dividual must have complete freedom of action. 
 Every householder must have his individual share in 
 the government of the country. The workman must 
 be freed from all restraints upon his right to sell his 
 labour to whom, at the place where, and at the time 
 when, he chooses. The merchant, freed from the tram- 
 mels of Navigation Laws and protective duties, has to
 
 422 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 think simply and solely of buying in the cheapest 
 market, and selling in the dearest. 
 
 Again, the individual must enjoy the largest liberty 
 of thought ; the religious sectarian is not only to be 
 permitted the freedom of worshipping undisturbed in 
 his own way, but of attacking, if he \vishes, the founda- 
 tion of the corporate Religion of the State ; the 
 advanced thinker must be free to push his intellectual 
 theories in public up to that dim and doubtful point, 
 at which the expression of obscenity or blasphemy may 
 seem to imperil the well-being of society. And this 
 because Liberty is regarded and in a sense rightly 
 regarded as being an end in itself; so that the aim 
 of philosophy in England, at least up to the middle of 
 the nineteenth century, might be summed up in the 
 phrase laisser faire, " let be," and has consisted rather 
 in preventing the State from interfering with the 
 liberty of the individual than in directing its energies 
 to a constructive social end. 
 
 Those who can carry back their thoughts as far as 
 I can will remember the enthusiasm with which young 
 University men, in the sixth and seventh decades of 
 the century, embraced the doctrines of the most 
 influential teacher of this school, John Stuart Mill, 
 especially as expounded in his book on Liberty. Their 
 thoughts and feelings were those described by Words- 
 worth pre-eminently the poet of Individualism as 
 prevailing at the opening of the Revolutionary era : 
 
 pleasant exercise of hope and joy, 
 
 For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood 
 
 Upon our side, us who were strong in love.
 
 LECT. X CONCLUSION 423 
 
 Bliss was in it in that dawn to be alive ; 
 But to be young was very heaven. 
 
 And the ideals of young Oxford were those of which 
 
 the same poet speaks afterwards in a passage less 
 
 well known : 
 
 What delight, 
 How glorious, in self-knowledge and self-rule, 
 To look through all the frailties of the world, 
 And with a resolute mastery, shaking off 
 Infirmities of nature, time, and place, 
 Build social upon personal Liberty, 
 Which to the blind restraints of general laws 
 Superior, magisterially adopts 
 One guide, the light of circumstances, flashed 
 Upon an independent intellect ! 
 Thus expectation rose again : thus hope, 
 From her first ground expelled, grew proud once more. 
 Oft as my thoughts were turned to human kind, 
 I scorned indifference, but inflamed ^v^th thirst 
 Of a secure intelligence, and, sick 
 Of other longing, I pursued what seemed 
 A more exalted Nature ; wished that Man 
 Should start out of his earthy worm-like state, 
 And spread abroad the wings of Liberty, 
 Lord of himself and undisturbed delights. 
 
 Such were the aspirations of that individual 
 self-consciousness, generated by the atmosphere of 
 Kevolutionary liberty, which prevailed till about 
 the year 1870. Then came the necessary reaction. 
 From the exaggerated hopes of human progress men 
 passed into a fit of revolutionary pessimism, and the 
 world of Culture began to exchange the somewhat 
 bourgeois Liberalism of Mill for the gloomy dis- 
 dain of Schopenhauer. Nevertheless, throughout the
 
 424 LAW IN TASTE part iii 
 
 remainder of the century individual liberty has still 
 asserted itself as the end and goal of existence, 
 individual consciousness as the standard of all in- 
 tellectual measurement ; only instead of looking 
 forward with Wordsworth to political Liberty as the 
 aim of human society, the Decadents, the Symbolists, 
 the votaries of the Fin du Siecle, and other philo- 
 sophical sects which have sprung out of the study 
 of Schopenhauer, now aspire to the freedom of Art 
 and Imagination, as a kind of heaven of self-culture, 
 in which each man can, if he thinks fit, find a refuge 
 and solace from the evils of existence. From the 
 enthusiastic dreams of Revolutionary progress we 
 have turned to the opiates of intellectual Buddhism. 
 
 Men of sense and manliness will not allow them- 
 selves to be infected with the despair of fantastic 
 sects ; pessimism is merely the unbalanced recoil 
 from an exaggerated optimism, not warranted by 
 facts and experience. One of the greatest benefits 
 of increased individual liberty has been that it has 
 stimulated the conscience of society ; and the vast 
 development of a free press, while it perplexes us 
 with the multiformity of facts and opinions converg- 
 ing on all sides upon our consciousness, enables us to 
 face these in a spirit free from prejudice. No right- 
 thinking man has given up his belief in the 
 advantages of rational and constitutional liberty ; but, 
 on the other hand, every sound reasoner is much more 
 ready than he was to acknowledge that Liberty itself 
 is not the solution of human ills ; that much more is 
 to be said than was supposed for such old authoritative
 
 CONCLUSION 425 
 
 methods of dealing with men and things as were 
 not long ago accounted relics of benighted barbarism ; 
 that, in fact, the remedy of laisser faire, of letting 
 things go, of leaving each man as a separate unit to 
 think, speak, and do as he likes, however simple and 
 attractive it seemed in the outset, has itself been the 
 cause of a thousand difficulties, which require to be 
 dealt with on quite another principle. 
 
 It is well to look at concrete examples of these 
 truths, in order to realise exactly wherein lies the 
 fallacy of the doctrine of laissei' faire. Take the 
 philosophy of the Manchester School why has not 
 Cobden's prophecy been fulfilled, that, if the principle 
 of Free Trade were once proclaimed, it would be 
 universally adopted ? Is it not plain that Cobden, 
 regarding the world as if it consisted only of a number 
 of money-making units, left out of his calculation 
 most important factors ? On the external side he 
 omitted national organisation and the European 
 Balance of Power, and, on the spiritual side, the passion 
 of envy and the mutual antagonism of class interests ; 
 he formed therefore quite a wrong estimate of the 
 strength of the forces which have resulted in the ideals 
 of Protection and Socialism. 
 
 liOok again at the principle of laisser faire in its 
 operation within the sphere of Keligion. How has it 
 worked in France, the classic land of Revolution, 
 where the doctrine of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 
 when first proclaimed, was understood to mean, in 
 spiritual matters, that each individual was free to 
 think as he chose ? At the present moment the
 
 426 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 Waldeck- Rousseau Ministry, whicli is supposed to 
 reflect in its composition all shades of Republicanism, 
 has proclaimed that, though the doctrine still applies 
 to everybody who chooses to restrict his active 
 energies within the sphere of private life, it must be 
 so interpreted as to exclude from the service of the 
 State every man whose character and opinions have 
 been formed in a place of religious education. I am 
 not so presumptuous as to cast obloquy on the 
 legislation of a foreign state, with the inner concerns 
 of which no Englishman has a right to interfere : I 
 merely wish to show how the doctrine of laisser /aire 
 has been qualified in practice, and to call your 
 attention to the practical rejection by French Liberals 
 of their old ideal : "A public career open to all the 
 talents." 
 
 In the sphere of imagination Ave find a phrase 
 exactly analogous to the phrase of laisser faire in 
 commerce and politics : De gustihus no7i est dispu- 
 tandum. The soundness of this maxim was some 
 months ago asserted by a leader of English thought 
 and action, justly exercising great influence over the 
 opinions of his countrymen, and I doubt not that he 
 arrived at his conclusion from his observation of the 
 multiplicity and self-contradiction of modern tastes, 
 and the complete absence of any recognised standard 
 of judgment in contemporary literature. But in the 
 first place, it is to be remembered that this state of 
 anarchy did not always exist ; it is, in fact, itself the 
 result of a reaction against the absolute and authorita- 
 tive method of criticism, which used to be applied to
 
 CONCLUSION 427 
 
 works of art by men of taste in almost all European 
 countries in the eighteenth century. The revolt, in 
 the name of Liberty, against the classical conventions 
 accepted as a starting-point by the critics of that age, 
 has ended in a demand for the emancipation of the 
 artist from all rules whatever. But as to this we 
 have to observe that the violent assertion of individual 
 liberty is one of the inconsistencies of human nature : 
 men are not content to differ. Look at the antagonism 
 between the Classicists and the Romanticists in the 
 early part of the century, between the Naturalists and 
 the Impressionists in the latter half ; how idle is it to 
 say that there should be no disputing about taste, when 
 men dispute, and will continue to dispute, about it 
 every hour of their lives ! If they reject the technical 
 standard imposed on them by authority, they erect 
 a metaphysical authority for themselves, and seek to 
 impose this on as large a circle of true believers as 
 they can rally to the worship of their particular 
 Cult. 
 
