BOOKS.

THE ENGLISH POETS.* THE editor's brief preface explains very distinctly the purpose of this anthology. "Our design," he writes, "has not been to present a complete collection of all that may fairly be called masterpieces,—if it had been so, the volumes would of necessity have been three times as many as they are. Still less has it been to give a complete history of English poetry,—if it had been so, many names that we have passed over would have been admitted. It has been to collect as many of the best and most characteristic of their writings as should fully represent the great poets, and at the same time to omit no one who is poeti- cally considerable." In making the selections, Mr. Ward has had the assistance of several well-known authors, each of whom has a special knowledge of a certain period or poet, and delivers his judgment in a brief critical essay.

It will be evident that such a plan admits of freedom, variety, and breadth of sympathy ; it supplies, also, accuracy of know- ledge. The field of English poetry from Chaucer to Clough is so extensive, that it is scarcely possible for a single mind to survey it all. A critic's knowledge may be ample in one direction, while in another it may be narrow and superficial.

He may be affectionately familiar with Spenser and on terms of bare acquaintance with Pope, be may love Wordsworth and have but a cold regard for Dryden, he may enjoy Herrick and be deaf to the music of Shelley. It may safely be assumed, says Mr. Saintsbury, in his notes on Drayton, that very few living Englishmen have read the Polyotbion through, and the same assumption may be made with regard to many of the weighty poems entombed within the volumes of Chalmers. Few readers of the Faerie Queens, according to Macaulay, have been in at the death of the Blatant Beast, a proof that the brilliant essayist, omnivorous reader though he was, had never reached the end of the sixth book, for the Blatant Beast does not die.

And yet the Faerie Queens is one of the chief glories of English literature, and Spenser's rank as a poet is with Chaucer and Shakespeare, with Milton and with Wordsworth. His position is not, indeed, precisely fixed, but if unworthy of the third place in our poetical Walhalla, there are few sane critics who would not award to him the fourth. We think, then, that Mr. Ward's plan, suggested apparently by that adopted by M. Crepet in his Les poises franpais, is a wise one, and the names of many of his coadjutors are in themselves a guarantee that the criticisms will be generally competent and the selections made with care. Of Mr. Arnold's remarkable essay, we shall speak later on. At present, it will be most expedient to glance at the general contents of these two volumes.

The editor leads the way, with Chaucer, in a brief but com- petent essay, which tells the general reader, in fourteen pages, all, perhaps, that it concerns him to know. The extracts in this instance are admirably chosen, though the difficulty of selection is obvious. That they should afford an imperfect notion of Chaucer's genius is inevitable ; if they promote the study of this manly poet, whose lines are fresh with the dew of the morning, the editor will have full compensation for his labour. Passing over the names of Langley, Gower, and other early poets, and staying only to note that, in the judgment of Mr. W. E. Henley, Robert Henryson was a born dramatist, and narrates a story "with a gaiety, an ease, a rapidity not to be surpassed in English literature between Chaucer and Burns ;" that Pro- fessor Nichol has given an admirably just estimate of Dunbar, whose coarse satire scarcely admits of representation in pages like these ; and that Mr. Churton Collins, a gentleman whose name is unknown to us, has uttered certain judgments upon Hawes and Skelton which are more enthusiastic than critical, we reach an essay on "Ballads," by Mr. A. Lang, which has, perhaps, no fault save that of overmuch brevity. He observes, and truly, that the English ballad is in general very inferior to the Lowland Scotch :—

"Popular poetry," he writes, "has often been compared to the wild rose, the wild stock out of which the richer garden roses are grown. If the wild stock be so poor and feeble in England, how comes it, we may ask, that English cultivated poetry is so rich in colour and perfume ? in simpler language, if the people is so devoid of poetry, how has the race come to produce so many great poets and the noblest poetical literature of the modern world, while artistic poets are rare indeed among races which have great wealth of popular

* The English Poets. Selections, with Critical Introductions by Various Writers, and a Cleneral Introduction by Matthew Arnold, Edited by Thomas Humphry Ward, M.A. Vols. I. and II. London Macmillan and Co. 1880.

song ? This is not the place to attempt a full answer to the question ; we can only defend the natural imagination of the English people, by saying that we do not really possess its unsophisticated productions. The English ballads are not, or are very rarely, pure Volks-lieder.

Most of our ballads are gathered from old broadsheets and ancient MS. collections. To say that, is to say that they are dashed with the humblest literary common-place. They have acquired in the bands of half-educated printers and editors a tone which is not the tone of the people."

A like objection may, perhaps, be urged with regard to our popular songs. Songs of the most exquisite kind our great poets have indeed given us in large measure, but of the songs that are at once poetical and popular, appealing to the tastes of ordinary men and women, as so many Scottish songs appeal, we possess but a small number. We do not know the dates of our old ballads, and it is well, perhaps, that the selection given here should appear before the age of Wyatt and Surrey, who may be said to inaugurate the Elizabethan era. These poets, friends in life, as in art, belong indeed to the reign of Henry VIII., but their poems were published just before the accession of Elizabeth, and the influence of their poetry extended far into her reign. Like Chaucer, both these poets warmed themselves at the fire of Italian literature. The debt they owed to Petrarch they repaid in sonnets, and they were the first to naturalise that pregnant form of verse on English soil. This was no mean achievement, but they have other

claims to attention. Wyatt, according to Warton, may justly be deemed the first polished English satirist, and Surrey was the first English poet to write heroic blank verse. For other reasons the position of these men is significant, and leaving Chaucer out of the question, it may be doubted whether the student loses much by beginning his survey of our poetry with these "courtly poets." We are glad to see that the ex- aggerated praise of Sackville uttered by some critics, and strange to say, by Hallam among the number, is not adopted by Dean Church. It may be true, as Mr. Mint° has observed, that his position in literature is unique, for he ceased to be a poet long before he was thirty, entered the Diplomatic Service, and ulti- mately became Lord High Treasurer, but there is little in his work itself, apart from the circumstances of its production, to excite much interest.

