• The " English 9, Muse Tans compendious anthology, intended
to replace Ward's English Poets, since now, obviously, no one would have shelf-room for a " Chalmers," sets out to present the tradition of poetry written in English ; it therefore ends at the outbreak of the First World War, and no poet is included who is at present alive. This has its advan- tages, but it seems to imply too bleakly that a break in the tradition did actually occur in 1914 ; and it means that only the earlier Yeats, and the earlier and cruder Kipling, are represented. The divisions are plausible enough, dictated largely by space it is true, but they fit into as sensible a scheme as any other, and at least avoid cutting up English poetry into the sausage-lengths of centuries. Thus we are given 1, Langland to §penser ; 2, Marlowe to Marvell ; 3, Milton to Goldsmith ; 4, Blake to Poe ; and 5, Tennyson to Yeats. More.. over the title is true to its implications, which means that we find a far bigger proportion of American poetry than is usual in anthologies.
Whenever we come across a new anthology, we ask ourselves 'a series of questions. Is there anything illuminating in the arrange- ment ? The answer here is, No. We are to interpret poetry as revealing its age (the sociological approach, now so much the fashion), and not as a series of attempts made at various times to penetrate and to grasp reality, or to provide different kinds of delight. It suggests no way through the rich tangle of our poetry. Are all the authors there that we would expect ? Are there any gaps ? In the main we get all that we have a right to ask, though in the last volume we could most of us, I think, accept one or two omissions that would enable us to have something by, say, Clough and the more surrealist Dixon- Are there any delightful surprises ? Yes (if not quite so many as the " blurb " claims), though not until the third volume, in which we get—and I confess that if I ever knew them they had slipped my memory—the quiet Anne Bradstreet, and the far more exciting metaphysico-religious poet, Edward Taylor, a triumphant find. In the next volume we meet, besides the American poets we could count on, but which are not usually found room for in smaller anthologies, the charming person of Philip Frenau., Sone may think that " The Dong with the Luminous Nose " and Tie Hunting of the Snark " strike an incongruous note ; but, if that is so, it is because they have not realised that they—" The Snark " it least—are profoundly metaphysical poems expressing the abysml neant which yawned before the Victorians • or so it is indicatei. Next, are the selections from each poet the best, the most revealirg, the most comprehensive ? Not always. We keenly miss " Tle Coronet " from Marvell • but on the whole the choice is orthodox, too much so perhaps. We are given the Skelton, the Spenser, tee Donne . . . that we take for granted (why not Skelton's " Woefuly arrayed " ?) while the Arnold, and more so the Tennyson, leave on any of those more startling notes that might have enlivened tie pages devoted to them.
But enough of these pribblings and prabblings ! The great thhg about this collection is its bulk ; and how enormously valuable. tint is ! It really means something different from the ordinary to haw, say, a whole Canto of Troilus and Criseide besides two complee Canterbury Tales, some sixty pages of Skelton, a generous slice of tie Scottish poets, plenty of anonymous work from the ballads and tie early lyrics, Everyman complete, a masque of Ben Jonson's, the whde of Antony and Cleopatra, a whole Tale of Crabbe, and so on, to tie same scale. Moreover, what is especially welcome here is tie generous space given to American poets, some of them we feel nn quite earning it : but how royally satisfied we feel with some niney pages of Whitman, some magnificent Melville and thirty-three piers by Emily Dickinson. To have so much really does give a Blighty different " feel " to the tradition ; it is possible to get away from tie Palgravian sense that English poetry is " mainly lyrical "—thouji in the process some happy lyrics are omitted, not only " singletons" such as Allan Ramsay's " My Peggy is a young thing," but also thus;, for instance, illustrative of Dryden's immense virtuosity in that form. Perhaps the price is worth paying, and it has allowed an immense amount of trumpery to disappear, such as the sham ballad of the eighteenth century.
What makes these volumes all the more interesting are the intro- ductions to each volume, brief essays on the general poetic ethos of the various phases, with which one need not wholly agree, but which are stimulating, 'and help to settle the poems in their proper place in our historical imagination. The first volume in addition has some useful pages on Middle English, its prosody, syntax, and pronuncia- tion, and all have chronological tables of the main events, literary and other, which serve as a background to the poets included. Except for some cautious adaptation in the very early selections, the old spellings have been retained, and first versions of poems have been preferred ; such corrections as may have been made are made silently ; glossing has been restricted to the early poets, though some of us, weaker brethren, might wish for some with Burns. Finally, these are handy, well-produced volumes which competently perform
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