FEBRUARY.

"AULD REEKIE."

(3) Sir,—Let Mr. Dexter stick to his guns. He is not the first who has found the New Woman an unmitigated nuisance, and I respect him for saying so in no measured terms. Let women, if they want husbands, cease to write oratorios and other things in which man is, by his very constitution,facile princeps, and let her cultivate that desideratum in which she excels—a cosy home and a bright smile to greet him on the doorstep when he returns from a tiring day in the City. Until that is done I, for one, shall remain:

"UNMARRIED."

P.S.—Could a woman have composed Shakespeare?

(4) Sir,—I had no intention of mixing in this correspondence, and publicity is naturally distasteful to me. Nor do I hold any brief for the Higher Education of Women; but when I see writer after writer—apparently of my own sex—taking refuge in what has been called the 'base shelter of anonymity,' I feel constrained to sign myself:

Yours faithfully,

(Mrs.) RACHEL RAMSBOTHAM.

(1) Sir,—After reading 'Unmarried's' letter, one can hardly wonder that he is so. He asks if any woman could have written Shakespeare, and insinuates that she would be better occupied in meeting him ('Unmarried') on the doorstep 'with a bright smile.' As to that, there may be two opinions. Everyone to his taste, but for my part, if his insufferable male conceit will allow him to believe it—I would rather have written Shakespeare a hundred times over, and I am not alone in this view. Such men as Mr. Dexter and 'Unmarried' are the cause why half of us women prefer to remain single; the former may deny it, poker in hand, but murder will out. In conclusion, let me add that I have never written an oratorio in my life, though I sometimes attend them.

Yours, etc.,

"MERE WOMAN."

(2) Sir,—Allow me to impale Mr. Dexter on the horns of a dilemma. Either it is too late in the day to discuss woman's education, or it is not. If the latter, why did he say it is? And if the former, why did he begin discussing it? That is how it strikes.

"B.A. (Lond.)."

(3) Sir,—Rethis woman's education discussion: I write to inquire if there is any law of the land which can hinder a woman from composing Shakespeare if she wants to?

Yours truly,

"INTERESTED."

(4) Sir,—Allusion has been made in this correspondence (I think by Mr. Dexter) to the grave of that eminent educationist, the late Platt-Culpepper, which is situate in the Highgate Cemetery. My interest being awakened, I made a pilgrimage to it the other day, and was shocked by its neglected condition. The coping has been badly cemented, and a crack extends from the upper right-hand corner to the base of the plinth, right across the inscription. Doubtless a few shillings would repair the damage; but may I suggest, Sir, that some worthier memorial is due to this pioneer of woman's higher activities? I have thought of a plain obelisk on Shakespeare's Cliff, a locality of which he was ever fond; or a small and inconspicuous lighthouse might, without complicating the navigation of this part of the Channel, serve to remind Englishmen of one who diffused so much light during his all too brief career. Choice, however, would depend on the funds available, and might be left to an influential committee. Meanwhile, could you not open a subscription list for the purpose? I enclose stamps for 2 shillings, with my card, and prefer to remain, for the present.

"HAUD IMMEMOR."

(1) Sir,—H. Immemor's suggestion clears the air, and should persuade Mr. Dexter and his reactionary friends to think twice before again inaugurating a crusade which can only recoil upon their own heads. I enclose 5 shillings, if only as a protest against this un-English 'hitting below the belt,' and am:

Yours, etc.,

"PRACTICAL."

(2) Sir,—It is only occasionally that I get a glimpse of your invaluable paper, and (perhaps, fortunately) missed the issues containing Mr. Dexter's diatribes anent woman. But what astounds me is their cynical audacity. Your correspondents, though not in accord as to the name of the victim (can it be more than one?) agree that, after encouraging her to unbridled license, Mr. Dexter turned round and attacked her with a poker— whether above or below the belt is surely immaterial. 'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true; but not once or twice, I fear me, in 'our fair island-story' has a similar thing occurred. The unique (I hope) feature in this case is the man Dexter's open boast that the incident is closed, and it is now 'too late in the day' to reopen it. 'Too late,' indeed! There is an American poem describing how a young woman was raking hay, and an elderly judge came by, and wasn't in a position to marry her, though he wanted to; and the whole winds up by saying that 'too late' are the saddest words in the language—especially, I would add, in this connection. But, alas! that men's memories should be so short! Is the reflection of:

"A MOTHER OF SEVEN."

