Still, our propensity for listening to the rank breath of the multitude is not wholly indefensible. In the first place pseudo-poets have not created so much discord as one might suppose. A lurking sense of their own worthlessness has made them timid of utterance except as they echo and prolong a note that has been struck repeatedly by singers of reputation. This echoing, it may be added, has sometimes been effective in bringing the traditions of his craft to the attention of a young singer as yet unaware of them. Thus Bowles and Chivers, neither of whom has very strong claim to the title of bard, yet were in a measure responsible for the minor note in Coleridge's and Poe's description of the typical poet.
Even when the voices of spurious bards have failed to chime with the others, the resulting discord has not been of serious moment. A counterfeit coin may be as good a touchstone for the detection of pure silver, as is pure silver for the detection of counterfeit. Not only are a reader's views frequently clarified by setting a poetaster beside a poet as a foil, but poets themselves have clarified their views because they have been incited by declarations in false verse to express their convictions more unreservedly than they should otherwise have done. Pseudo-poets have sometimes been of genuine benefit by their exaggeration of some false note which they have adopted from poetry of the past. No sooner do they exaggerate such a note, than a concerted shout of protest from true poets drowns the erroneous statement, and corrects the misleading impression which careless statements in earlier verse might have left with us. Thus the morbid singer exhibited in minor American verse of the last century, and the vicious singer lauded in one strain of English verse, performed a genuine service by calling forth repudiation, by major poets, of traits which might easily lead a singer in the direction of morbidity and vice.
The confusion of sound which our critic complains of is not to be remedied merely by silencing the chorus of echoic voices. If we dropped from consideration all but poets of unquestionable merit, we should not be more successful in detecting a single clear note, binding all their voices together. When the ideal poet of Shelley is set against that of Byron, or that of Matthew Arnold against that of Browning, there is no more unison than when great and small in the poetic world are allowed to speak indiscriminately.
Does this prove that only the supreme poet speaks truly, and that we must hush all voices but his if we would learn what is the essential element in the poetic character? Then we are indeed in a hard case. There is no unanimity of opinion among us regarding the supreme English poet of the last century, and if we dared follow personal taste in declaring one of higher altitude than all the others only a small percentage of readers would be satisfied when we set up the Prelude or Adonais or Childe Harold or Sordello beside the Republic as containing the one portrait of the ideal singer worthy to stand beside the portrait of the ideal philosopher. And this is not the worst of the difficulty. Even if we turn from Shelley to Byron, from Wordsworth to Browning, in quest of the one satisfactory conception of the poet, we shall not hear in anyone of their poems the single clear ringing note for which we are listening. When anyone of these men is considering the poetic character, his thought behaves like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between two poles.
Thus we ourselves have admitted the futility of our quest of truth, the critic may conclude. But no, before we admit as much, let us see exactly what constitutes the lack of unity which troubles us. After its persistence in verse of the same country, the same period, the same tradition, the same poet, even, has led us to the brink of despair, its further persistence rouses in us fresh hope, or at least intense curiosity, for what impresses us as the swinging of a pendulum keeps up its rhythmical beat, not merely in the mind of each poet, but in each phase of his thought. We find the same measured antithesis of thought, whether he is considering the singer's environment or his health, his inspiration or his mission.
In treatment even of the most superficial matters related to the poet's character, this vibration forces itself upon our attention. Poets are sofar from subscribing to Taine's belief in the supreme importance of environment as molder of genius that the question of the singer's proper habitat is of comparative indifference to them, yet the dualism that we have noted runs as true to form here as in more fundamental issues. When one takes the suffrage of poets in general on the question of environment, two voices are equally strong. Genius is fostered by solitude, we hear; but again, genius is fostered by human companionship. At first we may assume that this divergence of view characterizes separate periods. Writers in the romantic period, we say, praised the poet whose thought was turned inward by solitude; while writers in the Victorian period praised the poet whose thought was turned upon the spectacle of human passions. But on finding that this classification is true only in the most general way, we go farther. Within the Victorian period Browning, we say, is the advocate of the social poet, as Arnold is the advocate of the solitary one. But still our classification is inadequate. Is Browning the expositor of the gregarious poet? It is true that he feels it necessary for the singer to "look upon men and their cares and hopes and fears and joys." [Footnote: Pauline.] But he makes Sordello flee like a hunted creature back to Goito and solitude in quest of renewed inspiration. Is Arnold the expositor of the solitary poet? True, he urges him to fly from "the strange disease of modern life". [Footnote: The Scholar Gypsy.] Yet he preaches that the duty of the poet is
to scan
Not his own course, but that of man.
[Footnote: Resignation.]
Within the romantic period the same phenomenon is evident. Does Wordsworth paint the ideal poet dwelling apart from human distractions? Yet he declares that his deepest insight is gained by listening to "the still sad music of humanity". In Keats, Shelley, Byron, the same antithesis of thought is not less evident.
We cannot justly conclude that a compromise between contradictions, an avoidance of extremes, is what anyone of these poets stands for. It is complete absorption in the drame of human life that makes one a poet, they aver; but again, it is complete isolation that allows the inmost poetry of one's nature to rise to consciousness. At the same time they make it clear that the supreme poet needs the gifts of both environments. To quote Walt Whitman,
What the full-grown poet came,
Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe
with all its shows of day and night) saying, He
is mine;
But out spake too the Soul of men, proud, jealous
and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone;
—Then the full-grown poet stood between the two and
took each by the hand;
And today and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly
holding hands,
Which he will never release till he reconciles the two,
And wholly and joyously blends them.