New-York tribune., 1903-07-07
POET And PUBLIC.
Andre5o Lang on Their Present Cold
Relations.
From The London Morning Post.


younger wandering pale and wildered Gas
Professor Dowden says Of Shelley in a railway
station. Il have lost" he said, my Earthly
Paradise" He had also lost much of his porta-
bic property, but what irked him was his tenn
porary separation from Mr. William Morriss
poem. respected that man. though his faults
as a citizen were conspicuous, and 1 still respect
him. He was one of "the children Of the second
birth whom this world could not tame" and
rowed six in his college torpid.
Are there still poetry readers like my friend of
old days? Would youth lament its Mr.. Stephen
Phillips, If sundered from his works, more than
the rest of his baggage? How know?
Old age has many disagreeable tokens among
them this lack of absorbing interest in con-
temporary poetry. Time was when a man
rushed to Parkers to buy the new volume of
Tennyson, or Browning or Mr.. Norris or Mr..
Swinburne, and hurried to his rooms to devour
it, That time is past long ago. One did not
tumble downstairs to purchase anything of Mr.
Brownings in the age Of "Pacchiarotto" and the
rest OF them. After "Sigurd the Vosung" one
could wait for MI Morris And so, alas! with
petrifled to new poetry even now, and Mr.. Mac
kails translation Of the Odyssey" begets the
cared for the Muse. This" as Toad IN the
Hole remarked of a really good murder, lis
what you can recommend to a friend" This is
real poetry, but then, Mr.. MackaI has a great
ally, Homer. But never felt so fossized as
when lady yesterday recommended to me the
works OF a young poet which had never taken
the trouble to open So far 1 had ceased to
be one Of What Mr. Matthew Arnold perhaps
ironically called "one of the great poetry read
ing puDllc. IhaI PUBIC obviously IeduS new
poetry. Now, Brother John. in Rabelais detects
a sign Of old age in this. that he has more
awful apprehension of meeting bad wine, ana
fear to read bad poetry.
There is no doubt that poetry by the older
poets Is exposed in the book shops OF little
towns. One sees Globe editions OF the British
classical minstrels Shakespeare, Spenser, Pope,
Scott, and the rest, and other editions with
bright covers and gilt edges. But one has an
uneasy suspicion that the books are bought as
school
prizes, but not really perused. 1t Is odd to
notice how few people recognize quotation
from Shakespeare, if II is not a regular stock
quotation. Nobody ever read the "Faery Queen
twice. il is said, and from Macaulay's account
OF few being in at the death of the Blatant
Beast it looks as If that omnlVorous reaoer had
never finished the romance himself. If the
Blatant Beast was meant for the Puritan party,
at his death nobody was In Like "Charley's
Aunt" he is still running" We are, perhaps
rather humbugs about poetry. Numberless
books are written about it. l have just been
reading one: Mr.. Hepburn Millars Literary
History of Scotland" But 1 doubt II twenty
men north Of the Tweed professors excludeol
have read for pleasure the poems, long and
large, attributed to Huchoun, or those OF Henry
son and Dunbar and Montgomery, all Of them
famous, as Dante according to Voltaire was
famous. but unread. The young lady in Mr.
Anstey's tale remarks that poetry Is such
footle don't you know" and If we were quite
honest many of would be found to share
this opinion. Children used to Ike poetry long
ago, not only Aytoun, and ballads. and Macau-
lay but Shakespeare. Now they shy away
from a gift Of a poetry book, and think 0f they
do not say, like an outspoken boy OF my
ecousintancel II suppose somebody will give
me a Prayer Book next" attribute this un-
natural behavior to education. The modern
child lives In constant fear Of being pounced On
and asked questions and made to get poetry
OF by heart, which children used to do for their
own delight. Perhaps they were always the
exceptions; we do not hear that Scotts many
brothers and sisters went about shouting
II NAV also be noted that many people who
oival,r ood mo
and deserted so that they flock together into
little mobs for mutual protection, Wordsworth
societies Browning societies, reading societies
Of all kinds Now i would as lief fish at Loeb
Leven in a fishing competiton-men in boats
shouting to each other and breaking the silence
round Queen Mary S island prison, Whlskey
going every kind of gTegarious horror-as read
poetry in a society. 1t is in solitude, I'm q nook
with a book" that poetry is to be tasted. But
among the Northumbrian miners-one might as
well read Euclid in a society These studies
demand lonely application. A dozen decent
bodies met to dig the meaning out OF IN Me
moriam' is a spectacle comic and mournful,
and one that would have consternated the poet:
II takes a dozen men and women to understand
hin1-and then they don't. The eegy is not like
the obscurer parts of HegePs philosophy, ana
these are not most easily understood by being
read in a crowd. The minstrel used to sing at
q street corner, Mr.. Punch still sets up his
drama, ard everybody, men, women and chill
dren knew what he meant. But now many
people seem to hold that poetry is not thing
for solitary pleasure, but rather a puzzle TO be
solved as YOU may see idle men in a club con-
sulting each other about the lights IN that cruel
thing-a double acrostic.
Keats who knew what poetry is, used severe
expressions about science. There was an aN1ul
rainbow in the sky, he says, but now II is
given among the catalogue of common Things
And indeed say what will. science, even
little of it. is destructive Of poetry. Mr. Darwin,
the more scientific he grew the more he came
to think poetry "footle" and especially the plays
of Shakespeare became hateful TO him. II man
kind had been born scientific there would have
talking beasts and birds, giants, dragons, angels
and a thousand other delightful beings. The
woods "dispeopled Of their dreams, not by
the Folding Star of Bethlehem, but by scientific
gentlemen who sit down in a vernal woods with
pocket microscopes. The scientific spirit has
taken hold of the readers of poetry too; it is
not about the poem they care, but about its
moral Significance the very last thing that the
poet troubled himself about. Mr.. Ruskin, in one
of his many and various moods, denounced the
poems OF Coleridge as useless" Poetry was
never meant to be useful and Shelley, though
he preached so wildly well" truly said that you
might as well go to gin shop for leg of NUT
ton to him for human nature. His was fairy
nature. Then Mr.. Matthew Arnold, though by
the grace of the Muse poet, wrote what he
did concerning ideas about conduct and the
poetry reading societies go hunting in packs for
the moral ideas in Wordsworth or Browning.
Mr. Carlyle must add his sermons about mis-
sions and messages. and persons with no natural
taste for poetry burrow for sermons in Shake
speare. They might as wisely dig in Sucking
and Carew. They like the man in The
Strange story who neglected the surface gold
for some stuff that would give him eternal life
on earth. Then we have all the lectures and
books on the sources Of poets and what they
cribbed from each other, and about foreign in
1uences, and phiology, and whatever else de-
lights the soul OF Professor Skeat and other pro-
fessors. So poetry becomes a branch Of science
and contributes to the vast dreariness of inef-
fectual things.
.SurTOgateS' NOt1ceS.