BOOKS.

THE VALUE OF POETRY.f PROFESSOR CM:TILTON COLLINS was right to preserve in a per- manent form the critical studies which be has reprinted in his latest volume. One may safely expect to find in everything that Professor Collins writes what is perhaps the most important characteristic of good criticism,—the power of opening out before the reader new and unexplored tracts of stimulating thought ; and the present volume possesses this quality in a marked degree. The collection of essays is bound together, as Professor Collins says, by "a certain unity arising from an endeavour to regard both criticism and poetry more seriously than is at present the fashion." They are, in fact, written from a single aesthetic standpoint, and if they were not actually composed to illustrate a particular critical

* Painter referred to—Lucas Cranach the elder.

f Studies in Poetry and Criticism. By John Chnrton Collins. London : George Bell and Sons. [6s. net.]

doctrine, they are at least based upon the assumption that such a doctrine is true. What, then, are these beliefs upon which Professor Collins lays so much emphasis P Shall we have none of them, or shall we subscribe to them with as much fervour as Professor Collins himself ? It will be interesting to examine these questions a little more closely, but before doing so it is necessary to notice that the value of Professor Collins's book does not entirely depend upon its theories. A large proportion of the essays are concerned with matters of fact and scholarship which have nothing to do with the principles of aesthetics, and in this section of his work Professor Collins stands upon firm and undisputed ground. His essay on " Dfiltonic Myths" is an ' admirable example of the successful application of erudition to a complex literary problem, while his interesting study of Longinus shows a range of classical reading all too rare in the criticism of the present day. No less valuable is the accurate and learned exposition of the indebtedness of Byron to his predecessors,—a piece of work which leaves the reader more than ever convinced of the lack of original literary genius in that extraordinary man.

It is in his essay on "The True Functions of Poetry" that Professor Collins gives full expression to the critical theory which forms the basis of the more strictly aesthetic portions of his book. The question which Professor Collins asks —" What is the good of poetry ? "—is one which has haunted philosophers and poets since the days when Socrates and Aristophanes discussed it together over the dinner-tables of Athens. Fortunately nothing but the interest of abstract truth has ever depended on the answer; and, while philosophers have continued to disagree as to the nature of poetry, poets have continued to produce it. Professor Collins's treatment of the subject is suggestive, but it might have been a great deal more precise. There are so many pleasant digressions, so many quotations which one is glad to see again, so many references which one cannot help following up, that it is sometimes a little difficult to trace the main line of the argument. This is particularly to be regretted, since the conclusions at which Professor Collins arrives are often revolutionary enough. When one is told, for instance, that Keats was not a great poet, one needs, before one can believe the statement, to know very precisely indeed why one should.

Concerning one part of his subject, however, Professor Collins is as definite as could be desired. In reply to the question, "Why do we value poetry ? " the answer is often made, "Because it gives us pleasure" ; and at first sight this seems to be true enough. But no one can fail to be convinced by Professor Collins's refutation of what he calla this "loose and careless notion that the chief end of poetry is to please." If the value of poems is to be measured by their capacity for giving pleasure, who would venture to affirm that the works of Robert Mont- gomery were not more valuable than those of Robert Browning ? Indeed, it is obvious that no such criterion can be safely applied. For, as Professor Collins points out, the value which we attach to works of art depends not on the amount, but on the kind, of pleasure which they produce ; so that it is not the pleasure which we are valuing, but something else.

As to what, so far as poetry is concerned, this something else is, Professor Collins's view is somewhat difficult to catch. But, if we are not mistaken, in his opinion the real justification of poetry lies in its educative influence. Many other thinkers have held a similar view. "Read poetry, oh my children !" said Confucius, "for it will teach you the divine truths of filial affection, patriotism, and natural history." Professor Collins does not put the case quite so baldly as Confucius, but it is clear that his position is fundamentally the same. "In its highest aspects," he says, "poetry is essentially didactic, but didactic in the most exalted sense of the term " ; and he goes on to point out that while the poetry of Words- worth and of Dante comes under this definition, the poetry of Keats does not. It is true that, strictly speaking, the "Ode to a Nightingale" is a didactic poem, for it teaches us something; it teaches us that beauty lives on in spite of time and of mortality. But it is not what Professor Collins calls "didactic in the most exalted sense of the term," for it does not reveal to us "the sublimation of man's duties and obligations," nor give to us the "solace, sustainment, and inspiration" which, as Professor Collins points out, may be gathered from such a work as The Divine Comedy. In short, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain that the "Ode to a Nightingale" ever

helped any one to lead a better life ; and therefore—for such is Professor Collins's conclusion—the "Ode to a Nightingale" Is not a great poem.

