II.
Perhaps I ought here carefully to state that in propounding the ideathat the whole common speech of early man may have been rhythmicalthrough the operation of uniformity of syllables and periodicity ofbreath, and that for this reason prose, which is practically verse ofa very complex rhythm, was naturally a later development; inpropounding this idea, I say, I do not mean to declare that theprehistoric man, after a hard day's work on a flint arrow-head at hisstone-quarry would dance back to his dwelling in the most beautifulrhythmic figures, would lay down his palaeolithic axe to a slow song,and, striking an operatic attitude, would call out to his wife toleave off fishing in the stream and bring him a stone mug of water,all in a most sublime and impassioned flight of poetry. What I do meanto say is that if the prehistoric man's syllables were uniform, andhis breath periodic, then the rhythmical results described wouldfollow. Here let me at once illustrate this, and advance a steptowards my final point in this connection, by reminding you how easilythe most commonplace utterances in modern English, particularly whencouched mainly in words of one syllable, fall into quite respectableverse rhythms. I might illustrate this, but Dr. Samuel Johnson hasalready done it for me:--"I put my hat upon my head and walked intothe Strand, and there I met another man whose hat was in his hand." Wehave only to arrange this in proper form in order to see that it is astanza of verse quite perfect as to all technical requirement:--
"I put my hat upon my head, And walked into the Strand, And there I met another man, Whose hat was in his hand."
Now let me ask you to observe precisely what happens, when by addingwords here and there in this verse we more and more obscure its verseform and bring out its prose form. Suppose, for example, we here write"hastily," and here "rushed forth," and here "encountered," and here"hanging," so as to make it read:
"I hastily put my hat upon my head, And rushed forth into the Strand, And there I encountered another man, Whose hat was hanging in his hand."
Here we have made unmitigated prose, but how? Remembering thatoriginal verse was in iambic 4's and 3's, ___ ___ __ ____I put | my hat | up-on | my head |[**Diacritical marks]
--by putting in the word "hastily" in the first line, we have not_destroyed_ the rhythm; we still have the rhythmic sequence, "my hat uponmy head," unchanged; but we have merely _added_ brief rhythms, namely thatof the word "hastily," which we may call a modern or logaoedic dactyl(hastily)[**Symbols above hastily]; that is to say, instead now of leavingour first line _all_ iambic, we have varied that rhythmus with another; andin so doing have converted our verse into prose. Similarly, in the secondline, "rushed forth," which an English tongue would here deliver as aspondee--rushed forth--_varies_ the rhythm by this spondaic intervention,but still leaves us the original rhythmic cluster, "into the Strand." So,of the other introduced words, "encountered" and "hanging," each has itsown rhythm--for an English tongue always gives these words with definitetime-relations between the syllables, that is, in rhythm. Therefore, inorder to make prose out of this verse, we have not destroyed the rhythms,we have added to them. We have not made it _formless_, we have made itcontain _more forms_.
Now, in this analysis, which I have tried to bring to its verysimplest terms, I have presented what seems to me the true genesis ofprose; and have set up a distinction, which, though it may appearabstract and insignificant at present, we shall presently see lies atthe bottom of some most remarkable and pernicious fallacies concerningliterature. That distinction is, that the relation of prose to verseis _not_ the relation of the _formless_ to the _formal_: it is therelation of _more forms_ to _fewer forms_. It is this relation whichmakes prose a _freer_ form than verse.
When we are writing in verse, if we have the line with an iambus (say)then our next words or syllables must make an iambus, and we areconfined to that form; but if in prose, our next word need not be aniambus because the first was, but may be any one of several possiblerhythmic forms; thus, while in verse we _must_ use _one_ form, inprose we _may_ use _many_ forms; and just to the extent of thesepossible forms is prose freer than verse. We shall find occasionpresently to remember that prose is freer than verse, _not_ becauseprose is formless while verse is formal, but because any givensequence of prose has _more forms_ in it than a sequence of verse.