 We have then to recognise the existing condition of 
 things : there is now a general consciousness we may 
 almost call it a consciousness of the State that the 
 problems with which we are obliged to deal must be 
 considered, with a view, not so much to enlarging 
 the liberty of the individual, as to promoting the 
 welfare of society. Granted that the development 
 of all the faculties of the human intellect is good in 
 itself, the result will not be good, unless these energies 
 are directed to the promotion of some social end. It is 
 perceived that the task of the new century will be to
 
 428 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 discover what St. James in his Epistle calls " the 
 perfect law of liberty," the discernment of design in 
 the constitution and tendency of things, which is 
 always being more or less defeated by the corruption 
 of human nature. And hence, just as in religion 
 and politics so in the sphere of taste, we are bound 
 to examine whether there be not an eternal law, 
 above and beyond the aesthetic perceptions of the 
 individual, binding the poet and painter to direct 
 their conceptions towards some social end, which 
 must be understood alike by artist and critic before 
 either can produce or judge a work of Fine Art. To 
 search for and define this law has been my object in 
 the series of lectures 1 am bringing to a close, and my 
 last words shall be devoted to reminding you of the 
 course we have taken. 
 
 I pointed out, in the first place, the existence of that 
 general law, or prevailing instinct, in human nature, 
 on which Aristotle bases his reasoning about Fine Art, 
 the motion of the spirit, that is to say, which, on the 
 one hand, impels the artist to put the idea of his own 
 mind into his imitation of Nature, and, on the other, 
 justifies the critic in requiring that the artistic 
 imitation shall express the general sense of what 
 ought to be. This is Aristotle's Law of the Uni- 
 versal ; it is founded on the consideration that 
 all human beings, however great their individual 
 varieties, are constituted fundamentally in the same 
 way, and therefore that it is the duty of the artist to 
 be acquainted, not only with the workings of his own 
 imagination, but with the imaginative expectations
 
 CONCLUSION 429 
 
 of men as such. The validity of this law is proved 
 equally by its theoretical certainty, and by the fact 
 that it has been obeyed by all the greatest artists of 
 the world ; so that the kind of pleasure which is 
 felt semper, uhique, ah omnibus, becomes necessarily 
 the standard to which every work, claiming to be one 
 of Fine Art, is brought for the determination of its 
 value. 
 
 The definition of the Law of the Universal, how- 
 ever, only carries us to a point at which our minds 
 are steadied with a belief that, amid the iufinity of 
 tastes and opinions, there is a stable foundation of 
 judgment. We are immediately confronted with the 
 further fact that each great master- work of genius 
 has a life of its own, distinguishing it from every 
 other work of genius that the world possesses. Are 
 we to conclude from this that genius is a law unto 
 itself, and not to be made subject to any discoverable 
 law of art ? By no means : for that would destroy the 
 validity of the Law of the Universal. The fact is 
 explained when we consider that, though the Uni- 
 versal is something absolutely existing in itself, it 
 can only be reflected through the medium of minds 
 differing in constitution and character. Besides the 
 Law of the Universal noted by Aristotle, we have to 
 recognise the existence of another law, the operation 
 of which Aristotle himself did not observe, and indeed 
 had no opportunity of observing, the Law of National 
 Character. By this 1 mean the social instinct which 
 compels the artist unconsciously to individualise his 
 idea of the Universal in the light of the race tendencies,
 
 430 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 the methods of education, and the political history and 
 character of the nation to which he belongs. In so far 
 as his view of the Universal represents faithfully the 
 sum of the national life, the man is a great painter or 
 poet, and his work becomes a monumental standard by 
 reference to which the quality of other artistic work pro- 
 duced in his nation can be judged. But in order that 
 the critic may be able to declare and apply this Law of 
 National Character, he must, by means of conscious 
 analysis, investigate the nature of the spiritual forces 
 by which the artist has been unconsciously inspired, 
 observe the modes in which these operate at different 
 periods and in different nations, and finally judge in 
 what respect each work of Fine Art is a faithful 
 reflection of the life of the society out of which it 
 springs. 
 
 I have endeavoured in several successive lectures to 
 illustrate the actual existence and operation of the Law 
 of National Character. I have shown the perman- 
 ence of the four great forces Catholicism, Feudalism, 
 Humanism, and Protestantism by which the course 
 of life in European nations has been determined, and 
 the different way in which they have operated in 
 each nation according to the character of the people ; 
 and further, how the bent of the national character 
 and history has been in each country reflected in the 
 course of the national poetry. We have seen, for 
 example, how the French character seems to have 
 given a definite direction to French history in striking 
 contrast with that of Germany, and how the English 
 character, as manifested in history, differs from them
 
 CONCLUSION 431 
 
 both : we have noted with what rare representative 
 fidelity poets like Dante, Chaucer, Milton, Moliere, 
 La Fontaine, Goethe, and Heine, reflect the character 
 of their countrymen, and how their works may be 
 taken as the abstract and brief chronicles of their 
 time. 
 
 Phenomena so regular, so invariable, as those which 
 I have illustrated in my lectures ought, I think, to 
 furnish sufficient proof of, at least ; the unconscious 
 operation of the two great Laws of Taste. But it may 
 be asked : Granting their existence, can these laws be 
 consciously applied ? Can we, when we are judging 
 of a newly-created picture or poem, submit it to the 
 practical test of law so as to decide with any confidence 
 as to its possession of permanent qualities ? I think 
 we can, on certain conditions. The first, and the most 
 indispensable, is the acknowledgment of the principle 
 of Authority. We must allow the existence of law in 
 an external form that is to say, in the work of the 
 greatest artists, not because these have in an arbitrary 
 manner created the law, but because the universal 
 and enduring pleasure which their work afibrds is a 
 sufficient proof that they have obeyed it. Their 
 work is therefore to be studied in a liberal and 
 intelligent spirit, in order that we may discover the 
 reason of their method and procedure, which the 
 method of all genuine artists is bound to resemble, 
 though not slavishly to reproduce. 
 
 When the source of authority has been recog- 
 nised in principle, it should be practically used in 
 education. Besides collecting the law of art from the
 
 432 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 practice of the greatest artists, we must also study it 
 in the treatises of those who have most scientifically 
 declared it that is to say, of the most philosophical 
 critics. The head and source of this study is to be 
 souo-ht in the Poetics of Aristotle, not for the reason 
 that made the scholars of the Italian Renaissance turn 
 tx) the authority of Aristotle, as being an absolute 
 Dictator in the sphere of taste, but because he was the 
 first to investigate by analysis the imaginative prin- 
 ciples underlying the creations of the most artistically 
 constituted of all races, so that the elementary condi- 
 tions of fine art are more clearly defined in his treatise 
 than anywhere else. The long and persistent misin- 
 terpretation of Aristotle's meaning was, it is true, the 
 cause of much artistic aberration in the sixteenth, 
 seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries ; but the patient 
 labours of modern scholars have removed the old 
 stumbling - blocks, and any English reader, who 
 studies the Poetics with the aid afforded him by the 
 admirable essays of Professor Butcher, may now make 
 himself acquainted with all that is essential in the 
 Theory of Fine Art. 
 
 Though the Law of the Universal can be most 
 thoroughly studied in the Poetics of Aristotle, the 
 student of taste ought not to let this treatise mono- 
 polise his attention. The Law of National Character 
 has to be collected from other critical sources. No 
 doubt almost all Aristotle's critical successors into 
 quite modern times have looked at the Universal more 
 or less through his reasoning ; but most of them, 
 in so far as they have been men of original thought,
 
 CONCLUSION 433 
 
 have made some contribution of value to Criticism, 
 derived from the peculiar character and complexion 
 of the society to which they have belonged. Roman, 
 Florentine, French, German, and English Quintilian, 
 Dante, Boileau, Lessing, Johnson, and many others 
 have formed their own characteristic idea of the Law 
 of the Universal ; and if any one desires to satisfy him- 
 self of the identity and permanence of the problems of 
 taste from the dawn of Greek civilisation downwards, 
 he will find the subject exhaustively treated in the 
 excellent History of Criticism, of which the first 
 volume has recently been published by Professor 
 Saintsbury. It is certain that a critic who comes to 
 the judgment of a modern work of imagination 
 equipped with the knowledge of the varied opera- 
 tions of the universal Law of Rhetoric need not be 
 doubtful of his right to decide with authority. 
 
