The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-09-18

its light the topmost peak of the distant
cloud land of literature. understand
human nature? Did he apprehend the
| province of the artistic in distinction from
the realm of the didactic? Did Shaks-
peare, who peoples his plays with men
and women who stand for both heroic and
romantic types. know anything about
| human nature? Did he have any correct
apprehensions OF poetic or dramatic art
when he wrote his great ictions?
| Homer's characters are always human
| and always heroic, though not romantic,
| because the Greek, while he knew conju-
| gal did not know romantic love. Shak-
speare appeals more strongly TO the feel
ings of the modern man than Homer, be-
cause his great figures are at once human.
heroic and romantic. as Othello and Ham,
let among his men. Shakspeare's great
women are all human. heroic and roman
tic. for even Lady Macbeth leaves the i'm
preston that she behaved like she-devii
to win for her warrior, whom she passion
ately loved. an earthly paradise of power
and pride. She could cut Duncan's throat
loved, and she has therefore certain he
roic dignity in her depravity, even as Mil
tons Satan is heroic; she il as romantic as
Juliet. for she flung away her soul to make
her husband king.
The leading charm of Homer is that
when the world was young and there was
less social conventionality and more spon-
taneity In action than at present the poets
characters rise above the commonplace.
The methods of Homer and Shakespeare,
who dealt with the heroic and the roman
tic, but never wandered aside into the
didactic, are the methods of every poet or
novelist whose work continues to hold
the brain and the heart of humanity to-
day. A poem or novel dies rapidly just
in proportion rs its author has heavily
weighted it with didacties. A poem or a
play to be an immortal work cannot be
political or theological and temperance
tract too. Homer draws Achilles and
Hector. but he does not attempt to draw
a moral on the Had any more than Shaks-
peare. when he sketches Othello. Iago,
Hamlet or Falstaf, stops to draw
moral as Wordsworth, Cr;bbe or Pollock
would in poetry. Poetry or fiction with
q moral reform movement working its
bowels is poetry that soon perishes and
fiction that has bat short span Of life.
Human nature is about the same in its
passions and motives, vast and deep. as
when Homer sang Of Hector and Shak-
speare wrote his plays, and the world will
always give its ear to the man who with
touch at once powerful and true sweeps
the strings of the harp of the human
heart rather than to the cheap fellow who
plays the lutte of transient social life for
the entertainment of shallow, skipping
creatures who amble up and down through
life doing nothing and suffering nothing
from the cradle to the grave.
The new school of bloodless, non-ro-
mantle, pessimistic fiction will be read by
. clique, while the world will continue to
read fiction that is peopled by men and
women who stand for human nature, full
statured in its capacity for good or evil,
rather than for the cherry stone basket art
Of the latter day non-romantic novelist,
who is not a painter at all. but q fellow
with file, pumice stone, sandpaper and
varnish, who writes for very small class
Of humanity; people who are as impa-
tient Of ideals that are q rebuke of their
own eftortless, yawning and simpering ex-
istence as q Florida "conch" or q North
Carolina clay-eater is at the sight of a
schoolhouse or the sound of a church bell.
b. -, L
poetry that is not weighted by didactlcs;
the poet cannot be a true artist for all time
and be preacher and pedagogue too; he
must paint, not preach; he must sing as
he dies like a skylark or bobolink, not
chant q church mass. The permanent in
literature must be romantic, heroic fiction
sketchsd In lines rs broad as human
nature, good for all times and chimes and
races of civilized men who have risen to the
level OF romantic impulse and heroic
action.
Bloodless, non-romantic ic.io n. peopled
with dude and doll pictures Of the washed
blondes of. transient life cannot become
part Of the permanent in literature. To
illustrate. take the poems OF Whittier, so
lately dead; which of them will longest
survive? Not his anti-slavery lyrics; for
they are for the most part 200 full of local
color. passion and heat; not his didactic
poems. for they are spoiled by their "mor-
alizing" habit for a true poetic reader. who
seeks 10 find picture or a song, not a SER
! mon, and they are spoiled FOR far large r
class who want story told with such az
tistic simplicity and strength that it
carries with it its own obvious moral.
The poems OF Whittier that will live
longest Will be his few roems of nature
where he has RETAINED from "moralizing."
and his ballads like skipper Ireson's
Ride" Barbara Frieschie," Con
duotor Bradley" ''rhe Fipes az Luck
now" "Parson Avery's Prayer" poems
| in which he either paints picture full Of
| beauty or tells a story with simplicity,
| directness and power. Poems of this sort
Viii always be household words 20 q HUI
| name civilization, but his didactic. deyo-
tional poetry. where Whittier sinks the
| painter and singer in the morslist. teacher
| and preacher. will not long hold
| many readers. while his anti.slavery lyrics,
full of local color and charged with the
| passion Of the hour, viii be interestin 9
| chiefly 10 the historian seeking TO catch
| the spirit u that time Of moral sgIta,ion
and political onset.
The tAi1es IN Burns thst made the how
Whittier eagerly read and passionasely love