Let me be cautious here, or some remarks I made the other day upon another poet—Mr. Hosken, author of Phaon and Sappho, and Verses by the Way—will be brought up against me. Defending Mr. Hosken against certain critics who had complained of the lack of dramatic power in his tragedies, I said, "Be it allowed that he has little dramatic power, and that (since the poem professed to be a tragedy) dramatic power was what you reasonably looked for. But an alert critic, considering the work of a beginner, will have an eye for the bye-strokes as well as the main ones: and if the author, while missing the main, prove effective with the bye—if Mr. Hosken, while failing to construct a satisfactory drama, gave evidence of strength in many fine meditative passages—then at the worst he stands convicted of a youthful error in choosing a literary form unsuited to convey his thought."
Not in the "Plays" only.
These observations I believe to be just, and having entered the caveat in Mr. Hosken's case, I should observe it in Mr. Davidson's also, did these five youthful plays stand alone. But Mr. Davidson has published much since these plays first appeared—works both in prose and verse—Fleet Street Eclogues, Ninian Jamieson, A Practical Novelist, A Random Itinerary, Baptist Lake: and because I have followed his writings (I think from his first coming to London) with the greatest interest, I may possibly be excused for speaking a word of warning. I am quite certain that Mr. Davidson will never bore me: but I wish I could be half so certain that he will in time produce something in true perspective; a fabric duly proportioned, each line of which from the beginning shall guide the reader to an end which the author has in view; something which
"Servetur ad imum
Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet."
Sibi constet, be it remarked. A work of art may stand very far from Nature, provided its own parts are consistent. Heaven forbid that a critic should decry an author for being fantastic, so long as he is true to his fantasy.
But Mr. Davidson's wit is so brilliant within the circles of its temporary coruscation as to leave the outline of his work in a constant penumbra. Indeed, when he wishes to unburden his mind of an idea, he seems to have less capacity than many men of half his ability to determine the form best suited for conveying it. If anything can be certain which has not been tried, it is that his story A Practical Novelist should have been cast in dramatic form. His vastly clever Perfervid: or the Career of Ninian Jamieson is cast in two parts which neither unite to make a whole, nor are sufficiently independent to stand complete in themselves. I find it characteristic that his Random Itinerary—that fresh and agreeable narrative of suburban travel—should conclude with a crashing poem, magnificent in itself, but utterly out of key with the rest of the book. Turn to the Compleat Angler, and note the exquisite congruity of the songs quoted by Walton with the prose in which they are set, and the difference will be apparent at once. Fate seems to dog Mr. Davidson even into his illustrations. A Random Itinerary and this book of Plays (both published by Messrs. Mathews and Lane) have each a conspicuously clever frontispiece. But the illustrator of A Random Itinerary has chosen as his subject the very poem which I have mentioned as out of harmony with the book; and I must protest that the vilely sensual faces in Mr. Beardsley's frontispiece to these Plays are hopelessly out of keeping with the sunny paganism of Scaramouch in Naxos. There is nothing Greek about Mr. Beardsley's figures: their only relationship with the Olympians is derived through the goddess Aselgeia.
With all this I have to repeat that Mr. Davidson is in some respects the most richly endowed of all the younger poets. The grand manner comes more easily to him than to any other: and if he can cultivate a sense of form and use this sense as a curb upon his wit, he has all the qualities that take a poet far.
Nov. 24, 1984. "Ballads and Songs."
At last there is no mistake about it: Mr. John Davidson has come by his own. And by "his own" I do not mean popularity—though I hope that in time he will have enough of this and to spare—but mastery of his poetic method. This new volume of "Ballads and Songs" (London: John Lane) justifies our hopes and removes our chief fear. You remember Mr. T.E. Brown's fine verses on "Poets and Poets"?—