With the single exception of Burke, however, the critics of the eighteenth century labored under a misapprehension no less blind than the moral obsession which twisted Elizabethan criticism. In the eighteenth century critics were prone to confuse the spiritual element in the poet's nature with intellectualism, and the sensuous element with emotionalism. Such criticism tended to drive the poet either into an arid display of wit, on the one hand, or into sentimental excess, on the other, and the native English distrust of emotion led eighteenth century critics to praise the poet when the intellect had the upper hand. But surely poets have made it clear enough that the intellect is not the distinctive characteristic of the poet. To be intelligent is merely to be human. Intelligence is only a tool, poets have repeatedly insisted, in their quarrel with philosophers. In proportion as one is intelligent within one's own field, one excels, poets would admit. If one is intelligent with respect to fisticuffs one is likely to become a good prize-fighter, but no matter how far refinement of intelligence goes in this direction, it will not make a pugilist into a poet. Intelligence must belong likewise, in signal degree, to the great poet, but it is neither one of the two essential elements in his nature. Augustan critics starved the spiritual element in poetry, even while they imagined that they were feeding it, for in sharpening his wit the poet came no nearer expressing the "poor soul, the center of his sinful earth" than when he reveled in emotion. We no longer believe that in the most truly poetic nature the intelligence of a Pope is joined with the emotionalism of a Rousseau. We believe that the spirituality of a Crashaw is blent with the sensuousness of a Swinburne.
Nineteenth century criticism, since it is almost entirely the work of poets, should not be thus at odds with the conception of the poet expressed in poetry. But although nineteenth century prose criticism moves in the right direction, it is not entirely adequate. The poet is not at his best when he is working in a prose medium. He works too consciously in prose, hence his intuitive flashes are not likely to find expression. After he has tried to express his buried life there, he himself is likely to warn us that what he has said "is well, is eloquent, but 'tis not true." Even Shelley, the most successful of poet-critics, gives us a more vivid comprehension of the poetical balance of sense and spirit through his poet-heroes than through The Defense of Poetry, for he is almost exclusively concerned, in that essay, with the spiritual aspect of poetry. He expresses, in fact, the converse of Dryden's view in that he regards the sensuous as negation or dross merely. He asserts:
Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conception in naked truth and splendor, and it is doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not necessary to temper this planetary music to mortal ears.
The harmony in Shelley's nature which made it possible for his contemporaries to believe him a gross sensualist, and succeeding generations to believe him an angel, is better expressed by Browning, who says:
His noblest characteristic I call his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in the absolute, and of beauty and good in the concrete, while he throws, from his poet-station between them both, swifter, subtler and more numerous films for the connection of each with each than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge.[Footnote: Preface to the letters of Shelley (afterward found spurious).]
Yet Browning, likewise, gives a more illuminating picture of the poetic nature in his poetry than in his prose.
The peculiar merit of poetry about the poet is that it makes a valuable supplement to prose criticism. We have been tempted to deny that such poetry is the highest type of art. It has seemed that poets, when they are introspective and analytical of their gift, are not in the highest poetic mood. But when we are on the quest of criticism, instead of poetry, we are frankly grateful for such verse. It is analytical enough to be intelligible to us, and still intuitive enough to convince us of its truthfulness. Wordsworth's Prelude has been condemned in certain quarters as "a talking about poetry, not poetry itself," but in part, at least, the Prelude is truly poetry. For this reason it gives us more valuable ideas about the nature of poetry than does the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. If it is worth while to analyze the poetic character at all, then poetry on the poet is invaluable to us.
Perhaps it is too much for us to decide whether the picture of the poet at which we have been gazing is worthy to be placed above Plato's picture of the philosopher. The poet does not contradict Plato's charge against him. His self-portrait bears out the accusation that he is unable to see "the divine beauty—pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colors and varieties of human life." [Footnote: Symposium, 212.] Plato would agree with the analysis of the poetic character that Keats once struggled with, when he exclaimed,
What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Pentralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge—With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
Plato would agree with this,—all but the last sentence. Only, in place of the phrase "negative capability," he would substitute "incapability," and reflect that the poet fails to see absolute beauty because he is not content to leave the sensual behind and press on to absolute reality.