The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1892-12-26
WOMEN AS POETS.
Artists They Cannot Be, SO Says a
Famous Expert Critic.

St James Gazette.
On Saturday evening Edmund Gosse de-
livered an address in the hall of Newman
College, Cambridge, on ''Fhe Poetry of
Women" taking as his particular text the
poems Of Christina Rossetti.
mo sound critic will pretend that woman
has added anything to the sum of male at
tainments in these major branches of art.
The reason is, apparently, that the artistic
nature Is not strongly developed in her. She
has energy, imagination. sentiment. inyen-
tion but she has not the artistic impulse.
The consummate poets of the world have
been great artists. In Shakespeare, Cor
nellie, Goethe. Pope and Keats we see the
artist above all else, above the man of in
tellect or vision. In much lower rank of
poets We find the vision. or the ethical bias.
prepOnderating. In the greatest men the
art is paramount.
but women. IL the main entrances seem TO
De denied them, ascend into the house of
poetry by other doors. Lyrical verse owes
so much to them that We may easily forgive
their limited success in other directions:
The lyric, which is a spontaneous Jet of
music, an ejaculation forced from the heart
by an excess OF feeling, demands less art
than any other form of poetry. 1t is. per-
haps. the only species Of poetry which can
be excellent in its kind and yet wholly art
yet are exquisite; and the history of poetry
Is adorned by certain female names which
VIII always preserve their freshness. and
which yet were entirely innocent Of art.
Such are Emily Bronte in England and Mar
celne Desbordes-F almore In France. We
do not know whether. with extended op-
portunities, women will continue 10 show
themselves insensible TO or incapable of
the highest literary art. Hitherto they
certainly have been one or the other.
ANY one whose privilege it has beenlto
enjoy the friendship OF successful women
OF letters knows how much more they are
always occupied with literature as pro-
fession than as an art; how little they are
able to conceive the doing of work for its
OWE sake. Il o for its result; how conscien-
tious. industrious. and persistent they are.
and how little they are troubled with the
scrupes and the lassitude of the artist. 1t
is their lyric gilt, their cry from the heights
or the depth Of feeling. that has won them
shat place upon Paruassus from which no
De Quincy nor Guy de Maupassant can
eject them.
"I have denied poetic art to women
mainly that may give myself the luxury Of
attributing it 10 Miss Christina Rossetti.
To screen myself from the charge OF ex-
travaganee | will say at once that / think
the main interest OF the position of this
writer in the history of poetry is the fact
that she indubitably possesses this quality
which Is denied to many men OF genius and
10 almost all women. Mrs. Browning was
force In literature parsonage demand
ing universal recognition for her intellectual
power, her majestic Imagination aud her
independence Of other literary influences
but she was not an artist. That title
applied to George Sand or George Eliot
would be equally misnomer. What Lord
Tennyson was. what Flaubert was 1t is
surely plain that these great women could
DOT be. But precisely this, in a restricted
measure, it seems to me that Miss Rossetti
is, and that Isolation of hers, as apparently
the solitary woman poet of the ADglc-Saxon
race who eultivates poetry as one of the
fine arts, gives the study OF her verse an
especial interest"