The times., 1901-03-10

must. being old be necessarily bad. He
would recognize that there is, after all
something right in the Sixth Command
ment, but did not draw the inference that
q CLEAN of reason might also be found IN
most of the rest of the Decalogue. The
! state of society then, as always. provoked
revolt. but the state of society
was grievous. not because its moral
| laws were bad, but because its
! laws were not obeyed Shelley had no
| turn for narrative, and. in such poems as
| The Revolt of Islam" it is the splendid
! meteoric genius the unexcelled music that
captivate. In lyrics he was probably the
! most original force since the Ehzabethan
age: his verse Is a singing and soaring
| tame In "Adonais his righteous indlg-
nation carries him forward like an angel
with a sword of fire; and The Witch Of
Atlas" is a triumph in a new fairy way
! of writing" His is the Muse of clouds
! and stars. of sea and tempest, of all the
! aspects. and in appearance. most capri
! cious forces Of the world yet his is also
! the Muse of flowers and peaceful woods,
/ of detection and of delight. What the
! born rebel. Milton. might have been with
| out the foundation and trammels of Puri-
! tansm, that Shelley was, though his wild
! and tender lyric note was even more eN-
! ouisite than Milton's Neither was, in
the full sense, human, for both were with
out humor, as may be seen in their hu-
morous pieces.
Keats, but three years younger than
! Shelley Q7e5) was more a true child of
the nineteenth century. His social ideas,
though of course Liberal, were more in
| abeyance; he was more exclusively an
! artist; and his art was more controlled
by the revived Eliza bethansm of Leigh
Hunt G7SD. That singular man, who had
so much taste and so much of II bad;
so intense a theory of social benevolence,
and so keen a belief that it was more
blessed to receive than to give. owed lit
tie I'm the way Of literature) ito any but
the old masters and many contempora-
ries owed not a little to him. Few owed
| more. for good and bad, than keats-Nir-
gil he had found out for himself, and had
/ translated when a schoolboy. Spencer
! too. he found for himself and Greece ne
| discovered, afresh in Lempriere's DictIonv
airy and in Chapman's Homer. But TINS
superficial euphusm and elaborate verbal
! quaintness he partly derived at second
| hand from Leigh Hunt.
| That something in Leigh Hunt which
suggested Harold SkimpOle to Dickens and
/ his violent conception of THE Cockney
| School" to Lockhart was not hidden from
Keats, and inspired him with some bitter
words. 1t was what he derived from Hunt
| that gave occasion to Keats assailants,
who were more of political than of liter
ary partisans Lockhart, or Wilson, or
both. with the Quarterly reviewer, in at
tacking "Endymion'' were attacking, they
thought. a member of an affected, effemi-
I X
maturing with the suddenness Of genius,
looked on "Endymon' as thoroughly i'm
mature But killed, or even discouraged,
bv his critics he was not and on a page
Of COPY Of "I.amia" where his pub
fishers spoke OF his encouragement he
wrote This is a lie" CThe copy is in the
possession of Canon Ainger) Keats, like
| Burns, whom he so intensely admired and
so unerringly judged man and poet,
was his own best critic. Despite his boy
ish lusciousness of taste, and the fever
of letters written when dying, there was
no manlier or more chivalrous soul in
England than that of the poet OF the Odes
to the nightingale and to autumn. Keats
at his best attained sheer perfection of
language, of emotion, and Of thought.
As he advised Shelley TO be, he was not
content with less than filling all the riffs
with pure gold. "Untaught,' like the
minstrel of Odysseus, he combined
Greek clarity and largeness of manner
with that romance which Greece does not
lack, but which he possessed in degree
more conspicuous, at least to readers who
are not Greeks. Though he has not been
and cannot be initiated, he has supplied
to TennysOn and the best moderns a
standard and an ideal That the Shakes
pearean copiousness of humanity and hu-
NOR and dramatic genius would ever have
been his nothing indicates; but what
writer of our century, except Scott, has
possessed a large share Of these quail
tics2 In poetry, not one, and II was in
prose that Scott wore his fragment Of
the cloak Of Shakespeare. For the CEN
tury has not produced, in England or
America, a great dramatic poet. 1t is to
fiction, to Scott, Dickens, Thackeray,
Stevenson, Meredith. Hawthorne, George
Eliot that we must look for the humor
and humanity and passion which, earlier,
found their vehicle in the drama.
ours is a reading rather than a seeing
century, though this does not explain the
reason which made the great novelists
incapable of writing for the stage. OF the
other poets Of the early century, Camp
bell Rogers, Moore, Landor, Hogg, and
the ladies' Mrs. Hemans, and /. +. L.
and Beddoes, space does not permit us
to treat I.andor's audience has not in
creased; Rogers has none; Campbell is
best remembered for war songs, which /
fear are overrated; Hogg, despite some
exquisite passages in "Kilmeny," and
some admirable songs, suffers from his
countrymens exclusive devotion to Rob
bic Burns. When Scott turned to fiction
GSlD the current Of popular taste at once
changed into that channel Byron had
still his vogue; Keats, Shelley, and Cole
ridge then sang only TO the few initi-
ated. Wordsworth was past his prime, and
with the general public nothing was real
" popular but fiction, and that fiction
was Scott's. Miss Austen is probably
much more widely appreciated today
than when she died, little noted by the
world, in 1917. A criticism of Scotts
novels. which first made fiction supreme
and far above poetry in the estimation
of 'the reading public cannot be at
tempted in this place. The best estimate
of Scott, If far from most favorable, is
his own in the introduction to The For
tunes of Nigel" His faults of prolixity,
haste, Indifference to delcacy of style,
and even to grammar; his big bow wow"
vein (as he calls it,; the stilted theatrical
language Of his Catherine Glovers and
Helen Macgregors-aIl these defects with
his hasty denouements (as Of Shakes
peare and Moliere) are patent, are con-
fessed, and probably deter many readers
from making profit of his humor, his rich
knowledge of and sympathy with all hu-
of hfc inf ont hut Cd