[This correspondence is now closed, unless Mr. Dexter should wish to reply to his numerous critics. We do not propose to open a subscription list, at any rate for the present.—Ed.Daily Post.]

"O That I were lying under the olives!"—if I may echo the burthen of a beautiful little poem by Mrs. Margaret L. Woods. I have not yet consulted Zadkiel: but if I may argue from past experience of February—'fill-dyke'—in a week or so my window here will be alternately crusted with Channel spray and washed clean by lashing south-westerly showers; and a wave will arch itself over my garden wall and spoil a promising bed of violets; and I shall grow weary of oilskins, and weary of hauling the long-line with icily-cold hands and finding no fish. February—Pisces?The fish, before February comes, have left the coast for the warmer deeps, and the zodiac is all wrong. Down here in the Duchy many believe in Mr. Zadkiel and Old Moore. I suppose the dreamy Celt pays a natural homage to a fellow-mortal who knows how to make up his mind for twelve months ahead. All the woman in his nature surrenders to this businesslike decisiveness. "O man!"—the exhortation is Mr. George Meredith's, or would be if I could remember it precisely—"O man, amorously inclining, before all thingsbe positive!" I have sometimes, while turning the pages of Mrs. Beeton's admirable cookery book, caught myself envying Mr. Beeton. I wonder if her sisters envy Mrs. Zadkiel. She, dear lady, no doubt feels that, if it be not in mortals to command the weather her husband prophesies for August, yet he does better—he deserves it. And, after all, a prophecy in some measure depends for its success on the mind which receives it. Back in the forties—I quote from a small privately-printed volume by Sir Richard Tangye—when the potato blight first appeared in England, an old farmer in the Duchy found this warning in his favourite almanack, at the head of the page for August:—

"And potentates shall tremble and quail."

Now, 'to quail' in Cornwall still carries its old meaning, 'to shrink,' 'to wither.' The farmer dug his potatoes with all speed, and next year the almanack was richer by a score of subscribers.

Zadkiel or no Zadkiel, I will suspire, and risk it, "O that I were lying under the olives!" "O to be out of England now that February's here!"—for indeed this is the time to take the South express and be quit of fogs, and loaf and invite your soul upon the Mediterranean shore before the carnivals and regattas sweep it like a mistral. Nor need you be an invalid to taste those joys on which Stevenson dilates in that famous little essay in "Virginibus Puerisque" (or, as the young American lady preferred to call it, "Virginis Pueribusque."):—

"Or perhaps he may see a group of washer-women relieved, on a spit of shingle, against the blue sea, or a meeting of flower-gatherers in the tempered daylight of an olive-garden; and something significant or monumental in the grouping, something in the harmony of faint colour that is always characteristic of the dress of these Southern women, will come home to him unexpectedly, and awake in him that satisfaction with which we tell ourselves that we are richer by one more beautiful experience.… And then, there is no end to the infinite variety of the olive-yards themselves. Even the colour is indeterminate, and continually shifting: now you would say it was green, now grey, now blue; now tree stands above tree, like 'cloud on cloud,' massed in filmy indistinctness; and now, at the wind's will, the whole sea of foliage is shaken and broken up with little momentary silverings and shadows."

English poets, too, have been at their best on the Riviera: from Cette, where Matthew Arnold painted one of the most brilliant little landscapes in our literature, along to Genoa, where Tennyson visited and:

"Loved that hall, tho' white and cold,Those nichèd shapes of noble mould,A princely people's awful princes,The grave, severe Genovese of old."