Here, reserving to a later place the special application of all thisto the novel, I have brought my first general point to a stage whereit constitutes the basis of the second one. You have already heardmuch of "forms"--of the verse-form, the prose-form, of form in art,and the like. Now, in the course of a considerable experience in whatShakspeare sadly calls "public means," I have found no matter uponwhich wider or more harmful misconceptions exist among people ofculture, and particularly among us Americans, than this matter of thetrue functions of forms in art, of the true relation of science--whichwe may call the knowledge of forms--to art, and most especially ofthese functions and relations in literary art. These misconceptionshave flowered out into widely different shapes.
In one direction, for example, we find a large number of timoroussouls, who believe that science, in explaining everything as theysingularly fancy, will destroy the possibility of poetry, of thenovel, in short of all works of the imagination; the idea seeming tobe that the imagination always requires the hall of life to bedarkened before it displays its magic, like the modern spiritualisticseance-givers who can do nothing with the rope-tying and the guitarsunless the lights are put out.
Another form of the same misconception goes precisely to the oppositeextreme, and declares that the advance of science with its incidentsis going to give a great new revolutionized democratic literature,which will wear a slouch hat and have its shirt open at the bosom, andgenerally riot in a complete independence of form.
And finally--to mention no more than a third phase--we may considerthe original misconception to have reached a climax which is at onceabsurd and infernal, in a professedly philosophical work called _LeRoman Experimentale_, recently published by M. Emile Zola, gravelydefending his peculiar novels as the records of scientificexperiments, and declaring that the whole field of imaginative effortmust follow his lead.
Now, if any of these beliefs are true, we are wickedly wasting ourtime here in studying the novel--at least any other novels except M.Zola's, and we ought to look to ourselves. Seriously, I do not believeI could render you a greater service than by here arraying suchcontribution as I can make towards some firm, clear and piousconceptions as to this matter of form, of science, in art, beforebriefly considering these three concrete errors I have enumerated--towit, the belief (1) that science will destroy all poetry, allnovel-writing and all imaginative work generally; (2) that sciencewill simply destroy the _old_ imaginative products and build up a newformless sort of imaginative product in its stead; and (3) thatscience will absorb into _itself_ all imaginative effort, so thatevery novel will be merely the plain, unvarnished record of ascientific experiment in passion. Let me submit two or threeprinciples whose steady light will leave, it seems to me, but littlespace for perplexity as to these diverse claims.
Start, then, in the first place, with a definite recalling to yourselfof the province of form throughout our whole daily life. Here we finda striking consensus, at least in spirit, between the deliverances ofthe sternest science and of the straitest orthodoxy. The latter, onthe one hand, tells us that in the beginning the earth was withoutform and void; and it is only after the earth is formulated--after thevarious forms of the lights, of land and water, bird, fish and manappear--it is only then that life and use and art and relation andreligion become possible. What we call the creation, therefore, is notthe making something out of nothing, but it is the giving of _form_ toa something which, though existing, existed to no purpose because ithad no form.
On the other hand, the widest generalizations of science bring uspractically to the same view. Science would seem fairly to havereduced all this host of phenomena which we call the world into acongeries of motions in many
forms. What we know by our senses issimply such forms of these motions as our senses have a correlatedcapacity for. The atoms of this substance, moving in orbits too narrowfor human vision, impress my sense with a certain property which Icall hardness or resistance, this "hardness" being simply our name forone form of atom-motion when impressing itself on the human sense. Socolor, shape, &c.; these are our names representing a correlationbetween certain other forms of motion and our senses. Regarding thewhole universe thus as a great congeries of forms of motion, we maynow go farther and make for ourselves a scientific and usefulgeneralization, reducing a great number of facts to a convenientcommon denominator, by considering that Science is the knowledge ofthese forms; that Art is the creation of beautiful forms; thatReligion is the faith in the infinite Form-giver and in that infinityof forms which many things lead us to believe as existing, butexisting beyond any present correlative capacities of our senses; andfinally that Life is the control of all these forms to thesatisfaction of our human needs.