 You will see that the authority in taste for which 
 I am pleading is something quite different from the 
 authority of an Academy. The Italian Academies 
 of the sixteenth century and the French Academy 
 were simply assemblies of representative men who 
 discussed points of taste among themselves, and laid 
 down rules in an arbitrary manner which carried with 
 them just so much conventional authority as was 
 due to the collective agreement of able and learned 
 scholars. But almost all of them regarding the 
 reasoning of Aristotle aa axiomatic, and their misin- 
 terpretation of the text of the Poetics being frequent, 
 the rules and regulations which they endeavoured 
 
 to impose upon the taste of the world were devoid 
 
 2f
 
 434 LAW IN TASTE part hi 
 
 of a really rational basis. There is nothing a priori 
 or abstract in the critical method I have suggested. 
 The two Laws we have been considering are founded 
 in the constitution of the human mind ; their opera- 
 tion is discovered by inductions from observation and 
 experience. The only surrender of liberty demanded 
 from the individual taste is, in the first place, the 
 suspension of judgment till the aesthetic perception 
 has been justly trained, and, in the second place, a 
 submission of the intellect, in the early stages of its 
 schooling, to the judgment of the world on the works 
 of art deemed most worthy of admiration. When the 
 judging faculty has been disciplined to view things 
 in all their bearings, and has become robust and 
 mature, the mind resumes its native liberty, and is 
 free to revise its early decisions. Such is the course 
 of what has been well called Humanism in Education. 
 I am well aware that the recognition of lawful 
 authority in the sphere of imagination is not likely 
 to be attained without a painful effort. The passion 
 for novelty in the human breast ; the instinct of 
 democracy which makes the majority of the moment 
 the supreme Court of appeal ; commercial interest 
 which finds its account in following the law of 
 demand and supply ; all these influences favour the 
 assertion of unrestricted liberty of taste. But the 
 dangers to civilisation and refinement, arising out 
 of the present anarchical condition of things, ought 
 to show the lovers of true liberty the necessity of 
 rallying round an authoritative standard of taste. 
 " I do not think," says Sir Richard Jebb, in his lecture
 
 CONCLUSION 435 
 
 on Humanism in Education, " there is any exaggera- 
 tion in what Mr. Froude said thirteen years ago, that 
 if we ever lose those studies our national taste and 
 the tone of our national intellect will suffer a serious 
 decline. Classical studies help to preserve sound 
 standards of literature. It is not difficult to lose 
 such standards, even for a nation with the highest 
 material civilisation, with abounding mental activity, 
 and with a great literature of its own. It is 
 peculiarly easy to do so in days when the lighter 
 and more ephemeral kinds of writing form for many 
 people the staple of daily reading. The fashions of 
 the hour may start a movement not in the best 
 direction, which may go on until the path is difficult 
 to retrace. The humanities, if they cannot prevent 
 such a movement, can do something to temper and 
 counteract it ; because they appeal to permanent 
 things, to the instinct for beauty in human nature, 
 and to the emotions, and in any one who is at all 
 susceptible to their influence, they develop a literary 
 conscience." 
 
 Nothinst can be added to the force of these 
 admirable words. My only regret is that, in placing 
 before us the advantage, nay the necessity, of recog- 
 nising a definite standard of taste for the purposes of 
 education, Sir Richard Jebb did not at the same 
 time insist on the duty of promoting this aim by 
 organised endeavour. He seems to rely on the 
 permeating influence of our old established system 
 of Humanism in Education, and on the inspiring 
 example of individual scholars that is to say, he is
 
 436 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 content to trust to the principle of laisser faire. 
 Great and beneficial as the indirect effect of the 
 labours of eminent scholars may be on the thought 
 of society, it is impossible that the ideal they repre- 
 sent should stand against the overwhelming pressure 
 of the forces of materialism around us, unless it 
 is proclaimed, defined, and systematically defended. 
 For this end we need the concerted efi'orts of all 
 who desire to maintain the Humanist tradition ; 
 above all, we need a deliberate and sustained asser- 
 tion of the principle on the part of the Universities. 
 
 I venture to think that, at the present moment, 
 the English Universities are hardly acting up to 
 their traditions in the amount of attention that they 
 bestow on the training of taste. From very early 
 days, Oxford and Cambridge assimilated with their 
 system of mediaeval education all the ideas that 
 flowed in upon them with the rise of the New 
 Learning. But they did not, like the later Italian 
 Humanists, regard art and learning as something to 
 be pursued for its own sake, and without reference to 
 the active life of the State. On the contrary, as the 
 College system expanded, the ideal of civic education 
 grew always stronger ; the Universities shared to 
 the full in the sympathies and interests which were 
 moving the mind of the nation at large, and instead 
 of developing into monasteries devoted to the pur- 
 poses of knowledge and research, they became rather 
 schools for preparing the minds of youth for the 
 discharge of public aff'airs. Oxford and Cambridge, 
 having participated to the full in the internal struggle
 
 CONCLUSION 437 
 
 caused by the Reformation and the Civil Wars, 
 
 continued to send from their seminaries the men 
 
 who presided over the business of the country 
 
 as judges and statesmen ; poets and essayists went 
 
 forth from the seclusion of their colleges to apply the 
 
 stores of knowledge, there derived from the study of 
 
 antiquity, to the problems of living thought. This 
 
 bracing political atmosphere helped to invigorate the 
 
 studies of the Universities themselves, making the 
 
 scholar sympathise with the civic spirit of the great 
 
 classical authors, and vivify the literatures of Greece 
 
 and Rome with analogies drawn from the society 
 
 about him. 
 
 While my own official duties permit me to observe 
 
 with satisfaction how largely the public service is 
 
 still recruited from the Universities, I am doubtful 
 
 whether Oxford, at all events, derives as much 
 
 nourishment as was formerly the case from the outer 
 
 world. There seems within the last fifty years to 
 
 have been some diminution in the intercourse between 
 
 the life of this University and that of the State. 
 
 Perhaps the tendency arises from a natural antipathy 
 
 to the utilitarian forces in society, generated in the 
 
 atmosphere of democratic politics, a reaction which 
 
 has driven the scholar to seek his own ideal of liberty 
 
 in Self-Culture. At any rate no one, I think, can 
 
 read the books of my eminent predecessor, Matthew 
 
 Arnold, without perceiving that ascertain exclusive 
 
 instinct of self-esteem has been for a long time 
 
 impelling Academic society to exalt itself at the 
 
 expense of the Gentile world, classified as Barbarians, 
 
 2 f2
 
 438 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 Philistines, and Populace. The University man has 
 his own aesthetic aim, his own ideal of Self-Culture, 
 to pursue, apart from the main impulse of social 
 action in the State. And the result of this Academic 
 monasticism has been, if I may dare to say so before 
 such an audience as this, a decline in the robust- 
 ness of Oxford taste. I seem to find evidence of a 
 falling ofi" in the prize exercises I have been called on 
 to judge as Professor of Poetry. I note in the Essays, 
 for example, a failure of power to treat a subject as a 
 whole, a tendency to cultivate style as a thing desir- 
 able in itself apart from the subject-matter, and, on the 
 other hand, a passion for making points and epigrams 
 without any regard to perspective and proportion. 
 
 This is one of the mischiefs that arise out of 
 separating the interests of Art or Taste from the 
 movement of life and action ; Taste tends to become 
 effeminate. There is a danger of an opposite kind, also 
 encouraged by the prevalent tendency of laisserfaire 
 and the principle De gustihus non est disputandum. 
 I mean the excess of scientific curiosity which prompts 
 the inquirer to study all tastes alike in a spirit of 
 Epicurean indifference. In the enjoyment we derive 
 from watching the operations of the human mind, w^ 
 are inclined to leave out of account the moral beariner 
 of taste, and to content ourselves with a mere analysis 
 of artistic motives, without determining whether these 
 are good or bad, right or wrong. Such a habit of 
 thought is readily engendered by the study of history ; 
 and I venture to think that Professor Saintsbury, the 
 value of whose History of Criticism can hardly be
 
 CONCLUSION 439 
 
 overestimated, comes perilously near the encourage- 
 ment of dilettante trifling when lie says: "The 
 point on which I am content to be called a critical 
 Pangloss is this : that I have hardly the slightest 
 desire to alter if I could do so by the greatest 
 of all miracles, that of retroactive change the 
 literary course of the world. No doubt things might 
 have been better still : but one may also be perfectly 
 contented with the actual result." 
 
 If it be the case that Aristotle as Professor 
 Saintsbury says, and Mr. Bosanquet, in his History 
 of ^Esthetic, seems to be of the same opinion " over- 
 steps the genus a little in his generalisation, and 
 merges Poetics in Ethics," then I am well content to 
 err with Aristotle. But, in truth, I do not think 
 that he does err. I have said, in my lecture on 
 Aristotle, that all his philosophy about human affairs 
 regards man, not from the mere metaphysical stand- 
 point of Kant and modern philosophers, as an isolated 
 individual, but as ttoKltikov ^Sov, a social being. It 
 would therefore have been impossible for him to 
 eliminate moral considerations from the theory of 
 Fine Art, and in all his reasoning about Pleasure as 
 the end of Art, there is the underlying assumption that 
 the pleasure produced by Art must be such as is to 
 promote the health and well-being of the State. Those 
 who think that his reasoning in this respect is 
 sound will conclude that, beyond the Law of the 
 Universal, there is no absolute law in ^Esthetics, and 
 that the only law binding on the artist is the Law of 
 National Character, as interpreted by the educated
 
 440 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 conscience of society, which necessarily includes those 
 religious and moral considerations that determine our 
 conduct as individuals. 
 
