Poetry and National Character; The Leslie Stephen Lecture Delivered at Cambridge on 13 May 1915 (1915)

8/22/2019 Poetry and National Character; The Leslie Stephen Lecture Delivered at Cambridge on 13 May 1915 (1915)

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POETRY AND NATIONALCHARACTER

IV. MACNEILE DIXONUC-NRLF

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POETRYAND

NATIONAL CHARACTER


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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSC. F. CLAY, Manager

Honlion: FETTER LANE, E.G.Dm&urgfj: loo PRINCES STREET^


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POETRYANDNATIONAL CHARACTER

THE LESLIE STEPHEN LECTUREDELIVERED AT CAMBRIDGE ON 13 MAY 19 15

BYW. MACNEILE DIXON

Professor of English Language and Literature in theUniversity of Glasgow

Cambridgeat the University Press

1915


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(JTambriUgc:PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS


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POETRY AND NATIONAL CHARACTER" There are times," wrote Leslie Stephen,

"when we feel that we would rather have theactual sounds, the downright utterance ofan agonised human being than the far awayecho of passion set up in the artistic brain....We tire of the skilfully prepared sentiment,the pretty fancies, the unreal imaginations,and long for the harsh, crude substantialfact, the actual utterance of men strugglingin the dire grasp of unmitigated realities."Such a desire would be satisfied to-day, forwe stand in the grasp of these realities;and perhaps nothing is, perhaps nothingshould be further from our thoughts thanmatters of literature and art, "the prettyfancies, the unreal imaginations." Our"forward youth," as in Marvell's Ode, haveat their country's call forsaken the "Muses

D. 334334


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2- ' * : POETRY ANDdear," and left the " books in dust " to " oilthe unused armour's rust." How faint andfaded appear the old academic interests,how unwillingly we concern ourselves withthe shadows of the imagined past whileour living countrymen challenge by theirdeeds the heroic records of their forefathers.Happy, indeed, we dare not call these times,yet many a poet, no doubt, many a romancerto come will celebrate them, it may be withthat touch of regret that accompanies thechronicle of famous days, the inevitabletouch of regret that they are gone.Happier, they may say, those who had ashare in the deeds, happier they may evencall uSj'who are warmed by their generouscontagion, than our successors born too lateto do more than recall and glorify them.

Yet here at Cambridge, although auniversity so famous in science as to bealmost unconscious of its indisputablesupremacy in poetry, here one may at anytime speak of poetry openly and withoutapology. Here too, if anywhere, one may


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NATIONAL CHARACTERappropriately enquire what light our know-ledge of English national character throwsupon English poetry, or our knowledge ofthe poetry upon the national character.Such an enquiry aims, indeed, at no finalor scientific truth, a mere " sally of the mind"it can only support itself upon the tide ofits o^vn interest, but at least it proceedsfrom a fixed point. However far apart orincompatible they may at times appear someconnexion between a nation's character andits poetry there must be.

Imagine for a moment an intelligentforeignerthe witness so readily summonedin such investigationsfairly acquaintedwith a thousand years of our history, thepolitical and commercial activities of theEnglish race, its religious movements, itswars and colonial enterprises, acquaintedwith all this but unacquainted with ourliterature. Would he in turning his atten-tion to that literature instinctively expectit to be supreme in poetry, would he antici-pate meeting Shakespeare ? Or again, would

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POETRY ANDhe find more of the England he had alreadystudied, its essential spirit and genius, inBeowulf, in Chaucer, or in Pope? In hissearch for that spirit may one not fancyhim puzzled by the variety in our poeticmoods, by finding Marlowe of the same raceas Cowper, or Dryden as Shelley ? All areEnglishmen, but would they appear to haveanything save their language in common?Whatever the fundamental qualities of arace may be, and they are neither easilydiscovered nor stated, such a student couldhardly, I fancy, deny that we were a prac-tical and at the same time a poetical folk,or, if not poetical in grain, at least success-ful in the production of remarkable poetry,a pleasant inconsistency. Possibly he mightexpress surprise at such poetic fertility inan unexpected quarter, in a people obviouslyof a practical but not obviously of a poetictemper. Certainly he would not ascribethis success to a widely diffused or excep-tional artistic sense. Of hideous practicality,of wintry utilitarianism we have often been


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NATIONAL CHARACTERaccused, but no one has ever yet describedthe Englishman as a born artist. Hisamiable tolerance of the artistically intoler-able, how unassailable, how triumphant itis ! And for supremacy in the plastic arts,no one, I suppose, would turn to Englandor any northern nation. They are of theSouth. In these arts races nourished inthe Mediterranean tradition alone have suc-ceeded supremely, races in touch with thegorgeous East, educated through the ancienttrade routes before the dawn of historyby Assyria and Babylon in the values ofform, the values of colour, and under skieswhere form took its sharpest outlines andcolour its purest tones. Nobody in theworld thinks of the Englishman as a bornartist ; does anyone think of him as a bornpoet? Yet the poetry is there. MatthewArnold, in his famous and engaging dis-courses at Oxford, explained its presenceby dwelling on the Celtic element in theEnglish natm'e. We were a mixed people,fortunately blended, and the Celt in us