[I suppose, by the way, that every one who has taken the trouble to compare the stanza of 'The Daisy' with that of the invitation 'To the Rev. F. D. Maurice,' which immediately follows, will have noted the pretty rhythmical difference made by the introduction of the double dactyl in the closing line of the latter; the difference between:

"Of ólive, áloe, and maíze, and víne,"

And:

"Máking the líttle one leáp for jóy."]

But let Mrs. Woods resume the strain:—

"O that I were listening under the olives!So should I hear behind in the woodlandThe peasants talking. Either a woman,A wrinkled granddame, stands in the sunshine,Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets—Large odorous violets—and answers slowlyA child's swift babble; or else at noonThe labourers come. They rest in the shadow,Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry.Soft speech Provençal under the olives!Like a queen's raiment from days long perished,Breathing aromas of old unrememberedPerfumes, and shining in dust-covered palacesWith sudden hints of forgotten splendour—So on the lips of the peasant his language,His only now, the tongue of the peasant."

Say what you will, there is a dignity about these Latin races, even in their trivial everyday movements. They suggest to me, as those lines of Homer suggested to Mr. Pater's Marius, thoughts which almost seem to be memories of a time when all the world was poetic:—

Fig. 1 (24.3K)

"And how poetic," says Pater, "the simple incident seemed, told just thus! Homer was always telling things after this manner. And one might think there had been no effort in it: that here was but the almost mechanical transcript of a time naturally, intrinsically poetic, a time in which one could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without making a picture in 'the great style' against a sky charged with marvels."

One evening in last February a company of Provençal singers, pipers, and tambour players came to an hotel in Cannes, and entertained us. They were followed next evening by a troupe of German-Swiss jödelers; and oh, the difference to me—and, for that matter, to all of us! It was just the difference between passion and silly sentiment—silly and rather vulgar sentiment. The merry Swiss boys whooped, and smacked their legs, and twirled their merry Swiss girls about, until vengeance overtook them—a vengeance so complete, so surprising, that I can hardly now believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears heard. One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love-ditty with a jödeling refrain, which was supposed to be echoed back by her lover afar in the mountains. To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself deep in the corridors of the hotel. All went well up to the last verse. Promptly and truly the swain echoed his sweetheart's call; softly it floated down to us—down from the imaginary pasture and across the imaginary valley. But as the maiden challenged for the last time, as her voice lingered on the last note of the last verse… There hung a Swiss cuckoo-clock in the porter's office, and at that very instant the mechanical bird lifted its voice, and nine times answered 'Cuckoo'on the exact note!"Cuckoo, Cuckoo, O word of fear!" I have known coincidences, but never one so triumphantly complete. The jaw of the Swiss maiden dropped an inch; and, as well as I remember, silence held the company for five seconds before we recovered ourselves and burst into inextinguishable laughter.

The one complaint I have to make of the Mediterranean is that it does not in the least resemble a real sea; and I daresay that nobody who has lived by a real sea will ever be thoroughly content with it. Beautiful—oh, beautiful, of course, whether one looks across from Costebelle to the lighthouse on Porquerolles and the warships in Hyères Bay; or climbs by the Calvary to the lighthouse of la Garoupe, and sees on the one side Antibes, on the other the Isles de Lérins; or scans the entrance of Toulon Harbour; or counts the tiers of shipping alongside the quays at Genoa! But somehow the Mediterranean has neither flavour nor sparkle, nor even any proper smell. The sea by Biarritz is champagne to it. But hear how Hugo draws the contrast in time of storm:—

"Ce n'étaient pas les larges lames de l'Océan qui vont devant elles et qui se deroulent royalement dans l'immensité; c'étaient des houles courtes, brusques, furieuses. L'Océan est à son aise, il tourne autour du monde; la Mediterranée est dans un vase et le vent la secoue, c'est ce qui lui donne cette vague haletante, brève et trapue. Le flot se ramasse et lutte. Il a autant de colère que la flot de l'Océan et moins d'espace."

