Egoism is the prevailing fault in literary criticism, which, whatever pretence of principle it sets in the foreground, does almost always begin and end in individual "taste." It acts in defiance of the Latin proverb when proceeding it tries to show that these matters of taste are arguable-are subject for debate. As it inevitably fails in this attempt, it leaves at last (like an old Bailey lawyer) the field of reason altogether and takes to abuse. This was, for example, Johnson's method. His taste was often excellent; at times it was extremely faulty; good or bad, when it was challenged he ended by calling his opponent names, on the principle, which he frankly avowed, that everyone talked for victory. There is, besides, another influence, an inevitable one, which nourishes the conceit of the critic. While we are enjoying good literature we all of us feel as if we had taken some part in the creation of it. In truth we have, so far as ourselves are concerned. Literature needs in a sense to be recreated in every fresh brain: seeing that what we have before us are ink-marks and nothing more. But this is not a kind of achievement which allows the critic to boast himself over the maker even of second-class literature. The first did not really assist at the creation of "Hamlet," though he finds it hard to realize this truth: so that he is not justified in assuming too patronizing an air towards the maker of "Festus." On the whole, the critic will be in a better

1. "Adam Cast Forth." By Charles M. Doughty. I vol. London: Duckworth and Co. 1908.

2. "The Cliffs." By Charles M. Doughty. I vol. London: Duckworth and Co. 1909.

vol.

3. "New Poems." By Stephen Phillips. London: John Lane. 1908.

I

4. "Artemision: Idylls and Songs." By Maurice Hewlett. I vol. London: Elkin Mathews. 1909.

5. "New Poems." By Herbert Trench. I London: Methuen and Co. 1907.

vol.

posture for acting the upright judge if he suppress in his mind the tendency to judge first of all from a standpoint of "taste." Literature-the best or the worst-is not a matter of taste "first of all." It is a natural product more or less inevitable. All genuine literature is that: and it is far more interesting to study the laws of its growth, after the manner of the botanist, than merely to hawk up and down specimens of good or bad grain, like the cornchandler. There is such a thing as the Spirit of the Age. To go about complaining that we are not all Elizabethans is as profitable as to complain that war has become a less heroic business since "villainous saltpetre" was digged out of the bowels of the earth. The position the critic loves to take up is a good deal like that of Hotspur's trim lord:

But for these vile guns, He would himself have been a soldier.

But for the deplorable vulgarity of our age there is no saying what the critic himself might not have achieved.

The naturalist's part is more humble. He is not obliged to be concerned only with what is first-rate, condemning lesser products at a glance. These last

are grown in the same soil as better works, only under atmospheric conditions which were not so favorable. Similar laws of growth will be traceable in them also. This of course assumes that the lesser product is genuine of its kind, not a cunning arrangement of plucked flowers and grasses. To dis

6. "The Pilgrim Jester. By Arthur E. J. Legge. I vol. London: John Lane. 1908. 7. "Clifton Chapel, and other Poems." By Henry Newbolt. I vol. London: John Mur

ray. 1908.

8. "Drake." By Alfred Noyes. 2 vols. Edinburgh and London: Wm. Blackwood and Sons. 1908.

9. "Forty Singing Seamen, etc." By Alfred Noyes. I vol. Edinburgh and London: Wm. Blackwood and Sons. 1907.

tinguish the genuine from the spurious is the more difficult when we have to do with work which is not absolutely first-rate: and by so much the business of the critic, if he can furnish a criterion to distinguish true from false, is the more useful.

The condition for this more profitable -this "botanical," or, as we have called it, "naturalist”-criticism is first of all that we enter in some degree into the mind of the author: only so can we detect the influence of his time at work. And we shall detect it if the author have any sincere inspiration. Nor shall we easily find a better field for such research and botanic study than in the great mass of verse, of poetry, which is being continually poured forth at this time. Judging by the highest standards one is compelled to call it minor poetry; but in no contemptuous sense. The attitude of the reviewer ought certainly to be sympathetic toward all this literature, which is at least free from the vulgar incitements to pinchbeck imitation and the wanton issue of inferior products which affect writing that has a commercial value. In this last field a man trying to separate gold from base metal has to begin by detecting mere fraudulent imitation-though he may not thus characterize it. With verse it is not so: the fraudulent product will at least be unconscious, showing possibly at bottom a deeper type of insincerity. But it will be much less abundant.

