The Silent Isle by Arthur Christopher Benson (books to read this summer txt) 📕

same number of windows on each side, than in contemplating the structure of a tree. Uneducated people are far more charmed by the appearance of a rock which has a resemblance to something else--a human face or an animal--than by a beautifully proportioned and irregular crag. The uncultivated human being, again, loves geometrical forms in nature, such as the crystal and the basalt column, or the magnified snowflake, better than it loves forms of lavish wildness. We gather about our dwellings flowers which please by their sharply defined tint, and their correspondence of petal with petal; and yet there is just as precisely ordered a structure in natural objects, which appear to be fortuitous in shape and outline, as there is in things whose outline is more strictly geometrical. The laws which regulate the shape of a chalk down or an ivy tendril are just as severe as the laws which regulate the monkey-puzzle tree or the talc crystal. My own belief is that the trained artistic sense is probably only in its infancy, and that it will advance upon the line of the pleased apprehension of the existence of less obvious structure.

If we apply this to literature, it is my belief that the love of human beings for the stanza and the rhyme is probably an elementary thing, like the love of the crystal and the flower-shape, and that it is the love not so much of the beautiful as of the kind of effect that the observer could himself produce. The child feels that, given the materials, he could and would make shapes like crystals and flowers; but to make things of more elaborate structure would be outside his power.

To confine ourselves, then, to one single literary effect, it appears to me that the poetry of the future will probably not develop very much further in the direction of metre and rhyme. Indeed, it is possible to see, not to travel far for instances, in the work of such writers as Mr. Robert Bridges or Mr. Stephen Phillips, a tendency to write lines which shall conceal as far as possible their rhythmical beat. It is indeed a very subtle pleasure to perceive the effect of lines which are unmetrical superficially but which yet confine themselves to a fixed structure below, by varying the stresses and compensating for them. It is possible, though I do not think it very likely, that poetry may develop largely in this direction. I do not think it likely, because such writing is intricate and difficult, and ends too often in being a mere tour de force; the pleasure arising from the discovery that, after all, the old simple structure is there, though strangely disguised, I think it more probable that the superficial structure will be frankly given up. If we consider what rhyme is, and what detestable limitations it enforces on the writer for the sake of gratifying what is, after all, not a dignified pleasure, the only wonder is that such a tradition should have survived so long.

What I rather anticipate is the growth among our writers of a poetical prose, with a severe structure and sequence of thought underlying it, but with an entire irregularity of outline. The pleasure to be derived from perfectly proportioned lucid prose is a far subtler and more refined pleasure than that derived from the rhythmical beat of verse. Take, for instance, such works as The Ring and the Book and Aurora Leigh. Is there anything whatever to be gained by the relentless drumming, under the surface of these imaginative narratives, of the stolid blank verse? Would not such compositions have gained by being written in pure poetical prose? The quality which at present directs writers to choosing verse-forms for poetical expression, apart from the traditions, is the need of condensation, and the sense of proportion which the verse-structure enforces and imparts. But I should look forward to the writing of prose where the epithets should be as diligently weighed, the cadence as sedulously studied; where the mood and the subject would indicate inevitably the form of the sentence, the alternation of languid, mellifluous streams of scented and honied words with brisk, emphatic, fiery splashes of language. Indeed, in reading even great poetry, is one not sometimes sadly aware, as in the case of Shelley or Swinburne, that the logical sequence of thought is loose and indeterminate, and that this is concealed from one by the reverberating beat of metre, which gives a false sense of structure to a mood that is really invertebrate?

What I am daily hoping to see is the rise of a man of genius, with a rich poetical vocabulary and a deep instinct for poetical material, who will throw aside resolutely all the canons of verse, and construct prose lyrics with a perfect mastery of cadence and melody.

The experiment was made by Walt Whitman, and in a few of his finest lyrics, such as Out of the Cradle endlessly rocking, one gets the perfection of structure and form. But he spoilt his vehicle by a careless diffuseness, by a violent categorical tendency, and by other faults which may be called faults of breeding rather than faults of art--a ghastly volubility, an indiscretion, a lust for description rather than suggestion; and thus he has numbered no followers, and only a few inconsiderable imitators.

I think, too, that Whitman was, in position, just a little ahead, as I have indicated, of the taste of his time; and he was not a good enough artist to enforce the beauty and the possibilities of his experiment upon the world.