 By pursuing, or seeming to pursue, too exclusively 
 the aim of Self-culture, by failing to direct liberal or 
 Humanist Education to a moral, a practical, a social 
 end, I think we have brought ourselves within measure- 
 able distance of a great danger. This may be seen 
 dimly approaching in the light of the address recently 
 delivered by Lord Rosebery as Rector of Glasgow 
 University. I read with sympathy Lord Rosebery's 
 saying that the affairs of the British Empire ought 
 to be conducted on business principles ; but when 
 I ask how this ideal is to be translated into action, 
 I find that, in his view, the tradition of educa- 
 tion in the Universities should be altered so as to 
 make them into schools of technical training in the 
 business of commercial and professional life. Hence 
 the old foundation of the Humanities is to be abandoned. 
 "The protest," says Lord Rosebery, "against the educa- 
 tional bondage of the dead languages is being raised in 
 Edinburgh again to-day, but this time by the voice of 
 the mercantile community. The leading bodies of 
 that calling lately appointed a Committee to consider 
 the subject of Commercial Education. Their Report 
 is well worth reading. They speak of the ancient 
 tongues with courtesy and respect, but they demand 
 something more practical, useful, less divorced from 
 everyday life. . . . There is required, they say, on 
 the part of the educational authorities an admission 
 that a man may be an educated, and even a cultured
 
 CONCLUSION 441 
 
 gentleman, although he has not studied Latin or 
 Greek ; and they further point out that both France 
 and Germany possess invaluable literatures, with the 
 advantage that they are in languages which are living 
 and are not dead." 
 
 The fallacy underlying this reasoning is as trans- 
 parent as it is time-honoured. The raison d'etre of 
 our Universities is to promote liberal education, and 
 the aim of liberal education is not to impart know- 
 ledge for utilitarian purposes, but so to cultivate the 
 moral and intellectual faculties of the scholar as to 
 fit him, on his entrance into life, for the duties of a 
 citizen. Such has been the fundamental idea of the 
 English University course from the days of the 
 Renaissance ; such is still the effect on the mind 
 of our great Oxford school of Literce Humaniores. 
 To depart from this ideal, to do away with this 
 foundation, to attempt to build up a fabric of cul- 
 ture on the study of modern languages and litera- 
 tures, without reference to the art and literature 
 of antiquity, would be to reduce the system of 
 liberal education to anarchy. Men of independent 
 minds no doubt make their way by native force of 
 character ; but education in itself must be organised, 
 and how is it possible for a man to be comprehensively 
 instructed in the history of human society, in the 
 meaning of law and government, in the various rela- 
 tions of thought, and in the useful and beautiful arts 
 of expression, unless he begins at the beginning? 
 
 At the same time, the demand that liberal educa- 
 tion shall be practical in the high and imperial sense
 
 442 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 of the term is a just one. The Universities should be 
 prepared to show that their schools are animated with 
 the public spirit of the ttoKitlkt] TratSeia, the civic train- 
 ing, that was given in the city states of Greece in the 
 days of their greatness and liberty. Our educational 
 aims ought to be brought into conformity with the 
 law of our social being as disclosed in the course of 
 our national history, and they will then be seen to 
 be equally remote from a narrow utilitarianism and 
 from the pursuit of art and science as ends in 
 themselves. 
 
 Let us recognise the principle that the tendency of 
 our time towards the consolidation of the Empire 
 carries with it a corresponding ideal of imperial 
 Culture. The Universities are the natural guardians 
 of the traditions of Humanism. It is for us to show 
 our scholars that, in submitting themselves to a course 
 of education founded on the study of the " ancient 
 tongues," they are not "divorcing themselves from 
 everyday life," not dissecting a dead body, not learn- 
 ing Greek and Latin in a mere spirit of archaeology, 
 but are familiarising themselves with a science that 
 can reveal to them the genius of their own ancient 
 customs and Christian institutions, inseparably as- 
 sociated as these are with the civic spirit of fi-ee Pagan 
 antiquity. From the vantage ground of historic 
 science it is the privilege, and should be the aim, 
 of the Universities to maintain the standard of 
 purity in the English language. In our school of 
 English Language and Literature at least as it might 
 be the student may learn to trace from age to age
 
 LECT. X CONCLUSION 443 
 
 the development of our tongue, and to observe 
 the flexibility with which its character has adapted 
 itself to the gradual changes in our national life and 
 society. Nor ought we to study our own language 
 and literature in a mere insular temper, but, by 
 comparing it with the genius of the languages and 
 literatures of the Continent, to teach the scholar how 
 to appreciate justly the relative character of English 
 Art and Poetry, as the vehicle of ideas common to all 
 the Christian nations of Europe. 
 
 Such was, in principle, the method of English 
 University education that called forth the ever- 
 memorable tribute from the illustrious Dollinger, 
 cited in my Inaugural Lecture : " The colleges of 
 Oxford and Cambridge have many a time, as I ob- 
 served their working on the spot, awakened in me 
 feelings of envy, and led me to long for the time 
 when we might again have something of the kind ; 
 for I could plainly perceive that their effect was to 
 make instruction take root in the mind, and become 
 a part of it, and that their influence extended beyond 
 the mere communication of knowledge, to the en- 
 nobling elevation of the life and character." Nolumus 
 leges Anglice mittari : we will do nothing to weaken 
 the groundwork of the national character ; for, as was 
 asked of old, " if the foundations be destroyed, what 
 can the righteous do ? " If, on the other hand, these 
 ethical foundations arc kept sacred and untouched, 
 the most ample opportunity is given for expanding 
 the principle of individual liberty, according to the 
 ever-changing needs of our imperial society :
 
 444 LAW IN TASTE 
 
 Nought shall make us me, 
 If England to itself do rest but true. 
 
 Do we ask for some practical guide in the exercise 
 of rational freedom in taste and politics, I know not 
 what more majestic monument of Law we can find 
 than the continuous growth of our institutions as 
 reflected in our langruage and literature. In that 
 ideal mirror, illuminated by history, may be seen an 
 image of the life of the people which will enable the 
 statesman to proceed safely on his path of necessary 
 reconstruction, stimulate the invention of the painter 
 and the poet, and prove to the philosopher that the 
 perfecting of the law of liberty consists in maintain- 
 ing the standard of duty imposed on us alike by the 
 actions and by the art of our fathers. 
 
 COREIGENDA 
 
 P. 250, last line, for " through walled towns," read "through once-walled 
 towns." 
 
 P. 294, line 3, /or " general and moderating guidance," read " genial and 
 moderating guidance." 
 
 P. 431, line 9, for "to furnish sufficient proof of, at least; the un- 
 conscious operation of the two great Laws of Taste," read "to furnish 
 suflBcient proof of, at least, the unconscious operation of the two great Laws 
 of Taste."
 
 INDEX 
 
 Absalom and Achitophd, 41 
 Absolutism, 394 
 Academies, 15, 16, 37, 279 
 Academy, the French, 13-14, 15-16, 19, 
 
 228 
 Addison, 23, 150, 330, 331, 333 
 jEneid, 50-2 
 
 ^schylus, 101, 103, 104, 119, 126, 217 
 ^Esthetic philosophy, 161, 168-9 
 Affectation, 32, 297, 405 
 Agathon, 93, 122 
 Allegory, 344, 365-6 
 Analysis in Art, 148, 249 
 Atmly sis of Beauty, 172 
 Anglo-Saxon Culture, 315-23 
 
 Language, 307 
 
 Race, 300-4 
 
 Versification, 304-15 
 
 Anthology, the Greek, 98-9 
 Antigone, 26, 216 
 Anti-Jacobin, The, 396 
 Apollo Belvedere, 293 
 Apollonius Rhodius, 94-7, 109 
 Apology for Poetry, 69 
 Argonautica, 94 
 Aristocracy, English, 130-1 
 Aristophanes, 27, 103, 216, 217 
 Abistotlk as a Critic, 190-221 ; life of 
 
 Aristotle, 190-1 ; his vast authority ; 
 opposition to his authority in Eng- 
 land, 192-3 ; main principles of 
 his criticism : (1) object of Poetry, 
 Imitation, 193-6 ; (2) object of 
 Poetical Imitation, the Universal not 
 the Particular, 196-209; examples 
 of the Universal in Poetry, Scott's 
 Hefirt of Midlothian, 200-1 ; Jane 
 Austen's Pride and Prejudice, 201-2 ; 
 examples of attempts to imitate the 
 Universal by means of analysis, Ben 
 Jonson, 204 ; Balzac, 204-5 ; absence 
 of the Universal in mwlem novels, 
 206-9; (3) test of true Imitation, 
 