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6 POETRY ANDresolved the mystery. He it was whoredeemed our race from Germanism, gareto our poetry its sense for style and madeShakespeare and Milton possible. Thisadmirable speculation seems to stand whereit did, for the ethnologists have not yetconvinced each other, and the rest of uscan but continue to speculate. The pursuitof certainty is most fascinating in studiesthat least permit of it, but we still mustecho Arnold's cry"And we then, whatare we ? what is England ? " The hour cer-tainly befriends the Celtic theory, for itseems likely that we shall henceforth countourselves even less Teutonic than we usedto believe, and readily, all of us, becomeBritons or Normans. If, however, ourliterary history is made in some ways moreintelligible by thinking of the Celt, the restof our history is made less intelligible bythinking of him. They went fortli to theicar, hut they always fell will hardly serveas a sentence to illumine English history.And the talent for affairs, for political


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NATIONAL CHARACTERcompromise, for colonial enterprisethese,I suppose, we must ascribe to the Normans,and it would seem, then, that, by someingenious division of labour, to the de-scendants of one race Nature had entrustedthe poetic, and to those of another thepractical business of the nation. The hypo-thesis, charming though it be, awaitsverification. So rapidly, too, have theresearches of the linguistic scholars beensucceeded by those of the anthropologiststhat for races of whom Arnold had neverheard a share may yet be claimed in ournational achievements. Meanwhile to layan exact finger upon the contribution ofany race to our national history is toohazardous a venture, and it seems prefer-able to proceed in a simpler fashion, toconnect our poetry more directly withEnglish character and history as we knowthem.

The governing characteristics of theEnglishman are not greatly in dispute. Hissturdy nationalism, for example, has all along


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8 POETRY ANDand everywhere been acknowledged. TheearUest proof of it lies in the ' withdrawal,' touse Bishop Creighton's word, the 'withdrawal'of England from that marvellous fraternityof the Middle Ages, feudal and CatholicEurope. By the fourteenth century shehad become a separate nation, committedto the voyage of her own destiny. At aprice the Englishman purchased his free-dom. Deliberately he stood aloof fromthe centre, from the main stream of ideas,from the light and warmth of Europeancivility. He remained, as it were, thecountry cousin of the family, preferring,one might say, the rough, free out-of-doorslife to the elegance and refinements withthe accompanying restraints of the town.He declined the advantages of the bestLatin society. Unattracted by the mediaevalvision of a united Christendom, of racesheld together by common acceptance ofthe same laws, the same religious creedsand observances, the same chivalric ideals,he set over against the abstract perfections


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 9of this dazzling scheme his own liberty, hisown habits, his own interests. He had noeye for the beauty of a universal, an idealorder. His talent has ever been for liferather than logic. Of general principlesbecause they tend to imprison the in-dividual he is suspicious. "My case is alwaysa special case. Why should I be treatedas one of a number, I, who am unlike allthe rest ? " He preferred, too, the old " lawsof St Edward" to any legislative novelties,his own priests and bishops to foreigners,his own language to Norman French. Heknew his mind and achieved his ends, notindeed so much by way of argument asby patient indifference to argument, and thegradual development of national conscious-ness only stiffened his original prejudices.His country satisfied him as the best, hisrace as manifestly the bravest and thehandsomest in the world. To go his ownway, think his own thoughts, conduct hisown undertakings is all an Englishman asks,or used to ask, and if he interferes in the


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10 POETRY ANDaffairs of others, it is only that he maynot be interfered with. By this early with-drawal from the comity of European nations,England led the van in liberty but broughtup the rear in civility. For while theyadvanced in the social arts, in literary andartistic sense, while they seized upon andfamiliarised themselves with Renaissanceideals, she continued to pour her bestenergies into practical channels, fightingwithin her own borders to lay the founda-tions of civil liberty and on all the seasto secure her commercial and yet unseenimperial future.

The career of Milton illustrates thenational character, its practical and positivequality. If ever an Englishman was a bornartist, it was he. Yet perceiving on hisItalian journey that, in his own words, " away was opening for the establishment ofreal liberty," he is at once aroused, forgoeshis studies, abandons his Muse, sacrificesall his ambitions, and gives the best yearsof his life to the cause of political freedom.


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 11How characteristically English that is ! Thisthen, as Cardinal Xewman said, is " thepeople for private enterprise," and a littlelater added with equal truth, " a goYernmentis their natural foe." In his private capacitythe Englishman owes nothing to the state,he asks nothing from it, he hardly caresfor its protection.

Their governors they count such dangerous thingsThat 'tis their custom to affront their kings.

