Shelley; an essay | Page 2

the Wanderer is being called to her
Father's house, but we would have the call yet louder, we would have
the proffered welcome more unstinted. There are still stray remnants of
the old intolerant distrust. It is still possible for even a French historian
of the Church to enumerate among the articles cast upon Savonarola's
famous pile, _poesies erotiques, tant des anciens que des modernes,
livres impies ou corrupteurs, Ovide, Tibulle, Properce, pour ne nommer
que les plus connus, Dante, Petrarque, Boccace, tous ces auteurs
Italiens qui deja souillaient les ames et ruinaient les moeurs, en creant
ou perfectionnant la langue_. {2} Blameworthy carelessness at the least,
which can class the Vita Nuova_ with the _Ars Amandi and the
Decameron! And among many English Catholics the spirit of poetry is
still often received with a restricted Puritanical greeting, rather than
with the traditionally Catholic joyous openness.
We ask, therefore, for a larger interest, not in purely Catholic poetry,
but in poetry generally, poetry in its widest sense. With few exceptions,
whatsoever in our best poets is great and good to the nonCatholic, is
great and good also to the Catholic; and though Faber threw his edition
of Shelley into the fire and never regretted the act; though, moreover,
Shelley is so little read among us that we can still tolerate in our
Churches the religious parody which Faber should have thrown after
his three-volumed Shelley; {3}--in spite of this, we are not disposed to
number among such exceptions that straying spirit of light.

We have among us at the present day no lineal descendant, in the
poetical order, of Shelley; and any such offspring of the aboundingly
spontaneous Shelley is hardly possible, still less likely, on account of
the defect by which (we think) contemporary poetry in general, as
compared with the poetry of the early nineteenth century, is mildewed.
That defect is the predominance of art over inspiration, of body over
soul. We do not say the defect of inspiration. The warrior is there, but
he is hampered by his armour. Writers of high aim in all branches of
literature, even when they are not--as Mr. Swinburne, for instance,
is--lavish in expression, are generally over-deliberate in expression. Mr.
Henry James, delineating a fictitious writer clearly intended to be the
ideal of an artist, makes him regret that he has sometimes allowed
himself to take the second-best word instead of searching for the best.
Theoretically, of course, one ought always to try for the best word. But
practically, the habit of excessive care in word-selection frequently
results in loss of spontaneity; and, still worse, the habit of always
taking the best word too easily becomes the habit of always taking the
most ornate word, the word most removed from ordinary speech. In
consequence of this, poetic diction has become latterly a kaleidoscope,
and one's chief curiosity is as to the precise combinations into which
the pieces will be shifted. There is, in fact, a certain band of words, the
Praetorian cohorts of poetry, whose prescriptive aid is invoked by every
aspirant to the poetical purple, and without whose prescriptive aid none
dares aspire to the poetical purple; against these it is time some banner
should be raised. Perhaps it is almost impossible for a contemporary
writer quite to evade the services of the free-lances whom one
encounters under so many standards. {4} But it is at any rate curious to
note that the literary revolution against the despotic diction of Pope
seems issuing, like political revolutions, in a despotism of its own
making.
This, then, we cannot but think, distinguishes the literary period of
Shelley from our own. It distinguishes even the unquestionable
treasures and masterpieces of to-day from similar treasures and
masterpieces of the precedent day; even the Lotus-Eaters_ from
_Kubla-Khan; even Rossetti's ballads from Christabel. It is present in
the restraint of Matthew Arnold no less than in the exuberance of

Swinburne, and affects our writers who aim at simplicity no less than
those who seek richness. Indeed, nothing is so artificial as our
simplicity. It is the simplicity of the French stage ingenue. We are
self-conscious to the finger-tips; and this inherent quality, entailing on
our poetry the inevitable loss of spontaneity, ensures that whatever
poets, of whatever excellence, may be born to us from the Shelleian
stock, its founder's spirit can take among us no reincarnation. An age
that is ceasing to produce child-like children cannot produce a Shelley.
For both as poet and man he was essentially a child.
Yet, just as in the effete French society before the Revolution the
Queen played at Arcadia, the King played at being a mechanic,
everyone played at simplicity and universal philanthropy, leaving for
most durable outcome of their philanthropy the guillotine, as the most
durable outcome of ours may