Is the conclusion jwitifiable P Surely most readers would reply, in the manner of Browning's heroine, with "one quick instinctive No ! " though they might find it difficult to explain the grounds of their disagreement. It seems evident, though, that Professor Collins has been led away by a desire to discover in every kind of poetry characteristics which are proper to one

kind alone. He is like the circus-rider in the Arabian Nights who insisted upon judging the breed of horses by their

capacity for jumping through hoops. He insists upon judging poetry, not according to its essential nature, but by an accidental quality. And what is the quality which Professor Collins values so highly in poetry ? It is its educative influence, its power of directing human conduct, of giving "solace and sustainment " to life; in other words, he is judging poetry by its effects. But nothing can be more deceptive than this method of arriving at the true values of things. It might, for instance, be maintained with great plausibility that, as a means of educative influence, a birch-rod is of more value than the Georgics of Virgil ; should we therefore be wrong if we believed that the Georgics are more valuable than a birch-rod ? Clearly not ; for in the latter case

we should be thinking of the two things apart from their effects ; we should be thinking of their intrinsic values ; and

who can doubt that, while the intrinsic value of the Georgics is very high, that of a birch-rod is nothing at all ? Professor Collins's theory breaks down because he has confused the intrinsic value of poetry with the value of its effects ; he has failed to notice the very distinction which, curiously enough, is clearly brought out in one of his most interesting quota- tions,—a passage from a letter written by Lord Chatham to his nephew at Cambridge :—

" I hope you taste and love Homer and Virgil—you cannot read them too much : they are not only poets, but they contain

the finest lessons we can learn, lessons of honour, courage, dis- interestedness, love of truth, command of temper, gentleness of behaviour, humanity, and, in one word, virtue in its true signification."

"They are not only poets," says Lord Chatham, but they are also moral teachers. The distinction could not be more plainly drawn ; they might have been moral teachers if they had never been poets ; and they would have been poets if they had never taught anything at all.

Professor Collins's tendency to judge poets by unpoetical standards shows itself throughout his book. In his essay on American poets, for instance, he says of Emerson that "in some respects he is among the greatest of American poets ; but it is not by virtue of his poetry." And precisely the same kind of fallacy underlies his estimate of Byron. Byron, Professor Collins admits, had no spiritual insight and very little sense of beauty ; he was without an ear, without originality, and as an artist he was grossly defective ; but nevertheless, in spite of these overwhelming disadvantages, it is doubtful whether he must not be placed above Keats, and possibly, among the whole range of English poets, second only to Shakespeare. Never did such a conclusion follow from such premises. But, Professor Collins says, "it is not by its quality that Byron's work is to be judged"; its greatness lies in its "immense body and mass," its "almost unparalleled versatility," and its influence on Continental writers. Who

can help being reminded of the circus-rider in the Arabian Nights? An even more characteristic instance of the sort of result to which Professor Collins's theory inevitably leads is to

be found in his treatment of pessimism. "To link poetry with pessimism," he says in his final essay, "is to repeat the horrid crime of Mezentius, to bind the living to the dead." If this

means anything, it means that pessimistic poetry is always bad ; that Lucretius and Omar Khayyam and Leopardi were worthless, or worse than worthless, writers ; and indeed, if we once allow that the function of poetry is to give "solace and sustainment " to mankind, we cannot avoid the conclusion. But what it may well be asked, is the value of a poetical canon which excludes the work of Lucretius ? And where does Professor Collins draw the line? If he excludes Lucretius, how can he include Sophocles, or even Shakespeare ? For what could be a more complete example of "poetry linked with pessimism" than the Oedipus Tyrannzu3 or the last scene in Lear ?

The truth is that Professor Collins's doctrine turns out, if it is followed to its logical conclusion, to be a fatally narrow one. It would set a limit upon the boundless domain of poetry; it is, implicitly, an attempt to deprive poets of their dearest privilege,—that freedom without which they could never soar to their noblest heights. For it is not by its uses that poetry is to be justified or condemned. Its beauty and its goodness, like the beauty of a landscape or the goodness of a human being, have a value of their own, a value which does not depend on their effects. We love poems, as we love the fields and the trees and the rivers of England, and as we love our friends, not for the pleasure which they may bring us, nor even for the good which they may do us, but for themselves.