القرن التاسع عشر ، رقم ١٨٢، أبريل ١٨٩٢ [ظ‎‎٤‎٢] (٢٤٤/٨٩)

574 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
April
applause. But the ' claque' is quickly recognised, and the readers
of poetry are not persuaded to persevere long with the admiration
forced upon them. Again, really good writers do not always gain
their full meed or appreciation at once, or during the period of their
best production. Look at Browning, who had written all that was
really of the first order while he was an almost unknown man Irving
abroad, and who became famous in London when he had ceased to
compose anything but intellectual puzzles thrown at the heads
of his admirers. Look at Keats and Shelley. I am old enough to
remember the time when it required some courage to admire either
of them without grave reserves. The few great classics then stood
on an unassailed pedestal; and a man would have been considered
absolutely mad who should have preferred to
or the Ode to a Grecian Urn to the We have more
courage now, and, as I think, a better canon of criticism, and are more
just. If anyone doubts this, let him look through any library, public
or private, and try if he can discover a readable volume of verse by
an unknown author of more than fifty years ago. None such, I
venture to say, exists, and we may rest assured that all supreme
merit will continue to be recognised, all true poetry to find its proper
level.
With Lord Lytton's poetry I am, therefore, in no pain as to its
ultimately ranking according to its worth. For the moment, how
ever, it seems to me that the political part played by the man has
vitiated somewhat the public judgment in its estimate of the
writer.
Politics and poetry are in the English mind antagonistic things,
and it is considered that high merit in the one implies a correspond
ing lack of merit in the other. In our system, too, of party war
fare every organ of criticism, even those most exclusively devoted to
art, is obliged to have its side declared or half-declared in politics,
and so we see poets extolled or belittled in large measure according
to their supposed political opinions. Mr. Swinburne has been a
favourite of the Times since he became known as the enemy of
Irish priestcraft. Mr. William Morris, the Socialist, finds his best
applause in the Pall Mall Gazette-, Mr. Lewis Morris, the Gladstonian
candidate, in the DailyNeivs. This is only natural, and it would
be folly to complain of it, but still it needs to be considered if we are
to estimate things fairly. In Lord Lytton's case, I think, he has
suffered doubly as a poet from his political attitude. He has incurred
the resentment of the Liberal Press for being too strong a Tory, and
at the same time his high public position has caused his political
friends to treat his poetry as no more than that holiday flirtation
with the Muse which statesmen are allowed. By neither side has he
been treated according to his full literary deserts. Now, however,