The Poet's Poet Part 3

Of the other romantic poets, Sir Walter Scott alone remains on good terms with the public, expressing a child's surprise and delight over the substantial checks he is given in exchange for his imaginings. But Sh.e.l.ley starts out with a chip on his shoulder, in the very advertis.e.m.e.nts of his poems expressing his unflattering opinion of The public's judgment, and Keats makes it plain that his own criticisms concern him far more than those of other men.

The consciously aristocratic, sniffing att.i.tude toward the public, which ran its course during Victoria's reign, is ushered in by Landor, who confesses,

I know not whether I am proud, But this I know, I hate the crowd, Therefore pray let me disengage My verses from the motley page, Where others, far more sure to please Pour forth their choral song with ease.

The same gentlemanly indifference to his plebeian readers is diffused all through Matthew Arnold's writing, of course. He casually disposes of popularity:

Some secrets may the poet tell For the world loves new ways; To tell too deep ones is not well,-- It knows not what he says.

[Footnote: See _In Memory of Obermann._]

Mrs. Browning probably has her own success in mind when she makes the young poetess, Aurora Leigh, recoil from the fulsome praise of her readers. Browning takes the same att.i.tude in _Sordello,_ contrasting Eglamor, the versifier who servilely conformed to the taste of the mob, with Sordello, the true poet, who despised it. In _Popularity_, Browning returns to the same theme, of the public's misplaced praises, and in _Pacchiarotto_ he outdoes himself in heaping ridicule upon his readers.

Naturally the coterie of later poets who have prided themselves on their unique skill in interpreting Browning have been impressed by his contempt for his readers. Perhaps they have even exaggerated it. No less contemptuous of his readers than Browning was that other Victorian, so like him in many respects, George Meredith.

It would be interesting to make a list of the zoological metaphors by which the Victorians expressed their contempt for the public. Landor characterized their criticisms as "a.s.ses' kicks aimed at his head."

[Footnote: Edmund Gosse, _Life of Swinburne_, p. 103.] Browning alternately represented his public cackling and barking at him.

[Footnote: See Thomas J. Wise, Letters, Second Series, Vol. 2, p. 52.]

George Meredith made a dichotomy of his readers into "summer flies" and "swinish grunters." [Footnote: _My Theme_.] Tennyson, being no naturalist, simply named the public the "many-headed beast." [Footnote: _In Memoriam_.]

In America there has been less of this sort of thing openly expressed by genuine poets. Emerson is fairly outspoken, telling us, in _The Poet_, how the public gapes and jeers at a new vision. But one must go to our border-line poets to find the feeling most candidly put into words. Most of them spurn popularity, a.s.serting that they are too worthwhile to be appreciated. They may be even nauseated by the slight success they manage to achieve, and exclaim,

Yet to know That we create an Eden for base worms!

If the consciousness of recent writers is dominated by contempt for mankind at large, such a mood is expressed with more caution than formerly. Kipling takes men's stupidity philosophically. [Footnote: See _The Story of Ung._] Edgar Lee Masters uses a fictional character as a mask for his remarks on the subject. [Footnote: See _Having His Way._] Other poets have expressed themselves with a degree of mildness.

[Footnote: See Watts-Dunton, _Apollo in Paris;_ James Stephens, _The Market;_ Henry Newbolt, _An Essay in Criticism;_ William Rose Benet, _People._] But of course Ezra Pound is not to be suppressed. He inquires,

Will people accept them?

(i.e., these songs) As a timorous wench from a centaur (or a centurion) Already they flee, howling in terror * * * * *

Will they be touched with the verisimilitude?

Their virgin stupidity is untemptable.

He adds,

I beg you, my friendly critics, Do not set about to procure me an audience.

Again he instructs his poems, when they meet the public,

Salute them with your thumbs to your noses.

It is very curious, after such pa.s.sages, to find him pleading, in another poem,

May my poems be printed this week?

The navete of this last question brings up insistently a perplexing problem. If the poet despises his readers, why does he write? He may perhaps evade this question by protesting, with Tennyson,

I pipe but as the linnets do, And sing because I must.

But why does he publish? If he were strictly logical, surely he would do as the artist in Browning's _Pictor Ignotus,_ who so shrank from having his pictures come into contact with fools, that he painted upon hidden, moldering walls, thus renouncing all possibility of fame. But one doubts whether such renunciation has been made often, especially in the field of poetry. Rossetti buried his poems, of course, but their resurrection was not postponed till the Last Judgment. Other writers have coyly waved fame away, but have gracefully yielded to their friends' importunities, and have given their works to the world. When one reads such expressions as Byron's;

Fame is the thirst of youth,--but I am not So young as to regard men's frown or smile As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot, [Footnote: _Childe Harold._]

one wonders. Perhaps the highest genius takes absolutely no account of fame, as the sun-G.o.d a.s.serts in Watts-Dunton's poem, _Apollo in Paris:_

I love the song-born poet, for that he Loves only song--seeks for love's sake alone Shy Poesie, whose dearest bowers, unknown To feudaries of fame, are known to thee.