The less government the better hasbeen his consistent creed, for the weakerthe central authority the wider field forhis own energy and talent. The convictionthat the state was made for Englishmenand not Englishmen for the state madeit at times his unwilling servant ; he wascareful that it should never be his master.And the empire? Nothing of course couldbe further from the truth than to ascribeeither its origin or groAvth to the organisedand sustained effort of any central authority.Neither planned for nor foreseen it is, as


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12 POETRY ANDNewman so eloquently describes, the workof individuals, men acting for the mostpart without other warrant than their ownenergetic inclinationsmerchants, travellers,explorers, adventurers, colonists whoseunauthorised and personal enterprises,multitudinous, daring, resourceful, contri-buted mthout conscious design to theastonishing consummation. The state, sofar from encouraging often diso\Mied ordisclaimed responsibility for these individualperformances, and when it lent them sup-port, did so with reluctant tardiness. Isit surprising that such unconsidered empire-building appears to exasperate and bewildernations accustomed to act only through theirorganised authorities, nations which movein drilled and disciplined masses at thecommand of their rulers towards a goalforeseen and predetermined ?We have then this withdrawal from thecentre and this ineradicable independence asfacts in our political history. Turn to ourliterary history and what do we find ? That


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 13here too the Englishman went his own way.One cannot ofcourse picture him as a recluse,as so aloof and wrapped up in himself as torefuse all intercourse with his neighbours,or concern with their ideas. The truth isthat by this very withdrawal, this aloofnesshe rendered himself very susceptible to theinfluence of these ideas when they reachedhim. And at seasons they did reach him,borne across the straits like strange perfumes,all the charm of social grace and refinement,of literature and learning and the arts. Thecountry cousin, of whom I spoke, rarely avisitor to iovm., finds its fashions none theless novel and attractive on that account.Yet in the main he goes his oa\ti way, acontented rustic. As Pope puts it

We, brave Britons, foreign laws despisedAnd kept unconquer'd and imcivilis'd.Doubtless, for example, the advocates ofthe ancient rules, as recommended to theElizabethan playwrights by the elegant andaccomplished Sir Philip Sidney, had the


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14 POETRY ANDbest of the argument. The English easeremained for long, at least, T^dthout defenders.Yet the dramatists, Shakespeare among them,continued to write plays which were " neitherright tragedies nor right comedies, minglingkings and clowns," observingthe "rules neitherof honest civility nor of skilful poetry...faultyboth in place and time, the two necessarycompanions of all corporal actions." Thus,as might be expected, the country cousinhas, as Sidney called our drama, "an mi-mannerly daughter showing a bad education."Doubtless also the quantitative metres sopersuasively urged upon Spenser by hisfriend Gabriel Harvev had much to be saidfor them. " I like your late Englishe hexa-meters so exceedingly well," wrote Spenser," that I also enure my pen sometime in thatkinde." Yes, but he writes The Faerie Queenein stanzas. The poet Campion is not onlyconvinced of the superiority of the classicalmetres, he is enthusiastic about them, andproduces a treatise in their favour to con-vince others. But for himself he is careful


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 15not to follow whither the argument leads.He is an Englishman, he turns his backupon it, his practice is better than his theory,and he composes verses, none more charming,that are ruled by rime and accent. Or takethe matter of an academy. " It imputes nolittle disgrace to our IS^ation," wrote RichardCarew in 1605, "that others have so manyAcademyes, and wee none at all." Suchwas also the opinion of Edmund Bolton,whose society, had it been founded in 1616,planned to include great names, Chapmanand Drayton and Ben Jonson. Dryden toofavoured the design Avhen revived in 1664,Evelyn spoke up for it in a letter to Pepys,Bishop Sprat urged it again in 1667, andSwift in 1712. Admirable reasons wereadvanced for the project which never lackedfriends, yet without opposition it withered,nor does the cause of its ill-success clearlyemerge until Dr Johnson set it forth half acentury later in his uncompromising fashion.What is the root of his objection? Simplythat the less government we have the better,


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16 POETRY ANDin literature as in politics. " It was a pro-posal," said he, "which I, who can neverwish to see dependence multiplied, hopethe spirit of English liberty will hinder ordestroy."

As for the profits of this independence,this " spirit of English liberty," we may claimwith some confidence that it preserved, infull vigour and vitality, the originality, thegenius native to the race. Whatever thedangers of contact with more facile, morefluent, more subtile, more social peoples,these were avoided. In many ways they werereal enough. " The Englishman Italianate isthe devil incarnate" ran the Elizabethanproverb. "Our countrymen usually bringthree things with them out of Italy," it wassaid, " a naughty conscience, an empty purse,and a weak stomach." If the country cousinescaped moral he escaped also intellectualdangers, too close an imitation, too slavisha pursuit of Latin graces and refinements.This, too, we may claim, and with greatassurance, that in trusting to their own


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 17experiences and reflexions our poets andmen of letters drew upon the only authenticsources of inspiration, and that the strengthof our poetry is due to this trust. The bestschool for poetry as for everything else is theschool of personal experience. We may saymth truth that the fortune of our literaturewas made by attendance on this school, wemay praise our writers for their originalityand variety, but there are other qualitiesfor which we cannot praise them. Toofrequently they lack, and our most friendlycritics complain of it, restraint, lucidity,finish, shapeliness. Allow that inspirationis less frequently wanting, yet he who truststo inspiration, one discovers, too often truststo improvisation, and how much of our poetryis little better than improvisation. And soforeign critics speak, to our surprise, of " therude but splendid Muse of the Britons." Ifwe expect from a book that it should partakeof the character of a work of artand weshould expect itthat it should resemblea picture or a statue, a chapel rather than


