The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry

I should not wonder if some will have been saying to themselves, “But what about Wordsworth; Wordsworth, who was the contemporary, and at least the equal, alike in genius and in influence, of the three poets just named?” I have not forgotten Wordsworth. Wordsworth was of too pious a temperament, using the word pious in its very largest signification, to be a Pessimist; for true piety and Pessimism are irreconcilable. Nevertheless Wordsworth, as a poet, likewise experienced, and experienced acutely, the influence of the French Revolution. Upon this point there can be no difference of opinion; for he himself left it on record in a well-known passage. Everybody knows with what different eyes Wordsworth finally looked on the French Revolution; how utterly he broke with its tenets, its promises, its offspring; taking refuge from his disappointment.

But something akin to despondency, if too permeated with sacred resignation wholly to deserve that description, may be discovered in the attitude henceforward assumed by Wordsworth, as a poet, towards the world, society, and mankind. Not only did he write a long poem, The Recluse, but he himself was a recluse, and the whole of The Excursion is the composition of a recluse. Matthew Arnold, always a high authority on Wordsworth, has said:

But Wordsworth’s eyes avert their kenFrom half of human fate.

Indeed they did; turning instead to the silence that is in the sky, to the sleep that is in the hills, to the mountains, the flowers, and the poet’s own solitary meditations. He declared that he would rather be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn than one of those Christian worldlings, of which society seemed to him mainly to consist. This is not necessarily Pessimism. But it goes perilously near to it; and the boundary line would have been crossed, but that Wordsworth’s prayer was answered, in which he petitioned that his days might be linked each to each by natural piety.

Of Matthew Arnold himself, as a poet, I am able to speak; for though he was not long ago one’s contemporary, he is no longer one of ourselves. In Matthew Arnold it has always seemed to me, the poet and the man, his reason and his imagination, were not quite one. They were harnessed together rather than incorporated one with the other; and, many years before he died, if I may press the comparison a little farther, the poet, the imaginative part of him became lame and halt, and he conveyed his mind in the humbler one-horse vehicle of prose. The poetic impulse in him was not strong enough to carry him along permanently against the prosaic opposition of life. Nevertheless, he was a poet who wrote some very beautiful poetry; and he exercised a powerful influence, both as a poet and as a prose-writer, on the thoughts and sentiments of his time. Now, what do we find him saying? Listen!

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,The other powerless to be born,With nowhere yet to rest my head,Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.Their faith, My tears, the world deride,I come to shed them at your side.There yet perhaps may dawn an age,More fortunate alas! than we,Which without hardness will be sage,And gay without frivolity.Sons of the world, oh haste those years!But, till they rise, allow our tears.

Hark to the words he puts into the mouth of Empedocles:

And yet what days were those, Parmenides!Then we could still enjoy, then neither thoughtNor outward things were closed and dead to us;But we received the shock of mighty thoughtsOn simple minds with a pure natural joy.······We had not lost our balance then, nor grownThought’s slaves, and dead to every natural joy.

In another poem he declares:

Achilles ponders in his tent:The Kings of modern thought are dumb;Silent they are, though not content,And wait to see the future come.······Our fathers watered with their tearsThe sea of time whereon we sail;Their voices were in all men’s earsWho passed within their puissant hail.Still the same ocean round us raves,But we stand mute and watch the waves.

Last and worst of all, and in utter despondency and pessimism he cries:

Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,Your social order, too!Where tarries He, the Power who said,See, I make all things new?… The past is out of date,The future not yet born;And who can be alone elate,While the world lies forlorn?

Can Pessimism in Poetry go farther than that? Many will perhaps think it cannot; but, unfortunately, it can. It is only from poets who are dead, if dead but recently, that one can draw one’s illustrations; otherwise I could suggest you should read to yourselves volume upon volume of verse, the one long weary burden of which is the misery of being alive. I daresay you will not be sorry that one is precluded from introducing these melancholy minstrels. But the spirit that imbues and pervades them is compendiously and conveniently expressed in a composition that I can read to you, and which I select because it seems to express, in reasonably small compass, the indictment which our metrical pessimists labour to bring against existence.

