Great Poets discover themselves. Little Poets have to be “discovered” by somebody else. Otherwise they would live and die in the shadow of decent obscurity, unheard, unseen, unknown. And it is seriously open to question whether their so living and dying would not be an advantage to society in the abating of a certain measure of boredom. Looking back upon the motley crowd of Little Poets who had their day of “discovery” and “boom” at the very period when the thunderous voice of the Muse at her grandest was shaking the air through the inspired lips of Byron, Shelley and Keats, and noting to what dusty oblivion their little names and lesser works are now relegated without regret, it is difficult to understand why they were ever dragged from the respectable retirement of common-place mediocrity by their critic-contemporaries. Byron was scorned, Shelley neglected, and Keats killed by these same critics;—neither of the three were “discovered” or “made.” Their creation was not of man, but of their own innate God-given genius, and, according to the usual fate attending such divine things, the fastidious human dilettante of their day would have none of them. He set up his own verse-making Mumbo-Jumbo; and one Pye was Laureate. Pye was Laureate,—yet Byron lived, and there was a reigning monarch in England, strange as these assorted facts will seem to all intellectual posterity. For a monarch’s word,—even a prince’s word,—must always carry a certain weight of influence, and one asks wonderingly how, under such circumstances, that word came to be left unsaid? No voice from the Throne called the three greatest geniuses of the era to receive any honour due to their rare gifts and quality. On the contrary they were cast out as unvalued rubbish from their native land, and the Little Poets had their way. Pye continued to write maudlin rhymes unmolested, never dreaming that the only memory we should keep of him or of his twaddle, would be the one scathing line of the banished Byron:
Better to err with Pope than shine with Pye!
And feeble penny whistles played trumpery tunes to the languid votaries of “cultchaw” in those days, and pennywhistle verse was voted “classic” and supreme; but ever and anon the Nation turned a listening ear across the seas and caught the music made by its outlawed singers,—music it valued even then, and treasures now among its priceless and imperishable glories. For the Nation knows what true Poetry is,—and no “discoverer” will ever force it to accept a tallow candle for a star.
The gulf between Great Poets and Little is a wide one,—wider than that which yawned between Lazarus in heaven and Dives in hell. The Great Poet is moved by an inspiration which he himself cannot analyse, and in which neither the desire of money nor the latent hope of fame have the chiefest part. He sings simply because he must sing. He does not labour at it, piecing his thoughts and words together with the tardy and tame patience of a worker in mosaics, for though such exact execution be admirable in mosaic-work, it is dull and lifeless in poetry. Colour, fire, music, passion, and intense, glowing vitality are the heritage of the Great Poet; and when the torrent of unpremeditated love-song, battle-chant, dirge and prophecy pours from his lips, the tired world slackens its pace to listen, and listening, silently crowns him Laureate in its heart of hearts, regardless of Prime Minister or Court Chamberlain. But the Little Poet is not able so to win attention; he cannot sing thus “wildly well” because he lacks original voice. He can only trim a sorry pipe of reed and play weak echoes thereon; derivative twists of thought and borrowed fancies caught up from the greater songs already ringing through the centuries. And when he first begins piping in this lilliputian fashion he is generally very miserable. He pipes “for pence; Ay me, how few!” Nobody listens; people are too much engrossed with their own concerns to care about echoes. Their attention can only be secured by singing them new songs that will stir their pulses to new delights. The too-tootling of the Little Poet, therefore, would never be noticed at all, even by way of derision, unless he went down on all-fours and begged somebody to “discover” him. The “discoverer” in most cases is a Superannuated-literary-gentleman, who has tried his own hand at poetry and failed ignominiously. Incapacity to do any good work of one’s own frequently creates a thirsty desire to criticize the work of other people; thus, in the intervals of his impotent rage at the success of the deserving, the Superannuated, resolved to push himself into notice somehow, takes to “discovering” Little Poets. It is his poor last bid for fame; a final forlorn effort to get his half-ounce of talent to the front by tacking it on to some new name which he thinks (and he is quite alone in the idea) may by the merest chance in the world, like a second-rate horse, win a doubtful race. To admire any Great Poet who may happen to exist among us, is no part of the Superannuated’s programme. He ignores Great Poets generally, fearing lest the mere mention of their names should eclipse his dwarfish nurslings.
