ANTHOLOGIES.
THE death of Mr. Francis Palgrave will be a subject for regret to thousands of men and women throughout the English-speaking world, for every one who cares for English poetry knows that Mr. Palgrave edited " The Golden Trea- sury." The world may be roughly divided into those to whom poetry says something and those to whom it says nothing. No doubt there are thousands in the first class who as a matter of fact seldom read poetry or think about it, but nevertheless they are in the last resort on the side of thti poets. But almost all English-speaking people to whom poetry is capable of appealing know '• The Golden Treasury:. When an Englishman is going a long journey and can only take a few books he naturally puts "The Golden Treasury" into his box. He knows that if and when ho craves for a little poetry it will give him exactly what he wants. He will find there something for every mood and examples of every form of poetry. He will get not only the Elegy in a Country Churchyard and Milton's Hymn to the Nativity, but the best of the Elizabethan sonnets and of the Elizabethan love-songs. Mr. Palgrave's volume has from its first issue held the field against all comers. Nowhere is literary competition freer than in the region of anthologies, and every year sees one or two collections of English verse given to the public; but in spite of this the position of " The Golden Treasury" has remained uncaptured. What renders thia. success the more remarkable is the fact that the book originally won its way entirely on its own merits. Though Mr. Palgrave was fairly well known as a critic, he never occupied any com- manding position in that region of letters. No one has ever suggested that people liked " The Golden Treasury " because they were devotees of Mr. Palgrave's critical judgments. If Mr. Matthew Arnold or Lord Tennyson had made a selection of English verse, it might have been said to have succeeded because people took it on trust, and argued that such great authorities were sure to know the true from the false gold. Mr. Palgrave when he first gave his selection to the world certainly spoke with no such weight of authority. Later, and • owing to the success of " The Golden Treasury," he came tc be regarded as an expert in lyrical poetry, but at first the book, as we have said, won its way solely by its merits.
It is worth while to consider what are the reasons that made " The Golden Treasury " succeed while eo many other anthologies by critics quite as able, or indeed abler, have failed. We believe that Mr. Palgrave's success was due to the fact that he realised clearly and exactly the true conditions of an anthology, and that he carried them out to the letter. He worked, that is, on what are after all the only lines which ever produce perfection in litera- ture or art or politics. He first arrived at a clear under- standing of what an anthology of English verse might to be, and his plan once formed, he stuck to it and carried it out without allowing himself to be led into any pl.•scant but dangerous divergences and eccentricities. To b gin with, he realised that his book must not be to long ; next, that it must be diversified to suit many tastes ; and, lastly, that in a selection of poetry, as in a chain, its strength is its weakest link. Weak poems ruin anthologies as weak links ruin (mains. In other words, he saw that it was necessary to make a strict standard for admission into "The Golden Treasury." But here comes in the real difficulty. It was in choosing his standard that Mr. Palgrave scored so great a triumph. Had he taken his own personal taste as his sole guide he would certainly have failed. Again, he would not have made the book he did make had he chosen only such poems as commend themselves to the most fastidious critics. He did not, that is, allow himself to be frightened out of including this or that poem because it might be called conventional or artificial or trivial by the last or most learned critic. On the other hand, he did not make mere popular applause his canon, and include only poems which were household words. What he did, con- sciously or unconsciously, was to choose only such poems as both the plain man who liked poetry and the severe and cautious critic could agree upon. Either of these was, as it were, allowed a veto. Only if neither could be said to veto the poem it was included. If one turns over the leaves of " The Golden. Treasury" with this thought in one's mind it will be seen. that the poems stand the test with extraordinary success. They are all poems which have a natural attraction, and yet at the same time cannot be condemned by the critic. There is no poem in the collection which the critic, on the one hand, can call cheap, or, on the other, that the plain man can say is over his head,—" very fine, no doubt, but quite above me." One can see how soundly this double veto works out in the case of poets like Moore and Byron and Mrs. Hemans. No doubt the plain man would very much have liked to see included in "The Golden Treasury" "Let