I have confined my survey entirely to poets of our own land, and have said nothing to you of Giacomo Leopardi, the celebrated Italian Pessimistic Poet; nothing of Heine, whose beautiful but too often cynical lyrics must be known to you either in the original German, or in one or other of the various English versions, into which they have been rendered; nothing of the long procession of railers, sometimes bestial, nearly always repulsive, in French verse, beginning with Baudelaire, and coming down to the petits crevés of poetry who are not ashamed to be known by the name of décadens, and who certainly deserve it, for if they possess nothing else, they possess to perfection the art of sinking. One would naturally expect to find in the country where occurred the French Revolution, the most violent forms of the malady which, as I have said, is mainly attributable to it; and surely it is a strong confirmation of the truth of that theory that it is in France poetic pessimism has in our day had its most outrageous and most voluminous expression.

I hope no one supposes that I am, even incidentally, intending to pronounce a sweeping and unqualified condemnation of the great movement known in history as the French Revolution. That would indeed be to be as narrow as the narrowest pessimist could possibly show himself. The French Revolution, as is probably the case with every great political, religious, or social movement, was in its action partly beneficial, partly detrimental. It abolished many monstrous abuses, it propounded afresh some long-neglected or violated truths; and it gave a vigorous impulse to human hope. But it was perhaps the most violent of all the great movements recorded in human annals. Accordingly, it destroyed over much, and it promised over much. In all probability, action and reaction are as nicely balanced in the intellectual and moral world as in the physical, and exaggerated hopes must have their equivalent in correlated and co-equal disappointment. I sometimes think that the nineteenth century now closed will be regarded in the fullness of time as a colossal egotist, that began by thinking somewhat too highly of itself, its prospects, its capacity, its performances, and ended by thinking somewhat too meanly of what I have called things in general, or those permanent conditions of man, life, and society, which no amount of Revolutions, French or otherwise, will avail to get rid of.

In truth, if I were asked to say briefly what Pessimism is, I should say it is disappointed Egotism; and the description will hold good, whether we apply it to an individual, to a community, or to an age.

For nothing is more remarkable in the writings of pessimistic poets than the attention they devote, and that they ask us to devote, to their own feelings. Far be it from me to deny that some very lovely and very valuable verse has been written by poets concerning their personal joys, sorrows, hopes, longings, and disappointments. But then it is verse which describes the joys, sorrows, hopes, longings, and disappointments common to the whole human race, and which every sensitive nature experiences at some time or another, in the course of chequered life, and which are peculiar to no particular age or generation, but the pathetic possession of all men, and all epochs. The verse to which I allude with less commendation, is the verse in which the writer seems to be occupied, and asking us to occupy ourselves, with exceptional states of suffering which appertain to him alone, or to him and the little esoteric circle of superior martyrs to which he belongs, and to some special period of history in which their lot is cast. The sorrows we entertain in common with others never lead to pessimism, they lead to pity, sympathy, pathos, to pious resignation, to courageous hope. I wish these privileged invalids would take to heart those noble lines of Wordsworth:

So once it would have been – ’tis so no more —I have submitted to a new control —A power is gone which nothing can restore,A deep distress hath humanized my soul!

I sometimes think these doleful bards have never had a really deep distress, that their very woe is fanciful, and that like the young gentleman in France of whom Arthur speaks in King John, they are as sad as night, only for wantonness. But far from being rebuked by critics for their sea-green melancholy, they have been hailed as true masters of song for scarcely any better reason than that they declare themselves to be utterly miserable, and life to be equally so. Indeed by some critics it has been raised into a literary canon, not only that all Poetry, to be of much account, must be written in the pathetic minor, but that the poets themselves, if we are to recognise them as endowed with true genius and real sacred fire, must be unhappy from the cradle to the grave. If they can die young, if they can go mad, or commit suicide, so much the better. Their credentials as great poets are then firmly established. Even a pathetic phrase has been invented to describe the natural and inevitable condition of such sacred persons, a phrase that must be well known to you – the Sorrows of Genius.

