IDEAS, TRUTH AND BEAUTY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1575, 19 October 1912, Page 9

IDEAS, TRUTH AND BEAUTY.

It is sonic time since Mr. Masefield's novel "Multitude and Solitude" became accessible as a sevenpenny reprint. It has now, however, been published, apparently for the first time, in the United States, and the editor of the 1 "Dial"- takes a text from it for his leading article. The text is the challenge which one of the characters in the book offers another— "Taking writers generally throughout the world, what does the literary mind contribute to the world's thought now?" It raises the question (says an English writer) whether it is the office of the literary artist 'to enrich the .world with new ideas, and the writer of the article, Awhile not necessarily associating Mr. Maseficld with the opinion, of one of his characters, argues that it is not. It is not his function to Brush the gold from the quarts, but to work up gold already crushed into such shapes of artistic beauty as ho may. It may happen, in a caso such as that of Goethe, that a craftsman works a new vein of thought, but that is because he doubles the part of craftsman with that of the thinker, and it is not to be urged as a reproach to one who works in imaginative literature that he is simply popularising in netv forms matter found to his hand by'others. The contention is well argved and tho conclusion is sound, but once it is settled that a poem—to confine ourselves to poetry— is n ol; to, be criticised 011 the ground that whatever body of doctrine it contains is not origiral, there arises the further question: Ts it to be criticised on the ground of that body of doctrine not being true? Or, ill other words, since one. judges of the truth of au idea by its coincidence with one's own conceptions is ac'jniesceEce in a poet's views a necessary ele-

incut of tho enjoyment of his poetry!' Tho answer must also bo in the negative. That ono may experience groat pleasure in being of ono mind with the poet ho is reading thero can bo no doubt, but that it is not a poetic pleasure is seen from the fact that one can have the same pleasure in reading prose. Yet one comes very often upon tho fallacy that the truth and tho beauty of a poem are inseparable. People talk, for example, as if in somo mysterious.way "Paradise Lost" wero a less great poem- to-day than previously, because Cnristianity is not now hold in the form in which Milton held it; and as if Tennyson were not so great a poet now as he was during his lifetime, because his.interpretation of life lias become antiquated. Jvvidently there can be 110 such variations in the standard of poetic worth and the essential element of poetry must 1)3 uniform. There are .times when the confusion indicated is explicable, but it is never justifiable. Considering tlio state of public feeling at the time tho "lievolt of Islam" was published, its reception was such ns might have been cxpected; nevertheless those critics who confined themselves to pulverising the "pernicious doctrines" of that poem were doing an injustice, for they were treating a poetic masterpiece as if it were what it was not —a mero Godwinian pamphlet in twelve cantos.

A very striking instance of the independence of the truth of an idea of its beauty is seen in tho great lines in which l'rospero comments upon the vanishing of the vision ill "The Tempest.". 'J'lwt incident becomes a symbol of the dissolution of the universe. The universe is to dissolve like a vision—in respect, first, of its silence, there is to bo nothing of the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds; in respect also of its suddenness and completeness, there is to be left not a wrack behind. Now there are many who would not 'accept that explanation of the final catastrophe. The orthodox Christian would not, who takes literally the declaration that the heavens are to depart with a great noise and the elements to melt with fervent heat. Nor would the ..scientist, who talks of the gradual extinction of the sun and the cooking of the central fire, aiid who gives Mr. Lang his fine conception of'the last man on the ice-hound equator reading Shelley to revive l'or his imagination tho splendours of a world that have been buried under the universal snow. Yet . both Christian and scientist would probably, if asked to mention tho noblest lines of blank verso in our language, quote the lines in question—only, they would cross swords with John Jvoats over his contention that, the final test of the truth of an idea is its beauty.