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18 POETRY ANDan outhouse or barn, then we require afinished product which excludes the ill-considered, the irrelevant, the haphazardwe require a respect for words, we askthat it should avoid verbosity and save ourtime. But, if we look for these qualities,how often English books disappoint us.And when posterity, most inexorable ofcritics, gets to work, the evidence for in-spiration must indeed be overwhelming ifinspiration be asked to excuse verbosityand shapelessness. Our literature has de-veloped in conformity with our nationalcharacter and we must take what it givesus. It has given us, for example, the novel,the most modern of literary forms, in whichwe have been specially prolific. How con-genial is the novel to our temperament!Here there are no restraints, no laws havebeen prescribed for its government; itrevels in freedom, exalts sentiment, rejoicesin the diffuse, despises verbal economy andachieves the very perfection of the amor-phous. I do not know how it may be with


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 19others, but I find myself constantly in agree-ment with the sentiment of Amiel: "Keepyour vats, your must, your dregs to yourselves:I want wine fully made, wine which willsparkle in the glass."

To return to my thesis. An instinct foremancipation, for a free passage everywhereappears clearly in our literature as in ournational character, so that we are and havealways been willing to pardon anything togenius, to trust to its happy moments, tooverlook its vagaries, to permit every man tobe a law unto himself. The apparition ofShakespeare, who never blotted a line, blindsus to the virtues of restraint, of exactness,of order, virtues which, but for our insularityand withdrawal from close contact with Latinculture, might at a price have been ours. Ourhistory shows that above all things we prizeoriginality and independence of mind, thatwe prize even the eccentric as evidence ofspontaneity and truth to nature. We delightin these qualities and are correspondinglyindifferent to the disciplined and deliberate

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20 POETRY ANDside of art. Nothing so charmed the specta-tors of Elizabethan tragedy as the exalted,the towering in character, the superman likeMarlowe's Tamburlaine, storming across thestage to the capture of Babylon in a chariotdrawn by conquered kings, Caesar, whobestrode " this narrow world like a Colossus,"or Antony in whose livery "walk'd crownsand crownets." Nothing so charmed thespectators of comedy as the extravagant,the unconventional in character or person,the vast bulk and uncontrollable exuberanceof Falstaff, the whimsicalities of Touchstone.It is their humours we prize in men, not thequalities which unite but the idiosyncrasieswhich distinguish them from each other.We prefer a parti-coloured world. Xor isugliness excluded. That is tolerable, evenwelcome, provided it be expressive of indi-viduality. So much so, indeed, that with usan author may flourish on his very infirmities.Why eliminate what unfailingly attracts anaudience? This preference has persistedwith us, and will probably continue to persist.


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 21Not only are we content to be pleased we*' know not why and care not wherefore," notonly do many of our most talented authors,like Browning, for example, in his Ring andthe Booh, or Mr Hardy in his Dynasts, worksof genius if you will, make these shapeless,verbose things, but we are satisfied withthem and praise them. We must all gladlysuffer in the cause of freedom, nothing is sowell worth suffering for, but may we not, nowand again perhaps, confess to our sufierings,may we not, claiming an English privilege,complain that we pay a high price for it ?

" The world that I regard," said Sir ThomasBrowne, "is myself" There again we havethe characteristic note. He owns no otherauthority. "What do I think and feel," heasks, " what shall I do ? " not " What are thethoughts, feelings, susceptibilities, what arethe counsels of other men ? " Goethe in hisconversations with Eckermann praised theEnglish for their courage in being themselves,in following out the bent of their natures.He praised, too, " their ease and confidence


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22 POETRY ANDamong foreigners, as if they were lords every-where and the whole world belonged tothem." Times have changed and Goethe scountrymen no longer praise these qualities.They have ceased to be English virtues andhave become English vices. Still, whateverthey are, Avhether virtues or vices, they remainnational characteristics. When he writes,our foreign critics assure us, the Englishmangives the impression that he is wholly pre-occupied with his own thoughts and feelings,and expresses them first and last for his ownsatisfaction. " In London," said an eighteenthcentury Frenchman, "everyone assumes justwhat character he pleases ; there you surpriseno one by being yourself" When he turnsauthor he does not change. Men of otherand more sociable nations may write to delightor persuade their readers, the Englishmanwrites that he may converse with himselfHe wishes to contemplate his own image inthe mirror, to paint, as it were, his ownportrait. Clearly in this undertaking a manhas less need to imitate others, to consider


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 23the example of others, the less need, that is,to follow the rules, the tradition. For whatis the tradition ? What is it but the body ofdoctrine, accepted by previous writers, takingstock of earlier successes and failures ? Tra-dition in any art is nothing more than thecapitalised experience of its students. If,then, we write to please or persuade others thevalue of the tradition is evident : it professesto show just how this success may be achieved.If on the other hand we write to please our-selves it is much less evident, for who canguide us to this result better than our owninclinations?

