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Universal in his theme, has contrived to produce permanent pleasure
for the imagination, while Statius, with his grandiose subject and his
sounding verse, has fallen into neglect. Juvenal makes us see, as if
they were things of to-day, the perils of the streets in ancient Rome;
the bald Nero and his flatterers in council over their turbot;
13 the
Trojan-born aristocracy cringing for the rich parvenu's doles; 14 the
bronze head of Sejanus's statue turned into pots and pans.15 When
a satirist is so full as this of universal interest, we can listen to him
even when he talks mainly of himself. Witness the opening of
Pope's Epistle to Arbuthnot, where every word seems to throb and
tingle with sensitive life:

Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said,
Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.
The dog-star rages, nay, 'tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam and Parnassus is let out.

Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,

They rave, recite, and madden through the land.

And so on, through all the poet's interviews with his literary tormentors, till we reach the climax in the portrait of Atticus, where universal truth lives as lastingly as in the characters of Achilles and Hamlet:

Peace to all such! But were there one whose fires

True genius kindles and true fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease;

Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne;
View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame and to command,
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend;
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged ;
Like Cato give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;

While wits and Templars every sentence raise,

And wonder with a foolish face of praise:
Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?

Even in lyric poetry, which seems above all other forms of the art to contain the expression of individual feeling, if the verse is to have enduring life, the universal must be present either in the simplicity

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of the emotion or the common interest of the theme. No better illustration of this truth can be found than Gray's Elegy, a composition which has perhaps produced more general pleasure than any in our literature. Take the last line of the first stanza: 'And leaves the world to darkness and to me,' where two of the most abstract words in the language are combined with the most personal. Or again, the closing stanza, in which the epitaph on the individual is brought to a climax in the most universal idea that the human mind can conceive:

No further seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.

Difficile est proprie communia dicere. Difficult indeed! But to overcome the difficulty is the triumph of art. And here the triumph is complete. How simple and obvious are all the reflections, and yet how individual they seem in the form in which the poet presents them! A single familiar image is selected as the centre of a group of truths which every man acknowledges, and, as a rule, forgets; each stanza seems to condense in words the experience of human society; and breathes in its solemn harmony the catholic doctrine of the grave.

If then we are justified in believing the law of life in poetry to be what we have described it, we may draw some practical conclusions from it with regard to the poetry of our own day. For is not one of the most striking characteristics in modern poetical conception the exaggeration of the individual element and the neglect of the universal? Many of the spiritual forces in our society, notably reaction from materialism, vulgarity, common-place, impel the imagination towards a state of monasticism, thrust the mind inward upon itself, and urge it to the contemplation of its own ideas without considering their relation to the ideas of others. Poetical conception so formed will by its own innate force command attention and respect from those whose spiritual experience has been in any way similar, and yet, as it has been framed without reference to the wants of human nature at large, must necessarily lack the main element of enduring life. This is the danger that in my opinion threatens the position of one of the most eminent metrical composers of our own generation; I need hardly say that I refer to Robert Browning. No one who is capable of appreciating genius will refuse to admire the powers of this poet, the extent of his sympathy and interest in external things, the boldness of his invention, the energy of his analysis, the audacity of his experiments. But so absolutely did he exclude all consideration for the reader from his choice of subject, so arbitrarily, in his treatment of his themes, does he compel his audience to place themselves at his own point of view, that the life of his art depends

entirely on his individuality. Should future generations be less inclined than our own to surrender their imaginations to his guidance, he will not be able to appeal to them through that element of life which lies in the Universal.

If it is an error to look for the life of poetry exclusively in the mind of the poet, it is no less an error to derive its sources from the current tastes of the people. What is universal is always popular in the true sense of the word; but what is popular is not necessarily universal. Yet the modern poet is under a strong temptation to conceive as if it were so. Invention and Science present the imagination with a dissolving panorama of passing interests, and to embody these in a striking form is the proper end of the art of journalism. The ability and success with which the journalist discharges his functions naturally excite emulation among those who practise the fine arts. They imitate his methods. Hence Realism in the choice of subject, Impressionism, Literary Paradox, and all those other short cuts in art through which seekers after novelty attempt to discover nine-days wonders for the imagination. By the very hypothesis of fine art such methods must necessarily be fallacious; because when the temporary conditions to which they owe their being pass away the pleasure they excite perishes with them.