And now advancing a step: when we remember how all accounts, thescientific, the religious, the historical, agree that the progress ofthings is _from_ chaos or formlessness _to_ form, and, as we saw inthe case of verse and prose, afterwards from the one-formed to themany-formed, we are not disturbed by any shouts, however stentorian,of a progress that professes to be winning freedom by substitutingformlessness for form; we know that the ages are rolling the otherway,--who shall stop those wheels? We know that what they really dowho profess to substitute formlessness for form is to substitute abad form for a good one, or an ugly form for a beautiful one. Do notdream of getting rid of form; your most cutting stroke at it but givesus two forms for one. For, in a sense which adds additional reverenceto the original meaning of those words, we may devoutly say that inform we live and move and have our being. How strange, then, thefurtive apprehension of danger lying behind too much knowledge ofform, too much technic, which one is amazed to find prevailing sogreatly in our own country.
But, advancing a further step from the particular consideration ofscience as the knowledge of forms, let us come to the fact that as allart is a congeries of forms, each art must have its own peculiarscience; and always we have, in a true sense, the art of an art andthe science of that art. For example, correlative to the art of music,we have the general science of music, which indeed consists of severalquite separate sciences. If a man desire to become a musical composer,he is absolutely obliged to learn (1) the science of Musical Form, (2)the science of Harmony, and (3) the science of Orchestration orInstrumentation.
The science of musical form, concerns this sort of matter, forinstance. A symphony has generally four great divisions, calledmovements, separated usually from each other by a considerable pause.Each of these movements has a law of formation: it consists of twomain subjects, or melodies, and a modulation-part. The sequence ofthese subjects, the method of varying them by causing now one and nowanother of the instruments to come forward and play the subject inhand while subordinate parts are assigned to the others, the interplayof the two subjects in the modulation-part,--all this is thesubject-matter of a science which every composer must laboriouslylearn.
But again: he must learn the great science of harmony, and of thatwonderful tonality which has caused our music to be practically adifferent art from what preceding ages called music; this science ofharmony having its own body of classifications and formulated lawsjust as the science of Geology has, and a voluminous literature of itsown. Again, he must painfully learn the range and capacities of eachorchestral instrument, lest he write passages for the violin which noviolin can play, &c., and further, the particular ideas which seem toassociate themselves with the tone-color of each instrument, as theidea of women's voices with the clarionet, the idea of tenderness andchildlikeness with the oboe, &c. This is not all; the musical composermay indeed write a symphony if he has these three sciences of musicwell in hand; but a fourth science of music, namely, the physics ofmusic, or musical acoustics, has now grown to such an extent thatevery composer will find himself lame without a knowledge of it.
And so the art of painting has its correlative science of painting,involving laws of optics, and of form; the art of sculpture, itscorrelative science of sculpture, involving the science of humananatomy, &c.; and each one of the literary arts has its correlativescience--the art of verse its science of verse, the art of prose itsscience of prose. Lastly, we all know that no amount of genius willsupply the lack of science in art. Phidias may be all afire with theconception of Jove, but unless he is a scientific man to the extent ofa knowledge of anatomy, he is no better artist than Strephon whocannot mould the handle of a goblet. What is Beethoven's genius untilBeethoven has become a scientific man to the extent of knowing thesciences of Musical Form, of Orchestration, and of Harmony?
But now if I go on and ask what would be the worth of Shakspeare'sgenius unless he were a scientific man to the extent of knowing thescience of English verse, or what would be George Eliot's geniusunless she knew the science of English prose or the science ofnovel-writing, a sort of doubtful stir arises, and it would seem as ifa suspicion of some vague esoteric difference between the relation ofthe literary arts to their correlative sciences and the relation ofother arts to _their_ correlative sciences influenced the generalmind.
I am so unwilling you should think me here fighting a mere man ofstraw who has been arranged with a view to the convenience of knockinghim down, and I find such mournful evidences of the completemisconception of form, of literary science in our literature, that,with a reluctance which every one will understand, I am going to drawupon a personal experience, to show the extent of that misconception.