Respect for the tradition, for the opinionofothers made French civilisation the wonderand admiration of the world. In Frenchliterature deference to authority, regard forthe universal, sympathy with the wishes andsusceptibilities of men at large, a care forsocial requirements meet us at every tuni.It charms by putting every one of us at hisease, by asking our good opinion, by takingtrouble to meet us half way, by introducing


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24 POETRY ANDus to the pleasant society of like-mindedneighbours. If ever writers could say thatthey " only give back to the public what theyhad borrowed from it," remarks M. Brunetiere,French writers may say so. English writerson the other hand borrow nothing from thepublic, everything from themselves.

I do not for the moment attempt to sumup the gains and losses. This much appearscertain. With less respect for the tradition,less for the rules, >dth a far less sensitiveartistic conscience the Englishman was some-how more successful in poetry. He yields tohis brilliant neighbours in some but not inall, not even, it would appear, in the mostessential points. Where art is faulty theremay be insight, and vision, a greater thing,may outrange social sense. Still so valuable istradition, the body of educated opinion, thatwithout it even genius is almost powerless.To protect oneself against false prophets,against intellectual charlatans, even againstclap-trap and fustian is not an easy matter.The intellectual atmosphere is always thick


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 25with confused ideas, blurred images, inco-herent emotions. Against a man who standsalone false standards will almost certainlyprevail. When we stand together, onegeneration with another, we are in lessdanger of mistaking for excellence what isfar fi'om excellence, of becoming the dupesof temporary fashion. Our national horrorof pedantry, of ink-horn terms is justifiable,but respect for the tradition is not pedantry.Without it and the institutions which preserveit how precarious would be our intellectualbalance. Our universities and learnedsocieties have no more important functionthan to protect the nation from a beliefin the second-rate, the inferior men andinferior products.

Poetry, least of all arts and sciences, oneis accustomed to think, demands knowledgeand technical equipment. Poets, we imagine,are happy and irresponsible beings, directedby divine instinct, fortunately free from thedire necessity of preparation or labourimposed upon other men. Wholly guided


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26 POETRY ANDby inspiration little, we suppose, can bedone for them, they are born not made.Yet call to mind the eminent names. Observehow seldom even in this region, sacred togenius, the impulses of inspiration suffice.Few indeed have been the English poetswho reached without a guide the summitsof fame, few who were not studious disciplesof their predecessors, fcAV even, explain itas you please, who were unsupported by aprosaic university education or its equiva-lents. It would be as vain to seek, we arenevertheless agreed, for the secret of oursuccess in poetry in a regard for the rulesof art, the body of received opinion, as ina native or deep-seated sense of beauty.And in truth if poetry were primarily amatter of art, or again if it were the oflP-spring of wit and the social sense, Englishsuccess in it would be inexplicable. But,say Avhat some critics will, it is not primarilya matter of art at all. One cannot enterthe temple, as Plato said, by the help of art.^o, we may answer, nor yet without it.


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 27Briefly, let us say, success in poetry isattained when finished and arresting ex-pression is given to some moving thought orexperience. We must look for it, therefore,where thought and word, inspiration andart are found together, at a confluence ofstreams. It will be found, I believe, chieflyin our history when in the traflSc of thoughtthe intellect of one race meets the intellectof another, at the moments of their mostfruitful union.

There have been many definitions ofpoetry. From among them let me takeNe^inan's. Poetry, said Newman, is " origin-ality energising in the world of beauty." Bycommon consent the English have beendistinguished by their originality and energy.History shows, indeed, how much of theirenergy was devoted to the preservationor protection of this originality, how jea-lously the right to exercise it was guarded.Originality and energy are there, native tothem, splendid and conspicuous talents.But the talent for beauty, the sense for


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28 POETRY ANDbeauty, like that of the Greeks pervadingthe whole of life, the extreme sensitivenessto every breath ofloveliness whether in natureor language or art, that talent and thatsensitiveness we can claim neither for ourancestors nor for ourselves. The sense forbeauty is not native to us and needs kindling.For this, if for no other reason, the studyof Greek literature and art, where we areat the fountain head of beauty, should beof all literatures and arts the most preciousto our countrymen. But, if a sense of beautybe not native to us, an essential element asrequired in Ne^^inan's definition is lacking.The sense needs, as I have said, kindling,and if for the flame that kindled it we goin search among the constituent races thatproduced "that heterogeneous thing anEnglishman," we plunge into the unknoAMi,we elaborate a speculative psychology. Ifone says "England is England and Franceis France " one is clearly enough understood,but in attempting to penetrate far behindthese terms nothing is easier than to lose


