29 AUGUST 1925, Page 17

DRYDEN AND POETRY

" \Vital is man," asks Mr. T. S. Eliot, " to decide what poetry is ? " - And we praise Fate for allowing Mr. Eliot to expose himself. The joy of battle rises as we contemplate the question : we shall treasure it in mind for another occasion—when the issue is no longer Dryden, but Mr. Eliot himself. if we long for our enemies to write books, it is precisely in the hope that we shall receive from them these casual yet typical expressions, these sidelights of opinion. Remember, not "what is one man to decide . . .", but " what is 'non," man the creator of values, the inventor of poetry, in whom the only will to poetry, the only enjoyment of poetry, the only canons of poetry inhere.

There is a doctrine (and to some extent Mr. Eliot shares in it) that literature is autonomous and the standards of criticism must be derived from works of literature. Criticism, then; is comparative and historical : instinct, emotion, religion, morality, use, virtue and truth have no claim to put in their words and declare judgment. Is this man a great artist ? Examine him and see how far he succeeds in what he set out to do, where he stands in the development of technique. And here Mr. Eliot shows, in spite of himself, the strange assumption on which this theory rests. He is driven to posit an Absolute Poetry, independent of man. He is driven to declare man's work greater than man himself. To read thd critics of this sehoOl we might imagine them to be hard-headed, cool-blooded creatures of intellect : such is their confession and their bearing. Then suddenly we observe their nostalgia and worship ; they are deifying a thing made with hands.

If Mr. Eliot is serious in his question, we affirm to him that man is the measure of things, and that even poetry is a human activity. Judgment of literature calls for the application of all values ; the man who thinks to divorce literature from morality or truth makes it unreal.

But Dryden is an especially hard case for the critic of values; and it is easily intelligible that Mr. Eliot should choose him out for homage. No man in our literature was at once great and devoid of purpose to the same degree as Dryden. Nd man had such large capacities to use in dignifying any subject with the chaste and pleasing ornament of style. It is almost frightening to conceive the vacuum which was Dryden's soul.

Let us quote from Mr. Lubbock :--

" He never undertook a task which fashion or interest might not have offered : so much, though professing to despiso it, he confessed. And while in this there is nothing peculiar, he shows a rarer symptom in his attitude towards these tasks. Many others, in their original choice of a form to work upon, have been guided more by the necessity of earning a living than by their own unfettered taste: But those who succeed, those who make something really great out of the material submitted to them, seldom do so, one would think, without acquiring in the business some affection for that which, though foreign in the first place, they have made properly their own. Dryden had none of this parental feeling, and remained all his life quite uninterested in the forms which he had so distinguished."

How, then, does the impression of energy and homogeneity

in his works arise ? He was not even ambitious after " self- expression " ; he' had none of that morbid hunger of the individualists, which starts from nowhere and has no aim, yet urges them, in the very hurry of their attempt to impose themselves, into an unconscious unity of thought, into the displaying of their private focus through the multiplicity of subjects they deal with. Goethe's mind, in the last analysis; was such a vacuum : but Dryden's was more negative at-id more incredible ; his was the vacuum of indifference and equa--

nimity. He could write, with equal energy and force, with an equally smooth and athletic idiom, to glorify Cromwell and to glorify Charles. He could turn, with an equal argumentative skill, from supporting the Church of England to supporting, the Church of Rome. Was bawdry demanded ? His art was fresh and powerful to supply it. Was there a fashion for senti- ment and nobility ? Then Dryden was able to set the mark of literature upon that fashion, too. Above all, his lack of principle has made him superb in satire. Where indignation makes the verse, there will be excesses, and our sympathy will be somewhere alienated. But with Dryden the problem was still literary ; no man he satirized had stung him to anger or jealousy ; tranquilly and freely he devoted himself to satire, and his judgments, because they are impersonal, seem to be Anal and beyond dispute. He has the air of generosity and thorough fairness in his abuse, and it is the mere play of language, no rough appeal to prejudice, that bears the weight of persuasion.

It was necessary that some such man should be born, to level our speech, to make it no longer flourishing and impetuous, but supple and calm ; and we must allow it for truth that in the judgment of Dryden the standard is historical and literary. So continuous a devotion to mere speech, to the refinement of rhetoric, deserves a measure of adoration. It was Dryden who first saw in full clarity the greatness of Shakespeare, of Chaucer, of Milton ; and he accounted them great, not as action, or as thought, but as speech. Yet, if we admit that the standard for his judgment is literary, we are limiting his title to fame and granting him only the most qualified praise. Criticism, we said, calls for all values ; and when we can apply one value only, then our subject is infinitely poorer for the omission of the others.

It has been asserted that Dryden is himself a great critic. Indeed he is not. He could coin admirable phrases of apprecia- tion, and his taste helped him to use them where they fitted. It seems, at first, an illuminating piece of criticism when we come across his judgment of Chaucer—" Here is God's plenty." But we remember that he declared of Shakespeare that he " was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him " ; and, once more of Chau- cer, that " he must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature . . . Not a single character has escaped him " ; and we recognize at last that it is the phrase which has excellence, and there is no true judgment. The trouble with i` pure literary criticism " is that distinctions cease, and taste becomes arbiter.

Often we can employ the adherent of one superstition in destroying another ; and the intellectual heresy in Mr. Eliot is almost a virtue when he is attacking the vagueness and shabbiness inherent in Romanticism. Mr. Lubbock is temper- ate, and comes down upon neither side in any quarrels of theory ; as an expositor of Dryden's failings and powers he is very sound.

ALA-1ST PORTER.