First, to look for the influences under which most of our poetry is at this moment created. It must be owned that the apparent influences are not very strong: the electric current seems to be a negative one. We have first the natural reaction of poetic minds from the sordid and mechanical side of con

temporary life. It is that impulse to create merely "things of beauty" which Tennyson described symbolically and illustrated in his "Palace of Art," and

which, though he there formally condemned it, was always a ruling motive with him. The "Palace of Art" is its own justifier and negatives its own condemnation. But one cannot deny that there was too much of this spirit of placid beauty-loving in Tennyson, and not enough of what Milton calls "the power to a passion." Behind Tennyson in this matter stood Keats. From Keats to the greatest body and on the whole the best of modern poetry this is still the moulding force. Such phrases as "the influence of Keats," "the influence of Tennyson" are half-erroneous. What a poet does chiefly is to call down influences which are in the air or in the time: as the Franklin kites collected electricity. He opens men's minds to receive so much of the spirit of the age as he has received. It is more than anything the prosiness of modern life (and a certain negativeness, a "negation" in all modern thought) which makes the Keats-Tennyson worship of beauty an esoteric cult to-day. That it should be the strongest impulse to verse-writing is certainly an evil. Passion, which is the life-blood of poetry. can hardly be found in a city of dreams. It is on this account that the prevailing tendency has set up two counter-currents of verse which, at any rate in the belief of those who practise them, bring back reality and action into poesy. One method, by concen

trating on one or two motives in modern life, more especially on the patriotic emotions, has tried to bring back life and passion. The other, essaying a wider sweep, has sought to accommodate itself to things as they are by foregoing what used to be reckoned the very characteristics of poetry, by forging a new rugged verse which does almost without rhyme or metre: which on principle for the "pulchra" of Horace's line seems to pose obscurity, for the "dulcia" harshness. What it aims at is vigor and a certain pictur

esqueness through being uncouth: and, strange to say, in many instances this aim it achieves. It is, moreover, a stream of poetry which has many founts and is very widely spread. We do not mention Browning in this connection; for Browning is a world in himself and contains examples of poetry of the most diverse kinds. But George Meredith certainly belongs to this "new verse" in the greatest part of his production. Abroad, writers so different as Walt Whitman and Mallarmé are in the tale. Mr. Hardy's "Dynasts," which was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review (No. 424), is so likewise.

For,

as we there said, it is difficult to describe his blank verse as poetry: the lines of really melodious verse in those three volumes may be reckoned without much arithmetic. Nevertheless all these poets we have cited succeed in a great part of what they aim at. This example shows how necessary it is that the critic should be mostly a "naturalist" studying what is, not binding himself by pre-established rules.

Of the poets upon our list there is only one who belongs to the category last mentioned. In the same number of this Review in which we noticed Mr. Hardy's "Dynasts," we spoke also of Mr. C. M. Doughty's important prose work, "Travels in Arabia Deserta," and had something to say of his very long poem "The Dawn of Britain."

This

was only eighteen months ago. But since then Mr. Doughty has produced two more volumes of verse, "Adam cast forth" (1908) and "The Cliffs," which has only just appeared. The latter of these may be classed in either of two among our three categories; for it is as much inspired by patriotic sentiment as any of the verse of Mr. Kipling and his followers. Otherwise the influence which has acted most potently on the author of "The Cliffs" evidently comes from "The Dynasts." We have one very curious evidence of this.

"The Cliffs" is a prophetic poem inspired by the fear of or the expectation of German invasion; it is pre-eminently modern in some details, introducing all sorts of warlike inventions which have not yet seen the light of common day. And yet in the great scene at the end, when the two invading fleets by sea and air have come to grief, we meet with this direction: "Enter an Ensign bearing his regimental Colors." Ensigns existed in the Peninsular war— that is to say, in the age of "The Dynasts." Is Mr. Doughty unaware that they have long disappeared from His Majesty's Army? A very good episode in "The Cliffs" is the conversation of the villagers-near "Claybourne Cliffs"

discussing the character and doings of a certain Harvest Kempe. But this, again, is very Hardyish. In point of versification, in view of what Mr. Doughty aims at by his versification, the soliloquy of Hobbe which opens the volume is as good as any:

Out of our trenches a third time we fought:

'Twas moonlight, when we stormed a Russian breach.

Tall Major Boyse, who led us, was in first;

I next. England, with shining blade aloft,

He cried, for ever, lads; our lives for England!

And on that fell; the blood ran from his

breast.

'Twas I who caught our major in mine

arms:

I bayonnetted him who shot him; swarmed out on us

Blue Russians in bright moonlight.

It cannot be denied, on the other hand, that there is in this poem a great deal of what can only be called childish: that it savors almost of the fancies of a schoolboy, full of imaginary new inventions and new explosives, inventions which have none of the verisimilitude of Mr. Wells'; and the sudden collapse of the enemy celebrated by