Some of you may remember that a part of the course of lectures whichyour present lecturer delivered here last year were afterwardspublished in book-form, under the title of _The Science of EnglishVerse_. Happening in the publisher's office some time afterwards, Iwas asked if I would care to see the newspaper notices and criticismsof the book, whereof the publishers had collected a great bundle. Mostcurious to see if some previous ideas I had formed as to the generalrelation between literary art and science would be confirmed, I readthese notices with great interest. Not only were my suspicionsconfirmed: but it is perfectly fair to say that nine out of ten, evenof those which most generously treated the book in hand, treated itupon the general theory that a work on the science of verse mustnecessarily be a collection of rules for making verses. Now, not oneof these writers would have treated a work on the science of geologyas a collection of rules for making rocks; or a work on the science ofanatomy as a collection of rules for making bones or for procuringcadavers. In point of fact, a book of rules for making verses mightvery well be written; but then it would be a hand-book of the art ofverse, and would take the whole science of verse for granted,--like aninstruction-book for the piano, or the like.
If we should find the whole critical body of a continent treating(say) Prof. Huxley's late work on the crayfish as really acookery-book, intended to spread intelligent ideas upon the bestmethods of preparing shell-fish for the table, we should certainlysuspect something wrong; but this is precisely parallel with themistake already mentioned.
But even when the functions of form, of science, in literary art havebeen comprehended, one is amazed to find among literary artiststhemselves a certain apprehension of danger in knowing too much of theforms of art. A valued friend who has won a considerable place incontemporary authorship in writing me not long ago said, after muchabstract and impersonal admission of a possible science of verse--inthe way that one admits there may be griffins, but feels no greatconcern about it--"_as for me I would rather continue to write versefrom pure instinct_."
This fallacy--of supposing that we do a thing by instinct simply because we_learned_ to do it unsystematically and without formal teaching--seems acurious enough climax to the misconceptions of literary science. You haveonly to reflect a moment in order to see that not a single line of versewas ever written by instinct
alone since the world began. For--to go nofarther--the most poetically instinctive child is obliged at least to learnthe science of language--the practical relation of noun and verb andconnective--before the crudest line of verse can be written; and since nochild talks by instinct, since every child has to learn from others everyword it uses,--with an amount of diligence and of study which is reallystupendous when we think of it--what wild absurdity to forget these yearspassed by the child in learning even the rudiments of the science oflanguage which must be well in hand, mind you, before even the rudiments ofthe science of verse can be learned--what wild absurdity to fancy that oneis writing verse by instinct when even the language of verse, far frombeing instinctive, had to be painfully, if unsystematically, learned as ascience.
Once, for all, remembering the dignity of form as we have traced it,remembering the relations of Science as the knowledge of forms, of Artas the creator of beautiful forms, of Religion as the aspirationtowards unknown forms and the unknown Form-giver, let us abandon thisunworthy attitude towards form, towards science, towards technic, inliterary art, which has so long sapped our literary endeavor.
The writer of verse is afraid of having too much form, of having toomuch technic; he dreads it will interfere with his spontaneity.
No more decisive confession of weakness can be made. It is onlycleverness and small talent which is afraid of its spontaneity; thegenius, the great artist, is forever ravenous after new forms, aftertechnic; he will follow you to the ends of the earth if you willenlarge his artistic science, if you will give him a fresh form. Forindeed genius, the great artist, never works in the frantic veinvulgarly supposed; a large part of the work of the poet, for example,is reflective; a dozen ideas in a dozen forms throng to his brain atonce; he must choose the best; even in the extremest heat andsublimity of his raptus, he must preserve a god-like calm, and orderthus and so, and keep the rule so that he shall to the end be masterof his art and not be mastered by his art.
Charlotte Cushman used often to tell me that when she was, as thephrase is, carried out of herself, she never acted well: she must haveher inspiration, she must be in a true _raptus_, but the _raptus_ mustbe well in hand, and she must retain the consciousness, at oncesublime and practical, of every act.
There is an old aphorism--it is twelve hundred years old--which coversall this ground of the importance of technic, of science, in theliterary art, with such completeness and compactness that it alwaysaffects one like a poem. It was uttered, indeed, by a poet--and a rareone he must have been--an old Armorican named Herve, of whom allmanner of beautiful stories have survived. This aphorism is, "He whowill not answer to the rudder, must answer to the rocks." If any ofyou have read that wonderful description of shipwreck on these sameArmorican rocks which occurs in the autobiography of Millet, thepainter, and which was recently quoted in a number of _Scribner'sMagazine_, you can realize that one who lived in that oldArmorica--the modern Brittany from which Millet comes--knew full wellwhat it meant to answer to the rocks.
