large trade was carried on in models of the shrine, and it was the alarm lest it should be interfered with by the growth of Christian converts and the preaching of St. Paul, that led to the great tumult recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, when the Ephesians, roused to frenzy, rushed into the vast theatre, filling its countless tiers of stone seats with a living sea, bellowing for two whole hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." the tremendous Tartar hordes of Tamerlane, and then the Turks once more. But Ayasalouk in its turn fell into decay, and its great mosque is now utterly roofless. The same cause, it is said, that produced the decay of the Campagna of Rome, was at work here; the streams, no longer confined within their banks, flooded the lands after rain, and produced malarial fever; the inhabitants of Ayasalouk moved to Kiskenjee on the neighboring mounThe Christian traditions of Ephesus tain, and a handful of provision dealare of great interest, but the ruins are ers, attracted by the prospect of a little not clearly distinguishable enough to gold from the restless and picnicking speak positively of their site. Ayasa- Frankish visitors, remain to grow tolouk may itself be a corruption of Ha-bacco among the ruins of Ephesus. gios Theologos, the Holy Divine, and From The Fortnightly Review. TWO MODERN POETS. IT is becoming very difficult for any critic burdened with scruples, and not bursting with superlatives, to write about contemporary poets and their poetry. For some years past, indeed, it has not been easy to do so; but until quite recently the difficulty was of a somewhat different, as well as of a less formidable kind. The situation with which a critic of this description was confronted some years ago was this. In the third century the Goths of the He perceived, as, indeed, he might Bosphorus swept into the city and rav- have perceived any time during the aged it. When Constantine adopted previous decade, or perhaps longer Christianity, the great temple shared still, that the production of poetrythe fate of hundreds of similar build- meaning thereby the "genuine article " ings throughout the empire, and the in England had, by comparison with town ceased to be of much commercial the yield of previous generations, imimportance. A mistake was made in mensely increased. The producers attempting to embank the river Cayster to increase the scour of the current; it not only failed, but had the contrary effect; the river silted up, and in time the Panormus was deserted. themselves, moreover, were neither unaware nor obstinately secretive of the fact. Each new poet that arose was quite conscious and convinced — as, indeed, is the conviction of all who The place fell into the hands of vari- possess the divine gift, if it is also unous adventurers, and at one time of a fortunately the delusion of some who Greek pirate; this was in the eleventh do not-that he was a poet. Like the century. In the thirteenth the Otto- American gentleman of anecdote man Turks appeared upon the scene, that "most distinguished citizen of his and built a town on the hill of Ayasa- native State," whom Mr. Dudley Warlouk. Then came the great order of ner once told us of -he "admitted it Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who himself." What is more, his friends struck some coins here; a little later, and admirers pinned him, so to speak, LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 271 to the admission; they re-echoed it, in them, a claim to immortality. He confact, so loudly and so constantly that fined himself to admitting that a very it very soon became generally known. large number of new writers had masBut even when he had no friends to tered the true poetic 66 language," announce his arrival, and lacked the that speech so unmistakably separated candor to make the announcement in by its note of distinction from the mere his own person, he could not prevent rhetoric of verse; and that of these a his published poetry speaking for it- not inconsiderable number had disself, and for him, to any critical ear played that union of intellectual inthat might be listening. And this sight, power of imagination, and depth, placed the critic in the first difficulty to ardor, or dignity of emotion, which which I have referred. He found, constitutes the essence of poetry and that is to say, that where there had entitles its possessor to the name of formerly been one man capable of pro- poet. Having made this admission at ducing the "genuine article," there the aforesaid risk of his reputation for were now, at least, a dozen, and that it fastidiousness nay, at the yet more was, therefore, his duty, at the risk of awful peril of being told that he could his reputation (so dear to the critical not distinguish between "poetry" and nature) for fastidiousness, to acknowl-" verse," -the critic in a glow of edge the fact. virtuous self-approval laid down his Of course there was an easy way out of the duty, as there is out of most duties for those who care to take it. It would have been so safe, so cheap, so "superior," nay, in a certain sense so pleasant, to dismiss all the new poets as mere clever verse makers, and to label their poetry 66 pretty,' ," but "not the genuine article." It would have been cheap with all the cheapness of satirical epigram as compared with serious criticism; safe and superior with all the safety and superiority that belong to the position of the critic who refuses to admire what many voices have pronounced admirable; pleasant with all the pleasure of escape from the necessity of believing that a rare and precious product of the human spirit had become comparatively common, and of proportionately lower value. The only objection to it was that it was cowardly and dishonest; and to the critic with whom this objection