Therefore, in the really sacred name of Genius, of Literature, of Poetry, I protest against this pitiable, this mawkish, unmanly, unwholesome, and utterly untrue estimate both of poetry and poets. No first-rate poet ever went mad, or ever committed suicide, though one or two, no doubt, have happened to die comparatively young. It is utterly dishonouring to poets, it is utterly discrediting to men of genius, to represent them as feeble, whining, helpless, love-sick, life-sick invalids, galvanised from time to time into activity by a sort of metrical hysteria. Because Shelley has truly said that

Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought

– and because in Julian and Maddalo he has represented Byron as saying that men

… learn in suffering what they teach in song

– are we to conclude that sadness and suffering are the only things in life, the only things in it deserving of the poet’s music? No one will ever be a poet of much consequence who has not suffered, for, as Goethe finely says, he who never ate his bread in sorrow, knows not the Heavenly Powers. But, if our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought, they are not necessarily our strongest or our greatest songs; and if we accept the assertion that men learn in suffering what they teach in song, do not let us forget the “learning” spoken of in the line. The poet, no doubt, has to learn by suffering, but having learnt, he has then, in my opinion, to help others not to be miserable, but to be happy.

I cannot here allude to well-known poets of other ages and other nations, avowedly great and permanent benefactors of mankind, all of whom alike were completely free from this malady of universal discontent. But let me at least take a cursory survey of our native poets; for, after all, to us English men and English women, what English poets have felt and said concerns us most and interests us most deeply. Let us see what is their attitude to external nature, to man, woman, life, society, and the general dispensation of existence.

You know how our modern pessimists cannot see a tree, a flower, or a mountain, but straightway they drop into what I may call a falling sickness, and all the beauty of the woods, fields, and sky merely suggests to them a picturesque background for their own superior sighs and sorrows. How differently Chaucer looks upon the panorama of this fair earth of ours! He is a great student, as men in the early days of the Renaissance were, and he tells us that he hath such delight in reading books, and has in his heart for them such reverence, that there is no game which can tear him away from them. But, when the month of May comes, and the birds sing, and the flowers begin to shoot, then, he adds, “Farewell my book and my devotion!” He wanders forth and beholds the eye of the daisy; and this blissful sight, as he calls it, softeneth all his sorrow. Elsewhere he describes how he cannot lie in bed for the glad beams of the sun that pour in through the window. He rushes out, and is delighted with everything. The welkin is fair, the air blue and light, it is neither too hot nor too cold, and not a cloud is anywhere to be seen. This disposition of content with and joy in external Nature, Chaucer displays equally when he consorts with his kind. It is very noticeable, though I am not aware if it has been pointed out before, how he portrays all the various pilgrims and personages in the famous Prologue to the Canterbury Tales as of cheerful and generally jovial spirits. There is not a melancholy person, not a pessimist, in the whole company. He describes himself as talking and having fellowship with every one of them, and we may therefore conclude he also was pretty cheerful and genial himself. Even of his “perfect gentle knight,” whom he evidently intended to describe as the pink of chivalry, he says:

And though that he was worthy, he was wise.

And there never was, and never will be, wisdom without cheerfulness. As for the young Squire, the lover and lusty bachelor, that accompanied the Knight, Chaucer says of him, in a couplet that has always struck me as possessing a peculiar charm:

Singing he was or fluting all the day,He was as merry as the month of May.