Also, barring the sardine and anchovy, I must confess that the fish of the Mediterranean are what, in the Duchy, we should call 'poor trade.' I don't wish to disparage the Bouillabaisse, which is a dish for heroes, and deserves all the heroic praises sung of it:—

"This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is—A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,That Greenwich never could outdo;Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace:All these you eat at Terré's tavern,In that one dish of Bouillabaisse."

To be precise, you take a langouste, three rascas (an edible but second-rate fish), a slice of conger, a fine 'chapon,' or red rascas, and one or two 'poissons blancs' (our grey mullet, I take it, would be an equivalent). You take a cooking-pot and put your langouste in it, together with four spoonfuls of olive-oil, an onion and a couple of tomatoes, and boil away until he turns red. You then take off the pot and add your fish, green herbs, four cloves of garlic, and a pinch of saffron, with salt and red pepper. Pour in water to cover the surface of the fish, and cook for twenty minutes over a fast fire. Then take a soup-plate, lay some slices of bread in it, and pour the bouillon over the bread. Serve the fish separately. Possibly you incline to add, in the immortal words of the late Mr. Lear, "Serve up in a clean dish, and throw the whole out of window as fast as possible." You would make a great mistake. The marvel to me is that no missionary has acclimatised this wonderful dish upon our coasts, where we have far better fish for compounding it—red mullet, for instance, in place of the rascas; and whiting, or even pollack or grey mullet, in place of the 'poissons blancs.' For the langouste, a baby lobster might serve; and the saffron flavour would be no severe trial to us in the Duchy, who are brought up (so to say) upon saffron cake. As for Thackeray's 'dace,' I disbelieve in it. No one would add a dace (which for table purposes has been likened to an old stocking full of mud and pins: or was that a tench?) except to make a rhyme. Even Walton, who gives instructions for cooking a chavender or chub, is discreetly silent on the cooking of a dace, though he tells us how to catch him. "Serve up in a clean dish," he might have added, "and throw him out of window as fast as possible."

"O that I were lying under the olives!" And O that to olive orchards (not contiguous) I could convey the newspaper men who are almost invariably responsible when a shadow of distrust or suspicion falls between us Englishmen and the race which owns and tills these orchards. "The printing-press," says Mr. Barrie, "is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, one sometimes forgets which." I verily believe that if English newspaper editors would nobly resolve to hold their peace on French politics, say for two years, France and England would 'make friends' as easily as Frenchmen and Englishmen 'make friends' to-day.[1] One hears talk of the behaviour of the English abroad. But I am convinced that at least one-half of their bad manners may be referred to their education upon this newspaper nonsense, or to the certainty that no complaint they may make upon foreign shortcomings is too silly or too ill-bred to be printed in an English newspaper. Here is an example. I suppress the name of the writer—a lady—in the devout hope that she has repented before this. The letter is headed—

"Sir,—As your newspaper is read in France, may I in your columns call attention to what I witnessed yesterday? I left Dinard by the 3.33 p.m. trainen routefor Guingamp, having to change carriages at Lamballe. An instant before the train moved off from the station, a dying man belonging to the poorest class was thrust into our second class carriage and the door slammed to. The poor creature, apparently dying of some wasting disease, was absolutely on the point of death, and his ghastly appearance naturally alarmed a little girl in the carriage. At the next station I got down with my companion and changed into a first-class compartment, paying the difference. On remonstrating with the guard (sic), he admitted that a railway carriage ought not to be turned into an hospital, but added, 'We have no rules to prevent it.'"I ask, sir, is it decent or human, especially at such a time, to thrust dying persons in the last stage of poverty into a second-class carriage full of ladies and children?"

"I ask, sir, is it decent or human, especially at such a time, to thrust dying persons in the last stage of poverty into a second-class carriage full of ladies and children?"

