The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1902-01-09
OLDER ENGLISH BARDS.
WHEREIN thu YOUNG NAN From
INDIA DIFFERS
From Thom-He Makes Strong Points
and Parliament Mny Have to Legis-

ana faTltRment Mny AaEe u boSis-
| late.
| Honest Joe Addison and the other
poets of his day hunted for pensions
and offices by means of fiattering verses
in honor Of men in power. For one
smile in the Campaign" Goldolphin
made the lucky Mr. Addison commits
sioner, and to the end of his days he
usually had fat job Of some kind. II
was the custom of the wits of the age
to write lines to a Nobleman or a Per-
( son of Quality. A dedication was worth
a purse, at least guinea and the
! threadbare hack paid for his bottle of
| port by hattering the great. Then and
long afterward the Patron was every
| thing; and when more democratic age
| poet dared to smite John Bull in his
round, rudy, self complacent phiz.
Byron thumped away at his country,
shoWered immortal wit and humor upon
it, but more as Robin GoodfelloW or
some spirit of deviltry than as a serious
politician. Besides, he had brought
upon himself, partly in malice and
partly by no fault of his own, the I'M
forging hatred of Mrs Grundy, who
shifted at him to the last. The Public
had succeeded to the Patron, and it
wasn't safe to mention that the public
had ears.
n
tics anyway? You think of Words
worth as mumbling his verse to the
amazement of the Rydal PEASANTS; of
Coleridge as sailing on a sea of opium;
Of Tennyson, in spite of an occasional
war poem in the Times as dwelling
with Tithonus and Ulysses Keats and
Rossetti We're as far away from poll
ties as men can be. Matthew Arnold
preached to the British Philistine in
prose but not in verse. In verse Will
liam Morris lived in a remote world.
Swinburne shrieks or banks political
poem once in a while, but Swinburne
usually abuses the other fellows, not his
countrymen, and can affect political
opinion rather less than a cat affects
the tides.
The general impression is that poets
should cultivate poetry as a little rose
garden or cabbage patch of their own.
and not NEEDLE with the world outside
their hawthorn hedge. Rudyard Kip
ling is not in the verse-making business
for the beauty of it, but for the sake
of the use His way or regarding the
Nature and Functions of the Poet as
the essayists love to write, is that the
Ynno i-te for bn ra1y Of .tt. 4
directing the patriotism of his coun-
trymen, exposing their faults, ridicul
ing their foibles. His new poem in the
London Times" is a good specimen of
this He tells Bull in effect that Bull
is an ass, numbskull creature whose
favorite beliefs are fiubdub. A man |
might lay hands upon the British Con-
stitution and live but a man who at
tacks the hottest British belief belief In |
athletics. who dares to talk about 1.-The |
fannelled fools at the wicket or the !
mudded OATS at the goals" what will |
happen to him? What ought to hap |
pen to him? What ought to be done to
the blasphemous wretch?
Well, all England is reading him
All the journals discuss his opinions as
as il he were Salisbury or
Rosbery. They are likely enough to be |
the cause of legislation in Parliament.
The English nation and the dominions
beyond seas have heard from their
poet Once more he has buffeted them:
and they like it,
How far away this is from Joe Ad-
olson, pipe in mouth and ink on ruff1e, |
out SNUG compliments to
Halifax or Somers Yet we dare say
that not Addison with all his offices.
and not any one or ten of the crowd
Of courtly poets, dedicators and trans
ators, ever made a 1.-THE, say a
twentieth, thirtieth, fiftieth, of the in
come earned by this young and relent-
less smiter Of the English. So much
for the commercial side; now for the
political There is in England the
government; the Opposition, hopeless
y divided and Kipling, the censor, the
tutor, the bircher of the whole lot