THE POETS OF THE CENTURY.* Mn. MILEs'S ambitious enterprise, which
promises to present a bird's-eye view of the poetry of the century, is likely to prove a tolerable success if all the ten volumes are equal to these two. Nothing could be more desirable than to form, especially in the young generation, a catholic taste in poetry ; and this can be effectively done only by educating the powers of com- parison and intelligent criticism. Hardly anything can be more adverse to true appreciation of poetry than the exalta- tion of popular models into idols by reference to which every fresh effort must be tested, and condemned if it does not con- form to the narrow accepted standard. It is doubtful even if the predominance of certain poets in forming schools of dis- ciples does not operate at once against true judgment and originality. Wordsworthians are very exclusive in some respects, and Tennysonians are certainly exacting, while the Browningites often show themselves anything but comprehen- sive up to their master's level. In poetry, if anywhere, Bacon's dictum holds trae that there is no beauty but bath a certain strangeness in the proportion,—the very element of strange- ness in the new product is likely to be near of kin to in- dividuality. As we expand the sympathies by awakening new perceptions of beauty in what may at first have seemed strange and outro, we really confer new powers. The very process through which the poetry of Mr. Browning slowly passed in the public judgment is a prominent instance. Not so many years ago, Mr. Browning himself apostrophised the English reading
* The Poots mid tho Poetry of the Century. Edited by Altred fi, Miles. Vol. I.—George Crobbe to B. T. Coleridge. Vol. Vt—William Morris to Hobert Buchanan. London: Hutchinson and Co.
public as " Ye that love me not ;" but something like a revo- lution has since then been accomplished in public taste in that matter. The strangeness of Browning's manner has been modified in the perception of the variety, range, and interest of his themes,—his subtle thought, his lofty lessons, and his dramatic insight and penetration into motive. In this we have a gain,—something like a new intellectual factor, in reality.
One of the main ends to be accomplished by such an
anthology as this—ranging over so wide a field, and having to deal with so many styles and tendencies—is to interpret the " strangeness " in exceptional works, and commend the individual and new. This demands, in the first place, sympathy, and in the second, insight and large and educated powers of comparison. The general idea of the editor, we are glad to see, admirably conforms to this. In his introductory essay, we find him writing :— "It has boon the editor's desire that those [the critical and biographical notices] should be written sympathetically, as he believes that a sympathetic spirit is necessary to an accurate insight, and that the whole truth is rarely spoken, except by those who speak the truth in love. In the editor's judgment, every man has a right that the best shall bo said of him that can be said, and he has a right that the best shall be said, if not first in point of order, certainly in the best place and in the best way. It is not yet possible to appraise accurately the poetic work of the century : distance is necessary to a comprehensive view, and the ultimate verdict after all is not with the critics, but with mankind. Lord Houghton, in his introduction to the poems of David Gray, says i--` There is, in truth, no critic of poetry but the man who enjoys it, and the amount of gratification felt is the only just measure of criticism. To help the enjoyment of contemporary poetry is the object of the criticism in this work, and in no sense is it an attempt to anticipate the final judgment which can only be pronounced when Time, the Editor of editors, shall select for the last anthology the swan-songs of the world."
This forcibly recalls to us Emerson's fine sentence, that we surely owe to men the same deference that we pay to a picture, —to try to see them in the best light. Mr. Miles's aim is to show the poets in the best light. His own sketches in the first volume of Crabbe, William Blake, Samuel Rogers, Bloomfield, Wordsworth, and Sir Walter Scott—contrasted as are the types of character and genius—show broad but vivid sympathy, loving and careful study, descending to minutest details, but not dwelling on these, and an eye for very contrasted forms of excellence. Here, for instance, is a discerning note on Wordsworth :-
" For the poet to avow that he had taken as much pains to avoid what was usually called poetic diction as others ordinarily took to produce it, was to challenge tho judgment of those others in a way that was sure to provoke reply ; and to contend that the sole difference between prose and metrical composition is in the arrangement of 'language really spoken by men' in metrical form, was to claim a great deal too much for the language of common life, and to open up a controversy in which it was not difficult for his, opponents to prove his practice inconsistent with his principles."
Other writers have imbibed Mr. Miles's spirit, or have care- fully followed his example. Mr. Walter White does justice to James Hogg, acknowledging him as the poet of fairyland, and saying truly of " Kilmeny," that it is one of the loveliest poems that ever carried a reader into enchanted land. Mr.
0-rover does the same for Coleridge. In dealing with the poets of our own day, the difficulties of the task are increased in many ways. The biographical notices in the sixth volume are inevitably more marked by personal influence and associa- tion; but the leading lines have been, on the whole, well kept in view. Mr. Ashcroft Noble's sketch of Robert Buchanan is
especially good ; and the same writer's short sketch of David Gray is touched with pathetic regret as well as insight. Mr. Buxton Forman's essay on William Morris, with which the volume opens, is condensed and almost exhaustive. Mr. Arthur Symons carefully traces the great and gradual ad- vance in Mr. Swinburne's verse,—an advance not only to clearer view and purpose, but to a wider and more humane ideal, in which Nature stands as a helper and reconciler ; and Mr. Mackenzie Bell's sketch of Mr. Theodore Watts is a bit of careful critical work, at once sympathetic and studiously sincere. The editor's own sketch of Mr. Austin Dobson
should not be forgotten. It duly celebrates the delicacy and daintiness, the old-world aroma, that permeates the lyrics of that writer ; but "Incognita'" should have been mentioned, were it only for one stanza, perfect as anything ever written. The selections have been uniformly made with discrimination, and with a due regard to presenting the varied aspects of the
poets' activity. Mr. Swinburne43 Nature-poems have adequate representation, as well as the earlier passionate lyrics ; but we could have wished for just a couple of the rondels on childhood. We could almost have wished, too, that Mr. Robert Buchanan's " Wake of Tim O'Hara " had been given instead of " The Wedding of Shon Maclean," for, in some important points, we think it is a better specimen of Mr. Buchanan's humorous narrative style,—the best, indeed, if we except some of the- happier passages in. "St. Abe and his Seven Wives" and " White Rose and Red." But in the case of living poets,. where copyright exists, the editor may not in all cases be able to exercise an unqualified freedom of choice.
As last word, we may say that, if Mr. Alfred Miles in later volumes succeeds in overcoming difficulties as to copyright, as he has done in his sixth volume, and if he continues to exer- cise the same taste, judgment, and skill, he will in his ten volumes present to the present generation such an anthology of poetry as has certainly never been even aimed at before.. The volumes are got up with such nicety and taste, that this element will be found in many respects a source of attraction by book-lovers and book-buyers. Only some, like ourselves, may wish that the type used had been larger.
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