The Dean of St. Paul's, as is fitting, considering his admir- able monograph in English Men of Letters, takes charge of Spenser in this anthology, and his selections include, we are glad to see, the magnificent " Epithalainion," which, however, is not inserted in its complete form. An interesting but rather diffuse account of Sidney might claim attention, were it not that it demands more space than we can spare. We certainly disagree with the writer's statement that as a series of sonnets the Astropliel and Stella poems are second only to Shakespeare's, and that "as a series of love-poems they are, perhaps, unsur- passed." The tendency to civerrate the works of a poet who has ceased to be read is always strong, and a recent editor of Sidney's works has gone so far as to advise students to give days and nights to the study of his poetry. The criticism in The Euglish. Poets is nearly as enthusiastic, but the writer allows that Sidney's best work is liable to youth's unripeness and inequality. A very admirable criticism of Marlowe by Mr. A. C. Bradley might tempt us to linger. We are reminded in it that "it is ouly- Shakespeare who can do everything, and Shakespeare did not die at twenty-nine ;" and this allusion to the greatest of poets reminds us also of the small distance we have hitherto advanced upon our poetical pilgrimage. It would be pleasant, did space permit, to follow the critics of these vol- umes step by step, as they conduct us from poet to poet. This, however, is impossible, for the journey would lead to infinite digressions ; and it is also, let us hope, unnecessary, as the book is one with which students of English poetry are likely to make close acquaintance. As specially worthy of attention, we may mention Mr. Ward's notes on Ben Jonson and on Dryden, Mr. (losses on Herrick—a poet, by the way, who is largely represented—and Mr. Mark Pattison's on Milton.

Turning now to the remarkable Introduction, we are struck by the divergence between the contents of the volumes and the principle of selection proposed by Mr.

Arnold. The editor's purpose is "to collect as many of the best and most characteristic of their writings as should fully represent the great poets, and at the same time to omit no one who is poetically considerable." This purpose he has, to a large extent, accomplished, and indeed he has some- times gone beyond his promise, for by no stretch of charitable judgment can Lord Herbert of Cherbury, William Cartwright, and Mrs. Behn be termed "poetically considerable." Mr. Ward's aim, as the reader will soon find, is by no means steadily carried out in these volumes. He gives us very much that deserves to be called the best, but much also that is of second-rate quality ; and of this Mr. Arnold is so far from taking cognisance, that be writes as if the best, and that alone, were to be found within these covers. It would even seem as if his introduction had been written without any special consideration of the volumes. to which it is prefixed :—

"In poetry," he writes, "the distinction between excellent and in- ferior, sound and unsound, or only half-sound ; true and untrue, or only half-true, is of paramount importance. It is of paramount import- ance, because of the high destinies of poetry. In poetry, as a criti- cism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic troth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will, find, we have said as time goes on, and as other helps fail, its conso- lation and stay. But the consolation and stay will be of power in proportion to the power of the criticism of life. And the criticism of life will be of power in proportion as the poetry conveying it is excel- lent rather than inferior, sound rather than unsound or half-sound, true rather than untrue or half-true. The best poetry is what we- want ; the best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us as nothing else can. A clearer, deeper- sense of the best in poetry, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, is the most precious benefit which we can gather from a; poetical collection such as the present. And yet, in the very nature and conduct of such a collection there is inevitably something which tends to obscure in us the consciousness of what our benefit should be,. and to distract us from the pursuit of it. We should, therefore,. steadily set it before our minds at the outset, and should compel our- selves to revert constantly to the thought of it as we proceed."

The writer also observes that most of what now passes with us- for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.

Mr. Arnold is so masterly a critic, that his readers will not grudge him a few crotchets. A life which is to be consoled and sustained by poetry, as other helps fail, may possibly give satis- faction to the arch-priests and arch-critics of the divine art, but what is to become of the Philistines ? Mr. .Armild has him.- self written much about religion which we readily admit is far less consolatory and sustaining than his poetry, but then MP. Arnold is a poet, and we venture to think that he is not a theologian. His amazing assertion as to the future of poetry we discussed five or six weeks ago, but it is needful to point out that his high standard of poetry is by no means reached in these well-edited volumes. A great deal here is not what Mr. Arnold considers that it ought to be,—the best ; a great deal is interesting only as illustrating the progress or retrogression of the 'art, and the writer does not fail to remind us that the historic estimate is fallacious. It is needless to say that Mr.- Arnold—always a suggestive critic, and especially so where poetry is concerned—has much to say in his essay worthy of attention, and that deserves to be read and re-read. The comparison between Chaucer and Burns is especially noteworthy. A fresh, simple, and half-humorous mode of expression will have often struck the reader of Mr. Arnold's critical essays, and it is not wanting here. Indeed, the" Introduction " is eminently characteristic of the writer.