[Footnote: See also Coventry Patmore, from _The Angel in the House,_ "I will not Hearken Blame or Praise"; Francis Carlin, _The Home Song_ (1918).]

But other poets, with the utmost inconsistency, have admitted that they find the thought of fame very sweet. [Footnote: See Edward Young, _Love of Fame;_ John Clare, _Song's Eternity, Idle Fame, To John Milton;_ Bulwer Lytton, _The Desire of Fame;_ James Gates Percival, _Sonnet 379;_ Josephine Peston Peabody, _Marlowe._] Keats dwells upon the thought of it. [Footnote: See the _Epistle to My Brother George._] Browning shows both of his poet heroes concerned over the question. In _Pauline_ the speaker confesses,

I ne'er sing But as one entering bright halls, where all Will rise and shout for him.

In _Sordello,_ again, Browning a.n.a.lyzes the desire for fame:

Souls like Sordello, on the contrary, Coerced and put to shame, retaining will, Care little, take mysterious comfort still, But look forth tremblingly to ascertain If others judge their claims not urged in vain, And say for them their stifled thoughts aloud.

So they must ever live before a crowd: --"Vanity," Naddo tells you.

Emerson's Saadi is one who does not despise fame, Nor can dispense With Persia for an audience.

[Footnote: _Saadi._]

Can it be that when the poet renounces fame, we must concur with Austin Dobson's paraphrase of his meaning,

But most, because the grapes are sour, Farewell, renown?

[Footnote: _Farewell Renown._]

Perhaps the poet is saved from inconsistency by his touching confidence that in other times and places human nature is less stupid and unappreciative than it proves itself in his immediate audience. He reasons that in times past the public has shown sufficient insight to establish the reputation of the master poets, and that history will repeat itself. Several writers have stated explicitly that their quarrel with humanity is not to be carried beyond the present generation. Thus Arnold objects to his time because it is aesthetically dead. [Footnote: See _Persistency of Poetry._] But elsewhere he objects because it shows signs of coming to life, [Footnote: See _Baccha.n.a.lia._] so it is hard to determine how our grandfathers could have pleased him. Similarly unreasonable discontent has been expressed by later poets with our own time. [Footnote: See William Ernest Henley, _The G.o.ds are Dead;_ Edmund Gosse, _On Certain Critics;_ Samuel Waddington, _The Death of Song;_ John Payne, _Double Ballad of the Singers of the Time_(1906).] Only occasionally a poet rebukes his brethren for this carping att.i.tude. Mrs.

Browning protests, in _Aurora Leigh,_

'Tis ever thus With times we live in,--evermore too great To be apprehended near....

I do distrust the poet who discerns No character or glory in his times, And trundles back his soul five hundred years.

[Footnote: See Robert Browning, Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 12, 1845.]

And Kipling is a notorious defender of the present generation, but these two stand almost alone. [Footnote: See also James Elroy Flecker, _Oak and Olive;_ Max Ehrmann, _Give Me Today._]

Several mythical explanations for the stupidity of the poet's own times have been offered in verse. Browning says that poetry is like wine; it must age before it grows sweet. [Footnote: _Epilogue to the Pacchiarotto Volume._] Emerson says the poet's generation is deafened by the thunder of his voice. [Footnote: _Solution._] A minor writer says that poetry must be written in one's life-blood, so that it necessarily kills one before it is appreciated. [Footnote: William Reed Dunroy, _The Way of the World_ (1897).] Another suggests that a subtle electric change is worked in one's poems by death. [Footnote: Richard Gilder, _A Poet's Question._] But the only reasonable explanation of the failure of the poet's own generation to appreciate him seems to be that offered by Sh.e.l.ley, in the _Defense of Poetry:_

No living poet ever arrived at the fullness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers.

Of course the contempt of the average poet for his contemporaries is not the sort of thing to endear him to them. Their self-respect almost forces them to ignore the poet's talents. And unfortunately, in addition to taking a top-lofty att.i.tude, the poet has, until recently, gone much farther, and while despising the public has tried to improve it. Most nineteenth century poetry might be described in Mrs. Browning's words, as

Antidotes Of medicated music, answering for Mankind's forlornest uses.

[Footnote: _Sonnets from the Portuguese._]

And like an unruly child the public struggled against the dose.

Whereupon the poet was likely to lose his temper, and declare, as Browning did,

My Thirty-four Port, no need to waste On a tongue that's fur, and a palate--paste!

A magnum for friends who are sound: the sick-- I'll posset and cosset them, nothing loath, Henceforward with nettle-broth.

[Footnote: _Epilogue to the Pacchiarotto Volume._]

Yes, much as we pity the forlorn poet when his sensitive feelings are hurt by the world's cruelty, we must still p.r.o.nounce that he is partly to blame. If the public is buzzing around his head like a swarm of angry hornets, he must in most cases admit that he has stirred them up with a stick.