There is, moreover, this further difficulty in the way of the literary experimentalist. Whitman, in virtue of his strength, his vitality, his perception, his individuality, rather blocks the way; it is difficult to avoid imitating him, though it is easy to avoid his errors. It is difficult in such poetry not to apostrophise one's subject as Whitman did.

It may be asked, in what is this poetical prose to differ from the prose of great artists who have written melodious, reflective, essentially poetical prose--the prose of Lamb, of Ruskin, of Pater? The answer must be that it must differ from Lamb in sustained intention, from Ruskin in firmness of structure, from Pater in variety of mood. Such prose as I mean must be serious, liquid, profound. It must probably eschew all broad effects of humour; it must eschew narrative; it must be in its essence lyrical, an outburst like the song of the lark or the voice of the waterfall. It must deal with beauty, not only the beauty of natural things, but the beauty of human relations, though not trenching upon drama; and, above all, it must take into itself the mystery of philosophical and scientific thought. Science and philosophy are deeply and essentially poetical, in that they are attempts to build bridges into the abyss of the unknown. The work of the new lyrist must be to see in things and emotions the quality of beauty, and to discern and express the magic quickening thrill that creeps like a flame through the material form, and passes out beyond the invisible horizon, leaping from star to star, and from the furthest star into the depths of the ancient environing night.


XXVIII


A few days ago an old friend of mine, who has been a good friend to me, who is more careful of my reputation even than myself, gave me some serious advice. He said, speaking with affectionate partiality, that I had considerable literary gifts, but that I was tending to devote myself too much to ephemeral and imaginative literature, and that I ought to take up a task more worthy of my powers, write a historical biography such as a Life of Canning, or produce a complete annotated edition of the works of Pope, with a biography and appendices. I assured him that I had no talents for research, and insufficient knowledge for a historical biography. He replied that research was a matter of patience, and that as for knowledge, I could acquire it.

I thanked him sincerely for his thoughtful kindness, and said that I would hear it in mind.

The result of my reflections is that the only kind of literature worth writing is literature with some original intention. Solid works have a melancholy tendency to be monumental, in the sense that they cover the graves of literary reputations. Historical works are superseded with shocking rapidity. One remembers the description which FitzGerald gave of the labours of his friend Spedding upon Bacon. Spedding gave up the whole of his life, said FitzGerald, to editing works which did not need editing, and to whitewashing a character which could not be whitewashed. It is awful to reflect how many years Walter Scott gave to editing Dryden and Swift and to writing a Life of Napoleon--years which might have given us more novels and poems. Did Scott, did anyone, gain by the sacrifice? Of course one would like to write a great biography, but the biographies that live are the lives of men written by friends and contemporaries, living portraits, like Boswell's Johnson or Stanley's Arnold. To write such a book, one needs to have been in constant intercourse with a great personality, to have seen him in success and failure, in happiness and depression, in health and sickness, in strength and weakness. Such an opportunity is given to few.

Of course, if one has a power of wide and accurate historical survey, a trustworthy memory, a power of vitalising the past, one may well give one's life to producing a wise and judicious historical work. But here a man must learn his limitations, and one can only deal successfully with congenial knowledge. I have myself a very erratic and unbusinesslike mind. There are certain things, like picturesque personal traits, landscape, small details of life and temperament, that lodge themselves firmly in my mind; but when I am dealing with historical facts and erudite matters, though I can get up my case and present it for the time being with a certain cogency, the knowledge all melts in my mind; and no one ought to think of attempting historical work unless his mind is of the kind that can hold an immense amount of knowledge in solution. I have a friend, for instance, who can put all kinds of details into his mind--he has an insatiable appetite for them--and produce them again years afterwards as sharp and definite in outline as when he put them away. His mind is, in fact, a great spacious and roomy warehouse, where things are kept dry and in excellent order. But with myself it is quite different. To store knowledge of an uncongenial kind in my own mind is just as though I put away a heap of snowballs. In a day or two their outline is blurred and blunted; in a few months they have melted away and run down the gutters. So much for historical work.

Then there comes the question of editorial work: and here again I have the greatest admiration for men like Dr. Birkbeck Hill or Professor Masson, who will devote a lifetime to patiently amassing all the facts that can be gleaned about some great personality. But this again requires a mind of a certain order, and there is no greater mistake in literary work than to misjudge the quality and force of one's mind.

My own work, I am certain, must be of a literary kind; and when one goes a little further back and asks oneself what it is that makes great personalities, like Milton or Dr. Johnson, worth spending all this labour about, why one cares to know about their changes of lodgings and their petty disbursements, it is, after all, because they are great personalities, and have displayed