LITERATURE AND POLITICS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 781, 2 April 1910, Page 9

LITERATURE AND POLITICS.

An essay on the subject of. Literal tnre and Politics is included in Mr. Alfred Austin's latest volume of facile prosing—just published by Messrs. Macmiflan—which bears tho modest, title, "The Bridling of Pegasus." As the title is explained in a preliminary note, no one can fail to identify Bel-le-rophon, the bearer of the golden bridle.' Mr. Austin's topic is a suggestive oho, but may wo hint that ho has ■treated it-with a greater degrceyof superficiality than it merits ? And ho is superficial because he 'has gotvhold of'the wrong title for his essay .\.:H6 obviously set. out with the notion that because." politics were very living realities when Virgil and Dante, Spensor, Shakespeare, and Milton lived -and wrote, and these Olvmpians necessarily breathed -the vital air of spacious times, therefore their .splendid versogained inestimably : in splendour by their intimacy with a world of moving change. Well, who doubts it? Mr. Austin,would'have easily perceived, if he had not tripped over his title —as other versatile essayists have been known to do—is that, the writers whom ho »amcs, like hosts of others wham he does not'name, were politicians in tho same manner as they were poots, by the accident of birth. The genius which makes a poet, li.';e the temperament which makes a politician, is from the alembic of nature. And the negativo example which Me. Austin cites, that of Wordsworth, is proof that his postulate is wronc. One canaot lay

down formulas for poets, as Mr.- Aus:tin does, and affirm that if they "led a rather more mixed life"—that is his pleasant way of chiding Wordsworth's love of solitu-le—they flight do what, was done- by the Athenian and Elizabethan dramatists. It the poet is a man of action he will respond as inovitably to his environment-as-Words-worth did to. his Cumbrian lakes and hills. If lie is not, one nould simply ask whether the Poet Laureate prefers the poems which Wordsworth wrote under tho stimulus ■of tin French Revolution- to his "Ode on Intimations of Immortality." To suggest that politics— not party politics, which Mr. Austin professes to abhor as a literary ingredient—has been'a great -formative influence in..literature is-to iiavesty the simpler theory that great poets and groat prose writers have been infinitely receptive, of. tho tides of foelijnjg'iand generative impulse which great issues arouse,, havo caught the inagio of their times, and transmuted it, not into, the catchwords of party, which are for.a day, but into the immortal currency which can never be debased. The,infinite susceptibility of the human soul—and nono of our barren claptrap phrases regarding tho potency of politics to make an Aeschylus or to unmake a Wordsworth—accounts for the difference/between "Hamlet"' and St; Augustine's "Confessions" and Xeats's "Ode. to a Nightingale!" •; Just below the highest poetry and within the bounds of the highest prose we do find a marvellous fecundity to which tho essayist can pay lawful homage., It is to be feared we must drag -party' politics into this aiena.'. But that■ cannot, be helped. Neither Dryden nor Pope;' for example, could help, being politicians wifci deliberate opinions,'and though Burke could, and did,' rise aboifl Earty,- we cannot forget his partialities.' literature, however, is not disgraced through'ha?mg been made the handmaid of. Whig and Tory. ■ One of the' which.a place in the library of'the student and the politician is waiting. is a representative anthology of political satire—for the verso of sho partisan is riecsssarily. of "The Needy Knife-grinder" order. The objection that political.satires are among the ephemera of liter ituro is not altogether convincing. Our historians take endless trouble by their researches among State papers to .restore this or that period of, : it may be, remote history, for the sake of a generation which has ceased to care whether Queen Elizabeth ...had six hundred or six thousand dresses in. her wardrobe, '■'. or whether Charles' II .died; a' good Catholic or a; bad'' Pro-' •testf),t.;; What historians .could. gi\e !jis," ; or what wj could get for ourselves' ;if the : material were. easily accessible, is a vivid realisation of whit contemporary men thought/and said-when they, were deeply moved by the currents of political change. ••'- If this were more generally understood, ballads and satif'. cal versa would be copiciusly used • t>.. supplement and illustrate the unemotional record. From this point of view a few stanzas of "Lilliburlero" are, worth many pages of the. dogmatic statements which so many. of our writer's appear to regard as the consummation of-duty to their day and generation We have no doubt that an appreciative student of "Punch" could .Victorian history in.a,manner that, would delight the public and surprise those, who &o glibly -affirm that the satirist has written all his best work in water. —"Glasgow Herald." :