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is not the brilliancy, the versatility, the fecundity
or the ingenuity of a poet that makes him "great";
it is the plane upon which his imagination moves, the
height from which he looks down, the magnitude of his
ideas. This largeness of vision is often accompanied
by extreme simplicity in the literary faculty, and it
is on thei account mainly that the really great poet
is often partly obscured from public recognition by
the greater brilliancy and fertility of some of his
contemporaries. We are too apt to measure the greatness
of a writer by the degree to which he astonishes us
or interests us, rather than by the actual spiritual
benefit and enlargement of ideas which he confers. There
was a time when Dryden was considered a greater poet
than Milton. Dryden was a writer of great intellectual
power, great literary activity and an admirable range
of accomplishment; but we know now that that obscure
old man, who did not write so very much in all his life,
and who but for his obscurity and his blindness might
never have written our grand epic at all, was so far
greater than the renowned Dryden by the grandeur and
breadth of his imagination that the latter sinks altogether
into a lower rank in the record of literature. So, too,
in more recent times, Lord Byron, with his dash and
daring and his immense cleverness and gift of verse,
overclouded all the reputations of his age, but I think
that we are now nearly all of us agreed that three at
least of his contemporaries dwell upon an intellectual
level far loftier and purer than his, and were, therefore,
essentially greater poets than he.
In our own
time I think we allow ourselves to be a little too much
dazzled by the supreme literary gift and magnificent
versification of Tennyson, and the insight, vigor and
extraordinary versatility of Browning. We are apt almost
to pas by a poet who in this last age occupies the clearest
and noblest plane of all. I mean Matthew Arnold. Arnold
is not so triumphantly the poet as Tennyson, nor is
he so various or so clever as Browning, but he looks
from a grander height than either, his imagination has
its natural abode in a diviner atmosphere. The whole
range of life, time and eternity, the mysteries and
beauties of existence and its deepest spiritual problems
are continually present to his mind. In his genius is
that rare combination of philosophy and the poetic impulse
in the highest degree, which has given us our few solitary
poets. The only test by which we can measure the greatness
of a verse writer is the quality of the effect which
he produces upon the mind of a reader. He who has been
reading Browning till his head spins with the multitude
of subtleties and splendid tours de force, or he who
is even weary, if such a thing may be, of the rounded
perfections of Tennyson, betakes himself to Matthew
Arnold, and then he seems to have reached the hills.
With a mind blown clear as by the free wind of heaven
he surveys the extent of life. He passes through an
atmosphere where only the noblest emotions, life, beauty
and thought, possess him. He becomes gentle and majestic
as the mind of the master who commands him.
I believe
that the time will come when Matthew Arnold will be
accounted the greatest poet of his generation, and one
of the three or four noblest that England has produced.
L.
Now
that the artists are making preparations for an exhibition
at Chicago in 1893, the thought naturally arises that
in some way the literary men should be represented also.
Here the latter are distinctly at a disadvantage. If
in Canada we had a large native literature to draw upon,
our books might be placed on sale during the time of
the exhibition; but this is not the case, and even if
it were so it might not have the desired effect. It
has occurred to me that one of our enterprising publishers
should arrange with some person of known taste and judgment
to collect a representative mass of Canadian literature,
and publish it as a Canadian memorial volume. This could
be placed on sale in the proper section of the exhibition,
and I have no doubt but the publisher would be substantially
rewarded for his trouble and outlay. The volume need
not be a large one, two hundred pages would cover the
ground, and this space would compass a collection in
which Canada could feel a genuine pride.
S.
I
have always believed that nature poetry was not limited
to mere description of external nature, but that it
extended to all natural phenomena, and that the really
great nature poet would desire to get back to primeval
man when he was closely united with nature, and scarcely
beginning to dream of conquering her elements. Among
the great elements of nature that have had a strong
fascination for me is the element of fire. It seems
to me that of all the elements it is by far the most
remarkable and the nearest to man in its personality,
if it could be said to have a personality. How man first
became aware of its use, and the gradual stages through
which he came to have it in such wide use, and yet in
such comparatively supreme subjection, has always been
a matter of deep interest to me. Fire has appeared to
me to be a strange demon, whose very nature is essentially
cruel, and yet perfectly natural and necessary to the
existence of the universe. The following is an attempt
to personify fire in its relationship to man:—
FIRE.
