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[1]
It should not be doubted that at least one-third of
the affection with which we regard the elder poets
of Great Britain should be attributed to what is,
in itself, a thing apart from poetry—we
mean to the simple love of the antique—and
that, again, a third of even the proper poetic
sentiment inspired by their writings, should be
ascribed to a fact which, while it has strict connection
with poetry in the abstract, and with the old British
poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a merit
appertaining to the authors of the poems. Almost
every devout admirer of the old bards, if demanded
his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely,
yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild,
indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight;
on being required to point out the source of this
so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the
quaint in phraseology and in general handling.
This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct
to ideality, but in the case in question it arises
independently of the author’s will, and is altogether
apart from his intention. Words and their rhythm
have varied. Verses which affect us to-day with
a vivid delight, and which delight, in many instances,
may be traced to the one source, quaintness, must
have worn in the days of their construction a very
commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument
against the poems now—we mean it
only as against the poets then. There is
a growing desire to overrate them. The old English
muse was frank, guileless, sincere and although very
learned, still learned without art. No general
error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than
the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical
in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are
so. With the two former ethics were the end—with
the two latter the means. The poet of the “Creation”
wished, by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what
he supposed to be moral truth—the poet
of the “Ancient Mariner” to infuse the
Poetic Sentiment through channels suggested by analysis.
The one finished by complete failure what he commenced
in the grossest misconception; the other, by a path
which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at
a triumph which is not the less glorious because hidden
from the profane eyes of the multitude. But in
this view even the “metaphysical verse”
of Cowley is but evidence of the simplicity and single-heartedness
of the man. And he was in this but a type of
his school—for we may as well designate
in this way the entire class of writers whose poems
are bound up in the volume before us, and throughout
all of whom there runs a very perceptible general
character. They used little art in composition.
Their writings sprang immediately from the soul—and
partook intensely of that soul’s nature.
Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of this
abandon—to elevate immeasurably all
the energies of mind—but, again, so to
mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy,
and all good things, with the lowest possible bathos,
baldness, and imbecility, as to render it not a matter
of doubt that the average results of mind in such
a school will be found inferior to those results in
one (ceteris paribus) more artificial.