 Universal Pleasure, 209-10; dis- 
 regard of Social Pleasure as principle 
 of Fine Art by modem artists, 211 ; 
 Naturalists, and Impressionists, 211- 
 13 ; Aristotle's critical defects ; 
 exaggeration of Logical Analysis, 
 213-16; want of poetic sensibility, 
 216-18 ; distinction between Aris- 
 totle's Universal Laws of Art and 
 his Bye-Laws, 218-19 ; misrepresenta- 
 tion of Aristotle's Poetics by the 
 scholars of the Renaissance, 219-20 ; 
 elucidation of the treatise by modem 
 scholars, 220 ; Professor Butcher's 
 edition of the Poetics, 221 
 
 Aristotle's Rules, 279-84, 331-2 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 7, 9, 15, 20, 23-4, 
 42, 111, 135-8, 269, 437-8 
 
 Ars Poetica, 43, 117, 210, 237 
 
 Art Poetiqxie, Boileau's, 238-43 
 
 Art Poetiqne, Verlaine's, 116-17 
 
 Atcdanta in Calydon, 139 
 
 Atticus, character of, 56 
 
 Aubign/', 226, 289 
 
 Ausonius, 99, 100 
 
 Austen, Miss, 201-2 
 
 Authority in Matters op Tastb, 
 3-33 ; Professorship of Poetry, 3 ; 
 indefinite functions, 4 ; founder of 
 Chair ; his life and character, 4-5 ; 
 holders of Chair, 6-8 ; denial of 
 authority in taste, 8 ; tendency of 
 self-culture, 9 ; De gustibxu^ non est 
 dispiUanilum, 10-13 ; necessity of 
 authority in taste, 13 ; various courts 
 of authority in taste, 13-19 ; the 
 Academy, 13-16 ; the Coterie, 16 ; 
 Public Opinion, 16-18 ; the Press, 
 18-19 ; defects in these courts of 
 authority, 19 ; education of taste, 
 20 ; essential qualities in criticism, 
 20 ; consequences of unjudicial spirit 
 in criticism ; Croker and Keats, 
 
 2g
 
 446 
 
 INDEX 
 
 20-23 ; consequences of judging by- 
 private standard, Matthew Arnold, 
 23-4 ; final authority in taste, the 
 works of great artists, 24-5 ; as 
 having stood the test of time, 25 ; 
 and as being representative of 
 humanity, 26 ; education in taste 
 at the English Universities, 27-29 ; 
 the School of English Language and 
 Literature at Oxford, 29-30 ; aim of 
 lectures, 31-33 
 
 "Authority," Mediaeval, in Church and 
 State, 335-9 
 
 Ayliner's Field, 413-4 
 
 Bacon, 340, 373-4, 375, 378 
 
 Balzac, 1 49, 203, 204-5 
 
 Beaconstield, Lord, 160 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, 280 
 
 Beauty, 166, 173, 180-2 
 
 Beethoven, 164, 253 
 
 Birkhead, Henry, 4-6, 11 
 
 Blackmore, 102 
 
 Blake, 396 
 
 Boccaccio, 320, 323, 364, 365 
 
 Boileau, 237-43, 349, 394 
 
 Bolingbroke, 375, 377, 378, 381 
 
 Bosanquet, Bernard, 161, 166, 439 
 
 Bourget, Paul, 207-9 
 
 Browning, Robert, 58 
 
 Brunne, Robert of, 316 
 
 Buckingham, Pope's lines on death of, 87 
 
 Biirger, 265 
 
 Burke, 23, 172 
 
 Butcher, Professor, 70 (foot-note), 215, 
 220-21, 432 
 
 Byron as a representative of Law in 
 English Poetry, 388-407 ; Macaulay's 
 theory of decline of Poetry, 388 ; ex- 
 amined, 389-90 ; Lyi-ic Poetry product 
 of self-conscious stage of society, 
 391 ; Rousseau, pioneer of European 
 self-consciousness and Romanticism, 
 391-2 ; distinction between Shake- 
 speare's self-consciousness and Rous- 
 seau's, 392-3 ; effect of self-con- 
 consciousness on creative art of 
 Rousseau, 393-4 ; reaction from Ab- 
 solutism to Romanticism in Europe, 
 394-5 ; checked in England by 
 constitutional system, 394-5 ; pro- 
 gress of Romanticism in England, 
 395-7 ; B)Ton the most self-conscious 
 of poets, 397-8 ; examples of his self- 
 consciousness, 398 - 9 ; mixture of 
 aristocratic feeling with his Romantic 
 self-consciousness, 399 ; effect of the 
 mixture on his poetry ; failure in 
 epic and dramatic constructiveness, 
 400-1 ; his lyric self-consciousness 
 
 the vehicle of expression for uni- 
 versal feelings, 402-3 ; uses epic, 
 dramatic, and satiric forms IjTically 
 as vehicles of self- consciousness, 
 403-4 ; his power of poetical ex- 
 pression, 405-6 ; Macaulay's descrip- 
 tion of his mixed and representative 
 genius, 406-7 
 
 Coedmon, 300, 301, 304, 315, 316 
 
 Callimachus, 98-9, 109 
 
 Cambridge, University of, 28 
 
 Canada and " Our Lady of Snows," 145 
 
 Canadians, 145 
 
 Cain, 399, 401 
 
 Ganterhury Tales, The, 318-28 
 
 Caravaggio, 91 
 
 Cartwright, William, 5 
 
 Cassandra, 118 
 
 Castelvetro, 279, 282 
 
 Castiglione, 21 
 
 Centuries, the drama of the, 420 
 
 Chaucer, as representative of Law in 
 English Poetry, 299-328 ; question 
 as to Chaucer's title to be called 
 Father of English Poetry, 299-300 ; 
 mixed character of English Poetry 
 begins with Chaucer, 300 ; mixture 
 of races in England reflected in his 
 birth and education, 301-4 ; in his 
 language and versification, 304-15 ; 
 charge against Cliaucer of corrupting 
 the language, 304-6 ; natural changes 
 in Saxon grammar, 306-8 ; natural 
 changes in Saxon versification, 308-9 ; 
 Chaucer's combination of Saxon and 
 French in his verse, 309-15 ; mixture 
 of English and Continental culture 
 reflected in Chaucer's Poetry, 315-24 ; 
 domination of ecclesiastical influence 
 in Saxon Poetry, 315-6 ; Chaucer 
 contrasted with Langland, 316-23 ; 
 Chaucer's mixture of secular and 
 religious interests, 318-20 ; of art 
 and morality, 320-1 ; of insular and 
 continental ideas, 321-4 ; Chaucer's 
 humour representative of English 
 genius, 324-5; the "universal" 
 character of Chaucer's genius, 326-8 
 
 ChUde Harold, 403, 404, 405 
 
 Chivalry, 379-80 
 
 Christian, Tlie, 206 
 
 Christ's Death and Victory, 369 
 
 Cid, The, 234-5 
 
 Clarissa Ilarl&we, 74 
 
 Classes, decline of, 128-35 
 
 Classical authority, 24-7 
 
 Classicists, French, 242-3, 248, 249 
 
 Cleveland, John, 5 
 
 Cobden, 425
 
 INDEX 
 
 447 
 
 Coleridge, 63, 82 
 
 Comedie Huinaine, 204-5 
 
 Conclusion, 419-44 ; survey of pro- 
 fessorial period, 419 ; political coin- 
 cidences, 419-20 ; the Nineteenth 
 Century, its character, 421 ; spirit of 
 individual liberty, 421-4 ; optimism, 
 422-3 ; pessimism, 423-4 ; examples 
 of consequences of laisser faire in 
 commerce, religion, art, 425-7 ; con- 
 sciousness of aim in the State, 427 ; 
 survey of lectures, 428-31 ; necessity 
 of recognising Law in Taste, 427-8 ; 
 Law of the Universal, 431 ; authority 
 of Aristotle's Poetics, 431-2 ; law of 
 national character, 432 ; authority 
 of representative national critics, 
 432-3 ; authority of humanist educa- 
 tion, 433-4 ; Sir Richard Jebb on 
 Humanism in Education, 434-6 ; 
 humanist education in the Univer- 
 sities, 436-7; self -culture in the 
 University of Oxford, 437-8 ; its re- 
 sults, Professor Saintsbury's view, 
 438-9 ; taste and morals, 439-40 ; 
 reaction against humanism in educa- 
 tion, Lord Rosebery's view, 440-1 ; 
 true aim of University education, 
 441-2 ; imperial culture, 442-3 ; the 
 Law of Liberty in Education, 443-4 
 