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 29one's footing. Attempting to pass behindthe term ' England ' Matthew Arnold couldsee no brilliant prospect for our poetry inthe characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon, andquotes the old Irish poem which derideshim"For dullness the creeping Saxons."He turned, therefore, as we have seen, tothe Celt and put his trust in Celtic romanceand love of beauty. Possibly he was right, butwithout committing ourselves to a perilousdecision here, let us take a stand on firmerground, on the notion of the crossing ofideas rather than of races, the fertilisation,if we may call it so, of one type of geniusby another type. |hjP**

By withdrawal from the closer intimacyoffered her with Latin civilisation Englandpreserved nationality, point of view, thedistinctive flavour of her own qualities.She preserved originality, and the flood ofnative energy, derived from many tributaryraces, flowed into a thousand practicalchannels. While to her southern neigh-bours England seemed the fitting home of


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30 POETRY ANDa restless melancholy people, inhabiting acountry of pale sunshine, blurred landscapesand unwilling soil, a clumsy people, imlet-tered, mannerless, made " terrible and bold,"as Defoe said, by their climate, but otherwisenegligible, she was far from intellectuallyidle. So late as the seventeenth centuryLouis XIV asked whether there existed anywriters or scholars in England. Yet intruth for centuries, unassisted, untutoredby ancient sages, guided mainly by theirown instincts the English had for themselvesfaced the old human problems. Thrownupon their native resources they had been,and were not ill-content to be their ownprophets and teachers, their own philoso-phers. Though so late in history, withancient civilisations behind them, never veryclosely in touch with these civilisations, theyencountered the world with virgin minds.Nor is it wonderful that so occupied theyplaced life before art. Our pre-Normanliterature, like Beowulf, harsh and untutoredthough it be, is firmly rooted in experience.


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 31How clearly it sees life for what it is andhow fearlessly meets it ! It faces the worldwith a philosophy unborrowed from booksand yet perfectly suited to that world.Compare Beowidf with Homer, and you maysafely claim Homer's superiority in beautyand poetic quality, not so safely his su-periority in masculine vigour and truth."Better it is that a man should avenge hisfriend than that he should greatly mourn.Every one of us comes to his end, let himwho will achieve renown, leaving a famousname." " Not a foot's length shall I give backbefore the warden of the barrow, but itshall be for us at the rampart as fate, thedisposer of all men, may decree." Who isspeaking here? One might fancy Homerhimself Or at a later date compare Danteand Langland, visionaries both, not farseparated from each other in time. Wheredoes the Englishman yield to the Italian?Yield to him he must at every point ofart, grace, finish, sweetness, dignity. Yetassuredly half barbaric as he seems, a wild


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32 POETRY ANDand rugged figure beside the learned andaristocratic Dante, Langland is not lessimpressive in his fiery intensity, in his un-yielding grasp of realities. Of his ownworld he is as complete a master, nor doesa feature of it escape him. He knows hisEngland and probes it to the quick, butthe world of beauty he never enters. Thatis where Langland fails as a poet. Wherethere is no beauty there is no poetry. Thatis where his countryman and contemporaryChaucer so magnificently succeeds. Chaucersucceeds because his eyes have been openedto another vision. Over against the imper-fections of the world of humanity he per-ceived the perfections of the world ofart. He had been, we may say, at schoolin France and at the university in Italy.Yet if poetry is not fundamentally a matterof art but a matter of mental and emotionalexperiences, and of the variety and intensityof these experiences, this preoccupation withlife may prove the best preparation for it.Then any man who has adventured far on


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 33this voyage, who loves, in Chapman's phrase,"to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,"who has been moved and thrilled by thegreat spectacle is potentially a poet. Andwhat strikes one in comparing our ownwith the poetry of any other modern nation,the last five centuries of our literature withthat of Spain, of France or of Italy, is thewealth and variety of its themes. Theirthemes are on the whole slighter and fewer,their poetry has its roots in love and war,in romantic subjects generally, and is farless occupied with the whole range ofhuman experience than ours. Englishwriters have forced, we might say, moreof the prose of life to become poetry.They have gathered the "pleasant honeyof the Muses " where flowers seemed leastabundant. They have usually escaped too,so intent are they upon the main issuesof thought, that last poetic infirmity, theelaborate chasing of the cup that containsnothing. Rarely have they offered us winewithout body. What thoughts have not


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34 POETRY ANDpassed through the minds of these men,what feehngs have they not experienced?How vast the field touched with emotionis there, how many characters studied,humours explored, speculations pursued,passions expressed ! How varied, in a word,the mental energy and activity they display.Shakespeare, its greatest author, is typicalof our literature at large. Not withoutfaults of taste, never sure-footed even inhis finest passages, he yet easily eclipsesall others in the breadth of his humaninterests. Shakespeare is what he is, oneneed have no reservations in saying it,not as an artist but as a citizen of theworld. True to his race he never showshimself anxious about the rules, but re-joicing in freedom reviews the length andbreadth of existence and stretches out hisrod from pole to pole of human nature.There is nothing accidental in this, hepursues the curve determined by hisEnglish bias.

