of necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty. It must embody in order to reveal itself; but a living body is of necessity an organized one; and what is organization but the connexion of parts in and for a whole, so that each part is at once end and means?" (S. T. Coleridge.) The Neo-Classical theory had long been disintegrating when early in the nineteenth century it succumbed to the assaults of its Romantic critics. Romantic criticism begins, tentatively and circumspectly, in the mid-eighteenth century. It does not at first challenge the authority or supremacy of Neo-Classicism, but is content to plead the cause of "Gothic" poetry, and to defend it against the charge of lawlessness on the grounds (1) that it is a kind of poetry to which classical rules are inapplicable, and (2) that it has its own laws. The maxim "Follow Nature" may apply to certain species of poetry, e.g. the poetry of the passions or of manners, but it does not apply to the "more sublime and creative" poetry, the poetry of the imagination. The imaginative poet ranges in a world of his own, where experience has less to do than consistent imagination (Hurd). Poetical truth is to be distinguished from philosophical or historical truth. Romanticism proceeds from the vindication of "Gothic" poetry to the assertion of the principle of freedom for all poetry as against the claims of authority or formal law. Poetry is not lawless, but its laws are the laws of its own being. Genius, in the words of Coleridge, "cannot be lawless; for it is even this that constitutes it genius-the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination." Romanticism, in fine, advances the conception of "organic form" in opposition to the Neo-Classical ideal of "mechanical regularity." "The form is mechanic, when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material -as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic form on the other hand is innate; it shapes as it develops itself from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life-such is the form " (S. T. Coleridge). Finally, the Romantic School rejected entirely or limited the application of the Aristotelian theory of imitation, and revised, in sympathy with the transcendental tendencies of the age, the early theories of inspiration and imaginative creation. The criticism of the School is impressionistic and interpretative. I have endeavoured in the following pages to do justice to every school of poetry or criticism, and to allow to every doctrine its legitimate weight in whatever period it may have been affirmed or reaffirmed. For as criticism oscillates between the opposite poles of Classicism and Romanticism, doctrines rise and fall and rise again. may say of the history of doctrines what Horace has said of the history of words: Multa renascentur quae iam cecidere, cadentque Quae nunc sunt in honore. We The excerpts cited have been selected for the precision and clearness with which they formulate accepted doctrines or crystallize the vague and floating thought or opinion of an age. Expressions of individual opinion or the mere obiter dicta of poets or critics have not been admitted. The book is not primarily a selection of loci critici, but a body of doctrines-doctrines which may be said to interpret, if they cannot be said to have determined, the evolution of English poetry. They embody the theoretical principles of which the literary criticism of the last three hundred years is a concrete application. The study of poetry and criticism becomes more fruitful when associated with the study of literary theory. The student will not enter with understanding into the work of a poet and will not form a just historical estimate of it, if he is unacquainted with the aesthetic principles and critical standards of the poet's time. Even if the theory of poetry did not directly influence the work of a poet, it would do so indirectly by determining the literary criteria of his age. This is of course especially true of periods of conscious art, such as the eighteenth century. Finally, the literary criticism of a school or of an age is intelligible only in the light of its literary theory. The study of poetry and of poetical criticism divorced from theory is at best unscientific. I have to acknowledge the assistance I have received in the preparation of this volume from my friend and former colleague, Dr. F. E. A. Campbell. I owe to him. the compilation of the Index, and a most careful revision of the proof-sheets. I have also to acknowledge the courteous permission of Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton to cite a passage from A. C. Swinburne's Essays and Studies |