For an example of the satisfaction the ordinary mind takes in mere metre there is nothing better than the senseless refrains of popular songs—things which make not even the pretense of containing ideas. From the “hey ding a ding” of Shakspeare and the “luddy, fuddy,” etc., of Mr. Lester Wallack’s famous thieves’ song in “Rosedale,” to the “whack fol-de-rol” of inferior and less original composers, they are all alike in appealing to nothing in the world but the sense of time. And in this they differ in no essential particular from the verses in the newspapers; for such ideas as these contain—and God knows they are harmless—are probably never perfectly grasped by the reader, who, when he has finished his “poem,” is very sure to be unable to tell you what it is all about. I have proved this by repeated experiments, and I believe I am not far wrong on the side of immoderation in saying that of every one hundred adults who can read and write with ease, there are ninety and nine to whom poetry is a sealed book—who not only do not recognize it when read, but do not understand it when pointed out. There is hardly any subject on which the ignorance of educated persons is more deep, dark and universal. And in one sense it is hopeless. By no set instruction can a knowledge of poetry be gained. It is (to those having the capacity) a result of general refinement—the fruit of a taste and judgment that come of culture. The difficulty of imparting it is immensely enhanced by the want of a definition. If one have gift and knowledge it is easy enough to say what is poetry, but not so easy to say what poetry is.
Hunters have a saying that a deer is safe from the man that never misses. Likewise it may be said that the faultless poet gets no readers; for, as the hunter can never miss only by never firing, so the poet can avoid faults only by not writing. There is no such thing in art or letters as attainable perfection; the utmost that any man can hope to do is to make the sum and importance of his excellences so exceed the sum and importance of his faults that the general impression shall seem faultless—that the good shall divert attention from the bad in the contemplation and efface it in the recollection. In considering the character of a particular work and assigning it to its true place amongst works of similar scope and design, we must, indeed, balance merits against demerits, endeavoring in such a general way as the nature of the problem permits, to say which preponderate, and to what extent, making allowance in censure and modification in praise. But the author of the work is to be rightly judged by a different method, and he who has done great work is great, despite the number and magnitude of his failures and imperfections. These may serve to point a moral or illustrate a principle by its violation, but they do not and can not dim the glory of the better performance. Is he not a strong man who can lift a thousand pounds, notwithstanding that in acquiring the ability he failed a hundred times to lift the half of it? Who was the strongest man in the world—he who once lifted the greatest weight, or he who twice lifted the second greatest? The author of “Paradise Lost” wrote afterward “Paradise Regained.” He who wrote a poem called “In Memoriam” wrote a thing called “The Northern Farmer.” Of what significance is that? Shall we count also a man’s washing-list against him? Suppose that Byron had not written the “Hours of Idleness”—would that have enhanced the value of “Childe Harold”? Is our hoard of Shakspearean pure gold the smaller because from the mine whence it came came also some of the base metal of “Titus Andronicus”? Surely it does not matter whether the hand that at one time wrote the lines “To Helen” was at another time writing “The Bells” or whittling a pine shingle. Literature is not like a game of billiards, in which the player is rated according to his average. In estimating the relative altitudes of mountain peaks we look no lower than their summits.
In judging men by this broader method than that which we apply to their work we do but practice that method whereby posterity arrives at judgments so just and true that in their prediction consists the whole science of criticism. To anticipate the verdict of posterity—that is all the most daring critic aspires to do, and to do that he should strive to exclude the evidence that posterity will not hear. Posterity is a tribunal in which there will be no testimony for the prosecution except what is inseparable from the strongest testimony for the defence. It will consider no man’s bad work, for none will be extant. Nay, it will not even attend to the palliating or aggravating circumstances of his life and surroundings, for these too will have been forgotten; if not lost from the records they will be whelmed under mountains of similar or more important matter—Pelion upon Ossa of accumulated “literary materials.”
