The English Poetic Tradition

REVIEWS Hitlerism will probably feel that for them he has answere4 the prayer> "Oh that my enemy would write a book., Feder's sketch of the rise of the party is addressed to simple minds, and the monotonous repetition of such entries as, "The Party proceeded to enlighten t_he Nation amidst severe conflicts. Its opponents replied with torrents of lies>" is not noticeably helpful. We may suspect that Herr Feder remembers his Leader's dictum upon propaganda:· "The German has not the slightest notion how a people must be misled if we want to have the adherence of the masses.~' THE ENGLISH POETIC TRADITION* MALCOLM w. WALLACE The ten essays which make up this volume were nearly alJ delivered as le~tures by Professor de Selincourt during his five-year tenure of the Chair of Poetry at Oxford, and they constitute. a worthy add]tion to the criticaJ literature which has been published by his predecessors. A group of separate lectures naturally lacks the i_mpressiveness of achievement of such volumes as the author's variorum Prelude or his biography of Dorothy vVordsworth, but they will delight the intelligent student of poetry, and furnish abundant justification) if that were needed) for. Professor de SeJincourt 's appointment to the chair which had been occupied by Arnold and Bradley. The first essay in the volume, l(On Poetry," is the Inaugural .Lecture~ Here, Professor de Selincourt sketches briefly the general principles underlying his conception of poetry. He tells us what poetry· is and what it has been erroneously supposed to be. But while he controverts the doctrines of eminent critics, and is compelled for the sake of brevity to phrase his own convictions in somewhat dogmatic fashion, his writing is pervaded by an air of sweet reasonableness, natural courtesyJ and intellectual 'force> which goes far to conciliate opinion. His theory of poetry is not very originaL His debt to Wordsworth, to Shelley, to Arnold, to Bradley, confessed or implied, is very obvious, but if it be an eclectic theory that he elaborates, it is none the less a unified and highly Intelligent conception . *Oxford Lectures 011 Poelry, ·by E. de Selincourt, Clarendon Press. 131 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY He deals first with those lovers of poetry who, in reaction against Arnold's insistence on the "criticism-of-life" point of view, insist that the poetic element in poetry lies in its music. Very gently but very firmly he classes this belief among the heresies. Music enchants us by pure sound, but the transport of poetry springs from the eifect upon us of sound with a clearly defined ·intellectual content . It is not true that we can appreciate poetry written in a foreign tongue with which we are not familiar. We can indeed appreciate its music, but nothing is more tedious in poetry than music that has no meaning. Would those lines, he asks, upon the daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty, affect us even musically if we did not know what a swallow or what a daffodil was? Furthermore, supreme poetic effect is often achieved by lines the musical effect of which is almost nugatory. Closely r.elated to this heresy is the doctrine of those who hold that "pure" poetry is a mystic magic allied not to music but to prayer. Here Professor de Selincourt joins issue with M. !'abbe Bremond. Much poetry, it is true, has an affinity with mystical experience, but the field of poetry is much wider than that of mystiCISm. Blake and Wordsworth were both mystics, but Blake could see in Chaucer the great poetical observer ofmen, and Wordsworth could declare of Suckling's Ballad on a Wedding that "for grace and simplicity this stands unrivalled in the whole compass of ancient and modern poetry." Moreover, de Selincourt will draw no hard and fast line between the language of prose and the language of poetry. What some critics regard as magic in the poet's use of words whereby he conveys to us a transcendental feeling, is really only an extension of the natural power ·inherent in language when a living experience transmuted by imagination seeks voice in...