 Confessions, Rousseau's, 391-3 
 
 Contraries, reconciliation of, 292-3 
 
 Contrat Social, 395 
 
 Comeille, 231-5, 252, 260 
 
 Correctness, 361, 381-2, 384-5 
 
 Corsair, The, 401 
 
 Cosmopolitanism, German, 263 
 
 Coteries, 16, 109-10, 297 
 
 Cowley, 106-8, 129, 370, 378, 380 
 
 Cowper, 396 
 
 Crashaw, Richard, 371-3, 376, 378 
 
 Criticism, 20-4, 37-8, 159-61, 183-9, 
 256 
 
 Croker, 21-3 
 
 Oromwell, 244-6 
 
 Culture, 9, 135-8, 437-43 
 
 Cursor Mundi, 316 
 
 C^newulf, 315, 316 
 
 Dante, 67, 106-7, 335-9, 348, 351 
 
 Decadence. Sec Poetical 
 
 Dfftnct of Poetry, 69-70 
 
 Deformed Transformed, 401 
 
 Degeneration, 111 
 
 De gtistihus 7wn eM dispiitandum , 
 
 10-13, 426-7 
 Deism, 375-7, 396 
 Delia Crusca, 109 
 De Monarchin, Dante's, 337 
 De Quincey, 361 
 
 Dichtung und Wahrheit, 255 
 
 Diderot, 231, 242 
 
 Difficile est proprie communia dicere, 
 
 48,57 
 Discordia Concors, 367, 373 
 Discourse on the Tfiree Unities, 
 
 Comeille's, 231-4 
 Discourses on Painting, 25, 292 
 Divine Comedy, 67, 322, 333, 335-9, 355 
 Dolci, Carlo, 91 
 Ddllinger, 28, 443 
 Dolores, 82 
 Don Carlos, Schiller's, 261 
 
 Juan, 404, 405 
 
 Quixote, 252, 325 
 
 Donne, 129, 378 
 
 Dryden, 41-2, 87, 281, 309 
 
 Diirer, 252 
 
 Elegy, Gray's, 57, 264 
 
 Emilia Galotti, 260 
 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 
 
 399, 403-4 
 English Character, 285-6 
 
 Drama, 101-2 
 
 History, 287-8 
 
 Language, 286-7 
 
 School of Language and Litera- 
 ture at Oxford, 29-31, 442 
 Ennius, 305, 325 
 
 Epic Poetry, 94-7, 102, 241-2, 347-9 
 Epistle to Arhuthnot, Pope's, 381, 
 
 385 
 Erasmus, 27, 291 
 Essay on Criticism, 237-8, 278-84, 
 
 292, 361-2 
 Essay on Man, 297, 378, 394 
 Euripides, 103-4, 105, 127, 178, 217 
 Every Man in his Humour, 195 
 Every Man out of his Hummir, 195 
 Exairsion, 76 
 
 Faery Queen, 102 
 FavM, 253, 266-7, 295, 400 
 Feudalism, 289, 318, 336-9, 430 
 Filostrato, Boccaccio's, 323 
 Flau1)ert, Gustave, 249 
 Fletcher, Beaumont and, 280 
 
 Giles, 369-70, 378 
 
 Phineas, 368-9, 378 
 
 France, Anatole, 250 
 Free 'rra<le, ideal of, 425 
 French Character, 224 
 
 Drama, 172, 230-7 
 
 History, 224-5, 288 
 
 Language, 286 
 
 Metres in English, 308-15 
 
 Poetry. See Idea 
 
 Revolution, 60, 225. 248, 394-7 
 
 Words in English, 306-8, 313, 314
 
 448 
 
 INDEX 
 
 FursUrigrvft, Die, Schubat's, 264-5 
 
 Gautier, Theophile, 246-8, 249 
 Oeorgics, Virgil's, 100, 195 
 German Character, 253-5, 274-5 
 
 Drama, 258-62 
 
 Empire, 274-6 
 
 Language, 257-8, 262 
 
 Literature, 255-6 
 
 Gifford, 110, 396, 406 
 
 Goethe, 174, 255, 259, 261-2, 266-7, 
 
 270, 271, 272, 290, 400 
 Grand Cyrus, 227, 380 
 Gray, 57, 264 
 Gregory the First, 351 
 Greuvill, Bevill, 5 
 
 Haviinirgische lyramaturgie, 172, 259 
 Hamlet, 207-9, 291, 296, 297, 334, 
 
 402-3 
 Handel, 253 
 Hartmann, 181-2, 183 
 Hegel, 175, 180, 181 
 Heine, 253, 261, 267-72 
 Hellenising, 138-41 
 Hercules Oetaeus, 105-6 
 Herder, 263-4 
 Higden, 307 
 Hippolytus, 105 
 
 History of ^Esthetic, 161, 169-75 
 Hogarth, 172 
 Holbein, 252 
 Homer, 49-50, 148, 149 
 Horace, 21, 43-5, 65-6, 78, 117 
 Horace, Corneille's, 236, 260 
 Hours of Idleness, 397-8, 403, 407, 
 
 409 
 Hugo, Victor, 244-6, 304 
 Humanism, 130, 294, 357, 395, 430, 
 
 434-43 
 Humanists, 27, 289, 291 
 Hume, David, 160, 378 
 
 Idea of Law in English Poetry, 
 278-98 ; Pope's view in Essay on 
 Criticism, 278 ; examination of 
 Pope's view, 279-84 ; English national 
 character, 285-6 ; English language, 
 286-7 ; English character compared 
 with French and German character, 
 287-91 ; main characteristics of 
 English character the reconcilia- 
 tion of contrary principlas, 292 ; 
 character reflected in English Art 
 and Literature ; Sir Joshua Rejmolds's 
 definition of Art, 292-3 ; examples 
 of reconciliation of contraries in 
 English Poetry ; Vision of Piers the 
 Ploimian, 293 ; The Canterbury 
 Tales, 293-4 ; Saiires of Pope, 294 ; 
 
 poetry of Byron and Tennyson, 294 ; 
 test to be applied in judging con- 
 temporary poetry, 294-8 ; popularity 
 and singularity both inadequate tests 
 of genius, 294-7 ; the Universal 
 truth of classic English Poetry lies 
 in the just mean between the two, 
 297 ; examples of characteristic ex- 
 pression in English Poetry, 298 
 
 Idea op Law in French Poetry, 
 222-51 ; difference in the develop- 
 ment of Greek art and the art of 
 modern nations, 222-24 ; French 
 national character and history re- 
 flected in French literature, 224-5 ; 
 French literary parties, 225 - 6 ; 
 party of the chivalrous aristocracy, 
 its qualities, 226-7 ; party of the 
 bourgeoisie, its qualities, 227 ; 
 Moliere, 228-9 ; La Fontaine, 229- 
 30 ; French character reflected in 
 French drama, 230-1 ; Corneille, 
 Discourse on the Three Unities,2dl-7 ; 
 French character reflected in French 
 criticism, Boileau, 237-43 ; conflict 
 between Classicists and Romanticists, 
 243-4 ; Victor Hugo, Preface to 
 Grmmoell, 244 - 5 ; resemblance 
 between The Cid and Crmnwell, 
 246 ; Thc'ophile Gautier, Emaux 
 et Camees, 246-7 ; resemblance 
 between ideals of Boileau and 
 Gautier, 247-8 ; conflict between 
 Classicists and Romanticists con- 
 tinued between Naturalists and 
 Impressionists, Gustave Flaubert, 
 Anatole France, 249-50 
 
 Idea of Law in German Poetry, 
 252 - 77 ; results of German art. 
 252-3 ; German character described 
 by Tacitus, 253 ; exhibited in their 
 representative men, 254 ; individual- 
 ism in German history, 254-5 ; 
 absence of national principle in 
 German literature, 255-6 ; Klop- 
 stock's Messiah contrasted with 
 I'aradise Lost and Paradise Re- 
 gained, 256-8 ; German char- 
 acter in German drama, Lessing, 
 Schiller, Goethe 258-62; German 
 genius for lyric poetry, 262 ; 
 cosmopolitan tendency in German 
 literature of the eighteenth century. 
 Herder, 262-3 ; futile attempt to 
 express civic ideas in German lyric 
 poetry of eighteenth century, 
 Frederic Schubart ; Die Furstengrvft 
 contrasted with Gray's Elegy, 264-5 ; 
 German genius for lyric jwetry 
 reflected in Faust, 266-7 ; in Heine's
 
 / 
 
 INDEX 
 
 449 
 
 songs, 267-72 ; WUhelm MiiUer, 273 ; 
 
 question as to the future of German 
 
 Poetry, 274-7 
 Ideals for Middle Class, 135-45 
 IdyUs of the King, 413 
 Iliad, 49-50, 94, 353 
 "Imitation" in Fine Art, 63, 152-3, 
 
 163-4, 193-6 
 Imitations of Horace, Pope's, 43, 382, 
 
 384 
 Impressionists, 59, 142, 211-13, 249-50 
 Individual, The, 44, 67-8 
 Individualism, 9, 136, 148-9, 254-5 
 In Memoriam, 87, 412, 418 
 Inspiration, 44-7, 154 
 
 Jebb, Sir Richard, 434-5 
 Jerusalem Delivered, Tasso's, 348-9 
 Johnson, Samuel, 367, 406, 433 
 Jonson, Ben, 17, 68, 195, 203-4 
 Justinian, 337 
 Juvenal, 55 
 
