Now it is easy for a doubter to object that many of the poems on the subject show the poet, not arraying evidence for a trial, but leaning over the brink of introspection in the attitude of Narcissus. One need seek no farther than self-love, it may be suggested, to find the motive for the poet's absorption in his reflection. Yet it is incontrovertible that the self-infatuation of our Narcissus has its origin in the conviction that no one else understands him, and that this conviction is founded upon a very real attitude of hostility on the part of his companions. The lack of sympathy between the English poet and the public is so notorious that Edmund Gosse is able to state as a truism: While in France poetry has been accustomed to reflect the general tongue of the people, the great poets of England have almost always had to struggle against a complete dissonance between their own aims and interests and those of the nation. The result has been that England, the most inartistic of the modern races, has produced the largest number of exquisite literary artists. [Footnote: French Profiles, p. 344.]
Furthermore, even though everyone may agree that a lurking sense of hostile criticism is back of the poet's self-absorption, another ground for skepticism may lie in our assumption that Plato is the central figure in the opposition. It is usually with purpose to excite the envy of contemporary enemies that poets call attention to their graces, the student may discover. Frequently the quarrels leading them to flaunt their personalities in their verses have arisen over the most personal and ephemeral of issues. Indeed, we may have appeared to falsify in classifying their enemies under general heads, when for Christopher North, Judson, Belfair, Friend Naddo, Richard Bame, we substituted faces of cipher foolishness, abstractions which we named the puritan, the philosopher, the philistine. Possibly by so doing we have given the impression that poets are beating the air against an abstraction when they are in reality delivering thumping blows upon the body of a personal enemy. And if these generalizations appear indefensible, still more misleading, it may be urged, is an attempt to represent that the poet, when he takes issue with this and that opponent, is answering a challenge hidden away from the unstudious in the tenth book of Plato's Republic. It is doubtful even whether a number of our poets are aware of the existence of Plato's challenge, and much more doubtful whether they have it in mind as they write.
Second thought must make it clear, however, that to prove ignorance of Plato's accusation on the part of one poet and another does not at all impair the possibility that it is his accusation which they are answering. So multiple are the threads of influence leading from the Republic through succeeding literatures and civilizations that it is unsafe to assert, offhand, that any modern expression of hostility to poetry may not be traced, by a patient untangler of evidence, to a source in the Republic. But even this is aside from the point. One might concede that the wide-spread modern antagonism to poetry would have been the same if Plato had never lived, and still maintain that in the Republic is expressed for all time whatever in anti-aesthetic criticism is worthy of a serious answer. Whether poets themselves are aware of it or not, we have a right to assert that in concerning themselves with the character of the ideal poet, they are responding to Plato's challenge.
This may not be enough to justify our faith that these defensive expositions lead us anywhere. Let us agree that certain poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have answered Plato's challenge. But has the Poet likewise answered it? If from their independent efforts to paint the ideal poet there has emerged a portrait as sculpturally clear in outline as is Plato's portrait of the ideal philosopher, we shall perhaps be justified in saying, Yes, the Poet, through a hundred mouths, has spoken.
Frankly, the composite picture which we have been considering has not sculptural clarity. To the casual observer it bears less resemblance to an alto-relief than to a mosaic; no sooner do distinct patterns spring out of myriad details than they shift under the onlooker's eyes to a totally different form. All that we can claim for the picture is excellence as a piece of impressionism, which one must scan with half-closed eyes at a calculated distance, if one would appreciate its central conception.
Apparently readers of English poetry have not taken the trouble to scan it with such care. They may excuse their indifference by declaring that an attempt to discover a common aesthetic principle in a collection of views as catholic as those with which we have dealt is as absurd as an attempt to discover philosophical truth by taking a census of general opinion. Still, obvious as are the limitations of a popular vote in determining an issue, it has a certain place in the discovery of truth. One would not entirely despise the benefit derived from a general survey of philosophers' convictions, for instance. Into the conclusions of each philosopher, even of the greatest, there are bound to enter certain personal whimsicalities of thought, which it is profitable to eliminate, by finding the common elements in the thought of several men. If the quest of a universal least common denominator forces one to give up everything that is of significance in the views of philosophers, there is profit, at least, in learning that the title of philosopher does not carry with it a guarantee of truth-telling. On the other hand if we find universal recognition of some fundamental truth, a common cogito ergo sum, or the like, acknowledged by all philosophers, we have made a discovery as satisfactory in its way as is acceptance of the complex system of philosophy offered by Plato or Descartes. There seems to be no real reason why it should not be quite as worth while to take a similar census of the views of poets.
After hearkening to the general suffrage of poets on the question of the poet's character, we must bring a serious charge against them if a deafening clamor of contradiction reverberates in our ears. In such a case their claim that they are seers, or masters of harmony, can be worth little. The unbiased listener is likely to assure us that clamorous contradiction is precisely what the aggregate of poets' speaking amounts to, but we shall be slow to acknowledge as much. Have we been merely the dupe of pretty phrasing when we felt ourselves insured against discord by the testimony of Keats? Hear him:
How many bards gild the lapses of time!
* * * * *
… Often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude,
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime.
However incompatible the characteristics of the poets celebrated by Wordsworth and by Swinburne, by Christina Rossetti and by Walt Whitman may have seemed in immediate juxtaposition, we have trusted that we need only retire to a position where "distance of recognizance bereaves" their individual voices, in order to detect in their mingled notes "pleasing music, and not wild uproar."
The critic who condemns as wholly discordant the variant notes of our multitudinous verse-writers may point out that we should have had more right to expect concord if we had shown some discernment in sifting true poets from false. Those who have least claim to the title of poet have frequently been most garrulous in voicing their convictions. Moreover, these pseudo-poets outnumber genuine poets one hundred to one, yet no one in his right mind would contend that their expressions of opinion represent more than a straw vote, if they conflict with the judgment of a single true poet.