There's a pretty charity for you! 'A dying man belonging to thepoorest class.'—'Oursecond-class carriage'—here's richness! as Mr. Squeers observed. Here's sweetness and light! But England has no monopoly of such manners. There was a poor little Cingalese girl in the train by which I travelled homeward last February from Genoa and through the Mont Cenis. And there were also three Englishmen and a Frenchman—the last apparently (as Browning put it) a person of importance in his day, for he had a bit of red ribbon in his buttonhole and a valet at his heels. At one of the small stations near the tunnel our train halted for several minutes; and while the little Cingalese leaned out and gazed at the unfamiliar snows—a pathetic figure, if ever there was one—the three Englishmen and the Frenchman gathered under the carriage door and stared up at her just as if she were a show. There was no nonsense about the performance—no false delicacy: it was good, steady, eye-to-eye staring. After three minutes of it, the Frenchman asked deliberately, "Where do you come from?" in a careless, level tone, which did not even convey that he was interested in knowing. And because the child didn't understand, the three Englishmen laughed. Altogether it was an unpleasing but instructive little episode.

No: nastiness has no particular nationality: and you will find a great deal of it, of all nationalities, on the frontier between France and Italy. I do not see that Monte Carlo provides much cause for indignation, beyond thetir aux pigeons, which is quite abominable. I have timed it for twenty-five minutes, and it averaged two birds a minute—fifty birds. Of these one escaped, one fluttered on to the roof of the railway station and died there slowly, under my eyes. The rest were killed within the enclosure, some by the first barrel, some by the second, or if they still lingered, were retrieved and mouthed by a well-trained butcher dog, of no recognisable breed. Sometimes, after receiving its wound, a bird would walk about for a second or two, apparently unhurt; then suddenly stagger and topple over. Sometimes, as the trap opened, a bird would stand dazed. Then a ball was trundled at it to compel it to rise. Grey breast feathers strewed the whole inclosure, in places quite thickly, like a carpet. As for the crowd at the tables inside the Casino, it was largely Semitic. On the road between Monte Carlo and Monaco, as Browning says—

"It was noses, noses all the way."

Also it smelt distressingly: but that perhaps was its misfortune rather than its fault. It did not seem very happy; nor was it composed of people who looked as if they might have attained to distinction, or even to ordinary usefulness, by following any other pursuit. On the whole, one felt that it might as well be gathered here as anywhere else.

"O that I were lying under the olives!" But since my own garden must content me this year, let me conclude with a decent letter of thanks to the friend who sent me, from Devonshire, a box of violet roots that await the spring in a corner which even the waves of the equinox cannot reach:—

Nay, more than violetsThese thoughts of thine, friend!Rather thy reedy brook—Taw's tributary—At midnight murmuring,Descried them, the delicate,The dark-eyed goddesses.There by his cressy bedsDissolved and dreamingDreams that distilled in a dewdropAll the purple of night,All the shine of a planet.Whereat he whispered;And they arising—Of day's forget-me-notsThe duskier sisters—Descended, relinquishedThe orchard, the trout-pool,The Druid circles,Sheepfolds of Dartmoor,Granite and sandstone,Torridge and Tamar;By Roughtor, by Dozmare,Down the vale of the FoweyMoving in silence.Brushing the nightshadeBy bridges Cyclopean,By Glynn, Lanhydrock,Restormel, Lostwithiel,Dark woodland, dim water,dreaming town—Down the vale of the Fowey,Each in her exileMusing the message—Message illumined by loveAs a starlit sorrow—Passed, as the shadow of RuthFrom the land of the Moabite.So they came—Valley-born, valley-nurtured—Came to the tideway,The jetties, the anchorage,The salt wind piping,Snoring in equinox,By ships at anchor,By quays tormented,Storm-bitten streets;Came to the HavenCrying, "Ah, shelter us,The strayed ambassadors!Lost legation of loveOn a comfortless coast!"Nay, but a little sleep,A little foldingOf petals to the lullOf quiet rainfalls,—Here in my garden,In angle shelteredFrom north and east wind—Softly shall recreateThe courage of charity,Henceforth not to me onlyBreathing the message.Clean-breath'd Sirens!Henceforth the mariner,Here on the tidewayDragging, foul of keel,Long-strayed but fortunate,Out of the fogs,the vast Atlantic solitudes,Shall, by the hawser-pinWaiting the signal—"Leave-go-anchor!"Scent the familiarFragrance of home;So in a long breathBless us unknowingly:Bless them, the violets,Bless me, the gardener,Bless thee, the giver.