 Kant, 173, 179-80, 253, 254 
 
 Keats, 21-3, 40, 81 
 
 Keble, John, 7 
 
 King Lear, 205, 236, 296 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 141-5, 153 
 
 Klopstock, 256-8 
 
 Kubla Khan, 81 
 
 La Fontaine, 239-30, 251 
 
 Laisser /aire, 422-7 
 
 Langland, 308, 315, 316-18, 319-20, 
 321, 323 
 
 Laocoon, 172 
 
 Laodamia, 76 
 
 Lara^ 401 
 
 Latin element in English, 314 
 
 Poetry, 100-1 
 
 Law, William, 396 
 
 Law in Taste, 159-189 ; English dislike 
 of Criticism, 159-60 ; how far reason- 
 able, 160-2 ; question as to the 
 object of Fine Art Imitation, 163-4 ; 
 correctness in Imitation, 164-5 ; 
 ^Esthetic Pleasure, end of Fine Art, 
 166 ; Mr. Bosanquet's contrary 
 view, 166-7 ; question as to con- 
 nection between Art and Morals, 
 168 ; history of ^Esthetic CriticLsni, 
 169-75 ; history of Philosophic 
 Enquiry into ^Esthetic Law, 175-81 ; 
 failure of iEsthetic Philosophy to 
 throw light on artistic practice, 
 181-4 ; Law in Art and Taste to Ixi 
 looke<l for in the greatest works of 
 Art, 184 ; the Absolute in Art 
 variously reflected, 185 ; law of 
 
 National Character in Art, 185-6 ; 
 
 National Criticism, 186-9 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, 46-7. 71 149 
 Layamon, 307 
 
 Legend of Good Women, 322 
 Leibnitz, 394 
 Leonora, 266 
 
 Lessiug, 172, 253, 259-60, 290, 433 
 Les Tragiqv.es. 226 
 Liberty in Matters of Taste. See 
 
 Authority 
 Political and Individual, 60-1, 
 
 423-27 
 Life in Poetry, 38-44, 58-62, 89-90, 
 
 124-6, 188 
 LitevK Humaniores, School of, 30, 441 
 Locke, 367, 375, 378 
 Locksley Hall, 407, 409, 410 
 
 Sixty Years After, 410 
 
 Logic in Art, 249-50 
 
 Longinus, 170 
 
 Lorris, William de, 225, 304 
 
 Lovelace, 380 
 
 Lowth, Bishoj), 6 
 
 Luther, 253, 254, 352, 358 
 
 Lutrin, 247 
 
 Lyoophron, 118 
 
 Lyiy, 21 
 
 Lyric Poetry, 389-91 
 
 Macaulay, 330, 343-7, 388, 389, 406 
 
 Macbeth, 233, 258, 291 
 
 Malherbe, 226, 238 
 
 Mallarme, 115 
 
 Manfred, 401 
 
 Mannerism, 297, 413-14, 
 
 Marino. 369 
 
 Marin > Faliero, 413, 416 
 
 Marlow^ 71-72 
 
 Marot, 225. 289 
 
 Mavd, 407, 410, 413 
 
 Measti.re for Measure, 291 
 
 Medal, Drjden's, 41 
 
 Men and Women, 417 
 
 Mengs, Raphael, 172 
 
 M''.isiah, Klopstock's, 256-8 
 
 Metaphysical Poetry, 5, 367-73 
 
 Metre, 73-78 
 
 Meung, John de, 225, 304 
 
 Mid.lle Class, The English, 131-5 
 
 Middlemarch, 117 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 85, 422 
 
 Millais, 1S3-84 
 
 Milman, Dean, 6 
 
 Mli.TON as a reiiresentative of Law in 
 f:iiKlisli Poetry, 329-359 ; popular 
 dislike of Milton's Theologj-, 329 ; 
 not to Ik; taken into account in judg- 
 ing liis genius, 330-1 ; Addison's 
 criticism on I'aradi-sr Lost, its merits
 
 450 
 
 INDEX 
 
 and defects, 331-2 ; Paradise Lost 
 regarded (1) as an imitation of the 
 Universal in Nature, 332-4 ; (2) as 
 an imitation of the age and character 
 of the time, 334-43 ; comparison 
 between The Divine Conudy, as the 
 mirror of the thought of the Middle 
 Ages, 335-39 ; and Paradise Lost, 
 as the mirror of the thought of the 
 Renaissance and the Reformation, 
 339-43 ; Panuiise I^st reganled (3) 
 as harmonising opposite principles of 
 Art, 343-357 ; Macaulay's contrast 
 between the styles of Dante and 
 Milton, 343 ; examined, 344-7 ; 
 contrast between the epic method of 
 Tasso and Milton, 347-50 ; Milton's 
 reconciliation of Christian and Pagan 
 principles in machinery of epic action, 
 349-51 ; of Christian and classical 
 ideas and images, 351-5 ; faults in 
 Paradise Lost, 355-6 ; Paradise 
 Lost, viewed in relation to con- 
 temporary circumstances, 356-8 ; 
 its reflection of English Character, 
 359 
 
 Minot, Laurence, 322 
 
 Mistress, The, Cowley's, 380 
 
 Modern Painters, 161 
 
 Moliere, 228-9, 251, 252 
 
 Montrose, 380 
 
 Moral Essays, Pope's, 381 
 
 Moralitv and Art, 168, 177-81, 320-1, 
 438-40 
 
 Morice, Charles, 119-20 
 
 Morris, William, 80-81 
 
 Mozart, 253 
 
 Miiller Wilhelra, 273 
 
 Naevius, 305 
 
 National Character in Art, 185-9 
 Naturalists, 211-13, 249-50 
 Nineteenth Century, the, 421-4 
 Nordau, 111-14, 123, 147 
 Norman Conquest, the, 302 
 Nouvelle Helolse, 395 
 
 Ode on Immortality, 76, 391 
 
 (Edipv^ Rex, 105, 258 
 
 Optimism, 394, 422-3 
 
 Oratory and Poetry, 85, 139 
 
 Orlando Furioso, 252, 349 
 
 Othello, 7i 
 
 Oxford, University of, 1, 28, 29,|437-44 
 
 Palace of Art, 411 
 Palgrave, Francis, 8 
 Painting and Poetry, 39-40, 41, 94-97, 
 246-48, 411-13 
 
 Paradise Lost, 45, 46, 129, 252, 256, 
 332, 333-4, 339-43 
 
 Paradise Regained, 256-7, 369 
 
 Paratliso, 45, 337 
 
 Parliament of Foules, 322 
 
 Pater, Walter, 10 
 
 Pathos, 52 
 
 Pessimism, 423-4 
 
 Pericles, 33 
 
 Hipl itipovs, 
 
 Phadra, Seneca's, 105 
 
 Philologists, 30, 300, 306 
 
 Piers the Plmmnan, Vision of, 293, 
 305, 316-18 
 
 Plato, 169, 170-71 
 
 Pleasure, 38-9, 63-4, 166-7, 175-81 
 
 Pleiad, 226 
 
 Poe, Edgar, 81 
 
 Poems by Two Brothers, 407 
 
 Plotiuus, 170 
 
 Poetical Conception, 37-62, Nature 
 of, 42-4 ; Horace's principle of, 43, 
 48 ; Universal and Indi\idual in, 
 44 - 7 ; Homer's method of, 49 ; 
 Virgil's, 50 - 1 ; Statius', 52 - 5 ; 
 Juvenal's, 55 ; Pope's, 56 ; Brown- 
 ing's, 58 ; existing difficulties in the 
 way of, 58-62 
 
 Decaden'CE, 89-122 ; illustrated 
 
 in history of Greece, Rome, and 
 England, 90 ; symptoms of (1) 
 decline of the Universal, 92-102 ; 
 (2) exaggeration of the Individual, 
 102-108 ; (3) abdication by Society 
 of its right of judgment, 108-10 ; 
 Nordau's view of, 111-14 ; signs of, 
 in French school of Poetical Symbol- 
 ism, 115-120 ; question as to con- 
 temporary, 120-2 
 
 Expression, 63 - 88 ; Horace's 
 
 rule for, 65-6 ; Universal and Indi- 
 vidual in, 67 ; metre the vehicle of, 
 68-73 ; Wordsworth's theory of, 73- 
 78 ; test for determining propriety of, 
 78 ; Walt ^\^litman^s, 79 ; William 
 Morris's, 80 ; Coleridge's definition 
 of, 81 ; in Kubla Khan, 81 ; in 
 Dolores, 82 ; existing diflSculties in 
 the way of, 82-86 ; examples of just, 
 87-8 
 