Now the public, mistakenly called fools, are perfectly aware of the Superannuated. They see his signature affixed to many of the Little Poets Booms, and ask each other with smiling tolerance, “What has he done?” Nothing. “Oh! Then how does he know?” Ah, that is his secret! He thinks he knows; and he wants you, excellent Fool-Public, to believe he thinks he knows! And, under the pleasing delusion that you always have your Fool’s Cap on, and never take it off under any circumstances, he “discovers” Mr. Podgers for you. Who is Mr. Podgers? A poet. If we are to credit the Superannuated, he is “a new star on the literary horizon, of the first magnitude.” The “first magnitude”!—the public shakes its caps and bells in amused scepticism. Another Shelley? Another Byron? These were of the “first magnitude,” and shall we thank a bounteous heaven for one more such as these? No, no, nothing of the sort, says the Superannuated with indignation, for it is high time you put this sort of Shelley-Byron stuff behind you. Mr. Swinburne has distinctly said that “Byron was no poet.” Learn wisdom, therefore, and turn from Byron to Podgers. He has written a little book, has Podgers, for which those who desire to possess it must pay a sum out of all proportion to its size. What shall we find in this so-little book? Anything to make our hearts beat in more healthful and harmonious tune? No. Nothing of this in Podgers. Nothing, in fact, of any kind in Podgers which we have not heard before. There are a few lines that we remember as derived from Wordsworth, and one stanza seems to us like a carefully transposed bit of Tennyson;—but for anything absolutely new in thought or in treatment we search in vain. Unless we make exception for a set of verses which are a tribute to the art of Log-Rolling, namely Podgers’s “Ode” to Podgers’s favouring critic. We confess this to be somewhat of a novelty, and we begin to pity Podgers. He must have fallen very low to write (and publish) an “Ode” to the Superannuated, his chief flatterer on the Press, and he must be very short-sighted if he imagines that action is a millstone without a hole in it. And so, despite the loud eulogies of the Superannuated (who is naturally proud to be made the subject of any “Ode” however feeble) we do not purchase Podgers’s book, though it is urged upon us as being a “limited” edition. But the Superannuated is not herein baffled. If, he says, if you are so asinine, so crass, so dull and dense of comprehension as to reject this marvellous, this classic Podgers, what say you to Stodgers? Stodgers is a “young” poet (forty-five last birthday), entirely free from “manner” and manners. He has resorted to the last and lowest method employed by Little Poets for obtaining temporary notoriety, namely,—outraging decency. Coarseness and blasphemy are the prevailing themes of his verse, but to the Superannuated these grave blemishes constitute “power.” A “strong” line is a lewd line; a “masterful” stanza contains a prurient suggestion. It suits the purpose of the Superannuated to compare his two “discoveries,” Podgers and Stodgers, and to work them against each other in those quarters of the Press he controls, like the “toy millers” one buys for children. It is a case of “Podgers come up and Stodgers come down,” as fits his humour and digestion. Meanwhile the vital test of the whole matter is that notwithstanding all this energetic “hawking about” of the Little Poets by the Superannuated, neither Podgers nor Stodgers sell. Everything is done to secure for them this desired result; unavailingly. And it is not as if they came out in a “common” way, Podgers and Stodgers. No publishing-firm with a simple name such as Messrs. Smith or Brown would suit the Little Poets. They must come out singularly, and apart from others. So they elect a publisher who, as it were, puts up a sign, as though he were a Tavern. “Published at the Dragon’s Mouth” or “At the Sign of the Flagon” would seem to be more convincing than “Published by Messrs. So and So.” Now Podgers’s little book has a fanciful title-page stating that it is published at the “Goose and Gridiron.” Stodgers, we find, bursts upon the world at “The Blue Boar.” There is something very delusive about all this. A flavour of ale and mulled wine creeps insidiously into the air, and we are moved to yearn for good warm drinks, whereas we only get indifferent cold verse. Now if the proprietors of the “Goose and Gridiron” and the “Blue Boar” would only sell inspiring liquids instead of uninspired rhymes, how their trade would improve! No longer would they bend, lean and furrowed, over their account-books—no longer would they have to scheme and puzzle over the “making” of Little Poets; because it must not be imagined that the Superannuated “discoverer” is the only one concerned in the business. “Goose and Gridiron” and “Blue Boar” have to deal in many small tricks of trade to compass it. Of course it is understood that the Little Poets get no money out of their productions. What they