My business (I remind myself) behind the window is not to scribble verses: my business, or a part of it, is to criticise poetry, which involves reading poetry. But why should anyone read poetry in these days?

Well, one answer is that nobody does.

I look around my shelves and, brushing this answer aside as flippant, change the form of my question. Why do we read poetry? What do we find that it does for us? We take to it (I presume) some natural need, and it answers that need. But what is the need? And how does poetry answer it?

Clearly it is not a need of knowledge, or of what we usually understand by knowledge. We do not go to a poem as we go to a work on Chemistry or Physics, to add to our knowledge of the world about us. For example, Keats' glorious lines to the Nightingale—

"Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird…"

Are unchallengeable poetry; but they add nothing to our stock of information. Indeed, as Mr. Bridges pointed out the other day, the information they contain is mostly inaccurate or fanciful. Man is, as a matter of fact, quite as immortal as a nightingale in every sense but that of sameness. And as for:

"Magic casements opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn,"

Science tells us that no such things exist in this or any other ascertained world. So, when Tennyson tells us that birds in the high Hall garden were crying, "Maud, Maud, Maud," or that:

"There has fallen a splendid tearFrom the passion-flower at the gate:She is coming, my dove, my dear;She is coming, my life, my fate;The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near';And the white rose weeps, 'She is late'…"

The poetry is unchallengeable, but the information by scientific standards of truth is demonstrably false, and even absurd. On the other hand (see Coleridge'sBiographia Literaria, c. xiv.), the famous lines—

"Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November,…"

Though packed with trustworthy information, are quite as demonstrably unpoetical. The famous senior wrangler who returned a borrowed volume ofParadise Lostwith the remark that he did not see what it proved, was right—so far as he went. And conversely (as he would have said) no sensible man would think to improve Newton'sPrincipiaand Darwin'sOrigin of Speciesby casting them into blank verse; or Euclid'sElementsby writing them out in ballad metre—

The king sits in Dunfermline town,Drinking the blude-red wine;'O wha will rear me an equilateral triangleUpon a given straight line?'

We may be sure that Poetry does not aim to do what Science, with other methods, can do much better. What craving, then, does it answer? And if the craving be for knowledge of a kind, then of what kind?

The question is serious. We agree—at least I assume this—that men have souls as well as intellects; that above and beyond the life we know and can describe and reduce to laws and formulas there exists a spiritual life of which our intellect is unable to render account. We have (it is believed) affinity with this spiritual world, and we hold it by virtue of something spiritual within us, which we call the soul. You may disbelieve in this spiritual region and remain, I dare say, an estimable citizen; but I cannot see what business you have with Poetry, or what satisfaction you draw from it. Nay, Poetry demands that you believe something further; which is, that in this spiritual region resides and is laid up that eternal scheme of things, that universalorder, of which the phenomena of this world are but fragments, if indeed they are not mere shadows.

A hard matter to believe, no doubt! We see this world so clearly; the spiritual world so dimly, so rarely, if at all! We may fortify ourselves with the reminder (to be found in Blanco White's famous sonnet) that the first man who lived on earth had to wait for the darkness before he saw the stars and guessed that the Universe extended beyond this earth—

"Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'dWithin thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood reveal'd,That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?"

He may, or may not, believe that the same duty governs his infinitesimal activity and the motions of the heavenly bodies—

"Awake, my soul, andwith the sunThy daily stage of duty run…"

—That his duty is one with that of which Wordsworth sang—

"Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong."

