INSPIRATION IN CRITICS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 821, 21 May 1910, Page 9

INSPIRATION IN CRITICS.

Mr. W. J. Courthopo has just completed a great and important task iritli tliß publication of the sixth volume of his "History of English Poetry." "The Times" literary supplement says. that "hi 3 tool; lias no rival on the same scale, and it will long remain a mine of learning for students to dig in and an interesting exposition of one view of the history of our poetry.'" "The. Times" then proceeds to trounce Mr. Courtlmpe because he lucks the divine fire which critics should liavo if they are to do justice to the poets. "The work of Coleridgo and-Matthew 'Arnold is a thing done once for all, and neither thin volume nor any other will undo it," says "The Timer,." ''It is a thankless and disagreeable thing ■to have to say. that what Mr. Court-

hopo writes here is, on the wholo, simply an attempt to put back the clock of criticism, and that it inevitably fails; but that is the fact, and it has to be said. A Lack oi tho Divine Fire. "Tho divine fire in its full measure is the peculiar of the poets; but tho critic who is to interpret them to others must at least have si spark of it himself. That does not appear to be the case with Mr. Courthope as regards the greatest of tho poets discussed in this volume. His wide Icnowledgo of literature, his firm hold of tho important fact, so often forgotten nowadays, that poetry is an art, his complete freedom from tho common mistako of thinking that literature can over bo adequately treated apart from life —all these stand him in good stead, and produco a great deal from which most students of our poetry may learn things which they did not know before. But tho simplo and unfortuuate fact, is that ho cannot take us into the secret places or Wordsworth, or Keats, or Shelley, becauso ho has'never been there himself. "Of courso ho praises certain parts of the poetry of each of them; but tho impression left by each of tho three long chapters which ho devotes to them. is that ho has never really been carried out of himself by any one of them. His view of them is essentially an external view. Always interesting and instructive on poetry as an art, ho seems scarcely to be aware that all great poetry, is also a kind of inspiration. He is a schoolmaster correcting, and sometimes admiring, a set of exercises, never a man who has been through a great experience and is trying to tell other people about it. "All really groat criticism must riM) occasionally to tho mood of the man who has beou initiated into a mystery, and the most successful analysis of the constituent parts of poetry may fail entirely, like analysis in other fields, to tell us anything about the secret of life. "Neither Wordsworth nor Keatu nor Shelley ever tried to make verses to entertain the town or to bo quoted by the politicians. Each of them profoundly and permanently influenced tho mind of his countrymen, but nono of them ever could be easy reading to tho pooplo who attend political dinners. " 'Might, wisdom, joy, peace,' as Jlr. Raleigh has well said, 'these were' for Wordsworth 'not qualities projected by the. imagination of man iuto a lifeless universe, but qualities that exist outside of man, and may pass into his life if only ho will bo quiet and attend.' What Wordsworth did was not, as Mr. Courtbopo imagines, to seo himself everywhere, but to discover in the very plames't things, simplest actions, tho daisy and tho peasant, the familiar matters of to-day, those elements- of : great poetry which had before his time ' been commonly thought to bo discoverable only in moro splendid scenes and persons."