PLATO AS AN ART-CRITIC
I ought to say here that I find nothing more admirable in Plato than his criticism of poetry, and I cannot understand the difficulties which scholars find in his treatment of artists in the Republic and elsewhere. After all, scholars have as a rule little experience of any art that lies outside the narrow range of their own studies. Plato's remarks appear to me the perfection of common sense. Would any sane statesman, when devising such a revolutionary political scheme as is contemplated in the Republic, not take the opportunity of putting a bridle upon the mischievous vapourings of political poets, reformers, dreamers, schemers, et hoc genus omne? It should never be forgotten that the poet with the attractive fascination which he possesses in his art is an enormous power in society, all the more dangerous because his power is so subtle, and his doctrines not in themselves untrue. Can it be doubted that our own Byrons and Shelleys, with their frothy extravagances about freedom, have largely contributed both to the socialism and to the libertinism with which the politics of every nation in Europe are now infected? Even the great Schiller was led astray by the false watchwords of his time, and highly as I revere Goethe I cannot deny that the sensuality of his poetry has had a most baneful influence upon modern Germany. Many more might be named, and the subject is well worthy of fuller treatment. With regard to Schiller, however, it ought to be explained that "freedom" at that time in Germany meant only one thing, freedom from the foreign tyrant--Napoleon.
Remember that it is not all poets whom Plato wishes to banish, not those who feel the responsibility of their high calling, but only a certain class. Nowadays poets do not slander the gods; it is not worth their while, because nobody believes in the gods. They have other ways of undermining society. Plato everywhere shows an unerring feeling for art. Aristotle is a recorder and classifier, but no critic.
[CHAPTER IV]
THE ROOTS OF GERMAN MUSIC
Dr. Milman, in his great History of Christianity, observes that no religious revolution has ever been successful which has commenced with the Government. Such revolutions have ever begun in the middle or lower orders of society. The same is true of other branches of the intellectual life of man. Neither Governments nor academies and schools can ever originate anything new in art, politics, language. All growth springs from the unsophisticated masses; growth is organic, from below. The blossom must fade, and the seed fall to the earth before it can bring forth new life. Academical training concerns itself with the models of the past; its useful work consists in criticizing, purifying, directing the raw material into something higher, better, more useful than it was in the rough, as the gardener produces new and better varieties; but it can no more originate than the gardener can create new plants; and in perfecting it often emasculates.
The reason why the Elizabethan drama is so infinitely more impressive than the technically more perfect drama of the Restoration is that it is steeped in nature and reality, whereas the later stage represents men and women under the fashionable conventions of polite society. "The people" indeed includes high as well as low, but none but the very strongest natures--a Shakespeare, a Beethoven, a Goethe--can endure the stress of Court favour. Where the national nourishment from below is deficient, an elegant artificial semblance may indeed be forced; but it is felt to be wanting in root and to lack that spontaneity and universality which are the very life's breath of all true art and specially mark the art of the people.
In England culture has severed itself entirely from popular life. The very word "popular," unlike the German volksthümlich, carries the notion of vulgarity. Yet the lower classes among themselves are never vulgar; they only become so when they copy the manners of those above them, and their poetry is the very reverse of what we understand by that word. The Volkslied exhales the very perfume of nature. It may be uncouth, harsh, weather-beaten, but the perfume remains, and it is never offensive like the modern music-hall song, which is the Volkslied of a class that tries to ape its social superiors.
All, or nearly all, our foremost English poets of recent times have been products of that system of public school and university education which is justly the pride of modern English upper-class life. Admirable in many ways as this system is, it is essentially one of artificial forcing. The routine is rigidly prescribed by fashion, and is so devised as entirely to exclude all intimate fellowship with the common people. Nature and reality have no part in English scholastic life; "good form" and "sound scholarship" count for more than the heart of man. That such a system fosters character and produces first-rate men of action and rulers is undeniable, but it is fatal to poetry, and the poetry which we produce is what might be expected--refined, highly polished, but artificial and wanting in sincerity. It bears the same relation to true poetry that etiquette and polished manners do to truth and nature. To realize the difference between the poetry of the school and the poetry of nature compare the faultless English and elegant sweetness of the Idylls of the King with the vigorous and expressive, but often ungrammatical, prose of Mallory, or compare Virgil with Homer, Horace with Sappho, a chorale by Mendelssohn with a chorale by Bach. Or compare a modern refrain dragged in for no other reason than because the poet has felt that the form requires a refrain of some kind and has tried to find one that is suitable--compare such a refrain by Morris or Rossetti with
In the spring time,
The only pretty ring time
When birds do sing,
Hey ding a ding ding.