POETS AND POETRY.*
IT is a misfortune for Mr. Bailey's book that the component parts of it should have first appeared in the columns of a daily paper. In the first place, to reprint reviews of current books, even though these books be old masters in new guises, neces- sarily involves the reproduction of a great deal that cannot be of permanent interest. However deep our interest, in the critic's views on Wordsworth, Sidney, or Spenser, it is apt to be less moved by the merits or delinquencies of the poets' editors. This defect only affects half or less of the essays in the volume under consideration, but one may wish for Mr. Bailey's sake that he had found time to cast the whole of his book into true essay form, for one regrets to see a work of so much thought and sanity put before the world in a shape which may lead to its being undervalued. The second danger is a more real one. To many people, and more particularly to those who, through the liveliness of their enthusiasm, play the largest part in the formation of literary opinion, the book be- comes classified at once as an official utterance. "Pontifical," " stereotyped," " conventional," and other words of like significance crowd to the reviewer's pen-point, and it becomes almost impossible for him to judge the book on its merits. Yet Mr. Bailey's criticism has qualities which are at the present time both rare and valuable. His is a mind of wide culture and warm enthusiasm tempered by a deliberate sanity of judgment which, if it denies him the brilliance of some other contemporary critics, at least frees him from their extravagances. One does not think of him, as of Pro- fessor Saintsbury, approaching his subject, like a Japanese wrestler, with strange cries and uncouth gesticulations, or as of Mr. Chesterton, standing both opponents and supporters on their heads with genial impartiality. With Mr. Bailey criticism is a sober business. For him truth is all, and truth only to be found by patient and laborious analysis. He very seldom thrills you with a sudden illumination, but on the other hand he never outrages by a fault of taste or ignorance. He is no phrase-maker, and his style, though always sound and clear, is apt to be a little impersonal, but his sure taste and sympathy often illumine a chance sentence. How truly and yet how sympathetically he sums up the experience of most of us who have attempted to read through Spenser's epic : " Of all the places of poetic slumber the softest are to be found among the stanzas of the Faery Queen." Nothing could be more gracefully, more kindly spoken, and one could note many other touches equally happy.
The articles included in the volume illustrate some aspect of every great epoch of English poetry with an occasional digression into the literature of Greece, Rome, France,
* Poeta sad Poetry. By John Bailey. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. [5s. net.]
Germany, or Italy. The author's habit of mind is plainly classical—not classical in the sense that he is opposed to the Romantic, but classical in that he takes more kindly to tradition than to experiment. True he has a discriminating chapter in praise of Meredith's poetry, and is apparently half subdued by Ibsen ; but as a rule his attitude towards the modern is distrustful. He finds—and who can blame him sufficient nourishment in the race of poets which died with Swinburne. Much of modern audacity is plainly distasteful to him, and he consoles himself with the assurance that it is ephemeral, and that the world is on the verge of a renova- tion of the spirit which will restore and perpetuate the old tradition. One can at least sympathize with the aspiration, and, indeed, sound criticism on these lines is never- more valuable than at a time when old ideals and examples are in danger of oblivion.
Mr. Bailey turns for his ideals to Wordsworth and for his. canons to Arnold. To say this is not to imply that no thought of his own has gone to the making of his conclusions. He has studied deeply and widely, and his book shows a leisure of mind which it is becoming ever increasingly difficult to achieve. The result is that his criticism acquires a positive quality, and the reader of these random summaries cannot fail to leave them with a clearer view of the distinctive attributes of the great periods of English poetry, the full horn of the Renaissance, indiscriminate, unconfined, the eighteenth century with its slavery to abstractions, the romanticism of the nineteenth bringing imagination down, to the transfiguration of concrete things. What Mr. Bailey does not quite appreciate is that the realism of our own times. against which his invective is now and then a little thought- less, is the inevitable sequence of its predecessors. Without the abstraction of the classicists the English mind would never have learnt the concentration necessary to the fullest self- expression ; without the romanticists it would have drifted altogether away from human life. Realism is but the full expression of the motto," Nihil humani." Its excesses may be now and then a little repellent—alas ! can we not also say the same of much of human life under modern conditions P—but it, no less than the formalism of the eighteenth century and the idealism of the nineteenth, is necessary before we can achieve a perfect voice.
However, no critic can state the whole truth. Were there- one who could, criticism would lose its function ; and we may- be thankful to Mr. Bailey for his statement of principles, which. though always valuable, are always in danger of being forgotten, and never more so than at the present day. It is to be hoped that he will before long find leisure for some work on a scale more adequate to do justice to his great critical powers.
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