But in a higher order of some sort, and his duty of conforming with it, he does not seem able to avoid believing.

This, then, is the need which Poetry answers. It offers to bring men knowledge of this universal order, and to help them in rectifying and adjusting their lives to it. It is for gleams of this spiritual country that the poets watch—

"The gleam,The light that never was on sea or land.…"

"I am Merlin," sang Tennyson, its life-long watcher, in his old age—

"I am Merlin,And I am dying;I am Merlin,Who follow the gleam."

They do not claim to see it always. It appears to them at rare and happy intervals, as the Vision of the Grail to the Knights of the Round Table. "Poetry," said Shelley, "is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."

If this be the need, how have our poets been answering it of late years? How, for instance, did they answer it during the South African War, when (according to our newspapers) there was plenty of patriotic emotion available to inspire the great organ of national song? Well, let us kick up what dust we will over 'Imperial ideals,' we must admit, at least, that these ideals are not yet 'accepted of song': they have not inspired poetry in any way adequate to the nobility claimed for them. Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Henley saluted the Boer War in verse of much truculence, but no quality; and when Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Henley lacked quality one began to inquire into causes. Mr. Kipling's Absent-minded Beggars, Muddied Oafs, Goths and Huns, invited one to consider why he should so often be first-rate when neglecting or giving the lie to his pet political doctrines, and invariably below form when enforcing them. For the rest, the Warden of Glenalmond bubbled and squeaked, and Mr. Alfred Austin, like the man at the piano, kept on doing his best. It all came to nothing: as poetry it never began to be more than null. Mr. Hardy wrote a few mournfully memorable lines on the seamy side of war. Mr. Owen Seaman (who may pass for our contemporary Aristophanes) was smart and witty at the expense of those whose philosophy goes a little deeper than surface-polish. One man alone—Mr. Henry Newbolt—struck a note which even his opponents had to respect. The rest exhibited plenty of the turbulence of passion, but none of the gravity of thoughtful emotion. I don't doubt they were, one and all, honest in their way. But as poetry their utterances were negligible. As writers of real poetry the Anti-Jingoes, and especially the Celts, held and still hold the field.

I will not adduce poets of admitted eminence—Mr. Watson, for instance, or Mr. Yeats—to prove my case. I am content to go to a young poet who has his spurs to win, and will ask you to consider this little poem, and especially its final stanza. He calls it—

If thou hast squander'd years to grave a gemCommissioned by thy absent Lord, and while'Tis incomplete,Others would bribe thy needy skill to them—Dismiss them to the street!Should'st thou at last discover Beauty's grove,At last be panting on the fragrant verge,But in the track,Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love—Turn, at her bidding, back.When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears,And every spectre mutters up more direTo snatch controlAnd loose to madness thy deep-kennell'd Fears,—Then to the helm, O Soul!Last, if upon the cold, green-mantling seaThou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar,Both castaway,And one must perish—let it not be heWhom thou art sworn to obey.

The author of these lines is a Mr. Herbert Trench, who (as I say) has his spurs to win. Yet I defy you to read them without recognising a note of high seriousness which is common to our great poets and utterly foreign to our modern bards of empire. The man, you will perceive, dares to talk quite boldly about the human soul. Now you will search long in our Jingo bards for any recognition of the human soul: the very word is unpopular. And as men of eminence write, so lesser wits imitate. A while ago I picked up a popular magazine, and happened on these verses—fluently written and, beyond a doubt, honestly meant. They are in praise of King Henry VIII.:—

King Harry played at tennis, and he threw the dice a-main,And did all things that seemed to him for his own and England's gain;He would not be talked to lightly, he would not be checked or chid;And he got what things he dreamed to get, and did— what things he did.When Harry played at tennis it was well for this our Isle—He cocked his nose at Interdicts; he 'stablished us the while—He was lustful; he was vengeful; he was hot and hard and proud;But he set his England fairly in the sight of all the crowd.So Harry played at tennis, and we perfected the gameWhich astonished swaggering Spaniards when the fat Armada came.And possession did he give us of our souls in sturdiness;And he gave us peace from priesthood: and he gave us English Bess!When Harry played at tennis we began to know this thing—That a mighty people prospers in a mighty-minded king.We boasted not our righteousness—we took on us our sin,For Bluff Hal was just an Englishman who played the game to win.