Everywhere then our writers are observers


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 35and thinkers first and poets afterwards.When they fail it is because they arewithout wings, never because they are with-out ideas. Take Chaucer, who was, as Ihave said, at school in France and at theuniversity in Italy. In him the Englishgenius flowered when the observant, re-flective spirit, which had explored humanexperience, met the genius of the Southand had revealed to it the persuasive charmof form and symmetiy, of rhythm and orderand the craft of words. So with the "newcompany of courtly-makers " in the sixteenthcentury: "they travelled into Italy," saysPuttenham, " and there tasted the sweet andstately measures and style of the Italianpoesy." In our history success in poetryis met with where a current of ideas notdistinctively English flows into the mainstream of national thought and disturbsit. From the ripples and eddies that arethen formed, from the agitation and disquietwe judge the presence of a new force. Inthe ferment created by the clashing of

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36 POETRY ANDopposites, under the stimulus of unfamiliaremotions the originality and energy of theEnglish spirit blossoms, the sturdy tree ofindependent thought puts forth flower andfi'uit. At every point where our poetryrises to great elevations the native strainis crossed by another. Tempering its gravitywith extreme sweet the high austere soulof Spenser looks out fi^om a palace ofsplendours, the voluptuous splendours ofintoxicating Italy. In Marlowe Englandmeets full face the gale of Renaissancepassions. The shining perfection of Greekart passed like an arrow thi'ough theharness of Milton's Puritanism. To Diydenand Pope the exquisite shapeliness, the logicand precision required by the French spiritflung an unceasing challenge. From "thehorns of Blfland" strange airs floated tothe ears of Gray and his successors.

But some one will say, how comes itthat the distinction of English literatureis not in prose rather than poetry? Themind of a practical and energetic people


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 37accustomed to take what is offered, to dealdirectly with the matter in hand, willexpress itself more naturally and com-pletely in a plain and simple fashion, thefashion of prose, rather than in a heightenedand elaborate fashion, the fashion of poetry.It will be more at its ease in the field ofreason than of imagination. Yet we knowthe opposite to be the truth. Practical andlovers of freedom as they are, revoltingagainst all checks and limitations, Englishwriters have been somehow assisted by thevery checks and limitations which poetryimposes. Its strictness helps rather thanhinders them. Wordsworth, to take astriking example, was helped not hinderedby the boundaries of the sonnet. The morethe stream of his thought was confinedwithin banks, the less it was permitted tooverflow into unrestricted areas, the morepowerful became the current. And whatis true of Wordsworth is true of Englishwriters in general. Is Shakespeare lesseffective in his sonnets, or less effective in


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38 POETRY ANDthe plays where he permits himself leastfreedom, than elsewhere in his works ? Noone will say so. But that is not all. Englishthought in a surprising and surpassingmeasure associates itself with emotion. Ishall not here ask the interesting question,how far it is possible to think without feelingat the same time, how far what one maydescribe as pure thinking can be conductedat all, thinking, that is, largely or altogetherdisentangled or dissociated from feeling.Setting aside this fascinating question wemay assert that with us more of emotionenters into our thinking than with mostother peoples, we throw the whole of ournatures, as it were, into the process, whichis, with us, not an excited or rapid, but arobust one. We do not think so lucidly andlogically as the French. Everyone mustacknowledge the French superiority in thatrespect. Yet because our thought is morehighly charged with feeling it is the richerin consequence. It is obscurer but moreglowing, less exact because more luxuriant.


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 39And our poetry profits by it. Indeed sincepoetry for most of its lovers provides con-fused delight rather than a pure intellectualpleasure, we are the better fitted to excelin it. Poetry, said Coleridge, with greatacuteness, "gives more pleasure when onlygenerally and not perfectly understood."The mood of poetry is never the logicalor analytic mood, never the mood in whichwe approach the investigation of truth,but always that in which we enjoy someaccepted truth. And even our prose writers,so continuously is their thought accompaniedand supported by feeling, are rarely capableof presenting a subject in the dry cool lightof the isolated intelligence. Our best prose,as the critics frequently inform us, is ima-ginative, inspired by sympathy with itssubject, by warmth of heart rather thanby the spirit of scientific enquiry.

Thus then the connexion between ournational character and the achievementsof our poets may partly be traced. Andwhat may we conclude ? We may conclude


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40 POETRY ANDin the first place that to nothing as a peopledo we owe so much as to the spirit of liberty,the soul, as it were, of our national life.Everywhere and at all times it has inspiredand directed our activities. We do notexist as a nation in order to excel in anyone respect, to make ourselves powerful,or artistic or anything else. We prefer toleave a wide field for the development ofall forms and tyj^es of excellence; not bythe subordination of the rest to compassany one end, but rather to keep open theavenues to many. As a people we are forexcluding no quality for the sake of another,exalting no single virtue as super-excellentor final. It is not in our nature to enslaveourselves for scientific method or artisticsuccess or military strength. We wish, andwe are constantly blamed for it, to bemen rather than professionals or specialists,whether artists, savants or soldiers. Weplace the possession of freedom before allother aims. In its defence we have mademany sacrifices in the past and are prepared