Now, it is precisely this form, this science, this technic, which isthe rudder of the literary artist, whether he work at verse or novels.I wish it were everywhere written, even in the souls of all our youngAmerican writers, that he who will not answer to the rudder shallanswer to the rocks. This was the belief of the greatest literaryartist our language has ever produced.
We have direct contemporary testimony that Shakspeare was supremelysolicitous in this matter of form. Ben Jonson, in that heartytestimonial, "To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. WilliamShakspeare, and What He Hath Left Us," which was prefixed to theedition of 1623, says, after praises which are lavish even for anElizabethan eulogy:
Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art,
(Meaning here thy technic, thy care of form, thy science),
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part; For though the poet's matter Nature be, His art doth give the fashion; and that he Who casts to write a living line must sweat, (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same (And himself with it) that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn, _For a good poet's made as well as born, And such wert thou._ Look how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race. Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines _In his well-turned and true-filed lines, In each of which he seems to shake a lance_, As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance.
No fear with Shakspeare of damaging his spontaneity; he shakes a lanceat the eyes of Ignorance in every line.
With these views of the progress of forms in general, of the relationsof Science--or the _knowledge_ of all forms--to Art, or the creationof beautiful forms, we are prepared, I think, to maintain muchequilibrium in the midst of the discordant cries, already mentioned,(1) of those who believe that Science will destroy all literary art;(2) of those who believe that art is to advance by becoming democraticand formless; (3) and lastly, of those who think that the futurenovelist is to enter the service of science as a police-reporter inordinary for the information of current sociology.
Let us, therefore, inquire if it is really true--as I am told is muchbelieved in Germany, and as I have seen not unfrequently hinted in theway of timorous apprehension in our own country--that science is toabolish the poet and the novel-writer and all imaginative literature.It is surprising that in all the discussions upon this subject thematter has been treated as belonging solely to the future. But surelylife is too short for the folly of arguing from prophecy when we canargue from history; and it seems to me this question is determined. Asmatter of fact, science (to confine our view to English science) hasbeen already advancing with prodigious strides for two hundred andfifty years, and side by side with it English poetry has beenadvancing for the same period. Surely, whatever effect science hasupon poetry can be traced during this long companionship. While Hookeand Wilkins and Newton and Horrox and the Herschels and Franklin andDavy and Faraday and the Darwins and Dalton and Huxley and many morehave been penetrating into physical nature, Dryden, Pope, Byron,Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, have been singing;while gravitation, oxygen, electro-magnetism, the atomic theory, thespectroscope, the siren, are being evolved, the _Ode to St. Cecilia_,the _Essay on Man_, _Manfred_, _A man's a man for a' that_, the _Odeon Immortality_, _In Memoriam_, the _Ode to a Nightingale_, _The Psalmof Life_, are being written. If indeed we go over into Germany, thereis Goethe, at once pursuing science and poetry.
Now, if we examine the course and progress of this poetry, born thuswithin the very grasp and maw of this terrible science, it seems to methat we find--as to the _substance_ of poetry--a steadily increasingconfidence and joy in the mission of the poet, in the sacredness offaith and love and duty and friendship and marriage, and in thesovereign fact of man's personality; while as to the _form_ of thepoetry, we find that just as science has pruned our faith (to make itmore faithful), so it has pruned our poetic form and technic, cuttingaway much unproductive wood and efflorescence and creating finerreserves and richer yields. Since it would be simply impossible, inthe space of these lectures, to illustrate this by any detailed viewof all the poets mentioned, let us confine ourselves to one, AlfredTennyson, and let us inquire how it fares with him. Certainly no morefavorable selection could be made for those who believe in thedestructiveness of science. Here is a man born in the midst ofscientific activity, brought up and intimate with the freest thinkersof his time, himself a notable scientific pursuer of botany, andsaturated by his reading with all the scientific conceptions of hisage. If science is to sweep away the silliness of faith and love, todestroy the whole field of the imagination and make poetry folly, itis a miracle if Tennyson escape. But if we look into his own words,this miracle beautifully transacts itself before our eyes. Suppose weinquire, Has science cooled this poet's love? We are answered in No.60 of _In Memoriam_:
If in thy second state sublime, Thy ransomed reason change replies With all the circle of
the wise, The perfect flower of human time;
And if thou cast thine eyes below, How dimly character'd and slight, How dwarf'd a growth of cold and night, How blanch'd with darkness must I grow!
Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore, Where thy first form was made a man, I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can The soul of Shakspeare love thee more.
Here is precisely the same loving gospel that Shakspeare himself usedto preach, in that series of Sonnets which we may call _his_ InMemoriam to his friend; the same loving tenacity, unchanged by threehundred years of science. It is interesting to compare this No. 60 ofTennyson's poem with Sonnet 32 of Shakspeare's series, and note howboth preach the supremacy of love over style or fashion.
If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time; And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, Exceeded by the height of happier men. O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought: "Had my friend's muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had bought, To march in ranks of better equipage; But since he died, and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love."
Returning to Tennyson: has science cooled his yearning for humanfriendship? We are answered in No. 90 of _In Memoriam_. Where was eversuch an invocation to a dead friend to return!
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, And rarely pipes the mounted thrush; Or underneath the barren bush Flits by the sea-blue bird of March;
Come, wear the form by which I know Thy spirit in time among thy peers; The hope of unaccomplish'd years Be large and lucid round thy brow.
When summer's hourly mellowing change May breathe, with many roses sweet, Upon the thousand waves of wheat, That ripple round the lonely grange;
Come; not in watches of the night, But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, Come, beauteous in thine after-form, And like a finer light in light.
Or still more touchingly, in No. 49, for here he writes from thedepths of a sick despondency, from all the darkness of a bad quarterof an hour.
Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame Is racked with pains that conquer trust; And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a fury, slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry, And men the flies of latter spring, That lay their eggs, and sting and sing, And weave their petty cells and die.
Be near me when I fade away, To point the term of human strife, And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day.
Has it diminished his tender care for the weakness of others? We arewonderfully answered in No. 33.
O thou that after toil and storm Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air, Whose faith has centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form.
Leave thou thy sister when she prays, Her early Heaven, her happy views; Nor then with shadow'd hint confuse A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith thro' form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good. Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood To which she links a truth divine!
See thou, that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin, And ev'n for want of such a type.
Has it crushed out his pure sense of poetic beauty? Here in No. 84 wehave a poem which, for what I can only call absolute beauty, is simplyperfect.
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood, And shadowing down the horned flood In ripples, fan my brows, and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh The full new life that feeds thy breath Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas On leagues of odor streaming far To where in yonder orient star A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.'
And finally we are able to see from his own words that he is notignorantly resisting the influences of science, but that he knowsscience, reveres it and understands its precise place and function.What he terms in the following poem (113 of _In Memoriam_) _Knowledge_and _Wisdom_ are what we have been speaking of as Science and Poetry.
Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall fix Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
* * * * *
Let her know her place; She is the second, not the first.
A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child:
For she is earthly of the mind, But Wisdom heavenly of the Soul. O friend, who camest to thy goal So early, leaving me behind,
I would the great world grew like thee Who grewest not alone in power And knowledge, but by year and hour In reverence and in charity.
If then, regarding Tennyson as fairly a representative victim ofScience, we find him still preaching the poet's gospel of beauty, ascomprehending the evangel of faith, hope and charity, only preachingit in those newer and finer forms with which science itself hasendowed him; if we find his poetry just so much stronger and richerand riper by as much as he has been trained and beaten and disciplinedwith the stern questions which scientific speculation hasput--questions which you will find presented in their most sombreterribleness in Tennyson's _Two Voices_; if finally we find himsteadily regarding science as _knowledge_ which only the true poet canvivify into _wisdom_:--then I say, life is too short to waste any ofit in listening to those who, in the face of this history, stillprophesy that Science is to destroy Poetry.