You will perceive that in the third stanza the word 'soul' occurs: and I invite you to compare this author's idea of a soul with Mr. Trench's. This author will have nothing to do with the old advice about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God. The old notion that to conquer self is a higher feat than to take a city he dismisses out of hand. "Be lustful be vengeful," says he, "but play the game to win, and you have my applause. Get what you want, set England fairly in sight of the crowd, and you are a mighty-minded man." Now the first and last comment upon such a doctrine must be that, if a God exist, it is false. It sets up a part to override the whole: it flaunts a local success against the austere majesty of Divine law. In brief, it foolishly derides the universal, saying that it chooses to consider the particular as more important. But it is not. Poetry's concern is with the universal: and what makes the Celts (however much you may dislike them) the most considerable force in English poetry at this moment is that they occupy themselves with that universal truth, which, before any technical accomplishment, is the guarantee of good poetry.

Now, when you tell yourself that the days of 'English Bess' were jolly fine empire-making days, and produced great poets (Shakespeare, for example) worthy of them; and when you go on to reflect that these also are jolly fine empire-making days, but that somehow Mr. Austin is your laureate, and that the only poetry which counts is being written by men out of harmony with your present empire-making mood, the easiest plan (if you happen to think the difference worth considering) will be to call the Muse a traitress, and declare that every poem better than Mr. Austin's is a vote given to—whatever nation your Yellow Press happens to be insulting at this moment. But, if you care to look a little deeper, you may find that some difference in your methods of empire-making is partly accountable for the change. A true poet must cling to universal truth; and by insulting it (as, for example, by importing into present-day politics the spirit which would excuse the iniquities of Henry VIII. on the ground that 'he gave us English Bess'!) you are driving the true poet out of your midst. Read over the verses above quoted, and then repeat to yourself, slowly, these lines:—

"Last, if upon the cold, green-mantling seaThou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar,Both castaway,And one must perish—let it not be heWhom thou art sworn to obey."

I ask no more. If a man cannot see the difference at once, I almost despair of making him perceive why poetry refuses just now even more obstinately than trade (if that be possible) to 'follow the flag.' It will not follow, because you are waving the flag over self-deception. You may be as blithe as Plato in casting out the poets from your commonwealth—though for other reasons than his. You may be as blithe as Dogberry in determining, of reading and writing, that they may appear when there is no need of such vanity. But you are certainly driving them forth to say, in place of "O beloved city of Cecrops!" "O beloved city of God!" There was a time, not many years ago, when an honest poet could have used both cries together and deemed that he meant the same thing by the two. But the two cries to-day have an utterly different meaning—and by your compulsion or by the compulsion of such politics as you have come to tolerate.

And therefore the young poet whom I have quoted has joined the band of those poets whom we are forcing out of the city, to leave our ideals to the fate which, since the world began, has overtaken all ideals which could not get themselves 'accepted by song.' Even as we drum these poets out we know that they are the only ones worth reckoning with, and that man cannot support himself upon assurances that he is the strongest fellow in the world, and the richest, and owns the biggest house, and pays the biggest rates, and wins whatever game he plays at, and stands so high in his clothes that while the Southern Cross rises over his hat-brim it is already broad day on the seat of his breeches. For that is what it all comes to: and the sentence upon the man who neglects the warning of these poets, while he heaps up great possessions, is still, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee." And where is the national soul you would choose, at that hasty summons, to present for inspection, having to stand your trial upon it? Try Park Lane, or run and knock up the Laureate, and then come and report your success!

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