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 41to make further sacrifices. So precious athing must be preserved at all costs. Butwe must also conclude that whether in lifeor literature freedom has its dangers. Inthe field of foreign politics, for example,as our present situation proves, a freepeople is at manifest, in war it may easilybe at a fatal disadvantage. Though pos-sessed of ample resources it may besuddenly struck down by an envious rivalorganised not so much for peace as forwar, by some nation which is nothing elsethan an army ever prepared to strike, anation under a strong central government,ruling as if from the heavens, to whichit is perfectly submissive. " If we prefer tomeet danger with a light heart but with-out training," said Pericles in addressingthe Athenians, "with a courage which isgained by habit and not enforced by law,are we not greatly the gainers?" Wehave hitherto held the same view. Thereflexion has, however, been forced uponus that England is no longer as remote


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42 POETRY ANDfrom Europe as in former times and canno longer withdraw itself from Europeanconcerns. As freedom of speech, of criti-cism, the free exchange of ideas, can alonehelp us to the best thought, the best ideas,so, if we aspire to lead the world, no othercourse than to preserve our free politicalinstitutions seems open. Yet to play sosplendid a role is to occupy a dangerouspost. Nor will our insular position serveus in the future to pursue our national aimsundistm^bed as it has served us in the past.In art and literature, too, freedom has itsperils. No one who knows our literaturewill deny this, will deny that it has sufferedfrom disorder and caprice, from obscurityand eccentricity, in a word from too muchliberty rather than from too much rigourand formality. If freedom, however, meansanything it means tolerance, and if toler-ance is to be real we must for the sakeof the blessing of liberty, put up withevery kind of disagreeable absurdity, withworks manifestly in the worst taste, and


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 43ridiculous demands upon us to admire them,Tvith the personal vagaries of well-intentionedbut ill-educated persons who force themselvesupon our attention, and too often succeedin capturing the public, in degrading itsjudgment and confusing its conscience. Inpraising freedom one should remember thatit does not sanctify all that it permits. Inpolitics freedom such as ours may lead toruin unless as a people we retain oursagacity, good sense enough not to beimposed upon, not to be hoodwinked; inart, unless we make habitual reference tothe tradition, the capitalised experience ofthe past, it leads to our being in Kenan'sphrase "devoured by charlatanism."

What form our political institutionsshould take in the future if we are topreserve our freedom, how we may bestprotect it, though an attractive theme, ishere beyond us. But in the world ofletters, limiting ourselves to that, when wecast our eyes abroad and behold the newand greater England beyond two oceans,


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44 POETRY ANDwe should, I think, dwell more upon thequalities in which we are deficient, whichwe have found difficult of attainment, lessupon those natural to us. And that fortwo reasons. The qualities natural to usneed not be insisted upon, they will maketheir appearance without any consciouseffort. Independence of mind, trust inhappy inspirations, dislike of formality andpedantry, these characteristics we are notlikely to lose. It was for a very brief periodin our history that we seemed in dangerof preferring Waller to Shakespeare. Thatis the first, and not a negligible reason,but the second outweighs it. The qualitiesthat come less easily to us have acquireda new value. If, and it seems probable forsome time to come, the language of theseislands be accepted as the standard, if ourwriters at home be looked to for guidanceby the writers of English abroad, then,whether in prose or poetry, the merits ofa scrupulous style demand reconsideration.A style of the centre, less highly charged


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NATIONAL CHARACTER 45with personal qualities, marked by its respectfor words, its exactness and lucidity, itsfinish and purity should, to meet the cir-cumstances, rise in our estimation. If ourwriters aspire to be in any measure theschoolmasters of the English world theymust become lovers of restraint and pro-portion, of shapeliness and verbal economy.The secret way to the reader's heart doesnot lie through self-indulgence, indifferenceto form and finish, disdain of discipline andthe labour of the file. Nor does the wayto permanence lie through them. Emancipa-tion is not everything. Negligence andindolence are too often its accompaniments.Dryden, not the least careful of our authors,was, says Dr Johnson, " no rigid judge ofhis own pages ; he seldom struggled aftersupreme excellence, but snatched in hastewhat was within his reach." With such atemper, and it is the English temper, moreespecially since the torrent of print dailyincreases in the world, and must still furtherincrease, since we are all writers now, with

> > 1

it * >'


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46 POETRYAND NATIONAL CHARACTERsuch a temper we shall have a hard taskto protect our language from deteriorationand decay. The praise given to Dryden,that he found English poetry brick and leftit marble, praise too great even for Dryden,can never again be adjudged to any Englishpoet. The smooth and bright perfectionof marble, the substance in which thequalities of the Greek spirit found theirexquisite symbol, is beyond the reach ofour language and our poetry. The mostwe can hope for them, and that only ifwe submit to uncongenial discipline, is thestrength and durability of bronze.

CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.


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Documents

Poetry and National Character; The Leslie Stephen Lecture Delivered at Cambridge on 13 May 1915 (1915)