weighed but one course was open. He had to admit, and he did admit, that in spite of the advent of so many poets having been acclaimed by so many and such loud voices, the thing nevertheless had actually happened. He was not bound to say, and if he was discreet he did not say, that all or any of them were poets of the first order, still less that they had established, or promised to establish, all or any of pen. But now behold criticism confronted with a new and more formidable difficulty, a fresh and more severe trial of its courage. For if it required strength of mind to admit the claims of so many new writers of verse to the poetical franchise, it needs a higher measure, though a different sort, of resolution, to resist the growing pretensions of the newly enfranchised ones and their friends; to tell them that though they may be all poets, they are really not all of them immortal, nay, that they are not even all of them "major." True, an embarrassingly large proportion of them have admirers, who say they are. Few, if any of them, are content to be minor. Some of them, I think, have publicly repudiated that title as insulting. "Why drag in any differentiating comparative?" they indignantly ask. "You admit that we are all poets, Be content, then, to call us poets, without any qualifying prefix, and thank your lucky stars you have so many of us." The demand sounds reasonable enough, but to comply with it is, alas! a sel of perfection." The eulogists of the pocts, and, indeed, the poets themselves, when they write about each other, will not allow us. It is they who insist on the qualifying prefix, and they all prefer the word "major," or its equivalent, if not more than its 66 coun equivalent, in impassioned adjectives. | ingenuity of that order of critic who Unless, therefore, criticism is to admit begins to tremble for his reputation that there are no degrees in poetic when he finds himself in danger of power and achievement, and that to be having to bestow unqualified, or almost a poet at all is to be a great or, at any unqualified, praise on successive prorate, a "major," poet, it is necessary ductions of the same writer, I have for the critic to make a stand; to not observed that even the hardestremind them that he can and must dis- pressed of these persons have thought tinguish in this matter; to point out it hopeful to attack Mr. Watson on the to them that of two men who can speak point of poetic form. Indeed, it is his the poetic language with equal ease even excellence in this respect which and accuracy, one may use it with reduces the ingenuity aforesaid to such immeasurably greater power and charm grievous straits. Defects of form are, than the other; that of two men who of course, by far the most desirable possess the vision, imagination, pas- game of the fault-finder- or of the sion, reflection of the poet, one may see fault-seeker who has a difficulty in with more penetration, realize with finding. To be able to point to a "real more fulness, feel with greater fervor, bad line " in every second or third page think with more nobility (and, in each of a poet's work is a great godsend. It case, to an almost infinite degree) than is something "to take hold of," somethe other; and that, without embark- thing that even the "lay people ing on any rash enterprise of classifica- can understand, something whichtion, there is no sort of difficulty in whether the blemish be metrical or naming two or three of the new poets, metaphorical, an offence to the ear or a who, either in their mastery of the stumbling-block to the mind - appeals poetic language, or in their endowment to a critical faculty far more common with the faculties of poetic vision, among the average educated public imagination, passion, and reflection, than a capacity for weighing the merits are easily ahead of the main body of of poetic matter. Familiarity with the their strictly contemporary competi- not recondite art of scansion is pretty widely diffused; and even were it not, it must be remembered that prosody is largely based on the sure foundations of a science which is even more extensively distributed I mean that of arithmetic. The poet who is guilty of solecisms in metre is, after all, at the mercy of any reader who can count correctly on his fingers; and though rhyme, no doubt, presents more difficulties, yet we have, most of us, had the benefit of some training in that mystery from the nursery upwards. Many a man, again, who is insensible to poetry as such, possesses quite enough of literary taste to recognize bathos when he meets it, still more when it is introduced to him by a critic equally well acquainted with both parties. The circumstance, therefore, that so very few of these introductions have ever been brought about in the case of Mr. Watson's poetry, and that, indeed, the would-be fault-finder is himself hopelessly at fault in his hunt tors. Two such names, for instance, will at once suggest themselves to any one who has critically examined even the publications of the last few months. They are those of Mr. William Watson and Mr. John Davidson, and it is convenient to select this particular pair of poets, because their poetic styles, if not, indeed, their poetic merits, being in almost polar contrast to each other, they combine to illustrate the twofold differentiation of the major from the minor poet. On the matter of Mr. Watson's poetry, and still more, perhaps, on the quality of his poetic impulse, there is no doubt room for controversy, and it is best, therefore, to postpone consideration of the debatable, or, at any rate, debated, to that of the undisputed and, indeed, indisputable element in his equipment as a poet. It may, I think, be called in disputable; for though Mr. Watson is just now rather severely taxing the after technical flaws of any kind | Venetian canvas. The