Erin Remember the Days of Old." But the critic, of course, condemns the verses as at best only spirited and picturesque, and without the essential charm of really great verse. The same reason would keep out "The Assyrian Came Down like a Wolf on the Fold," and " The Castled Crag of Drachenfels." For Hrs. Hemans'e " Graves of the Household " the plain man would also plead in vain, for the critic would reply, and reply truly, that though there is much that is touch- ing and beautiful in the poem, it is without that note of distinction which is absolutely essential to every poem included in a representative collection of English poems. Poems cannot, the critic would insist, be accepted merely because they run in our heads, or make our eyes water. This slaughter of the innocents would, no doubt, be very annoying to the plain man, but he would have his revenge when the critic produced two or three of Dr. Donne's poems, and recommended them as showing not only an extraordinary insight into the mysteries of human nature, but a marvellous power over words, and a subtle harmony to be found nowhere else in English poetry. Of course, the plain man will have nothing to do with verse which he declares he can neither scan nor construe, and so the poet whom Dryden declared to be the greatest wit of his own or any age finds scant place in " The Golden Treasury." Mr. Palgrave only chose one short poem by Donne. The veto of the plain man also accounts for the absence of many of Shakespeare's finest sonnets, and for the non-appearance of certain Elizabethan lyrics, and of several of Words- worth's moat striking poems. " Resolution and Inde- pendence" could hardly be expected to survive the veto of the plain man, nor, indeed, could the " Poet's Epitaph." Irony so delicate, and yet in a way so fierce, is out of place in a family collection. But observe that though Mr. Palgrave allowed an absolute liberum veto both to his plain man and to his critic, neither of those ideal persons exercises his rights harshly or arbitrarily. The plain man does not always insist on his right to exclude everything which does not run easily and go straight to the heart, nor does the critic condemn every piece which has defects in taste and workmanship. For example, the plain man lets in Spenser's " Prothalamium," whose enchanting, if languid music he can hardly be expected to appreciate or understand ; while the critic allows " The Bridge of Sighs," swallowing, like a sensible fellow, what is slovenly and cockneyfied in Hood's poem for the sake of its power of touching the heart and its astonishing picturesqueness. In plenty of other instances there was evidently a good deal of give and take between the two wielders of the veto, though neither ever allows a poem which really annoys him. There is no poem in "The Golden Treasury" which any critic, however fastidious, can call "mere conventional rubbish," or any man, however plain, " mere literary artifice and conceit." There are plenty of poems, beloved alike of the public and the cultivated, which can be so described, but they do not find any place in "The Golden Treasury."
"The Golden Treasury" is, :n fact, the most successful collection of verse ever made, a collection which delights all sorts and conditions of men, because it is like a bunch of flowers into which the gardener, though he has put something for all tastes, has put no flower which is not really beautiful and sweet, and admitted to be sweet by garden experts and plain people alike. He has not refused to put in Gloires de Dijon because they are too common and well known, nor has he insisted on giving a conspicuous place to a green rose or an ugly orchid merely because it is so rare or so great a triumph of art. The bunch pleases all eyes and all noses, because in not a single instance does the presence of the flower need explanation or defence. It is exactly thus with "The Golden Treasury." Not a poem in its pages needs defence. It carries its right to be there on its face and patent for all to see. " The Golden Treasury " is never likely to be superseded, and for this reason. There are only a limited number of poems on which the plain man and the critic can agree, and practically Mr. Palgrave has got them all. We know of one or two which we think, with a little persuasion, we could get both wielders of the veto to agree on, but they are not numerous. Thus, though we may have new and interesting special collec- tions, anthologies of Elizabethan, Georgian, or Victorian verse we shall not have because we do not need a new "Golden Treasury "—i.e., a little book with all the beat English lyrics in its pages. Mr. Palgrave had the great good fortune, or rather the skill, to do a notable thing perfectly. Unless, then, we are very much mistaken, "The Golden Treasury" will come to be regarded as something permanent, as having a place of its own in our literature, and not as a mere bundle of poems tied with a string which can be untied and made up fresh again.
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