The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-03-02
HAS THERE BEEN NO AMERICAN POET
Eh oInge


editorial in the Boston Globe-was written by
S. W. Foss, the editor of the Yankee Blade:
Mr.. Howells, in the Editors Study" of the last
number of HdJper'S treats with his usual pungent
satire Mr. Edmund Gosses late declaration that
America has not yet produced great poet.
This is question which affects national pride,
and though Mr.. Gosses article published some
months ago it is no wonder that an acrimonious
discussion of it still continues in the American
press.
Mr.. Gosse mentions Chaucer, Spenser, Shake
speare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Burns, Words
worth, Colerdge, Byron, Shelley and Keats the
British worthiest, and he asks, w hat dead Ameri
is worthy TO join the twelve and make an
Anglo Saxon's bakers dozen?"
Let us look at these thirteen names, which Mr..
Gosse, not being good accountant, reckoned
twelve.
Though Chaucer is still read by linguists and
students he is no longer living force in English
literature. He was pleasant and rambling story
teller but his work is largely interesting
illustrative of the times and manners OF the early
English race.
Spenser produced one long poem that is as little
read any long poem that has survived in litera-
ture. We doubt if single professor of literature
in an American college can be found who has read
1.-THE Fiery Queen" through without skipping
Spenser is much more generally eulogized than
read
Shakespeare is pre-eminent in the solitary
isolation of his genius The flower OF the human
William Shakespeare.
Milton was one of the immortals; but it is
doubtful if he has said more untorgetable things
than Emerson.
Dryden is not a gigantic enough figure to
pedestal in a worlds pantheon. He spun many fine
artistic webs of elaborate and artificial poetry :
but they are not of the texture of immortality.
Pope was elegant finished, artistic writer,
q master of a mechanical metre, a prince of
epigrammatists, polished and cold iccle
Ruf ia q m az disOuta If
the present day whether, in the highest sense of
the term, he wac poet at all.
Great praise is due Gray for his perseverance
He worked many years, and produced one great
poem that will live His other poems and odes
are labored and artificial in the extreme. Gray
among the great spontaneous. native original
geniuses of mankind
Burns was a real poet, and with the true instinct
of poets nature appealed directly to the hearts
of men. His words were understood by the heart
before they filtered through the intellect and
hence they possess immortal significance.
Wordsworth produced much unwinnowed
wheat, pretty well concealed in chaff. He did
some truly great work; but many of his poems
are still read from a sense of literary duty
Coleridge the fragmentary, lazy, purposeess,
was a man of infinite literary promise, but of very
meagre and unsatisfactory accomplishments. His
best poems the suggestions of great possibilities,
which he always came short of realizing He has
right to be ranked among the great poets of the
world
Byron is no longer a literary force In the short
space of fifty years Byron worship has become q
tradition. He was brilliant, dazzling, meteoric
but the world no longer regards him as a great
poet.
Shelley was a great poet for certain kinds of
imaginative minds. But he was far from universal
in his genius. Emerson did not permit him in his
"Parnassus;"
Keats had the markings of great poet in him,