FIVE CENTURIES OF ENGLISH VERSE

CHAUCER-TENNYSON

I MAY be asked how I can have dared to sit in judgement on five centuries of English verse. My answer is that the following pages contain reports rather of my trial before the poets than of them before me. I have sat at their feet; and they have required me to say how I have understood them; what I have learnt from them. So long and intimately I have talked with them, from boyhood till the eventide of life, that somehow I felt bound to render them an account of the lessons they have taught me. I thought I should like, while I could, to tell them and myself results of our companionship. To them I owe the best of my education. Whatever intelligence I possess has been fed, refined, and illuminated by them. Hereafter it will not, I trust, be deemed that I have ill repaid my debt to my benefactors by the present attempt to trace and define their magic. Most of them, early and late, have been my old familiar friends and confidants. Pleasant, gracious, fragrant memories exhaled from scores of volumes as I successively took them from their shelves to refresh my acquaintance. If the souls enshrined therein look to the intention, I do not fear that they will resent my audacity at calling the roll.

Each of the company as he passed before me has so entirely occupied my attention that I have seldom been

tempted to draw comparisons. No student of poetry can avoid observing that certain writers tower above the rest. I am not speaking of particular poems. A poem may be great by virtue of the prominence of some special quality : sublimity, as Paradise Lost; passion, as the Cenci; holiness, as The Retreat; weirdness, as The Raven; tenderness, as My Mother's Picture; intensity, as The Tiger; atmosphere, as The Eve of St. Agnes; perfection of workmanship, as Shakespeare's Sonnets. The greatness I mean is a property of men as poets. It belongs to the authors of some of the pieces I have instanced, if not to all. I had begun indeed with a plan for confining my survey to some nineteen. Finally, while occasionally I have disregarded exact chronology, and have grouped authors with reference to analogies in literary character, I decided to abandon altogether assessments of comparative merit. All are peers if endued with the true poetic spirit, in whatever quantity. The Great themselves will have more justice done them, standing among their contemporaries, than in an unconnected gathering of luminaries torn from their native orbits.

My apprehension at first was that I might allow myself to contrast, marshal, even to measure out space with regard to rank in the hierarchy. Of such invidious distinctions I had a superstitious dread. I need not have been anxious. Genius beheld in the midst of its own proper and natural circumstances is invested with a halo too bright to permit a gaze once directed upon it to wander elsewhere, till a fresh name has been duly called. The proportion of room occupied in my pages has no positive relation to my estimate of merit; much or little has been requisitioned mainly according to the more or less of difficulty in gauging character and quality.

To one charge I must plead guilty. I confess, but with a sincere sense that I had no alternative. It is true that often in my quotations I have made omissions. My apology is twofold. In the first place, the laws of space forbade quotation in full. In the second, the purpose for which I quoted permitted, and even encouraged, curtailment. My motive in quoting at all was to explain my admiration of a writer or his work; to try to prove the inspiration. When, as of necessity frequently, the inspiration has ceased, the reason for taking up space otherwise required ended too. At the same time I hope to be believed when I declare that abridging was always a grief to me, and a violence to my instinct of propriety. I have constantly felt that I had to stand in a penitent's white sheet after perpetrating such an act, though I had no option but to repeat the offence.

If the effect have ever been to set a poet or his verse in too favourable a light, I accept rebuke so entirely without pain that I exult as at the performance of a good deed. Should, by some mischance, the freedoms taken by me have had the opposite consequence of marring a fine touch, I unfeignedly lament. It has been my object throughout to look for achievement, not for failure; to dwell on beauties, rather than on flaws. Did I suspect that I had been unfair to the least of the seventy-two, whether by omission, or by commission, I should be most unhappy. I have consistently inclined to regard high-, not low-water mark. My single endeavour has been to make clear to myself, if possible, the presence of inspiration. That is the quality I have sought, and endeavoured with all my power to bring to light. I have rejoiced in it when found. For the most part I have gone on my way in silence, when I have not succeeded in discovering it, or have come upon the traces

of it faded or tarnished. If I have indicated poets, or poems, where it is wanting, my object has been to concentrate regard upon those it glorifies. Where I have been unable to agree with a favourable contemporary view, I have differed with hesitation and doubt as to my own. Only in two or three instances have I presumed to condemn altogether.

In general, my surmise is that I am more likely to be held guilty of exaggerated admiration than of censorious severity. I expose myself to the charge almost deliberately, and by no means unwillingly. Let anybody commune with, live with, genuine poetry; I defy him to refrain from eulogy, which to others not under the spell will seem fantastic. Inspiration acts upon poets like laughing gas. It has a peculiarity of its own, that mere sympathy communicates the delirium. Perhaps I am rather vain of the liability to a passion of enthusiasm, and invite participation.