The abiding life of poetry must be looked for far beneath the surface of society: the end of poetry, as Hamlet says of the drama, is 'to show the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.' If there be any of my hearers, and especially of my younger hearers, who say to themselves with the proud consciousness of genius, 'non omnis moriar,' I would urge them to remember that this truth is written on every page of classic English poetry. In the reign of Elizabeth the life of the nation had its centre in the Crown, and monarchical energy found expression in the drama. The eighteenth century was an age of aristocracy and philosophic thought; accordingly the characteristic poetry of that era was ethical or elegiac. With the French Revolution began the great democratic movement which has prevailed for a hundred years, and naturally from that time to this the dominant note in poetry has been lyrical.

I think that one difficulty in the way of forming a poetic conception of Nature and Society in our own day arises from our adhering too tenaciously to a poetical tradition which no longer corresponds with the life and reality of things. Poetry, like politics, is an outward mode of expressing the active principle of social life, and for three generations the master-spirit in Society has been Liberty. In politics we have seen Liberty embodying itself in all that we understand by the word Democracy; sweeping away privilege, test, restriction; widening the basis of government; wakening the energies of free thought; shaking the foundations of faith and authority. In poetry the same principle finds utterance in the varied emotions we compre

hend under the name of Romance. Romance is heard in the voice of Wordsworth sending out his thought into the heart of Nature; in the voice of Byron rebellious against the laws of Society; in the voice of Shelley dreaming of the destinies of humanity; in the voice of Tennyson sounding the depths and intricacies of private sorrow. For universal conceptions such as these Romance has been the fitting vehicle of expression. But alike in politics and in poetry, the productive power of Liberty seems to have reached its natural limits. Can Democracy solve the problems it has itself created? civilise the swarming populations of the city? bind the young and vigorous colony more closely to the venerable Mother Country? charm away the demon of social envy? curb the fury of political faction? Or is it Romance that can most fitly reflect those scientific ideas of Nature and Society which press so powerfully on the modern imagination? It is just because Romance is unable to do this that the school of poetry which has adhered most faithfully to the romantic tradition now sounds in its art the note of lyric pessimism.

There is surely an analogy in the tasks that lie respectively before the modern statesman and the modern poet. It is the part of the one, rising above the indolence of laisser faire, to lead, to construct, to consolidate. So too in the world of poetry. The romantic poet regards himself as 'the idle singer of an empty day:' is it, however, just to charge the age with emptiness merely because it affords no materials fitted for expression in a particular poetical mould? The art of poetry has many mansions; and it does not follow that, if one mode of conceiving Nature has become trite and mechanical, the resources of Nature herself are exhausted. Sound reasoning would seem rather to point to the conclusion that since the subjective and lyrical forms of poetry languish, the sources of life are rather to be sought on the objective side and in the dramatic, ethical, and satiric forms of the art.

But perhaps to speculate precisely on this point is to fall into the very error of academic criticism which we started with condemning. It will be best to conclude with reiterating the truth that, while the force of individual liberty and genius is absolutely necessary to inspire poetic conception with the breath of life, obedience to the laws and constitution of the Universal Imagination is no less needful, if the life thus generated is to be enduring.

W. J. COURTHOPE.

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

A REMINISCENCE'

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THE personal equation' is often an element very necessary to the true interpretation of a great writer's words. Of the many thousands in England and America who have eagerly read their 'Huxley' few have known the man. They are familiar, perhaps, with his essays on the Gadarene pig affair' and the 'Noachian deluge;' and they have in all probability—as the present writer once had—a onesided impression of the intention and animus of such sallies. And a similar difference between the writer and the man extends to many other subjects. If this be so, it may be worth while for those who knew Mr. Huxley in later life to record personal traits which have interpreted for them much of his writing. Doubtless such sketches are necessarily themselves made from a special point of view. But what Huxley was to all his acquaintance can only be learnt by knowing what he was to each. And conscious though I am how imperfectly I shall express recollections which are very vivid, I make the attempt with the less scruple, as it was suggested to me by one whose wishes in the matter should be paramount.

My first direct intercourse with Mr. Huxley was accidentally such as to confirm my original impression of him as a somewhat uncompromising and unapproachable man of war. I was collecting materials about the year 1885 for some account of the old Metaphysical Society, to be published in the biography of my father, W. G. Ward, who was at one time its chairman. I wrote to several prominent members of the society, and received kind answers and contributions from all of them except Mr. Huxley, who did not reply to my letter at all. I remember thinking that I had made a mistake in writing to him, and that probably his antagonism to my father in the debates made him unwilling to say anything on the subject.

I was therefore the more pleasantly surprised when, in the year 1890, a common friend of mine and Mr. Huxley's (Sir M. E. Grant Duff) brought me a friendly message, expressing great contrition in

1 I am indebted to the kindness of Mrs. Huxley and Mr. Leonard Huxley for permission to print the letters from the late Professor Huxley which appear in the present paper.

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