He says of him, though he could sit a horse well, he could also write songs; and we can easily surmise what the songs were like. Chaucer’s Nun or Prioress is delineated by him as full pleasant and amiable of port, and as even taking trouble to feign the cheerful air of a lady of the Court. When the Monk rides abroad, men could hear his bridle jingling in a whistling wind as clear and loud as the chapel bell. Do not the words stir one’s blood to cheerfulness, and sound like a very carillon of joy? Of the Friar it is recorded that certainly he had a merry note, and well could he sing and play upon the harp, and that while he sang and played, his eyes twinkled in his head, like stars in the frosty night. The business of the Clerk of Oxenford was by his speech to sow abroad moral virtue; but Chaucer adds, “And gladly would he learn – ” mark that word “gladly” “ – and gladly teach.” The Franklin, a country gentleman, he declares, was wont to live in delight, for he was Epicurus’ own son. The Shipman draws many a draught of wine from Bordeaux; well can the wife of Bath laugh and jest; the Miller is a regular joker and buffoon; a better fellow you cannot find, he avers, than the Sumpnor; and the Pardoner, for very jollity, goes bareheaded, singing full merrily and loud. As for the Landlord of the “Tabard,” he is described as making great cheer, being a right merry man. He declares there is no comfort nor mirth in riding to Canterbury, even on pilgrimage, as dumb as a stone, and that they may smite off his head if he does not succeed in making them merry; and it all ends by Chaucer declaring that every wight was blithe and glad. Indeed, these are such a cheery, such a jovial set, that the only sorrow we can feel in connection with them is regret that we, too, were not of that delightful company.

I wonder if it has occurred to you, while reading these brief and cursory extracts from Chaucer, to say to yourselves, “How English it all is!” If not, may I say it for you? I am free to confess that I am one of those who think – and I hope there are some in this room who share my opinion – that the epithet English is an epithet to be proud of, an adjective of praise, a mark of commendation, and connotes, as the logician would say, everything that is manly, brave, wholesome, and sane. These latter-day melancholy moping minstrels are not English at all, they are feeble copies of foreign originals. Between them and Chaucer there is absolute alienation. About them there is nothing jolly or jovial, and there is not one good fellow among them.

Let us turn to the next great name according to chronological order in English Poetry; let us glance, if but rapidly, at the pages of Spenser. You could not well have two poets of more different dispositions than Chaucer and Spenser. One seems to hear Chaucer’s own bridle jingling in a whistling wind, to see his own eyes twinkling in his head like stars in the frosty night, and one thinks of him, too, as singing or fluting all the day long and being as merry as the month of May. In the gaze, on the brow, and in the pages of Spenser, there abides a lofty dignity, as of a high-born stately gentleman, deferential to all, but familiar with none. Indeed he resembles his own Gentle Knight in the opening lines of the Fairy Queen, the description of whom I have always thought is none other than the portraiture of himself. If ever a poet had high seriousness it is Spenser. He never condescends to indulge in the broad jests dear to Chaucer, frequent in Shakespeare, common in Byron. Yet between him and Chaucer, between him and every great poet, there is this similarity, that he looks on life with a cheerful mind. It is a grave cheerfulness, but cheerfulness all the same; and, in truth, cheerful gravity, and high seriousness are one and the same thing.

Full jolly Knight he seemed, and fair did sit,As one for Knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit!

he says in the very first stanza of his noble poem. “Jolly,” no doubt, does not mean quite the same thing with Spenser as it does with Chaucer. There is the difference in signification, we may say, that there is, in character, between the Landlord of the “Tabard” and the Gentle Knight. But never does the latter lapse into melancholy, much less into Pessimism. He is too active, on too great adventure bound, and too impressed with its solemn importance, for that. Spenser himself significantly expresses the fear that his Gentle Knight

Of his cheer did seem too solemn sad,

as though he wished to let us know that even solemn sadness is a fault. But he soon enables us to discern that appearance is misleading, and reflects in reality only a noble, lofty, and serene temper, and that desire to win the worship and favour of the Fairy Queen, which he tells us, “of all earthly things, the Knight most did crave.” As soon as Spenser has described the lovely lady that rode the Knight beside, he says:

And forth they pass, with pleasure forward led.

And again

Led with delight, they thus beguile the way.

There is no buffoonery, as in the Canterbury Tales, but a wise equable serenity that contemplates man and woman, beauty, temptation, danger, sorrow, struggle, honour, this world and the next, with a Knightly equanimity that nothing can disturb. But why should I dwell on the point, when Spenser himself has written one line which I may call his confession of faith on the subject? —

The noblest mind the best contentment has.