 Poetics, Aristotle's, 191-3, 213-220, 223, 
 432 
 
 Poetry and the People, 123-156 ; 
 connection between the life of a nation 
 and the life of Art, 125-6 ; question 
 as to extent of decay in national life, 
 127-8 ; decay in schools of art con- 
 temporaneous with decay of ruling 
 principles in the classes of a nation, 
 128-9 ; the decay of the power of
 
 INDEX 
 
 451 
 
 the Crown, 128 ; of the power of the 
 Aristocracy, 130-1 ; of the power of 
 the Middle Classes, 131-5 ; ideals of 
 Culture and Poetry suggested by 
 modem critics, Matthew Arnold's, 
 135-8 ; Mr. Swinburne's, 138-40 ; 
 Mr. Kipling's, 141-5; pursuit of 
 Novelty in Poetry, 145-6 ; causes of 
 decline in Modem Poetry, Herr Nor- 
 dau's pathological theory, 147-8 ; 
 Self-conscious Analysis in Poetry, 
 148-9 want of Cultivation in public 
 taste, 150-1 ; necessity of the Uni- 
 versal in Poetry, 153-4 ; National 
 ideal in Poetic Imitation, 154-5 
 
 Polymetis, 172 
 
 Pope as a representative of Law in 
 English Poetry, 360-87 ; value of the 
 Essay on Criticism, as the critical 
 work of a poet, 361-2 ; main principles 
 in the Essay on Criticism, 362-87 ; 
 
 (1) "Follow Nature," 362-5 ; different 
 conceptions of Nature in pre-Christian 
 Society, in the Middle Ages, and in 
 the post- Renaissance period, 362-5 ; 
 
 (2) "Avoid False Wit," 365-73; 
 " Wit," the result of the theological 
 conception of Nature in the Middle 
 Ages, 365-7 ; examples of False Wit 
 in English Poetry, 367-73 ; Phineas 
 Fletcher's Purple Island, 368-9 ; 
 Giles Fletcher's Christ's Death atul 
 Victory, 369-70 ; Crashaw's lyrics, 
 370-3 ; Pope's conception of Nature, 
 373-82 ; his attempt to reconcile 
 Roman Catholic and Protestant ideas, 
 374-5 ; Catholicism and Deism, 
 375-7 ; his rational conception of the 
 Universal contrasted with the False 
 Wit of the seventeenth century, 
 377-8 ; his exclusion from poetry of 
 the scholastic elements, 379 ; of the 
 Romantic element, 380; (3) "Imitate 
 the Classics," 379 - 85 ; Pope's 
 assimilation of the classic and civic 
 spirit of antiquity with modem life 
 and action, 379-81 ; restricted scope 
 of his poetical conception, 382-4 ; 
 limitation in his principle of correct 
 poetical expression, 384 - 5 ; his 
 supremacy in ethical, satiric, and 
 didactic verse, 386-7 
 
 Popularity, 295-6 
 Prelude, 76 
 
 Preraphaelites, 183-4, 276 
 Pride and Prejiuiice, 201-2 
 Professorship of Poetry, 3-8, 31-3 
 Public Opinion, 18-19, 151-2, 295-6 
 
 Service and Universities, 29, 437 
 
 Puritaoism, Milton's, 352, 357-8 
 
 Purple Island, The, 363 
 
 Quarterly Review, 20-23 
 QuintUian, 24, 433 
 Quintilius Varus, 108 
 
 Rabelais, 227, 289 
 Racine, 252 
 
 Rambouillet, Hotel de, 226, 227, 229, 
 239, 250 
 
 Marquise de, 226 
 
 Mdlle. de, 249 
 
 PMjje of the Lock, 381 
 Realists in Art, 203-9 
 Reformation, the, 130, 289, 291, 293-4, 
 
 342, 352, 357, 420, 437 
 Religio Laid, 41 
 Renaissance, the, 138, 140, 171, 249, 
 
 290-1, 341-2, 358, 364, 373, 374, 
 
 383, 392, 395, 421, 441 
 Renan, 14, 250 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 25, 292,4343 
 
 356, 383 
 Richardson, 74, 396 
 Richelieu, 14 
 Robbers, Schiller's, 261 
 Rollinat, 118 
 Romance, 61-2, 380-1 
 RoDUUice of t/ie Rose, 225, 280, 322 
 Romanticists, French, 243-9 
 Ronsard, 226 
 Rosebery, Lord, 440 
 Rossetti, 112 
 Rousseau, 391-5, 407 
 Ruins of Time, Spenser's, 42, 83 
 Ruskin, 23, 161 
 
 Sannazaro, 380 
 
 SardarMjxdiis, 399, 401 
 
 Sarpedon, 26 
 
 Sartor Resartus, 9, 417 
 
 Schelling, 174-5 
 
 Schiller, 173-4, 253, 259, 260-1 
 
 Schlegel, Augustus, 159-60, 162 
 
 Scfiolar (ripsy, 138 
 
 Scholastic Logic, 335-9, 379 
 
 Schopenhauer, 182, 423 
 
 Schubart, Fre<lerick, 264 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 46, 71, 200-1 
 
 Scud<:-ry, 242, 380 
 
 Self-consciousness in Art, 148-9, 154, 
 
 388-90, 391-4, 414-18 
 Setniramis, 172 
 Seneca, 104-6, 118, 231 
 Serums CiUl to a Devout Life, 396 
 ShakesiMjare, 68, 86, 90, 91, 113, 172, 
 
 183, 195, 232, 392-3, 400 
 Shelley, 61, 69-71, 397 
 Sidney, 69-71, 280-1, 359, 380-1 
 Simonides, 170, 172
 
 452 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Singularity, 296-7 
 
 Skinner, 306 
 
 Society, authority of, 11 
 
 Socialism, 276, 426 
 
 Songs before Sunrise, 139 
 
 Sophocles, 26, 101, 104, 105, 119 
 
 Sophrou, 200 
 
 Sj)ectcUor, the, criticism in, 63-4, 123, 
 
 129 
 Spence, Joseph, 6, 172 
 Spenser, 42, 83, 102, 359 
 Statius, 52-5 
 Stephen, Leslie, 362 
 Stcblime and BecitUiful, Burke's, 172 
 Swinburne, 82, 138-41 
 Swift, 375, 383 
 Symbolists, the French, 110-20 
 
 Tbnntson as a representative of Law in 
 English poetry, 406-18 ; Tennyson's 
 earliest poems imitative of Byron, 
 407 ; his later self -analysis, 407 ; 
 adaptation of BjTonic soliloquy, 
 408 ; difference between Byron's 
 self- consciousness and Tennyson's, 
 408-9 ; Locksley Hall, Maud, 409 ; 
 Tennyson's philosophic doubt, 409- 
 10 ; his self -consciousness representa- 
 tive of that of society, 409 ; examples 
 of, 410 ; seeks perfection of external 
 form ; Palace of Art, 410-11 ; 
 genius akin to painter's and mu- 
 sician's, 411; word-painting; In 
 Memoriam, 412; metrical music; 
 Maud, The Daisy, The Nortliern 
 Farmer, BaiUe of Brunanburh, 412- 
 13 ; want of epic and dramatic 
 genius. Idylls of the King, Aylmer's 
 Field, 413 ; In Memoriam a mirror 
 of universal self-consciousness, 417 
 
 Tacitus, 253 
 
 Tasso, 347, 363 
 
 Taste, 8 
 
 Taylor. Jeremy, 23 
 
 TertuUian, 291, 351, 352 
 
 Tempest, 73, 195 
 
 Thamyris, 148 
 
 Thebais, 52-5 
 
 Theocritus, 97, 358 
 
 Theology, 335, 379, 381 
 
 Thesrmopiwriazusve, 93-4 
 
 Thyrsis, 138 
 
 To BArto^, 165, 199, 201, 209, 213 
 
 T6 KaX6', 165 
 
 Trachiniae, 105 
 
 Two Foscari, The, 401 
 
 Unities, The, 231-6, 281-3 
 
 Universal, the, 44, 62, 92, 154, 196- 
 
 209, 294, 328, 332-42, 377-8, 386, 
 
 415-8 
 Universities, 27-28, 291, 436-40, 442 
 Usios, 21 
 
 Varus, Quintilius, 188 
 Verlaine, 116-7 
 Verstegan, 306 
 Vineta, 273 
 Virgil, 50-2, 72, 118 
 Voltaire, 172, 231, 242 
 
 Wagner, 183 
 
 Wallenstein, Schiller's, 261 
 
 Walt Whitman, 79 
 
 Warton, Thomas, 6 
 
 Werther, Sorroics of, 295, 395 
 
 Wesleys, the, 396 
 
 William Tell, Schiller's, 261 
 
 Winckelmann, 172, 290 
 
 Wit, false, 362, 365-7 
 
 true, 374 
 
 Wordsworth, 49, 61, 63, 73-8, 86-7, 
 
 422-3, 424 
 Wragg, 7 
 
 Xenarchus, 200 
 Xenophon, 69-70 
 
 Zola, 14, 207 
 
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