frigidity, of therein, may be fairly claimed as the course, is really in themselves; it is a strongest possible of all negative testi- question not of the poet's temperature monies to the perfection of his poetic but of their own. What they really workmanship. rectness sations of these chilly mortals as a subjective fact. They are certainly justified, on the strength of their own temperature, in rejecting the proposed explanation. mean is that that particular quality of It may be replied, however, and, beauty for which Mr. Watson's poetry of course, with justice, that such is distinguished leaves them cold, and testimony is only negative, and that that in obedience to a natural impulse something more than invariable "cor- of the human mind they credit the sub- that too fanatically wor-jective sensation with an objective shipped idol of the pre-Romantic era source. The same men might expeof English poetry-must be predicable rience the same feelings in the presof a poet for whom one claims so high ence of the Melian Aphrodite and a merit as that of formal perfection. explain them in the same way; but Architecture, to deserve the praise of those upon whom the sight of that beauty, must display something more statue produces a precisely opposite than that mere justness of proportion effect-those, that is to say, whom it that would satisfy the eye in a barrack fills with a glow of artistic pleasureor a workhouse. To be worthy of a can only consent to accept the sencathedral or a palace it must impress the imagination by some higher dignity as a whole, or delight the eye by some more exquisite symmetry of its parts, or captivate the senses by some special richness of decorative detail. And Most of the talk, in fact, about the poetry like architecture must fulfil one coldness of this poetry and of that is or more of these positive conditions mere confusion of language. Poetry to be entitled to a place in the first which should be really "cold" — in rank. This test, though strictly legiti- the sense that the creative fire, in mate, is undoubtedly a severe one; which all poetry must be fused and yet it seems to me to be no exaggera-moulded, has become extinct before tion to say that Mr. Watson's poetry the process of production was comsuccessfully faces it. It has not, in-pleted is a contradiction in terms. deed, been given to him to how few When it becomes cold, because the has it ever been given !—to appeal in fire behind it has gone out, it ceases to equal measure to the imagination and be poetry at all; which is "what is to the senses through his poetic work. the matter" with many hundred lines Those who cannot be satisfied without of the "Excursion," and, to take one a feast of color and a riot of decorative example out of a multitude, with the imagery will not find his poetry satisfy- whole of the Reverend Mr. Pollok's ing. Those, again, who demand from "The Course of Time." Purity, measit the piercing note of passion or the ure, composure, restraint - none of " lyrical cry " of yearning, which alone these qualities, even carried to the is capable of responding to that highly pitch of austerity, nor all of them tostrung mood wherein they habitually, gether, constitute coldness in poetry; and one would think somewhat monot- which, indeed, as has been said alonously, live, will come unanswered ready, knows no other chill than that away. Those in a word who seek it in of death. The confusing and questionthe spirit either of the literary volup- begging word got rid of, it may, tuary or of the literary sentimentalist, course, be admitted that there is a may find it and pronounce it have" marmoreal" manner in poetry, as indeed already found and pronounced there is a "pictorial manner; one it-"cold." And to them, of course, kind of poetic beauty which is wholly, it is cold. -as cold as Greek marble to or almost wholly, a beauty of line, and the man who cares for nothing but another kind which is largely, though But song, I, too, have come through wintry terrors, yea, Through tempest and through cataclysm of soul, Have come and am delivered. Me, the Me, also, dimly with new life hath touched, forth never entirely, a beauty of color; and, | With yours would mingle somewhat of glad Into the gracious air and vernal morn, My limits of space confine me to a single illustration of this point of workmanship, and I will select it from a poem which, if not otherwise deserving to be preferred above its fellows, is the most suitable to my purpose in this respect; that its subject his recovery from serious illness is one which is calculated to test to their utmost the characteristic qualities of a manner like Mr. Watsou's, and to afford him his happiest opportunity of demonstrating its large dignity of expression, its simplicity, and, above all, its absolute inerrancy of taste. severe O ancient streams, O far-descended woods, stream, And voiceful mountain, nay, a string, how And all but broken! of that lyre of life, the world. 80 No other poet since Coleridge, whose sweet, sad music its cadences strongly recall, has ever, it seems to me, approached the pathetic dignity of this utterance of thanksgiving. Aud Coleridge himself was unfortunately wanting in those qualities of temperament which have here enabled the poet to hymn the recovery of his spiritual and mental health with so fine a modesty and reserve. Now I recentre my immortal mind I walk with awe and sing my lofty songs. Well, it was an "immortal mind," and the songs were "lofty;" but it is difficult to check the smile which is provoked by the poet's "admitting it provokes it is, of course, the very last himself," though the emotion which kind of emotion which, in either case, he desired to arouse. And to do this is to strike that false note which Mr. Watson, throughout the whole of this difficult performance, has so unerringly |