What a noble line! the noblest, I think, in all literature. Let us commit it to heart, repeat it morning, noon, and night, and it will cast out for us all the devils, aye, all the swine of Pessimism. What does this grave, this serious, this dignified English poet say of the Muses themselves? —

The Sisters Nine, which dwell on Parnass’ height,Do make them music for their more delight!

That is Spenser’s conception of the mission of poetry, and of the function of the poet – to make them music for their more delight – I acknowledge it is mine. I earnestly trust it is that of many.

There is no passion of the human heart, no speculation of the human mind, to which Shakespeare has not, in some passage or another, given expressive utterance; and since in life there is much sorrow, no little suffering, and ample sadness, chapter and verse can readily be found in his universal pages for any mood or any state of feeling. But what is the one, broad, final impression we receive of the gaze with which Shakespeare looked on life? A complete answer to that question would furnish matter for a long paper. But one brief passage must here suffice. In the most terrible and tragic of all his tragedies, King Lear, and in the most terrible and tragic of all its appalling incidents, the following brief colloquy takes place between Edgar and his now sightless father:

Away, old man; give me thy hand; away!King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta’en:Give me thy hand, come on.No farther, sir,

replies Gloster in despair,

No farther, sir! A man may rot even here.

What is Edgar’s answer? —

What! In ill thoughts again? Men must endureTheir going hence, even as their coming hither,Ripeness is all: come on!

If, at such a moment, and in the very darkest hour of disaster, Shakespeare puts such language into the mouth of Edgar, is it wonderful that he should, in less gloomy moments, take so cheerful a view of life, that Milton can only describe his utterances by calling them “woodnotes wild”?

And Milton himself? Milton almost as grave as Spenser and certainly more austere. Yet I do not think that Pessimism, that the advocates of universal suicide, since life is not worth living, will be able to get much help or sanction for their doleful gospel from the poet who wrote Paradise Lost expressly to

… assert Eternal ProvidenceAnd justify the ways of God to man.

Milton has given us, in two of the loveliest lyrics in the language, his conception of Melancholy and of Joy. Of his L’Allegro I need not speak. But in Il Penseroso, if anywhere in Milton, we must look for some utterance akin to the desolation and the despair of modern pessimistic poets. We may look, but assuredly we shall not find it.

Then let the pealing organ blow,To the full-voicëd choir below.

In protesting, therefore, against Pessimism in Poetry, I am only returning to the oldest, soundest, and noblest traditions in English Literature, and in the English character. I trust no one supposes I am denying or that I am insensible to the existence of pain, woe, sadness, loss, even anguish and acute suffering, as integral and inevitable elements in life; and if poetry did not take note of these, and give to them pathetic and adequate expression, poetry would not be, as it is, coextensive with life, would not be the Paraclete or Comforter, with the gift of tongues. In poetry the note of sorrow will be, and must be, occasionally, and indeed frequently struck; it should not be the dominant key, much less the only key in which the poet tunes his song. There is much in our modern civilisation that is very unbeautiful, nay, that is downright ugly, whether we look on it with the eye of the artist or with the vision of the moralist. Moreover, I perceive – who could fail to perceive? – that we have in these days some very dark and difficult social problems to solve. Then let the poet come to our assistance by accompanying us with musical encouragement. For, remember, the poet has to make harmony, not out of language only, but out of life as well. I was once looking at a violin, a very lovely violin, a Stradivarius of great value and exquisite tone, and I asked the lady to whom it belonged of what wood the various parts of the instrument was composed. She told me, with much loving detail; but, she said, “I ought to add that I have been told no violin can be made of supreme quality unless the wood be taken from that side of the tree which faces south.” It is the same with the Poet. If he is to give us the sweetest, the most sonorous, and the truest notes, his nature must have a bias towards the sunny side.

A VINDICATION OF TENNYSON

[This paper appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine a quarter of a century ago, in reply to one that had been published in the same periodical in the previous month.]