The Aeolian Harp
Revaluations. By F. R. Leavis. (Chatto and Windus. 7s. 6d.) De gustibus non est disputandum ; there's no accounting for hobby-horses : 'but the form criticism takes today is precisely the search for arguments to support the rightness of your prejudices. You, the critic, are the Aeolian harp through which the winds of poetry Whistle. If your strings vibrate, the poetry is good ; if they remain inert, it is bad. Having thus established merit—and the method is at least honest—the next step is the famous eriger en dogme of Remy de Gourmont, which is not so good. But Mr. Leavis very sensibly and courageously takes the line that it is the business of the critic to make definite statements, for then they can be argued about, and some advance be made.
The result is that this collection of essays is amusing, in the right sense of the word. It keeps us alert, we agree here and dissent there, until in the end we find out Mr. Leavis's limita- tions, and are satisfied as to our own superiority, which is gratifying. Whether we could ourselves produce so coherent, so consistent, and so alive a book is another question, which need not concern us as we read. What is of importance is that we should know exactly how we differ from Mr. Leavis, not so much in our views, but, to use his own language, in "organisation," or "fineness of organisation," for this clears our minds. Through reading Mr. Leavis's book carefully we find out not only where he is but where we are also, which is an excellent thing. In short, this is an entertaining, an interesting, and a clarifying book.
There are two things which Mr. Leavis finds essential to good poetry. The first is vivid imagery, the "imaging," as Dryden, whom he so much despises, liked to call it. We now call it finding "the objective correlative," a process con- sidered imperative by Mr. Leavis and Erasmus Darwin, and welcomed by Mr. Eliot, who invented the phrase. (One may say parenthetically that many of Mr. Eliot's phrases, supremely useful to him as he used them, and beautifully illuminating, are in danger of becoming literary jargon.) The other thing Mr. Leavis requires is the presence of the " metaphysical " element, the word being used in its literary sense, which involves a -fusion -of -intellect with sensibility; a hard wit beneath the lyric grace, and a violent yokkng_ togethek of dissimilar 'ideas dr "things. If poetry does not conform to these standards, so much the worse for the poetry. Alas, poor Miltori, Dryden, Shelley—and all the Victorians !
So much for the hobby-horse ; now for the prejudice." Mr.
Leavis does not like the above-named poeti ; for him they are out OT the tradition, which runs Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Carew, Hope, Matthew Green- Crabbe, with Dr. Johnson
and Wordsworth alongside. ere is much to be said for the argument, and Mr. Leavis says it very well, very cogently. But he only likes poetry that gives him something to see.
Words and their sounds do not matter to him, and he hates words that are there for their own sakes. It would not be altogether unfair to suggest that his ear is not so good as his imagioatiye eye, for if it were he could hardly believe that the following lines by Pope "would be taken for Tennyson":
"With that, a Wizard Old his Cup extends ; Which whoso tastes, forgets his former friends, Sire, Ancestors, Himself."
" Whoso tastes, forgets his" by Tennyson ? Therefore, Mr. Leavis cannot listen to Milton ; he is overpowered by the metre, reduced to callistbenic exercises, dazed. So he reads as follows :
"The hasty multitude Admiring enter'd, and the work some praise And some the Architect : his hand was known In Heav'n by many a T6wred structure high, Where Sceptr'd Angels held thir residence,
And sat as Princes. .
But why ? One would like to ask alert readers whether they would stress the lines that way. But then Mr. Leavis cannot remain alert while reading Milton, which is all the more curious in such a passage as the above, where the great glory of English verse, according to Mr. Leavis's statement, is exhibited, namely, the meaning-stress fighting against the verse-stress (a dubious general proposition, though sometimes useful). Perhaps it is a question of local fashion. The people among whom Mr. Leavis moves cannot endure Samson Agonistes ; my own acquaintance, who mostly like Milton, delight in it above all his other works.
Mr. Leavis suffers from a similar inhibition when reading Dryden. It is all "external," not wrought from the inside ; and we wickedly remember Swift's- fable in The Battle of the Books ; the ancients brought honey from the outside ; it was sweetness and light ; the moderns spun their webs from their insides, like spiders. But the accusation is not altogether true of Dryden, and one might suggest to Mi. Leavis that if he could read Dryden sympathetically, he might 'find some- thing to ponder over in his use of " dissolves " (no ; not the anchovies dissolved in sauce this time please, Mr. Leavis). Dryden he treats unfairly, not for the reasons he gives, but because he compares the immature Dryden with the fully fledged Pope, and only in satire. Satire was not Dryden's strongest point, and Mr. Leavis might see what would happen if he compared Religio Laici with the Essay on Man.
A reviewer is easily led towards points of- disagreement, and I would wish in spite of these to recommend Mr. Leavis's book. The essays on Pope, The Augustan Tradition, and Keats are admirable, the others are stimulating and provoca- tive, and all the notes -which follow the chapters are fascinating. Nobody can doubt Mr. Leavis's intense interest in poetry, an interest which cannot fail to communicate itself to ()then, and his book is one which; to the mature reader, can do nothing
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