In
the night I sit beside you,
Dream the
dreams that glow inside you,
As you sparkle
ever higher;
While your
flame-whip goads and lashes
The red back
logs into ashes
On their crackling,
hissing pyre
Clinging,
kissing, like a leman,
Writhing,
twisting, like a demon;
How I love
and dread you, Fire!
What
a strange, uncanny spirit
From some
far past you inherit,
Some weird,
unappeased desire
Like some
unavenged devil,
Leaping, lurid,
red in evil,
That the ages
cannot tire;
Clinging,
kissing, like a leman,
Writhing,
twisting, like a demon,
Strange, weird,
red, unholy Fire!
How
and whence was thy beginning?
From what
liberty of sinning?
From what
genie's licensed hire?
From what
dread power that possessed you
Did the men
of earth first wrest you,
Causing unavenged
ire?
From what
liberty of sinning?
From what
weird and strange beginning
Wrested, chained,
and bound thee, Fire?
There
within their iron prison
Did they hold
you, shrunk and wisen,
Colled your
red tongue like a wire;
Curbed in
iron teeth your malice,
Till as in
the golden chalice
Leaps the
wine in ruddy spire;
So with glowing
madness gleaming,
From your
trance of evil dreaming,
Leaped you
forth in hatred, Fire.
Leaped
you forth an evil gladness
Shining through
your demon madness,
Lusts that
rudest hates inspire;
Growing, growing,
ever younger,
With an unappeased
hunger,
With an appetite
so dire,
Went you forth,
a thing of horror,
Desolater,
hell-restorer,
Scourging
earth and heaven, Fire!
Imp-like,
laughing, far-sky-shining,
Like ten million
serpents twining,
Ruddy, ray-like,
ever higher;
Imp-like,
climbing, ever-building
Over earth
one flame-house, gilding
Land and heaven
with red desire.
Cities fell
in lurid thunder,
Souls that
lived were mute with wonder,
Earth and
man were conquered, Fire.
All
wide earth was one red clamor,
Moan of bell
and stroke of hammer,
Shriek of
souls ere they expire;
Glare of town
and forest flaming,
Sights of
horror past tongue's naming,
Even death
would not require;
Till at last
men starved and bound thee,
Built an iron
cage around thee,
Sleepy, snake-like,
once more, Fire.
And
they think they hold thee prisoned,
But whene'er
I see thy wizened
Look of serpent-like
desire,
Then I know
that thou art dreaming
Over in a
sleepy seeming
All the madness
of thine ire;
Then I know
that thou art longing,
With a hate
to hell belonging,
For thy freedom,
Demon-Fire.
Yet
I love to sit beside you,
Dream the
dreams that glow inside you
As you leap
up ever higher,
While your
flame-whip goads and lashes,
The red back
logs into ashes
On their crackling,
hissing pyre;
Clinging,
kissing, like a leman,
Writhing,
twisting, like a demon,
Strange, weird,
red, unholy Fire.
[C.?]
A
critic should have the most amiable disposition of his
time; he should possess the gentler qualities of humanity
developed more sweetly and evenly than his contemporaries.
With a breadth of sympathy and keenness of vision that
will embrace the horizon and notice an irregularity
in the petals of a flower; he should have a taste less
individual and more catholic than any one of his readers.
He should be able to mingle praise and blame in such
exact proportions that the true value of the work which
he criticises will at once become apparent. As Lauder
says:—"It is only thus a fair estimate can
be made, and it is only by such fair estimate that a
writer can be exalted to his proper station. If you
toss the scale too high it descends again rapidly below
its equipoise; what it contains drops out, and people
catch at it, scatter it and lose it." If he is
the owner of some crotchet which he endeavors to force
upon the notice of the world, and which he cries, using
the shoulders of the man nearest him to perch upon,
the world finds out speedily that his own limits do
not give him the elevation, and that his voice has no
authority. If he is violent and sounds a rattle when
anything dangerous or formidable approaches, he may
for a time have the credit of being a faithful watchman
over the moral treasure chest of society, but the next
generation usually finds that he was keeping it from
its inheritance. The effect of violence in criticism
is to discredit a man's utterance. We do not allow a
lunatic to claim inspiration by reason of the foam on
his lips.
The watchword
of the critic should be "Freedom of Mind."
As Amiel says:—"The reward of the critic
is to feel himself freer than his neighbor," and
although this implies a knowledge of his superiority
to his surroundings, this knowledge brings with it no
triumph. The reward is esoteric, and is the mere consciousness
of truth within. It has no note of personal victory,
the desire for which is after all the most dangerous
passion in the human bosom.
S.
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