stipulate for with “Blue Boar” and likewise with “Goose and Gridiron” is a “hearing.” This “hearing” is obtained variously. Podgers got it in this way, as followeth: His verses, which had appeared from time to time in Sunday papers and magazines, were issued in a “limited edition.” Such “limited edition” was at once dispersed among booksellers in different parts of the country “on sale or return,” and while thus doubtfully awaiting purchasers, “Goose and Gridiron” tipped the trade-wink and perhaps something else more substantial besides, to the Superannuated,—who straightway seized his pen and wrote: “We hear that the first edition of Mr. Podgers’s poems is exhausted, and that original copies are already at a premium.” This done, and “passed” through many papers, the publisher followed it up with an advertisement to the effect that “The first edition of Mr. Podgers’s poems being exhausted, a Second will be ready in a few days.” And here, it may as well be said for the rectitude of “Goose and Gridiron,” things came to a standstill. Because the Little Poets seldom get beyond a second edition. When Podgers’s first editions came back unsold from the provinces (as they did), attempts were made to dispose of them at fancy prices as a last resource,—such attempts naturally ending in disaster. The times are too hard, and people have too much to do with their money to part with any of it for first editions of Podgers or Stodgers. The public is a very shrewd one, moreover, and is not to be “taken in” by gnat-rhymers dancing up and down for an hour in the “discoverer’s” artificial sunbeams. And the Superannuated, in his eager desire to assert himself as an oracular personage, forgets one very important fact, and this is, that being a Nobody he cannot be accepted as warrant for a Somebody. The public is not his child; he cannot whip it into admiring Mr. Podgers, or coerce its judgment respecting Mr. Stodgers. Its ways are wilful, and it has a ridiculous habit (considering what a Fool the critic imagines it to be) of preferring its own opinion to that of the Superannuated. It is capable, it thinks, what with Compulsory Education and the rest of it, of making its own choice. And on the whole it prefers the Great Poet,—the man who scorns to be “discovered” by an inferior intellect, and who makes his own way independently and with a grand indifference to the squabbling of Log-rollers. He is not “made”; he forms part of the country’s blood and life; he chants the national thought in haunting rhythm as did the prophet bards of old; he, careless of “pence,” praise or fame, does so mix himself with his land’s history, that he becomes, as it were the very voice of the age in which he lives, and the Superannuated may ignore him as he will, he cannot get him out of the nation’s heart when he has once got in. But of the feeble, absurdly conceited tribe of Little Poets who come jostling one upon another nowadays in such a puling crowd, piping out their wretchedly small personalities in versed pessimism or coarse metaphor,—men “made” by the Tavern-publisher and the Superannuated Failure;—we have had enough of these, and more than enough. Too much good paper, good ink and good binding are wasted on their totally undesired productions. Life with us now is lived at too hard and too difficult a pace for any one to need poetry that is only verse. Hearts break every day in the truest sense of that sentimental phrase; brains reel into insanity and the darkness of suicide; and it is no Little Poet’s personal pangs about “pence” and such trifles, that can, like David’s harp of old, soothe or dismiss the dark spirit brooding over the latter-day Saul. It is the Great Poet we care for, whose singing-soul mystically comprehends our unuttered thoughts of love or glory; who chants not only his pains, but ours; not his joy, so much as the whole world’s joy. Such a man needs no “discoverer” to prove his existence; he is self-evident. When we grow so purblind as to need a still blinder Mole to point us out the sun, then, but not till then shall we require the assistance of the Superannuated to “discover” what we understand by a Poet. At present we are actively conscious both of the orb of day, and the true quality of genius; and though the Poet we choose for ourselves and silently acknowledge as worthy of all honour, may not be, and seldom is, the recommended favourite of a clique, we are fully aware of him, and show our love and appreciation by setting his book among our household gods. No “limited edition” will suffice for such a man; we need to have his poems singing about us wherever we go. For the oft-repeated truth is to-day as true as ever,—that the Great Poet is “born,” and never has been and never will be “made.”
THE PRAYER OF THE SMALL COUNTRY M.P.
WHICH HE PRAYETH DAILY
O thou Especial Little God of Parliaments and Electors, with whom the greater God of the Universe has nothing whatever to do!—I beseech Thee to look upon me, Thy chosen servant, with a tolerant and favourable Eye!