Nothing, indeed, would be easier than to answer all this argument upon_a priori_ grounds: this argument is, in brief, that wonder andmystery are the imagination's _material_, and that science is toexplain away all mystery. But what a crude view is this ofexplanation! The moment you examine the process, you find that atbottom explanation is simply the reduction of unfamiliar mysteries toterms of familiar mysteries. For simplest example: here is a mass ofconglomerate: science explains that it is composed of a great numberof pebbles which have become fastened together by a natural cement.But after all, is not one pebble as great a mystery as a mountain ofconglomerate? though we are familiar with the pebble, and unfamiliarwith the other. Now to the wise man, the poet, familiarity with amystery brings no contempt; to explanation of science, supremelyfascinating as it is, but opens up a new world of wonders, but adds toold mysteries. Indeed, the wise searcher into nature always finds, asa poet has declared, that
... "In seeking to undo One riddle, and to find the true I knit a hundred others new."
And so, away with this folly. Science, instead of being the enemy ofpoetry, is its quartermaster and commissary--it forever purveys forpoetry, and just so much more as it shall bring man into contact withnature, just so much more large and intense and rich will be thepoetry of the future and more abundant in its forms.
And here we may advance to our second class, who believe that thepoetry of the future is to be democratic and formless.
I need quote but a few scraps from characteristic sentences here andthere in a recent paper of Whitman's, in order to present a perfectlyfai
r view of his whole doctrine. When, for instance, he declares thatTennyson's poetry is not the poetry of the future because, although itis "the highest order of verbal melody, exquisitely clean and pure andalmost always perfumed like the tuberose to an extreme of sweetness,"yet it has "never one democratic page," and is "never free, naivepoetry, but involved, labored, quite sophisticated;" when we find himbragging of "the measureless viciousness of the great radicalrepublic" (the United States of course) "with its ruffianlynominations and elections; its loud, ill-pitched voice, utterlyregardless whether the verb agrees with the nominative; its fights,errors, eructations, repulsions, dishonesties, audacities; thosefearful and varied, long and continued storm-and-stress stages (sooffensive to the well-regulated, college-bred mind), wherewith nature,history and time block out nationalities more powerful than the past;"and when finally we hear him tenderly declaring that "meanwhiledemocracy waits the coming of its bards in silence and intwilight--but 'tis the twilight of dawn;"--we are in sufficientpossession of the distinctive catch-words which summarize hisdoctrine.
In examining it, a circumstance occurs to me at the outset whichthrows a strange but effective light upon the whole argument. It seemscurious to reflect that the two poets who have most avowedly writtenfor the _people_, who have professed most distinctively to representand embody the thought of the people, and to be bone of the people'sbone, and flesh of the people's flesh, are precisely the two who havemost signally failed of all popular acceptance and who have mostexclusively found audience at the other extreme of culture. These areWordsworth and Whitman. We all know how strenuously and faithfullyWordsworth believed that in using the simplest words and treating thelowliest themes, he was bringing poetry back near to the popularheart; yet Wordsworth's greatest admirer is Mr. Matthew Arnold, theapostle of culture, the farthest remove from anything that could becalled popular; and in point of fact it is probable that many apeasant who would feel his blood stir in hearing _A man's a man for a'that_, would grin and guffaw if you should read him Wordsworth's_Lambs_ and _Peter Grays_.
And a precisely similar fate has met Whitman. Professing to be amudsill and glorying in it, chanting democracy and the shirt-sleevesand equal rights, declaring that he is nothing if not one of thepeople; nevertheless the people, the democracy, will yet have nothingto do with him, and it is safe to say that his sole audience has lainamong such representatives of the highest culture as Emerson and theEnglish _illuminated_.
The truth is, that if closely examined, Whitman, instead of being atrue democrat, is simply the most incorrigible of aristocrats masquingin a peasant's costume; and his poetry, instead of being the naturaloutcome of a fresh young democracy, is a product which would beimpossible except in a highly civilized society.
The English Novel and the Principle of its Development Page 2