These are points to which the critics do not sufficiently attend—do not, indeed, attend at all. They endeavor to anticipate the judgment of posterity by a method as unlike posterity’s as their judgment and ingenuity can make it. They attentively study their poet’s private life and his relation to the time and its events in which he lived. They go to his work for the key to his character, and return to his character for the key to his work, then ransack his correspondence for side-lights on both. They paw dusty records and forgotten archives; they thumb and dog’s-ear the libraries; and he who can turn up an original document or hitherto unnoted fact exults in the possession of an advantage over his fellows that will justify the publication of another volume to befog the question. Then comes posterity, calmly overlooks the entire mass of ingenious irrelevance, fixes a tranquil eye upon those lines which the poet has inscribed the highest, and determines his mental stature as simply, as surely and with as little assistance as Daniel discerning the hand of God in the letters blazing upon the palace wall.
II
The world is nearly all discovered, mapped and described. In the hot hearts of two continents, and the “thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice” about the poles, uncertainty still holds sway over a lessening domain, and there Fancy waves her joyous wing unclipped by knowledge. As in the material world, so in the world of mind. The daring incursions of conjecture have been followed and discredited by the encroachments of science, whereby the limits of the unknown have been narrowed to such mean dimensions that imagination has lost her free, exultant stride, and moves with mincing step and hesitating heart.
I do not mean to say that to-day knows much more that is worth knowing than did yesterday, but that with regard to poetry’s materials—the visible and audible without us, and the emotional within—we have compelled a revelation of Nature’s secrets, and found them uninteresting to the last degree. To the modern “instructed understanding” she has something of the air of a detected impostor, and her worshipers have neither the sincerity that comes from faith, nor the enthusiasm that is the speech of sincerity. The ancients not only had, as Dr. Johnson said, “the first rifling of the beauties of Nature”; they had the immensely greater art advantage of ignorance of her dull, vulgar and hideous processes, her elaborate movements tending nowhither, and the aimless monotony of her mutations. The telescope had not pursued her to the heights, nor the microscope dragged her from her ambush. The meteorologists had not analyzed her temper, nor constructed mathematical formulæ to forecast her smiles and frowns. Mr. Edison had not arrived to show that the divine gift of speech (about the only thing that distinguishes men, parrots, and magpies from the brutes) is also an attribute of metal. In the youth of the world they had, in short, none of the disillusionizing sciences with which a critical age, delving curiously about the roots of things, has sapped the substructure of religion and art alike. I do not regret the substitution of knowledge for conjecture, and doubt for faith; I only say that it has its disadvantages, and among them we reckon the decay of poesy. In an enlightened age, Macaulay says,
Men will judge and compare; but they will not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a certain extent enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while he shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilized community, and most rare among those who participate most in its improvements. They linger among the peasantry.
While it is true in a large sense that the world’s greatest poets have lived in rude ages, when their races were not long emerged from the night of barbarism—like birds the poets sing best at sunrise—it must not be supposed that similarly favorable conditions are supplied to a rude individual intelligence in an age of polish. With a barbarous age that had recently set its face to the dawn a Joaquin Miller would have been in full sympathy, and might have interpreted its spirit in songs of exceeding splendor. But the very qualities that would have made him en rapport with such an era make him an isolated voice in ours; while Tennyson, the man of culture, full of the disposition of his time—albeit the same is of less adequate vitality—touches with a valid hand the harp which the other beats in vain. The altar is growing cold, the temple itself becoming a ruin; the divine mandate comes with so feeble and faltering a voice that the priest has need of a trained and practiced ear to catch it and the gift of tongues to impart its meaning to a generation concerned with the unholy things whose voice is prose. As a poetical mental attitude, that of doubt is meaner than that of faith, that of speculation less commanding than that of emotion; yet the poet of to-day must assume them, and “In Memoriam” attests the wisdom of him who “stoops to conquer”—loyally accepting the hard conditions of his epoch, and bending his corrigible genius in unquestioning assent to the three thousand and thirty-nine articles of doubt.
As inspiration grows weak and acceptance disobedient, form of delivery becomes of greater moment; in so far as it can, the munificence of manner must mitigate the poverty of matter; so it occurs that the poets of later life excel their predecessors in the delicate and difficult arts and artifices of versification as much as they fall below them in imagination and power.