ON THE ANTI-POETICAL.

THERE are some persons to whom poetry is as much foolishness as Christianity was to the Greeks of St.. Paul's day. They are not merely indifferent to it, but regard it, in some cases at any rate, with positive contempt and dislike. If asked to read a passage containing a thought expressed in poetics form, the mere fact of its being so ex- pressed is an annoyance to them. "If he wants to say it, why cannot he say it in prose ?" they inquire. Or still worse, "There is nothing in poetry, as you would see if it were put into prose, so it has to be served up as poetry." These objections by the anti-poetical, are not drawn from fancy but from fact, and they fall like a douche of cold water on the lovers of poetry, who regard it as perhaps the most perfect and exquisite gift bestowed on man. And what makes this contempt peculiarly aggravating is, that it is often accom- panied by an assumption of superiority in the despisers of poetry. They give us to understand that they have too much common-sense to notice anything so flimsy, Bo un- practical, as poetry. They would have a lurking sympathy with one of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's characters, a certain Aunt Asphyxia, who divided all flowers "into blows that were of use, and blows that were of no use ; " and as she scouted the latter, so would they be inclined to scout poetry. Now, many of these anti-poetical folk have, as Sir George Chesney, in one of his Indian novels, admirably ex- pressed it, "plenty of good old stupid blood in their veins," so that it is easy to account for their indifference or contempt for our favourite form of literature and to plume ourselves on our own superiority. But the case is not so delightfully simple as this. For other cavillers are as decidedly clever, and the problem we have to confront is, how is it that so many able men and women have ranged themselves on the anti-poetical side ? Each one of us could in our own experience produce several examples ; and there are many famous men whose names are household words to whom poetry was a thing of nought. Carlyle in one of his books -declared that poetry was played out, though he was, as we shall see later, quite able to appreciate one of the essentials of poetry. Darwin's mind became dead to poetry as it did to -certain other realms of art and imagination. The great Sir William Herschel declared at one period of his life "that poetry was all lies," though, half vanquished by a poem on a scientific subject that was read to him, he afterwards ventured on a little poetical experiment himself. The present writer remembers a few years ago hearing Lord Blachford—of whom Newman said, "He was the most gifted, the most talented, and of the most wonderful grasp of mind of all his contemporaries "—remark, "I can only read poetry that has a story in it now," thus putting out of court, as it were, three-quarters of our rich inheritance from the poets. Therefore, to say that it is only the stupid, or those who, in Sir Philip Sidney's words, "are of so earth-creeping -a mind, that they cannot rise to the sky of poetry," who are -indifferent to it, is utterly untrue. What on earth, then, can be the matter with these clever people? How shall we -diagnose their case ? They are not as a rule devoid of 'imagination ; they can appreciate beauty in other of its -departments,—in music, it may be, or in painting, or in oratory, in landscape, in architecture, or in sculpture. Why do they not care for the thing of beauty that the poet offers them?

To answer this question aright, it is clear that we must realise what the function of the poet is, what is the nature of the faculties of mind that he exercises himself and appeals to in his hearers; and what faculties therefore must be wanting in those persons who are as blind to the beauties he offers them as a cow or a sheep would be to a fine sunset. We believe that his gift is a twofold one, lying in the regions of what Mr. Saintsbury speaks of as "poetic thought and poetic sound," which Mr. Gosse blends into one in his ex- pression, "harmonious thought." This double gift bestows on the poet the vision of the ideal and the power of its expres- sion. Of the two, the first is the most important. Idealisa- tion is perhaps the highest exercise of the imaginative faculty, and its source lies in a longing for perfection and a quick sensibility to all manifestat'oas of beauty, whether material or spiritual, and a sympathetic insight enabling the poet to detect it wherever it may be found. He sees it himself, and can open the eyes of others to perceive it, in Nature, in life, in character, reading in it, to borrow a Scriptural phrase, a copy of the pattern shown in the mount. With the eye of the seer he looks beyond and below the outward into the inward, his quick insight revealing the essential truth of everything, whether good or bad. That which is dark throws up the light into higher relief, the poet using it to set forth some truth of life or thought, and thus becoming the prophet and teacher. For if we go deep enough, we find that moral and spiritual truth are one with beauty :—

"Beauty is truth ; truth, beauty—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know;" for divine or eternal truth must be beautiful, and the highest beauty must be true, because it is the ideal as it exists in the mind of God. It was this thought that was with Milton when he spoke of the Creator looking at his world :— " How it showed, Answering his great idea."

It is this great idea of which the poet is in search. But he goes beyond the appreciation of the obviously beautiful, and does not reject that which is outwardly repulsive, if only he can discover therein the germs of the divine. He seeks and finds the jewel in the dust-heap. In our common talk we often bear witness to the truth of poetry being the mani- festation of the ideal in life ; when, for example, in referring to some noble character we speak of its self-sacrifice or heroism as the poetry of life. Thus, proving, as we said, his capacity of appreciating one of the essentials of poetry, Carlyle writes :—" Thy condition is but the stuff thou art to

shape that same ideal out of. What matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic or poetic." If, then, Carlyle was so well able to appreciate the ideal in life, why is it that he should de-

preciate poetry in verse ? The reason of this neglect brings us to the second essential for a taste for poetry. The failure may lie, not in the power of appreciating poetic thought, but in the capacity to enjoy poetic sound. There are many persons who are insensible to the charms of the medium in which the poet works, and have little or no ear for poetic language, a gift entirely distinct from that of an ear for music and as variously with- held and bestowed. Does this come from a physical or an intellectual defect P Is it with our ears or our minds that we enjoy the language of poetry ? We believe it is with both, and the two pleasures are often so closely blended together that it is difficult to distinguish them and to say where one begins and the other ends. Take such lines (we all have our particular charmers) as Herbert's-

" The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,

For thou must die;"

or Shakespeare's-

" Give sorrow words ; the grief that does not speak Whispers the o'er fraught heart, and bids it break ; "

or perhaps the most exquisitely melodious verse in Shelley's " Skylark "—

" We look before and after,

And pine for what is not.

Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught ; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought ; "

or some of the majestic lines of Milton, rolling out their rich tones like those of a grand organ, and it is both mind and ear that are charmed by them. Each receives a pure and refined delight ; the one from the perfect expression which the insight of the poet into the essential character of his subject, enables him to give; the other by the melodious and harmonious sounds of the words he chooses, or as Sidney puts it, "words set in delightful proportions," and marshalled in rhythmic measure.

There are cases, but we believe them to be extremely rare, in which it is the ear alone that is pleased by poetic sound.

We have beard the remark made by a friend who declared herself otherwise indifferent to poetry, that the richness of tone in Shelley's poems gave her real enjoyment, even when she did not understand a word of his meaning. It would have been the same if they had been written in an unknown tongue,

as long as that tongue was a musical one. Her gift of a

delicately constituted ear for the tones of language, insured her this pleasure. In her case, as in many others, it was not combined with an ear for music. It was an imperfect appreciation ; and it is, of course, only where the required faculties are combined that poetry yields the keenest delight. Given the power of idealisation and the mind and the ear for poetical language, it will be a continual joy. That there are other minor causes for in- difference to poetry we quite admit, such as the impatience felt by the intensely practical, businesslike mind to get at a writer's meaning at once, without having to reach it through the images and parables and circumlocutions of the poet ; but we believe that we have indicated the main ones. Where the necessary qualifications are all wanting, then, however gifted otherwise our anti-poetical friends may be, we can only say that though they are not sorry for themselves, we are extremely sorry for them.